News Archive

Ruminations in Konya.

Chronicling Northrop, Trinidad, Sebald, Song, and Guest.

"We have seen the best minds of our generation / destroyed by boredom at poetry readings."

Robert Frost home damaged by underage revelers.

Sardinian poet Peppino Marotto killed in retaliatory killing . . . 50 years after the fact.

"The most important American love poet in living memory . . ."

Gloucester poet Vincent Ferrini dies at age 94.

Copyrighting tradition: Trying to remember the New Critics.

"[H]e felt he had come to his end, and he did what he did.”

John Freeman finally answers the telephone.

"The rivers of Babylon" or "Babylon's streams?"

Jean Sprackland wins Costa Book Award for poetry.

Not reading Paradiso.

Who is the number three best-selling poet of all time?

Name the poet who wore "trousers made of green billiard cloth, a pink coat, a blue shirt, a tie hand-painted by a Japanese friend, an immense sombrero, a flaming beard cut to a point, and a single, large blue earring"

What's that? You want more Bukowski news bits? Here you go.

The ballad of FrancEyE and Bukowski.

Shel Silverstein: From "A Boy Named Sue" to "Where the Sidewalk Ends."

Which one is "M."?: Mary Oliver on photos by her partner, Molly Cook.

RIP Henri Chopin, poet and publisher of Burroughs.

Ain't it funny how the night plays tricks when you're trying to be a trapeze artist?

The startling judgments of Charles Simic.

Road less traveled leads vandals to Frost's house.

Signal to noise: Oxford Poets anthology.

"Then you discovered their peculiar passions": Mark Jarman imagines eternity.

"Remembering Linnaeus / And the binomial nomenclature / He established": Emperor Akihito and the art of the waka.

Stolen verses: Septuagenarian robbing target pens lines to thief.

Show me, don't tell me: Missouri's first poet laureate.

Vandalizing of Frost house: Career rejuvenator?

Best Goethe collection ever?

Christopher Hitchens on the Dems—and Cuomo's cementing catch-phrase.

Tryst makes it sound so . . . steamy: Poetry and India.

Harlem stakes: James Baldwin.

Reconciling a nation to death: rereading Whitman's "Lilacs."

The tragic story of Kim Sowol—Korea's first modern poet.

A.M. Klein: Not just about his circumcision.

Letters of Ted Hughes tops editors' end-of-'07 lists.

Simic and Pinsky get their jazz on.

Susan Briante enters the field of action.

Patricia Hampl: You can go home again—sort of.

Richmond's Purgatory: It's not what you think.

Q: "What is between Benjamin's notations?" A: Brian Mornar's!

DieSpace? Teen's violent poem gets him arrested.

Byron's marriage inspires new Benjamin Markovits novel.

Fox hunting and Andrew Motion.

Hey poets, your "fuzzy thinking" might be of benefit to science.

"Paternity: 2 men say/They want boy": Reading Louis Zukofsky.

"Assassin are you still free?": Poems of the Disappeared.

Hass in Tel Aviv: How is Israel like California?

Denis Lemon poem still illegal in UK.

Back to "the holy ordinary" for ex-laureate Kooser.

Edward Field: "Poetry is no different than newspapers."

Frost: house trashed, but his prose is here to stay.

Middlesex author Eugenides on how Catullus built his nugae.

Accidents will happen—if you plan them: Melville's poetry.

RIP: Franco foe Angel Gonzales.

Denis Donoghue on eloquence as the dancing of speech. Is this like music criticism being dancing about architecture?

Hey, where are the poetry nominees?

It's apparently Milton day: rare J.M. documents include makings of a play.

Milton spawned Pullman, sure . . . but The Matrix, too?

Whew! Now we can admire Angelina without guilt: Sophie Gee thinks popular adaptations are good for classics. (See our interview with Gee.)

Mary Jo Bang, Matthea Harvey among National Book Critics Circle Award finalists.

E-mail, shme-mail: Remember when poets used to write letters to each other?

RIP Vincent Ferrini, "the poet laureate of Gloucester."

A review of the collected Philip Whalen gives us another chance to put the capital letter in brackets: "[C]onked out among the busted spring rain cherryblossom winejars."

"I would take all the papers out of my pocket and I would have poems": Servicewoman writes, with props to God.

"[L]ike survivors of a shipwreck of blood: A translation of García Lorca's A Poet in New York for our times.

Will learning about Frost stop kids from vandalizing his house?

The Sun on The Sun's Adam Kirsch.

Sardinia shootout: After slaying of octogenarian poet Peppino Marotto, more death.

Sean O'Brien's double play.

Baseball players on 'roids? So what. Poets use all the time.

"You can feel the reawakening of individuality even in the language writers are using": Chinese poetry flourishes on the web.

