Yeh Chia-ying, a revered figure in Chinese classical poetry and education, died at the age of 100 in the northern port city of Tianjin on Sunday. Often referred to as the “daughter of poetry”, she dedicated seven decades to researching and promoting classical Chinese poetry across mainland China, Taiwan, the United States and Canada. She … Read more
“We all must be united, live under the same roof of the Islamic system and extend the hand of brotherhood to each other,” the 22-year-old says later. “These are the messages we convey through our poetry.” Afghan men listen to a poet during the Purple Flower Poetry Festival at Tap-e-Gul Ghundi recreational park in Charikar … Read more
The poet Diane Seuss and I began a recent conversation by talking about the burdens of companionship—or, at least, how those burdens are manifested through affection for a pet. Seuss lost her dog Bear during the pandemic. When we spoke, by phone, she was at home in Michigan preparing her new dog, Stella—whom she described … Read more
Paul Auster, a prolific, prize-winning man of letters and filmmaker known for such inventive narratives and meta-narratives as The New York Trilogy and 4321, has died at age 77. Auster’s death was confirmed on May 1 by his literary representatives, the Carol Mann Agency, which did not immediately provide additional details. Auster had been diagnosed … Read more
It’s only April, but it’s hard to imagine any album will be heard more this year than Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department. The album took less than 12 hours to break this year’s record for most single-day Spotify streams, and is projected to sell two million units in its first week. On Thursday, Spotify … Read more
Baidu’s Ernie 4 artificial intelligence (AI) model, one of China’s leading large language models (LLMs), has outperformed similar technologies from US peers in generating Chinese texts such as those in the style of Imperial Chinese poetry, according to Robin Li Yanhong, co-founder and CEO of the internet search giant. In an hour-long programme aired by … Read more
Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Google | Wherever You Listen Sign up to receive our weekly Books & Fiction newsletter. Photograph by Ladan Osman Donika Kelly joins Kevin Young to read “One Hundred White-Sided Dolphins on a Summer Day,” by Mary Oliver, and her own poem “Sixteen Center.” Kelly is the author of … Read more
It may come as no surprise that a country as deeply polarized by its recent history as Chile is also at war over the relevance of its preëminent poet, Pablo Neruda. In December, fifty years after the coup d’état that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power, Chileans rejected an attempt to write a new constitution … Read more
Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Google | Wherever You Listen Sign up to receive our weekly Books & Fiction newsletter. Photograph by Marcus Jackson Richie Hofmann joins Kevin Young to read “Twilight,” by Henri Cole, and his own poem “French Novel.” Hofmann is the author of two collections of poetry and the recipient … Read more
In a remembrance, the poet Sergei Gandlevsky, one of the people who knew Rubinstein best, called him “implausibly sociable.” He was not indiscriminate—he didn’t suffer fools, careerists, and narcissists—but he had a vast range of social possibilities. He accepted every birthday-party invitation, most dinner-party invitations, and many invitations to go grab a drink. He was … Read more
