Back to Life February 19, 2009: Second Run, an online magazine out of Ames, Iowa, just published its first issue last week, and it’s a peculiar thing. This Second Run does not want the newest, freshest work to show off; it wants old work, poems that have appeared in journals that have either gone out of print, been buried in the back of some grad student’s closet, or have [...] by Travis Nichols

New kid on the block February 19, 2009: I am going to assume, because you are here, reading this site, that you like to read. I am also going to assume, because you are reading this site, that you like to read good writing. My cousin always warned about what might come of you and me should we assume too frequently (if you don’t know the punch line, I’ll just say there’s a draft [...] by Camille Dungy

In conversation February 18, 2009: Friday night, in Chicago, I attended a tribute event for Gwendolyn Brooks. Lucille Clifton read Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “the mother” followed by her own piece, “the lost baby poem.” A highlight of my time at AWP was hearing Clifton read one and then the next, and hearing her discuss how her poem participates in direct conversation with [...] by Camille Dungy

Child’s Play: A Reading of a Poem I Like February 17, 2009: One word that gets a lot of play in our critical writing – since the dawn of Derrida, anyway – is ‘play’ itself. We’re often wanting more of it, not less, and the freer the play the better. But I wonder if the logic of Eliot’s old saw about free verse – “No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job” – can be extended [...] by Jason Guriel

AWP, The Poetic Morning After February 16, 2009: Ok, nobody else has started this thread yet, and I'm sure there are many folks out there dying to weigh in, so I'll bite: How was Y'all's AWP, from a poetry perspective, that is: favorite panels? readings? moments? Affrilachian Poets Reading, Chicago Art Institute, Associated Writing Programs 2009 Annual Convention. Photo by Stephanie [...] by Annie Finch

Translation and its Discontents, Part 3 (reading Blake backwards) February 16, 2009: The last major twentieth century poet to have included William Blake in his gallery of crucial ancestors was Allen Ginsberg. Lately, we hear less and less about Blake, not to mention Ginsberg. This is perhaps a shame, but as shames go, not a great shame. They’ll be back; first to return will be, I imagine, Blake of the Songs. In fact, he [...] by Martin Earl

The Poetry in the Prose: Part Two February 11, 2009: Last time around, I dealt with the unreadable poems of the fictional poets in Roberto Bolaño’s novel The Savage Detectives, or what one fellow blogger neatly dubbed, "dark-matter." It’s not that these unreadable poems are composed solely of punctuation or something, like the experimental works of D.L., the self-anointed postmodernist in a [...] by Jason Guriel

Neon Meat Dreams of a Octafish February 10, 2009: Throughout the life of the online literary journal Octopus, various writers have showcased out-of-print or hard-to-find works through the magazine's "recovery projects." These projects offer close readings and commentary on books by poets like Laura Jensen, Kamau Brathwaite, Paul Mann and Wong May, among others, and have been offered alongside [...] by Travis Nichols

Translation and its Discontents: Part 2 (some preliminary examples of attitude) February 10, 2009: Two of the comments on my recent post stood out from among the others in the tone they struck. They were the ones that generated the dynamic of this particular thread. As obviously as Horace Engdahl was wrong about America and its relation to world literature, the questions that arose seemed to turn upon why he was wrong. One of the two [...] by Martin Earl

AWP: My Would-be Itinerary February 9, 2009: THURSDAY FEBRUARY 12 8:00a.m. R100. Conference Registration. Attendees who have registered in advance may pick up their registration materials at AWP's pre-registration desk on the lower level of the Hilton Chicago. On-site registration badges are available for purchase at the 8th Street side of the lobby level. (more...) by Javier Huerta