IBPC: Poetry and Poets in Rags

9/30/2008

News at Eleven

As the Swedish Academy enters final deliberations for this year's award, permanent secretary Horace Engdahl said it's no coincidence that most winners are European.

"Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world . . . not the United States," he told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Tuesday.

from Associated Press: Nobel literature head: US too insular to compete

"My foster mother said, 'You don't love us, do you?' I said, 'Well, I do.' She said, 'Go away and think about it and come back tomorrow.' I studied the Bible and came up with what I thought was a perfect answer, which was that I would be able to learn to love them. I thought it was like a biblical story, having to go away and find the answer. [. . .]" [--Lemn Sissay]

from The Times: Growing up in care: I felt like somebody's experiment

I put my cell phone number in the note. I=2 0folded it into fourths, wrote the words "H.D. fans" on the outside and put it on her grave, holding it in place with one of the round red rocks already there.

About a week later I returned to the grave. My note had been moved, and it was now folded inside-out. The words -by now browned and blurred by the elements--were on the outside, but the note was in the same spot. But whoever saw my note never called.

from The Express-Times: Hilda Doolittle's Bethlehem grave at Nisky Hill Cemetery still gets visitors who leave shells. Who that is, and why, is a mystery

The Dodge Poetry Festival made its 12th biennial return to Sussex County Thursday. Tents dotted the site, and the schedule kept the verses, passion and occasional laughs running inside and outside and everywhere in the village.

Poet Laureates, masters of the craft and some 5,500 high school students walked the historic site and read, listened and wrote--and were hit by inspiration from the gathering of like minds.

from New Jersey Herald: Festival kicks off at Waterloo Village with motivational poets

Kay Ryan did not know she could be a writer until she had a brief talk with the universe. She was on a very long bicycle trip, from the West Coast to the East, in n ineteen seventy-six. Riding through Colorado's Rocky Mountains, a question came to her: "Can I be a writer?" Ryan said the universe answered, also with a question: "Do you like it?"

from VOA News: For Kay Ryan, Poetry Is 'the Most Private Form of Communication'

[Jeet] Thayil does not restrict himself to Indian nationals alone, but throws open his net to include all those born in India, or to Indian parents or grandparents, and now living in Denmark, France, China, Canada, Australia, the US and UK. "Indian poetry, wherever its writers are based, should really be seen as one body of work," Thayil argues in his preface, which he aptly titles, "One Language, Separated by the Sea".

In the process, Thayil brings to light some really exciting voices among this, mostly younger, lot.

from Business Standard: Revisiting 'Indian' poetry

I'm fond of some humans, but I'm not so sure about humanity. Some humans are very amusing. Humanity can be pretty creepy, just like some humanities departments. I would like to be a soulful ivory-towerist, but I'm not sure I'd last.

from Twin Cities Daily Planet: Interview: Transfixing poet Andrei Codrescu

[Heinrich] Schliemann soon reported to the world, breathlessly, that he and his diggers had found the charred remains of a grand citadel destroyed in prehistory by hostile men--that he had found Troy just where Homer said it would be. The news was a worldwide sensation, and Schliemann's view that the Homeric epics were fairly accurate chronicles of Late Bronze Age history--that is, the Greek world of around 1200 BC--dominated scholarship for more than 50 years.

But, in fact, Schliemann hadn't found Homer's Troy.

from The Boston Globe: Hidden Histories

In Salvina molesta, [Victoria] Chang finds a ready metaphor for the horrors of our modern age and the greed and fast pace of our society. While many of the poems collected in this volume cover expansive events, it appears to me the most effective of her poems are the more personal ones where she considers, in instance, a boy drowning and another boy injured in a car crash prior to moving into mulling over the actions we all take each day as we get dressed and go off to work . . .

from North Florida News Daily: Book of poetry is about finding solace in the worst of times

My area was the Victorian novel, and I had to do a lot of Americana at Harvard. The 19th-century novel i s very driven by money: If you peel off the very sentimental characters and get to the skeleton, it's a money skeleton. It's 'Who's paying for Pip's education?'" You don't notice it much when you're young, because you're more interested in the psychosexual. [--Margaret Atwood]

from The Globe and Mail: Margaret Atwood's old-fashioned approach to debt

Simply put, too many poets composed works they could not justify. We are seeing the impact on poetry, with a massive loss of confidence on the part of readers. What began as a subprime poetry problem on essentially unregulated poetry websites has spread to other, more stable, literary magazines and presses and contributed to excess poetry inventories that have pushed down the value of responsible poems.

from Harpers: Poetry Bailout Will Restore Confidence of Readers

Great Regulars

[Alfred Russel] Wallace made important journeys to the Amazon and Indonesia, and [Anne] Cluysenaar's delicate and graceful poems (framed with quotations from Wallace and images of the animals and plants he collected) deftly explore the channels that these journeys opened up.

from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: Batu-Angas

Much of20[MR] Peacocke's writing is a captivating mix of everyday detail with a finely judged sense of otherness, of larger vistas suddenly opening up.

from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: In Praise of Aunts

Both of these enable [Paul] Batchelor to adopt a voice surviving on the edge of things, set further and further apart not only from those around it but also from its sense of self: "I watch you wave and when you disappear/become a house where nobody lives".

from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: The Sinking Road

The inauspicious opening, which consists of two lines, sounds rather comical: "I became a criminal when I fell in love./Before that I was a waitress." The speaker has set the reader up for a smack by claiming she "became a criminal" after falling in love. One might immediately be put in mind of Bonnie and Clyde by that claim.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Louise Glück's 'Siren'

He then queries why he never seems to look anywhere for inspiration other than his usual place. He never explores any new ways of expression or any other "compounds strange," or other topics.

The reader who has examined all of the sonnets fr om 1 through 75 can well understand the questions.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 76

But the mirror can be used as a motivational tool if the speaker/poet will keep in mind the image of "mouthed graves." The open grave waits for the speaker who has ceased his work and can no longer create his valuable poems. Such an image is offered to spur the writer to greater effort that he stops wasting his precious moments.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 77

There's no agreed-upon Syracuse "school." But all these luminaries--however different in sensibility and style--move me without verbal frou frou or puffed up pyrotechnics. In "What Goes On," [Stephen] Dunn describes a marriage coming apart, then, after the wife's illness, repairing itself:

After the affair and the moving out,

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

Confederates
by Neal Bowers

My father was only two in 1915

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Confederates by Neal Bowers

May D ay
by Phillis Levin

I've decided to waste my life again,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: May Day by Phillis Levin

The Pennycandystore Beyond the El
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The Pennycandystore beyond the El

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Pennycandystore Beyond the El by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Purring
by Coleman Barks

The internet says science is not sure

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Purring by Coleman Barks

Smoke and Ash
by David Budbill

I spend every fall out in the woods, felling trees, cutting their trunks

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Smoke and Ash by David Budbill

When I Call
by John Brantingham

As I talk to her,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: When I Call by John Brantingham

Youth
by W. S. Merwin

Good Night
by W. S. Merwin

Youth

Through all of yout h I was looking for you

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Youth by W. S. Merwin

Perhaps you made paper leaves when you were in grade school. I did. But are our memories as richly detailed as these by Washington, D.C. poet, Judith Harris?

Gathering Leaves in Grade School

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 183

On Nov. 19 Mr. [Barney] Rosset will receive a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation in honor of his many contributions to American publishing, especially his groundbreaking legal battles to print uncensored versions of "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer."

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Publisher Who Fought Puritanism, and Won

"I told them that when I got to the outside I would talk. I wanted to talk, and that there will be people who will want to ask me questions. In the end, they told me that if I wanted to talk, I could do so, and do whatever I wanted."

Win Tin was held for the last 12 years of his jail term in solitary confinement after being sentenced to 21 years' imprisonment in 1989 following a crackdown on the student-led pro-democracy movement.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Freed Burmese Dissident Urges Talks

In this sense, [Clive] James is firmly situated in the sociable, plainspoken tradition that runs from Auden through Larkin and on to contemporary writers like Les Murray and Glyn Maxwell. This approach calls for a special sensitivity to tone, and it typically relies on forming a bond with the audience, either through a “we” to which the reader consents or an “I” the reader finds attractive.

from David Orr: The New York Times: The Roustabout

A very important part of writing for children is appearing at book festivals, and in libraries and schools. An important part of becoming a writer for children is seeing what published writers do and say when they appear. Writing children's books may be as lonely as any other kind of writing, but there is a big social element in how the books are taken to the readers.

from Michael Rosen: The Guardian: Child's play

The lover himself is a strange figure, almost ship-like, "alone and too tall here". After the brilliant and disturbing visionary flights ("all the argosy of your bright hair"), the f inal weary pleasure in relinquishing desire might, at least with hindsight, be read as a death-wish. The last stanza suggests, perhaps, a source for Auden's more famous and psychologically reconciled "Lullaby".

[by Hart Crane]

Voyages, V

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

Yet while I agree with that, I also believe that some books truly are dangerous, and to ignore that is simply disingenuous.

Lest this make me seem an apologist for the book banners, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I'm against restricting anything other than material that graphically portrays certain illegal acts.

from David L. Ulin: Los Angeles Times: Banned Books Week a thorny issue

Mandelstam by Glyn Maxwell

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Mandelstam by Glyn Maxwell

So, using Neruda's phrase as a kicking off point, write a portrait of yourself. If you like, you can write under the working title "Self Portrait as an Animal of Light", but by all means come up with a title of your own. Of course, if you really believe you aren't an animal of light in any way, then you can20pitch your self-portrait against that image

from The Guardian: Poetry Workshop: Michael Symmons Roberts's workshop

By Todd Hanks

A bloody sunrise bluesman,

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'Sunset Bluesman,' a poem by Todd Hanks

Romanesque
by Rosanna Warren

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Romanesque

Tag
by Anne Carson

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Tag

by David Lehman

In temple, I prayed

from Nextbook: Days of Penitence and Awe

At the September Hoot, Tammi Truax read this poem during the open mic. Her imagery, never quite letting us in on what (or who) is being "downsized," is a wonderful mix of classic and modern allusions. Not often you get Sisyphus and "The Donald" in one poem, but here it is used to great effect.

