Critical Notes

Praising Poets and Other Roundup Notes

By NBCC


NBCC board member Kevin Prufer’s new book, “National Anthem,” well reviewed by Robert C. Jones here.

In honor of Robert Hass’s Pulitzer earlier this month, The Atlantic has gone back to the archives to bring back his “Heroic Simile,” from a 1976 issue. 

NBCC finalist Lia Purpura has a new book of poems, King Baby, out this week.

Pulitzer Award winnning poet George Oppen’s Centenary will be noted April 26, from 2 to 4 pm in a Salute to George Oppen co sponsored by the Poetry Center and the San Francisco Public Library. On tap will be rare video footage and audio recordings, from the Poetry Center’s American Poetry Archives, of the poet reading his works (both the earliest known audio recording, February 19 1963, and the earliest known video recording, February 22, 1973), along with remembrances and tributes by local friends and fellow poets. At the Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Main Library.

YouTube on Tejano writers in advance of Hecho en Tejas, an eclectic literary and music ensemble performance May 3 at 7:30 pm at LCC Oak Farms Dairy Performance Hall in Dallas. The Latino Cultural Center, Writer’s Garret and Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say will host artists whose work appears in the “Hecho en Tejas,” the new anthology from the University of New Mexico Press and Southwestern Writers Collection edited by novelist Dagoberto Gilb of Austin.

Meanwhile, NBCC member Adam Kirsch takes on the Library of America’s 1,000-plus pages “Nature’s Keepers.”