Harriet

Archive for the ‘Arts’ Category

Anselm Berrigan

Howdy

Poetry Foundation

Children’s Poetry Events

Children's Poet Laureate

The Poetry Foundation cordially invites all kids and grown-ups to the following events with our Children’s Poet Laureates, past and present:

Fred Sasaki

Transformations

Transformations

So long September. On this, the last day of the month, have a lasting look at Cathie Bleck’s “Transformations” above, also featured on the current cover of Poetry.  Inside, I see a hoof, a hand, and (blush) the distinct influence of Rockwell Kent.

Tonya Foster

ADFEMPO: Advancing Feminist Poetics & Activism

Am just back from the first day of the Belladonna ADFEMPO conference at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The opening plenary got off to a late but energizing start. (It didn’t start so late that I should have arrived home at 2 AM this morning in the back of a police car. But here I am. Not in the police car anymore but at home, in the after burn of that experience. I’d never ridden in a police car before tonight. Can’t say that it’s something I ever imagined doing. Those back seats are surprisingly stiff, collapsible I’m guessing. The officers were kind, gentle even, and took care to get me home after a bullying cab driver met the stubbornness my family often asks me to keep in check. But I work for a living too…)

Abigail Deutsch

Keats lives! (for a while)

John Keats Bright Star poetry

Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate:—
‘Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuffed out by an Article.

—Lord Byron

Keats didn’t actually die because of a bad review. But if he had, how would he feel now that Bright Star, Jane Campion’s film about him, is garnering so much positive press?

Being dead, he probably wouldn’t feel much of anything. If he weren’t dead, though, his waxen cheeks would flush, his vague eyes focus, his chapped lips tremble. He’d study Entertainment Weekly and Time Out and The San Francisco Chronicle. He’d linger over the blog entries, gasping with pleasure – or horror? “O, for a glass of vintage!” he would whisper, emotions high. It would take him so long to read all the reviews that, unfortunately, he would die before he finished.

And so it is in memoriam to John Keats (1795-2009) that I offer a round-up of numerous, luminous Bright Star reviews. Your blogger found a total of 55, terminating her search only when she could no longer focus her eyes.

Travis Nichols

Jim Carroll, R.I.P.

Jim Carroll—poet, novelist, musician, diarist, impresario—died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 60 years old.

The tributes and reminisces have come in from various sources–from English footballers to New York musicians to everyday readers–all noting what a tremendous presence Carroll was both onstage and off.

*

The New York Times:

“’I met him in 1970, and already he was pretty much universally recognized as the best poet of his generation,’ the singer Patti Smith said in a telephone interview on Sunday. ‘The work was sophisticated and elegant. He had beauty.’

*

Tom Clark:

“Jim had by that time already begun haunting the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s in the Bowery Church. He loved the poetry of Frank O’Hara, and writing under a rush of Frank’s influence, at seventeen produced his own first slim chapbook, Organic Trains. Ted Berrigan had taken Jim under his wing. Poetry not basketball was where Jim wanted to go in his life.”

*

Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney on NPR:

Joel Brouwer

Back to Skool

fhproto

“The folklorist Vladimir Propp thought he was accomplishing something worthwhile by identifying in Russian folktales thirty-one functions and 151 elements, with a mathematical symbol assigned to each.” — Roger Shattuck, Forbidden Knowledge

Eileen Myles

Intimate in Pace

I’m trying to cure myself of the blogging late in the month syndrome PARTICULARLY because this month is my last month of blogging. To get to the quick of it I think well why am I not blogging now. Well because I have a new book and I’m

Travis Nichols

Measure for Measure

Auden Martini

Original Artwork by Paul Killebrew

Anyone who has ever looked at a photo of W.H. Auden knows the man enjoyed a good martini in his time.  Perhaps one or five too many.  “But,” the inimitable Rosie Schaap asks in this week’s cover story, “what sort of martini?”

She writes:

If Tarquin Winot, the epicurean protagonist of John Lanchester’s The Debt to Pleasure, is to be believed, he made them like so: “I borrowed W.H. Auden’s technique of mixing the vermouth and gin at lunchtime (though the great poet himself used vodka) and leaving the mixture in the freezer to attain that wonderful jellified texture of alcohol chilled to below the point at which water freezes. The absence of ice means that the Auden martini is not diluted in any way, and thus truly earns the drink its sobriquet ‘the silver bullet.’”

It’s charming—sort of—to imagine W.H. Auden, with his lined, noble countenance, inventing the progenitor of the jello shot, but Winot, a perverse and unreliable narrator, is not to be believed, and it seems questionable that an Englishman of Auden’s generation would abide, much less favor, a martini made with vodka instead of gin.

What would he abide?  Join the search over here.  And, if afterwards you find yourself a bit parched,  the perfect antidote to the office hour blues can be found after the jump.

Joel Brouwer

One of my songs spins backward, while the other plays forward

cat_scratchin

OK, if that GIF is too annoying, just tell me, and I’ll take it down. Would be a shame, tho.

Adrian Matejka’s second book of poems, Mixology, was published as part of last year’s National Poetry Series, and I’ve finally gotten around to picking it up and checking it out. I knew Adrian very briefly when we both lived in Carbondale, Illinois, in 2001. He had a radio show on the local independent station WDBX (then 700 watts; since upgraded to 3000), and he asked me to come on the show and read some poems. I’d done this sort of thing before, on a poetry show on Madison, Wisconsin’s indy station, the venerable WORT. But Adrian’s show was a little different.

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Anselm Berrigan
Abigail Deutsch
Tonya Foster
Melissa Friedling
John S. O'Connor
Barbara Jane Reyes
Amber Tamblyn
Edwin Torres

STAFF WRITERS

Cathy Halley
Michael Marcinkowski
Travis Nichols
Fred Sasaki
Don Share

RECENT COMMENTS

  • Hi Teri, I think I'm for it. Not in a spirit of separatism, but in ... MORE »
    Annie Finch | 11.21.09
  • Henry Gould says: "Terreson, you misrepresent Christianity, & probably all those other religions too. You want ... MORE »
    Terreson | 11.21.09
  • Barbara Jane Reyes says: "And this brings me to my question: how do you write about ... MORE »
    Terreson | 11.20.09
  • I like the idea of immanent transcendence. Any approximation of ultimate truth would have to ... MORE »
    Wendy Babiak | 11.20.09
  • Terreson, you misrepresent Christianity, & probably all those other religions too. You want to ... MORE »
    Henry Gould | 11.20.09

Señor Smith to you. (1)
Vladimir, Ron, and Gregori (4)
dubious poetry: the palin comparison (3)
To Vaya in the Viva of Time (2)
Indie Publishing: Two Questions, Many More... (5)

RECENT POSTS

MONTHLY ARCHIVE

CATEGORY ARCHIVE

PREVIOUS WRITERS

Subscribe to the RSS feed.
What is RSS?

Subscribe to Poetry
Listen & Explore — Take the Chicago Poetry Tour
Poetry Tool

OR SEARCH

CHICAGO EVENTS

Poetry Off the Shelf: Reginald Gibbons
Oidipous Tyrannos: Oedipus the King

Poetry Off the Shelf: Reginald Gibbons Oidipous Tyrannos: Oedipus the King Thu, December 3rd, 6:00 pm
National Hellenic Museum
801 West Adams Street, 4th Floor
Free admission

MORE EVENTS »

Subscribe to Poetry