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poems from the Hoot: Downs izing

If This Be Love

If this be love, why does my heart not soar away?

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: If This Be Love by E. Bernard Arnold

Few who enjoyed [Frank] O'Hara's presence in the avant-garde scene seem to have noticed that his jokes, gossip, and wild associative leaps tended to culminate in sermons about the ultimate value of one-to-one relations. "The only truth is face to face," he wrote in "Ode: Salute to the French Negro Poets," a poem partly about the prejudicial falsehoods that blur individual faces.

from Powells: Review-A-Day: Frank O'Hara: Selected Poems by Frank O'hara

"The Crying Hill"
By Yusef Komunyakaa

from Slate: "The Crying Hill" --By Yusef Komunyakaa

Poetic Obituaries

Over the course of her marriage, which saw one son, four daughters and 10 grandchildren, [Vicki] Briggs extolled the virtues of the written word in and out of the classroom. She often helped students off campus and loved to write poetry and chronicle her life in personal journals. And she always packed the suitcase with children's books whenever she visited her grandchildren--each of whom has a blanket or quilt their grandmother made for their bi rths.

from San Antonio Express-News: Briggs was a 'teacher's teacher' who loved to write poetry

[Hayden Carruth] won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Award for Poetry for his book, "Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey."

Carruth published more than 30 books and was known for his poems about the people and places in northern Vermont.

from Vermont Public Radio: Poet Hayden Carruth dies

[Enoch Dillon] was an economist for the National Science Foundation for nine years until his retirement in 1980. He then wrote two books, "The Bicentennial Blues: 200 Years of the American Presidency," 1988, and the poetry volume, "Love, From the Ends of the Earth," in 1990.

from The Hillsboro Argus: Enoch Dillon, 82, economist, Army vet

[Patricia 'Pat' Gasner] participated in Birthright, a child foster care program, was a pro-life advocate, and a published poet.

from Post-Bulletin: Patricia 'Pat' Gasner--Rochester

[Michael Johnson] moved back to Payette in 2003 and began writing fulltime. He was a prolific poet and managed to publish his20grandfather's novel, "The Bitterroot Trail," as an e-book. He was compiling an anthology of short stories at the time of his death.

from The Hillsboro Argus: Michael Johnson, 53, poet, mathematician

[Charlotte] Kohler, who was known to recite Greek poetry and then provide the translation, was the first American editor to publish South African writer Nadine Gordimer, who later earned the Nobel Prize in literature.

She didn't shy away from controversial figures, featuring drawings in 1945 by Mexican artist Diego Rivera, who was affiliated with the Communist Party, and in 1958 published Ezra Pound, an American poet who was arrested for treason after World War II.

from Times-Dispatch: Charlotte Kohler dies; had edited literary magazine

"He was a model student," said Saul Gonzales, the school's principal. "He had a shy side and he was very intelligent."

A poem [Martin] Leon had penned recently in an AVID class surfaced Monday: "I see my future in college," he wrote.

from Tulare Advance-Register: Teen fatally shot in Richgrove

[Kayla Lynette McBride] loved to write and wrote many poems and a20couple books all of which were enjoyed by all who read them.

from Bemidji Pioneer: Kayla Lynette McBride, 21

[Of Christina Mellen,] FSU instructor Sandra Simonds said, "Christina was a quiet but intense presence in my poetry class this summer. Her poems spoke of a deep love for her community and friends. Her writing had tremendous potential and she was always supportive of her classmates. She will be missed."

from Tallahassee Democrat: Family, friends reflect on two killed in crash

A poem Alexander [Milne] had written about driving quad bikes in the fields was also read out.

The service closed with a speech he had written about leaving his primary school. It told how much he was looking forward to going into secondary school – his only fear was getting lost.

from The Press and Journal: Hundreds remember Alexander

Only in recent years was he acknowledged for his contribution to modern Bulgarian poetry and literature. In 2000, he was awarded the Nikola Fournadjiev national poetry award, and in 2005, he received the Hristo G. Danov national literary award that honors efforts in building civil society in Bulgaria.

[Kons tantin] Pavlov's works have been translated into French, English, Spanish, German, Russian, Polish and Hungarian.

from Sofia Echo: Konstantin Pavlov, Bulgarian poet and screenwriter, dies at 75

[Andrew Prak] enjoyed computers, music, poetry, drama, basketball and riding his motorcycle. He enjoyed talking and hanging out with friends.

from The Hillsboro Argus: Andrew Prak, 17, liked music, poetry

[Edna B. Turner] retired in 1975, after teaching in the Roseburg School system for 28 years. After leaving teaching, Edna traveled extensively and maintained a large collection of photographs taken during her visits. She also regularly attended stage performances and other artistic media presentations. She was an avid reader and wrote some poetry.

from The News-Review: Edna B. Turner

[Tania Sikorsky von York] was an avid lover of classical music and an accomplished musician herself, playing piano and violin. She wrote a book, "Russia's Road to Revolution." She has written extensively about her experiences as an émigré and her upbringing in the Russian community in Stratford. She=2 0has also written poetry and essays.

from Connecticut Post: Tania Sikorsky von York, dead at 90

9/23/2008

News at Eleven

Win Tin was Burma's longest-serving political prisoner, according to the UN and human rights groups which had repeatedly called for his release.

A poet, editor and close aide to Ms Suu Kyi, he was originally arrested in July 1989.

Once in jail, he received additional sentences for agitating against the military junta and distributing propaganda.

from BBC News: Burmese democracy veteran freed

You might have seen them in person, in the classroom or on PBS television. Now the poets of the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival are coming to YouTube.
Advertisement

The 12th and latest edition of this four-day poetry bash begins Thursday at Waterloo Village in Byram. But you can get a preview this week in the form of online video.

"We're going to launch our Geraldine R. Dodge YouTube site," said Jim Haba, director of the festival since its inception in 1986. "In the first installment we will feature 19 video pieces from the 2006 festival.

from Daily Record: Where words matter

[Andrew] Motion, too, was only yards from Larkin during his time teaching in Hull.

Unsurprisingly, for a poet who places himself firmly in the English line, there are pieces here on Thomas Hardy and Edward Thomas, on Wilfred Owen and John Betjeman. The Thom as essay, 'An Imaginary Life', allows the poet to live through the First World War and imagines him evolving into 'an English modernist' by the Twenties.

from The Guardian: Transported by the art of Motion

[John Betjeman] wrote: "Oh God, the Royal poem!! Send the H[oly] G[host] to help me over that fence. So far no sign: Watch and pray."

Three weeks later, during a wake for the poet WH Auden, "he told Philip Larkin that he wanted to pack in the Laureateship" according to his daughter Candida Lycett Green, who edited the collection of poems.

from Telegraph: John Betjeman hated being Poet Laureate, says Andrew Motion

The text is printed backward, and the joke is on us. If we were really so buddy-buddy with the English language, [Simon] Armitage seems to taunt, wouldn't we recognize it even with its back to us?

After one labored reading, I held the poem, "Learning by Rote," up to a mirror and gleefully deciphered the story of young Armitage being ordered to write his name 10,000 times. It's a trick, sure, but a meaningful one.

from San Francisco Chronicle: Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid

< br> On the subject of poaching from one’s own life, [Donald] Hall quotes an article he wrote for the Hartford Courant: "Young poets sometimes fear, as they begin a life in art, that personal history may become mere material, as if one lived one’s life in order to write about it. . . . But as a poet ages, subject to inevitable losses, it becomes appropriate to write out of grief--appropriate, necessary, therapeutic."

from The Christian Science Monitor: The poetry of memories

Yet the best of [David] Wagoner's work still delivers the electric shock of truth. One of my favorite poems, "A Lesson From a Student," begins, "My student says he writes short stories and poems/ in front of a mirror, sitting at a table/ in the nude." Although the teacher in the poem doesn't like the student's writing and tells him the method is "the worst idea I've heard in a long while," he decides to try it for himself. The images that follow are harrowing:

from The Seattle Times: "A Map of the Night": Master poet sometimes loses his way in new collection

By the time the CP had established itself in his old neighborhood, [Claude] McKay looked at the party as cynically exploiting the political desires of Blacks.

McKay's vision, as [Lloyd D.] McCarthy spells out quite clearly through pieces of McKay's prose, poetry, and political writing, was one of Black liberation and socialism. He believed that capitalism and imperialism had robed the Third World--and especially the African diaspora--of its wealth and dignity.

from Green Left: Manley and McKay: reform and revolution in the politics of the African diaspora

He was executed, thrown in a pit and covered with dirt by General Franco's men, in an act designed to destroy all memory of him.

But yesterday, 72 years on, the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca's family agreed to his remains being exhumed from a mass grave, reopening painful civil war wounds the country has never really fully faced up to.

from The Scotsman: How exhuming poet may open up old war wounds

Chapter 1 by William S. Burroughs.

Chapter 2 by Jack Kerouac

1 Will Dennison

The bars close at three A.M. on Saturday nights so I got home about 3:45 after eating breakfast at Riker's on the corner of Christopher Street and Seventh Avenue. I dropped the News and Mirror on the couch and peeled off my seersucker coat and dropped it on top of them. I was going straight to bed.

from USA Today: Excerpt from 'And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks'

Great Regulars

"The assumptions of realism as it has been practised are simply wrong. People bring a great deal of memory and also a sense of present experience to everything that they do. If you see someone doing a simple action like hanging sheets on a line, there is absolutely no reason in that person's perception that there is anything simple about it at all. I have all the respect in the world for reality, but I think the general assumptions about it are wrong." [--Marilynne Robinson]

from Bryan Appleyard: The Sunday Times: Marilynne Robinson: world's best writer of prose

"Though Your Sins Be Scarlet"
by David Biespiel

from David Biespiel: Slate: "Though Your Sins Be Scarlet"

The Quarrel

By Mark McGuire-Schwartz

Originally published in Whatever Literary Magazine, March 08

He said Yes,

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Yeah, right, whatever . . .

