I Often Wish April 29, 2011: I often wish I could pry day-like spaces out of second-long openings, cracks between Wednesdays and Thursdays. There would be a kind of low rumbling over my wrist as the escapement of my watch accommodates the wormhole. Weeks and months are even shorter than days, looming like large warehouses over my sense of broken efficiency. I really only have [...] by Martin Earl

Timely Timelessness: a response to Rachel Zucker April 25, 2011: If you’re going to be a hack these days, you’ve got to do a lot of hacking. This is timely work that, hopefully, I’ll be paid for in timely fashion. (more...) by Martin Earl

What’s Missing April 18, 2011: Great poems adapt to our needs over a lifetime of reading them. Philip Larkin’s “Aubade,” written in his last decade of life, and arguably one of his greatest poems, has come to mind again and again as I read through my colleague’s posts, reminding me of what seems to be an almost a seismic shift in the American poet’s relation to work. [...] by Martin Earl

A Poem by the Portuguese poet Ana Luísa Amaral April 11, 2011: It is hard to speak about contemporary European Poetry without differentiating between countries and even regions of countries. The same thing, of course, holds true for American poetry, though in different ways, especially if we – as we should – take an inclusive view of the Americas, not just looking at North America, and certainly not just [...] by Martin Earl

The poetics of ethics and the ethics of exile, a reading of Alan Gilbert April 7, 2011: The other day Alan Gilbert wrote on what he called an “ethics of exile” and a “poetics of exile,” the latter being the title of his piece. I find both expressions problematic. To illustrate these notions he calls upon both an essay written by Judith Butler entitled “Who Owns Kafka” and Butler’s notion of  “a poetics of [...] by Martin Earl

Can I wait until tomorrow to know this? April 4, 2011: Shiho Fukada / International Herald Tribune "The love of form is the acceptance of mortality." - Charles Simic Once again it is April, the month poetry creeps out of its hole and into the public arena with somewhat more insistence than it does during the other eleven months. It gets in the news. It even becomes news. But, in spite of what [...] by Martin Earl

Saudade April 28, 2010: António Nobre’s House -- Eugénio de Andrade The house was small, in front of the sea. It would be insignificant if António Nobre Had not finished his days there: (more...) by Martin Earl

What Do You Do? April 24, 2010: “I have sleep to do. / I have work to dream.” (Bill Knott, “(End of Summer (1966)”; Naomi Poems) 'Today, the question “What do you do?” means “How do you earn your living?” On My passport I am described as a “Writer”; this is not embarrassing for me in dealing with the authorities, because immigration and customs [...] by Martin Earl

The Problem with Exile (after Ange Mlinko) April 19, 2010: Irony heaped on irony: I was exiled from my home in the U.S. in the midst of the economic meltdown, so went to live, against my will, in Beirut; I needed to do some April readings for my new book so I came to stay in my parents’ home for a few days; now I can’t leave my parents’ home, though my children are waiting for me in our [...] by Martin Earl

Documentary Poetry and Language Surge April 13, 2010: One of the posts from the first week and half of April that most struck me was Mark Nowak’s on the 6th: “25 miners killed in West Virgina Coal Mine blast.” It is (apart from its reportorial relation to a tragic event) deliberately putting the question to the reader. And asking what? Nothing less than what the use of poetry is; in particular, [...] by Martin Earl