News at Eleven

Although composing poems for state occasions has never been a requirement of the job, Howard Nemerov wrote a poem in 1989 to mark the 200th anniversary of the first meeting of Congress, and Rita Dove composed a poem when the Statue of Freedom was restored to the dome of the Capitol Building in 1993.

So how will Ryan, a self-described "modern hermit," adjust to the post's demands? She expects that 90% of her life will be disrupted. "But I'm ready to be interrupted," she says. "I'm getting tired of myself, tired of inflicting myself on myself. I'm ready to inflict myself on others."

from Time: America's Busiest Poet

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Grand go the Years,
In the Crescent above them--
Worlds scoop their Arcs--
And Firmaments--row--
Diadems--drop--
And Doges--surrender--
Soundless as Dots,
On a Disc of Snow.

[Thomas Wentworth] Higginson, the radical, was a pious man. [Emily] Dickinson, the dormouse, was a heretic who dared to call the dead suckers, conned of their heaven. Her sweetness of tone makes it easy to miss her bleak audacity. She didn't, it seems, take much of Higginson's advice ( which we can only infer from her replies--his half of the correspondence disappeared), except for his suggestion that she delay publishing. But, lost at an anguished crossroads, she needed a Virgil. He had once risked his life to rescue a fugitive slave, and she was, in her way, also a fugitive.

from The New Yorker: Her Own Society: A new reading of Emily Dickinson.

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[Sharon Olds] laughs. "Well . . . companionship. And pleasure: musical pleasure, in hearing it--and, to the inner ear, in reading it on the page. And recognition: 'Someone else has felt what I've felt.' And surprise: 'I never thought of that.' Reading poems can give us information about emotional states, or subjects, give us virtual experience which may be very different from our own. Yes! Maybe this is it! I think that the arts are for showing us ourselves--including what's dangerous about us--holding a mirror up to nature."

from The Guardian: Olds' worlds

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John Ashbery

Planisphere

Mysterious barricades, a headrest (of sorts),

from London Review of Books: John Ashbery: Two Poems

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Poem: 'Videlicet'

R.F. Langley

Over the reed bed the marsh harriers

from London Review of Books: R.F. Langley: Poem: 'Videlicet'

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"The first thing is that I am a writer. I write articles and books. Maybe the government does not like my words and is not satisfied with what I'm saying."

One of Tibet's most famous poets, Woeser, is doing something very unusual. She is a Tibetan woman living in China who is critical of the government, but has somehow managed to avoid public censure. Now she wants a passport, and she is taking legal action against the Beijing government to get it.

from The Irish Times: Tibetan poet undaunted as she takes on the might of China

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Some of this year's recipients have asked to remain anonymous because of possible continuing danger to them and their families. Among those are three Iraqi writers and one from Cameroon, China, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

Short biographies of those who can be safely publicized follow:

Kamram Mir Hazar (Afghanistan), 32, poet, essayist, journalist and blogger, was picked up outside the Kabul office of Internews Network on July 4, 2007 and held in incommunicado detention for five days under conditions that he likened to Guantanamo. After his release, he was kept under surveillance. He and his wife, Zahra, began living at the Internews offices to ensure their safety. He was taken into custody aga in in August 2007, and was questioned and released the same day. In fear of further harassment, Mir Hazar fled to India and applied for resettlement through the UN High Commission for Refugees. He now lives in Jessheim, Norway.

[Also mentioned poets Sakit Zahidov (Azerbaijan), Ricardo González Alfonso (Cuba), Saroop Dhruv (India), Nguan Xuan Nghia (Vietnam), and Nguyen Xuan Tu (Vietnam)]

from Media for Freedom: Banned, Censored, Harassed and Jailed

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[Mick] Imlah is alive to contradictions, and the poems move back and forth, unwilling to level judgments.

In "Drink v Drugs", the speaker, worse the wear for alcohol and "worked up about some other matter", apprehends a stoned kid who seems to be smashing up a phone box. The youth dares the concerned narrator to ring the police, before doing it himself and saying he's been assaulted by a drunk man.

from Telegraph: Macbeth as Othello, and other players

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"I also realise now that at last, after all this time, I am not afraid of speaking as myself. I realise that I hadn't before. But now I know that there is nothing else you can do: you come to a point in your life where you don't worry about how you seem to other people. That is where I am now. That really is a huge relief, getting over yourself. And I am getting over myself at last."

[David] Brooks was born in Canberra in 1953 but spent his very early childhood in Greece and Yugoslavia, where his father was an Australian immigration official.

from Brisbane Times: Poet finds a sensual new voice

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Georgia Woman of the Year Committee, Inc. announced today that Natasha Trethewey, Professor of English and Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair at Emory University has been confirmed as 2008 Georgia Woman of the Year! Nellie Dunaway Duke, Committee Chair, said that Trethewey was chosen as the 13th honoree by the Committee on their first ballot at their annual meeting, has accepted the nomination and set the date for the annual celebratory reception and dinner for Tuesday, July 29, 2008 at 103 WEST in Atlanta.

from The Weekly: Emory Professor Natasha Trethewey Named Georgia Woman of the Year

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Though [Sarah] Manguso claims not to recall all of her illness, she does know that after "the fourth or fifth hospitalization, I remember just lying in bed for hours every afternoon. I had too much to think about to do anything else. It must have looked as if I weren't doing anything, but I was very busy." Later, describing receiving infusions of gamma globulin, she writes; "I20didn't know it at the time, but I was paying attention."

from January Magazine: The Life Best Lived

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Great Regulars

80/81

By Jon Herbert Arkham

It's been thirty years

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Lament

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Middle Man
By Jon Herbert Arkham

He knows only one

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: No guru . . .

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Albatross
By Jon Herbert Arkham

Perhaps the thing was

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: A rime

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By Elizabeth Moore

Recorder replays

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Untitled haiku

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Playing Golf with Alice Cooper

By John Mark Eberhart

"That was a terrible putt," he says to me,

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Welcome to my daydream

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The speaker's questions are not merely rhetorical, although they do imply that an answer does exis t. He then poses another question: who can keep Time from spoiling beauty? By asking these questions, the speaker hints that he knows how to complete these acts of holding back Time's fleet foot and erasing Time's effect on beauty.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 65

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He then explains that it is not merely modern science that informs and delights the soul, but also myths and fables from the around the world. And he is especially enthralled by world religions, "The deep diving bibles and legends."

Next, he celebrates the fact that India was the first land to find the pathway to God.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Walt Whitman's 'Passage to India'

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[Allen] Grossman's grand and bardic style echoes the High Modernist capital-T Tradition that bred both Yeats and Eliot (about whom Grossman has written). He leavens his work with the hilarity of honky tonk and the Borscht Belt. "The Piano Player Explains Himself" is an ars poetica, in which the piano is an actual Messiah--as poetry is, I think, when it's played right.

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

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From the Garden
by Anne Sexton

Come, my beloved,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: From the Garden by Anne Sexton

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The Good Nights
by Joseph Mills

On the good nights

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Good Nights by Joseph Mills

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Locked Doors
by Anne Sexton

For the angels who inhabit this town,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Locked Doors by Anne Sexton

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Moment Vanishing
by Elizabeth Spires

Now, in the quietude of evening, the dove comes.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Moment Vanishing by Elizabeth Spires

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Musée Des Beaux Arts
by W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Musée Des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden

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Riding the A
by May Swenson

I ride

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Al manac: Riding the A by May Swenson

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The Snowy Day
by Elizabeth Spires

The last time I saw you, we met for coffee on a snowy day.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Snowy Day by Elizabeth Spires

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I'd guess you've all seen a toddler hold something over the edge of a high-chair and then let it drop, just for the fun of it. Here's a lovely picture of a small child learning the laws of physics. The poet, Joelle Biele, lives in Maryland.

To Katharine: At Fourteen Months

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 174

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As Beijing goes into overdrive to prepare for next month's Olympics, Chinese authorities have intensified a crackdown on people they don't want to see in the capital until the Games are over.

China's thousands of petitioners--people trying to lodge complaints over alleged wrongdoing by officials in their home region--are major targets.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Beijing Rounds Up Its Unwanted

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[Kay Ryan] practices dipstick philosophy, taking a quick reading of the oil in the motor and slamming the hood. She moves away from her themes as rapidly as she=2 0engages them, which may be why some critics have compared her to Emily Dickinson, even though her dramatic imagination is far more detached--less blasphemous and exalted--than her predecessor's.

from Meghan O'Rourke: The Outsider Artist: Assessing Kay Ryan, our new poet laureate

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[Elizabeth] Bartlett herself denied that she had been neglected as a poet: rather, she said, she had been neglectful about being published. "It suited me to write without an audience," she said, "so that I could do what I wanted without an editor or publisher."

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Elizabeth Bartlett: Compassionate and innovative poet of the fractured self

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Good though the dialect poems are, The Children is unique, a war poem strengthened by a voice that is identifiable with the writer's own. It requires no persona, no special idiom--simply the courage to face facts (a courage [Rudyard] Kipling never lacked), and find plain words and a rolling, liturgical, rhyme-packed rhythm for its expression.

The Children
1914-1918

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Poem of the week: The Children by Rudyard Kipling

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[by Robert Huff]

After the shot the driven fea thers rock

from B.T. Shaw: The Oregonian: Poetry

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If you've experienced or heard of these places, or know anyone in them, you know that because the inhabitants have, the residents have dementia or Alzheimers, personal belongings just disappear. And at first it's extremely difficult to accept that, because we're holding on so hard to the individuality of the people we love. But then, things change. So, let me read it:

The Withering of Their State

from Belinda Subraman Presents: Judy Kronenfeld: Professor, Scholar, Author, Poet

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By Rachel Franklin

The world is a spinning ball of darkness

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'Plea for Goodness,' a poem by Rachel Franklin

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Ancient Anecdotage
by Kathryn Starbuck

As a former

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Ancient Anecdotage

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Before the Storm
by Louise Glück

Rain tomorrow, but tonight the sky is clear, the stars shine.

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Before the Storm

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Frutas. Growing up in Miami, any tropical fruit I ate could only be a bad copy of the real fruit of Cuba. Exile meant having to consume false food and knowing it in advance. With joy, my parents and grandmother would encounter Florida-grown mameyes and caimitos at the market. At home, they would take them out of the American bag and describe the taste that I and my older sister would, in a few seconds, be privileged to experience for the first time.

from PBS: Newshour: Poet Ricardo Pau-Llosa Reflects on Influences, Art
also PBS: Newshour: Poet Profile: Ricardo Pau-Llosa
also PBS: Newshour: Poetry Reading by Ricardo Pau-Llosa

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[by Jack Nyhan]

The Sea

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: The Sea

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"Swifts"
By Dan Chiasson

from Slate: "Swifts" --By Dan Chiasson

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Poetic Obituaries

A freelance writer and journalist, Mrs. [Hazel] Adcock wrote for several publications and interviewed many national personalities. She later wrote a popular book, "Prairie Hope," which told the story of early Oklahoma history.

