News at Eleven

The composition was written by 24-year-old Su Shansheng, who was struck by the image published on May 13 of a dead child's hand stretching out of quake ruins. He adapted a poem which he had written for his cancer-stricken girlfriend three years ago, and contributed it to earthquake victims.

Thanks to the rapid information freeway of cyber-space it received a huge amount of clicks and forwards in the virtual world, and quickly made its way into books and onto various charity vigils where numerous actors and hosts recited it.

from China.org.cn: Poetry aftershocks

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By calling the force that binds the two men "the wet bond of blood," Graves bravely acknowledges the softer aspects of his feelings for Sassoon. A friendship blossoming from mud suggests the conventional motif of the flower that springs from a grave, but it also allows the two males a metaphorical fertility. All of this rich imagery, however, is a prelude to the revelation of the true bonding force: Death. By staring Death in the face, Graves claims, the two men found beauty. From the dead men all around them, they drew breath. [--James Winn]

from BU Today: A Terrible Beauty: The Poetry of War
also BUniverse: The Poetry of War by James Anderson Winn

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When she [Sarah Manguso] has a line implanted directly into her chest so her plasma can be replaced more easily, she parses her reaction: "I had read Freud in school. He distinguishes fear, a state of worrying anticipation, . . . from fright, the momentary response of our mind to a danger that has caught us by surprise but is already over." For hours, she writes, "I lay there, weeping in fright. Not fear. Fright."

from The New York Times: Sick Days

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[Charles D.] Abbott's goal was to collect manuscripts and materials from major and minor poets of his day, figuring--with what looks now like remarkable foresight--that those then-cutting-edge poets would someday be much studied and discussed in scholarly circles. That appreciation in value would give the collection a great deal of importance, in Abbott's view.

"He thought it would take 100 years before people would appreciate the significance," Basinski said of Abbott's dream. "We're a little ahead of that. It's been about 75."

from The Buffalo News: UB's poetry treasures find global audience

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And it was exactly the things that [Allen] Tate the modernist objected to--the intimacy, the autobiographical detail, the conversational tone--that made "Life Studies" a triumph. In challenging the old canons of impersonality, [Robert] Lowell had shown the world that the most intimate parts of life--childhood misery, Oedipal longings, marital discord, mental illness--could be made the subjects for great poetry. Never before had a poet risked so much of himself on the page.

from The New York Sun: Reconsiderations: 'Life Studies' by Robert Lowell

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Fifteen years after he had first proposed it, [William Cullen] Bryant's dream of a park for the people was coming to fruition. In mid-April 1859, he visited the area with Frances, Julia, and his brother-in-law Egbert Fairchild, who was part of the engineering team constructing the Croton Reservoir within the park's boundaries. In a letter to Christiana Gibson, Bryant described a scene "in which thousands of men are at work blasting rocks, making roads, excavating, rearing embankments, planting trees--a sight that reminded me of Virgil's description of Dido and her people building Carthage."

from The Wall Street Journal: 'William Cullen Bryant: Author of America'

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The aim is more serious, however, as the lecturer allows his audience to listen in on a range of encounters, from parodies of exchanges between Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley and between Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale, to some self-deflating verbal sparring between writers, to everyday chats between ordinary citizens. Each time someone lets slip a piece of information, such as a place name that might conceivably be of use to the enemy, a loud gong sounds with great theatricality.

[Dylan] Thomas might seem an unlikely recruit to propaganda work.

from The Guardian: The reluctant propagandist

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The competition's organisers had intended to put Mr [Abdel Kareem] Maatouk, 48, head to head against the new champion to decide who should be the Prince of Poets 2008. But last week, they said the title would pass automatically to this year's winner, who will walk away with Dh1 million (US$272,000). But Mr Maatouk says: "I will always be Prince of Poets. I don't need to fight again."

from The National: Long live the Prince of Poets

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"But then I just got philosophical about it."

Philosophical?

Well, [Gregory] Crosby said, there's something fitting about a desperate character stealing his poem about desperate characters, just to sell it for scrap. Also, while he felt having his poem put on a plaque was his shot at "a bit of dime store immortality," he said having it stolen is a good reminder that nothing lasts in Las Vegas.

from Las Vegas Sun: Poetic justice doesn't get much more literal than this

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The key passage in dating the tale is highly ambiguous.

As the suitors are sitting down for their noontime meal, the goddess Athena "confounds their minds" so that they start laughing uncontrollably and see their food spattered with blood.

Then the seer Theoclymenus prophesies their death and passage to Hades, ending with the phrase: "The Sun has been obliterated from the sky, and an unlucky darkness invades the world."

from The Los Angeles Times: Researchers hit a homer with 'The Odyssey'

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In the Big Inning . . .

By Hyman Baras

While baseball is generally considered a "modern" sport, there are references in the Bible that could lead one to deduce that, in fact, there were Giants in those days as well:

from Smithsonian: Moses at the Bat

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Great Regulars

These sermons are what you and I would call mad. In a gentle, hypnotic, "listen to me carefully" kind of voice that seems to be designed to draw you in closer, making you collude in the insanity--a technique Hitler used in small groups--[Warren] Jeffs explains that women must be utterly subservient to their men, that black people were put on Earth as Satan's representatives, that the Beatles--"useless people nobody would hire"--corrupted the world by spreading black music, and so on. The children thoroughly absorbed his messages. Once outside, they pointed and laughed at blacks.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Times: Yearning for Zion: What next for the polygamists?

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The book is made up of a procession of these reformulations, which reach their reluctant conclusion in the penultimate piece, where we finally learn that Nina was killed in a car crash: "The phone rang. I picked it up and I knew from the grave voice/they'd found my number in your black notebook . . . I looked at you. They let me pull the sheet over your face."

The collection is sustained by constant storytelling; each poem in the book offers a miniature narrative.

from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: In a pane of moonlight

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[George Carlin's] books, particularly "Brain Droppings" and "When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?" are way more like Mark Twain than Jerry Seinfeld, and anyone who thinks Carlin got too bitter as he got old should check out Twain's "Letters from the Earth."

from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: George Carlin: Words fail us, not you

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[Philip] Whalen himself was often concerned with this very question of presentation and appreciation, and his thoughts about his own methods might provide, at least, one answer to the questions I just posed: "I enjoy cutting and revising what I've written, for in the midst of those processes I often discover images and visions and ideas which I hadn't been conscious of before, and these add thickness and depth and solidity to the final draft, not simply polish alone."

Zenshinji

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: David Biespiel's poetry column addresses variations in Philip Whalen's 'Zenshinji'

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By Jim Fox

May your sharp teeth

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'A Benediction for Violence' (in honor of T. Hannon)

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A Poem
Channeled from Charlie McCarthy--
(To Be Hummed in the Key of "N")
By Timothy Pettet

"If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."
traditional koan

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: In the key of . . . N?

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By Larry M. Schilb

grass the victor, timid

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Unity'

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So what was this situation like? Well, "It was a little like the night wind, which is soft,/And moves slowly, sighing like an old woman/In her kitchen late at night, moving pans/About, lighting a fire, making some food for the cat." That explains why a lonely, calcium deficient pond would grab a man and devour him.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Bly's 'The Cat in the Kitchen'

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How odd, in deed, that we promote ourselves as the creator, when, in fact, we are merely repeating what someone else has done. Our "labouring for invention bear[s] amiss," because our "beguil'd" brains are merely giving birth a second time to a "former child."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 59

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He hypothesizes that the creature of this "second coming" might be something that looks like the Egyptian sphinx and not be the return of Jesus Christ after all. The speaker finalizes that hypothesis by alluding to the birth of such a creature, likening the Blessed Virgin to a "rough beast," who will be "slouching toward Bethlehem," that is, after all where the First Coming was birthed.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: W. B. Yeats' 'Rough Beast'

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She did not accept the love when it was offered to her, and it escaped like smoke that rises and dissipates into thin air. He asks her to imagine his rarefied love, and therefore he himself, slowly walking in the mountains where he seems to vanish among the "stars."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Yeats' 'When You Are Old'

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He even admitted taking my morning class just to free up his afternoons for lab. And he hated having to memorize a poem per week. But near term's end, he was chilled to the core by a girl reciting a Keats poem. It had burrowed into him and, over time, kept making him feel alive.

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

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I Knew a Woman
by Theodore Roethke

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: I Knew a Woman

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Left Town
by Thomas McGrath

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Left Town

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Locomotion
by Philip Bryant

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Locomotion

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Losing WSUI
by Michael Dennis Browne

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Losing WSUI

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Love: Beginnings
by C. K. Williams

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Love: Beginnings

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Of The Terrible Doubt Of Appearances
by Walt Whitman

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Of The Terrible Doubt Of Appearances

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One Hundred White-sided Dolphins on a Summer Day
by Mary Oliver

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: One Hundred White-sided Dolphins on a Summer Day

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Propofol
by Karl Kirchwey

from Karl Kirchwey: The New Yorker: Propofol

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I remember being scared to death when, at about thirty years of age, I saw an x-ray of my skull. Seeing one's self as a skeleton, or receiving any kind of medical report, even when the news is good, can be unsettling. Suddenly, you're just another body, a clock waiting to stop. Here's a telling poem by Rick Campbell, who lives and teaches in Florida.

Heart

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 169

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Soft language was the substitution, say, of "bathroom tissue" for "toilet paper"; it was calling the dump the landfill and saying you were experiencing a "negative cash-flow situation" when what you really meant was that you were broke.

Mr. [George] Carlin had dozens of examples, and he could cite them for minutes on end, alternately rueful and disbelieving. But what came through, even as he shook his head and used one or more of the seven forbidden words to say how stupid we were, was his love of language itself and how various and evocative it was. Even the expletives--or perhaps especially the expletives.

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: A Master of Words, Including Some You Can't Use

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"During the holy month of April, Lhasa and the surrounding area would normally be bustling with people visiting monasteries and other religious sites and making offerings. This time, they are all being forced to stay home," the Lhasa source said.