Standardizing Dunbar: "We is gathahed hyeah" or "We are gathered here"—who will win???

What are you talking about? This has been a great decade for poetry!

Head games: Canadian Islamic scholar slams decap poem.

Who can resist the charms of Ted Kooser?

Slow Burns: Library of Congress makes all things Scottish . . . English.

RIP: New Zealand's Hone Tuwhare.

All hail the Buffalo diaspora.

The Yah Yah Yahs: Eliot Weinberger on Robert Alter's Psalms.

Burns Day is coming up—where can you find a trove of his work? (Hint: It's in Utah.)

Rob for the Communists, write some poems: Another day in the life for the young Stalin.

Frost house vandals update.

All-boys poetry class: Let's write about football!

These guys aren't European: Giving Canada's Four Horsemen another spin.

Want to avoid NEA controversy? Skip visual arts.

Leaders share their favorite poems. (Hmmm, wonder why I wasn't invited?)

Exodus in reverse: Robert Hass in Tel Aviv.

Will your letters ever be as good as Ted Hughes's?

When will David Rowbotham get some Aussie awards love?

RIP Sargon Boulos, the Iraqi who joined the Beats.

Pound for Pound.

In praise of Burns.

Another poetry primer, this one form Tom Paulin.

Who touches this touches a Wiman: Poetry editor's essay collection.

"In the fell clutch of circumstance/I have not winced nor cried aloud": John McCain memorized poetry.

Hillary-supporter Maya Angelou: "Oprah is a daughter to me, but she is not my clone."

William Logan on Geoffrey Hill: "More despised than admired, and more admired than loved."

From A to A and back again: Zukofsky's "long intent eccentric unread game."

Hass: aspiring to Milosz's moral gravity.

"We live in a prose world where poetry is an experience": Sean O'Brien.

To have and "To Hold": Li-young Lee aims high.

If you're a Scottish politician, you gotta love Burns.

The fun side of Milton.

Robert Browning, marathon man?

Frost on chickens.

Babyshambles' crooner a "police-loving poet"?

Endangered species—gazelles? No: "Ghazals are dying."

Frost damage? Controversy over transcription of notebooks.

The Homosexuals should cover Anne Carson.

"My pockets are empty/from minimum wage . . .": CityWide Poets see Detroit clearly.

Burton Hatlen, RIP: Scholar, journal editor, and mentor to Stephen King.

Is advertising poetry? Maybe when SpotCo does the poster.

"Power Crazy Than Shwe": Thai poet's politically charged acrostical message lands him in jail.

Things don't matter: Jen Bervin on Vénus Khoury-Ghata.

The many faces of Jewish poetry today.

Where they're calling from: Clover, Spahr, and others in 21st-century poetry field guide.

RIP: Maine professor and chaplet publisher Sylvestor Pollet.

Longfellow read Wharton's verse.

Even the Kurds wonder: " Can we enjoy poems we don't understand?"

Poe: inventor of the detective story, author of "the greatest poem that ever was written," and precursor to . . . Einstein?

The Green Mill: Slamming in Chicago.

The wanderer: Mani Leib grapples with Biblical precedent.

A "daft idea, but a good one": giving away 50,000 free Edwin Morgan books—in one day.

More Burnsiana: "eccentric Sikh businessman" names an island after R.B.

Tomalin's Hardy: Emma wasn't syphilitic.

"His elbow was sticking in my rib": Giorno remembers Ginsberg.

Burns Night! Pinch some info from Seamus Heaney for your B.N. toast.

Framing devices: Natasha Trethewey.

Mormon crickets and hermit beetles: The appealing Simic.

Pass the haggis! Photos from a Brooklyn Burns Night.

Poetry's a "3-D form": Florida's Edmund Skellings. Does that mean we need to wear those glasses?

Boston laureate Sam Cornish: "There's something more beautiful than a sunset."

Adam Kirsch: a critic with Wilsonian ambition.

. . . or maybe not, since he invented so many words that in a sense, we are already reading Milton every time we pick up the paper?

Our new year's resolution: Read more Milton . . .

Pound and Eliot as Oscar and Felix.

"Urine! How well I know it": Michelangelo—inventor of pork things.

For bitter or worse: More on Ted Hughes's letters.

Blues poetry: Bad to the bone. (For "bad," read "good.")

Latino poetry, without apologies.

Poetry's not neutral. It's . . . anti-neoliberal?

Monitor Young Poet Contest winners: "My cheeks are always a deep/and powerful pink."

Cover me: Jeff Clark, poet and part of the new breed of book designers.

"Most poetry sort of freaks me out," confesses Sharp Teeth poet Toby Barlow.

Public and private, Katrina and Iraq: All in a day's work for Pinsky.