A Poetry Daily Prose Feature:
"Once you realize that writing is a process and nobody out there is waiting with bated breath for what you'll do next, you can relax a bit. It becomes a habit of being. Seeing a poem grow from my hand onto the page feels good to me, and I'm not in a race to finish it. It isn’t piecework. That film image of the suffering artist is a bourgeois American joke as far as I'm concerned, but it's interesting how many poets feel they have to buy into it. Almost as if that alleged suffering is a justification for what they do, and the public will have more regard for them if they claim to sweat and toil. You’re lucky if you manage to get the time to go along with your inclination to write. It's not a curse; it’s a chance to give yourself an authentic life instead of an excuse." —Brendan Galvin, Atlantic Flyway To Whirl is King: An Interview with Brendan Galvin
Sharon Olds, C. S. Giscombe, Maureen N. McLane:
New books reviewed by Barbara Berman. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Ordinary pie:
A tribute to Hayden Carruth. (Audio from NPR's All Things Considered)
"I'd make a mess, then clean it up."
A brief chat with Steve Orlen. (Kalamazoo Gazette)
No stranger to hard work:
Donald Hall's Unpacking the Boxes: A Memoir of a Life in Poetry reviewed by Floyd Skloot. (The Boston Globe)
Charlotte Kohler, 99
An obituary for the longtime editor of Virginia Quarterly Review. (The Washington Post)
"Part long-distance romance, part artistic collaboration, part AA meeting:"
Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, edited by Thomas Travisano with Saskia Hamilton, reviewed by Christopher Benfey. (The New Republic)
"He prepared for the moment. He finished his eternal business."
Cunthia Haven on Czesław Miłosz's last days. (Los Angeles Times)
"The Nobel committee has no clue about American literature."
Adam Kirsch weighs in. (Slate)
Poet's Choice:
Mary Karr introduces poems by Hayden Carruth. (The Washington Post)
Walcott on Walcott:
James Campbell talks with Derek Walcott. (Guardian)
Tying " tie the unruly monster of human being down with gossamer strings:"
The Collected Poems, by Kathleen Raine, reviewed by M. Wynn Thomas. (Guardian)
"My theory is that most people like poetry. Really."
The approach of National Poetry Day has Matt Harvey thinking about this year's theme: work. (Guardian)
Poetry, Yeats, and life with Raymond Carver:
Richie Beirne talks with Tess Gallagher. (Audio from The Arts Show and RTÉ Radio 1.)
Or is it, "Fuggedaboudit, postmodernists"?
Max Fisher argues that it's postmodernism in American literature that the Nobel committee disdains. (The New Republic)
"From a jewel-hard artificer... to a gurulike discourser:"
Letters of Ted Hughes, selected and edited by Christopher Reid, reviewed by Richard Eder. (The New York Times)
"Arts are always in jeopardy in tough times."
Halley Bondy talks with National Endowment for the Arts chairman Dana Gioia. (Back Stage)
American Life in Poetry:
Ted Kooser introduces a poem by John Maloney. (American Life in Poetry)
Friedrich Schiller dunned for TV and radio fee:
Collection understandably difficult in the case of the German poet, dead for 200 years. (BBC News)
"So off you go, infants of the brain"
• Billy Collins's Ballistics reviewed by Janet Maslin. (The New York Times)
• From the Poetry Daily archive: Two Poems from Ballistics
Poetry Ireland turns 30:
Vincent Woods talks with Director Joe Woods as the organization prepares to launch 'All-Ireland' poetry day. (Audio from The Arts Show and RTÉ Radio 1.)
"Scared into neatness by the wild sublime."
• Clive James's Opal Sunset: Selected Poems, 1958-2008 reviewed by Abigail Deutsch. (Village Voice)
• From the Poetry Daily archive:
"A Gesture towards James Joyce"
"Little Low Heavens"
Recently Arrived Titles
These just in... Highlighted titles may be purchased from Poetry Daily / Amazon.com. A complete
list of all books and journals recently received at Poetry Daily is also available.
- Martial's Epigrams: A Selection, Garry Wills (Viking)
- Intruder, Jill Bialosky (Alfred A. Knopf)
- The Best American Poetry 2008, ed. Charles Wright and David Lehman (Scribner)
- Warhorses, Yusef Komunyakaa (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Zong!, M. NourbeSe Philip, as told to the author by Setaey Adamu Boateng (Wesleyan University Press)
- Hide Now, Glyn Maxwell (Picador)
- Miscreants (new in paperback), James Hoch (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.)
- Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology, David Hinton (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- The House of Your Dream: An International Collection of Prose Poetry, ed. Robert Alexander, Dennis Maloney (White Pine Press)
- Facing High Water, John Brandi (White Pine Press)
- Ghost Alphabet, Al Maginnes (White Pine Press)
- Village Limits, Greg Joly (Adastra Press)
- The Heaven-Sent Leaf, Katy Lederer (BOA Editions)
- The Moon Makes Its Own Plea, Wendy Mnookin (BOA Editions)
Recent Anthologies, etc.
- The Best American Poetry 2008, ed. Charles Wright and David Lehman (Scribner)
- White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Brenda Wineapple (Alfred A. Knopf)
- Best Thought, Worst Thought: On Art, Sex, Work and Death, Don Paterson (Graywolf Press)
- 100 Essential Modern Poems by Women, ed. Joseph Parisi and Kathleen Welton (Ivan R. Dee, Publisher)
- The Monster Loves His Labyrinth: Notebooks, Charles Simic (Ausable Press)
- Quote Poet Unquote: Contemporary Quotations on Poets and Poetry, ed. Dennis O'Driscoll (Copper Canyon Press)
- The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology, ed. Edward Hirsch and Eavan Boland (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.)
- The Art of the Poetic Line, James Longenbach (Graywolf Press)
- The Art of Attention: A Poet's Eye, Donald Revell (Graywolf Press)
- The Modern Element: Essays on Contemporary Poetry, Adam Kirsch (Norton)
- Poetry Daily Essentials 2007, Diane Boller, Don Selby, ed.s (Sourcebooks)
Past Features:
Original
articles, interviews, selections from special collections and journal issues, and more are available in the Archives.