Armed police in Lhasa

Tibetans had been threatened with the loss of their jobs and even pensions if they performed the usual offerings during the torch relay, he added.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Tight Curbs for Torch Relay

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When [Edwin] Arnold describes the "crackle of parched skin, and snap of joint," we are uncomfortably reminded of the Sunday joint. Man as meat.

As the smoke thins and the ashes sink down, we see what lies within--nothing except for the dazzling whiteness of bones. Is this all we are? Do we laugh? Do we scream? Do we stay to linger or run back into the walled citadel of our illusions?

For Prince Siddhartha, the answer is clear.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: The Antidote: Classic Poetry for Modern Life

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But in this case--in a stifling public building in Addison County, surrounded by anxious kids trying to wipe their records clean as they pored over my Xeroxed copies of the poetry--I felt that I had to work more simply, with the symbol itself: two roads, choices. "Life is about choices," said one of the teens. Indeed, I said. I pointed out that the speaker in the poem was deep in the woods and that it was always difficult to figure out the right road when confronted with a forking path. They acknowledged having had many such experiences, quite literally, in the Vermont woods.

"You are now in deep woods," I told them. They seemed confused. "If this isn't a deep wood, I don't know what is," I added. Many of them lit up.

from Jay Parini: The Washington Post: A Case of Poetic Justice. Literally.

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And now the actual poem. This week's Poem Worth Reading is by Mohja Kahf, whose stuff I recently accidentally came across in a back issue of The Paris Review. The brief bio goes: She's Syrian-American, and kicks the ass of any stereotype that might be affixed to her. This one's from her latest collection, E-Mails from Scheherazad. She also has a novel, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, which is probably worth checking out. Bladao.

Continued

advertisement

"Hijab Scene #7"

from Max Ross: The Rake: Cracking Spines: Poem Worth Reading" Words like Bombs

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In the sequence below, poet Amy Newman imagines a set of lost notes jotted by Charles Darwin for his wife Emma (née Wedgwood). The series of haiku-like observations and miniature poems mirrors the delicate, precise, interdependent constructions that Darwin himself detected in nature. We seem to witness a mind in the process of realising that humanity, no less than the orchid or the wasp, is part of this vast, intricate pattern.

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

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The most ridiculous requirement--to poeticise on state occasions--should certainly go. Why continue to parrot what was a sycophantic charade even in the days when royal patronage meant something to poets? It's a charmless anachronism, an activity that shouldn't even be negotiable. It should be punishable (a stint in the Tower stocks would be appropriate).

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: theblogbooks: We don't need a poet laureate

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Allen [Taylor] says, "While in Iraq, I had a little bit of extra free time on my hands during the summer months and I began to work on the World Class Poetry Toolbar. Also, during the time that I was deployed I managed to write quite a few poems that I am slowly compiling into a book. My wife and I now run an Internet marketing company and I manage the writing process for a team of writers who provide original online content for webmasters who need to build up their web sites."

from Belinda Subraman Presents: Allen Taylor, Iraq War Vet, Poet and Creator of World Class Poetry Toolbar

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[Patti] Smith, however, has not burned out but thrived. The key is that she is a poet first; she has always approached rock with a poet's eye. Her first collection, "Seventh Heaven," came out in 1972, and throughout her career she has relied on verse to ground her, even during the extended period of nearly total silence (1980-96) when she lived in Michigan and raised two kids.

from David L. Ulin: Los Angeles Times: 'Auguries of Innocence' by Patti Smith

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Ancient peoples did not personify the wind and the rain, the sea and the sky. Rather they experienced--as so-called primitive peoples still do--the world as a place inhabited by beings with personalities. We like to regard pre-Socratic philosophers like Thales and Heraclitus as proto-scientists, but anyone who has read the latter's Fragments knows that he has more in common with Lao-tse than with Galileo. Earth, air, fire and water, I suspect, were not thought of as one or another primary substance of being but rather as apt ultimate metaphors of being.

from Frank Wilson: Philadelphia Inquirer: The world stage . . .

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Editor's Note: John Brandi, author of more than 38 books of poetry and nonfiction, grew up in Southern California. A poet, essayist, haiku writer, exhibiting visual artist, and an ardent world traveler, he now lives in New Mexico.

Missing a Good Friend Gone Far
for Bari Long

from Good Times Weekly: Poetry Corner: Excerpts From Facing High Water

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I Believe Nothing . . . by Kathleen Raine

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: I Believe Nothing . . . by Kathleen Raine

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by Gabrielle Althen translated by Marilyn Hacker
Confiteor

from Guernica: Poetry: Two Poems

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By Jon Herbert Arkham
The slug never left

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines

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The Evening Is Tranquil, and Dawn Is a Thousand Miles Away
by Charles Wright

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Evening Is Tranquil, and Dawn Is a Thousand Miles Away

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Return of the Prodigal
by Charles Wright

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Return of the Prodigal

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Cosmic Page

by Jessica Greenbaum

Folded in half, the long paper documenting

from Nextbook: Cosmic Page

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By Lauren De Saint Martin

Cherry Hill High School West

First Day of Summer

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Lauren De Saint Martin]

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[by Carol Sandin Woodruff]

Wedding Reflections

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poetry: Wedding Reflections

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[Campbell McGrath] deploys rank after rank of exclamation points to convey his enthusiasms--"No cheese steaks today!" "French people are having a party!"--but this Whitmanesque exuberance often feels forced, even coercive. Similarly, McGrath's paint-store adjectives, which aim to be expressive, frequently end up smug and sentimental: "Surely this is one of life's little-noticed pleasures, showering in dappled sunshine beneath a cerulean sky after a month-long siege of hurricanes."

from Powells: Review-A-Day: Seven Notebooks: Poems

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With the Edinburgh International Film Festival being held in June for the first time in its history, here's a chance celebrate film in a poetic fashion. Try dipping into In Person (Bloodaxe Books Ltd, 2008, £12) – with accompanying DVDs, words can be brought to the stage of your living room. You'll be spoilt for choice, but this poem and performance are a good place to start.

One day, feeling hungry

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week: Gwyneth Lewis

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"Confinement"
By Tony Hoagland

from Slate: "Confinement" --By Tony Hoagland

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Poetic Obituaries

Some of her [Evelyn L. Baker's] favorite pastimes were playing canasta, solving crossword puzzles and reading mystery novels. She was a collector and treasured the time spent traveling to yard sales and rummage sales.

An accomplished poet, Mrs. Baker's works were published by The National Library of Poetry.

from The Malden Observer: Evelyn L. Baker

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Or consider "The American Businessman's Ten Steps to Product Development": "1. Can I cut corners in the design? 2. Can it be shoddily built? 3. Can I use cheap materials? 4. Will it create hazards for my workers? 5. Will it harm the environment? 6. Can I evade the safety laws? 7. Will children die from it? 8. Can I overprice it? 9. Can it be falsely advertised? 10. Will it force smaller competitors out of business?

"Excellent. Let's get busy."

from World Socialist Web Site: Social satirist George Carlin dead at 71

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[Elizabeth Walsh "Betty" Churchill] actively participated in the League of Women Voters, was editor of a Chelmsford Know-Your-Town guide, volunteered at the library, and worked to assure her daughters had the benefit of quality schooling. She often took on the technical aspects of activities, acting as navigator for autoclub T&D rallies, learning celestial navigation for sailing, and mastering Latin botanica for gardening. She was also a wordsmith who enjoyed entertaining with puns and poems, both silly and serious.

from York County Coast Star: Elizabeth Walsh Churchill

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[Marie Enschede] was a homemaker and enjoyed gardening and time spent at the ocean. She also painted with oils, wrote poetry, and played the piano and accordion. She was active in the Hillsboro Methodist Church and a member of Pythian Sisters Phoenicia Temple No. 10.

from The Hillsboro Argus: Marie Enschede, 97, service on Saturday

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During basic training, [Frank] Gasper sent his mother a poem he wrote titled "Warriors"--one reflection of just how deeply he felt about his new calling.

"He felt he was actually making a difference," said Breanna Gasper, who lives in Colorado Springs, Colo., near Ft. Carson. "On missions, he'd bring bags of candy to hand to little kids. It was a sense of accomplishment."

A specialist in maintaining field radios, Gasper kept in frequent touch with his family from Iraq.

from Los Angeles Times: Army Staff Sgt. Frank Gasper, 25, Merced; killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq

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[Jeanette (Yox) Helmbrecht] was a distinguished poet and member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and the Illinois State Poetry Society. She considered herself a social activist, and in the 1970's was the first woman to argue a case and win in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

from The Post-Journal: Jeanette (Yox) Helmbrecht

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Police investigating Rachel [Jarvis']s death found long-sleeved tops with blood stains at the wrists. They also found a diary with dark poetry and entries about eight earlier suicide attempts.

from The Times: Girl found hanged in bedroom had become obsessed with 'emo' culture

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After she retired in 1997, Mrs. [Nancy Metzgar] Lippa enjoyed traveling to Italy with her husband, decorating their home, gardening, and in recent years helping to care for her granddaughter.

She was a devoted theater patron, a lover of poetry and Italian culture, and an excellent cook, her husband said.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Nancy Metzgar Lippa: Theater assistant, 64

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[Peter Meller's] expertise in the field of small-scale Renaissance bronzes was sought after by collectors and dealers until the very end of his life.

Throughout his life, Peter continued to make drawings and prints, as well as paintings, photographs, and sculpture. All his work is characterized by lyricism, elegance, and wit. Much of it involves a playful--often ribald--adaptation of classical motifs.

from The Santa Barbara Independent: Peter Meller 1923-2008

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As a writer, he [Steve Mirabella] published a textbook on the Middle Ages and won prizes for fiction and poetry. As an educator, he became one of the most popular teachers at James River Day School and St. Anne's of Belfield. As a musician, he played blues guitar with enough flair to have made that his living.

