IBPC: Poetry and Poets in Rags

6/26/2007

News at Eleven

In one of his shows, "The Guesthouses of our People," the 39-year-old [Rahim] al-Maliki visited Sunni and Shiite groups and used his poetry to open dialogue about ways to end Iraq's sectarian bloodshed. In Anbar, many tribal elders have agreed to help U.S.-Iraqi troops fight groups linked to al-Qaida in an alliance that the Pentagon considers an important blow to the insurgency.

from The Associated Press: Blast kills Iraqi peace poet

"When I heard pigeons cooing in the trees/Hot tears covered my face," Sami al Haj wrote in one poem. The al-Jazeera cameraman has been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 on suspicion of aiding Islamic militants. "When the lark chirped, my thoughts composed/A message for my son," he went on.

from The Wall Street Journal: The Prison Poets

Last month, an interviewer on PRI's "The World" put that one to Robert Pinsky, the nation's poet laureate from 1997 to 2000.

"I havent found a Mandelshtam in here," he said, referring to the great Russian poet who died in a Stalinist labor camp.

from The Lede: Ex-Poet Laureate on Guantánamo Poetry

[Ron] Silliman's "Ketjak"--of which The Age of Huts is only a small part--stands among the most ingenious and ambitious poetic endeavors currently under way in American letters. With it, Silliman is actively reshaping what poetry means and causing us to rethink the very nature of language.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Ron Silliman, making poetry, unmaking rules

[Günter Grass] spent the war leaping out of the way of exploding shells and watching his fellow soldiers get blown to pieces by Soviet artillery. Grass was spared from death often, thanks to freakish occurrences: He was once left behind in a shelter by his troop because he couldn't ride a bicycle; moments later, his fellow conscripts were all killed as they put their feet to the pedals.

from The Los Angeles Times: 'Peeling the Onion: A Memoir' by Günter Grass

When Rain Falls Easy
[by Robert Dunn]

from Portsmouth Herald News: Former poet laureate publishes new book

If Nature is a haunted house, as Emily Dickinson told us, and Art a house that tries to be haunted, then [Charles] Wright has created in "Littlefoot" one of the most satisfyingly possessed landscapes of his career. "The other side of the world, they say, is a door/where I'll find my life again."

from Los Angeles Times: 'Littlefoot: A Poem' by Charles Wright

Above all, it can be seen in his cultivation of an ear permanently cocked for fraudulence, so that whenever Housman the poet is tempted into flights of fancy, [A. E.] Housman the editor is quick to pull him back down to earth: "Why was I ever born? This question is addressed to the universe, not to you personally".

Often these two voices cannot be separated.

from The Times Literary Supplement: Star man

[Percy Bysshe Shelley] feared that he was being pursued by enemies and informants. He was constantly hypochondriac, fearing syphilis and even elephantiasis.

It could be claimed that Shelley lived an imaginary life. He was not at home on the rough earth.

from The Times: Being Shelley

Everything about Maxwell Corydon Wheat Jr.'s poet laureate coronation yesterday was different from the last effort to bestow the title upon him.

Standing in front of about 100 adoring fans in Roslyn Harbor, Wheat accepted the title from his fellow poets instead of from lawmakers and vowed to boost poetry's profile in Nassau County and on Long Island.

from Newsday: Unofficially, controversial poet gets laureate title

The Rig Veda, oldest of the four Vedas, is among the 38 items of documentary heritage of exceptional value which have been added to the prestigious register, bringing the total number of inscriptions since 1997 to 158.

It is a collection of 1028 hymns of exceptional literary qualities eulogising the Vedic deities and is said to be the source of the Aryan culture.

from IBN live: Rig Veda becomes 'world inheritance'

Great Regulars

[Mikhail] Bakhtin's central concept of dialogism does not mean bending a courteous ear to others, as some of his more liberal commentators seem to imagine. It means that every word or utterance is refracted through a host of other, perhaps antagonistic idioms, through which alone its meaning can be grasped. It thus bears an affinity with the post-structuralist concept of textuality. There can be no unmediated truth.

from Terry Eagleton: The London Review of Books:

The lower estimate tells you very roughly what the owner of the work of art is prepared to part with it for. But this has no relation to what it is worth in aesthetic terms. Learning about art and learning about the market are two quite distinct things.

I found the Raphael hanging in the foyer beside a Sisley and opposite a Hoppner.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Picture perfect

The boy gets to enjoy ripe strawberries that make his lips red, and he wears a hat, probably a straw hat, whose "torn brim" displays a "jaunty grace."

Although the speaker has been moved to remark on all the summer happiness this young boy is celebrating, in line 10 we learn how closely the speaker identities with the lad: "From my heart I give thee joy,--/I was once a barefoot boy!"

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Whittier's 'The Barefoot Boy'

If an individual (a child, in particular) plays computer games until his (or her) thumbs drop off, they are a lot less likely to become a poet; they will be a passive digester of material processed by others, not creators and inventors.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Don't lose your head

Poem: "Choices" by Tess Gallagher, from Dear Ghosts.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of June 25, 2007

The subdivision; it's all around us. Here Nancy Botkin of Indiana presents a telling picture of life in such a neighborhood, the parents downstairs in their stultifying dailiness, the children enjoying their youth under the eaves before the passing years force them to join the adults.

Geometry

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 117

The poet [Galway Kinnell] reflects: "We were enchanted. Everyone was in love." Another high point is "Promissory Note", a poem about death, written to the poet's lover. It is worth quoting in full:

from Jay Parini: The Guardian: In blackberry time

Sometimes, he [Rodney Jones ] keeps his musing, vernacular voice so moderate in tone that the writing reminds me of a baseball term for certain pitchers, "sneaky fast"--the delivery finishes with more heat than the lulling windup suggests:

Sitting with Others

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

Messaien's Piano
Fiona Sampson

from Fiona Sampson: The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Messaien's Piano

Much like a game of telephone, many of the chains in "Poets Picking Poets" wind up far from where they started. Who knew, for example, that an image-driven lyric by Michael Ondaatje is four degrees of separation from the synaptic pops and sonic snaps of Portland's own Kaia Sand? Not I--until now.

