Sustenance and abandonment August 19, 2008: The release in paperback this month of If I Were Writing This, the final book of poems Robert Creeley saw into print before his death in 2005, provides a good opportunity to think about his late work. At the risk of oversimplifying, I’m tempted to say that Creeley’s adult writing life conveniently falls into four neat, roughly [...] by Alan Gilbert

Sylvia Plath—original hip-hop poet August 9, 2008: I know that a primary root of hip-hop is Jamaican toasters delivering rhymes and declamations over portable sound systems in the 1960s, and that a version of this was introduced to the Bronx by the Jamaican-born DJ Kool Herc, an early pioneer of hip-hop. I also realize that the Last Poets are important figures in the genre’s birth. More [...] by Alan Gilbert

The politics of memory August 5, 2008: Martin Wong, King of Pain, 1997–98 Dean Daderko is an imaginative and adventurous independent curator working in New York City. A few years back, he turned the living room of his ground-floor Brooklyn apartment into one of the more interesting alternative art spaces in the city. Parlour Projects hosted solo and multi-artist shows, [...] by Alan Gilbert

“the thing that refuses to be consoled” August 4, 2008: In the second of his “Vast Eternity” posts, D.A. Powell quotes an extended excerpt from an interview with Philip Levine; in her most recent post, Daisy Fried links to an LA Times profile of August Kleinzahler. This prompts me to post a link (at the bottom of this entry) to my favorite poet interview so far this year: it’s one that CAConrad [...] by Alan Gilbert

Interpretations of dreams July 31, 2008: Dreams are corrosive agents. Although dreams are usually imagined as expressions of unconscious desires or fears, it’s their form that’s most important: a fluid attack on the least secure parts of the psyche’s structures. That this happens while a person is sleeping doesn’t qualify this action but amplifies it. Dream imagery and narrative [...] by Alan Gilbert

Switch it up July 31, 2008: Last week’s public performance component of Urban Word’s Summer Institute of Social Justice and Applied Poetics was a fairly formal affair. As I described in my previous Harriet entry, Theodore Harris presented work from his Our Flesh of Flames artist book, and Amiri Baraka read poems. The Bowery Poetry Club was packed, there were lots of [...] by Alan Gilbert

Art or propaganda? Both. July 28, 2008: I just spent two late evenings at Matthew Barney’s massive studio in Long Island City watching grindcore and death metal bands play, along with a bizarre and hilarious “diarrhea humiliation” performance. (Not sure if coverage of this might turn up, though I don’t have a sense Artforum.com was there.) I also had to write two short reviews [...] by Alan Gilbert

Taking the bait July 21, 2008: The question Mark Nowak has raised a couple times concerning the devaluing of politically progressive poetry in comparison with work that appears less socially engaged would take a book, not a blog entry, to fully answer. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that the frame of the discussion keeps slipping within and between Mark’s two posts [...] by Alan Gilbert

This is what democracy looks like July 19, 2008: It’s interesting that the posts which have generated the most discussion during the past couple months—Lucia Perillo’s “Why are poets aligned with the left?” from June 23 and Mark Nowak’s “Cannon fodder” from a few days ago—both deal with the relationship between poetry and politics. I can’t tell if this is the result of people [...] by Alan Gilbert

My top three favorite poetry readings, like, ever! (Part II) July 13, 2008: So my second favorite poetry reading is one I never would have predicted: Clayton Eshleman reading the entirety of his translation of Aimé Césaire’s Notebook of a Return to the Native Land. There was a reading series in the late ’90s held in a gallery in New York City at the corner of Broadway and Houston that was dedicated to a single poet [...] by Alan Gilbert