News Archive

“Poetry has showed me the way to feel again and again.” Donald Hall on ABC News.

James Whitcomb Riley fans have hit the Internet jackpot.

Robert Hass shocker: Loves nature, teaching, hates war.

Hart Crane once considered a “great American failure.”

Bestsellers: People in Idaho are buying poetry books like they’re going out of style.

Hopefully she'll put some meat on her bones for this role: Keira Knightley to star in Dylan Thomas bio-pic.

“The difficulty of teaching poetry to a lay audience can be summarized by a single, diabolical name: Robin Williams.”—David Orr in the New York Times.

Lisa Robertson’s The Men: guaranteed to make men-lovers everywhere swoon.

“What’s the obstacle? Is the dead hand of the past, or the avaricious hand of the present, too strong?” John Palatella on Joshua Clover.

The Bloodaxe Book of Poetry Quotations is “all about poetry, but contains hardly any of the stuff at all.”

UC Berkeley posts video of its Lunch Poems reading series online.

“Then South Africans joined hands and set the country ablaze through poetry.”

Colum McCann’s top 10 novels about poets.

Everything you always wanted to know about the Romantics but were afraid to ask.

This is the 21st century: time to listen to poems on your iPod.

Poet laureate of hangovers and the shakes: as part of his job, Andrew Motion will be sent 630 bottles of sherry a year.

Admit it, even though he’s a crackhead he’s got charm to burn: Pete Doherty on war poetry and his hardcore love for Emily Dickinson.

Patti Smith reads poetry at a fashion show, and consequently a fashion writer forgets about her aching feet.

University of Washington creative writing department hits the jackpot.

Teenager writes poems of death and destruction, wins award.

New poetry books reveal there is nothing new under the sun.

Hart Crane and the bridge he couldn’t get out of his mind.

Well knock me over with a feather: guy with enormous, scary beard also writes poetry.

At University of Buffalo, a jam-packed Creeley conference.

Poet locks himself in a cage, only eats raw meat.

Forward Prize judges: Poetry is part of our lives, even if we tend to forget about it.

Reissued Lisa Robertson: “Robertson’s sentences break every rule of the writing workshop.”

In Iran, the Supreme Leader recommends that poets revive the spirit of revolution.

More Pete Doherty: It’s hard to read in jail when your cellmate keeps flashing you.

U.K. poet laureate praises Pete Doherty’s love of poetry. Now if only he could stay away from that pesky Columbian marching powder.

“Once you have refused to throw away your first copy of Mrs. Dalloway, it is a life of pain, sacrifice and storage issues.”

In Pakistan: Commercially produced, anti-capitalist poems ruining the market for traditional and romantic poetry.

The Language Meter Maid “prowls the prosaic world looking for inadvertent poems.”

Bob Dylan samples passages from Ovid and fan predicts rise in Ovid’s popularity. Maybe someday, a Bob Dylan sample will be the equivalent of an Oprah book pick.

What does it mean to be a “social” poet? Hell if I know.

Poet Taha Muhammad Ali runs a souvenir shop in Nazareth. He writes of wishing to be “a rock on a hill / which the young men / from Hebron explode.”

Philip Larkin: “In our family / Love was as disgusting as lavatory / And not as necessary.”

“When Lorca arrived in Buenos Aires, poor Neruda clung to him like a limpet.”—Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro.

California pre-teen reads poetry to 1,191 pound gourd, wins second place in pumpkin growing contest.

“I am someone between insane and black”—Amir Sulaiman.

“All talk of political motives in our rewards is nonsense.”—Secretary of the Nobel Academy.

Kenneth Koch as the “King Kong of American poetry.”

National Book Award finalists announced.

“I was one of these sappy teenagers, who thought the world was a cheat, that adults were liars and that there must be purity somewhere.”—Mark Strand on Mark Strand.

“Creeley’s work provides a crucial poetic experience that often eludes even the best critical assessments.”

Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk wins Nobel. Critics claim award to be politically motivated.

Prose poetry, flash fiction, and using a guitar to break eggs.

Nikki Giovanni calls Ohio gubernatorial candidate an “SOB.”

In Turkmenistan, eccentric autocratic leader pens book of poems, outlaws lip-synching and gold tooth caps.

“My generation is beginning to realize the fact that there is a Sudanese culture, and this culture is quite rich.”—Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi

“It is as powerful and knowing an account of the literary muse and its effects as one could hope to read, and the neglect into which it seems to be sliding is a genuine injustice.” Jonathan Yardley on Eileen Simpson’s Poets in Their Youth.

