News at Eleven

The Children's Poet Laureate is a joint scheme between S4C, The Welsh Books Council, the Welsh Academy and Urdd Gobaith Cymru. Its aims are to raise the profile of poetry amongst young people and to encourage them to create and enjoy poetry. Ifor ap Glyn becomes the ninth poet to hold the position.

from Daily Post North Wales: Ifor ap Glyn is Children's Poet Laureate

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Chloe Garner, director of the Ledbury Poetry Festival, has made an impassioned call for the appointment of a female poet laureate to redress the imbalance in the 22 male laureates chosen over three centuries.

Yesterday, Ms Garner wrote a letter to the Queen, Gordon Brown, the Tory leader David Cameron, and the Culture Secretary Andy Burnham, in which she calls for the appointment of a female poet laureate when the position falls vacant next year.

from The Independent: Queen is asked to appoint first female Poet Laureate after 22 men in 340 years

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This poem has his [Charles Simic's] characteristic ingredients, and they are as fresh as ever: Something rare and beautiful that's missing, a chance comic encounter that feels vaguely aggressive and deceptive ("She could be making it all up"), and in which, despite its apparent slightness, the poet finds himself entangled forever.

And why, years later, do you still,
Off and on, cast your eyes to the ground
As you hurry to some appointment
Where you are now certain to arrive late?

from The New York Times: 'One or Two Murderers in Any Crowd'

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Few poets since William Carlos Williams have done more for the Garden State, or rendered with such mixed feelings what they saw there.

North Jersey also gives [August] Kleinzahler his other great subject: American masculinity, the qualities we attribute to tough guys and men. Kleinzahler's sole book of prose, "Cutty, One Rock," begins and ends in the Fort Lee of his youth, a gruff, if upscale, Mafia stronghold. "Boys are formed by the playgrounds they come from," he wrote there. "Ours was violent, noisy and profane."

from The New York Times: Witness for the Transit
also The New York Times: Excerpt: 'Sleeping It Off in Rapid City'

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"He is dead," [John] Burnside replied.

Mike was sad for him, sorry about his loss. "I guess you miss him," he said.

That's when Burnside told his lie--or, at least, let an untruth hang in the air.

He didn't contradict Mike. He was silent, leaving Mike with the impression that he had had a normal, everyday childhood, that he had had "a regular dad" in a normal, loving household, like Mike's. And that, yes, he missed his father.

from The Sydney Morning Herald: Words to touch the invisible

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"None is high or low, all men (and women) are equal,
And none is either king or subject of anyone.
We all share happiness and sorrow equally. None
Has the right to hoard. Would some shed tears
To put light on to another's room to enlighten the fate
Of the few keeping the millions remained ill-fated?
It is not the law of Islam."

[Kazi] Nazrul [Islam] had his humanity in the light of Islamic liberalism. He had profound faith in Islam. "Love for humans is the best prayer of Allah." He said: "When you do not expect sorrow, pain, torment and indignity for yourself, you must not wish them for your brothers. Do not take your meal keeping your neighbours starving."

from The Daily Star: The rebel poet

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A poet has the responsibility to point out the ills of society, to call attention to what is happening and awaken the people's consciousness for genuine social change, he said.

He [Bienvenido Lumbera] debunked claims that the words used by a poet were solely the poet's own. "It is important to point out that the words used by the poet are already used by other people in the community and have acquired meanings that embedded itself into the poem," he said.

from Philippine Daily Inquirer: Poetry, politics and political killings

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Its very completion must have seemed like divine Providence to Milton. Even while writing it, he believed that he shared a muse with Moses and King David and that she visited him nightly in his dreams; he woke up and dictated his poem in seemingly preformed stanzas. The palpable exhilaration of the poem's composition, and the heavy burden of its complex meanings, contributes to the thrilling tension of "Paradise Lost."

Milton's burning question, how things could have gone so wrong in human affairs, is carried back to the moment when "our first parents" ate the apple and brought "death into the world, and all our woe."

from The New Yorker: Return to Paradise

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The movement from rhetoric to clowning, from elegy to irony, from self-pity to self-mocker--such a common movement in modern American poetry--is related rather to the modern American poet's fear of the solemn and the naive.

Nevertheless, the American poet is concerned with the eternal verities, not with making casual yet precise observations or capturing the mood or impulse of the moment which is the concern of so many modern English poets.

from The Times Literary Supplement: Then and Now

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On one side of the strip is a poem about Mt. Asaka, in present-day Fukushima Prefecture, while the other side bears a poem about Naniwazu, an ancient port in Osaka.

The poem on Mt. Asaka included in "Manyoshu" is described by Ki no Tsurayuki, a renowned poet of the Heian period (794-1192), as an archetypal poem in the preface of "Kokin Wakashu," a compilation of waka poems.

Since the strip is believed to have been made during the same period that "Manyoshu" was compiled, the discovery is of considerable importance to studies of the collection.

from Daily Yomiuri: Ancient poem found on wood strip

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But the catastrophe that destroyed so many lives has also taken a toll on a region rich in antiquities. Here along the quilt of jagged peaks that stretch north toward the Tibetan plateau, 184 historic sites were damaged or destroyed in the span of five minutes, according to a preliminary government tally. The home of Li Bai, one of China's most revered poets, was shaken apart.

from The New York Times: Stillness Returns, Sadness Lingers

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Great Regulars

By H.C. Palmer

Den annexed, he waits--

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Coyote Haiku # 3'

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By Jon Herbert Arkham

So which is the myth?

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'The Gloaming'

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By Alarie Tennille

IBM Corp. and the National Geographic Society
will announce a project today to collect
at least 100,000 DNA samples from people
all over the globe to trace the routes
of human migration.
April 14, 2005 San Francisco Chronicle

Sent my DNA

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Letters From Home'

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By d. douglas

Millie comes and sits beside me

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'The man with the hole in his head'

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By Pat Daneman

My son is learning at last everything I never

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Phone Call from a Movie Set Somewhere in Kansas'

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By John Mark Eberhart

On Stratocaster Road, all the noises belong to you.

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'On Stratocaster Road'

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Perhaps the chattiness of the style seemed self-indulgent. Perhaps it seemed camp, a term Auden actually uses in the course of the review, although in an unusual form. He liked pioneering current slang in print (long before it became routine for writers to switch between the language of High Seriousness and smart argot), and lexicographers may be interested in a couple of early uses of the term "trade", to mean (strictly) heterosexual men selling sexual favours (to men or women).

from James Fenton: The Sunday Times: The Complete Works of WH Auden: Prose, Volume III 1949-1955 edited by Edward Mendelson

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Adrienne Rich's "Living in Sin" is one of the world's best free verse poems.

The poem is one lump chunk on the page but sections itself by lines: 1-7, 8-14, 15-22, and 23-26. The visual ("a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own"), auditory ("each separate star would writhe / under the milkman's tramp"), and olfactory ("last night's cheese") imagery is superb, precisely supporting the theme of disillusionment.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Rich's 'Living in Sin'

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The pseudo-scientific principles that became widespread with the rise of Darwinism led to the failure to grasp spiritual truths that appear in scriptural texts. Thus the notion of a virgin birth becomes, not only not debatable, but the object of scorn and ridicule.

The speaker in [Malcolm M.] Sedam’s poem, posing as "Joseph," therefore puts words in that ancient wise man’s mouth whose ideas Joseph would find outrageous: "Some things were never explained to me." Everything he needed to know was, in fact, explained to him by the angel that appeared to him.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Sedam's 'Joseph'

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But soul love beckons with a perpetual "summer’s welcome," even though it is rarer than the vestiges of ordinary love. The lovers will yearn three-times more strongly for this level of soul love, even before they are aware of that yearning.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 56

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The speaker does not question his Muse as a demanding lover might, out of jealousy, question a lover about his whereabouts. He refuses to behave like "a sad slave." He does not blight his mind and heart with wild imaginings that his Muse is off cavorting with others.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 57

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On one volume, "No Man's Land," Ruth Fowler's narrative of her time working as a dancer in a Times Square strip club, I sarcastically summarized:

"Cambridge University graduate strips . . . emerges to write about it. When I took a jaundiced stance on the book, publicist Kate Lloyd told me, 'Ruth's editor has assured me of the book's veracity (as has Ruth herself.)' "

from Bob Hoover: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Publishers, newspapers, Unite!

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Pain's narrow horizon (for pain makes one very focused--on the pain--and usually excludes a wider vision) is an echo of the narrow horizon that is the little wood with its trees.

The pleasure of owning a piece of woodland; to preserve it from development or assault from the slashers and burners, and to add it to one's own home as an annex of sorts must be a joy.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: Taking stock of the wood

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Such feeling in such a small space. These haiku prove that in a secular culture, the stadium--from little league through the majors--may be the closest many Americans get to a house of worship, which is why I end with Raffael de Gruttola's meditation on eternity:

from Mary Karr: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

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250 I shall keep singing!
by Emily Dickinson

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: 250 I shall keep singing! by Emily Dickinson

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Boarding House
by Ted Kooser

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Boarding House by Ted Kooser

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Family Group, Late 1930s
by Christopher Wiseman

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Family Group, Late 1930s by Christopher Wiseman

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Fireflies
by Richard Newman

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Fireflies by Richard Newman

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The Lost House
by David Mason

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Lost House by David Mason

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The Man Next Door Is Teaching His Dog to Drive
by Cathryn Essinger

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Man Next Door Is Teaching His Dog to Drive by Cathryn Essinger

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What We Want
by Linda Pastan

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: What We Want by Linda Pastan

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In "The Moose," a poem much too long to print here, the late Elizabeth Bishop was able to show a community being created from a group of strangers on a bus who come in contact with a moose on the highway. They watch it together and become one. Here Robert Bly of Minnesota assembles a similar community, around an eclipse. Notice how the experience happens to "we," the group, not just to "me," the poet.

