The Joyce estate’s famous litigiousness now officially comical / depressing March 21, 2011: Craig Ventor, a geneticist whose team created the first synthetic DNA (“replacing the genetic code in a bacterium with DNA they’d composed on a computer”), has been warned. Regardless of the potential scientific value of his work, the Joyce estate is concerned primarily with a supposed breach of intellectual copyright: In order to [...] by Poetry News

Brian Kim Stefans takes on Bank of America March 21, 2011: Poet Marie Buck reviews Brian Kim Stefans’ digital pamphlet “Bank of America Online Banking: A Critical Evaluation,” which is not a work of poetry but just what the title says it is, an evaluation of the way the bank uses its website to misdirect and misinform the consumer. As Buck says, the pamphlet “argues that the great portion of the [...] by Harriet Staff

NYT comissions Twitter poems from famous poets March 21, 2011: 140 character poems from Robert Pinsky, Billy Collins, Claudia Rankine, and Elizabeth Alexander. Teeny tiny poem/just enuf 2hold/1 xllent big word . . . Follow along on Twitter via #poetweet by Poetry News

Religious visions as outsider poetry March 21, 2011: The Poems and Poetics blog continues its “mini-anthology” of outsider poems with one of Hildegard of Bingen’s visions from her book “Scivias.” Bingen apparently had vivid religious visions until the age of fifteen. This one is of the devil, who appears to her as a big gross worm: Now that worm was black and bristly, covered with [...] by Poetry News

Hunted by Eliana Perez March 19, 2011: Poetry magazine’s March 2011 cover art, “Lamp,” is by Eliana Perez, and is part of a series called "Hunted." Perez says: In "Hunted," the patterns on furniture, rugs, and curtains come to life, transforming these objects of domestic comfort into portals expressing a pervasive world of savagery and violence. In these drawings, the [...] by Fred Sasaki

Contemporary Poetry Review teaches you to be a better (less boring) poetry reader March 18, 2011: The editors of Contemporary Poetry Review (who suspiciously resemble Statler and Waldorf) are not beyond admitting that they can still learn a thing or two at AWP. For instance, they can learn that they hate poetry readings. On their blog, they offer five tips/tricks/criticisms/rants based on the lessons they had to learn the hard way—by [...] by Harriet Staff

Carl Sandburg’s typographic “Chicago” March 18, 2011: Chicagoist talks to graphic artist Bud Rodecker about his typographic series Ode to Carl. The project grew out of his self-imposed mission to make one new piece of artwork daily. Though titled RicharDaily, the first series of daily art didn't have nearly the connection to Chicago that the Sandburg graphics do. Writer Betsy Mikel notes that [...] by Poetry News

Longfellow’s radical politics March 18, 2011: We haven’t blogged about Longfellow for awhile, have we? Well, it’s about time. Luckily, Jill Lepore has written an article for The American Scholar that argues for Longfellow’s continued relevance, or at least for a re-evaluation of his work. She claims that a century of beating-up on Longfellow’s perceived slightness and lack of [...] by Poetry News

Interview with Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl March 18, 2011: Sharon Mesmer, on her Dubious Labia blog, interviews Icelandic poet Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, founder of the Nýhil cooperative. The interview is notable not simply because it affords us a brief glimpse into the concerns of Icelandic poets, but because Mesmer and Norðdahl are actually in conversation - the whole thing is less of an interview and [...] by Harriet Staff

Suheir Hammad’s anti-war poems at TED Women March 18, 2011: Poet Suheir Hammad who "blends the stories and sounds of her Palestinian-American heritage with the vibrant language of Brooklyn" performed at TEDWomen in Washington DC in December. Hammad addressed the crowd of "confused, aspiring pacifists" and spoke of how poetry prepares you to confront "man's creative violence" in her poems "What I Will" [...] by Poetry News