What happens, though, when a poet sets out to construct a ruin 2,000 years in advance? The result is a book like Philadelphia-based poet Katie Ford's new volume, Colosseum -- a colle ction full of self-conscious occlusions, far-reaching links and some oracular, beautiful lines.

Before Ford moved to Pennsylvania, she lived in New Orleans, and this book is haunted by Katrina and how the storm transformed that city.

from John Freeman: Orlando Sentinel: Katrina aftermath haunts collection of poems

The speaker says that the flowers sit there, "too much at home," and he feels that they hold an accusation of "some small crime," although the couple does not seem to have committed any crime at all. They cannot be blamed for the error that brought the flowers to them.

They could have discarded them immediately after they could not find the rightful owner, but they opted to keep them and let them decorate their home.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Dana Gioia's 'Thanks For Remembering Us'

The speaker then avers that he is proud to be able to enjoy his ability to commune with his fecund muse, but he admits that he still suffers doubts that his ability will not fade. The speaker's humanness always demonstrates that he never becomes so self-important as to think he is more than a striving artist, despite the unique muse he has attracted.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 75

The rose desires to live as long as possible, as every living thing is programmed to do; thus, the "thorny ring" will do its job if it has to, even though it may become blood-tinged.

The speaker then extols the beauty of the rose and avers that the flower's loveliness and alluring fragrance should draw the soul, not the fingers.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Yogananda's 'Protecting Thorns'

Open the window and wail, "I'm so bored!" the way you might wail the first time you find true love. Others will hear and realize that they're bored, too, and they'll start wailing and throwing coffee cups and sending bogus e-mails to their families and friends who get so bored from reading them. Maybe you'll incite a riot, and that won't be boring at all.

from Kristen Hoggart: The Smart Set: Ask a Poet:

Rilke's afterlife here becomes an eternity of green in which he can blossom like a rose, as no doubt David [Foster Wallace] will in the minds of his devoted readers. But, ultimately, this childhood snapshot by Weldon Kees, a poet and presumed suicide, captures the innocent melody of my early friendship with David, while permitting- -sandwiched in the center stanza--some rage against adding his death to the planet's roster of horror:

1926

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

Hardware
by Ronald Wallace

My father always knew the secret

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Hardware by Ronald Wallace

The Hungry Gap-Time
by Thomas Lux

late August, before the harvest, every one of us worn down

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Hungry Gap-Time by Thomas Lux

Laundry
by George Bilgere

My mother stands in this black

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Laundry by George Bilgere

Literature in the 21st Century
by Ronald Wallace

Sometimes I wish I drank coffee

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Literature in the 21st Century by Ronald Wallace

Windows is Shutting Down
by Clive James

Windows is shutting down, and grammar are

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Windows is Shutting Down by Clive James

The Wordsworth Effect
by Joyce Sutphen

Is when you return to a place

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Wordsworth Effect by Joyce Sutphen

Zimmer in Grade School
by Paul Zimmer

In grade school I wondered

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Zimmer in Grade School by Paul Zimmer

Poetry has often served to remind us to look more closely, to see what may have been at first overlooked. Today's poem is by Kaelum Poulson of Washington state. A middle school student and already accomplished maker of poems, he writes of the thankless toils of an unlikely but entirely necessary member of our community--the crow!

The Crow

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 182

In the mind

When verse drama is written today, it is not always meant to be performed on an actual stage in physical reality, but is often intended to be "performed" in the reader's imagination.

In this sense, it has something in20common with radio drama, which is never seen by the eyes but only in the mind's eye. And radio drama possesses a kind of poetry by the way in which its emotional effect depends entirely on words and the human voice.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Dramatic poetry still has audience; it needs a voice

I look at baseball. I look at life. And your blessed from one pitch to the next.

from E. Ethelbert Miller: Foreign Policy in Focus: NPR: Baseball, Memoirs and Secrets

But each week I walked back to my car with a spring in my step, brimming with the afternoon's yield of images and laughter.

The students wrote stories drawn from early memories, stories about siblings and cousins and friends, about bilingual households, about King Street in Southall, about journeys to India, Pakistan and Germany. They read their work aloud and grew used to responding sensitively to each other's efforts, and to hearing praise and criticism of their own

from Andrew Motion: The Guardian: The week in books

Michael Rosen performs I Can't Stand It Anymore

from Michael Rosen: The Guardian: Michael Rosen performs I Can't Stand It Anymore

The diction itself becomes rather platitudinous ("best treasure", "heavenly face"): it is telling us what the first quatrain so expressively showed. A sonnet of asymmetrical, top-heavy intensity then, turning its face away from the epiphanic to the quotidian – it can't be considered a great poem, or can it? Perhaps there are times when the one proverbial swallow really does make a summer.

[by William Wordsworth]

Surprised by joy--impatient as the wind

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

[by J.W. Marshall

Taken With

25.]

I am beyond tired because my mother slipped off.

from B.T. Shaw: The Oregonian: Poetry

It kind of just happened organically. When I saw I had a lot of poems--I looked at them and saw they had this theme, and a lot of them did, and those that didn't, I sort of pulled out, and started writing more poems that had this same theme, this darkness that seemed to be lurking. It wasn't until I just looked at my recent poems that I decided on a theme.

from Belinda Subraman Presents: David Hernandez: Poet and Author

Pushing the envelope, please. HBO and the Poetry Foundation teamed up to win an Emmy® for Outstanding Children's Programme. Watch Classical Baby (I'm Grown Up Now): The Poetry Show @ the Foundation's Online 'Site

from Frank Wilson: Books, Inc.: The Epilogue: The Poetry Show Scoops an Emmy®

Before We Get Into This by Lemn Sissay

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Before We Get Into This by Lemn Sissay

By Bill Bauer

Grass is wordless here.

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: A poem by Bill Bauer

The Virgin King
by John Ashbery

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Virgin King

In grade school
By Julie Brennan

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: In grade school

Poetic Obituaries

"He was an exquisite prose stylist," Molly Stern, [James] Crumley' s editor at Viking, which published "The Right Madness," said Friday. "I always say he was a poet of violence."

Calling him a "true original," Stern said Crumley "was incredibly brazen with language.

from Los Angeles Times: James Crumley dies at 68; author of gritty but poetic crime novels

[Mary Margaret Engle] cared about the earth and animals both wild and domestic. She also enjoyed writing. She wrote poetry, fiction, biographical non fiction and self help books. She longed for a time when poverty and violence were a thing of the past.

from The Platte County Record-Times: Mary Margaret Engle

Ringing George [Fage]'s town crier's bell, she called: "Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! George we won't forget you. We all love you."

Not only did George bring colour and enthusiasm to events across the town during his spell as town crier, he was also a talented poet and a keen gardener, winning a number of Reading in Bloom awards.

from The Reading Chronicle: Family say goodbye to larger than life town crier

And now she is dead, and strangers who never knew her are posting rude speculation about her based only on news reports with20skimpy details. I didn't know Caprisha well, but I knew her a little, and you can know her a little too, because I want to share with you a poem she wrote in 5th grade.

The Sky Is…..
By Caprisha Green

The sky moves smoothly

from S.F. Education Examiner: A tribute to Caprisha in the ice cream sky

[Agni Shikha, a.k.a. Sukdev Nepal,] had penned many poems and stories. Currently, he had been penning a book on how republic became a reality in Nepal.

from The Himalayan Times: Litterateur Agni Shikha Passes Away

[Ragna Oline (Qually) Steile] enjoyed reading, writing poetry and kept a journal since 1946. She was an avid writer leaving precious written memories for all to share. She also learned rosemaling.

from The Bemidji Pioneer: Ragna Oline (Qually) Steile, 95

9/16/2008

News at Eleven

Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts since March 2003, plans to announce today that in January he will leave the federal agency he is credited with helping revitalize.

Gioia, a prize-winning poet and critic, said he will become the director of a new arts program at the Aspen Institute, an international organization that conducts forums on contemporary issues.

from The Washington Post: Arts Agency Chairman Is Moving On: Dana Gioia Wants More Time to Work on Poetry

[Andrew Motion] thought the internet was providing a better medium for poetry than books. "Either books have not been doing the job or they are being outmanoeuvred by the internet."

His comments come as it puts recordings by another 14 major 20th century American poets online.

from Telegraph: Poetry's popularity soars online

In [Ninar] Esber's telling, and by Adonis' own admission, the poet was often away from home, or at home only in a nominal sense, because tucked away in a book. He was determined not to be a stereotypical father ("The father in Arab culture is a scaled-down image of God Almighty," he claims), and was in any case devoted first of all to his poetry. But despite his absence, in Esber's memory he looms very large.

from The National: Song of myself

They printed a lot of bad poetry, he [Donald Hall] acknowledges, but they also labored under the gaze of the old poets they admired.

"We wanted, like Keats, to be among the English poets when we died," Hall writes. "The name of poet was glorious to us, as it was to Milton. Shakespeare and Jonson and Dryden wanted to write lines of epics that would live forever. Maybe I should whisper it--it was naïve and perhaps farcical in its self-regard--but so did we."

from The Concord Monitor: A brief story of a life in poetry

Parting no longer fresh, the poet [Linda Gregg] has refined the emptiness: "Left alone in the stillness/in that pure silence married/to the stillness of nature."

But although Gregg documents the ravishments of love, I don't think of her as a love poet. These are allegories draped in the vestments of contemporary lyric love poems, where gone men serve as a metaphor for the lost divine.

from Los Angeles Times: 'All of It Singing: Poems' by Linda Gregg

Perhaps the best of the unpublished poems [by John Betjeman] is The Lenten Season.