Seeing the Eclipse in Maine

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 165

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And I invite all you fearless readers (I really do love puns) to post your own haikus in the 'comments' section. (Though please refrain from the likes of "Max Ross: Egomaniac/ where's Whitman? Or Eliot?/They're better than you" and so on. Unless you have one that's really, really good.)

Also, for those interested, I found the header illustration here.

So here goes:

Fat green leaves beaten

from Max Ross: The Rake: Cracking Spines: Poem Worth Reading

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[Jean] Passerat's poem is beautifully simple--and an absolute devil to translate. "J'ay perdu ma tourterelle" it begins: "I have lost my turtledove." Amanda French seems to be the latest person to have had a shot at it. Unfortunately, she clogs the rhyme scheme by re-iterating her "dove/love" rhyme in every stanza. However, she has written a fascinating paper to accompany the translation, which you can read here.

Jean Passerat's poem is reproduced below. I've followed the original spellings, designed to enhance the rhyme scheme. Stanza-breaks are inserted for clarity.


Villanelle

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Poem of the week

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Here's an example: I remember waking on the morning of the autumn equinox in 1997, shortly after turning 50, with a line of poetry in my head: "I feel my body letting go of light." I wrote it down immediately, before losing it, and in the act of writing I realized several things about the line: that it was iambic pentameter; that it was obviously connected both to the Earth's seasonal turn toward lessening light at equinox and to my own turn toward older age; and that although it sounded dark, ominous, it felt uplifting and positive to me. [--Floyd Skloot]

from B.T. Shaw: The Oregonian: To Floyd Skloot, poetry emerges from emotional intensity and 'insistence'

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Didi Menendez is a Cuban-born American artist and author. She is also the publisher for MiPoesias, http://www.mipoesias.com ,OCHO and Oranges & Sardines. Her series The American Poet Portraits is gaining momentum. http://americanpoets.blogspot.com/

from Belinda Subraman Presents: Didi Menendez: Poet, Artist, Publisher

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by Jane Hirshfield

Vinegar and Oil

from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: Vinegar and Oil

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A London Symphony by Jo Shapcott

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: A London Symphony by Jo Shapcott

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The Crows at 3 A.M.
by Stanley Plumly

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Crows at 3 A.M.

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Low
by Arda Collins

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Low

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By Tali Bumgardner
Kellman Academy

One flag for the soldier that has died

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Tali Bumgardner]

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By Hunter McGowan

Beach

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Hunter McGowan]

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[by Lucia H. Stumreiter]
In Memory of MRM

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: In Memory of MRM

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"Memory"
By Judith Harris

from Slate: "Memory" --By Judith Harris

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"Let's make a baby," said Rita.
by Roman Baenbaev, Translated by Adriana X. Jacobs, May 22, 2008

from Zeek: Poem: "Rita" by Roman Baembaev

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[by RBarenblat]

From The Brakhot Cycle

One whose dead lies before him

from Zeek: Three Poems from The Brakhot Cycle

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Poetic Obituaries

[Saleh ibn Abdullah Al-Malik] wrote a number of books and conducted field research on social, political and economic topics.

Hamad Al-Qadi, a member of the Shoura, said Al-Malik’s death was a big loss not only for the Shoura but also for the Kingdom. “He was a good parliamentarian, a poet and a linguist,” Al-Qadi said.

from Arab News: Shoura Sec. Al-Malik, 67, Passes Away

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Zachary Fitzgerald, one of Lauren Barrett's cousins, read a poem written by Lauren Barrett which he hoped would inspire those who knew her.

"I've got two arms strong enough to hold the weight of the world . . . " Fitzgerald read from Lauren Barrett's poem.

"If she can have that strength and know that much about herself, it can help all of us," Fitzgerald said.

from Poughkeepsie Journal: Family, friends mourn loss of teen killed in crash

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[Don Becker's] personal struggles had long been documented, battling mental illness throughout a life of varied creative pursuits, including comedy albums, one-man plays and even children's stories.

In 2001, the Denver International Film Festival screened the Robin Beeck documentary "A Farewell to Arms," which detailed Becker's unusual story--including the loss of his arms in a 1986 train accident. (One of them was successfully re-attached.)

from The Denver Post: Don Becker stood up for local scene

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For 25 years Carol managed the poetry business that filled the Bly house, doing farm work as well as working on the literary reviews, The Fifties and The Sixties, edited by Robert together with William Duffy. She also served as hostess for the many poets--among them Bill Holm, Donald Hall and James Wright--who visited, serving dinners to guests but exacting chores in return.

from Duluth News Tribune: Carol Bly's friends recall passion, conscience

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NACRO also encouraged Steven [Bosanquet] to deal with his problems in a more positive way by writing poetry and as an artistic person, creating amazing drawings.

As well as trying to promote greater understanding of the illness that is drug abuse, the family are keen to remember the good times with Steven.

from The Flintshire Standard: Wrexham family's plea after drug addict found dead

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[Ronald G. Crawford] loved hunting and fishing, playing cards and board games, especially Scrabble. And he loved writing poetry. He was everyone's handyman; whenever anyone needed anything he was always there.

from Tribune Chronicle: Ronald G. Crawford 1930-2008

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George Garrett died this weekend. The former Virginia poet laureate and University of Virginia professor had an international reputation and a profound impact on Grounds, especially concerning UVA's Creative Writing Program.

from NBC 29: Poet Laureate, UVA Professor Dies
also Inside UVA: In age of narrow specialization, a writer who does it all

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Lois Hirshkowitz, 72, of New York City, who was a founding director in Lakewood, died Tuesday, May 20. She was a founding director of Lakewood Prep, a founding editor of Barrow Street poetry journal, and author of four books of poetry.

from Asbury Park Press: Lois Hirshkowitz, 72, of New York City, who was a founding director in Lakewood

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Reginald Franklin Lockett touched people's lives through his artfully chosen words, poignant themes and sincere friendships. The accomplished educator and award-winning poet was much loved in Oakland's literary community and beyond. He published several books and countless articles and served as a tenured professor at San Jose City College for the past 20 years.

from Oakland Tribune: Oakland's unofficial poet laureate dies at 60

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Professor [Winston] Napier specialized in critical theory, 20th-century African American literary culture, and African American philosophical thought. A former editor of the Howard University Journal of Philosophy, he published in Literature and Psychology, The Massachusetts Review, New Literary History, and The Village Voice Literary Supplement. He was editor of the acclaimed book "African American Literary Theory: A Reader." In his research, Professor Napier explored the intercultural dynamics responsible for the unique structure and configuration of black expressive discourse.

from Clark University: University Communications: In Memoriam: Winston Napier, E. Franklin Frazier Chair and Associate Professor of English

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In eulogies at the burial, he said, the late Ngugi [wa Mirii] was described as unique in many ways and a remarkable man of many dimensions: a poet, pan-Africanist, artist, publisher, writer, filmmaker, media analyst and freedom fighter.

"We noted that Ngugi, Kenyan-born, had become a Zimbabwean citizen, and that he had embraced as his own the Zimbabwean struggle against imperialists," Mr [Chinondidyachii] Mararike said.

from allAfrica.com: Zimbabwe: Ngugi Laid to Rest

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[Reuben Pakaenda] knew the power of art as a tool. In 2004, he eventually published 13 brilliant poems in the ZPH anthology called Zviri Muchinokoro Kunaka! alongside his heroes, Ignatius Mabasa and Chirikure Chirikure.

He wrote about the joys of friendship and the frailty of the human soul. The book is now on the Advanced Level school syllabus.

That publication gave Reuben intense joy and confidence. At writing workshops in Chiredzi, Mudzi, Abre Acres, Chinyaradzo . . . you would see the glitter in his eyes as he volunteered to perform new and old poems.

from allAfrica.com: Zimbabwe: Writer Pakaenda Dies

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"We were not only father and son. We were the best of pals and we laughed a lot together. He was bright and witty and the best of company." [--Jim Queally]

He described Ian [Queally] as a "very bright and multi-talented young man" who played guitar, wrote his own poetry and was also a "useful" actor.

from Irish Independent: TV star's heartbreak as son dies

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The following day when Mark [Speight] had still not arrived home, [his daughter] Kirsty searched his room and found the journal in which he wrote his thoughts and poems.

There, she found a note which showed the true depths of his despair.

Carmen says: 'It was on a side of A5 and had been ripped out of the main pad. It said that he couldn't believe he and Natasha had only been together five years.

'Then he'd written, "I've tried to carry the load but the burden is too heavy to bear. I love my family and Tash's family very much. I'm sorry I can't be strong anymore."

'It ended with the words, "Please make sure you set up The Natasha Collins Trust and publish these poems."

from The Mail on Sunday: 'I honestly don't think he planned suicide'--The mother of his overdose girlfriend on the tragic death of Mark Speight

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[Juanita Tucker] helped start the community paper, Christmas Bell Ringer, and was its editor for many years. She also wrote a column about Christmas that ran in the Orlando Sentinel.

A poet and artist, she painted the baptistery at the Fort Christmas Baptist Church and has even been credited with helping bring electricity and dial telephones to Christmas.

from Orlando Sentinel: Juanita Tucker, 101, was longtime postmaster and booster of Christmas

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[Jaroslav] Vajda, of Webster Groves, Mo., died last week at the age of 89, and left the world of hymnody--the art of composing of sacred songs in praise of God--very different from when he entered it.

