he says, underscoring the seriousness of the label "kafir," or apostate.
[E.L.] Doctorow, the author of "Ragtime" and other books, criticized the Chinese government for its "sorry record of artist intimidation." 
to know what they cannot access," Reporters Without Borders said. "For the sake of transparency, Apple should release a complete list of the censored apps--if any are being censored--and the selection criteria used. If Apple has agreed to withdraw some of the App Store products under pressure from the authorities, it will have joined the club of companies that are accomplices to the censorship of news and information in China."
By Martín Espada. Edited by Melissa Tuckey, January 1, 2010
knew theoretically, and most people glimpse sooner or later: that they are building ramparts against the dark and trying to believe in them, however flimsy they may be.
There are records of folk songs bearing similarities to Auld Lang Syne circulating as early as the 16th century, and Burns wasn't the only poet to try incorporating them into his own work:
Your husband must be a really nice guy to let you come with us"
for a $25 million mansion-like "Home for Poetry," which one trustee characterized as the foundation's "monument" to itself; the granting of a job to foundation president John Barr's wife; and the spending of more than $1 million on a Web site and a brow-raising $706,000 on a survey to determine poetry's place in American life today.
is "the point of roughness." A few days after solstice, in a celebration with origins most likely in Celtic mythology, a group of boys would kill a wren and carry it through the village, singing and asking for money.
in the traditions of 16th-century prosody but equally at home in the countercultures of San Franscisco where he lived from the mid-1950s until his death. He wrote in strict metre and stanza form and also in the looser forms more associated with 20th-century American poetry. His series of laments for friends who died of Aids, collected in The Man with Night Sweats (1992), is as moving and eloquent a sequence as Thomas Hardy's poems of lament after 1912.
in a way from their own actions, have kinda set up a model for the state poet laureates. And that was that you attempt to engage the public as much as you can. I found that I was so engaged with invitations to appear at elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, libraries, book clubs, retirement homes--that really became my project, to try to meet as many people as possible, face to face, and trying to present them with the poetry I thought they would find appealing.
case of cooperation. The history of poetry knows a number of examples of poets being man and wife, though those were not very happy marriages. But, unless I am mistaken, there has been no case of a wife being a poet and the husband being a translator. This gives a lot of advantages to the translator, because he gets to translate poems that we have lived through together. [--Vera Pavlova]
of Minneota, Minnesota. He died ten months ago, before his book of new and selected poems "The Chain Letter of the Soul" was published. Here's his poem "Gait," courtesy of Milkweed Editions.
of scientific study that have led to the remarkable capabilities of splitting atoms: "Sage science splits/Each atom knit." But the speaker makes a rather starting statement when he mentions the overlooked purpose for splitting that tiny atom; instead of releasing the power of the atom for destructive purposes, the speaker reminds mankind that the original urge to learn through science is "to find apace/Thy hiding place."
and lose some weight, reflect on the ways that eating healthy and losing weight will improve the time you spend with your family, or your sex life, or whatever your value may be. Personally, I like New Year's resolutions--we all can be better people. Maybe they're so hard to keep because we make them too specific. Maybe they should be more general, like "Next year, I will be more thoughtful," or "Next year, I will not give up hope."
however. Its scope became narrower, almost pinched in some areas. Losses took a heavy toll on opportunities for the general reader to find a range of authors from pop to serious and to enjoy the special qualities of the independent bookstore.
by Philip Booth
learned this week of the death of Rachel Wetzsteon, our poetry editor. Rachel only joined TNR a few months ago, and she had just begun to make her mark on the poetry we publish. But we admired her own poems for years: at 42, she was one of the best poets of her generation, distinguished by her natural gift for form, her tough urban romanticism, and her appealing combination of melancholy and wit.
small children is the way in which they cause us to explain the world. "What's that?" they ask, and we have to come up with an answer. Here Christine Stewart-Nunez, who lives and teaches in South Dakota, tries to teach her son a new word only to hear it come back transformed. 
recently turned up in the basement of a Masonic lodge in Methuen, Mass. It's not a poem or an essay, but rather an attendance book Frost kept while teaching eighth grade at the Second Grammar School in Methuen in 1893.
