some articles from relatively recent periodicals (2006)

Dean Young, “Interview,”
from Pool: A journal of poetry, 2005.
Fantastic interview with a very important and funny/fun poet who has a lot of compelling thoughts about writing, including:

“Louis Aragon . . . called for a belief system based on error to end the tyranny of certainty, because in fact our more natural state is to be in error. Surrealism is finally about the freedom from doubt---nagging, inhibiting, blood-sucking doubt. The obligation to be correct, which often means uniform, in uniform, can be utterly debilitating.”

Dan Beachy Quick. Reviews of Aaron Kiely, The Best of My Love and Aaron Kunin Folding Ruler-Star in Colorado Reviw, Spring 2006, Vol. XXXIII, no. 1, pages 170-176.
Well, it sure would be scary to have DBQ judge your poems. Characteristically he doesn’t judge these two Aarons, at least not overtly, but provides really smart glosses on the two books under consideration.

D. A. Powell, “Advice to a Young Poet,” in American Letters & Commentary, no. 17 (2006).
“It turns out that I don’t even really understand the idea of “inspiration.” I do understand mollusks, though. To me the poem is this irritating bit of grit that lodges in my otherwise slick interior and it begins to nag and worry me. Unconsciously, I begin to bury the grit under layers and layers of nacre. And then I have a pearl. But I hate pearls, so I cut the damn thing in half so that all the layers are exposed, including the original offending particle.”

Bat City Review, Austin, Texas. Issues no. 1 (2005) and no. 2 (2006).
A new lit journal from the students of UT Austin. Issue no. 2 includes “A conversation with Aimee Bender and George Saunders.”

Joe Wenderoth, “Letters to American Poet,” In Fence, Volume 8, nos. 1-2 (Summer 2005).
An important, important example of the difficulty of being truly free, independent and uncensored.

Marta L. Werner, “Emily Dickinson’s Futures: Enjambment Degree Zero,”
In Jubilat, no. eleven (2006)
About the fragments of Emily D (“Like the limit texts of other writers---Kafka’s Conversation Slips, Pascal’s Pensees, Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Color”). Werner calls them “traces of though in writing.” Fascinating.