"The new owner of CBS and the current editor-in-chief ... set an explicit objective of appealing to the center right and the center left. That is a political goal. It is not a journalistic one." @postbaron.bsky.social via @sulliview.bsky.social
margaretsullivan.substack.com/p/why-the-jo...
@justbuffalolit.bsky.social Poem of the Week:
The Canisius College Contemporary Writers Series will present a reading by and question-and-answer session with Marcus Jackson at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 21 in The Grupp Fireside Lounge of the Richard E. Winter Student Center, 80 Hughes Ave., Buffalo.
The Buffalo poetry and Poetics community we now have in this city and much the blue-collar avant-garde sensibility that is the hallmark of the Buffalo arts and cultural community would not exist in its current constellation had Creeley not made this city his home sixty years ago.
Seems like the Strait of Hormuz is only open when the stock market is.
At 6 pm on Friday, April 17th The University at Buffalo Poetics Plus Series and Fitz Books will present a book talk & launch event for Mark Nowak’s … AGAIN (Coffee House Press, 2026), his new serial abecedarian documentary poem about January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol and its aftermath in America.
Wednesday Night Live, a reading at The Buffalo AKG Art Museum by former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, and Mark Nowak's Buffalo book launch for ...AGAIN are among the events happening in Buffalo this week. @thebuffalohive.bsky.social
thebuffalohive.com/buffalo-area...
Breaking news from the business of journalism: The Pittsburgh Post Gazette just announced it will be acquired by the same non-profit organization (Venetoulis Institute) that publishes the Baltimore Banner.
The cover of The Tunnel reissue
"Gass challenges us as readers, forces us to participate in an experimental study, with his deranged world of words bound by rules we do not yet understand, and which seem to change."
On "The Tunnel": lareviewofbooks.org/article/william-h-gass-t...
Today's haul from Talking Leaves Books. Books by Charles Bernstein and Elizabeth Willis in preparation for the Robert Creeley Centenary events in Buffalo in May. Who else is coming to Buffalo?
Shh, don't say that too loud. He might change his mind.
Text of "Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)" by Muriel Rukeyser. Text is online at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47657/poem-i-lived-in-the-first-century-of-world-wars
Muriel Rukeyser, always but especially today. Full text at www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47657/...
A little background on this poem: Fred James Clifton, Lucille's husband, received his Ph.D in Philosophy at the University at Buffalo, and taught at UB and Harvard.
www.thecliftonhouse.org/about-fred-c....
There are so many good books coming out today and so few media outlets cover them in the first place, so I will be furious if they’re all preempted by nuclear war.
After ChatGPT launched, about a dozen of OpenAI’s top engineers held secret meetings to discuss whether its founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman could be trusted. @ronanfarrow.bsky.social and Andrew Marantz report. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/zd5PFT
So wait, what was the concert?
The Buffalo AKG Art Museum is pleased to announce a special poetry reading by former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, who wrote two beautiful poems featured in the exhibition "Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way" on Friday, April 17, 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Can someone tell me where the “oh, they’re looking for an off-ramp” vibe is coming from? Because I don’t get it.
CNN giving that Trump library video an amazing tongue bath.
First wife poem, Alina. Leslie and Margaret divorced in 1972, and Leslie married Sally Smith Fiedler, also a poet and teacher at Buffalo Seminary, in 1973. I came to UB in September of 1973 and came to know only Sally. Sally was a great friend of the poet Ruth Stone, grandmother of Bianca Stone.
In these parts, among a certain subset of the communities I frequent, a minimum of a 15 minute grace period is permitted before anyone even begins to question another's punctuality. I think you recall we refer to this as "poet time."
OPEN GESTURE OF AN I I want to give more of my time to others the less I have of it, give it away in a will and testament, give it to the girls' club, give it to the friends of the urban trees. Your life is not your own and never was. It came to you in a box marked fragile. It came from the complaint department like amends on an order you did not place with them. Who gave me this chill life. It came with no card. It came without instruction. It said this end up though I do not trust those markings. I have worn it upside downs. I have washed it without separating and it did not shrink. Take from it what you will. I will --D. A. Powell
Your life is not your own and / never was.
D. A. Powell
Paper on Humor Everything sounds funny in a funny magazine. For years now I have published my poems in funny magazines so that nobody would notice how sad they were. Sad anthologists, however, took my poems out of context and put them in the sad anthologies and there they started to shine with tears because they were the saddest poems in there. With a liking for funnies and a following of sadness followers I arrive in Brazil to get my prize. The prize consists of the cross, the guillotine and the hot pepper. I am collected. Nothing matters to me. 1980
a following of sadness followers
Andrei Codrescu
Nothing like the presence of masked, heavily-armed ICE officers checking everyone's ID's at airports starting Monday to drive home the point that we are living in an authoritarian police state now. The Waffen-SS used to check papers on the trains in Nazi Germany. But not even they were masked.
Homan on ICE at airports: "ICE can check identification before people enter the screening area"
Yesterday I had a story out about eggs, today I have a column out about Marc Andreessen. Make of that what you will.
as.ft.com/r/14d0d9d8-6... (gift link! 💝)
Bari Weiss kills CBS News Radio with a memo to staff, and with it the legacy of Edward R. Murrow.
CBS News said Friday it is shutting down its storied radio news service after nearly 100 years of operation as part of a round of layoffs, citing a shift in radio station programming strategies and challenging economic times.
New from SUNY Press.
R.D. Pohl? Who dat?
Big thanks to Edric Mesmer and Yrtemmys Press for this transcription of a 3 hour conversation I had with him in April 2025. It's the latest installment in Yrtremmys Press's Little Book Series, prompted by my forthcoming "Buffalo Poetics and the Rise of a Blue-Collar Avant-Garde."
This is where having a plug-in hybrid vehicle minimizes my exposure to the president's ill-considered wars.
