News Archive

Uproar as students called on to illustrate violent poem.

"Poet of al-Qaida" convicted in Jordan.

"Do you know what it’s like / To be chased by the Ghost of Failure / While staring through Victory’s door? / Of course you do, you’re a Mets fan."

Poetry on demand.

"It's all autobiographical."—Dorianne Laux on her own Facts About the Moon

"A benign teddy-bear of a man."—On the selected writings of John Betjeman.

"Tree at my window, window tree." Not any more.

Widow of Africa's first poet laureate receives death threat.

"Drop / Dead. / Plop, flop. / Plop." William McGonagall challenged as world's worst poet.

50 years after court considered it not obscene, "Howl" still is.

Alice Notley wins $25,000 Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets.

How did Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas survive the Nazi occupation of France?

Sean O'Brien wins Forward poetry prize . . . for the third time.

"It's not that there isn't any orthodoxy—rather that there are too many of them."—John Freeman on poetry in America.

Who's afraid of the FCC? More on the decision not to broadcast “Howl Against Censorship.”

University of South Carolina purchases $35,000 Phillis Wheatley first edition.

Prince Charles marks 14th National Poetry Day.

Virginia Tech professor Bob Hicok publishes poems about shooting.

Fiery Furnaces: Imagine Ashbery lines rattling by "as if on a ticker tape."

Strange power of speech: The phrase "willing suspension of disbelief" has its origins in Coleridge.

Malkovich-narrated Charles Olson doc a "triumph."

In Hass' first post-laureate collection, "The painter gets to behave like time."

Poetry's own Don Share publishes the "playful, self-deprecating" Squandermania.

Diane Ackerman on Whitman: "He really only wrote one poem."

Violet Kazue de Cristoforo, RIP: Poet of the Japanese internment.

Here, Bullet author Brian Turner: poetry in wartime.

"Gunslinger" Edward Dorn targets capitalism and cancer in Way More West.

In New York, poems written to order—in about 10 minutes.

Thinking inside the box, Seattle poet solves the distribution problem.

Big Dig: Who will be Boston's poet laureate?

Gregerson! Hass! Kirby! Plumly! Voigt! These are your National Book Award finalists.

Chicago architect tapped to design Poetry Foundation's new home.

Like a good mix tape: a look at new books by Basil King, Jillian Weise, and Allan Kaplan.

Which poet was "a real rock star" in his time?

"Force of Light": Setting Celan to music, learning him by heart.

Kelly Writers House celebrates poet Bob Cobbing.

Spanish poet Francisco Brines wins 50,000 euro prize.

Old Heart, new nomination: Stanley Plumly, National Book Award finalist and University of Maryland professor.

Tampa poet laureate records local history in verse.

Federal judge releases collection of slain mother's poetry.

“It’s necessary to maintain a state of disobedience against . . . everything.”—Alice Notley

University of Arizona Poetry Center gets new digs.

"I thought I heard on the stone a midnight keel . . ." but it was just a new Christmas carol written for the Queen.

"This is an island of hell."—More on
Poems from Guantanamo.

"Berso sa Metro" in the Philippines.

23 years later, the return of Poez.

"A spiritual memoir of the first order."—Adam Kirsch on Poetry editor Christian Wiman's Ambition and Survival.

David Biespiel on A.R. Ammons.

"The sky moves / from gray to yellow to blue / and I am missing you in the way / that spreads."—Poems from the Gowanus Canal.

Opera based on the death of Lorca makes its Boston debut.

Missouri jumps on the poet laureate bandwagon.

"One of the advantages of being a poet is the opportunity for revenge."—Martin Espada returns to his Lawrence roots.

Drink? Rabies? Poison? Brain Tumor? How did Poe die?

Hotel dispute gets ugly with publication of poem.

Sinan Antoon's Baghdad Blues.

“I don’t have that kind of money or, of course, I would have bought it.”—Patti Smith on the former home of Rimbaud and Verlaine.

Looking back on the formative years of young Ezra.

Reading poetry: a guide for the perplexed.

Live in Boston? Like to put words on paper? The laureate gig is still up for grabs.

In a staggering development, Wendell Berry looks out the window.

Tell it to Paisley Rekdal: At Cambridge, Ted Hughes woke at 6 every day, read a whole Shakespeare play by 9.

. . . but W.S. Merwin snags the Bobbitt.

Brit award: No room for poetry . . .

Ancient Rome at its raunchiest: Latin Love Lessons.

Nikki Giovanni: Abolish journalism as a college major.

The two lives of Coleridge: Great poet, incompetent civil servant.

Poetry for Young People choice Maya Angelou is "laughing at the other sleeve."

Copper Canyon Press survives and thrives.

Octogenarian regains memory after 10 years—thanks to a poem.

An ode to Game 5 of the '93 World Series. (For more baseball and poetry, click here.)

Canadian businessman's financial meltdown forged him into poet.

Remembering Iraqi poet (and Pound translator) Sargon Boulos.

Talking it over: U. Wyoming prof turns Bush and Bin Laden's words into verse.

A moveable East: Gary Snyder lectures at Columbia.

Starting from scratch: Simic speaks.

Twin towers loom in new Laurie Kutchins book.

Richard Hugo's legacy, 25 years after his death.

A pair of Paradisos.

Jayne Cortez and all that jazz.

Whiting Award winners announced.

In trial, "Lyrical Terrorist" is compared with Wilfred Owen.

Walt Whitman's body: an excerpt from Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer.

On listening to the letters of Ted Hughes.

"And the English? The English do poetry."

Poetry and the birth of the Jell-O Jiggler.

Robert Pinsky, live and in person.

French poet Yves Bonnefoy receives Franz Kafka Prize.

"The mystery of intimacy, the elusiveness of time."—on the latest from Robert Hass

"Rather than writing the life of a man into which poetry erupts occasionally, my hope is to reconstruct the world of a poet into which earthly life keeps intruding."