New Book of Poems by Lili Bita

Lili Bita has published a new book of poems, The Thrust of the Blade, with Somerset Hall Press. Lili will perform at a reception marking the tenth anniversary of the Press on April 30 at 6:00 p.m. at The College Club of Boston, 44 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston.

Passing of Poet and Critic John Haines

The RJA notes with sorrow the passing of the gifted poet and critic John Haines.  Haines was the keynote speaker at the 6th RJA conference, which took place in Carmel in 2000, where he delivered a talk titled “Welcome to Apocalypse: the Poet as Prophet.”  Haines was a great admirer of Jeffers and leaves behind a lasting legacy not only of poetry and prose, but of a life lived with tremendous integrity and fierce independence. A number of Haines’s poems and a brief biography are available on the Poetry Foundation website and the Faibanks (AK) Daily News-Miner carries an obituary.

RJA President Reviews Volume One of Collected Letters in The Sewanee Review

The current issue of The Sewanee Review contains a review written by RJA President David J. Rothman on The Collected Letters of Robinson Jeffers, with Selected Letters of Una Jeffers, vol. I, 1890–1930, James Karman, ed. In “Arts and Letters: Shine, Perishing Republic of Letters,” Rothman notes that “These letters are astonishing, revealing as powerfully as any documents of the time, the gulf that opened between not only the poetries but also the sensibilities of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in America.” Read the review>>