from B.T. Shaw: The Oregonian: Chains of poets, and a poet of chains

Khaled Nusseibeh

Tragic

from The American Muslim: Poetry: Tragic

I used to wonder what made them write as they did, and whenever I was able to find out I discovered that it was because of the dreadful prose they read and the way they read it. They admired cheap stuff, they imitated cheap stuff, and they appeared to have no understanding of how they cheapened their own minds and their powers of expression by so doing.

from Daily Times: Purple Patch: Reading! --Robertson Davies

The best advice I know for the writer on the matter of criticism was given by Thornton Wilder; he said that a writer should certainly read criticism of his work and give it adequate but not prolonged consideration, or else he would find that the critic had wormed into his mind and was writing his next book. To which I would add that it must always be remembered that the critic is seeking to enhance his own reputation, and may not be wholly scrupulous about the way he does it.

from Daily Times: Purple Patch: Writing --Robertson Davies

This month: Philip Wagner, who was born in Santa Cruz County, served in the Peace Corps, edited the underground newspaper, ACT, in Paris, founded Resisters Inside the Army, made 10 documentaries and has published psychology and political articles. He lectures on myth, psychology and art.

Catch and Release

from Good Times Weekly: Poetry CornerPhilip Wagner

Mute Game
[by René Char]
[tr. Nancy Naomi Carlson]

from Guernica: Poetry: New Translations of René Char

Like a Prisoner of Soft Words
C. D. Wright

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Like a Prisoner of Soft Words

Venice
by James Longenbach

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Venice

By Nina Bej
Consequences

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Nina Bej]

By Kirsten Hatcher
The Day

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Kirsten Hatcher]

By Audrey Alyse Jenkins
Let it Be Known that Fire Chills the Bones

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Audrey Alyse Jenkins]

By Sarah Keane
Delsea Regional High School
I Have Seen. . ..

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Sarah Keane]

By Anthony Kent
Life is But a Breath

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Anthony Kent]

By Hannah Romm
Cherry Hill High School West
Return to Where I Never Was

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Hannah Romm]

La Lune
[by Cate Jones]

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: La Lune

As a teenager, Gerry Cambridge was obsessed with wild birds. His enthusiasm sings off the page in Aves (Essence Press, 2007), a collection of bird-spotting poems. The baby barn owls--tyto alba--discovered in this prose poem are lovingly captured in a series of precise images.

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week

"Lilacs"
By Peter Campion

from Slate: "Lilacs"--By Peter Campion

Poetic Obituaries

[Mario Mundin Auxillo] had written a number of poems, in the Visayan language, depicting the struggle of the people and the long-awaited victory of the masses. From his school days and up to the time that he was already a full-time activist, he had been receiving praise and recognition for his poems.

from Bulatlat: Mario "Mayong Mag-uuma" Mundin Auxillo (1957-2007)

[Jamie Collier] wrote poems and considered submitting some of her poetry to a national contest, but she never got a chance.

She spent Saturdays watching movies with her family. "What's Love Got to Do with It" was her all-time favorite, said her mother, Sandra Collier.

from The Huntsville Times: Teen's death shocks witnesses to fight

Nicole Griswell wrote poems. She spoke whatever was in her nearly 19-year-old mind.

Her 15-year-old sister Raven was quieter, introspective. She made the honor roll. She wanted to be a doctor when she grew up.

from Memphis Commercial Appeal: Sharing of joys marks sisters killed in dragster crash

Here, then, is an epigraph of that shared culture, and perhaps an epitaph for Hamburger, from his translation of Celan's 1970 collection, "Lichtzwang":

from The Jewish Daily Forward: Remembering Poet and Translator Michael Hamburger

[Jemina "Jimmy" Hammes] was a member of Hope Reformed Church.

Jimmy was an avid reader whose creative interests included journaling and writing poetry for her family.

from Sheboygan Press: Jemina "Jimmy" Hammes

[Aldyth Jaffe] appreciated nature and the outdoors and collected rocks, plants and pets.

Mrs. Jaffe was also a poet and a wordsmith who saw to it that her children used proper grammar.

from The Enquirer: Aldyth Jaffe, 83, taught all ages of piano students

Cara [Liuzzi] was a happy, talkative girl who played basketball, wrote poetry and sang with a soulful waver in her voice. More than 400 people visited her profile on myspace.com over the weekend.

Cara had attended Watervliet schools for most of her childhood and won the Watervliet school district's Spelling Bee last year.

from Times Union: Bicycle accident in Troy claims the life of spirited girl

Renowned Iraqi poet Nazek al-Malaika, who was famous as the first to write Arabic poetry in free verse rather than classical rhyme, died Wednesday. She was 85.

from Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Iraqi poet Nazik al-Malaika dies at 85

[Marion L. "Dottie" Olsen] experienced a life-long interest in the writing of prose, poetry and drama having received several awards and publications and having left a written life journal. Before moving from Hendersonville in later years, she participated with a local writers group.

from Hendersonville Times-News: Marion L. Olsen, 96

Katherine Dixon says [Matthew] Swader will be missed. According to her Matthew was one of the brightest people she knew. "He was smart, he did the school newspaper and did poetry. And no matter where you were he would come get you."

from WRBL: Funeral Services Held For Matthew Swader

Fed up with local politics in the 1980s, Bea Wilcox wrote a poem titled "Chili Town Stew."

In the poem, she compared her frustrations attending Town Board meetings to simmering vegetables in a pot.

from Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Bea Wilcox, a former Chili historian, dies at 82

[Maurice] Wolfson, who lived in Pepper Pike with his daughter and son-in-law for the past 12 years, was born in Boston, where he first studied violin. He never attended college. Instead, he studied philosophy and poetry on his own and composed.

"He pushed himself with natural talent, because he didn't have the opportunity of conservatory training," [Saralee] Epstein said.

from The Plain Dealer: Maurice Wolfson, 95, violinist with orchestra for 40 years

6/19/2007

News at Eleven

Within weeks, the dashing Major [Christopher] Okigbo had been killed in an early battle of the Biafran conflict. The fortunes of war decreed that [Chinua] Achebe survived, to become not a meteor but a fixed star.

