Farnoosh Fathi is the author of Great Guns (2013) and Granny Cloud (2024), the editor of Joan Murray: Drafts, Fragments, and Poems (2018), and the founder of the Young Artists Language and Devotion Alliance (YALDA).

Farnoosh Fathi is the author of Great Guns (Canarium, 2013), editor of Joan Murray: Drafts, Fragments, and Poems (NYRB Poets, 2018) and founder of the Young Artists Language and Devotion Alliance (YALDA).

Stanley Kunitz, poet, editor, teacher, activist, leader, and collaborator approaches his one-hundredth year—Farnoosh Fathi speaks with him and his literary assistant, poet Genine Lentine, about his life-long devotion to and extraordinary achievements in the world of poetry.

In regards to the tradition that Language poetry inherited—self-effacement in language, practicing language as a form of resistance, engaging in a delineation of the structures of language embedded in our consciousness—how do these stylistic choices distinguish Language poetry from other modes of political writing, poetry or otherwise?