She was active in Falls Church and a member of the Women's Club, the garden club, the great books group and was the founder of The Cherry Hill Writers and Poets Society. She was especially fond of poetry.

from Falls Church News-Press: Falls Church Resident Hazel Adcock Dies

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Apart from singing, Patrick [Carlo] was also playing various musical instruments including Harmonium and Pedal Organ. He was also a poet and his poems have appeared in various Konkani Magazines like Raknno, Mithr and Amchi Maai.

The Academy of Music Sciences has honoured Patrick for his selfless service to music.

from Mangalorean.com: The Catholic community of Mangalore . . .

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[James W. Davis Jr.] was famous for his sense of humor and his poetry and could usually be found at his second home--Seven Oaks Golf Club. Jim's love for music and performing were evident. He was especially proud of his performance with the Corsairs on the Arthur Godfrey Show.

from Oneida Dispatch: James W. Davis Jr.

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Kuldeep Kumar Dogra, a resident of Talab Tillo, Jammu, fainted while reciting a poem at the Parade ground, the venue of the hunger strike. He was rushed to hospital where he was declared dead.

Leela Karan Sharma, convener of the Sangharsh Samiti, said the youth had turned up at the camp on Wednesday afternoon and was "emotionally upset" by National Conference president Omar Abdullah's speech in the parliament on Tuesday.

from DNA India: Amarnath row claims another victim

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"The public health community has not been very imaginative in promoting good reporting," he [Michael B. Gregg] told the New York Times in 1990. "Reporting cases ought to be as much of a reflex as carrying a stethoscope, and the names of serious offenders should be made public."

A gentlemanly colleague, he was known informally as the CDC's poet laureate, penning personalized doggerel for retirements and celebrations in the Atlanta offices until he retired in 1989. He was also a jazz drummer.

from The Washington Post: Michael B. Gregg, 78; Journal Editor Led Coverage of Disease Outbreaks

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Daughter Cathy Lee of Oviedo said Robert Johnson laughingly referred to his wife as his hobby. She remembers her father enjoyed amateur photography when she was a child and had his own darkroom. He also was a writer, from poetry to technical items, and meticulous in everything he did.

from Orlando Sentinel: Robert A. Johnson stayed on the cutting edge, from military to space race

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"Our whole family just stood there watching her incredulously," said her daughter, Lynn Scott Myers of Decatur.

It was all a publicity stunt for Kawai pianos, but in the end, Mrs. [Dorothy] Myers walked away with $1,000 and an entry in the 1965 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records as "the longest continuous female piano player."

from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Dorothy Myers, 88, painter, lover of reading, writing, music

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[Carrie Allen McCray Nickens'] first poetry book, "Piece of Time," was published in 1993. She came to much wider recognition with her book "Freedom's Child," which told the story of her grandmother, a freed slave, and grandfather, a Confederate general.

from The State: Service is Tuesday for Carrie Allen McCray Nickens

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Abdalla Nuradion Ahmed a well-known Somali journalist as well lyricist as well poet has died for heart attack in Somali capital Mogadishu.

Mr. Noradin was recently working as freelance for local Radios and Universal television in Mogadishu

from Mareeg: Popular Somali journalist, composer dies at 75

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Ursula Prout took a deep interest in spiritual matters with many of her poems appearing in Spiritual Healer magazine as well as national journals such as People's Friend and Sunday Companion.

Arguably her finest hour came when Yours magazine decided to feature her work every month until she was well into her 90s.

from Hereford Times: Hereford poet Ursula dies

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[Larry Alvino] described [Paul] Sorenson as very enthusiastic about cycling and a mentor for younger, less experienced riders.

"He helped others enjoy the sport as much as he did," Alvino said.

Sorenson's other passions included nature and writing poetry, according to an obituary written by his family.

from The Beacon News: Aurora man dies riding bike in Ohio

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"I, with fast pen slung low on my hip, would blow in, hang out, then tumble on after defending and encouraging local talent against the likes of the villainous Strikers," [William] S tudebaker wrote in the preface to About a Place.

He left the manuscript in the care of his friend and occasional publisher, Rick Ardinger, executive director of the Idaho Humanities Council.

The following is a selection of poems from that unpublished book.

from Boise Weekly: An Idaho Poet

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Roger [Van Dorpe] had a gift for writing poetry; his work was published several times, especially in "The Hudsonian."

from Iowa City Press Citizen: Roger Van Dorpe, 95

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Josephine Vecchio

Nov. 18, 1933--June 16, 2008

Wrote a novel about Italian immigrants, like her maternal grandparents, who settled in Crabtree, Pa.

Penned poems, short stories and a children's book, "Grandma Budinski."

Listen to her dramatic radio performance in Matter of Life & Death.

from The Plain Dealer: Josephine Vecchio: Dancer, actress, author, mother

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[M Vyasa's] Kambani (collection of stories), Suli (collection of poems), Snana (mini novel), Kruta (collection of stories), Kshetra (collection of poems), Janapatha (intellectual writing) and many other books have been released. The book, Janapatha had been released during=2 0Akhila Bharatha Kannada Sahitya Sammelan in Udupi. He also wrote articles for newspapers.

from Udayavani: Famous Storywriter, M Vyasa no more

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News at Eleven

"I thought I might take it upon myself to prevent all bad poetry from being published during my reign," she [Kay Ryan] says, speaking by phone from her home north of San Francisco, when asked if there is any special project she plans to undertake in her new role.

Then she tries to explain how a poet laureateship could happen to a 62-year-old woman who grew up in the small towns of central California ("the glamour-free zone"), learned to hide behind the role of class clown, got rejected by her college's poetry club, committed to writing poetry as a vocation only after she'd turned 30, refused to have anything to do with creative writing classes and has lived a deliberately quiet life in which she didn't cultivate connections within the literary establishment.

from The Washington Post: Verse of the Turtle
also The Washington Post: A Small Taste of Kay Ryan

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[Kay] Ryan's metaphor, are deceptive "bows," gestures of obeisance that are actually acts of oblivion.

"Chop," then, is a less accessible poem than it looks, and less comforting than it is accessible. Like Ro bert Frost, Ms. Ryan tends to lay out her metaphors like traps, coaxing the reader into them before springing all their dark implications.

from The New York Sun: Kay Ryan, a Laureate Worth Lauding

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Because of this bias, much of the work of the self-taught poets vanished as centuries passed. "We assume that poetry disappears from literary history because it was bad, and did not stand the test of time,"’ said [Julie] Prandi. "But sometimes scholars make mistakes."

More and more people are discovering the work of self-taught poets, said Prandi. While poets such as the Scottish Robert Burns have always been celebrated, people are uncovering works by authors such as Mary Leopor and Friedrich Müller.

from Illinois Wesleyan University News & Events: Reversing the Tide: Professor Gives Due to Self-Taught Poets

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[Joanna] Lumley praises [Liz] Cowley for preferring to call herself a writer than a poet: 'Liz would never dream of describing herself as a "poet". She even dislikes the very word "poetry" because she feels there is a divisive ring to it, as if the genre were up there on a rarefied pedestal.'

But her comments have drawn the wrath of many of Britain's leading poets.

from The Guardian: Lumley attacks 'obscure' new poetry

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The poetry makes the preoccupations of the prose more lucid by showing just how enigmatic they really are. After reading [Edward] Thomas again in [Edna] Longley's always informative and often intriguing edition, he seems subtler and more cunning as a poet and his often evocative, descriptive prose seems full of potential, poetry waiting to happen. In his poetry, Thomas finally realised what he could do.

July by Edward Thomas (c1905)

from The Guardian: From Adlestrop to Arras--a poet's life

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The cosmos is appropriated to imagine things outside our ken; our own desert places, our own lunar distances.

The great Danish physicist Niels Bohr, in conversation with Heisenberg, remarked: "When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as poetry. The poet too is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images." What is not visible is in effect imaginary, and it is not possible to talk about such a thing without metaphor.

from The Guardian: Quantum poetics

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This is as generous as the author [V.S. Naipaul] gets. So far as he can see, [Derek] Walcott more or less realized his greatness in that early work, and for the rest of his career, which of cou rse includes the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature (Naipaul got his Nobel in 2001), he looked to fit himself to more cosmopolitan templates. Naipaul's implication is that the vast output that followed was a denouement, in some way even a betrayal, of what was greatest in the poet. Nowhere does he attempt to reckon with Walcott's changing ambitions. It is almost as if Naipaul cannot allow his fellow islander a place by his side on the dais.

from The Washington Post: View From the Summit
also The Washington Post: A Writer's People

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In reality Elizabeth Barrett Browning died as a result of a ruptured abscess on her lung, complicated by her longstanding physical frailty. Yet the ultimate cause of death may perhaps not have been a pulmonary haemorrhage, but the excessively large measure of morphine given to her in her final hours to ease her pain. She died, as [Robert] Browning was careful to point out in the letters he wrote to friends and family immediately after the event, not merely peacefully, but in a state of euphoria.

from The Guardian: Portrait of a lady

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While he [Martin Bidney] often writes in that meter, he also began to pen in what h e calls "hybrids" of rhyme and non-rhyme, and various metrical forms in response to whatever it is that moves him during his day. And that could be a bird, a piece of music, something in the news or a tickle in his nose. It could be a book he's read, a conversation he's had or an interview with a journalist (and yes, he actually wrote a sonnet in response to this journalist's interview).

"I discovered I have a skill for it," he said. "I can write in all these complex meters."

from Press & Sun-Bulletin: The sonnetmeister

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[Elizabeth Bishop] didn't require any reading at all except for the two-volume memoir by Nadezhda Mandelstam, the wife of Osip Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope and Hope Abandoned. She said that she wanted us to know that there are people who have died for poetry. I was very interested in that choice, given that Bishop was not a political poet. She encouraged us to read a lot of other things, but that was the only reading she required. She said it was very important to read Keats's letters--that in some ways Keats's letters were even better than his poems, and I remember that I did read Keats's letters that year. [--Mary Jo Salter]

from The Atlantic: The Poet's Poet

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I think it is especially effective for pe ople who are dealing with illness and perhaps feeling disempowered and overwhelmed from having to go through treatments and a hospital system that would often treat them like a disease rather than a person.

