David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Is Poetry Ready for Pandora?
Granted my affliction does not in any way parallel the gravity of close friends who aren’t so much battling but, as Christopher Hitchens put it, being battled by cancer, and…
Posts by author
David Biespiel
115 posts
David Biespiel is a poet, literary critic, memoirist, and contributing writer at American Poetry Review, New Republic, New York Times, Poetry, Politico, The Rumpus, and Slate, among other publications. He is the author of numerous books, most recently The Education of a Young Poet, which was selected a Best Books for Writers by Poets & Writers, A Long High Whistle, which received the 2016 Oregon Book Award for General Nonfiction, and The Book of Men and Women, which was chosen for Best Books of the Year by the Poetry Foundation and received the 2011 Oregon Book Award for Poetry.
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The State of American Poetry Address
Poets, Poetesses, and Unacknowledged Legislators of Mankind: I address you at a moment unprecedented in the history of Poetry. I use the word “unprecedented,” because at no previous time has…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Something More Than Style
Earlier this week, while speaking to some younger poets, I became intrigued with their nascent fascination, to the point of headiness, with all things poetically elliptical, non-linear, and disjunctive. I…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 10 Things Successful Poets Do
Over on Lifehack, there’s one of those smarmy little lists to help you better yourself called 10 Things Positive People Don’t Do. Enjoy. Reading it got me thinking. What are 10 things…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: A New Poetry Emerges from Iran
If war is a defeat for poetry, what is diplomacy? Like poetry, diplomacy involves craft and discretion, finesse and poise, skill and subtlety. It requires canniness, deliberation, presence of mind,…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: News of the Weird in Poetryland
New book reports postmodernists forced to write in rhyme and meter Exposing widespread abuses faced by beginning poets writing in postmodern verses, a new book titled “Between the Lines,” revealed…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: When JFK Read Poetry
Not that one needs an excuse such as the imminent threat of nuclear armageddon to read poetry, but the early 1960s might have been a good time to turn to…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Art of Communion
There comes a time in the process of writing a poem when you find yourself putting the reader’s interests and desires ahead of your own as the poet. Not that…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Poetry Shutdown Begins – Poets and Critics Fail to Agree
A flurry of last-minute phone calls, philippics, tweets, and Facebook posts by poets and critics late last night failed to break a bitter standoff over the latest poetry-is-dead attacks, setting…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 10 Burdens for American Poetry
As with the myth of America, America’s poets believe a poem should go from rags to riches. And yet, why so much surprise when it actually happens? There is more…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Reading My Hate Mail
Every since I wrote this weekend with the news that I’m stepping down, after 11 years, as a columnist on poetry for my local paper, I’ve received some very nice…