James Franco talks about playing Allen Ginsberg August 19, 2010: In anticipation of the Ginsberg biopic Howl, postmodern Renaissance man James Franco has penned an essay for Vanity Fair chronicling his character study. In preparation for taking on the role of Ginsberg, Franco saturated himself with information about the poet’s life and work. Here’s how Franco parsed out the part and learned to march to [...] by Poetry News

Edwin Morgan, Scotland’s “national poet” August 19, 2010: Scottish poet Edwin Morgan—deemed “poetry’s true son” by Carol Ann Duffy—has died at 90. Morgan was revered for his poetry as well as his poetic translations, critical essays and librettos. He served as Glasgow's inaugural poet laureate in 2004, and was the recipient of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Read more about his life and [...] by Harriet Staff

Print goes to college August 19, 2010: C.W. Anderson, a professor of journalism and media sociology at the College of Staten Island, offers a syllabus for the digitally-saturated masses in the Atlantic’s science & tech section. Anderson's teaching a new course this fall about print culture officially called "COM 230: History of Print Media." One of the course objectives deals with [...] by Harriet Staff

A postmodern elegy for the mourner and mourned August 18, 2010: The poet Ashley David has taken a poem of mourning and turned it inside out. Her work could be categorized as a visual elegy, a short film, or a theoretical poetry pastiche—but it is at once all and none of these things. She calls her 18 minute poetry experiment “a performance of theory, a performance of postmodern elegy, a performance of [...] by Poetry News

War poems from the air August 18, 2010: Why is war poetry so often relegated to the Great War? Who determines which war poets are included in the canon? These questions are just a sample of the ones Daniel Swift addresses in Bomber Country: the Lost Airmen of World War Two. What began as research about his pilot grandfather’s disappearance over Holland in 1943 evolved into what David [...] by Harriet Staff

A deeper look into what went on between Kevin Morrissey and the Virginia Quarterly Review August 18, 2010: Charlottesville weekly The Hook investigates further into the Kevin Morrissey tragedy with an in-depth feature called "Tale of Woe." The story looks into the perilous financial situation at the literary journal, the workplace bullying accusations against editor Ted Genoways, and the various instances of conflicting interests and mismanagement [...] by Harriet Staff

When poetry is so bad it’s good August 18, 2010: Do you know what day it is? Here’s a clue: it’s cliché, saccharine, self-indulgent, cringe worthy, and often associated with angst-ridden teens and sleazy beret-wearing poets who hang out in cafes. That’s right! It’s Bad Poetry Day! To honor this special occasion, the folks at The Frisky held a bad poetry contest and posted the atrocious [...] by Poetry News

“Writing must teach men soberness: to be awake.” August 18, 2010: Last week, Ecco Press published the collected prose of venerated Polish writer Zbigniew Herbert and to celebrate the New York Review of Books blog has published "Leonardo's Disquiet," a series of meditative vignettes in which Herbert examines the function of art and constructs the pillars of the artist’s perpetual anxiety: “Fear and desire” [...] by Harriet Staff

How to cure the U.S. with dancing August 18, 2010: Mexican American poet and artist Rafael Gonzalez has a few ideas about how to build a healthier world: first, recognize the permeable boundaries of language, culture and nationality; then cure America’s chronic case of anxiety with some singing and dancing in the streets. In a profile, he talks to the Detroit Free Press about living near the [...] by Harriet Staff

The lost Modernist who wrote the next Finnegans Wake August 18, 2010: Though David Jones, a painter and poet, was lauded by the likes of T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden, he never earned mainstream critical acclaim. In light of the reprinting of his two book-length poems, In Parenthesis and The Anathemata, David Wheatley from the New Statesman explores why Jones may have slipped into obscurity. Jones was a war poet who [...] by Harriet Staff