I recommend Bob Grumman’s site/blog:http://comprepoetica.com/newblog/Index.html
Good stuff that’s making me think. And I appreciate Bob’s responses because they don’t assume I am arguing just for the sake of argument or out of bad faith, which has happened (the assumption, I think, and my knee-jerk reactions which warranted it) on an email list we both share.
The beauty [...]

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On the beach in Kodiak I kept thinking of these lines by e.e. cummings in one of my favorite childhood poems (still a favorite despite that horrific inversion in the third stanza):
“For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)it’s always ourselves we find in the sea”
[cosmopoetica commings sea]

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JforJames from the NewPoetry list has a blog: ursprache
As does the prolific and under-recognized Bill Knott (though he never did answer my question about whether he’s the same person James Wright wrote about so long ago…
[cosmopoetica billknott ursprache poetryblogs poetry poets]

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There are quite a few things funnier than Kent Johnson’s latest rabble-rousing Epigramititis, but numbering well up there are the stuffy intonations of the poetry blogerati complaining that they don’t see the humor in such juvenile activities. As long as they are playfully stroking one another, then the most feeble attempts at humor raise much [...]

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I’ve often pondered why new media–particularly blogs, but also podcasting and audio-blogging–has really taken off within only a relatively narrow group of practicing poets. In the “post-avant” school, people blog like crazy and in all kinds of ways. More traditional and the “quiet” poets blog very little.
Does the kind of poetic practice each engages in [...]

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We work in the company of others (philosophers and farmers, artists and scientists, as we variously require), and we work in the dark. The historian Daniel Boorstin has remarked that ignoring the past in making decisions is like trying to plant cut flowers. Likewise, to ignore the future, when “we’ll all be dead,” is to [...]

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My friend David Graham has a good poem on Writer’s Alamanac this week (scroll down to February 19). It’s a particularly good fit for Keillor’s voice… which I generally like anyway, being a member of the great-unwashed poetry-non-elite. You can listen now to the Real Audio stream.
[cosmopoetica, david graham, poem, reading]

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New to me: Spork. Some interesting work (poems, stories, drawings) by mostly other than the usual suspects. Rather annoying layout.
[cosmopoetica, spork, reading]

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A lot of good stuff (in the form of mp3 files) has been added to the PennSound site since I last mentioned it here. Take a look; have a listen.
[cosmopoetica, poetry, mp3, audio]

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In Slate yesterday:
By never firmly establishing what it itself was for, the English department cultivated habits of withering self-reflection and so became one mechanism by which the university could stay in touch with its nonutilitarian self and subject its own practices to ongoing critique. Did the theory era produce bullshit by the mountain-load? Of course [...]

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An interview with, and some readings by, Galway Kinnell. The Book of Nightmares is one of my favorite booklength (a very short book!) poems.

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Nick ponders blogging and the possibility of blogs evolving into their own form of literature. I’m seeing variations of this question by all kinds of bloggers. This kind of contemplative regard– beyond the mechanics and affordances of blogs as tools– seems a sure sign that there’s some kind of evolution going on.
Part of what has [...]

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I’ve been away from poetry blogland for quite some time: partly due to a really heavy travel schedule but also because I had grown weary of the whole scene.
If I read, I write. It’s not in my nature– nor is it very fulfilling– to lurk. But I have to ask myself what I am [...]

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Regarding Tony’s latest rumination on the role of the editor, someone posted a comment (apparently seconded by Jordan) questioning whether Tony was becoming a new/another Ron Silliman.
If he is, then good! We need another 100 Ron Sillimans coming at poetry from their own perspectives, rather than the one overshadowing so much of poetry blogland. [...]

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I love Texfiles and if I kept a Jim Behrle style crush-list, Chris Murray would be right there near the top… but I have to confess that I don’t understand the imbroglio on her blog surrounding the review of Kent Johnson’s new book.
I’d already seen the review (and I am mightily resisting the urge to [...]

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An interesting project using Flash to score and animate the Marvin Bell poem “Why Do You Stay Up So Late?”

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So the semi-notorious Lon Silliman who inhabits Ron Silliman’s comment boxes, agitating from within, is actually the bit-more-notorious Joe Green, who I remember fondly from back in the pre-blog days of USENET and rec.arts.books and rec.arts.poems
Ron should be thankful that Joe appears to have mellowed a bit…

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I can’t tell from Ron’s hot post whether or not he actually likes Jack Gilbert’s work. Views of Jeopardy may well have vaulted into first place on my list of all-time favorite volumes of poetry. Unfortunately, Ron’s take on Auden is pretty clear and that’s dominating the conversation over there.
I’ve been meaning to write [...]

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The funny thing about being accused of being “willfully ignorant” in my reading of contemporary poetry is that if my email antagonists knew anything about me at all, they’d know that this is perhaps the most unjust accusation possible. At this particular point in my life, of all times, I have looked harder and more [...]

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Kasey clarifies and expands on his previous post regarding eclecticism and not only does it now make more sense to me, but I instinctively agree. The jazz analogy helps, as does putting the emphasis of problematic contextualization back in the hands of those packaging the materials, where it rightfully belongs.
As for my comment that I’m [...]

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