The Week We Made Headlines

California Libraries Defunded. With all the celebration and hand-wringing over California’s Prop 8 being declared unconstitutional, you may have missed some other news from the Land of the Setting Sun: Its libraries will lose their state funding and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Librarians in LA and the Bay expected this and already factored it into their budgets, but it is bad, bad news for branches in Stockton and Bakersfield.

A Bunch of Old Magazines Just Left Lying Around. Go ahead. Take ‘em.

Poets Need Editing. Well, yeah, but what does it have to do with the patriarchy?

Poet Finds Employment. Marianne Moore’s corporate-funded brainstorming is some of her best work. We would totally drive a Ford Thunderblender.

"Poet Laureate” Is Too a Real Job. Find out what those people actually do all day.

Poetry Magazine Publishes Three Sentences That Aren’t Poetry. The balance of Typo’s 16th issue is, in fact, poetry. The website looks very McSweeney’s, which kind of figures.

Islamic Leader Proposes Revolutionary Strategy. He’s turning the whole thing over to the poets.

Poet’s Therapy Records Released. We never stop working the Sexton beat. Because we like to be disturbed.

Fan of Cancelled Show Upset. When BBC Radio Scotland announced that it would 86 The Janice Forsyth Show to make room for Olympics coverage, crime novelist Ian Rankin let them have it. With a poem. This is how it’s done, Community nerds. [Spelling of "canceled" adjusted for maximum Britishness.]

Hollywood Celebrity Reads a Poem. And it’s Samuel L. Jackson, America’s Orator.

Poets and Buildings Mourned. Pour one on the block for Stacy Doris, Xuan Tam, and Sankichi Toge’s old digs.