Poetry Daily features the 1992 Foreword from The State of the Art by David Lehman. I remember when the Carter administration invited several hundred poets to the White House for a celebration of American poetry. There was a reception, handshakes with the president, the pop of flashbulbs. Concurrent poetry readings in various White House rooms capped off the festivities. In each room a few poets had been asked to read. The rest of the poets, the ones who hadn’t been asked to read, could attend the reading of their choice. A year later, Jimmy Carter lost the presidency. I used…

Florida poet Barbara Hamby, who has published three books with the Pitt Poetry series, is known for cooking up delicious verse. Poet Laureate Billy Collins described one of her collections as offering “a generous helping of poems so crackling with references and busy with verbal energy you might feel them buzzing in your hands.” It turns out that one of Hamby’s other passions is soup! “I love soup. It is the ultimate comfort food,” she said. Hamby usually has a freezer full of several different kinds, and enjoys trying new recipes.” Most of my soups are easy, and many are…

The Double Truth Chard deNiord “Sunday Calls,” from Chard deNiord’s collection The Double Truth, will be set to music by Jacob Cooper and featured during a May 15 concert by the chamber ensemble of the Albany Symphony. Cooper explained that the new song will be performed by vocalist Theo Bleckmann and the symphony’s chamber group “Dogs of Desire.” This concert is part of their annual American Music Festival, and part of Cooper’s two-year residency with the Albany Symphony. “For this concert, we’re each arranging songs and writing new ones,” he said. “The song I’m arranging is Kate Bush’s ‘Under Ice,’…

Entries must be postmarked by April 30, 2015. The 2015 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize Competition The University of Pittsburgh Press announces the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize for a first full-length book of poems. Named after the first director of the Press, the prize carries a cash award of $5,000 and publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press in the Pitt Poetry Series under its standard royalty contract. The winner will be announced in the fall; no information about the winner will be released before the fall announcement. The Starrett Prize is our only venue for first-book poetry manuscripts….