Poetry is making things happen! Installment #2 (Help Him Woo Sarah Silverman) April 13, 2009: Can poetry help this man woo the woman of his dreams (and support at-risk youth in the process)? Rob Gitin, Executive Director of At The Crossroads, a San Francisco-based not-for-profit organization, turned to poetry as part of his 2009 fund raising campaign. The campaign is a unique one.  Gitin describes it as “kind of a [...] by Camille Dungy

I, Too, Am a Vegetable: The Whitman Parodies April 13, 2009: Among the gems in my late father's library is a book published in 1923 under the title Parodies On Walt Whitman,  published by American Library Service with a preface by Christopher Morley. Chronologically arranged and covering a sixty five-year period starting in 1857, it's a fascinating book from literary-historical, sociological, and [...] by Annie Finch

What Do You Know? April 13, 2009: Judith Shklar introduced her book Ordinary Vices by saying, "It is only if we step outside the divinely ruled moral universe that we can really put our minds to the common ills we inflict upon one another each day." I suppose poets these days aren't supposed to put their minds to grand tasks - you know, it's more like write a poem every day [...] by Don Share

Do I Dare Disturb the Reader?: Some Thoughts on Horror, Plus Two Brief Readings of Poems I Like April 11, 2009: Poetry, we’re assured, is a full-service operation. It makes nothing happen, provides momentary stays against confusion, gives language a good Swiffering, fills time at weddings, kills Time at funerals – it has a full itinerary. But one thing it sometimes seems ill-equipped to do is scare us. I mean really scare the shit out of us, and not [...] by Jason Guriel

Headlines: NEVERMORE! April 10, 2009: No, dear hearts, I am not made of stone.  I am not some blog hog tyrant who can't listen to reason.  So when you say, hey, bubba, those headlines on Harriet this month are kind of "annoying," when you say they "clog the RSS feed," and that "no one in their right mind cares about D.I.Y. magnetic poetry," and "Why don't you take your Seamus Heaney [...] by Travis Nichols

Some Practical Advice for Young Poets Considering Exile: Part 1 April 9, 2009: Perfect Parallax Correction In my case it took almost two years of leaving and then returning, and then leaving once again to reach the point at which I finally gained what I would call a legal footing in Europe. In the midst of these two years (1984 - 1986) I even spent a week in China - an alternative to the European project - having [...] by Martin Earl

Headlines: April 9, 2009 April 9, 2009: Different sex, different book. The 2009 Guggenheim list. Dante's love and Dante's ethics. Exclaiming Chelsey Minnis and Edna St. Vincent Millay. The New Economy same as the Old: Poets are broke. Said of Shiraz poem headed to White House. Leonard Cohen, comparing mythologies. DIY magnetic poetry. The lyric poems of [...] by Travis Nichols

Sound makes sense April 9, 2009: Yesterday a student came into my office with a guitar, and he sang me a song.  He did so because he had realized the music could convey more than his words could.  He wanted a boost behind the piece he’d written for our meeting.  I listened to his song (with pleasure: he plays guitar well and has a pleasant voice), but afterwards we talked [...] by Camille Dungy

Headlines: April 8, 2009 April 8, 2009: Seamus Heaney= bikini? Egypt bans literary journal for "blasphemous poem." How to build your own letterpress. Is all bookselling local? "Africadian" poet's new book of blues and bliss. Is poetry in the midst of " a worldwide movement, a renaissance"? Judging a book by its author photo. Poetry picks from Fort [...] by Travis Nichols

Poetry is making things happen! Installment #1 (Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project) April 7, 2009: We’re nearly a week into National Poetry Month.  Poems, poems, everywhere. Also economic chaos, heightened criminal activity, catastrophic climate change…and all the other worrying realities of our time.   This world is full of real-time hard times. How can poetry make it better? April is a month of heightened awareness.  In [...] by Camille Dungy