The poet and the prisoner

The last word, for now, on The Paris Review. Check out this issue - No 182 Fall 2007 - with an interview on The Art of Poetry with American poet August Kleinzahler (who appeared at the Melbourne Writers Festival this year) and an eye-popping exposé of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar (pictured above with his wife Victoria Henao in the 1980s). 
The Kleinzahler piece - besides being a fascinating insight into the razor sharp mind of a successful contemporary poet and writer of prose, essays, short stories - is pretty funny. He doesn't hold back, to the point where the interviewer comments on his 'gift for vitriol'. Check out this manuscript page from his poem Retard Spoilage (above). Incidentally, he notes Australian short story writer Helen Garner as one of his favourite writers.
You can read the Kleinzahler article here. Escobar, as with his trade, comes at a price...