“Food in eternity, food and sex, food and lust”
A portrait of Jim Harrison

§

“Don’t feed the poets”
(!?!)

§

Robert Pinsky
tries to write about
Charles Bernstein

§

Rae Armantrout
in
The Nation

§

Steve Lowe
poet, “Mennonite geisha,”
one-time secretary
to William S. Burroughs
& founder of
The Beat Hotel
in Desert Hot Springs, California
has died

§

The text-message novel
has already been published

§

HereComesEverybody
has published its
132^nd & last
interview

it’s with
Paul Hoover

(Actually,
it’s really 131 interviews
plus a tribute to
Robert Creeley,
tho that includes
Ray Bianchi’s interview
with Bob)

§

Jasper Johns
at the
National Gallery

§

Peter Schjeldahl
on
Martín Ramírez

§

The other
Coleridge
was named
Sara

§

Why would the NY Times pick,
of all people,
William Logan,
to review
the long overdue
Hart Crane
Library of America
Collected?

§

Assamese poetry now
(tho I’m not so sure
I trust this
unnamed reporter’s
account)

§

Lebanese poet
Joumana Haddad
in Lebanese, French & Spanish

§

Close reading
the shower curtain

§

Exactly.

§

So why
is the world still
”all that is the case?”

§

Simon Armitage
finds an age
in which
he’s comfortable

§

A history of music
from punk
to grunge

§

Are the days
of zen & poetry
on the mesa
giving way
to high fashion?

§

Early David Markson
returned to print

§

Perry Anderson
on
Vladimir Putin

§

Michael Wood
on
Babel

§

Coetzee on Mailer
on Hitler

§

The tip
of a Robert Kelly interview

§

The impact of Katrina
on the poetry of
Lagos

§

A celebration of
Mahmoud Darwish
in Tehran

§

Allen Ginsberg
talking & meta-talking
to you

§

Missing the poetry,
missing the charm

§

For 50 years
Josh Malihabadi
dominated Urdu poetry

§

The Caribbean-Kenyan
poetry connection

§

Meaning, music, Vietnam

§

Poems from Gitmo

§

Death row tanka

§

“She burns like a shot glass of vodka
She burns like a field of poppies”

§

Breaking the code

§

Perseus offers to buy PGW
but small presses who sign on
may be stuck
or worse

§

Are books doomed?

§

Donald Hall in Kansas City

§

Talking with Bruce Covey

§

Talking with Tom Lux

§

Selling out
vs.
getting sold out

§

“Gong fatigue”

§

“How aware was MacNeice
of his creative decline?”

§

“Puts Keats to shame” –
a new poet
fit for the 1840s
fresh from Faber

§

The literary prize
that lost its edge

§

Pete Seeger,
award winning author

§

Daisy Fried
should win
the National Book Critics Circle Award
by acclamation

§

The problem with poetry
in the state capitol
of Montana

§

Poetry vs. song

§

At least this week’s
”death of independent bookstores”
tale
isn’t about a store
closing

§

Parodies are targeted
in the PRC
(the form in question:
e'gao)

§

The thought of what America
would be like
if “ethically inspired TV”
had wide circulation –
well, it troubles my sleep

§

Googleschaden

§

Poe’s Virginia home

§

An interview with Bert Stern
(the poet,
not the fashion photographer)

§

A curious
(but fun)
collection of
arts related videos
that include
a tour of Fallingwater,
Bill Clinton on sax
& Richard Nixon on piano

§

Requiem for Darfur

§

Questions for John Ashbery

§

Questions for Charles Bernstein

§

It’s pretty much last call, Kyle Schlesinger tells me, for Woundwood, down to a few last copies in hand that he found in the back room recently, plus four others still at SPD. Woundwood is a part of VOG, the section of The Alphabet that functions something like a normal book of poems. For people who prefer poems to poetry, it’s probably the place to start with me. The Alphabet, by the way, will be published in its entirety in 2008 by the University of Alabama Press.

Hearing Creeley
with Steve Swallow
& Steve Kuhn

§

This is actually
the most important story
in publishing
right now

§

Canadian lit program
shafts
indie bookstores

§

Poet in residence
at the pub

§

Robert Anton Wilson
has died.

§

And so has
Alice Coltrane

§

The Beauty and the Brute
a.k.a.
”his ‘true wife’”

§

“I give birth to poems
like a hen lays eggs.”

