Reviewed: Ten Walks/Two Talks by Jon Cotner & Andy Fitch

Ugly Duckling Presse (2010) ,88 p. Reviewed by Laura Wetherington What do you get when you cross David Antin’s talk poems, William Carlos Williams’ Paterson, and Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro”?  Ten Walks/Two Talks.   That’s what.  This book by Jon Cotner & Andy Fitch composed in four parts, depicts the urban ecosystem as its living, breathing protagonist.  Here New York plays the hero.   A constellation of character sketches, including, “two blonds…thrilled to be tall,” the “guys […]

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Thurston Hearts Poetry

Over at Arthur, Thurston Moore and Bryan Coley discuss (among other things) poetry. Whatever generation it is now of the St. Marks Poetry Project New York School is beyond us, we stopped counting as soon as we saw Anselm Berrigan running the joint, remembering him as a kid banging around the folding chairs at the Project really not that long ago. Time flies in real time and in poet time and the last decade of young poets around that scene […]

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Bites: Buster Keaton, Warhol’s Blue-Collar Roots, Grrrl’s From the 90’s, Brooklyn’s Poet Laureate, and More

New York Review of Books talks Buster Keaton. Deep down, Andy Warhol was just a blue-collar eccentric. Remember N + 1 talking about the “neuronovel”?  Here’s co-founder Marco Roth talking about his essay on the subject on Aussie radio. Photos of Russian explorers at the North Pole in the 50’s and 60’s. The Breeders, Kim Gordon, Bikini Kill, and other essential female artists of the 90’s. Tina Chang: Brooklyn’s poet laureate.

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Poetry, Blues, and the Wrong Discussion

Interesting article over at The Daily Swarm about folk/blues singer Leadbelly’s lyrics as poetry: “I don`t know if it’s racism or plain old Aristotelian categorization that keeps that keeps Leadbelly`s driven, mad, wily lyrics out of the pantheon. Maybe it`s both, and snobbery to boot. I know Leadbelly himself probably could have been inspired to write something about it if the subject had been brought up.” The writer makes some great points, but fails to take into consideration that Leadbelly […]

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Peaches and Bats #5 Out Now/Looks Great

Peaches and Bats is a spiffy looking zine poetry out of Portland, Oregon features new work by: Eric Baus, Allison Cobb, Robert Dewhurst, Michael Farrell, Emily Kendal Frey, Anne Gorrick, Alina Gregorian, Matthew Hattie Hein, Derek Henderson, Robert Kelly, Sheila E. Murphy, and James Yeary. Fellow New Yorkers can pick theirs up at Bluestockings.

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Bites: Eating Meat Around Safran Foer, Nextbook Makes a Friend, Talking to Martin Amis, and More

Pizza meets math. Lit. Good for you Greg Kuntzman, ordering a chicken sandwich when talking to Jonathan Safran Foer. Paul Auster has a cool daughter. Nextbook announce a new “partnership” with record label, JDub Records. The Guardian gives us their books of the decade. HTMLGiant picks the most important poetry books of the 00’s. An interview with Martin Amis. New albums Titus Andronicus covering the Civil War on their next album. Interviews The Rumpus talks to a Mountain Goat. Politics […]

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