Parnassus: Poetry in Review

08/22/2017

The Poorly Built House : Parnassus Poetry

The Poorly Built House : Parnassus Poetry

06/23/2016

“Poem to My Litter”

Parnassus Editor Max Ritvo's masterly poem, "Poem to My Litter" has just been published in this week's edition of The New Yorker! http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/poem-to-my-litter-by-max-ritvo

Poetry: “I wish it was perfect, but sometimes the death we see / doesn’t happen when we try it again in my body.”

07/08/2015

The Forgotten Man Behind William Carlos Williams’s ‘Red Wheelbarrow’

The latest issue of Parnassus was mentioned in this recent New York Times article! You can read The Red Wheelbarrow essay and other wonderful poems and reviews by purchasing Volume 34 at http://parnassusreview.com/subscribe.

A professor and a historian discovered the identity of the unseen wheelbarrow owner in a classic poem.

12/21/2014

To read Parnassus is to spend lon leisurely hours without leaving your home in the company of exciting minds thinking about science and poetry, amoebas and galaxies, grifters and altruists, Darwin and Bob Dylan, line breaks and limericks. The subjects are predictable only for their unpredictability; the prose is consistently passionate, analytically stringent, witty, and utterly readable. If following William Carlos Williams, “nothing whips your blood like poetry,” here are a some tempting gifts you can buy at the Parnassus bazaar for yourself or friends:

A single copy of Volume 33 can be purchased for only $12.

A two-year subscription, volumes 34 and 35, costs just $27.

Copies of our last five, highly acclaimed issues (volumes 29-33), list price $75, is available for $50.

If you’re looking to give a spectacular and singular gift to a special person, here are two irresistible suggestions:

A beautiful French Fold printing of of Seamus Heaney’s lovely poem “The Loose Box,” signed by the late Nobel Laureate, which usually sells for $295, is on offer for $245, a substantial discount.

A gorgeous broadside of U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan’s wry poem “Odd Blocks,” signed by the poet and illustrated and signed by artist Robert Berlind, can be had for $150, a saving of $45. On all purchases we will pay for postage and enclose a gift note, which you can customize.

Any additional donations, fully tax deductible, will be greatly appreciated.

Paying is simple:

Make checks payable to Poetry in Review Foundation and mail to

Parnassus: Poetry in Review
205 West 89th Street, Apt. 8F
New York, NY 10024-1835

If you prefer to pay by credit card, just go to our website—http://parnassusreview.com/subscribe—and follow the links to PayPal. While you’re there, don’t forget to browse the poems and essays, artwork and special features on display.

We wish you and yours a wonderful holiday and a healthy, joyful 2015.

All the best,

Herbert Leibowitz,
Editor & Publisher

10/06/2014

www.92y.org

Editor Herbert Leibowitz will be teach a class on Berryman, Lowell, Sexton, and Plath at the 92Y this November. To learn more, go here:

http://www.92y.org/Class/Reading-Berryman-Lowell-Plath-Sexton.aspx

01/17/2014

Prototype

Don't miss the LAST TWO PERFORMANCES (tonight and tomorrow) of THUMBPRINT, the brilliant new opera with a libretto by Parnassus contributor Susan Yankowitz: http://prototypefestival.org/show/thumbprint/

In this world premiere, an illiterate woman is gang-raped as retribution for an ‘honor crime’ her brother allegedly committed. She doesn't surrender. She becomes the first woman in Pakistan to bring her attackers to justice. Her name is Mukhtar.

01/08/2014

The stirring dramatic monologue by Susan Yankowitz, “The Thumbprint of Mukhtar Mai,” featured in Parnassus Volume 32, Nos. 1 & 2, tells the story of an illiterate Pakistani peasant who is gang-raped in retaliation for an alleged s*x crime by her twelve-year-old brother.

Yankowitz has adapted this moving story into an opera libretto with music composed by Kamala Sankaram. The opera will première tomorrow January 10, 2014 as part of the Prototype Festival of new contemporary music. A special performance followed by a discussion with human rights advocates and the subj Mukhtar Mai, via Skype, is scheduled for January 11 at 4:00 p.m.

For further information, additional performance dates, and tickets, go to Protoypefestival.org

Additional link: Thumbprint interview with Susan Yankowitz and Kamala Sankaram: http.//vimeo.com/79404538

An excerpt of the title aria can be heard at soundcloud.com/saturninus/aria-from-the-thumbprint-of

07/26/2013

The NYC Poetry Festival is this weekend! : Parnassus Poetry

A few Parnassians and Parnassus contributors will be reading at the NYC Poetry Festival this weekend.

The Poetry Society of New York is throwing its third annual poetry festival on Governor’s Island this Saturday and Sunday. The festival “showcases all of the different formats, aesthetics, and personalities of New York City reading series and collectives, in one place at one time. The festival inten...

07/18/2013

A note of congratulations to Kay Ryan : Parnassus Poetry

On behalf of Parnassus, Margot Lurie extends congratulations to Kay Ryan on her recent receipt of a National Humanities Medal.

