The Other

Congrats to Rae Armatrout, whose book VERSED won the 2010 NBCC Award. Here’s her poem “Guess”: 1 The jacaranda, for instance, is beautiful but not serious. That much I can guess. And that the view is softened by curtains. That the present moment is an exception, is the queen bee a hive serves, or else [...]

(Disclaimer: Ok, yes. This is a post about pens. But bear with me—I actually do have an idea here.) I found my favorite pen at home—my mother’s house in Northern Virginia. The townhouse is a small one, and is filled with thirteen years worth of the kind of stuff a family with an inclination toward [...]

Above is painter Sean McElroy’s “So Just Be It.” I have known Sean a long time, and I admire both his art and intellect. I was reminded of his work yesterday as I settled down with Ben Lerner’s new book of poems, Mean Free Path (Copper Canyon Press, 2010)—a book I’ve been excited to read [...]

Interview Part 1: Interview Part 2: A HILL | by Anthony Hecht In Italy, where this sort of thing can occur, I had a vision once – though you understand It was nothing at all like Dante’s, or the visions of saints, And perhaps not a vision at all. I was with some friends, Picking [...]

CHAPTER 10 (from Tracking the Marvelous by John Bernard Myers) “Did Grace Hartigan really look like the photograph Cecil Beaton took of her?” I was asked recently. Yes, she did. I was cross the day I first climbed the stairs to her studio on Essex Street. Oh God, I was saying to myself, another female [...]

Charles Olson measured 6’8″ tall and like many mammals of large appetite he died young, at 59. His life revolved around the history of the small coastal town of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and its present, where he was born and lived until his liver failed. Vulcan was a god of fire in its destructive and beneficial [...]

First, I want to say it is an honor to be blogging with so many great minds and poets. Some of you I’ve met in person, and many of you I haven’t. I hope to get to know all of you, at least virtually. It will be fun to see where blog goes. Now, onto [...]