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News Articles, with Rus Bowden 4/28/2009
News at Eleven
Ms Duffy, 53, who is known for her emotional style of writing, has been chosen by the Government to succeed Andrew Motion. She has won out after Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, introduced a new "selection process" for the role, with the general public given more of a say. Poetry lovers were encouraged to "vote" for their preferred candidate by writing in to ministers, while the views of writers and academics were also canvassed. from Telegraph: Carol Ann Duffy tipped as new Poet Laureate also Independent: Carol Ann Duffy: A poet laureate with a twist also The Scotsman: After 340 years, Scot set to be named as new Poet Laureate Quebec poet, editor and translator Pierre DesRuisseaux has been appointed Canada's fourth parliamentary poet laureate. DesRuisseaux, 63, is the author of numerous volumes of poetry, as well as fiction and non-fiction works. His poetry collection, Monème, won the Governor General's Literary Award in 1989. His bilingual anthology of 25 English-Canadian poets, Contre-taille, was nominated for a Governor General's Award in 1996. DesRuisseaux has also written on popular culture in Quebec, including the Livre des proverbes québécois and Dictionnaire des expressions québécoises. from CBC News: Quebec's Pierre DesRuisseaux named parliamentary poet laureate "We were very excited at the time of the end of the Taliban," she continues. "I dreamt of being a professor, of our group becoming a cultural association for the city's women. But everything went wrong. Nadia was killed . . . She had great spirit, but we could see she was facing problems. She was trapped." Nadia [Anjuman]'s few poems from that time talk of her as "a bird without wings". "I remain, but remain a broken pen", ends one. "If I was to say the situation of women is better, that would be untrue," says Leila [Razeqi]. from The Sunday Times: The defiant poets' society also TimesOnline: Photo Gallery: Literacy in Afghanistan [Woeser's] visits to Tibet are even more tightly scrutinized. The police track her every move, interrogating any friend who dares to meet with her. "Most of my friends no longer have the guts to see me," she said. During her last visit in August, public security officials searched her mother's home in Lhasa, confiscating computers and subjecting Ms. Woeser to eight hours of questioning. When she returned home, her mother, fearful for her safety, begged her to pack her bags and go. "That was one of the most heartbreaking moments," she said. from The New York Times: A Tibetan Blogger, Always Under Close Watch, Struggles for Visibility Here, from "Our Savage Art," is a taste of [William] Logan on the warpath: "The only way Ammons could have improved ‘Ommateum' would have been to burn it"; "Almost everything Graham writes offers the swagger of emotion, pretentiousness by the barrelful and a wish for originality that approaches vanity--she's less a poet than a Little Engine that Could, even when it Can't"; or, on Billy Collins: "He's the Caspar Milquetoast of contemporary poetry, never a word used in earnest, never a memorable phrase. . . . If such poems look embarrassing now, what are they going to look like in 20 years?" from The New York Times: Samurai Critic My heart sank. It sank even further when two days later an immensely long letter arrived [from Philip Larkin] containing no fewer than 15 suggested changes, some of them substantial. He took issue above all with the heart of my profile, the character sketch that I had composed with such care. "Oh dear, this final character sketch! I do want to sound less of a simple-minded book-drunk, if you can manage it; I want to sound more guarded, more complex, more like a person who could possibly write a good poem. It's absurd to write a character sketch of oneself, but I'll try anything to avoid wearing the particular garment you have woven for me. Using the properties you've mentioned as far as possible, I'd prefer something along these lines . . ." from Telegraph: Philip Larkin ''It's a way to go beyond the surface of things,'' he [Mark Doty] explains by phone from his Chelsea apartment in New York. 'There is the rich and satisfying experience of not just writing, but of thinking and perceiving. A poem is always more than a description. It's not enough to just point to the world, its beauty or its terror. A poem has to move beneath that and make a claim on meaning. We want to look at things and ask, `What do you have to say about that?' The sound of frogs--'What does that mean to you?''' from Miami Herald: Poet looks below surface to find deeper meaning "A Human Eye" collects short essays and book reviews published over the past 12 years. In it, one can find some of the central concerns that have animated this writer since the 1960s. Rich continues to refuse to separate the artistic from the political, and she articulates in powerful ways how a truly radical political agenda can draw upon an aesthetic vision. In an essay on the poet Muriel Rukeyser, Rich says that Rukeyser "was one of the great integrators, seeing the fragmentary