The Poetry of Our Youth April 25, 2013: Why can’t I hear the music of my youth with objectivity? I really don’t know if The Unforgettable Fire is a great album or not because I loved U2 so ardently in high school that the profound and sticky wistfulness of unfulfilled teenage desire roars back to life at each listening. Of course, many songs I still like from that time I know [...] by Camille Guthrie

Introducing the Reincarnated Poetry Pamphlet Series from New Directions March 21, 2013: We're happily stunned by New Directions's first series of Poetry Pamphlets--Bernadette Mayer mentioned The Helens of Troy, New York (for which she won a Creative Capital grant), in a recent interview; and we wrote about the Susan Howe pamphlet reprint of her Chris Marker piece, Sorting Facts, or Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker, upon [...] by Harriet Staff

The Scholarship of Poetry & Performance February 20, 2013: [caption id="attachment_61651" align="alignright" width="500"] Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz and Stan Mir at Kelly Writers House in 2011.[/caption] The idea that art—especially in performance—might question or break down the boundary between artist and reader/viewer or creator and consumer isn’t new. In Towards a Situationist [...] by Harriet Staff

A Call to Help Bernadette Mayer Stay Warm This Winter January 8, 2013: Many of you seriously read, listen to, and teach the poetry of the amazing Bernadette Mayer. Now we can send her a little payback (the good kind!). Brenda Coultas, Andrei Codrescu, Dave Brinks, Alan Casline, and Edie Abrams, acting with the Committee on Poetry (founded by Allen Ginsberg), have developed "The Friends of Bernadette Mayer Fund," [...] by Harriet Staff

New Year, Old Resolutions January 3, 2013: Every year I make the same resolutions: read all of Finnegans Wake, and read all of Shakespeare. Sometimes I get through the first hundred pages of Finnegan. With Shakespeare I’m lucky if I have time to watch some movie adaptation. I reason that if I wasn’t a mom to a three-year-old I’d get more done, but I really can’t blame the [...] by Lisa Jarnot

Bernadette Mayer Will Read Her ‘Midwinter Day’ with Peter Gizzi at The Bookstore in Lenox December 20, 2012: All you lucky ducks in Lenox, MA are (well) lucky! Don't miss Bernadette Mayer reading from her beloved Midwinter Day with Peter Gizzi tonight at The Bookstore. Mayer's book "chronicles her experiences on Dec. 22, 1978, moves through the day in details of what happened near 100 Main St., just down the street from [The Bookstore]." As the [...] by Harriet Staff

Sandra Simonds on the Sonnet as Fascist Form? December 7, 2012: Sandra Simonds looks at the sonnet as a potentially fascist form for Best American Poetry. "Somewhere, supposedly, William Carlos Williams calls the sonnet 'a Fascist form.' Can someone tell me if this is true?" Just in time for the new Telephone Books English-to-English Shakespeare sonnet translations! (Though excited about Kasey Mohammad's [...] by Harriet Staff

This and That March 6, 2012: Why are we looking at this—what does this have to do with poetry (writing poetry) now? Said in class with some exasperation by a student. The this doesn’t matter. Its matter could be anything. It’s the exasperation that makes it/this crucial. The exasperation inspires this writing. Feeling it, taking it in, from her into me, mine own [...] by Norma Cole

Constrain yourself: 50 years of Oulipo November 18, 2010: The 2010 Conference on Constrained Poetry promises lectures and workshops on the language of numerology, "poetical mathematics," and other startling discoveries in the in field of limitation. Conceived as a celebration of 50 years of Oulipo by UNCA Associate Professor of Math Patrick Bahls with Literature Professor Richard Chess, the conference [...] by Harriet Staff