Difficult Speech at Louisvile

Difficult Speech at Louisville    

Cosmic Weather, by Anthony Seidman

"The great Kenneth Koch once wrote an imaginary anthology titled Some South American Poets, even though most of them didn’t sound (intentionally or…

Dispatch #49: Letter to a Student at Wayne State University

Dear *******, We appreciate your detailed letter. We don't doubt many of the people involved in this latest iteration of Poetry Cancel Culture are…

PoBiz Stock Index Update, 6 February 2020

  Poetry markets ticked upward yesterday on news that the Louisville Academic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (aka the University…

Poem for Donald Trump’s Acquittal, by Kent Johnson [link]

HI THERE, MADID, I’m an American poet, twentyish, early to mid-thirtyish, fortyish to seventyish, I’ve had poems on the Poets Against the War…

The Suburbs, by Paul Vogel [link]

A slight striation brings us to an opalescent aquapit of algae-grazing crustaceans and pedal boat taverns. Take I-94 West past the tropical…

Dispatch #48 — Despicable Us

It has come to the attention of Dispatches that certain Players in the Authorized Poetry Zones have taken to calling us despicable following our…

Burt Kimmelman reviews Hugh Seidman’s Status of the Mourned (Dispatches Editons) [link]

  “Seidman’s greatness as a poet ultimately lies in his capacity to identify with the other. Suffering rivets him. Compassion fails to…

A VERY FULL, LARGE, AND LUMINOUS SPACE”: THE POETRY OF AMANDA BERENGUER [link]

  “ . . . this anthology took more than a decade to compile, and I wasn't initially an editor. I was the translator working with selections…

Q.R. Hand benefit

Go Fund Me link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-helping-hand-for-q-r-hand

Peter Anastas, 1937-2019

Didpastches mourns the loss of our friend, the writer, Peter Anastas who passed on December 27, 2019. For an account of Peter's life, here is a link…

Dispatch #46: On phony victimhood and the attempt to suppress debate

If anyone needed proof that Barrett Watten doesn’t get it, all they’d have to do would be to read the self-serving screed currently posted on his…

Barrett Watten responds to Dispatches from the Poetry Wars [link]

“There is a larger question, here, of the relation between “principle” and “antagonism,” and Dispatches from the Poetry Wars is at the center of that…

Dispatch #45: On the Attempt to Exclude Barrett Watten from the 2020 “20th Century Literature Conference” in Louisville

The following extraordinary document came to us yesterday. It is now making the rounds on the internet. Petition for the Removal of Barrett Watten…

Chicago Review, the Beats, and Big Table: 60 Years On [link]

"This year marks sixty years since the publication of the first issue of Big Table, the journal started by Irving Rosenthal, Paul Carroll, and other…

Dispatches mourns the death of the UK activist poet Sean Bonney (1969-2019)

Our Death / Abject (after Baudelaire) Wine is a dull disk that encircles the law. It will check your passport, will make sure that your sense of…

William Barr’s monument to ego and power [link]

"I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily…

Testamentality, Transcryption: An Emotional Memoir of Jack Spicer by Larry Kearney, reviewed by Patrick James Dunagan [link]

"Kearney isn’t interested in contributing to any legend of Spicer. He also isn’t so much interested in facts. As the journalist’s comment…

Literature, Capital, Catapult, and The Kochs: A Dialogue Hilary Plum & Lucy Biederman [link]

More voices raised against the incursions of corporate money and influence in the world of poetry. "So let’s name it! This evil, this money, the Koch…

Peacock Generation: Satirical poets jailed in Myanmar [link]

"Five members of a satirical poetry troupe in Myanmar have been jailed for making fun of the country's military. "The group, Peacock Generation, was…

Exchange between Dispatches Editor Burt Kimmelman and Thomas Fink on Wings Apart [link]

  "I’ve been working exclusively in syllabics for a long while now. In some longer poems, especially if there’s a persona’s voice, let’s say,…

Cascadia Poetry Festival 2020 — Life & Legacy of Robin Blaser/The Practice of the Self

The next Cascadia Poetry Festival will be May 1-3, 2020, on San Juan Island, at the Multiverse. The Life and Legacy of Robin Blaser and The Practice…

Global call to defend the Rojava Revolution!

"Internationalism in the twenty-first century has a lot of colours, but for sure the colour of the woman is the one that shines brightest. Patriarchy…