world of modernity not as irretrievably broken, but in need of societal and emotional repair." from San Francisco Chronicle: 'A Human Eye,' by Adrienne Rich The metaphore in this b. is a sort of eloquence built upon three words that bear more than one connotation. The verb râdihazhînî from the infinitive râhazhândin to wave and shake, describes the spiritual condition of the poet who is shaked by his love, hubb, for Him ( literally: it is Your love) so that he laments. But love, the sufi love, can also shake the poet physically when he is obsessed by ecstasy. The relation between love and the condition of being shaked is, morely, poetic and phantastic. Inorder to conceive the other aspects of the picture we have to reconsider the word h§ubb, love. from The Kurdish Globe: Aesthetical Aspects in the Poetry of Mala-ye Jaziri--Part IV also The Kurdish Globe: Aesthetical Aspects in the Poetry of Mala-ye Jaziri--Part I also The Kurdish Globe: Aesthetical Aspects in the Poetry of Mala-ye Jaziri--Part II also The Kurdish Globe: Aesthetical Aspects in the Poetry of Mala-ye Jaziri--Part III Lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to a machine, while his [John Updike's] children and grandchildren visit, he asks himself: "Must I do this, uphold the social lie/that binds us all together in blind faith/that nothing ends, not youth nor age nor strength?" Elsewhere, he simply refers to "our wastrel lives." Certainly in youth we all spend our days as if there were an infinite number of tomorrows. Several poems in "Endpoint" recall Updike's early years in Shillington, Pa. He remembers the "peppy knockout" cheerleader, later in life struck down by Parkinson's disease, and the friend whose "wild streak/was tamed by diabetes," which claimed his toes and feet. As man and writer, he is grateful for all they gave him: from The Washington Post: Does Updike's Last Verse Hit Its Mortal Mark? Plainly. Grasping a champagne flute and sporting a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan "Tenement Glasgow--taking the biscuit", Edwin Morgan, Scotland's best-loved living poet, yesterday opened the archive which celebrates his life and work. This trip to the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh, where the collection will be housed, was a rare outing for Morgan. For years he has been suffering from cancer and has been largely confined to his rooms in a nursing home in Glasgow. from The Times: Birthday champagne as Edwin Morgan, 89, opens own archive also Scottish Poetry Library: Our sweet old etcetera . . .: Photos, as promised . . . Great Regulars The poem "Cyclops Country" is from my 2001 book published by Harmonic Balance. It is a poem about growing old in the suburbs, where life is mostly suspended in waiting. We pretend to have some control over our lives, so tools are arranged precisely. A single out-of-place tool suggests how fragile the illusion of control is. Husbands stand by mailboxes looking for the letter that will inform them that they've been drafted into the legions of death while wives tell stories trying to make sense of it. The what and the when of it all we can never really know. Cyclops Country from Walter Bargen: The Post-Dispatch: Writer turns his verse on suburbs Since 2001, Pakistan has been a country in decline. We suffer a suicide-bombing rate that surpasses Iraq's. The billions of dollars we have received have not made Pakistan safer, they haven't made our neighbors safer, and they've done nothing in the way of eradicating terror. Instead, we now have our own version of the Taliban busy blowing up trade routes and flogging young girls. The Taliban and their ilk, on the other hand, are able to seat themselves in towns and villages across Pakistan without much difficulty largely because they do not come empty-handed. In a country that has a literacy rate of around 30 percent, the Islamists set up madrassas and educate local children for free. from Fatima Bhutto: The Daily Beast: Stop Funding My Failing State No matter how complex the ideas in the poem, no matter how difficult some of the language might be, there would always be the recognizable real world in it, and real people who could always choose to get their raincoats cleaned instead. [by Ted Kooser] Selecting a Reader First, I would have her be beautiful, from Fleda Brown: Traverse City Record-Eagle: On Poetry: Keeping readers awake Several years ago I had the wonderful opportunity to travel through Israel and the West Bank to talk to Palestinian and Israeli poets. Among the remarkable writers I met there and the one who made the greatest impression on viewers (I still have people talk to me about him) was Taha Muhammad Ali, who in addition to writing is a shopkeeper of a souvenir shop in Nazareth. from Jeffrey Brown: PBS: Newshour: Conversation: Adina Hoffman, Author of the New Biography of Poet Taha Muhammad Ali According to those in the know (and, trust me on this, no one knows more about these things than the Literary Editor of The Telegraph, Sam Leith), Britain is set to get its first female Poet Laureate with the appointment of Carol Ann Duffy to the historic post. from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: