I hope you’ve been following along with our National Poetry Month project. For links to the poems we’ve already run as well as the poets to come, you can follow this post, which is updated every morning with a link to the newest poem, or you can check our Rumpus Original Poems page.

Ron Silliman is giving up blogging. Or maybe not.

David Kirby on How to Read Poetry.

32 Poems has asked a number of poets to talk about their five favorite books of poetry. I’ll be one of them as soon as I write the damn thing.

I’m a little ashamed to admit this, but I’ve never really had spoken word poetry on my radar. I think Sarah Kay’s performance/presentation at TED might have changed that for me.

Last month’s chat with Joseph Harrington was a lot of fun, and I’m really looking forward to chatting with Dean Young at the end of this month.

Remember that you can keep up with Rumpus Poetry on Twitter and on Facebook. See you next week.

Brian Spears

I’ve already said this a lot, but it’s April, so expect it a lot more. You can follow our National Poetry Month poem-a-day project by visiting this post every day. I’ll be updating it every morning and adding a new link to the bottom of the list. I’ll also be posting daily links to individual poems on Twitter and Facebook.

I’ll also be posting a bit about O, Miami events as they come around. This is a month-long project organized by P. Scott Cunningham which is trying to bring poetry to every person in Miami-Dade county in the month of April. Last night’s event was Eating Our Words, with a reading by our May Poetry Book Club author Tracy K. Smith. Here’s some video of Smith in action. Sorry if it’s not the best quality–it’s iPhone video.

Ada Limón on what poets want for their poems. I think she’s pretty right on.

Here’s the write a poem a day project I’m working with this year. This will be my third year at it, and I need it this time because I haven’t been writing since my book came out (available here! See how I did that?). Most of what I write in these paroxysms of poetry winds up in files that I’ll never open again, but enough good stuff comes out that I do it regularly now.

This month’s book in the Poetry Book Club is Dean Young’s Fall Higher. This is a special get for us because Young is in very poor health–he needs a heart transplant–and he’s still going to be a part of the chat at the end of the month. Stay tuned for time and date on that.

Brian Spears

As I mentioned at the end of the Poetry Book Club chat with Noelle Kocot (the edited version will run Tuesday, I believe), I have started a Rumpus Poetry Facebook page. So there’s yet another way for everyone to keep up with what’s happening in Rumpus Poetry.

This month’s selection is Joseph Harrington’s Things Come On, and it’s already sparked a good discussion in the google group. If you want to join the Rumpus Poetry Book Club, click here. Next month is Dean Young’s latest, so get in now.

Ariel Jastromb has some insights into social media and the future of poetry, or one future anyway.

If you’re going to be in south Florida during the month of April, keep an eye out for O, Miami. They’ll be everywhere, or they’re going to try at least.

Over at LemonHound (which I should read far more regularly and so should you), Damian Rogers talks to Anne Waldman about a number of things, including the VIDA count.

Congratulations to C D Wright on winning the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry.

Just remember that in addition to our spiffy new Rumpus Poetry Facebook page, you can follow us on Twitter. April is coming, which means National Poetry Month and which means, for the third straight year, our Poem a Day project. We’ve solicited poems from some great folks again this year, and I have high hopes for the project.

Brian Spears

The Poetry Book Club Chat on Tuesday with Noelle Kocot was a tremendous success, and we’ll be posting the edited transcript next week.

Not exactly poetry, but Robert Lee Brewer takes on the question of whether or not authors are chasing readers or money when it comes to e-books.

Harriet ran a chat with Douglas Kearney yesterday. Check it out.

I agree completely with what Elisa Gabbert gets at in this post, no hesitation, no equivocation. But then again, those of you who know me probably know that already.

Amy Letter on Teacher’s Hours.

The new masculinist lyric.

Follow us on Twitter for all Rumpus Poetry related stuff. See you next week.

Brian Spears

You would not believe the crazy crap that’s happened the last two times I tried to do this column, but I’m back at least for this week.

For Rumpus Poetry Book Club members, save this Tuesday for our conversation with Noelle Kocot. Check your inbox for details on the time and for the link.

Amy Lawless on VIDA’s count and Eileen Myles.

Tin House talks about their numbers.

John Gallaher is making videos of the poems in Your Father On the Train of Ghosts.

Barbara Jane Reyes on messing with hegemony.