Among other accomplishments, he taught a course on the Renaissance at the American Academy in Rome and was chairman of the Friends of the Sweet Briar Library board.

from Lynchburg News Advance: Cancer's toll: Two friends, too young, too soon

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Herman [L. Parsons] had many talents including writing children's stories for his grandson, and poetry. His poetry always included just the right words to honor an individual for the specific occasion. He could fix almost anything, including farm machinery and TVs

from The Morning Sun: Herman L. Parsons

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Ruby Peters starting writing poetry as a teenager. It was a practice she would continue throughout her life.

At her funeral Friday, mourners received copies of some of Ms. Peters' poems, including some of her earliest, a reminder of her imagination as well as her meticulousness.

from Fort Worth Star Telegram: The longtime teacher who wrote poetry was her church's historian

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[Jean C. Soule] eventually published seven children's books and six books of poetry for adults.

Mrs. Soule also taught at local writers conferences and conducted writing seminars in elementary schools, and from 1978 to 1999, taught correspondence courses for the Institute of Children's Literature.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Jean C. Soule, 89, children's author, educator

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News at Eleven

BBC Chairman Sir Michael Lyons drew attention to the risks taken by many journalists [such as Abdul Rohani and Nasteh Dahir Faraah] in the course of their work.

He said: "The implicit contract, whereby journalists place their lives at risk to help us understand the world and its events better, needs to be reaffirmed.

"At moments like this that sacrifice is properly valued and the loss is widely shared."

The sculpture, entitled Breathing, is by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa.

It was specially commissioned and selected as a result of an international competition for the BBC's public art scheme.

The BBC also commissioned a poem to complement the structure by ex-war correspondent and poet, James Fenton.

from BBC News: Killed reporters' memorial opens
also BBC News: Poem for murdered journalists
also BBC News: Reporters' memorial in full

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[Margaret Atwood]: Yes, but you have to factor in the role of the diva. The 19th-century diva had quite a lot of influence and they loved those dying scenes--they were very popular with the public and you got to show your stuff as a singer. Composers could be very interactive with their female singers, so there was some of: I want to die in the end; write that. Men often get blamed for killing off all these women, but, well, talk about collaboration.

from The Prague Post: First writer

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Samina Malik, 24, from Southall, west London, was convicted under section 58 of the Terrorism Act in November last year after she wrote poems celebrating the beheading of non-Muslims.

Today, she won an appeal against her conviction for collecting personal information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.

The lord chief justice, Lord Phillips, sitting in the court of appeal with Justice Goldring and Justice Plender, quashed the conviction after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) conceded it was unsafe.

from The Guardian: 'Lyrical terrorist' has conviction quashed

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Poetry in Egyptian society is not often played up as an important tool for affecting change, but [Iman] Bakry believes that real poetry has the ability to change hearts and minds, to "wake up" those who are too busy with their lives to take note of important changes around them. "Poetry is a talent from Allah," she explains, "and if a person can utilize it to the benefit of his community and country and translate feelings [into actions] then it as important as all other arts. Poetry is your language. It is the closest art to your hearts. It is the only art that was born before music, it is the first language on earth."

from Egypt Today: The Devil of Poetry

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The right words are little coughs from off-stage, promptings, triggers, intimations of something near and distant and--since poetry is an art of analogy, and thus an art of integration--finally connected to you, right to your skin. Jorie Graham lists the desired chain of links, the platonic ideal of oneness, and the necessary shortfall, when she writes, in "The Age of Reason": "For what we want/to take/inside of us, whole orchard,/color,/name, scent, symbol, raw/pale//blossoms, wet black/arms there is/no deep enough." A poem is an attempt to experience. It's a form of compensation for having just the one life.

from The Guardian: Words of mouth: Nick Laird on the physicality of language

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[William] McGonagall also fancied himself an actor although (perhaps understandably) his services were seldom in demand. On one occasion, he paid the Director of a theatre to be allowed to play the title role in Macbeth. McGonagall persuaded sufficient friends and acquaintances to attend the play as to avoid a financial disaster. But it was not an artistic triumph; at the end, when Macduff should kill Macbeth, McGonagall became convinced that the actor playing Macduff was deliberately trying to upstage him, and he refused to die.

from National Post: Ian Hunter on William Topaz McGonagall, the world's worst poet

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[Billy] Collins said he sees a good poem as an eye chart. "A big E that everyone can see. As you read down, you get to some part of illegibility. (The poem) makes no demands at first, making a few statements that are inarguably true--sitting there looking at a hibiscus--but by the middle and toward the end, we've drifted into much more mysterious and complex and tricky waters.

from UALR Public Radio: Poet Keeps It Simple--Sort Of

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The poems in this inestimable book are in no way all homages; still less are they imitations or pastiches. But they are all indebted in some way to Thomas. Where appropriate, the relevant Thomas poem is printed alongside its modern descendant. So Heaney's "Edward Thomas on the Lagans Road" appears next to "As the team's head-brass . . .", off which it plays.

from The Guardian: A pure thrush word

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In her keynote address to the symposium, Marjorie Perloff, noted American critique of avant-garde strains of poetry such as language poetry, argued in favor of these new non-referential, material forms of poetry. All these strains of poetry, Perloff said, share a concomitant commitment to innovative technology, a questioning of the politics of mark making, the pluralizing of language and the problematizing of the self as a vehicle of expression. As such, poems such as "Lighght" become more important--they don't just "express" an idea but actually embody it, thus expanding the horizons of poetry and making language palpable.

from The Daily Utah Chronicle: The 'lighght' of conceptual poetry
also The University of Arizona Poetry Center: Conceptual Poetry and Its Others

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"Align" is the actual title of the poem [Colleen] Michaels was commissioned to create for the Trustees, and its spray-painted stanzas are stencilled onto the risers on the two boardwalks to the beach, on the cedar shingles over the snack bar and bathhouses, and on the face of the arbor between them.

The project is the brainchild of Beverly resident Jim Younger, director of structural resources for the Trustees.

Younger attended a recent exhibit at Montserrat College of Art that used art to raise awareness about ecological sustainability.

from The Salem News: Poem on the Boardwalks Makes a New Kind of Beach Read

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While Nolan [Eskeets] and his teammates do not hail from the gritty urban surroundings that are often a breeding ground for slam poetry, where poets are judged on both performance and writing, their team is drawing national attention for its decidedly American Indian take on an art form that has grown increasingly popular with young people over the last decade.

from The New York Times: Young American Indians Find Their Voice in Poetry
also The New York Times: Three Poems

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Great Regulars

Four years and many real books later, the R&J Book Club accounts for 26% of the sales of the top 100 books in the UK, and Amanda Ross, the club's creator and book selector, is the most powerful player in British publishing. Now, though, the club faces a crisis.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Sunday Times: How the Richard & Judy Book Club has shaken publishing

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You can hear in the exquisite last lines all the anguish and all the love combined. He's using the word "offices" in the religious sense, sacred responsibilities such as that of a vicar or priest. And they are "austere"--it's a plain and hard life here. Yet the father has done what he could.

[by Robert Hayden]

Those Winter Sundays

from Fleda Brown: Traverse City Record-Eagle: On Poetry: Non-Hallmark words for father

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Prison Inmate: Where you said, "Forget I said I'll leave you never"?

Richard Shelton: What would the normal word order be?

Prison Inmate: "I'll never leave you."

Richard Shelton: OK, "I'll never leave you." That would be the normal word order. Why did he invert it?

Prison Inmate: So it would rhyme.

from Jeffrey Brown: PBS: Newshour: Poetry Program Gives Prisoners Unexpected Voice

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By John Mark Eberhart

Nothing left now but 90-degree angles:

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Ask the Ocean, Ask the Rocks, Ask the Dead'

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By John Mark Eberhart

based on Charles Dickens' short story, "The Signal-Man"

He's sitting there, one moonlight night,

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Signaling'

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James Fenton's poem

We spoke, we chose to speak of war and strife--

from James Fenton: BBC News Broadcasting House: Memorial

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While many people believe that poetry and science are polar opposites, the message of the Gita, when accurately translated and interpreted as it is here by Paramahansa Yogananda, demonstrates that the two fields merge and create the way to God-realization: "the story [of the Bhagavad Gita] is the story of the soul's journey back to God." And according to all great spiritual leaders, that is "a journey each one must make."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: A Sacred Epic

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"I'm planning to read poetry and prose Friday, a little bit of both," [Mark] Doty said last week. After emerging as a prize-winning poet in the 1990s, he turned to prose because "I wanted a broader canvas for my writing," he explained.

"Poems can tend to focus on the specific, but I found that the memoir gives me little breathing space to tell stories, especially at that time when poems aren't coming."

from Bob Hoover: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Author Doty indulges passion for poetry, prose

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To end, I offer two ways of considering poetry: my own and one by Billy Collins, in which he describes the over-zealous analysis of a poem, which might finish it off altogether.

About a poem by Frieda Hughes

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: The do's and don'ts of poetry

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Memoirist, poet and Book World contributor Mary Karr was online Tuesday, June 17 to discuss her Poet's Choice column, her best-selling 1995 memoir The Liars' Club, and the joys, seductions and struggles of the writing life.

Karr is the Jesse Truesdale Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University. She is the author of two memoirs, The Liars' Club and Cherry, and four volumes of poetry, most recently Sinners Welcome. She joined Book World as Poet's Choice columnist in March 2008.

A blessing from My Sixteen Years Son

from Mary Karr: The Washington Post: Book World: Poet's Choice: Poetry, Writing and 'The Liars' Club'

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Nearly 30 years after my daddy's death, I can still miss him with throat-clenching force. As a child, I shadowed him through pool halls, but--with time and alcohol--he eventually dwindled into a form that fit nowhere except on a barstool at the Veterans' Club. Maybe vets of that great generation created a distance inside them that distanced their kids, a sadness that's made for some great poems.

Edward Hirsch (who once squired this column into print) portrays a father who sold containers while himself containing mysteries.