And, Britain's Newest Poet Laureate is . . . American Poet Laureate (1973-1974) Daniel Hoffman: The seeming simplicity of Frank Wilson's "Still Point" repays a close reading. Ten musical lines evoke, "As everything spun round/About the silence that he found/He had become," a man unable to "keep in touch" with others. The distracting grandeur of the natural world is economically embodied in two modest images, "a drooping bough,/A flitting bird." These, casually enlisting his notice, stir him to feel "alive awhile." from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: In celebration of planetary poetry month 14 "Tusking," published in March 1986, was the first of his poems to appear in the TLS: a powerful frightening parable of coloniser and colonised, it is untypical of Imlah's work only in its short lines. Everything else: the distinctive voice, a mixture of forthrightness and delicacy, the clear echoes of pre-twentieth-century verse (Browning, ballads, nursery rhymes), the vivid economical evocation of place and action, the delight in sly subversion of conventional views and images--in this case, of Englishness--is to be found throughout [Mick] Imlah's later work and is here combined with unforgettable freshness and verve. Tusking from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: In celebration of planetary poetry month 20 The speaker of this poem is at once defeatist and fainthearted (yet still a romantic). On top of all it all, she seems a little exasperated with herself, with her inability to fully interact with her world, but resigned to that, resigned to the world--or certain parts of it--always being too much to take at once. In the end, in what seems almost a parody of courtly love, the speaker's romantic side must remain hidden, for her eyes only, hidden from her sweetheart the drunk, but happily, through the art of poetry, not from us. [by Meaghan Strimas] Nod to the Drunkard I Once Sat Next to in the Park from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: In celebration of planetary poetry month 21 A theme throughout Paul [Vermeersch]'s work is empathy for the animal world that never loses its human subjectivity, one that is committed to seeing the unique "otherness" of the wild rather than only its anthropomorphised translation. This selection is from a three-part poem for Koko, the most famous resident of The Gorilla Foundation in Woodside, California; it demonstrates his unique ability to speak simultaneously to the specific while pointing a finger at a world hidden beneath it. Ape (part one) from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: In celebration of planetary poetry month 22 And so one has the experience of entering and leaving--a forest, a day, a life--knowing that all will turn back on itself in fulfillment, precisely the sort of immortality that will dwarf the giant redwoods and make their rings seem to spread like ripples on a pond. (One final note: Read this poem and you will know what the real California feels like.) [by John Timpane] Big Basin from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: In celebration of planetary poetry month 23 In "Show Your Work!," an incisive essay he penned for The Poetry Foundation Online (which garnered an overwhelming response from readers in its comments' section stretching into next week), Matthew Zapruder explained the way in which the Velvet Underground lead him to conclude American poetry's in the poorhouse because its critics fail to do the job implicit in that description of same: Today, in American poetry, very few critics take it upon themselves to examine the choices poets make in poems, and what effect those choices might have upon a reader. As a consequence, very few people love contemporary American poetry. Many more might, if critics attempted to truly engage with the materials of poetry--words and how they work--and to connect poetry with an audience based on an engagement with these materials. from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: Matthew Zapruder takes contemporary critics to task Addressing God directly, the speaker is seeking an answer to the question of why people, particularly poets, no longer demonstrate a deep devotion to God. In the past, many "Martyrs" burned for God, even as they maintained interest in other things. He suggests that "poetry" has become mere decoration, dedicated to romantic love that eventually fades. He wonders if poetry simply exists to serve venality. from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: April Poet--George Herbert--Sonnet I The speaker then avers that the feeling she is experiencing is that of "a perfect rest" that has spread from her "brow" and over her "breast" and thus the rest of the physical person. She metaphorically faces the west, seeing "the purple land," while her consciousness continues to deepen. Averring that she "cannot see the grain" nor can she "feel the rain/Upon her hand," she demonstrates that her physical body has become unresponsive to physical stimuli. from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Christina Rossetti's Dream Land In the first septain, the