Lost and Found: A Reading of a Poem I Like January 31, 2009: In the audio commentary for his film Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), Monte Hellman notes the great advantage of working with “non-actors” like James Taylor and Dennis Wilson, innocent amateurs who don’t try to act. The great advantage of the speaker in Canadian poet Brian Bartlett’s recent poem “Dear Georgie” is the fact that he doesn’t [...] by Jason Guriel

FEAR OF BLOGGING January 31, 2009: As a poet and writer, still struggling in the woeful margins of our society, gathering the courage and mustering the time to participate on HARRIET has been challenging. Too, being born on the cusp of the first Baby Boom—a post-WWII generation that refuses to kowtow to Father Time, but many of whose intellectuals remain stubbornly recalcitrant [...] by Wanda Coleman

WHAT TILLIE OLSEN TAUGHT ME January 31, 2009: Would that cultural, literary and community action panels were less about self-promotion (my book, my poem, my looks), more about the issues at hand—a true dialogue, if in brief, under the pressures of public scrutiny—and less dull (like those unfortunately bookish or ill-spoken, if deserving, souls who appear so frequently on C-SPAN). Perhaps [...] by Wanda Coleman

ON ORAL WORD— BEAT TO “DEAF” JAM SLAM January 30, 2009: Slams—once the bane of poetry, if the boon of grungy environs, has left the barrooms and stormed academia, as the first conference on hiphop and rap took place in Norfolk, Virginia at the turn of this century. Still—the Def Jam generation has yet to produce giants as impressive as Ginsberg, Kerouac and Kaufman, although it has been a joy to [...] by Wanda Coleman

BELATED VALENTINE January 30, 2009: Needing a quote for a project in 2006, I tracked down Eileen Kaufman, wife and amanuensis to poet Bob Kaufman (the Black Rimbaud, April 18, 1912-January 12, 1986), with the help of San Francisco’s Kush Cloudhouse. She was in an assisted-living facility in the Richmond, California area. After a number of false starts, we finally connected. She [...] by Wanda Coleman

Translation and its Discontents: Part I January 30, 2009: At the end of last year, in the wake of the annual Nobel to-do, during which J.M.G. Le Clézio took the literary prize, Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the jury, publicly declared that “There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world... not the [...] by Martin Earl

A NATIONAL MUSEUM OF POETS & WRITERS? January 29, 2009: In the mid-90s I became aware of competing factions writing proposals for a museum celebrating American poets, from Antoninus to Zukofsky. I did not keep up with their progress—if any. It was a great idea, although criteria for such an edifice might prove a nightmare, given the diversity and pettiness of American poetry. Too, if I had my [...] by Wanda Coleman

MY OWN PRIVATE INAUGURATION January 28, 2009: It is January 20th, 2009 and I am here. I come from every state and territory, and from all over the world. I walked, I bicycled, I hitchhiked, I drove by car, I flew by plane, I rode the A-train—I watched on TV and listened on the neighbor’s radio. I am the millions who made the hajj to Washington, D.C., recorded and documented—bona fide [...] by Wanda Coleman

The Making of the Pré January 28, 2009: On Saturday, Cabinet Magazine will host “Untitled New York,” an all day festival of experimental writing at their Event and Exhibition Space in Brooklyn. The event is a continuation of “Untitled: Speculations on the Expanded Field of Writing,” a Cal Arts sponsored showcase from last October that featured many of the same writers and [...] by Travis Nichols

The Inaugurable Poem Remixes January 27, 2009: People Like Us "An Induction Is A Draft Is A Gust Of Air" (video version) PLU + RIAA "A Golden Induction" People Like Us "An Induction Is A Draft Is A Gust Of Air" People Like Us "Adjournment-Poem" Fatty Jubbo "Histrionic Inaugural Poem" Fatty Jubbo "Elizabeth Claire Prophet Inauguration" Fatty Jubbo "Riveting Inaugural Poem" Fatty Jubbo "A [...] by Kenneth Goldsmith