Just Saying: On Rae Armantrout’s Latest Book April 18, 2013: 1. I opened Just Saying for the first time to the second poem, “Instead.” I was immediately struck by the first section, which reads: To each his own severance package. The Inca hacked large stones into the shapes of nearby peaks. After this it jumps to a new section about the non-existence of ghosts; the third [...] by Laura Sims

Ange Mlinko Reviews Leonard Barkan’s New Book on Poetry & Painting March 18, 2013: Ange Mlinko, perhaps non-ruffled after Carol Muske-Dukes's critique of her "re-track" of Adrienne Rich, has published a piece at LARB on Leonard Barkan’s Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures, which asks the question, "Why do painters sometimes wish they were poets--and why do poets sometimes wish they were painters?" Mlinko writes: [...] by Harriet Staff

Lynette Roberts: ‘Pastoral ding-dong is out’ February 15, 2013: If you’ve been keeping up with Poetry over the past two years, you perhaps weren’t surprised to see Ange Mlinko write about Lynette Roberts for our “Enthusiasms” section in this month’s issue. Back in October 2011, Poetry published Mlinko’s “Cantata for Lynette Roberts”: Want to read some Lynette Roberts for yourself? [...] by Lindsay Garbutt

Ange Mlinko Looks at Adrienne Rich’s Later Poems: Selected and New February 4, 2013: Last week the Nation posted Ange Mlinko's review and assessment of Adrienne Rich's Later Poems: Selected and New and Rich's impact on the latest generation of feminists poets. But when it comes to compositional influence, "Impact" might be too strong a word. "Meh" might be better. Mlinko survey's Rich's career, beginning with her winning the [...] by Harriet Staff

Reading List, January 2013 January 30, 2013: [caption id="attachment_60198" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Paul Blackburn, from the POETRY magazine archive[/caption] We're pleased to welcome a new series to the Editors' Blog this year. Each month we will ask Poetry's recent contributors to share a book—or several—that they've been poring over. A big thanks to our January [...] by Lindsay Garbutt

Ange Mlinko Discusses Robert Duncan at The Nation September 25, 2012: Keeping up with all things Duncan, we take a look at Ange Mlinko's article on Robert Duncan at The Nation. Mlinko begins by describing the peculiar gaze Duncan developed after an accident at the age of 3 when he "slipped in the snow in Yosemite while wearing sunglasses against the glare; they shattered, and the injury resulted in [...] by Harriet Staff

Code Coda April 25, 2011: The letter to the New York Times Book Review that Ange Mlinko mentions in her post caught my eye too, but for different reasons. “Give me code cracking any day” wrote the letter writer, Allen Benn, in response to David Kirby's review of David Orr's new book of criticism, Beautiful and Pointless. Benn then went on to say that, for example, [...] by Daisy Fried

Questions for Poetry I April 2, 2011: In the 22nd century, what will the line look like and do?  Will the line continue to have its traditional roots ("traditional" not meaning middle road but rather a haunting presence of what the line has been in the past centuries however shaky and nonsequential)?  Will the line of Williams (short, aware of its breath both at beginning and end) [...] by Gillian Conoley

Don’t Wax the Poem April 1, 2010: Maybe all poets are nerds or they wouldn’t be poets. But not all poets write nerdy. Some are suave, which can be a good thing. Some are elegant in an elegant way. Nerds can be elegant in a backwards way, by retaining their bumps and inelegances, bumptious idiosyncrasies, a being-in-life at least as much as in-literature. There’s plenty to [...] by Daisy Fried

Trigger Cuts January 5, 2010: The on-going review-interviews taking place over at Lemon Hound have my attention at the moment (I’m one of the interviewees, an admission that I suppose qualifies as full disclosure here if you believe such a thing exists in the demi-world of warm soft fact), and I’m particularly interested in the question of what one might be looking for in [...] by Anselm Berrigan