My Remains: poetry, art, and the emergence of the subject April 12, 2011: For the past couple years I have been working on a book of poems that deals with a certain model or mode of subjectivity. I am not sure what to call this book yet, though I have a few titles in mind. The specific model of subjectivity I am working with (I hope at the level of the poem's language) involves a conception of the individual as a kind [...] by Thom Donovan

“You Can Have It All” April 12, 2011: My idea of a conservative poet is Marcel Duchamp. There isn’t much use for time external to the writing in my head these days, insofar as the timely timelessness thing goes, much as I can sort of be “in like” with the question, or give it some nod from the next set of collapsing structures (tonalities), one gets paid to briefly inhabit. [...] by Anselm Berrigan

Performance and Narrative: Craft Notes April 10, 2011: Last night, in the Dikeou Gallery in Denver, as part of the launch for TITMOUSE magazine, I gave, towards the end of the evening --  a performance, that built in me: :as I sat in my chair. Built. Until it became impossible to consider reading from the Belladonna chapbook of a book, a "poem-essay" (not yet written): BAN.  Instead, I did [...] by Bhanu Kapil

The Untimeliness of the Xenotext April 10, 2011: Rachel Zucker asks us to consider whether or not we might prefer our poems to be either timeless or timelier. Historically, avant-garde poets have often called into question any reliable standard of value for excellence, leaving the field open to a permissive, if not nihilistic, attitude, in which no poetry seems adequate to any time, be it [...] by Christian Bök

(What) Remains (Common) April 10, 2011: Rob Halpern and I have spent the past couple months revisiting a correspondence/collaboration that we started in 2007, working title "The Birds Know, So" after a line of Monica Vitti's in Michelangelo Antonioni's Red Desert. This past February we generated a series of questions and prompts about "commons" in hopes that this might yield [...] by Thom Donovan

Tweet Tweet April 7, 2011: For National Poetry Month, the Academy of American Poets asked a different poet to use Twitter each day. As is the case with most social media, the results have varied widely. D.A. Powell (fellow Harriet blogger from the summer of 2008) started things off on April 1 by asking, “What was the 1st poem you fell in love with?” which generated [...] by Alan Gilbert

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

Tucson impressions April 4, 2011: One of the exciting things about being a poet is periodically getting to step out of my day-to-day and fly somewhere to read my poems. I'm in Arizona now for the Tucson Poetry Festival. Here are some random thoughts and impressions. * Stepping off the plane, there seem to be a whole lot of white faces in the airport. * There are an [...] by Jeffrey McDaniel

The Xenotext Works April 2, 2011: The Xenotext is my nine-year long attempt to create an example of “living poetry.” I have been striving to write a short verse about language and genetics, whereupon I use a “chemical alphabet” to translate this poem into a sequence of DNA for subsequent implantation into the genome of a bacterium (in this case, a microbe called [...] by Christian Bök

Things That Help: National Poetry Month April 1, 2011: There's something so very appropriate about the fact the first day of National Poetry Month is April Fool's Day.  Like the world is saying, "Ha, ha, it's 'National POETRY Month'" in a sarcastic voice whilst using air quotes. But, no, really, it is. Like, for real. It's OUR MONTH. We get to do whatever we want this month. We get to eat whatever we [...] by Ada Limón