News at Eleven

[Woeser's husband Wang Lixiong] said: "I can't say whether their intention was to intimidate. But if they can do this to an influential writer who has done nothing more than take photographs, then one can only imagine the kind of threat that ordinary people in Tibet must feel every day."

The couple decided to return home to Beijing but first organised a reunion party with Woeser's many family and friends in Lhasa. Many did not attend, apparently afraid of possible consequences after her arrest.

from The Times: Tibet's most famous woman blogger, Woeser, detained by police

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When the IOC voted to award these games to China in 2001, it knew that the issue of human rights would be at the heart of the event. But, throughout the seven long years from the vote until the start of the games, the IOC and its president, Jacques Rogge, proved incapable of getting the Chinese authorities to make lasting improvements in respect for freedom of expression.

The IOC had an obligation to ensure respect for the Olympic Charter, which says sport must serve "the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity. " It is guilty of a serious dereliction of duty.

from Reporters Without Borders: Olympic disaster for free expression in China: Reporters Without Borders condemns Chinese government cynicism and IOC inability to ensure respect for charter

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[Mahmoud Darwish] speaks of this paradoxical identity in the poem Mural: "Whenever I search for myself/I find the others/And when I search for them/I only find my alien self/So am I the individual-crowd?" The interiority of this poem renders its tone radically different from his early assertive poem Identity Card: "Put it on record./I am an Arab./And the number of my card is fifty thousand./I have eight children/And the ninth is due after summer./What is there to be angry about?"

from Frontline: Lover from Palestine

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Translated from the Chinese by Pascale Petit

Born in 1955, in Changchun, Jilin province, Wang Xiaoni was sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, and began writing poetry in 1974.

from The Guardian: Poem: White Moon by Wang Xiaoni

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Also, you might want to try thinking of yourself as a mountain, as a being capable of bringing on weather through your voice, and give it a good, solid, slow reading. Maybe even this afternoon as the last of the summer rains come down you can give it a good read. Enjoy.

[by Ed Lahey]

"The Blind Horses"

The old man in the hospital bed

from Flagstaff Live: Taking the pulpit: Honoring Montana poet Ed Lahey

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"She had tried society and the world," Mrs. [Mabel Loomis] Todd wrote [of Emily Dickinson], "and found them lacking. She was not an invalid, and she loved seclusion, from no love-disappointment. Her life was the normal blossoming of a nature introspective to a high degree, whose best thought could not exist in pretence."

It would be hard to come up with a more mistaken analysis of Emily Dickinson. Even the accurate parts are misleading.

from Worcester Telegram & Gazette: The little-known Worcester sweetheart of Emily Dickinson

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We still don't know why Dickinson elected, well past her youth, to don only virginal white or--beyond a sense of shared mental and social superiority--what caused the members of her family to cling so tightly to one another. (Vinnie and Emily, the husbandless sisters, spent their entire lives under the parental roof; their lawyer brother, Austin, lived in coffined coldness with his wife, Susan Gilbert, within eyeshot of Emily's bedroom window.)

from The New York Times: Emily's Tryst

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With Yeats at his best, then, and he is at his best profusely--not a costive poet like Eliot, or a cranky/spotty one like Pound--we encounter the very essence of what we mean by poetry, by art and the aesthetic sense.

He could not be omitted from any circle of the best without amputating something intrinsic to the idea and practice of poetry itself. That is how strong Yeats is.

from Globe and Mail: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

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Now a leading scholar has compiled fresh evidence that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was jolted into life with the help of her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

According to the research, Percy made at least 5,000 changes to the original, many of them probably as the couple sat in bed writing together.

from The Sunday Times: Frankenstein lives--thanks to the poet

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America's highest literary honour has been sullied in an Internet scam affecting writers, including Brantford's poet laureate, John B. Lee.

The acclaimed author is still smarting after an e-mail saying he had been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize turned out to be a cruel hoax.

=0 Afrom Brantford Expositor: Pulitzer hoax targets city's poet laureate

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[Antonio] Machado was at first disenchanted with Soria, then a rough-hewn rural town of 7,000. Born in Seville and raised in Madrid, he had by this time already published a book of poetry. But before long, Soria worked its spell on him.

I found my homeland where the Duero flows

from The New York Times: A Poet's Realm of Myth and Reality
also The New York Times: A Poet's Timeless Idyll in Soria

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Great Regulars

This book is at its best when [Daniel] Barenboim meditates on and explains the unique status of music. "I firmly believe," he writes, "that it is impossible to speak about music." But, somehow, he does. He describes brilliantly the way music works and the way in which its intricacies and logic justify his faith that everything is connected.

from Bryan Appleyard: Thought Experiments: Everything is Connected by Daniel Barenboim

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Consumerism, globalism and, somehow, secularism lurk behind the pepperoni, the garlic bread and the salade niçoise. An AK-47 assaul t rifle has something of the same effect. Also global, also consumed, this is a killing machine that never seems to go out of style. It's as sexy and vile in 2008 as it was when it first went into service in 1949. More than any other object, it seems to embody the anguish of Africa and the incorrigible original sinfulness of humanity.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Sunday Times: Warhol captured an era in his Time Capsules
also Bryan Appleyard: Thought Experiments: Ashbery and Alsop--More Capsules

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Coveting
By Jon Herbetr Arkham

The noises next door--

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Coveting'

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Sheet Lightning
By Jon Herbetr Arkham

Evidence of an

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Storm Watch

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[Katie] Ford worries less about what the event means and more about how to bring it to life in a poem.

And she can do that heartbreakingly well. Ford's sludgy lines eddy and snag on unexpected lyricisms: "Blue tarps drape the oysters/harvested from contaminated beds," she writes in "Fish Market," "silverlings caught from trestles of the resealed lake."

from John Freeman: The Star-Ledger: Sorrow rains down

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Received history speaks of ancient people who buried their most prized possessions with the bodies of the dead. Thus the speaker in Kenyon's poem claims, "Like primitives we buried the cat/with his bowl."

Then the speaker says that with bare hands they covered the cat with "sand and gravel."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Jane Kenyon's 'The Blue Bowl'

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The speaker then becomes clairvoyant, prognosticating, "When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie/Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by." The speaker has shown absolutely no examples of the "ordeals [the aunt] was mastered by." She is preaching to the choir of other feminists and their dupes who have bought into the notion that "marriage" is slavery, and all men are patriarchal slave-masters.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Rich's 'Aunt Jennifer's Tigers'

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The speaker then queries, "Why should he even care that others cause calamity by their lifeless imitations?"

The speaker is aware that the poetasters will always be there, pouring forth their dreck and doggerel. And althou gh he is especially proud of his own talent, he fashions his criticism from a point of view of one who is harmed by these scoundrels.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 67

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The shallowness of copycat poetasters is an abomination just as are grave robbers who steal hair from the dead to fashion into wigs. The "second life" of that hair that well suited its original owner becomes an unnatural prop, not an outgrowth of beauty.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 68

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The speaker then reports, "A glass of ice-water/Keeps me company." He subtly lets the reader know that he is alone, which might account for the seemingly long wait he is experiencing and perhaps the illusion that it has grown darker outside. The stereotypically solo diner is often ridiculed or pitied, so much so that many people will go out of their way to make sure they have at least one dining companion.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Simic's 'The Partial Explanation'

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The poet Thomas Lux eats boiled potatoes and chicken carcasses among other delicacies cataloged in "Refrigerator, 1957," but not anything whose ingredients call for mara schino cherries, "full, fiery globes like strippers/at a church social." Maybe he is outraged by the cruel treatment the cherries endure in order to become maraschino, but what he actually says is this: "you do not eat/that rips the heart with joy."

from Kristen Hoggart: The Smart Set: Ask a Poet: On Dining, Hygiene, Miracles, and Publishing

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When you are a poet in this age, your eyes go bad from too much time spent in front of the computer screen and you may develop carpal tunnel syndrome from deleting and rewriting lines or words or punctuation marks. You won't exercise as much as you should because maybe after a hard day's work, you would rather write a poem than run three miles like your doctor recommends.

from Kristen Hoggart: The Smart Set: Ask a Poet: On Fashion, Pay, and Patriotism

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We were never hunted down and punished because we felt, as perhaps did the appropriate authorities, that we had poetic license: We had the right to get naked, we had the right to paint our bodies, we had the right to scribble another classmate's epigram next to our spattered silhouettes: "I cannot believe in you,/however I will continue/compulsively counting."

from Kristen Hoggart: The Smart Set: Ask a Poet: On H appiness, Love, and License

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Another time the motorbike I was on skidded on mud on a sharp corner. With enviable forethought the rider vacated the front seat a second before impact, leaving me gazing in awe at a pair of completely unmanned handlebars. I was carted away in a neck brace and ambulance.