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

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The Barefoot Boy
by John Greenleaf Whittier

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Barefoot Boy by John Greenleaf Whittier

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Chapter: Penelope
by James Joyce

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Chapter: Penelope by James Joyce

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The Death Of Queen Jane
by Anonymous

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Death Of Queen Jane by Anonymous

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A Drinking Song
by William Butler Yeats

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
by William Butler Yeats

Never give all the heart
by William Butler Yeats

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: A Drinking Song by William Butler Yeats

---

The Old Man and the Motorcycle
by Liam Rector

Acrobat's Song
by Robert Lax

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Old Man and the Motorcycle by Liam Rector

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Rye Whisky
by Anonymous

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Rye Whisky by Anonymous

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Song
by Edwin Denby

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Song by Edwin Denby

---

So often, reading a poem can in itself feel like a thing overheard. Here, Mary-Sherman Willis of Virginia describes the feeling of being stilled by conversation, in this case barely audible and nearly indecipherable.

The Laughter of Women

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 168

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If you're going to write literal nature poetry in a serious way then you need to be aware of the long and honorable tradition of poems that celebrate the Earth's transcendental beauty and look back to a time of innocence. With that beauty now being threatened by pollution and climate change, there is an urgent need for nature poetry that inspires people to alter their behavior in order to protect the environment and prevent the meltdown of the planet.

An excellent model for poetry that examines our relationship to nature can be found in the work of contemporary poet Gary Snyder, a Zen Buddhist and former member of the San Francisco beat movement.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Nature poetry requires understanding of its tradition

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I'm like a person of the book. My father is the person who carried the boxes with the books. And so there is difference there in terms of a man who really used his hands to make a living and me being free to use my mind. You have a father sacrificing so that their son or daughter becomes a professional person. And so when you look at their hands, there is a difference. I have the paper cuts.

from E. Ethelbert Miller: NPR: Poet E. Ethelbert Miller on Fatherhood

---

It reminds us, too, that [Ben] Jonson himself had been a child who had lost a father. The bitter stoicism of the last couplet is conclusive testimony to his pain. When he describes the child of his "right hand" (a reference to the original meaning of the name, Benjamin) as his "best piece of poetry" (presumably, Jonson wrote with his right hand) we have no reason to find the moment bathetic, or too skilfully wrought for sincerity. And what greater tribute could a father-er of poems and poetic drama pay his human child?


XXII On My First Daughter

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

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Then, next thing you know, "a guy in a leather bar . . . held my right hand and stared down/into the contradictory fretwork . . . translating the lines in my palm, and he said . . . Sometimes you just have to make/a little faith."

Just the way those locusts "proceed as always," so "that fountaining canvas . . . spoke its green." Art, nature and human encounter turn out to be in the same key after all.

This easy transition from one thing to another that doesn't seem quite to fit but, in the end, proves to fit perfectly is characteristic of Doty's urbane and civilized verse.

from Frank Wilson: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Book Review: 'Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems' by Mark Doty

---

Like newspapers, publishers seem to think that what readers want is the endless re-packaging of what they've already had. No, they want something genuinely, perhaps along those lines, or something altogether different, or . . . who knows--but that's what they're supposed to find out, and that takes looking in places different from the ones you always look at, finding someone besides "the usual suspects." And of course that means taking some risks and maybe even backing a dark horse from time to time. [--Frank Wilson]

from Frank Wilson: Roses & Thorns: Frank Wilson, Retired Inquirer Book Editor: Interview by Nannette Croce

---

by Christian Wiman

From a Window

from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: From a Window

---

by Chelsea Rathburn

A Raft of Grief

from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: A Raft of Grief

---

Present by Wendy Cope

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Present by Wendy Cope

---

'The Last Shot' poem
By Maryfrances Wagner

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'The Last Shot' poem

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A Frame
by J. D. McClatchy

from The New Yorker: Poetry: A Frame

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Slow Drag Blues
by Kevin Young

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Slow Drag Blues

---

By Cami Bolling

The Girl

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Cami Bolling]

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By Kelsey Sawyer

Father's Day Poem for my Dad, Buzz

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Kelsey Sawyer]

---

By Casey Stewart

Dad

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Casey Stewart]

---

[by Ron Tomanio]
Bits and Pieces

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poetry: Bits and Pieces

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Nowhere does nature reflect [Kazim] Ali's query as to the nature of human existence more than the human body that dies. In "A Century in the Garden" he remarks "what is the difference between entity and eternity." The nature of the self is an inverse riddle to that of God: "I am brief and a river," he writes, "somehow space and far away."

If the question of God is only one riddle of this book, it is a mirror to the riddle of spiritual hunger.

from Powells: Review-A-Day: The Fortieth Day (American Poets Continuum)

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"Watch"
By Eamon Grennan

from Slate: "Watch" --By Eamon Grennan

---

by Emmanuel Moses, Translated by Marilyn Hacker, June 12, 2008 [. . .]

Alive

from Zeek: Poems: "Alive" plus Mr. Nobody

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Poetic Obituaries

In the past seven decades during which he [Kalakeerthi Pandit Wimal Abhayasundara] had become a well-known literary figure in Sri Lanka, he had published about one hundred books, collections of poems, short stories and novels. Some of his books on poetry and prose have been translated into English, Yugoslavian, Chinese and Malay.

Wimal Abhayasundara started his career as a journalist and worked as a sub-editor on both daily and weekly newspapers.

from The Sunday Times Sri Lanka: A simple man with many a talent

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The high-altitude winds measured by [Reid] Bryson and [William] Plumley later came to be known as the jet stream.

At Wisconsin, Bryson, who was also a published poet and a weaver, indulged his many scholarly interests and in doing so forged a model of interdisciplinary research that was decades ahead of a trend now firmly established in higher education.

"Now, interdisciplinary studies is almost like a mantra," explains Jonathan Martin, the current chair of the department Bryson founded.

from University of Wisconsin--Madison News: Pioneer of climatology dies at 88

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Paying tributes to [Kirti] Chaudhari who died late last night, Achala Sharma, Head of the BBC Hindi Service here told PTI "Kirti Chaudhary''s contribution to modern Hindi poetry is unique." "It was her refreshing style that led one of the stalwarts of modern Hindi literature Sachchidananda Vatsyayan Agyeya to include her poems in the much talked-about 'Teesra Saptak' published in 1960." She was the only woman among the seven selected poets in Agyeya's volume.

from MyNews: Prominent Hindi poetess Kirti Chaudhari passes away in London

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Educator and poet James R. Iorio, 87, of Park Ridge died June 3 in Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, Park Ridge.

He had been named the Poet Laureate of Park Ridge a number of years ago

from Park Ridge Herald-Advocate: Park Ridge Poet Laureate, educator James Iorio dies

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[Natalie Garland Larson] was a member of Living Lord Lutheran Church, the Duxbury Art Association and the Duxbury Yacht Club. She recently enjoyed taking classes at Florida Atlantic University. She loved music and playing her organ, art, poetry, crossword puzzles, and decorating her homes by the sea.

from Duxbury Clipper: Natalie Garland Larson, 82, DYC member

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"Once she had her son everything in her life revolved around him," said [Dana] Lyons' mom, Bonnie Norman.

Lyons was fond of beaches, especially Pine Island, and writing poetry. Originally from Virginia, Lyons arrived in Spring Hill four years ago.

from Hernando Today: 20-Year-Old Mother Killed In Crash

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[Pala Narayanan Nair] shot into fame with his most celebrated work 'Keralam Valarunnu', penned in 1953 in ten volumes, absorbing the cultural vibrancy, spirit and hope of the masses who were then on the threshold of imbibing the concept of a unified state.

The masterpiece earned him the 'Mahakavi' title. He penned more than 5,000 poems, noted for their mellifluous flow and richness of the language, which have been compiled in about 45 collections.

from Newindpress.com: Mahakavi Pala dead

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[Michael Norton] retired months later, listening to jazz and writing poetry until the end.

He penned several books, including "And When the Weeds Began to Grow," and his latest, "Eschatology," which was published this year. Another book, written in Spanish, was titled, "A quien pueda interesar" or "To Whom It May Concern."

He often said two books that captured Haiti best were "Alice in Wonderland" and "Exodus."

from Danville News: Former AP Haiti correspondent Michael Norton dies

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At U of T, he [James Reaney] was strongly influenced by Northrop Frye and Fearful Symmetry, his book on the poetry of William Blake, which was published in 1947. Even as an undergraduate, he was already writing poetry and short stories. The first brought him acclaim, the second notoriety. He was only 23 when he won the Governor-General's Award in 1949 for his first collection of poems, The Red Heart. A collage in which a young man tries to reconcile his childhood memories with the harsh and often incomprehensible world of experience, the volume contains 42 poems, written during his university days, including The School Globe, in which the poet pictures himself holding the "wrecked blue cardboard pumpkin" with its lines of latitude and longitude, and laments the loss of the "fair fields and lands" of his childhood. Here is how it ends: "If I raise my hand/No tall teacher will demand/What I want./But if someone in authority/Were here, I'd say/Give me this old world back/Whose husk I clasp/And I'll give you in exchange/The great sad real one/That's filled/Not with a child's remembered and pleasant skies/But with blood, pus, death, stepmothers, and lies./"

from The Globe and Mail: Author was 'one of the finest writers Canada has produced'

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According to Tassal, [Abdul Samad] Rohani chose his own last name when he was a student in a madrassa, or religious school, under the Taleban. "Rohani" means "spiritual".

He became a journalist after the Taleban regime fell in late 2001 and a transitional government was put in place.

A budding poet, he was also a founder and active member of the Bost Cultural Society, a group that brought together Helmand's literary elite.

Rohani has left two widows. As Tassal put it, Rohani married once out of duty and once out of love. Under Afghan law and by Muslim tradition, a man can have up to four wives.

from Institute for War & Peace Reporting: Murdered Reporter Leaves Lasting Legacy

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Herman Wrede told stories.

An English purist, a career journalist, an admirer of good literature and to many, a dear friend, the 74-year-old Wrede died at his Hollister home last week.

