News at Eleven

There is a cliché about music writing, sometimes attributed to Thelonious Monk, among others: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." If so, Nathaniel Mackey is compelled, rather than deterred, by the multiform madness of the enterprise. He is the Balanchine of the architecture dance.

from The New York Times: Jazz Man

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Guernica: Was it useful for you to know Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara, James Schuyler—other young poets, I mean.

John Ashbery: Oh yes. When we were young, we were our only audience. We would write poems and read them to each other, and in fact, for quite a few years, I didn't really think that anybody else was going to be interested. My first book was not at all successful. I'm talking about the Yale University one, which I think they printed 800 copies of, and it took eight years to run out.

from Guernica: Houses at Night

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"Three dangerous moments will come to you," he [Vyasa] says. "The first will be at the time of your wedding: at that time, hold back your question. The second will be when your husbands are at the height of their power: at that time, hold back your laughter. The third will be when you're shamed as you'd never imagined possible: at that time, hold back your curse."

Panchaali, of course, does none of these and thus launches the conflicts and problems that are the stuff of all storytelling.

from Los Angeles Times: 'The Palace of Illusions' by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

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[by Susan Tichy]

1.

Three men who look like Bedouin, but are not, pause with their camels in the snow--

from Foreign Policy in Focus: Fiesta!: American Ghazals

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" . . . Australia will notice a New Zealand writer if someone in New York or London says they are interesting and New Zealand will notice Australian writers (in the same way). Everything has to go back to the old centres that we thought we had freed ourselves from."

The answer, he [Bill Manhire] thinks, would be to encourage much more trans-Tasman travel by publishers and editors of books pages, especially to events such as writers' festivals. But with the internet changing the way readers can access books, he says, maybe these old distribution networks will eventually lose their power, anyway.

from The Age: The accidental poet

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The poem ends: 'This is an illusion: perspective is everything./Wherever I may stand/the vanishing point is my eye,/the beholden.' To write poems about seeing, you have to disappear; it is essential to relinquish your so-called perspective. The beholden, with its suggestion of gratitude, is for Maguire a self-cure for narrow-mindedness. Egotism dissolves in perception.

from The Guardian: Precise visions and visceral wit

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One often feels while reading his work that if there is any misstep, any syllable or stress put wrong, not only the poem but its maker will either go up in flames or disappear down a black crevasse. This is the drama of [Robert] Creeley's defining work, and that drama never feels calculated or inauthentic.

from The New York Times: What Is Left Out

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"It's like Frost unplugged," said Peter Campion, editor of the journal. "Previously unpublished lectures would drive scholars crazy in and of themselves, but in addition to that, we're getting him in discussion. He's sitting down with a bunch of 20-year-olds and trying to teach them. That involves anecdotes, stories, jokes, funny little disses on his contemporaries."

from GazetteXtra: Poet Robert Frost illuminated by previously unpublished transcript of 1947 Dartmouth lecture

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It is widely expected among education circles, however, that the Irish syllabus committee of the NCCA will withdraw his poetry from the list of prescribed poets.

The move is the latest in a protracted saga surrounding [Cathal] O'Searcaigh's sexual relations with young men in Nepal, which was brought to light by Gortahork-based film-maker Neasa NiChianáin in her upcoming documentary 'Fairytale of Kathmandu'.

from The Donegal News: Poet to be taken off Leaving Cert?

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Of Thomas Gray: "as if turning your poetry into published work were mortifying". Of the Alice books: they took "their life from a special relationship with children. They hardly belonged to the realm of commercial authorship". Of Sir Walter Scott: "his anonymity was a way of turning his personal experience into impersonal fiction".

from Times Literary Supplement: Hiding behind the pen

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[Xhevdet Bajraj] said it was months before he could sleep without worrying that someone would break into the house to kill them. (Last week Kosovo formally declared its independence from Serbia, prompting protests in Belgrade.)

For weeks after Bajraj arrived in Mexico City, he sat at his computer, unable to write. Eventually the words came. His first book containing poems written in Mexico, The Liberty of Horror, won Kosovo's top literary prize.

from USA Today: Mex. refuge for world's persecuted writers

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Great Regulars

"I don't quite understand about understanding poetry. I experience poems with pleasure: whether I understand them or not I'm not quite sure. I don't want to read something I already know or which is going to slide down easily: there has to be some crunch, a certain amount of resilience. It's certainly not meant not to be read. But I enjoy only works of art with an element of surprise in them. It's probably an essential feature of any work of art." [--John Ashbery]

from Bryan Appleyard: Carcanet: Interview with John Ashbery

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The readers that write in to me are critical and aware, they're sharp and impassioned and I'd like to thank everyone of them who has written in with a question or a comment--you've helped me learn so much on this journey of ours.

However, and there is always a however, I do get my fair share bizzarro mail.

from Fatima Bhutto: The News International Pakistan: Frequently asked questions

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Anna Beer talks to Sarah Crown about her new biography of poet John Milton published 400 years after his birth

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Books: Anna Beer on her new biography of poet John Milton

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In the opening section he describes the death of his father in piercing detail, anchoring the exigent crisis with strands of earlier memories ("Appearing in his car on Sunday mornings/Impatient for the whole world to wake up,/He'd arrive for lunch before breakfast") that lend individual texture to this most commonplace of tragedies.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: On your marks

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Clutter
By Alarie Tennille

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Clutter'

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Another Spring
By Greg Field

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Field trip

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Dawn Harris Rainey reminds us today of the wisdom of the late Wystan Hugh Auden:

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: A Nod to Auden

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One Below
by Jon Herbert Arkham

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'One Below'

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Through My Window

By Ryan P. Silva

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Student Poem # 3

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Jonesburg, GA
By Shane P. Stricker
University of Missouri-Kansas City

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Student Poem # 4

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Ever since I found the mass-market paperback of a novel by William T Vollmann at a small drugstore in Paris, I thought: retailers can do better.

Coffee shops seem the ideal place to start. Half the people who go to a coffee shop are there to chat. The other half go to read. Why can't Starbucks or Costa give the readers more?

from John Freeman: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Books with everything

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She has enjoyed him carnally: his nipples are like ripe berries in her hand. He tastes "like grainmeal mingled with beer" and "[l]ike wine to the palate when taken with white bread." "White bread" used to a delicacy only the rich could afford.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Ancient Egyptian Poem

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The speaker likens them to Christ who shed his blood for mankind. As the divinity of Christ portended a "better way" of life for those who understood His courage and followed in His brave footsteps, those who understand and follow the courageous path of these brave black soldiers will also find "a better way."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Jamison's 'The Negro Soldiers'

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She will be grateful when her sister's soul has departed, and the dying one no longer has to suffer the sorrowful and painful transition she is now undergoing.

The speaker attempts to report as calmly and objectively as possible as she, at the same time, dramatizes the event that is so crucial, so vitally important.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: 'On the Death of Anne Brontë'

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His creations remain with him, and even if his muse roves far from him, his inspirational urges cannot range farther than his thoughts. And through his poems, "I am still with them and they with thee." He is, therefore, never without his love, his muse, his inspiration.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 47

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His mention of metal combs recalls the days when remedies for head lice were combed through the hair with just such combs; there is a punitive and controlling aspect to the use of these. And when he complains that he is sick of his annuals, I imagine that it is because his brain has developed beyond them, even while being artificially constrained by his medication.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: A suspicious degeneration

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Poem: "Water" by Robert Lowell from Selected Poems.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of February 25, 2008

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America's answer to Amy Winehouse may just be a former wedding singer whose résumé includes a lengthy stint as a prison guard. Atlanta-born Sharon Jones is a decade or two older than Winehouse, but the big-voiced African-American singer is doing her part to revive old-school soul music--and she's doing it without emulating Winehouse's tabloid-magnet antics.

from David Kirby: The Christian Science Monitor: Why Sharon Jones is the new face of old soul music

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A child with a sense of the dramatic, well, many of us have been that child. Here's Carrie Shipers of Missouri reminiscing about how she once wished for a dramatic rescue by screaming ambulance, only to find she was really longing for the comfort of her mother's hands.

Medical History

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 152

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In the next section, the poet [Albert Goldbarth] does look at the desiccated animal remains, but without poetic metaphor. He accepts "hard summer; the land enameled." He accepts life disintegrating into dust. Then he finds solace in prayer and love.

Wings

from Denise Low: Ad Astra Poetry Project: Albert Goldbarth (1948 - )

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With the exception of Martin Luther King's, most political oratory is decidedly un-poetic and political poetry should not emulate a stump speech. You can write about the topics of war, poverty, racism, sexual abuse or other social problems, and perhaps you can move people to alter their way of thinking. If you want to motivate people to take some sort of action to make our country (and our world) a better place to live, then you must first move them.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Political poetry must first move the reader with an idea

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"The situation is quite serious," Sandra Boss, interim chairwoman of the Mount's board, said in a telephone interview from London, where she works. "On the one hand, the Mount [Edith Wharton's estate in Lenox, Mass.] is winning awards for preservation and is internationally renowned as an institution. And it's well run from an efficiency perspective. We've made great progress by cutting costs and raising revenues. On the other hand, our current debt levels are unserviceable and unsustainable. We're not in control of our own destiny unless we can mount a restructuring of our debt."

