Mary Karr lunches with Studs Terkel March 29, 2011: Mary Karr reads on Tuesday, April 5 at the Art Institute of Chicago's Rubloff Auditorium. She took a few minutes to talk about what she's reading, what she's read, and who she'd quote: What line or poem do you find yourself sharing again and again? Too many to count. My message to young writers always comes from Beckett: "Fail [...] by Poetry Foundation

Poetry may find its way back to New York’s subways after all March 29, 2011: The New York Times' City Room reports that the MTA has begun talks with the Poetry Society of America to bring back Poetry in Motion. The program ended in 2008 and was replaced with Train of Thought, which met its own demise earlier this year. Since then, the New York subways have been devoid of the literature and philosophical quotes that had [...] by Poetry News

“The lush Maui retreat of W.S. Merwin, US poet laureate” March 25, 2011: The Wall Street Journal takes a look at Merwin's digs: When Mr. Merwin first saw it in 1976, it was mostly covered with dry, waist-high grass. At one time, the area had been a thick forest of prized Acacia koa trees. But those had been cut down, and the area ruined beyond agricultural use by poor irrigation techniques. Still, he was enchanted [...] by Poetry News

Treme turns to local poet to capture post-Katrina New Orleans March 23, 2011: The Times-Picayune talks with Gian Smith who is featured reciting his poem "O Beautiful Storm" in a new promo for the HBO show Treme. Smith now hosts an open mic at The McKenna Museum of African American Art, but it was Katrina that first made him turn to poetry. In both the poem and his interview, he describes scraping the residue off the [...] by Poetry News

The Making of This Part II March 23, 2011: ('This' At the Chocolate Factory) Or: on writing text for K.J. Holmes’s “This is Where we Are (or take arms against a sea of troubles)” Performed at The Chocolate Factory, L.I.C NY, March 9-12, 2011 Performed by: Jodi Bender, Keith Biesack, K.J. Holmes, Marin Sander-Holzman, Kathy Westwater, Devika Wickremesinghe. Music performed by: [...] by Julie Carr

Celebrating (and preserving) ten years of E-Poetry March 21, 2011: 2011 marks the 10-year anniversary of the E-Poetry Festival. The biennial "artist-oriented gathering" is returning to the place of its birth, SUNY Buffalo in May. On her blog, Lori Emerson, director of the Archaeological Media Lab at University of Colorado at Boulder, compares this year's program to that of the first in 2001, looking at how much [...] by Poetry News

Carl Sandburg’s typographic “Chicago” March 18, 2011: Chicagoist talks to graphic artist Bud Rodecker about his typographic series Ode to Carl. The project grew out of his self-imposed mission to make one new piece of artwork daily. Though titled RicharDaily, the first series of daily art didn't have nearly the connection to Chicago that the Sandburg graphics do. Writer Betsy Mikel notes that [...] by Poetry News

Brazil commissions poetry blog, minus the poets March 17, 2011: Forbes' Kenneth Rapoza writes about the Brazilian government's controversial commissioning of a "million dollar" poetry blog. The R$1.3 million ($783,000 USD) isn't going to a poet or literary organization. The recipient is singer Maria Bethânia, who will use the platform to interpret poetry in song through a daily series of videos. There's no [...] by Poetry News

“Poet,” the fashionable look for Spring 2011 March 17, 2011: (Photograph of Terrance Hayes by David Armstrong from the NYT style magazine) Could it really be? Or is it just that poetry (and poets) have become such curiosities in American culture that those outside of poetry circles don't know what else to do with them but put them on display (and put giant paper wigs on them)? In the past week [...] by Poetry News

Eat your art out March 17, 2011: Linda Holmes, writing for NPR, reports on a study done by the NEA which found that lower attendance to high cultural activities was related to a diminishing number of “omnivores”—people who are "are involved in both 'highbrow' and middle- or lowbrow activities." Holmes argues that this is part of a larger tendency of isolation between people [...] by Poetry News