§

Profile of a “gallerist”

§

A short, revisionist history
of the blues

§

Arthur Danto
on Brice Marden
& a painting by Manet

§

Literature,
or at least
the “reality” version

§

Speaking of reality,
I will be in Vegas
all week,
so it may be spotty
hereabouts

Ginsberg Interrupted

§

The best minds
of Palmer, Alaska,
diverse & responsive

§

Thy sins are forgiven,
Wichita!

§

Jack’s scroll
in Neal’s home town

§

“Her fog, her amphetamine & her pearls”

§

"One of the funniest things in talking to Allen Ginsberg
– and a cautionary lesson for us all–
is that Allen thinks
that nearly all Dylan's songs
are about him.
Well, I never say anything.
I just hold my peace.
'Yes, I'm sure that one is Allen!
It's very sweet, isn't it?
And there is one that really is about Allen.
'Just Like a Woman.'"
Marianne Faithfull, from Faithfull, p. 48

 

§

Interviewing
Bob Holman

§

A street poet
in Japan

§

Stupid contest cancelled

§

Modest proposals
for the NEA

§

This week's
Death-of-the-Bookstore
story
is more hopeful.

Maya buys a brownstone

§

How to win an NEA grant
(scroll down,
this tale is a bottom feeder)

§

A poetry marathon
that includes elected officials
in Helena, Montana

§

The art of Jorge Fick
(and Jonathan Williams
on being the last of
the Black Mountain poets)

§

A new generation
of Indian literature

§

On the road
with “the loquacious
Richard Feynman,
the Neal Cassady of physics”

the memoirs of
Freeman Dyson

§

The origin of Gunslinger
lies not in the old west

§

Further tales
of the Cricket Laureate

§

In the copyright war,
the buyers
have begun to fight back

§

Copyright & choreography

§

Ignoring a new law
prohibiting censorship
of student publications

§

Fighting over footnotes
in the daily papers

§

Adopt an art work

§

Artist at work

§

Andy’s back

§

Do museums
really need
to charge admission?

§

Slavoj Zizek’s
op-ed piece
on who’s continuing
Hussein’s legacy

Tillie Olsen,
an icon of short fiction
who published her first book
at the age of 50,
has died

§

Alice Munro
says she’s done

§

Al Young’s New Year’s resolutions

§

The complete recordings of
William Carlos Williams
are now online

§

Profiling Nate Mackey

§

Nate Mackey talking with Tavis Smiley
(also: Cornell West & Buddy Guy)

§

Waldrop’s Baudelaire

§

A new CD
of work by
Anne Tardos & Jackson Mac Low

§

“It’s the end of the world
as we know it”

§

No, it’s really
the end of the world
as we know it

§

And this
certainly must be
the end of the world
as we know it!

§

Understanding hypertext cognition

§

Save bad poetry!
(Neil Astley’s call
to preserve
his type of quietude)

§

Auster’s Beckett
(not austere enough)

§

Reading the faux avant

§

The “cliché childhood from hell” of
S.A. Griffin.

§

Jonathan Mayhew follows through
with more than five things
you don’t know about him

§

So does K. Silem Mohammad,
who goes on
to tag five additional bloggers
(some of whom
have already tagged others)

§

This week’s
death-of-a-bookstore-tale
blames TV

§

But it’s not the only
bookstore
that’s closing

§

The OED wants you

§

Libraries dump books

This was how
I bought
Stanzas in Meditation
for less than a buck

§

Playing games with pricing
at Amazon

§

Academic bloggers
at the MLA

§

Britain’s bookmakers
are betting on
Voldemort
to kill Harry

§

How the web
is transforming
newspapers

§

Same story,
different paper

§

The oral poetics
of Richard Powers

§

Confessional opera

§

English language poetry
in Bahrain

§

John Heath-Stubbs dies

§

The man I once heard
Nelson Mandela
credit
with saving his life
is the new mayor
of Oakland

Thus far, Jordan Davis, Eileen Tabios, and Joseph Massey have responded to my tagging them earlier this week, tho none of them followed the form exactly as I had been given it by J.P. Rangaswami, tagging other bloggers. Jordan & Eileen’s responses will surprise you, tho for very different reasons. (I ran into Jonathan Mayhew at the MLA yesterday, but forgot to ask him about this.)