"He was more or less the dean of hymn writers in North America," said Carl Daw, executive director of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada at Boston University.

from Coulee News: Poet laureate of American hymns dies at 89

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News at Eleven

On March 10, 2008, about 300 of us gave up everything we owned in India to begin a long march back to Tibet. The only things we have with us now are our sleeping bags, mattresses and mobile phones. I have spent my whole life looking for a place I can call home. I was born in India, but my family were refugees from Tibet, a country presently torn by strife and chaos. I am also a Buddhist--and believe in the basic principle that Buddhism has the power to change people's minds, and bring long-term happiness and peace to them. [--Tenzin Tsundue]

from Daily News & Analysis: The long walk home

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Jang [Jin-sung] witnessed the incident he describes in the poem, he said. "It happened at a market in the Tongdaemun district of Pyongyang. A lot of people witnessed that tragic scene and cried that day," he said.

"As they watched her, she tried to appear unaffected in the beginning, but after she gave her daughter that mother's parting gift, one last piece of bread, and as she wailed, all the onlookers broke into tears. Even now, my eyes still tear up when I think of that instant."

from Radio Free Asia: Defector Is Best-Selling Poet

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I rang Fatima [Bhutto] and asked: "So, with Zardari in power, are you now afraid for your own safety?"

Fatima considered for a second before answering: "Well, I am certainly very afraid for this country," she said. "Even before Zardari, this was a country where anything can happen, a country that regularly disappears its own people. The state here is, in the worst way, expedient. You just don't know what's waiting for you, especially if you stand up and say what you think. And I have never been an especially diplomatic person. I certainly don't belong to the silent majority."

from The Sunday Times: Fatima Bhutto: living on the edge

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The [Pakistani] government also paid several hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom to the Taliban.

The government has released 55 Taliban operatives, including Mufti Yousuf and Muslim Dost, the Asia Times reported. In exchange, the Taliban released Tariq Azizuddin, Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan, along with "dozens" of Pakistani soldiers and paramilitaries captured during battles since last summer.

from The Long war Journal: Pakistan frees former Guantanamo prisoner, Afghan Taliban commander

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Europa is the girl whose name gave western culture its identity: a girl invaded, a girl who represents all violent traffic between east and west ("we weren't meant to mix up our lives"). Within her story, [Moniza] Alvi sets the Middle Eastern echoes of Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine ringing.

from The Guardian: Rape of the rock

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[Coleman Barks] says that after teaching three classes at the University of Georgia, he would pour himself some hot tea and work on one of Rumi's poems, "going into the trance of the poem." He describes this experience as feeling "the soul growth."

Using the images of the poem, he worked to translate it into accessible English from more scholarly or formal English. He calls it "movement toward the emotional and spiritual--toward that which is felt."

from The Block Island Times: Coleman Barks: poet and translator

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[Mary Oliver] describes making "a dish of rice with chicken and almonds. Only," she adds, "the almonds are imaginary and the chicken ran away."

When at the end of her hour, she brings down the house with a standing ovation from an audience that won't let her go, she smiles and says, "I know--you're waiting for 'Wild Geese,' which she proceeds to read:

from The Block Island Times: Mary Oliver's 'work is loving the world'

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Before [Andrew] Motion settled to the task in 1999, [Carol Ann] Duffy had been the favourite. However, her status then as the mother of a young child and as a woman in a lesbian relationship made her wary of taking up such a prominent national position.

It was also suggested that [Tony] Blair, then Prime Minister, had vetoed Duffy because he was concerned that her domestic arrangements would be inappropriate for such a public figure.

from The Guardian: Duffy likely to be first woman to follow Tennyson and Betjeman as laureate

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Two poems by JoAnn Balingit, named today as Delaware's poet laureate.

The first poem is about her father.

History Textbook, America

from The News Journal: Newark woman is state's poet laureate

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[Ezra] Pound's current heroes were the medieval troubadour poets of Provence, with some Italians and half-understood classic authors mixed in. The 23-year-old novitiate tramped the city's streets, incanting his "songs" in the doorways of literary journals--"Let us deride the smugness of the Times: GUFFAW!" (he means the Times Literary Supplement)--and along the corridors of the weekly magazines: "Go! rejuvenate things! Rejuvenate even the Spectator."

from The Guardian: Home from home

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[John H.] Hagen surveyed 34 West Virginia alumni who earned master-of-fine-arts degrees in creative writing, and he found that students who had allowed open access to their theses went on to have more-successful careers, in terms of material published and further education, than those who didn't.

Professors of writing are skeptical. Publishers still operate by the rule of turning down manuscripts that are already freely available, says Mr. [Mark] Brazaitis, who is a novelist.

from The Chronicle of Higher Education: Readers Not Wanted: Student Writers Fight to Keep Their Work Off the Web

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Great Regulars

In other pieces this interweaving of connections can be more austere, more considered. The collection [Hidden River, by Stephanie Norgate] is interspersed with adaptations from Lucretius, is fascinated by his theory of atomism, by the subtle processes of constant physical change--"A ring wears away./You do not see the gold go,/thinning day by day."

from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: In brief

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It started off in the same way that you see with American military involvement in a lot of countries under the guise of fighting terror or protecting interests, they'd come in, say so and so has terror links, and they'd take them to Guantanamo. However, the Pakistani government, once the American government stopped shipping people to Guantanamo with enthusiasm, decided this was a very convenient way to deal with their problems. In Balochistan Province you have anywhere between five to eight thousand people disappeared--that's an incredibly high number. As you said they are activists, professors, political workers, poets, they are picked up and taken and for no reason. Their families don't know where they are; we don't discuss this in the media.

from Fatima Bhutto: altmuslim: The new "daughter of destiny"

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Books of quotations are one of my guilty pleasures. This month, rather introduce a poem, I present some of the juicier quips, bumper-stickerish insights and smart thinking about poetry from this fun compendium. Enjoy.

"The first great task of the aspiring poet--the task of the imagination--is to create the self that will write the poems." Stanley Kunitz

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: From a book, little gems about the process of poetry

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As you can see in this one, he's a young man, already acutely aware of exactly how much time he has left. Yet, when I say this poem to myself, I feel really happy, to have the cherries hung with snow, just for now. My guess is, he did too.

[by A.E. Housman]

Loveliest of Trees

from Fleda Brown: Traverse City Record-Eagle: On Poetry: Trees at their 'Loveliest'

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There were also legal and political reasons for the ubiquity of Anon. There were times when the state needed to know the author or printer of a work in order to know who to prosecute for heresy or sedition. In 1579, John Stubbs had his right hand cut off for writing a work opposing the marriage of Elizabeth I to a French nobleman. Elizabeth herself urged that the printers of the anti-Anglican Marprelate tracts should be subjected to torture. In 1663, a London printer who published a pamphlet which argued that the monarch should be accountable to his subjects, and justified the people's right to rebellion, was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. He refused, even so, to reveal the name of the pamphlet's author, though the disclosure might have saved his life.

from Terry Eagleton: London Review of Books: Unhoused

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By Robert Wooten

You didn't hold your own against the lust

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Alabama Winds'

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Not improvisational; we've worked out a set list. Here's a sample. I wrote "Gateway Arch," in fact, as a direct response to Lindsey's "Everyone Connects Kansas With Oz."

Everyone Connects Kansas With Oz

By Lindsey Martin-Bowen

(from her new book, Standing on the Edge of the World)

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Arch commentary, Oz it were

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By Jon Herbert Arkham

His thought, as sloppy

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Bongos'

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Rubbled Homes in Arlington, Va.

By Anna M. Carroll

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Immigrant song

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By now, the taste for [Thomas] Hope's furniture and his interior style was so specialised that when the contents of the Deepdene were dispersed in 1917, there was really only one purchaser interested in the furniture: Edward Knoblock, the author of Kismet. Regency itself, as a style, was generally discounted, and the Brighton Pavilion considered utterly ridiculous. Reading only slightly between the lines of the excellent catalogue, we find, however, that this taste was kept alive by a small minority of gay men, including Lord Gerald Wellesley, doomed (when he became Duke of Wellington) to the nickname The Iron Duchess

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Taste acquired

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The speaker has the same complaints the Irish have had for centuries, living in a war zone: "Men die at hand. In blasted street and home/The gelignite's a common sound effect." The speaker has become enamored with term "gelignite," using it liberally throughout his reportage.

The speaker dramatizes the socialistic nature of the bunch and manages to fling off a reconstituted cliché "Long sucking the hind tit/Cold as a witch's and as hard to swallow/Still leaves us fork-tongued on the border bit."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Heaney's Hugging Destiny

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In the second quatrain, the speaker insists that nothing can erase "The living record of your memory." The poem's memory is permanent; even though "wasteful war" may "overturn" "statues" and "broils root out the work of masonry." The poem is ethereal and once written remains a permanent record written on memory.

"The living record" includes more than just parchment and ink; it includes the power of thought that is born in each mind.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 55

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There will, in fact, be much pomp and tribute dedicated to this fallen soldier, and his personage will swell well past "the three days." Thus, the nihilistic portrayal of the unsung hero is negated in the reader's mind by the end of the second verse paragraph. So the speaker has to bounce back somehow. How can he do that?

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Stevens' 'The Death of a Soldier'

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The footnote in the book that accompanies the first poem here explains how, at the table of Mr Maxwell of Terraughty, "one of the guests spoke of nothing but the dukes and lords with whom he had supped and dined". [Robert] Burns apparently scribbled his verse The Toad-Eater (being a reference to "toady") on a scrap of paper and passed it around the table, much to the amusement of the other guests and the discomfort of the name-dropper.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: Dealing with a name-dropper

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My most recent excuse to purchase more plants has been the aviary, which I had built last autumn for George, my magpie. I found George as a tiny fledgling in the garden last May, with two dead siblings, after their nest had been destroyed in ferocious gales. For the first two months I fed him and cared for him, his cage remained on the floor beside the Rayburn next to the baskets for our three small dogs; he came to believe they were siblings and that I was a strange, featherless parent. I took him out every day and he lived half his life on my shoulder. I was smitten.

from The Times: Frieda Hughes reflects on the aviary she built in her garden

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"Pretty", for instance--published in the TLS in 1959--seems at first an obsessive, atmospheric reprise of the theme of Nature "red in tooth and claw", until the closing stanzas, which reveal a human raptor and an unsuspected impulse behind the poem.