speaker portrays herself as "a possessed witch," who has gone out prowling the night in search of evil. On her metaphorical broomstick, he has flown over the "plain houses," looking "light by light" for something that she cannot identify, perhaps some way to fill what she perceives in a hole in her soul. from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Sexton's Her Kind The speaker sarcastically proclaims that she would have him excuse her, when she knows that it is her beauty, not her sparkling personality or intelligence, which has captured his imagination, a situation that the speaker finds inimical to his true interests: "Her pretty looks have been my enemies." from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 139 The speaker, while remaining civil, does get in a zap here and there. By condescendingly remarking, "If I might teach thee wit," he implies that she is really too dull to be taught wit by him. But if, by chance, he could teach her to be clever, it would be better that they were not lovers. But because they are in relationship, he insists that she has to tell him what she means, because he is unable to glean her obfuscating communications. from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 140 The poem is accessible and innocent, and its dialogue will enable an animate reading. Its themes are powerful: the loss of leaving a homeland and the isolation of an immigrant's life. My yellow poem, for mature audiences, will be one of Kim Addonizio's poems (meaning, Cassy, if you don't make a mature audience, this poem's not for you): You Don't Know What Love Is from Kristen Hoggatt: The Smart Set: Ask a Poet: Pocket Prose Autopsy in the Form of an Elegy by John Stone In the chest from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Autopsy in the Form of an Elegy by John Stone Commuters by Edward Hirsch It's that vague feeling of panic from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Commuters by Edward Hirsch From a Bus Window in Central Ohio, Just Before a Thunder Shower by James Wright Cribs loaded with roughage huddle together from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: From a Bus Window in Central Ohio, Just Before a Thunder Shower by James Wright Foreseeing by Sharon Bryan Middle age refers more from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Foreseeing by Sharon Bryan Homage to Roy Orbison by Irene McKinney If I can touch the voice of Roy Orbison from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Homage to Roy Orbison by Irene McKinney Paper, Scissors, Stone by Tom Wayman An executive's salary for working with paper from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Paper, Scissors, Stone by Tom Wayman That Time of Year by Philip Appleman So April's here, with all these soggy showers, from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: That Time of Year by Philip Appleman Bill Holm, one of the most intelligent and engaging writers of our northern plains, died on February 25th. He will be greatly missed. He and I were of the same generation and we shared the same sense of wonder, amusement, and skepticism about the course of technology. I don't yet own an Earbud, but I won't need to, now that we have Bill's poem. Earbud from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 213 [Charlie] Plymell celebrates details of geographic places in many of his poems, whether Paris, Utah, Baltimore, or Nueva York. Like many Kansans, he is an inveterate traveler, and he has some of the best highway poems. "Not a Regular Kansas Sermon" references Kansas culture in several ways: the subsistence living, with pear cactus and jackrabbits making a meal; and a faith that makes psychological survival possible. He has a declamatory style, with the ability to compress stories to their barest, most gleaming bones. Not a Regulars Kansas Sermon For my mother in the hospital from Denise Low: Ad Astra Poetry Project: Charlie Plymell (1935-- ) Bargains The people covering their faces from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: Bargains Free Fall When the bearded man on the screen from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: Free Fall Lessons from Houdini You practice disappearing from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: Lessons from Houdini But preserving the childlikeness, the great problem, I think, for every writer as they get older, but perhaps especially for people who volunteer to put themselves in the front line in the way that you and I have done and articulate all the time every day our ideas about poetry, about poetry's merits and values and all these things, is that the saying of it invades the quiet, and in a crucial sense, unthinking bit of our minds, which is so crucially the place that the poems originate in. The whole business of getting older is about becoming, among other things, is about becoming more worldy wise, more expressive about the things that happens to us. That's not good for writing, becuase it distorts the balance between the known and the unknown, the sayable and the difficult to say in our make-up. from Andrew Motion: The Guardian: Andrew Motion and