Hayden Carruth (1921-2008) July 17, 2009: Last summer, I was asked to write something about Hayden Carruth, and I did, but the folks who had asked me to write the piece never published it. Carruth died in September of last year. He had been an idiosyncratic but pervasive force in American poetry -- both as a writer of poems and a critic of poetry -- for more than fifty years. Here is [...] by Joel Brouwer

Like and Dislike July 16, 2009: In our constant effort to improve the Harriet experience, we've implemented a new comments feature for readers to express their likes and dislikes. The new comments feature allows readers to anonymously state a "like" or "dislike" preference for comments on Harriet posts by clicking on the "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down" icons below each [...] by Travis Nichols

Dirk Does Dallas July 16, 2009: Have you yet read Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip? I haven't, fully, due to the previously mentioned feelings of deep inadequacy my first foray brought up. I picked it up and read umpteen pages, and then skimmed the rest, flipping it like a flip book to see how the texture of the language makes an image rise up, holographically from the pages. [...] by Rebecca Wolff

Overheard in the hallway July 14, 2009: "How are you going to have sex with a carny if you won't go to the carnival?" by Joel Brouwer

This is about Jane Austen July 14, 2009: I thought I'd share some mature thoughts on Lisa Robertson's magic powers but instead I'm thinking about Jane Austen. She's really come down in the world. My parents were watching some PBS bodice-ripper a few months ago, and it took me several minutes to discern that it was a hotted-up Pride & Prejudice. Lots of longing and heavy breathing in [...] by Rebecca Wolff

PMD July 14, 2009: Probably it’s because I lost my computer that it’s looming but I had already begun the project in which I transcribed text messages from my cell phone onto my computer. Those are gone so the project feels even more urgent now. Fragmented, incomplete. The practical reason and the sentimental reason meet exactly in this task. Virtually all of [...] by Eileen Myles

A Braille Hoax and Some Rockabilly Cancer July 14, 2009: Ed Park peered into the strange world of David Berman's drawings for last week's cover story.  Park argued that the drawings collected in the newly released  Portable February are cut from the same quirky cloth as Berman's poetry and music.  One 'rawing that particularly caught the writer's attention: a billboard/projection stating, [...] by Travis Nichols

The Mulch Shoveler July 12, 2009: Walter Earl, age 76, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, shoveling mulch. This is supposed to be the post in which I sign off, pack up my bags and leave as gracefully as possible. Unfortunately I’ve been distracted from that task by a recent article in the Boston Review by Stephen Burt called “The New Thing”, an attempt at [...] by Martin Earl

Paid to Blog July 10, 2009: It seems that the medium of the blog has come full circle or full bloom and one is now solicited, and renumerated, for one’s formerly private or random or sketchy thoughts. In this venue, in the next few weeks, I’ll be publicly thinking about: my new gray kitten, Myshka (that’s Russian-in-English for “little mouse”); the imminent [...] by Rebecca Wolff

The Possibility of a Poetic Drama July 9, 2009: "The questions—why there is no poetic drama to-day, how the stage has lost all hold on literary art, why so many poetic plays are written which can only be read, and read, if at all, without pleasure—have become insipid, almost academic." So wrote T. S. Eliot in "The Possibility of a Poetic Drama," published in The Sacred Wood (1922). [...] by Joel Brouwer