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From Stephen Elliott
Michael Lista nails it with his review of The Open Door: One Hundred Years of Poetry Magazine, the anthology celebrating 100 years of Poetry, edited by Don Share and Chistian Wiman. University of Chicago hails the collection as a “new kind of anthology.” But it is less an anthology than a curatorial enterprise.
...morePoet and Rumpus contributor Matthew Zapruder contends that John Ashbery is “our greatest living poet.” In order to make his point—and spare us the work of tracking down all the evidence—Zapruder has compiled 30 great John Ashbery poems (complete with links).
...moreTo truly commit a poem to memory is to commit your life to that poem. Out of all the many verses I’ve memorized over the last year, no other has so fully enveloped my days than John Ashbery’s “Poem at the New Year.” So much so that its evocative and elegiac images mark all my mythologies, memories, lies, fantasies, evasions, romances.
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This week in New York 2010: Whitney Biennial opens, Gigantic holds a launch party for Issue 2: Gigantic America, Anderbo Reading at KGB, Mary Karr talks with Philip Gourevitch, MOMA premieres documentary about Mikhail Khodorkovsky–Russia’s wealthiest man and one if its most controversial figures, Ted Conover reads, André Aciman talks to Paul Leclerc, and Sam Mendes directs The Tempest at BAM.
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This week in New York Cate Blanchett acts in A Streetcar Named Desire, John Ashbery and Paul Auster read, Mike Daisey monologizes, an n+1 panel discusses feminism and love, Sherman Alexie talks with Rick Moody, Samuel Beckett’s Letters get talked about, and Charles Burns and Adrian Tomine stand around, talk and sign books at The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival.
Poetry is good for your face, but you need to make sure you rub it all the way in.
Harriet, the Poetry Foundation’s blog, is having some problems with commenters. I wonder why we don’t?
Steven Fama has a few choice words for the Pulitzer Committee.
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