By the time I was 22 I'd gone right off being someone's pillion.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: L for leather

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With a fresh, wry voice, Meghan O'Rourke can make the quotidian sound strange, the same way Joseph Cornell could assemble a magical collage by pasting magazine clippings into out-of-context compositions. In "Descent," the speaker's own birth begins with a metaphoric shock:

I was born a bastard in an amphetamine spree,

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

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Annabel Lee
by Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe

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Comfort
by Terence Winch

Father Ray Byrne quickly became

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Comfort by Terence Winch

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In the Park
by G.E. Johnson

We walked along Central Park West and at 65th

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: In the Park by G.E. Johnson

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The Sorrows
by Gary Fincke

Whatever the Sunday, the sorrows kept the women in the kitchen,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Sorrows by Gary Fincke

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Teaching a Nephew to Type
by Rebecca McClanahan

Because you lag already

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Teaching a Nephew to Type by Rebecca McClanahan

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Thus Spake the Mockingbird
by Barbara Hamby

The mockingbird says, Hallelujah, coreopsis, I make the day

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Thus Spake the Mockingbird by Barbara Hamby

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What We Might Be, What We Are
by X. J. Kennedy

If you were a scoop of vanilla

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Alman ac: What We Might Be, What We Are by X. J. Kennedy

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Among poets, the taut ironies the New Critics valued have been displaced by other values and habits--from the confessional onslaught of John Berryman and Sylvia Plath to the postmodern diffuseness of John Ashbery.

Perhaps that is why an interest in the New Criticism functions, among poets, as a kind of password--a pledge of high ambition, intellectual seriousness, and defiance of trends.

from Adam Kirsch: New York Sun: Harvesting the Waste Land: An Anthology of New Criticism

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We mammals are ferociously protective of our young, and we all know not to wander in between a sow bear and her cubs. Here Minnesota poet Gary Dop, without a moment s hesitation, throws himself into the water to save a frightened child.

Father, Child, Water

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 178

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It puts forward no argument, makes no revelatory comparison, confronts no new audience, engages no misconception in language likely to be understood by the deceived, and so on and so on. Having dared, to his credit, a truly political poem, [Robert] Hass is unable to muster an engaging political voice, and instead retreats into the conventions of the contemporary meditative lyric.< br>
from David Orr: Poetry Magazine: The Politics of Poetry

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One day I came home to find Czeslaw [Milosz] in the living room, being entertained by my children, who had let him in. He was just back from Italy and had a new poem for which he had prepared an English trot. He presented the text to me, and asked me, what did I think of it?

I hemmed and stalled, trying to take it in: this part looks wonderful, but I'm not sure I understand this other section . . .

from Robert Pinsky: Poetry Magazine: No Tiara, No Crown

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[by Vern Rutsala]

[Against Telephones]

from B.T. Shaw: The Oregonian: Poetry

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[John] Amen travels widely giving readings, doing musical performances, and conducting workshops. He founded and continues to edit the award-winning literary bimonthly, The Pedestal Magazine (www.thepedestalmagazine.com).

from Belinda Subraman Presents: John Amen: Poet, Musician/Songwriter, Editor

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Wind shakes the branches

from Fr ank Wilson: Books, Inq.: The Epilogue: Two haiku . . .

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Glass by Anne Rouse

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Glass by Anne Rouse

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Read Coleridge's Kubla Khan several times and compose a likely end for this greatest of unfinished masterpieces (assuming Paul Valéry is right when he says there comes a point in the process of writing a poem when it is abandoned as an alternative to the dull absolutism of completion).

from The Guardian: Poetry Workshop: Fred D'Aguiar's workshop

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By Jeanie Wilson

The cat sleeps

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: A poem by Jeanie Wilson

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Reunion

by Jeffrey Skinner

Why do you keep returning,

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Reunion

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We Did Not Make Ourselves

by Michael Dickman

We did not make ourselves is one thing

from The New Yorker: Poetry: We Did Not Make Ourselves

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By Jean Harrison

Birches' Ballet

Metallic sky and gray stone wall,

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Birches' Ballet

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"Yom Kippur"
By Philip Schultz

from Slate: "Yom Kippur"--By Philip Schultz

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Poetic Obituaries

The mother of a man who died this week at one of Galveston County's deadliest intersections hopes that her son's death will nudge state officials into taking action.

"I just want something good to come out of all this," said Mary Williams of Texas City.

Her son, John Andrew Austin, 25, a poet who had hoped to have his work published, was buried Friday.

from Houston Chronicle: Deadly intersection claims another

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[Linda Marie] Beal was a 4-H leader for 20 years and introduced the first goats to the Harney County Fair. Her club members all excelled in market lambs and dairy goats. She was a member of the Harney County Church of the Nazarene, and through singing, delivered the Lord's word. Her other talents included writing poems, acrylic painting and pencil drawing.

