IBPC: Poetry and Poets in Rags

12/30/2008

News at Eleven

Little is said about the impact of the second world war on pacifism, but these writers were all wartime children--[Adrian] Mitchell was born in 1932, [Harold] Pinter in 1930 and [Bernard] Crick in 1929--and all reacted by becoming pacifists. Pinter had his first traumatic confrontation with authority when he registered as a conscientious objector in 1948. Crick avoided national service by moving to North American universities. Mitchell did national service but said it "confirmed my natural pacifism", and he became one of the most doggedly pacifist writers in the country.

from The Guardian: In terms of spreading values, Mitchell mattered most

God is no longer dead, at all events, as [Seamus] Heaney may have been moved, with his generation, to wonder in the 1960s. The poet sees ghosts, and his poetry, when it began in him, was experienced as a "redemptive grace". There is, if not an afterlife, an "afterimage of life". This does not make him a theocratic defender of Ireland's Catholic Church, but it may be that he has followed a different course from those of its flocks who are now less faithful than they were once.

from The Times Literary Supplement: Seamus Heaney country

It seems in poetry the only tone left is elegiac.

Any poem that takes nature as its locus must also be conscious, even in refusing, of being a hymn to it in its sickness. Since no poem can be written about nature in ignorance of its dereliction, nature poetry has become eco-poetry. We possess a new fact, new by its indisputability: nature does not belong to man, but man belongs to nature. This poetry doesn't necessarily mean a poem needs to be a rant against chainsaws--though why not?--but rather that it manages to connect the hidden interior of humans with their outer mapped world.

from The Guardian: Last order

How can the poetic expression contribute to the building of a truly humanist world, not a deranged one, not a fetishistic, hyper-individualistic, racist, sexist or mercantilist world, one without merciless exploitation by one class of another?

[Luis Delgado] Arria stresses that it has always been problematic in Latin America, indeed dangerous, to claim that politics can be formulated as poetry. In the past, there was a desire to use poetry and organise it into neatly settled territories of order and humility.

from Morning Star: The poetry of resistance

Graphic images from Iraq and the outrages of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo lead to the anguished and angry question ". . .Why is our enemy/always dark-skinned/always surrendering an arm/& a leg for a tooth,/a child for an eye?"

Yusef Komunyakaa is a national cultural treasure, a poet whose depth of compassion and gift for the telling turn of phrase will guarantee him a distinguished place in the literary history of our times.

from The Post-Dispatch: Warhorses

At other times her [Elizabeth Alexander's] voice is calm and plain-spoken, as in this snippet from the poem "Smile":

When I see a black man smiling
like that, nodding and smiling
with both hands visible, mouthing
"Yes, Officer," across the street,
I think of my father, who taught us
the words "cooperate," "officer,"
to memorize badge numbers,
who has seen black men shot at
from behind in the warm months north.

Ms. Alexander, who was born in Harlem and raised in Washington, has been on fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard.

from The New York Times: The Intersection of Poetry and Polit ics

There, along the shores of Galilee, I kept recalling these lines from Shakespeare: Over whose acres walk'd those blessed feet, Which fourteen hundred years ago, were nail'd, For our advantage, on the bitter cross. Actually, there is a total of three poems on Israel in [Jorge Luis] Borges's collection "In Praise of Darkness" (1969). All were later included in his "Obras Completas" (1994) I don't believe they have been rendered into English before. Herein are my versions. First, "To Israel".

from Forward: Borges's Zionist Bent: Newly Translated Poems

During [Teofilo] Folengo's lifetime (1491-1544), the popularity of the Baldus is attested by many reprints and no fewer than three extensively revised editions. By 1606 it had been translated into German, and the French edition of that year noted that it was a model for Folengo's contemporary, Rabelais. With a further dozen editions in the century following Folengo's death, it is surprising that it has taken nearly 500 years for Baldo to appear in English.

The burlesque epic opens with an appeal to the paunchy macaronic muses who are to be entrusted with the 25 books of the opus.

from The Guardian: Renaissance rapper

The letters sent by French poet Apollinaire to his lover Lou during World War I20have been published for the first time in Spain in a volume which, according to translator Marta Pino, "is the truest reflection of the poet's personality."

In letters that Apollinaire never dreamed would be published as a book, the author "tells all with complete sincerity, to such a degree that when they were published in France they caused a huge scandal and had censorship problems," Pino told Efe.

from Latin American Herald Tribune: Letters of Apollinaire To His Lover Lou Published for First Time in Spain

The only person who might have been able to save [Osip] Mandelstam--though it is doubtful anyone could have--was fellow poet, and novelist, Boris Pasternak (author of "Doctor Zhivago"). Pasternak approached Nikolai Bukharin, a prominent Bolshevik and then editor of the daily newspaper Izvestia, but Bukharin, too, was on his way to becoming a non-person (and was executed in March 1938).

"Why didn't you come to me instead of Bukharin?" said [Josef] Stalin in an unexpected telephone call to Pasternak that was to become a traumatic event for the poet for the rest of his life. "If I were a poet and my friend were in trouble, I would do whatever I could to help him."

from The Japan Times: 'The noise of time' ensures that art's unbowed spirit is heard

Gathering Holly
Jay Ruzesky, Times Colonist

from The Times Colonist: Gathering Holly
also The Times Colonist: Weight by Terence Young
also The Times Colonist: Poetry to warm the wintry soul

Great Regulars

The poem opens with a wonderful line where the life force of spring "rules" and the pastures of Wales combust into lambs.

By the third stanza this overwhelming feeling of exuberant awe and abundance makes no sense, but sense or not what difference does it make, the world is still drunk with lambs.

The fourth stanza brings us back to earth, reminding us why Wales is drunk with lambs, the fall harvest of these creatures, the hangover of survival.

[by Jon Dressel]

Mountain Spring Song, Wales

from Walter Bargen: The Post-Dispatch: Missouri poets: Dressel's verse sings, if not his lambs

Geopolitical realities make our two nations inseparable in facing any attacks on our region.

Even though our governments may choose to be enemies, the people of India and Pakistan share a history, one deeply rooted not only in our similarities, our languag es and religions, but also in our differences, notably Kashmir.

It is those similarities, rather than the differences, that led both countries to covet that one piece of land, and it is our joint refusal to deal with the Kashmir issue that brings violence to both our doorsteps.

from Fatima Bhutto: Al Jazeera English: S Asia neighbours' linked destinies

I think that's what we're made of is memory. We're talking to each other in a language that we remember, that we didn't invent, that came to us, washing dishes and doing something like that.

Why is that moment in my life in London, and that moment of my childhood when I was 9 in Scrantion, why are they [?] on top of each other, and what do they have top do with each other?

from Jeffrey Brown: PBS: Newshour: Poetry Series: W.S. Merwin
also PBS: Newshour: Weekly Poem: 'Rain Light'

While his [Harold Pinter's] output was not held in universal regard within the poetry community (Don Paterson famously dismissed his "big sweary outburst[s] about how crap the war in Iraq is" in his 2004 TS Eliot lecture, with a withering "anyone can do that"), he was nevertheless awarded the Wilfred Owen award for poetry, bestowed biennially on a writer seen as continuing Owen's tradition, for his 2003 pamphlet, WAR. Michael Grayer, chairman of the Wilfred Owen Association, described his poems as "hard-hitting and uncompromising, written with lucidity, clarity and economy".

Several of Pinter's poems first appeared in the Guardian. Read a selection, dating back to 1995, below.

Poem (17 January, 1995)

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Pinter in verse: a selection of his poetry

'The God of Molecules'

By John Mark Eberhart

(for P.M. and S.L.E.)

The god of molecules sweats the small stuff.

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: 'The God of Molecules'

The speaker understands that the "only thing" she possesses is herself--or her self, with "self" meaning "soul." She retains the power to "use or waste," "to keep or give" this only possession, and she retains this power always, "every day I live." Even "despite Time's winnowing," she retains this soul power. As the days, nights, and seasons pass, bringing their own special natural qualities, she remains aloof with the power of her own soul.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Christina Rossetti's The T hread of Life

The lightning knows the "eye cannot speak," plus reasons are just not necessary when events so intimately coalesce.

Still, the speaker is aware that the human mind want reasons for everything, and it wants to talk about things that are ineffable despite the fact that such cannot be "contained--/--Of Talk." The mind is of the ilk of "Daintier Folk," whose less subtle mentality needs everything spelled out in verbiage.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Dickinson's "'Why do I love' you, Sir?"

In the first quatrain of sonnet 103, the speaker exclaims with great enthusiasm that despite the Muse's value, nay even though her submissions be likened to "poverty," and her pride displayed, the true sonnet with its "argument, all bare" projects it own great worth.

Even with the speaker's "added praise," the honesty of a brilliant sonnet will shine forth.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 103

The speaker then emphasizes again that the poem is three years old: three springs have turned into "yellow autumn," and the fragrance of "three April[s]" has been incinerated by "three hot Junes." But unlike the seasons that are swallowed up by other seasons, the freshness and "green" of the poem re main.

The speaker, as the reader has seen, remains obsessed with the aging process and dismayed that the human body undergoes decay and decrepitude; for this reason, the poet/speaker remains so enamored with his poems that do not undergo the human frailty of change.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 104

However, the elder monk, through age and experience, has learned something that the young monks have yet to comprehend. He used to feel the way they do: "But now, beyond the things of sense,/Beyond occasions and events,/I know, through God's exceeding grace,/Release from form and time and space." Through the monastic discipline he has followed over the years, he has come to realize the Christ-Consciousness within his own soul.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Whittier's The Mystic's Christmas

He asserts rhetorically through his question that no power could exert itself sufficiently to "blind" him to his "most grievous loss."

He then avers that having that thought of the fact that his beloved had died brought "the worst pang that sorrow ever bore." However, he then qualities that claim by stating that there was one--"one only"--other occasion when he had suffered such a grief.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Wordsworth's "Surprised by Joy"

The speaker addresses his listener by asserting that the old year is gone, and the New Year is beginning. The old year had its "sorrow and laughter," and the New Year promises encouragement and hope, and its "song-voice" graces the senses with the command, "Refashion life ideally!"

The sentiment is universally grasped with many folks making New Year's resolutions.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Yogananda's "The Garden of the New Year"

First Snow
by Pamela Porter

That last day of the year

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: First Snow by Pamela Porter

In Passing
by Ted Kooser

From a half block off I see you coming,

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

little tree
by E. E. Cummings

little tree

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: little tree by E. E. Cummings

Oniomania
by Peter Pere ira

Not so much the desire

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Oniomania by Peter Pereira

Proposals
by Cecilia Woloch

Mistaking me for someone else, he asked me to marry him. This has

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Proposals by Cecilia Woloch

Song of the Wonderful Surprise
by Kelly Cherry

Start with the fact of space; fill it up

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Song of the Wonderful Surprise by Kelly Cherry

The world in the year 2000
by Marge Piercy

It will be covered to a depth of seven

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The world in the year 2000 by Marge Piercy

One of the most effective means for conveying strong emotion is to invest some real object with one's feelings, and then to let the object carry those feelings to the reader. Notice how the gloves in this short poem by José Angel Araguz of Oregon carry the heavy weight of the speaker's loss.

Gloves

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 196

The counterbalance is land, or "home's street." To extend the water comparison further, he then imagines the moon also moving within an oceanic sky. He suggests the moon is love, "beauty," and mystery--all universal associations. The "small bird" and the moon both share the same fate as humans: all are "condemned" to struggle in "the open sea." Home is the familiar, and the sky is the natural world with all its powerful, uncertain forces.

[by Michael Poage]

Pelagic

from Denise Low: Ad Astra Poetry Project: Michael Poage (1945 - )

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
O, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

This is one of the most famous stanzas in all of poetry, and it comes, of course, from "The Rubaiyyat," the book by the 12th century Persian mathematician and poet, Omar Khayyam. It illustrates the concept I would like to explore in today's column: Wine has long inspired poets and poetry in varied ways.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Poets have long credited wine for inspiration, comfort

More than a decade ago (June 1998), as the millennial year approached, I offered Slate readers "The Darkling Thrush" as a hard-to-equal model for responses to the turn of a millennium.

Now, at what many hope is the start of a new era, and in time for the new year, here again is Hardy's vividly described little bird with its blend of comedy and pathos.

from Robert Pinsky: Slate: "The Darkling Thrush"

Clare Staples: It was amazing really, that she'd written such a reflective poem in such a short space of time. And it was just reflecting on the idea of thinking about people that you've lost during the year at Christmastime, and it can be a sad time as well as a happy time.

from Michael Rosen: The Guardian: Reading Aloud with Michael Rosen: Christmas messages

Meanwhile, let's raise a glass to a new year in which the spirit of translation--the spirit, in fact, of the luminous conversation between Edward FitzGerald and Omar Khayyám--presides over public affairs, especially those in the Middle East. "Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,/Before we too into the Dust descend;/Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,/Sans wine, sans Song, sans Singer and--sans End!"

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poem of the week

"What captivated and fascinated Britain in late 1963," [Philip] Norman writes about the early bloom of Beatlemania, "was not just a pop group more extraordinarily and unstoppably successful than any before. It was the new definition of 'pop group' they had created, something closer to the Marx Brothers than any forerunners like the Blue Caps or Shadows--a gang laughingly on the run from overblown adulation and desire, a brotherhood that in the brightest glare of publicity still kept its own intriguing secrets, the ultimate impenetrable clique."

from David L. Ulin: Los Angeles Times: 'John Lennon: The Life,' by Philip Norman

How few there are to be found in modern times who can say the same, or whose conduct is consistent with such a profession! We are now become so much Englishmen, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Spaniards, or Germans, that we are no longer citizens of the world; so much the natives of one particular spot, or members of one petty society, that we no longer consider ourselves as the general inhabitants of the globe, or members of that grand society which comprehends the whole human kind.

from Daily Times: Purple Patch: On national prejudices --Oliver Goldsmith

[Rudyard] Kipling became the first English writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. He was the youngest recipient of the award, and still retains that distinction today. After receiving the prestigious award, Kipling continued to write poetry and stories, although less prolifically; the collection "Rewards and Fairies" (1910) included Kipling's best-known poem "If."

from findingDulcinea: Happy Birthday: Rudyard Kipling, Author of "Kim" and "The Jungle Book"

A Poem for Gaza
by Remi Kanazi

I never knew death until I saw the bombing of a refugee camp

from MR Zine: Remi Kanazi, "A Poem for Gaza"

Anterooms
by Richard Wilbur

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Anterooms

Trismegistus
[by Richard Wilbur]

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Trismegistus

A Sensible Life
by Liz Waldner

from The New Yorker: Poetry: A Sensible Life

[by John J. Witherspoon]

A Lesson Learned
< br> Though I used to believe

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: A Lesson Learned

[Patricia] Savage's direct poem begs the question, if a mother's love is not enough to prevent war, then what is? When she writes,--"before we became I and thou," she is perhaps making reference to Nixon's Quaker heritage--and the irony of a man with Quaker roots leading a nation at war. Although Savage ends her poem with the unanswered question: "Why hasn't that been enough?" there is hopefulness in her poem that perhaps we might finally come to recognize the futility of war.

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poetry Hoot on tap for Jan. 7

Nick Laird is the patron poet of bachelorism. This at first may seem counterintuitive, as he is the husband of bestselling literary novelist Zadie Smith. But upon reading either of his collections, one quickly gets a sense of man's inherent desire to be on his own. "Go home. I haven't slept alone/in weeks and need to reach across/the sheets to find not warmth but loss," Laird writes in "Aubade," a poem from his 2006 début, To a Fault. The title of that book would thus suggest that we do things, especially in relationships, that reveal our flaws, that make us contemptible to significant others.

from Powells: Review-A-Day: Poetry of Resentment

A New And Fervent Domesticity Has Seized Me

by Megan Buchanan Cherry

okay, I can understand

from The Sun Magazine: Poetry: A New And Fervent Domesticity Has Seized Me

Poetic Obituaries

Sheldon [Biber], who died in August after a prolonged physical meltdown, scrapped a computer career to follow his muse. His poetry is a delightful cross between Ogden Nash and Dr. Seuss:

The Bunny and the Polar Bear
by Sheldon Biber

from Morristown Green: Sheldon Biber, poet: 1935-2008
also Barry Louis Polisar: Sheldon Biber

"I never received much love growing up," Maria Bowles wrote in her journal. "But it did not stop me from giving love. Most of my patients are dead, but not in my heart. They will live forever. "

Mrs. Bowles treasured a scrapbook filled with more than 200 letters and poems from patients' families. But as she comforted their sorrows, her spirit often sagged with longing for the faces in the family photos hanging in her Henrico County home.

from Richmond Times-Dispatch: Hospital volunteer Maria Bowles dies

A temporary librarian who rose through the Del Mar College ranks devoting her life to teaching thousands of students died early Christmas Day.

