Blogs
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Voices of the Rainbow: Contemporary Poetry by Native Americans
Visiting the Taos Pueblo (“an ancient community continuously inhabited for 100 years”) on San Geronimo Day, I was frightened by the Sacred Clowns (Koshares). The list of rules for visitors explained that these fit young men roving about in traditional…
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National Poetry Month Day 38: “A Room in Cleopatra’s Palace” by Mary Jo Bang
This brings us to the end of our National Poetry Month project, one poem short of a sestina’s worth. We close out this year with a poem by Mary Jo Bang, whose forthcoming translation of Dante’s Inferno will be our…
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This Is Ridiculous
Harriet, the Poetry Foundation blog, reports that poet Joshua Clover and 11 students at UC Davis are potentially facing a $1 million fine and up to 11 years each in prison. Their crime? Peaceful protest. A petition is circulating which…
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National Poetry Month Day 37: “Two Lyrics from ‘Rondo’” by Janet Holmes
Well I got to keep it going keep it going full steam. Two Lyrics from “Rondo” The boys pawing the ground are horses. They will drag you between them. Come, give them your arms!
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National Poetry Month Day 36: “The Lover’s Field Guide to Lesser Coinage” by Sandra Beasley
Was National Poetry Month over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no! The Lover’s Field Guide to Lesser Coinage There are eight stycas in a penny, two pennies in a farthing, three farthings in a nearthing, and eight nearthings…
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Lit-Link Round-up
Greg Olear is smart and relentless in this exploratory expose on the aftermath of Bush’s “Mission Accomplished.” What do you think of the positioning of “Toni Morrison” for posterity? Patrick Somerville makes the coolest book trailer ever. Roy Kesey, Anne Leigh Parrish,…
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National Poetry Month 2012 Lineup
So maybe you’re following our National Poetry Month project and you want to know who else is going to be featured. You’re following, right? I mean, sure you get the tweets from Rumpus Poetry and The Rumpus, and you regularly…
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The Poems of Jesus Christ, by Willis Barnstone
Born in 1927, Willis Barnstone is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Indiana University and an admired translator . His rendering of The Poems of St John of the Cross is rightly revered by believers, non believers, scholars and…
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National Poetry Month Day 35: “A Double Sestina on Happiness” by Cathy Park Hong
We decide when National Poetry Month is over. A Double Sestina on Happiness Part 1: I should never be happy, the Samsung Chairman’s eldest daughter Eunhee thought as she picked up a capsleeved dress in Seoul’s only Marni boutique, and…
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Rebel Muses
Famous female literary muses Zelda Fitzgerald, Louise Joyce, and Vivienne Eliot were more than just the apple of their respective husbands’ and fathers’ eye. It turns out they were also hard party-ers of the Jazz Age. “The muse is traditionally…
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Girl In Cap and Gown by Harriet Levin
Filmgoers this year who saw the documentary The Cave of Forgotten Dreams in 3-D (or not) entered the prehistoric Chauvet caves of Southern France in a stunning modern way. The labor to return to the stone womb felt transformative but…
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The Last Poem I Loved: “Reaching Around For You” by D.A. Powell
April is over. We can’t stop these things from happening, no. We’re slipping out of spring into summer, out of busy semesters and National Poetry Month. We’re slipping outside our houses, and offices, and coffeeshops after the seemingly innumerable gray…