Sep 29 Watch 7:09 Navigating Seattle's ever-evolving streets through poetry By PBS News Hour How do you capture Seattle’s complications, quirks and ever-changing population? A new digital project is mapping out the evolving city by collecting poems that tell unique stories, from growing up in an affluent neighborhood to memories of homelessness and cold… Continue watching
Sep 25 How the irreverent poetry of the '60s helped spawn punk music By Elizabeth Flock A new book traces how innovators of punk music interacted with New York School poets such as Ted Berrigan and Anne Waldman. Continue reading
Sep 18 Why U.S. Virgin Islanders feel there's no place they belong By Elizabeth Flock Hurricane Irma devastated the U.S. Virgin Islands, leveling homes, knocking out power, and turning the landscape into a "battered wasteland" where some say media coverage was minimal and help was late to arrive. Now, the islands are under… Continue reading
Sep 04 Watch 5:10 Remembering John Ashbery, acclaimed writer who pulled poetry 'from the air' By PBS News Hour Considered one of the country’s most influential poets, John Ashbery died Sunday at the age of 90. He was a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Jeffrey Brown revisits his conversation with Ashbery from 2007, where… Continue watching
Sep 03 John Ashbery, esteemed and inventive poet, dies at 90 By Corinne Segal John Ashbery, a master of poetic verse whose enigmatic, dexterous work challenged the world of American poetry, died Sunday at 90. Continue reading
Aug 22 This poet is making sure women of the Bauhaus movement get their due By Elizabeth Flock The Bauhaus German art school of the early to mid-20th century is today associated with several things: its stark white modernist buildings, its emphasis on re-combining arts and craft, and the male artists and architects who taught there, including Paul… Continue reading
Jul 24 This poet's obsession with death led her to write about how to live By Elizabeth Flock Nicole Sealey's new poetry collection asks us if, like the Greek figure of Sisyphus, we can find contentment even when life is difficult and absurd… Continue reading
Jul 17 The rage and rebellion of the Detroit riots, captured in one poem By Elizabeth Flock Fifty years ago this month, a protest in Detroit turned into a riot, which turned into five days of violence that left dozens dead, thousands arrested and a city engulfed in flames. The poem "They Feed They Lion" chronicles the… Continue reading
Jul 03 This poem grapples with America's complicated identity By Elizabeth Flock "I think of the U.S. as an adolescent country. It's not the old, wise European country, or very young either, it's somewhere in the middle," poet Dorianne Laux says. Continue reading
Jun 26 This writer is erasing 'Infinite Jest' to find the poetry left behind By Elizabeth Flock Page by page, Jenni B. Baker makes poems out of David Foster Wallace's novel "Infinite Jest" by erasing much of the text, and creating a new piece of writing from what's left behind. Continue reading