Society

A few weeks ago, the miraculous Metta Sama(~), master of , hosted a discussion under the Twitter hashtag #thethepoetics with editors from , , , , and , as well as a host of other poets. The discussion covered the life (and writing) of editors, the world of publishing, ebooks, and self-publishing. Download #thethepoetics small [...]

“They imagine a future by practicing it.” – Michael Davidson, on the non-democratic and elitist writing communities So, I just got back from attending my first &NOW Festival of New Writing in San Diego. Overall, I enjoyed the balance of panels celebrating experimentation and panels attempting to engage texts or movements more critically. I am [...]

1. The traditional book was based on a form that needed capital, influence, etc. This meant that gatekeepers were required. Getting through the gates endowed an author with certain benefits: editing, layout, publicity, and—perhaps most important—legitimacy. a. The system inevitably mistakes its own guardians of capital for guardians of true literary value. Certainly these interests [...]

Photo by . I always liked making things up, improvising, using my “imagination.” I do not remember my dreams because I spend the greater part of my day restructuring the past and fitting it into schemas of relationship and disrelationships, and not to any discernible end. In short, I am always in a dream. Perhaps [...]

Neither a memoir nor a novel, The Poetry Lesson (Princeton UP, 2010) by Andrei Codrescu measures the speed of our psycho-poetic times. It seems we are moving faster and faster knowing less and less where. On the sheen of it, the book runs through the first day of an Intro to Poetry Writing class wherein [...]

Michael Montlack’s new poem collection Cool Limbo, for starters, looks really cool before it’s even opened. The collection establishes a definite and intentional first impression: with its sassy cover illustrating a bygone scene (addressed in the title poem): a certain sort of girl, luxuriating in her aloofness, sunning on a deck chair near some backyard [...]

The best art school I ever attended was my childhood friend, Marco Munoz’ studio above a Florist shop on Elizabeth Avenue, Elizabeth, New Jersey, circa 1977 to 1980. We were kids, the sons of factory workers, and immigrants/exiles from Cuba and Peru and, by all the usual expectations and social indicators, we were not supposed [...]