In the manner of stars, observers can often take his position and his brilliance for granted.

from The Independent: Chinua Achebe: The storyteller

Before war I used to see the killed only on TV; in the news about Palestine. I never was able to smell the warm stream of blood shown in massacre reports. War acted like a sleight of hand to make the distance between me and the world disappear, beyond the TV. It turned my first little son to a bird without wings to fly, a bird good only to be buried forever. [--Farideh Hassanzadeh]

from Foreign Policy in Focus: Interview with Iranian Poet Farideh Hassanzadeh

One day, to his [Nguyen Chi Thien's] surprise, one of his angry jailers came storming towards him, waving a book in his face, 'Flowers of Hell.' It was a collection of Thien's poems, which would eventually appear in English, French, German, Dutch, Chinese, Spanish, and Korean. It would win awards while he was still in jail.

from Monsters and Critics.com: Vietnam poet Thien's prison years left "no time to love"

"There are over 40,000 severed fingers in the Pearl River Delta. I often think: How long will the fingers extend if they were connected one by one? But my poor words cannot restore any of the fingers . . ."

In nonstandard Mandarin, a Dongguan migrant worker Zheng Xiaoqiong made a speech when she received one of the nation's most prestigious literary awards in Beijing on May 21, 2007.

from Shenzhen Daily: Zheng Xiaoqiong: Between a poet and a migrant worker

Recommended Action:

Send appeals to authorities:
- expressing outrage at reports that a confession by Yang Maodong [a.k.a. Guo Feixiong] extracted through torture is to be used in court as evidence
- condemning the use of torture and degrading treatment against prisoners, in violation of the United Nations Convention against Torture
- seeking assurances from the authorities that Yang Maodong is humanely treated while in detention
- calling for his immediate and unconditional release in accordance with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which China is a signatory

from International Freedom of Expression eXchange: Imprisoned dissident writer Yang Maodong allegedly tortured, confession to be used in court

Chinese journalist Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment after Yahoo revealed his personal details to the Chinese authorities. His mother, Gao Qinsheng, said in Hong Kong on June 10 that she had sued Yahoo Inc. via a U.S. law firm through the U.S. court system.

from The Epoch Times: Jailed Chinese Journalist's Mother Sues Yahoo in U.S. Court

The book is, as she [Tess Gallagher] has described it, "my letter to my ghosts". An extended elegy for those she has lost, its ambition is also to connect the poet to her addressees in the imagined space of the text. These are poems that seek, as in "Sixteenth Anniversary" (for [Raymond] Carver), to capture a moment where "the door/swings open and we're both/on the same side of it/for a while".

from The Guardian: Letter to my ghosts

"These poems will be surprising for many people because they are lewd and erotic," said the editor, José Antonio Expósito. "This is not the normal Juan Ramón [Jiménez]."

The publication of Books of Love, which includes 25 previously unpublished poems, has provoked angry letters from the Holy Rosary order, the newspaper El País reported yesterday.

from The Guardian: My sex in the convent--by Nobel poet

The opening poem, "Bugs," from which the book's title is taken, unfolds like a Steinian surrealist experiment:

You still understand, don't you?

You say this must
follow that
and can I make this woman alphabetical?

On this day raccoons
and honkytonk piano.

At her best, [Laura] Farina plucks the tenous line between contemplation and irreverence.

from Arc Poetry: Back to the Modern: Three Ottawa Poets

What is crystal clear from Adam Sisman's double-bio "The Friendship" is there may never have been a William Wordsworth if there hadn't have been a Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He (Coleridge) was not only a mentor, a one-man cheering section and an attendant muse to his friend, he was also a canny editor, a ubiquitous critic, and a constant source of inspiration.

from Swans: Adam Sisman's The Friendship: Wordsworth & Coleridge

A Munich court has ruled that the heirs of composer Richard Strauss must share royalties with the heirs of librettist and poet Hugo von Hoffmansthal for the popular operas "Der Rosenkavalier" and "Elektra," as well as seven other collaborations.

from International Herald Tribune: Court says Strauss heirs must pay "Rosenkavalier" royalties to heirs of librettist

Great Regulars

"Burning books is an inflammatory act,' [Will] Leathem acknowledged to me in an e-mail this week, "because books can contain our most sacred and valuable thoughts . . . Yet we risk a secular idolatry when we value the physical pages and continue to ignore the fact that fewer people are choosing to read what's contained on the pages."

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: They burned with zeal, not malice

It is a tragedy for all concerned. And I strongly believe that when our most distinguished artists are in such terrible situations--whether or not they brought it on themselves--we should offer them some kind of support, not because, as artists, they deserve a better treatment than anyone else, but simply because we have so much to thank them for.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Facing the music

He has no insight to offer, just the question: what is one to think about things that lose their leaves, and seasons that become covered with dust, after having promised such lush beauty in their earlier days.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Frost's 'The Oven Bird'

A poem for truckers and bacon-lovers everywhere. When I began this column I wrote that I believed there was poetry for everyone--including a truck driver on the M1.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Lewd longings in the sun

"Rather than focusing on ideas of individual artistic genius, it explores what happens when artists, programmers and thinkers of all sorts discuss, exchange ideas, and share their processes with each other," [Ruth] Catlow said.

By its nature, the Internet is an ideal medium for blending genres and, well, doing it yourself, she said.

from Katie Haegele: The Philadelphia Inquirer: State of 'Net art' way of the future?

Poem: "Beauty" by Tony Hoagland, from Donkey Gospel.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of June 18, 2007

It's the oldest kind of story: somebody ventures deep into the woods and comes back with a tale. Here Roy Jacobstein returns to America to relate his experience on a safari to the place believed by archaeologists to be the original site of human life. And against this ancient backdrop he closes with a suggestion of the brevity of our lives.

Safari, Rift Valley

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 116

But what recommends "Beowulf" to children--and to older readers who haven't lost a child's delight in stories that are both scary and gory--is that it's also a first-rate horror yarn, featuring slaughter, dismemberment and underwater sword fights.

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Children's Books/Young Adults

But a poem reports about something different from news, even when the material is similar. That distinction is clear when a superb reporter such as Eliza Griswold, who has covered Afghanistan, Africa and Guantánamo, also excels as a poet.