from Burns Times Herald: Linda Marie Beal--1942-2008

~~~~~~~~~~~< br>
[Marcy Crandell] never lost her appetite for learning or her ability to respond to difficulty with hard work and creativity. While raising her children, she also managed to lecture in English at UCSB, become a real estate broker, manage a motel in Arizona and write beautiful stories and poems. She also had a passion to see the world, and traveled extensively, often with family, to China, Japan, Europe, the South Pacific, North Africa, and throughout North America

from Noozhawk: Marcy Crandell, 1925-2008

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Jeannette Eyerly, an Iowan for more than 90 years, is an award-winning author of books for children and teens and an advocate for mental health. First published at age eight, she wrote twenty books of fiction for young people, two books of poetry and co-authored a book on writing young adult novels. She graduated from University of Iowa in 1930 with a bachelor's degree in English. A free-lance writer for many years, Eyerly co-wrote a nationally syndicated column in the late 1950's. She later wrote eighteen novels for young adults, in which the subject matter was ahead of its time--high school drop-outs, abortion, suicide, divorce, and alcoholism.

from Des Moines Register: Jeannette Eyerly

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=0 A


The Nowshera born poet [Ahmed Faraz ] was one one of the greatest poet not only of our times but of all times. A man of conviction his poetry blended the exquisite sensitivity with fervent political passions. In his famous poem Mohassra, he writes:

Maira qalam to amanat hai mairey logouN ki
Maira qalam to adaalat mairey zameer ki hai

And, indeed it was.

from All Things Pakistan: Ahmed Faraz (1931-2008): Abb kay hum bichRay . . .

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[Pam Hughes'] latest work featured at the Hop Gallery in Lewes for the unique exhibition Shadow on the Downs, which saw her poems displayed alongside the work of contemporary Sussex painter Harold Mockford, and it was curated by Pam's daughter-in-law Katharine Martin.

from Eastbourne Herald: Pam's legacy of poetry

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Wei Wei, who joined the Communist Party of China in 1938, wrote most of his works right from the front lines.

One of his best-known works, "Who Is the Most Lovable," was produced shortly after he returned with the Chinese People's Volunteer Force from the 1950-53 Korean War.

The book highlights the tenacity and internationalism of the Chinese volunteer soldiers who were in North Korea to help battle against U.S. aggression.

from China.org.cn: 'Who Is the Most Lovable' author Wei Wei dies

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News at Eleven

Authorities have ordered a high-profile Tibetan activist and writer to stay in this northern Indian town after detaining him for nine days for trying to sneak into Tibet to protest the Beijing Olympics.

Police released Tenzin Tsundue on Aug. 11, after detaining him Aug. 2 in Mandi district jail in India's northern Himachal Pradesh state. For four days, he staged a hunger strike and was then force-fed intravenously.

from Radio Free Asia: India Curbs Tibetan Activist-Writer

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Others go into exile, knowing there's a privileged, free world out there, outside their tormentors' reach, where you can write in language no longer sullied by censorship, no longer flat and shoddy. For both Solzhenitsyn and Darwish knew that it is language, when it is free and exuberant, even flamboyant and irreverent, that has always been the expression of human grace and the prime vessel of civilisation.

from Gulf News: A tale of two literary giants

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In one of the rare meetings with his relatives [Yusuf=2 0Juma or Yusuf] Djuma said he was being tortured regularly.

"He was tortured and beaten in prisons, and was told that he is not going to get out alive," [Gilnora] Oltieva's letter [to the UN Commission for human rights] states.

She also said that her husband was forced to sleep on bare cement floor, that he lives with prisoners infected with HIV and tuberculosis and he lost much weight.

from Turkish Weekly: Uzbekistan: Dissident's Wife Calls for UN Help

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We asked Niyi Osundare, a world renowned Nigerian poet if he thought peace could prevail in Bakassi after the August 14 date. He answered inter-alia: " . . . Sincerity and justice are the two things we need in Bakassi; i.e. Cameroon and Nigeria sitting down and discussing the issues politically and diplomatically. If the leaders are able to do this, then the people will follow. The people who live there must be our first priority. They are not just statistics. They are Cameroonians, Nigerians; but beyond that they are human beings . . . When human beings stop talking, they begin to rely on the power of their arsenal. It is not a case of war. It is a case of diplomacy and it is a human problem that requires a human solution . . . "

Professor Osundare also fielded questions on Mugabe's Zimbabwe, his nightmarish experience during the Katrina floods and, of course, his award winning works.

from The Post: Niyi Osundare--Meet The Poet Who Hates Wa

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It's not to say that people who don't write poetry don't survive, or survive well, but without the outlet of poetry I might have fossilized in my grief, or developed a chronic habit of sorrow or even bitterness, and certainly a debilitating regret and guilt. Poetry that is not merely release – crying is also that – is an adventure of the soul in its journey towards itself. It demands an utter honesty of experience and expression without which writing remains only cathartic and does not touch the depth at which it becomes art. [--Kamla Kapur]

from My Himachal: Poetry of Immense Grief: An Interview with Kamla Kapur

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"I'm also working on something that I don't want to talk about," he says. "It will come out next spring." Then he pauses and shakes his head. "Oh, why shouldn't I talk about it? During Joan's memorial I read some poems and one was about two people meeting for the first time. Over the decades I have written a number of poems that are scenes from married life. Now Hutchinson wants to publish this, too. My wife would count magpies, so I think that I will call the publication Two For Joy. The poems that I've written since the accident, they aren't quite enough to fill the20desired amount of pages. But there is plenty of time for more."

Lachrymae

(i) Later

from The Times: Poet Dannie Abse on how writing helped him through grief

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"Are these the stairs, where . . . ?" asks the visitor.

"There's only one set of stairs in this house," he replies.

Sometime in the dawn of an October morning almost six decades ago, the undoubtedly inebriated poet Edna St. Vincent Millay tumbled down these stairs, landing in a crumpled heap on the lower landing. Hours later her farm manager found her and summoned a local doctor, but it was too late. Her neck was broken, and she had died as fiercely and adamantly as she had lived.

from The Washington Post: A Garden of Verses

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[Jeremy Paxman] described [Robbie] Burns--who wrote Auld Lang Syne and is venerated as the national poet by Scots and their descendants across the globe--as 'no more than a king of sentimental doggerel'.

Almost inevitably, Scotland took umbrage yesterday at the Newsnight presenter's remarks.

Among the kinder reactions was that Yorkshireborn Paxman was being silly and talking nonsense, while one scholar accused him of 'poking a stick in Jock's rib'.

from Daily Mail: Paxman outrages Scots by calling Burns' poetry 'sentimental doggerel'

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[Stanley] Plumly read everything, absorbed everything. He took himself off to London several times, holed up in the library at the Keats House museum, took the train to Winchester and walked the walk that led Keats to write "To Autumn," which many call his most perfectly realized poem. In Italy, he rented the apartment above the one in which Keats died, at the Spanish Steps. Twice he traced the route Keats and Severn took from Naples to Rome.

He knew he didn't want to commit a mere "act of scholarship."

from The Washington Post: An Ode to John Keats's Immortality

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[Juan Felipe] Herrera's vaulting confidence and his concessions to the demands of an audience (where subtlety may be no asset) can raise poems above the page or sink them. "Señorita X: Song for the Yellow-Robed Girl From Juárez" sometimes soars: "This is the song of mumbling fathers with harmonicas conjuring the winds/This is the song of tiny lost brothers and sisters hiding under mercado glass."

from The New York Times: 'Punk Half Panther'

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"Parched years that I have seen/That may be hers appe ar: foul, lingering/Death in certain war, the slim legs green./Or, fed on hate, she relishes the sting/Of others' agony; perhaps the cruel/Bride of a syphilitic or a fool./These speculations sour in the sun./I have no daughter. I desire none."

The final line is devastating, the bitterness real. [Weldon] Kees had no kids, and his wife Ann (who nonetheless survived him) went mad shortly before his disappearance, a contributing factor no doubt.

from Los Angeles Times: Where's Weldon?

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Great Regulars

The two men are acting for democracy, you see. And impeaching dictators is a good thing for democracies, you know.

But Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari are unelected. They're not just unrepresentative in that they don't hold seats in the parliament--they have absolutely no mandate in Pakistan. They head the two largest, and most corrupt, parties in the state but hold no public office. Pots and kettles.

from Fatima Bhutto: The Guardian: Charlatans of democracy

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The dragon of good fortune . . .

Tokyo (excerpt)
Lyrics by Bruce Cockburn

The dragon of good fortune struggles with the

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: The dragon of good fortune . . .

---

Crash Landing in Telluride
By Jon Herbert Arkham

I wanted more life.

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Spiritual plane

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The speaker/teacher then explains that he wants his students "to waterski/across the surface of a poem/waving at the author's name on the shore." He wants them to continue playing with the poem, giving perhaps a bit of recognition to the poet, but not allowing the poet to dictate how the poem will click inside the student's head.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Billy Collins' 'Introduction to Poetry'

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The second quatrain continues the speaker's list of complaints: honor is misplaced; virtue is prostituted; perfection falls short; strength is "disabled" by "limping sway."

The speaker is offering generalities that hold true for any generation. There is always a current example of honor being "shamefully misplac'd." In the 20th and 21st centuries, the honor of the Nobel Peace Prize has suffered tremendously as partisan committees have degraded that prize by awarding it to terrorists and political hacks.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 66

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[Philip Larkin] never wasted a reader's t ime but spitefully resented his own being wasted through inane social activity. He opens "Vers de Société" by satirizing an invitation:

My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps
To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps

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

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August
by Elise Partridge

Late August night,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: August by Elise Partridge

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Dislocation
by Marge Piercy

It happens in an instant.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Dislocation by Marge Piercy

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In Praise of Joe
by Marge Piercy

I love you hot

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: In Praise of Joe by Marge Piercy

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Memorial Day
by Steve Kowit

Because our sons adore their plastic missile launchers,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Memorial Day by Steve Kowit

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Mixed-Up School
by X. J. Kennedy

We have a crazy mixed-up school.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Mixed-Up School by X. J. Kennedy

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The Origin of Myth
by Ed Ochester

That summer I was drinking

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Origin of Myth by Ed Ochester

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Turtle
by Kay Ryan

Who would be a turtle who could help it?

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Turtle by Kay Ryan

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Kristen Tracy is a poet from San Francisco who here captures a moment at a zoo. It's the falling rain, don't you think, that makes the experience of observing the animals seem so perfectly truthful and vivid?

Rain at the Zoo

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 177

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When black poets speak the truth to the people or are honest with themselves, they have to acknowledge that Amiri Baraka has influenced their lives as well as their aesthetics. No matter how much we might agree or disagree with him, the man has been a barometer or scale by which we can measure whatever degree of blackness we are or wish to invent. No African American writer has touched our lives in such subtle as well as obvious ways. How can we talk about blues, jazz or poetry without mentioning his name?

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes!: Well We Know Baraka Is Vetted

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Authorities in Tibetan areas of western China have placed a curfew on Tibetan Buddhist monasteries during the Olympics, forbidding Tibetans from traveling to Beijing and confining some monks around the clock, informed sources said.

"Since the beginning of August, many monks have been confined to their monasteries day and night," a spokesman for the Tibetan government-in-exile in India said.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Tibetan Monks Confined During Games

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American artists as different as Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams belong more or less in the "ordinary speech" category. On the other, "Miltonic" side of that division about word order in the mother tongue, consider the expressive eccentric Emily Dickinson, who in her magnificent poem 1068 ("Further in Summer Than the Birds") writes this quatrain about the sounds of invisible insects in the summer fields:

Antiquest felt at Noon
When August burning low
Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify

from Robert Pinsky: Slate: The American John Milton: The poet and the power of extraordinary speech

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"Whuttup," Rob said.
"So what part of the poem are you reading?" asked Michael Dennis Browne.
"The last part. Part three."
"Ah," said the poet. "That's the best part."

I'm inclined to agree.

[by Michael Dennis Browne]

"Epithalamion/Wedding Dawn" (Part 3)

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

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In the meantime, here is a favourite section, in which the poet, left alone after a happy summer's evening party, re-reads some of his dead friend's letters.

[from Alfred Tennyson's In Memoriam]

By night we linger'd on the lawn,

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

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I like the firmness with which the poet calls a halt, and that little touch of ambiguity that he adds in the last two lines. Will "we" be "free at the end" because we're philistines, or because there are some poets who transcend all the categories and stereotypes--as Steve himself did?

[by Steve Bailey]

Come the Revolution

from Carol=2 0Rumens: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Poem of the week

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"Kindle," her [Paulann Petersen's] fourth full-length collection, recently appeared from Mountains and Rivers Press. Instead of crafting a manuscript for publication, however, Petersen sent a passel of short poems to the press and permitted publisher Ce Rosenow to compile the book as she saw fit.

From her home near the Willamette River, Petersen answered questions by e-mail.

from B.T. Shaw: The Oregonian:

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Yes, and she's [Iris Brossard is] great at all three and had a famous father to boot. Listen to find out more!

from Belinda Subraman Presents: Iris Brossard: Poet, Writer and Neurologist

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Swar Thounaojum's poem has a truly startling opening, and uses concrete detail and local language superbly throughout the poem, wavering only in the third stanza. The poem digs down steadily through actual earth to make us experience an actual grief.

A sentry converses by Swar Thounaojam