If someone will listen to you and hear what your fears are you can release it and just let go of it. You can discover things you didn’t know before you wrote and read the poem. An insight may come. [--John Fox]

from Flesh & Stone: Heal your body by giving voice to your soul: An interview with John Fox

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Great Regulars

The problem for all such works that attempt to confront 9/11 directly is that, as Spielberg implied, we are still too close. Art, like history, requires a certain blurring of the facts. When blinded by a bright light, you need to half close your eyes to see what is really going on--and, as yet, we can't quite do that with the burning towers.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Sunday Times: Is Man on Wire the most poignant 9/11 film?

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These things do make our lives easier, but only by destroying the very selves that should be protesting at every distraction, demanding peace, quiet and contemplation. The distracters have product to shift, and it's shifting. On the train to Wakefield, with my new 3G iPhone, distracted from distraction by distraction, I saw the future and, to my horror, it worked.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Sunday Times: Stoooopid. . . . why the Google generation isn't as smart as it thinks

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Gold Dust

By Kathleen Johnson

from John Mark Eberhart: Moonlight . . .

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For Ian McEwan

By Judith Bader Jones

from John Mark Eberhart: "Rooms in my house . . ."

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By Timothy Pettet

A snail on a rock

from John Mark Eberhart: Untitled haiku

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[Kay] Ryan considers herself an outsider vis-à-vis the poetry establishment. As a student at UCLA, she could not join the poetry club; she applied, but her application was turned down. She thinks they turned her down, because she was a loner.

She also admits that she did not particularly want to be a poet. She believed in keeping her feelings to herself, instead of broadcasting them in poems.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Kay Ryan: New U.S. Poet Laureate

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Co ntinuing with the third "when" clause, the speaker turns to the natural events of the ocean that ranges upon the shore. He has observed the give and take of the waves beating upon the land causing erosion of the sand, and yet the land fights back and gains control from the waves. What the waves bring to land, the land again offers to the waves in a never-ending battle of opposite natures.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 64

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[Kay Ryan's] fellow Californian and leading booster, Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, compared her to the once-unknown recluse Emily Dickinson in his essay collection, "Disappearing Ink."

In truth, Ryan's as much a part of the Establishment as her 15 predecessors in the honorary position. She published her first collection in 1983. What she lacks is a literary position in a university, teaching remedial English part time at a California college.

from Bob Hoover: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Poet laureate 'outsider' followed traditional path

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I once heard Charles Simic, who finished his term as the nation's poet laureate this month, tell a story about his mother in the war-ravaged Yugoslavia of his youth. Bartering with a gold-toothed gypsy, she swapped his father's tuxedo for a suckling pig they ate on Christmas. The anecdote embodies for me Simic's genius: juxtaposition. Not the easy surrealism of two random things (fish and bicycle, say), but the binding together of Manichaean opposites: tuxedo and pig.

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

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It is Marvellous to Wake Up Together
by Elizabeth Bishop

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: It is Marvellous to Wake Up Together

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The Layers
by Stanley Kunitz

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Layers

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Not to Sleep
by Robert Graves

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Not to Sleep

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Sing we and chant it . . .
by Anonymous

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Sing we and chant it . . .

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Thistles
by Ted Hughes

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Thistles

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Up against the Sea
by David Wagoner

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Up against the Sea

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The Young Watch Us
by Donald Hall

Gold
by Donald Hall

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Young Watch Us

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Mutable and Immutable
by Maya Bejerano translated by Tsipi Keller
section ten of Mutable and Immutable

from Tsipi Keller: Guenica: Mutable and Immutable

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Poets are especially good at investing objects with meaning, or in drawing meaning from the things of this world. Here Patrick Phillips of Brooklyn, New York, does a masterful job of comparing a wrecked piano to his feelings.

Piano

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 173

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The Jailhouse Blues Surprise or

Do you Believe in Magic?

(for Ronnie White)

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: The Jailhouse Blues Surprise or< br>

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Poem for RV

when you leave

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: Remembering the poet Reetika Vazirani.

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I also give credit to the genius of African-American literature right now. I think that we can glorify the Harlem Renaissance, but I don't think that they can go up against the writers today. Just like I think Tiger Woods is playing better golf than Lee Elder. You just can't go up against some of the individuals today. I mean Langston's wonderful, Countee's wonderful, but when you look at the intellectual range of the some of the Elizabeth Alexanders--first of all, their training, their education, has prepared them to pursue a greater level of excellence, and that's how it should be. And so what happens?

from E. Ethelbert Miller: Post No Ills: Visionary Literature: A Two-Part Interview with E. Ethelbert Miller

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My own feeling is this: libraries need to be more clearly established as places people want to visit, but also as places which can go to people. By, for example, putting a lot of things online, speeding up how people order books from home, having them delivered to their homes and collected from their homes.

There are also libraries where there are poetry readings, book readings, talks and lectures.

from Andrew Motion: The Independent: Noises Off

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All the graves at Paju face north, toward the hometowns of those who are buried here.

"It seems to me that the South Koreans did not just thoughtlessly lay them to rest here," Kim Choon-Ae said. "This place was carefully chosen, as North Korea is just a stone throw's away."

"Graves in South Korea face South, but these graves face North, toward the hometowns of these fallen North Koreans. It truly takes something special for one to pay this kind of respect to his fallen enemies and bury them in such fashion," she said.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Korea's 'Enemy Dead' Cemetery

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If Seamus Heaney's oeuvre were revealed to have been written by a Portuguese guy living in Toronto, or if Anne Sexton were actually a mild-mannered soccer mom, it would disrupt our entire sense of their poetry. At the same time, though, it would be wrong to say that Heaney's or Sexton's appeal depends completely upon autobiographical data. Exactly why we take personal poems so, well, personally remains a mystery and a muddle.

from David Orr: The New York Times: Soldier Boy

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But does "Fine Knacks . . ." stand alo ne as a poem? Unlike many song-lyrics, I think it exerts enchantments of its own. Perhaps only those who haven't heard the musical setting can really judge. All opinions, musically informed or not, are welcome. As indeed would be the outing of the gallant pin-and-pun-peddler, Anon.

[by John Dowland]

Fine Knacks for Ladies

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Poem of the week: Fine Knacks for Ladies

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[by Sage Cohen

Bridal]

The pond drifts its corsages
along the withered wrists

from B.T. Shaw: The Oregonian:

---

I also think that there is an element in diving that is similar to poems in this way. When divers enter the water, one of the things they are trying to accomplish is a splashless entry. A large splash in diving, too much splash in diving would be more than a thimble worth of water. And there's a way in which you see the presence of the diver, off the diving board, in the air, through performance, in a kind of extremis for 1.3 seconds and then they enter the water, and then they're not there.

from Belinda Subraman Presents: David Biespiel: Poet, Writer-In-Residence, Editor of Poetry N orthwest

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In my view the real heroes of mankind are the toiling farmers of the world. We owe everything to them--food grains, edible oil seeds, industrial raw materials and what not. And yet the farmers are the most neglected sections of society in every country and more so in India.

Edwin Markham (1852-1940) a great American poet immortalized the trials, tribulations, tortures and toils of an average farmer in his famous poem 'The Man with a Hoe' which was presented at a public poetry reading in 1898.

from V Sundaram: News Today: Ever toiling heroes of mankind
also V Sundaram: News Today: Ever toiling heroes of mankind--II

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. . . 'An Idea Is a Mouth That Sells'.

And what Patrick said is precisely what that young man needed to hear. And if an idea is an idea that sells, what then is poetry? Here's a good answer from R.S. Thomas:

'Don't As Me . . .'

from Frank Wilson: Books, Inq.: The Epilogue: Bravo, bravo, bravo . . .

---

For instance, one of the heteronyms whose poems are included in Selected Poems is Alberto Caeiro. The biography [Fernando] Pessoa supplied for Caeiro states that he was born on Ap ril 16, 1889, lived most of his life with an aunt in the country and died of tuberculosis in Lisbon in 1915. The Book of Disquiet is attributed to Bernardo Soares, called by Pessoa a semi-heteronym, since his personality was merely a "mutilated" version of Pessoa's own.

from Frank Wilson: Books, Inq.: On the block . . .

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Historiography
by Cassandra Pantuso

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: Historiography

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Nary a Soul
by Macgregor Card

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: Nary a Soul

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My Last Duchess by Robert Browning (extract)

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: My Last Duchess by Robert Browning (extract)

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Never Mind
by Dorothea Tanning

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Never Mind

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Summer Evening by the Window with Psalms
by Yehuda Amichai

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Summer Evening by the Window with Psalms

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"In our home, something like being a poet would be thought of as putting on airs," [Kay] Ryan told the NewsHour in June 2006. "It would be embarrassingly pretentious, and educated, and snobbish. And so that, as a writer, I've always been very sensitive to not being pretentious and to being sure that I didn't put on airs. I mean, it's all right to be intelligent and to use every possible aspect of language, but never to be pompous."

from PBS: Newshour: Kay Ryan Is Appointed U.S. Poet Laureate
also PBS: Newshour: Poetry Series: Poet Profile: Kay Ryan
also PBS: Newshour: Kay Ryan Discusses New Collection of Poetry

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By Christy Gindhart

Untitled

Mid-morning light shines through the chink in my tent

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Christy Gindhart]

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By Rohan K. Rajagopalan

I Am

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Rohan K. Rajagopalan]

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=0 A[by Isabel Grasso]

The Colors of Snow--A Child's Muse

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: The Colors of Snow--A Child's Muse

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"Siren"
By Paul Breslin

from Slate: "Siren" --By Paul Breslin

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Poetic Obituaries

[Alfred Arteaga] was a prolific poet who conjured up philosopher kings in postcolonial America, ensnaring both his characters and their landscape in the web that he called the "fabric of language," the statement said.

Professor Arteaga received many awards for his literary achievements, including the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award for literary excellence in 1998 for "House With the Blue Bed," and a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship in poetry in 1995.

His poem, "Illumination Mine," reads in part:

from San Francisco Chronicle: Professor Alfred Arteaga, prolific poet, dies

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UC Riverside's chair of the English department where [Lindon] Barrett worked for the last year made a statement on behalf of his 'devastated' colleagues:

"A brilliant scholar, Lindon was just finishing a major book on slavery's central role in the evolution of Western modernity. Lindon offered so much, personally and prof essionally, to the department, the campus and the scholarly field of African American studies. The English department at UCR saw him as a bright beacon of the future."

from The Post Chronicle: Slain Professor Wrote Of Slavery, Langston Hughes 'Homoeroticism'

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[Les Crane] also won a Grammy for his 1971 spoken-word recording of the poem "Desiderata." With its New Age-y sentiments ("You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. . . ."), it became a counterculture hit and a popular target for parody. The irreverent Crane later professed to prefer the parody.

from Los Angeles Times: Les Crane, 74; former late-night TV host also founded software company

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Bernard Holland, reviewing a piano program by Mr. [Joseph E.] Fields in The New York Times in 1988, wrote, "How satisfying it was to hear music-making in which every line, voice and texture had been thought through and cared about."