Patti Smith at CBGB closing: Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not CBGB’s.

Poet asked to be “uplifting” calls candidate for governor a “political whore.”

Donald Hall interviewed on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer.

Mazisi Kunene, African poet, dies at 76.

Hugo Chávez’s campaign strategy: talk like a poet.

Eleanor Lerman wins Lenore Marshall prize. She stopped writing for 25 years after people flipped out about all the sex in her first book.

Starlets are coming out of the woodwork for Dylan Thomas biopic.

Composer reads all of Emily Dickinson in one week, then watches Curb Your Enthusiasm to unwind.

Assia Wevill was Ted Hughes’s mistress when Sylvia Plath killed herself. Four years later, Wevill also killed herself, along with their young daughter. Why does it seem she was written out of history?

Maya Angelou is going to find a boyfriend for Tyra Banks. No kidding.

Former poet laureate Robert Pinsky turns 66 today.

Nikki Giovanni defends her profanity-laced speech at community event that was supposed to be “uplifting.”

Football player turned slam poet says: “Poetry is really sharing your soul with people.”

Chinese man arrested for satirical poem about officials.

A refuge for writers is erected in Baghdad.

Alice Quinn interviews Galway Kinnell and Philip Levine.

Paul Muldoon tackles Baghdad, Bush, dead relatives, and Charlton Heston.

80,000 pages from a man’s man: University of Minnesota buys Robert Bly archive.

Harold Bloom is always having epiphanies. Who better to edit an anthology of religious poems?

James Fenton doesn’t want to see you suffer. He especially doesn’t want to see you hit by a train.

Burnt to a crisp: In 1936, Edna St.Vincent Millay lost only copy of verse drama in a hotel blaze.

“Poetry is both flourishing and floundering in Britain because it has a split identity.”

Citzens weigh in on the brouhaha over Nikki Giovanni’s incendiary comments.

Coleridge’s descendants are in the red, so they’re selling family heirlooms.

Handel set to poetry, as flowery as a Glade plug-in air freshener.

Emma Lazarus, author of that American credo: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. . . .” (These days, just make sure they aren't too poor or too huddled.)

In the tradition of Casey at the Bat: A long poem about the Mets and how they lost.

Group appeals to territorial government to take action over distortion of poem.

Well knock me over with a feather: New Statesman publishes poetry special.

Forbes.com blogger experiments with found poetry. Does this mean Forbes is planning an all poetry issue?

Via YouTube: Marilyn Nelson reads sonnets for lynched African-American teenager Emmett Till.

Reviewer goes after Mark Strand like he wishes he could pop him in the can.

Can spoken word translate on record? This critic says no.

Hey warmongers, check it out: Young Jews and Arabs come together to publish literary journal.

Writer nostalgic for days when poets really knew how to get loaded.

Whiting Award winners announced.

Poetry Bus comes home. Dear God, that was a long ride.

What’s flying off the poetry shelves? Charles Bernstein’s Girly Man, for one. Check out our poetry bestsellers.

“Referring to Strand's book as ‘another nail in the coffin of contemporary poetry’ is about as cliched a thing as one can write, and far less interesting than the idea of being drunk at sunset.”

OK, now you can stop talking about it. Controversy over interpretation of Tagore settled.

From Seamus Heany to a security guard: Queens University celebrates its huge litter of poets.

Jack Prelutsky poet laureates all over public radio.

Zia-ul Haq Qasimi, prominent Pakistani poet, dies.

From the “Enjoyment” section of the Independent: “When Sharon Olds was a child, she was told she was going to hell.”

High school student suspended after writing violent poem about stabbing people. His defense: Edgar Allan Poe was an angry guy, too.

More about Assia Wevill. According to this writer she was very pretty and also doomed.

At Yeats exhibit, letters, old school report cards, and evidence that he was a bit cuckoo about the ladies.

In this phony news article, rappers protest Donald Hall appointment, and he tells them to get out his face.

Ten years later, this version of the Aeneid was done. Now the translator doesn’t know what to do with himself.

A new translation of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus takes away any traces of preciousness.

Our bestsellers columnist asks: “Are you wearing pants right now?”

Reciting nursery rhymes helps man with rare disorder get his voice back.

Is the New York Times sampling itself?

Unpublished early Plath poem discovered. It’s about the possibility of a future “where nothing will occur.”