Archive for 'Literary News'
Red Hen Press Turns 17: Celebrate with Ron Carlson, Natasha Tethewey, and T.C. Boyle
Proceeds from this event will not only help Red Hen continue its tradition of literary achievement, it will also benefit Red Hen’s Writing in the Schools program, a literacy initiative for underprivileged K-12 students that has provided writing workshops throughout Los Angeles County since 2003. The event will feature poetry readings from participating WITS students at Cleveland Elementary School in Pasadena.
Full StoryKGB Monday Night Poetry Fall Lineup!
Monday Night Poetry is back at the legendary KGB Bar in New York’s East Village, co-hosted by Megin Jimenez and Matthew Yeager.
Full StoryDan Stone Introduces ALIBI: a New Magazine of Literature and Rock & Roll
“Alibi is a new sort of magazine focused on literature and rock & roll. It’s published using a mix of traditional and innovative approaches–not only online, not only print, but a unique blend of the page, the stage, and the web. No high-quality magazine exists that presents rock music and literature side-by-side and explores their exhilarating relationship. Not until now. Keep an eye on this site for new films, audio, and writing, and for news on our debut print magazine and live event, starring Neko Case, launching this winter.”
Full StoryStephen Dunn, Cynthia Hogue, Garret Hongo, Albert Goldbarth, Camille Dungy, and More! Red Hen Press’s Fall Reading Schedule
Catch some of these authors at Red Hen Press’s fall reading series!
Full StoryStudy Prosody with David Yezzi at the 92nd Street Y in New York City
Poems are written in musical language. Examine the ways that traditional meter and verse techniques are used to make music in poetry, and learn how the age-old tools of poetic composition can liberate, strengthen, and energize your writing in verse.
Full Story“When I was working on poems about her death, I was happy. It was the only time all day that I was happy”: Ernest Hilbert Interviews Donald Hall
My interview with Donald Hall appears in the new May/June issue of the American Poetry Review.
Full StorySeamus Heaney “Renewed” at the Royal Society of Literature
The Royal Society of Literature (of which I am a member) recently hosted an evening of conversations with Seamus Heaney, featuring the likes of Bernard O’Donoghue, Nick Laird, Andrew O’Hagan, Jo Shapcott, and my former adviser at Oxford University, Jon Stallworthy. Click on the issue’s cover or the sound player to hear a recording of [...]
Full Story“Most respondents stated that attitudes towards sex changed after the Vietnam and Woodstock wars”: Introducing “Shit My Students Write”
“Rome went on to conquer other territories and planets.”
Full Story“Prisoner of More” by Jill Alexander Essbaum, from the New Issue of Think Journal
Check out the new issue of Think Journal, its first perfect-bound edition, including new poetry from David Yezzi, Ernest Hilbert, Deborah Warren, Ashley Anna McHugh, and many others, (such as Rilke and Housman, translated from the German and Latin respectively by the amazing Len Krisak).
Full Story“The corrupted treasures of the world”: David Yezzi reviews the Selected Poems of Anthony Hecht
And then, to my astonishment, a small group of German women, perhaps five or six, leading small children by the hand, and with white flags of surrender fixed to staves and broom-handles, came up over the far crest and started walking slowly toward us, waving their white flags back and forth. They came slowly, the children retarding their advance. They had to descend the small incline that lay between their height and ours. When they were about half way, and about to climb the slope leading to our position, two of our machine guns opened up and slaughtered the whole group.
Full Story“. . . It Raised Adolescence to an Ideology:” 100 Artists’ Manifestos reviewed by Terry Eagleton
This fetishism of the future crops up on almost every page of 100 Artists’ Manifestos, deftly selected and stylishly introduced by Alex Danchev. Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto of 1909, which as Danchev points out founded not only Futurism but the very idea of the artistic manifesto, celebrates “the beauty of speed”. “A racing car, its bonnet decked with exhaust pipes like serpents with galvanic breath . . . is more beautiful than the Winged Victory of Samothrace.” A later Futurist proclamation incites the brethren to destroy all “passéist” clothes (“tight-fitting, colourless, funereal, decadent”) and invent futurist clothes instead, “daring clothes with brilliant colours and dynamic lines”. Like Romanticism, the revolutionary avant-garde was staffed by the young, full of contempt for their experimentally challenged elders. In its more flamboyant moments, of which it had more than a few, it raised adolescence to an ideology.
Full StoryE-Verse Congratulates Kay Ryan on Her Pulitzer Prize!
“Over the past five years no new poet has so deeply impressed me with her imaginative flair or originality as Kay Ryan. I first saw her poems almost by accident. In 1994 a small publisher gave me a review copy of Flamingo Watching along with several other recent books. No critical fanfare accompanied the slender volume, and I had no special reason to think it possessed singular merit. But given the work of an unfamiliar poet, I always read a few poems, and I was immediately struck by the unusual compression and density of Ryan’s work. I particularly enjoyed the evident delight she took in playing extravagant games with small units of language. Genuine wit is rare in contemporary poetry but rarer still combined with brevity. I made no immediate fuss about Ryan, but I could also never quite bring myself to put Flamingo Watching away on the shelf. I kept picking the book up to read or reread a few more poems. Over the next year their depth of perception, joyful invention, and stylistic authority never failed to fascinate and delight me.” – Dana Gioia
Full Story“Professor of Perjury? What Will He Say to His Students?”: Geoffrey Hill’s Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Poetry at Oxford
There was standing room only in the South Room of the Examination Schools for this inaugural lecture. With powerful and resonant delivery, Professor Hill discussed the entanglement of poetry and perjury, the infection of poetic language by ethical and theological culpability, and how the achieved poem may achieve its own linguistic justice or grace, in light of this entanglement. Taking a title from Henry IV, Part II, he traced this theme through a wide range of poetic and critical texts, from Shakespeare’s sonnets to Sidney’s Defence of Poesy and works by Paul Celan, T.S. Eliot, R.P. Blackmur and Fulke Greville, concluding with an affirmation of poetry’s ability to oppose its grasp of intrinsic value to “the gigantic scam of our times.”
