Of the Time, Out of Time April 26, 2011: Last Saturday I read at the first (annual?) Westchester Poetry Festival at The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, NY. I read with Victoria Bond, Jo Ann Clark, Brenda Conner-Bey, Lynne Francis, Jacqueline Johnson, Iyabo Ibo Mandingo, Jeffrey McDaniel, Tanya McKinnon Simon, Kathleen Ossip, and Donna Reis. The festival began with a powerful [...] by Rachel Zucker

Color palettes, earthquakes, dentists and Blake April 26, 2011: Color: grass green. San Francisco Chronicle few days ago ran first person excerpted account by Dr. Leonie von Zesch, 23-year-old female dentist (most likely one of the few women dentists in the world at that time) who left behind thousands of onionskin typescript pages (recently discovered in belongings of her niece Jane Troutman, now 85 and [...] by Gillian Conoley

Violi April 26, 2011: It’s been a year of many deaths and maybe all years are but the poetry world seems bent by loss right now. Leslie Scalapino this time last year. Akilah Oliver died last month. This month Paul Violi. I want to chime in on the surprising (because Paul seemed the most present therefore the most local of men in his radiant charm) accolades from [...] by Eileen Myles

Rob Halpern: on “Somatics” April 26, 2011: For my final few posts at Harriet this month, I would like to present a series of poets in succession who consider the term "somatics" with regards to their work and contemporary poetry at large. "Somatics," which has for awhile referred to disciplinary work around movement/dance, bodywork, and exploratory uses of language for the purposes of [...] by Thom Donovan

Reading, and What’s On My Radar April 26, 2011: Holla, Rigoberto! Whatchu reading, you ask. Actually, I am reading the boisterous novel, Leche, by poet and novelist R. Zamora Linmark, as he will be in San Francisco this week, and I will be interviewing him at his I-Hotel Manilatown event (which falls on the same day as my 40th birthday). I also wanted to link to some poetry happenings, books, [...] by Barbara Jane Reyes

Timely Timelessness: a response to Rachel Zucker April 25, 2011: If you’re going to be a hack these days, you’ve got to do a lot of hacking. This is timely work that, hopefully, I’ll be paid for in timely fashion. (more...) by Martin Earl

The Rejection Slip April 25, 2011: If the subscription list of this magazine approximated the yearly inflow of manuscripts - the editors would hire a long string of assistants, have cut flowers replenished daily on their desks, and be less harassed generally.  Even then, however, the impossibility of answering personally each letter that reaches the office would be equally [...] by Don Share

I was not far enough out, and simply waving, not drowning April 25, 2011: Is poetry a domesticated art? Are we drowning in it? Or are we in fact not drowning enough? This is what I’m thinking as I peer out into a green ravine in the Druid Hills area of Atlanta. There is all this writing, but it seems very little gets said. And then we have the strand of thinking that says, well, it’s very difficult to say nothing [...] by Sina Queyras

Code Coda April 25, 2011: The letter to the New York Times Book Review that Ange Mlinko mentions in her post caught my eye too, but for different reasons. “Give me code cracking any day” wrote the letter writer, Allen Benn, in response to David Kirby's review of David Orr's new book of criticism, Beautiful and Pointless. Benn then went on to say that, for example, [...] by Daisy Fried

Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open by Diane Suess April 25, 2011: In 2010, I received 180 poetry books in the mail. All had been published that year, and the single book, (by an author that I’d never heard of), that surprised me the most, the one that grabbed me by the throat and refused to let go was Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open by Diane Seuss, winner of the Juniper Prize (University of Massachusetts [...] by Jeffrey McDaniel