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Landmark Massachusetts Building Where Wharton Wrote Faces Foreclosure

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Nothing changes the pain of suffering, the humiliations of aging, our inability to change the past, guess the future, or capture the elusive present. We are thrown into the world and have barely a minute to make sense of it before we vanish.

It is the "moving finger" of the artist, poet, or otherwise, that helps us see through what is mere convention and face whatever lies outside—chaos or higher vision.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: A Reading of The Moving Finger by Omar Khayyam

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For this, my farewell "Poet's Choice" column, here are two poems related by a form: the sonnet.

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

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[Brigit Pegeen Kelly] moves straight on, into the mystery of metamorphosis. This dead creature "[ . . . ] tricked//our vision: at a distance she was/for a moment no deer/at all//but two swans: we saw two swans" and "this is the soul: like it or not". It is transformation which animates, often beautifully, even in death.

Yet, ambitious as this might seem set against our own poetic norms, it is not enough for Kelly.

from Fiona Sampson: The Guardian: The transforming soul

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by Annette Marie Hyder

Your teeth flash halos of hate
as you try to turn my wine into water
lessen the loaves
subtract the leaven of pleasure
from this experience
leaving it flat like matzo bread.

Posted on February 21, 2008

Your company, a crown of thorns

from Donna Snyder: Newspaper Tree: Poetry: "Your company, a crown of thorns"

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In 1924, [A A] Milne published a book of children's poems entitled 'When We Were Very Young', with drawings by Punch illustrator, Ernest Shepard. This book includes a poem about a Teddy Bear who 'however hard he tries grows tubby without exercise'. This was Pooh's first unofficial appearance in A A Milne's writing.

from V Sundaram: News Today: Inventing Wonderland --Fantasies of A A Milne

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Dr. [Elisabeth] Kubler-Ross was greatly influenced by the poems of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) in his famous work 'Gitanjali' and other works. Almost every chapter in her famous maiden book called "On Death and Dying" carried a quotation from the writings of Tagore. She was very fond of the following lines of Tagore in his "Stray Birds":

'Death belongs to life as birth does The walk is in the raising of the foot as in the laying of it down'

from V Sundaram: News Today: Philosopher of death and dying

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There are relatively few new outbreaks of violence. The current violence over Gaza has been with us at least since 1948, as has the division of Kashmir between India and Pakistan or the discontent of ethnic minorities in Burma. The violence in Sudan began on the eve of independence in 1956 and has been with us, in one form or another, since.

As governments are largely unwilling to admit that they are unable to cope with a new downward spiral of tensions and violence, it is up to non-governmental organizations to sound the warning bell.

from René Wadlow: media for freedom: Acting in Time

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[Glenn] Reynolds, who knows his away around the First Amendment, thinks that "the press establishment's general lack of enthusiasm for free speech for others (as evidenced by its support for campaign finance 'reform') suggests that it'll be happy to see alternative media muzzled. "

"You want to keep this media revolution going?" he asks. "Be ready to fight for it. "

from Frank Wilson: Books, Inq.: The Epilogue: Her wish . . .

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Consider just one aspect: the slave who stood behind the general in the triumphal chariot and held above the honorand's head a golden crown while whispering, "Look behind you. Remember you are a man." Beard, who holds a chair in classics at Cambridge University, points out that this "has become one of the emblematic trademarks of the triumph," even figuring, in slightly different wording, in the closing sequence of the film Patton.

from Frank Wilson: Philadelphia Inquirer: A tradition not so well understood after all

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Count ten by Arnold Wesker

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Count ten by Arnold Wesker

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Near Field
by W. S. Merwin

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Near Field

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Rain Light
by W. S. Merwin

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Rain Light

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A Single Autumn
by W. S. Merwin

from The New Yorker: Poetry: A Single Autumn

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--Vi Gale (1917-2007)

Born in Sweden and raised in Clatskanie, writer and publisher Vi Gale lived in Portland for 67 years. She began writing short stories and poetry in the 1950s, and her early books of poetry--including "Love, Always," in which "In a Loud Whisper" appears--were published by Alan Swallow in Denver. In 1974 she founded Prescott Street Press, publishing original work by some of Oregon's best-known poets, as well as translations.

from The Oregonian: Poetry

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By Nicole Naticchia

Wind

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Nicole Naticchia ]

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[by John J. Witherspoon]
Winter

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Winter

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Toby Barlow's first book, Sharp Teeth, is a verse novel about werewolves. This makes it not only a decisive answer (nay!) to the age-old question "Is long-form monster poetry dead?" but also a perfect marriage of form and subject: Both the werewolf and the verse novel (which lopes across the centuries from Pushkin to Browning to Vikram Seth) are shaggy hybrids that appear once in a blue moon and terrify everyone in sight.

from Powells: Review-A-Day: Sharp Teeth

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Gerry Cambridge opens a window on American poetry for UK readers, and in the 21st issue of The Dark Horse offers stimulating criticism alongside poems from both sides of the Atlantic.

He includes this touching and many-layered meditation on time and memory from the distinguished American poet Rachel Hadas.

Quickening

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week

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"The Room"
By Michael Chitwood

from Slate: "The Room" --By Michael Chitwood

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Poetic Obituaries

Mrs. [Mavis] Biesanz authored "The Costa Ricans," published in 1988 and "The Ticos: Culture and Social Change in Costa Rica" published in 1998, both with her son Richard and his wife, Karen Zubris Biesanz.

from A.M. Costa Rica: Prolific author and observer of Tico life, Mavis Biesanz, dies at 88

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[Brian Hill] also wrote poetry and short stories, Rees said.

A graceful writer, Mr. Hill began his blog in December 2003 as physicians were diagnosing why "my left arm and leg are . . . acting funny. Lazy. Tingly. I have noticed myself stuttering, using the wrong word sometimes (broccoli instead of ravioli), slurring words, and 'mix-mashing' syllables . . . or just not remembering the word I need. I counted this up to getting older and having two small children."

from San Francisco Chronicle: Brian Hill dies--he blogged about his illness

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Moving from Canton, Zaughn [Jones] was a homemaker. She was an active member at Howland Community Church where she attended. Zaughn was an avid golfer, enjoyed swimming, reading and poetry. She was very talented as an artist.

from Tribune Chronicle: Zaughn Jones 1920-2008

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[Arun Kale's] first poem collection "Rock Garden" was published in 1993, following which his other collections including the popular 'City of Siren' went on to recieve accolades.

He was elected as a President of the proposed Akshar Manav Sahitya Sammelan to be held on Feb 26-27 at Bhosi in Chandrapur district.

from The Hindu: Poet Arun Kale passes away

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[Amelia R. Lockhart-Battenhausen] was smart, funny and artistic, with a flair for writing poetry and loved the outdoors. Her adoration for children was well known, as was her uncanny ability to find the humor in every situation.

from Parkersburg News and Sentinel: Amelia R. Lockhart-Battenhausen

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Mrs [Kim] Roye described her son [Jerome Roye] as "a very artistic boy", who loved to draw, paint, write poems and write his own music.

He also worked for a company called Hatlow Entertainment designing t-shirts and clothing.

He had recently been commissioned to paint graffiti in a pub opposite Herne Hill station.

from Croydon Guardian: Mum's tribute to son killed in Streatham crash

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The community was saddened by the death of Omena native and long-time resident Barbara Foltz Schneidewind. Barbara was a talented writer of poetry and children's books.

from Leelanau Enterprise: Omena news

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M. Shivanna (72), a Non-Resident Indian, who participated in the poetry reading session of 9th Kannada Sahitya Sammelana, died here on Friday following cardiac arrest.

from The Hindu: NRI poet dies after recital

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Jonathan Tyler, 18, was a gifted poet who moved to Gilead this winter to work as a lift attendant at Sunday River Ski Resort in Newry.

The three inseparable friends went to nearby Gorham, N.H., on Saturday night to fuel up Tyler's 1994 Mitsubishi Eclipse and to buy cigarettes after a day's work.

from Sun Journal: 'Good boys' Community mourns teens killed in crash

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[Tara Lynn] Woodman was wearing a 2004 "Just Move It" T-shirt when found and had participated in an event in Chinle where she received one of the shirts, Lewis later learned.

Her uncle, Mark Forster, spokesman for the family, said Friday, "She was a very fine poet and a very good athlete. She ran track and participated several times in the 'Just Move It' events."

from Gallup Independent: Navajo woman's body is identified

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News at Eleven

Poems such as "Floodtide: For the black tenant farmers of the south" by Aksia Muhammad Toure or June Jordan's "In Memorium: Martin Luther King, Jr.", Julia Field's "Poems: Birmingham 1962-64", and the many poems of Ishmael Reed, Richard Wright, Conrad Kent Rivers, Keorapetse W. Kgositsile., and a hundred more. Here are just a few.

Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song: A Poem to American Poets

from North Lake Tahoe Bonanza: Poet's Corner: 20th century Black history through poetry

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[Countee Cullen] advised black writers to "let art portray things as they are, no matter what the consequences, no matter who is hurt is a blind bit of philosophy ... Every phase of Negro life should not be the white man's concern. The parlor should be large enough for his entertainment and instruction."

How revealing. In his own terms, Cullen merely stated that black art was to instruct the white reading public.

from The Capital: Our Legacy: Thank you, Countee Cullen, for your brilliance

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Regarding the poems written by the students themselves, he [Henri Cole] gave advice almost offhandedly, as if he hadn't been a Pulitzer finalist.