Michael Rosen on children's poetry Last month over 150,000 people were using it in a regular way--by which I mean not just people logging on thinking it was something to do with poultry--they really meant to be there. This new fangled thing the web has established two very beautiful ancient truths about poetry--one is that people like listening to it and reading it, and the other is that a poem has as much to do with the sound it makes as it does with what the words mean on the page. from Andrew Motion: BBC News: Last words of a Laureate: Motion bows out Only a certain precision and delicacy in the diction, and the occasional slight swelling of tension at line-endings, distinguish the poem from prose – but do so securely. Truth to memory of the repeated, unvarying event is the only 'effect' the poem reaches for, preparing in this way for the quietly visionary close and the sense of reality altered for ever. Here, it is only the 'big green metal grass-basket' that declares itself 'By Royal Appointment'. The Mower from Andrew Motion: The Times Literary Supplement: The Mower Andrew Motion's 'Recession' poem: Poor Alistair Darling's new budget from Telegraph: Poet Laureate Andrew Motion laments burden of recession in new poem In sight and sound, the poem is plotted to perfection. With the precision of Hitchcock, Tennyson lets us see the eagle from every angle. We start with a close up of the "crooked hands," pan up to the sun blazing above us, take in a 360 degree tracking shot of the sky, and then gaze down at the sea below us. We return to the eagle (perhaps zooming in on his watchful eye) and then, in a blur of feathers, he disappears. Alliteration and rhyme help us to taste the scene on our tongue. from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: A Reading of 'The Eagle' by Lord Alfred Tennyson Sir Arthur's name appears to be concocted from King Arthur and a convenient rhyme with Hellvellyn, yet it has a strange ring of truth to it. Like Eleanor Rigby's, his name is so evocative it's hard to believe no such person ever existed. His grave rests in a secluded spot "by the side of a spring" on "the breast of Helvellyn"--a mountain in the Lake District in the North West of England. Nature, often so vengeful in the Coleridge's work, assumes a comforting maternal aspect. from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: A Reading of "The Knight's Tomb" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Although it has often been dismissed as dated and jingoistic, I find it far more profound than it may initially appear. Its Latin title translates as "the torch of life," and it describes a light of inspiration that burns in every age. The poem begins with a cricket match on the green of Newbolt's old school, Clifton College in Bristol, England. However, we could be watching any cricket match in any park across the world, or, for that matter, any game of baseball. from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: A Reading of 'Vitae Lampada' by Henry Newbolt I began to notice it around Easter, the season of resurrection, the season of regeneration. The daffodils were peeking up out of the seemingly still-frozen ground. The magnolias had come into bloom, their spoon-size petals opening wide. And I started feeling . . . better. Not "recovered," the way one feels after a flu. But . . . better. I suppose this isn't a surprise. I simply conform to the clinical norm: Studies show many mourners begin to feel less depressed around four months after the death. from Meghan O'Rourke: Slate: The Long Goodbye: What Is It Like To Recover From Grief? also Meghan O'Rourke: Slate: The Long Goodbye: Watching Someone You Love Accept Death [W.S.] Merwin was among those who, in the 60s, began to loosen the screws of formal verse. He grew into his mature style in the later 60s and 70s, when he moved toward the curiously impersonal voice and "open" style that have become his trademark. As he began to write his own kind of free verse, he layered image upon bright image, allowing the lines to hang in space, largely without punctuation, without rhymes, as in the final stanza of "Thanks," where he writes with a kind of graceful urgency: from Jay Parini: The Guardian: Why WS Merwin deserves his second Pulitzer prize In his "asylum" poems, [Ivor] Gurney sometimes hurls himself into a desperate argument with God and fate, but not here. Here, like his remembered self, he quietly shoulders the final disappointment. The farmer has other business to attend to, and the poet is driven on by his clamouring private demons. There is no self-pity or recrimination. The end of the poem is wonderfully matter-of-fact, with the precise measurement of the field ("fifteen acres") a peculiarly haunting detail, almost an acknowledgement that something apparently trifling has imprinted itself on the poet's mind, intense and unforgettable. The Mangel-Bury from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poem of the week: The Mangel-Bury by Ivor Gurney These issues of death and grief are approached with humanism and humility. From "The Visit": "The once-master of my universe/walks with an unsteady gait/My own mortality/slaps