digital emunction

I’m very pleased to announce the launch of Chicago Review 53:4 & 54:1/2, a 368-page triple issue with a special section dedicated to the life and work of Barbara Guest. The issue costs $18 and may be purchased here, or you can subscribe to CR for a year–good for three issues–for just $25 here.

The Barbara Guest feature includes three previously unpublished plays by Guest and a portfolio (edited by Catherine Wagner) of five uncollected poems. The feature also includes critical and personal responses to Guest’s work by Charles Altieri, Eileen Myles, Donald Revell, John Wilkinson, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Martha Ronk, Andrea Brady, Brenda Hillman, Nancy Robbin, Patricia Dienstfrey and Rena Rosenwasser, and Garrett Caples.

The issue also includes:

[Read more]

Yesterday Ron Silliman jumped into the discussion of Charles Simic’s review of Robert Creeley’s Collected Poems. Not surprisingly, Silliman comes down firmly on the side of those who saw the review as an attack on a whole tradition of poetry. Echoing Mark Weiss’s original sentiment, Silliman writes “[Simic] uses Creeley to make a larger—and much more pernicious—argument. His real target is the post-avant.”

Nothing in the discussion on the POETICS listserv that followed my original post convinced me on that point, though Simic’s hand in this year’s National Book Award nominations has certainly made me reconsider it. But since no one seemed especially interested in the point I was actually concerned with—the effect of Creeley’s social standing in certain circles on the reception of his work—it didn’t seem worth carrying on, especially since I wasn’t much in the mood to defend a poet (Simic) whose work I don’t particularly care for and whose idea of good poetry seems blinkered at best.

Silliman’s post takes apart the Simic review paragraph by paragraph, [Read more]