Samizdat Blog

What now? Can't you see I'm trying to fix the knackebrod on my Volvo with an Ikea catalog while the Swedish Chef socializes some lu...

So, as part of my ongoing process of poking away at the project whose working title remains "The Big Boring Book of Aesthetics, or: How...

I've been surprised by the amount of feedback I've been getting back-channel about the Poetry/Not Poetry Post (I suppose back-channe...

Where do we draw the line between what is poetry and what isn't poetry? Or, more specifically, what makes a poem a poem? Ask a poet li...

Anglophiles present, for the American professor of English, an occupational hazard. One inevitably has colleagues who've spent so many ...

Ow! My leg! Last Monday a suddenly-opened car door had a disagreement with my bicycle about the nature of my forward trajectory. "Slow...

Yes, it's true. I've been abducted by Anton Dy Buncio, official Chicago-area fun sherpa, and interrogated about poetry, teaching, w...

Ever since my daughter, Lila, was born four months ago I've been spending most mornings hanging out with her. She's good company bu...

Bruce Andrews! Juliana Spahr! Leslie Scalapino! Allen Ginsberg! Ezra Pound! and, uh...me! Yep. Once again, I'm part of the WSUM Word Sa...

Sad news: the poet David Bromige has died. I only met him once or twice, but I admired his work, his wit, his sense of play and style. He ...

"Storming the Museum of Irrelevance" , the web version of an essay I wrote for the current issue of Poetry , is now online. If yo...

"You know when a communications medium is obsolete?" my media theorist collegaue Dave Park likes to ask, before answering himself ...