"If you're trying to write iambic pentameter, then you start off striving for perfect iambic verse, but at some point you have to just say, (bleep) it, and then you use the right word instead."

from The Columbus Dispatch: A torch passed
also The Columbus Dispatch: Audio: Oil & Steel
also The Columbus Dispatch: Audio: Poppies

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In the second segment, dubbed "Urban Renewal," the poems are given Roman numerals for titles. In one [Major] Jackson recalls, with bewilderment, how a teacher at Reynolds Elementary, unable to commit to memory names such as "Tarik, Shanequa, Amari and Aisha," nicknamed the entire class after French painters.

In another poem Jackson finds solace in his grandfather's backyard garden, shielded from encroaching crime, blight and despair.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Poetic nuances of Phila.

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In [Louise Bernice] Halfe's story, women who have unhappy marriages, who, down through the years have been "give-away brides/starry eyed as I, as they trudged behind/their fur-trader husbands," who have been married for convenience rather than love, often develop an "obsession" to climb out of their own skin and run out of the life shackled to them.

Turn-Around Woman, in stories often remarkably like Halfe's [a.k.a. Sky Dancer], speaks of trying to be true to oneself as a Cree woman, as a wife and mother, as a daughter and granddaughter, to navigate between all the amenities and temptations of the white world while Rib Woman waits.

from Saskatoon Star Phoenix: Halfe joins many voices in her poetry

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This belief led at its worst to a literature as limited and unwieldy as the language of objects in Swift's Laputa, where only a kettle itself can signify 'kettle'. Yet this unsustainable (if not anti-intellectual) attitude let [Robert] Creeley focus as few modern poets have on sound, which is to say on the sound of speech: on the ways intonation and rhythm carry attitude and emotion, and on how to put those ways down on the page.

To say this is to make Creeley sound much like [Robert] Frost, who said he could hear 'the sound of sense' in 'voices behind a door that cuts off the words'.

from London Review of Books: What Life Says to Us

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Compare, for instance, [John] Anster's stiff rendering of lines from Faust's meditation in the "Forest and Cave" scene:

And when before my eye the pure moon walks
High over-head, diffusing a soft light,
Then from the rocks, and over the damp wood,
The pale bright shadows of the ancient times
Before me seem to love, and mitigate
The too severe delight of earnest thought!

with the more soulful, sinewy cadence of those being credited to [Samuel Taylor] Coleridge:

There may I gaze upon
The still moon wandering through the pathless heaven;
While on the rocky ramparts, from the damp
Moist bushes, rise the forms of ages past
In silvery majesty, and moderate
The too wild luxury of silent thought.

from The Times Literary Supplement: Coleridge and Goethe, together at last

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New research has revealed that the radical writer [Hugh MacDiarmid] was at the heart of an audacious plot to retrieve the iconic artefact from Westminster Abbey, more than 15 years before the act was carried out by a band of young Scottish academics.

Previously, MacDiarmid's stated intention of seizing the Stone of Scone was largely laughed off as an alcohol-fuelled delusion.

from Scotland on Sunday: Proof of poet's date with Destiny revealed

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Irritating he may have been, but also captivating, at least in the picture that his mentor, Ford Madox Hueffer, paints: "Ezra . . . would approach with the step of a dancer, making passes with a cane at an imaginary opponent. He would wear trousers made of green billiard cloth, a pink coat, a blue shirt, a tie hand-painted by a Japanese friend, an immense sombrero, a flaming beard cut to a point, and a single, large blue earring."

Hueffer played a major role in helping Pound move his writing from the elevated language of verse to a more natural voice, the "living tongue," as Hueffer put it.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Irritating, captivating, quirky Pound

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South High School assistant principal Karl Perkins has been placed on administrative leave after school officials learned he was the author of some erotic poetry for sale on a Web site.

Springfield City Schools officials are investigating the incident after a student downloaded a book of poems written by Antonio Love, Perkins' pseudonym.

from Dayton Daily News: South High official on leave over sexy poems

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Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Burma Media Association (BMA) condemn the arrest of Myanmar Nation editor Thet Zin and his office manager, [poet] Sein Win Maung.

The Honolulu Community-Media Council (HCMC), which was established in 1970 and is the oldest of the 5 volunteer media councils that exist in the United States, has also joined the Burma Media Association, international journalist and human rights organizations in condemning the continued crack down on the Burmese media by the military regime. HCMC President, Chris Conybeare says: "We urge all who value human rights to join us in condemning these latest attacks and to demand the immediate release of all political prisoners of the despotic regime of General Than Shwe".

from Asian Tribune: Burma's Media completely under military dictatorship

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Great Regulars

[Vi Gale] began writing stories and poetry and found an early mentor in poet May Sarton. Her first book, "Several Houses," was published in 1959 and was chosen one of the 100 best books in Oregon history from 1800-2000 by the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission.

Gale's other books include "Love Always," "Nineteen Ing Poems," "Clearwater" and "Odd Flowers & Short-Eared Owls."

from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: Celebrating the life of Vi Gale
also Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: Bookmarks: Vi Gale Celebration

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Lloyd Schwartz: I think, in some way, it really is, that she writes about memory, but she writes about how important it is to have memories and how awful it is to remember some things.

She talks about how important it is to be an individual and have an individual identity and, in some ways, how lonely that is or what a nightmare it is to be an eye, an Elizabeth, as she says, in one of her most remarkable poems.

from Jeffrey Brown: PBS: Newshour: Elizabeth Bishop's Writings Honored by Library of America

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[Toby] Barlow's book is being marketed mostly as a novel, but the prose is chopped up into poetic lines. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't, but when it does, it's powerful.

The first-person-plural opening, in fact, echoes the ceremonial tone of the firstborn English epic Beowulf.

from

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Here is a poem by Kathleen Johnson.

February 14

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Good morning.

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Here's one from Jo McDougall, whose books include Satisfied With Havoc.

Afternoon at Sunset Hills

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Jo McDougall

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From 'Red Silk,' by Kansas City poet Maryfrances Wagner.

Softening Up

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Parachute Silk

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I cannot say more than this: Keep them [Jeanie and Thomas Zvi Wilson] in your thoughts. And when you read Tom's final line here today, remember his voice. Hear him always.

Voices

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Poetic antiphony

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Daisy Johnson, 17, is a student at the Friends' School in Saffron Walden, England.

On the Bench With You

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Student poem # 2

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For him the world no longer exists, and his despair makes him feel that "nothing now can ever come to any good."

Although the poem is easily accessible, the construction is quite clever, and even though the speaker is calling for the impossible, it is his deeply felt emotion that makes the reader understand and appreciate his anguish, as the reader also enjoys the execution of the expression.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: February Poet--W. H. Auden

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He reminds him to "Fight on" even if he is spilling blood. He must "Fight on" and show that he is brave. Even if it is the end, he should show a "Brave end of the struggle if nothing beside." Even if he dies, if he dies bravely, he will die a hero.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Harpur's 'The Battle of Life'

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While moonlight may be romantic for lovers, its pale light can seem cold and isolating to someone alone.

Although the speaker does not make clear why she is alone, the reader might suspect it is because of a divorce, because the speaker seems bitter. She refers to her lack of a man as "No heavy, impassive back to nudge." Not exactly a description of a loving relationship.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Kizer's 'Night Sounds'

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What now is different that allows this character to "beg forgiveness," whereas he could not beg forgiveness before? According to the claim, it is because he is "Silhouetted almost into a woman." Does this imply that women can ask forgiveness but men cannot?

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Komunyakaa's 'Pride'

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One might imagine that when the woman made of water laughs or rages she creates the whirlpools and waterspouts mentioned. And when she "scribbles her slippery name/ over and over down the glass" it is the rain streaking against the windows, each rivulet like a signature.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: Rites to fulfil a fantasy

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This "belief" underpins his late poem, "Presence of an External Master of Knowledge"; the poem also relates to Tennyson's "Ulysses" (1842), whose ageing narrator resolves to "follow knowledge like a sinking star,/Beyond the utmost bound of human thought".

The TLS published "Presence of an External Master of Knowledge in [Wallace] Stevens's seventy-fifth year, in 1954. He died the following summer.

Presence of an External Master of Knowledge

from Mick Imlah: The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: Presence of an External Master of Knowledge

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Poem: "Lament" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of February 18, 2008

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Thirty, forty years ago, there were lots of hitchhikers, college students, bent old men and old women, and none of them seemed fearful of being out there on the highways at the mercy of strangers. All that's changed, and nobody wants to get in a car with a stranger. Here Steven Huff of New York tells us about a memorable ride.

Safe

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 151

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Almost no one skates outdoors in New England anymore. People seldom do it even in Canada or Minnesota.

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Elegy for a Vanishing Pastime

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"Does your office face south?" I asked Miller. "In Washington, D.C., southern windows get good light."

"My office faces Mecca," Miller informed me.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Which way is Mecca again?"

"I'm just kidding," Miller said.

from Washington City Paper: 3 Minutes with E. Ethelbert Miller

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The pictures are always the same.

A group of young boys

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: God Holding a Camera and Waiting for Us to Smile

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Then he finds it. His expression "the liquefaction of her clothes" should be pronounced with a note of triumph, as he captures in mere words the liquid, melting delight of her appearance. His use of such a conspicuously polysyllabic Latin-derived term seemingly raises the tone, as if we had been taken from a domestic interior and set down in a royal court, yet there is certain witty irony too.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Today: A Reading of 'Upon Julia's Clothes' by Robert Herrick

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For instance, she [Matthea Harvey]'ll call a poem "Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form" and begin one of its syntax-bending sections:

Pity the bathtub its forced embrace of the human
Form may define external appearance but there is room
For improvement within try a soap dish that allows for
Slippage is inevitable . . .