Aileen Creighton, dean emeritus with the college's Division of Arts and Sciences, was 97.

Creighton began in the library and worked as assistant registrar, in the fourth year the school was open, before World War II. She later joined the English department as a professor. Creighton became chairwoman of the English department and director of the Division of Humanities and dean of the Division of Arts and Sciences through 1980.

from Caller-Times: Del Mar innovator, namesake of plaza Creighton, 97, dies

Dean [D. Curry] painted many treasured works of art, which graced the homes of friends and family. He wrote poetry. He danced a mean jitterbug in his day. In 1986, he retired from the United States Information Agency in Washington and relocated to Salisbury with his wife.

from The Daily Times: Dean D. Curry

[William E. Evans] shared his love and sense of peace with family and friends, and his hope and knowledge that those of us who remain will carry on, working to create a better world f or everyone. He expressed his lifelong love of poetry, and his message to all, as written in one of his poems.

(Excerpt from) A Candle for Christmas (1977)

from Crossville Chronicle: William E. Evans

In Richard Exner's memory and with friendly permission by his translator, Roger Lydon, we publish an excerpt from the last and seventh canto of his work Night/Die Nacht: Seven Cantos, 2001, with an English translation by Alan MacDougall and Roger Lydon, a cycle of poems inspired by Aristide Maillol's bronze statue "La nuit"/"The Night," and dedicated to Richard's two daughters. To see the full canto, go to independent.com/cantovii.

After his retirement, Richard Exner lived in Munich and Berlin, publishing and reading his poetry to an ever widening circle of readers and listeners. He is survived by his partner, Annegret Stein, and two daughters, Bettina Exner Mara and Antonia Exner.

Canto VII: The Last Night

from The Santa Barbara Independent: Richard Exner 1929--2008

Dr. [Femi] Fatoba, though an academic, was a man of many parts. He was a professional actor, poet, and even, a painter. He was a man in love with arts generally.

In one of his most creative roles in films, Fatoba was a white-garment priest in O le ku, a Yoruba movie produce d by Mainframe, where he gave a scintillating performance.

from Nigerian Tribune: For Femi Fatoba, renowned actor, academic, it's goodnight

Possibly the nation's oldest voter, he told The Bee then, "I think he's great, because he's black. Because the white people thought the Negro would never be promoted. I think it's beautiful."

Influenced by civil rights leader Booker T. Washington, who once spoke to his third-grade class, and later by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. [George] Francis embraced equality without anger.

He often dramatically recited his favorite poem, "The Black Man's Plea for Justice," but he never taught his children bigotry or prejudice, said his daughter Lelia Francis Larue.

from The Sacramento Bee: Nation's oldest man, 112, dies in Sacramento

He was widely respected for his professional skills in various departments of radio, particularly music.

Saleem Gilani introduced several new voices in the fields of music, announcement and comparing, raising the standard of radio. Late Gilani was also a poet and author of several books.

from The News International: PM condoles death of Saleem

[Barney Goltz'] holiday cards also generally included a poem. The last of those poems arrived in friends' mailboxes in the last few days. It concludes:

"And aren't you glad the election's done,

from The Bellingham Herald: Barney Goltz, former legislator, dies at 84

Another professor, Charles O'Keefe, said [Eduardo "Edo"] Jaramillo's poetry readings were always a highlight at poetry festivals.

"He was just riveting," O'Keefe said, adding that Jaramillo would memorize and read poems in English and Spanish.

He also said Jaramillo was a proponent of using technology in the classroom, including during one of his more popular classes, "Violence in Colombia," when his students sat through a video-conferencing session with other students in Bogota, Colombia.

from Newark Advocate: Man known for teaching methods

An avid composer of plays and poetry, Mrs. [Helen T.] Kadlec also devoted much energy to the nutrition-course lesson plans she taught for many years at Baltimore County senior citizen centers.

from The Baltimore Sun: Helen T. Kadlec, lover of 'all things domestic'

Denison Stewart Knewstub, 67, an arborist who loved poetry, music, sculpting, art, and growing large sunflowers in his front lawn, died on Dec. 18 in20Bryn Mawr.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Denison S. Knewstub, 67, arborist

[Lucille M. Malcott] favorite pastime was writing. She wrote two novels, many short stories and beautiful poems. She also loved playing the piano and writing songs. She enjoyed Scrabble, doing crosswords and being outdoors.

from Great Falls Tribune: Lucille M. Malcott

[Rev. James Martin] spent his last years as pastor of Redeemer's United Church of Christ in Littlestown.

During his leisure time, Pastor Jim penned Christian songs, some of which were recorded and produced on a CD. He also wrote poetry, and enjoyed photography.

from Staten Island News: Rev. James Martin, 60

As he lay in bed at York Hospital on Tuesday battling leukemia, Gerry Meisenhelder turned to a grandson and began dictating verse.

One more connection with the world to be recorded.

Since he began writing poetry in high school, Meisenhelder found and explored one avenue after another for these connections.

A chess player. A painter. A veteran of the second World War. A drawer. A creator of stained glass windows. A father to eight daughters . An actor. A playwright. A runner. A thinker.

Most of all, a poet.

from York Daily Record: York's first poet laureate dies: Gerry Meisenhelder never tired of exploring life

[Raymond Nasser] proudly served his country as a Marine during the Vietnam War, for which he received a Purple Heart and an Air Medal.

He later became an educator and a poet, working as a teacher for more than 20 years.

from Palisadian-Post: Raymond Nasser, 61

[Barbara Noble] was a member of St. Michael's Catholic Church, loved dancing and playing the accordion organ, and kept alive some lost arts such as calligraphy and quilling. An avid sports fan, she enjoyed watching hockey, baseball, football and NASCAR. She also enjoyed reading and writing poetry, the outdoors, flowers and gardening

from Post-Bulletin: Barbara J. 'Barb' Noble--West Concord

[Sigurd T. Olson's] many friends throughout the community always enjoyed his exhuberant love of Alaska; his visits to Eaglecrest and the daily walks along Sandy Beach and theTreadwell trails. Everyone appreciated Sig's sense of humor and fond memories of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota and vast array of experiences throughout A laska.

Sig was a skilled writer and poet--and enjoyed recalling rhymes he learned as a youth. "Be the labor, great or small--do it well or not at all!"--was an admonition he often shared with colleagues within various organizations in which he served.

from Juneau Empire: Neighbors mailbox: Friend gives tribute to Sigurd T. Olson

Mrs. [Angela M.] Paolillo graduated from Curtis High School in 1964. In her spare time, she enjoyed gardening, writing poetry and following current events.

from Staten Island Advance: Angela Paolillo, 62

[Peter V. Paulus] was supreme president of the International Order of Ahepa, an accomplished poet, an avid golfer and pool player, and a member of the Greek Orthodox Church.

from Port Clinton News Herald: Peter V. Paulus

We're left no better off: [Harold] Pinter rarely consoles us; he confronts. And yet the political aspirations and content of the poetry yield a private spiritual war against oppression--a word that is so over-used it has become barren. Pinter sought to invigorate it, and he chose lucidity and clarity.

However, Pinter's verse is also about process; it's Pinter acting out, as it were, the contrary facts of being inside the situation, the context of the poem, the context of the politics.

from The Guardian: Pinter's poetry got under the skin
also The Boston Globe: Harold Pinter, dramatist of life's menace, dies
also MR Zine: Harold Pinter--Friend of the Kurds, Citizen of the World
also Telegraph: Charles Spencer: The last time I saw Harold Pinter
also The Independent: Jonathan Heawood: For Pinter, the outsider came first
also San Francisco Chronicle: Harold Pinter knew better than to explain

12/23/2008

News at Eleven

"Writing an occasional poem has to attend to the moment itself," she [Elizabeth Alexander] said in an interview, "but what you hope for, as an artist, is to create something that has integrity and life that goes beyond the moment."

To prepare, she has delved into W. H. Auden, particularly his "Musée des Beaux Arts" ("About suffering they were never wrong/The Old Masters"), and the work of Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize, for poetry. Auden, she said, "asked very large questions about how we stand in history."

from The New York Times: Poet Chosen for Inauguration Is Aiming for a Work That Transcends the Moment
also The Washington Post: Selection Provides Civil Rights Symmetry
also Investor's Business Daily: An X-Rated Inaugural?

"He really existed and he was really elfin," says [Dinghy] Sharp.

Jan-Peter, she adds, would sit at a potbelly stove in the general store, telling stories to the children.

After he returned home, great-great grandfather [Clement] Moore, says Sharp, finished the poem that had probably been percolating in his head for some time--a poem to lift the spirits of his six children, especially 6-year-old daughter Charity, who was ill with tuberculosis.

That Christmas, Moore recited his poem to his family. "Everyone loved it," says Sharp, including cousin Harriet Butler. "She wrote it down in what they called a woman's notebook," says Sharp.

from The Arizona Daily Star: Her kin's beloved poem

[Leonard] Cohen's signature tune is a paean to a doomed love affair with a woman who cares little for music and is more concerned with a game of sexual humiliation. Rufus Wainwright declared Cohen "the greatest living poet on earth" and 'Hallelujah' is a poignant, earthy take on the two issues that dominate his life: faith and sex. His conclusion that sex is the great driver of humanity is no surprise given that Cohen was a notorious womaniser.

from Scotland on Sunday: Profile: Leonard Cohen
also YouTube: Alexandra Burke--Official Single--'Hallelujah'

Which I didn't even know anyone there had a guitar, but our medic, Doc Cole, had a guitar. He and I [Brian Turner] actually didn't get along very well until this time. And I found out he had this guitar, we started talking about it. And then it sort of, I don't know, it was sort of like a bridge, so we became friends after this. And so I wrote this poem after that, and it's a rare poem of mine, where I'm thinking back about home, and about being nostalgic and missing home.

Cole's Guitar

from Weekend America: The Brutal Poetry of the Iraq War

"BBC has a listenership of six million. On the strength of that very short interview, I was quite surprised, they sold out of the print run in 48 hours. It's holding steady as the No. 1 book of poetry (on Amazon). It's sold out two if not three print runs in the last two or three weeks. It's up there with cook books and autobiographies of Obama and that sort of thing. It's a surprise hit for the Christmas season." [--Christian Bok]

from Calgary Herald: Poetic Justice

A poem by Wendy Cole

The mice attacked the Holy Family--

from The Guardian: Christmas ornaments

An extract from Simon Armitage's translation of the Medieval tale.

It was Christmas at Camelot--King Arthur's court,

from Telegraph:20The Great Christmas Compendium: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Our congratulations go to each of these; and our thanks to those readers who took the trouble either to enter the competition or to take part in the voting process.

Different Places To Pray

by Susan Rich

Everywhere, everywhere she wrote; something is falling--

from The Times Literary Supplement: TLS Poetry Competition: The winning poems

Here, he has achieved greatness. While our attention has been on the big fish--the novels, memoirs, television--the essays and poems have accumulated, year by year, like polyps making coral; until you realise that the most important thing isn't the fish, it's the reef, which makes all else possible.

When we talk on the phone, [Clive] James says firmly: "I think that for anyone who writes poetry, it [the poetry] is the most important thing." So--how good is the poetry?

from Prospect: As good as Heaney

The gun mentioned in one of his very first poems, "Digging", has been interrogated: [Seamus] Heaney now says that the source of the reference was phonetic rather than prophetic, but even if it were absent from the text this would still be a poem about his native place and the condition of=2 0Ireland. But it is only very barely a political poem in the sense Helen Vendler intended.

from The Times Literary Supplement: Seamus Heaney country

Poet Breyten Breytenbach was imprisoned for opposing apartheid but, now that his homeland is free, he is encouraging youngsters to flee the country.

Breytenbach, who for years was prevented from returning to South Africa after leaving it in the 1960s, has written a scathing article on the democratic republic in US magazine Harper's. His open letter to former president Nelson Mandela is signed "Mongrel Son".

Breytenbach writes of a country that has failed its most vulnerable: its women and children.

"If a young South African were to ask me whether he or she should stay or leave, my bitter advice would be to go. For the foreseeable future now, if you want to live your life to the full, and with some satisfaction and usefulness, and you can stand the loss, if you can amputate yourself--then go . . . " he writes.

from The Times, South Africa: Breytenbach: My bitter advice is go
also The Times, South Africa: Breytenbach's letter to Mandela
also The Times, South Africa: Madiba's spokesman responds
also The Times, South Africa: Mandela Foundation slams Breytenbach

Great Regulars

In these poems, drawn from the experiences of soldiers who fought in the Gulf, Bosnian and Malayan wars, and originally aired as part of a 2007 documentary, [Simon] Armitage shows us that modern war poetry, like modern combat, is provisional, chancy, unresolved. These are poems of survivors--the damaged, exhausted men who return from war in body but never, wholly, in mind.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: The Not Dead

Peter Bennet's handling of folklore, his watchful, thicketed landscapes, the stateliness of his language--all fit themselves perfectly to winter. While the sun's glare might diminish poems in which "goblins chuckle" and "hills ... shed darkness from their stature/beyond the graveyard", their impact swells as nights draw in and days turn colder.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: The Glass Swarm

[by John Mark Eberhart]

'Faith'

Trimming the tree alone this year.

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: KC poets, and a Texan, encounter slacker Santa Claus, wintry owl, ghostly figure

The speaker begins with a confession that she is so lazy that she could qualify is as "laziest/girl in the world." Lest the reader think she exaggerates, she confides that she sleeps all day if she feels so inclined, "'til/my face is creased and swollen,/'til my lips are dry and hot." Furthermore, she eats whatever strikes her fancy, healthy or not: "cookies and milk/after lunch, butter and sour cream,//foods that/slothful people eat."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Alexander's "Blues"

The speaker is unyielding about keeping her "own Society," and even though she is aware of visitors arriving in "Chariots" and "pausing--/At her low Gate," she insists on remaining alone with her soul society and will not accept a visit from them. Even if "an Emperor" comes calling and "kneeling/Upon her Mat," she will remain aloof for the sake of her soul, and the grace that solitude brings her.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Dickinson's "The Soul selects her own Society"

[Bret] Harte's two final couplets hold up a weak contrast to [John Greenleaf] Whittier's: "If, of all words of tongue and pen,/The saddest are, 'It might have been,'//More sad are these we daily see: 'It20is, but hadn't ought to be'." Trying to out-clever Whittier, Harte says that if the human heart regrets the absence of what might have been, then it should regret even more what should not have been.

Unfortunately, there is no difference between these two statements.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Harte's "Mrs. Judge Jenkins"

One of his favorite subjects has been the aging process. Here he calls that theme "a satire to decay." By reminding himself and his readers that the aging and decomposing process of the physical body are serious matters, he performs a service while sustaining the beauty and truth inherent in his right thinking and his ability to create beauty in his sonnets.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 100

The speaker then asserts that beauty needs "no pencil" to tell its truth, but by telling it well, the speaker assumes his artistic talent will assure that truth will never be intermingled with anything less than beauty and truth. He intuits his correctness, elevating it to righteousness.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 101

And the importance of this poem is well-summarized i n the two final couplets: "Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies/Deeply buried from human eyes//And, in the hereafter, angels may/Roll the stone from the grave away!"

Whittier understood that the unreality of this earthly existence causes human beings to fail to realize their true nature: the soul's goal is to find unity with its Creator, not to languish in useless dreams and regrets about whether it lives in city or country or as judge or farmer.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Whittier's "Maud Muller"

It is the poet/speaker who suffered loneliness in his life before the found his Divine Friend, but because he steadfastly sought unity with the Beloved, he found Him, but the success he now also lays at the feet of the Divine, who have him the ability to feel, work, and create. The hands that the Great One gave to the devotee are the hands that were used to create.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Yogananda's "Consecration"

"Messiah" by Mark Doty is also one of my favorites, and you needn't have ever seen a performance of Handel's Messiah to appreciate it. It's long, linearly speaking, so I've only written out the latter part, but it's a wonderful poem in its entirety:

Aren't we enlarged
by the scale of what we're able
=0 Ato desire? Everything,
the choir insists,

might flame;
inside these wrappings
burns another, brighter life,
quickened, now,

by song: hear how
it cascades, in overlapping,
lapidary waves of praise? Still time.
Still time to change.