To peers, he was dry in wit, kind, generous, at times stubborn, always a gentleman and forever open for conversation. As a writer, he was a newsman by trade, a poet at heart and a grammarian before anything.

from Hollister Free Lance: Herman Wrede: A newsman, a poet, a friend

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News at Eleven

[Josephine Jacobsen] started writing poetry as a child (the family moved to Baltimore when she was a preteen) and kept at it during odd hours as she and her husband, Eric Jacobsen, raised a son. She published four books to little notice between 1940 and 1966, and first came to nationwide attention in 1971, when the Library of Congress tapped her for its top literary honor at 63.

from The Baltimore Sun: A long flowering

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Stroller by Yang Lian, translated by Bill Herbert

Whether the golden fish sing about the rise and fall of the city or not

from The Times: Stroller by Yang Lian, translated by Bill Herbert
also The Times: The Yellow Mountain poetry festival unites Chinese poets with the English language

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"Lighght" is the full text of [Aram] Saroyan's poem of the same name, but it is perhaps better read without preface, uncapped and untitled, surrounded only by the whiteness to which it alludes:

lighght

from Forward: In Brief: Poetry

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[Philip] Lamantia anticipated by decades the elegant involutions and torqued interiority made familiar to us by other poets influenced by Surrealism such as Paul Celan and John Ashbery. He did so not through some eerie prescience, but as the outcome of a stylistic and spiritual crisis about which not much has been known until recently. Garret Caples's invaluable introduction touches on the pained circumstances which gave rise to the plaintive, prayerful disposition for the unknown that makes Tau Lamantia's most moving collection

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: New Verses from Long Ago

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In terms of technique, the poetry is formidable, and [Mick] Imlah's command of stanzaic verse, blank verse, short lines and even the hexameter (that rarest of modern beasts) is complete, making the collection a storehouse of masterfully executed forms. Rhymes, too, are often some of the volume's funniest moments (rhyme's humour is inherently wicked, but Imlah adds to the repertoire "widower" and "rid of her", as well as "pay me/To do a poetry reading with Kathleen Jamie").

from The Guardian: Brave hearts

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"Poetry is the deepest language we've got . . . I encourage you all to get busy and start writing," said [Robin Blaser] the author of "The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser" (University of California Press).

[John] Ashbery, who won for "Notes From the Air: Selected Later Poems" (HarperCollins Publishers/Ecco), told a packed dining room in the historic Distillery District, "I've never experienced anything like this before."

from The Canadian Press: Prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize goes to Blaser and Ashbery

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Another frontrunner, Lavinia Greenlaw, would not comment on whether she would take the post. "I don't know, I haven't been offered it," she said. But Greenlaw added that she was saddened by Cope's rejection of the role. "I think it's a real shame that Wendy doesn't want it, as I think she'd be really good at it," she said.

from The Independent: Female contenders rule out 'archaic' post of Poet Laureate

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And if [William] Stafford was an "exile," it was by free choice and honorable conviction. In any case, forced dabbling in soil conservation, even under rough conditions, doesn't sound unduly oppressive, especially when compared with conditions at Iwo Jima or the beaches of Normandy.

Still worse is Mr. Marchant's dishonest tendency to equate Allied and Nazi intentions in the war.

from The New York Sun: William Stafford's Poetry of False Witness

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A North-East poet tried to destroy some of his early work to save his professional career, an Aberdeen University academic has claimed.

Alford-born Charles Murray (1864-1941) was at one time the most popular poet in the country and a key figure in the development of Scottish poetry.

from The Press and Journal: Why poet tried to destroy his early work

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4
There is on earth a warrior wonderfully engendered:
between two dumb creatures it is drawn into brightness

from The Times: Old English riddles
also The Times: Classics--Old English Poems and Riddles and The First Poems in English

---

But publishers' plans to introduce age ranging guidance onto children's books have met with fierce opposition from authors including Philip Pullman, Anne Fine and Michael Rosen, following a report of the growing protest last week on guardian.co.uk.

In a letter to the Bookseller magazine, to be published this Friday, over 80 authors and illustrators have described the plans as "ill-conceived, damaging to the interests of young readers."

from The Guardian: Age banding 'ill-conceived and damaging', say children's authors

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Great Regulars

Bad typing--the first sign that something was wrong--remains a problem [for Terry Pratchett]. His productivity is affected. He's easing down from two to one book a year. The danger is that the embuggerance will be seen in everything he writes. Although he's probably had Alzheimer's for three years, however, his last book, Making Money, was well up to scratch; and Rob says his next, Nation, due in the autumn, is first-rate.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Sunday Times: Terry Pratchett, Lord of Discworld, fights to save his powers

---

By Larry M. Schilb

river dry

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Belief'

---

By Ginny Lowe Connors

The sun will fall

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Through'

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Whatever the muse does must be accepted, because its force is soul force, and the mere human cannot understand or control such force or even begin to comprehend its relationship to time. Only the muse can "privilege [her] time/To what [she] will."

So while the speaker can complain, he can also create his poems based on the supposed frustrating schedule of the creative force, and he chides the muse with exaggerated blame, even referring to it as a "crime."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 58

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Thoreau's "Prayer" relies chiefly on literal language. He uses no imagery or metaphor. Perhaps one could glean a hint at a metaphor in the line, "in my action I may soar as high"--one infers a bird here, but only for a brief moment. (Such inadequacies testify to the "poetaster" that he claimed to be.)

He does reply on synecdoche in phrases such as "my weak hand," in which "hand" refers to his whole physical being, and "my relenting lines," in which "lines" represent the whole poem.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Thoreau's 'Prayer'

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When you treat your body, you say "This is my body." When you refer to your mind, you say "This is my mind." So the self--in our natural thinking--the self appears as though it is what possesses the body and the mind, and that the body and the mind as the objects to be possessd by this self.

And in the earlier times, there used to be people who could record their past lives. And then upon recording their past lives . . . so that self, which existed in the previously lives, it is totally disconnected with the part of this life, the present life, the present mind. And yet, this self which [tracks?] by grades from the previous lives to the present life from which this evolved the people, they inferred or they concluded the existence of a self which is distinct from the body and the mind.

from Tenzin Gyatso: The Office of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama: Introductory Teaching on Buddhism for Tibetan Students

---

As [Neil] Astley says, there is a difference between "dumbing down" and "reaching new readers". New readers are neither dumb nor less important because they are only encouraged to pick up a poetry anthology when it is endorsed by Mia Farrow, Philip Pullman or Meryl Streep. Or for that matter, because they are only encouraged to attend a Josephine Hart poetry event when Dominic West is reading Robert Frost and Robert Lowell. Everyone has to begin with a first step in the right direction.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Frieda Hughes enjoys the intimacy of watching poets on film

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"The moment I met Laszlo on a garden path, we fell in love. He gave me a hug and he smelled right; he smelled clean. We moved in after our first date without knowing each ­others' surnames. This painting is about that explosion, like being in a bubble of light"

from Frieda Hughes: The Guardian: Pieces of me

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William Matthews beat brain cancer only to keel over from heart failure in 1997, the day after his 55th birthday. A Yale-educated WASP, Matthews mocked the tight-lipped stoicism that was his birthright, while elevating it into high style.

His poem "Wasps" begins with his father sprinting the golf course, "trailing a loud plume/of wasps, slapping himself, jockey and horse." But of course, the game goes on. . . .

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

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Baseball as Etiquette
by Josephine Jacobsen

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Baseball as Etiquette

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City of Tonawanda Softball Championship
by Sarah Freligh

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: City of Tonawanda Softball Championship

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Farmhouses, Iowa
by Baron Wormser

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Farmhouses, Iowa

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First Marriage
by Liam Rector

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: First Marriage

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High Flight (An Airman's Ecstasy)
by John Gillespie Magee Jr.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: High Flight (An Airman's Ecstasy)

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Religious Consolation
by John Updike

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Religious Consolation

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Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
by Dan Albergotti

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale

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Among young people, tattoos are all the rage and, someday, dermatologists will grow rich as kings removing them from a lot of middle-aged people who have grown embarrassed by their colorful skins. I really like this poem by Sharmila Voorakkara of Ohio.

For the Tattooed Man

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 167

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Michele L. Simms Burton: [Richard] Wright seems to have developed an interest in Africa on his arrival in New York City and meeting Garveyites; however, his interest burgeoned in 1946 when he met George Padmore, a black student leader and activist in the Communist Party. He also meets the South African writer Peter Abrahams and facilitates the publication of his book The Path of Thunder (1947). Wright's interest in Africa is finally realized when Padmore helps him plan a six-week trip to the Gold Coast (Ghana) in 1953.

from E. Ethelbert Miller: Foreign Policy in Focus: Fiesta!: Richard Wright on Black Power

---

The off rhyme of "Christ" and "mist" is telling--and disturbing. The knights cry out to heaven but are surrounded by degradation. They see only darkness. Why is there no answer? Is belief an illusion? Have the knights sinned? Is King Arthur no better than Sir Modred?

This is the kind of mist we live with today--the mist of moral equivalence.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: An extract from "The Idylls of the King" by Tennyson

---

Jody Gilley's agreement to co-operate with [Kathryn] Harrison's research is based on Harrison's experience (recounted in her earlier book "The Kiss") of prolonged incestuous violation by her father: knowledge, in other words, of what it is to salvage one's soul after a massively destructive wound.

The narrative of survival may have qualities that alienate and bewilder other people:

"People who cross the threshold between the known world and that place where the impossible does happen discover the problem of how to convey their experience. Some of us don't talk about murders or intergenerational sex within our families. We find words inadequate, or we lose them entirely. Those of us who insist on speaking what's often called unspeakable discover there's no tone reserved for unnatural disasters, and so we don't use any. We're flat-affect; we report just the facts; this alienates our audience."

from Robert Pinsky: The New York Times: Speaking the Unspeakable

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And now the actual poem. Or actually, this week it's not an actual poem. Rather, this is a segment from the beginning of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, whose language and progression I found to be somewhat poetic. Originally it was in paragraph form, but it broke down fairly easily into stanzas.

from Max Ross: The Rake: Cracking Spines: Poem Worth Reading: Not actually an actual poem, per se

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The castle is an archetypal image that, in this narrative, serves to settle the poet's turmoil: it is not the "dark tower" of romantic quest or challenge but a solid presence, a marker of a boundary safely crossed, more trustworthy than the later pink glow of "sunlight from no sure source."