As an essay on form--poetic and otherwise--it's a satisfying performance: light and quick rather than ponderous and self-occupied.

from David Orr: The New York Times: Dream logic

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Alan Shapiro's new book contains a remarkable section headed "from The Book of Last Thoughts." Each poem presents the dying thoughts of a different character in a form appropriate to that speaker. This one, for instance, is in rhyme:

Country-Western Singer

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

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It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, movin? g, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

In an amazing moment, with a magician's speed, the last three words here make two separate verbs seem like one. That stroke also epitomizes [Elizabeth] Bishop's work: the fluid, rapid, and mortal action of knowledge, made live in words.

from Robert Pinsky: The Boston Globe: Soul deep

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Even before he founded the Tamil Sangam in Madurai, Pandithurai Thevar had made a name for himself in the Tamil world through his poems, writings and speeches. He was celebrated as a powerful speaker. He had published two anthologies in Tamil--one literary and the other religious. He helped his teacher Ramaswami Pillai to bring out an excellent edition of the Thevaram hymns and gave liberal monetary help to many scholars for publishing their works.

from V Sundaram: News Today: The great Marava patron of Tamil language and literature

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by Walt Whitman

Bardic Symbols

from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: Bardic Symbols

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by Linda Gregerson

Constitutional

from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: Constitutional

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by Mary Jo Salter

Executive Shoe Shine

from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: Executive Shoe Shine

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Editor's note: This week's Poetry Corner features the work of David Sah? ner. His poetry has appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Connecticut Review, White Heron, Blood and Fire Review and Buffalo Spree. He is a physician involved in clinical research, and he lives with his family in Santa Cruz.

Grandma's Right Hand

from Good Times Weekly: Poetry Corner

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Fame by Charlotte Mew

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Fame by Charlotte Mew

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by Edip Cansever translated by Julia Clare Tillinghast and Richard Tillinghast

Sky-Meaning I

from Guernica: Poetry: Two Poems

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By Larry M. Schilb

aluminum sky

from The Kansas City Star: 'Winter': A poem by Larry M. Schilb

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Chinese Poem
by J. D. McClatchy

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Chinese Poem

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Thrown
by Rae Armantrout

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Thrown

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[by Li-Young Lee, To Hold]

So we're dust. In the meantime, my wife [. . .]

from The Oregonian: Poetry

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By Alexa Garvey
Eastern Regional High School

My Bowl of Oranges

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Alexa Garvey]

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By Samantha Morrow

Shadows

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Samantha Morrow]

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By Sohale Sizar

The Violin

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Sohale Sizar]

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By Andrew Van Dyk
Van Zant Elementary

My Dial-up Internet Service

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Andrew Van Dyk]

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[by E. Bernard Arnold]
His Majesty Speaks

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: His Majesty Speaks

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[by Judy Curtis]
Seasons

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Seasons

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"Richard Noel"
By Harry Thomas

from Slate: "Richard Noel" --By Harry Thomas

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Poetic Obituaries

The talented nonagenerian [Bert Batty] wrote a number of books, including A Ripe Old Age which charted events in Britain over the last century and The Pear Tree Chronicles which followed his own family history.

He also penned an epic poem entitled 'Great Britain's Glory Days and My Country's Pride and Fall' and told his friend's wartime story 'The Diary of Driver Don Hammett' by using the secret diary that he kept between 1939 and 1940.

from Redditch Standard: 99-year-old Bert Batty dies

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[R. Paul] Cracroft loved to write and decided at age 13 that it would be his life's work. He was particularly proud of a 1979 479-page epic poem based on the Book of Mormon called "A Certain Testimony." The professor concluded his obituary by writing: "Since I can no longer write letters to the editor, this obituary will be my last hurrah!"

from The Salt Lake Tribune: Cracroft, a mentor to Utah journalists, dies at 85
also Making Everlasting Memories: Paul Cracroft

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"An irony about Smoky, even though he was best known in the country music sphere, I would call him one of Australia's great folk artists," he [Philip Mortlock] said.

"While his music was tinged with country, he was also a great poet and a very creative man. He encompassed a great sense of Australiana."

from The Sydney Morning Herald: Folk legend Smoky Dawson dies

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"In the old days it was, 'Burn the letters,'" she said. "Today, 'Clear the hard drive.'"

She [Kathryn Faughey] also had a romantic side, evident in a love of music and a touch of the poet that were as much a part of her Irish heritage as her red hair, blue eyes and ivory skin.

from New York Daily News: Slain therapist Kathryn Faughey plucked her guitar and heartstrings

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Mr [Bernard] Gadd was a widely recognised poet, playwright and author of novels and collections of short stories, winning many awards and publishing a number of books.

He also edited Manukau in Poetry, a regional poetry website.

from Rodney Times: Poets pay tribute to fellow author

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Aysel Gurel, one of Turkey's most famous lyrics writers, passed away on Sunday at the age of 80 in Istanbul.

Gurel, also a poet and a drama player, was medical attention since last December for lung cancer at Istanbul's Metropolitan Florence Nightingale Hospital.

from newstime7.com: Turkey lost Crazy Aysel

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Elsie [J. Hobbs] was a member of the Akron Baptist Temple where she was in the Choir and the Whitfield Baptist Church in Dalton, Ga., where she had taught Sunday School and was a Church Secretary and the Lake Milton Baptist Temple of Lake Milton, where she had taught Sunday school until December 2007. Elsie wrote poetry and music along with flower gardening in her spare time.

from Tribune Chronicle: Elsie Hobbs 1921-2008

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Many more were touched by his poetry, his drumming, his compassion and his humility.

Dr Roi Kwabena was named Birmingham's sixth Poet Laureate in 2001/2002. Born in 1956 in Trinidad, Roi Ankhkara Kwabena came to Britain in 1985 after political and cultural activities in his home country.

from African Echo: Tribute to Dr Roi Kwabena (1956-2008)

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"He was not a lost soul. He was a happy guy. Some people don't understand it. They talk about him in these terms like he was a tortured person and he wasn't like that at all," Ron Kublin said [of Steven Kublin]. "He's a artist, he's a poet. He was a brilliant painter. He just had a joy for living and he cared about people. He would never raise a hand to anyone.

"We're not crying for the heads of whoever did this. We don't want another family to have to go through this."

from Montrose Daily Press: Break in murder case hinges on lab

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A charity worker gunned down by police on the side of a busy Yorkshire ? road was hit by six live rounds, an inquest has heard.

Simon Murden, 26, was holding a book containing his own "stream of consciousness" poetry when he was shot--and was also found to have been carrying three African swords.

from Yorkshire Post: Man shot by police carried three swords

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Mr [Gary] Murphy rejected suggestions that poetry found in the villa pointed to a crime of passion.

He said the poetry was written by Heidi [Murphy]'s friend.

Reports that Heidi was in the process of divorcing her estranged husband were also incorrect.

from Daily Liberal: Heidi's friends seek out truth
note Poetic Obituaries: Ms [Heidi] Murphy's distressed family

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One of David Rosen's favorite childhood stories was when he and his sister melted crayons on the radiator, marveling in the beautiful swirls of color they left there.

"Most parents would get totally irate, but my mother would gently say, 'Oh, isn't that pretty!'" he said.

A wordsmith: An accomplished poet, [Barbara Jane] Rosen published many poems, including a book of poetry.

from The Kansas City Star: Tribute: Barbara Jane Rosen was an artist with a spiritual side

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When he [Raúl Salinas] arrived "it seemed like we knew him already because we'd seen his pictures, we'd read his work," [José] Flores said.

Soon after it opened, the store became known as a place where he mentored poets and served as a breeding ground for political activism.

"The bookstore is more than books, sort of a multi-pronged community center," said Sandy Soto, who volunteered there in the late 1980s.

from American-Statesman: Raúl Salinas, poet, teacher and activist, dies

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Most of [Mark] Stenberg's law-related issues were misdemeanors, but there were a handful of drug-related felonies.

"He came out doing rap," Aurelia Stenberg said of her husband's post-prison life. "He was not even into rap when I met him. He was a poet."

from The Oregonian: Portland rapper slain in Houston

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News at Eleven

Before you buy Ted Kooser's "Valentines" for someone, though, remember what the author's note says of these poems: "I suppose some of them have a little literary merit, but, really, they were written with pleasure and meant for the reader's fun."

In other words, don't think of "Valentines" as expensive red roses. This is a box of mixed chocolates, some of which are completely satisfying, while others boast just a sweet center.

from The Christian Science Monitor: Love Poems on a Post Card

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Every sensible person ought to have a poem of her own. Of course it doesn't have to be something you've written; it could be a poem you have sought out, or one that has sought you out, and one, therefore, you cherish because it fits you like your own shadow.

from Trinidad & Tobago Express: Poetry as journalism

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"The kids at Fresno State hadn't gotten into Berkeley. They were from families that hadn't been to college before. You'd tell them they had two or three lines out of 20 lines that were genuine and authentic, and they didn't have a problem with that. They might get angry; I had one swear at me. But they didn't cry."

from The Fresno Bee: Poet's work still flows from Fresno's inspiration

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Now [Peter] Krok, the editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal, has shared his thoughts and feelings with a new book of poetry "Looking for an Eye."