There’s still time to join the conversation Claudia Rankine began over Tony Hoagland’s poem at AWP (Click the AWP and Open Letter links at the site for details). Much has already been written, and much more will no doubt come.

Remember to follow Rumpus Poetry on twitter to keep up with all things Rumpus Poetry related. See you next week.

Brian Spears

You really should buy my book, but if you were thinking of joining the Poetry Book Club this month, you’ll get it for free–signed and everything. We–I or The Rumpus–aren’t making any money off of it this way. It’s all love.

Speaking of the Poetry Book Club, the chat with Kirsten Kaschock is this coming Monday at 6:00 PST, 9:00 EST. If you’re in the club, you should have gotten an email with the details already. I’ll send another one tonight. Next month’s book is Noelle Kocot’s The Bigger World.

So who’s going to the AWP Convention? Find our table there and get your Rumpus schwag.

I’m feeling like a hustler now, for some reason.

Robert Archambeau runs down the basics of copyright best practices as regards poetry. Very informative.

Poetry is apparently blowing up in Britain.

New York’s ninja poet.

Being as I’m located in south Florida, I can’t wait for O, Miami to start, especially since there might be a Literary Death Match coming as well. Exciting!

You should also check out Two Weeks, a digital anthology put together by the people at Linebreak journal. It’s available in Kindle format now, but they’re working on an ePub version for the iPad which will have the audio tracks embedded. Should be ready in a week. I got a copy because I’m in it (along with a number of other Rumpus contributors), but I’ll be buying the ePub version when it comes out. It’s five bucks. You spend that on coffee-ish drinks.

Follow Rumpus Poetry on Twitter. We’ll be doing this from DC next week at the AWP convention, so I don’t know if we’ll get a column done, but you’ll likely get lots of photos from the Book Fair and the off-site readings. I expect my phone will get a workout.

Brian Spears

We send our condolences to the friends and family of poet and activist Susana Chavez Marisela Escobedo, found murdered in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on January 6.

In case you missed it, Ann Hays is giving The New Yorker some well-deserved crap over the absence of women in their pages. Here’s the latest.

John Gallaher gives us all a little taste of The Monkey and the Wrench, a book of essays on, or “into” as the other half of the title tells us, contemporary poetics. Gallaher and Mary Biddinger co-edited the book, and if the clips are any indication, it’ll be an interesting read.

Don Share provides some excerpts from the essay “The Fate of the Avant Garde.”

Okay, so this isn’t poetry exactly, but how can I pass up a story about a graphic novel version of The Communist Manifesto?

Kathleen Rooney takes us inside the Poetry Brothel, which seems appropriate given the amount of sex-work talk we’ve had around here this week.

If you don’t already do so, follow Rumpus Poetry on Twitter to keep up with all things Rumpus-y and Poetry-y. See you next week.

Brian Spears

Remember, Poetry Book Club Members–the chat with Aimee Nezhukumatathil about her book Lucky Fish is Monday the 3rd at 9:00 p.m. EST, 6:00 p.m. PST. Check your email for the url and the password.

I knew, when I took the job as poetry editor two years ago, that I wanted to make sure we covered poetry in translation, and I’d be lying if I said I was pleased with our level of coverage. It’s hard to get people to write about poetry in translation. I suspect it’s because there’s a sense that one should be fluent in the original language when critiquing the translation, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. Writing about the translation gives you the chance to talk about the translator as much as the original poet, and that’s someone who often gets neglected in the reviews of translated work.

Which is a long way of saying that if you want to pitch a review of some poetry in translation, drop me a line. I’m interested.

Speaking of which, this piece by Jen Hofer on translation as subversive speech is one of the more challenging pieces I’ve read in recent weeks. Her translation of Laura Solorzano’s Lip Wolf is fabulous.

Via We Who Are About to Die, the best writing exercises ever.

Dean Rader stakes a claim to San Francisco as the best poetry city in the country.

Elisa Gabbert begins a list of cultural clichès of the aughts.

Remember you can follow Rumpus Poetry on Twitter to keep up with all things poetic happening around here.

Brian Spears

Save the date, Poetry Book Club Members–Monday January 3, 9:00 p.m. EST, 6:00 p.m. PST–for the chat with Aimee Nezhukumatathil about her book Lucky Fish. You’ll get the link and the password in your email as the date approaches.