Full Story2011 Tollund Poetry Translation Contest Winners
In collaboration with the popular literary blog E-Verse Radio, Tollund Inc., an international legal translation firm, is happy to announce the winners of the second annual Tollund Poetry Translation Prize.
Full StoryWesley Stace’s New Novel: Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer
England, 1923. A gentleman critic named Leslie Shepherd tells the macabre story of a gifted young composer, Charles Jessold. On the eve of his revolutionary new opera’s premiere, Jessold murders his wife and her lover, and then commits suicide in a scenario that strangely echoes the plot of his opera—which Shepherd has helped to write. The opera will never be performed. . . .
Full StoryCheck Out an Impressive Online Anthology of Poetry
A Canadian gentleman by the name of John Fraser maintains an excellent online anthology of poetry, spanning several centuries and including a number of very good contemporary poets. Have a look by clicking here. The anthology, from Chaucer to Erica Dawson, was begun by Donald E. Stanford (1913–1998) and is currently edited byJohn Fraser (1928– [...]
Full StoryToo Bookish to Play Video Games, You Say? Well, Try The Great Gatsby for Nintendo!
Now this is fun. Thanks to E-Verser Stephen for sending this one in. Click below to play! Good luck, and watch out for those martinis.
Full StoryOscar Wilde Week at Esoteric London!
E-Verser Katy Evans-Bush, the woman behind the famous literary blog Baroque in Hackney and, now, Horizon Review magazine, would like to make an announcement.
Full StoryAnnouncing the spring season of poetry at KGB Bar in New York City
KGB Monday Night Poetry is proud to present our spring line-up. We’re certain you shan’t fail to note it includes luminaries, and upstarts, a range of voices, styles, literary presses & aesthetic philosophies . . . In short, a spectrum which no doubt presents at least one night where your presence at the bar will be indispensable.
Full StoryErnest Hilbert Appears in Two New Penguin Anthologies
Purchase at Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, or Alibris.
Full StoryAnnouncing Western State College of Colorado’s MFA in Creative Writing: Poetry with an Emphasis on Formal Verse
E-Verse recommended program. Please share with anyone you think might be interested.
Full Story“Does rap’s suspended adolescence keep it from serious consideration?”: Adam Kirsch on The Anthology of Rap
“Poets have been more interested in what they can learn from rap than vice versa.”
Full StoryPress Release: Poet David Yezzi to Join Western State College of Colorado’s MFA Faculty
David Yezzi, acclaimed poet and executive editor of The New Criterion , will join the graduate creative writing faculty in Western’s MFA this summer.
Full Story“‘Official’ Art Was Dull and Desiccated and that the Real Vibrancy was with the Subversive Trash of Popular Culture”: Neal Gabler on the Enduring Divide Between the Critics and the Public
Kael’s was a time in America, some 40 years ago, when the balance of power was shifting from the elites to the populists–a last-ditch fight that turned criticism into a blood sport with all sorts of warriors.
Full Story“The Text is Read on One’s Knees”: E-Verser Luke Hankins Announces His New Book of Translations from the French
Stella Vinitchi Radulescu was born in Romania and left the country permanently in 1983, at the height of Ceausescu’s communist regime. After seeking political asylum in Rome, she immigrated to the U.S. She received an M.A. in French from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Philology from the University of Bucharest. She has taught French, first at Loyola University, then at Northwestern, since 1989.
Full Story“I fancy I know more about Seamus Heaney’s back than anyone not related to him”: Anthony Moore Reviews Seamus Heaney
“He was sweating heavily. Since his clothes had stuck to him, I helped him shed his fustian academic gown and his Donegal tweed jacket, so he could drink in shirtsleeves. I was thanked with a pint of Guinness.”
Full Story“Majoring in literature or art history rather than economics or biology, never mind hotel management or marketing, suggests a certain privileged indifference to material concerns”: The Editors of N+1 on What it Means to Be “Elitist” Today
One would be that access to political, economic, and military power is today more meritocratic and open than access to filmmaking, humanistic academia, freelance writing, wine criticism, and so on. Do people no longer complain about the power elite because those with power are no longer elitist?
Full StorySecond Annual Tollund Poetry Translation Prize Now Open
In collaboration with the popular literary blog E-Verse Radio, Tollund Inc., an international legal translation firm, is happy to announce the second annual Tollund Poetry Translation Prize.
Full Story“Only waiting until Cyclops finds us. It is horrible!”: Adam Kirsch Tackles Saul Bellow’s Letters in the Times Literary Supplement
Diderot speaks both in his own voice–as the rational, meliorist man of the Enlightenment–and in the voice of the Nephew, who overpowers the reader with torrential, brilliant rants even as he confesses to atrocious vices. To Lionel Trilling, the most authoritative critic of Bellow’s generation, the dialogue was ominously significant, because it made vitality seem more appealing and authentic than morality. Rameau’s nephew was the first modern anti-hero, the ancestor of Dostoevsky’s Underground Man. In Trilling’s view, this kind of life-worship was modern literature’s original sin.
Full Story“Look, Honey, Awww, They’re Just Like Us!”: Celebrity Librararies
Head on over to Flavorwire to have a peek into some celebrities’ libraries. E-Verse picked its own three favorites. Thanks to E-Verse photographer Niamh for sending these in.
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