John Baker’s Blog

Poets, by tradition, imagine themselves likely to die young. But that’s not a matter of imagination alone. Marc Abrahams in The Education Guardian reports on the research of Associate Professor James C Kaufman, of California State University at San Bernardino:
Kaufman looked at the lives and deaths of 1,987 deceased writers from four different cultures: American, [...]

Giosuè Carducci, an Italian poet, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1906. He was born in a small town near Pisa. Carducci began writing poetry when he was a child. He was enthusiastic about the ancients and demonstrated a strong revolutionary tendency.
Carducci led an active political life and his poetry inspired many [...]

The New York Times has an interview with Charles Simic, the current American poet laureate. Deborah Solomon asks him what he thinks of the current crop of books on happiness:
It’s an industry. It’s really frightening. People need to read a book on how to be happy? It’s completely an American thing. Can you imagine people [...]