from The Guardian: Poetry Workshop: Dead letters

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by Adam Day

We pour the eyes in with a ladle

from Guernica: Poetry: The Gods Describe Building Bodies, like Badger's

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by Jason Vaughn

"What are we doing?" you whisper,

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'After the Divorce,' a poem by Jason Vaughn

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Here the Birds' Journey Ends
by Mahmoud Darwish

Here the birds' journey ends, our journey, the journey of words,

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Here the Birds' Journey Ends

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Isola Bella
by C. K. Stead

In the stony garden

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Isola Bella

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A Woman of Worth

by Joy Katz

Proverbs 31

A woman of worth who can find?

from Nextbook: A Woman of Worth

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By Karen Smith

My New England Summer

California transplants never miss not having summer

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: My New England Summer

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St ella Sutherland is a Shetland poet, living on the isle of Bressay where she was born in 1924. Here she celebrates long midsummer days and longer-lasting love; the poem is included in a new pamphlet from Handsel Co-operative Press, Joy o Creation: Favourite Poems Old & New in Shetland Dialect and English.

Sang

To L.J.S

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week by Stella Sutherland

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"Hermit"
By Gail Mazur

from Slate: "Hermit" By Gail Mazur

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Poetic Obituaries

[Army Pfc. Paul E.] began his tour of duty in Afghanistan in April.

Though he wrote poetry and played Mozart on the piano, Paul had firmly stated to family since the age of 12, that he was going to be a soldier, his mother said.

He had military flags on his bedroom ceiling, she said. He joined the Civil Air Patrol in middle school.

from Cape Cod Times: Mashpee 'warrior poet' killed overseas

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[Mahmoud Darwish's] work resonated across political and generational lines for his ability to express the Palestinian sense of loss, anger and defiance.

In later years, he became increasingly frustrated at the in-fighting between rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas. Last year he condemned the explosion of violence between the two groups in Gaza as "a public attempt at suicide in the streets."

In Memoriam

I Come From There

I come from there and I have memories

from The Arab American: Palestinians bury poet Darwish in West Bank
also The Palestinian Chronicle: Darwish: The Anger, the Longing, the Hope [by Uri Avnery]

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Despite their contribution, the WASPs were not considered military personnel following their decommissioning in 1944, and were not entitled to veteran's benefits or honors. With the support of Col. Bruce Arnold, son of "Hap" Arnold, and Sen. Barry Goldwater, that situation was corrected in 1977. Mrs. [Marion] DeGregorio was among those who received the WWII Victory Medal.

Mrs. DeGregorio spent her last years in her beloved Greenwich Village. A voracious reader, she could recite dozens of poems from memory well into her 90s. "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats was a particular favorite.

from The Star-Ledger: Marion DeGregorio, pioneering pilot, 94

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[Mary Sue "Petey" Martin] Giroux was the Georgia PTA's first environmental chair, and spent more than 11 years at the Environmental Protection Division of the state Department of Natural Resources, most recently as an environmental education coordinator. She popularized a national poetry contest called "River of Words" that Georgia students went on to win.

"Petey made an enormous mark on our agency, by being the face of where we were going," said Deron Davis, who directs the EPD's Water Smart program.

from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Mary Sue 'Petey' Giroux, 63, educator

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[Frank] Ledwell was the first recipient of the P.E.I. Council of the Arts' prestigious Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Literary Arts. He received the Wendell Boyle Memorial Award for Creative Writing, the Charlottetown Royalty Rotary's Mentorship Award and the Order of Prince Edward Island in 2006. He became the Island's second poet laureate in January 2005.

from CBC News: Former P.E.I. poet laureate dies

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Hugh Reid MacCallum, a professor of English at the University of Toronto for 35 years, was an unassuming giant in the field of 17th-century literary criticism. He broke new ground in the study of English poet John Milton, but always remained true to the school of historical research associated with his mentor, A.S.P. (Arthur) Woodhouse – a cult figure to a generation of U of T academics.

Prof. MacCallum had a worldwide reputation in Milton circles, according to Glenn Loney, one of the professor's former PhD students and now registrar of the U of T faculty of arts and science.

from The Globe and Mail: Hugh Reid MacCallum, Milton scholar, dies age 80

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The message s are especially poignant because the man charged with killing the bright and vivacious [Boitumelo] Tumi [McCallum ], 20, is also believed to have stolen her cell phone and computer, filled with the South African student's poetry and personal musings.

"That's like taking away my child and taking away everything about her--her in her own words," [Teboho] Moja said from within the Greenwich Village home where her daughter was murdered.

from New York Daily News: Slain daughter lives on in text messages to mother

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[Gertrude McKenzie-Lind] worked for Pingree School, Pingree, as a cook for 10 years and as a live-in caretaker in James-town. She was a member of Pingree Homemakers, Farm Bureau, the Stutsman County Fair Board, Pingree Senior Citizens, and St. James Basilica, Jamestown. She enjoyed reading, writing poems and watching sunsets.

from The Jamestown Sun: Gertrude McKenzie-Lind

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News at Eleven

None of us really thought he'd die. Our loss is great, we tell each other. In our minds we think of Edward Said, of Haider Abdel-Shafi, of Faisal Husseini, and even--yes--of Yasser Arafat. The "big men" of Palestine. And now, Mahmoud Darwish.

He was seven when--in the Nakba of 1948--he fled from Birweh, his village in the Galilee. At the age of 12, living in Deir el-Asad, in what had become Israel, with a reputation as a precocious child poet, he was asked to compose a poem for a public reading.

from The Guardian: The laureate of all Arabs
also The Guardian: The life of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (8 pictures)
also The Guardian: Mahmoud Darwish

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Police first arrested [Tensin] Tsundue from Buntar Airport in Himachal state on August 3, after suspecting his alleged attempt to cross over into Tibet. He was taken to Kullu police station, but released the following day.

He was again picked up by police on August 4 from=2 0Mandi, and was taken to Mandi Jail, where he refused to eat or drink in judicial custody. According to him, he was then taken to Mandi Zonal Hospital on the fourth evening and approved "forced feeding" on him. After that he was again sent back to the jail.

He was formally released from Mandi Jail today around 5:00pm to be taken to Dharamsala and handed over to Kangra SP office tomorrow.

from Phayul.com: Tenzin Tsundue to be handed over to Kangra police from Mandi Jail
also Phayul.com: Arrested marchers released; Tenzin Tsundue reported to be in weak physical condition

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"Repression is getting worse; everything is locked up because of the Olympic Games," he [Tashi Choephel] says.

The center estimates that 6,500 Tibetans were detained after the riots in March, about 60 have been sentenced, and up to 2,000 may remain in custody. Verifying reports is difficult because of increased surveillance of telephone calls, Choephel says.

China's ruling Communist Party has reinvigorated its "patriotic education" campaign, Choephel says, "in monasteries . . . villages and even school students." He worries that after the Olympics, the government will impose death penalties or life sentences on Tibetans st ill detained.

from USA Today: Shadows Flit Underneath Tibet Surface

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Writers and poets around the world produced 125 translations of "June" into 98 languages. The poem travelled to 65 countries during the four and half month virtual relay, which can still be viewed at www.penpoemrelay.org.

On August 5, 2008, three days before the opening of the Games, it was reported that the PEN Poem Relay site has been blocked in mainland China.

from CNW Group: International PEN Poem Relay Site Blocked in Mainland China

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It would call for a major research effort to collect, process and present the profiles and the poetic words of those who sang of freedom and revolution in 22 scripts and 81 spoken languages and dialects of the country. Many of them were folk bards and wandering minstrels who walked from village to village and street to street to spread the tales of heroes and martyrs. But there are known names and songs of freedom which can be remembered as some of the landmarks in the poets' contribution to freedom struggle.

from India Journal: Poetic Words--Enshrined Spirit

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[Nikita] Khrushchev, of course, assumes that [Robert] Frost has been personally sent by Jo hn F. Kennedy. Somewhat baffled by the poet's meanderings on virtue and metaphor, he even wonders whether the old man may have forgotten to deliver the president's real message. Whatever the value of the encounter, Frost squanders it on his return. Meeting with a crowd of reporters at the airport, he unwisely relays Khrushchev's intimation that the West, in its dotage, is now too impotent to act. Kennedy, furious, becomes the more determined to prove the United States' vigor. Thus Frost, far from saving the world, may unwittingly have contributed to the near catastrophe of the Cuban missile crisis.

from The St. Petersburg Times: Poetic license

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[Brenda Wineapple:] Certainly you can't write another biography; they are already there and sufficient. I didn't think I would discover new poems or letters. But this pairing gave me a way to write about [Emily] Dickinson that seemed fresh, that used her poems, her letters, that allowed her to speak for herself. . . . I also thought that [Thomas] Higginson could carry the plot. He does so much, while she provides so much insight.

from The Boston Globe: Light on a poet's imagination, and an era

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[John Malcolm] Brinnin's depiction of [Dylan] Thomas as an alcoholic was wholly false, [George] Tremlett said, but it had "set the mood, defining how people have thought of Thomas".

Pubs were an important part of Thomas's life, he acknowledged. But, while the writer could hold a pub audience spellbound with jokes and extempore poems, he could not hold his drink beyond two pints, he believes. While there were affairs, he added, the evidence is fewer than some suggest.

from The Times: Secret diary reveals wife's undying love for Dylan Thomas

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[John Keats] lay there on the floor of the second story in the heat, with the rust taste of blood in his mouth, for most of the rest of the day, late afternoon and the closeness of the humidity and the weight of the ceiling pressing down on him. That is when he decided to try to make his way around the corner to the Hunts, with whom he had an open invitation and with whom, soon enough, once it was determined he could not be alone, he would move in.

from The New York Times: First Chapter: 'Posthumous Keats'
also On the Seawall: on Posthumous Keats, a "personal biography" by Stanley Plumly (Norton)

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Competition among poets for space in the New Yorker is fierce. The magazine receives ab out 600 poetry submissions a week, with each submission usually consisting of several poems from a single contributor, said Paul Muldoon, the New Yorker's poetry editor.

In the case of Mr. [Marcus] Jackson's poem, it stood out by providing a new way of looking at the phenomenon of tattoo parlors, he said.

"One of the things that we're interested in, I guess, is the poem that is going to modify one's sense of the world," Mr. Muldoon said.

from Toledo Blade: UT grad's poem lands in a top magazine
also from Tuesday, July 15, 2008: Great Regulars

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A mere four teams among the 76 total competing at the National Poetry Slam this week took the stage at Overture Hall on Saturday to compete in the final round. This crowning bout pitted last year's champions SlamCharlotte against three other powerhouses of competitive spoken word: Austin Poetry Slam, Boston Cantab, and louderARTS from New York City.

from Isthmus: The Daily Page: SlamCharlotte repeats as champion at National Poetry Slam 2008 in Madison
also The Huffington Post: Highlights From the 2008 National Poetry Slam

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Great Regulars

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2005, Nicholas Negroponte, supreme prophet of digital connectivity, revealed a strange tent-like object. It was designed to change the world and to cost $100. It was a solar-powered laptop. Millions would be distributed to children in the developing world, bringing them connection, education, enlightenment and freedom of information. The great, the good, the rich and the technocrats nodded in solemn approval.

And then some of them tried to kill it.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Sunday Times: Why Microsoft and Intel tried to kill the XO $100 laptop

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Similar to some Chinese characters, the shapes of many Hebrew letters resemble forms found in the world . . . For example, beit, the second letter . . . is shaped like a house . . . and its name means 'house.' "

"The House of Musing," a poem of self-instruction, came about from [Emily] Warn's musing about beit. Her language-to-experience process demonstrates a lot about metaphor, too--that metaphor is not so much about making up things as it is about making from them.

The House of Musing

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: David Biespiel muses on two paths to creating a poem

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And here I must confess to an embarrassing youthful moment: I recall, before reading Solzhenitsyn, arguing with my mother the merits of capitalism versus communism. Angered, even in my teens, by corporate greed, I said something like this: "Well, at least in the Soviet Union, they share."

Yes, she told me. They share an existence in which many people are deprived--of the necessities of life but also of freedom.

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: In One Day in the Life prisoner Ivan Denisovich finds hope most meager

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Charms
By Jo McDougall

One evening she glances up to see

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Death slouched in a doorway . . .'

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Thermometer

By Jane Marie Evanston

It's covered with germs.

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Fever?

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By Eve Ott
"You look nice today!"

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Retirement'

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Another Weather Report

By Pat Daneman

God shakes his fists eternally to say,

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute:=2 0Weather or not . . .

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He then attributes the humbleness of his birth circumstances to the fact that he was born on Saturday, for as Mother Goose asserts, "Saturday's child works hard for a living."

And instead of joining proud, happy parents, the speaker was welcomed by a father who said, "Bad time for planting a seed" and "One mouth more to feed."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Countée Cullen's 'Saturday's Child'

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The devotee thought again that he had exhausted the bliss of delights from the earth, water, and fire chakras, so he "idly looked for more," continuing to dig "deep,/Deep, below." And to his pleasant surprise he finds "undrunk, untouched/There the fountain lay."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Yogananda's 'At the Fountain of Song'

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This is a moment of great pride to the 1.3 billion Chinese people. These Games should contribute to promoting the Olympic spirit of friendship, openness and peace.

I send my prayers and good wishes for the success of the event.

from Tenzin Gyatso: The Office of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama: Message by His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the Beijing Olympics