It catches delicately the mood of Lent, and its purpose as a preparation for the Resurrection, but at the same time there is an easy good humour in its tone, and there is a fine metaphor for the Resurrection in its description of the sun coming through the mist in some Irish hills.

from The Times: John Betjeman's radio poems

In 1854 he [Thomas Wentworth Higginson] had battered down a courthouse door in Boston in an attempt to free the fugitive slave Anthony Burns. In 1856 he helped arm antislavery settlers in Kansas and, a loaded pistol in his belt, admitted almost sheepishly,

"I enjoy danger." Afterward he preached sedition while furnishing money and morale to John Brown.

All this had occurred by the time [Emily] Dickinson asked him if he was too busy to read her poems, as if it were the most reasonable request in the world.

from The Wall Street Journal: Book Excerpt: 'White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson' By Brenda Wineapple
also Truthdig: Jane Ciabattari on Emily Dickinson's Friendship With Abolitionist

[by Naomi Shihab Nye]

The News

How I miss my dad when Karen Hughes or Condoleeza Rice

from Foreign Policy in Focus: Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye
also Foreign Policy in Focus: Interview with Naomi Shihab Nye

Fortunately his writing does not seem to have been the platform for the display of "personality" in the way which is now widespread, for while [W. H.] Auden's literary personality is everywhere apparent, it is always for something more than itself. It is hard nowadays to name a single author who can demonstrate the same breadth of competence or wield the same authority as Auden in his time, or who can make serious matters look like the natural occupation of the intelligent general reader.

from The Times Literary Supplement: Auden not our contemporary

I think he was seen as eccentric and interesting and he was also a really good listener. People who know his work would not be surprised to hear me say that, because his work is full of talk, and in some cases the poems are almost like plays in that there are dialogues between people talking and he has one poem, called "A Time To Talk", where he describes a sort of a personal ethos, which is: if you're hoeing potatoes and someone comes by on the road, you don't just wave to them, you go over, it's the time to talk. [--Jim Schley of Robert Frost]

from Vermont Public Radio: Robert Frost--New England, a Sense of Place

"Poisson d'Avril" goes for camp. Here a Little Lord Fauntleroy figure, gender uncertain, laden down with a basket of flowers, appears against a starburst of pleated pink tulle that could be an aura or a splayed-out tutu. The tableau, set against a postcard view of a sequoia forest, is like a unisex version of Hansel and Gretel choreographed by Les Ballets Trockadero.

Some of the elements in recent collages he [John Ashbery] didn't find himself, though they are part of his history.

from The New York Times: The Poetry of Scissors and Glue
also The New York Times: The Collages of John Ashbery

Great Regulars

Talk

By John Mark Eberhart

Once more, the shadow issues:

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Seven Years Gone

Because there is no one else in the poem, the reader infers that the couple has probably outlived most of their relatives and friends.

The couple's strength of character is demonstrated in their persistence; they keep on keeping on as they "keep on putting on their clothes/And putting things away." What might strike others as a boring existence seems to work well for his old "yellow pair."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Brooks' 'The Bean Eaters'

So upon encountering such an obvious falsehood, the reader shifts his thought to the soul that has left the physical body, and thus understands the speaker to be referring to the wise soul, not the dead body, which is incapable of any human activity.

A problem then confronts the reader as the tercet proceeds: the dead are wisest because they "know/How far the roots of flowers go,/How long a seed must rot to grow."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Cullen's 'The Wise'

By withstanding larger and larger amounts, she has become so hardy that she can "drink--and live--what has destroyed some men." Through this method, she has trained her senses so that she can now say what she said in the octave, that the object of her passion is not as lovely as the lilacs and other flowers, when in her heart, she feels quite=2 0the opposite.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Millay's 'Sonnet I'

The speaker forms his request as "don't fawn over me when I'm dead, unless you want to diminish my poetry." As readers see repeatedly, this speaker plays with language structure to produce original discourses. He, therefore, is loath to have his productions vanquished by an emphasis on his personal life.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 72

The couplet, "The worth of [the body] is that which it contains,/And that is this, and this with thee remains," plainly declares that the only value of the body is that it contains the soul, and the speaker has put his soul in his art, which will continue to provide sustenance for all those other souls who may read his creations, including those family and friends who will mourn his loss.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 74

The idea being that in this new medium, people are doing all kinds of traditional writing, sharing of poetry and fiction. But it's changing too. The new medium is changing the forms.

from Katie Haegele: Coudy Day Art: Interview with poet Katie Haegele

[John] Betjeman was imagined by listeners to step into the small, intimate space that joined the everyday world to the ecclesiastical, to read what had apparently been left there by a parishioner.

Casting a humorous - if cynical - eye on the vagaries and vanities of clergy and parishioners alike, albeit in his praise of God, Betjeman's poems would have brought some light relief to an otherwise very serious programme.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Hidden Betjeman

Anna Kamienska is one lesser-known beauty from the generation that spawned Nobel laureates Czeslaw Milosz and Wislawa Szymborska. Skepticism pervades their work; Kamienska's sounds less sardonic, more desperate to make sense of random carnage. Her poem "The Return of Job" suggests how much worse survival can be than affliction.

Job didn't die

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

I Planned To Have a Border of Lavender

by Paul Goodman

I planned to have a border of lavender

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: I Planned To Have a Border20of Lavender by Paul Goodman

The Man Who Finds That His Son Has Become a Thief

by Raymond Souster

Coming into the store at first angry

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Man Who Finds That His Son Has Become a Thief by Raymond Souster

Maybe Very Happy

by Jack Gilbert

After she died he was seized

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Maybe Very Happy by Jack Gilbert

Mennonites

by Julia Kasdorf

We keep our quilts in closets and do not dance.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Mennonites by Julia Kasdorf

Shopping Urban

by Jane Shore

Flip-flopped, noosed in puka beads, my daughter

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Shopping Urban by Jane Shore

Student

by Ted Kooser

The green shell of his backpack makes him lean

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

Where I Am With You

by Ryan Vine

Waking from a nap,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Where I Am With You by Ryan Vine

Stuart Kestenbaum, the author of this week's poem, lost his brother Howard in the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. We thought it appropriate to commemorate the events of September 11, 2001, by sharing this poem. The poet is the director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts on Deer Isle, Maine.

Prayer for the Dead

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 181

I imagine [William] Blake countering today's Voltaires with a scepticism based not on scorn for science but on his sense that there is a hard-wired propensity to see through, as well as with, the eye, and that this, too, is part of the irreducible, insatiable, magnificent particle collider that is human intelligence.

Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Poem of the week: Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau

Gene Keller's poetry has appeared locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. He follows the tenet of Vice nte Huidobros, "El poeta era un pequeno dios."

Like a Crystal Skull

from Donna Snyder: Newspaper Tree: Tumblewords Poetry: Gene Keller

Robert Lee Brewer is the editor of Writer's Market and will be the editor of Poet's Market (beginning with the 2010 edition). He is the sole contributor to the Poetic Asides blog at http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides, and beginning this fall will be teaching online poetry courses at www.writersonlineworkshops.com.

from Belinda Subraman Presents: Editor of Writer's Market, Moderator of Poetic Asides blog

by Maura Stanton
Royal Harp

Big golden harps make me think of angels,

from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: Royal Harp

by Billy Collins
Searching

I recall someone once admitting

from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: Searching

Boxcar Jumper Cable
by Jess Fiorini

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: Boxcar Jumper Cable

Joie de Vivre
by Lisa Jarnot

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: Joie de Vivre

For the Nation
by Lisa Jarnot

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: For the Nation

Nun Reading Romance Novel
by Lisa Jarnot

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: Nun Reading Romance Novel

Poem to my enemies
by Nada Gordon

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: Poem to my enemies

Voice Dhoti: Gong (after Dana Ward)
by Nada Gordon

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: Voice Dhoti: Gong (after Dana Ward)

When I land in Northern Ireland by Colette Bryce

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: When I land in Northern Ireland by Colette Bryce

The argument of the poem raises the question most of us suspect must be right and that is, Can KK be finished by anyone given the unfinished genesis of most poems?

My answer to that is to say that an act of completion is really a reader's interp retive act, especially someone who reads as a writer, where the act of reading remakes the poem in the reader's image.

from The Guardian: Poetry Workshop: After Kubla Khan

Two Poems
by Manoel de Barros translated by Idra Novey

from An Education on Invention

To enter the state of being a tree it's necessary

from Guernica: Poetry: Two Poems

By Jason Vaughn

It does not seem out of place

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: ‘Conch Shell,’ a poem by Jason Vaughn

17
by Bob Dylan

from The New Yorker: Poetry: 17

21
by Bob Dylan

from The New Yorker: Poetry: 21

Names
ny Marilyn Hacker

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Names

by Sarah Heller

After Forty-Nine Days

Don’t make me do it.

from Nextbook: Four Poems

Judy Curtis

Cameo

Sculpted in ivory, a silhouette is born

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Cameo by Judy Curtis

The New Writing Scotland annual volume is now in its 26th year. Edited this year by Liz Niven and Brian Whittingham, Bucket of Frogs (Association for Scottish Literary Studies, £6.95) provides us with a spread of emerging and established writers. This poem by Paula Jennings neatly captures our struggle to make the most of the present before it passes us by.

The Gift

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week: Paula Jennings

"Lord Forgive Me"
By Kathryn Maris

from Slate: "Lord Forgive Me" --By Kathryn Maris

by Lev Rubinstein, translated by Alex Halberstadt, September 13, 2008

All night I dreamed of the border regions of being.

from Zeek: Poem: Between Thursday and Friday

Poetic Obituaries

At the time of his death, Will [Bridges] was majoring in English education at Fairmont Sta te. He also loved to write poetry. Copies of his book "Misery Loves Company," a compilation of his poetry, will be for sale at the show.

from The Times West Virginian: In memory of Will

[Eddie] Hasson would sometimes teach his former students' kids.

After retirement in the mid-1980s, Hasson substituted regularly at Wilson High School and began taking stained glass and poetry classes.

His poetry subjects often revolved around his years as a teacher.

from Press-Telegram: Hasson was a dedicated coach

Kay [Hughan] was a writer, She penned a number of short stories, scores of poems, hundreds of letters and a book about her life on the Nass. One of the ‘old school,' she could recite poems by memory. You could tell how much she savored the rhythm, the story and the thought of this old poetry.

