Poetry & Poets in Rags

Dear Poetry Aficionados, Poetry & Poets in Rags blog This is the final installment of Poetry & Poets in Rags, completing 10 ye...

live in the outlying provinces--Khost, Paktia, Maidan Wardak, Kunduz, Kandahar, Herat, and Farah--where the group functions in secret. Man...

intensive care unit earlier on Wednesday. The 59-year-old poet has been on a hunger strike for 22 days now. "I was the one who forc...

"Freedom to Publish Turkey" including right violations between June 2012 and 2013. "At least 27 authors, poets, translators...

of poems just before her death. A selection of these poems was published posthumously in the collection Kantelson ("Toppling Sun...

[Jane] Varley said, that draws people to art. "Art is an endeavor to try to make sense of chaos," she said, "and in the c...

as "opaque" and "inscrutable"--the same Anne Carson who became a hit when her compulsively readable, gay coming-of-age...

with multi-colored plugs,  and answering the siren call of cell phones. I always tell my students--for the most part 18 to 20 year olds, t...

the disconnect between the rigorous approach to learning the classics, and the often lascivious or emotional subject matter of the poetry....

or replicate, Dante's trick of ending each book with the word "stelle"--stars--but then if he'd done so he would have lo...

attempt to transcribe, so I stuck to image making. [Les] Murray has a distinctive reading style, breathless and wheezy, rat-a-tat with emp...

may reveal affected writers share a commonality in their writings.  An exploration of the works may help find a way for society to better ...

fail to see is that the time for merely edifying America as to the realities of language is over; the time for speaking primarily in the lan...

will take some care, but, before delving into Dex's ­disturbingly interesting soul, we should look at the big picture. Everybody knows--...

by William Matthews The first one was for the clock from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Another Beer by William Matthews ...

training regimen, [Peter] Sloterdijk implies that a religion is justified only by its saints. Anyone who is not a saint is insignificant, an...

that is made up of our memories of a departed person, especially as these cling to that person's belongings. Bruce Snider, who lives and...

By Richard Foerster My neighbor's cat, all nimble from Wesley McNair: The Portland Press Herald: Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetr...

is the visit of Pope Francis to Brazil this week. Will the focus now turn to poverty and social justice? Is liberation theology returning wi...

Actaeon breaks another taboo. He has no alternative, as before, and no further story, except, perhaps, that he will be forced (by loneliness...

situation of no passport-to travel-no travel- no asylum--a world citizen passport has been issued to Snowden by Garry Davis--"World Cit...

A poem. By Jennifer Freed from The Christian Science Monitor: What carries us through ~~~~~~~~~~~

Samuel Beckett used to drive from The Oregonian: Poetry: 'Neighbor' by Chris Anderson ~~~~~~~~~~~

July 21, 2013 2:00 AM My neighbor in a white sedan from Portsmouth Herald News: Random Acts of Poetry: Animal Talk ~~~~~~~~~~~

Dropped into life from Post-Bulletin: Farm Poem--2013 ~~~~~~~~~~~

different from the "jangle" jazz rhythms of [Andrei] Voznesensky's beatnik-style series, which includes "The Last Tram...

educator, child advocate and interior decorator, and she had a penchant for progressive politics and charitable activism. "Cast a net...

and his family published some of his work posthumously. Among the poems was a piece called Let it be hushed, in which he reflected on th...

an affluent family. Yet if I decided to slog it out it was because I wished to. (Ishatapattu kashtapattaen). And, till a little later, I d...

Dear Poetry Aficionados, Poetry & Poets in Rags blog This is the second to last issue of Poetry & Poets in Rags. Next week...

Trayvon, Redux It is difficult/to get the news from poems/yet men die miserably every day/for lack/of what is found there./Hear me out/f...

political activist Edvin Sugarev has declined an appeal in an open letter from a group of intellectuals to end his hunger strike against t...

My temporary release is indeed a breath of fresh air. But freedom and justice are not achieved by mere yearning, only by struggle." T...

"Churches have a tradition of generosity. The aim is to get them to consider organ donation alongside the donation of time and money....

innocent bystanders. Those drones belong to the government." The self isn't guilty; the state is. On the other hand, when our ind...

an important aspect of Arab culture, the reliance on lyricism, poetry, and words to insist on the memory of that which has been taken: lif...

biography is seeking to dispel the "myth" surrounding the 1996 Nobel Literature Prize nominee, whose centenary was celebrated ea...

are powered by a taut, refined syntax: "She is a beast constructed for smooth sliding," [Anne] Carson writes of one character: ...

on the back of the earthenware dish, which dates back to around 1200. Iroha uta, an ancient Japanese poem that uses 47 Japanese characters...

(100 copies were originally published in 1978) and it arrived signed and with pressed flowers in it--someone before me had treasured this ...

On the Phalanx in History Only a few were sent to study with anyone from Seth Abramson: The Brooklyn Rail: Four ~~~~~~~~~~~ If you w...

who live in the bottom of the society. And when I came out of prison, I was also living at the bottom of society. I know these people, the p...

by Miller Williams Six hundred years ago, more or less, from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: After a Brubeck Concert by Mill...

around 500 C.E., the Temple had been gone for 400 years--as much time as separates us today from Shakespeare. For the Amoraim, there were no...

by Lisel Mueller about the way we've assigned human characteristics to the inanimate things about us. Mueller lives in Illinois and is o...

the things we love for what they are"? Suddenly, having this time read the poem backward, its full beauty broke over my head. The poem ...

By Richard Blanco A Cuban like me living in Maine? Well, from Wesley McNair: The Portland Press Herald: Take Heart: A Conversation in Po...

and Sophie Mayer explain the motivation behind an exciting social media platform Like the Turkish resistance, the new rolling online antho...

his mother died of peritonitis, and his father, Captain Reginald Keyes, returned with the child to his own father's house. SKK, commemor...

and to American domestic politics, about which he seems strikingly well‑informed: "Naturally the Oregon primary was a bad blow; I was u...

sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country--was used sarcastically by Wilfred Owen to skewer the kind of patriotism that led to ...

A Birthday Poem for Nat Nat, will there be any large jewelry cutters at your party? from The Brooklyn Rail: Five ~~~~~~~~~~~ ...