(a poem by Jean Métellus; from Voyance, 1985; translation HS) . . . I am the one shore in the memory of the Antilles And the delectable cheek which radiates and welcomes fragrance I am the generous lips of childhood Haiti, Quisqueya, Bohio, Land both welcoming and cool

Like the poems of Wang Wei, Li Bai, Mallarmé, or Pasolini, the Nocturnes of Fédéric Chopin are there to intoxicate us in dreams. If you have not tried it, pour yourself a glass of absinthe, imagine yourself in a Parisian café in 1830, watching a young man at the age of 20 casually breathing out poetry. The most exquisite pleasure is the moment at which you hold your glass right at your lips and find yourself being arrested by the music, and th...

Writing poetry is so much trouble! The Lazy Lyric Society of Connecticut requests your assistance in completing the following song. (I warn you, if I don't get responses I will just go ahead and do it, but if you want it done right, do it yourself.) How much is that human in the window, The one with opposable thumbs? How much is that human in the window? (The banjo here silently strums.)

To be frank, I could never say no to a skank. I’ve known many virgins. As lovers they stank. I’m not one to rue the wine I once drank; For most of my fun there’ve been skanks to thank. &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Loose-limbed, leering, slinky and lank -- &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I prize the bad pupil who’s courting a spank. &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp No thought how dank the dungeon, how ripe or rank, &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp When I ask why not — -- — ...

Last night I saw John Ashbery give a reading on campus. He opened with a daunting double sestina from Flow Chart — as if to remind us that he was once a virtuoso, that back in the heroic age of Secretariat and Seattle Slew it was he alone who had won poetry’s Triple Crown — and then read several poems from his latest volume. In the question-and-answer period afterward he was remarkably open and down-to-earth, and at the end he even signed au...

To follow the recent reflections on printculture writing by E Hayot and S L Kim, one of the things that’s struck me often is the frequency with which I encounter old versions of myself – either in that I discover a “new” idea is actually one I’ve already written (and promptly forgotten) about or as today where I feel a kinship with myself from a year ago, writing then about the work of end-of-the-semester grading. It is that time of year agai...

Death to sweet pleasure, death to good sense! All must now bow down to dissonance. Down with the past, down with hard work and anyone who wins a big prize is a jerk! The future is ours. We work by its light. In the future the critics will know we were right and until then we vote ourselves endless hurrahs just like politics, but without the Cause.