Poetry’s biggest loudmouth loves baseball, is Canadian August 23, 2010: George Bowering was Canada’s first parliamentary poet laureate in 2002. Today, he’s the official loudmouth fan at Canadian baseball games—at least, according to his business card. Back in the day Bowering wrote about baseball for a local paper and played ball for the “infamous” hippie Kosmik League. Today he has more than 90 books to [...] by Poetry News

Let’s all enjoy some Yaddo with the Washington Post August 23, 2010: Yaddo, the famed Saratoga Springs artists’ community (its castle pictured above), has seen its fair share of literary genius. Founded by Katrina Trask, a poet and playwright herself, this sanctuary has inspired scores of prizewinning writers and artists since 1900. The artistic enclave, with its 10-acre Italian-style rose garden, 180-foot [...] by Poetry News

Alfred Starr Hamilton: Creative genius or cranky crackpot? August 23, 2010: The rediscovery of letters to police from New Jersey poet Alfred Starr Hamilton has piqued new interest in his work—yet no one can seem to decide what to think of it. Though compared to literary giants, it’s unclear whether Hamilton, who died in 2005 at the age of 90, was a madman, a master poet, a creative con artist, or all of the above. [...] by Poetry News

Celebrating Faiz, Urdu love poet August 23, 2010: The Pakistan Academy of Letters is planning a series of events to commemorate the centenary of Pakistan’s premier Urdu poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz. The Academy hopes to promote wider recognition of Faiz’s work through a translation project, international conferences, and even a memorial stamp. Though varying education levels and dialects in [...] by Poetry News

Lasky and Beer, ex-husbands and Uma Thurman August 23, 2010: Two stellar new poetry collections, John Beer’s The Waste Land and Other Poems and Dorothea Lasky’s Black Life, are juxtaposed in a review by former BOTH editor Michael Brodeur at the Boston Globe. Brodeur on Beer: Until this direction arrives, the poems revel in their spirited collisions of past and present, high and pop culture, [...] by Harriet Staff

“I would like a different body, a different mind, a different life” August 22, 2010: Oh, wouldn’t we all? In The Philosophy of As If, Canadian poet Fraser Sutherland gets existential and looks at the imagined lives running parallel to the one lived. Katia Grubisic distinguishes when he’s at his best (when he’s wry, simple, and funny) and when he misses the mark in this review at the Globe and Mail: The first persons [...] by Harriet Staff

Your daily Eamon August 21, 2010: Out of Sight: New and Selected Poems by Eamon Grennan is filled with nourishing poems that become “daily bread” for his readers. Grennan, the prize-winning author of over 10 poetry collections, is praised for his vigilance and contemplation in this review of his new collection in this weekend's Providence Journal: Many readers will note [...] by Harriet Staff

Further adventures in death, book club edition August 20, 2010: Lane Smith's new children’s book, It’s a Book, wants you to know it’s, um, a book. You know, the kind with pages you can flip (without the click of a mouse.) The kind generally housed on a shelf, not in an e-reader’s digital memory, that grows yellowed and dog-eared with age. Linton Weeks at NPR uses this simple children’s story to [...] by Harriet Staff

Poetry best sellers for the week of August 7-15, 2010 August 20, 2010: Charles Bukowski would have been 90 last week. Unfortunately, he died. His would-be birthday did cause his posthumous collections to surge on the contemporary best seller list, though, which may be some consolation. Slouching Toward Nirvana: New Poems squeaks in at number 30; The People Look Like Flowers At Last is at number 20; and The Pleasures [...] by Harriet Staff

Big bang poetry August 20, 2010: To Light Out, Karen Weiser’s first collection of poetry, is an array of unexpected juxtapositions. It’s both static and music, big and small, solid and liquid. Perhaps she’s trying to define the murky spaces between, suggests David Kaufmann. In his review at Tablet Magazine, Kaufmann uses snippets of Weiser’s playful poems to fuel a [...] by Harriet Staff