T.S. Eliot was born in 1888 and by the age of 29 he had published his first collection of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) amidst the seemingly unending carnage of western civilization’s First World War (1914-1918). Along with this, his life during the early 1920s was under personal strain due to marriage difficulties with his wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood, and Eliot, now near nervous-breakdown, spent two months in a Swiss Sanitorium. It was during this traumatic time that Eliot produced the fragmented and disturbing …

Granted: ticket to America!
What’s an ex-pat to do when given such a gift?

Immediately, she plans to meet up with a poet or two. And thus, our story begins.

Adventure 1:
Lunch at 2nd Avenue Deli with Graham Seidman

So, a humid day in NYC brought me, my life partner Gad and my second son, Rahm, over to Second Avenue for a simple lunch with Graham Seidman, the superb photographer/writer, who lived in what’s called the Beat Hotel in Paris when Ginsberg, Corso and Burroughs …

“You know what the worst part about working with him was?
He always wanted you to use some weird fucking form.” —T. Borchers

For most people, Agha Shahid Ali’s name is synonymous with the “English ghazal” or “American ghazal”. He is the one known for bringing the ghazal to English, for teaching the Western world it’s rules and mysteries. And while, we must bow our heads in thanks to those who walked before him, it is Agha Shahid Ali who has presented us with not one, …

I thought this list might help others improve their craft. These are the essential elements of haiku as advocated by The Heron’s Nest (from editor Ferris Gilli):

Concrete imagery
Focus
Conciseness (clarity, brevity)
Effective juxtaposition
Resonance
Immediacy
Natural syntax
Common language
Balance of humanity and nature
Sense of mood
Sense of season; kigo
A clear caesura between the two parts of the haiku
(A poem that consists of only a single, complete sentence usually fails as haiku.)

Every successful haiku poet keeps a mental list of things that should not be part of a haiku. This is my list …

I have been unsuccessfully trying to find living connections between the poet Olafs Stumbrs and any parts of the American literary scene. Olafs Stumbrs was born in Riga, Latvia in 1931. His childhood was spent in Bierini, a poor, but beatiful, green suburb. Communists occupied Latvia in 1940, Nazis came in 1941, then Communists returned in 1944-45. Thousands of Latvians fled west, since Communists had killed or deported to Siberia thousands of innocent Latvian people in 1940-41. Thus, Stumbrs went with his mother to …

The room was a romantic’s dream … a garret … a real goddamn “la Boheme” garret.

There was no window, only a small skylight. Five hundred years ago this room was probably home to a servant in some Noble’s service. Now it was mine. Five flights up. A Turkish toilet (you had to have the agility of a ten year old to squat on the hole in the floor) outside next to the stairs with sheets of France Soir, the local newspaper, in lieu of …

In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, there is a conspicuous absence of really villainous antagonists. Neither are there real heroes; Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist, is constantly ready to give up. Vonnegut seems to be making the statement that there really is no good or evil, only different perspectives. In his own words from Chapter 1:

“I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time, they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody. They may be teaching …