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

Cardinals
by John L. Stanizzi

for Carol

I had seen them in the tree,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Cardinals by John L. Stanizzi

A Christmas Poem
by Miller Williams

In a little bar on the Gulf Coast

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: A Christmas Poem by Miller Williams

Coming Out of Wal-Mart
by Mark DeFoe

The child, puny, paling toward albino,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Coming Out of Wal-Mart by Mark DeFoe

The Shop
by Joyce Sutphen

There was a window

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

Very Pretty
by John L. Stanizzi

Point O' Woods, South Lyme, August, 1999

So early in the morning,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Very Pretty by John L. Stanizzi

Waking from Sleep
by Robert Bly

Inside the veins there are navies setting forth,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Waking from Sleep by Robert Bly

When You Are Old
by William Butler Yeats

Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
by William Butler Yeats

When You are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by William Butler Yeats

A typical [Jeffrey] Yang poem begins with the title "Oarfish"; traces it to the abode of humans called Midgard in Norse myth; invokes the ourobouros, the serpent devouring its own tail in a symbol of infinity; quotes the 19th-century American artist Elihu Vedder, the Baroque religious scholar Sor Juana and Lawrence's poem "Fish"; glances at the Homeric word "oarismos" (roughly, "pillow talk"); and ends with guanine, a che mical that codes genetic information and also a substance found in fish scales.

from Karl Kirchwey: The New York Times: 'Poetry's Shadow'

The story opens in 1997, when [Nili Scharf] Gold, a professor of modern Hebrew literature at the University of Pennsylvania, accompanies [Yehuda] Amichai to a lecture in New York. "We sat in a back row at the end of a crowded hall and waited for the speaker to begin," she writes in her introduction, "when suddenly he touched my arm and said, almost in a whisper, 'Do you see, three rows in front of us, near the aisle, a woman sits? Her name is Ruth Z. Do you remember the poem about the one who 'ran away to America'? I wrote it about her."

That poem is "'History's Wings Beating, They Used to Say'" (as translated by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav in Yehuda Amichai: A Life of Poetry, 1948–1994):

Those were days of great love and great destiny,

from Adam Kirsch: Nextbook: The Reader: The Book of Ruth

Here is a poem, much like a prayer, in which the Michigan poet Conrad Hilberry asks for no more than a little flare of light, an affirmation, at the end of a long, cold Christmas day.

Christmas Night

from Ted Koose r: American Life in Poetry: Column 195

[by Anthony Maulucci]

Sonnet No. 33

from Anthony Maulucci: YouTube: Love Sonnet 33 by Anthony Maulucci

How do we raise black boys in a post-racial society? Trick question? OK--let's try a few others.

How do we raise black boys in a racist society? Is their a stimulus package for black fathers?

Here is one of my "Race Koans" that might shed some insight into the matter.

Race Koan

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: Black Boys
also E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: It's Morning in America, Please Don't Pass Me the Silly Stuff

Saturday

and I count

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: Days Without You

By going back and reading closely these thirteen books, and looking at them as a sequence, I started to find certain themes running through them. And in effect I think I kind of located something of the American character here, the DNA that's really at the basis of what it means to be an American.

from Jay Parini: On Point with Tom Ashbrook: Books that Changed America

In a sense, the Obama team remains pitch-perfect here. The choice of [Elizabeth] Alexander to read is brilliant. She represents black American culture, but she says to the audience: "We're here, and we're very smart and well-educated, fully aware of western European culture in all its complexity; yet we retain an allegiance to our own past, our roots, our needs, our vision."

from Jay Parini: The Guardian: Books Blog: Why Obama chose Elizabeth Alexander for his inauguration

Sweet-minded, mirthful, and sensuous 17th-century poet Robert Herrick (1591-1674) composed a Christmas carol (originally for soloists and chorus) that invokes spring instead of winter. In Herrick's charming reversal of seasonal imagery, his Jesus is a darling prince of flowers and natural warmth—a divine figure in keeping with Herrick's merry disposition in his poems. Only in closing does this carol nod to the traditional Christmas evergreens.

Dark and dull night, fly hence away,

from Robert Pinsky: Slate: "A Christmas Carol, Sung to the King in the Presence at White-Hall"

Many years later, as Adrian [Mitchell] adapted the=2 0last lines of the poem: "Tell me lies about Vietnam..." to include Iraq and Afghanistan, he explained to his audience at Marxism 2006 that the poem had started out as an expression of what he called "compassion fatigue". He couldn't bear to hear of yet more wars.

Alongside such explicitly political work – and his collection "For Beauty Douglas" is one of the truly great volumes of political poetry written in English – he revelled in language itself.

from Michael Rosen: Socialist Worker: Adrian Mitchell (1932-2008)
also Michael Rosen: The Times: Passionate poet unafraid of the big stuff

Maybe it's the sign of a truly modern Jewish family when one of the rituals--as consistent and necessary as breaking the matzoh during Passover--is explaining our traditions to the non-Jewish people that have become a part of our family. I dunno.

I wasn't exactly reminded of the following poem, but happened to read the poem later and was reminded of yesterday's brunch. Translated from Kabir by Minnesota's own Robert Bly, I found it in The Paris Review Book of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, Dinner, Baseball, Travels, The Art of Writing, and Everything Else in the World since 1953.

The Breath

from Max Ross: The Rake: Cracking Spines: Poem Worth Reading: Bubbie: The Four-Foot-Ten Professor

Angela Leighton has published various books of criticism on 19th and 20th-century literature, and two volumes of poetry: A Cold Spell (Shoestring, 2000) and Sea Level (Shoestring, 2007). A second edition of Sea Level is due in early spring 2009.

Warm Christmas wishes and thanks to all Poem of the Week readers and contributors, old and new. May all your windfalls be merry ones. (NB: You can always cut out the bruised parts and make an apple-pie.)

Windfall

An ill wind, misprint or flaw,

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poem of the week

The main conclusion of [Daniel Jonah] Goldhagen is that anti-Semitism inspired and moved many thousands of 'ordinary' Germans--and would have moved millions more, had they been appropriately positioned--to slaughter Jews. It is not economic hardships, it is not the coercive apparatus of a dictatorial state, it is not psychological pressure, nor invariable psychological propensities, but unfounded horrendous ideas about the Jews that had been pervading Germany for many decades, that induced 'ordinary' Germans to kill unarmed, defenceless Jewish men, women and children by the thousands, in a streamlined manner systematically and without any pity whatsoever. Let me conclude the first part of this review with a poem by Francis Duggan titled 'The Victim':

from V Sundaram: News Today: Lest we forget-I
from V Sundaram: News Today: Lest we forget-II

[Elizabeth] Alexander agrees that there is a powerful political message in Obama's selection of her. "By bringing poetry into such a prominent place on that extraordinary day, he's demonstrating his own belief that words matter, that using language with care and precision--we poets try to be exemplars of that--really matters. We must take care with the words we live in."

[by Elizabeth Alexander]

Emancipation

from John Timpane: Philadelpia Inquirer: Obama chooses 'the perfect inaugural poet'

[by Frank Wilson]

Advent

The leaves are fallen, but the sky is clear

from Frank Wilson: Books, Inq.--The Epilogue: As Christmas nears . . .

by Pancho Mendoza

Harmonica man blows a sweet sound

from Express-News: Poetry: Harmonica Man

A new poem written for Review by Carol Ann Duffy. Illustrated by Posy Simmonds

Scrooge doornail-dead, his widow, Mrs Scrooge, lived by herself

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Mrs Scrooge

Poem of the week: "What is Wall Street, daddy?" by Peter Phillips

is a question your daughter may ask one day,

from Morning Star: Well Versed: Poem of the week

[by John P. Karliak]

October

Leaves ever changing, then fall

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: October

Poetic Obituaries

Patricia [Baker] was a homemaker and a regional director for Girl Scouts. She loved writing poetry, loved drawing and was a true "Survivor" fan.

from Chillicothe Gazette: Patricia Ann Baker

[Barbara Beddoe] travelled widely and visited Mara, Africa, in 2000 and persuaded the Coley church to adopt a village. Reflecting on her life, she wrote: "I've walked and climbed and bird-watched.

"I worked in the woods a nd learned about trees and the animals and birds. I've enjoyed poetry, my friends, and all those people who have passed through my life." Her daughter-in-law, Janet Beddoe, said: "She was a hard-working lady who never gave up on anything."

from Halifax Courier: Death of the worker who loved her life

[Maureen Bradley] was an avid reader, and she frequently wrote beautiful poetry for special events or indeed just for her own pleasure. Good films gave her endless hours of enjoyment, and she was also a big fan of snooker, watching many world tournaments from start to finish. The challenge of completing cryptic crosswords was another interest of hers.

from The Mayo News: Maureen Bradley

Vivian [Buchan] was a gifted educator, author and editor. From 1956 through 1968 she taught in the Rhetoric Programs at the University of Illinois and the University of Iowa. Throughout her career Vivian published over 900 columns, poems, articles and essays in more than 160 national and international publications. Vivian wrote the definitive bibliography of; Sara Teasdale, American Poet. Her books include, Cat Sun Signs, Make Presentations With Confidence and Cat Astrology.

from Iowa City Press Citizen: Vivian Buchan, 97

A former adviser to Sir Roger Douglas and Sir William Birch, he [Bevan Burgess] was described by family as "a renaissance man for modern times", a poet, artist, sculptor, musician , astronomer and communicator.

from The Dominion Post: Political adviser dies

Hugh [Chang] worked as a nuclear engineer for several Bay Area corporations before retiring from General Electric in 1983. Elsie taught at the Chinese School in Oakland while working as a broadcaster for Free China Radio in San Francisco and retired from the University of California's East Asiatic Library as a research librarian in 1979.

Since then, Hugh perfected his poetry, mastered Chinese martial arts, taught calligraphy and traveled the world with his lifelong companion Elsie, who shared her artistic expertise with anyone who a passion for learning.

from Contra Costa Times: Rossmoor couple dies en route to South Pole campout

An only child, Rae [Ellen Michael Chang] grew up in Ohio and Mexico, enjoying horseback riding, archery, ceramics and seashell collecting. In her later years, Rae wrote short stories and poetry and created paintings and drawings for which she received numerous prizes and awards. Rae attended Western College for Women in Oxford,=2 0Ohio for one year prior to attending Ohio State University receiving a BA from the latter in journalism. She also studied in France and Japan, pursuing a love for languages. Following graduation, Rae moved to Honolulu, Hawaii to continue her language studies at the University of Hawaii.

from San Francisco Chronicle: Chang, Rae Ellen Michael

Throughout her life, Brenda [Gulliford] wrote poetry. She has had numerous poems published over the years, and won several prestigious awards for her work. An anthology of her poems was published in 2001, titled Words Within. The book sold over 10,000 copies and now is in use in numerous university level poetry courses around the nation.

from The Marion Star: Brenda Boyd Gulliford

Atari [Kindred] was a Jones High School graduate working at the Orange County Jail. She made others laugh; wrote poems and was planning her wedding for Valentines Day. Little Ayana [Womack] turned three last Monday.

from Fox 35 News: Mother forced to bury daughter, granddaughter after fatal hit and run

[Mufti Muhammad Idress] would long be remembered for his meritorious services he rendered as lawyer, poet, author and social worker.

Destined for bigger things, he went on to join the Aligarh Muslim University after his farsi and pushto fazil. There he did his Law and Masters in Arabic, emerging as gold medalist.

from Associated Press of Pakistan: Mufti Muhammad Idress passes away

[Lars] Logan also performed with Butte College's "Shakespeare in the Schools" and, most recently, appeared in "Times Square Angel," a Rogue Theatre production. Three weeks ago, he was cast in "Tender Yellow Sky," an upcoming musical at the Blue Room Theatre.

Logan donated his talents in graphic design to promote local events. He reviewed theater and music for the Synthesis, wrote plays and competed in poetry contests.

from Enterprise Record: Local actor Lars Logan dies; friends mourn at Cabaret

[Gangadhar] Mahambare authored 55 books and his works also included prose comprising literary criticism, biographies and travelogues.

He became popular with songs he penned for many Marathi films. The poet had a brief stint with the city-based Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) as a librarian.

from The Hindu: Marathi poet Mahambare passes away

The musical nature of Adrian [Mitchell]'s imagination led him to work with a cavalcade of composers and performers: Andy Roberts, Richard Peaslee, Steve McNeff, Dominic Muldowney, Andrew Dixon and Stephen Warbeck. His influence radiated widely, not least to generations of teachers, who used his poems with children in schools.

Last week he rang me. He sounded better than during his last three months of illness. "Can I read you this poem?" he asked. He did. It was a celebration. Next night he died. But this poem (below), and the poems and the plays and the politics--he went to Faslane on the anti-Trident demonstration and got arrested--will last.

from The Guardian: Poet Adrian Mitchell dies, aged 76
also The Guardian: Adrian Mitchell--a poet who made things happen
also The Guardian: Tell Me Lies About Vietnam by Adrian Mitchell

Before his death Mr [David] Murdoch, a keen writer and poet with a degree in theology from Aberdeen University, was working on an extensive piece on comparative religion which he had saved to his computer.

from The Press and Journal: Family in plea for late son's computer

[Lauren E. Richmond] enjoyed writing poetry and had a book published in 2007, titled 'Black & Brown Markers' and was currently awaiting publication of her new children's book titled 'A Venture to Find Adventure'. Last December, she and her parents celebrated her poetry with Jenna Bush at the White House. She also enjoyed painting and drawing.

from Somerset Reporter: Lauren E. Richmond

The Rumbolds bought the Old Rectory at Stinsford, where Thomas Hardy's heart lies in the grave of his first wife, and Pauline enjoyed showing friends the larder, where the great poet's heart had waited, overnight, to be buried. Congenial dinners at Stinsford often ran into the small hours, as guests talked animatedly around the fire in the dark green drawing room, its walls lined with poetry books and paintings.

Always a lover of language, Pauline Rumbold became a founder member of the Prayer Book Society, devoted to saving the rites of 1662. In 1989 the Folio Society published an edition of her translations into plain English of the Dorset dialect poet William Barnes; and her own poems, Loaves and Fishes, were published in 1992.

from Telegraph: Lady Rumbold

An avid musician, he [William J. Saffell] wrote music and poetry and had four novels published. He taught English as a second language for several years both locally and in Northern Virginia.

from The Free Lance-Star: William J. Saffell

[Harriet E. Schwarzer] served on the Board of Trustees of Cazenovia College, as well as on the Board of Trustees of the Cazenovia Public Library. She was a docent at "Lorenzo," a New York State Historic Site, and a published poet.

from The News Leader: Harriet E. Schwarzer

Keng Vannsak had an unparalleled depth and breadth of knowledge, and was a truly original thinker, said Ros Chantraboth, vice president of the Royal Academy of Cambodia.

He had written many books on Cambodian culture, theatre, poetry and was also a creative author--penning a series of short stories and establishing the first centre for higher education focused entirely on Khmer literature. He also created a writing system to guide the creation of Khmer words.

from The Phnom Penh Post: Keng Vannsak dies, leaving profound intellectual legacy

[Pat Westerhoff] loved nature and would thrill to reminisce about seeing deer in the wild for the first time, the smells of lilacs and20roses, and hearing songbirds sing. She liked to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl. She worked crossword puzzles with a pen and she worked crossword puzzles in her head when her daughter read them to her. Even though she had no formal training, she wrote lovely poetry and songs with melodies.

from Superior Telegram: Patricia (Pat, Patty) A. Westerhoff

12/16/2008

News at Eleven

Reflecting on crossing the bridge from Jordan to his West Bank birthplace in 1996 after 30 years' exile--a visit under Israeli control that he [Mourid Barghouti] refused to call a return--he described a condition of permanent uprootedness. A student in Cairo when the 1967 Arab-Israeli war broke out, he was prevented, like many others, from returning to the Israeli-occupied West Bank. He was later exiled from Jordan for 20 years, Egypt for 18 years, and Lebanon for 15 years. Yet all writing, for him, is a displacement, a striving to escape from the "dominant used language" and the "chains of the tribe--its approval and taboos".

from The Guardian: A life in writing: Mourid Barghouti

Asked by his interrogator what his occupation was, he said: "I'm a poet, Sir." The officer did not believe him and dared him to write a poem and recite it right away.