In memory of WG Sebald
from "Medea in Athens", one of a number of psychologically complex dramatic monologues by the remarkable Victorian poet, Augusta Webster. The poem is from her 1879 collection, Portraits, and you can read the full text here.
is a classic of couplets or Kurals (1330 rhyming Tamil couplets) or aphorisms celebrated not only by the Tamil people but all mankind. It was authored by the ancient Tamil Saint Thiruvalluvar, and is considered to be one of the first literary works to focus on ethics, in Shramana literature of India. However it begins with salutation to Adi Bhagwan. Thirukkural expounds various aspects of life and is one of the most important works in Tamil.
he wrote poem-letters to his wife which were later published as Letters to Martha (Heinemann, 1968). As he said concerning the letters
do have little in common. No analysis of the telephone signal will tell you anything about what the caller is saying to you. Any more than a study of paper and ink will give you any insight into David Copperfield or an examination of the Globe Theater will help you understand Hamlet. Likewise, the frequency of a sound-stimulus and the electrical response the stimulus evokes in the auditory cortex are entirely dissimilar.
Wings of Gabriel, the best collection of [Muhammad] Iqbal's Urdu poetry. From time to time, I will be presenting translations from this collection. 
By Richard Wink
to defending the British Empire, The New York Times states, adding, "A conservative by instinct, a rebel at heart, his views were unpredictable: many echoed the mood of the street, some were stridently pugnacious, a few unapologetically eccentric." Some of those views, particularly his racism and support of imperialism proved to be unpopular in later years, but his works continue to be read and appreciated today.
Late
And when at last they gave his passport back
)))) Listen
by Mark Smith-Soto
contains faith and violence and all manner of music. One of those poems, "Temple Beth Israel," takes its name from a synagogue that was bombed in the summer of 1964. It considers faith and doubt co-existing in a world that does not welcome all of us. It is a letter about learning and risking joy in the face of tremendous loss. A love letter to a world in which faith and hope are unconquerable because they are boundless.
short story writer, poet and the wife of one of New Zealand's greatest poets, the late James K. Baxter, has died in Wellington. She was 82.
who led the fight to use sports as a weapon against the racist policies of South Africa. Ultimately, South Africa was barred from almost all international athletic competitions, including the Olympics, from 1964 to 1991.
in 1991 from his home city of Chicago and his beloved Chicago Bears. He was a creative soul and a man after God's heart. He wrote poetry and was always inventing something.
and was often the DJ at parties.
and 12 books of poetry, including 1971's "There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves," which has sold over a million copies.
was the $100 million she donated in 2002 to an obscure, Chicago-based poetry association that revealed something deeply personal: [Ruth] Lilly was a poet at heart. Not only did she read it, she wrote it, though to little acclaim.
earlier this month with a copy of the new book, "Heart, Laughter, and Sentiment--Poems and Short Stories for Your Every Day," which he wrote with his granddaughter. Judging from the book, Pacetti was the kind of person you would want for a friend, full of good humor, faith, and wisdom.
in her 60s when she started in earnest to pursue her career as a writer. She met the legendary W. O. Mitchell, the author of Who Has Seen The Wind. Mitchell had come to Windsor as the writer-in-residence. It was Mitchell who saw in Danny a writer of enormous talent. He offered to help, mostly to encourage her and to light a fire under her. From there, her work blossomed, and she started publishing.
for calypso and flamenco music into a successful career as a producer and critic of what is now termed world music. A polyglot fluent in six languages, Roberts published four non-fiction books (three of them on music), a handful of short mystery stories and, as a young man, some poetry. 
all of her life. During the past 40 years, she expressed herself writing short stories, prose and poetry. In November of 2002 she was honored with the International Poet of Merit Award. One of her last published poems appeared in Centres of Expression, Nobel House Publishers, in 2007. This poem was written expressly to the many people she knew in the Jamestown area whom she could no longer get out to see because of aging and poor health.
first published Maori women writers and is acknowledged as paving the way for later writers such as Patricia Grace and Keri Hulme.
of The New Republic, a post to which she was appointed last fall. She was also on the faculty of William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J.
in the former Second Congressional District, serving as a national convention delegate in San Francisco in 1964. Truman and Reta sponsored the Wood Scholarship for juniors majoring in political science or international relations that has been awarded since 1992 at MSU. Truman enjoyed woodworking, photography, reading, was a history buff, a sports fan, and enjoyed listening to his children and grandchildren sing. In later years he was an avid member of Poets and Storytellers, a volunteer performance group with ties to Delavan.