[by Roy Fisher]

The Running Changes

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

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I don't know if it's harder to publish today than at any other time. Thanks in part to the Internet, there's an abundance of places--journals, magazines and, if I may say so, even a newspaper here and there--that welcomes poetry. Books may be another matter, though, in part due to the contest system, which has become a dominating force.

from B.T. Shaw: The Oregonian: Poetry can be true without being True

---

Equally masterful at poetry, fiction, and the essay, Kelly Cherry has published eleven works of poetry, eight of fiction, five of nonfiction, and two dramatic translations. Her collection Hazard and Prospect: New and Selected Poems was published by Louisiana State University Press in 2007.

from Belinda Subraman Presents: Kelly Cherry: Poet and Author

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Next consider how the lines fit with one another. That first line--"I enjoy an accumulating"--can be taken as a statement all by itself. The "faith in weak forces" of the second line can be taken to be an example of what it takes to "enjoy accumulating," but can also be read as a continuation of the first line, so that what we are talking about is "an accumulating faith," specifically "in weak forces. " Ignoring for a moment what is said between the dashes, what one has is "an accumulating faith in weak forces . . . in what/starts to drift. "

from Frank Wilson: Books, Inq.: The Epilogue: Let's start the day . . .

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As A Miner
by Ann Stephenson

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: As A Miner

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The Fallout
by Ann Stephenson

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: The Fallout

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How Could It Be
by Ann Stephenson

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: How Could It Be

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Dead Black Men
by Paul Killebrew

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: Dead Black Men

---

For Beth Ward
by Paul Killebrew

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: For Beth Ward

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Sonnet by Billy Collins

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Sonnet by Billy Collins

---

By Tiffany Bermudez

Buena High School

Poetry . . . Gift or Curse?

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Tiffany Bermudez]

---

By Elana Resnick

Cherry Hill High School West

Standing at the Grand Canyon

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by ]

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[by Geri Woodworth]
Waiting

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Waiting

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A Festschrift for Duncan Glen at Seventy-Five edited by Tom Hubbard and Philip Pacey (The Craigarter Press, 2008, £12) is a tribute to Duncan Glen, powerhouse of Scottish poetry, on his 75th birthday. Gerry Cambridge's poem remembers MacDiarmid's cottage, and a rewarding relationship, both personally and professionally.

Snawdrops

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week: Gerry Cambridge

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"Blue"
By Peter Balakian

from Slate: "Blue" --By Peter Balakian

---

by Peter Cole
Palestine: A Sestina

from Zeek: Poems: "Palestine, A Sestina" plus others

---

Poetic Obituaries

"In fact, what can accurately be said of Paula Gunn Allen--that her work as a poet and novelist helped create basic texts in Native American literature and that her work as critic and anthologist has been instrumental in promoting the study and understanding of that literature--cannot be said of many other academics in any field, let alone in American literature."

Allen published six volumes of poetry, including "Life Is a Fatal Disease: Collected Poems 1962–1995" (1997) and "Skins and Bones" (1988). Her latest book of poetry, "America the Beautiful" is forthcoming from West End Press.

from UCLA Newsroom: Obituary: Paula Gunn Allen, 68, noted English, American Indian studies scholar

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The Rom singer, composer, poet and actor Saban Bajramovic died on Sunday in a hospital in the city of Nis, Croatia.

A year ago, Bajramovic suffered from a heart attack, and since then he has mainly been hospitalized. It was said that he was in financial problems, and that the state recently gave him a one-off welfare payment.

from Javno: Music Legend Saban Bajramovic Dies

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In a short autobiography at Catholic Authors, [Ann Ball] the grandmother of eight wrote that curiosity about the saints led her into the Church and her career as a Catholic writer. She was especially interested in the life of Blessed Miguel Pro, the Jesuit priest and Mexican martyr.

"I find it horrifying that so few Americans realize the persecutions of the church that were right next door less than a lifetime ago. I find it equally sad that so few of our American Hispanic Catholics don't know about their own heroes," she wrote.

from Catholic News Agency: Well-loved Catholic author Ann Ball passes away

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As detectives try to solve her killing, [Mildred] Beaubrun's family is setting up a memorial fund to cover funeral and burial expenses for the young woman who worked as a Winn-Dixie cashier, wrote poetry and dreamed of becoming a nurse.

from Orlando Sentinel: Teen shot after rebuffing advances dies

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The writer, poet and historian [Angus Calder] wrote works covering a wide range of fields, including modern African history.

He had a keen interest in poetry, and as well as writing books on poets such as Byron and Eliot, he worked as an editor of the prose of Hugh MacDiarmid.

An award-winning poet himself, with four collections to his name, his poetry won the 1967 Eric Gregory Award and the 1970 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.

In 1984, he helped to set up the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh and served as its first convener.

from Edinburgh Evening News: Tributes to well versed poetry library founder

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[Joe Frisino] was a writer all his life, said his daughter, Denise Frisino. He wrote poems on their lunch bags and columns about school trips and family outings, she said. He was writing a poem on the day he died.

"My father was such a reporter, he always had a pen in his hand. He was cremated with a pen in his pocket."

from Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Joe Frisino, 1919-2008: Journalist was a calm presence in P-I newsroom

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[Jowe Gibbs' daughter Josie] Mills, of Basildon, Essex, said: 'I'm very cross that the nurse never checked it at the bedside. I'm really hurt about that.'

'My father was very, very active. He loved dancing and gardening as well as enjoying painting, writing poetry, and going on day trips.'

from Evening Standard: War hero, 90, in hospital for routine knee operation died after nurse gave him WRONG drug

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When I used too many commas, Mr. [Tommy] Harper would interrupt the class to say, "Mr. Patterson, commas are like sex. When in doubt . . . leave it out."

We read dozens of books, explicated poetry, memorized vocabulary words, and we would write and write and write. Every time I write the phrase "to be sure" or hear the words "laconic," "obsequious" or "bombastic," or read a Robert Frost poem, I think of Mr. Harper.

from The Arizona Daily Star: English teacher made a profound difference

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Barbara [E. Johnson] was very fond of sewing and enjoyed creative writing in her short stories and poetry. Barbara was a devoted mother and took great care of her parents and her sister, Janet, in their years of need.

from Appleton Post-Crescent: Johnson, Barbara E. Nee: Ozburn

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On returning to San Francisco, he [Alton Kelley] became a founding member of the Family Dog, a loose confederation of artists, poets, musicians and other free spirits who put on the some of the earliest psychedelic dance concerts, first at the Longshoremen's Hall and later at the Avalon Ballroom.

from International Herald Tribune: Alton Kelley, poster designer for 60s counterculture, is dead

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A retired realtor, Patricia [Leonard] was an artist, photographer, poet, avid gardener, and a dear, loving friend to all who knew her. She was an active member of the River Tree Center for the Arts and the Art Guild of the Kennebunks.

from York Coast County Star: M. Patricia (Geherty) Leonard

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[Eugenio] Montejo's poetry is known for its rich texture and was published in numerous books in Spanish.

His work also reached a wider audience thanks to the 2003 film "21 Grams" by Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.

In one scene, Sean Penn's character quoted a line from a 1988 poem by Montejo: "The earth turned to bring us closer. It turned on itself and in us, until it finally brought us together in this dream."

from The Miami Herald: Venezuelan poet Eugenio Montejo dies

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George Quinn, who was killed Friday night just feet from his home along Route 97, was remembered Monday as a kind, carefree kid with a big smile and a loving heart.

When the Sullivan West sophomore with a rock star's dark flowing hair wasn't skateboarding, he was tinkering with an instrument, his bass, guitar and saxophone, or scribbling down poems and short stories.

from Times Herald-Record: Dead youth's kindness recalled

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One of its first grants was to a young Chicago activist named Barack Obama.

At the time of her death, [Lois] Roisman was a research associate at the Brandeis Women's Institute at Brandeis
University in Waltham, Mass., and was completing a series of poems she described as a personal dialogue with the tales of the Chasidim.

from JTA Breaking News: Playwright Roisman dead at 70

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"He was still teaching, still writing poetry, was still editing Other Poetry magazine and still helping to run Colpitts Poetry," said Val [of her husband Michael Standen].

She said he would have liked to be remembered as a writer and a teacher, particularly in adult education, and also as someone who sought to protect the environment.

"He worked very hard for the North East over many years in all sorts of ways," she said.

from Journal Live: Prominent Durham poet dies suddenly at his home, aged 70

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[Sabrina Hess] and others said [Finn] Terry was a sixth-grader at da Vinci Arts Middle School. He was on a swim team, liked to play the Wii video game system, played basketball with neighbors and loved his theater and dance classes. He sometimes wore a hat with a propeller on top. At Friday's talent show, he read a poem about love and received a standing ovation.

His theater teacher, Tom Beckett, described Terry as the kind of student who makes his profession gratifying.

from The Oregonian: Boy's death highlights peril of fast, cold rivers

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News at Eleven

But last week the St Lucia poet Derek Walcott used his talent in the pursuit of less lofty ideals as he reignited a simmering row with VS Naipaul by unveiling a stinging attack on the author--in verse.

Walcott's new poem, The Mongoose, is a fast-paced, savagely humorous demolition of Naipaul's work and personality that begins with the opening salvo: 'I have been bitten, I must avoid infection/Or else I'll be as dead as Naipaul's fiction.'

from The Guardian: Rhyme and punishment for Naipaul

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Answering a question at this year's Guardian Hay festival, [Wendy] Cope told her audience that the laureateship is something we could do without.