Monkey

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

--Rhythm, said Stephen, is the first formal esthetic relation of part to part in any esthetic whole or of an esthetic whole to its part or parts or of any part to the esthetic whole of which it is a part.

from Daily Times: Purple Patch: Talk isn't cheap --James Joyce

Combat. Contest. Match by Michael Hamburger

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Combat. Contest. Match by Michael Hamburger

'He Said It'
Carl Calvert Bettis

from The Kansas City Star: Poet's Corner: 'He Said It'

Cronus
by Robert Mazzocco

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Cronus

Hawthorne on His Way Home
by Lawrence Raab

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Hawthorne on His Way Home

Tributaries
by Louise Glück

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Tributaries

Cajoled by impetuous spring [. . .
by Ruth Elliott Perkins]

from The Oregonian: Poetry

By Laura Grabowski
Carusi Middle School
Remember me?

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [By Laura Grabowski]

By Tori Lattanzi
Delsea Regional High School
We Are the Misfits

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [By Tori Lattanzi]

Poem: Apple blossoms, white . . .
[by Isabel Grasso]

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Apple blossoms, white . . .

Castings (£8.99, Two Ravens Press, 2007), the first full-length poetry collection from Mandy Haggith, comes in three parts: poems about her home on an Assynt croft; a tribute to the River Kelvin in Glasgow; and sightings and encounters from round the world. Yichang is known as the gateway to China's Three Gorges.

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week: Yichang by Mandy Haggith

"The Box"
By Tomás Q. Morin

from Slate: "The Box"--By Tomás Q. Morin

Poetic Obituaries

[Syed Riaz Ahmad's] masterly translation of the Urdu poetry of Noon Meem Rashid, the famous Urdu poet, into English will be well remembered by literary circles.

from The News International: Former VC Preston University passes away

Throughout her life, she [Sheila Dominy] wrote lovely poetry, some of which was published. She was an avid supporter of libraries, and volunteered her time off and on throughout her life.

from The News Journal: Dominy, Sheila

[Ruth Bell Graham] was a woman we admired for being the supportive and encouraging wife of a world-beloved man, and whom we admired just as much for being, into the bargain, her absolute own, true self..

Listen to Ruth in this fragment of a poem she wrote in 1943, of her love and marriage to Billy, and, it seems to me, of more, much more, than even that.:

from ALRC News Kitchen: Ruth Bell Graham

[Dorothy Leger] enjoyed poetry, music, board games, and traveling.

from The News Journal: Leger, Dorothy

Yvonne [Yelland Marshall] was a loving wife and mother, clever author of many poems, active in the community with starting the 4-H program, teaching sewing, serving at various positions within her church, a proud Sigma Kappa, past Ladies' Captain at El Macero Country Club, and an avid Scrabble player!

from Daily Democrat: Yvonne Yelland Marshall

[Oskar Morawetz] also wrote a work called From the Diary of Anne Frank in 1970 based on the diaries of a young Jewish girl in occupied Holland, and a work based on anti-slavery poems by Frances E. W. Harper called Prayer for Freedom was commissioned by Toronto's Elmer Iseler Singers.

from CBC Arts: Canadian composer Oskar Morawetz dies at 90

Isias [Muñoz] wrote a poem on a Father's Day card he made for his dad. He told his mom to hide it so he could give it do his father on Sunday.

from San Jose Mercury News: An 8-year-old boy riding his bicycle was killed in a car accident in San Jose on Saturday.

Punjabi fiction writer and poet Surinder Singh Narula died here today after a brief illness.

from Webindia123.com: Punjabi author Surinder Singh Narula dead

[Sembene Ousmane] would be best remembered for his rich catalogue of films as well as authoring so many books.

The renowned poet, novelist and motion-picture director endowed with the skills of blending arts and culture to tell the African story from the African perspective was a product of migrating parents in the southern Senegalese capital of Ziguinchor in 1923.

from afrol News: Africa's cinema father is gone

[Daryl Lee Ryan] enjoyed music and writing poetry, his family said.

from Grand Haven Tribune: GH man dies six weeks after fall from moving van

All who knew him agree: John Sorenson was a Renaissance Man.

A history and art teacher at Tustin High School for 30 years, he also wrote poetry, composed music and helped out with the school's Model United Nations program.

from The Orange County Register: Vigil service today for John Sorenson

6/12/2007

News at Eleven

"I want to help make children's poetry be seen as utterly diverse and a liberating spirit--you can write and read and this helps you discover the possibilities of the world."

I Sell the Owl and the Pussycat a Boat
A previously unpublished poem by Michael Rosen

from The Guardian: Forever young

As you've probably heard by now, Charles Wright's Scar Tissue and Don McKay's Strike/Slip won the International and Canadian Awards. The C$100,000 purse is shared between the two winners, and is the most generous poetry prize in the world.

from Torontoist: Dancing In The Distillery District: The 2007 Griffin Gala

From more than 3,000 poems entered for this year's competition, the editors of the TLS have chosen a shortlist of eleven pieces, printed in random sequence below, from which readers are invited to select the winning poems.

from The Times Literary Supplement: TLS/Foyles Poetry Competition 2007

Paula Camacho, the committee chairwoman, called the appointee, Stephen Cipot, a "sniveling, coward of a man" and accused him of helping legislative Republicans shoot down the poet laureate nomination of Maxwell Corydon Wheat Jr. by delivering to them some of Wheat's controversial writings.

from Newsday: LI poet at no loss for words

"Reading a poem involves self- examination . . . we don't have the time or the inclination." [--Martin Amis] Ah I weep . . . a novelist who does not have the time or the inclination for self-examination . . . surely not! As Harold Bloom tells us, we read "in quest of mind more original than our own".

from The Guardian: The visionary company of love

I'd gladly leave behind me
all the pleasures of Spain--
if only I might see
the dust and ruins of your Shrine.

This is the classical, Zionistic awakening from the Dream of the Poem--the dream that cultural tolerance could hold off the violent monotheism of Islam and the murderousness of Christian polytheism (to tell a little truth).

from The New York Review of Books: The Lost Jewish Culture

"I think the downside," he muses, "is you get very self-conscious and think, 'This has to be good because it's by me,' and I better really work extra hard to make it good. . . ."

[John] Updike, nonetheless, credits his productivity to practicality over perfectionism: "A novel always has some faults. Yeats said that prose never comes absolutely right the way poetry does."