 

§

 

The giant off-site reading at this year’s MLA meeting occurs tonight, at 9:00 PM at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, 251 South 18^th Street, near the southeast corner of Rittenhouse Square. Readers for the two-hour event include:

Aaron Kunin
Adam Fieled
Sasha Steensen
Dennis Barone
Aldon Neilsen
Bill Howe
Bob Perelman
Brent Cunningham
Brian Kim Stefans
C. A. Conrad
Camille Martin
Carla Harryman
Caroline Bergvall
Cathy Eisenhower
Charles Bernstein
Christian Bök
Eduardo Espino
Elaine Terranova
Ethel Rackin
Evie Shockley
Frank Sherlock
Hank Lazer
Herman Beavers
Jena Osman
Jenn McCreary
Jennifer Scappetone
Joan Retallack
Johanna Drucker
John Wilkinson
Josh Schuster
Barrett Watten
Kathy Lou Schultz
Lamont Steptoe
Laura Moriarty
Leevi Lehto
Linda Russo
Linh Dinh
Loren Goodman
Mark Wallace
Matthew Cooperman
Michael Tod Edgerton
Michael Davidson
Nat Anderson
Nick Monfort
Norma Cole
Patrick Durgin
Peter Middleton
Prageeta Sharma
Rachel DuPlessis
Ron Silliman
Susan Schultz
Timothy Yu
Tom Devaney
Tom Orange
Tyrone Williams
Walter Lew
Will Esposito
Yunte Huang

Project Row Houses:
community as art,
art as community

§

Heck of a job, Gracie!

Grace Shulman,
who made The Nation,
America’s oldest progressive journal,
a hotbed of neocon poetics
& the home room
of the School of Quietude,
has left her position
as poetry editor there
after 34 years

John Palattella
will replace her

§

The Nation
on Hart Crane’s
The Bridge
(subscription required)

§

In addition to
the Electronic Poetry Center,
& the British Electronic Poetry Center
as centers for gathering
links & data
about the poets of a given nation,
there is also the
Australian Poetry Resources Internet Library
(April)

§

The supermarket in California
where Allen Ginsberg
once saw Walt Whitman
& penned
”A Supermarket in California”
will become the site
of a supermarket
once again,
complete with
“Two Buck Chuck”

§

The Crystal text
on language

§

Making the white space
in the language
visible

§

Stopping violence
through grammar

§

Not pleased
with
Jacques Roubaud

§

American Oulipo?
3by3by3

§

The best
(of many good)
response(s)
to my note yesterday
is this item
from the MailBucket
po-list,
but it’s truncated
& I have no idea
who wrote it!

§

Orhan Pamuk’s
Nobel lecture

§

A tale by
Nadine Gordimer

§

“and, now, the wizened poet”

§

The Washington Times
on
Walter Benjamin
on
Charles Baudelaire
(complete
with Lemony Snicket jokes!)

§

“fifteen years after the death
of Earle Birney
in 1995 …”

Canadian math
put to the test

§

Reading Rushdie
in Kashmir

§

Interviewing
Alice Walker

§

A contemporary Indonesian poet
is translated into English

§

Review of a grim bio
of William Burroughs, Jr.

§

Doctor Dickens

§

Carol Gilligan
goes to
YouTube

§

Pibgorn
is a strange little web comic
that has been retelling
Midsummer Night’s Dream
for some time now

§

Op-Art pioneer
Henry Pearson
has died

§

George Lakoff
on the
November elections

For its 60^th anniversary,
Chicago Review
has put online
work from its archives
including
seriously silly work of mine
from the 1960s,
plus pieces
by Al Young & David Bromige
from the feature
David Melnick & I
edited on poetry in
the SF Bay Area
in 1970

§

Check out also
the three items
excerpted
from the Spring1958 issue
that included
William Burroughs,
Jack Kerouac,
& Robert Duncan

(it was the fall number,
also including Burroughs,
that the university
suppressed)

(read Ginsberg’s letter
from the censored issue
here)

§

A history
of the Chicago Review
(PDF file)

§

Lyn Hejinian, Sharon Olds & Carl Phillips
have been elected
to the Board of Chancellors
of the American Academy of Poets

§

kari edwards
reads
(10MB mp3 file)

§

The Chicago Manual of Style
available by subscription
online

§

The Senate confirms
Dana Gioia
at the NEA
for four more years

§

The world’s first computer
is 2,100 year old!

§

Joshua Weiner
on
Kenneth Koch

§

Shelly Jackson
interviews
Vito Acconci

§

The painter is an ass
& thereby
loses his day job
as a teacher

§

Finding Borges
all over again

§