me in the face." [Belinda] Subraman's helplessness in the face of her father's death is totally frank, yet, in "River of Life," she answers the question of how she deals with dying in her job as a nurse, saying, "I am filled with joy/for a painless passing/surrounded by love./I feel sadness/for the breaking/of an intimate bond." from Donna Snyder: El Paso Times: Hospice nurse-poet uniquely qualified to write about death As the American Poet Jimmy Santiago Baca (Born in 1952) puts it: 'When you work at a poem long enough--if you just do that one poem and don't worry about anything else--that the imagery of one verse line exudes a sparkling fountain of energy that fills your heart". By making us stop for a movement, poetry gives us an opportunity to think about ourselves as human beings on this planet and what we mean to each other. Sublime poetry gives us revelations, flashes which illuminate those things which are mysterious to us. Victor Hernandez Cruz is a Puerto Rican poet, who was born in 1949 in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico. from V Sundaram: News Today: Why do we need to read great poems?--I Bill Moyers declares in his introduction 'Poets live the lives all of us live with one big difference. They have the power--the power of the word--to create a world of thoughts and emotions others can share. We only have to learn to listen . . . Democracy needs her poets, in all their diversity because our hope for survival is in recognizing the reality of one another's lives'. The setting in which Bill Moyers has interviewed great American Poets like W S Merwin, Claribel Alergria, James A Autry, James Santiago Baca, Coleman Barks, Robert Bly, Lucille Clifton, William Stratford, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Rita Dove, Carolyn Forche, Donald Hall, Joy Harjo, Adrienne Rich, Stanley Kunitz, Li-Young Lee, Linda McCarriston, Octavio Paz etc. is the Dodge Poetry Festival in New Jersy's Historic Village of Waterloo. Bill Moyers says that during the 1994 Dodge Poetry Festival he came upon thousands of poetry lovers, from a score of States, having the best time of their lives. from V Sundaram: News Today: Why do we need to read great poems?--II "Yes," I said to myself. "That's exactly what is on display here." And so I made my way back, reveling in the wondrous all and nothing Bonnard had managed to capture. In the meantime, my mind had automatically made one of those associative leaps it does so well on its own: It reminded me of something I had read on the bus trip to Manhattan. It was in Josef Pieper's The Silence of St. Thomas: " . . . it is part of the very nature of things that their knowability cannot be exhausted by any finite intelligence . . . the very element which makes them capable of being known must necessarily be at the same time the reason why things are unfathomable." from Frank Wilson: When Falls the Coliseum: That's What He Said: The wondrous all and nothing Jerusalem By Khalil from CounterPunch: Poets' Basement: Khalil and Mankh By Glynn Tiller He sees scars on the face of the lake from Express-News: Poetry: 'From the Pit to the Bells' This week's Poetry Corner features the work of Jim Powell, the author of "It Was Fever That Made The World" and the translator of "The Poetry Of Sappho" and "Catullan Revenants." He was awarded a CCLM Younger Poets Prize in 1986 and a MacArthur Fellowship (1993-1998), and was the Sherry Poet and Lecturer at the University of Chicago in 2005. He is a fourth generation native and lifelong resident of the San Francisco Bay Area. see poems . . . Vernacular from Good Times Weekly: Poetry Corner: Belly, Bass, Again, Wood, Smaller The Fox and the Girl by Gillian Clarke from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: The Fox and the Girl by Gillian Clarke Forgotten Fountain by W. S. Merwin from The New Yorker: Poetry: Forgotten Fountain Treatment by Ange Mlinko from The New Yorker: Poetry: Treatment [by Melissa Madenski] My friend no longer from The Oregonian: Poetry: Daily News By Carl Phillips Now the leaves rush, greening, back. Back now, the leaves push greenward. --Some such song, or from PBS: Newshour: Weekly Poem: 'To Drown in Honey' [by Patricia Jabre] Still Morning I I stir in bed from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Still Morning This poem by Scotland's National Poet takes us directly into that experience of clarity that comes when scaffolding is taken down, a feeling city dwellers will identify with. The Edwin Morgan Archive at the Scottish Poetry Library formally opens on 27 April, Morgan's birthday. It contains over 2,500 items, including A Book of Lives (Carcanet, £9.95) from which this poem is taken. The scaffolding has gone. The sky is there! from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week "Eurydice: 1887" the flax spinners of Laren, spinning in the old tradition, as painted by Max Liebermann By Avery Slater from Slate: "Eurydice: 1887" --By Avery Slater When friends' infant daughter, Natalie Joy Hertel-Voisine, died suddenly, I knew that a child's death is beyond words. I wished I were a painter or a composer when, in response to my "Let me know what I can