@rdpohl
Writer, critic, literary journalist, poetry editor. Trained as language philosopher. Follow at POETRY/POETICS/LANGUAGE/COMMUNITY (https://rdpohl.substack.com). Formerly with The Buffalo News, currently The Buffalo Hive, a non-profit arts & culture startup.
Buffalo Area Poetry & Literature Calendar (March 2 to March 8, 2026)
Ellen Carol DuBois returns to Buffalo to talk about her new book on Elizabeth Cady Stanton, plus a bilingual poetry reading with Santiago Acosta and Diego Espiritu at Burning Books. Wednesday, March 4, 7:30 p.m.: CFI Literary…
The Tampa Bay Times starts a monthly “book club” for news stories www.niemanlab.org/2026/02/the-...
Claude😂
There's no more complete accounting of what transpired with Buffalo Police in the Granville case than here in The Buffalo News This is the result of hours of work by three reporters, including Aaron Besecker, Justin Sondel and myself. More coming.
Breaking: Nurul Amin Shah Alam has been confirmed dead by Buffalo police
He was found Tuesday evening downtown after he'd been missing for 6 days. Nearly blind, he'd been left at a coffee shop Thurs. evening by Border Patrol agents 5 miles from his home.
www.investigativepost.org/2026/02/25/b...
Honest to Pete I don’t understand this framing.
With prediction markets booming, so have concerns about insider trading. Now, Kalshi has disclosed its first public actions against accounts suspected of trading on confidential information. n.pr/4kRy6Ei
Don't have a list as such. Many online and print publications based in WNY appear sporadically, probably not "magazines" in the traditional sense.
The non-profit Baltimore Banner has quietly registered the domain names dcbanner.com and thedcbanner.com You can see where they're going with that. And they are not the only ones, @status.news reports.
www.status.news/p/washington... [no paywall on weekends]
Allegra Hyde visits Buffalo for a UB Exhibition X Series Fiction reading at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center. Plus three other events on Thursday, Feb. 26. @thebuffalohive.bsky.social
thebuffalohive.com/buffalo-area...
During a recent conversation between the neo-reactionaries Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land, Yarvin said that, after all jobs had been automated, people could make money selling their organs. “But our new robot overlords do not need human organs,” Land replied. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/zLjrNH
Why do the Brits see the Epstein Class for what they are, while the US Department of Justice orders thousands of more gallons of ink for the redactions?
This was Buffalo in the 1970's, and to some extent it is true of Buffalo now. My friends are amused when I call Buffalo a 'ghost adjacent city,' but "The souls of the wives of the robber barons/ Are imprisoned in the chandeliers."
Hass was on that University at Buffalo Department of English faculty that Silverblatt studied with briefly--his first teaching job after receiving his Ph.D from Stanford.
Thinking of Michael Silverblatt's recent passing and his time in Buffalo reminded of this Robert Hass poem from his 1972 collection "Field Guide" which received the Yale Younger Poets Prize.
It could have been the cheap wine, but it left me with nausea and an "Eliot Complex"!😜
As an undergraduate at the University at Buffalo 50 years ago and *under the influence of alcohol,* I was persuaded to participate in an ensemble reading of Eliot's Ash Wednesday at the Katherine Cornell Theater in UB's Ellicott Complex.
This is often referred to as T.S. Eliot's "conversion [to Anglicism] poem." And the 'conversion' it brought about in me was a strong distaste for Eliot.
"Another strategy is to create new structures that further the art... Create a langauge the unborn might be unashamed to speak."
- C. D. Wright laying down this gauntlet here for us
AI does not enhance “efficiency.” AI is a permission structure for a totalizing regime of austerity and labor immiseration.
David Foster Wallace once said Silverblatt was the best live literary interviewer he ever met.
People on the East Coast and Midwest were generally unaware of how great a program KCRW's "Bookworm" was because we had WHYY's "Fresh Air," a more general interest interview program built out by Terry Gross, another UB alum.
LA Times left out Robert Creeley, Leslie Fiedler, Robert Hass, Rene Girard, Raymond Federman, et al. All were on the UB faculty at that time.
Former classmate at the University at Buffalo: "Until he left home for UB, Silverblatt said he had never met an author...His college, however, was filled with such famous authors as Michel Foucault, John Barth, Donald Barthelme and J.M. Coetzee, who were all working as professors."
The final Screening Room Poetry Series reading, Wednesday Night Live at Caffe Aroma, and a UB Poetics Plus Book Talk by Amy De’Ath are noteworthy this week. @thebuffalohive.bsky.social
thebuffalohive.com/buffalo-area...
ICYMI: The debate over what to do about immigrants who have entered the country illegally or as refugees has been playing out for months in government offices and on the streets of American cities. But it also is a daily occurrence in federal courtrooms.
He will be the featured reader at the next Kenmore Village Improvement Society Open Mic Night curated and hosted by BlazeVOX Books publisher Geoffrey Gatza from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday, February 26th at the KVIS/Made for Good Shop, 7 Warren Avenue (near Delaware Ave.) in Kenmore, NY.
His collaborative book Color Me White (with the late artist and illustrator Mickey Harmon) is known for its witty and provocative engagement with identity and culture. Deeply involved in community and creative exchange, Kevin brings curiosity, humor, and rigor to everything he shares.
