12/22/98 - Some Questions, Some Answers
On “the spoken word movement of the 1990's”... A slow slouch towards Utopia. When we're all poets, the politicians will have to look for a day job.
12/15/98 - Merry Christmas. Chappy Chanukah. Kool Kwanzaa.
Yes, 'tis the season to try to figure out what to BUY for everybody. We must all do our part. So, this year, why not give the gift of poetry?
12/08/98 - The Rothko: A New Poetic Form
Call 'em haikus. Naw, call 'em Rothkos... and get those colors in there while you're at it, like a tic-tac-toe.
12/01/98 - Ain't it time for a poem?
How About “Sex With a Famous Poet”? The best Poem of the Day online is dished up by Anastasios Kozaitis... and Denise Duhamel is one of poetry's most raucous unstoppable young voices.
11/24/98 - To Feel the Poem Dance
A report from the First International Poetry Olympics held in Stockholm, Sweden last month via email interview with Gary Glazner, individual champion.
11/12/98 - The San Francisco Bay Area Book Festival
Poetry sustained by community: The event was overflowing with an anarcho, dedicated-to-lit energy that mirrors the City by the Bay's centrality to US poetics history.
11/03/98 - Society of Underground Poets Festival, Lexington, KY
Report from the front: This year's SoUPFest was a stunning example of poetry's continuing engagement with the daily life of the nation's citizenry.
10/27/98 - SemiCento, Part II
Serial Poets Kill 4,000 at Bookfair Dinner: A report of the premiere performance.
10/20/98 - SemiCento, A “Stitched Together” Poem
When the Frankfurt Buchmesse turns fifty, and Bob Holman is commissioned to write the occasional verse, voila!... the poem gathers poets from all cultures and times to say Happy Birthday, What Is a Poem?
10/13/98 - Janet Hamill's Three Rules for Performance Poems
Rhythm, hooks, simplicity. Three keys for a poem that will work in performance. Thanks, Janet!
09/30/98 - Travelers' Guide / Coming Home
Poetry can bring us together; a poem that allows us inside as we move, mutually, towards a center called love is rare indeed.
09/22/98 - Fernando Pessoa: Poet as Poetry
More than any other human, he lived life solely in his poems, his life a shell for the literary movement that was himself.
09/12/98 - Back To School Special
Professor Bob Holman's “Exploding Text: Poetry in Performance”: Our intrepid PoGuide takes up residence as Visiting Professor of Writing at Bard College this semester.
09/01/98 - Poetry in China Today
“Tea House Rappers, Crusification and the Slammer”: A letter sent home by our friend Gary Mex Glazner, who is midway in his year of circling the globe as a wandering poet...
08/25/98 - Slam Grows Up As It Blows Up
A report from the 9th annual National Poetry Slam in Austin, Texas: It was a treat and a tribute, a coming of age and a Headbanger's Ball.
08/18/98 - The Dream of the World of Poetry
Remarks by Bob Holman at the XXth Biennale Internationale de la Poésie: Poets of the World, Rewrite! I mean, Unite! I take off my hat to you.
08/11/98 - Preface to A Rebirth Announcement Haiku
For Amiri Baraka, on birthday numero sesenta: Deeper'n'deeper'n'deeper'n'deep / Voice, where you lead us? / The way out Way Out / Song itself sings itself...
08/04/98 - Just A Moment: Paul Blackburn...
And the fragmentation of the New American Poetry: He was a walking exponent of the oral tradition...with the word at the center and poets breathing them in and out... First the Poem. Then, the Theory.
07/28/98 - A Community of Poets: Fact and Myth
A clatter of poets. A scatter of poets... As individualistic as writing is, in practice writers have always helped each other. To a point... It's time to push the point.
07/21/98 - How the Ginsberg Memorial That Didn't Happen...
...Happened: A report from the trenches of the future from Birgitta Jonsdottir of Reykjavik, Iceland.
07/14/98 - Why Slam Causes Pain and Is a Good Thing
A poetical explication of Slam phenomena by Bob Holman: Because Slam is Unfair. / Because Slam is too much fun. / Because poetry. / Because rules. / Because poetry rules....
07/07/98 - Rinaldo Rasa & Alan Sondheim
Poems take shape on the screen: We see a poem on a screen as a poem, a connector of linguistic holistic hooliganisms, a shameless shaman sham'n'truth shake.
06/30/98 - Road Tripping with Poetry Alive!
Tour doodles from Wendi Loomis.... I walk into tomorrow's school armed only with poetry, hoping I have enough ammunition to get out alive.
06/23/98 - Patricia Smith, Journalism & Poetry
Shall we meditate on Truth? As the nation's foremost Slam poet, she speaks the voices of those who have not been heard.... As a journalist, Patricia Smith is a great poet -- she gets at the truth under the skin.
