Ted Dodson

Poetry Foundation Staff Protest Program Cuts, Job Loss Employees at the foundation say the decision of senior leadership to eliminate public programs, announced earlier this month, goes against the organization’s mission, and are circulating a petition to...

This Publishers Weekly article about protests at the Poetry Foundation, including layoffs & changes in PF programming, is so strange. Because this shift is so important to poets, to readers, & to the field, here's a 🧵 about how we got here:

tinyurl.com/326xy2tm

The reporting in this @publisherswkly.bsky.social is bizarrely inaccurate for framing the move "to eliminate public programs" as a top-down decision.

If you're interested in Poetry Foundation's changes & position in literary philanthropy over the last 5 years, 🧵 here:
bsky.app/profile/nick...

Lost to myself I stayed My face upon my lover having laid From all endeavour ceasing: And all my cares releasing Threw them amongst the lilies there to fade.

St. John of the Cross, tr. Roy Campbell

Good Riddance To ‘The Best American Poetry’ | Defector When David Lehman, a poet then working as a book critic for Newsweek, proposed the project for The Best American Poetry anthology, he was searching for a national platform. His first anthology project...

It's the end of The Best American Poetry.

I wrote about the forty-year anthology project, poetry’s place in Big Five publishing, and editor David Lehman's culture wars vision of American verse.

defector.com/good-riddanc...

Broadcast presents HEAT WEEK—a series of dispatches from a world on fire. Ft @luxante.bsky.social, @billmckibben.bsky.social, @emilyraboteau.bsky.social, @jannalevinastro.bsky.social, @laurenmarkham.bsky.social, @philipcball.bsky.social. @wellcometrust.bsky.social
pioneerworks.org/broadcast/se...

Robert Glück, pictured here, says "the history of arts organizations is so ephemeral."

The new archive at Small Press Traffic, arranged for public access in the Mission, materializes the literary organization's history in Bay Area small press publishing.

www.smallpresstraffic.org/archive/arch...

The System Book covers curl, shaker caked with salt humidity— I can't speak for thinking of you St. Francis, hand aloft in the garden here you are here you are here you are. My daughter collects buttons in a box whose only purpose is containing them while their purpose is being contained. X-ing out the window panes, collecting non-perishables watching it rain in the ocean.

“St. Francis, hand aloft in the garden” A poem by Kate Colby.

I need money to buy gloves so that I never need again to touch it, money. I need gloves to separate my hands from dollars. Also from other hands when they hand me money, handling others' money, others' hands, disgusting. And cold, or hot, and lotion. To regulate mine own hands' temperatures, gloves. To buy them, money. (Line breaks too long to indicate accurately here)

Yes, here's how to start a book ⚡⚡

@sophiadahlin.bsky.social GLOVE MONEY (Nightboat Books)

And what about an ocean whose troubles top your own What about the sparks in that ocean and Andy, tell me what would you do Andy tell me what you would do if Sparkling Love comes to town and tries to look you up.

Robert Glück

I’d like teachers to reframe the question as: what labor is it right to steal?

the process by which human labor/the labor of the much-aligned and defunded LANGUAGE ARTS is fed into a machine and becomes a “donkey’s” labor is capitalism’s special twist and—it is right to protest this at every turn

The Poetry Foundation invited me to write an essay remembering Alice Notley (1945-2025). I'm grateful for the space to remember her in this way.

www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/171...

Fun fact: The literature fellowships were the only arts fellowship that survived the last right wing assault on arts funding in the mid-1990s. The reason they survived? The wife of one (1) congressman convinced him they had to stay.

(Look for the whole story in my new book June of next year!)

Unraveling of federal arts funding infrastructure continues. Hard to describe the decades of debates & advocacy invested in sustaining the CW fellowships at the NEA. Now, wiped out.

What the fu**ing shit, nyt!?!?!?!
Just within 24 hours after five of al-jazeers journalists were killed, nyt published this.
Who wrote it?
An israeli writer.
The blood of the journalists is still fresh in the journalists’ graves.
Blood is on nyt hands.