~~~~~~ ~~~~~

The interesting biographical side note is, of course, that [Robert E.] Hayden's biological parents gave him up to foster parents, but whether the "memory" is an orphan's longing or a fragment of an actual memory, the power of the poem is the same. The final phrase about "love's austere and lonely offices" has a grandeur and poise that elevate the duty to the level of religious ritual, as does the 14-line form of this sonnet, albeit in free verse. It's that same sense of dignity that Hayden brought to this next poem, which praises a different kind of sacrifice for another ancestor of his: the freed slave Frederick Douglass.

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful

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

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Andy Warhol for Familiar Quotations
by Peter Oresick

Andy Warhol said, Always leave them wanting less.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Andy Warhol for Familiar Quotations By Peter Oresick

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The Continuous Life
by Mark Strand

What of the neighborhood homes awash

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Continuous Life By Mark Strand

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Halley's C omet
by Stanley Kunitz

Miss Murphy in first grade

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Halley's Comet By Stanley Kunitz

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How to Play Night Baseball
by Jonathan Holden

A pasture is best, freshly

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: How to Play Night Baseball By Jonathan Holden

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Late Afternoon, St. John
by Linda Pastan

A little blue heron has landed

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Late Afternoon, St. John By Linda Pastan

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Migration
by Tony Hoagland

This year Marie drives back and forth

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Migration By Tony Hoagland

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Suck It Up
by Paul Zimmer

Two pugs on the undercard step through

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Suck It Up By Paul Zimmer

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Hearts and flowers, that's how some people dismiss poetry, suggesting that's all there is to it, just a bunch of sappy poets weeping over love and beauty. Well, poetry is lots more than that. At times it's a means of honoring the simple things about us. To illustrate the care with which one poet observes a flower, here's Frank Steele, of Kentucky, paying such close attention to a sunflower that he almost gets inside it.

Sunflower

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 176

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The long form of narrative poetry has a framework that holds it together. This frame may be a battle or a journey or a more contrived plot device such as a group of people on a pilgrimage, telling their personal stories. Within this formulaic concept, the author has the freedom to add love songs, descriptions, history lessons, mythology or philosophical digressions.

The avid readers of long narrative poems (who may have more patience than the readers of prose fiction) expect the author to show off his or her literary skills in the process of telling the story. In other words, they are reading the work for more than the story itself.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: On poetry: Whether sweeping or concise, narrative poetry always powerful

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Art and life seldom imitate each other, but in [John] Keats's case they really do seem inextricably linked, and in those last days, M r. [Stanley] Plumly suggests, it's as if he were living out the last movement of one of the odes, "To Autumn" especially, with its sense of a lingering moment prolonged, before transpiring into mist.