06/16/98 - New Heavyweight Poet Crowned!
The one and only SofaSurf Poet Extraordinaire, Miz Juliette Torrez reports from the Taos Poetry Circus. Poetry Channel #46 was so chockfull of noize that we had to Feature it... the BIG news is a brand-new Heavyweight Champeen -- read on!
06/09/98 - Tapping My Own Phone: poems & stories
Ron Whitehead's new CD reviewed: Appalachia in all its lost-in-the-holler glory and the Beat zone of poesie in full utopian regalia....
06/02/98 - How to Make a CD: A Poet's Perspective, Part II
How finished the book feels! unlike the ever-ongoingness of the poems. With a CD it's different.... Mind dances, under the headphones, to poetry on CD.
05/26/98 - How to Make a CD: A Poet's Perspective, Part I
First, make up poems for twenty-odd years.... look on CD, like book, as a vehicle for Poem's Wild Ride.
05/19/98 - Zen and the Art of Poetry: Parables by Mike Topp
Mike “The Spinner” Topp's parables allow for a truth, but only when ROTFL....
05/12/98 - “If I Were Chubby Checker,...
..., How I Would Change the World”: A meditation on a passage from Eldridge Cleaver's Soul On Ice by Steve Greenberg.
05/05/98 - David Thomas' DISASTODROME, Part II
“Refine yourself in the fire of the moment,” says Man to Mirror. “Burn baby Burn!” replies Mirror... Off you go then. Stand by, Earthman. Where?
04/28/98 - David Thomas' DISASTODROME
The Poet reports from backstage, on stage, front row center: I had the perfect Olympian vantage point for this Masterpiece of Spontaneous Creation.
04/21/98 - Mimeo Cyber Po: Paul Copeland & Rinaldo Rasa
We at About.com Poetry have a bent towards mimeo cyberpo, the lo-tech arrangement of characters and words into a concrete, graphic representation. And we love showing off our far-flung poets.
04/14/98 - It's Always National Poetry Month!
The Po-Year-In-Review, from the end of the Beat era through Nike ads, slams & festivals, to the year's best poetry recordings....
04/07/98 - My First Poem
Before I wrote my first poem I heard my first poem... one of those mythical schoolyard rhymes, handed down by who knows how many children....
03/31/98 - Poets Work
Here's a journey into the dailiness of the lives of the poets -- how do we make a living?
03/24/98 - Creative Cursing: A Poet's Disstionary
Poets Bite! And Daniel Zimmerman's got a word bead on ya.... floats word bombs that invite snortin' retortin' and gaffe-in' guffawin'.
03/17/98 - Poetry Flash from Deutschland: Till Müller-Klug
German Cyber Slammer, he has been known to perform at his home club in Berlin, SO36, using only the light from a reindeer cigarette lighter for illumination.
03/10/98 - Making Real Yeats' Gyres
An account of a program of opposites, Lucie Brock-Broido reading with Bob Holman... & something tectonic was bound to happen.
03/03/98 - RIP, Brother Man, Jack Micheline
Jack Micheline, painter, poet, the guy next to you at the bar, boho, true spirit, grizzled guzzler of all U.S. could offer, pappy, sappy, smart sass and free-flow po.... No one can keep you out of Heaven.
02/24/98 - From Tyler to XYZ
Mike Tyler & Emily XYZ: two of our favorite poets get down with a million eyes and a few yi-yis.
02/17/98 - The Mount
A behind-the-scenes tale from the making of The United States of Poetry, guaranteed to incite insight into that most delicious of contempo marriages: Poetry vs. Television.
02/10/98 - Why I Love Anne Elliott Is Revealed
An email interview with Anne Elliott, terrific poet & the publisher/editor of Big Fat Press, who with Big Soul and Talent, tiny bucks and fantastic art (design) sense has made some of the loveliest books of the past few years.
02/03/98 - SLAM! A Raw Poem of a Movie
...wins best feature at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. This is the recipe for a movie for a new millennium.
01/27/98 - Cantos to Blood and Honey: Taste Joy!
Here's the language mix that puts Miami in your eye.... Read the words of Adrian Castro, new poet singing like a cucu and bopping flesh back to life.
01/20/98 - “Home Is Where the Music Is”
A review of Victor Hernandez Cruz' Panoramas: Here's the latest fresh roasted off Coffee House Press, perhaps the best “small” press in the country, stepping to the heartbeat of la poesia nueva.
01/13/98 - Technological Report
Announcing the new Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge device called B.O.O.K.: Once again, an anonymous Genius Grant Deservee has created a solid-state mania reconfig of the void.
01/06/98 - Dance With This Man!
Slim Moon's Kill Rock Stars label is the great hope both of indie records and poetry's purity and more than that, it rocks.
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