At Marywood, Mr. Fields wrote several works, including song cycles based on poems by E. E. Cummings.

from All About Jazz: Joseph E. Fields, Conductor, Composer and Pianist, is Dead at 53

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Nancy Burdick Galbraith, 79, retired head of the Poetry and=2 0Literature Center at the Library of Congress, died July 7 of complications from emphysema at an assisted-living facility in Bellevue, Wash.

In 1964, she joined the center, which was then the office of the annually appointed consultant in poetry and later, by a 1985 act of Congress, the office of the nation's poet laureate.

from The Washington Post: Nancy Galbraith; Led Center For Poetry

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[Evelyn T. Groux] was an avid reader and enjoyed gardening and poetry. She was a modest but very talented artist and a lifelong, loyal Boston Red Sox fan.

from Exeter News-Letter: Evelyn T. Groux

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Gupta, whose real name was Abdul Mannan took the pen name of Samudra Gupta in the 60s and is now widely known by his pen name.

Through his writings, Gupta created a strong voice against communalism and fundamentalism, and created his own following.

During his long writing career, Gupta who was a journalist by profession--penned 13 poetry books, one fiction and a poetry book with another writer.

from The Daily Star: Poet Samudra Gupta passes away

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[Bobby L. Hatfield] was also very talented with pen and paper and compl eted two books, "By My Nature" and "Once upon an Ocean," along with a number of outstanding works of poetry.

from The Siuslaw News: Bobby L. Hatfield

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[Dorothy A.] Nicholson enjoyed crafts especially knitting and embroidery. She was a published poet.

from Newzjunky: Dorothy A. Nicholson

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[Khosro Shakibaii's] performance in Amrollah Ahmadju's TV series "Once Upon A Time" playing the role of "Morad Beik" was one of the most brilliant acting performances in his lifetime career.

He possessed a unique tone of voice and released a number of tapes in which he recited the poetry of several contemporary poets including Sohrab Sepehri.

from Tehran Times: Actor Khosro Shakibaii dies at 64

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Together the couple owned and operated a dairy farm on the Kirschnerville Road in Croghan for 34 years, retiring in 1979. Mr. Steria died January 10, 2005.

Mrs. [Dorothy M. Gadbaw] Steria was a member of the Croghan Mennonite Church.

She enjoyed flower gardening, cooking and writing poetry.

from WWNY TV 7: Dorothy M. Gadbaw Steria, 87, Beaver Falls

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Leonard Swanson was a crackerjack engineer, but he was also a man who loved his family and enjoyed hunting, gardening, painting and writing poetry.

from Rapid City Journal: Children remember father's pride, care in his work

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News at Eleven

Nationalism is on the rise in Europe. The vast majority of [Fernando] Pessoa's papers belong to the National Library; the remainder, some 2,700, to the heirs. In this case the originals contain all sorts of scribbled notes and other unrecorded details that even good photocopies might miss. Most Portuguese, truth be told, couldn't care less about what happens to Pessoa's papers, but he is still the most remarkable sort of national treasure.

from The New York Times: Portugal Holds on to Words Few Can Grasp

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Translations by and courtesy of George Monteiro

The exalted Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa lived through a multitude of literary pseudonyms. One of the following poems is attributed to "Fernando Pessoa," one to "Alberto Caeiro," and two to "Alvaro de Campos," a retired, bisexual naval engineer and melancholic with an addiction to drugs.

Self-Analysis

from International Herald Tribune: Selected poems by Fernando Pessoa

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The information supplied has enabled him to piece together the Scottish poet [George Colburn]'s life story.

"The process has been absolutely fascinating," said20Mr [Chris] Moorhouse.

"I've been contacted by professional genealogists, librarians, and members of the public from all over the world, and I really appreciate their time and effort.

"We now know much, much more about this man than we did a few days ago."

from BBC News: Readers solve 'lost' poet mystery

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Garbage in, garbage out: the city where this cycle takes place is "A giant breathing cell/Exhaling its waste/From the stacks by the river/And feeding through the night".

Compared to the sheer, unrelieved ugliness of [August] Kleinzahler's New York, the London of T. S. Eliot's Waste Land seems almost pastoral.

from The Times Literary Supplement: August Kleinzahler's ugly gifts

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MUW English professor Kendall Dunkelberg was the first poet to read. After emcee John Dorrah quieted the crowd and between the roar of blenders producing frozen latt/s, Dunkelberg launched into a poem he wrote about his family's preparations the night Katrina hit the coast, "The Eye of the Storm."

from The Commercial Dispatch: Poetry alive (7/13)

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Sophocles's original version would have been semi-operatic, combining sung and recited tex t.

The Irish poet [Seamus Heaney] said that he is looking forward to the 'huge enhancement' his work will get from the talents of West Indian [Derek] Walcott, who is to direct the production, Le Gendre, and conductor Peter Manning, who has commissioned the ambitious work for his ensemble Manning Camerata.

from The Guardian: Heaney to stage an opera at the Globe

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Al-Taiziaya Court in Taiz governorate has in its sitting on Wednesday decided to imprison defendant Fahd al-Qarani one year and a half and fine him half million Yemeni riyals in favour of Culture Office in taiz and the General People's Congress Party there. The court also decided confiscation of his CDs and giving a guarantee he would not return to such acts for which he was condemned.

from Almotamar: Al-Qarani given one year & a half for instigating sectarian fanaticism

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Nay Phone Latte, a young blogger who has been held since 29 January in Insein prison, is facing a possibly seven-year sentence after new charges were brought against him on 7 July under the article 5 (j) of the 1950 Emergency Provision Act, article 505 (b) of the criminal code (which punishes defaming the state) and article 33 (a) of the Electronic Act. He was originally charged under article 32 (b) of the Video Act, which would have limited his maximum20detention to six months.

The new charges were approved by a special court in Insein prison, where his lawyer has never been allowed to see him since his arrest.

from Reporters Without Borders: Nay Phone Latte faces up to seven years in prison

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The 51-year-old book dealer [Raymond Scott] was arrested last Thursday and quizzed at length over the disappearance of a Shakespeare First Folio, regarded as the most important printed work in the English language, before being released on bail.

Yesterday he insisted the copy he had was not the one stolen among several items of astonishing rarity from Durham University's library ten years ago, as has been claimed.

from Daily Mail: 'I've done nothing wrong': The Shakespeare suspect and his Cuban cutie

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Every day on Mutanabi Street, a Hayawi sells books, educating a new contingent of lawyers, doctors and computer programmers.

The Hayawis stay in Iraq out of nostalgia, nationalism and a sense of tradition, as well as economic necessity. When U.S. troops withdraw someday, Iraq will depend on families like theirs to rebuild itself, physically and psychologically.

"Iraq is my soul," the bald, silver-bearded [Nabil al-]Hayawi said. "I go and come back. But I will never leave."

from The Washington Post: A Baghdad Bookseller, Bound to His Country
also The Washington Post: Keeping Literature Alive in Baghdad

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Hamza Bin Laden, 16, the youngest of the Saudi-born warlord's 18 sons, is claimed to be the author of a poem featured on an extremist website to mark the third anniversary of the July 7 London bombings in which 52 people died.

from Telegraph: Osama Bin Laden's son calls for Britain to be wiped out on terror web film

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Great Regulars

[by Richard F. Hugo

Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg]

You might come here Sunday on a whim.

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: Anecdote answers the origins of a Richard Hugo poem

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But poetry didn't start out with rhyme and meter. Before the printing press, when poems had to be memorized, they contained all sorts of repetitions to make that easier -- repetitions of phrase (check out the Psalms) and repetition of sounds (look at the alliteration in Beowulf).

from Fleda Brown: Traverse City Record Eagle: On Poetry: Rhythm washes up in waves

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By Jon Herbert Arkham

This man's not human:

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: '7 Come 11'

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'Jekyll and Slide'
By Jon Herbert Arkham

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Monster mash

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Ozark September
By Lindsey Martin-Bowen

In September, when sunlight

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'When sunlight turns from gold . . .'

---

The speaker exclaims that the man who is free from "courts" and "towns" and owns his own small farm where he can "breath[ ] his native air" is the happiest man. The reader will find the serenity of the situation described here to be quite hypnotic.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Alexander Pope's 'Ode on Solitude'

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While Dickinson's poem, "The Only News I Know," is obviously an exaggeration, it, nevertheless, dramatizes the most important topics with which the poet likes to engage: immortality, eternity, and God. She likes to occupy her thinking and20musing with ethereal places and events.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Dickinson's 'The Only News I Know'

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The speaker begins by claiming that if a dweller of the Himalayas happens upon a male bear and "shouts to scare the monster," the bear will "often turn aside." Not so with the female of the bear species—she will "rend[ ] the peasant tooth and nail." Therefore the speaker concludes that the "female of the species is more deadly than the male."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Kipling's 'The Female of the Species'

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His traveling mates ridicule him for wanting to rest, and they continue on their journey: "they held their heads high and hurried on;/they never looked back nor rested;/they vanished in the distant blue haze." The speaker remains to enjoy his leisure while the others keep their busy pace.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: May Poet--Rabindranath Tagore

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Therefore, it is his soul that he praises, not his physical body, which is only an instrument used for "[p]ainting [his] age with beauty of [the soul's] days." Thus his sin is commuted to a virtue, because he is merely admitting love for his=2 0own soul, which is, in actuality, love for the Divine.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 62

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Watching candidates scramble for the presidency in these past months, I couldn't help returning to [Louis] Simpson's poem about the cost of democracy. The process exalted by Jefferson and Lincoln is made up of endless, basement-level arguments.

In Otto's Basement

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

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Back to Back
by Debra Kang Dean

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Back to Back

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Night
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Night

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Opposing Forces
by Eamon Grennan

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Opposing Forces

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Patty's Charcoal Drive-in
by Barbara Crooker

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Patty's Charcoal Drive-in

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A Primer of the Daily Round
by Howard Nemerov

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: A Primer of the Daily Round

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A Snap Quiz in Body Language
by David Wagoner

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: A Snap Quiz in Body Language

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Trees (excerpt)
by W. S. Merwin

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Trees (excerpt)

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I don't often talk about poetic forms in this column, thinking that most of my readers aren't interested in how the clock works and would rather be given the time. But the following poem by Veronica Patterson of Colorado has a subtitle referring to a form, the senryu, and I thought it might be helpful to mention that the senryu is a Japanese form similar to haiku but dealing with people rather than nature. There; enough said. Now you can forget the form and enjoy the poem, which is a beautiful sketch of a marriage.

Marry Me
a senryu sequence

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 172

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In America, modern urban poetry since the end of20World War I has tended to emphasize the negative, i.e., violence, poverty, drugs, brutality, and prostitution.

