This Lower World April 19, 2013: [caption id="attachment_65443" align="alignright" width="500"] Book XII of William Blake’s 1808 Paradise Lost.[/caption] This week I’ve been thinking about the moment in Book XI of Paradise Lost when Milton’s Eve laments to Adam, when the angel Michael has arrived to dispossess them of Paradise: How shall I part and wither wander [...] by Camille Guthrie

Patti Smith Sings William Blake January 24, 2013: We are thrilled about the recently discovered lost etchings of William Blake. Now, Jacket2 has reminded us that Patti Smith performed  "In My Blakean Year" on December 9, 2010, as part of the Blutt Singer-Songwriter Symposium at the Kelly Writer's House. According to their website, the annual symposium brings "eminent and lauded [...] by Harriet Staff

The Lost Etchings of William Blake January 23, 2013: This is great news for all the William Blake fans out there, all the millions of you! Researchers at the University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library have stumbled upon a treasure trove of works by poet and artist William Blake. After two years work the students, overseen by Blake expert and Manchester university art historian [...] by Harriet Staff

Artist Annette Messager and William Blake October 8, 2012: In an excerpt of her book, "In my View," on Huffington Post, French artist Annette Messager reflects on how William Blake influences her work: Blake is, for me, both a child and an old man. "Songs of Innocence and of Experience" — the child who marvels at everything and the man tortured throughout his life by mystical insights, death, [...] by Harriet Staff

Rare Video: Ginsberg on Music, William Blake, and a Harmonium August 3, 2012: The Allen Ginsberg Project dug up another gem today. This 1978 video opens with Ginsberg singing William Blake's "The Tyger," but sadly, there's some trouble with the audio. He uses song to discuss how to read and hear Blake's poetry. Here's an excerpt from the transcript: So it’s only if you get back to the pronunciation of the [...] by Harriet Staff

Color palettes, earthquakes, dentists and Blake April 26, 2011: Color: grass green. San Francisco Chronicle few days ago ran first person excerpted account by Dr. Leonie von Zesch, 23-year-old female dentist (most likely one of the few women dentists in the world at that time) who left behind thousands of onionskin typescript pages (recently discovered in belongings of her niece Jane Troutman, now 85 and [...] by Gillian Conoley

Does poetry need its own Glee? January 13, 2011: On The Moderate Voice, Michael Silverstein proposes an unusual solution to restoring the place of poetry in civic discourse. The problem isn't with poetry itself, rather the medium for delivering it to the masses. Silverstein has had it with the Op Ed pages of newspapers which are now as overrun with "spin doctoring" and "hype" as any other [...] by Harriet Staff

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

Howdy October 3, 2009: Thank you for letting me come over. Having just arrived I’m already baffled but that’s as good a place to begin as any since I’m typically only able to write once I’ve cleared my head of anything resembling thought (or so I tell myself between the cracks). On the other hand this predilection can make writing prose a bit of a tricky [...] by Anselm Berrigan