E-Verse Radio

“These Go to Eleven”: E-Verse Eleventh Anniversary Party, Saturday, June 27th, Philadelphia, Hold the Date

Yes, that’s right, this July 1st will mark a full ten years of E-Verse Radio (and the start of the eleventh year)! We’ll celebrate with a Saturday night of drinks and music at Ruba. June 27th. 9PM. Free and cheap drinks, live music, dancing. Yeah!
Ruba Hall
414 Green St
Philadelphia, PA
215-627-9831
Please RSVP to get onto the guest [...]

Top Five Cynical Christmas Movies

5.  Gremlins (1984)

4. A Midnight Clear (1992)

3. Trading Places (1983)

2. The Ref (1994)

1. Bad Santa (2003)

“Sweat to Death!”: Top Five Cheap Beers Consumed by Five Young Metalheads in New Jersey During the ’80’s

The guitarist for Judgement [sic] (Ernie’s old heavy metal band) sends in Top Five Cheap Beers Consumed by Five Young Metalheads in New Jersey During the ’80’s:

5. Meister Brau

4. Old Milwaukee

3. Piels

2. Stegmeier
[So obscure, no pictures exist of this brand. - E]

1. Schmidts

Runners up, added by Ernie:

Löwenbräu [dubbed "Poop Moistener" by Judgement guitarist Jay in [...]

E-Verser Introduces a New Drink: Oleg’s Choice

E-Verser Erica discovered a new drink last night while surveying her liquor cabinet: the Oleg’s Choice!
One part Fresca.
One part Maker’s Mark.
Pour over ice.
Drink.

Disclaimer: E-Verse Radio has not personally tried this drink. Do so at your own risk!
And, in case you were wondering, here’s Oleg:

Coolest Barbie I’ve Seen

Yes! This is a Barbie version of Tippi Hedren’s character Melanie Daniels in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1963 psycho-thriller The Birds, based on the Daphne Du Maurier short story (adapted for the screen by Evan Hunter). It’s a bit pricey for me, but I think it’s very cool. It could use a bit more blood, but [...]

Ernest Hilbert Interviews X.J. Kennedy

From the Contemporary Poetry Review.
“Celticly Wild, Teutonically Fussy,” an Interview with X. J. Kennedy
X. J. Kennedy was born in Dover, NJ in 1929, the son of a boiler factory timekeeper. After collecting degrees from Seton Hall and Columbia, he spent four years in the US Navy as an enlisted journalist. He and his wife Dorothy [...]

“Nothing is Beneath Consideration”: Christopher Bakken reads letters of Lowell, Wright, Clampitt

This is a wonderful piece by Christopher Bakken that I published in this month’s issue of the Contemporary Poetry Review:
By my count, the greatest collection of letters ever produced by a poet advances at least one exquisitely rendered thought per page, and many of these thoughts match in wit and wisdom, and often in beauty [...]

Contemporary Poetry Review Party, 10th Anniversary, Slideshow

I’m back from a long weekend (working) in San Francisco. While I was away, Paul put together this funny slide show video of the Chelsea Hotel Party. Paul and I hope to put together some shows soon. I’ll be heading to Peru at the end of the month, and then Paul’s heading to Australia. We [...]

Some Photos from the Contemporary Poetry Review Party at the Chelsea Hotel

I hosted a party with Garrick Davis for the Contemporary Poetry Review at the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan last Thursday, the opening night of the AWP conference.
Left to right, Jan Schreiber, Ernest Hilbert, Garrick Davis, and Dan Brown.

Left to right, Joshua Mehigan (not entirely pictured), Bill Coyle, David Yezzi, and George Green.

The photographer, Preston Merchant.

Marilyn [...]

Funny Frontispiece

I’m back from a long weekend in NYC. I hosted Contemporary Poetry Review parties at the Chelsea Hotel and (the next evening) at the Madison Belvedere. On Saturday I met with my publishers, who had flown in from the west coast on a GulfStream private jet. I also spent some time in the recording studio [...]

American Premiere of The Lifeblood, New Verse Drama by Glyn Maxwell

AMERICAN PREMIERE OF THE LIFEBLOOD BY GLYN MAXWELL, FEBRUARY 1, 2008 AT PHOENIX THEATRE ENSEMBLE
Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, a New York artist-directed theatre company, announces that the American premiere of Glyn Maxwell’s remarkable drama The Lifeblood. The dramatic telling of the last days of Mary Stuart begins performances on Friday, February 1 and plays [...]

What We Owe the New Critics

Mark Bauerlein on the New Critics and Garrick Davis’s forthcoming book in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
When Garrick Davis told me he had assembled an anthology of New Criticism, I reached across the table and shook his hand. Davis is the founder of the Contemporary Poetry Review (http://www.cprw.com), an online magazine that covers the poetry [...]

The First Confessionalist: Ernest Hilbert Interviews American Poet W.D. Snodgrass

From the Contemporary Poetry Review
Interviewer’s note: William DeWitt Snodgrass is commonly credited with inaugurating the “confessional” era in American poetry in 1959 with his first collection, Heart’s Needle. It went [...]

Neither Does it Strengthen the Soul: Anthony Hecht, 1923-2004

Neither does it strengthen the soul: Anthony Hecht, 1923-2004 by Ernest Hilbert
[In 2004, the Academy of American Poets asked me to write an in memoriam for the American poet Anthony Hecht. It appeared in their magazine American Poet. His widow, Helen Hecht, wrote me a very kind note to say how pleased she was with [...]