One 20th century American poet may be the sole exception. Can you identify the following poem and its author?

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Modern poetry puts negative spin on cities, city living

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July 9th was June Jordan's birthday. One can just image what she would be doing right now. I can see her wearing an Obama button, writing about Darfur and Zimbabwe. Raising questions for white feminists regarding Lady Hillary. She would be outraged and tickled at the same time. I miss this woman's fierce laughter and her beauty.

For June

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: Remembering; June Jordan

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The Mermaid Tavern existed in the era of that great matriarch, Queen Elizabeth I, and was located east of the old St Paul's Cathedral on Friday Street. What made it so mythical was that here the Friday Street Club would meet, a group founded by sonneteer and seafarer Sir Walter Raleigh (who may have glimpsed a few sirens in his travels) and which attracted such literary giants as Ben Jonson, John Donne and even William Shakespeare himself. Legend has it that Jonson and Shakespeare would often be s een pitting their wits over a pint.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: A Reading of "The Mermaid Tavern" by John Keats

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Right now they're working on replacing the windows, I think, and there's a big yellow cherry picker that goes up and down the side of the building, and a guy who takes out the old frames and puts in the new ones and then, I imagine, eventually washes the panes.

I've been watching this for a few days now, and then read this poem by Stephen Dunn, from his Pulitzer-winning collection Different Hours, which shares the same central image.

from Max Ross: The Rake: Cracking Spines: Poem Worth Reading: An Existential Miscommunication

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Selima Hill's 1984 collection Saying Hello at the Station introduced arguably the most distinctive truth teller to emerge in British poetry since Sylvia Plath. In the quarter-century since that debut, her voice has deepened and strengthened as its subject matter has widened from bereavement and life in a psychiatric unit to more general difficulties with men, family relationships, and the business of living.

from Fiona Sampson: The Guardian: Truth and dare

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Brian20[Michael Tracy] had been working on a book of poetry when he attended a Lucinda Williams concert where, between songs, her father Miller Williams read his poetry. Brian thought that Andy [Hill] and Renee [Safier] might be the perfect choice to do something similar.

from Belinda Subraman Presents: Tea With Dante: Poetry by Brian Michael Tracy, Music from Andy Hill, Renee Safier and Marty Rifkin

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Variation on Shapcott by John Fuller

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Variation on Shapcott by John Fuller

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Courting Forgetfulness
by Robert Bly

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Courting Forgetfulness

---

Mary at the Tattoo Shop
by Marcus Jackson

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Mary at the Tattoo Shop

---

By Christy Gindhart

Untitled

Mid-morning light shines through the chink in my tent

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Christy Gindhart]

---

By Frank McDevitt

Cherry Hill High School West

A Place Down the Road

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Frank McDevitt]

---

By Anh Thu Nguyen

Cherry Hill High School West

Cookie Wonder

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Anh Thu Nguyen]

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[by Isabelle Woollacott]
Glass Winged Bug

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Glass Winged Bug

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This year is the 400th anniversary of John Milton's birth. If you haven't read his poetry, or not since schooldays, Poems of John Milton, introduced by Claire Tomalin (Penguin Classics, £10.99) is an attractive place to start. This is his most famous sonnet, written at 44, when he lost his sight.

Sonnet XIX

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week: John Milton

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"Visiting the Real Ranch"
—for Oscar
By Sally Ball

from Slate: "Visiting the Real Ranch" --By Sally Ball

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Poetic Obituaries

[Alfred] Arteaga was a pioneer in post-colonial and ethnic minority literature studies and an important early Chicano movement poet. He was an expert on the works of Shakespeare and the Mexican poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Arteaga originally joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1990 as an assistant professor of English and was tenured in the Department of Ethnic Studies in 1998.

from UC Berkeley News: Poet Alfred Arteaga, professor of Chicano and ethnic studies, dies at 58
also Lorna Dee Cervantes: Sad, Sad News--Alfred Arteaga, Poet, Professor Has Passed . . .

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Having bought a hunting lodge in Devon, this proved not wholly convenient, so he [Glencairn Balfour-Paul] resigned to become a research fellow at the University of Exeter and devote himself to writing and travelling with his wife, a researcher and writer on the use of indigo dyes, in the Maghreb and in south-west and South-East Asia. He published a book of poetry, A Kind of Kindness, in 2000, and his autobiography, Bagpipes in Babylon, in 2006.

from The Times: Glencairn Balfour-Paul: British ambassador to Baghdad

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Riley [Roy Frazel] was killed July 9, in a skateboarding accident with a car while spending the summer with his mother in Littleton, Colo. He had written this poem and several others about skateboarding for his seventh grade poetry project.

Born November 19, 1994, in Arcata to Lisa Corbett and Ted Frazel, Riley would have been an eighth grader at Zane in the fall.

from The Eureka Reporter: Riley Roy Frazel

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A well-known name in Marathi literary circles, [Kalyan] Inamdar was associated for several decades with the Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad, said its secretary Madhavi Vaidya. He was conferred the MSP's "Bal Kavita Vangmaya Puraskar-2008" recently, she said.

from Daily News & Analysis: Marathi author, poet Kalyan Inamdar dead

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Born in Rabat in 1917 and known as Kilin since childhood, Mr [Mikiel] Spiteri, who has seven children, 17 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren, published a string of books in Maltese, which included novels and poetry. He was fluent in six languages and has published in other languages besides Maltese, including English and Spanish.

from Times of Malta: Kilin, the author who enriched Maltese literature, dies aged 90

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[Gil Prewett] was an accomplished pianist, and his wife also helped instil in him a passion for poetry , art and drama, which became more central to his life as time went on.

She managed to lure him into amateur dramatics in the Horsham Players, later known as Theatre 48.

from West Sussex County Times: Death of 'a humble man'--Gil Prewett

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[Det. Sgt. Mike] Hopson added that a search of the man's home resulted in the discovery of notes left for his family.

He also said [Dennis Alan] Roush had written notes and poems about depression.

from Ennis Daily News: Man hangs himself outside his home

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As his conditioned worsened at the beginning of 2008, classmates worried that Demetrius [Smith] might not live long enough for sixth-grade graduation. So his teacher and classmates decided to hold the ceremonies April 7.

Demetrius, who could barely move and depended on others to steer his wheelchair, wrote this poem for the event.

from Cleveland Metro News: Demetrius Smith: A short life, but fully lived

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Branislaw Sprynchan was born in the village of Kanizh in Ukraine's Kirovohrad province in 1928. He headed the poetry department of the literary journal Nyoman and is known for translations of Belarusian- and Ukrainian-language poetry into Russian.

fr om Belarus News: Writer Branislaw Sprynchan dies after being run over by drunk driver in downtown Minsk

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Saundra Click, a friend of the women, said, "If you ever stopped to get to know Wyoming ([Teresa] Tingey), you'd know she wrote beautiful poetry, and little Rosy (Cruz) could sing her little heart out. She had a voice none could compare to. [It] scares me more than anything. It could have been any one of us girls, any one of the girls out here."

from KSL Newsradio: Ogden murder victims identified

---

[Carlton Turner] blamed the killings on anger and hatred and said he was sorry.

"I still loved them," he said. "What I did was wrong. There was a time when I had justification, but that's all wrong."

Read more of the interview on his personal Web site, where he also posted his poetry.

from USA Today: Texas executes man who killed adoptive parents

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News at Eleven

Surjit Singh was beaten up on Tuesday by a teacher in the Nangal Kalan Government High school in public, said the Dalit sarpanch of the village Gyan Kaur. His two classmates said, "When the teacher came to know about the Surjit's love poem, he caned him till he almost dropped dead."

That was not the end of his ordeal; he was again beaten up by the family members of the girl the next day, Wednesday.

from The Times of India: Verse for classmate gets Dalit bot death

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Desribe Your Grief

by Tom Hawkins

from The Sun Magazine: Describe Your Grief

---

However, [Tung-Hui] Hu was pleasantly surprised when he arrived in Owxford.

"I love this town. Everybody tries to feed me." he said. "I love my house. I haven't lived in a house in 10 years. I'm still getting used to it, me being a small guy."

Hu is scheduled for a signing and reading today at 5 p.m. at Off Square Books. He will read selections from his previous works as well as some of his newest poems. The event is free and open to the public.

The Wish Answered
by Tung-Hui Hu

from The Daily Mississippian: Tung-Hui Hu: Summer Poet in Residence

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In a functioning culture the landscape is full of stories. Stories adhere to it. And they're most interesting when they're told within the landscape. If, say, an oral-history project records somebody's story and puts it in the university archives, then it's a different story. It's become isolated, misplaced, displaced. [--Wendell Berry]

from The Sun Magazine: Digging In: Wendell Berry On Small Farms, Local Wisdom, And The Folly Of Greed

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Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were holding their already famous philosophical debates at a table at the nearby Café de Flore. Richard Wright had arrived a few years earlier, as had Saul Bellow and a young, and relatively unknown and impoverished James Baldwin, who was living at the Hotel Verneuil, a cheap, slightly run-down hotel nearby.

from The Wall Street Journal: Why the Expats Left Paris
also The Wall Street Journal: Bonjour Tristesse

---

The poem's author, Kyi Maung Than, has gone into hiding for fear of being arrested by the military government. His poems and articles were banned for several years after he took a pro-democracy position. Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association are concerned at the possibility that he could be found and detained.

from Reporters Without Borders: Poem prompts purge of Rangoon-based magazine

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A series of unpublished poems by Chile's late Pablo Neruda, winner of the 1971 Nobel prize for literature, are shedding light on his last romance with his wife's niece more than 40 years his junior, a collector said.

The 14 poems were found in a book titled "Black Island Album," named after the house in central Chile which Neruda, his third and last wife Matilde Urrutia and her niece Alicia Urrutia shared, according to Nurieldin Hermosilla.

from AFP: Unpublished Pablo Neruda poems highlight last romance

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But one academic has accused the poet [Robert Graves] of stealing ideas, literary criticism and poetry from his one-time American mistress and passing them off as his own.

Dr Mark Jacobs, a research fellow at Nottingham Trent University who has spent two decades studying 700 letters he received from Laura Riding Jackson as well as her literary works, said when she discovered the uncanny similarity in his texts she condemned her former lover as a "robber baron".

from The Independent: War poet Robert Graves 'stole work from his mistress'

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In the next poem, [John] Redmond's father is remembered diving into water; but the opening couplet makes it ambiguous as to whether this is a real or a metaphorical event: "Over the inver the universe blows--/father dives into the hereafter". Voices from the shore try to locate him--"Where is here?"--and the piece (and the first half of the book) end with a suggestive Gaelic proverb, "Is fánach an áit a bhfaighfeá gliomach" ("It's a queer place you would find a lobster").

from The Guardian: A place of casual collisions

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On some pages [William] Allegrezza literally obliterates the text: large black letters and sometimes words appear on top of blocks of smaller text, rendering the background text illegible.