Alizah Salario reports in from the e-book summit.

Amy Lynn Greacen has a nice piece that wanders from baking to formal poetry and goes from there.

Bookslut chats with Reb Livingston of No Tell Motel and No Tell Books.

Leah McLaren has a (slightly) different beef with e-books–it has to do with giving them as gifts.

We don’t do lists here at The Rumpus, but we do like to hear what you have to say on things. We’re crowd-sourcers. So tell us, in the comments, what your favorite poetry collections were from the past year. Limit yourself to books released in 2010, if you don’t mind, and give a short (1 or 2 sentence) description of why they wowed you. If you want an example of what I’m talking about, you can look at the list I put together at my place earlier today. I’ll collate them and try to do something with them sometime next week.

For all things poetry on The Rumpus, follow Rumpus Poetry on Twitter. See you next week.

Brian Spears

Next up for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club: Lucky Fish by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. We’re hammering out the selections for the next three months right now, so stay tuned. There’s some fierce competition.

Dean Young needs a heart transplant, and Tony Hoagland is asking for people to donate in Young’s name.

Sandy Longhorn muses on submissions and rejections, and on changing her approach.

I’m not going to link to this next story because 1) it’s at the Huffington Post and 2) because I despise the premise. Any time a person asks the question “is (insert genre here) at a dead end?” or something similar, the best answer is always “no, and you’re a damned idiot for asking.” At least in my opinion. The people asked in this piece still managed to do something with the question (for the most part), but if you want to find it, then you have to hunt for it.

Sina Queyras interviews Gail Scott at LemonHound.

Neil de la Flor interviews Sandra Simonds at Almost Dorothy,

Lisa Russ Spaar mentions some sites that are probably familiar to anyone who comes here, but I like her larger point, namely that the web is breaking down the divide between so called “academic poets” and the rest. I’ve long thought the divide was overblown, except by those who benefit from making sure one exists, but to the extent one is there, I’m glad it’s disappearing.

Keep up with all manner of Rumpus Poetry happenings by following us on Twitter.

Brian Spears

We don’t do end-of-the-year lists here at The Rumpus–we don’t do lists in general–but I’m very much in favor of linking to gift recommendations, so here’s Ron Slate offering space to 19 poets to recommend new and recent titles for your gift-giving pleasure.

And over at No Tell Motel, Reb Livingston has contributors naming their favorite books of the year.

VIDA is a year old now, and I for one am damn glad they’re out there. (Update: that’s older than I thought, but it’s still worth reading.)

D. A. Powell recommends this Kickstarter project, and that’s good enough for me.

Tomorrow night the Rumpus Poetry Book Club is chatting with Jena Osman about her book The Network. If you were a member, you could be a part of it. Here’s how you join. Next month we’ll be talking with Aimee Nezhukumatathil about her new book.

If you follow Rumpus Poetry on Twitter, you’ll keep up with all things poetic here and occasionally elsewhere. I also make bad jokes sometimes. See you next week.

Brian Spears

This morning, south Florida awoke to temperatures in the upper fifties. Panic ensued. There was a run on firewood and snow tires. Natives were seen frantically digging through closets for the coats that have been stored for roughly 10 months. I have no idea how we’ll react to the double whammy of slightly chilly weather and the end of daylight savings time. I’m sure there will be drinking.

Last night, the Rumpus Poetry Book Club held its chat with Elizabeth Alexander. Keep an eye out for the transcript sometime this week.

Nancy Lili Gonzales got a head start on our next selection for the Poetry Book Club, Jena Osman’s The Network. I’ll be posting a piece which discusses why I chose it, but I’m going to warn you in advance–it’ll look a good bit like Nancy’s piece.

Poem Talk, the radio show by Al Filreis which you can subscribe to via the Poetry Foundation website, is being archived online, and one of the recent pieces to make it there is by next month’s poet, Jena Osman.

You can join the Poetry Book Club at any time.

At The Guardian, Michael Tomasky puts together a poetry quiz that honestly, anyone serious about poetry should be able to pass. How many people can get a perfect score, though? (I missed one, but I guessed at a couple of others and got lucky.)

W. S. DiPiero translates some selections from Giacomo Leopardi’s daybooks in the latest issue of Poetry. Fascinating stuff.

