Writer, critic, literary journalist, poetry editor. Trained as language philosopher. Follow at POETRY/POETICS/LANGUAGE/COMMUNITY (https://xitter.gq/t.co/bPAJgjYgsM)
Joined March 2021
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RD Pohl retweeted
UB's prestigious Poetics program is in limbo.
Students and faculty fear the program could be coming to an end, while university officials maintain it is not shutting down.
Read more here: investigativepost.org/2026/1…
Anne Elezabeth Pluto returns to Buffalo to celebrate the launch of her new book of poems You Offered Me Your Horses,’ with readings by poets Rachelle Toarmino and Dennis Maloney.
thebuffalohive.com/buffalo-a…
RD Pohl retweeted
UB in recent months made moves to gut its famous poetry program -- it's down to just one professor now. Confronted by students and professors, the admin is now defensive:
“If [it’s] the consensus of the department that I blew this one, then I blew it."
investigativepost.org/2026/1…
Dean Jeffrey Grabill talks about his decision-making process like he is a failed NFL referee. Maybe he made a bad call, he concedes, but he is comfortable with his decision. Grabill: "The play on the field stands. It is not reviewable."
RD Pohl retweeted
This looks like a failure to engage in long-range strategic planning, a lack of vision for the college, and historical amnesia, with a little self-dealing and corruption thrown on top. I hope UB pulls up out of this death spiral and restores Poetics.
New: University at Buffalo leadership appears to be shuttering its renowned poetry program, which has produced a 2026 Pulitzer winner.
The dean gave the program’s two endowed professors positions to others. It lost its budget. Its director resigned.
investigativepost.org/2026/1…
RD Pohl retweeted
Juliana Spahr to @ipostnews :
RD Pohl retweeted
Programming is now suspended for the fall semester. Just one professor remains to advise some 20 graduate students, who are now protesting the shuttering of the program.
UB isn’t saying much but the dean now says maybe he “blew it.”
investigativepost.org/2026/1…
RD Pohl retweeted
This story was thoroughly reported by two up-and-coming student journalists at The Spectrum, UB’s independent student newspaper. I played advisor/editor. Give it a read:
investigativepost.org/2026/1…
“If I made a bad decision, I own it,” [College of Arts and Sciences Dean Jeffrey Grabill] told the English department faculty. “If [it’s] the consensus of the department that I blew this one, then I blew it, right?"
New: Leadership questions. Financial pressures. An uncertain future.
UB's renowned poetry program is facing challenges that could shape what's next.
Read more here: investigativepost.org/?p=530…
RD Pohl retweeted
New: Leadership questions. Financial pressures. An uncertain future.
UB's renowned poetry program is facing challenges that could shape what's next.
Read more here: investigativepost.org/?p=530…
To learn more about the ongoing dismantlement of the University at Buffalo Poetics Program visit: poeticsinexile.crd.co
Hilary Plum: "Elizabeth Koch writes (I am starting to think Elizabeth Koch writes like Ivanka Trump dresses) about how she’d like books she publishes to “bring attention to the false divisions that make up our world.”
RD Pohl retweeted
Wikipedia, which went online in January, 2001, is now the greatest compendium of human knowledge ever assembled. Yet in the last four years, it has lost 25 per cent of its traffic—more than a billion monthly visitors. Since the site recruits its editors from its audience, this dip also threatens its growth and quality. Many users have been intercepted by A.I. “It’s a cruelly ironic fate,” Julian Lucas writes. Wikipedia was the single most important training corpus in the history of artificial intelligence. Now artificial intelligence is threatening its survival. Read Lucas’s report on the future of Wikipedia: newyorker.com/books/under-re…
New York Times book critic Dwight Garner revisits Leslie Fiedler's "Love and Death in the American Novel" 66 years after its publication and finds it passes the test of time and then some.
nytimes.com/2026/10/19/books…
RD Pohl retweeted
One important part of rethinking and redesigning the university.
I Teach at a Business School. It’s Time to Shut Them Down. nytimes.com/2026/10/18/opini…
RD Pohl retweeted
As a longtime admirer of Dennis Tedlock's work, who was both the McNulty Professor and a founder of the Poetics program at Buffalo, this is rather sad news
Timothy Liu at St. Bonaventure, Doireann Ní Ghríofa at Canisius, and Deb Olin Unferth at Hallwalls headline this week's events in Western New York. And that's just on Tuesday...
thebuffalohive.com/buffalo-a…
The dean wants to see "good behavior" on the part of the Poetics Program before it gets and new hires and a restoration of funding. What can "good behavior" possibly mean in this context? Does he want a program for "well behaved" poets that will genuflect to UB's Empire A.I.?
