Iron Maiden’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” September 27, 2011: For your Tuesday enjoyment. by Harriet Staff

Mythbusters: the Mary Shelley edition September 27, 2011: This one goes out to all you Romantic scholars and incensed villagers out there: The Guardian reports that a team of astronomers from Texas State University will tackle Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with hard science. According to Shelley, the novel’s idea came on a sleepless, moonlit night after Lord Byron challenged his friends to a horror [...] by Harriet Staff

“Nobody is normal.”: An Interview with Valzhyna Mort September 26, 2011: Valzhyna Mort took part in an interview with CBS Baltimore in which she discussed her new collection Collected Body among other things. Let's have a look-see: CBSBaltimore.com: What inspired Collected Body? VM: Nothing inspires inspiration, if it makes sense. Inspiration comes and goes at its only will, and there’s no way of [...] by Harriet Staff

Inebreational Travelogue: Tom Waits on Being Called a Poet September 26, 2011: Nancy Smith wrote a review at The Rumpus that celebrates Tom Waits and the book Tom Waits on Tom Waits. In said book Waits weighs in on the many things he's been called over the years, namely "poet." See: It’s almost impossible to write an apt description of Waits, but every journalist in this collection makes a worthy attempt. Some [...] by Harriet Staff

Poet (and publisher) sued by sonnet subject in South Dakota September 26, 2011: Nothing says unrequited-love-with-the-potential-for-legal-intervention better than a good old-fashioned sonnet sequence, except perhaps a sonnet sequence that declares love in vertical letters for a student at the author's university. According to the Mitchell Daily Republic, University of South Dakota Assistant Professor Edward Allen has been [...] by Harriet Staff

Talking with Urayoán Noel about translating the wondrous Chilean poet Pablo de Rokha September 26, 2011: Over at Montevidayo, Daniel Borzutzky took the time to ask some questions of "stateless poet, professor, polemicist and performer" Urayoán Noel, who is also the translator of Chilean poet Pablo de Rokha! We are exclamatory here because, well, Borzutzky is pretty exclamatory himself. He writes: [Noel] has recently translated a [...] by Harriet Staff

Monkeys make Shakespeare September 26, 2011: Jesse Anderson, a developer from Reno, Nevada, is recreating Shakespeare with virtual monkeys: Instead of having real monkeys typing on keyboards, I have virtual, computerized monkeys that output random gibberish. This is supposed to mimic a monkey randomly mashing the keys on a keyboard. The computer program I wrote compares that [...] by Harriet Staff

James Franco teaches poetry to NYU film students September 26, 2011: The New York Times had a reporter and photographer present for a Saturday night special class at NYU, taught by "America's most famous poetry geek," Mr. James Franco. The class, “Directing the Thesis I," for filmmaking grad students, is usually taught on Tuesday afternoons but was rescheduled due to Franco's crazy schedule. Though the nine [...] by Harriet Staff

The Week We Said, “Yes!” September 23, 2011: Yes! We’ve seen it. Yes! Rob Delaney, “cringe” humorist, Vice writer, self-outed depression-sufferer and all-around entertainer, has a far more enlightening, amusing take on the St. Mark’s Bookshop flap than Choire Sicha’s. Yes! It was a solid week for great literature and thoughtful stand-up comedians. Yes! Star humor [...] by Harriet Staff

A deeper look at negative criticism and bad poetry September 23, 2011: We've just caught on: in Bookforum's new issue, a compelling article: "Why Critics Praise Bad Poetry." Adam Plunkett looks sincerely at some "false advertising," as he calls it, the sense that, in the poetry world, "most of published criticism is positive even though so much of published poetry is bad." Plunkett focuses his study primarily on [...] by Harriet Staff