Being named the government’s official poetic voice of America really does matter! Since Philip Levine was crowned poet laureate yesterday, The New York Times reports that readers are buying every copy of his books in sight, Knopf is rushing to print more and Amazon has back orders six days deep.
Philip Levine, whose poems have chronicled American life from the industrial toils of Detroit to the dry heat of the Fresno Valley, will be the next poet laureate. He is the author of 20 collections of poems, including the Pullitzer Prize-winning “The Simple Truth” (1995). He is 83. He told the New York Times Read More
Earlier today, a one-bedroom apartment at 437 East 12th Street went on the the rental market. Though it’s certainly remarkable for its price—$1,700 a month? In the East Village?—its primary claim to fame is that it housed Allen Ginsberg for over two decades. Here Ginsberg lived with his lover, Peter Orlovsky, and would host Read More
“I think there’s a good argument for having fun when you work,” said Paris Review editor Lorin Stein on the phone from his White Street offices yesterday. “Life is short! And none of us is making a banker’s salary, right?”
Since leaving Farrar, Straus & Giroux to take over the quarterly from Philip Gourevitch earlier Read More
Earlier this month, I saw poets Paul Muldoon and John Ashbery read at a small, 60-seat venue in Hell’s Kitchen called Medicine Show Theatre. I’d never heard of the place. There was no sign on the door and scaffolding shrouded the entrance. I paid $5 and sat in a room with about 40 Read More
Paul Muldoon and John Ashbery were a little late to their reading last night at Medicine Show Theatre in Hell’s Kitchen. The charmingly unassuming space tucked away on the third floor of a sign-less building on 52nd Street was set up like a retro domestic kitchen, adorned with fake fruit and fake flowers. The room Read More
