“What Must Be Said” April 10, 2012: True or false: 1. Major daily newspapers no longer publish poetry. 2. Poems are not about anything. 3. Nobel laureates in literature politely remove themselves from the public forum immediately after nomination. 4. Poetry is too difficult for the general reader. 5. Bad poems still bite. Last Wednesday on the 4th of April, Günter [...] by Martin Earl

Amy King—I Want to Make You Safe April 9, 2012: When I was a grad student at SUNY Buffalo in the mid-’90s, the comp lit students thought they were the cool kids, the Poetics Program poets thought they were the cooler kids, but the truly cool kids were the more independent agents like Amy King. She and I crossed paths in New York City a few times after we both moved here post-grad school, [...] by Alan Gilbert

But a Storm is Blowing from Paradise April 9, 2012: Returning to an old tradition and making good use of Harriet to spread the word about poetry books, I wanted to give a shout out to Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, whose debut collection has recently been released through Red Hen Press. But a Storm is Blowing from Paradise signals disruption, interruption, discord and, on a more empowering note, [...] by Rigoberto González

What is a Tea Poet? April 9, 2012: "The poet descends low. He forsakes the parnassian assembly." While the Parnassian movement—a reaction against Romanticism that called for a recognition of art independent of any moral, social, or scientific consideration—produced few poets of lasting renown, its significant influence has been recognized by artist and critic alike. Okay, I [...] by Edwin Torres

The Jubilee of Poetic Crises April 9, 2012: Vanessa Place has suggested that, if Conceptual Literature is dead, it is so, only because poetry itself is dead—persisting, like a spectre, which does not yet know that it must keep its rendezvous with the afterworld, preferring instead to malinger in the a shadow of its own demise. "If poetry is dead, act like a zombie," she advises. I really [...] by Christian Bök

¡ONLY TWO TYPES OF POETRY! April 6, 2012: Poetry these days, whether viewed in print or listened to at readings, falls into just two basic categories. They are: come-to-me poetry and go-to-you poetry. This is not a reductive “characterization,” it is rather a hard-nosed, no-bones look at specifications—a spec check. Come-to-me, go-to-you, how much of each. Hybrids are cool. But how [...] by Rodrigo Toscano

Vivek Narayanan—Universal Beach April 5, 2012: When I was blogging for Harriet in the summer of 2008, I posted a two-part interview with Vivek Narayanan after having met him earlier that summer at the Beats in India: A Soul of Asia Symposium held at the Asia Society in New York City. The interview covered a wide variety of topics ranging from trends in South Asian poetry, to the Hindu [...] by Alan Gilbert

IT’S NOT CONCEPTUAL IT’S CONSENSUAL April 4, 2012: I figured if I put "conceptual" in the title of my post, I'd get more readers. Did it work? I'll never know. But the topic of this blog post is "consensual" poetics, not conceptual—whether or not conceptual poetry is dead, dying, moving into middle age, or still in its young adulthood. As I told Rachel Zucker recently, I don't believe in "types [...] by Julie Carr

The Morbidity of Conceptual Literature April 3, 2012: Kenneth Goldsmith has reposted an article by Johanna Drucker, and I am hoping to make some idle comments in response to her arguments, with a more detailed response to follow throughout the month: Johanna Drucker has suggested that Conceptual Literature has begun to enter the twilight of its eminence, on the verge of becoming yet another one of [...] by Christian Bök

The Well-Packaged Estrangement of Jack Gilbert April 2, 2012: When Dwight Garner in the New York Times, or anyone else, tells me that something is likely to be one of the year’s “two or three most important books of poetry” my sweeping generalization Geiger counter starts bleating and its needle jumps around in the red zone. That’s not because I don’t believe in important books, but rather because [...] by Martin Earl