Tomaž told me, repeatedly, when he and I worked on these poems in the tea house in Ljubljana: there is no intelligence in them; they go how they go. He would slap his hand on the table, rattling coffee spoons, … ∞

The vagabond who’s rapping at your door Is standing in the clothes that you once wore —– It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue, 1965 . Almost every morning while walking one of my dogs, I re-listened to Jack Spicer reading… ∞

It began at a Joseph Beuys exhibit in Los Angeles in 2010. We had not seen other in a while—–E.J. lives in New York and Philip, in Cleveland; professional life and family had kept our energies focussed locally, inwardly. But… ∞

The relationship that I want to have with Virgil as I work on the Aeneid is best described by Chris Piuma in his essay-poem for postmedieval, ‘The Task of the Dystranslator.’ Piuma argues that the frequent approach to translation is… ∞

In the past century, Switzerland has been recognized—–in regards to its contributions to international literature—–as a haven of peace, a physical space for artists to inhabit when their home worlds were collapsing. But what of the people who live and… ∞

What little is known about Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 535–475 B.C.E.) comes down to us in mysterious, powerful fragments, mostly reported by Diogenes Laertius, a third-century biographer of Greek philosophers. Although scholars still dispute his claim, Laertius tells us that… ∞

As it is most commonly conceived, craft orients poetry by and toward better, but I propose a counterconception I’ll call ‘metacraft,’ which recognizes also the possibility of orienting poetry by and toward otherwise. I take the former conception as prevalent… ∞

It is Friday. Nobody had better wake up and talk to me for at least an hour. Except for the fetus, who could do me the courtesy of a few freaking kicks so I know it’s not dead. But onto… ∞

[Note: This talk was originally given at the Academy of American Poets 2012 Poets Forum on Friday, October 19, 2:00 p.m. at The New School’s Theresa Lang Center at 55 West 13th Street, New York, NY. The title of the panel was 'The Anxiety of Audience: Who We Write For, Real & Imagined'. The other participants were Mark Bibbins and Brenda Shaughnessy.] The title of our panel, ‘The Anxiety of Audience,’ is obviously flirting with that other ‘anxiety’ title with which we are all quite familiar: Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety… ∞

[Note: The following is a talk given as part of a panel on collaboration that took place at the Summer Writing Program of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University on July 3, 2012.] I want to… ∞

I’m spending the summer at a ranch that is also a school in the High Mojave, at the edge of the Great Basin, on the California border with Nevada, in a valley ringed with mountains and accessible by two passes. The more tortuous of the passes brings you from California, taking about thirty-five minutes from Highway 395. When I lived here for four years three years ago that drive became like the streets of a real neighborhood. Either to pass the time, or to amuse myself, I divided the road… ∞

Poetics statements are difficult for me. Friends, including John Gallaher and Dana Levin—-who are quite good at them—-keep urging me to write them. Other friends solicit. I admire the poetics statement as a form, poetics itself as a sort of glass-bottomed boat I’m prohibited from boarding. Later, you can tell me about all the curious beauty you saw beneath your feet. In the meantime we live in a very small and ancient village, where we are charged (whether we will or no) with taking care of both our mad and… ∞

As a graduate student in comparative literature, I was warned, at times strenuously, about the philological and moral dangers of reading literature in translation. Even in the poststructuralist academy the text was still the text, suffused with a Benjaminian ‘aura.’ There was no substitute for the spiritual substance (what Muslim scholars call baraka) to be gained from contact with an author’s original words. But in the heedlessness of youth I read a lot of translations, and some of my favorite writers, from Tolstoy, to Lermontov, to Yasunari Kawabata and WG… ∞

To initiate their ongoing collaborative exchange of poems, Jessica Murray wrote Jennifer Moxley a letter, containing seven prompts. Jennifer has responded with poems, to which Jessica has responded (find those poems here). They have also responded to the prompts, and one another’s work, with the prose below. Jennifer responds to prompt one Impeccable taste/Guilty pleasures. This question baffled me at first. Then I realized why—-I do not associate pleasure with guilt. A result of my non-religious upbringing perhaps? So the only frame that made sense for me was to approach… ∞

All poets write the poems they want to read, or at least they try: I think I write poems for others to read as well—I like the sense that I am not, or not always, alone in a room. I like commissions, challenges, deadlines, set forms, word counts, anything that gives me some purchase in the void of what we are pleased to call contemporary poetics, where everything is permitted but nothing (so poets fear) gets noticed unless it’s attacked. I do not think I could write a single poem… ∞

In this guest post Barry explains the origins and intricacies of his heartening project of revision and completion. There follows an example of one the finished poems.   Last year I began sending e-mails something like the following to a number of poets whose work I admire: I am hoping you will consider contributing to a new project I have in mind. Basically the inspiration for this came when I was at a painter’s studio and he mentioned to me that a particular painting had come about when the artist… ∞

  Collaborations often emerge from relatively separate artistic communities who, while their policed borders discipline their form and concentrate their fields of energy, thrive when the authorities are given the day off. Under such circumstances smugglers from the different arts meet to exchange what they hope, or assert, are premium goods. Sometimes the meeting becomes a little rough, a little disorganised, or a little too enthusiastic: different merchandise spills into each other in the swap and a new contraband is formed. I first worked with the artist Ronald King in… ∞

I’ve always been a reluctant collaborator but the “always” at the beginning of this sentence is the emphatic word: I keep coming back for more. It’s not exactly grudging but it is hesitant. There is certainly an egoist element that whispers to me, quite sinisterly and naturally with a non-British accent, “Don’t share, Richard: sharing is for LOSERS!” Blame it on growing up with three other brothers: I do. Another, more plaintive, a Gollum voice, is if anything insidiously more persuasive: “Me does everything else in Me’s life with various… ∞

Poet David Hart goes from one thing to the next: Invited to contribute a note, I have in anticipation wandered from collaboration via response to chance and on, more darkly, towards fate. Or, alternatively, luck. A long time ago I struggled with free will and never resolved it. It suggests to me personal identity isn’t resolvable, while personal responsibility can’t be disposed of. Free will is taken to mean control, but alternatively, while allowing for plenty of good please and thank you, will, that has its own kind of freedom,… ∞