The New Yorker, “The Secret Lessons of Soviet Children’s Poems”

As a teen-ager in tsarist Russia, Mayakovsky was already attending anarchist meetings and distributing socialist leaflets. A stint in prison converted him into a poet; the Revolution made him a Communist. Proclaiming himself a “Bolshevik in art,” Mayakovsky founded innumerable avant-gardist groups that variously inspired or horrified the Soviet authorities in the nineteen-twenties. When he […]

The Denver Post, “This poet is riding through Denver delivering dreams to doorsteps. Nightmares cost extra.”

In Richmond, Va., he lived in an anarchist collective called the Flying Brick. In Tucson, he lived in an old fire station above the Tucson Museum of Contemporary Art. A violent lightning storm nearly killed him in the desert outside Marfa, Texas. Continue Reading

The New York Times, “Philip Levine, a Poet of Grit, Sweat and Labor, Dies at 87,” February 15, 2015

Philip Levine, a Poet of Grit, Sweat and Labor, Dies at 87 by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, February 15, 2015 In spare, realistic free verse, Mr. Levine explored the subjects that had long animated his work: his gritty Detroit childhood; the soul-numbing factory jobs he held as a youth; Spain, where he lived […]

James Tracy: We Vote Every Day (a poem)

Printed with permission from James Tracy.                               i’m always                                       suspicious                               of parties                           […]