David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Moderate Giftedness
Last week I misquoted W. H. Auden in this space. I could confirm the correct quote for you if only I could find my Collected edition of Auden’s poems. That…
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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 Fading of September 11
We live in a world where whenever the discussion turns to humanitarian assistance or military intervention what is meant by that is American assistance and American intervention. There are good…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Death of the Natural
I mean, his [Heaney's] verse is under my skin. His verbs are inside my veins. His metaphors are in my nervous system. His moral clarity is a light inside my own, shall we say, republic of conscience.
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Cynicism of Mark Edmundson, Or Poetry Is Still Not Dead
Mark Edmundson’s take down of contemporary American poetry, “Poetry Slam,” (currently behind the paywall) in this month’s issue of Harper’s, is not so bad really. He’s right about the insularity…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Foxes, Hedgehogs, and Bad Judgment
Asked by James Dickey why he got “into this,” meaning into the literary business, into poetry, Robert Penn Warren says, “bad judgment.” I suppose, one thinks about this sort of…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Syria’s Poets Under Threat
The debate about political poetry in the United States sometimes has an arid feel to it. Essential, yes. But fatally so? Not very often. But poets caught up in violent…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: What is Lyric Poetry II
Back in December last year I offered not so much ten definitions but ten clues, fixings, or renditions about lyric poetry. A couple dozen of you chimed in as well,…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Boston Stands in a Sahara of Blood
“The old South Boston Aquarium stands / in a Sahara of snow now,” begins Robert Lowell’s masterpiece, “For the Union Dead,” a poem about race and class in Boston. To…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Politics and Post-Modernism?
No one can know for sure what literary historians will make of it, least of all me as I pound out an editorial about poetry every week. But if I…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Republican House Set to Banish Poets from America
“The subcommittee's bill breaks the promise that this country has made to poets”
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl meets Gay Marriage
Yesterday was the 56th anniversary of the day that U.S. customs agents seized some 500 copies of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl on the grounds of obscenity. Yesterday and today, the Supreme…