One of my songs spins backward, while the other plays forward August 4, 2009: OK, if that GIF is too annoying, just tell me, and I'll take it down. Would be a shame, tho. Adrian Matejka's second book of poems, Mixology, was published as part of last year's National Poetry Series, and I've finally gotten around to picking it up and checking it out. I knew Adrian very briefly when we both lived in Carbondale, Illinois, [...] by Joel Brouwer

A Braille Hoax and Some Rockabilly Cancer July 14, 2009: Ed Park peered into the strange world of David Berman's drawings for last week's cover story.  Park argued that the drawings collected in the newly released  Portable February are cut from the same quirky cloth as Berman's poetry and music.  One 'rawing that particularly caught the writer's attention: a billboard/projection stating, [...] by Travis Nichols

A Toast for the Fathers June 27, 2009: Roy Finch at Sarah Lawrence College, mid 1960's Father's day came and went, and I've been wanting to say something about my dad, and all my poetic fathers, after all the talk about mothers. I want to thank my dad for a lot of things. For reading "The Night Before Christmas" aloud every year until I got addicted to triple meters. For [...] by Annie Finch

The Man in the Mirror June 26, 2009: As we all know by now, Michael Jackson--who apparently was reading Tagore poems in his last days--is dead. It is sad and strange, and though it feels a little odd, I wanted to put up a sort of Harriet "open thread" about it here just in case anyone wants to vent over the weekend.  Myself, I've felt mostly numb about the whole thing, mainly, I [...] by Travis Nichols

Why I Am a Woman Poet June 24, 2009: My Sister-in-Law, Sister, Niece, and Me in My Mother's Kitchen Anna Leahy reminds us, in her recent essay “Is Women’s Poetry Passé?” in Legacy, that “in the January 2006 issue of Poetry, the three female poets who had been asked to comment on “women’s poetry” (Meghan O’Rourke, J. Allyn Rosser, and Eleanor Wilner) asserted, [...] by Annie Finch

The Music of Langston Hughes June 10, 2009: While the Roots--everyone's favorite late night house band--prepare for the West Coast premiere of Ask Your Mama this August, insatiable Langston Hughes fans should check out this week's cover story:  Franklin Bruno's exploration of the poet's 1957 Broadway musical comedy Simply Heavenly. The production featured a nearly-forgotten gem sung by [...] by Travis Nichols

Happy Mother’s Day, to Foremothers, Poet-Moms, and Maggie May 10, 2009: Today I went to visit my mother, Margaret Rockwell Finch, who turned 88 a few weeks ago.  As always lately, she showed me a new poem.  Maggie was my first model of a Margaret Rockwell Finch, 1961 working poet, entering and once winning the contests of the Poetry Society of America, whose meetings she brought me to as a teenager; typing [...] by Annie Finch

¡El que no brinque es migra! February 3, 2009: My first creative attempts as a child were narcocorridos. Influenced by movies and songs like La Banda del Carro Rojo, my friends, cousins, brothers, and I played “narcotraficantes,” a game that always ended in the heroic tragic death of the narcos. As we lay on the ground, I composed corridos that narrated the events of our role-play. My [...] by Javier Huerta

Tune thy music to thy heart November 24, 2008: In Berlin this week, I wandered into a dark room next to this building site and found myself not in a silent disco but a silent singalong. ‘Tune thy music to thy heart,’ Thomas Campion proposed. These people sure did. First I came across a row of Lennon fans from Newcastle singing along to Plastic Ono Band. They were wearing headphones and [...] by Lavinia Greenlaw

Silent disco October 13, 2008: Have we entered a version of silent disco in which the primary experience of the poem is as received signals rather than noise? For a poem to operate as a poem must it now be concentrated on the idea of itself, must it appear to be either the square root of poem or hardly a poem at all? What's a disco? asked my American penpal in 1974. She also [...] by Lavinia Greenlaw