Kathleen Rooney watches Poetry at the Movies

In the new issue of the Contemporary Poetry Review, Kathleen Rooney writes about poetry in movies. This is a piece I suggested to her about a year back, and as the editor of the CPR I have worked quite closely with her on it. I think she’s done an excellent job. I’ve added links to [...]

Ernest Hilbert Introduces a Special Issue for Louis MacNeice

As editor of the Contemporary Poetry Review, I have assembled a special issue devoted to one of my favorite British poets, Louis MacNeice:
Just as Ben Jonson bore the unfortunate fate of living in what would become known as the “Age of Shakespeare,” Louis MacNeice lives in the long shadow thrown by his exact contemporary, W.H. [...]

Louis MacNeice: “His Own Unchanging Self”: An Interview with Jon Stallworthy

Sunil Iyengar interviews Jon Stallworthy on his biography of Louis MacNeice for the new MacNeice issue of the Contemporary Poetry Review:
Jon Stallworthy’s blood quickened after a poetry reading he gave earlier this year, not because he admired his own recitative powers, but because of something an audience member told him. This man, who turned out [...]

John Drexel’s “Classic Reading” of Louis MacNeice’s “Sunlight on the Garden”

John Drexel offers us a “Classic Reading” of Louis MacNeice’s poem “Sunlight on the Garden” in the new issue of the Contemporary Poetry Review:
Reviewing Stevie Smith’s Collected Poems in 1976, Seamus Heaney touched on “the whole question of poetry for the eye versus poetry for the ear.” One might be forgiven for momentarily thinking that [...]

“Re-Collecting MacNiece”: Maria Johnston on the new Faber Edition of Louis MacNeice’s Collected Poems

In the new issue of the Contemporary Poetry Review, Maria Johnston reviews the new collected poems of Louis MacNeice:
In a note on Louis MacNeice’s poetry penned in 1964, Louise Bogan observed that, “the Collected Poems 1925-1948 should, although not so arranged, be read in chronological order, for it is an added pleasure to watch the [...]

The Tawdry Halo of the Idle Martyr: Katy Evans-Bush on MacNeice’s Autumn Journal

In this month’s issue of the Contemporary Poetry Review, Katy Evans-Bush takes us back for another look at Louis MacNeice’s classic book-length poem Autumn Journal:
In 1963, after Louis MacNeice’s premature death of pneumonia, Philip Larkin wrote that “his poetry was the poetry of our everyday life, of shop-windows, traffic policemen, ice-cream soda, lawn-mowers, and an [...]

Explaining the Modernist Joke: James Matthew Wilson Considers W.H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, and Letters from Iceland

In this month’s issue of the Contemporary Poetry Review, James Matthew Wilson examines the famous collaboration between Auden and MacNeice:
Like many odd literary creatures from the British 1930’s, W.H. Auden and Louis MacNeice’s Letters from Iceland (1936) is referred to more frequently as a representative period piece than as an achieved work of art. As [...]

Andrew Goodspeed lauds the daring of Kevin Ducey

In this month’s issue of the Contemporary Poetry Review, Andrew Goodspeed writes about the Kevin Ducey’s book Rhinoceros: “Kevin Ducey’s great strength is his daring. He frequently appears silly, he risks silliness in his work, and this silliness sometimes succeeds admirably. Few modern poets have that sense of daring, and it is a point to [...]

Tupelo Press Announces a Sarah Hannah Memorial and Reading

Tupelo Press announces a Sarah Hannah Memorial and Reading. “Please join us October 25th from 7-9PM for a memorial for Sarah Hannah (1966-2007) including readings from the new book Inflorescence by poets and friends at Poet’s House, 72 Spring Street, second floor, New York, NY 10012.All are welcome and encouraged to attend. For information about [...]

James Rother returns with Part Three of the Prose of Poetry

In the current issue of the Contemporary Poetry Review, the infamous critic James Rother continues his series on the Prose of Poetry: “Where poetry can but clutch and cling, prose is free to root about, its snout on the alert always for any scent of a truffle. Poetry might put down roots where only rhizomes [...]

James Matthew Wilson Examines the History of Expansive Poetry

In this month’s issue of the Contemporary Poetry Review, young critic James Matthew Wilson continues his controversial series on poetry and the academy with a look back at the history of the Expansive Poetry movement in the United States (“expansive poetry” is the more obscure, but more accurate, term for what is generally known as [...]

“The Year of Turning Seventy,” Lorne Mook weighs the fragments of Charles Wright

In the current issue of the Contemporary Poetry Review, Lorne Mook reviews a new collection from Charles Wright. Lorne Mook is the author of the collection Travelers Without Maps (2002) as well as translations of Rainer Maria Rilke and scholarly essays on Wordsworth and Joyce. Here is an excerpt from his review:
“Those who know Charles [...]

James Rother and the “Prose of Poetry”

In this month’s issue of the Contemporary Poetry Review, the inimitable poetry critic James Rother, heir to the tradition of Hugh Kenner, brings us the third part of the first installment of his three-part series on the Prose of Poetry, the Poetry of Prose, and the Prose Poem (try saying that quickly five times).
Rother writes: [...]

Alfred Corn hails the mastery of Irish poet Derek Mahon

As most readers of the E-Verse blog know, I am the editor of the Contemporary Poetry Review. We publish twelve issues a year, and the current issue is always available for free for one month, after which the articles are added to the ever-growing archive, available only to paid subscribers.

This month, Alfred Corn hails the [...]