Ryan adds the medal to a Pulitzer and a MacArthur fellowship, as well as a two-year stint (2008–2010) as our Poet Laureate. But while she may be wreathed in laurels, it’s prickly Joshua trees that illustrate the cover of her selected poems, attesting both to her attachment to California and to the t...

07/09/2013

Poetry Daily's Featured Poet: Sarah Lindsay

Sarah Lindsay's poem "Adaptive Behavior," from Volume 33 was featured in Poetry Daily yesterday! A link if you haven't had the chance to read it yet.

Sarah Lindsay is a Lannan Literary Fellow whose books include Twigs and Knucklebones (Copper Canyon Press). Her new collection is forthcoming from Copper Canyon. She recently gave an evolution-themed poetry reading for Iowa City Darwin Day 2013.

07/08/2013

The work of poets : Parnassus Poetry

On long-time contributors John Foy’s “Poets & Jobs” at Best American Poetry (goo.gl/6HxCC), with a special guest appearance by STC.

The long-time Parnassus contributor John Foy is guestblogging at Best American Poetry this week. In his maiden post, he takes a look at some poets who have held down “real” jobs, by which he means (but not pejoratively) work outside the literary sphere. Going from the list of “usual suspects” he’s c...

07/05/2013

Complaint of present days is not the certain path to future praise : Parnassus Poetry

Mark Edmundsen's indictment of contemporary poetry in Harper's set tongues wagging around the internet. Reporting for Parnassus's blog, Castalia, Jeremy Axelrod explores the reaction, as well as the long, lively history of the critic's lament.

Every age’s poetry is bad, but each age disappoints its critics in its own way. If you follow the literary blogosphere, you know that Mark Edmundsen just weighed in on this age with a tweedily earnest essay in Harper’s, called “Poetry Slam, or The Decline of American Verse.” Perhaps it struck close…

06/26/2013

An excerpt from The Linen Way by Melissa Green : Parnassus Poetry

Melissa Green on Derek Walcott and the beginnings of her beautiful pastoral cycle, The Squanicook Eclogues.

Many readers are probably familiar with Melissa Green’s collection of poems The Squanicook Eclogues, which won prizes from Poetry Society of America and the American Academy of Poets. In Volume 33′s exclusive excerpt from her forthcoming memoir, The Linen Way, Green gives us the story behind the fou...

06/18/2013

Ben Downing’s new book, Queen Bee of Tuscany, is now on sale! : Parnassus Poetry

Farrar, Straus, and Giroux has just published Queen Bee of Tuscany, by our very own co-editor Ben Downing. In the biography, he paints a vivid portrait of Janet Ross, a supremely well-connected and brilliant woman who lorded it over the Anglo-Florentine literary colony in the Victorian Era. You can pick it up at Amazon at http://goo.gl/15LpQ or find it in the flesh at any shop where fine books are sold.

The Parnassus offices have been a hive of activity of late. Yesterday we announced the arrival of Volume 33 (subscribe here!), and today we have the pleasure of announcing that Farrar, Straus, and Giroux has published Queen Bee of Tuscany: The Redoubtable Janet Ross, by our co-editor Ben Downing.

06/17/2013

For Branchus, Beloved of Apollo the Affectionate : Parnassus Poetry

"For Branchus, Beloved of Apollo the Affectionate": Karl Kirchwey's meditation on inspiration and competition from Volume 33.

06/17/2013

Notes from the Trepidarium : Parnassus Poetry

We're thrilled to have long-time contributor Lucie Brock-Broido back in our pages with her poem "Notes from the Trepidarium."

06/17/2013

Knot Garden : Parnassus Poetry

Yet another poem from Volume 33: "Knot Garden," a villanelle by Ange Mlinko.

06/17/2013

Kenneth Allott and the Cleft Stick : Parnassus Poetry

D. H. Tracy explains why the "English Hart Crane" forsook poetry for prose.

Some lines from Kenneth Allott’s anthology piece “Lament for a Cricket Eleven,” about the taking of a photograph and the fates of its eleven subjects:

06/17/2013

Three new translations of François Villon : Parnassus Poetry

David Georgi takes it all in stride. Three poems from his recently published translation of Villon.

Say you sell indulgences or cheat at cards, or dice all day, or stamp false coins (and so get burned with others scalded for that crime, lying faithless traitors all), or burgle, pilfer, or purloin: where do you suppose your profit goes? All to the taverns and the girls.

06/17/2013

Adaptive Behavior & Sailing Kraken Mare on a Moon of Saturn : Parnassus Poetry

Two poems, "Adaptive Behavior" and "Sailing Kraken Mare on a Moon of Saturn" from always-stellar Sarah Lindsay.

Five miles deep, on the Japan Trench floor the forecast is the same today as for the last million years: near freezing, cave-black, five tons of pressure per square inch. Slow rain of flesh. Snailfish ask nothing more. Their plump head-bodies are pale with dark eyes, reports the submersible, peering...

06/17/2013

Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier and Wife Posing with Scientific Instruments Just Before He Is...

"The Republic needs neither scientists nor chemists; the course of justice cannot be delayed"—so saith Robespierre. Bridget Lowe finds reason to disagree with him in her lovely poem "Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier and Wife Posing with Scientific Instruments Just Before He Is Beheaded."

