As Editor of Broom, Lola Ridge Objected to Stein: “A bladder blown up by many breaths” May 23, 2012: Yesterday we got deeper into Ernest Hemingway's salty annotation of the "Lady Poets," one of whom, "the nearest prototype in her time of the proletarian poet of class conflict," is Lola Ridge. Ridge has had more longevity than most of those women--Factory School republished her book The Ghetto in 2006. It was already pretty much [...] by Harriet Staff

Blake Butler Reviews Dodie Bellamy, Jon Leon, Tomaž Šalamun for VICE May 21, 2012: Over at VICE, Blake Butler has reviewed three books that cause the good reader to reflect momentarily on sex and power. Dodie Bellamy's Cunt-Ups (Tender Buttons, 2001), a cult favorite, if we may encourage the term (and maybe this one's ready for a reprint); Jon Leon's newest, The Malady of the Century (Futurepoem 2011); and, unexpectedly for [...] by Harriet Staff

Sandra Simonds Responds to Marjorie Perloff’s Boston Review Essay May 16, 2012: On her blog, poet Sandra Simonds responds to Marjorie Perloff's essay, "Poetry on the Brink," recently published in the Boston Review, as we mentioned. The essay claimed that "[t]he national (or even transnational) demand for a certain kind of prize-winning, ‘well-crafted’ poem—a poem that the New Yorker would see fit to print and that would [...] by Harriet Staff

On Julian Brolaski’s Advice for Lovers May 15, 2012: Over at The Volta, last Friday's Feature was a review of Julian Brolaski's recent Advice for Lovers, which is the latest book to come out of Garrett Caples's rather marvelous City Lights Spotlight series. Patrick James Dunagan was at the reading at City Lights Bookstore celebrating the publication, and noted that Brolaksi at first hesitated to [...] by Harriet Staff

We Should Probably All Read Francesca Lisette’s Teens May 10, 2012: Nice one: Brebrowed reviews innovative UK poet Francesca Lisette's new (and first) book, Teens. Straightaway: "I wrote last October extolling Lisette as one of the finest younger poets writing at the moment and I’ve now bought ‘Teens’ from Mountain Press which collects most of her stuff in one place." The book is described at Mountain's [...] by Harriet Staff

Charles Bernstein Helps to Set the Gertrude Stein Wartime Record Straight May 9, 2012: We recently pointed to a piece by scholar Barbara Will on Gertrude Stein's potentially iffy wartime politics; and The New Yorker posited the other day, oddly, that "The Anti-Defamation League is right to say that Stein’s 'troubling ideology was inextricably linked to her art collection.'" Now, at Jacket2, Charles Bernstein hopes to set [...] by Harriet Staff

Albert Mobilio Reviews The Collected Poems of Joe Brainard + Listen to “Van Gogh” May 8, 2012: Albert Mobilio reviews The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard for the current issue of Bookforum. "Smartly edited by his lifelong friend Ron Padgett, the collection demonstrates that this unlikely success was no fluke." Of Brainard's I Remember, Mobilio writes: "Drawing on his dadaist and surrealist experiments in art and infusing their [...] by Harriet Staff

Work Working Itself Out: The Poetry of Matvei Yankelevich Gets Its Due May 8, 2012: O'er at The Brooklyn Rail, Matvei Yankelevich gets the full treatment, with a review of all three of his books, including the just-released Alpha Donut (United Artists), Palm Press's 2006 The Present Work, and of course, Boris by the Sea (Octopus Books 2009). Often associated and rightly admired for his running of Ugly Duckling Presse or [...] by Harriet Staff

Fascinating Piece on Gertrude Stein’s Pro-Vichy Politics, ‘Innocence’ of Intellectuals May 4, 2012: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities has a great piece up on the strangely pro-Vichy, quasi-Fascist politics of Gertrude Stein, written by Barbara Will, Stein scholar and professor of English at Dartmouth. Apparently, "Stein’s Vichy past has long been known to scholars of her work, if not to the public at large. In 1970, [...] by Harriet Staff

Joel Whitney on Mark Strand’s Almost Invisible May 3, 2012: Over at NPR, Joel Whitney offers up this review of Mark Strand's new collection. He begins: American poetry's recognition of the prosaicness — if not profanity — of our age and culture takes many forms. Poets embrace pop or pursue the workings of the mind with what Robert Bly called associative leaping. They examine rhetoric by [...] by Harriet Staff