John Updike (1932-2009) January 27, 2009: All of the staff and board at the Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine express their profound sorrow at the death of John Updike. Although many people knew him as a prolific novelist, Updike also wrote and published several books of poetry. Some of his poems were printed in Poetry magazine. He is, in fact, the author of this site's most popular [...] by Catherine Halley

Poet Musician David Berman quits Band, outs Father January 26, 2009: File this under random gossip. David Berman, best known as singer of the Silver Jews and author of Actual Air, just "announced that he will quit his band and continue on as muckraker and screenwriter. It doesn't say anything about whether or not he'll continue to write poetry. I hope he does since Berman is a hit with the college students. [...] by Cathy Park Hong

What’s On Your Desk? January 26, 2009: Unlike Seinfeld’s Kramer’s coffee-table-book-about-coffee-tables, Evie Christie’s Desk Space – a Web site devoted to writers' desks – is much more than a novelty. (more...) by Jason Guriel

ASK January 24, 2009: Black History Month approaches, and, it seems, is amazingly becoming a daily affair with the election of Barack Hussein Obama as our nation’s new president. I have never seen so many identifiably African-American faces on programming outside of BET, if most of our females look like White women dipped in molasses. This is both boon and bane. The [...] by Wanda Coleman

Of poetry and privilege January 23, 2009: Despite its principles, the Republic of Letters, as it actually operates, is a closed world, inaccessible to the underprivileged. (more...) by Don Share

OF POETRY AND A-HOLES January 22, 2009: In recent history, some insulting moron called films the poetry of our era—deaf to the thousands of poets who raise their voices daily, hoping America, and perhaps the world, will hear. The chilling, if not complete silencing, of contemporary American poetry at peak bloom is an awful thing to watch. Educational factors are too numerous to [...] by Wanda Coleman

OF POETRY AND POWER: REFLECTIONS ON THE INAUGURATION January 21, 2009: A little over a year ago, at a house party in Harlem, through some fluke I ended up standing within 5 feet of Barack Hussein Obama as he delivered his stump speech. Close enough to note hangnails, blackheads. Close enough to watch single pores bead up with sweat in the hot room. Close enough that I could smell on his breath that he had been [...] by Monica Youn

Keep Blogging January 21, 2009: What will come after the blog? Where do bloggers go from here? Has the form, as is typical of new media, aged precociously? Are the big print media outlets, with their combination of traditional and new media formats (paper, a website which reproduces more or less a virtual duplication of the hard form, embedded bloggers, video, slideshows, [...] by Martin Earl

A Brief, Belated Review of “Twelve Visual Poems” (edited by Geof Huth, from the November issue of Poetry) January 21, 2009: Actually, I don’t have too much to say about the poems themselves, which I found pleasant enough. But surely these poems deserve a livelier critical commentary than the polite one Geof Huth supplies. (more...) by Jason Guriel

The Inaugural Poem January 20, 2009: .msnbcLinks {font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 425px;} .msnbcLinks a {text-decoration:none !important; border-bottom: 1px dotted #999 !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px;} .msnbcLinks a:link, .msnbcLinks a:visited {color: [...] by Travis Nichols