The title poem "Looking for an Eye," speaks of the poet search to find his poet's eye: "Fumbling in the dark, always looking/for an eye, he hurls stones/at his shadow. Voices startle him."

from News of Delaware County: An 'Eye' for poetry

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So my publisher sent the book to [Harold] Bloom. When he wrote back, he said my work reminded him not of an American-Jewish poet, but of Emily Dickinson! He described me as a flawed, almost-made-it Emily Dickinson. It's like when you have a beautiful vase in a museum, and then the appraiser looks at it and sees a fissure so it's worthless. [--Samuel Menashe]

from Nextbook: The Minimalist

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" . . . I said to him, 'If I couldn't write poems like "Babi Yar" against something I didn't like, like anti-Semitism, I will never have the moral right to write poetry about Vietnam.' I dislike both, this is my position. You know the proverb 'You couldn't sit between two chairs'? . . ." [--Yevgeny Yevtushenko]

from The New York Sun: A Citizen of Human Grief

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[Charles Allen's] book is a modest apologia on his subject's behalf, as he seeks to put Kipling's early views and writings into the context of the late 19th century.

He rightly points out how the poem "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet" has been shockingly and almost universally misinterpreted. Jump just one more line and Kipling intones, "But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth/When two strong men stand face to face/tho' they come from the ends of the earth!"

from Daily News & Analysis: The art of Kipling

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You do not need to be Aristotle to see why most of us, shying away from the inherent violence in ourselves, and in everyday life, take refuge in the artificial violence of rituals, or films.

Sylvia Plath is a poet who confronts the inherent violence in everyday life, brings it to the surface. In her poem Cut, she begins "What a thrill -/My thumb instead of an onion" . . .

from Telegraph: Seduced by Sylvia Plath's gore and gloom

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Or must [Alun] Lewis be left to lie with those he styled "the quiet dead"? "Quiet": the adjective signals his early commitment to a discourse deaf to "the loud celebrities/Exhorting us to slaughter". His were humble "poems in khaki" not only in being products of army experience.

from The Guardian: The outsider

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Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association firmly condemn the transfers of journalist U Win Tin and blogger Nay Phone Latt to Insein prison, near Rangoon. The two organisations also condemn a government decision to restrict the content of newspapers' websites to the articles approved by military censors for the print editions.

from Reporters Without Borders: Journalist U Win Tin and blogger Nay Phone Latt transferred to Insein prison

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At night, under generator-run lights, locals crowd into makeshift outdoor secondhand book markets, browsing.

The Internet cafes in these main cities are packed with youngsters overriding the blocks with endless formulas to reach proxy servers – and freely surfing the web, in open defiance of the law. They chat with friends across the border in Thailand, check gmail accounts, read news, search for scholarship opportunities overseas, and follow American celebrity antics.

from The Christian Science Monitor: Burma's censors monitor Internet, newspapers--and poets

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Great Regulars

Frank [Wilson] was, in effect, my first glimpse of the higher joys--rather than the lower pleasures--of blogging. He raises the game. Last night I had a dream about being in Philadelphia and trying to find him. One day I will.

from Bryan Appleyard: Thought Experiments: Frank Wilson: How to Compliment Americans

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I've been returning to Sir Philip Sidney's neglected Astrophil and Stella (which, weighing in at 108 poems along with 11 songs, has a pretty good claim to be the first major sonnet sequence in English) for just over 20 years. It's mysterious, elusive, frustrating and inspiring, woven through with brilliant lines and sudden exhilarating shifts of tone, but also with a dry and austere self-consciousness, an ornate and, at times, icy posturing.

from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: The dazzling world of Sir Philip Sidney

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This was the third or fourth time I'd heard Allen [Ginsberg] read portions of "Howl" in public. I'd also read it, and heard him read from it, when under construction . . . at his cottage in Berkeley. He was already very much at home in the text, and it clearly spoke--as everyone could see--to the condition of the people. It sort of shocked some people awake. "Yes, that's life in our America today," they could begin to see. It was a poem that was precise to its historical moment. [--Gary Snyder]

from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: Gary Snyder on hitchhiking and "Howl" at Reed

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The first known recording of [Allen] Ginsberg reading the poem was thought to be March 18, 1956, at a notorious performance in Berkeley, Calif.

Until now.

Last May, John Suiter was researching a biography of Snyder in the Hauser Library at Reed. Suiter knew Snyder and Ginsberg had been at Reed in 1956 and knew Ginsberg had read "Howl."

from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: 'Howl' tape gives Reed claim to first

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"I don't have to be in dynasty politics to make a mark . . . my name does not prevent me or take me forward. Certain things I can say as a writer that I cannot as a politician. For instance, I can say that Mukhtar Mai changed the culture of silence. She is an illiterate woman who was punished for raising her voice after a gang-rape. But she stood up, and has now built a school for girls from the money that poured in for her . . . By writing we chronicle the injustices of our times."

from Fatima Bhutto: The Hindu: 'I don't believe in dynasty'

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As devotional poetry goes, "The Unbosoming" is old-fashioned Enlightenment fare. Its stance begins with doubt, not piety; it dramatizes grief ("Crestfallen, Love. Of the fallen breast. Un-clean of eye"); and it discovers redemption ("I Live and I Wire. I Wive, Lord . . ."). And, like her compatriot from four centuries ago, Olena Davis also struggles not with monastic, but with worldly faith.

The Unbosoming

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: Dear God . . . two seek salvation

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Instead of attending a conventional sitting, he submitted to a psychological test conducted at his New York apartment with a couple of Californian conceptual artists.

The result depicts [Salman] Rushdie, 60, a slightly donnish, bearded figure, as a purple lobster floating before a fiery red planet, surrounded by snowflakes.

from Olivia Cole: The Sunday Times: Artists delve into failing love of Salman Rushdie, the purple lobster

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At last, I get Missouri into the mix. Here's a poem from Walter Bargen, who recently was named Missouri's first poet laureate.

'Forgotten History'

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Forgotten History,' by Walter Bargen

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The work is 14 lines in the style of a sonnet, though Sarah allowed herself a bit more freedom than the form traditionally requires--early in the poem, the lines tend more toward three and four beats than five. But the rhymes do follow the ABABCDCDEFEFGG pattern of the English (Shakespearean, to be specific) sonnet.

I Am Not a Writer

by Sarah Robinson

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'I Am Not a Writer': Student Poem # 1

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And what's the sense in growing our cut flowers in Africa? The flowers we are talking about are not, for the most part, African species. They belong to the traditional European repertoire. We could grow them at home--we do grow most of them at home--if we were prepared to do two things: pay a bit more for them, and respect their growing season.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Flora international

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It wasn't just Frank [Wilson]'s mindfulness of the future that made his section an inspiration, though. He began covering poetry in a serious way, started working creatively with local events (you can actually see him in an NBCC event later this month), and took for granted that the readers of his section cared about ideas. He brought in reviewers like Scott Esposito and M.A. Orthofer and Kate Haegele who have a point of view and unique and informed tastes.

from John Freeman: Critical Mass: Goodbye to Frank Wilson

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The stroller is now empty, the crib is now empty, and more terrifyingly the hearts of the parents are empty from facing all this emptiness. The only complete sentence in the poem claims that this grieving mother "is as/small/as still//and silent/as the baby girl."

The mother rocked her baby girl to sleep, but the baby did not wake up.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Back's 'Her Hands'

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The command, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," contains a perverse irony, considering that the speaker of the poem is advising young women to marry, an act that would result in their deflowering.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Herrick's 'To the Virgins'

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[Rachel Tzvia] Back began writing poetry at a very early age. She admires Emily Dickinson, Charles Olson, George Oppen, and Joy Harjo. She wrote her doctoral dissertation on Susan Howe, an experimental poet often associated with the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets. She published the dissertation as a monograph, titled Led by Language: the Poetry and Poetics of Susan Howe.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Profile: Rachel Tzvia Back

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The speaker in sonnet 46 claims that his heart and eye are locked in a deadly battle. They are fighting over whether the poem is most influenced by the poet's aesthetic capability, metaphorically represented by "eye," or by his ability to feel strongly, metaphorically represented by "heart."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 46

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"With all its various centers of power and checks and balances, a newspaper is a lot less biased--for all its commercial pressures--and a lot less susceptible to hostile influences than the unchecked ego and will of a single blogger," [Lee] Siegel believes.

A book review in the Post-Gazette and other newspapers is the product of several people, from me, the editor who selects the book and its reviewer, to the critic to several editors who read the review and point out problems and errors in reasoning, fact and language.

from Bob Hoover: Post-Gazette: Internet critic questions blogs' place in culture

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The door opens and the "tiger-master's wee pimp" enters. The tiger-master (the prisoners being caged like tigers) is surely Robespierre.

His pimp is so called because he is the procurer of the next individual to be beheaded; it is like a game of musical chairs.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: Final thoughts

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The poem intends to honour those who fought against the Communists--the "swans" of the title refers to the men of the White Army, in which the poet's husband was an officer--but its sympathies are extensive, as this extract suggests.

Elaine Feinstein is the foremost translator of Tsvetayeva's poems into English. The version below was published in the TLS of October 10, 1980.