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: The playful literary legend

Can you see the rust-crusted gate of an island churchyard, the bent man mending fishnets at noon? Can you feel the caution in a lizard's pause, the space between a pelican and its shadow? [Derek] Walcott can, and he fills collections from 1965's "The Castaway" to 2005's "The Prodigal" with moments that ask us to see and remember.

from The News & Observer: Poetry of the beach

"At first we were thinking, 'Oh, this place is going to be too gay,'" recalled Mr. [Paul] Lisicky, a tall, sunny-faced man with a sharp wit, laughing. "But we fell in love with the landscape right away," he added [about himself and Mark Doty]. "We were smitten."

from The New Tork Times: Trading One Beach Retreat for Another

I have an incurable cancer in my blood. The disease is as rare as it is mysterious, killing some people quickly and sparing others for decades, afflicting some with all manner of miseries and disabilities and leaving others relatively healthy until the end. Of all the doctors I have seen, not one has been willing to venture even a vague prognosis.

from The American Scholar: Gazing into the Abyss

In setting the poem, the composer must pay careful attention to preserving the clarity of the work, its flow of ideas and subtle manipulations. They must caress each word, each line, as if the poem were being read to an audience hearing it for the first time.

from All About Jazz: Jazz and Poetry: The Words Project

Great Regulars

With his previous book, The Physics of Immortality, [Frank] Tipler used physics to prove that death would be utterly conquered as future beings deployed vast energy resources, derived from the contraction of the universe, to resurrect the past, ourselves included.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Philadelphia Inquirer: He thinks physics proves Christianity

So, the Royal Academy, with its steel bands and dinosaurs, may be suffering from multiple-personality disorder, but to me it looks alive and well -- quarrelsome, neurotic and part of the Season, certainly, but simultaneously bohemian, contemporary and still the repository of that strange impulse, in the midst of enlightenment England, to sanctify and protect the best things on which the human eye can rest.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Sunday Times: Jolly good show?

"Author events are very limiting and depend tremendously on the author's speaking ability. Nothing can replace the personal connection of going to an event and seeing an author in person, but we think there are other ways to reach people than just flying someone into a city and having them do a reading." [--Dave Weich]

from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: Reinventing the book tour

From here she [Annie Freud] embarks on a subtle deconstruction of the paradox at the heart of poetry - the conflict between the poet's desire to say something unique and the necessity of using infinitely recycled words - via an investigation of the way in which the memory of old loves contaminates the experience of new.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Freudian blip

Another week, another poem, this one chosen by FrankCB, who nominates Paul Farley's Liverpool Disappears for a Billionth of a Second on the grounds that "someone at a meeting unexpectedly recited it . . . And it was fantastic!"

I agree.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Poem of the week

Still, I admire Prokofiev as a musical dramatist, and if I am told the work is flawed--well, some things just are flawed.

A part of its purpose was to bring the spoken language closer to musical performance, so that it is a drama of dialogue without set pieces.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Russian roulette

Although the rains will transform the landscape into a brilliant grassy green for the summer growing season, the woman, Summer, will go about tending her garden, and the mud on her shoes will harden like "Quartz." And Summer will wear "Amber" shoes.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Dickinson's Summer

"After looking at some other online workshops, I realized that many of them had exercises that they used to prompt the writing of new poems," said [Christine] Klocek-Lim. She wanted to add a feature like that, but didn't want to use the term "exercise."

So the Poem Spark was born.

from Katie Haegele: The Philadelphia Inquirer: Her forum seeks to spark poetry, introduce poets to others' work

When [Hans Magnus] Enzensberger observes "the deep seriousness with which a woman there/puts on her make-up in the ruins of her kitchen dining-room", he contrasts her efforts to maintain pride in her appearance with the hopeless condition of her home, which is a result of a political situation beyond her control.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Parallel worlds

Poem: "Knoxville, Tennessee" by Nikki Giovanni.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of June 11, 2007

Each of the senses has a way of evoking time and place. In this bittersweet poem by Jeffrey Harrison of Massachusetts, birdsong offers reassurance as the speaker copes with loss.

Visitation

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 115

Here is [Meghan] O'Rourke's poem "Hunt," with images that in a similar way are familiar, yet disrupt trite expectations. Her shade of red, associated with the fox, is different from the red of [Wallace] Stevens's poem, and her emotional weather is quite different, too.

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

Here is how it ends:

Never ask where you are going,
the wind might blow your ashes there.
Never ask where you are going,
the wind is blowing everywhere.

from Frank Wilson: Philadelphia Inquirer: Poems of atrocity, and of joyfully Americanizing

Deterrence

by Khaled Nusseibeh

from The American Muslim: Poetry: Deterrence

from Hyper glossia
by Stacy Szymaszek

from The Brooklyn Rail: from Hyper glossia

the man who ate himself
by Roberto Harrison

from The Brooklyn Rail: the man who ate himself

from Poem Noir
by Doug Nufer

from The Brooklyn Rail: from Poem Noir

The following are a selection of poems from [Morton Marcus's] "Pursuing the Dream Bone."

The Mistake

from Good Times Weekly: Poetry Corner: Morton Marcus

Dawn Walk by David Harsent

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Dawn Walk by David Harsent

'A Shared Earth'
By Hans P. Bremer

from The Kansas City Star: Poet's Corner

The seat was designed for comfort, for two. A resplendent [. . .
by David J. Pickering]

from The Oregonian: Poetry

By Coleen Kulik
Rancocas Valley Regional High
A Peaceful Night

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem [by Coleen Kulik]

By Shweta Kumar
The Battle of the Times

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem [by By Shweta Kumar]

By Damon Lomax
Delsea Regional High School
Glue and Tape

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem [by By Damon Lomax]

"I've Been Working on the Railroad"
By Jeffrey Skinner

from Slate: "I've Been Working on the Railroad"--By Jeffrey Skinner

Poetic Obituaries

[Aurelius Melvin East] would be sitting in a restaurant and either a thought would come to him or he would hear a snatch of interesting conversation and jot a poem or an idea on a napkin.