It looks like 32 Poems is planning on hosting a poetry party every Sunday night from 9:00 – 10:00 p.m. EST on Twitter. Hashtag is #poetparty. I did it a couple of weeks ago and had a good time. Won’t be there this week, but I plan to hang out there more in the future.

You can follow Rumpus Poetry on Twitter to keep up with all things poetic here.

Brian Spears

So the big news for Rumpus Poetry Book Club members is that our chat with Elizabeth Alexander will take place on Friday November 5 at 8:00 p.m. EST, 5:00 p.m. PST. Be ready to wow her with your questions about Crave Radiance. Our next selection is Jena Osman’s The Network.

What does a poet want from the audience? I’m interested in this since I’m doing a reading in Boca Raton on Nov. 17th. (Email me for details if you’re in the area.)

Harriet provides a taste of the larger discussion over UbuWeb and IP rights.

Sina Queyras has an extraordinary piece on the debate over appropriation in poetry.

Would you like to write about poetry for The Rumpus? I’m always looking for people to review new collections or to provide entries for our “Last Poem/Collection I Loved” series. If you have something you think I’d be interested in, send a query to poetry-at-therumpus-dot-net.

If anyone can find the text of the poem Sam Waterston read at today’s Rally to Restore Sanity, can you pass it along? I liked that they introduced Waterston as the most reasonable seeming man in America.”

Follow Rumpus Poetry on Twitter for updates on the book club, reviews, original poems, and whatever else pops up during the day.

Brian Spears

I realize that NBA basketball is too pop culture-y for us at The Rumpus, but the poetry contest that the Miami Herald put together for the arrival of LeBron James has been too good to pass up. P. Scott Cunningham of the University of Wynwood has been running it, and had to cull through the 1100 entries today for the final judge. He tweeted selections from the entries today at @ladypythons. You should search the stream, and then follow him, as he’s a really good guy.

Check out the Twitter poetry party on Sunday at 9:00 p.m. EST with D. A. Powell, January O’Neil, Collin Kelley, Aimee Nezhukumatathil and 32 Poems. Use the hashtag #poetparty.

We Who Are About to Die interviews Don Share.

Interesting tweet from John Lee Clark in which he suggests he might not submit to journals which don’t archive content online. I hadn’t thought about that before, but I can’t disagree with it at first glance.

Finally, I’d like you to check out Send Julia to College. It’s a site by a poet and a friend of mine, Alice Pettway, who’s working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mozambique. She’s trying to raise money for one of her students to attend college, and I’m trying to help spread the word. I’m mentioning it here because I know Alice personally and am willing to put my reputation on the line for her. If she says it’s a good cause, then I say it too.

Remember, you can keep up with Rumpus Poetry on Twitter.

Brian Spears

Jonathan Farmer has some ideas on ways people can support poetry in the digital age. I really support his fifth one, which suggests getting web designers and programmers involved in the world of online poetry, because formatting a poem with anything other than a hard left margin is, umm, taxing for someone with my meager skills. I give it my best, but I have no idea how it actually looks on anything other than my computer when I’m done with it (MacBook with a Chrome browser). If someone can figure out an easy way to render poetry faithfully and consistently on an e-book page or a computer screen, that person will make literally dozens of people very happy.

Elizabeth Alexander is everywhere right now. The Poetry Book Club will be talking with her later in the month–I’ll announce the date as soon as I know it–but in the meantime, you can check out this interview with her at Trinity College.

Curtis Fox and Emily Gould chat about Eileen Myles at the Poetry Foundation website. I subscribe to all their podcasts (even the avant garde one), but I’d like to expand my horizons a little. What other poetry podcasts should I be listening to?

The University of Utah has been posting scans of the journal L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. Issue 4 is up.

The Dodge Poetry Festival is going on right now. You can follow it on Twitter by searching for the hashtag #dodgepoetryfest.

Harriet points to an article in Newsweek about literature in Mexico, and then writes “Recently, Mexico has seen a surge in independent publishing houses willing to publish new writers. Meanwhile, the numbers of female writing students, and of writing collectives for women, have swelled. All these developments prompt hope that Mexican women’s voices will continue to be heard.” I not only second that, I’m making a call for people who want to review collections by Mexican poets (male and female) either in Spanish or in translation. Contact me at poetry-at-therumpus-dot-net with articles or reviews.

The Rumpus offers its condolences to the friends and family of Michael Gizzi. You can listen to Gizzi read from his work at the Penn Sound Archive.

