Samizdat Blog

Are we autonomous individuals, or inextricably bound to our communities?  Is art created in freedom, for its own sake, or does it come i...

Brooklyn The prettiest girl I ever saw was sipping Hoffman's through a straw, give or take a word.  Right from the can. A tree ...

Not long ago the poet Alfred Corn noted that “Year’s Best lists are strewn all over the print and electronic media. One publication I saw ...

Rita Dove's Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry continues to generate controversy. Here are a couple of articles that ...

One of the most notable things about contemporary poetry is that there's so much of it.   If one were tempted to keep up with...

Rejoice!  John Matthias' Collected Shorter Poems , vol.2, is now available from Shearsman Books.  Covering Matthias' work in short...

Here’s a video shot at the University of California-Davis. It shows Lt. John Pike of the UC-Davis police sauntering up to students associa...

Letters of Blood and Other English Works , by the late, great Swedish poet and critic  Göran Printz-Påhlson is just about to hit the pre...

Oh hey.  The new issue of Sous les Pavés  is out, featuring work by Susan Howe, Mairéad Byrne, Amiri Baraka, Kent Johnson, and a host of o...

I'm giving a talk to a gathering of some of the faculty of Lake Forest College this Wednesday.  It's called "Why You are No...