Of course we did! November 4, 2008: "There is simply too much to think about. It is hopeless — too many kinds of special preparation are required. In electronics, in economics, in social analysis, in history, in psychology, in international politics, most of us are, given the oceanic proliferating complexity of things, paralyzed by the very suggestion that we assume [...] by Don Share

Will there be time for eggnogs and eclogues in the place where we’re going? November 3, 2008: The title of this post is from my fave Halloween-season poem, "What the Spider Heard," by Weldon Kees. And just in time for your tricks and treats, a change in seasons, the onset of "standard" time, and the big election - we're pleased to announce... ... a few changes here at Poetry. We're introducing a redesigned new Poetry magazine website [...] by Don Share

The hybrid-way or the highway October 8, 2008: The Oxford English Dictionary says that the word "hybrid" comes from the Latin hibrida - the offspring of a tame sow and wild boar. There are lots of citations of Darwin, but we won't go there; now, I'm not the guy who just finished reading the entire OED, but it looks to me as though the word has fewer citations from poets than almost any other [...] by Don Share

Pompeii and Circumstance September 20, 2008: OK, who saw the letter to the editor in the October issue of Harper's about Charles Bernstein's poem, "Pompeii?" And who gets to put the iron in irony? Harper's reader Richard Schlesinger, seeing the poem - which was first published in Poetry - objects: "How mediocre does the prosaic imitator sound, when set beside his betters [...], how banal [...] by Don Share

What Are Years. September 5, 2008: Marianne Moore once explained that she did not put a question mark after the title of her poem "What Are Years?" - though it kept being printed with one. It's not a question at all, she explained: "It's a meditation: 'What Are Years. What Are Years.' You're not thinking about it, not asking anyone to come and answer you." Really, Miss [...] by Don Share

Meditations in an Emergency August 12, 2008: I know it's been blogged all over the place, but meditate on this, all who debate about expanding the audience for poetry: year-to-date sales of Frank O'Hara's Meditations in an Emergency have increased 218%, mostly due to the book's appearance on the AMC TV show Mad Men, in which (m)ad man Don Draper buys what we now know is one of the last [...] by Don Share

Either/Or(r) July 31, 2008: I'm a little surprised that the exhumation in the New York Times back in May of a pair of poems written by Barack Obama hasn't excited more twittering in the blog-po-sphere. Here they are... POP Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken In, sprinkled with ashes Pop switches channels, takes another Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks What to do [...] by Don Share

It’s scary to think about what your body is going to look like in forty years July 18, 2008: At the swimming pool, I am an honorary old person—I get to swim with the senior citizens, who play volleyball in the shallow end and use the deep end for water exercise. Only a few people do the exercises, and they move over to let me swim, and I also try to do some of the exercises, though when I go underwater to check out what my legs are [...] by Lucia Perillo

The Aspern Papers… Spicer’s, Schwartz’s, Kafka’s – and yours? July 14, 2008: "After Jack Spicer's untimely death at the age of forty in 1965, the contents of his apartment were packed into boxes..." Dunno about you, but I know what would happen to the contents of my place, should it all end up in boxes! Just think how much we owe to the removal and serendipitous rediscovery of what used, not very charmingly, to be [...] by Don Share

The soul grows refined June 30, 2008: "Recently I happened to read the letter in which Montaigne relates the death of his friend de la Boétie: afterwards I couldn't fall asleep for crying, but to my shame this crying returned the following evenings with no apparent cause: you can imagine that I did not give in to it easily, I had books in front of me - but alas, these books: one [...] by Don Share