Like all writers, she possessed a vivid imagination.

from Terrace Standard: Tea Barn owner remembered

Nichole Katz enjoyed photography.

One of her brothers kept a photo she took in his room.

Michael said, "She's a very great photographer. She's a poet. She loved writing and reading poetry. She was a free spirit. One of a k ind. A free spirit."

from KOLD News 13: Family outraged that murder suspect is out

[Ruth Knudtson] had a knack for making everyone feel special and made the world feel smaller with her talent for making connections among people. After Carl's death she began to write cowboy poetry about the experiences of an eastern city girl turning into a western cowboy's wife. She has published three books of poetry as well as writing occasional columns to be published in local papers.

from The Dickinson Press: Ruth Knudtson

In October 2007 year he [John Matshikiza] organised the 10th annual Poetry Africa festival in Johannesburg.

He said of his career as an actor, director, journalist and poet: "I'm all these things because I cannot get away from all of them."

from The Star: Acclaimed SA playwright dies

There were many David Prenskys.

There was the classical music devotee and popular preconcert lecturer. The advocate for the arts and tireless booster of the Alexander W. Dreyfoos Jr. School of the Arts. The ardent Democrat and campaigner for a universal health-care system. The devoted husband who wrote a poem for his beloved Bryna nearly every day of their 50-year marriage.

from Palm Beach Daily News: Henry David Prensky, veteran, dentist, arts lecturer, dies

Suddenly [Harry] Ruddle began reciting poetry he had written about his love for the land.

"I started getting chicken skin," Kahele said.

"Harry, you're the guy," he told Ruddle.

from Honolulu Star Bulletin: Former councilman had love for land

Irma's little boy sits by the window, waiting for a mother who will never come home.

A week after Irma Simeus--a 22-year-old medical technician who wrote poems, wrapped herself in strong opinions and never gave up on the idea of love--died violently at the hands of an enraged attacker, her family is wrestling with her sudden absence.

from Palm Beach Post: Family of slain woman struggles with sudden absence

[Juha] Virkkunen co-hosted the YLE Radio One radio programme "Tämän runon haluaisin kuulla" ("I want to hear this poem") almost since its inception more than 30 years ago, until his retirement a few years ago.

Since then, he continued to host poetry even ts, write about poetry and translate.

from YLE News: Poetry Maven Virkkunen Dies at 67

There is also a page for Ian [Wells] at the online memorial site, gonetoosoon.org. When "Ian Wells" is typed into the site's search box, visitors are shown a biography, poems by Ian and others and mourner's comments. Visitors can leave a "tribute" or "gift" or light a virtual candle.

from New Britain Herald: Anguish, action follow teen's death

9/09/2008

News at Eleven

The AQA spokeswoman said: "The decision to withdraw the poem was not taken lightly and only after due consideration of the issues involved. We believe the decision underlines the often difficult balance that exists between encouraging and facilitating young people to think critically about difficult but important topics and the need to do this in a way which is sensitive to social issues and public concern."

[by Carol Ann Duffy]

Education for Leisure

Today I am going to kill something. Anything.

from The Guardian: Top exam board asks schools to destroy book containing knife poem
also The Guardian: Mrs Schofield's GCSE: The poem Carol Ann Duffy penned in response to her work being removed from a GCSE curriculum

'The job has been very, very damaging to my writing,' he [Andrew Motion] told festival goers.

'In fact I dried up completely about five years ago and can't write anything except to commission.

'I thought the poetry had all gone, but I feel some of it is still there and may yet return.'

from Daily Mail: Woe is me! Poet Laureate is suffering from writer's block and is upset the Queen hasn't praised his work

Nissim [Ezekiel]'s position as the pre-eminent Indo-English poet of our time is well established. But what about his place in World Literature? The question never bothered Nissim. He was only concerned with the quality of his poems. When he was actually asked, 'What about your place in World Literature?' in an interview, he answered, with some irritation "Perhaps, I don't make it on the international scene . . . Most Indian writers don't. We're just not good enough."

from The Hindu: Remembering Nissim Ezekiel

There was awe in his [Robin Blaser's] voice.

"Atoms are made of energy. You can't see them, but when they become things they're kind of magical. It's magical to think this kind of stuff is going on all the time. It's a wiggling universe."

Blaser not only thinks it's a mistake professors no longer talk about God, he believes it's a shame they do not teach about the complexities of love.

from Vancouver Sun: "The hippest guy in the room:" Poet Robin Blaser at 83

Realizing the deep friendship blended into the tea, Lu Tong couldn't wait to try the tea on that quiet afternoon. After some preparation, he began to simmer the tea in water carefully using specific tools. The fragrance from the tea bowl appealed to him, so he couldn't stop after just having one cup, and Lu Tong ended up enjoying seven cups of Zisun.

He described each of the cups like this:

The first cup moistens my lips and throat;

from Times-Standard: Tea Tales: Poem tells the story of a friendship

The people to pay close attention to, a teacher once cautioned, are the ones who have something to impart that they could not have learned in any ordinary way. [Norman] Jordan seems to be one of those unusual people. His way of writing poems resembles the work of a sculptor: He collects images and sculpts, arranges and polishes.

Hear an audio interview with him on thegazz.com MountainWord blog at http://thegazz.com/gblogs/mountainword/. Here is the text of one of the poems he recited there, reprinted with permission:

"How to Sprout a Poem"

by Norman Jordan

from redOrbit: Jordan to Be Inducted into Affrilachian Poets Tonight
also MountainWord: Laurels: Jordan honored as 'Affrilachian' poet

As the dog's remains were shovelled away, the boy [young Robert Gray] realised Lucky's "extraordinary smartness had been made nothing, in an instant . . . this was just the empty way of things . . . I felt myself swimming with the horror of it, and yet I was standing upright and steady--like a top spinning so rapidly, it seems almost unmoved on its stem. I knew I must never hint to my mother about such feelings."

from The Sydney Morning Herald: Poet palely loitering

Changing the world is easier to grasp when we realize that it's our view of the world. I think poetry can change this, for instance, on an intimate scale--we turn to words with power, as we find in poetry or prayer, when we're bereft or moved. [--Gabeba Baderoon]

from Moneyweb: Society needs poets

Moreover, humour is one of the best ways to make children into readers. Hence the source of support: Roald's widow Liccy Dahl believes that not only did her husband think there was "nothing better than a row of giggling children", but also that he longed for every child to be literate "and you can't start them on Shakespeare". Jokes are seductive. [Michael] Rosen's theory is that funny books liberate kids from their controlled lives--for the smaller ones by inverting what they know; for the older ones by puncturing teenage angst.

from Telegraph: Why making children laugh is a serious business

And writing about poetry, particularly praising contemporary poetry, is a fine but extremely difficult art. It has to distill the presumed poetic genius of the writer being praised in a way that at the very least equals the supposed brilliance of the work itself. So in a way it's more elevated than prose; it's prose-poetry (remember that?) about poetry.

from Slate: New Literary Art Form Discovered!: in praise of the praise of poetry

Probably the most widely known blizzard survivor was [Minnie Mae] Freeman.

On the afternoon of the storm, she led 16 children through a mile of snow to the safety of her rural boarding house near Ord, in central Nebraska. Newspapers later declared her a heroine. [Ted] Kooser conveys her discomfort with the hype.

"I was embarrassed all right!" writes Kooser, supposedly in Freeman's voice.

from Omaha World-Herald: 1888 blizzard recounted in Kooser poems now Opera Omaha oratorio

Great Regulars

An irritating afternoon made messy by PRs and television producers was suddenly redeemed by the receipt of a book--The Landscapist by Pierre Martory, translated by John Ashbery. The book fell open at a poem called The Return of the Birds, the second half of which I now quote to redeem all your afternoons. For copyright purposes I claim fair use, abject admiration and gratitude.

from Bryan Appleyard: Thought Experiments: Afternoons Redeemed

Anyone can start a blog and be read by thousands of people. So how does one make the leap to being a published writer? I'm using the word "published" to mean "refereed--writing that has been chosen by a highly professional editorial staff as the best of what's been submitted, the work they'd like to publish.

from Fleda Brown: Traverse City Record-Eagle: On Poetry: Writers gain strength in co-op

'Between the Lines'

By John Mark Eberhart

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

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines:

Fatherless

By Ginny Lowe Connors

We are the ones you have left behind.

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Fatherless'

My Father Teaches Me to Bat

By Jo McDougal

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Batter up!

untitled

By Nate Rogers

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: untitled

'The White Album'
By Jon Herbert Arkham

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'The White Album'

The speaker's memory of the past then unsettles him; seeing the woman's picture made him feel "as though we there face to face." His "stomach tightened." But he read the article anyway, which he found unsatisfactory, because he wanted to know more about the woman than the families of the bride and groom. So he felt disappointed with the sparse information about his former girlfriend.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Dana Gioia's 'The Sunday News'

The speaker describes her daily work: "I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,/I made the garden." But she also gives more space to dramatizing her playful activities.

She lived a pastoral life, quietly performing her household chores and then immersing herself in nature, from "[r]ambl[ing] over the fields" to collecting shells from the banks of "Spoon River" to picking flowers and "medicinal weed."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Edgar Lee Masters' 'Lucinda Matlock'

Scaring birds to flight could be a downright unpleasant experience as well. And any number of hazards could "spring/To rural peace from our meek onward trend." So to eliminate such unhandy events, they will eliminate sense-awareness in favor of superior mental awareness.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: September Poet - William Carlos Williams

The speaker dramatizes a further request of the listener: if the listener happens to read his verse, the speaker demands that the person not say the speaker's name, but "let your love even with my life decay."

