January 2003

Two Ghazal Poets

Arabic,

Poetry

Within recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in formal poetry, including 'new' or 'original' forms. One such form is, of course, the ghazal, which in reality can be traced back at least a thousand years, with roots going even deeper. However, the form is indeed new to English, especially in its formal sense. Many writers have claimed to written ghazals, but have in reality written creative free verse in couplets.

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Amiri Baraka

Beat Generation,

Harlem Renaissance,

Poetry,

Politics

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Roger Richards and Claude Pelieu

Beat Generation,

Tributes

2002 came to a sad and sudden end with the passing of two friends, Roger Richards and Claude Pelieu, both of whom were integral to the extended Beat family we celebrate on this site.

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Borges’ Ficciones

Latin,

Postmodernism,

Reviews

I've never read a critical source about Borges. I don't really feel the desire to. And I think Borges might be pleased with that. Why? Well it seems to me that Borges, more than any other writer, realized that reading is the process of making a book one's own. Of adopting it.

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Charles Bukowski and the Path of Masculinity

Existential,

Poetry,

Transgressive

I was browsing the poetry section at Barnes & Noble's the other day when I ran into one hell of a ballsy title. What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999), is a collection of poems by Charles Bukowski, published posthumously by his last wife who apparently thought that he walked through the fire quite well. It takes some cojones to pull off a proclamatory title like this without coming off as extremely pretentious, but in this case I think the implied compliment to the man is well deserved.

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Giacomo Leopardi

History,

Nature,

Romantic,

Victorian

The Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi, 1798-1837, was a contemporary of the great English Romantic poets such as Shelley, Keats and Byron who lived in Italy, though he never had the chance to meet them. He was born in Recanati, a small town of the Marche region, then part of the Papal States.

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The Great Lost Rock Memoir: The Autobiography by Chuck Berry

by Levi Asher Sunday, March 17, 2013 06:42 pm

It's fitting that the guy who singlehandedly invented rock and roll when he recorded a song called "Mabellene" at Chess studios in Chicago on May 21, 1955 would later become an early innovator in the rock memoir field.