This blocking out of words serves as a reminder that we cannot have everything. We cannot access all the text on the page or catch all the references, allusions, and voices, but we are able to access that which remains -- the fragile replacements that exist in place of didactic conclusions.

from Bookslut: Fragile Replacements by William Allegrezza

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Today they are famous and however wild and wooly it was when archived, this enormous trove of material written on the vanguard is "ripe" today and widely accepted as seminal to some of the most important movements and literary forms of the 20th century.

from University at Buffalo Reporter: UB Poetry Collection hits the road

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Great Regulars

Fifteen years after his death at age 79, [William] Stafford is more popular and prolific than ever. At least eight books--a lifetime's worth for most poets--have been published since his death. There were 61 events celebrating his birthday this year--more than 40 in the Portland area but also in Malaysia, Mexico, Scotland and Sweden. Thousands of people, many of them new to poetry readings, brought favorite Stafford poems and heard others written in his spirit.

from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: Oregon poet William Stafford is hugely popular--15 years after his death

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Marvel
By David Biespiel

from David Biespiel: Poetry Foundation: Marvel

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The Theory 0f Hats
By David Biespiel

from David Biespiel: Poetry Foundation: The Theory 0f Hats

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Kansas City Heat
By Jim Fox

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Blanket Statements

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August Heat
By Lindsey Martin-Bowen

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Brownstones doze in haze . . .'

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By Donna Trussell

There goes pi

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Summer'

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'Howlin Wolf'
By Jon Herbert Arkham

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Wolf at the door

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In [Edmund] White's estimation, Americans are better 'at following books outlining architectural tours of Montparnasse'--rather like those high-minded British tourist in Florence.

For those who prefer cities to reveal their treasures more haphazardly, here are three resonant masterpieces, the perfect companions for a loose-limbed stroll.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Summer reading: how to pick the right book for any trip

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The speaker claims that the tramps knew they didn't have to say anything; they assumed it would be obvious to the speaker they deserved to be splitting the wood. They would split wood because they needed the money, but the speaker is splitting the wood for the love of it. It did not matter that the tramps had "agreed" that they had a better claim.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Frost's 'Two Tramps in Mud Time'

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They have marched on undaunted over a path "watered" by tears, and they have trod through the sludge of "the blood of the slaughtered." The past is gloomy, but now they stand "[w]here the white gleam of our bright star is cast." Hope has now been brought alive by their valiant struggle.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: June Poet--James Weldon Johnson

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Pablo Neruda is one with the vast sludge of mediocrity, whose writings would have long passed into oblivion, instead of hoisting the poetaster into the Nobel Laureateship, had not the radical left-wing noise machine, so obtrusive in American and European art spheres, hovered around him and elevated him to a prominence which he in no way deserves.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: July Poet--Pablo Neruda

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[Terrance] Hayes's poems enact the new race struggle, more up-to-date than the pre-civil rights poems of his lit'rary ancestors (Langston Hughes, say), but equally instructive to this white reader.

Talk

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

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827 The Only News I know
by Emily Dickinson

441 This is my letter to the World
by Emily Dickinson

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: 827 The Only News I know

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The Exchange
by Ron Rash

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Exchange

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Like Riding a Bicycle
by George Bilgere

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Like Riding a Bicycle

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Marine Tongue Twister
by John Hollander

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Marine Tongue Twister

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Old Timer's Day
by Donald Hall

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Old Timer's Day

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Quiet After the Rain of Morning
by Joseph Trumbull Stickney

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Quiet After the Rain of Morning

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The Rider
by Naomi Shihab Nye

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Rider

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Sometimes I think that people are at their happiest when they're engaged in activities close to the work of the earliest humans: telling stories around a fire, taking care of children, hunting, making clothes. Here an Iowan, Ann Struthers, speaks of one of those original tasks, digging in the dirt.

Planting the Sand Cherry

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 171

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Shadows & Acts of Love

I loved you so much

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: Shadows & Acts of Love

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The book immediately broke through commercially and artistically, selling some 19,000 copies in five months, leading even the cranky dean of American letters, Mark Twain, to pronounce Anne "the dearest and most lovable child in fiction since the immortal Alice." Today, Anne of Green Gables and its seven sequels are the basis for a small industry.

from Meghan O'Rourke: Slate: 100 Candles

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Loosely speaking, these are:

1) That poetry is passive, swoony, and generally not in the business of "doing things."
2) That politics is active, gritty, and comparable to war.

Many objections can be made to these assumptions, but it's important to note first that poetry and politics are both matters of verbal persuasion--that is, both have strong connections to the art of rhetoric.

from David Orr: Poetry: The Politics of Poetry

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Some of the 28 people charged with trespassing and vandalism accepted an unusual plea agreement — they had to take a class on Robert Frost.

Jay Parini, a professor of English and creative writing at Middlebury College, talks about instructing some of these students in poetry and poetic justice.

from Jay Parini: NPR: Justice For Vandals Is Poetic

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The real reason I'm posting this can be found after the poem.

The following is lifted from Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72, which is Hunter S. Thompson's take on the 1972 presidential election, written for Rolling Stone.

What's striking to me is how many parallels there seem to be between the 1972 cycle and this year's.

from Max Ross: The Rake: Cracking Spines: The world is full of downers...which is maybe why Gonzo took so many uppers

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"Mine", from her [Elizabeth Bartlett's] penultimate collection, Appetites of Love, draws an analogy between psychoanalysis and coalmining, and ends with a bright sense of vindication through poetry. Let's share the celebration and keep her fires alight.

Mine

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

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[by Scott T. Starbuck]

So two guys in suits arrive,

from B.T. Shaw: The Oregonian: Poetry

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[Elizabeth] Robinson's work results from metaphoric openings that introduce conceptual relations through dramatic enactments in the poem.

Adding to the conceptual complexity here is a conversation with a dead author. The poems in this collection all converse conceptually with the New England poet, Edward Arlington Robinson, whose work provides the titles and line-end rhymes throughout the book.

from Dale Smith: Bookslut: Marsupial Inquirer: Writing the Dead

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1 This is me when I'm happy, with my father. He was nearly 60 when I was born and carried on working until he was over 70. He was an emotional man. We children had to be kept out of the way because he was old and worked hard and worried about the business. He married a much younger woman and wanted a quiet life. He should have intervened to protect us from her because she wasn't very nice to us.

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Pieces of me: Wendy Cope, poet

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[by Rivka Miriam]

My Love

My love,
who comes from the transparently veiled Palm Islands,

from Nextbook: Six Poems by Rivka Miriam

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[by H.J. Arey]

Pocket Garden

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Pocket Garden

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"In the Fourth Grade"
By Charles Grosel

from Slate: "In the Fourth Grade" --By Charles Grosel

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Translated from the Hebrew
by Ronny Someck

Biting into Her Beauty

In memory of Noah Orbach

from Zeek: Two Poems by Ronny Someck

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Poetic Obituaries

At the same time [William] Buchan continued with his literary career. His short story collection, The Exclusives, was published in 1943. He next published Personal Poems (1952) and Kumari (1955), a widely admired novel set in Calcutta; two thrillers, Helen All Alone (1961) and The Blue Pavilion (1969), followed. He also edited Letters to Reyna (1982), the correspondence of John Masefield and the violinist Audrey Napier-Smith.

But it was John Buchan: a Memoir (1982) and his autobiography, Rags of Time (1990), which attracted the greatest attention.

from Telegraph: Lord Tweedsmuir

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Mr. [R. John] Buskowiak enjoyed building model airplanes, music, songwriting and poetry.

from Post-Bulletin: R. John Buskowiak--Rochester

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[JoAnn C. Carey] also had a craft shop at Village Showcrafters Shop for four years.

Mrs. Carey was an active poetry writer with books published in "Living Voices," "Timepieces" and "Who's Who in International Poetry."

from The News Leader: JoAnn C. Carey

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Ross [Carter] was a true gentleman, friend and mentor, a man of scintillating intellect and wry humor whose love of life found expression through painting, poetry and politics.

Born March 18, 1929 in Vancouver, Ross graduated from UBC and then earned a master's degree in librarianship from the University of Washington. His career as a librarian took him to New York, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington in the States, and finally back to Vancouver, where he served first as librarian and then as acting president for Vancouver Community College.

from Bowen Island Undercurrent: Ross Carter May 18, 1929-June 29, 2008 A beloved soul is lost to Bowen and the world

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Prolific and diverse in his literary output, Disch also was the author of "The Brave Little Toaster," a children's book that was made into an animated film by Disney, and "Amnesia," an interactive computer novel. Earlier this month his satire "The Word of God: Or, Holy Writ Rewritten" was released.

As a poet, Disch wrote in standard forms: sonnets, villanelles, epigrams, "always clever and full of wordplay," said Thomas Heacox, who teaches English at College of William and Mary, where Disch served as a writer-in-residence in the 1990s.

His volumes of poetry include "Yes, Let's: New and Selected Poetry," published in 1989.

from Los Angeles Times: Thomas M. Disch, 68; prolific science-fiction author
also The Bat Segundo Show: Thomas M. Disch (BSS #219)

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A recipient of the presidential award, Khater Ghaznavi was also known as a researcher, columnist, educationist and vice-president of the NWFP chapter of Progressive Writers' Association.

from Dawn: Khatir Ghaznavi laid to rest

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[Shannon Leigh] Lewis later won the Austin-wide Under 21 poetry slams in 2003 and 2004. Last year, during a sold-out National Poetry Slam show at the Paramount Theatre, Lewis took third place. She was featured on the HBO series, "Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry," and represented Austin in the Under 21 Slam Team at the national Brave New Voices Youth Festival. She also had finished writing two novels and produced a hip-hop album titled "Sanctuary."

from The Austin American-Statesman: Update: Austin poet Shannon Leigh Lewis has died

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[Marie Flowers] McDonagh authored and self-published four books. Her first poetry collection, "My Simple Word," hit the stands in 1999, with her first novel, "One Day, Fransean," arriving in 2005.

Facing cancer did not hinder her creative spirit when she published her second novel, "Sequel 2 One Day, Fransean," in 2007, with her final book of poetry, "The Last Mile," released in 2008.

from The Saginaw News: A Chesaning novelist and poet has died

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Published in 1999, the encyclopedia was the culmination of around 30 years of research.

[Abdel-Wahab Al-]Messeri has also written extensively on Western culture and contemporaneity, and he has also produced several poems.