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Truth and Beauty? Only in Afterlife

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Journalists, about whom the government seemed so wary before the Games--shutting down their access to human-rights Web sites and those critical of China--have been practically pampered.

But it is the legions of volunteers who make the greatest impression, and who seem to be sending the strongest message about how China wishes to be perceived. This is the face the country is showing to the world: young, eager, proud and patriotic.

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Beijing Puts On Happy Face for Games, Without Wrinkles
also Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Olympic Timeout by Literati of China

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[Mahmoud Darwish] gave voice to the Palestinian dreams of statehood, crafted their declaration of independence and helped forge a Palestinian national identity.

Darwish first gained prominence in the 1960s with the publication of his first poetry collection, Bird without Wings.

Darwish wrote the Palestinian Dec laration of Independence in 1988, read by the late Palestinian leader YASSER ARAFAT when he unilaterally declared statehood. The declaration was symbolic and had no concrete significance.

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: Darwish dies at 67

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[Sir Henry] Wotton continues by saying that anyone pledged to a happy life envies no one who has become successful--which is likely to have been either by "chance" or "vice." (A few well-known celebrities come to mind…) Those who believe their own hype perhaps never realize just how arbitrary and destructive their fame is. The "deepest wounds" are "given by praise" because flattery feeds pride; whereas happiness relies on transcending the ego.

Yet it’s hard to remain so detached from the world.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: A Reading of 'The Character of a Happy Life' by Sir Henry Wotton

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"A Curse for a Nation", written in 1854, is a simple, striking, three-part polemic against the continuing slave trade in America's Deep South. It begins with a Prologue, which records the summons to write. [Elizabeth] Barrett Browning overturns the tradition's trope: the poet is visited by a male angel rather than the muse. The nature of the commission is also unusual--to write a curse.

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

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"New Grey Whistle Test" (nugreywhistletest.co.uk)
by David Hudson

All the way from New York this guy oozes credibility and coolness, he has a new album out now called 'Poems' . . .

from Belinda Subraman Presents: David Francis: His Poetry, Music and Interview

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by Rodney Jones

Cathedral

Over time it occurs to me

from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: Cathedral

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by Henri Cole

Quai Aux Fleurs

I want to just keep on smearing butter

from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: Quai Aux Fleurs

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Sleeper in the wadi by Gabriel Levin

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Sleeper in the wadi by Gabriel Levin

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King Lear

Rowan Williams

from King Lear by Rowan Williams

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By DeM ar Regier
At commencement

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'Bittersweet,' a poem by DeMar Regier

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Poem: A Walk on the Beach

By Sue MacIntosh

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: A Walk on the Beach

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"A Bristle of Wings in the Ivy"
By Teresa Cader

from Slate: "A Bristle of Wings in the Ivy" By Teresa Cader

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Translated from the Yiddish
by Anna Margolin, August 8, 2008

(I Did Not Know, My Lover)
(Ikh Hob Nit Gevust, Mayn Liber)

from Zeek: Two Poems by Anna Margolin

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Poetic Obituaries

[Mahmoud] Darwish published more than two dozen books of poetry and prose, the last in 2008, "The Impression of Butterflies," which are rooted in his experience of Palestinian exile and the bitter Arab--Israeli conflict, in a career spanning nearly five decades.

His work has been translated into more than 20 languages and won international awards, including the Ibn Sina Prize, the Lenin Peace Prize, the 1969 Lotus prize from the Union of Afro-Asian Writers, France's Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres medal in 1997, the 2001 Prize for Cultural Freedom from the Lannan Foundation, the Moroccan Wissam of intellectual merit handed to him by King Mohammad VI of Morocco, and the Stalin Peace Prize, according to the Academy of American Poets.

from Palestine Media Center: Poet, Writer of Palestinian Declaration of Independence, Darwish 67: President Abbas Declares Three Days of National Mourning
also The National Newspaper: Poet's village lives only in memory
also Monthly Review: Mahmoud Darwish
also The New York Times: Mahmoud Darwish, Leading Palestinian Poet, Is Dead at 67
also Houstonist: Mahmoud Darwish Dies in Houston
also Los Angeles Times: Palestinian poet was a political, cultural icon

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[Mohammad Mehdi Fuladvand] has translated Nahj-ul Balagheh and Sahifeh Sajjadieh into Persian and his translation of the Quran is known as one of the best Persian versions of the holy book.

He had also translated Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" into Per sian.

"Studying Quran," "Studying Khayyam," "First Lessons on Aesthetics," "Woman in God's View," "I saw God" and "Flowers from Quran" are amongst his books.

from Tehran Times: Quran translator Fuladvand passes away at 88

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[David] Humphreys wrote about Valley life, such as "November Geese."

. . . lovely sound cutting time's fabric with the saw
teeth of seamstress scissors, cutting like a
memory of hip-waders in muddy rice fields
setting decoys before dawn in the smell of
Pop's pipe tobacco . . .

He expressed love for his wife and three children, in lines such as this one about an early date with Lydia [Fox].

Our hands touching like distant lightning under the sand at Point Reyes Station.

Often his poems contemplate the big questions. But he was inspired by the littlest things.

from The Record: Poet's influence will live on through his inspirational words

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[Richard Lehman] enjoyed fishing, Packers games and visiting his children. He even traveled to Rochester, Minn., to help teach a poetry unit with his daughter, Nancy Lehman said.

Lehman struggled with heart disease and had his first coronary when he was 29.

Still, he always provided extra help to his students when they needed it.
from Wausau Daily Herald: Teacher was friend, mentor to many

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[Roland D.] Paine was a lifetime member of the National Association of Science Writers. An avid reader of American history and politics, he also enjoyed poetry, humor and satire. Mark Twain and W.H. Auden were among his favorite writers. He loved opera and classical music, hiking with friends, birding and sailing his boat on the Chesapeake.

from The Washington Post: Roland D. Paine, 84; Science Writer And Government Information Chief

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[Veta Mae Peterman] was a prolific poet throughout her entire life and was frequently called upon to share them at Black History Month events and other special occasions. Although Peterman stopped working a few years ago, she continued to walk miles around her neighborhood several times each day until a little over a week before her death. She never watched TV, preferring to observe nature in the birds around her yard and the lake behind her house.

One of the poems that most struck her family the day she died was:

"I am happy to be alive"

from The Westside Gazette: Veta Mae Peterman goes on to glory July 29

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In 2000, he [Joseph Sapone] turned his avocation into a business enterprise, opening Bonsai Etc. in Phoenixville.

There he offered a successful series of workshops as well as assembling an assortment of Asian antiques and collectibles. He was a member of the Pennsylvania Bonsai Society and the Susquehanna Bonsai Club. Mr. Sapone was also an appreciator of many art forms and spent time attending jazz performances, theatre and museums. He loved and wrote haiku poetry.

from The Phoenix: Joseph Richard Sapone, 78

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In the 1970s he [Ted Solotaroff] founded New American Review, later American Review, a paperback literary magazine that was among the most widely read and influential of its time. In one edition, American Review might feature new work by Phillip Roth, whom Solotaroff befriended as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, or E.L. Doctorow, alongside fiction and poetry and essays from previously unknown writers. Before founding the magazine, Solotaroff had been the books editor of the New York Herald Tribune.

from The Jewish Daily Forward: Ted Solotaroff, 79, Mensch of Letters

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For, at a time when the Soviet monolith looked imperishable to its architects and acolytes, he [Alexander Solzhenitsyn] warned: "The ho ur of peril will come, and you will appeal to your people once more, not to world communism." From the idyllic remoteness of Vermont, US, the world's most famous exile would watch the fall of the Soviet empire, the final unraveling of the Lie.

from India Today: The lie detector
also BBC News: Solzhenitsyn is buried in Moscow

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News at Eleven

[Charles] Simic, who succeeded Donald Hall, another New Hampshire poet, said the job required far more work than he expected. He traveled so much, attended to so many duties and performed at so many events that he went the entire year without writing a new poem.

Especially for a prolific poet like Simic, this is a serious flaw in a job, no matter how much fame and money come with it.

from Concord Monitor: Back to poetry, after a year promoting it

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Like many who die young, [Raymond] Carver has become a legend, which is another way of saying that a lot of people have a stake in promoting their version of him as the authentic one.

To some extent, Carver participated in the process, particularly in the often-repeated story of his two lives. The first--which he called his "Bad Raymond" life--was marked by alcohol, financial struggle and marital turmoil.

from Telegraph: Why Raymond Carver's legacy keeps on growing

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I think that all poetry, except for children's poetry and political poetry, aims toward the world of the soul. So the best poetry is always religious. [--Robert Bly]

from Today's Zaman: Robert Bly: The best poetry is always religious

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Du [Fu] was a humanist. His writing style is revered both for its manifest sympathy for people's sufferings and resentment of injustice and corruption.