That Joe pronounces his name Chair-a-vole-oh and not Chur-ah-vah-low…I don't think I've ever heard anyone pronounce it correctly until now, including the most dedicated Ceravolo lovers

Newly available via American Archive of Public Broadcasting: A digitized collection of "Poetry Discovered," a WRVR-FM radio show in NYC including 43 episodes featuring readings by 85 poets in 1966: John Ashbery, Daisy Aldan, Helen Adam, Lorenzo Thomas, & more.

americanarchive.org/catalog?f%5B...

Screenshot of article that reads: When looking beyond just Harvard and Columbia, one thing becomes clear, said Dominique Baker, an associate professor of education and public policy at the University of Delaware, the president is inciting an “outright attack” on higher education, and he has no plans of slowing down. From the political ousting of University of Virginia president James Ryan to the legislative termination of countless academic programs in Indiana with little to no faculty input, Baker identified one defining thread: curtailing the power of democratic institutions. “We are in a very dangerous time, both for U.S. higher education, but more importantly for our country,” she explained. “These types of outright attacks on colleges and universities are typically the moves of autocrats and dictators, often seen as signs of authoritarian takeovers.” She later added, “if one wanted to overthrow our constitutional republic, these are the types of moves you would make.”

Reporter: How do you feel about the Columbia settlement?

Dominique: Let me tell you about public universities in Republican-led states...

I appreciate that I get the kicker on a lot of these stories because I'm the most grim

www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

Exposing The New York Times: The Paper of Zionist Record High-ranking Times editors and reporters have material and ideological ties to Israel’s occupation and apartheid. Their journalistic malpractice enables genocide in Gaza.

Tremendous reporting here from @wawog.bsky.social

newyorkwarcrimes.com/dossier?fbcl...

A photo of Zohran Mamdani receiving the endorsement of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City on July 9, 2025, overlaid with the headline, "Zohran Mamdani Shows Democrats How Not to Take the Bait," and the DEK, "By refusing to capitulate on "globalize the intifada," Mamdani rejected a long tradition of demonizing Arabic language."

This is what "intifada" actually means, and why Mamdani was right not to take the bait. interc.pt/4eEx4bK

This is an outrage, but also, look at all the citizens, with their cameras out both recording and shaming these secret military/police.

It’s Tuesday (July 1, 2025) today in Gaza. It’s still 8:52 P.M. there. Israel murdered 102 people since the early hours of the morning.

Seeing some more centrist folks imply that it was solely the focus on affordability that won the race for Mamdani. Absolutely bread and butter issues are key. But it was also his moral clarity.

Economics and ethics. Prices and principles. Freeze the rent AND free Palestine.

NYC LET’S GO

NYC 🚨

IF YOU HAVEN’T VOTED, GO NOW

FIND YOUR POLLING PLACE HERE: vote.nyc/page/find-yo...

RANK ZOHRAN 1, LANDER 2, MYRIE, ADAMS, BLAKE 3-5.

DO NOT RANK CUOMO UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

LET’S FUCKING GO.

This is incredibly beautiful storytelling.

The War Hawks Aren’t Even Trying To Persuade Us Anymore The Trump administration is barely making an effort to convince the public to get behind a war with Iran. But without a powerful anti-war movement, ‘manufacturing consent’ is not even necessary.

This moment is screaming out for a principled anti-war opposition. But outside of a few legislators, there is none. There is plenty of anti-war sentiment in this country, but it needs to be backed up by a movement prepared to wield political power.

www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-war...

This is on the heels of Reagan's shuttering of CA college campuses to quell anti-war protesting. Reagan's disdain for the UC system would then culminate in a mandated restructuring of their tuition structure, which is a line of attack that has been repeated and advanced all over the US ever since.

Good to note here the longue durée of the right's destabilization of the US ed system. In 1970, the architect of the student loan program, the oft-quoted Roger Freeman divulged as Reagan's gub ed advisor, "We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. That's dynamite!"