The speaker wants the listener to shed all emotion and thought of the speaker so that listener will not be burdened by sorrow at the death of the speaker, and repeating his name would make forgetting even more difficult.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 71

Describing the Ineffable in terms of the physical plane of being must be done metaphorically, that is, using the terms of the earthly plane. The speaker, therefore, describes his experience in terms of light calling it the great "Lightland." The higher worlds of consciousness are built of light more readily recognized as "light" than the gross thickness of the physical world.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Yogananda's 'The Great Lightland'

True hate requires a life-long devotion, and even that wouldn't be enough. You would have to schedule a life-long ritual of hating this column, every day, every hour, every minute of your life, in order to say, truly, that you hate my column. And to be humble, it's just not worth it. Don't you have something else to do? Can't you seek out something that you like, or that you at least don't hate?

from Kristen Hoggart: The Smart Set: Ask a Poet: On the Environment, Leisure, and Loathing

Notice that the bay leaf is broken, and how many hard items follow: the pit of the olive, the various shells (like the wavy-shelled dogwinkle, which feeds on mussels). Even the wishbone is "unwished on," suggesting someone too blighted to hope. Maybe [Sharon] Olds is mocking critics who've complained that she neglects language in favor of narrative clarity and psychological insight, but this poem proves for me her linguistic and metaphorical genius.

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

Black Umbrellas
by Rick Agran

On a rainy day in Seattle stumble into any coffee shop

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Black Umbrellas by Rick Agran

The Clause
by C. K. Williams

This entity I call my mind, this hive of restlessness,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Clause by C. K. Williams

Evolution in Indiana
by Richard Cecil

I thought that species took ten thousand years

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Evolution in Indiana by Richard Cecil

Greenhouse
by Paul Hostovsky

My Aunt Ellie lived in a green-

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Greenhouse by Paul Hostovsky

I Planned To Have a Border of Lavender
by Paul Goodman

I planned to have a border of lavender

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: I Planned To Have a Border of Lavender by Paul Goodman

Little Sisters
by Sonia Gernes

This birthday I have reached the age

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Little Sisters by Sonia Gernes

Parting
by Emily Dickinson

My life closed twice before its close;

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Parting by Emily Dickinson

What's in a name? All of us have thought at one time or another about our names, perhaps asking why they were given to us, or finding meanings within them. Here Emmett Tenorio Melendez, an eleven-year-old poet from San Antonio, Texas, proudly presents us with his name and its meaning.

My name came from . . .

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 180

One of the enduring qualities of the sonnet form is its length, which sustains thought as long as most of us can concentrate. It fits the human mind like the length of a breath is gauged to our lung capacities.

The speaker of this dramatic monologue is a writer. He believes God is counting his words, like breaths, from birth to death. As he writes late at night, he listens to night music of train whistles and "Yardbird," nickname for Charlie Parker.

from Denise Low: Ad Astra Poetry Project: Brian Daldorph (1958 - )

Visionary poetry looks far beyond the normal range of a human life. It takes hold of the imagination with a kind of hypnotic language that induces a mental state which is more receptive to profound truths than the normal way of understanding that grasps only the limited reality of the everyday.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: A.S. Maulucci: Visionary potery looks beyond the everyday to reveal truth

Daybreak and I Dreamt of Your Vagina (Again)

Sunrise.

Where are you?

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: Daybreak and I Dreamt of Your Vagina (Again)

"The aim of our Sichuan 'healing arts' program is to restore children's faith in nature, which the earthquake shattered," [Ashfaq] Ishaq said. "They should understand the tragedy and their reaction to it. Art is a powerful channel for them to express their unspoken thoughts and fears."

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Aid Through Art in China

[Mervyn] Peake's finest poems emerged from his experiences in the second world war. "The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb", for example, tells the story of an infant subjected to the terrors of the Blitz. It features a sailor who runs through the city streets with the baby in his arms. The poem's innocent ballad form seems utterly incongruous, given the harsh material, with the shattered rooftops and "monkey-flames" of bombs that destroy everything in sight.

from Jay Parini: The Guardian: Far from Gormenghast

Of course, the poem stands fully achieved as it is: a beautifully constructed and satisfying narrative, with a little rainbow-y flicker of myth at the edges. If it's a parable, perhaps it's simply one about the power of ordinary people to transcend themselves and their environment, to be kind and to find hope in the most unlikely circumstances.

[by Bernard O'Donoghue]

Ceo Draiochta (Magic Mist)*

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Poem of the week: Ceo Draiochta (Magic Mist)

[by Ryan W. Bradley]

The vapor flare cracks like a jet engine,

from B.T. Shaw: The Oregonian: Poetry

Laws regarding public space are inherently exclusionary, even if, on the surface, they appear designed toward inclusion." These poets use "locational conflict" or "interventionary practices" to reclaim public spaces as sites of social production. "Such poetic intervention," they argue, "poaches public space in innovative and sometimes antagonistic ways, seizing democratic rights, rather than stuffing them silently into pocket."

Their book looks at four instances of contemporary Guerrilla Poetry.

from Dale Smith: Bookslut: Marsupial Inquirer:

For me as an early poet, a young poet, I tended to write very short, constructed, rhetorical, imagistic poems that relied an awful lot on suggestion. And I was essentially trapped in the deep image box. I could do a really good immitation of Robert Bly or James Wright. But for the life of me, I couldn't tell a good story.

