Why Does the Poem Work?: Rachel Loden’s “What the Gravedigger Needs” April 19, 2010: Joel Brouwer blogged about Rachel Loden’s Dick of the Dead last year here; it's been a pleasure to see this political, strange and strangely charming book get some attention, including here and here.  The Dick of the title is of course Richard Nixon; Ron Silliman says “Loden works with Nixon the way Shakespeare worked with Lear, mining him [...] by Daisy Fried

The Malfunction Malfunctions Malfunctioned April 14, 2010: Lavinia Greenlaw’s delightful Booth of Truth post about her visit to an amusement pier and Rachel Zucker’s mention of her & Arielle Greenberg’s Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama's First 100 Days (which I’m glad to know has been published) came strangely together to remind me of a poem I tried to write over a year ago that refused [...] by Daisy Fried

Today’s Imperative: John McAuliffe April 12, 2010: I’ve had the pleasure this spring of having as a colleague the Irish poet John McAuliffe. He’s occupying a visiting chair of Irish Studies at Villanova University, where I’m currently teaching. The fact that I didn’t know McAuliffe’s poetry before doesn’t mean other Americans also don’t know it. As August Kleinzahler says on the [...] by Daisy Fried

Billboard Koan, Shitty Namaste April 5, 2010: The Ben Franklin Bridge connects Philadelphia and Camden NJ, where both wine and gas are cheaper. The first thing you see from the bridge’s eastbound downside (as they say in traffic reports—my current unstartable poem is called “Eastbound Downside”) is the big red-and-blackgray billboard advertising Droid, Verizon’s new iPhone-type [...] by Daisy Fried

Don’t Wax the Poem April 1, 2010: Maybe all poets are nerds or they wouldn’t be poets. But not all poets write nerdy. Some are suave, which can be a good thing. Some are elegant in an elegant way. Nerds can be elegant in a backwards way, by retaining their bumps and inelegances, bumptious idiosyncrasies, a being-in-life at least as much as in-literature. There’s plenty to [...] by Daisy Fried

Fish’s Night Song March 24, 2009: Here’s Christian Morgenstern’s (1871-1914) “Fisches Nachtgesang,” or, “Fish’s Night Song.” It’s one more example of American parochialism that nowhere in Bartlett’s Quotations is a line of this poem reproduced. by Daisy Fried

Prufrock Moment February 5, 2009: There’s a particularly lovely bit in Stephen Colbert’s interview with Elizabeth Alexander the night after the inauguration. Colbert: [mock-pathetic] “Poems aren’t true, right? They’re made up, right…because I recently read this thing called The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock which is about a guy, you know, in his mid-40s like I am, [...] by Daisy Fried

Phillies! Phillies! Phillies! October 29, 2008: 9:58 pm South Philly— Whooos, horns honking, somebody hitting what sounds like a cowbell... we don’t have a TV and didn’t get around to see if it was streaming on-line, but we can always tell what’s happening in a ball game that really matters by the noise in the street. As the New York Times live blogger says “And after 98 seasons of [...] by Daisy Fried

GO PHILLIES!!!! October 16, 2008: The crowd at the ball game is moved uniformly by a spirit of uselessness which delights them-- W.C. Williams, from "At the Ball Game" Fanaticism? No. Writing is exciting and baseball is like writing. Marianne Moore, from "Baseball and Writing" by Daisy Fried

Vitriol in the Arts August 4, 2008: Always glad to see August Kleinzahler, one of the best poets writing today, get some press. Reporters for mainstream papers who write about AK seem to like to ask Billy Collins for a quote about him. In the LA Times recently, BC remarked, on AK’s attacks on the poetry establishment: “All the vitriol…I don’t get it.” Which makes me ask a [...] by Daisy Fried