"I think it is an archaic post. It has ridiculous expectations attached to it, which do not come from the palace or from Whitehall, but from the public and the media," she said.

from The Guardian: Wendy Cope: 'I don't want to be laureate'

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"I don't go to parties." she [Wendy Cope] says in "Being Boring", a poem in If I Don't Know, a collection published in 2001, seven years after her discovery of domestic happiness, "Well, what are they for,/If you don't need to find a new lover?/You drink and you listen and you drink a bit more/And you take the next day to recover."

The misery was real enough, but it did bear wonderful fruit.

from The Independent: Behold, a happy poet

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Amateur Shakespearologist John Hudson is not the first to question whether the actor William Shakespeare was actually the author of the body of work we've come to know as his, but Hudson is the first to suggest that the true author was a Jewish woman named Amelia Bassano Lanier. Of Italian descent, Bassano lived in England as a Marrano and has heretofore been known only as the first woman to publish a book of poetry ("Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum" in 1611) and as a candidate for "the dark lady" referred to in the sonnets.

from The Jewish Daily Forward: Was the Bard a Beard?

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[Yusuf Juma] and his family members were several times accused of fabricated crimes. In July 25, 2007, his son Mashrab was imprisoned, and one month later he was released as his guilt was not proven. December 10, 2007, was the worst day in the Jumaevs' life. Late at night, a group of Special Forces of Uzbekistan attacked Juma's house. Although Juma and his family managed to escape then, a week later they were arrested by SNB and are reportedly tortured in custody.

from Global Voices Online: Uzbekistan: Yusuf Juma, a Martyr Poet

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"The vortex is the point of maximum energy," [Ezra] Pound explained in BLAST, the magazine that he and [Wyndham] Lewis produced, and that ran for two issues. "All experience rushes into this vortex. . . . All the past that is vital, all the past that is capable of living into the future, is pregnant in the vortex, NOW." The cluster of associations triggered by the apparition of the faces--Odysseus' descent into Hades, Dante's visit to the Inferno, Persephone and Demeter--is present in the twentieth-century subway, but only for those who can see. "Swift perception of relations, hallmark of genius," Pound wrote.

from The New Yorker: The Pound Error

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"This is where Frost is relevant. This is the irony of this whole thing. You come to a path in the woods where you can say, 'Shall I go to this party and get drunk out of my mind?'" he [Jay Parini] said. "Everything in life is choices."

Even the setting had parallels, he said: "Believe me, if you're a teenager, you're always in the damned woods. Literally, you're in the woods--probably too much you're in the woods. And metaphorically you're in the woods, in your life. Look at you here, in court diversion! If that isn't 'in the woods,' what the hell is 'in the woods'? You're in the woods!"

from U.S. News & World Report: From bad to verse: Vandals get classroom penance

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The old man, however, is prevented from meeting the night's gaze. Frost tells us that the old man's concerns are more interior. His memory is failing him:

"What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze/Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand./What kept him from remembering what it was/That brought him to that creaking room was age./He stood with barrels around him--at a loss."

And notice how the sound of the "creaking room" would certainly echo in the old man's bones.

from The Age: A poet's winter windfall

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"No, I have learnt to adapt. Change is always for the better. Our poetry has to depict the reality of our times. No poet uses words like radio, car or telephone today. But poetry has to reflect the changing life. Unfortunately, we still long for gav-takia. Our attitude to poetry is limited. There is a bit of two-facedness when it comes to Urdu poetry today. You can accept changes in English but not in Urdu poetry. I wonder why Urdu poets still use expressions like Phansi ka takht and shamsheer se sar qalam when these things are long dead in real life?" [--Gulzar]

from The Hindu: Weaver of words

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Music is the great need of a poet. I go hunting for it in the same way I imagine a sculptor goes digging for the right clay in some remote region where the conditions make the red stone soft. There is an idea, in the sculptor's mind, of what she wants to make. However, what she finds as she digs sometimes combines with her own ideas, the pressures of her hands, the light of day, the art she's been influenced by, to make something she didn't necessarily plan, but something that exact clay did allow in the first place. It's something like that. I go searching for music. Much more, in fact, than I go searching for subject. [--Katie Ford]

from SF Station: Interview with Poet Katie Ford

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The wildest sentence, perhaps:

"Suddenly came the drenching fall rains, all-night rain, millions of acres of Bo-trees being washed and washed, and in my attic millennial rats wisely sleeping."

Now that's a very strange sentence, an oddly personal associative jump in the middle of it to the eternal rats. Not many prose writers alive (Celine, Genet, a few others) would have the freedom and intelligence to trust their own minds, remember they made that jump, not censor it but write it down and discover its beauty. That's what I look for in K's prose.

from Village Voice: Clip Job: Allen Ginsberg on The Dharma Bums

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Great Regulars

Shakespeare's sonnets may be said to be about the brevity of life and the painful transience of human love and beauty.

But if we lived for a thousand years or more in a condition of youthful health and vitality the postulated life extension technologies promise to hold us permanently in our late twenties then would we come to see these poems as the curious remnants of an antique world rather than urgent expressions of the deepest truths of our predicament?

from Bryan Appleyard: Cosmos: Becoming immortal

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And, if that weren't enough, the north, river-facing wall of the museum has been covered by six gigantic examples of "street art". "Very colourful," says one old lady, peering through the downpour. Well, yes. And free--indeed, you don't even have to get to the Tate to see the pictures. They're clearly visible from vantage points in the City. It's art that's just there in the world, waiting for you to pass. (The fact that it is not street art, it is tamed, institutionalised street art, a form turned into a style, is, for the moment, beside the point.)

from Bryan Appleyard: The Sunday Times: Is there a price to pay for free art?

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By Jon Herbert Arkham

Blogs should be awake.

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Hiatus'

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Giant Blob of Slimy Flesh Remains Unidentified
from a news account, July 2, 2003
By Ginny Lowe Connors

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Something huge . . .'

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By Ginny Lowe Connors

Five dark rocks,

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Zen garden'

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The truly shaming thing, as an American, was the fact that the Poetry Bookshop had more poetry from the states here than just about any store shy of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's famous City Lights Bookstore. Thick veins of John Ashbery, Anthony Hecht, Adrienne Rich and Robert Lowell arrowed through the stacks, with smaller selections of poets like Hayden Carruth, Jack Gilbert, Tony Hoagland and Alan Shapiro. There was also a whole special section dedicated to the beats, and not just the Ginsbergs and Kerouacs, but obscure figures like Lew Welch.

from John Freeman: The Guardian: Hay Festival: Cashing in on the poetry exchange

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The rain seemed to have a personal vendetta. It came at you sideways, fingered through the gap between your collar and undershirt to find warm skin. A cup of tea thawed you out for about six seconds. Sump pumps were brought out. The central lawn at Hay began to resemble the site of a monster truck rally.

And yet, amazingly, none of this turned people away. It only made them more giddily determined.

from John Freeman: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Hay festival: 'The Woodstock of the mind'

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No one would confuse Lorraine Hansberry with any of her characters in her play, A Raisin in the Sun. Yet, when Langston Hughes writes, "My old man is a white old man/And my old mother's black," readers may assume that Hughes had a white father and black mother. In fact, both of Hughes' parents were black. Hughes is speaking through a created character, just as Lorraine Hansberry speaks through her created characters in her play.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Poet and Speaker

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The form's key purpose is to make a comment about human nature, and it often makes a scathing observation about human behavior. Poets, not unlike philosophers, often fancy engaging in the assessment of the human condition, which includes the delicious toil of criticizing the conduct of fellow human beings. Thankfully, most poets appreciate that they are not above the frailties they blast.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: The Versanelle

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The speaker continues to engage his own romantic fantasies about the nature of the starving poet and his world of poetry. He believes it takes a "risky spirit" to "leap" "headlong" "into the vast/unknown of love." Because in that vastness "anything/and everything might happen." He wonders where those romantic views have gone.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Where is the Romance?

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This is bookselling 2008, a long way from the quaint belief that personal contact is the best way to get your book into the hands of the reading public.

At another social gathering, a perplexed publicist asked, "Well, what is the 'buzz book' of the convention? Tell me, I want to know."

Unlike my earlier shot at a comeback, I knew there was no answer. There seems to be no frontrunner for the eagerly anticipated novel or sensational memoir.

from Bob Hoover: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: BookExpo America: This year's event lacked zip
also Bob Hoover: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: BookExpo America: Rubbing an elbow or two with celebs
also Bob Hoover: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: BookExpo America: Zogby, Friedman offer two views of the future

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My friend Jason Shinder was 52 when he succumbed to leukemia last month. A poet, Jason also founded the Writer's Voice program at New York's West Side YMCA, which spread nationwide, furthering poetry's far-flung infiltrations. Jason's poem "One Day I Will Die" enjoins us to hug each instant hard enough to forge a diamond from the coal. He did. For that, and for his words, I'm grateful.

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

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Analysis of Baseball
by May Swenson

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Analysis of Baseball by May Swenson

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The Babes in the Wood
by Anonymous

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Babes in the Wood by Anonymous

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The Best Slow Dancer
by David Wagoner

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Best Slow Dancer by David Wagoner

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For All
by Gary Snyder

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For All by Gary Snyder

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A Quiet Life
by Baron Wormser

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: A Quiet Life by Baron Wormser

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The Swing
by Timothy Steele


from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Swing by Timothy Steele

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Sonnet 64: When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd
by William Shakespeare

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Sonnet 64: When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd by William Shakespeare

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Black jeans and a pearl-buttoned black shirt were the Saturday night get-up of many a rockabilly Rigoletto, which is Tom Waits's phrase for Roy Orbison, before they became the official uniform of Johnny Cash, the Man in Black.

Black looks, black hearts, black circles around your eyes when you've been up all night with a sick child who's not getting better or because you lipped off to some squirt who turned out to be meaner and quicker than you were: black is the color that dominates the country palette.

from David Kirby: The New York Times: New Hampshire Hoedown

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Texas poet R. S. Gwynn is a master of the light touch. Here he picks up on Gerard Manley Hopkins' sonnet "Pied Beauty," which many of you will remember from school, and offers us a picnic instead of a sermon. I hope you enjoy the feast!

