That’s right, ROBERT PINSKY reads from his work on The Simpsons (skip to 9:58)

Lisa attends his reading at Cafe Kafka, where the sound technician recites this sound-checking verse: “roses are red, roses are red. april is the cruelest month, cruelest month,” and then shares an after-reading pizza with the former poet laureate. Pizza and poems? We’re in.

this post is FOR THOSE OF YOU KEEPING SCORE

&

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO KNOW IT’S ALL ABOUT WINNING:

Hipster Runoff’s list of the “alt-est costumes of 2k9″ includes a Tao Lin costume!

which we were totally considering using as our 2010 costume, until we saw this charmer:

A resident of Seattle in the post-Kurt Cobain era

a newly published volume of Eliot’s letters threatens to dispel myths that the poet was a Jew hater, wife-torturer.  times article about newly published volume leaves lingering doubts about such claims.  with little revelation–aside from oh shit, that’s right, TS Eliot is distantly responsible for CATS– the article simply contains loads more examples of eliot being a total douche:

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In private papers written in the 1960s, he wrote: “To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land.”

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that sounds like a pretty awful marriage, dude.  also?  the parts where you talk about killing her and/or yourself are not so sympathetic.  thankfully there are tiny gems in the times’ 11 pages of excerpts:
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To Virginia Woolf

7 May 1924, Milestone Cottages

How tired I am of being supposed to edit the Criterion, how tired of the very word Criterion! And yet you would be surprised how many substantial personages and men of weight, Oxford dons and grave statesmen, come and tell me what a lucky young man I am at my age to have a review to “do as I like with”! Do as I like! As if there were any satisfaction in doing as one likes with editing a review in the fragmentary evening hours given at the cost of sleep, society, recreation and neglect of private affairs.

Close-reading the current Urban Outfitters catalog, Jezebel reveals what we already knew to be true about the electricity innate in every poets blouse:

-via Jezebel.com

Now that Vito Acconci is modeling the conceptual poet look on page 26 of the latest J.Crew catalog, we wonder:

Is J.Crew getting hipper?

or

Is Vito getting lamer?

Spotted over lattes and lameness: V telling Scott that Lonely Boy will be her BFF 4-EVA,

“even if he were rich and dressed like Truman Capote”

we feel like we had something to do with this:

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Hi.  My name is Amber Tamblyn and I am a 26 year old writer and actress who lives in New York City.  I was born in Venice, California.  I’ll be blogging here at Harriet for a few months.  I hope to share some unique stories with you.  I hope you enjoy them.

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good job, pofo

A:

First of all, you can put away your old-school notions about the liberal arts. Back when you grew up, Plato banished poets from his Republic. These days, there is no poet leper colony.

It is true, ________[1], I have no marketable life skills and fewer survivor skills. Very little separates me from infants or the women of VH1’s Rock of Love.

-by MFA holder Sheera Talpaz via rumpus.net