San Francisco’s Angry Poet One of my favorite poets, August Kleinzahler, uses a Smith-Corona typewriter exclusively, and sometimes while sitting on the toilet. In the photo, the bad boy of American poetry has a drink at one of his hangouts, the Zam Zam bar in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.
The movie Paterson and Jim Jarmusch give us the opportunity to compare the work of making poetry with material forms of creative work and the waged work of bus driving.
Caleb Femi’s family lived in a housing estate where the walkways were swabbed down every Monday. His imagination transformed the space into a wonderland.
The Lincoln Journal Star reports that Nebraska poet Matt Mason won national attention for his poem “The Start,” which appeared in the New York Times. He drafted the poem three years ago when he wasn’t comfortable with the political climate, later realizing the poem’s relevance last month as an angry mob swept the Capitol. The phrase […]
The older I get the more I look like the poet Robert Lowell. If I could write poetry like Lowell, I’d be set.
This is the only filmed interview I’ve been able to find of the great poet Karl Shapiro. It’s sourced from a 16mm film by Karl Shapiro and Arthur Hoyle, Santa Monica, CA: Pyramid Films, 1976.
Billie Nardozzi writes poems every week for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. It’s for love, not money: He pays for the privilege of getting them into print.
Claremont Graduate University is handing out a couple of huge poetry prizes here in Claremont, California. Earlier this month in a press release, CGU announced Marianne Boruch won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for her book The Book of Hours. The prize, given to a mid-career poet, is one of the largest cash prizes […]
The following poem was delivered by inauguration poet Richard Blanco at President Obama’s second inaugural today. The text of the poem was provided by the Presidential Inaugural Committee. “One Today” One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores, peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth […]
The Presidential Inaugural Committee has announced that Richard Blanco has been chosen to read a poem at President Obama’s inauguration ceremony on Jan. 21. The choice marks a couple firsts: Blanco will become the first Hispanic and the first gay poet to read at a presidential inauguration. He will also, at 44, be the youngest […]
Longing for some memorable holiday cards? How about a beautiful Christmas card from Robert Frost with one of his poems printed on it? In 1926 a recently opened letterpress shop in New York City named Spiral Press printed a book of poems for Frost. One of the owners of the press, Joseph Blumenthal, printed one […]
The first edition of Robert Frost’s third collection of poems, Mountain Interval, was published in 1916 by Henry Holt and Company and was dedicated “To you who least need reminding that before this interval of the South Branch under black mountains, there was another interval, the Upper at Plymouth, where we walked in spring beyond […]