Tony Hoagland’s “The Change” April 28, 2011: Since Tony Hoagland wrote “The Change” about a decade ago, the poem (from What Narcissism Means to Me, Graywolf 2003) has been praised by African-Americans and whites, and attacked as racist by almost as many—or maybe more. That readers find the poem painful is understandable. Hoagland probably intended the poem to cause pain. But “The [...] by Daisy Fried

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

Adventures in Parenting: Metaphor, Painting and Narrative for Pre-Schoolers April 19, 2011: (Separated at birth?) My four-year old loves metaphor, although she says she loves simile better than “plain metaphor” because she likes the “like” in a simile. She first became aware of metaphor when in The Berenstain Bears Go Trick or Treating, light “stabs” out of a spooky house in the woods. Ever since she will stop [...] by Daisy Fried

Questions I Don’t Understand #2 April 5, 2011: Rachel Zucker: “Is it more important to you that your poems be timeless or timely?” I want my poems to be as good as I can make them. Timely or timeless doesn’t address that. I understand this to be a question about the journalistic content of poetry, or else a question about an individual writer’s relationship to current fashions in [...] by Daisy Fried

Questions I Don’t Understand #1 April 4, 2011: The Future of the Line. Gillian Connolly: “In the 22nd century, what will the line look like and do?” I find myself incapable of thinking theoretically about poems. I’m not saying this question doesn’t have value, and I’m certainly not bragging. But is it like ‘if we can dream it, we can do it?’ Sort of like Leonardo Da Vinci [...] by Daisy Fried

“…like a bird of prey, the profile of night…” April 30, 2010:            --from “Facing It,” Yusef Komunyakaa’s great poem            about war and race and America and the Vietnam Memorial. The university where I currently teach has more political diversity among its student body than most of the liberal-to-left institutions where I’ve previously taught. It’s never [...] by Daisy Fried

Everything Lives, Everything Dances, Everything Sings April 28, 2010: For all my bravado elsewhere about being open about being a mother and a poet, I do get leery of doing too much kiddie-mentioning. I think about Maisie plenty and am not ashamed to, and like to, and will happily buttonhole you at a party and recite her three-year-old poems (genius, surely!) to you until you beg for mercy or throw a drink in my [...] by Daisy Fried

Arcs and Arcoholics April 26, 2010:                                                        a good arc In a recent (positive) review, I noted that the book in question didn’t have much of an arc. Another poet-critic called me out on that in the comments stream of the online version of the review, asking why books of poems [...] by Daisy Fried

Mom and Supermom April 23, 2010:   In the Don Juan in Hell section of Shaw’s Man and Superman, The Statue, Don Gonzalo, explains why he has chosen to come to Hell instead of staying in Heaven. At classical concerts in England, he says, “you find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like [...] by Daisy Fried

Just the Crisis April 22, 2010:   That “why don’t you write novels” question Camille Dungy refers to is one I get all the time. Once, I was reading my poem “Aunt Leah, Aunt Sophie and the Negro Painter” which is about, oh, you know, Black-Jewish relations, Socialism v. Communism, secularized v. religious Jews, Paul Robeson, conservatism, late Cubism, Ariel [...] by Daisy Fried