Roxane Gay writes about the question of unpublishing a piece online (among other things). I can’t imagine a situation where I’d ask a journal to remove one of my pieces, even if the title had been Kilgore-Trouted on me. Perhaps that’s because the worst butchering anything of mine ever received was in a print journal, and when I mentioned it to the publisher, I didn’t even get an apology.

John Lundberg provides the highlights from this year’s Slam Poetry competition.

In case you missed it, we announced our third selection for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club, Elizabeth Alexander’s Crave Radiance. I want to thank the other members of the Advisory Board–Camille Dungy, Gabrielle Calvocoressi and Matthew Zapruder–for the work they’ve put into this project and for helping make it a success so far.

Remember, you can keep up with all Rumpus Poetry happenings by following us on Twitter. We announce when we’ve published new reviews, new poems, and pieces on the Book Club, among other things.

Brian Spears

The Essential American Poets series selection this week is Carl Sandburg. I’d never heard his voice before, and it was nothing like I’d expected. I suppose I’d assumed he sounded mid-western, Chicagoan, perhaps deep and barrel-chested. Nope.

I thought about not posting this, as I don’t want the competition, but No Tell Motel’s reading period opens in a week.

Elisa Gabbert has developed a “heat scale” for poetic moves.

Mark Scroggins discusses the savage review (and the comments stream is lively as well).

Mike Chasar takes on the poetry of beer advertising.

We’ll have an announcement about our next Poetry Book Club selection as soon as I can find the time to write the damn thing. It’s a big book, and I’m working my way through it right now. I’ll mention it on Twitter when the essay is up.

Brian Spears

I think we’re just a couple of days away from announcing our next two books for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club. The logistics for this thing are a bear sometimes, but it’s worth the effort, and we’re very excited about the selections.

I think it’s safe to say that this is the only time either I or The Rumpus will ever link to Marie Claire, but hey, sometimes you have to go where the stories are.

Philip Metres writes about building a collection of poems that moves beyond anti-war poetry into a poetry of peace.

Ron Silliman has seen the film Howl. I think I want to see it.

Have you seen the latest issue of storySouth? Because you really should take a look.

Would it be gauche to point out, in the wake of our gender disparity in publishing and reviewing discussion this week, that both of the poetry reviews were of women and by women, as was (I believe), one of the fiction reviews? Probably less gauche than posting a link to a place I was just published in. (See above.)

By the way, that wasn’t a deliberate reaction to the VIDA discussion–it just happened that way. If you’re interested in reviewing poetry for The Rumpus, let me know at poetry-AT-therumpus-DOT-net. Follow Rumpus Poetry on Twitter to keep up with the Book Club and other poetic happenings here.

Brian Spears

Jenny Hendrix in The New Yorker wades into the question of whether or not song lyrics are poetry. She’s responding to Kristen Hoggatt at The Smart Set, who’s responding to Billy Collins in the Wall Street Journal. I have my own thoughts on the matter which put me closer to Collins than I’m generally comfortable with being.

Are you a part of the Rumpus Poetry Book Club? We’re tearing it up over Timothy Donnelly’s The Cloud Corporation in no small part due to Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s writing on it. You can join at any time.

If you want to see some of what you’ve been missing, you can see the Poetry Book Club’s interviews with Shane Book–cut and uncut.

Sandra Beasley is going to be writing for VIDA, who we love here at The Rumpus.

Great piece by Barbara Jane Reyes on the difficulties/contradictions/issues that surround classes on poets of color and the exclusion of those poets from “standardized” courses.

We Who Are About to Die brings back FMK Fridays, this time with Objectivists.

You can keep up with the latest from Rumpus Poetry on Twitter.

Brian Spears

If you were a member of the Rumpus Poetry Book Club, you’d be involved in the conversation Gabrielle Calvocoressi is leading about Timothy Donnelly’s The Cloud Corporation. You’d also have the book before its official release.

I really enjoyed this piece by Clive James in the latest issue of Poetry. It’s one of those essays that winds around a bit, from Berryman to Shakespeare to Menashe to Ashbery and Wallace Stevens.

Dante Micheaux makes a very good point about semantics and racism and the way white still seems to be the default (conscious or not) when it comes to describing people.