"Melvin had a natural linguistic talent, and his quick way with words would make you laugh and groan with appreciation for his gift of communication," his family said.

from Philadelphia Daily News: Aurelius Melvin East, retired teacher

[Michael Hamburger] received numerous awards, not least for the distinction and dedication with which he worked to make the riches of German literature accessible to English-speaking readers. His translations twice won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize, and he was awarded the Goethe Medal (1986) and the European translation prize (1990). He was appointed OBE in 1992.

from The Times: Michael Hamburger

[Larry Leon Hamlin's] 2001 Midnight Poetry Jam, hosted by television star and poet Malcolm-Jamal Warner, was a huge hit.

"We thought we were doing it for young people, for the hip-hop generation, but there were four generations in the audience," he said in 2003.

from The News & Observer: Larry Hamlin, 58, founded National Black Theatre Festival

In 1988, despite the stroke, [William] Meredith won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for "Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems." In 1997, he won the National Book Award for Poetry for "Effort in Speech."

"If you look at his career," says [Dana] Gioia, "what you see is a long and remarkable story."

from The Day: Requiem For A Poet

On the front of the funeral bulletin, Jesse [Allen Mizer] is pictured wearing a hat in a Frank Sinatra pose.

A poem written by Jesse in February was reprinted on the back cover, showing he may have had a premonition of his death.

from The Daily Citizen: 'Huffing' led to fatal accident

Among other honors, he [Leonard E. Nathan] received the National Institute of Arts and Letters prize for poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Phelan Award for Narrative Poetry, and three silver medals from the Commonwealth Club of California, including one for "The Potato Eaters" (Orchises Press, 1999).

His poems were also published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, New England Review and The Georgia Review, among other publications.

from UC Berkeley News: Leonard Nathan, distinguished poet, dies at 82

[Richard] Rorty, who first came to the university as a fellow at the Humanities Center in 1996 and then joined the faculty of the Comparative Literature Department in 1998, is one of the most famous and widely read philosophers of the late 20th century.

"He entered the department as this towering figure, perhaps the leading intellectual in the United States," said Russell Berman, chair of the Department of Comparative Literature and the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities.

from Stanford News: Richard Rorty, distinguished public intellectual and controversial philosopher, dead at 75

T. Paul Ste. Marie, creator and host of a long-running weekly performance-poetry series called Thundering Word Heard, has died.

The poet, painter, performer, producer and emcee -- a flamboyant presence, with his pompadour and lime-green sportjacket--was 41.

from Vancouver Sun: Flamboyant poet Ste. Marie dies at 41

[Jerry A. Westfall] began writing poetry during a family rift, since healed, as a way to deal with his feelings.

"You work your way out of pain, and it was a need he had at the time," his wife [Mary] said.

from Toledo Blade: Jerry A. Westfall, 1939-2007: Food Town manager wrote book of poetry

6/05/2007

News at Eleven

Almost any random poem by a great poet can become your private key to their enigma machine; although the enigma machine keeps spitting out different daily codes, you will sense the same deep gizmo behind it. For example, everything in Frost has that same ominous something-that-drains-away-the-gold, once you've really seen it at work in "Nothing Gold Can Stay."

from Arabesques: A Consideration of poetry: Poetry Is Funny

In fact, I can't stand jazz poetry, something that tries to sound like jazz, it's just that jazz is part of my environment.

Cigarette smoking used to be part of my environment--I wrote about that--but it's just reaching out and grabbing anything to see if you can exploit it and build the poem out of it.

from Planet Jackson Hole: Poetry, life full of surprises for Billy Collins

In writing Cathay--at a time when, incidentally, he knew no Chinese--[Ezra] Pound discovered a mysterious process that [Ted] Hughes seems also to have hit upon. Anyone who has successfully translated a poem knows something of it. In any poem of value there seems to be some poetic element, some inner intensity, which is separable from the language it is embodied in and which therefore appears to defy the truism we began with.

from Times Literary Supplement: Ted Hughes and translation

No poet who was "kept poor," as Murray believes he and his parents were, sees "nature"--droughts and floods, the relentless summer heat on an uninsulated iron roof--in celebratory terms. Indeed, since the poverty that Murray suffered was an enforced poverty, it is hard even to see "nature" in natural terms. Nature, for him, is the field where human motives, often sinister, play out.

from The New Yorker: Fire Down Below

At this point, the judge intervened to say that it was "obvious that the author could have used another term; whether or not it would have served the same purpose is another matter". At that moment, [Lawrence] Ferlinghetti surely sensed victory.

from The Guardian: To save America

And I think it was because those people felt that in order to separate their business lives from their imaginative lives, they literally like Wallace Stevens, he had this briefcase and when he opened it up he said "This side is poetry, this side is insurance and you don't mix them." So it's male compartmentalization perhaps.

But also, American poetry has never really been very good in the 20th century, about talking about public, social issues.

from Knowledge@Wharton: Dana Gioia on the Close Connection between Business and Poetry

"Life," he concludes, "is in the form of spirals."

These spirals are an integral part of both [Jack] Mapanje's writing and his philosophy. To him, there will always be the despot and there will always be the poet. His writing is fused with a deeply outraged humanity that feels every murder, the killing of every innocent, deeply personally and wants the reader to feel it too.

from Nouse: Poems of a political prisoner

Shi [Tao]'s mother, Gao Qinsheng, paid homage to her son at yesterday's ceremony in the South African city of Cape Town, reading a poem he wrote a few weeks before his arrest to the memory of the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 1989. With tears in her eyes, she said: "He did what every courageous journalist must do." Her speech was warmly applauded by those present including President Thabo Mbeki.

June

from Reporters Without Borders: Renewed call for release of Shi Tao after mother reads Tiananmen poem at Golden Pen Award

There is too much brightness. A glow can also be a warning in the dark: "a light warning remains in everything,/like a movement of a light veil: warning." By the end of the third section of this long, plangent poem, the writing is on the wall: "terrible, true X-ray writing/in letters of bones, in white and lightning: MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN."

from The Guardian: Words without borders

As much American Noah as American Adam, post-modern Merwin is aware of launching a porous ark of language. Behind even his most serene raptures lies always the quiet imagination of apocalypse: "I hope I make sense to / you in the shimmer / of our days while the world we / cling to in common is // burning."

from The Guardian: Written in water

The selection actually cuts off the last two lines of the poem, which read, in a parenthetical: "(Many a soldier's loving arms about this neck have cross'd and rested, Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these bearded lips.)" We want to believe the omission was related to space and not because city leaders thought it was too gay.

