News Archive

Yvonne Zipp writes about Margaret Atwood for the Christian Science Monitor.

"All I got is time": Avi Steinberg writes about teaching poetry in prisons in the Boston Globe.

Objectively speaking: The New York Times weighs in on the collected poems of Charles Reznikoff.

"Patti Smith, meet Sylvia Plath." Slate takes on the poetry of Patti Smith on the 30th anniversary of her debut album.

New York Public Library launched its digital library with 275,000 images in March 2005. Today, there are 415,000 images. Search poetry and 112 items come up: dust jackets from poetry books, landscape prints with poems, Lyric Poetry murals, and photographs of Langston Hughes and Robert Burns.

Cabaret singer Sophie Auster is a hit in Europe. One reason is that her lyrics, translated by her father Paul Auster, include poems by Guillaume Apollinaire, Robert Desnos, Paul Eluard, Philippe Soupault, and Tristan Tzara. Listen to her on NPR here and here.

Terrorist poetics: After the CIA's attempted assassination of Ayman al-Zawahiri last week, Osama bin Laden's supposed right-hand man released a tape of himself reading poetry to jihadists.

Nebraska state senator Chris Beutler proposes a bill to fund the construction of a sculpture garden to honor U.S. poet laureate Ted Kooser, as well as other Nebraska poets and writers.

Poetry in Motion goes international: United Kingdom and China exchange poems in their transit systems.

The Guardian names the 100 most valuable first edition books of the 20th century. Only five poets make the list: Auden, Brooke, Eliot, Pound, and Spender.

The Newberry and Caldecott Books Awards were announced yesterday, and one book of children's poetry made the list: Song of the Water Boatman & Other Pond Poems by Joyce Sidman.

Now available online from the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences: a report on "a unique patient who developed an irrepressible urge to write in rhyme concomitant with the onset of a seizure disorder."

In this month's Atlantic, Alice Quinn writes about the complicated process of assembling Elizabeth Bishop's notebooks for a forthcoming collection. Bishop was so meticulous, her editors begged her for finished poems they knew were sitting on her desk. (reg. req'd)

Three Monkeys interviews Camille Paglia.

Burns manuscript restored.

Entertainment Weekly reviews the dueling sestinas of David Lehman and James Cummins in their new book Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man.

Gilbert Sorrentino, from his 1968 long poem “The Perfect Fiction," quoted in Bookforum: "These people are real, are real, are real, they are / absolutely rotten, and are real.”

“Vital force.”

Another blond actress decides it’s time to tackle Plath.

The National Portrait Gallery (UK) bids to buy portrait of 16th-century romantic poet John Donne.

Poet Lisa Jarnot polls higher than Nicolas Cage, Cameron Diaz, and Gwyneth Paltrow in the Village Voice's 7th Annual Film Critics' Poll for her perfomance in The Time We Killed.

British Poet Laureate, Andew Motion, along with Sir Maxwell Davies, is composing a piece to mark the Queen's 80th birthday.

890,220 books of poems sold.

The New York Times reviews Christopher Marlowe: Poet and Spy by Park Honan.

Online poetry is all the rage in China.

Selecting 85 poets to represent the new century is a “Noah like job.”

Has poetry “decomposed into an isolated and insulated subculture”?

A Great Moment in Poetry.

The house where Verlaine and Rimbaud wrote goes up for sale.

Can poetry make you as happy as Prozac?

Dominican poet Osiris Vallejo winner of ‘Lyrics from Ayonder’ literature contest.

The Poetry Daily Show: Greg Perry’s been micro-reviewing three daily poetry Web sites.

The Poetry Drinking game.

Latest issues of: Big Bridge, The Constant Critic, and Octopus Magazine.

The University of Cambridge opens first British exhibition centering on Black Mountain College.

Billy Collins seen as people's poet.

from the JOURNALS: "did you hear
she wouldn’t have a baby with her lover
even if he promised to keep it in a tent out back?"