Echoes of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"
Fifty years later, a number of organizations are planning special events on October 7 to commemorate the anniversary of Ginsberg's legendary reading.
Article Archive
Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
Page One features a sample of titles we think you'll want to explore. With this installment, we offer excerpts from Water’s Leaves and Other Poems by Geoffrey Nutter and Pieces of Air in the Epic by Brenda Hillman.
Literary MagNet
Literary MagNet chronicles the start-ups and closures, successes and failures, anniversaries and accolades, changes of editorship and special issues—in short, the news and trends—of literary magazines in America. This issue's MagNet features Verb, the Relay Project, From the Fishouse, Sonora Review, Bridge, Columbia, Failbetter, and Versal.
The Status of a Classic
This month the Library of America, the nonprofit publisher founded in 1979 to “preserve our nation’s literary heritage,” will release the first two installments of a planned eight-volume edition of Philip Roth’s collected fiction.
The Contester: Who's Doing What to Keep Them Clean
Unfortunately, these days it is not the quality of the award-winning writing that gets people talking; it is the way in which contests are run and the manner in which winners are chosen—or not chosen, as the case may be—that attract attention.
Resuscitating Poetry Recitation
The National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation recently completed the pilot phase of a new program designed to raise the profile of poetry in high schools.
Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
Page One features a sample of titles we think you'll want to explore. With this installment, we offer excerpts from Evening Ferry by Katherine Towler and Little Beauties by Kim Addonizio.
No Translation Takers
Despite a $10,000 incentive from the Association of American Publishers to United States publishers willing to translate, publish, and promote contemporary Iranian fiction, no commercial houses have come forward since the initiative was announced in late 2004.
Q&A: C. Michael Curtis's Fiction Issues
C. Michael Curtis, a senior editor at the Atlantic Monthly, who is known not only for selecting award-winning short stories but also for his considerate and sensible letters of rejection to the thousands of submissions he’s read over the years, spoke about the magazine’s new approach to publishing fiction.
Literary MagNet
Literary MagNet chronicles the start-ups and closures, successes and failures, anniversaries and accolades, changes of editorship and special issues—in short, the news and trends—of literary magazines in America. This issue's MagNet features Poetry, the Southern Review, Swivel: The Nexus of Women and Wit, 6x6, Ninth Letter, and Black Clock.
Small Press Points
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features McSweeney’s Books, Believer Books, Tell Tale Press, and Wings Press.
Amazon Expands Search Function
In case anyone was wondering, the four most frequently used words in T.S. Eliot’s 1943 collection Four Quartets are “time,” “past,” “fire,” and “end.” It is this kind of information that can be found by using one of several new features recently added to Amazon.com’s “Search Inside the Book” function, launched in October 2003.
The Transformation of James Frey
Two years after publishing a brutal, unflinching account of his drug addiction, James Frey is showing signs of becoming a kinder, gentler writer in his second memoir, My Friend Leonard.
Myths We Live By, But Shouldn't: A Writer's Guide to Reality
Perhaps because many writers and their adherents are poorly paid and often go unrecognized, they cultivate a variety of myths—some about the creative process, others about the profession itself—to justify what they do, to cheer themselves up, to inhabit a mystique.
Poets House and PSA Branch Out
Aided by a $260,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Poets House and the Poetry Society of America, two nonprofit literary organizations based in New York City, recently partnered to establish Branching Out: Poetry in the Twentieth Century.
Small Press Points
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features City Lights Books, Verse Press, Wave Books, the Feminist Press, Ig Publishing, and Sarabande Books.
The End of the Story
To those who knew him through his work—and, if we are to believe the many tributes published in the past two months, to those who knew him intimately as well—Thompson was a strange and lovely amalgamation.
Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
Page One features a sample of titles we think you'll want to explore. With this installment, we offer excerpts from Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk, Bitter Milk by John McManus, and The Lake, The River & the Other Lake by Steve Amick.
Searching for Signs of Shakespeare
Most writers have heard the old saying about the Bard and the chimps: Gather 100 monkeys (or similarly hirsute primates) in a room, give them typewriters, and sooner or (more likely) later, they’ll deliver the complete works of Shakespeare. Nick Hoggard, a British computer programmer living in Sweden, has decided to put the theory—often attributed to Thomas Huxley, a 19th-century disciple of Charles Darwin—to the test.
The Written Image: Voices in Wartime
Voices in Wartime, a documentary about the experience of war as seen by soldiers, journalists, historians, and poets, featuring contemporary poets Chris Abani, Sam Hamill, Marie Howe, and Todd Swift, opened in select theaters nationwide last month.
Filling the Best Seats in the House
Thanks to a growing trend in grassroots marketing and publicity, writers in the San Francisco Bay area are reading to packed houses—literally.
Fear of Flight: Rewriting Short Fiction as a Novel
In April 2003, an agent sat down with me, pointed to my manuscript, and said the words I had been dreading: I think this should be a novel. I shuddered. I was no novelist. I was a minimalist, a votress of the goddess of gesture, a worshipper at the altar of the succinct. I was a short story writer.
Imported Imprint to Close Its Doors
HarperCollins recently announced that it will close its United States imprint Fourth Estate.
When Editors Are Edited: Three Debut Authors on the Ultimate Role Reversal
Elizabeth Gaffney, Adrienne Miller, and Adrienne Brodeur—three high-profile magazine editors who recently added "debut novelist" to their resumés.
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Never Let Me Go: A Profile of Kazuo Ishiguro
What if genetic cloning had become the defining science of the 20th century? The main characters of Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel contend with such a world—and its moral consequences.