Author: Brian

Every semester, I give my 2nd year students a chance to earn extra credit by reciting a poem. My only requirements are that it be 16 lines long and that I approve it first, and my primary restriction is that it cannot be the lyrics to a song. They're always disappointed by that limitation, mostly … Continue reading Song Lyrics as Poetry

Seth Abramson has a pretty good piece up at HuffPo about what he calls the myths of the Creative Writing MFA. I recommend the piece, mainly for the last five myths. They're pretty pervasive myths and he handles them pretty well. And I'm not going to take issue with the first one so much as … Continue reading The 6 Myths of the Creative Writing MFA

I was putting off the work I need to do by catching up on podcasts--a practice I follow even when it isn't Labor Day--and found that this episode of Poetry Off the Shelf is all about the poetry of labor. It's an interesting piece, and worth the 15-20 minutes of your day to listen to, … Continue reading Labor Day Poetry

If you were a member of the Rumpus Poetry Book Club, you'd be involved in the conversation Gabrielle Calvocoressi is leading about Timothy Donnelly's The Cloud Corporation. You'd also have the book before its official release. I really enjoyed this piece by Clive James in the latest issue of Poetry. It's one of those essays … Continue reading Poetic Lives Online

I haven't written much about my upcoming book here because, well, I was worried I might jinx it. That's not quite true. It's been more because I was nervous. The economy hasn't been kind to university presses, and the university system in Louisiana, where my book is being published, has been particularly savaged, both by … Continue reading Book update

It's just a coincidence that I'll be teaching the Wendell Berry poem "Enriching the Earth" tomorrow, a poem which ends with the lines "And so what was heaviest / and most mute is at last raised up into song," but I couldn't help but think of Berry's sentiment about the body being of use after … Continue reading The Ultimate in Recycling

When Stephen hit me with the email suggesting we do a poetry version of the wildly successful Rumpus Book Club, I didn't know quite how to react. I'm a relatively busy guy, especially now that the semester has kicked back in, and it sounded like a lot of work. But we recruited some great people … Continue reading Rumpus Poetry Book Club First Impressions

Last week, I made a snarky comparison of Kent Johnson's theory about the authorship of a Frank O'Hara poem to Andrew Sullivan's continual questions about who exactly Trig Palin's mother is. Johnson responded to Tony Towle's challenges <a href="here, and I have to say that I think my comparison was apt. Johnson's refutation seems to … Continue reading Poetic Lives Online

Everyone who knows me knows I'm not afraid of tech, and yet I don't use it much in my classroom. No clickers, few Powerpoint presentations, and I still grade by marking comments on papers (though I tried electronic comments for a couple of years and may go back to it). I'm thinking about this because … Continue reading Teaching and Tech

On Facebook, Seth Abramson pointed to this HuffPo piece by Lev Raphael defending his MFA, and then wrote "as time goes on hopefully we'll hear more and more MFA graduates speak out." Raphael doesn't say how long ago he did his MFA, but I suspect, given his output, it's more than the seven years since … Continue reading Was my MFA worth it?