Oops! Wow, I can’t believe I forgot to include the two books of Rilke in translation that I read on my list of books read from 2009. This is a serious omission, since 2009 was the year that I finally really discovered Rilke. If you’re interested in what I have to say about those books, I’ve added my thoughts to the post, and you can click through to see what I had to say. But for here, I’ll just say that I came to Rilke because of a conversation I had recalling a few lines from one of the letters …
Tag: poetry
Diet Soap #3! (Get One Free!)
Diet Soap #3 is finally out! It includes my poem “Tian Ju Zhao,” which is the first poem ‘ve published in ages. (Though a couple more will be showing up in a future issue of Diet Soap.) There’s a heck of a lineup too, including none other than Howard Waldrop! You can pay to download or get a print copy at Lulu, but there’s a special offer on, at least at the time of writing, where you can request a free copy of the current issue in PDF format (presumably to see whether you like it enough to subscribe). Might …
It’s Not Normal For Everybody to Write Poetry
There’s a very interesting piece at Danwei about popular mockery on the Chinese Web of a “poet” named Zhao Lihua whose poems are, well… Well, some people think they’re not poetry at all. She sees them as part of an experimental stage in her past, and there’s an interesting debate about the whole topic going on around the web, but in Chinese, so I have no access to it, except via Danwei. This is really interesting to me for two reasons: 1. This stuff reminds me of a lot of Kerouac’s attempts at poetry, which I don’t hold in very …