From "Swans' Encampment"

from Mick Imlah: The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: From 'Swans' Encampment'

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Poem: "Windchime" by Tony Hoagland from What Narcissism Means to Me.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of February 11, 2008

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There's a world of great interest and significance right under our feet, but most of us don't think to look down. We spend most of our time peering off into the future, speculating on how we will deal with whatever is coming our way. Or dwelling on the past. Here Ed Ochester stops in the middle of life to look down.

What the Frost Casts Up

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 150

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Here's the first of what I hope will be many poems by some of the nation's best state poet laureates.

'Asters'

By Denise Low

from Denise Low: Parachute: 'Asters,' by Denise Low

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Can an atheist write a moving psalm in praise of the Almighty? Probably not. Similarly, a poet who does not believe in and has never experienced an overpowering romantic passion cannot compose a convincing poem in praise of the subject, regardless of his or her mastery of the craft.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: A.S. Maulucci: Love doesn't need more poems written about it

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". . . . It seemed eminently more sensible to live in a part of a hotel which you knew would not be struck by shell fire, because you knew where the shells lit, than to go to some other hotel further from the lines, the angles of which you had no data to figure and where you would maybe have a shell drop through the roof.

"Well, I had great confidence in the Florida and when Franco finally entered Madrid, Rooms 112 and 113 were still intact. There was very little else that was though." [--Ernest Hemingway]

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Hemingway, Your Letter Has Arrived

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i'm just crazy about you and it has nothing [. . .]

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes

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"The trial took about 15 minutes. As soon as Lu Gengsong was brought to the courtroom, the judge started to read the verdict. After 10 minutes when the reading finished Lu was taken away. No time was allowed for him to talk, but Lu Gengsong yelled 'Long Live Democracy' as he was taken away. As he was leaving, I yelled 'Lu Gengsong is innocent!"

Lu's wife, Wang Xue'e

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: China Frees Journalist Ahead of Lunar New Year, Jails Activist

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"In the Barn" is about the strict, unavoidable grip of matter on life: Living things are stuck in the material world. As the poet says here, "the snake was helpless too." Some readers will recognize [Elise] Partridge's name and recall her poems about cancer treatment that appeared in the New Yorker in recent years, including "Chemo Side Effects: Vision."

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

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"Lorca's Lady in a NYC Train," "Belly Dance Passion," and "Night Shadows."

[by Evie Ivy]

Lorca's Lady in a NYC Train

'Verde que te quiero verde ...'
'Green, I want you green ...'
Romance Sonambulo, Frederico Garcia Lorca

from Donna Snyder: Newspaper Tree: Tumblewords Poetry: Evie Ivy

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[P Sundaram Pillai's] work Manonmaniam which was a poetical drama of over 4,500 lines was published in 1891.

This great work of drama met with a warm public reception. Rich tributes were paid by eminent Tamil scholars of that time. Sundaram Pillai in his preface stated: 'Among the rich and varied forms of poetic composition extant in the Tamil language, the dramatic type, so conspicuous in Sanskrit and English, does not seem to find a place. The play here submitted to the public is a humble attempt to see, whether the defect may not be easily removed.'

from V Sundaram: News Today: The creator of Manonmaniam and the Tamil anthem

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The Vedas refer to Sun worship. Vishnu is also described as being seated in the midst of the disc of the Sun; so much so that over time Vishnu worship merged with sun worship leading to Surya being referred to as Suryanarayana. No wonder Ratha Sapthami is celebrated on a grand scale at Tirupati every year.

from V Sundaram: News Today: The glory and the radiance of Ratha Sapthami

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Aisla Rose
2/5/08
5 lbs. 12 oz.
18 inches
baby girl

from Andrew Varnon: Flash & Yearn: Baby Picture

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The simplicity of [Elizabeth] McFarland's verse reveals, very subtly, a singular personality, someone for whom a poem is not primarily a literary artifact, but rather a necessary utterance, without which a given experience would not be quite complete, setting the experience to a music made entirely of words:

O the rowantree lifts there

from Frank Wilson: Philadelphia Inquirer: She lived, breathed, made poems

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That is why invited some to review for me. I would have invited more had I lasted longer.

The critical landscape is changing. I don't know anymore than anybody else does what it will look like when everything settles down, but I do know that, thanks in large measure to blogging and bloggers, it will be richer, more varied, and more alive.

from Frank Wilson: Books Inq.: The Epilogue: Well, here they are . . .

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"Reading Jack's words after all these years, remembering how much they meant to me once, how I was sure I wouldn't don any gray flannel suit and trudge to an office day in, day out, and knowing full well that tomorrow morning and the day after and after I'll tie my tie and sit down at my desk yet again, well, it makes me wonder if I can still, even at this late date, salvage me some authenticity. Yeah, reading Jack has reminded me that living means more than just making a living, and that it's always easier to get along by going along. As Ray confesses, 'I had no guts anyway . . . .'"

Kass Mencher, my friend Eric Mencher's wife, is the only person I know who read this and inferred--quite correctly--that it signaled my plans to retire.

I could have continued to get along by going along, but I didn't have to, and I sure didn't want to. So I decided not to.

from Frank Wilson: Books Inq.: The Epilogue: Why I decided . . .

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by Christopher Y. Lew

The dead shuffled forward in their camps

from The Brooklyn Rail: Necropolis

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by Christopher Y. Lew

I returned to a city too busy

from The Brooklyn Rail: Return

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by Christopher Y. Lew

Even when
the watermelon

from The Brooklyn Rail: Watermelons

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by Jonas Mekas

Winter, don't ever be over. So that Spring

from The Brooklyn Rail: Update 2003

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by Anne Waldman

the manatee is found in shallow slow moving rivers
the manatee moves in estuaries moves in saltwater bays

from The Brooklyn Rail: Manatee/Humanity

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by John Yau

A french fry sticks its tongue out at you
Blue, swollen, unfathomable

from The Brooklyn Rail: After A Self-Portrait by Francis Picabia

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Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love by Cole Porter

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love by Cole Porter

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By Todd Hanks

He walked through
a caption,

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'Flat Character': A poem by Todd Hanks

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Culture
by Aharon Shabtai

from MR Zine: Aharon Shabtai, 'Culture'

---

By Patrick Burns
Pleasant Valley School

Birthstones

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Patrick Burns]

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By Kelsea Guckin

I Could Live Like That

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Kelsea Guckin]

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By Morgan Halbruner
Eastern Regional High School

To My Dear and Loving Planet

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Morgan Halbruner]

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[by John-Michael Albert]

Portsmouth from the Pavement

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Portsmouth from the Pavement

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[by Vincent Denunzio]

Teacher Killjoy

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Teacher Killjoy

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Poetic Obituaries

At 17, Salim Umarbhai Adambhai was unlike his contemporaries working in the saltpans across the Little Rann of Kutch.

He had a liking for poetry, and like many prodigies, he died young. But, he could have lived a little longer, if the fatal jaundice he was suffering from was detected earlier.

from Expressindia: Dearth of doctors makes death a reality for saltpans workers in Little Rann

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A cousin to the boys, Samantha Warnecki, read a poem Greg [Browning] wrote for a class assignment that seemed to exemplify the Brownings' optimistic outlook.

"Life was not meant to be depressive and full of death," the poem said. "So live life to the fullest, even when drawing your last breath."

from WTOP News: Nearly 1,300 Remember Generosity and Humor of Slain Family

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In biographical information on the CCSF [City College of San Francisco ] Web site, [John Alfred Pierre] Dennis [Jr.] wrote "students are at the heart of quality teaching. It's not about me, it's about the students. They always rise to the level of my highest expectations."

According to the CCSF site, Dennis was for 17 years a lay chaplain for Catholic Charities at the Bryant Street Jail in San Francisco, a lay "preacher" at Saint Benedict's in East Oakland, an avid journal writer, poet, liturgical dancer and an avid traveler.

from The Oakland Tribune: Popular college lecturer found slain

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What we didn't know and appreciate about him [Thomas Hass] was that he was a poet and a musician who could do almost anything with his hands.

The minister, Jerry Pfaff, who conducted the service, spoke lovingly of their long friendship. "He convinced me to do what I'm doing. He saved my life," Pfaff said.

from Baraboo News Republic: Myra: Many will miss quiet, modest 'HR'

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[Marjorie E. Hess'] poems were published in education and church magazines and she also self-published two collections of poems and essays.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Marjorie E. Hess: Teacher, 98

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"He was a light that just was extinguished so soon," his mother, Jenny Lespi said. "I know he is in heaven reading, teaching or talking to his favorite poets."

[Jeremy] Lespi graduated from Shelby County High School and had earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in English literature at the University of Montevallo. He went on to earn his doctorate in creative writing and poetry from the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.

from The University of Alabama Crimson White: Beloved professor dies during break

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In 1947 [William Turner] Levy was working on his dissertation on the poet William Barnes and wrote to Eliot seeking a meeting as part of his research. That meeting was the spark of a friendship that would last 18 years and include conversations and correspondence about their common interests: literature and cats, in particular Eliot's cat named Pettipaws and Levy's cats Judy and Lord Peter Wimsey.

from Los Angeles Times: William Turner Levy, 85; teacher wrote of friendships with luminaries

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Greg [Monteforte] was a 1972 graduate of John F. Kennedy High School, Warren, and a 1976 graduate of Youngstown State University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.

