Hometown reporting on Philip Levine’s appointment as US Poet Laureate from the Fresno Bee in California. Levine was born in Detroit and started teaching at Fresno State in 1958. The university didn’t even have a creative writing program at the time. His close friend and fellow poet Peter Everwine,…
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Poetry is front-page news online tonight. That’s different. The NYTimes tonight reports that Philip Levine is the new U.S. Poet Laureate. Read Charles McGrath’s article here, and get the NYT if you want more. Phil Levine was one of my poet-heroes when I started writing in the mid-1970s. I admired…
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Kay Ryan (photo courtesy of Kristina Coci Hernandez) Sometimes I worry that we push too much poetry on the readers of this blog. After seeing more than 250 happy people listening to Kay Ryan read her poems last night at UMass Lowell’s O’Leary Library, I’m more encouraged than ever that poetry can…
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