What poets and Mark Zuckerberg have in common March 22, 2011: On Thought Catalog, Liz Dosta writes of some of the philosophical requirements shared by poets and whiz kid internet entrepreneurs. Each are wired to construct a world that best allows their subconscious to play out, to establish the conditions to access their own creativity (and insecurities/fears/experience/hopes). She argues that, at least [...] by Harriet Staff

Poets teach lawyers what the law is, who lawyers are, why people don’t like them March 22, 2011: Michael P. Maslanka (aka "Texas Lawyer") opines on Law.com about what lawyers can learn from poets: Poetry illuminates not just who lawyers are, but what they do. It provides not just a factual narrative but an overarching moral one as well. Such narratives, not facts, drive decisions. But, who knows how the narrative strikes a juror in [...] by Harriet Staff

Working on the work of poetry March 22, 2011: Poets Lauren Levin, Steve Farmer, Alli Warren, and Brandon Brown have started a blog called the Poetic Labor Project, which will post short essays on the relationship between poetry and work, and the work of poetry. So far the site hosts writing from Anne Boyer, Tyrone Williams, and Lara Durback. You can download a PDF of all three essays, or [...] by Poetry News

Author sues over bad review March 22, 2011: The New York Times reports on an odd lawsuit in France, in which the recipient of a bad book review filed a criminal libel charge. Karin N. Calvo-Goller, a senior lecturer at the Academic Center of Law and Business in Israel and the author of “The Trial Proceedings of the International Criminal Court,” is arguing that the review could damage [...] by Harriet Staff

This window makes me feel like singing March 22, 2011: Composer John Supko composed and recorded an arrangement of Robert Fitterman’s poem “The Window Makes Me Feel,” which you can listen to here. The poem, in prose and more like a drone than a song, might seem to be a counterintuitive choice of libretto, but according to Supko: The music, scored for mezzo-soprano, keyboards, percussion and [...] by Poetry News

Mary Ruefle wins the William Carlos Wiliams Award March 21, 2011: Mary Ruefle's Selected Poems (Wave Books) has won the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award, given every year to an outstanding book of poetry. From the PSA website, here's Rodney Jones on the collection: What a civil, undomesticable, and heartening poet is Mary Ruefle: fond of experiment, but just as pleased to write [...] by Poetry News

David L. Ulin remembers I Remember March 21, 2011: Over at the LA Times" Jacket Copy" blog, book critic David L. Ulin spotlights Joe Brainard's prose poem/memoir/singular masterpiece I Remember: The idea behind "I Remember" is as profound as it is simple: to reconstruct the past as a series of short, loosely connected paragraphs, each one beginning with the phrase "I remember." The effect is [...] by Harriet Staff

Spiggitz the Cat: “Feline Charles Bukowski” March 21, 2011: Spiggitz wants you to know that he is a poet first and a cat second. And third? Somewhat delusional. So what can a mangy cat puppet teach us about poetry? Growing up with a lot of health problems, poetry always brought me a great deal of comfort. I mean, it allowed me to explore and expel my own inner pain and soar in ways that I couldn't [...] by Harriet Staff

Celebrating (and preserving) ten years of E-Poetry March 21, 2011: 2011 marks the 10-year anniversary of the E-Poetry Festival. The biennial "artist-oriented gathering" is returning to the place of its birth, SUNY Buffalo in May. On her blog, Lori Emerson, director of the Archaeological Media Lab at University of Colorado at Boulder, compares this year's program to that of the first in 2001, looking at how much [...] by Poetry News

Operation William Carlos Williams March 21, 2011: For one column, The New Yorker's Book Bench became a lab bench. Last week, Jeannie Vanasco visited a Poetry Lab hosted by Cabinet magazine in which Princeton professors D. Graham Burnett and Jeff Dolven invited attendees to put on their lab coats, grab some alcohol (not the disinfecting kind) and operate on the work of William Carlos Williams to [...] by Harriet Staff