With Respect: Stacy Doris, 1962-2012 February 3, 2012: We at Harriet are deeply saddened to report the loss of poet and translator Stacy Doris, who died on January 31 at the age of 49 after a battle with cancer. We discussed Doris's book-length poem The Cake Part (Publication Studio, 2011) just recently. This work, which acts as "an eruption of all the repressed joy and terror of [the] 18th [...] by Harriet Staff

Dorothea Tanning, 1910-2012 February 1, 2012: She made it to 101 years old; we are stunned. Gallerist NY tells us that Dorothea Tanning, surrealist painter and poet, has died. "According to her publisher, Graywolf Press, she passed away of natural causes while sleeping." Graywolf Senior Editor Jeffrey Shotts wrote today: We are honored to have published her two poetry books, the [...] by Harriet Staff

Wisława Szymborska, 1923-2012 February 1, 2012: The Associated Press and The Polish Cultural Institute have both just reported that poet Wislawa Szymborska died today. More: Her personal secretary says that Poland's 1996 Nobel Prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska has died. She was 88. Michal Rusinek said Wednesday that Szymborska died "quietly, in her sleep." She resided in the [...] by Harriet Staff

Typograms & Ptydepe: Remembering Vaclav Havel December 19, 2011: As you've heard by now, playwright, poet, dissident, and former Czech president Vaclav Havel died this weekend at the age of 75. The New Yorker's David Remnick recommends some of Havel's favorite writers, including poets Joseph Brodksy and Czeslaw Milosz; and The New York Times excerpts reviews of plays written by Havel, many of which [...] by Harriet Staff

RIP Christopher Hitchens December 16, 2011: In the April 2005 issue of Poetry magazine, Hitchens wrote about the poems he knew "by heart." In keeping with his style, the piece tackles a personal subject without sentimentality or mawkishness. He will be missed: My own acquaintance and relationship with poetry is bound up with acquisition, memorization, and recital. That is: I realized [...] by Harriet Staff

George Whitman, 1913 – 2011 December 15, 2011: George Whitman, the owner of Shakespeare & Company, a legendary English language bookshop on the Left Bank in Paris, died yesterday at the age of 98. From his recent obituary in the New York Times: More than a distributor of books, Mr. Whitman saw himself as patron of a literary haven, above all in the lean years after World War II, and the [...] by Harriet Staff

Christopher Logue, 1926 – 2011 December 5, 2011: Christopher Logue, the British poet best known for his modernist re-working of Homer's Illiad, died at home in London on December 2nd. He was 85. Logue grew up in Portsmouth, Hampshire. After a stint in the military, where he served as a soldier in the Black Watch and spent 16 months in an army prison, he turned to a variety of jobs to support [...] by Harriet Staff

Ruth Stone, 1915-2011 November 28, 2011: National Book Award winning poet Ruth Stone has passed away at 96. From the New York Times: A quietly respected poet who wrote in rural solitude, Ms. Stone became something of a public figure when news of her award was announced in November 2002 and press accounts drew attention to her unusual life story of struggle and belated acclaim, [...] by Harriet Staff

With Great Respect: Theodore Enslin, 1925-2011 November 23, 2011: We learned late last night that Theodore Enslin -- "one of our greatest poets working quietly outside the noisy mainstream," as Matthew Henriksen put it -- has left us. Enslin, a prolific poet identified with Cid Corman, Charles Olson, and particularly the Objectivist tradition, was born in Pennsylvania in 1925 and became a resident of Maine [...] by Harriet Staff

Czech poet Ivan Martin Jirous, 1944 – 2011 November 14, 2011: Ivan Martin Jirous -- a Czech poet and the artistic director of The Plastic People of the Universe, an avant-garde rock group banned by the country's Communist regime -- died in Prague last Thursday at the age of 67. Better known by his nickname "Magor," which roughly translates as "loony" and derives from "phantasmagoria," Jirous trained as [...] by Harriet Staff