Dear (Hypothetical) Reader: An Interview With Lucia Perillo

Award-winning poet Lucia Perillo would just as soon surrender the idea of a readership altogether and focus on what truly matters—great poetry.
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Award-winning poet Lucia Perillo would just as soon surrender the idea of a readership altogether and focus on what truly matters—great poetry.
Dan Chiasson, who last fall succeeded former poet laureate Charles Simic as a poetry editor of the Paris Review, recently spoke—by phone from a New York City taxicab—about his new role at the venerable journal.
The brief, contentious, and ultimately fruitless relationship between poet Stacey Lynn Brown and the editors of Cider Press, points to an essential question that pops up often in literary publishing: Whose opinion—author's or publisher's—should matter most when it comes to finalizing the product that enters the marketplace as a book?
While it's safe to say the twenty-first century has so far not been a great time for American diplomacy, a handful of new poetry anthologies, from Norton, Dalkey Archive Press, North Atlantic Books, and Graywolf Press, offer proof that American poetic diplomacy might be entering a new golden age.
Pattiann Rogers, author of twelve poetry collections, including Wayfare (Penguin, 2008), recently spoke about the process of writing her latest collection, the importance of investigation, and the pleasure of naming the world.
On Wednesday, John Ashbery and Robin Blaser were named the winners of the eighth annual Griffin Poetry Prize, awarded to both a Canadian and an international author or translator for a book of poetry published in English during the previous year.
Poets House, the nonprofit poetry library and literary center in New York City, announced recently that it will honor Cave Canem founders Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady with the Elizabeth Kray Award, given biennially to individuals who serve poetry in the spirit of Kray, who founded Poets House, along with Stanley Kunitz, in 1985. The award will be presented to Derricotte and Eady following the thirteenth annual Poetry Walk Across the Brooklyn Bridge, a benefit event for Poets House, on June 9.