Another poem, "We Embrace" by Howard University Professor E. Ethelbert Miller, is also being installed at the station on a large round bench near the entrance of the station.

from DCist: Dupont Metro Gets Poetry

Great Regulars

This line--"I did not know what was happening in my heart"--is one of my favorite lines in the poem. I love how it dramatizes the poet's [Robert Penn Warren's] realization that the shared experience of telling and hearing stories can stimulate the mysterious, interior recesses of the self, which, I want to assure you, must not be ignored.

Tell Me a Story

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: Poetry

Sarfraz Manzoor talks to Sebastian Faulks about his latest book Engleby and Charlotte Higgins reviews Vivienne Westwood's cultural manifesto, which she delivered to an audience in Hay.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Haycast 05: Sebastian Faulks and Vivienne Westwood

Sarfraz Manzoor takes a look at what's on offer for kids at Hay. Nine-year-old Maud and seven-year-old Allegra get a chance to ask Lauren Child their burning questions, then Malorie Blackman takes us around one of the children's bookshops in Hay and tells us about the books that have inspired her.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Haycast 06: Lauren Child and Malorie Blackman

In today's show, Tony Benn tells Sarfraz Manzoor what inspired him to keep a lifetime's worth of diaries. Benn retired from Parliament in 2001 to "devote more time to politics" and he has since thrown himself into anti-war campaigning, all of which he has carefully chronicled.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Haycast 07: Tony Benn and AL Kennedy

Dannie Abse has always viewed himself as something of an outsider. With the help of fellow Welsh poet Owen Sheers, he explains his inspirations for his most recent volume Running Late, and gives an exclusive reading of his poem North.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Haycast 08: Tony Juniper and Wangari Maathai

It seems that Abse wandered into a Hay bookshop yesterday and came across a couple of his older collections. As they were in better nick than the ones he owned himself, he decided to buy them. The cashier, not recognising him, told Abse that he ought to charge him more, as the books were, in fact, signed, but that he'd let him off because "Dannie Abse signs everything".

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Hay festival: sunshine greets Owen Sheers

[Quentin Blake] helped bring Roald Dahl's weird and wonderful creations to life and has written and drawn his own works for children. He tells Nell Boase what it was like to work with Dahl, and his plans for a museum of illustration.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Haycast 09: Quentin Blake, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Doris Lessing

We take a brisk country walk with Tom Bullough, author of The Claude Glass, and poet-turned-novelist Owen Sheers to discuss literature and landscape.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Haycast 10: Peter Florence and Marina Lewycka

[Benjamin] Britten, who had great taste in literature, had a perverse taste in librettists: he liked them bad, but amenable. That's what he got in Myfanwy Piper, and he pays the price for it as usual. Between the two of them, they cooked up a drama in which the lover is a singer but the illicit loved one is a dancer, and therefore on some kind of different plane of reality.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Venetian bind

As a guru, one who leads those in darkness back into light, the speaker asserts that he has seen God's "whole unbroken love that's everywhere." Therefore, he has the strong will and the intense devotion with which he can "weld [his] varied collection / Of tiny bits" of love.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Divine Oneness

"Years," she says. Her face, she tells us, "is swollen/with regrets" because she has been crying about her lost youth.

She has powdered her face as if to disguise the puffiness, but the powder "flakes off" and there is no indication that she tries to repair it.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Letting yourself go

Poem: "A Girl Playing in a Sandbox" by David Wagoner, from The House of Song.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of June 04, 2007

Poetry can be thought of as an act of persuasion: a poem attempts to bring about some kind of change in its reader, perhaps no more than a moment of clarity amidst the disorder of everyday life. And successful poems not only make use of the meanings and sounds of words, as well as the images those words conjure up, but may also take advantage of the arrangement of type on a page. Notice how this little poem by Mississippi poet Robert West makes the very best use of the empty space around it to help convey the nature of its subject.

Echo

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 114

Most of the members of the band inhabit a different part of the literary universe, the loftier reaches of the best-seller list. Besides Mr. Blount, members include Amy Tan, Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, Stephen King, Scott Turow and Mitch Albom. At least notionally Maya Angelou is also a member, but she has yet to show up for a gig--a word that members of the Rock Bottom Remainders delight in using whenever possible.

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Rock on, but Hang on to Your Literary Gigs

Just t'ink aboud it, as Tony might say. If Yeats' swans opened The Sopranos, it is plausible that his destructive sphinx has come to close it--and that this "rough beast" alludes not just to a rival to Tony, but to both the invasion of Jamba Juice and Starbucks along the DiMeos' old collection routes, and, now, in 2007, the encroachments of Islamic fundamentalism.

from Meghan O'Rourke: Slate: The Second Coming: What Yeats is doing on The Sopranos.

Tom Wayne, owner of Prospero's Books in Kansas City, Mo., has made headlines by burning books in protest after finding that he could no longer give away excess stock, even to thrift shops. An old, deep reverence for books pulls one way, while digital media and ease of printing pull another.

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

"An artist creates art from three primary sources. The first, of course, is the heart. What emerges from an Artists heart can indeed be called ART. The second is the brain. Sometimes an artist creates art, like a student who writes an essay. This is essentially poster-art and is deliberately crafted. This should be called SmArt. Then there is the third source--the organs of procreation. When the primary motivating factor for art arises out of the artist's genitalia, then it can be termed FArt."[--Kishore Asthana]

from V Sundaram: News Today: Art and SmArt

But I recently saw an overflow crowd of people under 30 (900 of them for a 300-seat auditorium) come to hear Chuck Palahniuk read. And I suspect those people were more likely to read about books online than in the newspaper--especially since newspapers are providing fewer and fewer reviews.

The Internet is going to play a larger and larger role with regard to literature and publishing and criticism.

from Frank Wilson: Britannica Blog: Dissing Allies: The Book Critics' War on Bloggers

It was the intensest nervous vibration of unison, pressed higher and higher in pitch, till the blood-vessels of the girl broke, and the blood began to flow out loose. It was love. If you call it love.