[by Stevie Smith]

Pretty

from Mick Imlah: The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: Pretty

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Bless them for prying open the canon to [Emily] Dickinson's genius, but they did praise some of her most tiresome noises.

There is constriction in Dickinson's work. Women in her day were corseted to live extra-small. Her finest poems force the reader to a crawl, creating a cramped, psychological space best traversed slowly. As you're trying to figure out what she means, the poem works its emotional alchemy. Here she creates the void of love lost through death or disaffection:

After great pain, a formal feeling comes--

from Mary Karr: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

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Poem: "Family Group, Late 1930s" by Christopher Wiseman from Crossing the Salt Flats.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of May 19, 2008

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How often have you wondered what might be going on inside a child's head? They can be so much more free and playful with their imaginations than adults, and are so good at keeping those flights of fancy secret and mysterious, that even if we were told what they were thinking we might not be able to make much sense of it. Here Ellen Bass, of Santa Cruz, California, tells us of one such experience.

Dead Butterfly

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 164

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The poem "Hearing Parker the First Time," about Charlie Parker, shows how radio airwaves also cross this flyover region. In the poem, "Eleusinian mysteries" are ecstatic Greek rites. Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young are saxophone players with ties to Kansas and Kansas City. And "Ornithology" is the title of one of Parker’s albums (he was known as Bird). This poem is an homage to jazz as understood by a poet [B. H. Fairchild] who first learned to play the saxophone and then the instrument of American language.

Hearing Parker the First Time

from Denise Low: Ad Astra Poetry Project: B. H. (Pete) Fairchild (1942--)

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Being a counselor or therapist is another one of those professions that diverts the flow from writing and dries you up. Any type of job that will leave your mind free at the end of the day is your best bet.

Perhaps the worst occupation is that of publicist, magazine writer, ad copy writer or journalist--any job that steals your creativity will ultimately waste the fire you should save for your best writing, though there are probably some rough-and-ready scriveners who are able to avoid this occupational hazard.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: What's the best job choice for a poet?

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A story has been created which erroneously poses me in opposition to JK Rowling. Then, rather than anyone phoning me up to clarify (my phone number and email is freely available round the Press, as are the Laureateship press officer's), the Daily Mirror and some of the radio channels repeated the story. It's as if it was too juicy to be worth checking.

I take from this that anything that suggests that JKR or HP should be knocked off their perches is sexy.

from Michael Rosen: The Guardian: theblogbooks: What I really said about Harry Potter

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This week's Poem Worth Reading is by Marie Vogel Gery. It's part of a collection entitled Penchant--an anthology comprised of poems written by women from Northfield, Minnesota. Though I can't quite put my finger on it, there is definitely a quality that unites the verses of these poets. "The eleven writers gathered here show an easy abundance," notes Scott King in his introduction. And I think that's as close to a definition as one can get--a vague yet precise "easy abundance"--a lovely ability to meander, paired with the certain (Minnesotan) simplicity that underlies each stanza

Read it. Everyone else is.

"Sleepover"

from Max Ross: The Rake: Cracking Spines: Poem Worth Reading: Beat your ploughshares into pens

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I also wondered about the identity of the "officer of the orbits" and "the knight of death"--and, more generally, how much had been lost--or even gained--in Nazih Kassis's translation. I feel I have no more than shadowy glimpses of this narrative and its symbols, but that it is one of those poems that truly "can communicate before it is understood." I'm hoping that readers, as ever, will be a fount of helpful comment and interpretation.

[by Samih al-Qasim]

There was a village called Sireen

"A Palestinian village whose feudal owner
sold it for a kiss through a pane of glass . . ."

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Poem of the week

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Special thanks to my facebook friends for sharing their talent.

from Belinda Subraman Presents: Gas Facebook Show

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I can repeat his great lines for you:

They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three’.
(Stanzas on Freedom, st. 4-1843)

The above lines of James Russell Lowell have inspired great freedom fighters and lovers of liberty in all parts of the world during the last 120 years. He was a romantic poet, literary critic, satirist, diplomat and abolitionist. The story of his life is really instructive and inspiring.

from V Sundaram: News Today: Bracing bard of human freedom and liberty

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Since Buddha was born on this full moon day, this day is also known as the day of Buddha Purnima. This Vaishaka full moon day, according to the Chinese Lunar Calendar, and dedicated to Gautama Buddha, is celebrated on a grand scale in China. Likewise, this very day is celebrated as Visakha Puja Day in Thailand or Le Phat Dan in Vietnam. Other countries like Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia also follow this sacred tradition on this day.

from V Sundaram: News Today: great teacher of universal morality and religion

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by Robin Robertson

Lesson

from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: Lesson

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Dismantling the Library by Stephen Romer

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Dismantling the Library by Stephen Romer

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Think of an object: a thing in a room, in a house, in a place, in a landscape or townscape, in weather, a season. An object, perhaps, from your past, something you half remember but which has been out of mind for a while Attend to it. Listen, and look, feel its texture, or coolness, or weight. Look up and away from it, out of the window of the remembered room perhaps. Listen. Attend utterly to the object and its place, its recalled qualities and associations.

from The Guardian: Poetry Workshop: Gillian Clarke's Workshop

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by James Galvin

The stagnation is deafening.

from Guernica: Poetry: The Stagnation

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Looking Back on the Muckleshoot Reservation from Galisteo Street, Santa Fe
by Arthur Sze

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Looking Back on the Muckleshoot Reservation from Galisteo Street, Santa Fe

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Neck
by Sarah Arvio

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Neck

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Rain
by Don Paterson

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Rain

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By Sima Rabinowitz

I. Arbitrary Potential

Un-pack the narrative, restore the body's triple root

from Nextbook: Dictionary on Wheels

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By Meghan Smith

Silence

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Meghan Smith]

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[by Stephanie Koziol]
let it roll on in

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: let it roll on in

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Selected Poems by CP Cavafy (Penguin Classics, 2008, £9.99) presents a selection of Cavafy's work in a new translation by Avi Sharon. Candles is perhaps his best-known poem: like much of his work, it is haunted by an acute sense of the brevity of youth.

Candles

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week: CP Cavafy

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"Just a Tranquil Darker"
By John Hodgen

from Slate: "Just a Tranquil Darker" --By John Hodgen

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Poetic Obituaries

[Alisa Marie] Beck, a native of Pennsylvania, left her son, Jordan, now 8, behind when she moved to the Valley for a fresh start in life. She had only been in Phoenix for about a year before she was killed and had no Mesa ties.

"She was a young girl and starting her life over, and she didn't get the chance," Mesa police homicide Detective Domenick Kaufman told The Republic in 2005.

She was described by friends and family as a funny, outgoing girl who loved adventure, poetry and drawing and dreamed of going to school to become an artist.

from The Arizona Republic: Arrest made in slayings, sex assaults

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Inside the funeral program was a poem Daniel [Davis] wrote called "Why?"

[Danielle] Davis said her son wrote it for her two months ago. They had argued, and when he apologized he gave her the poem. She read her son's words:

"Why I gotta be the one that hurt you/ even though I'm the lil' man you gave birth to . . . I'm just a young man and time is a virtue/ Please understand that my heart hurt too."

from Rochester Democrat & Chronicle: Rochester shooting victim Daniel Davis 'in my heart,' says cousin

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[James B.] Hall wrote more than 20 books--novels, short stories and poetry--and was widely published and anthologized. He founded the creative writing program at Oregon and also taught at the University of California-Irvine and University of California-Santa Cruz. He was a co-founder of the Northwest Review, the UO literary magazine.

from The Oregonian: James B. Hall: Writer, teacher

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[Richard Helgerson] was a professor of English at UC Santa Barbara, where he had taught since 1970.

Helgerson left an international reputation as one of the leading Renaissance scholars of his generation. He wrote six important books, including an edition and translation of the French Renaissance poet Joachim Du Bellay, and more than sixty articles and reviews, said his sister, Jan Ondeck, of Walnut Creek.

His most influential publications were "Self-Crowned Laureates," a major study defining the distinctively Renaissance career patterns of English writers Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, and John Milton, and "Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England."

from Pasadena Star-News: Helgerson, former visiting professor at Caltech, dies

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Known for his extensive reading and sharp wit, [Abul Khair] Kashfi was considered an intelligent and erudite critic and held in high esteem among scholars and critics, especially for his doctoral thesis that explored political and historical background of classical Urdu poetry.

His books that made ripples in the literary circles include 'Jadeed Adab Ke Do Tanqeedi Jaeze' and 'Hamare Ahad Ka Adab Aur Adeeb'.

Kashfi won many awards for his literary pursuits, including Dawood Literary Award and National Seerat Award.

from Dawn: Eminent critic Kashfi dead

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Her first verses were published in 1955. In 1958 Rimma Kazakova published her first book of verses titled "Meet each other in the East."

Since the 1960s Rimma Kazakova lived in Moscow. She enjoyed popularity in Russia as the author of many books of poetry based on the best traditions of Russian folklore, romance and lyrics of the 20th century.

from ITAR-TASS: Popular poetess Rimma Kazakova passes away

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The family best remembers her [Evelyn Minnie Kraemer's] limitless love, laughter, hugs, smiles, warm welcomes, as well as her toy box, apple pies, breaded pork chops, homemade fries, stuffed animals, chocolate and special poems.

from Iowa City Press Citizen: Evelyn Kraemer, 90

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An article in the Nov. 19, 2006 edition of the Boston Herald stated that [Steven] Kublin came to Colorado a few months before his death to be with friends at the Rainbow Family of Living Light, a counterculture group of people dedicated to peace, love and nonviolence.