[Axel] Pinpin was quick to answer: "Ay, kamatayang anong tamis! Ihimlay mo ako20sa pagitan ng putok ng mga baril at ng aking tugmaang matatabil. (O, sweet death! Lay me down between the volleys of gunfire and my glib-tongued rhymes.)"

The officer clapped and said: "Very good but that would be your last performance."

from Philippine Daily Inquirer: Poetry saved me--'Tagaytay 5' member
also bulatlat: Ex-'Tagaytay 5' Detainee Launches Book of Poems

And you have to be impressed by a plucky Spanish provincial, in the dangerous days of Nero and Domitian, who could manage to earn a handsome living writing dirty poems for the urban sophisticates of ancient Rome. But can you condone what they get up to under a single set of covers? "Martial's Epigrams," Garry Wills's enthusiastic verse translations of Marcus Valerius Martialis, Rome's most anatomically explicit poet, offers a chance to find out.

from The New York Times: 'My Poetry Is Filthy--but Not I'

When we turn to the Areopagitica, his greatest prose performance, we meet with a different [John] Milton, one whose mind ranged far beyond his time. Milton wrote in 1644, just as the Parliamentary cause was at its military apex. Feeling strong in the sinews, the House of Commons prepared to re-establish the old monarchical custom, largely dispensed with under pressure of civil war, of forbidding the printing and sale of unlicensed books--in a word, censorship.

At this moment, with the future of the world's model Protestant state in the balance, Milton stepped forward to deliver an awesome command performance on the subject of press freedom. It has never, down to our time, been equalled.

from The National Post: Censorship's fiercest foe

Robert Bridges, the future poet laureate of England, informed his friend [Gerald Manley] Hopkins that he'd managed to read all 280 lines of "The Wreck of the Deutschland," but would not be persuaded for any amount of money to read it again. And yet Bridges remained beguiled by the possibilities of sprung rhythm, attempting (with indifferent results, as Hopkins saw it) to use it in his own work. When at last he saw fit to introduce Hopkins's singular poetry to the world, some 30 years after his friend's death, Bridges opened the volume with "The Wreck of the Deutschland," "like a great dragon," he wrote, "folded in the gate to forbid all entrance."

from The New York Times: A Modern Victorian

The mermaids' disastrous refusal to breastfeed [in Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill's The Fifty Minute Mermaid], and consequent high infant mortality, are explained in terms of their "system of symbols" and adopted veneration of dairy products: "Even in ordinary speech they call what they hold most dear/'the butter of my heart' and 'top of the milk'". The merfolk's tragic wrong-headedness inspires a natural dismay in the reader, but instinctive condemnation is brought up short by the tone of the last stanza:

For, let's face it, despite their adaptability
and their gift for fading into the woodwork,
like chameleons,
they were water-dwellers before they came on land and, however we might describe
what they'd morph into, it certainly wasn't
human beings.

from The Times Literary Supplement: Translated merfolk: What happens when an Irish poet, with Paul Muldoon's help, adapts to dry land

Their shared vulnerability and doubts are present from the start. "Not written anything very great, that's bugged me, overanxious to please I guess and follow Howl up, obsessional, so just a lot of self conscious long lines about politics, horrid, some funny tho--I don't know, I have a lot of manuscripts," [Allen] Ginsberg confesses in 1958, in a perhaps prophetic note about the rest of his life's work. In the earlier letters, [Gary] Snyder comes off as more of the comradely teacher, outlining Zen concepts and setting his own course as a broad and deep socio- ecological thinker, as in this 1960 observation: "Nobody can straighten American politics out because the people won't stand for it--how can the internal economics be put in order when everybody wants everything? Any sane monetary policy or farm policy doomed to ruin. Ditto by logical extension foreign policy."

from San Franciso Chronicle: The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder

Writing to her in 1974 from England, and a third marriage, [Robert] Lowell remembered Elizabeth [Bishop] at that first meeting as "rather tall, long brown-haired, shy but full of design and anecdote as now," only to be corrected, a couple of weeks later: "Never, never was I tall . . . and I never had long brown hair either . . . so please don't put me in a beautiful poem tall with long brown hair!" For her part, Bishop recalled "the sad state of his shoes" and that "he needed a hair cut". The eye for detail and the endurance of the affection go together, and it may be telling that Lowell, rather than Bishop, eventually allows himself to misremember things. "I can't tell a lie even for art, apparently," Bishop wrote to him in 1962; "it takes an awful effort or a sudden jolt to make me alter facts."

from The Guardian: 'I seem to spend my life missing you'

However, it turns out that these interviews did not take place. What happened, [Dennis] O'Driscoll explains, was that he sent [Seamus] Heaney long lists of possible questions and Heaney, having chosen which ones he wanted to answer, returned written replies. So the appearance of spontaneity is misleading. The questions were just lures to get Heaney going, and it might have been better to leave them out and simply join up his replies.

For all that, this is a book of rare stature, vivid and profound in seeking out the hiding places of Heaney's power.

from The Sunday Times: Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney
also The Guardian: 'To set the darkness echoing'

Missing verses by Robert Burns to his great muse, Clarinda, are among five "rediscovered" poems now attributed to the national bard.

A 42-line manuscript that the poet addressed to the woman he called "mistress of my soul" has been unearthed by Professor Robert Crawford, one of Scotland's leading literary scholars.

The verses, My Steps Fate on a Mad Conjuncture Thrust, are published in a new collection of Burns' poetry and prose co-edited by Prof Crawford.

"You are putting your head in the lion's mouth in doing this," he said yesterday.

from The Scotsman: Lost and found--Burns' hidden poems make it into collection
also The Guardian: Two new Burns poems discovered alongside 'rude' letters

Carla Bruni, comment ça va?
Et Georges Cluny--connais pas?
So ha'r you doin', George F. Will,
Drew Gilpin Faust, and Dr. Phil?

Longtime readers of The New Yorker will not, of course, need to be reminded who Mr. [Roger] Angell is--an eminent baseball writer, an editor at the magazine since 1956 and the stepson of E. B. White. But they may wonder where "Greetings, Friends!," an annual poem that was a New Yorker institution for nearly eight decades, has been. It was written by Frank Sullivan from 1932 until 1974, and by Mr. Angell starting in 1976. But "Greetings, Friends!" vanished after its 1998 iteration and has not been seen again until now.

What happened?

from The New York Times: Rhyming Name Dropper Returns

Great Regulars

You are dying. Twenty seconds ago your heart and breathing stopped and your pupils became fixed and dilated. Your brain cells are in a state of panic, trying every trick they know to get hold of oxygen and glucose. An electroencephalogram (EEG) would show no electrical activity in your cortex, the thin outer layer of your brain. You have flatlined.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Sunday Times: The living dead

The poem's title, "The Duke Meets the Duke," recognizes that the actor, John Wayne, and, the jazz musician and composer, Edward Kennedy Ellington, shared a famous nickname.

Perhaps the two men met, perhaps they didn't, but the worlds in which they were cultural icons did meet. In Hollywood or in Harlem, in film or in music, each man helped to define the modern American spirit. Maybe the voice in the poem is the voice of cultural memory, a voice that tries to express the inveterate hope and the inevitable pain of American history. It's a voice that would equally welcome a meeting of Billie Holiday and Marilyn Monroe.

[by Wayne Zade]

The Duke Meets the Duke

from Walter Bargen: The Post-Dispatch: Missouri poets: Wayne Zade

From what I heard and read that day, I got an impression of Dave Church as a sort of Rhode Island version of Charles Bukowski: a bit of a carouser, committed to honesty and straightforward language, a writer with a populist sensibility, a rough take on life and a good heart. I was pleased with the student's presentation that day, and pleased to know that poets like Dave=2 0Church are living and actively writing among us. His is a simple voice that looks to find poems in the pattern of weekday life. ["Muses is] a good example.

Muses

I asked young Willa's mom the other day

from Tom Chandler: The Providence Journal: Streetwise Dave Church will be missed

New Letters once was known as The University Review.

Between these covers, though, the name of the game always has been quality, and this new issue is true to form. Between these covers the reader will find fiction by Olufunke Grace Bankole and Paul Zimmer and poems by Tony Barnstone, John Bensko, Laura Kasischke and The Kansas City Star's very own Steve Paul. Paul's "Shore Birds," if I may say so in reference to a colleague's work, is one of his surest and finest poems.

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: New Letters is a diamond in our midst

"People from the Midwest are trapped in a kind of self-effacement, brought up to be virtuous and self-denying, and their struggle against that is maybe one thing that is funny about them."

Once a week, for the past 30 years, [Garrison] Keillor has turned this neurosis into a great source of laughter and entertainment, deflecting attention from himself on to folk and bluegrass singers, sketch actors, make-believe cowboys, and, of course, the residents of a fictional corner of Minnesota called Lake Wobegon.

from John Freeman: The Times: Interview with Garrison Keillor, writer, radio presenter and champion of smalltown America

She does not dress in fancy duds like the stage performers, nor does she have her hair all gussied up, "No Ringlet, to my Hair." And naturally, since she is not a ballet dancer and does not know the art, she has never "hopped to Audiences--like Birds,/One Claw upon the Air."

She becomes a bit supercilious here comparing the ballerinas to birds hopping, and offers the fascinating image of the ballerina's upturned hand as it resembles a bird with "One Claw upon the Air."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Dickinson's "I cannot dance upon my Toes"

Bill Morgan‘s skillfully crafted piece features three unrimed verse paragraphs, rendering a magnificent dramatization of the birds stripping foxtails in a snowy field. Despite its flaws, the poem speaks powerfully and minus the regrettable final line could very well serve as a Christmas season testimony to the birth of Divine love for all creatures.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Morgan's "Six Tree Sparrows"

The speaker places himself in his upstairs room writing: "Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun." The slant rime of thumb and gun implies the old adage, "The pen is mightier than the sword." But soon the reader learns that the war this writer fights is of a very different nature from the soldier. His thoughts roam and muse on the nature of the war every living creature fights for survival.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Seamus Heaney's "Digging"

Still, the speaker cannot take total pleasure in and assurance for his rich output for "this abundant issue seem'd to me/But hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit." Even though he managed to fantasize a summer-like fecundity, his knows that factually "summer and his pleasures wait on thee."

He also finds that even the chirping, musical birds seem "mute " with "thou away."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 97

The joys of the birds and the flowers are not sufficient to inspire the speaker to his usual state of creative elation. He cannot "any summer's story tell." His mood will not join the season, regardless of how he contemplates the beauty that surrounds hi m.

Although he is moved by the beauty of the flowers, he cannot be moved to "pluck them where they grew."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 98

Finally, the speaker claims that in addition to the violet, lily, and rose, he has observed other flowers, and all of them have behaved just as the first three had: all of the flowers had stolen their qualities from his love. The implication is that his love, his poetry, is capable of containing and sustaining the beauty of all flowers, and thus is more permanent, for the poetry can survive for centuries while the flowers, those little thieves, will survive for a season, at best.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 99

Guruji avers that the blueprint for the marvelous hermitage and meditation gardens had existed in the ether throughout eternity, and then "it came wafting--enchanting, entrancing--/Down the arches of the ancient years."

After he came to America from India, he had searched in other locations for the building and grounds that would match his vision.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Yogananda's Dream Hermitage

Tibet's spiritual leader t he Dalai Lama called on the world community to bring China into the democratic mainstream, in a speech to Polish deputies Thursday.

"The free world has moral responsibility to bring China into the mainstream of world democracy. That is very essential, very important," the Dalai Lama told members of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee.

from Tenzin Gyatso: The Office of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama: World Must Bring China Into Democratic Fold

The year brought a wealth of interesting, entertaining and provocative books and introduced several writers with promise along with worthy efforts from the old reliables--and some that didn't make the mark.

All this means it's time again to rate the books of the year. We're doing it a little differently for 2008, though. We've sought your input along with the book reviewers of the Post-Gazette.

from Bob Hoover: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: 2008's best books: Yours and ours

At Sea
by Wendy Mnookin

At the end of the jetty.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: At Sea by Wendy Mnookin

Christmas 1963
by Joseph Enzweiler

Because we wanted much that year

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Christmas 1963 by Joseph Enzweiler

The Conjugation of the Paramecium
by Muriel Rukeyser

This has nothing

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Conjugation of the Paramecium by Muriel Rukeyser

Farewell
by Emily Dickinson

Tie the strings to my life, my Lord,

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

Free
by Virgil Suarez

When we first arrived in the United States

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Free by Virgil Suarez

Poor North
by Mark Strand

It is cold, the snow is deep,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Poor North by Mark Strand

Returning to Earth
by Jim Harrison

I'm getting very old. If I were a mutt

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Returning to Earth by Jim Harrison

Fath er and child doing a little math homework together; it's an everyday occurrence, but here, Russell Libby, a poet who writes from Three Sisters Farm in central Maine, presents it in a way that makes it feel deep and magical.

Applied Geometry

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 194

Stories, legends and myths about the characteristics and powers of superior beings abound in literature of the ancient world, and they were meant to inspire a feeling of religious awe and explain the random forces of nature. But today's poets are using these gods for an entirely different purpose.

The pagan gods are embedded in our subconscious minds, and they may point us in the direction of a more meaningful way of living.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Poets would do well to study the Greek, Roman classics

[Pat Kavanagh] read manuscripts very quickly; she didn't respond with a massive analysis but with sharp, deft judgements about what worked and what didn't; she never shrank from telling difficult truths about failure; her praise was armour against any number of nay-sayers who might come along later; her attention to detail created the sense of a whole world in which writing and friendship could happen.

from Andrew Motion: The Guardian: Pat Kavanagh

I call on the Chinese government to to answer me this: "Where is the crime in Charter 08?" The basic concepts of the Charter are freedom, human rights, equality, republicanism, democracy, and constitutional rule. So would the powers-that-be please tell 1.3 billion people why freedom is a crime, why human rights, why equality, or republicanism, and what is criminal about democracy and the rule of law under the Constitution? "Charter 08" puts forward 19 propositions. Not one of them is the invention of the people who signed it. They have all already been implemented in modern, civilized countries, and they have shown themselves to be part of a worthwhile system with beneficial effects. [--Bao Tong]

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: China Detentions 'Challenge Constitution'

Authorities in Beijing are still holding writer Liu Xiaobo, one of the signatories to a document published online earlier this week that called for substantial reforms to China's one-party system.

Mo Shaoping, a lawyer hired by Liu's wife Liu Xia and himself a signatory to Charter 08, said he feared police were preparing to pursue a criminal case against the writer, probably for subversion.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Writer Held After 'Charter 08'

When Pam Royds at Andre Deutsch said that a group of poems I had written could be published as a children's book. I had thought that they were "adult" but that children might like them. To tell the truth, I hadn't really thought it through. I lived in a house where "adult" poetry was repackaged in anthologies and radio broadcasts and given to children--poems by Dylan Thomas, James Stephens, Robert Graves, and the like. So perhaps I thought I was doing that--being an "adult" poet whose poems might be taken up by anthologists putting books together for schools.

from Michael Rosen: Poetry: Snip, Snip!: A talk with the children's laureate of Britain

Kathryn Maris is a young poet originally from Long Island, New York, currently living in London. She has published one collection, The Book of Jobs (Four Way Books, 2006) and has received several fellowships and awards. Darling, Would You Please Pick Up Those Books was a runner-up in the 2008 Troubadour Poetry Competition judged by Jo Shapcott and Stephen Knight. Grateful thanks to Anne Marie-Fyfe for permission to reproduce the poem here.

Darling, Would You Please Pick Up Those Books?

How many times do I have to say
get rid of the books off the goddamn floor

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poem of the week: Darling, Would You Please Pick Up Those Books?

After my thorough cleansing, I was allowed into the inner sanctum to pay my respects, but only after confrontation with the temple guards over my whiteness. We were ushered into a large office where Uncle and my husband, and the man who gave the theerthums all spoke up for me. The office man looked at my passport and said it was not a Hindu name. Ramnath tried to explain the American requirements for names, but it had nothing to do with religion. In the long run the arguments by three Hindus, supported by Sanskrit quotations by Uncle, persuaded the officer to allow me to have dharshan, to be in the presence of God, but I was to stay quiet and do it quickly. I asked Ramnath later what finally had convinced them to let me in. He said after all the arguments were made the conclusion was that I was a princess with a pure heart. This conclusion meant more to me than the rush to visit through the inner sanctum.

from Belinda Subraman Presents: India: Finding Reality in Myth

In his ‘Every Book Its Reader' Basbanes tells us eloquently and sometimes very poetically that books in all their myriad forms are necessary equipment for meaningful, creative, fascinating and quite20often very exciting living. I have never come across any other writer who has felt and thought more about the extraordinary power of books than Nicholas Basbanes.