from Belinda Subraman Presents: Tony Barnstone: Prize Winning Poet with a Ph.D

~~~~~

The Fall by Alastair Reid

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: The Fall by Alastair Reid

The Clay Army

by Yusef Komunyakaa

When the roof of the First Emperor of Qin's tomb

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Clay Army

The Eel

by Harry Clifton

In the crowded yard, in the oily blue smoke

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Eel

The Gate of Horn

by L. S. Asekoff

Forgive me if I seem a bit at sea

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Gate of Horn

by Quame McNair

Caffe Kilim

My heart holds this special place

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Caffe Kilim by Quame McNair

"Winter Accident"
By Laura Polley

from Slate: "Winter Accident" --By Laura Polley

Secret Places of the Stairs

by L. G. Corey, September 4, 2008

Telling secrets

from Zeek: Poem: Secret Places of the Stairs

Poetic Obituaries

[Ali Sodqi Abdulqader] was considered to be one of the pioneers along with the late poet Ali Al-Raghai who launched modern poetry in Libya.

His group of poems titled "Dreams of a Revolution" in 1957 marked the new trend of poetry in Libya.

from The Tripoli Post: Libya's "Youth Poet", Ali Sodqi Abdulqader, Dies at 84

On moving to the Alnwick area, he [John Cartmel-Crossley] ran his own gallery in town and was instrumental in furthering the progress of many students with his History of Art course at what was Northumberland Technical College.

In 2004 John gained an MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of Northumbria, and was a winner of the Biscuit International Poetry Prize.

from Northumberland Gazette: Tributes to a celebrated artist

[Nadine] Chapman earned her MFA in creative writing from Eastern Washington University in 1996. She then joined the Whitworth faculty and for the past 12 years taught composition, creative writing, and creative nonfiction in the English department. In 2007 she completed her PhD in leadership studies at Gonzaga University.

Her published works include 2005's "On Solitude," a collection of poetry.

from Whitworthian: Professor dies after long fight against cancer

"Even Shakespeare, who they say didn't blot many words, blotted some, after all," Mr. [Robert ] Giroux said. "And Jack, you ain't Shakespeare."

An indignant Kerouac called him a "crass idiot," stormed out and published "On the Road" with Viking.

In 1955, Mr. Giroux tired of the strictures at Harcourt and joined the informal but high-minded Farrar, Straus.

from The Washington Post: Robert Giroux; Publishing Maverick Discovered and Edited Great Writers

In her free time she [Pamela Charlene Gorum] loved painting, writing poetry, interior decorating and riding her Harley. She worked for Dillard's and Sears for many years. She was a member of Mora House of Prayer.

from The Town Talk: Pamela Charlene Gorum

The following poem, entitled "Why We Fight," was written in Afghanistan in 2006 by Cpl. Andrew Grenon of Windsor, Ont., one of three Canadian soldiers who died Wednesday in an anbush in the volatile Zhari district. It was released Thursday by members of Grenon's family.

Why We Fight

from The Canadian Press: 'Why We Fight,' a poem by slain Canadian soldier Cpl. Andrew Grenon
also The Windsor Star: Soldier son found niche in Army

The tragically untimely death of Niranjan Mohanty has not only robbed Orissa and India of a poet with a distinctive lyrical voice but also of a simple and impassioned man. His poetry, at its best, was a filtration of his humanity, his home-bound vision, as this verse from "Prayers" reveals:

I know that my English is not English

from The Hindu: Lines in memoriam
also Leslie Love Ann Tripathy: In Memory of Niranjan Mohanty Uncle

Harry [L. Walen] published the following monographs: English Learning Environments, 1972; History of the Order of Founders and Patriots of America, 1982; Centennial History, 1996; co-author Alluring Rockport, rev. edit. 1986; The Little Old Meeting House and How It Grew; editor The English Leaflet, 1947-1954; cons. editor on career education New Voices Series, 1978. Harry contributed chapters, articles, and poems to numerous books, professional journals and periodicals.

from Exeter News-Letter: Harry L. Walen

This was stated by National Language Authority Chairman Professor Fateh Mohammad [about Hafiz Zahoor] in a condolence reference organized by Pakistan Academy of Letters (PAL) Tuesday.

He said that the collection of his poetry was among one of the most prominent collections in the world.

"His poetry preaches the message of peace, harmony and brotherhood," he said, adding that his contribution to the literature would never be forgotten

from The News International: 'Persian poet Hafiz Zahoor preached peace'

9/02/2008

News at Eleven

And yet touring the poet's magnificent stone and clapboard house in Hudson, New York, one has an eerie sense of déjà-vu. It's not that any of the objects or artworks on display appears in [John] Ashbery's poems. Rather, we feel we're inside the imaginative space from which the poems issue. One might have to go back to Pope's famous glass-encrusted grotto at Twickenham to find an environment so meticulously crafted to embody a poet's sensibility.

from Rain Taxi: On the Inside Looking In

Q: The "Billy Collins" character you've created inside your poems, what is he like?

A: He's unemployed, obviously; he must have some kind of trust fund, obviously. He has downshifted tremendously, he is moving 14 mph, while everyone is moving at 65. He has a slow take on things. One of his characteristics is his ability to modulate time and let it wash over him, not to spend it. I wish I were him. I made him up out of other literary characters. He is wonderfully irresponsible.

from Washington Times: Poet versed in humor

[Robert Bly's] forthcoming trip to Britain got him thinking on an irony accompanying the cultural disintegration he laments: "There are still an amazing number of poetry readings going on in the United States. What's more, those who attend bring tremendous energy and curiosity. They want to engage with the work. They want to argue. They ask questions and linger long after the reading has finished."

from The Times: Interview with Robert Bly, the American storyteller behind the Iron John men's movement

[Faiz Ahmed] Faiz used the emotion of love to artistically describe the conditions of his country and nation under tyranny and personified the country as beloved in his poetry and thus carried it further to describe the conditions of exile synonymous with the Hijr (Separation). [Ahmed] Faraz carried this tradition further and associated the passion of love with the collective feelings of youth and then harmonising it to depict the bitterness, weariness, tyranny, exploitation, injustice and double standards.

from The Nation: A pure poet

The beauty of [James A.] Emanuel's poem resides in its first and last stanzas, where he weaves the arts of fishing and writing unlike any other artist. In the first stanza, he writes, 'I fish for words to say what I fish for, half-catch sometimes,' which raises this important question: Why do we20fish? To catch fish or to catch words and stories? Emanuel reminds us that fishing and writing are bookends on the same odyssey, a search for personal, communal, societal, and universal meaning that helps define our existence.

from PopMatters: The Poetry of Fishing: James A. Emanuel

"The City Has Moved Too Close to the Sun" is somewhat surrealistic and metaphorically abstract, but I think it paints an accurate portrait of our diverse, complex and unique community. Think of each line as a distinct poem by one of our great writers. Then, weave them together for a vibe of the city. Here is Our Detroit in words and images.

from Metro Times: The City Has Moved Too Close to the Sun

"I try to step into the story and try on all the shoes in the story until those shoes get really uncomfortable," [Patricia] Smith said. "You're responding to a human situation; it becomes a universal thing. I'm not trying to have the correct credentials for writing this book. I'm not from New Orleans, but it's good if you think I am."

from Susan Larson: The Times-Picayune: Three years later, poems are still putting the impact of Hurricane Katrina into words

And Barry Spacks, Santa Barbara's poet laureate, writes: "Centered on the experience of raising a special child and the cruelty we inflict on difference, these poems will break and heal your heart."

Her [Rebecca Foust's] poems won two Pushcart nominations last year and appear or are set to appear in Atlanta Review, North American Review, Spoon River Poetry Review and other publications.

from Marin Independent Journal: Ross mom whose son has Asperger's writes book of poems

But [Adam] Kirsch's own judgments keep returning to those false alternatives. He begins an essay on John Ashbery's work by observing that it combines experimental and traditional "inspirations." Then it turns out that what is good in Ashbery is the traditional and what is bad is the experimental.

This is no surprise, because Kirsch is deeply indebted to Eliot's criticism, which revolved around those "old opposites."

from The New York Times: Theory and Practice

Haji Koiy uttered his words honestly when he said that the main cause behind having no Kurdish State was the Kurds themselves, who did not learn from their bitter experiences before:

Since you do not love each other
Your troops will be dissolved easily.

from The Kurdish Globe: The idea of State establishment in Haji Qadiri Koiy's poetry

Saturday afternoon, after his brief encounter with Victor [Jara], [Carlos] Orellana and other prisoners being held at the Estadio Chile were transferred to the Estadio Nacional, another sports stadium in Santiago that had been converted into a concentration camp. On their way out of the Estadio Chile they saw Victor's body. It was riddled with bullet holes and piled together with other bodies in the foyer of the stadium.

from CounterPunch: Who Killed Victor Jara?

Great Regulars

Stella sums up their situation: "We're drowning in two stories of cold." "Theban Traffic" continues from there telling Stella and Jake's darkly humorous story.

"Cold Wet Morning"

By Walter Bargen

from Walter Bargen: The Post-Dispatch: Missouri's poet laureate highlights area writers

But it's the deep pleasure of going slow, of feeling the water on my skin, of the way it feels velvety as I push through it, for no particular goal, just to keep afloat from our dock to Cherry Point and back. I'm thinking about a poem I found in the July/August issue of Poetry magazine. It's about fishing, but it's the same pri nciple:

[by Kathryn Starbuck]

Trout

from Fleda Brown: Traverse City Record-Eagle: On Poetry: Slow season lets 'Trout' fly

The last line, "Driving around, I will waste more time," is reminiscent of James Wright's "I have wasted my life" in his poem, "Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota." The profound difference is that in Wright's poem, the reader can actually believe that Wright's speaker means it.

In Bly's poem, his speaker's wasting time makes no sense.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Bly's 'Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter'

As the bright fire of the sun appears, the darkened blackness first turns blue, before taking on its brightness in the full glow of the sun.

Then suddenly the sun's appearance spreads quickly: the speaker likens it to the spreading of "news" that runs "like Squirrels."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Dickinson's 'I'll tell you how the Sun rose'

Although it was great luck that she found the job as seamstress, the downside was that the mother still had to "[take] in piecework" to make ends meet. So all evening=2 0and into the night, the industrious mother would continue her needlework at her sewing machine with its "locomotive whir."

The speaker describes the fabrics the mother had to work with, "quicksand taffeta/or velvet deep as a forest."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Dove's 'My Mother Enters the Work Force'

He did not voluntarily give up his identity to become a "nobody"; it was taken from him: "A red sinking autumn sun/Took my name away." The symbolism of the "red sinking autumn sun" is, however, so private that the reader can only guess at why the speaker engages it.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Richard Wright's 'Five Haikus'

Those who fail to grasp the spiritual level of the human personality, especially in the artist, do not "matcheth" or understand the level of truth revealed in the creative works of spiritual artists.

Instead of offering true growth, the superficial viewers negate all art to dirt.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 69

While positive criticism works to publicize even the most egregious art, negative or scandalous false criticism can also help publicize the even the20best art. The speaker has confidence that his art is genuine and that true art lovers will be able to recognize its worth.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 70

While in the introductory couplet, the moon is walking slowly and silently in her silver slippers, the second couplet finds her looking at the fruit trees, perhaps apple or peach trees, and observing that they appear to be silver—both the fruit and the trees.

The metaphor of the moon wearing silver slippers creates a far-reaching expansion in this night scene.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Walter de la Mare's 'Silver'

In the first stanza of Paramahansa Yogananda's "Thou in Me" from Songs of the Soul, the speaker recognizes that his own smiles are essentially the smile of the Divine. Thus also does the Divine "weep" when the individual cries.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Yogananda's 'Thou in Me'

It cited "cautionary advice" that the book "could incite acts of violence by a small radical segment." No actual threats were listed, however.

[Sherry] Jones, a Seattle-based journalist, was released from her contract (but kept the money) and sold the book to a Serbian publisher. Last week, it reneged after printing 1,000 copies when a Belgrade Muslim cleric complained.

from Bob Hoover: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Censorship never goes out of style

In "Work," his [John Engman's] desire to be a "rain salesman" suggests an obscure poet's longing to break free from selling his word processing skills and move toward the exalted skill of selling beauty to readers:

