Robert Polito

The Reluctant Genius of Rudy Burckhardt The complexity of Burckhardt's work is easy to overlook, because he calls attention to neither his mastery nor his labor.

The Reluctant Genius of Rudy Burckhardt hyperallergic.com/990734/the-r...

I’m hosting a celebration of Kenneth Koch at The New School on March 17 at 7 pm. Speakers will include Robert Polito, Ron Padgett, Maxine Groffsky, John Keene, Lucy Sante and Jim Jarmusch.

Robert Polito: The one-of-a-kind “film investigations” of Manny Farber - Library of America Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber (paperback) This month Library of America restores to print, via a new paperback edition, Farber on Film: The Collected Film Writings of Mann...

Manny Farber, who Susan Sontag called “the liveliest, smartest, most original film critic this country ever produced,” was born on this day, February 20, 1917. In this interview, poet and biographer Robert Polito discusses the “film investigations” of this singular cinematic interpreter.

Mail Call! Hollywood & God by
@fantomas2go.bsky.social
Found following the Barbara Payton trail; an initial skim reveals many thrills, tangents, clues... #poetrysky #booksky

Book Review Farber on Film: Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber - by Edited by Robert Polito: A c.. http://bit.ly/3hldOg

Kenneth Koch at 100: A Celebration Monday, March 17, 7 pm The New School Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street The Kenneth Koch Literary Estate and the New School invite you to a celebration of the life and work of Kenneth Koch, poet, teacher, playwright, fiction writer, and collaborator with artists. Koch, who taught at The New School from 1958 to 1966, is a major poet of New York - alongside his friends John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara and James Schuyler - and a teacher who inspired generations of young writers.

Participants include film director Jim Jarmusch, critic Lucy Sante, artists Jim Dine and Alex Katz, legendary editor of Paris Review Maxine Groffsky, essayist Phillip Lopate, and poets Ron Padgett, Charles North, Tony Towle, John Keene, and Jeffrey Harrison. Poet and editor Jordan Davis will host the event, with a general introduction by Robert Polito of The New School. Koch collaborated with artists Alex Katz, Jim Dine, Roy Lichtenstein, Red Grooms, Niki de Saint Phalle, Robert Rauschenberg and Larry Rivers, and with composers Virgil Thomson, Ned Rorem, Marcello Panni, and Scott Wheeler. The event is the first to celebrate Koch's work following what would have been his 100th birthday in February. During his lifetime, Koch published more than a dozen collections of poems including Thank You, The Pleasures of Peace, The Art of Love, Days and Nights, One Train, and New Addresses. Among his posthumous volumes are Collected Poems, On the Edge: Collected Long Poems, The Banquet: Collected Plays and The Collected Fiction of Kenneth Koch. He is also the author of two trailblazing books on teaching writing to children, Wishes, Lies and Dreams and Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?

Koch received the Library of Congress' Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry and the Bollingen Prize for Poetry. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, received Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships, and was named Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. Koch's teaching career in New York, beginning with three years at Brooklyn College and nine years at the New School, concluded at Columbia, where he taught from 1959 until 2002. The event is free and open to the public.

Some personal news

Winter is Here: On the Chilling Effect of Elon Musk and Donald Trump A functioning democracy needs dissent and debate. Trump won the 2024 election with 49.8 percent of the vote (with 77,302,580 total votes) over Kamala Harris’s 48.3 percent (with 75,017,613 total vo…

For @literaryhub.bsky.social I wrote about the fear of speaking up against Trump and Musk's fascism, especially if you receive any kind of federal funding, and that it is our job as writers and editors to reclaim their banned words and ideas to fight back for those who can't.

Will Frazier: “My Dad’s Memories of David Lynch as a Young Artist” A high school friend of David Lynch recalls the filmmaker’s early years as budding painter and fraternity brother.

Will Frazier & Bill Frazier: Fourteen Memories of David Lynch
yalereview.org/article/will...

An ‘SNL’ for the True Bob Dylan Fans Timothée Chalamet chose the artist’s lesser-known songs when performing last night.

Esther Zuckerman on TC singing BD on SNL last night www.theatlantic.com/culture/arch...

Sonnet for the Chickens The picture of elegance, my grandfather. I wanted his photograph in the dictionary.

Tom Healy - “Sonnet for the Chickens” poets.org/poem/sonnet-...

Sarah Lewis on Ways of Seeing Race in America “When it comes to the unspeakable facts in the history of America, it's largely the artists who've been willing to show us what others would not,” the art historian said in an interview with Hyperalle...

hyperallergic.com/974811/sarah...

Snapshots in Verse: On Hannah Arendt’s Long-Lost Poems Lit Hub is excited to feature another entry in a new series from Poets.org: “enjambments,” a monthly interview series with new and established poets. This month, they spoke to Samantha …

lithub.com/snapshots-in...

Walk on Air Against Your Better Judgment What Seamus Heaney gave me

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

The Art of Fiction No. 36 Author photograph by Gerard Malanga. Firecrackers and whistles sounded the advent of the New Year of 1965 in St. Louis. Stripteasers ran from the bars in Gaslight Square to dance in the street when mi...

www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4...

Suzanne and Louise

Hervé Guibert’s great-aunts serve as muses and collaborators in a newly translated “photo novel” of disquieting love and beauty. 4columns.org/camhi-leslie...

Oh, to Own the Lost Portrait of Arthur Rimbaud! The discovery of a rare picture of the tragic, handsome poet, made by his lover Paul Verlaine, set off a bidding war in Paris.

www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/s...

Lucy Grealy Understood What It Meant to Be Seen Three decades later, “Autobiography of a Face,” a sensation when it was published, has lost none of its force.

www.newyorker.com/books/second...

Jonathan Griffin: "How Mike Kelley Became Himself" How class and the counterculture shaped the art of Mike Kelley.

How Mike Kelley Became Himself
yalereview.org/article/jona...

Contemporary Poets Respond (in Verse) to Taylor Swift When Taylor Swift announced the title of her new album The Tortured Poets Department at the Grammy Awards in February, a question popped into my mind: How can poets and poetry enter into conversati…

lithub.com/contemporary...

Suzanne and Louise | Los Angeles Review of Books

lareviewofbooks.org/artist/suzan...

Book Review: ‘Love, Joe,’ by Joe Brainard The New York City writer and painter Joe Brainard comes alive in a new collection of letters.

www.nytimes.com/2024/12/02/b...

Ray Johnson and Emily Dickinson’s Quiet Correspondence The elusive correspondence artist saw himself reflected in the writer of enigmatic letters to the world.

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/ray-johnson-...

Emma Corrin and Maggie Nelson on the Strength in Vulnerability The “Nosferatu” actor and the writer discuss solitude, self-editing and the playfulness of their work.

www.nytimes.com/2024/11/26/t...

Garth Greenwell: ‘I didn’t read Middlemarch until my late 30s. Why didn’t someone intervene? ’ The novelist on Virginia Woolf’s luminous prose, obsessively rereading James Baldwin and why Saint Augustine is his favourite writer

www.theguardian.com/books/2024/n...

No Ordinary Joe | Daniel Felsenthal Joe Brainard’s trove of letters leads him down from Mount Olympus on a staircase of his own words.

thebaffler.com/latest/no-or...

Found this tintype - an early author’s photo?

Isn’t this the most amazing movie? Rewatched it again last night…