Kublin had been hitchhiking around the country for about 30 years and working odd jobs, the article quoted his father, Bennett Kublin, as saying. His son often wrote poems and short stories for friends, his father said.

from Grand Junction Sentinel: Suspect arrested in murder of free spirit

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[Cicely] Nichols was involved in the peace, civil rights and union movements. Active in the anti-Vietnam War movement, she also wrote and edited material for women's support groups, authored histories of Mother Jones and of Sacco and Vanzetti, and wrote poetry and an unpublished novel about a naive young woman who came to New York and transformed herself and her world, her daughter said.

As an editor with Grove Press, she was a leader in organizing a union, efforts that resulted in her being blacklisted in the publishing industry, her daughter said. Later Cicely Nichols co-founded the Editorial Freelancers Association, which still helps freelancers.

from The Villager: Cicely Nichols, writer/editor, activist, dies at 70

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It was a student protest that lasted about three months during the 1964-65 school years.

But for [Michael] Rossman it was something that consumed most of his life. He wrote essays, news stories and books about it. He was the president and chief executive officer of the Free Speech Movement Archives and took very seriously the way information was presented on the group's Web site, said Lee Felsenstein, secretary-treasurer of the archive.

"Michael, I would have to call him a renaissance man because he embodied both art and science and activism. He was a poet and had that sort of sensibility, which could be hard to bear when you were reading one of his long writings. Nevertheless, he had a way with metaphors that was a very important part of him," Felsenstein said.

from Oakland Tribune: Free Speech Movement leader dies at 68

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One, 'A dream in polar fog', was published in English in 2005.

In his articles, poems, short stories and novels, [Yuri] Rytkheu described the Chukchee way of life and how it was influenced by the Soviet Union. He was often critical of 'civilisation', and of how indigenous peoples were treated in what he called a 'silent genocide'.

from Survival International: Chukchee author Yuri Rytkheu dies

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Prof Asghar Saudai [or Asgar Sodai] had been a prominent activist of Pakistan Movement and creator of Na'ara Pakistan, 'Pakistan Ka Matlab Kia?' Besides, he served as a director education, senior economist and poet.

"If no one else, Prof Asghar Saudai fully deserved the Pride of Performance Award," they added. They said he was a close associate of the Father of the Nation, Qauid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

from The Post: Sialkot mourns Prof Asghar Saudai

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[Fred J] Taylor was the author of 18 books; the most recent--Rabbiting Man e_SEmD was published last year. He also wrote poetry (a selection was published in 2001 in his book Travellin' Man), and contributed regularly to newspapers and magazines.

Right up to his death, Taylor's articles featured in Shooting Times, for which he had written for more than 30 years. He also appeared in The Sunday Telegraph, The Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard, Saga magazine, The Country Gentleman, The Mail on Sunday and most specialist angling publications.

from Telegraph: Fred J Taylor

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News at Eleven

I have a hunch that there's more to be said of [Philip] Larkin's painterly eye, and wonder whether, by rereading the poems, we might build up a gallery of visual inspirations. Was he thinking of Louis Lassalle's Winter (another Christmas card) when he wrote Gathering Wood? Do the strikingly descriptive Dublinesque, Cut Grass or Home Is So Sad hang somewhere? There's nothing further in this archive to suggest it, but I can almost see them in their frames.

from The Sunday Times: Revealingly yours, Philip Larkin

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You don't learn about these detailed realities of [Primo] Levi's writing from the Cambridge Companion; the contributors' attachment to their own labels is such that they even describe "compassion and forgiveness" as "Christian virtues", a slur on the Hebrew Bible if ever I heard one. For them, an iron curtain has fallen between the "cultural" and the "religious", so they imagine Levi must be a double agent, engaged in "ironic rewriting of divine utterances in secular terms" (they do not mention what the point of his irony is), whereas, in fact, the Scriptures are already written in "secular terms", there being no other terms available even to God, supposing he wishes to speak with his creatures.

from The Times Literary Supplement: Dante, Primo Levi and the intertextualists

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[Alexander] Pope happened upon a rich subject that poets had hardly sampled. He took stupidity as his inspiration. Or, rather, he took a special kind of stupidity, which he called "Dulness". Dulness presides over the efforts of hack writers and bad poets. Dulness is promoted by vain patrons and ruthless publishers. Dulness is the literary spirit of Pope's age (but a capacity that flourishes in most ages). Dulness is lack of imagination, lack of talent, lack of taste. It produces the pedantry of the academic or the deadly learning of the scholarly critic.

from The Guardian: Darkness visible

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Dylan [Thomas], conspicuously not a fighting man, retained a chippiness with anyone who counted as a war hero (he'd had a punch-up with Caitlin's brother, a commando). [William] Killick was drunk. Tempers flew, insults were traded and there seems to have been a fight.

All might have calmed down, but 40 minutes later Killick marched up to the cottage where the Thomases were staying and sprayed the thin asbestos walls with machine-gun bullets, 'to put the wind up the buggers'. He then stormed into the house with a hand grenade, which he threatened to detonate. It was Dylan, unaccustomedly brave, who managed to persuade the anguished man to leave without doing any more damage.

from Telegraph: Life with Dylan and Caitlin Thomas

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Developing weak lungs he [Isaac Rosenberg] went to South Africa, where he enjoyed an affair with an actress: a previously unknown liasion uncovered by [Jean] Moorcroft Wilson's indefatigable research.

She has, however, not been able to solve one of the central mysteries of Rosenberg's life: why did he voluntarily return from the Cape Town sun to the mud and blood of the trenches?

from Telegraph: Isaac Rosenberg, the outsider's outsider

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[Brian] Hall is a novelist, and "Fall of Frost" arrives as the first fictional rendering of Frost's life. The book is billed as a novel, but this is only because it is speculative rather than veritable; it is more properly classified a vie romancée, a bio enhanced with the loosey-goosey methods of fiction.

from The New York Times: All the Difference

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But if prose poems are so obviously great, why exactly do the British disparage them?

"There are actually plenty of British who write them," [Gary] Young explained, "but they think of it as a French form."

Ah, there's the rub: the experimental French came up with the form!

from Santa Cruz Sentinel: Chris Watson, Bookends: The prose poem in California

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Alice Oswald, herself a fine poet (she won the TS Eliot prize in 2002), has selected the verse and also written a very lucid, useful and penetrating introduction (one wishes for more writing on poetry as good as this) which points out that [Sir Thomas] Wyatt was, in fact, part of a dying metrical tradition, whose poetry was misrepresented by his first editors: they cleaned up his verse, which was originally deliberately hesitant, into the more regularly iambic "riding line", the one which was so embedded in the national consciousness until teachers stopped making children learn poetry by heart. (I owe this insight to Clive James.)

from The Guardian: The private life of a courtier unmasked

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"I assumed that since 100,000 people saw me as the King of May, there wasn't any problem no matter what the government wanted to do," [Allen] Ginsberg said in an interview years later. "But I also realized I was now in a very dangerous position . . . I'd already had the experience of being grabbed and isolated in Havana, so I was really quite apprehensive and knew what was possible."

from The Prague Post: When poetry was king

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A Mexican poet has been fined about US$5 (¤3.25) for desecrating the country's flag by writing a poem about using it to wipe up urine and excrement.

Poet Sergio Witz Rodriguez published the poem in a magazine in the southern state of Campeche in 2000 and could have faced as many as four years in prison under a law protecting the flag and national insignia.

from International Herald-Tribune: Poet fined for insulting Mexican flag, calls ruling threat to free speech

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Boston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center and the Poetry Society of America team up to celebrate the rich, wide-ranging voice of African-American poetry with an evening of readings. Introduced by Boston's inaugural poet laureate Sam Cornish, poets include a Pulitzer prize winner and several nominees and the founders of the poetry group Cave Canem, among many others.

from BUniverse: State of the Art

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Great Regulars

It doesn't declaim. It doesn't announce or preach. It acknowledges the gaps, the unspoken truths that rest quietly, as if between the lines. Intimacy requires a degree of silence, a listening. The line-breaks in a poem stop us, briefly, to listen. Notice the first line of [Jeanne Walker's] "Nursing," that ends "you hold so still." We can feel ourselves holding still for a second before we go on to the next line.

from Fleda Brown: Traverse City Record Eagle: On Poetry: Pausing for Mother's Day

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Frances Richey: Well, we disagreed on the war itself. I felt that we shouldn't go into Iraq, and I was very critical of the current administration. And he felt that it was his duty to go and that it was the right thing to do.

And when I criticized the administration, I wasn't thinking that I was criticizing him. We had always debated about politics, and I didn't realize that when we were arguing, when he was so close to going into combat, that it was much more personal, that it hurt him when we argued.

from Jeffrey Brown: PBS: Newshour: Frances Richey's Poetry Speaks to Son's Role as Soldier

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Here's an encore from Carrie Allison, who recently contributed "Trying."

Bodies in Motion

By Carrie Allison

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute:

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Growing Mick Jagger Lips

By Timothy Pettet

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: I can't get no . . .

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Another flood poem. Wet springs do this to us.

Another Woman with No Name

By Timothy Pettet

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: If it keeps on rainin' . . .

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Rain Taxi Nocturne

by Larry M. Schilb

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Rain Taxi Nocturne'

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Electric Lions

By John Mark Eberhart

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Road trip

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By Larry M. Schilb

whose yard this is--Hell, I know,

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Spring Frost'

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If [Richard] Madox's diary had been a novel, the author would have seen to it that the ingenious forms of encryption used to obscure the content would have been ways of enticing the reader to solve certain riddles, which would have been judiciously strewn around the text. But this is a genuine secret diary, which the author, a ship's chaplain, most emphatically does not want the commander of the flotilla, a certain Edward Fenton, to read.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: All at sea

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In "The Violets," the speaker relates a tale that accounts for there being no violets growing in a certain land. A traveler asks the locals, why there are no violets in the vicinity, and they responded that there used to be violets growing there but once upon a time the violets made the announcement that "Until some woman freely gives her lover / To another woman / We will fight in bloody scuffle."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Crane's 'The Wayfarer'

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Three days later after an apparent change-of-heart, the poet returned with a different kind of poetry which [Faris] Sanabani describes as "the most beautiful poetry I have ever seen." A poetry "that now condemned violence and promoted peace and tolerance."