I wanted to be a rain salesman,

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

I still haven't done the radio show the way I really want to do it, and I want to write another movie, and my great hope is to write a play. A person wants to do what he can't and that's what keeps you going. Failure is a great stimulus.

What you realize, in maturity, is that stunning success when you're young would have killed you forever. [--Garrison Keillor]

from Garrison Keillor: The Patriot-Ledger: Garrison Keillor wants 'just enough success to keep working'

Basketball
by G.E. Johnson

Once after dinner a woman and I walked past

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Basketball by G.E. Johnson

A Certain Swirl
by Mary Ruefle

The classroom was dark, all the desks were empty,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: A Certain Swirl by Mary Ruefle

Hide-and-Seek 1933
by Galway Kinnell

Once when we were playing

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Hide-and-Seek 1933 by Galway Kinnell

the man in front of you
by Alice N. Persons

is just tall enough

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: the man in front of you by Alice N. Persons

Ticket
by Meg Kearney

I have a ticket in my pocket that will take me from Lynchburg

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Ticket by Meg Kearney

Watching my Parents Sleeping Beside an Open Window Near the Sea
by Rebecca McClanahan

Needing them still, I come

from Garrison Keillor: Th e Writer's Almanac: Watching my Parents Sleeping Beside an Open Window Near the Sea by Rebecca McClanahan

When We Sold the Tent
by Rhina P. Espaillat

When we sold the tent

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: When We Sold the Tent by Rhina P. Espaillat

I've always loved shop talk, with its wonderful language of tools and techniques. This poem by D. Nurkse of Brooklyn, New York, is a perfect example. I especially like the use of the verb, lap, in line seven, because that's exactly the sound a four-inch wall brush makes.

Bushwick: Latex Flat
2001

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 179

Self exposure became the banner of a revolution against all that was considered rotten and repressive in the American social landscape of that period. And rebellion helped many of those writers survive.

This passage from the poem “Man and Wife” by Robert Lowell exemplifies the type of work written for the sake of both art and endurance:

All night I've held your hand,

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Confessional verse arose out of repressive post-war er a

A million pages. This, along with the popularity of poetry readings at literary festivals and the rise of slam poetry competitions, all point to the same conclusion: the 'problem' of poetry is not to do with appetite but delivery.

This is where this Poetry for Performance competition comes in, with its invitation for entrants to submit poems on the theme of 'relationships'. It is another way of proving the vitality of poetry--the energy, invention and enthusiasm of those writing it as well as those reading it.

from Andrew Motion: Telegraph: Poetry for Performance

No-one is allowed to contravene these rules; not the athletes, nor the judges and referees, nor the members of the Olympics Committee, not anyone.

Whether or not there is fair competition depends on whether or not the rules are followed faithfully. This has all been witnessed by China's population in broad daylight, rather than being carried out under the table or behind closed doors. This is the way of the Olympics.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Olympics 'Will Change China'

Like father, like son: "Any new enthusiasm, my father would have to share," says Rosen. "Interesting things in the newspaper, something he'd found on a dump somewhere, a chur ch he'd found in the guidebook. All that stuff he just shared with you as if it was going to be obvious that you'd be interested. And in a way, the old man was right. He was able to pass on those enthusiasms by being wildly enthusiastic."

'Words Are Us', by Michael Rosen

from Michael Rosen: The Independent: 'Give children books, not SATs'

In fact--not to get political here--the Road Trip seems to me a very American entity, and with gas prices doing what they're doing, one wonders how much longer it can remain a pastime. Let's sing it some praises, shall we?

"Song of the Open Road" (part 1)
by Walt Whitman (who rules, like Slice does)

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

The newspaper report of her [Charlotte Mew] death referred to her as "Miss Charlotte Mary New, a writer of verse". The 20th century has since made up for its neglect, and she is now highly regarded, thanks particularly to the scholar and poet Val Warner, who set the reappraisal in motion with her seminal edition of Mew's Collected Poems and Prose, published by Carcanet in 1981.

The Farmer's Bride

from Ca rol Rumens: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Poem of the week: The Farmer's Bride by Charlotte Mew

[by Geo. Staley]

Growing up, I feared Flying Monkeys,

from B.T. Shaw: The Oregonian: Poetry

Frances Mai-Ling is pioneering the genre of Alternative-Classical music; taking classical piano to new level giving it a fresh sound of the traditional and the current trend of rock, pop, alternative. Creating a new genre that is powerful, for people of all ages can enjoy.

from Belinda Subraman Presents: Frances Mai Ling: Poet and Alternative Classical Composer

Bahar Bastani, M.D.

Poetry: The Old Beauty

I walked into her room quite hurriedly

from The American Muslim: Poetry: The Old Beauty

Learning Economics at Gemco

by John Olivares Espinoza

My mother pushes a grocery cart,

from Good Times Weekly: Poetry Corner: Three Poets

From Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: From Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

Only Different

by Richard Howard

for Seymour Kleinberg
who reminds me what
Kate Croy knew

from Guernica: Poetry: Only Different

By Bill Bauer

Old people on canes

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'Canes,' a poem by Bill Bauer

Beast Brutality

by Mary Jo Bang

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Beast Brutality

The Clay Army
by Yusef Komunyakaa

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Clay Army

by Vincent Larkin

Wild Turkey

In the dream painted light

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Wild Turkey by Vincent Larkin

The new Everyman anthology of poetry about the seasons, edited by JD McClatchy, is the perfect excuse--if you needed one--to steal some quiet reading time for yourself, whatever else is going on. This poem by Wallace Stevens will remind you exactly why you'll enjoy doing so.

The House was Quiet and the World was Calm

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week: Wallace Stevens

"Walking in Fog"
By Barry Goldensohn

from Slate: "Walking in Fog" --By Barry Goldensohn

Slide

by Mark Smith-Soto

In Venezuela, which means "Little Venice": thousands

from The Sun Magazine: Poetry: Slide

Poetic Obituaries

"Oh what a neat gal![" Rita Whitford said of Mary Allton.]

"She was such a talented woman, so quiet in her own way but so full of talent."

Whitford said she hadn't realized until long after working with the Alltons that Mary also was a painter, photographer, poet and Ham radio operator.

from The Maui News: Isle artist of many talents dies at 94

[Ruth Kennedy Anderson] was a member of Our Savior's Lutheran Church where she was active in many Circles and Guilds and was also the money counter. She enjoyed writing poetry and had some published.

from The Bemidji Pioneer: Ruth Kennedy Anderson, 100

[Gerbie Arroyo] was quiet in his nature and was well known for his knowledge of cars. He loved to write poetry and spend time with his family, but his greatest love were his grandchildren.

from The Californian: Ronald (Gerbie) Lockhart Arroyo

[?lhan Berk] was one of Turkey's most influential and innovative contemporary poets. He is the author of more than two dozen books of poetry as well as a number of works of critical and biographical prose

from Turkish Daily News: ?lhan Berk dies at 90

This music clip was recorded through the door of "God's Oasis," a building my parents owned which was rented by a splinter church group. Daddy [Thomas Lee Bumgarner] liked their "foot stomping" music.

from Belinda Subraman: Thomas Lee Bumgarner
also Reins-Sturdivant: Thomas Lee Bumgarner

Nell and Francis [Donohoe] were inseparable and shared a deep spiritual faith. They also shared a=2 0love for writing and reading poetry. Nell could recite many lengthy poems from memory and would spice up any occasion with a quotation. Nell's and Francis' annual Christmas letter has been a treasury of wisdom and enjoyed by hundreds of people. Nell was a unique person and a true daughter of Yosemite.

from San Francisco Chronicle: Donohoe, Helene Angela Degnan

[Kerry] Downey travelled widely, and wrote poetry and short stories under the pen name Arabella Blake.

She worked for the Cats Protection League for over 20 years and formed her feline welfare group Cats Unloved in 2002.

from The Press: Mourners recall kind, happy woman

In deference to his sentiments, I had used the Ranjish Hi Sahi ghazal as the title track for the programme we produced on him. And I see no lines more befitting to express the veneration of his countless fans for [Ahmed] Faraz and his timeless renderings.

Ranjish Hi Sahi Dil Hi Dukhaane Ke Liye Aa
Aa Phir Se Mujhe Chhod Ke Jaane Ke Liye Aa

(Let it be anguish, come still to torment my heart
Come, even if to leave me again)

from Zee News: Farewell Faraz!
also Saudi Gazette: They don't make poets--or people--like Ahmed Faraz anymore

In his poem, "Gone Forever," he [Jared Healea] described how much he missed his brother, his regret at being unable to protect him and how alike they were.

Much of Jared's poetry is about his love for his girlfriend, Brittany Gipson, the mother of his 5-month-old son, Konner.

from Columbia Missourian: Drowning death is second for family

Kayley [Howson] will live on through her poems. Only three days after she died, I found out that My Happiness had been accepted for publication.

'My Happiness'

from Mirror: Mother of raped suicide girl pays tribute to her poet daughter

The year 2008 is perhaps unfortunate for theatre enthusiasts in Bangladesh. The latest shock is the demise of renowned poe t-dramatist-director-teacher Professor Zia Hyder.

from The Daily Star: Zia Hyder passes away

Born in 1934 in Dac N'Rung Commune, [Dieu] Kau contributed to the preservation and development of the M'Nong traditional culture in the Central Highlands.

He began to collect M'Nong stories and poems when he was a teacher in Dac Nong Province's Gia Nghia town. He had translated M'Nong works including 75 epics, 15 legendary tales and other books into Vietnamese.

from Viet Nam News: Folk artist Dieu Kau passes away

The 26-year old man attended Twin Lakes Secondary School and made a living working at the Washago gas station and selling the wood pieces he made. [Warren] Mangan really enjoyed his life in Washago as he wrote about in a poem before he passed away, called Sweet Home Washago. The following is a few lines from his poem.

from The Orillia Packet & Times: Washago man dead after weekend incident

[Chris] Matthews arrived in Santa Cruz County in 1973, and he immediately immersed himself in the local political and poetry scenes (Night Owl Press published a collection of his verse, An Egg Like Me), and began fighting for both jobs and affordable housing for veterans and ex-convicts.

from Metro Santa Cruz: A Poet and A Patriot: Chris Matthews (1946-2008)

In 1997, she [Tricia Jo Parrish] moved to Cameron, where she purchased the Wolf's Den Resort, which she operated since.

Tricia enjoyed fishing, reading, writing poetry and history.

from Barron News Shield: Tricia Jo Parrish

[Alison] Stanton was an avid reader, published poet and professional educator. She started teaching school in 1943 at Wellington School District in Ohio. She brought literacy training to inmates of the North Carolina Department of Corrections. She served as the head of the English department at Prairie School in Racine, Wis., from 1977 to 1986.

from Delta County Independent: Alison Stanton

[Lelynn Dwight Trumbull] taught English at Hamline briefly before the war, then worked as a job counselor with the Wisconsin Employment Service until retiring in 1974. After his wife's death in 1984, he moved to Red Wing. He was a member of Christ Episcopal Church and pursued biblical textual studies. He enjoyed words, ideas and composing poetry.
< br> from Red Wing Republican Eagle: Lelynn Dwight Trumbull, 98

[Charles Van Doren] received his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1946. After getting his law degree from Columbia University in 1949, he joined his father's New York law firm, Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett. He worked on energy and public utility issues for 13 years before moving to Washington and joining the State Department.

A gifted amateur pianist, accompanist and composer, he was a member of the Friday Morning Music Club and composed settings of poems by cummings, Browning, Frost and others.

from The Washington Post: Charles Van Doren; Helped Limit Spread Of Nuclear Weapons

Two poems found in Elaine [Walpole]'s flat--called When I Must Leave You and When Tomorrow Starts Without Me--were read out during the service.

The Sugar Babes' song Change and also the ballad Absent Friends were played over the church's speaker system as Elaine's coffin was brought in and taken out.

from EDP24: Dereham murder victim laid to rest

The author of more than fifteen books of poetry, short stories and novels--he was especially well known for his youth novels--[George] Weideman won both the MNet Prize and the ATKV Prize in 2000, for his book Draaijakkals.

from Book SA: George Weideman, Author of Draaijakkals, Dies at 61

Troy West loved to draw, capturing family members and inanimate objects on his sketching pad. He wrote poems with such flair that his male friends asked him to pen love letters to their girlfriends so they could pass the sweet words off as their own. And he often spent hours listening to his vast music collection, smooth oldies that reminded him of his days growing up in Dorchester.

from The Boston Globe: Violence, grief, and disbelief in Dorchester

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