In Which We Learn That Some Critics Call Any Literary Artifacts Poems May 20, 2013: Neat-o, huh? According to this recent Inside Higher Ed article by Scott McLemee, in which he reviews Mathew L. Jockers's new book, Macroanalysis: Digital Methods & Literary History (University of Illinois Press), "some critics apply the word 'poem' to any literary artifact." The article begins: “A poem,” wrote William Carlos [...] by Harriet Staff

Useless Wooden Toys April 30, 2013: [caption id="attachment_66233" align="alignright" width="500"] Jeff Grosso, still from Speed Freaks, 1989[/caption] I always dug that title from the New Deal video, aptly taken from Jeff Grosso’s part in Speed Freaks where, laying on a sofa after shaving his eyebrows off says, “…the life of a professional skateboarder, lounge around all [...] by Micah Ballard

Code Unknown: 23 Things About W. H. Auden April 25, 2013: [caption id="attachment_65785" align="alignright" width="500"] W. H. Auden[/caption] One day, while he and Stephen Spender were students at Oxford, Spender told him that he was thinking of stopping writing poetry. Auden stopped in his tracks, took firm hold of Spender’s arm and said, “You must keep writing poetry, Stephen—we need [...] by Bill Berkson

Successful Poets Who Kept Their ‘Other’ Jobs August 14, 2012: While many of us dream of becoming full-time writers, the fact is, several of the most successful poets in recent history have remained at their day jobs. Here are some examples from Publisher's Weekly. Wallace Stevens Day Job: Insurance Executive In perhaps the most direct refusal to trade in a 9-to-5 for a laurel-resting [...] by Harriet Staff

Exciting and Simple: Lew Welch, William Carlos Williams, and Gertrude Stein August 6, 2012: City Lights Books has just reissued Lew Welch's Collected Poems, Ring of Bone, with a cover photo of Lew taken in 1965 by his old friend the photographer "Steamboat" Jim Hatch. City Lights has been distributing Grey Fox Press books, published by Don Allen, since Don Allen's death in 2004 (Grey Fox was the original publisher of Ring of [...] by Joanne Kyger

Can you say “The Red Wheelbarrow” four times fast? May 2, 2012: Al Filreis can and does over at Jacket 2. Check out the good doctor reading "The Red Wheelbarrow" in different ways and at four different readings. by Harriet Staff

A Little Love for WCW March 5, 2012: William Carlos died on March 4, 1963. Here's a few of the many tributes floating around this weekend: A mega-gathering from Roger Ebert. Here's audio of WCW reading at the 92nd Street Y in 1954. Thanks for the tip, Open Culture. by Harriet Staff

William Carlos Williams in The New York Review of Books February 8, 2012: Adam Kirsch has a long piece on William Carlos Williams in The New York Review of Books. He considers a few recent publications dedicated to WCW's work—including a critical biography by Herbert Leibowitz and a collection of essays by Wendell Berry—and asks an intriguing question: why is it that "almost fifty years after his death, the [...] 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