Poets would like to get married in order to suffer enough to write Pulitzer Prize-winning books, but parachute out after their partners have burned them with cigarettes only five or six times. They do not understand that marriage is not about being happy or safe. It is about having children. We are proud to...
It’s that time of year when we as a society look back at the previous year’s excellence and accomplishments in film, television, and music. However, one cultural field is often overlooked by critics—blurbs! That’s right, it’s time for the Blurby Awards, honoring excellence in blurb writing for poetry books. So without further ado, we at...
Martin Woodside’s new anthology of Romanian translations, Of Gentle Wolves, adds much to the landscape of contemporary English language poetry. Woodside, in his translator’s note, claims that “contemporary Romanian poets work largely in obscurity and are often dismissed as a marginal, even irrelevant, group;” he argues, however, that these Romanian poets are relevant, diverse, and...
My personal history of violence is quite visible, yes, and it challenges first of all myself. Valzhyna Mort’s previous two poetry collections, I’m as Thin as Your Eyelashes and Factory of Tears, garnered international acclaim, and she quickly developed a reputation as an electrifying reader. Mort has received numerous awards and fellowships throughout Europe...
“I wield a dull knife / to my way of seeing: / the cloud-thoughts, not muscles, / feel the threat.” Jennifer Kronovet’s poems from her prize-winning collection Awayward (Boa Editions, Ltd. 2009) are neatly carved sculptures, in which every single word exists for a reason—mainly to hone in on our somewhat strained relationship with language....
Click on the links below to hear Nikola Madzirov read from his translated poetry collection, Remnants of Another Age, performed at San Diego State University, April 2011. Read our interview with Madzirov here. I Don’t Know Shadows Pass Us By Before We Were Born Usual Summer Nightfall When Someone Goes Away Everything That’s Been...
“I was a witness not a victim … My job was to witness and record the ‘it’ of their lives, to celebrate those who don’t have a place in this world to stand and call home … My role as a witness is to give voice to the voiceless and hope to the hopeless, of...
The beauty and musicality of the English language cannot be overlooked in Susan Rich’s third book, The Alchemist’s Kitchen (a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year). She invents new forms and reinvents the tried and true, exploring every device and tool with a keen ear and deft...
I think I must have a long-standing obsession with women who transform into monsters or animal spirits. The idea that women necessarily must live in two worlds—the animal and the human—kind of crosses over multiple cultures… Jeannine Hall Gailey is the Seattle-area author of two books of poetry, Crab Creek Review, writes book reviews,...
With all due respect to excellent organizations like the Academy and the Poetry Society of America, as a matter of my own eccentricities I much prefer the informal, personal, improvised forum of Slate. Robert Pinsky began his relationship with Slate.com in 1996. At the time, publicly available Internet was still a new phenomenon (Hotmail, the...
Be aware of the following idiom! If a German person ever calls you a bottle, don’t think you have a long neck or a nice figure. Being a bottle simply means that you’re a loser; perhaps we’re speaking of an empty bottle here. I recently moved to Austria to translate poetry on a Fulbright...
Tea Party Leader Betrius Lamp Slams Obama for Supporting Poet Marriage
May 13, 2012
Karolyn Forché’s “The Kernel”
Apr 14, 2012
Belle Lettre on the Postmodern
Mar 4, 2012
It’s the Blurby Awards!
Feb 26, 2012
Escorting Romanian Poetry to the English Speaking World—Of Gentle Wolves: An Anthology of Romanian Poetry edited by Martin Woodside
Feb 5, 2012
An Interview with Valzhyna Mort
Feb 3, 2012
Jennifer Kronovet: I Talk to Another More Than Myself
Feb 1, 2012
Author Audio: Nikola Madzirov
Jan 23, 2012
Update: A Place to Stand: Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Docu-Memoir is Scheduled for Release Next Spring
Jan 19, 2012
The Alchemist’s Kitchen by Susan Rich
Dec 21, 2011
