Harriet: News & Community

Rigoberto's got me thinking about poetry and music, and I've been thinking about my favorite singers, who always seem to be poets at heart. So 1 a.m. on Sunday morning is...

Some poets establish a rhythm in generating new material and subsequently publishing it. We expect to see a collection every 3 to 5 years, which is a lucky thing for...

Like many other folks, I need a cap to my summer--a day or seminal event that bellows this is it, the dog days are officially over. This year, I actually...

Ann Lauterbach told me that poetry is an art for the old. Harry Mathews told me that a writer he knew who had won almost every prize under the sun was...

There are certain songs I cannot listen to anymore because they remind me of someone associated with the pain of loss. R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” reminds me of an old...

Sometimes poems are riddles, hard to decipher, complex mazes with clues scattered all around to help us find our way to some understanding. The poet is taking a risk there....

Don’t worry about the facts, the truth is what is important. Writers are told this all the time. There is this idea that there is a truth that transcends the facts...

My grandfather lived in Lome. We drove from Ghana to Lome, waiting patiently to be waved through the Ghana/ Togo border with a sense of anticipation and excitement. From there...

In 2005 I had a part-time job in midtown, and I would walk two long blocks across 55th St. from the subway to this office building (mechanically reaching into my...

In 1995, Rosalie Richardson was one of the women I interviewed in Sumter about their lives growing up in Jim Crow, South Carolina. These stories have been a rich source...