Messeri has received many prizes throughout his carrier, including the State Merit Award in 2005.

from IslamOnline.net: Egypt's Iconic Thinker Messeri Dies

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Aside from the poetry she [Lunette Mulkey] wrote as a child, Mulkey was known mostly for letters to the editor, which she began sending to the Moberly Monitor-Index in Moberly, Mo., when her sons were young.

She would talk about life with her husband and their boys, or the pleasures of rural living. She'd lament the intricacies of new technology. She chronicled the quiet joys and disappointments of growing older and the lessons of a life well lived.

from Albany Democrat-Herald: Remembrance: Lunette Mulkey was a letter writer for life

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[Beatrice D. Price] always had a deep interest in literature, poetry, politics, land conservation and environmental issues. She and her husband "lived green" all of their lives.

from Hampton Union: Beatrice D. Price

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[Sharada] Rao, who has been serving the literary field for the last 30 years, had brought out collections of poems titled Kavyaguccha, Kavya Karaveera and Saptaswara besides audio cassettes by the names Bhava Sangama and Balaka Manikanta.

Two Tulu plays penned by her, 'Boodammana Birsatike' and 'Preetida Bale' had won her Sri Ratnavarma Heggade Memorial awards.

from daijiworld.com: Beltangady: Veteran Writer, Poetess Sharada Rao No More

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"Get in the car," [Eileen] Kennedy recalled her mother [Eileen Regan] saying at the start of their beach sojourns. "We're going to the Shore. We're going to find a place to rent and everybody will get jobs."

Eileen was a devoted reader whose tastes tended to the classics and poetry. The children had to memorize poetry, and the aforementioned family dog was named after Emily Dickinson.

That was an embarrassment to son Timothy. "How could he tell his friends the dog was named after a poet?" Kennedy said.

from Philadelphia Daily News: Eileen Regan, 81, artist and beach-lover

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[Morton Schwab] kept a sailboat on Martha's Vineyard for years. He was also a passionate tennis player and an amateur poet, his son said.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Morton Schwab, 91, psychiatrist in Phila. for more than 50 years

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Surjit Singh was beaten up on Tuesday by a teacher in the Nangal Kalan Government High school in public, said the Dalit sarpanch of the village Gyan Kaur. His two classmates said, "When the teacher came to know about the Surjit's love poem, he caned him till he almost dropped dead."

That was not the end of his ordeal; he was again beaten up by the family members of the girl the next day, Wednesday.

from The Times of India: Verse for classmate gets Dalit boy death

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[Rod] Burks tried to rescue [Bill] Studebaker but was unable to reach him.

He's the author of about a dozen books of poetry and non-fiction, including "Short of a Good Promise," a 1999 reminiscence of growing up in the remote Idaho backcountry following World War II.

from KTVB: Body of drowned kayaker [Wiliam Studebaker] found

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[Tasha] Tudor illustrated several classics of children's literature, including "The Secret Garden" and "The Wind in the Willows."

She also compiled poetry collections, such as "Wings from the Wind," with poetry from venerable writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare and Wordsworth.

Do today's children like her old-fashioned illustrations? The delicate watercolors may verge on the sentimental, but the details of animals, plants, people and daily activities give them a sturdy appeal.

from The Free Lance-Star: Revisit Tasha Tudor's world

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News at Eleven

In one cartoon which mixes animation with a live action sequence, Porky Pig barges into producer Leon Schlesinger's office demanding to be let out of his contract. Another cartoon opens quietly with the figure of Elmer Fudd in full hunting regalia tip-toeing left to right through the woods. Then, as if noticing a noisy late-comer to the theater or the sound of a shaken box of candy, Fudd stops, turns to face the audience, puts one of his four fingers to his lips and says in a seething whisper: "Shhhh! It's wabbit season." Ah, Elmer, you unlikely modernist! What were your creators reading? Was animator Chuck Jones curling up at night with a volume of French surrealist poetry?

Daffy

from The Wall Street Journal: Inspired by a Bunny Wabbit

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So, on his way to the Polo Grounds, [Franklin Pierce] Adams jotted down a poem, his muses being the three thorns in the Cubs infield who eternally vexed his beloved New York Giants.

Shortstop Joe Tinker. Second baseman Johnny Evers. First baseman Frank Chance.

Certainly not the most prolific double-play combination in baseball history. However, the most creative, arguably. And the most famous--that can't even be argued.

from MLB.com: Power of poem immortalizes Cubs trio

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Our press, the Bunny and Crocodile Press, published two of Ann's books, Flying the Zuni Mountains (1994) and Confessions of a Skewed Romantic (1993).

Here are two poems from Romantic. First the title poem:

Confessions of a Skewed Romantic
After seeing "The Butcher's Wife"

from Beltway: Let Us Now Praise Famous Women: Remembering Ann Darr

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They went on, "By far the greater number of persons who have purchased it from us have found fault with it in such plain terms, that we have in many cases offered to take the book back rather than be annoyed with the ridicule which has, time after time, been showered upon it."

When Keats's long poem "Endymion" came out, the following year, from a different firm, the ridicule was even worse, and far more public.

from The New Yorker: Cloudy Trophies

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Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association (BMA) today called for the immediate release from prison of celebrated journalist U Win Tin whose health has deteriorated badly in the past few days.

The 78-year-old is suffering from lung problems with severe asthmatic attacks which prevent him from sleeping and eating properly. A relative who visited him two days ago found him thin and weak.

from Reporters Without Borders: Health of renowned journalist U Win Tin deteriorating after 19 years in jail

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The censors order Cherry to sack the editor of its poetry section, Htay Aung, Rangoon-based journalists told The Irrawaddy.

Htay Aung's dismissal was followed by staff changes, but the magazine is still waiting for clearance to continue publishing.

The offending poem, "De Pa Yin Ga", referred to the events in Depayin town in Sagaing Division in May 2003, when Burma's democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her convoy were ambushed by junta-backed thugs.

from The Irrawaddy: Rangoon Editor Fired Over Offending Poem

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[Charles Simic's] is a surrealism with a conscience, acutely attuned to existential absurdity yet immune to zero-sum nihilism, using elaborate artifice as a delicate instrument to probe everything that makes us all too human.

James Tate began his career as something of a child prodigy, winning the Yale Younger Poets prize at the ripe old age of 23, and ever since has reveled in a life of literary truancy.

from The Boston Globe: Dream time

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It's hard to care about a lot of [Frank] O'Hara's poems, but he doesn't want you to care. To accept the present as a fallen realm risks making it insignificant, although other poets of the period, especially Elizabeth Bishop, wrote deeply without losing their lightness of bearing. In his best poems--"Thinking of James Dean," "Why I Am Not a Painter," "On Seeing Larry Rivers' ‘Washington Crossing the Delaware' at the Museum of Modern Art," "Ode: Salute to the French Negro Poets," "The Day Lady Died," "Les Luths," "Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)" and half a dozen others--O'Hara found something beyond that terrible vacancy he was trying so hard to fill.

from The New York Times: Urban Poet

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Perhaps the modernist founding fathers, TS Eliot and Ezra Pound, induce a kind of English cultural cringe. But the close literary relationship between [Edward] Thomas and Robert Frost was another key Anglo-American encounter, and its effects continue.

In fact, it might seem odd to ask if Thomas is undervalued. Few poets have been such a muse to other poets.

from The Guardian: Roads from France

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Driving past small gas stations and a clapboard country store, you turn onto a packed dirt road, and at the point where two roads diverge you go to the left and up the small hill. If it's the off-season, and the thin road is deserted, you can park right in front of the white boxy house with the front porch overlooking the mountains. The neighbors won't mind that you're blocking the road a little. They're used to people stopping and staring at the former home of one of America's most loved writers, Robert Frost.

from New Hampshire Magazine: The Homes of Poems

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Secondly, they [John Marshall and Christine Deavel] keep overhead low by staffing the store themselves. This decision is one they've both struggled with and aren't proud of--Deavel says she wishes they could provide jobs for others--but it's one borne of necessity. Employees are usually an employer's largest expense.

from Crosscut Seattle: Profits from poems

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Great Regulars

A prose poem by Jim Fox

Ahead of me and on my right, an arc

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'February Missouri Rain'

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One: Parachute is seeking poems on summer and autumn, on music, on the arts, and on what I call "freakish nature." I don't want flowers and bees; I want storms, cyclones, mudslides, or just plain weird-ass places.

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Parachute rips

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[Ted] Kooser's poetry is called "accessible" which means it is easy to understand. To many modern, or post-modern, American minds, such a distinction is the kiss of death. The lovers of obscure verse will find plenty in Kooser to deride, but the rationale for maintaining the position of poet laureate is to help make poetry more accessible in order to attract a wider audience for the art.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Kooser and American Life in Poetry

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Along with the official bicentennial poem of Tennessee, [Maggi] Vaughn wrote "Mr. Tennessee Music Man," the official poem for the Tennessee state quarter, released by U.S. Mint in 2002. She also wrote the governor's inaugural poem, and a poem celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Air Force. She has appeared in programs on PBS, USA, TNN, TNT, and the BBC, and on many local radio and TV programs.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Maggi Vaughn

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Joel disagrees that someone is snooping around the house and tries to dissuade her going out and trying to find someone. But she is adamant and cries, "Don't hold my arm!" To which he relies, "I say it's someone passing."

She then reminds him of how isolated their farm is: "You speak as if this were a travelled road./

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Robert Frost's 'The Fear'

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Then they must "fight" against the new-found knowledge that they are, in fact, aging, changing from their glorious youth to maturity that requires more of them than romantic folly. The same "Time" that they were given at birth later seems to confuse them.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 60

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He cannot allow himself to be motivated by a muse that he can ostracize at will. He can receive only so much inspiration from the muse, because "[the muse's] love, though much, is not so great" as his own.

He acknowledges that he is the only one who is answerable for his own inspiration: "It is my love that keeps mine eye awake."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 61

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[Miroslav] Holub's scientific proclivity crosses the battle line so boldly drawn by the English Romantics, who fired flaming volleys at reason and its territories. In 1820, John Keats's "Lamia" dubbed science "cold philosophy"--a destroyer of natural charms: "Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings/Conquer all mysteries by rule and line . . . , Unweave a rainbow." But Holub swings open the operating-theater door in "Heart Transplant" and reveals technology's new beauty:

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

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Melancholy
by Baron Wormser

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Melancholy

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My Grandmother's Ghost
by James Wright

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: My Grandmother's Ghost

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Naming the Animals
by Anthony Hecht

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Naming the Animals

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On a Fly Drinking Out of His Cup
by William Oldys

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: On a Fly Drinking Out of His Cup

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Self-knowledge
by C. K. Williams

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Self-knowledge

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Square Dancing with Sister Robert Claire
by Michael Cleary

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Square Dancing with Sister Robert Claire

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The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Summer Day

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I've lived all my life on the plains, where no body of water is more than a few feet deep, and even at that shallow depth I'm afraid of it. Here Sam Green, who lives on an island north of Seattle, takes us down into some really deep, dark water.

