“School/Period”: Chicano Renaissance April 15, 2011: I would like to make a suggestion to the Poetry Foundation: that "Chicano Renaissance" be added as a "School/Period" in its Poems/Poets page. In order for this to work, though, the Poetry Foundation would have to add the following poets not yet included on their website: alurista, Alberto "Lalo" Delgado, Jose Montoya, Raul Salinas, Luis Omar [...] by Javier Huerta

UNMENTIONABLE MATTERS April 7, 2011: People whose concept of themselves is largely dependent on their racial identity and superiority feel threatened by a multiracial person. The insistence that one must align oneself with this or that race is basically racist. And the notion that without a racial identity a person can’t have any identity perpetuates racism…I wish I could say [...] by Kwame Dawes

The Meme Museum April 5, 2011: Darren Wershler has coined a term, "conceptualism in the wild," to describe practices which rage through the internet that are predicated upon earlier avant-garde tendencies without having the slightest knowledge of them. These most often involve memes. A typical "conceptualism in the wild" meme would be the series of re-subtitled Downfall [...] by Kenneth Goldsmith

Time 2 April 5, 2011: Kathleen, I liked your post! And I agree the timely/timeless question is a bit of a false dichotomy. And, yes, most people I’ve asked are saying some version of “both.” Still, I think the question is worth asking, worth thinking about. I see a shift toward valuing “timeliness” or being more willing to talk about the pleasure of [...] by Rachel Zucker

Madness. Love. Poetry. Thutt. April 5, 2011: It can be seen as obnoxious to write in a public forum about one’s yoga practice. I get it. I do. But I’m going to do it anyway, in the interest of doing some craft work about portmanteaux. Here goes: On the first day of National Poetry Month, I went to a yoga class led by my favorite Shambhava yoga teacher here in Chicago and she [...] by Kathleen Rooney

I have been summoned. I enthusiastically respond. April 4, 2011: HARRIET! Good to see you again, girlfriend. You bring us together. You re-introduce us to our particular music. I've missed and craved you so. If only that sweet-assed Amber T wasn’t such a reticent sort. She really needs to learn to speak up for herself, stop all that infernal mumbling into the back of her hand. That said, Am, now that [...] by Patricia Smith

WHY I NO LONGER NEED TO LEARN MY POEMS BY HEART April 4, 2011: Now it is true that not all poets who recite their poems by heart are performance poets. But they both pose the same problem for me. I admire them. I especially admire those who remember those really long poems that they have written. They go on and on, and I have to say that part of why I applaud so loudly is because I am so impressed that they [...] by Kwame Dawes

Pleasures of the Didactic April 1, 2011: I am a little obsessed with genre, which is to say with expectations and how they are subverted or fulfilled.   Contemporary American poetry is so dominated by Lyric that we often forget there are other modes:  Narrative (nephew of venerable Epic), Pastoral (largely these days the province of country music), Epinician (the trumpeting of [...] by A.E. Stallings

Your brain loves art March 30, 2011: Morgan Meis reviews V.S. Ramachandran’s new book The Tell-Talle Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human, which attempts to explain art and aesthetics in terms of neuroscience. Meis points out that theories of art have existed as long as philosophy has existed, but now, according to Ramachandran, we know enough about the brain to [...] by Harriet Staff

A call for more poetry activists among the laureates March 29, 2011: In an opinion piece for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Julia Baird laments the relative invisibility of poet laureates among the general public. The deficiency isn't in the public's taste for poetry but rather the title itself, the kind of person it's bestowed upon and what it should require of its bearer. Baird recalls the efforts of Joseph Brodsky [...] by Harriet Staff