News Archive

Mystery of the fake love letter solved, and not a moment too soon.

György Faludy, Hungarian poet and Nobel prize nominee, dies at 95.

Frieda Hughes, daughter of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, admits she used to avoid poetry like the plague.

Poet of urban black experience becomes laureate of bucolic suburb.

“I hear a lot of my people talking to themselves without cell phones these days.” Andre Codrescu on post-Katrina New Orleans.

Mystery poem appears at crash site, and people want to know who the heck wrote it.

World leader reads books: Chinese premier given to quoting poetry.

Simon Armitage pens 9/11 poem, and a celebrity reads it on TV. Newspaper speculates this makes him a shoe-in for poet laureate.

The Poetry Bus: a manly undertaking, kind of like Ken Kesey without the killer acid.

Lorca as the poet who had to die.

“The blind leading the blind.” Franz Wright dishes about MFA programs and his famous pop.

“I’m suggesting that we celebrate the physical, autonomic whimsy and joy of repetition alone.” David Biespiel on teaching poetry to tots.

Michael Palmer wins Wallace Stevens Award.

Woman writes 1,200 poems to commemorate 9/11 victims.

What poet wouldn't want a hamburger named after them?

The new Best American Poetry is out. Now how about the Worst? or the Most Mediocre?

Poems in honor of Jack Bauer, Kiefer Sutherland's hard-breathing, sweaty character on 24.

Rumor has it writing things down will make you feel better: residents of assisted living center write poetry about the past.

In Madrid, Lorca play cancelled after death threats.

Is Simon Armitage having a crisis? New book is full of “paranoia, fatalism, anger and mid-life anxiety.”

The olden days before caller ID: biography claims Sylvia Plath’s suicide was caused by a phone call.

Man's fiance kicks him out; he takes up residence on the street and decides to write a poem about September 11th.

Walt Whitman: a prolific reviewer of his own work.

Claim: TS Eliot wore green makeup and he was addicted to pain. Sounds like every other punk rocker on the block.

Never fear, the Poetry Bus is coming to town, full of poetry crusaders.

Two young poets win $15,000 Ruth Lilly Fellowships.

Maya Angelou reveals she loves Oprah. Actually, I think we already knew that.

At sickle cell fundraising event, Maya Angelou "celebrates the rainbows that come with stormy weather." Well knock me over with a feather.

Files reveal Macedonian poet tailed by secret police.

Enough already. Everybody knows John Kinsella partied like it was 1999.

Tourists visiting Edna St. Vincent Millay's stomping grounds can learn about her "torrid affair."

"To pick up Bill Morgan's I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg is immediately to feel a few more pounds being added to the poet's hagiography." John Palattella, Bookforum

New York Howl festival collapses and people ask, “who owns the rights to the dream of the East Village.”

Bob Dylan: borrowing lyrics from Civil War poet Henry Timrod?

Memoir by UK poet laureate “is a curiously exasperating experience.”

The National Review sure has a problem with Allen Ginsberg.

Lebanese poet’s words ring true 24 years after the fact: `“I belong to a country that commits suicide every day, while it is being assassinated.”

3,000 year old poem found on a piece of rock. Archeologists go nuts.

In Caracas, Hugo Chavez’s marathon TV show includes poetry readings.

Request for poems to rescue country from an oil spill. “This is the power of poetry,” proponent claims.

All the world’s a search engine: complete and searchable Shakespeare.

“Alas, in this book, we must deal not with mere ‘spots’, but with exhaustive 24/7 coverage. No dog, no pony, no school uniform is left undescribed.”—Rachel Cooke on Andrew Motion's childhood memoir.

A new number one, erasing the classics, a man and his camel, and more in this week’s “Behind the List.”

“Words like democracy and freedom made no sense to me on the street when I had to go from a checkpoint and do a foot march through a city to another point.” Poet Brian Turner on war and poetry.

Joel Brouwer ponders Charles Wright’s keyboard: “I picture his comma key worn down to a nub and the period filmed with dust.”

Poetry Foundation to announce children's poet laureate.

Mazisi Kunene, Zulu poet and teacher, dies.

In Iran, magazine closed because of poem.

Keep ‘em coming: community rallies to collect 10,000 poems and perhaps make it into the Guinness Book of World Records.

Former gangster pens poem to dead homies.

“If Keats can lift from Milton, then Dylan can lift from Timrod, or Humphrey Bogart, or the Bible, for that matter.”

Suzanne Vega on Bob Dylan, the civil war poet, and the folk process.

Poet laureate Donald Hall turns 78 today.

Adrienne Rich wins honorary National Book Award.

Why did John Donne jump the Catholic ship?

Can’t get kids to read poems? Tell them they can play basketball at the same time.

“We felt that we could start a revolution, express our poetic and sexual energy, do something positive.” Patti Smith on the good old days.

Blogger takes mammoth New Yorker articles and reduces them to 17 syllables.

Enormous Milton collection bought by University of South Carolina.

Robert Frost's war thoughts.

Works every time: Ted Turner used his high school poetry to woo Jane Fonda.

Poet dies, takes e-mail password to the grave.

American banker becomes official jester to Tonga's king. In this role he writes poems, plays saxophone, steals money.

In Iran, Hafez is treated like Elvis, but better. There was no fat Hafez period.

New biography tells of Thomas Hardy's poetic “flowering” after wife's death.

Well knock me over with a feather: Newly uncovered documents show police spied on 19th century poets.

Garrison Keillor jams up bestseller list.

T.S. Eliot's wife: Not crazy?

Wordsworth vs. Coleridge. Biographer tries very hard not to take sides, but Coleridge still wins.

“One of the most idiosyncratic intelligences at work in contemporary literature.”—Fiona Sampson on Anne Carson.

Students beware! Billy Collins hates highlighters.

Martha Collins’ Blue Front: poems that fragment around the story of a lynching.

“We’re trying to diminish the stereotype of the poet as some dreamy bozo who wanders around and then all of a sudden gets struck by inspiration.”—Thomas Lux on teaching poetry to engineering students.

Ode written to honor Welsh Chief Constable is printed in newspaper, and some are none too happy about it.

The Believer takes readers on a constrained trip to Oulipo.

“I keep thinking I would like to live in a city.”—Simon Armitage.

Lucille Clifton and Coleman Barks go bananas anticipating the Dodge Poetry Festival.

John Hollander chosen as Connecticut poet laureate. Some of his poems are scarier than a Wes Craven movie.

Even drunk, man that guy could write.

As Dodge Poetry Festival kicks off in New Jersey, citizens ask: After Baraka, will we ever have another state poet laureate?

Unpublished war poem by Robert Frost discovered. Not surprising, it's still rather topical.

Poetry Foundation announces nation's first Children's Poet Laureate.

Poetry Bus still rolling along.

Trying to read Shakespeare's literary fingerprint.

Bush to renominate Gioia as NEA Chair.

Cuban poet quits the biz after wife's death.

Former tax collector audits Dodge Poetry Festival.