Harriet: News & Community

Technically speaking, can there ever be half a list? Lists of ten are a form more ingrained than sonnets. Here are 5 books being shuffled and reshuffled on my desk—at...

Take me where the light is John Mayer I have still not worked out quite why the recent Time Magazine article on Mother Teresa’s book of private correspondence, Mother Teresa: Come Be...

In 1973 I entered high school. That year, my school, Jamaica College, did not play in the schools’ football (read soccer) contest—in fact, no school did. That year the...

I have been wondering how much poetry collections these days are being structured around the habits of readers of book contest entries. Someone commented some months ago, that much of...

I’ve been thinking about the issue of texture. There has to be a word—I’m using “texture” for lack of a better one—that describes how words in a poem interact, how...

A few confessions apropos of much of the discussion about how to promote poetry: 1. I promote poetry. I say, “Y’all need to read poems, they are great.” I say,...

Suddenly, the air is charged. My 12-year-old is banging around the apartment, trying on first-day-at-school outfits, cooing at her image when the ensembles work and screaming like a banshee when they...

My post of the day is a reply to Kwame in the comment box of his post "Rebels." Among other things, I compare Kenny to Alfred Barr!

In the Spring issue of American Poet (put out by the Academy of American Poets) Lyn Hejinian gave an interesting answer to what is by now (especially around these offices)...

With anthems like this coming through the radio in the 1970s and 1980s it is hard not to develop a poetics of rebellion. This is Burning Spear in a song...