November 19, 2012
The Machine in the Library, the Machine in the Bookstore: On Book Machines
This past week, NPR ran a story on the “Biblio-Mat,” which is exactly what it sounds like, a book dispensing machine. Reports NPR: Earlier this year, Stephen Fowler, owner of The Monkey’s […]
November 14, 2012
Mash Note Part II: Love from the Book Designer
Earlier this week, I wrote about Noah Falck’s Snowmen Losing Weight. I was making an argument that book design is often underappreciated and an argument that good book design can be one […]
November 12, 2012
Forms of Enthusiasm: Noah Falck’s Snowmen Losing Weight: A Mash Note With an Interview Inside It
Earlier this year, I saw on a friend’s desk an unusual book. It had a rather simple board cover—type, but no image—but it had four spines, two on one side […]
November 5, 2012
Forms of Enthusiasm: On Chapbooks
Back at the end of August, I was writing to suggest the value of enthusiastic engagements—interviews, conversations, encomia, even blurbs, however hyperbolic—as counterweights to “negative” reviews, which too often seem […]
August 31, 2012
Forms of Enthusiasm: On Poetry Criticism, Book Reviews, and (yes, again) Blurbs
You may have heard something over the last week or two about William Giraldi’s review of two Alix Ohlin books in The New York Times. It’s a wildly negative review […]
July 21, 2012
from A Field Guide to North American Blurbs
As I’m preparing two blurbs this weekend, I’m looking at a lot of blurbs and thinking about the genre. Maybe there are some observations to be made about the varieties […]
July 10, 2012
Creative Exigency, Exhilaration, Exhaustion, and Expansion: A Postscript on the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops
I’ll say it: I’m exhausted. I spent 22 days in Gambier, Ohio, first as faculty for the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and then for the KR Young Writers Workshop, in […]
June 14, 2012
Cardio-Poetic Resuscitation
Earlier this week, at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop here in Denver, I attended a salon conversation in which three poets—David Rothman, Nicky Beer, and Seth Brady Tucker—discussed what they were […]
June 1, 2012
A Craft Note On the Duet (part 4) and On the Elegy (part 2)
Several several weeks ago now, Tarfia Faizullah and I exchanged notes on the elegy in what was billed as the first part of a multi-part craft note on the elegy. […]
May 22, 2012
Craft Note: Duet (Part 3) — Beginning and Ending With A Reader’s Comment
In a comment on our last post, “Craft Note: Duet—Part Two (Ending With A Post By Tarfia Faizullah Ending With A Line By Vallejo),” Judith wrote toward an undeveloped idea […]
April 20, 2012
Craft Note: Duet—Part Two (Ending With A Post By Tarfia Faizullah Ending With A Line By Vallejo)
The poem that begins with a borrowed line begins spending its inheritance right away. It feels free, cavalier, perhaps even prodigal at times. It seems to thrive on its own […]
April 13, 2012
Craft Note: Duet — Part One (Beginning With A Line by Mark Irwin)
What / you’re looking through is the act of giving, writes Mark Irwin in his “Poem Beginning with a Line by Milosz.” I wrote about this poem, briefly, several months […]