[Amin] Al-Mashreqi says, "The Yemeni people are very sensitive to poetry--especially traditional poetry like this. If poetry contains the right ideas and is used in the right context, then people will respond to it because this is the heart of their culture."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Poetry against Terrorism

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Unlike the perfumed rose, the canker roses have only the outward beauty. They are not sought after because their beauty exists only in the outward appearance of their petals. They do not exude their inward beauty. The cankers "[d]ie to themselves."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 54

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The riddle remains a riddle, but it is instructive for language users, especially for poets: the use of "when" as an adverbial conjunction causes an ambiguity that should be revised by using a more specific term.

[Walt] Whitman, who is so savvy in most of his poetic language use, really fumbled it here by repeating the adverbial conjunction "when" four times, when he obviously means "after." It was, in fact, after he had heard the astronomer, after he had seen the numbers, after he has observed the charts, and after he heard the others applauding the lecturer that he grew "tired and sick" and decided the leave.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Whitman's Learn'd Astronomer

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I am deeply saddened by the loss of many lives and many more who have been injured in the catastrophic earthquake that struck Sichuan province of China. I would like to extend my deep sympathy and heartfelt condolences to those families who have been directly affected by the strong earthquake on 12 May 2008. I offer my prayers for those who have lost their lives and those injured in the quake.

from Tenzin Gyatso: The Office of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama: Media Release

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If only what we hadn't intended to say could be unsaid. But once heard, our words cannot be unheard. That's why it's wise to err on the side of accuracy--or kindness.

[Rainer Maria] Rilke is furious with his mouth, accusing it of seduction, but not grand seduction, only seduction in a small way that is "quickly insipid".

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: Down at the mouth

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by Paul Muldoon

When the Pie Was Opened

from Mick Imlah: The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: A new poem by Paul Muldoon

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[Sarah] Harwell's frustration leads her to examine how she implanted the daughter's clinginess since her own body seizes when the child finally "leaves to go/where I am not."

The form of the poem replicates the paradox of the situation. The first stanza has two end rhymes: rOll/fOld--a pattern of matching that devolves into deliberate half-matching and finally unmatching ends of lines: bEat/bEing; awAy/HAdes; waKes/blinKs.

from Mary Karr: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

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Poem: "We Collect Gull Feathers" by Timothy Young from Building in Deeper Water © The Thousands Press.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of May 12, 2008

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I have always enjoyed poems that celebrate the small pleasures of life. Here Max Mendelsohn, age 12, of Weston, Massachusetts, tells us of the joy he finds in playing with marbles.

Ode to Marbles

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 163

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"With each new verbal or participial theater of action of the stanza, there arrives a new agent," [Helen] Vendler writes, "making the clauses scramble helter-skelter, one after the other. The headlong pace is crucial." Since the stanza involves words like "dragon," "nightmare," "murdered," "blood" and "fighting," it's easy to see what she's thinking here. But to make a more modest use of Vendler's rewriting trick above, what if we kept the same enjambments, syntax, rhyme scheme and basic rhythm--yet changed some of the words?

from David Orr: The New York Times: Vendler’s Yeats

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This week's Poem Worth Reading is by Yehuda Amichai. Usually he tends toward the political, and is scarily good at it. However, though one could probably read some Israel-Palestine into this, it's mostly just sexy. I figured it's spring, so why not get a little racy.

Read it. Everyone else is.

A Precise Woman

from Max Ross: The Rake: Cracking Spines: Poem Worth Reading: A Precise Poem

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Step by step, the reader's empathy increases, and by the end of the poem we have moved closer towards the couple and their plight. We no longer smile. There is no doubt of the timeless human dignity of the street-sellers, who trudge patiently through the rain as if, perhaps, like the "man harrowing clods" ("In Time of The Breaking of Nations") they had been doing this for ever, and would never stop.

[by Thomas Hardy]

No Buyers

A Street Scene

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Poem of the week

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Currently, [Andy] Thibault is an adjunct lecturer in English and a mentor in the MFA writing program at Western Connecticut State University. He is author of The History of the Connecticut State Police and The 12-Minute MBA for Lawyers, a consulting editor of the literary journal, Connecticut Review, and--as an indication of his many outside interests--a licensed

professional boxing judge.

from Belinda Subraman Presents: Andy Thibault: author of Law and Justice on Everyday Life

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[Gerald] Stern knows his shoes--"I sold them at Baker's and Burt's / and carried the boxes on high"--but he also knows that few items of everyday use better symbolize the travails men and women face on the path of life than the footwear they don every morning. A homely symbol, to be sure, but all the more touching--and revealing--for that (think of that "split tongue").

What holds Stern's work together, both the individual poems and the collection as a whole, is its idiosyncratic tone and turns of phrase, at once demotic and prophetic, a kind of plaintive hectoring.

from Frank Wilson: Philadelphia Inquirer: 'Save the Last Dance,' by Gerald Stern

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by Anna Moschovakis

first

No, in a shed

under the machine

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: from The Human Machine: 30 Chances

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by Paolo Javier

1

ahlan wa sahlan note a poem o receive it here as it charades onto history's gauzy list

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: from Kundiman for the Condemned

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Afternoon by MR Peacocke

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Afternoon by MR Peacocke

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This starts by setting up the situation: "For their anniversary, he brings her roses she can't see,/bursting with scent she can't share." I'm not sure about "bursting" here. In the next stanza, I like the wife's "seamed lips" and think "unbramble her hair" is terrific, especially as it prefigures the outdoor imagery later on. "Slivers of time melt on his tongue" is the central metaphor of the poem, and effectively fuses the chocolate imagery with the theme of memory.

from The Guardian: Poetry Workshop: Lists with license

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A Primer

by Bob Hicok

from The New Yorker: Poetry: A Primer

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Young Orchard

by Richard Wilbur

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Young Orchard

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[by Joanna Rose]

Her paperback books, backs cracked lying

from The Oregonian: Poetry

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[by Terry Mayo]

Hugging

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Hugging

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"The Story of the Father"

By Tony Hoagland

from Slate: "The Story of the Father" --By Tony Hoagland

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by Agi Mishol, Translated by Lisa Katz, May 8, 2008

Life that swirls in the scraps of swallows in the early evening,

reaching out red from within the flower,

from Zeek: Poem" "All" by Agi Mishol

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Poetic Obituaries

[Elaine Dundy] wrote movingly about coping with her vision loss in "Out of the Darkness," a 2006 article for the London Guardian.

A few weeks before her death, she sent [Rosemary] Harris a poem she had written. "It was an amazing poem," Harris said. "It was about . . . looking into the mirror and not finding herself in her reflection. She said, 'Rosie, do you ever do that, think who are you, where have you gone? I just don't recognize the me anymore.' It was as if she was telling me something, that her life was coming to an end."

from Los Angeles Times: Elaine Dundy, 86; author wrote about life with Kenneth Tynan

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C. Jeanean Gibbs passed away on Monday, May 5, 2008.

from E-Notes: Death of a Poet:

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Edward Den Lau, whose Space gallery in Los Angeles was a center for art shows as well as performances, poetry readings and musical events, has died. He was 80.

from Los Angeles Times: Edward Den Lau, 80; owner of L.A.'s Space art gallery

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Mrs. [Ellen Turnbull] Lynch was interested in animals, her Scottish heritage, her native state and poetry, and was honored by Gov. William Donald Shaefer for her poem "Baltimore." She loved travel and entertaining with her husband.

from North County News: Ellen Turnbull Lynch

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Sameer [Mathur] loved music, played the guitar exceptionally well, composed poetry, and excelled in foreign languages having lived more than 10 years in in Switzerland and India and traveled to more than 20 other countries. Sameer was a superb student of mathematics and science.

from Westport Now: Sameer Mathur, 19

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Queen Creek resident Ellen Delano didn't realize what her mother [Anna Nelle Phipps Ohrt] was working on when she'd get up in the middle of the night to jot things down. "She would say 'I just had something revealed to me,'" Delano said.

But later in life Delano discovered her mother's revelations were a collection of poems spanning 70 years.

from East Valley Tribune: Book of poems fulfills mother's dying wish

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[Ira Yarmolenko] was also working with the University Times, the campus newspaper, where she volunteered as a photographer and reporter.

At a candlelight vigil Thursday, friends said she wanted to be a journalist, a poet and an artist.

from Gaston Gazette: Slain student born in Ukraine, family lives in Chapel Hill

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News at Eleven

The incarcerated mainland Chinese journalist Shi Tao may be rotting in prison thanks to having been ratted on by the US technology giant Yahoo, but his poetry is freely traveling the world through language and the internet thanks to the efforts of an international writers' group.

The International PEN writers group used the United Nations-designated World Press Freedom Day May 3 to call attention to the plight of Shi Tao, a journalist that Chinese authorities imprisoned for leaking state secrets.

from Wired: Jailed Chinese Journalist Shi Tao's Poem Follows Olympic Torch's Route Online

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[Gary] Snyder has a long list of awards, including the Bollingen Prize for Poetry he received after finishing his 40-year project begun in 1956, "Mountains and Rivers Without End."

How did he know when to stop after all those years?

