news, song of the week

Hip-hop has always done self-aggrandizement well, and hip-hop from the mid-90’s may have had it perfected (I’m thinking of Biggie’s “Hypnotize” video and basically everything ever put out by No Limit Records). In their heyday, the Wu-Tang Clan bragged and boasted along with the best of them, and the Killa Bees give us no better example than “4th Chamber.” Here we happen upon Ghostface “sipping wine out of Stanley Cups” (multiple Stanley Cups?) and Killah Priest inexplicably “lounging between two pillars of ivory.” Like Kehinde Wiley’s …

Between Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx there are a ton of readings happening every night. Each Sunday, Coldfront will feature five upcoming readings.  This section will eventually expand to feature weekly readings throughout the country, but for now we’ll just try to keep up with the daunting task of New York City.

Sunday, February 5th 4-7pm

 POLESTAR POETRY SERIES

THE WHITE ALBUM

CAKE SHOP NYC

152 LUDLOW STREET, New York, NY

Monday, February 6th 7:30-10:30pm

SNOWY WILDERNESS PRESENTS:

Ariana Reines, Brandon Downing, Christie Ann Reynolds, Ben Fama

The Living Theatre

21 Clinton St., New …

“To have what back?
Carry forward.  Portion this mortal
dabble…”

–Morgan Lucas Schuldt, from “Version’s Verge”

Morgan Lucas Schuldt, inventive poet and founder of the nation’s best prose poem magazine, died Monday from complications with cystic fibrosis. Schuldt would have turned 34 later this month.

Schuldt, of Tucson, Arizon, founded the handsomely bound CUE: A Journal of Prose Poetry in 2004, and proceeded to publish work by significant figures like Rita Dove, John Ashbery, Ron Silliman, Mary Ruefle and Russell Edson. He also made plenty of room for new faces, …

The Polish poet, Wislawa Szymborska died of lung cancer on Wednesday, February 1st in Poland. She was 88. Szymborska won the Nobel Prize in 1996, and the Nobel Prize committee referred to her as the “Mozart of poetry.”

Her work is best known for being both political and playful. Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said on Twitter that her death was an “irreparable loss to Poland’s culture.” Many throughout the world are echoing Sikorski’s statement. Her death coming so closely to Dorothea Tanning, Don Cornelius, and Mike Kelley has …

On Tuesday, January 31st, Dorothea Tanning passed away. She was 101.  Tanning is perhaps best known as an American Surrealist painter. She was married to German artist Max Ernst.

At 89, Tanning established herself as a poet, publishing her first collection of poems in 2004. Tanning engaged in many collaborations, and her death is a deeply felt loss for both the art and literature worlds.

You can read more about Tanning and her poetry here.

The Poetry Society of New York is now soliciting “Poets, Artists, Curators, Organizers, Vendors, Volunteers and Poetry-Lovers of any sort” for the The Second Annual New York City Poetry Festival, which will be held, as it was last year, on the grasses of Governors Island. If you run a reading series, poetry organization or collective in NYC and would like to bring it to one of the festival’s stages, write to Stephanie Berger at sb@poetrysocietyny.com.

The Poetry Society of New York also announced this week …

Warm chords. “Have you seen him?
Have you seen him? Have you seen
him?” Brass horns. Then the voice,
her voice a yellow tobacco field
wide & dry deep summer deep South.
In Florida, in the backseat of
a taxi, she wrote the first notes
during a three-hour drive, an epic
eighteen-minute acoustic tune she
pared then amplified—it sounds
finest on vinyl—, I have listened
(no exaggeration) at least once
every day since 2006. And you can
hear the years between recordings,
what fell wayside and what held:
the triumphs letdowns, bewilderments,
cigarettes, etc.; “unbelievable”
versus “beautiful” flowers, etc.—
it balms the nerve. Vital. …

I’ve never forgotten Husker Du’s “I’ll Never Forget You,” when Bob Mould’s vocals ripped the title lyric eight times through vinyl fabric and into my bloodstream.  Like everyone else I loved hardcore, but this song was about emotion unleashed—both anger at a friend’s betrayal and agonizing remorse at the friendship’s loss.  Looking at the lyrics by themselves over the past couple of days, I’ve come to believe the song was written about revenge, but performed as a heart-wrenching loss, in which we listeners know that Mould (or we) will, of …

The National Book Critics Circle has announced finalists for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. Two of the nominees, Yusef Komunyakaa (The Chameleon Couch) and Bruce Smith (Devotions), were nominated for the National Book Award last fall; the award was eventually won by Nikky Finney. Here are all five nominees:

Forrest Gander, Core Samples from the World (New Directions)

Aracelis Girmay, Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions)

Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains (Copper Canyon Press)

Yusef Komunyakaa, The Chameleon Couch (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)

Bruce Smith, Devotions (University of Chicago …

Tree Swenson, Executive Director of the Academy of American Poets, has announced that Toi Derricotte, Jane Hirshfield, and Arthur Sze have been elected to the Board of Chancellors, the Academy’s advisory board of distinguished poets.

Each of the new Chancellors will have a poem featured in the Academy’s Poem-A-Day program, starting today with Toi Derricotte. To sign up, visit www.poets.org/poemaday.