News Archive

When a poet reads at Borders.

Not dead yet: Ladino-writing poet searches for a waning tongue's past.

Turning and turning in the widening Ba-Da-Bing. . .

The human condition: William Meredith, RIP.

Remembering Sarah Hannah.

Rating the lit-mags Down Under.

Finding poetic voices online.

Selling poetry: "flogging the unfloggable."

Griffin nominee says the prize money isn't the important part. What kind of poet is he?

Getting the facts straight on Eliot, at least for now.

Les Murray: not a pastoral childhood, just a poor one.

Brazilian poet Marly de Oliveira dies at age 69.

Poet Leonard E. Nathan, who inspired Ted Kooser, dies.

Digging up the dirt on Derek Walcott.

Making sense of Auden, then and now.

"Haven't you noticed your chin and neck are the most beautiful thing in the world?"—the love letters of Rupert Brooke.

In New York's East Village, among eye-patches and squatters: poetry.

Poet nominated and rejected, nominated again, and still, the fur continues to fly.

Griffin Prizes announced. One winner calls it a "deeply moving experience."

Poet Brian Turner blogs with other Iraq veterans over at the New York Times (TimesSelect required).

Griffin Prize: The party photos.

Time magazine to poetry: “Make it sexy and cool and accessible without making it stupid or patronizing.”

The haunting of Catherine Wagner.

Poetry Out Loud champ Fernandez: How "Ma Rainey" conjured her grandmother.

Looking for a there there: Poet/urban planner Jennifer Rose.

We bet Prelutsky could take him on: Michael Rosen is U.K.'s new children's laureate.

Their names sound very pastoral: reviews of Hollo, Knott, Ashbery.

"A loss of something ever felt I": Christian Wiman on religion and poetry.

Dana Gioia: "I'm the only person, in history, who went to business school to be a poet."

Harold Bloom on Peter Cole's book about the great Jewish poets of Spain.

Fine day for a beret: Kids open-mike it at Brooklyn B&N.

The twenty-minute workout: A visit to the Robert Penn Warren Birthplace.

Scenes from the Poetry Conference: Your book will not change the world—and that's fine.

"Though their faces are hid we shall never forget them": Deciding fate of Civil War poem written on back of grocery store stationery.

Pinsky: What rhymes with "Gitmo"?

Dwelling with difficulty: a double shot of Dan Featherston.

Poetry tip: Use water as metaphor.

Hurt by distributor collapse, McSweeney's holds a sale and also auctions off cool rarities.

We've had baseball haiku, salaryman haiku . . . now it's time for road-rage honku.

Chinese whispers: Head of an economic planning agency is a poet who has the premier's ear.

In labor camp, Nguyen Chi Thien engraved poems in his mind.

RIP Michael Hamburger—poet, translator, friend of Sebald.

Axiomatic: Chopping down a tree that inspired Frost.

Attention Bukowski disciples: send your work to Joaquin Phoenix.

Gloomy world, gloomy words: In China, migrant workers have a bard.

Armenian pastoral: new Gregory Djanikian collection.

William Meredith remembered as "the Stonehenge of living poets."

More haiku—this time in Inuit.

Bill Murray—poetry lover!

Going once, going twice—or not going gently into that good night?

Two literary journals compete in Greensboro. Both "lean toward the mainstream."

Editor's beware! Byron could be a little tough to work with: “I will have none of your damned cutting & slashing.”

"But however I don't like it / When she makes faces."—Love poem by Syd Barrett to be auctioned.

When Gertrude met Alice.

A haunting new collection: Dear Ghosts, Tess Gallagher's first book in 14 years.

Harlem Renaissance: Langston Hughes home to become performance space and gallery.

NEA head decries passive consumerism at Stanford commencement; grads respond, "Whatever."

Come for the gore. Stay for the poetry. Three new Beowulf adaptations for kids.

Sister act: Nuns oppose publication of erotic poems set in convent.

Rhyme of the Century: Bankrobber Bonnie Parker's verse goes on the auction block.

Total Psychic Reconstruction: Michael Collier on Louise Bogan's depression diaries.

What poetry could learn from opera—over lunch.

Prison poets of Guantanamo: Army okays anthology; DOD fears coded messages in verse.

Pete Doherty's Diaries released; poet/rocker still high on Kate Moss.

Rhymebusters: Two named in anonymous poem charged with murder.

Two kinds of divine: A pair of poets praised.

Nazek al Malaika, pioneering Iraqui poet, dead at 85.

Physicists get big bang out of poetry.

Christine Montross: the melancholy of anatomy.

"There's a rather old couple in Herts/Who are cousins (or so each asserts)": Mordant light-versifier and dance fan Edward Gorey gets his own ballet.

How many poems do you know by heart? Tom Sleigh on the uses of poetry.

Harold Bloom on Dem candidate's verse: At 18, Obama "was already a much better poet than our former Secretary of Defense William Cohen."

He's not just a blogger: Silliman's latest is "a complex component of a massive poetic machine."

Glück fans will cluck over Jessica Fisher's Frail-Craft.

Ted and Sylvia's digs up for sale.

Chain chain chain: McSweeney's book picks ten poets, who each pick a poet, who each pick a poet . . . Joseph Millar might descend from Bruce Smith and Nick Flynn.

Meet Maxwell Corydon Wheat Jr., the boater-wearing octogenarian anti-war ex-marine who was picked then dropped for Nassau County laureate.

"I am the sluice of dead scrolls and songs, / I am the tongue of what exists": Charles Wright's "Littlefoot" is more than a meditation on death.

Know how to repair a Zon-o-phone? The James Whitcomb Riley Museum Home needs you.

"I nodded: Yes, it took time, / Till I found words / For the over-used word 'shame': Günter Grass uses verse to address controversy.

Remembering Will Carleton, the poor-house poet.

New Galway Kinnell collection has intensity, and also long poem about pulling a nail.

Brontë birthplace (4BR, split-level DR) fails to meet auction reserve.

David Berman vs. Crash Test Dummies guy—who will win???

"If you do not love Iraq/Then do not pray with me": Rahim al-Maliki, Iraqi poet and TV host, killed by blast at Baghdad Hotel.

Mersey Poets deployed "humorous references to everyday objects, like pint bottles of milk or bus conductors": Maybe they would like Wilkes-Barre?

Poetry in perpetual motion: Wilkes-Barre metro riders get a dose of verse.

Dragutin Tadijanovic, Bard of Croatia, dies.

L.A. Times book prize finalist Tom Satterlee, photographed in action.

Food poetry contest: What rhymes with "chicken cacciatore"?

When Tony Hoagland talks about himself.

"When I grow 3 feet taller/I will dunk this basketball": Our children's poet laureate hurls some sports poems your way.

Poet at the gates of dawn: Syd Barrett verselet auctioned.

Elizabeth Bishop's cousin remembers her doing cartwheels.

Summer's hear: Time to bust out the Akhmatova!

From TV on the Radio to Sonic Youth to Otis Redding: Kevin Young's playlist.

This headline should be in the shape of a tombstone: Mary Ellen Solt, RIP.