"It tastes done," Snyder said.

from The Union: Gary Snyder inspired by nature

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A kind of healthy loathing sets in for me as soon as the poems are published. They're basically done; they're as good (more or less) as they're going to be. I consider each of them as works of the highest genius the day that I finish it, and possibly for a few days afterward. Then more and more I tend to see the flaws. Whatever it was that got my blood going enough to think I was on the right track fades a bit. I still feel okay about it but not as thrilled. That's good, I think. [--David Yezzi]

from News By Us: Memorable Speech: An Interview with David Yezzi

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But a researcher believes poet "Banjo" Paterson penned it simply to impress a local woman, Christina Macpherson.

Often called Australia's unofficial national anthem, it tells the story of an itinerant making a cup of tea.

from BBC News: Waltzing Matilda 'not socialist'

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It is easy, flipping through Eye Rhymes[: Sylvia Plath's Art of the Visual], to imagine my own childhood drawings--any American girl's childhood drawings or paper dolls or bubble-scripted diary entries--on these slick pages, with black typed words beside them: "Mastering Vision and Voice," "Compositional Design and Thematic Fusion Across Media," "Perspectival Deepening." It is hard, reading this book, to imagine the childhood scribblings of Seamus Heaney or Robert Lowell collected in this way.

from Bookslut: Plathophilia: Rereading Sylvia

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"I think what's important to recognise is that not all poetry is immediately accessible, you might just have to work at the poems a bit. But once you do, you can see just how rich they truly are.

He adds: "Today's society sees Milton as elitist because of this, but in reality he was quite a profound democratic and a liberal."

Making poetry accessible to everyone has always been a top priority for Andrew [Motion], who ends his term as Poet Laureate next year.

from Bucks Free Press: Poet Laureate to visit literary festival

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[Jorie] Graham's new collection confirms her to be a cerebral shaman for our age, a time-traveller in a shape-shifting mental universe. The human mind, she writes, is "open and oozing with / inwardness", a process her poetry registers. Her intensely focused, sensuously inflected meditations are both entranced and entrancing.

from The Guardian: Full fathom five

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Li Ho, strangest of Chinese poets, comes out with such baffling lines as "The blue raccoon weeps blood and the cold fox dies." And yet, the same Li Ho could write, "If heaven too had passions even heaven would grow old," a line in which all the pathos of human experience is obliquely conveyed.

Until his death in 1991, [A.C.] Graham taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and was steeped in Chinese philosophy as well as poetry.

from The New York Sun: The Lovely Bones: Poems of the Late T'ang

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Sijo and gasa (two four-syllable semantic units of Korean lyric verse) were developed toward the end of the Goryeo Kingdom in the 14th century. The Sijo became increasingly popular as a medium for expressing the sentiments of the people. I present two sijo poems by Yoon Sundo and Hwang Jhini in this space:

from The Korea Times: Traditional Korean Poetry Has Rich History

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The skull had been thought to be real for 180 years, given its close resemblance to [Friedrich] Schiller's death mask and contemporary portraits of the writer. The DNA tests also revealed that two additional skulls which some had claimed to be Schiller's also did not belong to the poet.

from Der Spiegel: DNA Tests Reveal 'Schiller's' Skull Not His

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[Sappho] took to writing poetry--lyric poetry, created to be sung to lyre music--and revolutionised the tradition by writing about her own thoughts and feelings, rather than about what the gods and Muses might be thinking.

She was an innovator: among her ground-breaking work was her predilection for writing tender love poems to women--often of elegy and yearning for a departed lover: "Come back to me, Gongyla, here tonight," reads one fragment. "You, my rose, with your Lydian lyre/There hovers forever around you delight:/A beauty desired."

from The Independent: Who are the real lesbians?

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Great Regulars

What dominates this collection is the city, its energy, its disarray and temporary utopias: "Five cabs ahead, the leader takes a fare, shifts/into second gear, sweeps//out of the terminal and into startling sun."

from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: Living in fear

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It's so we don't forget. Milan Kundera has said, and I think this is so true, he said, "The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." And for places like Pakistan that are violent and are repressive through authoritarian rule, whether military or civilian elected, what we have in a lot of these countries is we have our words and our memories. The minute you surrender that I think it's game over.

from Fatima Bhutto: CounterPunch: Pakistan's New Daughter of Destiny?

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In the same way, we want to watch an elite athlete, a diver, for instance, nail a high degree-of-difficulty reverse three-and-a-half somersault with no more splash than a teardrop. Just because it's a damned hard thing to do.

A poetry column provides a context for that difficulty, a bit of color commentary: Who is the poet? What is a useful way to begin thinking about the poem? How does the poem connect to the history of the art?

What sort of poem can work?

from David Biespiel: Poetry Foundation: Poetry on Deadline

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One way is to say what Wittgenstein said, language philosophy in the early 20th century, "The limits of my language are the limits of my world," which I don't think is quite true.

And the other is to say what Ed Wilson, the environmentalist and entomologist, biogeographer said, which is that every species lives in its own sensory world and, at some point, it dawns on you that you just--we don't have a language for what would be the experience of a tree or, for that matter, a fox or a robin. [--Robert Hass]

from Jeffrey Brown: PBS: Newshour: Robert Hass Discusses His Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poetry

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Excerpt from "Sweet Virginia"
By Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: "Come on down . . ."

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Floating through Coffeyville on Pontoon Boats

Flood poem #3 (2007)

By Lindsey Martin-Bowen

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Floating through Coffeyville on Pontoon Boats

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Here's a prose poem from Denise Low, poet laureate of Kansas. She's been working on a series of these based in part on the paintings of Paul Hotvedt.

Surrogates

By Denise Low

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Mayday, Mayday! Prose poses as poem!

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I can't resist running another Philip Miller poem today. --jme

Chance of Doomsday

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Not just Philler

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Different Drummers
By Ken Eberhart

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Percussion discussion

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Tornado

By Jon Herbert Arkham

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Twister

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The first pocket-sized volumes, renowned for their beautiful, clear print and reliable texts, were printed by Aldus Manutius in Venice starting in 1501 with texts of Virgil, Juvenal and Persius. The idea was to hold them in the hand and learn them by heart.

That kind of printing remained exemplary for centuries afterwards. The Dutch publishers, the Elzevirs, worked in this tradition.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Making tradition

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But instead of bemoaning that loss, he turns it around, claiming, "I know that David's with me here again." Instead of acknowledging the physical absence of his friend, he becomes engrossed in the spiritual reality of the friend's presence.

The speaker asserts that his friend, David, exerts a positive influence on the universe: "All that is simple, happy, strong, he is."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Robert Graves' 'Not Dead'Suite101.com: Robert Graves' 'Not Dead'

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The speaker says, "Since every one hath, every one, one shade,/And you but one, can every shadow lend." Although God is one, His creatures are many. God is one "substance" or "being" that exists, and His creatures are His shadows. It seems to be a conundrum that One can have many shadows.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 53

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As for his qualifications, [Sandford] Thatcher feels his 40 years of working in publishing give him the knowledge to choose the right books and the people to write about them.

However, he down plays the obvious objection to his role--conflict of interest. As head of the academic press association, he represents vested interests. "Might you be suspected of favoring those interests?" I asked him.

from Bob Hoover: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: One man's plan to rescue book reviewing

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This poem adds atmosphere to the premise of a man's return to a city--and perhaps to a woman; he appears to have been absent for some time. It reminds me of the old black and white films; the mist, the looming shapes that become familiar upon approach, the necessary promise of a romantic meeting . . . the poem is pregnant with possibilities that remain non-specific.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: A city comes to life

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The poem begins with a longing for permanence: Let me hold inside what I learn, for experience shapes me. In leaving the water of experience--as the fish and toad do--the water clears. But it's only in returning to the water of experience, plunging back through memory--as the kingfisher does--that the mind clears. In a single instant of recall, the poem argues, we can experience all our time, all our tribe's time.

from Mary Karr: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

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Poem: "Night" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of May 05, 2008

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Though at the time it may not occur to us to call it "mentoring," there's likely to be a good deal of that sort of thing going on, wanted or unwanted, whenever a young person works for someone older. Richard Hoffman of Massachusetts does a good job of portraying one of those teaching moments in this poem.

Summer Job

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 162

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Your training for an academic career will turn your mind to mush, that is, rendered useless as a creative instrument. A Ph.D. is most unhealthy for a creative artist; it makes you overly analytical, critical, highly opinionated, defensive, persnickety, close-minded and complacent. Complacency is indeed one of the great enemies of creativity. Too much education can be ruinous to your creative health. It will dull the sharp edge of your writing (and fighting) spirit.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Safety, comfort, complacency worst things for a creative mind

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"Criticism, obstructiveness, and attacks on the other side will end in failure because that sort of 'dialogue' isn't really a dialogue at all," said Bao [Tong], who had called publicly for negotiations with the Dalai Lama after the armed crackdown on anti-Chinese protests and riots which flared up in Lhasa March 14 and spread to other Tibetan areas of the country.

"It is just opposition in another guise. Once this unfortunate mutation occurs, dialogue is a dead duck," he added.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Chinese 'Want Real Dialogue': Bao Tong

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But now it seems as if things have taken a turn for the better, with the announcement by Xinhua news agency that the relevant departments in government are preparing to initiate contact with the Dalai Lama. This is a good omen, and worthy of our attention

from Luisetta Mudie: RFA Unplugged: Bao Tong: On Beijing's decision to talk to the Dalai Lama

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But how persistent that moment proves to be, haunting our imaginations for days and years. In the blissful transcendence of first love, which, as the poets remind us, is always the most pure and meaningful part, we begin to feel anything is possible, even perhaps eternity.