Basbanes beautifully describes the basis of his belief as to how we can learn about great historical figures in the field of politics, literature, art etc. by just trying to find out what they read. Such an approach is a unique and remarkable lens through which we can analyse the subterranean contours, movements and forces of history.

from V Sundaram: News Today: Word is weighty--I
also V Sundaram: News Today: Word is weighty--II

Some books are for looking at, and some are for reading - and rereading. Here are some reader-friendly books that would make fine gifts. Prices are for hardbacks, although many of these are available in paperback, download or CD form.

from John Timpane: Philadelpia Inquirer: Reader-friendly, gift-ready volumes
also John Timpane: Philadelpia Inquirer: What the staff has been reading

by Rodrigo Toscano

I.

keenness, to keenness, by keenness, as keenness, keenness this of...dot, 1,

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: from Clock, Deck, and Movement

by Greg Fuchs

Sedgwick & Cedar

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: from De la Bronx

Anonymous

I first saw the child a few weeks ago, our Humvees all in a row,

from Express-News: Poetry: 'In Dâ Allâh, Looking for the Lion's Roar'

T.C. Marshall teaches writing at Cabrillo College by encouraging inventive use of forms. He has written a wide variety of things from "Jumbles" to a detective novel. In the '70s and '80s, he initiated three poetic movements (Horriblisme, Horripilisme and Phalanxologie) that got some attention at one MLA convention. Since then, Marshall has used and taught approaches based on the Latin American vanguardismo that Neruda practiced, the posthumous humanismo of Vallejo, and Cardenál's exteriorismo. His poems and literary criticism can be found in magazines from North America and Europe. The following poems are all elegiac.

Edwin

from Good Times Weekly: Poetry Corner: The Poetry of T.C. Marshall

Magpie, pomegranate by Liz Lochhead

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Magpie, pomegranate by Liz Lochhead

Flocks of Never

by Drew Blanchard

We had to throw things

from Guernica: Poetry: Flocks of Never

Poem of the week: Student Question by Sarah Lawson.

It was the one question I didn't expect.

from Morning Star: Well Versed

The Fifth Season

by Arthur Vogelsang

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Fifth Season

Greetings, Friends!

by Roger Angell

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Greetings, Friends!
also The New Yorker: Poetry: Poet Cornered

