You’ll want to stumble over to the City Lights blog today to read “I’m Not a Man,” by one of those great neglectarinos Harold Norse. As the good editors write: Often categorized as a Beat writer, poet and memoirist Harold Norse created a body of work that used everyday language and images to explore and [...]

And they are (in the International Poetry category): Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, and Other Poems, by Ghassan Zaqtan, and translated by Fady Joudah. Judge Wang Ping writes: What does poetry do? Nothing and everything, like air, water, soil, like birds, fish, trees, like love, spirit, our daily words … It lives with [...]

In this latest installment of SF Weekly’s Read Local column, Alexis Coe reviews The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia, forthcoming from UC Press. Check it out! In the introduction to The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia, Lawrence Ferlinghetti remembers Lamantia’s voice as “the most distinctive poetic sound I had ever heard.” Much of his work [...]

At Vice, Blake Butler has curated an array of summer reading lists from fiction writers and poets called “What Are These Freaks Reading?” Scope it out! It includes a set of summer reads from poets, Claire Donato and Ben Mirov. Read their picks below! Claire Donato (Author of Burial) 1. New Religious Movements: A Documentary [...]

At Big Other, John Madera talks to Joyelle McSweeney about her latest book from Tarpaulin Sky, Salamandrine: 8 Gothics. McSweeney’s hybrid text falls under the wonderful generic cross-roads of Fiction / Parenting / Occult. It’s on the point of parenting and motherhood, and all their toxic implications, that they begin their conversation: Madera: Many of [...]

Line trailer from Non-Inferno Media on Vimeo. Check out this new documentary by Robert McTavish that’s all about the 1963 Vancouver Poetry Conference! From the Simon Fraser University Library: Narrated by poet Phyllis Webb, who chronicled the event at the time, The Line Has Shattered is a sixty-minute documentary film that revisits the ’63 Conference [...]

The Daily Beast reports that the Henry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin, has discovered the origins of a long-standing feud between Allen Ginsberg and Diana Trilling. The source? A letter from Diana Trilling to Peter Orlovsky, Ginsberg’s long-term partner, from the center’s newly acquired Peter Orlovsky Archive. According to The Daily Beast: [...]

Amanda Nadelberg, author of Bright Brave Phenomena (Coffeehouse Press, 2012) is in the spotlight at Coldfront, fielding questions about process, inspiration, and bravery from Coldfront’s-own, Nick Sturm. Be sure to check out Nadelberg’s ethereal, fully-realized poem at the end too, “Symphony of Leaves.” Here’s one of our favorite moments from their conversation: What happens when [...]

Calum Rodger reviews Alec Finlay’s new book, Question your teaspoons: Stonypathian memories (Dunbar: Calder Wood Press, 2012), for Glasgow Review of Books–the book, Rodger notes, borrows its title from [George] Perec. “Finlay’s poetry establishes a dialogue with the past, augmenting old voices with phenomenological reflections from the imagistic (‘Luster fjord is black / lake blue [...]

Marcus Books is the country’s longest-running black-owned bookstore and it is desperately in danger of closing. The San Francisco bookstore has been in its same location on Fillmore Street since 1981. As this change.org petition indicates: Marcus Books is the oldest black-owned bookstore in the county. It has been located on San Francisco’s Fillmore Street [...]

Lucky for us, there’s much footage of the recent East Bay Poetry Summit, including this must-watch of Jen Hofer with Dolores Dorantes at Woolsey Heights. Recording of the reading took place on Saturday, May 25, 2013, and has been posted by Evan Karp. Watch!

Over at the Paris Review Daily, Rowena Kennedy-Epstein, editor of Muriel Rukeyser’s only novel Savage Coast, talks about her recovering of the book, which has just been published by the Feminist Press but for many years was buried in draft form in Rukeyser’s Library of Congress archives. After a solid biographical turn, Kennedy-Epstein writes of [...]

We got a reminder in our inbox today to get prepared to enroll in summer sessions at the Chicago School of Poetics, which start on July 19th. They offer a melange of online courses from Remix the Poem to Strategizing Poetics to Dream Journaling and Poetry. But they’re also getting militant with their poetics. Check [...]

Yes, it’s part #deux of the Harriet summer reading series, brought to you by… us… Harriet! And this time we’re thrilled to host Corina Copp, who’s coming in from Brooklyn, and one of our favorite Chicago poets Joel Craig. Stop by the Foundation starting at 6:30. The show’s popping off right on the seven o’clock [...]

The Les Figues TrenchArt Series has always been one to watch, and the eighth-annual edition is out, featuring new books and essays from Dodie Bellamy, Divya Victor, Redell Olsen, Chris Tysh, an introduction to the series by Vanessa Place (co-editor, with Teresa Carmody), and art by Alice Könitz. More on TrenchArt: Logistics: This year’s 2013 [...]

Escuchen New Yorkers! SOUTHFIRST Gallery (founded in 2000) presents this retrospective of the work of Robert Grenier: for your viewing pleasure. Check it out! The gallery is located at 60 North 6th Street, in Williamsburg. They write: SOUTHFIRST is proud to present “Language Objects: Letters in Space, 1970 – 2013,” a retrospective exhibition tracking (via [...]

This just in from Jacket Copy: Natasha Trethewey has been appointed to a second one-year term as U.S. Poet Laureate. The Pulitzer Prize winner is also currently serving a four-year term as poet laureate of Mississippi, making her the first person to serve as poet laureate of country and state. She also teaches English and [...]

At the Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival a few weeks back, I picked up a copy of Simone White’s chapbook, Unrest, which was published this year by Ugly Duckling Presse. In it she writes, “My brother called on the phone. I could hear the music again. I needed to talk, but not now and not about [...]

Here’s an enchanting article to read while sipping that Tuesday a.m. brew: Toronto’s Globe and Mail brings us this inside scoop on Toronto’s-own small-press publisher, Coach House Press. I’d first wanted to photograph Coach House Press back in 2004, when word was out that the building they occupied on bpNichol Lane might soon be torn [...]

If you’re interested in poetics and sound recordings, there are so many good things about the arc and the hive in this post by new poet-in-residence at Archive of the Now, Sophie Mayer–from pointing out that Charles Bernstein’s “Making Audio Visible” “. . . in Textual Practice 23.6 (2009) . . . remains a key [...]