News from the University!

The University of Washington wants its common book — the one book that’s required reading for all incoming freshman — to be a book of poetry. For once it seems poetry will be read and studied by more than just future generations of smart, underemployed MFA candidates!

Seriously, what’s not to love about this model?

If more colleges and universities pressed poetry like this more people would know the math behind scansion or who Hart Crane is.

Right? Right.

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Fall is fast approaching, which means football, network television, blathering about new sitcoms! What a great reason to turn that TV off! Oh wait, we mean turn off your already turned off televisions, you wordy readers!

While seemingly every guy out there is busy following his fantasy football team, we’ve been busy drafting a fantasy team of own — made up entirely of poets…

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Oh, Canada

If you make it to a top 10 list as a writer that’s worth mentioning on your CV, during interviews and when “casually” trying to impress your date. But we hope you never make it to the top 10 Overrated Candaian Authors list. Since the Huffington Post and the Guardian recently ran their version of overratedness, Canada’s taking its turn now. And yikes! These reviews are brutal with scathing adjectives such as “solipsistic, humorless, and alienating” grovelling nouns like “tragedy and farce.” If you really want to get your acerbic on, check this one out. And be sure to check back once more for the National Press version of 10 Underrated Canadian Authors. But, hey why even bother with it, for all we know these could be of the top 10 most overrated articles.

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Edwin Morgan died this week. Not everyone likes poetry, and not everyone likes Scotland, but most everyone seems to like the Scottish poetry of Edwin Morgan. And for good reason.

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