But [Edgar Allan] Poe knew only love, love, love, intense vibrations and heightened consciousness.

from Daily Times: Purple Patch: Edgar Allan Poe --D H Lawrence

[Ted Hughes] was a born seducer and only my terror of Sylvia's ghost kept me from being seduced.

I remember sitting across a bar table with Ted and his friend Luke while Ted put the poetic moves on me. Knowing I'd want an autographed book, he snatched my copy of Crow and drew, on the title page, a lecherous snake climbing an Edenic tree.

from Daily Times: Purple Patch: Seducing the Demon --Erica Jong

Extract from 'Howl' by Allen Ginsberg

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Extract from 'Howl' by Allen Ginsberg

Larina Warnock's poem is both funny and movingly tender. Warnock has one man telling his friend to dance with Anna Mae, and we quickly realise that he doesn't really want his friend to dance with her.

from The Guardian: Poetry Workshop: Drama lessons

'The Copy Desk'
By Robert Folsom

from The Kansas City Star: Poet's Corner

The Bowerbirds
by Dana Goodyear

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Bowerbirds

Posthumous Fragments
by Yehuda Amichai

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Posthumous Fragments

By Samantha Tumolo
Sea Side City

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [By Samantha Tumolo]

Spring Forth
[by Elaine Peverly]

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem--Spring Forth

On a beautiful light May evening, our favorite chanteuse, Lucie Therrien, conjured up a scene in a dark nightclub, where--if you listen closely--you can even hear the music:

Tango With Me

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poetry Hoot

More than 1600 poems were submitted to the 2007 Wigtown Poetry competition. Judge Jackie Kay said "It is the job of poetry to take the cliché and breathe new life into it" --which the winning entry, by London poet Kathryn Simmonds, certainly does.

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week: My Darling, My Cliché By Kathryn Simmonds

"Driving Back From Crotched Mountain, Winter Storm, New Year's Eve"
By John Hodgen

from Slate: "Driving Back From Crotched Mountain, Winter Storm, New Year's Eve"--By John Hodgen

Aside from its merits as a quiz, however, the best examples of "Author Author" have offered a particular reading experience like that of a tripartite poem. The effect is well caught in a bluish little poem of January 1988 by the late Gavin Ewart. All answers to Ewart's quiz will be wrong.

The TLS "Author Author" poem

from The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: The TLS "Author, Author" poem by Gavin Ewart

Matchmaker
Charles Rammelkamp

from Zeek: Matchmaker: Charles Rammelkamp

Poetic Obituaries

A longtime resident of Garden City, S.C. and recent resident of Watertown, Lee [E. Caylor] loved boating, fishing, music, poetry, gardening, genealogy, his friends and his family. He will truly be missed by all.

from newzjunky.com: Lee E. Caylor

Instead, words painted a picture: Born in Haiti, Stephanie [Dorismund] was the oldest of five siblings. Her father lived in Haiti, Merline Dorismond believed, or perhaps Canada.

She had been an eighth-grader at North Miami Middle School. She enjoyed writing and had even "won a trophy" at school for her poetry, Merline Dorismond recalled.

from The Miami Herald: Police: Adult friend killed 15-year-old runaway

[Sister Mary Madonna Fowler] was well known for her gentle spirit, her quick smile, her contemplative manor and her spontaneous visits to people she met on daily walks. Many of Sister Madonna's poems were published in the former Church World.

from Bangor Daily News: Sister Mary Madonna Fowler, RSM, Lillian Jane

In all, Mr. [Mark] Harris wrote 13 novels and 4 nonfiction books. His nonfiction books included "Mark the Glove Boy, or the Last Days of Richard Nixon" (1964); an autobiography, "Best Father Ever Invented" (1976); and "Saul Bellow: Drumlin Woodchuck" (1980). He also edited "Selected Poems of Vachel Lindsay" (1963) and "The Heart of Boswell: Six Journals in One Volume" (1981) and wrote book reviews, critical essays and articles.

from The New York Times: Mark Harris, Author of 'Bang the Drum Slowly,' Is Dead at 84

[Rhoda Jal Vania's] poems, especially those written in Chittagong, where she spent part of her youth, have a fresh quality, a fragrance that brings the place to life for the reader. A poem written at the Moscow airport is a piece that should be used in history books for its fine and soft depiction of the past and present of communist history.

from Daily Times: Dr Rhoda Jal Vania: She that was wise has left us rich

The title of the poem is "The Eagle." It reads: "The eagle is free. Free to go whenever, wherever in search of food and to fish Without Higher authorities saying 'you can't do this or that.' I want to be free, Free as the Eagle on the wind."

[Pfc. Robert] Liggett published more of his poetry on his MySpace.com Web page.

from Quad-City Times: Rocky graduate dies in Iraq

"Years ago, when they would have parties at his house, he would read his poetry. Listening to him was wonderful. He read, and it was just magic," said [Rita] Dawley [of William Meredith], who lives next door to River Run, the home Meredith and his partner, Richard Harteis, shared on Kitemaug Road in Uncasville. "We had a lot of great times, and William loved every day that he lived."

from Norwich Bulletin: Late Uncasville poet's talent, strength praised

A funeral and graveside service drew hundreds of mourners who celebrated the 29-year-old [Army Sgt. Robert Joe] Montgomery [II]'s gift for poetry, his passion for the hard-rock group Nine Inch Nails, and the impact he left on tearful friends who huddled together around his silver coffin in a final goodbye.

from The Courier-Journal: Final salute for a soldier

Renowned Irish author John Moriarty has died, it was announced today.

The Co Kerry-born poet and philosopher had been battling cancer. He was 69.

from Irish Times: Irish author John Moriarty dies aged 69

Marly de Oliveira, 69, an award-winning Brazilian poet, died of multiple organ failure Friday in Rio de Janeiro after being hospitalized for four months, the Brazilian Academy of Letters announced.

from The Los Angeles Times: Marly de Oliveira, 69; respected Brazilian poet, professor of literature

[Pat Priestman's] son Joel said: "She was a larger-than-life character and some people said that the Conservatives won that year because of her.

"She also ran her own kissogram business where she would write poems for people, sit on their knee and give them a kiss."

from Welwyn & Hatfield Times: Horsewoman Pat dies at her own riding competition

ARCHIVES