Throughout his life, Greg was an avid writer of short stories and poems.

from Tribune Chronicle: Gregory J. Monteforte

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Ms [Heidi] Murphy's distressed family and friends, who gathered outside the villa on Sunday, were interviewed last night. Her mother, Toni Delahunty, who lives in Flaxton, Queensland, said she was "shattered" at losing her only child. "She was a beautiful, beautiful person who had a wonderful life and lived the dream," she said.

from Brisbane Times: Victim's poetry points to crime of passion

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Mr. [H.K.] Narayan worked with All India Radio for nearly four decades and played a vital role in popularising the genre of Sugama Sangeeta, which uses music as a vehicle to take poetry close to people.

from The Hindu: H.K. Narayan passes away

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An artistic woman, she [Vianne Marie Shead] had also loved poetry and creating things. "Her poetry was very personal to hear and she expressed herself in her writing.

"She also loved making cards to give and would do so with style."

from Timaru Herald: Teen dies after car crash

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[Jazeh Tabatabaii] displayed an interest in writing from the age of twelve and has authored more than 40 books comprising folktales, novels, poetry and plays.

He later turned his hand to directing, dramatic art, ballet, in addition to painting and sculpting.

from Tehran Times: Iranian sculptor Jazeh Tabatabaii dies at 77

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[Ivylin Howell White] was a gifted writer of poetry and even had a poem published in an international book of poetry a few years ago. It was her first published poem and was featured as the first one in the book - a copy of which I shall always cherish

from The McDuffie Mirror: Mother-in-law set example for living life and following His path

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News at Eleven

The appearance by the 71-year-old writer from Massachusetts [Mary Oliver], arguably the country's most popular poet, had sparked the fastest sell-out in the 20-year history of the hallmark literary series. The response was so feverish that Oliver ticket buyers and sellers moved into the unlikely realm of Craigslist with prices as high as $100 per seat.

from Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Revered poet shows her witty side

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[Robert] Pinsky's efforts in word and deed to reassert poetry's civic role have throughout been accompanied by another project of reclamation: his insistence, in his prose book "The Sounds of Poetry" and elsewhere, that poetry is made not only of ideas generated by the mind, but of sounds made in the body. The two projects may seem distinct, but they are not, since minds differ, but bodies are alike.

from The New York Times: The Civic Poet

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"Music is just the sound of the words. But poets aren't trained; it's not like they go to singing school." [John] Giorno bounds and sweats on stage like a musician, too. "I am not playing with my body to amuse the audience, it is the poem that moves the body that way," he says.

from The McGill Daily: Dial-a-poet: verses for the masses

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I wander now among names of the dead:
My mother's name, stone pillow for my head.

That image is real because my mother does not have any kind of stone on her grave. That sort of hit me, the history that had not been properly memorialized, remembered, tended by someone native to her -- it was my mother's history. She was just like those black soldiers. No monument existed, and in that way she was erased from the landscape.

from Bookslut: An Interview with Natasha Trethewey

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The results might be surprising, however, for anyone who imagines that The Origin of the Milky Way [by Barbara Louise Ungar] is a series of serene ruminations on the blessings of motherhood. Rather, a primal form of terror is part and parcel of Origin, which is divided into four sections. These sections--ranging from mythos-inflected "Annunciations" through the bluesy musings of "Fourth Trimester" and the edgy observations of "Feast," where she comments on raising a child in a time of war--document the full process of pregnancy and the birth of her son Izaak, followed by the great afterwards of trying to write with an infant on the hip.

from Chronogram: Origins

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One of his [George Gordon Byron's] digressions describes the treatment of wives in Muslim countries, their confinement, both physical and spiritual, with strange and ironic commendation: "They stare not on the stars from out their attics,/Nor deal (thank God for that!) in mathematics." The object of his irony would have been clear to a knowing reader: his wife's intellectual pretensions. For the benefit of the less knowing, he gestures heavily at what he isn't saying.

Why I thank God for that is no great matter,
I have my reasons, you no doubt suppose,
And as, perhaps, they would not highly flatter,
I'll keep them for my life (to come) in prose . . .

from The Guardian: A man of the world

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[Philip Larkin's] picture of religion as "That vast moth-eaten musical brocade/ Created to pretend we never die" is so good--as music--that one remembers it almost every time one enters a church. But the rest of the verse, in which he itemises just what it is that we dread about extinction, for me--at any rate--spoils it. It lacks the bleakness, and brilliance, as the full-throttle death fears end and day begins.

from Telegraph: Philip Larkin's almost perfect poem

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Translation serves as a bridge in terms of dialogue between different civilizations, [Özdemir] İnce said, drawing attention to the importance of literary translations from different cultures. Other Turkish translators, in addition to İnce, translate from Greek literary works. "Each work translated from Greek into Turkish is a message of peace and friendliness from Turkey to Greece and its people," İnce said.

from Turkish Daily News: Greek poets reach shores of Turkey

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"The Vietnamese government should stop locking people up simply for expressing their views."

During her more than nine months of detention at Thanh Liet Detention Center (known as B14 Camp) in Hanoi, authorities prohibited [Tran Khai Thanh] Thuy from receiving visits or letters from her family. According to her family, authorities rejected requests that Thuy, who suffers from tuberculosis and diabetes, be transferred to the Dong Da Tuberculosis Center in Hanoi for better medical treatment. Instead, her health worsened and she developed rheumatism after months of sleeping without a blanket on the cement floor of a small cell, when Hanoi's winter temperatures drop below 7 degrees Celsius (45 degrees Fahrenheit).

from Human Rights Watch: Vietnam: Woman Writer Released, but Crackdown Continues

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Though the magazine maintains a Web site, there are no plans to publish online. For one thing, says Christine Portell, president of the board of directors, "No one on board has the Web skills." For another, the editors prefer print. "We don't discuss going online much," says Michael Nye. "Reading still feels personal, despite the new media. There's something about curling up on a couch with a book, being alone, underlining and writing in the margins. That's not something we want to move away from."

from Rivert Front Times: River Styx keeps on rolling.

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"I have never sat down to analyze it," he [Stephen Bunch] says. "There were things going on with kids and family. I know real poets deal with these things, too. I don't know other than I wasn't inspired to write."

That changed four years go, when, as he puts it, "the tap was turned again."

from Lawrence Journal-World: Winning writers discover voices later in life

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Great Regulars

[Peter Wilson] told friends it felt like three years but it was only three months. In fact, when he consulted his notes, he found it was only three weeks. Something similar, he believes, happened to Ishmael Beah.

So do we have here a reformed mass killer, a man with a drug-scrambled memory or a brilliant young storyteller?

from Bryan Appleyard: The Sunday Times: Bryan Appleyard's full account of his interview with Ishmael Beah

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On my last night in the pink city, I was watching television. The US Secretary of Defence was ready to send ground troops into Pakistan the headline blared. At that point, our differences became pointless. It was no longer us against each other; there were larger threats now. Siblings, though stymied by rivalries at times and shadowed by each other's ghosts, are still siblings.

from Fatima Bhutto: The News International Pakistan: The pink city
also Los Angeles Chronicle: Pakistan: Real Successor of Bhutto?

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Charles Saatchi, the art collector, has risked the ire of Britain's Jewish establishment by buying a painting of Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi who planned the Holocaust, to put on the walls of his new London gallery.

from Olivia Cole: The Sunday Times: Saatchi makes space for a candy-coloured Himmler

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As I have said elsewhere, and this is what you possibly have observed: poets "divine" the times in which they live. We choose what of our world today is worth carrying into the permanence of art. Such an undertaking, noble or not, requires us to approach our existence and presence and all of the accrual of things with a wonder that approximates first encounter. [--Major Jackson]

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Interview: Poet Major Jackson

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Hans von Bülow almost instructed his students to make mistakes: "In large leaps, now and then you must claw a wrong note; otherwise no one will notice that it is difficult." The audience liked this. Wrong notes, we are told, were considered a sign of genius. Eugen d'Albert was celebrated for the wild inaccuracy of his playing.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Notes on a theme

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I hope writers come back to the fringe at least, no matter who is elected. They're essential, on a larger level, to imagining what a government is capable of doing, and then reminding us, when it comes down to it--it's our leaders' imaginations which matter the most.

from John Freeman: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Creative presidential campaigners

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She says, "My eyes burst closed." This oxymoronic claim seems odd: to describe "closing" with the word "burst" which usually refers to "opening." But the pressure mounting in her skill and throughout her body, no doubt, made it seem that her eyes closed because the eyeballs had burst open. In her mouth she felt blood that was clotting, and she describes the clots as ""blood curds."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Ann Stanford's ‘The Beating'

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Then he likens his feelings to the opening of a rose in spring, implying that his emotional life has been closed, but this new baby motivates him to open his heart "petal by petal" as a rose opening in springtime to its natural surroundings.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Rethinking Cummings' Poem

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His thought resembles air, and his desire resembles fire, and both elements become metaphors for the nature of creativity. They have the power of "swift motion." They contain and facilitate his thought processes that allow him to create.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 45

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His pent-up fury at knowing that his words will be subject to scrutiny and deletion, no matter how carefully he chose them, is expressed in the way he likens them to caged monkeys with bared teeth, craving freedom.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: Springing into life again

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"In the Basket Marty Brought to the Hospital After the Cesarean" by Thorpe Moeckel, from Odd Botany.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of February 04, 2008

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Elsewhere in this newspaper you may find some advice for maintaining and repairing troubled relationships. Here, in a poem by Linda Pastan of Maryland, is one of those relationships in need of some help.

