Romantic Re-volutions June 16, 2009: What does Edward Lear have in common with Samuel Taylor Coleridge? The answer, or at least the question, may be found in the brand-new volume 3 of Jerome Rothenberg’s Poems for the Millennium, coedited with Romanticism scholar Jeffrey C. Robinson. The book approaches the nineteenth century the way Rothenberg and former coeditor Pierre Joris [...] by Annie Finch

Sadness and Peepers June 6, 2009: I'm in my tent. I woke up hearing peepers and a big bullfrog. I can't believe there is wireless in this campground. It's a KOA in Woodstock, New York. I'm here with my daughter for a workshop called "Talking With Plants." Around dawn, all the peepers and frogs and crickets were singing in interaction with each other. It was utterly [...] by Annie Finch

Chillin’ More With the Villies June 5, 2009: Guess who wrote the following villanelle: The Measure Each unconsidered day we live is lost. I should record the moments as they come though marking time is seldom worth the cost. Loss is our lot, a commonplace, at least a philosophic truth. We must turn from each unconsidered day, though it be lost, without a backward glance. [...] by Annie Finch

Women’s Work: The Poetic Justice Forum June 5, 2009: My poetry trip to the U.K. this winter was marked, among many wonderful experiences, by something more sobering: a string of stories poured out to me by women poets about gender imbalance and discrimination in prizes and book and journal publishing at the top levels of the British poetry world. While I am a natural idealist and would prefer [...] by Annie Finch

Where Are You, General Audience? June 2, 2009: I woke up the morning after the college reunion reading not only slightly hungover on cucumber vodka, but also satisfied and addicted. These few hundred folks might well be the largest audience I've ever read to that didn't consist primarily of poets, writers, and poetry and writing teachers. I had had the rare experience of reading for a [...] by Annie Finch

Bright College Fears May 30, 2009: I'm posting this from a dorm room in Timothy Dwight College at Yale, where I am beng housed before giving a poetry reading tomorrow as part of the 30th reunion of the class of 1979. It's a brick building, not one of the gray Gothic ones I liked to frequent as an undergrad, which helps me feel more removed from the carousing outside my window, [...] by Annie Finch

Discovering Dunbar May 27, 2009: A life centered on poetry has allowed me many emotions that I never feel except in relation to poetry. There’s the thrill of gratitude when a poem is conceived, the anxiety of waiting for a word, the warm breakthrough of the right one at last, the dryness and frustration of the blind alley. There’s the glorious triumph of speaking the [...] by Annie Finch

S.O.S. for Salt May 26, 2009: News flash: an important trans-Atlantic poetry publisher put out an S.O.S. this week.  Here's yesterday's update on the  Salt Publishing situation from the U.K. bookseller Catherine Neilan: Poetry press Salt has launched a viral marketing campaign in a bid to stave off closure, in the wake of the publisher’s [...] by Annie Finch

Facebook & the New Poetry Community May 19, 2009: I should be packing right now. I'm just about to get on an early plane to NYC with my daughter who, thanks to a great Jetblue deal, I am bringing to the Museum of Natural History and then the Dusie kollektiv reading and performance tonight at ACA Gallery. So, yes, I should be packing. But someone sent me a link to a Facebook events page for the [...] by Annie Finch

Eileen and Me (1982) May 18, 2009: Annie Finch and Alix Baer 1980 ( photo: J. Miller) It’s 1981 and it’s a year before I’m going to meet Eileen Myles. I’m living in the East Village, on a deserted-looking block of Avenue A a couple blocks north of Tompkins Square Park, trying to figure out how I can ever find my place in the poetry world.  I’m writing a shamanic [...] by Annie Finch