Like Natasha Trethewey, I grew up in one of the areas of the Gulf region that was also devastated by Hurricane Katrina and didn’t get much in the way of news coverage, so I’ll be taking a look at her book on the subject.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is reading William Faulkner right now, and it reminds him of reading Yusuf Komunyakaa.

Congratulations to Friend of The Rumpus Barbara Jane Reyes. Her book Diwata is now available from BOA editions.

Brian Spears

The Nepotist, if you’re unaware, is an online journal run by a person who publishes his/her friends, and does so anonymously. What’s the over/under, do you think, on someone either deliberately or accidentally revealing The Neoptist’s identity? Should we start a pool?

D. W. Lichtenberg muses on Duotrope’s Good Bad and the Ugly list.

Here’s a journal I think I’ll be reading when it goes live: Intersections. Get a taste of what’s to come at Improbable Object.

There are times when I come across an issue that obviously has a long history behind it of which I am completely unaware. The one I discovered a couple of days ago is over Kent Johnson’s “theory” that Kenneth Koch wrote Frank O’Hara’s “A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island.” Tony Towle responds here, and makes Johnson’s theory sound about as reasonable as Andrew Sullivan’s “questions” about Trig Palin’s birth mother.

Us poets get blamed for everything.

There’s always time to the Rumpus Poetry Book Club. Follow Rumpus Poetry on Twitter. See you next week.

Brian Spears

The great MFA usefulness debate continues with a piece by Lev Raphael. (Here’s my contribution if you’re interested.)

Barbara Jane Reyes gives Reginald Dwayne Betts’ book four of five stars. I agree completely, and I’m using Shahid Reads His Own Palm in one of my classes this fall.

Neil de la Flor (who we interviewed here) interviews Steven Cordova.

When I see the words “are e-books bad for,” I tend to reach for a bottle to smash over my head, but this entry isn’t so bad.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil talks about the haibun.

And finally, if you’re interested in writing about poetry, whether reviews of collections or about individual poems, send me a note. It’s the same offer as the one in the post below this one, but send to poetry@therumpus.net. Please don’t hammer Isaac with poetry stuff–he’s got too much to do as it is.

Let’s have some fun on the interwebs, shall we?

It’s funny that contractors at the Dylan Thomas center in Swansea made the same spelling mistake twice, writing “lighting” for “lightning.” With my students, it’s usually “lightening,” which makes for some unintentionally hilarious sentences at times.

Lots of people linked Anis Shivani’s list of overrated contemporary American writers. I certainly have my own opinions on some of the people included there, but I’m reminded mostly of what I don’t like about list posts, namely, that they’re a cheap way to stir up controversy without adding much value to a conversation.

I suppose I’ve never run across the practice of coffee shops banning computers between certain hours because the idea of being able to write effectively in public is alien to me, but given that it exists, I suppose I’m not surprised that Kindle/iPad/e-reader prejudice exists.

A note about comment streams: I don’t blame any blogger, especially a solo blogger with a large audience, for either eliminating comments or for leaving them unmoderated. We moderate comments here, and even though our comment threads don’t generally get as long as those at other sites, they can still be a handful. I only moderate occasionally. We all have lives, after all.

We’ve also been lucky here in that we don’t often have problems with CFB’s (comment field bullies) like those discussed by Jessica Smith and Ron Silliman, among others, certainly not in this column or in our poetry reviews. And as long as our luck holds, we’ll keep the comment streams open. Fingers crossed.

Brian Spears

Follow The Rumpus Poetry Section on Twitter.

Jessica Smith wrote a post about the incivility in the comment stream at Ron Silliman’s blog, and in comment streams in general. Silliman has since turned off his comments, and I can’t say I blame him. Comment streams can become ugly places, especially when you get the kind of traffic Silliman does, and you can find yourself spending so much time moderating that you don’t have time to do anything else. It’s also a little soul-crushing to deal with that much bile over a long period.

Brian Henry argues that poetry criticism is in a perpetual state of crisis, but what he seems to suggest is a bug–”It’s not just that critics cannot agree on which poets or kinds of poetry are the best, but that poetry critics often have no common ground”–I see as a feature. Maybe I’m oversimplifying here, but I can’t think of anything more boring than a world of poetic criticism where critics were all coming from the same stating point, or agreed upon set of values.

Elisa Gabbert asks if poetry is boring.

Have you joined The Rumpus Poetry Book Club yet?

