North African expatriate writer Tahar Ben Jelloun (The Blinding Absence of Light) is well-regarded in his adopted home of France (awarded a Prix Goncourt in 1987) and around the world, having garnered an International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2004 (one impressive aspect of this award is that the
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins has collaborated with ornithological illustrator par excellence David Allen Sibley to create a sweet little compendium, Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds (Columbia University Press), which is, as the title claims, over a hundred poems illustrated with 60 Sibley’s
A new poem by the author of “Green Squall” and winner of the 2005 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award.
Of the incontestable reasons to choose one book, one song, one painting over another is the caprice of personal preference. There being many worthy poets available to the loquacious commentator, in the case of Marie Ponsot—who has over half a century of versifying under her belt—it was the
John Ashbery is not one of my favorite poets, but his longevity and prodigious accomplishments put him in that newly minted category of the “too big to fail.” Having won countless major awards (Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Yale Younger Poets Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, etc.
If you can set aside (any) concerns about poetry in translation then you may rejoice at the publication of The Poetry of Rilke (FSG) edited by Edward Snow, a highly regarded contemporary translator of Rilke. This volume contains over 250 of the influential German poet’s work including complete translations
Octogenerian Phillip Levine, who was born in Detroit of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents and worked in the mind-wrenching, body-breaking auto plants before he took up his poetic calling, has won two National Book Awards and a Pulitzer Prize. His seventeenth and newest collection of poetry, News of The
The life of a poet in New York means recognizing the important appellations and knowing when to take the (grant) money and run.
The U.S. presidential inauguration in January will be one for the ages. A hat tip to Langston Hughes.
In spite of all the reporters crawling around Alaska, Gov. Palin remains unknown to the general public. Thanks to W.H. Auden.