Almost every Chinese knows two of his most famous lines: "Meat and wine go bad in lordly mansions, while the roads are strewn with bones of those killed by the cold." The lines are still quoted to condemn the sharp contrast between the lives of the haves and have-nots.

from China Daily: Chengdu tourist sites intact, still yield their wonders

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"While we romance with English due to our exile situation, our counterparts in Tibet have been taking Chinese language to greater heights," writes Tenzin Tsundue, a political activist and writer living in exile in Dharamsala, India. "Tibetans are recording history and writing poetry and stories on love, religion and culture in Chinese. They are singing in Mandarin. The Chinese cannot but regret they gave the Tibetans their tongue."

from The Women's International Perspective: Tibetans Find Power in Words

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Some Burmese intellectuals consider much of the country's post-modern literature "gibberish" because the prose lacks plot and the poetry is nonspecific, resembling a "word salad." But the specialist described the new Burmese literature as "one of the more extreme responses to censorship," because it allows a writer under investigation to claim the work has no real meaning. "It's kind of their way of bypassing the censorship system and then sort of communicating in some way."

from News Blaze: Burmese Writers Play Cat-and-Mouse Game with State Censors

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Over the past three decades, writers who stayed in Iran have continued creating literature under censorship, the number of women writers has multiplied, and a huge body of criticism about writers living both inside and outside Iran has emerged. Many banned works, or works that are not put through the Bureau of Guidance for publication permission are embedded in blogs, accessible to the whole world, until the blogs are discovered and shut down--and then they are embedded in new blogs. [--Niloufar Talebi]

from IPS: Q&A: "Longing for the Past Yet Belonging to the Present"

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One February evening in 2005, 16 people sat squashed into sagging sofas and a motley collection of chairs in a timber-beamed farmhouse in Devon. As is usual on the first evening of an Arvon course, we were doing the introductions. "Say your name, and something about your shoes," I suggested, borrowing a trick from the writer Philip Hensher, with whom I'd tutored my very first Arvon, also at Totleigh Barton, five years previously. A Palestinian man spoke first. The shoes he had on, he said, were the only ones he could find that didn't hurt. Most shoes hurt because when he was tortured, they "concentrated on legs".

from The Times: A history of the Arvon International Poetry Competition on its 40th anniversary

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[Kenneth Patchen's] genius stems from his uncanny ability to exist in and write through contradictions--his anger, despair, and resignation, are matched by jubilance, a goofy sense of humor, and stubborn hope. Because of the proximity of these extremes, reading him can be a physically jolting experience.

from Bookslut: We Meet and The Walking Away World by Kenneth Patchen

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The final line "Perchance to dream: fleetingly obscene and thoroughly American," echoes through and alters the preceding lines each time it is reached. In "Perchance" all [Carl] Martin's talents come together: complex imagery, interesting phrases, manipulation of sound in al l sections of the lines and humor.

Martin has a knack for brilliant phrases: "encaustic brushstrokes" from "The Common Cry," "Diana and Hermes: Art Nouveau models and volleyball stars," from "Jealousy," and "The solemn decrepitude of inhuman courage" from "And Who Will Remember," to name a few.

from Bookslut: Rogue Hemlocks by Carl Martin

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"In our experiments, concepts presented early in a poem (or prose passage) were more available when alliterative sounds overlapped between lines than when there was no overlap," the researchers said.

Additionally, the results of the other experiments, published in the July issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, show that alliteration's affect on memory is not lessened by either the type of work it is used in or whether or not the literature is read silently or aloud.

from Association for Psychological Science: The Power of Peter Piper: How alliteration enhances poetry, prose, and memory

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Great Regulars

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was easy to admire and difficult to read.

The Russian writer, who died Sunday at 89, was a figure of enormous moral and physical courage whose book "The Gulag Archipelago" exposed the brutal, capricious nature of the penal system in the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsy n spent seven years in a labor camp and three more in internal exile for writing a letter to a friend that, among other things, referred to Stalin as "the man with the mustache."

from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: One Russian's difficult legacy

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In my view, his remarks on the West, which caused so much controversy, were almost throwaway remarks. Solzhenitsyn was not interested in America for its own sake. He wasn't interested in Western democracy for its own sake.

He was interested in what they could do to help Russia get free of the Soviet tyranny. And to that extent, I think it wasn't exactly he was misreported, but he didn't understand the Western media and he didn't understand what would be seized upon and commented upon the most. [--Michael Scammell]

from Jeffrey Brown: PBS: Newshour: Russian Author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89

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Mariner
By John Herbert Arkham

He wakes each morning

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Asea

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Comin' Back to Me

(excerpt)

Words by Marty Balin

From the song by Jefferson Airplane

The summer had inhaled and held its breath too long

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Midsummmer Melody

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The fourth clause renders the literal fact, "when it is finally won," and the fifth clause offers a breathtaking, plain truth that even offers a humorous description: "when it is more/than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians." What an irony that a need so vital to everyone could become the "gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians"!

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: August Poet --Robert Hayden

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"When his youthful morn//Hath travell'd on to age's steepy night"; and when "all those beauties whereof now he's king" disappear, they will so vanish like "the treasure of his spring." The speaker goes deeply into describing the phenomenon of growing old, emphasizing the devastation that it brings, in order to contrast the value of his ever youthful talent of encasing his eternal, undying love in his poems.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 63

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If the speaker will meditate on his soul and study the ways of the Divine, he will overcome death. Ordinary men allow death to consume them, but those who contact the soul are able to transcend death, realizing at last the soul is immortal and never dies: "there's no more dying then."

This speaker holds for himself a lofty goal, which is a natural outcome from living a life of intense creativity and muse sparring that has always engaged him.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 146

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Mr. Solzhenitsyn's return to Moscow in 1994 signaled an end to that literature of rebellion from behind the Iron Curtain. His writing lost its sense of danger and courage as he redirected his attention to his countrymen and sought to exclude "outsiders."

"We should clearly understand that only the voluntary and conscientious acceptance by a people of its guilt can ensure the healing of a nation," he said last year. "Unremitting reproaches from outside, on the other hand, are counterproductive."

from Bob Hoover: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Appreciation: Solzhenitsyn books bared dirty secrets of Soviet system

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But after authorities lobotomize him, it takes Hard Rock "exactly 3 minutes to tell you his first name."

The poems of [Etheridge] Knight's that I cherish most--with lines more lyrical than narrative--show how a prisoner's affliction can push him painfully inside himself. Like Dickinson, whom he loved, he often uses capitalization and line breaks to startling effect.

Cell Song

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

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Breakfast Song
by Elizabeth Bishop

My love, my saving grace,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Breakfast Song

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Eating Together
by Kim Addonizio

I know my friend is going,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Eating Together

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The Latest Injury
by Sharon Olds

When my son comes home from the weekend trip where he

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Latest Injury

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Living in America
by Anne Stevenson

'Living in America,'

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Living in America

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My Sweetest Lesbia
by Thomas Campion

My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: My Sweetest Lesbia

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Pilgrims
by G.E. Johnson

Out of the flat dry country where I seem to be

=0 Afrom Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Pilgrims

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There Will Come Soft Rains
by Sara Teasdale

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: There Will Come Soft Rains

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A part of being a parent, it seems, is spending too much time fearing the worst. Here Berwyn Moore, a Pennsylvania poet, expresses that fear—irrational, but exquisitely painful all the same.

Driving to Camp Lend-A-Hand
for Emma Grace

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 175

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A political poem shares qualities with narrative poetry: embedded within these images is a storyline. Finally, this is a moral comment that protests the treatment of returning veterans, especially those with war wounds. The title has shock-effect, or hyperbole (exaggeration) to move readers to action.

[by Barry Barnes]

Kicked to the Curb

from Denise Low: Ad Astra Poetry Project: Barry Barnes (1960 - )

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People don't get in. They're mad. That is my critique--I think that if we formed right now a money-making venture on how to write the Cave Canem poem, we could do it. And there are certain people who are not going to get in and they are going to be mad. And because they didn't get in and because they do get mad, they may go on and do their best work. It's like August Wilson who was told, "You didn't write this paper. Go home!"

from E. Ethelbert Miller: Part Two of Visionary Literature: A Two-Part Interview with E. Ethelbert Miller

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Thousands of foreign journalists based in Beijing during the Olympic Games still have limited access to hundreds of Web sites considered sensitive by the ruling Communist Party, although some key news sites appeared to have been unblocked following widespread coverage in the international media and behind-the-scenes talks between international and Chinese Olympics officials.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Press Freedom at the Olympics?