Thread
by Dan Chiasson

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Thread

~~~~~ ~~~~~~

[by Isabel Grasso]

Monarch Butterfly

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Monarch Butterfly

"Sewage Has Its Say"
By Steven Cramer

from Slate: "Sewage Has Its Say" By Steven Cramer

Poetic Obituaries

[Tajal Bewas] was the author of 44 books--34 published, including a collection of Urdu poetry 'Andaz-e-Bayan Aur' and 10 other books under publication. He had also contributed hundreds of articles on various topics, including travelogues, book reviews and forwards of books, which are needed to be compiled.

from The News International: Tajal Bewas passes away

[Eduardo] Cademartori was known to family and friends as a true Renaissance man. In addition to his talent with race cars, he could sing, play a variety of musical instruments, spoke three languages, wrote poetry and made people laugh.

from The DeLand-Deltona Beacon: Blow that killed DeLand man felt round the world

[Ray Carlton's] cat, named "Kitchen Cat," seemed as good a host as he was--circulating and greeting guests, he was "the friendliest cat in America," she said.

Mr. Carlton won two Emmys in 1977 for "Langston," a series about the poet Langston Hughes, when the network was known as Georgia Educational Television. He won a third Emmy in 1984 for a public affairs and features show called "Georgia Digest."

from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Ray Carlton, 72, had heart for TV, electronics

From PoetryMagazine.org.uk: in an articled title "Dave Church: a well kept American Secret:"

"From the tomato plantations of Florida, where he spent time on a 'chain gang' for being drunk and disorderly, the eighteen year old youth had set out on a Beat odyssey that was to occupy much of his life from then on in. He has worked as a roofer, bouncer, street barker (for Big Al's, a strip joint seen behind the opening credits on the old 'Streets of San Francisco' TV series), and even cut the lawn for a doctor who paid him in drugs."

from HTMLGIANT: Dave Church Died

Mr. [Stuart] Confield constantly sought inspiration, from classics in the classroom to verse in the Village, and, in turn, he sought to inspire those around him. He began his career as a high school English teacher but soon followed in his father's footsteps and became an accountant, eventually becoming a partner in Demetrius & Co. LLC in Wayne, perhaps a less than obvious career for a bohemian po et. Mr. Confield loved his work and found inspiration in it each day.

from The Warren Reporter: Stuart Confield, 63, of Greenwich Township

George [G. Daniels] enjoyed reading and learning his entire--never fictional, but always factual. George wrote beautiful poetry and also wrote a book on his own life experiences while living in Japan. Photography and classical music were his hobbies.

from Oshkosh Northwestern: George G. Daniels

In addition to the establishment of two scholarships for Lady Tiger Golf and Humanitarianism, we will be contributing to programs that Emily was passionate about. All donations received will be utilized to positively impact the youth in Nevada, as Emily would have wanted.

The first annual Emily Ann DeBrine Memorial Golf Tournament has been scheduled for 5/09/09, at the Frank E. Peters Golf Course, with all proceeds to benefit her foundation

from Emily Ann DeBrine Foundation

[Susan DeChambeau] wrote many letters to the editor and will be remembered by her columns for the Republicans, the Museum and mining.

She loved learning and had taken oil painting classes and many community college classes, including geology and poe try.

from Reno Gazette-Journal: Susan DeChambeau

Veeravalli Raghavacharyulu, whose pen name was Jwalamukhi, was popular among modern Telugu writers. Six of his poems were published in three volumes brought out by Digambara Kavulu.

He was active in Left movements and worked as vice-president of Bharat-China Friendship Society. He worked as a lecturer.

from Express Buzz: Revolutionary poet Jwalamukhi

A voracious reader, she [Iva Knight] was proud of her exceptional memory, which distinguished her from her one-room school house until the end of her life. Iva was a published poet, a pianist and worked outside the home for a time at Essex Wire. She was the family historian, a talented story teller, master solver of Crypto quotes and a trophy winning bowler into her 90s

from Zanesville Times Recorder: Iva L. 'Chick' Gildow Knight

"I remember making those walks with her through the LSU campus back in the '60s and having racial remarks shouted at us through the dorm windows," her son [Gordon Lane] recounted.

After e arning her Ph.D., [Pinkie Gordon] Lane was promoted to full professor at Southern and was head of the English department there from 1974 until her retirement in 1986.

from The Advocate: Former state poet laureate Pinkie Gordon Lane dead

Ms. [Ashley C.] Marcotte was a well-liked and accomplished student at PBL High School and a published poet and devoted family member in her private life, according to her friends and family.

from The News-Gazette: Man facing prison term for ex-Loda resident's car death

Duane [Marcotte] was a talented artist and was known locally for his artwork, especially caricatures. He also enjoyed writing short stories and poems. He loved his family and enjoyed going on trips with them. His wit and sense of humor will be missed.

from Marshall Independent: Duane Marcotte

Nisar Mazloom, a Pakhtun nationalist who was a former producer of the state-run radio, was considered an expert on Afghan affairs as he spent a long time in exile in Afghanistan during Zulfikar Ali Bhutto government.

He used to write columns for different national Urdu dailies and had made a distinctive place for himself for his va st knowledge of Afghan affairs. A collection of his columns--Estighasa--was published recently.

from The News International: Noted Pashto poet, writer passes away

[Brandi Moore] was a girl who sang in her church choir, she played the piano and violin and she spent hours and hours writing poems and drawing pictures. Brandi skipped first grade, won several talent show and spelling awards and loved to read.

from Valencia County News-Bulletin: Heart transplant patient, 11, dies of complications from virus

The Monkey's Mask remains her [Dorothy Porter's] best known work. Set in Sydney it features a lesbian detective, Jill, who falls in love with a doctor, Diana, while investigating the mysterious Mickey who writes poetry. A series of monologues with constantly changing perspectives, it contains some of the finest English-language lesbian love poetry, easily comparable with the American gay poet Adrienne Rich, who never wrote such a sequence: Her breasts are not my breasts/Under her dress/they push towards my hands/… Diana's tongue whirls/in my mouth/like a dissolving aspro/like knives on a chariot wheel in Ben Hur.

from WA Today: Poet pushed boundaries and encouraged others
also The Australian: Poet with a tongue of fire
also The Guardian: Dorothy Porter

Roberta [A. Renskers] loved doing crossword puzzles, reading and writing poetry, and she especially enjoyed her grandson and her great-grandchildren.

from The Post-Journal: Roberta A. Renskers

[Rajeev Saraswat's] neighbours knew him as a poet. In one of his poems, Desh Rehe Akhand, wrote about how the youth of the country should unite to stop "the bloodbath." And just a few days before his death, at a programme in Navi Mumbai, he read out a couple of lines from the poet Ghanshyam Agarwal: "Hum To Bach Gaye Ye Saal Mein–Ab Tum Bachna Naye Saal Mein (We have survived this year, now it is your turn to survive the new year)."< br>
from The Indian Express: As NSG chief led Taj ops, terrorists inside killed his relative

Ms. [Carol Houck] Smith spent her entire 60-year publishing career at W.W. Norton & Co., starting as a secretary and working her way up to vice president. A legendary editor, she was known for seeking out new talent and had an impressive record for finding it. Those she edited included Stanley Kunitz, Rita Dove, Ron Carlson, Andrea Barrett, Gerald Stern, Maxine Kumin, Rick Bass and Pam Houston. Books she edited collected a Pulitzer Prize and three National Book Awards in the past dozen years alone.

from The Washington Post: Carol Houck Smith; Book Editor Worked With Award Winners

[Patrick Soucheck] loved the outdoors and storms, music, reading, and writing poetry.

from Sheboygan Press: Patrick Michael Soucheck

Nancy [Wade] was a member of First Church of the Nazarene in Staunton and was the devotional reader and head of the Farmer Memorial Sunday School Class for many years. Mrs. Wade loved to read; she cherished her poems and above all was a beloved mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.

f rom The News-Leader: Nancy C. Wade

[Lois Watts] served as a hospital chaplain's assistant. She enjoyed church activities, music, reading and writing poetry.

from The Jamestown Sun: Lois Watts

[Rashit] Yangirov wrote more than 200 articles on Russian cinema, fiction and folklore. His subjects included the cinematic cult of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, emigre female authors, the persecution of dissident Soviet poets and references to silent films in works by writers such as Vladimir Nabokov and Mikhail Bulgakov.

from Associated Press: Soviet film historian Rashit Yangirov dies at 54

12/09/2008

News at Eleven

To celebrate the 400th anniversary of John Milton's birth the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library mounted a splendid exhibition entitled Citizen Milton.

Adorning the entrance to the exhibition was this quote from Gordon Brown, "At the core of British history, the very British ideas of 'active citizenship', 'good neighbour', civic pride and the public realm."

It is not clear which part of this quotation was intended to apply most accurately to John Milton.

from Socialist Worker: John Milton: poetic genius who was at the heart of revolution
also Bodleian Library, Oxford: Citizen Milton
also The Guardian: Philip Pullman reads Paradise Lost
also Telegraph: John Milton was a poet and a20freedom fighter

[Paul] Mariani's study also weaves in glimpses of young [Gerard Manley] Hopkins' mind, his grief when trees are hacked down, his essays on poetry or metaphysics, his first meeting with a Jesuit, his family vacations on the Isle of Wight. Becoming a Jesuit in 1868 (he was 24), he learns prayer and metaphysics, discovers the philosophy of Scotus on uniqueness, enjoys dialect words and Irish fairy-stories, visits art exhibitions, knows "the beauty of the Lord" through bluebells, reads about an American yacht race, hypnotizes a duck, and vacations with Jesuit classmates on the Isle of Man.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Biography worthy of the poet

Sarah Ruden, a poet and translator, has chosen to make every line of her new translation of The Aeneid correspondent to the original. She concedes that English, with its strict rules for word order, makes her attempt to replicate Virgil's music "beyond fantasy." But she sets out to keep her Aeneid faithfully tied to the Latin because she wants to "go through the technical struggle that the author went through in composing the original."

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Another try at matching Virgil's verse

And which does Michael [Rosen] prefer, the John-Taupin m ethod or the Lennon-McCartney?

Michael, 62, of London says: "I nearly always send a manuscript over to the illustrator. You have to trust an illustrator to do what they do. This is the case with illustrators such as Helen Oxenbury (We're Going on a Bear Hunt) and Quentin Blake (Michael Rosen's Sad Book).

"They do a visual reading of what I have written, representing my words."

from The Journal: Self-imposed mission to spread excitement of poetry
also BBC News: Poem published to mark NHS 60th

[Simon Armitage's] credentials say it all.

With 11 volumes of poetry under his arm, he received awards including the Sunday Times Young Author of the Year, one of the first Forward Prizes and a Lannan Award.

His latest work, The Not Dead--a short collection of war poems written as a response to the testimonies of ex-soldiers--has won praise from critics.

The poems focus on the testimonies of veterans of the Gulf, Bosnia and Malayan wars--ex-squaddies who have seldom been heard before.

from Huddersfield Daily Examiner: Simon wins our vote for Poet Laureate

Our image of=2 0the bearded poet--with his vagabond's hat and open Byronic collar, his walking-stick and swagger--is one of carefree independence. In the national imagination [Walt] Whitman strides down city street and country lane, or sits silently beside a dying soldier's bed. No matter how many his male companions, and how often he sought company, he remains--in our mind's eye--alone.

In fact, he wrote his mother almost daily and stayed close to his siblings. He lived with the former for most of his life and spent his last 11 years in a brother's home.

from The Washington Post: America's Poet as Brother

They demanded she [Woeser] repent. She refused, and was fired. In 2004, she retreated in a self-imposed exile in Beijing, where her writing took on a more explicitly political edge.

In Panchen Lama, written in 2005, Woeser reflects on the Chinese government's abduction of the six-year-old Panchen Lama (the second highest-ranking Buddhist Lama) in 1995, and his replacement with another six-year-old boy, the son of two Party members.

If time can cover a lie,
Is ten years enough?

from The National: Tibet's foremost poet of freedom and exile

I have yet to meet an Indian who cares whether his compatriots--those living in India and abroad--write in Eng lish or not, and only the most mean-minded would begrudge the international success that Indian novelists in English have achieved. What infuriates Indians who write mainly in Indian languages is the implication that the writers in English are somehow representative of the whole literary scene--and it is even worse if they display ignorance of that scene.

from The Guardian: Fresh air and Chanel No 5

"My vocabulary did this to me. Your love will let you go on" were reputedly [Jack] Spicer's last words, and a fitting title to this single-volume monument to his enigmatic muse. Peter Gizzi, who previously edited Spicer's lectures, and Kevin Killian, his biographer, selected this work from out-of-print rarities. The result is a monument to a unique voice, if also to an acidic, lovelorn, provoking one.

Described as often being "morose and grouchy" in person, on the page Spicer is not only that but sometimes humorous as well. And he seemingly did not much trust poetry, or words in general.

from San Francisco Chronicle: 'My Vocabulary Did This to Me'

The award-winning author [Sergio Ramirez] warned that the Managua government's next step "could be to stop the arrival of my books at customs as a form of censorship and reprisal."

A group of Latin American writers attending the Guadalajara Book Fair this week issued a statement condemning the "official censorship."

"No government can assume the legal authority to veto or ban the words of a writer, and such an act can only be described as totalitarian," said the declaration signed by literary heavyweights such as Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Fernando Savatier, Tomas Eloy Martinez and Carlos Monsivais.

from Latin American Herald Tribune: Nicaragua Blocks Ex-Vice President Sergio Ramirez From Writing Prologue To Poetry Book

Editors had hoped to find an elegant Chinese poem to grace the cover of a special issue, focusing on China, of the MaxPlanckForschung journal, but instead of poetry they ran a text effectively proclaiming "Hot Housewives in action!" on the front of the third-quarter edition.

from The Independent: Chinese 'classical poem' was brothel ad

Great Regulars

I find [Thomas] Hardy's poem ["The Oxen"] very contemporary, as the best poems always are. The best poems find a timeless center of human feeling and articulate it beyond doctrine, beyond dogma, beyond local circumstance, beyond the individual speaker.

But to do that, such poems always remain specific, located in time and place. There's20a real voice in Hardy's poem, a real person remembering his childhood.

from Fleda Brown: Traverse City Record-Eagle:

Odetta: I love to perform. It has been the music, folk music that has informed me, educated me, got me to feeling good and better about myself, and I have a need to propagandize and to continue putting out the stories of how strong a group of people we came from, how we got over, under, through, in spite of all the feet that were holding us down. And so I am a propagandist, really.

from Jeffrey Brown: PBS: Newshour: Famed Civils Rights Folk Singer Odetta Dies

[John] Milton did more than hymn the praises of revolt, as Blake and Shelley did. He was also a political activist and propagandist, an architect of the modern liberal state. As a militant ideologue in the defence of liberty, he assisted in the revolutionary upheaval that brought modern Britain to birth - a revolution all the more successful for us having quite forgotten that it ever happened.

from Terry Eagleton: The Guardian: Milton's republic

By Larry M. Schilb

Bent
over the kitchen sink eating

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Matador'

The speaker then claims that in the harbor his ships are ready. And although he and his sailors are old, "Some work of noble note, may yet be done." For the men who fought very great odds to return to their homes, the speaker avers that something useful should still be available for them accomplish.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses"

The speaker then lists further things she has personally lost: "two cities," "some realms," "two rivers," and "a continent." Of course, she is speaking figuratively here. She did not literally own cities, rivers, and a continent. She means that she no longer has a relationship with these places. Still their loss, because of her diligent practice, is not "a disaster."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Bishop's "One Art"

Barley belongs to the fabrication of the liquor/poem because of "the manner of its malting." But before that stage, it stood up to the wind in a certain way, it sprouted, dried, and ripened in its own unique manner. Before a poem can be poured into the glass of the blank page, it too must stand up to many winds of opposition; it must also sprout, dry, and ripe n in the mind of the poet.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: December Poet--David Solway

The Divine then reminds the speaker that He came to the speaker in the form of his son to teach him more clearly about the nature of God's love for man. The Divine remarks, "My servant Death with solving rite/Pours finite into infinite," then asks the mourner, "Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow,/Whose streams through nature circling go?"

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Emerson's "Threnody"

In contrast to the continued extremely rigid attitude of the Chinese government towards Tibet, fortunately among the Chinese people--especially among the informed and educated Chinese circles--there is a growing understanding and sympathy for the plight of the Tibetan people. Although my faith in the Chinese leadership with regard to Tibet is becoming thinner and thinner, my faith in the Chinese people remains unshaken. I have therefore been advising the Tibetan people to make concerted efforts to reach out to the Chinese people. Chinese intellectuals openly criticized the harsh crackdown of Tibetan demonstrations by the Chinese government in March this year and called for restraint and dialogue in addressing the problems in Tibet. Chinese lawyers offered publicly to represent arrested Tibetan demonstrators at trials. Today, there is growing understanding, sympathy, support and solidarity among our Chinese brothers and sisters for the difficult situation of the Tibetans and their legitimate aspirations. This is most encouraging. I take this opportunity to thank the brave Chinese brothers and sisters for their solidarity.

from Tenzin Gyatso: The Office of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama: Address By H.H. the Dalai Lama to the European Parliament

The mind is pretty amazing--it can imagine many, many things of which only a percentage are possible or even probable. Sometimes they are good things, like winning the lottery or your partner cleaning the bathroom as a surprise, but sometimes they are bad. Actually, most times they are bad. Buddhist and other eastern philosophers call this the monkey mind: The mind starts with a fairly innocuous thought, then jumps to another, and another, then finally to something that can get you into trouble. Steve Orlen has a poem called "Monkey Mind":

When I was a child I had what is called an inner life.

from Kristen Hoggart: The Smart Set: Ask a Poet: It's the Poetry, Stupid!

Like President-elect Barack Obama, poet Thomas Lux comes from humble beginnings, born to a milkman and a Sears & Roebuck switchboard operator. In a time when the country faces so many challenge s, Lux's deeply moral poems emphasize the work that we must do together. However unpretentiously one of his poems might start, it often builds to a strong emotional finish.

Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy

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

All the Women I Almost Married
by Tim Mayo

They gather at the edge of a big proscenium like a Greek

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: All the Women I Almost Married by Tim Mayo

The Fall
by George Bilgere

Although there were no witnesses

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

Great Depression Story
by Claudia Emerson

Sometimes the season changed in the telling,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Great Depression Story by Claudia Emerson

McClures Beach
by Sidney Hall Jr.

Something About the Wind
by Sidney Hall Jr.

McClures Beach

Here at the end of the world,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: McClures Beach by Sidney Hall Jr. Something About the Wind by Sidney Hall Jr.

My Father's Diary
by Sharon Olds

When I sit on the bed, and spring the brass

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: My Father's Diary by Sharon Olds

Piano
by Patrick Phillips

Touched by your goodness, I am like

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Piano by Patrick Phillips

Remodeling the Bathroom
by Ellen Bass

If this were the last

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Remodeling the Bathroom by Ellen Bass

The first two lines of this poem pose a question many of us may have thought about: how does snow make silence even more silent? And notice Robert Haight's deft use of color, only those few flecks of red, and the rest of the poem pure white. And silent, so silent. Haight lives in Michigan, where people know about snow.

How Is It That the Snow

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 193

When the narrat or wants to kill the venomous serpent, Uncle Walt says, "There's worse than snakes," and he lets the animal leave in peace. The nephew learns danger is the natural order of this cosmos, including the unspoken realm of human interactions. Yet revenge is not the appropriate response. Here Sheldon expounds a natural theology, based on lessons that arise in nature.

[by William Sheldon]

A Kind of Seeing

from Denise Low: Ad Astra Poetry Project: William Robert Sheldon (1962 - )

[Pinkie Gordon Lane] authored eight books, including four volumes of poetry. She has received numerous honors throughout her career, including: induction into the Louisiana Black History Hall of Fame; named Distinguished Professor at the University of Northern Iowa; and given the National Council of Teachers of English Image Award.

Her poem, "Lyric: I am Looking at Music," from one of her four volumes of poetry, Girl at the Window, was read aloud by actress Nia Long in the 1997 motion picture, Love Jones.

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: Another death in our literary family . . .

Defector Lee Min-bok of the Christian North Korean Coalition, which has been sending leaflets to the North for more than five years, said the leaflets were the only way to attack the information20blackout imposed by Workers' Party leader Kim Jong Il on his people.

"The two characteristics of the North Korean regime are its isolation and its Dear Leader Kim Jong Il's personality cult. The leaflets are the only available means to break North Korea's isolation and bring down that personality cult," Lee said.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Korean Leaflet War Escalates

This poem was written to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the NHS, and is printed exclusively here.

