From the category archives:

Poetry Is Not a Project!

All the People of the Universe (An interview with Dorothea Lasky)

Thumbnail image for All the People of the Universe (An interview with Dorothea Lasky) April 16, 2010

(To sum up our tryptych of posts for Dorothea Lasky, I present a brief and delicious interview) It seems like some of the best writing that’s happening right now is coming out of the Amherst/ Northampton area. I’m thinking of Natalie Lyalin, Heather Christle, Emily Pettit. Matthew Zapruder went to school there. So did you. [...]

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Some Sort of Truth: Dorothea Lasky’s BLACK LIFE Hurts Like Joy

Thumbnail image for Some Sort of Truth: Dorothea Lasky’s BLACK LIFE Hurts Like Joy April 15, 2010

Dorothea Lasky is a poet of petulant grace. The particular way she does is she carves into the alphabet for poetry’s hurtfully buried, metastasized epiphanies of black life. Thence comes the fragments of jagged wonder she strings together to decorate her verse with pretty conflict. Her wonder (love and awe) is heavy and plain, stilted [...]

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Dorothea Lasky’s POETRY IS NOT A PROJECT or Cutting More Lines in the Cosmic Divide

Thumbnail image for Dorothea Lasky’s POETRY IS NOT A PROJECT or Cutting More Lines in the Cosmic Divide April 13, 2010

Dorothea Lasky’s POETRY IS NOT A PROJECT made huge waves when debuted at this years AWP. The newest book on UDP‘s Dossier imprint, Lasky lays out, in 19 quick pages, a theory of poetry that reaches back through High Romanticism into a more hermetic time. Illustrated beautiful throughout by Sarah Glidden, Lasky’s theory pushes against [...]

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Do You Know This Beautiful Book?

Thumbnail image for Do You Know This Beautiful Book? April 6, 2010

See more about Dottie Lasky’s POETRY IS NOT A PROJECT here Get it at AWP while the ink is still wet. Available at the UDP portion of the “table X publishing commune.”

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Reciting your own poems from memory is for supernerds, or the worst project of my life

Thumbnail image for Reciting your own poems from memory is for supernerds, or the worst project of my life March 30, 2010

Concerning all the recent discussions about memory, recitation, etc, I thought I would try it in my own way. I should disclose that I never recite my own poems from memory at readings. I think it is corny, weird, it makes me uncomfortable, and frankly, to spend that much time memorizing your own work is kind of sick.

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