The Quarrel

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 149

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[Trish] Reeves creates a new timekeeping paradigm here, suggested by Van Gogh and by farming, but instead more personal: anniversaries of family deaths. When I read this poem, I remember my ancient grandmother mourning her father's death anniversary. I memorialize my own family deaths.

Chronology

from Denise Low: Ad Astra Poetry Project: Trish Reeves

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[Campbell] McGrath's audacity has a genial, sociable quality, often with a flippancy that he directs back at himself, in the American tradition of kidding, a humor that may tease greatness but makes the joke on itself. For example, "Rilke and God":

When Rilke talks about God I have no idea

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

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It emerges from this book that in order to avoid the censors--or worse--[Marcel] Martinet published the poems in Switzerland, from where they were distributed as samizdat. Like Wilfred Owen or Ernst Friedrich in his book of photos War Against War, Martinet gives us the horrors of industrial warfare, piling up bodies and documenting horrific injuries.

from Michael Rosen: Europe's charnel house

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Arumuga Navalar was as great an Editor of Tamil classics as he was a prose writer. All his editions are noted for their accuracy of text, minuteness and exactness in the concern for detail and marked by a great thoroughness in method. He edited the largest number of Tamil religious and literary works.

from V Sundaram: News Today: A religious leader and a man of letters from Jaffna

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[George] Eliot steps apart from Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, T.H. Huxley, and John Stuart Mill, and in this particular, shows--directly because she thinks as an artist--that she was the greater thinker as well as imaginative writer. For too many scientists, engineering explains everything, in a closed-circuit determinist system. In fact, it has to. No it doesn't, Eliot said, and her fiction is great because she did.

from John Timpane: Philadelpia Inquirer: Did you know there was science in poetry?

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"The baby has been born. She was born at 12:18 and she was 5lbs and 12oz and she's 18ins long and she's really beautiful and she has already breast fed and she latched on right away and we have not yet settled on a name but now I know what my mom was telling me when she said that she couldn't that she wanted me to know someday how it felt to hold in her arms when I was a baby. So bye."

from Andrew Varnon: Flash & Yearn: Voice Post

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Of the universal mind each individual man is one more incarnation. All its properties consist in him. Each new fact in his private experience flashes a light on what great bodies of men have done, and the crises of his life refer to national crises. Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.

from Daily Times: Purple Patch: History --Ralph Waldo Emerson

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6.25 by Alison Brackenbury

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: 6.25 by Alison Brackenbury

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by Ales Debeljak translated by Andrew Zawacki and the author
The Kiss

from Guernica: Poetry: Two Poems

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By Jan Sokoloff Harness

Driving in my car,

from The Kansas City Star: 'Static': A poem by Jan Sokoloff Harness

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The Magic Kingdom
by Kathleen Graber

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Magic Kingdom

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A Measuring Worm
by Richard Wilbur

from The New Yorker: Poetry: A Measuring Worm

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The Saws
by Robert Pinsky

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Saws

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[by Kate Gray]
Near the houses where we lived [. . .]

from The Oregonian: Poetry

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By Jeff Bogel
Eastern Regional High School
Thanatopsis

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Jeff Bogel]

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By Margie Brining

Triton High School
I Am From

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Margie Brining]

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By Courtney Dalton
Martin Luther King Jr.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Courtney Dalton]

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At the January Hoot, Nancy Donovan read this strong and sharp poem:

The Old Year Passes 2007

or

Grandpa Jim

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poetry Hoot: The Old Year Passes 2007 or Grandpa Jim

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[by Kyle Potvin]
Sleep Sonnet

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Sleep Sonnet

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[by Abby Suchocki]
Snow Dancing

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Snow Dancing

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Window for a Small Blue Child (Carcanet, £8.95) tells the story of a child's creation by in vitro fertilisation, in which the languages of science and of human feeling interact. Nature and control of nature and uncontrollable emotions each have their place in this drama, beautifully constructed by Gerrie Fellows.

Conversation (Blue Tablecloth)

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week

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"Losing My Hair"
By Wesley McNair

from Slate: "Losing My Hair" --By Wesley McNair

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Yerra Sugarman
Ash and Scar

from Zeek: Poems by Yerra Sugarman

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Poetic Obituaries

[Louise Aldrich Bugbee] first writing for the Gazette was poetry. Then, when the Gazette's late editor Henry Beetle Hough needed an Oak Bluffs Social Notes columnist, he proposed that Mrs. Bugbee take over that post. She did, and continued to write Oak Bluffs Social Notes until--according to her version--she was fired. Henry Hough, however, vehemently denied it.

from Vineyard Gazette: Louise Aldrich Bugbee Wrote Well-Liked Column in Gazette

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[Stefan Meller] was Poland's foreign minister 2005-2006, before that he served as ambassador to France and Russia. Mr. Meller was a historian, a poet and a diplomat at the same time.

from cafebabel.com: Former Polish MFA Stefan Meller died

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Then that afternoon came a request from the Mormon Tabernacle choir director Craig Jessop to perform the song at Hinckley's funeral.

Saturday at President Hinckley's funeral service the very words of Hinckley's poem gave others comfort upon his own passing.

"What Is This Thing That Men Call Death"
By President Gordon B. Hinckley
Music by Janice Kapp Perry

from ABC4: President Hinckley's Poem

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[Deepak] Mishra, whose literary compositions are marked by simple and lucid style, served as the president Orissa Sahitya Akademi at the time of his death. Mishra was selected for 2007 Central Sahitya Akademi award honour for his book `Sukha Sanhita'.

According to litterateurs from this part of the state, Mishra dealt on reality and his compositions often reflected the social milieu and trends.

from Kalinga Times: Poet Deepak Mishra passes away

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The poem, "The Man, The Boy, The Indian," so touched local artist Suzanne Shipley when she read it that she created a painting to depict it. More than 2,000 prints of the painting with [Walter] Mize's words, "He was at Peace with nature. His spirit was the wind . . ." were requested by others.

from Cleburne Times-Review: Walter Mize--man of poetry

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[Edith L. Pedersen] was a member and past treasurer of Alpha Delta Kappa sorority, was a member of the Seasoned Poets of the Blue Ridge, volunteered at the Henderson County Library and was a member of the Alumni Association of Miami University

from Times-News: Edith L. Pedersen, 85

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It is not the sort of poetry that is easy to get into magazines--though Ray [Pospisil] did rack up some publication credits--but it was a poetry that was harrowing, but moving, possessed of humour, tenderness, and that aching sense of a beauty that you can only experience occasionally, or at a distance, or in memory.

And there were poems among them that should rank among the greatest of his generation. Allow me to quote one in full, "Insomnia":

Insomnia

from Eratosphere: Ray Pospisil has died

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[Anthony] Yamashiro then read aloud from a poem written by Sammantha [Alexis Salas] titled, "The Importance of Your Family."

"Always keep and trust your family," he read. "Help out even if you dread it. You'll never know when they're gonna leave."

from Pasadena Star-News: Sammantha Salas is laid to rest

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[Jeevanlal] Satyal had served also as Secretary at Ministry of Information and Communication and Director of Department of Industry. Late Satyal had also penned poem collection--'Othka Rekhiharu'.

Late Satyal was one of the founders of Nepali Congress.

from The Rising Nepal: Satyal dies at 80 [2008-2-3]

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[Ann Marie] Shannon related well to her college students. She retired as an associate dean of the college in 1995 but continued to be an active voice on the campus. She gave tutorials in 17th-century poetry in the school's Oxbridge Honors Program, which she helped create.

from The Kansas City Star: Ann Marie Shannon was devoted to mission work at her church

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To quote media visionary, and noted lyricist Amit Khanna, Majrooh Sultanpuri's reign of five decades in Hindi cinema has provided a "healing touch to a wounded society with poetry--moving with enviable ease from the lofty heights of the best in Urdu Ghazals to the latest foot-tapping chartbusters of their time".

from Tehelka: Lyrical Legend

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In 1935, he [Volodia Teitelboim] published, in collaboration with Edurdo Anguita, the Antología de Poesía Chilena Nueva (Anthology of New Chilean Poetry), a title that gave rise to controversy, since Gabriela Mistral was not included in the book, and contributed to the famous literary polemic between Vicente Huidobro, Pablo de Rokha, and Pablo Neruda.

from Periodico 26: Marcelia Yeh dies at 91

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Jarvis Thurston, former head of the English Department at Washington University and the man most responsible for the inception of the college's graduate writing program, died last night at his home in University City. Jarvis was married for more than half a century to former U.S. poet laureate Mona Van Duyn, who died in 2004

from River Front Times: Jarvis Thurston, 1914-2008

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From early in life, Marcleia [Yeh] wrote poetry, winning many prizes and publishing numerous poems. The poems she wrote during her life in China are now housed at the New York University archive. During the Cultural Revolution, Marcelia began keeping a diary, which she continued for 7 or 8 years. The ten volumes are unique personal record of a transformational political revolution.

After her retirement in 1976, Marcelia returned to the United States. At 60, her strong curiosity and passion for learning propelled her into the University of California at Berkeley's Master's Program in Creative Writing, with a focus on women's literature.

from China Daily: Marcelia Yeh dies at 91

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