These are the hands

from Michael Rosen: The Guardian:
Michael Rosen salutes the NHS at 60

Michael Rosen, the children's laureate, is joined by celebrities including Sir Michael Parkinson, Dame Jacqueline Wilson and Harry Hill to read his poem marking 60 years of the NHS

from Michael Rosen: The Guardian: These are the Hands by Michael Rosen

The boy grows up an orphan ([John] Gay himself had been orphaned at the age of 10), but the goddess offers him protection, and in this part of the tale she guides him to the trade that will allow him to survive, cleaning the grime from the fashionable boots of a city thriving on wastefulness and grubby politics. G ay's descriptive art is never in doubt, but here, in the second section, Cloacina's materialisation allows the poet to take off on a particularly enjoyable flight of fantasy.

Trivia, from Book II: Of Walking the Streets by Day

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poem of the week

Listen for how she compares herself to the popular girl, the way she talks about her own mouth compared to the mouth of Inez, the girl she wants to be. And then listen for what happens at the end of the poem. In BT Shaw's poems, there's always a shift in awareness and this one is I think quite striking by the end of the poem. So here's BT Shaw reading "No. 2 Venus".

from B.T. Shaw: KUOW: B.T. Shaw, Job Fair and What Have You Found?

While the public presence of poetry increased, however, much of [Philip] Whalen's work plumbed the subjective range of experience in language that was intimately located in his unique features of perception. With extended visits to Kyoto, Japan, a meager and simple stay for periods of time in Bolinas, the small arts community north of San Francisco, and prolonged study, practice, and initiation into the Zen Buddhist tradition as a priest, Whalen complicated the relationship between the personal and the public, the inner life and outer practice of it in words.

from Dale Smith: Bookslut: Marsupial Inquirer: "Beyond This Universe of Countless Words"

A number of [Garry] Wills' efforts stutter so. If you're going to go 18th-century, one thing you must face is that those poets were formidably perfect. Wobble even a little and the whole house comes down. Closing lines, where pressure's on for a trim, knife-blade ending, too often are the weakest. That's sad, especially in Poem 21 from Book 11, otherwise extremely good, where I am saddened by, to be respectful, a last line that was just not ready yet.

But you will also find some nice ones, as here:

from John Timpane: Philadelpia Inquirer: Of 'Sex-lover,' unmissed lips: Martial's very modern verse

The indiscriminate impact of cluster bombs was raised with the support of the Swedish government by the representative of the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva and myself. My NGO text of August 1979 for the citizens of the world on "Anti-Personnel Fragmentation Weapons" called for a ban based on the 1868 St Petersburg Declaration and recommended that "permanent verification and dispute-settlement procedures be established which may investigate all charges of the use of prohibited weapons whether in inter-State or internal conflicts,20and that such a permanent body include a consultative committee of experts who could begin their work without a prior resolution of the UN Security Council."

I was thanked for my efforts but left to understand that world citizens are not in the field of real politics and that I would do better to stick to pushing for a ban on napalm--photos of its use in Vietnam being still in the memory of many delegates.

from René Wadlow: Toward Freedom: Banning Cluster Bombs: The Outlaws

Winter Approaches

Suppose you have found words

from Frank Wilson: Books, Inq.--The Epilogue: As I see it . . .

At any rate, it was not those famous quotes from "Self-Reliance" that grabbed me so much as this one: "Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him."

What I liked about this--what I still like about it--is the idea that there is something each of us can do that no one else is qualified to, and that authenticity consists in finding out what that is and doing it as best one can.

from Frank Wilson: "Insist on yourself; never imitate"

By Mo H. Saidi --San Antonio Express-News

I shall remember the night: the crowds. The throngs

from Express-News: Poetry: 'The Night Glowed with Young Stars'

Despite his travels and romantic intimacies, [Rainer Maria] Rilke's life was marked by loneliness. One of Rilke's mentors, the French writer Paul Valéry, described the poet as spending "eternal winters long in excessive intimacy with silence." Rilke dedicated his life to pursuing "Weltinnenraum," or "inner-world-space," believing that only by deep introspection could one truly understand the mind.

from findingDulcinea: Happy Birthday: Happy Birthday, Rainer Maria Rilke, Author of "Letters to a Young Poet"

Salmon by Pascale Petit

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Salmon by Pascale Petit

By Jeanie Wilson

Wander down

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: "Mother's Garden"

Acting Like a Tree by Jonathan Aaron

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Acting Like a Tree

My Autopsy
by Michael Dickman

from The New Yorker: Poetry: My Autopsy

[by Olive Tardiff]

The Cloud

You can't trap me with rose-gleam;

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: The Cloud

"Wedding"
By Rachel Hadas

from Slate: "Wedding" --By Rachel Hadas

Poetic Obituaries

Betsy Aardsma's friends and teachers said she was among the best America had to offer in the late 1960s.

Artistic and poetic, imbued with liberal ideals and empathy for the underprivileged, she planned to join the Peace Corps after graduating with honors from the University of Michigan in 1969.

from The Patriot-News: A 39-year mystery: The murder of Betsy Aardsma

In addition to his prolific writings on naturism, and his plays, essays, poems, commentaries and works of aesthetic criticism, Lee [R. Baxandall] was a noted translator of the German playwr ight Bertolt Brecht. Lee's many books include Radical Perspectives in the Arts, Marxism and Aesthetics, and (with Stefan Morawski) Marx & Engels on Literature and Art.

from Oshkosh Northwestern: Lee R. Baxandall

After the inquest, Dr Bhuiyan paid tribute to his son [Roabbi Bhuiyan].

He said: "He was a very kind, compassionate, articulate, creative person.

"He was very thoughtful and a talented poet. He will be greatly missed."

from This is Lancashire: Open verdict on poet who died in fall from Bolton quarry

Bob Bletchman was a teacher, a lawyer, a mentor, a poet, a husband and an actor. But he was best known for his defense of the phenomenon known as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.

from Hartford Courant: For This Multifaceted Explorer, UFOs Were Real

[Rudy C. Campbell] was a painter and a sculptor, working in oils and clay and wood. He was a writer of short stories and wrote and published two books of poetry.

from The Free Lance-Star: Rudy C. Campbell

Being orphaned by society for one's beliefs wasn't much of a threat.

Though he [Robert Emmett] grew up as a tough street kid, he defied the gangs to defend the weaker "smart" kids, rescued stray dogs, wrote poetry, painted and later graduated from Cooper Union art school.

from Age of Autism: Grandfather Warrior: Robert Emmett 1921-2008

Michael [Fielding] was preparing to attend school for special effects in the movie industry. He loved to write music and poems and perform music. He was a true rock star.

from Rochelle News-Leader: Michael Fielding

[Anna M.] Gacek was a member of the Delta Kappa Gamma Society for Teachers.

She was a composer of original songs and poems which were published in many Polish and American periodicals. She was awarded poet of the year in 1991 and 1992 by the World of Poetry. Many of her treasured artifacts and publications were donated to the Orchard Lake Schools, in Orchard Lake, Michigan. A room in the archives was dedicated to her.

from SouthCoastToday.com: Anna M. Gacek, 99

Sad news to pass along: Art Honeyman, author, poet, and most recently movie-star subject, died yesterday in Seattle. He had been visiting friends.

I had the genuine honor of profiling Art three years ago. He was a smart, funny, sharp, sweet, ornery man. Every time I spoke to him, he seemed to have had some crazy new adventure.

from The Oregonian: Art Honeyman : 1940 - 2008

Getting to the bone was an obsession [for Kersy Katrak]. "The bone prevails I have found this./The flesh exists upon it, breeds/Proliferates, turns to itself for love:/Creates its bright arterial jungle and undergrowth of nerve/ Pap, genital and thigh/suffers its own agony and dies./Somewhere beneath/Interior and unlit, the bone remains/ Inexorably white." ("Malabar Hill"). The bone stood for the core and meaning of life for him.

from The Hindu: Poet of the soul

Les [Lambert] later served as a firefighter in Selby, Goole and in the ordinance depot at Barlow before retirement from Drax Power Ltd. He was a regular contributor to the Selby Times, penning letters and poems of his wartime memories.

His son Phil described him as a "real gentleman" and a terrific sportsman.

from Selby Times: Death of 'real gentleman' Les Lambert

[Pinkie Gordon] Lane was chair of the Department of English at Southern from 1974--1986. She was published in a variety of journals and was recognized as one of the 58 outstanding women for inclusion in the Women's Pavilion of the World Exposition held in New Orleans in 1984.

From 1989--1992, she served as the first African-American Poet Laureate of Louisiana.

from WAFB Channel 9: Louisiana Poet Laureate Pinkie Gordon Lane dies

David [J. Kalamas] was the ultimate Renaissance Man as he was a superb artist producing watercolor paintings and pen and pencil drawings, he was an avid hunter and fisherman, and he was a stellar writer, penning poems and short stories. He had two business books that were published by Human Resources Development Press and several books and articles published by The American Association of Vocational Educational Materials and The National Center for Research in Vocational Education.

He also wrote articles and book reviews for a number of Training trade journals. David was in the process of working with a literary agent in California to publish several of his fiction novels that he recently wrote.

from Mansfield News Journal: David J. Kalamas, Ph.D.

[Ralph] Lewin published more than 250 scientific papers, edited "Physiology and Biochemistry of Alg ae," "The Genetics of Algae," "Origins of Plastids" and, with Cheng, "Prochloron: a Microbial Enigma," and was author of "Merde, Excursions in Scientific, Cultural and Socio-Historical Coprology."

He also was known for his poetry, including such works as "Poems about Animals and Plants" and "The Biology of Algae and Diverse Other Verses." He was an expert in Esperanto and translated "Winnie the Pooh" into that language.

from Scripps Oceanography News: Esteemed Marine Biology Pioneer: Ralph A. Lewin

[M. Kelly] Lombardi, who died Sept. 9, 2008, was the founder and leader of the Salt Coast Sages in Machias. She taught poetry, specializing in international poets, particularly contemporary Irish poets, in Sunrise Senior College at the University of Maine in Machias, and facilitated poetry workshops.

from Village Soup: Forum pays tribute to Washington County poet
also The Salt Coast Sages: Kelly Lombardi

Mrs. [Evelyn A.] Lowmiller was a member of the First Alliance Church of Bucyrus, but had previously served as choir director at Whetstone Baptist Church for 35 years and was an accomplished soloist. She enjoyed cooking, sewing, painting, writing and reading poetry and collecting seashells.

from Bucyrus Telegraph Forum: Evelyn A. Lowmiller

Dubbed "the most celebrated publisher in Egypt and the Arab world" by the country's Al-Ahram state-run daily, [Mohammed] Madbouli died on Friday.

The man, who started his career by selling newspapers at the age of six, was famous for printing or distributing banned books such as poems by Ahmed Fuad Negm, known for his scathing criticism of the country's leaders.

from AFP: Top Egyptian publisher Mohammed Madbouli dies at 70

[Annie McCann] wrote poems, one just days before she died filled with personal memories celebrating her Irish and Czechoslovakian heritage and her love of music from Led Zeppelin to Coldplay. The final stanza: "I'm from the one-dimensional blank piece of paper/To the three-dimension skyscrapers of New York/Where I hope to be one day."

Is this what she meant when she wrote, "Please let me be free"?

from The Baltimore Sun: Parents, police still wonder why a sheltered Va. girl died in Baltimore

[Mary "Jewel" Lane McNeill] was an elementary school teacher in Crispencand was a pre-school teacher at Epworth United Methodist in Tulsa. She was a songwriter and poet.

from Baxter Bulletin: Mary 'Jewel' Lane McNeill, 89

Noted Kashmiri poet and scholar Abdul Ghani Nadeem, 76, passed away Monday morning after prolonged illness.

Secretary Jammu Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages (JKAACL) Zaffar Iqbal Manhas, described him as a scholar of national repute. He said: "As an editor of Kashmiri in the Academy he contributed a lot of work to enrich our long term project Encyclopaedia of Kashmir vis-à-vis Kashmiri Dictionary project. His contributions will be remembered for centuries together," said Manhas in a condolence meeting organized at the headquarters of the Academy in which rich tributes were paid to late Abdul Ghani Nadeem.

from The Daily Rising Kashmir: Noted Kashmiri writer Ghani Nadeem passes away

A PhD from University of Kashmir in Persian, [Altaf] Niaz was presently posted as lecturer in Government Degree College Handwara.

Known for his work for the promotion of Kashmiri poetry and english literature, Niaz's first research work titled "Music and Melodies" was released by Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages a few months ago.

from Sakaal Times: Kashmiri poet Altaf Niaz dead

[Odetta] was singing and performing well into the 21st century, and her influence stayed strong.

In April 2007, half a century after Bob Dylan first heard her, she was on stage at a Carnegie Hall tribute to Bruce Springsteen. She turned one of his songs, "57 Channels," into a chanted poem, and Springsteen came out from the wings to call it "the greatest version" of the song he had ever heard.

from The Times Herald Record: Odetta, 77, voice of the Civil Rights Movement, dies
also Ebony Jet: Whose Tube

When he retired from medicine in 1991, Dr. [Henry] Scott managed and developed residential real estate. He was handy at renovations and repairs, his son said.

"He was a brilliant Renaissance man. He was a skilled tennis and saxophone player and vocalist who wrote lyrics, poetry, and even published cartoons," his son said.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Henry Scott, 80, family physician

Reece [Severson] loved to write poetry with an appreciation for all types of music and the arts. To all who knew him, he was known for his great sense of humor and quick wit. Reece was on a continued quest for knowledge and spiritual well being throughout his life.

from Appleton Post-Crescent: Severson, Reece G.

After retiring, [Martin] Small became an accomplished artist and poet. His art often depicted the horrors of the holocaust.

A memoir of his life written with the help of Boulder-based author Vic Shayne. "Remember Us: From My Shtetl Through the Holocaust" was published in May.

"He lost everything that was dear to him," Shayne said. "(After his release from the Nazis) he risked his life crossing turbulent waters to bring homeless refugees to begin a new life in Israel. He fought in a kibbutz on the frontier in 1948 as Egyptian tanks fired shells over his head.

from Broomfield Enterprise: Small in name; not in spirit: Holocaust survivor dies at age 91

In his professional life, he [Donald T. Sparks] enjoyed frequent and extensive travel throughout the world, and enjoyed studying languages. In his private life, he enjoyed playing piano and guitar, gardening, reading, woodworking, cross-country skiing, ice skating, picture framing, calligraphy, anything having to do with tall ships and sailing, antique cars and writing memoirs and poetry.

from Portsmouth Herald News: Donald T. Sparks

But when the station manager heard the idea, he signed [Ruth Brunk] Stoltzfus to a six-month contract.

The program needed a name, so Stoltzfus' husband asked her what she wanted to talk about during the broadcast and she is said to have responded, "I want to share ideas, tell stories, read poetry and just talk heart to heart."

With that, the program's name became "Heart to Heart," and Stoltzfus became the first known Mennonite woman on the airwaves with a regular program. She referred to herself on the air as "your friend Ruth."

from The Daily News Record: Ruth Brunk Stoltzfus: A Woman Ahead Of Her Time

Mable [G. Watkins]'s talents were many. Crocheting, knitting, embroidery work of extreme beauty, sewing, baking, especially angle food cakes, excellent cook, and at the age of eighty she began writing poetry.

from The Marion Star: Mable Ge rtrude (Swartz) (Daugherty) Watkins

A published writer and poet, [Linda] Wiggin's work was published in "The Boston Globe," "IN Boston" and "Provincetown Magazine."

A poem included in her 1994 book entitled "Deed To My Blood" revealed a foreboding message.

"Now that you have crossed over, and so have I, to that place in ourselves where words are only robbers of any little peace we have gained," Wiggin wrote.

from Times Argus: Friends remember Linda Wiggin

[Evelyn M. Wiley] enjoyed writing poems and collecting birdhouses. Evie was also a volunteer with the Fort Dodge Schools in helping children read.

from The Messenger: Evelyn M. Wiley

A resident of Huntsville, Ala., since 1964, Dr. [Robert L.] Welker was founder and first chair of the English Department at UAH. He retired professor emeritus in 1985.

He was a prominent member of HLA and served as editor of Poem from 1972 to 1985.

from The Leaf Chronicle: Dr. Robert L. Welker

12/02/2008

News at Eleven

"The fact that it's still in our society to put together anthologies of women poets tells us something about the status of women in poetry," says [Colette] Bryce. "It's basically saying that this is a sub-category, because you wouldn't have an anthology of male poets."

This label as a "woman poet" is something [Leontia] Flynn accepts only as one of many to be applied at varying moments. "Some days I might see myself as a woman poet, yes, some days as a Northern Irish middle-class asthmatic culturally Catholic woman poet," she says. "I do tend to hate it when publications do the review-all-the-women-together thing."

Dubliner Caitriona O'Reilly rejects such easy categorisation. "Categories are for critics, not poets," she says.

from The Irish Times: Tackling the poetry patriarchy

"We are living as if in a theatrical play," [Iman] Bakry said. "All the actors have their makeup expertly on, but no one believes them. They don't speak the truth."

In her poem about fraudulent democracy, she writes:

Democracy is our ruse.
The big guys in the alley fabricated it, just to improve our image,
and to believe that we live an easy life.

Out her window, beyond the chic CityStars mall, the pyramids rise in the desert, testaments to a great, ancient civilization that has for centuries lost its way. And Bakry worries what the future will bring.

from Los Angeles Times: Dissident poet is allowed to speak, but Egypt's leaders aren't listening

The poem we kept coming back to is 'Who will douse the lights?' the first in the section, From the Ashes, that includes several reflections on Tongan politics. This is one of several long poems. It is powerful, haunting, accusing.

this is rage

from Matangi Tonga: Karlo Mila's poems: perceptive, sometimes painful

"I think people do reach a point where nothing that they've depended on works anymore," he [Franz Wright] says, "and they discover a sense of the divine as the one place that continues to welcome us when there is nowhere else to turn. And one day very suddenly, one afternoon, I had an experience that I can't describe, but an experience of the reality of things that I'd formerly admired as beautiful literature, beautiful ethical structures. I suddenly had a sense of the literal reality of Christ's spirit in the world."

He was baptized Catholic in 2000.

from The Phoenix: Medicine men

The verse uses an octosyllabic baseline and contains plenty of the features we expect in poems. Even though it is syntactically complex (it's only two sentences), the lines are heavily endstopped with solid, repetitive masculine endings and there is a lot of sound play. In "trespasses" the feminine ending (meaning that the last syllable isn't stressed) seems to replicate the very act of trespass--by going one step further than it should--and that "amen" is a neat full stop, a click on the send button of the email to God.

But give me real poetry over religion.

from The Guardian: Religions are poems

If the language poets teach us anything, it's to look past those crude definitions. And [Ron] Silliman's poetry certainly resists simple classification. Generally speaking, language poetry tries to disrupt our usual ways of reading. For such poets, the physical shapes of the words on the page and the sounds they make in our heads are just as important as any accumulated narrative or meaning. Silliman's words continually call attention to the fact that they're only that--words.

from The Philadephia Inquirer: 'Language poetry'? It's all words

The medal citation also menti ons a mission when he ran out of bombs, so started blasting the enemy with the aircraft's cannon. "Was that," he wonders now, "a dumb, effective, admirable or reprehensible thing to do with a £20m aeroplane?"

For someone as thoughtful and analytical as [David] Knowles, shock and awe was almost overwhelming.

But these are the poems of a professional fighter. The enemy, the target, the Iraqis beneath the Tornado's shadow, hardly get a mention.

from The Sunday Times: The Jet Man well versed about Iraq

[Allen] Ginsberg was hyperaware of the frequent charge that Beat poetry was little more than improvised mumbo jumbo baked from jazz records and marijuana smoke, and so he sought to establish its genealogical links to heroes of the American tradition such as Whitman and Hart Crane while at the same time proclaiming that Beat poetry was a passionate disavowal of traditional, normative, 1950s American society.

This was obviously a tight rope to walk, and he managed it for the most part with impressive grace.

from PopMatters: The Letters of Allen Ginsberg

A target of Lee [Min-yung]'s criticism is Chinese-language education in Taiwan. "The language is taught using a long tradition of teaching that tends to have learners focus20on rhetoric skills rather than the word's correspondence with reality," he argued. "The result is like drawing a map that refers to no real sites. It does not serve to help student address their surrounding realities, but just works to consolidate the existing political power this language represents."

The poet explained that this situation gradually created a condition in which the sincerity of language has been lost, effecting a gap between words and deeds. "Thus, a dictator can claim democracy when there is no freedom of speech, and politicians make promises that few expect them to deliver on," Lee said, stopping short of naming an example.

from Taiwan Journal: Poet offers nation recipe for language and culture

A wan, half-starved Chen Shui-bian, former president of Taiwan, sitting inside Room No. 46 in the detention centre in Tucheng, in suburban Taipei, casts a weary glance over the books, paper and mattress spread over the dank cell.

Fuelled only by Gatorade and gruel, he jots down a love poem to wife Wu Shu-chen, simply titled, To My Wife:

"Layers and layers of bronze and steel walls,
A small and dank and dark cell.
A Black Prison which no warm sunlight can penetrate."

from The Straits Times: Taiwan's prison poet

I think after a20while the shadows in the wall becomes as intriguing as a painting by Rembrandt or Breugel. The bird sounds that one hears, maybe from time to time, nearly--could be read or could heard as sonnets. I think that had a lot to do with it. I do think that one loses sense of oneself. It's kind of a prolonged process of questioning and re-evaluating the sense of oneself--the I, the person. And perhaps recognizing that it is futile to hang on to a certain number of concepts one had of oneself, and to let go. In other words one is trying to build some kind of a freedom that cannot be attained by those who keep you in prison. But it's not something I would want to encourage. I think if you're going to do that you would rather go into a monastery. [--Breyten Breytenbach]