Brian Spears

I really had planned on doing this column ahead of time last week, but Friday night found me under the kitchen sink teaching myself how to unhook a garbage disposal and attempt to unclog pipes with a plumber’s snake. I was not successful. Here are some poetry stories to look at for this week, though.

It’s Sandra Beasley’s turn to answer ten questions on poets and technology.

Don Share writes about Erik Anderson and the pastoral.

Barbara Jane Reyes on Diane di Prima’s talk at the San Francisco Public Library.

And finally, an update on the Rumpus Poetry Book Club. We had a meeting this week and worked out some of the details, and talked about upcoming books (as soon as we get official agreements from the poets and publishers we’ll announce them). If everything works out as planned, we’ll have a stunning range of poetic voices on display in this club. Exciting times.

Speaking of which, your twitter follow recommendation for this week is, no surprise, Rumpus Poetry, the twitter account of the Rumpus Poetry Book Club. Hope to see you there!

Brian Spears

Have you heard? The Rumpus is a place for poetry. (My own thoughts on this subject here.)

If you’re looking for a journal to subscribe to, Gulf Coast is a really good option.

Greg Gerke, who just reviewed Kim Chinquee’s Pretty for us, asks why short works aren’t often considered ambitious.

Don Share responds to Ron Silliman’s post on the Poet Laureate.

When I was more of a political blogger, I used to dream about long rambling comment threads. Then I got swarmed by some trolls one time, and while I had fun changing their attacking posts to read things like “I eat my own farts,” I also realized that an active comments thread is often a major pain in the ass. Which is a roundabout way of saying read this post by Jennifer Knox at the Best American Poetry blog.

Brian Spears

Have you heard about The Rumpus Poetry Book Club? Just making sure.

I’ve bookmarked this article on how to format poetry online, since I’ve had some problems along these lines in the past myself.

This year, Wimbledon’s official poet laureate, Matt Harvey, had the chance to write about the longest tennis match ever played. How did he mark it? With a haiku, of course.

We have a new Poet Laureate in W. S. Merwin, and Ron Silliman has some nice words for Kay Ryan, who is leaving the post. He also has some suggestions for future Poets Laureate, including one of my Rumpus Poetry Book Club co-chairs, Camille Dungy.

Artifice Mag is having a subscription drive. HTMLGIANT is talking smack about how much they can help, but I want The Rumpus to steal some of the glory of putting Artifice over the top. So, umm, go subscribe.

Brian Spears

So, as Stephen mentioned in a recent Daily Rumpus, we’ll be doing a poetry version of the Rumpus Book Club. We’re in the early stages at present, but we’ll make more announcements as we start to nail things down.

I’m more a fan of Wendell Berry’s prose than his poetry (though I like both), but there’s no denying that he’s been a major voice in in poetry for the last 50 years, so it was heartening to see him take back his papers in protest from the University of Kentucky over its decision to ally itself with the coal industry.

I’ve mentioned Poets for Living Waters here a bunch, and I’ll probably continue to do so off and on. I’m enjoying the poems, but I’m also enjoying the statements of purpose which accompany some of the poems, as well as the atypical author photos.

I have to admit, when I read Anis Shivani’s screed against the latest Best American Poetry, I was tempted to buy a copy for the first time in years just to see what had gotten him so worked up. John Gallaher took another, and better tack.

Reb Livingston continues her recommended Summer reading series.

You absolutely need to read Rebecca Wolff’s essay/letter/response to Juliana Spahr, Joshua Clover and the 95 Cent Skool.

Brian Spears

Check out this terrific interview with Amy King at Huffington Post on the current “Femininaissance” in poetry.

Artifice Mag muses on summer reading and wants to know what you’re reading this summer.

Dante Michaux on “What’s American about American Poetry?”

Another year, different drama over the Oxford Poetry Professorship.

Video from the Brooklyn action by Poets for Living Waters.

Brian Spears

No-Tell Motel has some summer reading recommendations for you.

Did you see our reviews of two poetry collections this week? Weston Cutter on Maureen McLane and Virginia Konchan on Timothy Green.

Harriet points to where you can help with Gulf cleanup efforts.

Kathleen Rooney details her reading travels of late.

And I can’t top this title, so I won’t try: “Crash blossom finds remain”. Figure that one out. Or, you know, click the link.

Brian Spears