News Archive

We all knew Les Murray could write poems, but did you hear about his frittatas?

Kerouac and Kumin in the Christian Science Monitor.

Burmese poets take a stand against high fuel prices.

Bob Dylan is not a poet. Or is he?

“There’s no connection between rap and poetry. . . . I can’t listen to it. It’s like being blasted up against a wall.”—Mark Strand.

Re-published Whitman novel "feels like a Horatio Alger novel in reverse."

Just who were all those sonnets written for anyway?

Previously unknown poems by W.H. Auden uncovered.

George Bowering to judge Griffin Prize.

Michael Longley appointed "Professor of Poetry."

"You'll never meet a guy who loves life's rich pageant more than David Kirby."

A single poem, with temporary caesuras: José Kozer.

Sophie Gee's new novel unlocks the story behind Pope poem.

Do they really call him "Famous Seamus"?

Everyone you saw with an iPod this morning was listening to poetry.

Che Guevara, anthologist.

Who is today's Wilfred Owen?

"Go forth and prettily miscalculate": roundup of collections by Stephen Paul Miller, Eileen Tabios, and Turkish poets.

And yet it moves: Angus Fletcher's magical new study of science and language.

Is Scott Cairns like Eliot?

Codrescu: New Orleans is a "poet's paradise."

Psalm at the end of the mind: Translator Alter brings knowledge and passion to Scripture.

Woman on the Edge: Rip Torn's daughter delivers a "mesmerizing" Plath.

Pop quiz: How many cities have a Poetry in Motion program?

"Interested & amazed": Poets from Langston Hughes to John Berryman on our nation's capital.

How different is today's Ashbery from the one of yesteryear? Think Yeats.

Poetry: Outmoded art form, or way to get in touch with lost relatives?

"How do we read a poem whose verses are obscured by images of stars and constellations"?

Should India's most famous poem be regarded as a "national religious doctrine"?

"Be a man": The Kipling-Petraeus connection.

Kevin Young riffs on jazz, blues, and country western: "Johnny Cash is the man."

"The best film about an American poet ever made."

Heather McHugh delivers, literally, on promise to her students: "For once I can show you a mortal moment. This is what human beings are made of."

If only James Frey had called it poetry: BookForum on C.D. Wright's One Big Self.

Tess Gallagher wants the president to read poetry.

From a forest in Maine to Prairie Home Companion: Ron Padgett gets around.

Does memorizing poetry reduce risk of dementia or simply improve ability to memorize poetry? Scientists turn to Britney Spears for answers.

They've published Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, Gloria Naylor, and Tavis Smiley: celebrating 40 years of Chicago's Third World Press.

John Greenleaf Whittier, the "Hermit of Amesbury."

Spiritual en-lite-enment: Sienna Miller accepts poem from blind man, has life changed. Wonder if she'd feel the same way if she knew the poem was actually written in 1927 by a lawyer from Terre Haute.

Criminal investigation of poet and singer sparked by YouTube video of their collaboration.

McSweeney's Down Under.

The transformation of a poet into "America's most important living art critic."

Poet, 91, receives National Heritage Fellowship for haiku written while in internment camps.

What's the Situationist? Hipster revolution in Williamsburg includes "a mumbled stream of concrete poetry."

"Some 'poems' are so atrocious as to be almost comical."—Jacob Laksin on Poems from Guantanamo.

The best American poetry? Heather McHugh makes no apologies.

Paul Muldoon to replace Alice Quinn as New Yorker poetry editor.

Love and Hate tattooed across the knuckles of his hands: Bill Griffiths, RIP.

A "very chic sandwich with soft black bread and veal on the terrasse at Webers": Janet Malcolm and other Gertrude Stein biographers.

From John Lennon to Patti Smith to . . . Dave Navarro: When rockers write.

Comma by comma: the Penguin Dorothy Parker flap.

From "King Death's rainy garden" to old Ireland to Africa: Forward Prize roundup.

Arabian idol: Would Fox go for a poetry competition?

Believe it or not: Hardy's body, Hughes as busboy.

Windy City "genius": Poet-fictioneer Stuart Dybek gets MacArthur nod.

I saw the best minds of my generation . . . bartending: "Howl!" festival pics.

Beantown bards roundup.

"The most dangerous shape": Kay Ryan.

Portrait of the artist as a young model: Flatmate's rendering of Dylan Thomas found.

What rhymes with "PBUH"?: Ayatollah approves of Iran's young poets.

Screen saver: David Trinidad.

Frost prize decision sparks board mutiny at Poetry Society of America.

Robert Alter on translating the flexible Psalms—and James Wood on Alter's radical take.

Who was James Farrar? Andrew Motion thinks you should know.

More on the controversy at the Poetry Society.

Did Paris Hilton plagiarize her prison poem?

Poetry and parachuting at West Point.