UPP welcomes Nicholas A. Brown and Sarah E. Kanouse, authors of the forthcoming Re-Collecting Black Hawk: Landscape, Memory, and Power in the American Midwest as the first of our authors to be featured in a Q&A. UPP: What was your inspiration for Re-Collecting Black Hawk? NB: There’s no one moment that inspired the project; rather it was an organic outgrowth of our artistic and scholarly interests and quirks of personal history that all came together at the right time. I actually grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, surrounded by references to Black Hawk. As a kid I walked to Blackhawk Country…

Pitt poet Charles Harper Webb, author of Brain Camp, has some rather controversial advice for today’s poets, and claims he can help them become better at their craft and sell more books! So, Publishers Weekly gave him a soapbox. A Cure for What Ails Poetry A poet argues that more accessible poems will lead to broader interest in poetry—and more sales By Charles Webb | Apr 03, 2015 Featured on Publishers Weekly Soapbox It’s no secret that the main audience for poetry is other poets. If you want to slow or even stop a party conversation, ask, “What new poets are you…

Robert D. Lifset is the Donald Keith Jones Assistant Professor of Honors and History at the University of Oklahoma. Lifset’s research and teaching interests focus on energy history broadly defined. This includes the business, policy, political, environmental, social and cultural history of energy with a focus, though not exclusive, on the United States in the 20th century. His books include Power on the Hudson, Storm King Mountain and The Emergence of Modern American Environmentalism (2014) and American Energy Policy in the 1970s (2014). Lifset is currently researching a history of the energy crisis of the 1970s.  Robert Lifset is also the founding web and list editor…

When Larry Levis died suddenly in 1996, Philip Levine wrote that he had years earlier recognized Levis as “the most gifted and determined young poet I have ever had the good fortune to have in one of my classes. . . . His early death is a staggering loss for our poetry, but what he left is a major achievement that will enrich our lives.” Each of his books was published to wide critical acclaim, and David St. John has collected together the best of his work from his first five books. “It is not an exaggeration to say that…

The State of the Art A Chronicle of American Poetry, 1988-2014 David Lehman POETRY **STARRED REVIEW** “Lehman, though primarily known as a poet (Yeshiva Boys, When a Woman Loves a Man, and others), is a fine editor (The Oxford Book of American Poetry) and nonfiction writer (A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs) who teaches in the graduate writing program of the New School in New York City. He has also written the forewords to the prestigious annual showcase of new poems from Canada and the United States, The Best American Poetry, since its inception in 1988. This volume gathers…