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It is not merely rich in historical allusion; as in this sequence, it is steeped in conversation with the past. For poetry not to be so, in [Geoffrey] Hill's terms, would be betrayal. But this difficulty is actually secondary. What matters is that Hill is a poet in whom words live sensuously and trenchantly. The emotion and the knowledge of this particular poem are difficult, certainly. But the impact lies in a powerful and fearless s implicity.

Tristia: 1891-1938

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

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--William Stafford

"Are you Mr. William Stafford?" is from "The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems," Graywolf Press.

from B.T. Shaw: The Oregonian: Poetry

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[Vannacharabam Thandapani Swamigal] was an itinerant sage and saint who traversed the entire length and breadth of the Tamil country which was a part of Madras Presidency for nearly 50 years from 1850 to 1898, carrying his message of total devotion to Lord Muruga. As an outstanding poet, he wrote 49722 poems/songs in Tamil, touching several aspects of Hinduism and Tamil religion, Tamil language, Tamil society, Tamil culture, Tamil grammar and Tamil literature.

from V Sundaram: News Today: A Tamil poet saint with clairvoyant vision--I
also V Sundaram: News Today: A Tamil poet saint with clairvoyant vision--II
also V Sundaram: News Today: A Tamil poet saint with clairvoyant vision-III

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Today is Conrad Aiken's birthday. He is a most unjustly neglected poet. Here is

Morning Song of Senlin
(from "Senlin, A Biography")
by: Conrad Aiken (1889-1973)

It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning

from Frank Wilson: Books, Inq.: The Epilogue: Quite a twofer . . .

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What, Friends, Is A Life?

by Mark Yakich

for Gabe Gudding

Killing a chicken for dinner always prompted

from Guernica: Poetry: What, Friends, Is A Life?

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By Judith Bader Jones

Barn owls with heart shaped faces

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'Neighbors in the Attic,' a poem by Judith Bader Jones

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Attabled with the Spinning Years
by John Ashbery

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Attabled with the Spinning Years

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Trouble
by Matthew Dickman

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Trouble

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By Richard Masta

Catopia--A poem about cats

Cats are in the bookstore;

f rom Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Catopia, a poem about cats

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Hugh Hennedy, one of our readers on July 2, will also be a featured reader at a regular Hoot on Wednesday, Sept. 3. Here, he speaks to an acquaintance who has passed on through this poem; a quiet reflection on time, change and loss.

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poems from the Hoot

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Icelandic poet and musician Aðalsteinn Sigurðsson is at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Monday 11 August, with Gerry Cambridge, Lise Sinclair, Icelandic accordionist Astvaldur Traustason and Lithuanian poet/musician Gintaras Grajauskas. This poem is from Sigurðsson's beautiful book Abandoned Farms (Edda útgáfa, 2004).

The Booksellers Won't Ever Come Again

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week: Aðalsteinn Sigurðsson

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"The Intention of Things"
By David Ferry

from Slate: "The Intention of Things" --By David Ferry

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One Argument for the Existence of God

by Katrina Vandenberg

I don't remember what we were fighting about,

0Afrom The Sun Magazine: Poetry: One Argument for the Existence of God

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by Martin Kohn, July 31, 2008

On this flight to Pittsburgh
the man next to me reads

from Zeek: Poem: Prayers to John Grisham

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Poetic Obituaries

[Alejandro Aura] won several Latin American literature awards including the Mexican National Poetry Prize for the work Volver a Casa (Returning Home) in 1973.

His other poetry included the volumes Tambor Interno (Internal Drum), Poeta en la Manana (Poet in the Morning), Jubilo (Rejoicing) and Se Esta Tan Bien Aqui (It Feels So Good to Be Here).

from EarthLink: Mexican poet Alejandro Aura dies in Spain

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[Julia Rose Graham] created more than 200 cryptogram puzzles on a variety of nature and history topics, and many custom poems or puzzles for family and friends. In 2006 her article on coping with progressive M.S. was published in "Inside MS", a periodical of the National MS Society (www.nationalmssociety.org/download.aspx?id=85.)

from The Eureka Reporter: Julia Rose Graham

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When Charles Guenther retired from writing poetry reviews for20this newspaper, it was obvious that there would be no one waiting to take his place.

Who else could draw on 50 years of experience in reviews, not to mention correspondence with some of the greatest poets of the 20th century, and decades of writing and translating poetry? Guenther's retirement in 2003 meant other good writers could also express their opinions about new poetry, but five decades of such experience is not possible to replicate.

from St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Saluting a life in poetry
also St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Longtime Missouri poet, Charles Guenther, dies at 88

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After World War II, Mr. [Ralph Victor] Heino [Sr.] joined the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra and later the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. As he was an award-winning composer, the Seattle Symphony would feature his work while on tour.

Mr. Heino also worked as a longshoreman, loved to fish, wrote poetry, created wood sculptures and painted and exhibited his work around Seattle.

from The Seattle Times: Ralph Victor Heino Sr., 91, musician, composer

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[Marilu Hrabak] did volunteer work such as delivering Meals on Wheels and tutoring students in the English language. Among her hobbies, she very much liked to read, write poetry and stories and enjoyed spending time with her grandchildren.

from Barron News Shield: Marilu Hrabak

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Dr. [Reuben A.] Kruggel served as assistant plant steward, secretary and president of the Del Monte Local of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Workers Union and also as secretary of the Central States Council. He was author of published books; “Bicentennial Broadsides” and “The Meandering Muse” along with poems in several publications. He enjoyed traveling and has visited at least 20 countries.

from Rochelle News-Leader: Reuben A. Kruggel

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Danielle Meyer, 18, a nursing student from Tomah, loved to write poems. She had one published last year.

from Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter: Families ask: Was alcohol involved?

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In her younger days, Norma [Quick] was a member of the Red Cross and often raised money for the charity.

She also loved writing religious poetry and often attended Malvern Priory.

from Worcester News: Woman killed in crash was a 'radiant' mum

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Ray [Olson] enjoyed playing cards, photography, wood-working, and golf. He also enjoyed writing short stories and poetry, and was working on a children's book at the time of his death. He loved all animals and the outdoors.

from The Post-Journal: Raymond C. Olson

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Clara [Schatz] had a great interest in reading & writing poetry and was honored by the National Library of Poetry with an Editor's Choice award for her poem "In Memory of My Son".

Clara had a great memory in regard to people, times, and events. A former Hebron Mayor referred to her as a "walking encyclopedia".

from The Dickinson Press: Clara Schatz

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Family was very important to [Carol] Shields's work as well as to her life: her last novel concerned a mother's struggles to come to terms with a beloved daughter becoming a dropout.

Although embraced as a Canadian literary star, she was born in Chicago, and said the only thing wrong with her childhood was that there was not enough of it: "It was all very good, but it wasn't enough."

She wrote poetry, literary criticism and biography, but found her medium when her first novel, Small Ceremonies, was published in 1976

from The Guardian: Orange winner dies, still engrossed in her books, at 68

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After her fight with breast cancer, she [Elinor Elaine "Jackie" Smith] became a poet voted into the International Society of Poets in Washington, D.C. Her poetry is in several anthologies in the Library of Congress archives.

Moving from California to a farm north of Dunnegan in 1977, she worked side by side with her husband, Roy, on the farm.

from Bolivar Herald-Free Press: Elinor E. Smith

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A good place to start might be The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947-2005, edited by Edward E. Ericson, Jr. and Daniel J. Mahoney (ISI Books, $30).

Compiled with the cooperation of both [Alexander] Solzhenitsyn and his three sons, it provides a far more textured picture of the writer as an unrelenting artist (he began to compose poetry again in his last years); a flexible and theologically minded philosopher (more than worthy of his Templeton Prize); an often daring stylist; and a political and nationalist "ideologue" only in the eyes of predisposed critics. (Solzhenitsyn specifically rejected a blood-based,=2 0ethnic criterion for being "Russian.")

from Philadelphia Inquirer: Truth-telling Solzhenitsyn remained great to the end
also BBC News: Solzhenitsyn: A tortured patriot
also: CBS News: Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, R.I.P.

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Loretta Turnbough of Gulfport and Atlanta always told her granddaughter that "she wanted me to do whatever I wanted, just be the best at it--even if I was a jewel thief!"

That granddaughter grew up to win the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and will arrive in Gulfport today to bury her grandmother, whose strength "has given me the strength to write what I've been given," says Gulfport Native Natasha Trethewey of Atlanta.

from Sun Herald: Turnbough inspired poet

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