Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani in conversation February 24, 2011: In his interview with Kwame Dawes for the Lannan Foundation, Chris Abani describes him as "the only one I know who can take money from a funding body to study salmon and end up writing a book about masculinity." The interview begins with a discussion of linguistic code switching-- Abani explains to the audience that in West Africa, being [...] by Harriet Staff

Akilah Oliver February 24, 2011: Coffee House Press has reported that the poet Akilah Oliver has died. Read her insightful interview with BOMB, "Good Grief," here. Our thoughts go out to her friends and family. by Harriet Staff

William Carlos Williams reviews Wallace Stevens February 24, 2011: The New Republic has posted a review, from 1937, of Wallace Stevens’ The Man with the Blue Guitar and Other Poems, written by William Carlos Williams. Williams begins by praising Stevens’ craft but questioning his politics: The story is that Stevens has turned of late definitely to the left. I should say not, from anything in this book. [...] by Harriet Staff

A (Complete!) Surprise for the Bagpipe Player February 24, 2011: Booktryst reports that a complete set of Kenneth Patchen's 1955 broadsides, A Surprise for the Bagpipe Player, has appeared on the market. Only three copies have surfaced at auction in the last 35 years, one of which was incomplete. Silkscreened from Patchen's original painted manuscript on handmade Japanese paper by fine printer Frank Bacher, [...] by Harriet Staff

Culture Anonymous? San Francisco poet revisits his first 90 days February 23, 2011: SF Weekly profiles Charles Kruger, who last year made a formal decision to take the Bay Area literary world by storm. You've probably heard that phrase a lot, but in this case it's true: Kruger called his project, in which he attended 90 cultural events in 90 days, Storming Bohemia. Confronted with the loss of his job as a high school English [...] by Harriet Staff

Khaled Mattawa on the Libyan demonstrations February 23, 2011: Democracy Now's Amy Goodman talked to poet and University of Michigan Ann Arbor professor Khaled Mattawa about the situation in Libya, where he still has many friends and family members. Goodman notes how difficult it is to get information out of the cities of Benghazi or Tripoli right now, and their discussion is framed in terms of what Mattawa [...] by Harriet Staff

POET February 23, 2011: 

169. Ars poetica or arsehole poetica? Subtitle: Why and how I wrote the long, obnoxious poem: “The Poet Writes the Poem That Will Certainly Make Him Famous.” But first… 170. [caption id="attachment_22580" align="alignleft" width="460" caption="The Dove, 1964 Romare Bearden"][/caption] 171. That’s “The Dove” by [...] by Douglas Kearney

Close-reading capital letters February 23, 2011: Curtis Faville, over on his Compass Rose blog, writes about capitalization in the poems of Robert Grenier. It’s terrific to see such a thorough close-reading of the use of capitals in the context of work so minimalist, it begs such attention: The campaign against titles--and capital letters--as symbols or signs of authority--both real and [...] by Harriet Staff

Hate Speech Poetry February 23, 2011: The Melville House blog draws our attention to GodLovesPoetry.com, which, as the name suggests, takes its aim at the Westboro Baptist Church, whose anti-gay statements and protests are notoriously vitriolic (they protest funerals, for example). Anyway, Andres and Kevin, who created the site, manipulate the WBC’s words, and make poems with [...] by Poetry News

Poets set the tone for “Natural Events to Social Disasters” conference in Austin February 22, 2011: Natasha Trethewey and Evelyne Trouillot will keynote this week's conference From Natural Events to Social Disasters in the Circum-Caribbean hosted by the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at University of Texas, Austin. The conference will discuss the long-running injustices across the region that natural disasters of the [...] by Poetry News