David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Identity v. Identification
T. R. Hummer has a comely piece up on Slate, “The Intimacy of Walt Whitman’s ‘America,'” about the influence and pleasures of Walt Whitman, plus an alleged recording of Whitman…
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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: Revising Poetry Just Got Easier
Revision, as classically understood, generally relates to the poet’s understanding while composing a poem, via kneading language, via discovering insight. More and more though I find that sort of revision…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Poesis Delenda Est!
I’ve never much gone in for shoot ’em up movies. I’ve never seen Terminator, other than the most famous clip (“I’ll be back”). I can’t stomach Quentin Tarantino movies or,…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: You Will Be Judged
About to board a flight from Portland to New York, about to meet with the jury that’s been convening for 12 months by e-mail, Skype, and face to face meeting,…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Going Back to 1968
45 years ago was a barricaded, world-rocking year. Both in politics and in poetry. Between January and the end of March came the beginning of both the Prague Spring and…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: The Genius of Adrienne Rich
I’m surprised by the amiable but lukewarm reception Ange Mlinko gives in The Nation to Adrienne Rich’s Later Poems: Selected and New. The 500+ retrospective was published late last year.…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: My Kingdom for a Bag of Bones
Up most all of last night with some kind of malady contaminated by insomnia, my mind began to drift as a means to stem the anguish. What follows, fair warning,…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: “Daddy, what did YOU do in the great ‘Poetry Is Dead’ war?”
Read poetry, what else? That’s the greatest military maneuver in the ‘Poetry Is Dead’ war, isn’t it? It’s where the odds are longest, the risk greatest, kind of like Lee…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: What Alexandra Petri Should Have Said in the Washington Post.
Kelly Clarkson’s Inaugural Song Means the Death of Country Music Inaugural country singer Kelly Clarkson said that her story is America’s story. If that’s the case, America should be slightly…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: A Poet and a President
A funny thing happened on the way to President Obama’s second inauguration Monday. The president’s speech and Richard Blanco’s poem got reversed. Broadly speaking, one’s expectations of political rhetoric is…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Things They Do Look Awful Cold — Talking ‘Bout My Generation
About eight or nine years ago I caught a ride from Northampton, Massachusetts to New York City with the poet Matthew Rohrer. We’d given a reading a few nights earlier…
David Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: Viva Richard Blanco!
As of today the question of whether President Barack Obama or former Governor Mitt Romney won the Cuban vote in Florida, traditionally a solid Republican bloc, remains in dispute. Back…