“POETRY AS FORCES” AFTER Cecilia Vicuña

By Andrea Abi-Karam

APR 2019 | Critics Page

The "about to happen" / "poetry as forces" when Cecilia Vicuña says that the lies (the words, the language) of the Chilean dictatorship murdered & tortured thousands of people I remember the power of the word & i remember the power of poetry—"made of forces"—that holds something in the action of language

Uncle Ho’s Poetry

By Richard Tuttle

FEB 2018 | Poetry

Richard Tuttle recently showed with James Ensor  – a hero, whom he feels has brought the verbal and visual to the same plane, as well as contributing to the literature of artists who write about art – in Ostend, Belgium.  Enlisting as a pilot in Vietnam, the Air Force decided Tuttle could not be trusted to "push the button", and gave an honorable discharge.  The wounds of those years, for many, he believes, are still not healed. A suggested reading list from RT: Ho Chi Minh: A Life, by William J. Duiker; Down With Colonialism! (speeches of Ho Chi Minh, with an introduction by Walter Bello), & The Prison Poems of Ho Chi Minh (with an intro and photos by Larry Towell; also in various editions).

Why Poetry Now

By Ann Lauterbach

APR 2018 | Editor's Message

A friend recently handed me a bumper sticker that reads WHO NEEDS POETRY. A question in the form of a statement.

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By Patricia Spears Jones

JUL-AUG 2020 | Poetry

Patricia Spears Jones is author of A Lucent Fire: New & Selected Poems and nine other poetry publications. She is an editor, literary curator, anthologist, cultural critic, and playwright. She is an Emeritus Fellow at the Black Earth Institute and organizer of the American Poets Congress. She was the 2020 Louis H Rubin Writer-in-Resident at Hollins University. Originally from Arkansas, she calls Brooklyn home.