from Democracy Now!: A Conversation With South African Poet and Anti-Apartheid Activist Breyten Breytenbach on His Own Imprisonment, South Africa's "Failed Revolution," Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama

Great Regulars

[Fady] Joudah, a Palestinian-American medic, is also a member of Doctors Without Borders, and much of the writing here explores his experiences with urgency and clarity: "Today, I yelled at three old women / Who wouldn't stop bargaining for pills they didn't need." Joudah's poetry thrives on dramatic shifts in perspective, on continually challenging received notions.

from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: The Earth in the Attic

The second section compiles several essays concerned with Latin American literature, including wonderful evocations of Borges and Neruda, of [Alistair] Reid's friendship with both and his translations of their work. The essay is littered with fascinating insights, such as Neruda in Paris telling him, "Don't just translate my poems, I want you to improve them!" It is in a selection of these translations that Reid is in his element.

from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: Inside Out

This quotation from John Berger resonates throughout this edition of M P T dedicated to Palestine. Here is Mahmoud Darwish on the loss of his childhood village: "I wasn't able to memorise the words and protect the place / from being transferred to a strange name fenced in / with eucalyptus trees. While the posters told us: / 'You were never here'." The book features brief histories, letters, memoirs, short polemics and a varied gathering of Israeli and Palestinian poets.

from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: Modern Poetry in Translation: Palestine

We may not be able to prevent or anticipate everything, but we can be well-rehears ed and well-practiced in emergency response. And no one thinks we're better prepared for this than before 9/11 given how little funding has gone to this sector of national defense.

Lastly, to call vigilance against festering international subversion a "war" is a waste of linguistic breath. It's not a war; it's not about territory or international spheres of influence; it's brute retaliation for the sake of blood and pride avenged (whether real or imagined); it's the Hatfields and McCoys, is what it is.

from David Biespiel: The Arena: Politico's daily debate with policymakers and opinion shapers

By John Mark Eberhart

To which Yeats returned, again

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Sligo'

By John Mark Eberhart

Why is it I miss

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: untitled haiku

Desire can turn into a kind of intimacy within memory's compression chamber, and few American writers have investigated this transformation like Mark Doty, whose latest collection, Fire to Fire, claimed the 2008 National Book Award for poetry earlier this month.

Even the new poems in this volume of selected work feel hauled up from a vast, mysterious deep.

from John Freeman: The Dallas Morning News: 'Fire to Fire' by Mark Doty: Poems with power to resurrect the past

The speaker in the first of quatrain of sonnet 94 waxes philosophical, while describing a personality type that has the power to hurt others. Such a personality might demonstrate that power, but he may still not necessarily act upon it. That personality type may remain "Unmoved, cold" and therefore not be tempted to display outrageous emotion.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 94

In the third stanza, the speaker dramatizes the reason for his deep love for his country: it was in his own native land that he learned that he was a unique soul, a spark of the Divine. He learned to love God in the land where he was born. This love of the Divine places a permanent glow about his native nation for which he is eternally grateful.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Yogananda's "My Native Land"

In the Christian liturgical calendar, we're entering Advent season, the four weeks before Christmas. This year it starts on November 30. It's preceded by "ordinary time," not a period of routine, but20of ordinal or numbered weeks. In Marie Howe's new collection, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, we delve into the connection between regular life and the intensified life inspired by revelation. Her "Prologue" starts in the dreary quotidian but then catapults to the least ordinary event in America's recent history: Sept. 11, 2001.

The rules, once again, applied
One loaf=one loaf. One fish=one fish.

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

Driving into Our New Lives
by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Years ago, driving across the mountains

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Driving into Our New Lives by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

The History of Effects
by William Greenway

The Bible was created by Bishop Ussher

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The History of Effects by William Greenway

My Room
by Patrick Kavanagh

10 by 12

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: My Room by Patrick Kavanagh

Purgatory Is Nearer in November
by Josephine Jacobsen

November is beautiful as the word sounds, is gray, is bare,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Purgatory Is Nearer in November by Josephine Jacobsen

Six Billion People
by Tom Chandler

And all of you so beautiful

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Six Billion People by Tom Chandler

Studio
by Liz Robbins

The couple in the rooms above me smoke. The smell

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Studio by Liz Robbins

Winter and the Nuthatch
by Mary Oliver

Once or twice and maybe again, who knows,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Winter and the Nuthatch by Mary Oliver

Class, status, privilege; despite all our talk about equality, they're with us wherever we go. In this poem, Pat Mora, who grew up in a Spanish speaking home in El Paso, Texas, contrasts the lives of rich tourists with the less fortunate people who serve them. The titles of poems are often among the most important elements, and this one is loaded with implication.

Fences

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 192

The time seems ripe for a reminder of the things that truly matter in this life, and for that we would be well advised to turn to poetry.

A poem that seems to summarize this attitude of awe and thankfulness, and one which I've always found inspirational, is "Auguries of Innocence" by William Blake. He writes:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Poetry, Thanksgiving go hand in hand

On Saturdays, I Santana With You

E. Ethelbert Miller (Author)

Another collection by a poet that the late Liam Rector described as "a Ghandi in our national literary world." These poems are sensual, erotic, and political, and read like revelations. From Iraq to the bedroom, E. Ethelbert Miller is aware of borders and boundaries. His vision is upheld by a belief that love transforms the individual and the community.

"The widow of Baghdad"

from E. Ethelbert Miller: Consortium Book Sales & Distribution

Do not wear yourself out. Keep enough time for your own writing. That is not just a question of getting up an hour earlier; it means the more difficult task of preserving staring-off time, thinking time. The laureateship takes over your life. An American publication described it as "a double-edged chalice". A ridiculous mixed metaphor, but true enough.

from Andrew Motion: The Guardian: Andrew Motion's advice to the next poet laureate

Camp Rules: The 10 Commandments

1. Do not attempt to escape. The punishment is death.

2. Never gather in groups of over three people or move around without the guard's authorization. The punishment for unauthorized movement is death.

3. Do not steal. If one steals or possesses weapons, the punishment is death. The punishment for failure to report the theft or possession of weapons is death.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: A Glimpse of Horror

So Houghton Mifflin Harcourt halted acquisitions. Borders probably closed another store somewhere in Minnesota, too. All this means is that better content is going to fall to the independently owned-and-operated, organic, high in omega-III fatty acids bookstores and publishers that you should want to support, anyway, because it's good for your soul.

from Max Ross: The Rake: Cracking Spines: Books Buyer Stops Buying Books

A poem has to settle into shape, it can't be in spate for ever. Coagulation, then, is essential. "The blood jet is poetry," wrote Sylvia Plath, but this poem finally, I think, settles in favour of that stabilising Factor VIII.

[by Jean Bleakney]

Improvisation

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poem of the week: Improvisation

What this seems to demonstrate is that there's no one around like Auden, who could have tossed off the demands for occasional verse with great aplomb. On the other, there is myself. I did, in The Inquirer, note in verse the marriage of Charles and Camilla:

Royal Couplets

from Frank Wilson: Books, Inq.--The Epilogue: Crisis looms . . .

[Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland's] statement is a conditional proposition, and the point of it is not the antecedent clause--"when it is not necessary to change"--but the consequent: "it is necessary not to change." Think of all the cosmetic surgery that would not have taken place had patients acted on Lord Falkland's principle.

In fact, Falkland was advancing a rather austere notion. Imagine how different the world would be=2 0had his advice been consistently followed

from Frank Wilson: When Falls the Coliseum: Change we can believe in, or not

by Tom Sleigh

Buoyancy

A swimmer swims out through voids of drypoint, inkwash,

from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: Buoyancy

by Christina Pugh

Inflection

They are white planets in a galaxy, these wheels

from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: Inflection

"If all the animals were to vanish from the earth," said Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, "then men and women would die of a great loneliness of the spirit." Usually we think of loneliness as a condition of the heart, but the Native American's remark provokes a different sort of consideration. Does the human spirit require animal company? What does it offer us? And why, in the realm of the wordless, is the poet moved to words?

Here's the exercise: Think about an animal you've encountered, and make the clearest, most evocative physical portrait you can of that creature. Urbanites need not feel excluded: pigeons, rats, cockroaches and police horses are all welcome here.

from The Guardian: Poetry Workshop: Mark Doty's workshop

Cat Posing for a Portrait of a Dog, Hollywood, California

by Elizabeth Gold

My agent’s not returning phone calls

from Guernica: Poetry: Cat Posing for a Portrait of a Dog, Hollywood, California

By Robert C. Jones

November afternoon. A cold wind from

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'Waltzing in Budapest'

edited by John Rety

Poem of the week: A Nicking
by Anna Robinson.

White tiles and a slab, white and silver,

from Morning Star: Well Versed

Lost in the Desert
Yoshie Furuhashi

from MR Zine: Yoshie Furuhashi, "Lost in the Desert"

Ode to Black Friday
by Jon Flanders

from MR Zine: Jon Flanders, 'Ode to Black Friday'

As I Was Saying

by Bob Hicok

Long, thin clouds as if the sky were smoking.

from The New Yorker: Poetry: As I Was Saying

Terza Rima

by Richard Wilbur

In this great form, as Dante proved in Hell,

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Terza Rima

Poems during the open mic covered politics (of course, given the election the day before), Thanksgiving, the coming of winter and many other seasonal topics, but one poem, by young Molly Hearn, seemed to sum up Portsmouth, in any season. Her brief portrait of any coffee shop uses specific images to remind us of the diversity and the commonality in our community.

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poems from the Hoot

Feliciousness

I have six cats at home.

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Feliciousness by M. Beaudett

Clive James has been a fish out of water, a television personality and a poet, a memoirist who befriended Princess Diana . . . and an erudite critic, a regular in England's most important literary journals. Yet his own fame, as what the English call a TV presenter, ruined his reputation: "As a show business name, I was crossed off the list of the serious."
But American audiences have hardly heard of him. Presented now with Opal Sunset: Selected Poems 1958-2008, we should be able to read his poetry on its own merits, free from visions of "Saturday Night Clive."

from Powells: Review-A-Day: A Lively, Engaging Volume Marred by A Tendency to Trade Poetic Insights for "Sayableness"

"Haydn Leaves London"
August 1795
By Rita Dove

from Slate: "Haydn Leaves London" --By Rita Dove

Respite

by Ellen Bass

And then this morning, on the seventh day of crying,

from The Sun Magazine: Poetry: Respite

by Robert Manaster, November 27, 2008

The Beginnings of Ritual

When God intrudes from within

from Zeek: A Poem by Robert Manaster

Poetic Obituaries

[Pat Armstrong] holds dual citizenship with the Republic of Ireland . . . past recipient of several writing fellowships, including a generous cash award from Portland's Literary Arts, Inc., in addition to Walden and Ragdale writing residencies . . . has won first prizes in both fiction and poetry in the prestigious Kay Snow Contest, sponsored by Willamette Writers . . . The late=2 0Kurt Vonnegut selected her short fiction "The Hat" as a finalist from among 1,400 entries in a competition sponsored by The Writers' Workshop in Asheville, N.C. . . holds degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Oregon . . . she and Rich have three sons, Mark, Bismarck, N.D.; Scott, Portland, Ore.; and Tod, Rohnert Park, Calif., and 17 grandchildren.

from The Register-Guard: Close to Home: Patricia Mees Armstrong: 1933-2008

[George Chesbro] published his first poem at the age of 27 for $1 and his first short story when he was 29.

The novel "Shadow of a Broken Man" (1977), starring Mongo, proved to be his breakout hit. He kept his day job through several more books and later, during lean times, he worked as a night security guard. He wrote screenplays and books under the pen name of David Cross, published more than 100 short stories and sold book reviews and articles on the art of writing. He was a past president of the Mystery Writers of America.

His novels include "City of Whispering Stone" (1978), "Affair of Sorcerers" (1979), "The Beasts of Valhalla" (1985), "Second Horseman Out of Eden" (1989), "Bleeding in the Eye of a Brainstorm" (1995) and "Dream of a Falling Eagle" (1996).

from The Washington Post: George C. Chesbro dies at 68; wrote offbeat detective novels

"Yes, yes, yes, I was sad until I had a friend, I didn't know right from wrong until I had a friend."

Another poem written by Abigail [Crampton] and given to the Chronicle includes an explanation, where she wrote: "I got the idea of a poem from a movie I watched on TV. It was about a man who was getting bullied so I thought I'd write a poem about friends."

She adds: "My favourite is the second verse because his friend and him share things. In the first verse, I felt sad because his friend picked on him and he didn't act like a friend at all."

from Chronicle: Diary reveals murdered daughter's love of life

Jdimytai Damour, 34, the Wal-Mart worker who died Friday after a stampede in a Valley Stream store, was an easygoing, helpful man who loved poetry, his friends and family said.

from Newsday: Trampling victim was easygoing, helpful, friends say

[Emily Ann Debrine] grew to enjoy playing golf. She obtained a varsity letter as a freshman, in 2007. She played through adversity during her sophomore season this fall, yet she was able to qualify for the All-District Golf20Team. She strived to maintain a 4.0 grade point average, and obtained an academic letter for her achievements. Her original writings and poetry are something to admire.

from The Fort Scott Tribune: Emily Ann Debrine

[Mary Grace Decker] was also a member of the Retired Teachers Association of Ohio and the League of Women Voters. Throughout her life, Mary enjoyed singing, reading, ceramics, writing poetry and spending time with her family, especially w ith her grandchildren.

from The Marion Star: Mary Grace Decker

[Thomas M.] Disch's fascination with mortality permeated his fiction and poetry. His first novel was called The Genocides (1965) and his second story collection Getting into Death (1971). Some readers found his work pessimistic; others regarded his fascination with mortality as a romantic posture. His blog gave a taste of what an original, funny and clever companion and poet he was and the stories in this collection offer an idea of his extraordinary range.

from Telegraph: The Wall of America by Thomas M Disch

Victoria [Fitzsimmons] took nourishment through a tube, breathed through a tracheotomy hole, used a wheelchair, was unable to speak, had limited us e of her arms, and communicated through an improvised sign language.

This did not stop her from composing poetry, bringing awareness to those with special needs, and working to help other "sick children."

from The Herald News: Mom: Daughter was 'awesome gift'

"The act of writing makes everything possible to me," [William] Gibson said in a 2003 interview with The Associated Press at his home in Stockbridge, Mass. "I've always found the business of writing has helped me to live."

Gibson's last Broadway play was "Golda's Balcony," a one-woman show starring Tovah Feldshuh as Israeli prime minister Golda Meir during one of her most difficult times--the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

It was a heavily revised version of "Golda," Gibson's 1977 Broadway flop that featured a large cast and Bancroft in the title role.

Although the 2003 play marked the last time Gibson wrote for Broadway, he continued to write novels, short stories and poetry.

from The Union-Tribune: 'Miracle Worker' author William Gibson dies at 94

Besides his autobiography, Mr. [Fred] Grant self-published World War II as Told by a Few Who Were There in 2005, a collection of poems selected by his wife in 2006, and Prairie Pioneer, a novel about Oklahoma homesteaders this year.

Mr. Grant came late to writing but long was influenced by the guide to clear writing, The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Fred B. Grant, 88, former EPA manager

[Ross Heikkila] enjoyed riding his Suzuki Intruder motorcycle. Ross had the ability to fix just about anything. He enjoyed participating in church plays, doing woodworking and leather working, and was into high technology. Another of Ross' interests was photography and he had developed a business on the side. Ross coached Rug Rat wrestling for his boys and followed all the kids' activities. He also wrote many short stories and poetry.

from Great Falls tribune: Ross Eugene Heikkila

[Stella Hillier] often said that some of the best radio programmes were devised while propping up the bar in The Stag or in The George, just around the corner in Great Portland Street.

Her down-to-earth realism was useful in dealing with Dylan Thomas, who was commissioned to write several scripts for Features but often missed his deadlines. The writing of Under Milk Wood--which had its first full airing in Douglas Cleverdon's production on the Third Programme in 1954, a few months after Thomas's death--was completed in Stella Hillier's outer office, after she had winkled him out of The Stag.

from Telegraph: Stella Hillier

Ruth [Estelyn Hillman] belonged to several organizations before her illness and enjoyed all of them. Her memberships include the Cowan Christian Church; National Federation of State Poetry Societies; Indiana State Federation of Poetry Clubs; Muncie Poetry Club and Anderson Poetry Club; the National League of American Pen Women; Delta Kappa Gamma; Indiana School Women; Business and Professional Women's Club; Indiana Council of Teachers of English; National Education Association; Indiana State Teachers Association; Muncie Teachers Association; Delaware County Retired Teachers and she volunteered at the E.B. and Bertha C. Call Center; taught classes at Update Learning at High Street UMC; ushered at Emens Auditorium; Volunteered at Ball Memorial Hospital and judged the Free Enterprise Essay contests several times.

from The Star Press: Ruth Estelyn Hillman

[Jerry] King was an immense fan of Walt Whitman, but it wasn't until King retired that he began devoting so much of his home's space to the celebrated American poet. He accumulated more than 600 books by and about Whitman. He also attended Whitman conferences and visited historical sites.

Whitman's works held the most prominent positions in King's bookca ses at his townhouse condominium near Officers Row.

"I do find them to be very beautiful objects," King said of his books in 2006, "so I like to arrange them on the shelves and show them off."

from Columbian: Former city attorney King, 76, passes

[Evelyn B. Kramer] loved to cook, garden and work in her flowers. She also wrote poetry and played the keyboard and guitar.

from The Cullman Times: Evelyn B. Kramer

"The panther is smarter and more agile than the lion," said [Blanca Luna's mother Gloria] Barrios, smiling as she echoed her daughter's words. A Day of the Dead altar erected in Barrios's living room includes dark chocolate, which Luna loved, and a poem she wrote urging friends to live in the moment and seize the day.

from Chicago Reader: Murder on the Base Cont'd

[Dylan Miles'] poetry articulated the messy place he was in at the time. I still critiqued it the way I would anything regardless of friendship. He took it into consideration then said "(Screw) you, Richie," with a smile. Words that live with me to this day.

His writing is a testament to his legacy. Every now and then the article he wrote about William Hung on campus pops up as one of the most popular on the Sundial website.

from Daily Sundial: Journalism student and Daily Sundial A&E Editor Dylan Miles died Monday

Amanda [Nelson] then moved into public relations when she became a press officer, first for Merseyside Police, and then Cheshire County Council where she was launch editor of in-house magazine Our Cheshire and Your Cheshire which was aimed at local residents.

Her out of work interests included cycling, walking, poetry and the theatre.

from HoldtheFrontPage: Ex-reporter who moved into PR dies aged 54

[Jacqueline S. 'Jackie' Paul-Johnson] was a graduate of Rosecrans High School, class of 1972, and a former employee of Ohio Power and the Longaberger Co. She enjoyed writing poetry and loved her animals.

from Zanesville Times Recorder: Jacqueline S. 'Jackie' Paul-Johnson, 54

Speaking after the inquest in Stourpot-on-Severn, her [Winifred Quick's] 57-year-old son Gary Quick said: "She was a very sociable person, everybody loved her.

"She was a fantastic mother to me and my brother."

He added his mother loved writing poetry and walking in the Malvern Hills.

from Malvern Gazette: Accidental death verdict for pensioner knocked over by car

Joyce [D. Schor] was an amazing wife and mother, as well as an excellent cook who always provided a loving home for her family and friends. She used her artistic abilities as a cake decorator. She was a talented singer and poet who had a love for life and people.

from Sheboygan Press: Joyce D. Schor

[V.P.] Singh, an erudite man with a fondness for poetry and painting, wasn't the same force after he quit as prime minister. His frail health didn't help his cause, but history will remember him as the man who managed to polarize India, although his efforts--aimed at creating a level playing field for people belonging to the backward classes--might have been well-intentioned.

from livemint.com: VP Singh, 77, former Indian PM and social engineer, dies

"Sal is such an onion. On the outside he's this huge guy--a monster--but you peel back the layers and you find out he's a . . . guy who also wrote poetry," Twisted Sister front man Dee Snider told the Advance in September. "He's lethal though. We had this song off our first record called 'Destroyer.' I always kind of think of Sal when we play that song."

from Staten Island Awe: Staten Island bodyguard Sal Valvo died Monday

[Peggy L. Williams'] greatest love was her church and her family. Her life was dedicated to caring for both. She enjoyed crafts, reading and writing poems.

from Times Daily: Peggy L. Williams

ARCHIVES