Harriet

Archive for the ‘Poetry magazine’ Category

Travis Nichols

Can “Experimental” Poetry Save the Earth?

outback2

In his essay “Vermin: a Notebook”, the Australian poet John Kinsella writes that without acts of resistance, “the environment has no chance.”

This seems obvious enough.

The way things are going, the earth (or at the very least, life on it) is in danger of being irreparably damaged by humanity’s heedless gobbling of resources. Resistance and change need to happen. Everyone from Barack Obama to T. Boone Pickens agrees on that.

What no one quite agrees on is what form these acts of resistance should take. Should we chain ourselves to trees and squeal at passersby, or should we just use Flexcar once a week? Should we turn the living room lights off during the day or develop a bedroom bucket sewage system? Firebomb the coal plant or compost the coffee grounds? Let the free market take care of the polar bears or demand cap and trade?

For Kinsella, there’s one act of resistance that encompasses the full range of these possibilities, yet no one has talked much about it: Poetry.

Don Share

Poetry makes nothing happen… or does it?

Catpupil03042006

You see the phrase, “poetry makes nothing happen” trotted out over and over again, attributed to W.H. Auden as some sort of evidence for the reductiveness and hermetic inutility of poetry.  And yet…

Edwin Torres

I choose the dumb one

Sorry to be MIA, a ratatouille of obstacles thrown in my path this week. Here we go: I escape from work, play hooky, and ride the subway all the way to the editor’s house in Brooklyn

Fred Sasaki

Transformations

Transformations

So long September. On this, the last day of the month, have a lasting look at Cathie Bleck’s “Transformations” above, also featured on the current cover of Poetry.  Inside, I see a hoof, a hand, and (blush) the distinct influence of Rockwell Kent.

Kenneth Goldsmith

Flarf and Conceptual Writing in Poetry Magazine

flarf-con

An introduction to the 21st Century’s most controversial poetry movements.
From the July/August 2009 Issue of Poetry Magazine

by Kenneth Goldsmith

Start making sense. Disjunction is dead. The fragment, which ruled poetry for the past one hundred years, has left the building. Subjectivity, emotion, the body, and desire, as expressed in whole units of plain English with normative syntax, has returned. But not in ways you would imagine . . .

READ THE REST HERE.

Travis Nichols

2009: The Halfway-Point Reading Report

The Top Ten Most-Read Articles on poetryfoundation.org

Of all the articles on poetryfoundation.org, these received the most page views:

1. “Show Your Work” by Matthew Zapruder

2. “Going Negative” by Jason Guriel

3. “Poetry Can Be Any Damn Thing it Wants” by Mary Ann Caws

Annie Finch

Happy Mother’s Day, to Foremothers, Poet-Moms, and Maggie

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

maggie_1961_1
Margaret Rockwell Finch, 1961

Fred Sasaki

Is that a poem in your pocket?

anabenaroya_1

Poetry staff was happy to see Ana Benaroya’s e-mail come over the transom with big, beautiful illustrations for us to consider for the cover of the magazine. (See November 2008 for her first appearance and April 2009 for her latest, “Crazy Head.”) After perusing her website we found several poetry illos in her pocket that made us fall crazy head over heels for her work. Click on for a few samples.

Don Share

What Do You Know?

180px-knowledge-reid-highsmith

Judith Shklar introduced her book Ordinary Vices by saying, “It is only if we step outside the divinely ruled moral universe that we can really put our minds to the common ills we inflict upon one another each day.” I suppose poets these days aren’t supposed to put their minds to grand tasks – you know, it’s more like write a poem every day for a month. But since it’s not only National Poetry Month but National Uh-Huh month, I thought I’d post something, you know, deep.

Don Share

Happy Birthday!!!

170px-Birthday.jpg
Some folks didn’t care for our recent commemoration of the centennial of Futurism – like we were endorsing it somehow, sheesh! Well, it’s time to celebrate yet another birthday.

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Thom Donovan
Bhanu Kapil
Fred Moten
Craig Santos Perez
Sina Queyras
Sotère Torregian

STAFF WRITERS

Cathy Halley
Michael Marcinkowski
Travis Nichols
Fred Sasaki
Don Share

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IN THIS ISSUE: March 2010

Poetry Magazine

A selection of new work from Dorothea Grossman; new poems by Lavinia Greenlaw, David Yezzi, A.E. Stallings, Gerald Stern, and Dan Gerber; translations of Carlo Betocchi, and Mahmoud Darwish; an Editorial on Ruth Lilly; an exchange between Ilya Kaminsky and Adam Kirsch; an essay by Chen Li; and a review by Daisy Fried.

CHICAGO EVENTS

Poetry Off the Shelf: David Baker

Poetry Off the Shelf: David Baker Fri, March 26th, 6:00 PM
Open Books
213 West Institute Place
Free admission

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