What would poetry sound like as curated by Philip Glass? February 28, 2011: According to The Los Angeles Times' Culture Monster blog, you'll get to find out in August when Philip Glass launches his own annual arts festival at Hidden Valley arts center near Carmel, California. The Days and Nights Festival will include poetry alongside theater, dance, film and, of course music. The as yet unannounced lineup for the poetry [...] by Poetry News

Congratulations, nerds February 28, 2011: First, an objective correlative moment from last night's show: Second, demographics young and old are flocking to the Google to find out more about the man who stole the Oscars with his discomfiting weirdo-dom, and it just so happens that we have an interview with Franco up on our homepage this week, so we're getting lots of incoming [...] by Poetry Foundation

“The democracy of universal vulnerability” February 28, 2011: The Minneapolis Star-Tribune takes a look at Marion Janssen's biography of the long-lost Modernist Isabella Stewart Gardner: Born in 1915 into a wealthy Boston family, lively, lovely Isabella grew up amid privilege and dysfunction; became a globe-trotting actress whose first lover was Erskine Hamilton Childers, the future president of Ireland; [...] by Harriet Staff

Lorin Stein and The Paris Review: The personal is professional is literary is a party February 28, 2011: Because it's a Fashion & Style piece, let's get a few things out of the way in The New York Times' profile of Paris Review editor Lorin Stein. Who makes his suits? Kirk Miller. What exclusive bar does he frequent? The Wooly. What literary figure's photobooth portrait keeps watch over his office bathroom? Frederick Seidel. There are also the [...] by Poetry News

Reading together as therapy (at least you’re not arguing!) February 28, 2011: The Independent reports on a new trend in couples therapy: couples bibliotherapy, in which the couple is encouraged to read the same books together, and to write haiku responses. Seriously! The article is written from the point of view of someone who supposedly benefited from their experience, and she outlines the process of skepticism and [...] by Harriet Staff

John Cage predicts the internet February 28, 2011: The John Cage Trust posted a note bemoaning the lack of available e-publications of Cage’s work. They reproduce a nice quote from Cage, from 1965, about the future of publication: “Yet with the number of people who work now -- the number of composers, the number of authors, and so on -- has vastly increased over the 19th century; but the [...] by Poetry News

Taking the commodification of literature way seriously February 28, 2011: A new online project, Books2 Barcodes, is an ongoing effort to convert all the world's great books to QR codes (2D barcodes). Each work featured here is the entire text of a piece of classic literature translated into several thousand barcodes. With a mobile device equipped with a camera and a barcode-scanning app, you can experience the joy [...] by Harriet Staff

Victor Martinez: “I am an American writer” February 26, 2011: Mission Loc@l remembers poet and National Book Award-winning novelist Victor Martinez who passed away earlier this week. Born in Fresno, California, Martinez would prove influential and respected enough among his 11 other siblings to secure his own room to write, yet he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1996 that the most his high school [...] by Harriet Staff

“A multidisciplinary feat of beauty from the heart of Montreal’s poetry scene” February 25, 2011: Disappear - from the CD To Call Out in the Night by Pharmakon MTL from Ian Ferrier on Vimeo. Art Threat talks with Montreal poet Ian Ferrier about his live improvisation with the band Pharmakon MTL and its use in the video above as part of the media artist pk langshaw's d_verse project. Adding up the collaborators, that's one poet, three [...] by Poetry News

The LA Times Book Prize finalists announced February 25, 2011: And we're happy to see former Harriet blogger Craig Santos Perez on the list! Congrats, Craig. Here is the full list: Henri Cole, Pierce the Skin: Selected Poems, 1982-2007 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Maxine Kumin, Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010 (W. W. Norton & Company) Yehoshua November, God’s Optimism (Main Street [...] by Poetry News