Why Write Sestinas? April 16, 2013: Oh yes, why write sestinas? I like the difficulty of the form: six stanzas with six end-words that have to repeat in a particular rotating pattern (twice in the three-line envoi at the end) like playing ping-pong with six balls and six other players. Sestinas are tricky.  The repetition of the end-words gives you a chance to mull over [...] by Camille Guthrie

Deterritorializations: Nominal Problems April 12, 2013: [caption id="attachment_64951" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Ungraffiti in the Los Angeles River channel from the Broadway Street Bridge[/caption] Sometimes I think of everything animate (and, frankly, most things inanimate) as systems of motion. If we are healthy, there are close to a thousand species of bacteria and fungi on our skin, [...] by Jen Hofer

Loose Diary: Cedar Sigo on Collaborative Writing August 23, 2012: Earlier this week City Lights blog published the latest dispatch from Cedar Sigo, this time focusing on his collaborative work with fellow City Lights author Micah Ballard. A taste: Collaboration is also editing. It’s easy to just fire away contributing lines to a poem, but cutting the final shape together requires a more delicate [...] by Harriet Staff

A Brolaski Extravaganza!!! July 24, 2012: The City Lights blog is lighting it up with TONS of great writing and recordings by and about Julian Talamantez Brolaski. The occasion, of course, is the publication of his Advice for Lovers earlier this year. All of this is brought to us by way of Garrett Caples (recently published here, btw, and recorded here). Caples sets the scene [...] by Harriet Staff