Article Archive

Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.

Amazon Expands Search Function

by
Doug Diesenhaus
7.1.05

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. 

Literary MagNet

by
Kevin Larimer
7.1.05

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

No Translation Takers

by
Joe Woodward
7.1.05

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.

Searching for Signs of Shakespeare

by
Kevin Canfield
5.1.05

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. 

Literary MagNet

by
Kevin Larimer
5.1.05

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 the Grove Review, the Sonora Review, Volt, Quick Fiction, and Barrelhouse. 

The End of the Story

by
Joe Woodward
5.1.05

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.

Poets House and PSA Branch Out

by
Daniel Nester
5.1.05

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.

In Memory of Hunter S. Thompson: Postcard From Louisville, Kentucky

by
Nickole Brown
4.15.05

When I stepped off the plane in Aspen, Colorado, in June 1997, I found a 60-year-old Hunter S. Thompson waiting for me in a convertible Cadillac blasting Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” at full volume. I was terrified; he was giddy. He was playing the song because it was a part of the soundtrack put together for the film version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that was scheduled to hit theaters the following summer, and he could not have been happier.

 

The Contester: Is There More to Contests Than Cash?

by
Kevin Larimer
3.1.05
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The standard recompense for winning a literary contest is typically one of the following: money, publication in a literary magazine or a book, and a certain amount of recognition, but some rather unusual awards are handed out each year that don’t fall within the usual “money plus publication” category.

Literary MagNet

by
Kevin Larimer
3.1.05

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 Diner, the Massachusetts Review, Night Train, the Women’s Review of Books, DoubleTake, the Oxford American, and Cranky Literary Journal.

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