Fried Beauty

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 166

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Mirriam-Goldberg's verse plumbs the depths of consciousness. In "Spring Song" she situates the poem between waking and dream states. The poem also hovers between night and day; between winter and summer; and between imagination and reality. Sky, gravity, trees, birds, and stones are elements of nature--and so also are moments like sudden waking from a dream and love. The ending image of a stone, solid yet carrying an internal crack for years, is yet another paradox. What seems solid may shatter at any moment. This is fertile ground for the poet, as she explores the renewal of springtime.

Spring Song

from Denise Low: Ad Astra Poetry Project: Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg (1959 - )

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Little things and casual occurrences may spark a memory that inspires a poem. Here's a sample from D. H. Lawrence taken from his poem, "Piano":

"Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings."

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Memories can elicit powerful, provoking poetry

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I imagine this puppet refers to one of those brightly painted mechanical figures that emerge from a clock's inner recesses to mark the hour by performing a mime, before swinging back into the machine. If no skill can "put the puppet bowing," it has been denied the dignity of a final performance, frozen mid-action. Putting together the images of the stopped clock and the puppet dangling still, we begin to realize they both refer to someone who has died.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: A Reading of 'A Clock Stopped,' By Emily Dickinson

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And the more people write children's books, the more they find ways of writing about the most taboo subjects and also, we have this category in the children's book world called "the young adult". But "the young adult" . . . nine-, seven-year-old younger brothers and sister will get hold of it.

from Michael Rosen: The Guardian: Haycast 07: Michael Rosen, Will Self and Kathleen Turner

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[Marina] Tsvetaeva had moved to Czechoslovakia in 1921, the setting for a magnificent sequence, Poem of the End, which re-lives the last phases of her most intense love affair. I've chosen the eighth poem of the cycle, a powerful, almost mesmeric piece of writing that seems to walk the couple's own walk as they cross Prague, clinging together and discussing their impending separation. (Note that in the penultimate stanza, "as it ends" is indented in the original, an important effect that may not be reproduced in all browsers, but which readers can imagine.)

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

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This vividness in an attempt to make birth perceptive to poetic language, of course, fails. "[B]irth is still not like/anything." And yet, a reader does discover an adherence in language too. It may not be "like anything," but the words activate the potential in a reader for receiving what the Greeks would have known as a mystery in the cult of feminine knowledge. The distance between the negated simile and the actuality of experience is where [Jenny] Browne's poetry thrives best.

from Dale Smith: Bookslut: Marsupial Inquirer: Lyric Strategies I

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Carol Novack is the publisher of the multi-new media e-journal Mad Hatters' Review, Australian government grant recipient and the author of a poetry chapbook, as well as a one-act play, and collaborative films/video's and CDs. During her many years as a criminal defense and constitutional lawyer, Carol wrote little but briefs and memorandums; her muse returned circa 2004. Past credits include poems in The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets.

from Belinda Subraman Presents: Carol Novack: Writer, Publisher of Mad Hatters' Review

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When the devotee truly surrenders himself to the Divine, God becomes the ruling passion of his mind, and whatever the devotee does, he does for the Glory of God. Bhakti is to believe in God, to love Him, to be devoted to Him, to enter into Him. Such a devotee has in him the content of the highest knowledge as well as the energy of the perfect man. To study the story of the lives and times of these five great saints of Cauvery Delta is by itself an exalting, ennobling, elevating and ecstatic spiritual experience.

from V Sundaram: News Today: Nama Siddantha saints of Cauvery Delta-I

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The book had its genesis when she began to realize that some of her acquaintances were writing dirty stories about her (one appeared in Best American Erotica) that featured "[e]verything about me, it seems, except my underwear and my modesty." Eventually, Gottlieb put out a call for submissions; the result is this book.

I love the blurriness of this idea, the way fantasy and reality blend together until we don't know what's fiction or fact.

from David L. Ulin: Los Angeles Times: The girl in the story is me

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And the point that I was making is that when you leave here, when you have looked at these paintings, when you have read these poems: they're looking at life. They enable you to see the world better. So when you step out of the museum, look around and see what the artist has taught you about how to see. And poets teach you to how to, teach you to appreciate your feelings. You have the feelings. But you may not notice them enough. You may not appreciate them enough.

from Frank Wilson: Philadelphia Inquirer: Sunday Salon: How to establish a successful Literary Blog: Audio Interview with Frank Wilson, former Books Editor, current Book Blogger.

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Bei Hennef by DH Lawrence

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Bei Hennef by DH Lawrence

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A poet's truth is always convincing. "Brylcream" sets the period. It was "then", but a familiar "then". "Torah" and "siddur" are exotic words, but the bloody cotton ball caught on a father's chin is touchingly familiar. We are in human territory, and the reader trusts the authenticity of the memory.

The poem is worth working on.

from The Guardian: Poetry Workshop: Inner and outer landscapes

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by Hamutal Bar-Yosef translated by Rachel Tzvia Back
The Well

from Guernica: Poetry: Two Poems

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Dearborn Suite
by Philip Levine

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Dearborn Suite

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Spring
by Gerald Stern

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Spring

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[by John Morrison]
Our love would be enough as long as [. . .]

from The Oregonian: Poetry

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[by Terry Mayo]
What Is It?

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Poem: What Is It?

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[by Joyce Corcoran]
The Fan

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Poetry Hoot

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"The Names"
By Joe Wilkins

from Slate: "The Names" --By Joe Wilkins

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Poetic Obituaries

The young Sheela [Basrur] penned poems and essays for sheer amusement. She was also a skilled flautist and told the Toronto Star, in one of the many profiles that paper wrote about her over the years, that her artistic nature led her parents to believe that she would on day be a writer or a musician.

But the biological subject matter of the Basrurs' dinner banter led her in a different direction.

from The Globe and Mail: Sheela Basrur loses cancer fight

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In 1982, she [Anne d'Harnoncourt] told the Inquirer that she remembered scampering through the hallways of her father's museum, "but I never thought of it as a career. I had visions of being an actress, or in government."

D'Harnoncourt graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Radcliffe College in 1965, after studying European history and literature, writing a thesis on the poetry on Shelley and Holderin, and doing additional coursework on architecture.

from Philadelphia Daily News: Anne d'Harnoncourt dies

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[George] Garrett has put his life into his work as completely as Faulkner did, and done it with more candor.

As is true of Faulkner, if we look at the body of Garrett's work, with all its doubles and doubling, we derive the sense of a master, of--and here I offer my best regards to the theorists--an author, the mind overseeing the work. This creation of authorial self is what I mean by a "shadow-work," but now I realize that "light-work" might be a better term, because we are talking about illumination.

from Blackbird: The Achievement of George Garrett
also Blackbird: In Memoriam: George Garrett

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[Adele V. Holden] studied poetry with Elliot Coleman during the earlier days of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars (on full scholarship, no less). She published Figurine and Other Poems, her only other book, in 1961. She often lunched with Josephine Jacobsen, counted Ruby Dee among her friends, and sustained correspondence with Langston Hughes. Nikki Giovanni called Down on the Shore "a moving testament to the human spirit."

Adele taught hundreds of students, many of whom went on to great things, such as Robert M. Bell, the first African-American man to serve as the Maryland Court of Appeals' chief judge. The Enoch Pratt Free Library decorated one of its prime Cathedral Street display windows in her honor when Figurine published.

from Baltimore City Paper: Black Infiniti

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[Hunter] Ingalls wrote primarily about visual art, but he had interests in all sorts of fine art.

"Hunter was always a familiar figure around all types of arts events," said artist Ken Wampler, who had known Ingalls about eight years.

In addition to being remembered as an art reviewer, Ingalls also is known as a poet and teacher.

from Amarillo Globe-News: Amarillo teacher, poet, artist dies

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[Wilfrid Mellers] gained a first class honours degree, began drawing and painting and wrote reams of poetry. But his first love was music and he began composing, then studying for a further degree, this time in music.

In 1945 he was appointed to teach English and music at Downing, later moving to Birmingham University as an extra-mural tutor in music.

In 1960-62 he was the visiting professor of music at the University of Pittsburg in the United States, before taking up his post in York in 1964.

from York Press: Music master Wilfrid Mellers dies

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The singer, songwriter, activist, historian, storyteller and railroad tramp [Utah Phillips] died a little more than a week ago at his home in Nevada City, Calif. Though he spent a lifetime imparting stories, songs and poems to the multitudes that came to hear him play, he took with him all the bits that never got written down--what he referred to as "the long memory."

from Philadelphia Weekly: Utah Phillips, 1935-2008

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[Ray Pospisil's] poems were the poems of an intensely private man, a man who was often alone with his thoughts and memories, in whose work genuine interaction with others--friendship, family, romance--was a fragile thing, a counterpoint to the loneliness of the city, to a working life spent in front of a computer screen, and to the many insomniac nights of soul-searching that feature so prominently in Ray's poetry. His work was not always palatable, and the comfort within it was hard-earned.

from The Chimaera: On Ray Pospisil (with three poems by Pospisil)

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Noted academician and poet, Ashraf Sahil, breathed his last this evening in SK Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) here.

from Greater Kashmir: Ashraf Sahil passes away

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[Luis Omar] Salinas had withstood a tough early life "as a kid on the Tex-Mex border," [Philip] Levine said.

Cousin Carmen Molina cared for Mr. Salinas the last years of his life in Sanger, and remembered him Thursday for his intellect.

"His poetry is lush in imagery, like no other being written," she said. She recognized his talent in high school, and he helped her with her own high school essays.

from The Fresno Bee: Poet Salinas dies at 70

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Lt. Col. Selvi was eulogized not only as a leading woman fighter of the LTTE but also as a poetess who wrote inspirational lyrics and poems for the cause of the outfit and also as a presenter of those verses over the LTTE radio and television in the Tiger controlled areas of Sri Lanka.

from The Sinhalaya News Agency: Selvi dies giving another body blow to the LTTE

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