Night Dive

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 170

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Here nature is brought into the poem not to symbolize the feelings of one individual, but to stand for the shattered individuals of an entire generation, survivors trying to put their lives back together in a country crippled by a war.

When contemporary psychological poets incorporate nature in their poems, they do so with irony or with deliberate distortion. Surrealistic images of nature reflect a state of mind that is considered unmistakably modern.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Use nature as an indirect element in your poetry

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The wife of a Christian publisher who has been held by authorities in Beijing without charge since March says her husband's detention has now been extended for a further two months to give the police time to collect evidence against him.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: China Extends Christian's Detention

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Could the Parthenon have turned Diogenes, known as "The Dog," into a kitten? Well, Melville has unfortunately got his history a little mixed-up here--Diogenes was alive and well when the Parthenon was built and certainly would have seen it. And there is no proof that he found it of any account whatsoever.

But does that undermine the poem?

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

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One tends to forget that poetry is wisdom. I was in Morocco recently, and a devout Muslim mentioned to me that the Prophet Muhammad, in his book of sayings, the Hadith, had said as much. But the Koran also teaches, I was told, that poets are dangerous, and that decent people should avoid them. That reminded me of Plato, who wished to ban all poets from his ideal republic because he thought they were liars.

from Jay Parini: The Chronicle Review: Why Poetry Matters

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As a result of the way that class and poverty impact on education, there are hundreds of thousands of children who will only come across books when they are in school.

Those children face education with one hand tied behind their backs. They are not immersed in a kind of language and a way of thinking that matches the way schools deal with ideas, debate, thought and knowledge.

from Michael Rosen: Socialist Worker: Michael Rosen's favourite children's books

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Part of writing is discovering the rules of the game and then deciding whether to follow the rules or to break them. The great thing about the game of poetry is that it's always your turn-I guess that goes back to my being an only child. So once it's under way, there is a sense of flow.

And now one of his poems. This is from his Nine Horses collection. (Click the link to buy it . . .)

Aimless Love

from Max Ross: The Rake: Cracking Spines: Poem Worth Reading: An Insatiable Lover

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Hence, according to a paradoxical tradition which developed as a corollary, this nonexistent nothing is the source or unformed raw material of all things in the Creation, without which they would not exist."

[by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester]

Upon Nothing

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

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Poems from Monica E. Gomez, Daniel Elias Galicia, Gilberto Moreno, Nancy Lorenza Green and Jonathan Penton. Compiled by Donna Snyder and the Tumblewords Project.

Posted on June 28, 2008
t'ao day
© 2008 Monica E. Gomez

from Donna Snyder: Newspaper Tree: Tumblewords Poetry

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I am currently a special feature writer, commentator, reviewer and columnist for The Sunday Times.

My books are: The Culture Club: Crisis in the Arts, Richard Rogers: a biography, The Pleasures of Peace: Art and Imagination in Postwar Britain, Understanding the Present: Science and the Soul of Modern Man, The First Church of the New Millennium: a novel, Brave New Worlds: Genetics and the Human Experience (winner of a medical writing prize whose name I cannot remember); Aliens: Why They Are Here and How to Live forever or Die Trying.

from Belinda Subraman Presents: Bryan Appleyard: Author of 8 books, Award Winning Journalist, Columnist for The Sunday Times

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Editor's note: In this week's Poetry Corner we feature a series of poems that appear in the 15th Annual Santa Cruz County High School Poetry Anthology.
Without

from Good Times Weekly: Poetry Corner

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Nettles by Vernon Scannell

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Nettles by Vernon Scannell

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In this exercise, you're going to write a letter to someone you have lost.

Any sort of "lost"- through death, distance, illness, accident or rage. Recently or years ago. A friend, a lover, a parent, a child. The first thing to do is to name the person and to think about him or her for a while. You might want to look at a letter or a photograph.

from The Guardian: Poetry workshop: Kate Clanchy's workshop

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World's End: North of San Francisco

by Tess Taylor

I. Fortress

from Guernica: Poetry: World's End: North of San Francisco

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After Love
by Jack Gilbert

from The New Yorker: Poetry: After Love

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Songs of a Season
by Maureen N. McLane

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Songs of a Season

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By Nick Giaquinto

Blue Blood

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Giaquinto]

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By Quinlan McDonnell

Me and My Hamster

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Quinlan McDonnell]

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By Kaitlin Moore

The Ballad of Hope

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Kaitlin Moore]

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By Michael Zurzolo
F.V. Evans School

Midnight

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Michael Zurzolo]

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[by Lucie Therrien]

Spring Fever

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Spring Fever

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In the galaxy of American modernism, Allen Tate is now a black hole. The authority that made him, in the 1930s and 1940s, one of the most formidable figures in American poetry, mentor and superego to a generation, has collapsed. Neither his strenuously ambiguous poems nor his orotund essays in literary interpretation (he was one of the deities of the New Criticism) are still commonly read.

from Powells: Review-A-Day: Collected Poems, 1919-1976 (FSG Classics)

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[Jorie] Graham is fundamentally a poet of swiftness and simultaneity--the swiftness of both thought and time, the simultaneity of the sensous and the mental. Writing that combines the constant fluctuation of the real and the intermingling of body and mind in all perception conveys truths, both external and internal, that are otherwise, in more sequential treatment, unattainable. Thinking of such an intersection of flesh and spirit, John Donne famously sums up its effects: "One might almost say, her body thought."

from Powells: Review-A-Day: Sea Change: Poems

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Nearly the Happy Hour by D A Prince (HappenStance Press, 2008, £8) signals the first full collection from this publisher. This week's poem is representative of the pace and pleasure in this collection – a tightly woven rattle, a beady poetic eye to the beauty of a moment.

Blackbird

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week

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"When in the Uterine Empyrean They Told Me"
By Patrick Donnelly

from Slate: "When in the Uterine Empyrean They Told Me"--By Patrick Donnelly

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Poem: "Miriam and Her Brothers"

by Kathryn Hellerstein, June 26, 2008

from Zeek: Poem: "Miriam and Her Brothers"

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Poetic Obituaries

[Elizabeth Bartlett] was critically acclaimed as a fine poet who, although not short of admirers, deserved wider recognition.

Much of her work drew on the southern working-class milieu from which she sprang, and she produced powerfully evocative poems remarkable for their painful insights into people's lives.

from Telegraph: Elizabeth Bartlett

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[Nancy A. Calhoun-Medlock] returned to East Liverpool in 2004 after many years in Texas, where she was an apartment complex manager and also a published poet.

from The Review: Nancy A. Calhoun-Medlock, 67

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Joe Daily didn't shy away from talking about his disease or being ill in his writing--which included songs as well as the books of poetry "Girls on Chemo" and "the b-sides of death and dying."

"Death seems to permeate my writing, but it's not about depression or sorrow," Joe Daily said in a Journal article in 2003. "It's just about looking at it from a different angle."

from The Flint Journal: A teacher and inspiration, Joe Daily of Flushing, dies after 18 years fighting cancer

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[Loretta Lorraine Garcia] enjoyed writing poetry, many of which were published.

During her younger years she was active in the church school activities, including Catholic Daughters and the Altar Society.

She loved cooking and the nuns and firemen always remarked about how good a cook she was and begged for more.

from Sherwood Gazette: Loretta Lorraine Garcia

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[Francis Henderson] loved writing poetry, her family genealogy, her dog, Fancy, and attended the Church of Christ in Houma.

from Houma Today: Francis Henderson

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Mrs. [Gladys E.] Henderson enjoyed writing letters to the editor, several poems were published in several poetry anthology books, a distinguished member of the International Society of Poets, member of the American Association of Retired Person's Union, a member of the Library of Congress, received many outstanding achievement awards from the National Library of Poetry.

from Newzjunky: Gladys E. Henderson

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[Ruslana] Korshunova wrote a series of heartbroken internet messages about love in the weeks before she leapt nine floors to her death.

Her internet poems and postings reflect an inner torment sparked by a lover, with her admitting she was 'hurt' and 'lost'.

And most tellingly, in one she wrote: 'My dream is to fly. Oh, my rainbow it is too high.'

from Daily Mail: Supermodel, 20, who threw herself from her ninth floor New York flat was 'on top of the world', say stunned friends

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Cherished for his work as a journalist, [Rick] Murray viewed himself as a creative writer. In 1997, he and his son, Richard, wrote Bloo Moon, an Internet-exclusive science-fiction novel.

"It was very cutting edge," Lorsbach said. "He was an avid writer. Poetry, short stories, anything. He loved writing. He had a great intellect."

from Haddon Herald: Former Haddon Herald reporter dies

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[Mark Perlberg] published three volumes of poetry, "The Burning Field," "The Feel of the Sun," and "The Impossible Toystore" during his life; a fourth book of poetry, titled "Waiting for the Alchemist," is to be published next spring.

In 1968, Mr. Perlberg co-founded the Poetry Center of Chicago, now at the School of the Art Institute, and served as its president for 13 years. Mr. Perlberg also taught a poetry workshop at the Newberry Library for about 20 years.

from Chicago Tribune: Journalist felt pull of poetry

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[Elizabeth] Phillips was a tough-minded teacher, he [Hayes McNeill] said, who wanted her students to dissect and understand the intricacies of literature.

"There was a lot of give-and-take in her class, which was fairly unusual in those days," he said.

Whether students were reading Whitman, Dickinson or T.S. Eliot, Phillips subjected literature to a simple test: What did it mean in real life, and was it valid? he said.

from Winston-Salem Journal: Trailblazer for women at Wake Forest dies

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The talented teenager [Jake Roberts], described as a sensitive boy with a fantastic imagination enjoyed writing stories and poems and even had one verse published after his school entered it into a competition.

from Daily Mail: Schoolboy found hanged after his father confiscated his new Wii

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John Foster West taught English and creative writing for 42 years at three different colleges: Elon College, N.C., from 1949 to 1958, Old Dominion College in Norfolk, Va., from 1958 to 1968 and Appalachian State University (ASU), from 1968 until he retired, professor emeritus, in January, 1991.

At ASU, along with teaching, he was writer-and-poet-in-residence and mentored hundreds of aspiring writers and poets throughout the years.

from N.C. Arts Council: Remembering John Foster West (1918-2008) [scroll down]

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Gary [R. Widger Jr.] enjoyed all facets of literature, especially writing, reading and discussing poetry. He also enjoyed music and spending time at the beach and mountains.

He was active in the Portsmouth poetry community and had poems published in Caketrain, a literary journal, and The Other Side of Sorrow, an anthology of poems.

from Portsmouth Herald News: Gary R. Widger Jr.

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