The body is like fire, he wrote, it consumes and gives off heat. It seemed so romantic, like a love letter, like the tomb

06/17/2013

Brass Tacks : Parnassus Poetry

A. E. Stallings on the dazzling Greek diction of Kiki Dimoula.

Kiki Dimoula. The Brazen Plagiarist: Selected Poems. Translated by Cecile Inglessis Margellos and Rika Lesser. Yale University Press: Margellos World Republic of Letters 2012. 392 pp. $30.00

06/17/2013

Lt. Selkirk on the Weymouth : Parnassus Poetry

William Logan gives us a Gulliver of Goats in his offbeat and hilarious poem "Lt. Selkirk on the Weymouth."

They were not hard to tame, the feral goats. That rocky mount was hardly an island at all— I doubt all London is much larger— and soon the goats and I grew used to our lot. I had my favorites, or a string of favorites, because of course the beasts would die, or break a foreleg, or grow ill-tempered;...

06/17/2013

Sarah Lindsay and the Didactic Tradition : Parnassus Poetry

Jamie James on the poetry of science, from Hesiod to the present.

William Bartram, Drawing 56 from the botanical and zoological drawings (1756–1788), courtesy of the Natural History Museum, London.

06/17/2013

Parnassus Poetry

We're delighted to announce the arrival of Parnassus, Volume 33, with two special sections: The Poetry of Science and Religion and The Glory That Is Greece. For a good time, visit parnassusreview.com and read selected essays and poems from the new issue! And if that leaves you wanting more (as we know it will), subscribe today to take advantage of our special offer.

Full text from Jason Guriel Portraits of the poetry crowd: Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist and Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives reviewed.

04/08/2013

Everything New Is Old Again - Parnassus Review - Jewish Ideas Daily

Many thanks to Jewish Ideas Daily for making Jason Guriel's essay "Words Fail Him" an editor's pick!

04/05/2013

Xenophobe’s Hellenica : Parnassus Poetry

Another sneak peek at Volume 33: Stefan Beck on Greece, travel, romance, and a brief passage through Hades.

Of course, they must from time to time get officers altogether unfit for the post—men whose nautical knowledge dated from yesterday, and who, moreover, had no notion of dealing with human beings. It would be very odd if this practice of sending out people ignorant of the sea and unknown to the folk…

04/05/2013

Words Fail Him: The Poetry of Charles Bernstein : Parnassus Poetry

We've just put up a sneak peek at Volume 33 on www.parnassus.com. Here's Jason Guriel's take on the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry of Charles Bernstein.

In senior year of high school, my friend Tom discovered the works of Marilyn Manson and took up the vestments: hair dye, torn nylons, Doc Martens. He insisted I borrow his Heart of Darkness, his Darkness at Noon. (He preferred his fiction dimly lit.) We convened in Ms. B—’s creative writing class an...

04/05/2013

Parnassus: Poetry in Review's cover photo

04/06/2012

Parnassus Poetry

Who says that bots can't be poets, too? From the spam filter of www.parnassusreview.com:

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Free farmville cash goes to all through home.
As soon as can easily the actual loyal delicious chocolate puncture my own coast?
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Full text from Jason Guriel Portraits of the poetry crowd: Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist and Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives reviewed.

04/02/2012

Parnassus: Poetry in Review's cover photo

02/24/2012

The Trouble with Blurbs : Parnassus Poetry

In which the Parnassus staff sheds some light on the terrible luminosity of blurbs:

“This is just the book to give your sister—if she’s a loud, dirty, boozy girl.” Thus spake Dylan Thomas on Flann O’Brien’s novel, At Swim-Two-Birds. And they are fighting words, indeed—an author would be hard-pressed to find a better endorsement for her book-jacket. And writing a blurb—though hardly...

02/06/2012

http://parnassusreview.com/

The editorial staff at Parnassus: Poetry in Review is delighted to announce the relaunch of our website! Visit us at www.parnassusreview.com, where you can check out our sleek new design and enjoy samples of some the finest poetry criticism this side of the Adriatic.

05/25/2011

Parnassus: Poetry in Review

Volume 32 is here! At a hefty 550 pages, it’s sure to last you through plenty of long days at the beach this summer. The new issue includes a fascinating study of medieval Chinese poetry by Lewis Hyde; a reconsideration of Shelley’s “Ozymandias” by William Logan; a classical translation by Richard Wilbur; new poems by Kay Ryan; and plenty more. You can purchase a copy at http://www.parnassuspoetry.com/subscribe.htm.

Mark Polizzotti on TranslationLewis Hyde on Medieval Chinese Oxherding poemsLangdon Hammer on James MerrillWilliam Logan on Shelley's and Horace Smith's Sonnets on OzymandiasAlberto Manguel on Poetry and TranslationMorris Dickstein on Light VerseChristopher Bakken on Eating Red Mullet in GreeceBerna

12/09/2010

National Foundation for Transplants ::

Attention poetry readers: Dean Young needs your help

National Foundation for Transplants