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Stirring the Fire: Artistic Wisdom from Denise Levertov
I’ve lately been rereading Denise Levertov—always a refreshing pleasure. Here’s the poetic preface to her 1959 collection, her third book, With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads. The poem is a translation from the Spanish poem “El Artista,” which itself is a translation from the original Toltec poem, “Toltecatl,” written in Nahuatl probably between the 10th and 12th centuries CE. THE ARTIST The artist: disciple, abundant, multiple, restless. The true artist: capable, practicing, skillful; maintains dialogue with his heart, meets things with his mind.Read More
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My Profession
I just signed up for a free account with the London Review of Books so I could read Slavoj Žižek’s thought-provoking take on Ukraine. I mention this for one reason only. LRB is the first and only site of any kind—journalistic or “literary”—that actually offers a pop-up choice of professions that includes poets.Read More
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Rich
The White House has embraced con-artist Kenny Goldsmith. He will lead a “poetry workshop for children” with Mrs. Obama. This should be rich. For years now Goldsmith has been insulting the intelligence of college students, readers of the Harriet blog and Poetry magazine (see here and here), as well as credulous members of what passes for the “avant-garde” in this country. According to his Wikipedia page, Goldsmith’s classes at University of Pennsylvania, Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, involve “appropriation, theft, stealing, plundering and sampling.Read More
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Submission
Linh Dinh has a new Harriet post called “Poetry and Technology,”and it fairly bristled with interesting ideas. “One may begin writing a poem in complete freedom, that is, in complete randomness,” he notes, “but one should end the exasperating process in abject submission.” Another way of putting is that writing a poem is like digging your own grave! (Linh also says, “With irony, everything is possible.”) One surprise in his post—surprising to me, though others may not find it so—is Linh’s revelation that he writes on a laptop while lying on his belly.Read More
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On the Poet’s Role
After two absurdly relaxing weeks in Mexico I am only just now digging out from under emails, backlogged paperwork—you know the routine. But before the weekend overtakes me I want to pass along one of the most evocative meditations I’ve read about the role of the poet: Eavan Boland’s “Islands Apart: A Notebook”, from the latest (May 2008) issue of Poetry.Read More
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Hugo Claus—A Goodbye and a Poem
“Belgian writer, poet and artist Hugo Claus has died aged 78, ending his life by euthanasia, his wife has said.” I knew Hugo Claus’s poetry only from anthologies until recently, when I stumbled upon his Greetings: Selected Poems.Read More
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Blake on Imagination
“To the Eyes of a Miser a Guinea is more beautiful than the Sun & a bag worn with the use of Money has more beautiful proportions than a Vine filled with Grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way. Some See Nature all Ridicule & Deformity & by these I shall not regulate my proportions, & Some Scarce see Nature at all But to the Eyes of the Man of Imagination Nature is Imagination itself.Read More
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Little Somethings
A little something worth remembering, from someone named Perie Longo … “The Inuit root word anerca means both to breathe and to make poetry.” … and a little something worth forgetting from Charles Bernstein.Read More
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Adios, Jonathan Williams
Ron Silliman has posted a small fortune of information about the unjustly neglected North Carolina poet Jonathan Williams here.Read More