Last Friday, Tao Lin came and presented to my department at UIC on his development as a poet, 2001–2013. The notes from his talk are here. I also recorded the event, and will see what I can do about making that available, should all parties prove willing.

I meant to write a longer post about this, but then we were all in Boston and my car battery died, etc. But before all that, I was feeling pretty gassed about the new issue of Jellyfish, particularly this low-pressure system from nice guy Mike Krutel. Dig in and love the pants off it.

In case you’ve missed it, Kent Johnson’s gone after Marjorie Perloff (PDF) for her entry on “Avant-Garde Poetics” in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 4th ed. Writes Johnson:

[With] exception of a passing reference to the Brazilian brothers Augusto and Haroldo de Campos and their Concretista moment, not a single poet or group outside the Anglo-American/European experience is acknowledged. The entire Iberian Peninsula, even, goes missing!

Among those missing, he argues, are Vicente Huidobro, César Vallejo, Aimé Césaire, Kitasono Katue, Alejandra Pizarnik, and Raúl Zurita—plus he takes a few swipes at Conceptual Poetry and Flarf. Well worth reading.

Fou Magazine came back from the dead. Check out their 4th issue here. They also have a twitter account.

Any thoughts on the new Bowie album? I’m halfway through and “Where Are We Now?” and “Valentine’s Day” at least seem decent?

Oh, hey–if you’re in NYC and not too AWHungover, you can go see Joshua Mohr, T. Geronimo Johnson, Adam Tobin, Eric Nelson, and Erika Anderson at the Franklin Park Reading Series tonight. Which is probably my favorite reading series in the world.

More details here.

Everyone must be at AWP.

For those of us who like theory, what’s the most productive theoretical work you’ve ever read? (Interpret that however you like.)

Hey wow, did my last post, “How To Be A Critic (pt. 6)” just get deleted? Sure looks like it did. Will be curious to hear the reasoning behind that.

This is the first time anything I’ve written for this site has been tampered with.