Shakespeare was evidently no exception.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: A Reading of "Sonnet 55" by William Shakespeare

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Robert Pinsky: They're both arts that feed other arts. That is, jazz music has had a tremendous influence on American popular music, on show music, on rock 'n' roll, and on American classical music. It's like a laboratory where ideas are discovered and things go out into other forms. Poetry, too. They both get adapted or diluted or incorporated into something else. I can't imagine [Quentin] Tarantino making "Pulp Fiction" if there was no poetry.

from Robert Pinsky: The Boston Globe: A kaleidoscope of poetry and jazz

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This week's Poem Worth Reading is by Allen Ginsberg, from his collection Kaddish and Other Poems, which came out sometime ago (1961).

Read it. Everyone else is. There's self-deprecation involved. And cats. God, it's honest-seeming. Parts are omitted. If you want them in, let me know and I'll add them. A little dark, but it's cold outside.

"Mescaline"

from Max Ross: The Rake: Cracking Spines: Poem Worth Reading: Cold Poem for a Cold Monday

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This week's Poem Worth Reading is by Ron Padgett, from his collection You Never Know, which came out in 2001 from Coffee House Press. Notice the yeses, maybe.

Read it. Everyone else is.

The Drink

from Max Ross: The Rake: Cracking Spines: Poem Worth Reading: Yes, This is a Contemporary Blog Post

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The effortless weaving of cadence, assonance, rhythm, and refrain makes this bi-lingual poet's English sound almost Italian.

We often think a great poem needs to be highly complex - and in these post-modern times this is often the case. But here, simplicity is raised to the level of genius.

[by Christina Rossetti]
A Birthday

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Poem of the week

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Internationally renowned as a performance poet, Patricia Smith is four-time national individual champion of the notorious and wildly popular poetry slam, an energized competition where poets are judged on the content and performance of their work. She is also regarded as one of the few performance poets whose work translates effortlessly to the page.

from Belinda Subraman Presents: Patricia Smith: Four-time national poetry slam winner, author, teacher

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"What's wrong with reading?" she [Mikita Brottman] asks. " . . . Nothing, of course. But once you assign an intellectual value to the act, you not only overlook the nature of the text itself, you also make universal and one-dimensional what is essentially a private process of engagement." In other words, you dilute the emotional power of the word, of language, by framing reading as a moral virtue.

from David L. Ulin: Los Angeles Times: 'The Solitary Vice' by Mikita Brottman

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Now, you are grown up, and there isn't much left to dream about. So memories intrude, and you wonder at how you got to where you are, how you became who you are. Not that it matters, since, however it happened, there's not much you can do about it.

from Frank Wilson: Books, Inq.: The Epilogue: Meditation . . .

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The Words by Grey Gowrie

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: The Words by Grey Gowrie

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by Sarah Messer
American Familiar

from Guernica: Poetry: Two Poems

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Chair (A Dream)
by Adonis

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Chair (A Dream)

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Homeland
by Adonis

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Homeland

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One Can Miss Mountains
by Todd Boss

from The New Yorker: Poetry: One Can Miss Mountains

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--Emily Dickinson (1830-86)

(from Ellen Louise Hart's "Open Me Carefully")

from The Oregonian: Poetry

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[by A.H. Walker]
Never Forget

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Never Forget

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During the open mic portion of the evening, Jack Jamison read this candid poem:

Floodgates

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poetry Hoot

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"A Place in Maine"
By Sherod Santos

from Slate: "A Place in Maine" --By Sherod Santos

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by Rivka Miriam, Linda Zisquit, May 1, 2008

His Grandfather's Face

from Zeek: Three Poems by Rivka Miriam: Translated by Linda Zisquit

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Poetic Obituaries

After her husband died in 1989, Mrs. [Larine] Brown began "Tracks From The Junction," a history column for the weekly Ross Valley Reporter. She published a collection of her columns in 1992. Her second book, "Faith: The Inspirational Poetry of Larine Brown," was published in 2005.

from Marin Independent Journal: San Anselmo writer, historian Larine Brown dies

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In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Ryan Delafield, said his aunt [Emily Delafield] was an active church member, who liked to write poetry, and should still be alive.

"When someone is in an agitated state, the last thing you do is Tase them," Delafield said.

from Miami Herald: Family of woman who died after being Tasered suing police

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[Robert E. Dixon] could still recall hundreds of poems he learned as a child, and from his home in Redmond he liked to recite them for his family.

Judge Dixon was raised on Queen Anne, the younger of two sons. As a boy, he nearly bit his tongue off when he fell from a tree. After work, Judge Dixon's father would sit by his side, requiring him to read books and poems aloud.

from The Seattle Times: Judge Robert E. Dixon remembered for his fairness, wit

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"Claude was always a real interesting person to talk to," said [George] Haley. "He was very knowledgeable on town matters."

The mayor also said [Claude] Emerson had a good eye for appraising real estate.

"I always relied on Claude to give me a good evaluation of the town's needs," Haley said.

Emerson and his wife, Mollie, have a daughter, Claudia Emerson, who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.

from Star-Tribune: Former Chatham town councilman dies

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LSD and [Albert] Hofmann's true legacy, though, is in the art that was produced as a result. Music, literature and the visual arts have all benefited from its input. I'm not saying drugs make for better culture, but more than any other drug acid, is responsible for altering perceptions and recalibrating minds. The last time I took it I ended up naked, vomit-flecked and chuckling, the world's worst poem scrawled into a notebook. But for every me, there has been a William S Burroughs, Robert Crumb or a 13th Floor Elevators.

from The Guardian: theblogmusic: Albert Hofmann: 1906-2008

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Although Mr [Shrikrishna] Kalamb poured his emotion into his poetry, written in Warhadi, a dialect of the Marathi language, his friends and family said he never spoke about his worries. "He would hold us in rapt attention and sometime in tears, when he would recite his poems," said Vitthal Patond, a childhood friend. "Financial problems played heavily on his mind. But he would never show it. He abhorred an exploitative system and rebelled against it."

Vasare (Calves)

from Independent: Suicide of farmer poet highlights the poverty trap in India

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Park [Kyung-ni] won numerous literary prizes, including the Woltan Literature Award, for "Land.''

She recently published three new poems in the April issue of the literary magazine, "Hyundae Munhak'' (Contemporary Literature), her first work in eight years.

The cultural center was established in 1999 on the spot of her home in Wonju, where she wrote from 1980 to 1997.

Kim Ji-ha, the renowned poet, is her son-in-law.

from The Korea Times: Park Kyung-ni Dies at 82

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In the confines of the newspaper office, Eric Layman, left, who died suddenly last week, was a sales representative, writer and proofreader at The CJN, where he had worked since 1974.

Outside, in what he probably considered the "real world," he was a poet, a creator of science fiction worlds, a thinker, a teacher and a songwriter.

from The Canadian Jewish News: CJN staffer really was a renaissance man

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According to him, Kishan Maharaj was one of the strictest gurus, a stern disciplinarian, serious about punctuality and a perfectionist.

Apart from tabla, the master percussionist had several passions, including poetry and art (he was an accomplished painter), said renowned kathak dancer Pandit Birju Maharaj.

from Bombay News: Tabla legend Kishan Maharaj dead

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[Jean Moon Mitchell] loved writing short stories and poetry, dancing, working with crafts, traveling, collecting elephants and beanie babies and she made wedding cakes for 35 years. She especially enjoyed spending time with her children and grandchildren.

from Marshall Independent: Jean Moon Mitchell

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[Bernice M. Nicholas] loved cooking, canning, gambling excursions, reading and writing poems.

Mrs. Nicholas was a retired LPN from Richmond Heights Hospital and Wickliffe Country Place, retiring in 1991.

from The News-Herald: Bernice M. Nicholas

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Along with his famous epic Dobhan, the late [Bharat Raj] Panta has about about 15 published books to his credit,. A postgraduate in Sanskrit and Nepali, Panta was a retired professor of Tribhuwan University.

from Kantipur Report: Poet Panta passes away

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[Jason] Shinder expanded the Writer's Voice into a national program in 1990; it is currently offered at more than two dozen Y.M.C.A.'s nationwide. Among the writers who have taught in the program over the years are the poets Adrienne Rich and Galway Kinnell, the novelists Michael Cunningham and E. L. Doctorow and the playwright Wendy Wasserstein.

Mr. Shinder was the author of two volumes of poetry, "Every Room We Ever Slept In" (Sheep Meadow Press, 1993) and "Among Women" (Graywolf Press, 2001).

from The New York Times: Jason Shinder, 52, Poet and Founder of Arts Program, Dies

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[Ishma] Stewart's brother, Mancill H. Stewart, described his younger sister as a woman with a lifelong love of the written word.

While other kids might read Dr. Seuss, Ishma Stewart was happier creating her own stories, her brother said. Ishma Stewart's adolescent poetry mused on the meaning of the poverty that she saw in Chicago's public housing.

As a student at Oak Park and River Forest High School, Stewart decided she wanted to be a journalist, hoping one day to write for Time magazine, her brother said.

from Chicago Sun-Times: Young woman killed in possible gang crossfire

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[Phil Stone] wanted to be a writer.

He began selling freelance articles to magazines and newspapers. He wrote a column for the Toronto Daily Star called Poems and Thoughts, a collection of light verse and everyday ironies. He sent jokes and observations to Walter Winchell, the legendary New York City newspaperman who invented the gossip column, and when Winchell printed some of them, he was encouraged.

from The Stone Report: A radio pioneer dies

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In a letter to the editor of The New York Times Book Review, [Jonathan] Williams once claimed that poetry readers could be counted "somewhere between the number of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers (several sighted in Cuba recently) and the number of California Condors." He observed too that "[t]he only poetry readers I have unearthed lately lived near Pippa Passes, Dwarf, and Monkey's Eyebrow in Kentucky; at Odd, West Virginia; and at Loafers Glory and Erect, North Carolina."

More recently Williams's poetry met a larger audience when Copper Canyon published his selected poems, Jubilant Thicket.

from Bookslut: Devotion to the Strange: Jonathan Williams and the Small Press

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