do," my devastated friends immediately responded, "Write a poem." I knew that for her elegy to mean anything to them, it would have to speak to the powerful physicality of a parent's relationship with a young child and, in particular, the goofy, sweet physicality of Natalie's own spirit. I thought of the extraordinary notes by Stéphane Mallarmé that make up "A Tomb for Anatole," which Paul Auster had assembled and translated. Mallarmé's son Anatole, sickly throughout his brief life, died at 8 years old, and the fragments Auster assembled were discontinuous and truncated notes toward a text the French poet had never written. from The Washington Post: Poet's Choice: Susan Wheeler on 'Song for the Spirit of Natalie Going' Poetic Obituaries [Deborah Digges] oldest son, Charles, said he "strongly questions" whether his mother's death was a suicide. She often exercised at the stadium, no one saw exactly what happened and she left no note, he said. "Given that much of her work is a celebration of life and nature, I feel the circumstances of her death are inconclusive," he said. Digges, who lived in Amherst, joined the English faculty at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., in 1986 after publishing her first collection of poems, "Vesper Sparrows." It won New York University's Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize for best first book of poetry. from Los Angeles Times: Deborah Digges, distinguished poet and memoirist, dies at 59 [June Fulbrook] travelled widely in Europe and was one of the founder members of the Henley Poetry Group. With a continuing passion for education, she attended classes at Henley College. She had a particular interest in local history, even in her seventies. She celebrated her 75th birthday by attending the WOMAD festival in Reading. from Henley on Thames: Teacher with zest for life Like his legendary Guru, [Kalamandalam] Kesavan too has displayed his prowess in vocal music, in the composition of new Kathakali plays, histrionics and even in poetry. He has, many a time, handled the role of vocalist in Kathakali performances. Of the umpteen new plays he has composed over a long period of time, 'Ekalavyacharitam' and 'Sohrab and Rustom' have won the admiration of viewers for their theatrical panache and thematic novelty. Among his poems, 'Karkotakan' has some memorable lines. from Kerala online: Kalamandalam Kesavan passes away [Mary Lucille Streacker Miller] taught in Vigo, Parke, and Greene Counties. She was a chapter member of the Terre Haute Writers Club and the Poets Study Club which were active in the 1940's. Her hobby was writing. Her poetry, stories and children's plays often appeared in children's magazines in her working years. from The Tribune Star: Mary Lucille Streacker Miller Sources said that family members of Bantu [Mwaura], who was also a renowned thespian, director, poet and storyteller, had reported him missing on Friday. Bantu was a respected poet whose work in English, Kiswahili and Gikuyu has been published in several journals. from The Standard: Human rights activist Bantu Mwaura found dead also Global Voices Online: The News of Bantu Mwaura's death shocks Kenyan bloggers [Franklin Rosemont] published several volumes of poetry: he is a relatively minor poet, exceeded by the work of Penelope and other figures in the Chicago group, but Rosemont, laudably, never saw his writing about surrealism as being separable from his practice as a surrealist. He insisted, even as older groups were struggling, that surrealism remained a viable revolutionary mode of poetic life. Less well-known than the anthology of Breton's writings is its introduction, published separately in Britain as André Breton and the First Principles of Surrealism. In this he insisted that surrealism is not "a mere literary or artistic school," but "an unrelenting revolt against a civilisation that reduces all human aspirations to market values, religious impostures, universal boredom and misery." from World Socialist Web Site: Franklin Rosemont (1943-2009): Leading US surrealist and anthologist of André Breton dies Gayle Ronan Sims, 61, of Merion, who lyrically described the lives of the famous, the infamous and the ordinary as an Inquirer obituary writer, died April 16 of multiple organ failure following a double lung transplant. This weekend, at its convention in Charlotte, N.C., the Society of Professional Obituary Writers (SPOW) plans to announce the creation of a special award named for Ms. Sims, to be given only occasionally to writers of the highest dedication and distinction. from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Inquirer obituary writer Gayle Ronan Sims dies Among these, Shahriar had the greatest influence on the teenager Bijan [Taraqqi (or Bijan Taraghi)], and inspired him to write his first collection of poems "The Song of Fall". Taraqqi's other poetry collections are "A Window to Garden", "Fire Remaining from the Caravan" and "Behind the Walls of Memories". Taraqqi began his collaboration with Radio Iran in 1954, and many of the great composers of that time, among them Ruhollah Khaleqi, Parviz Yahaqi, Ali Tajvidi, and Homayun Khorram, asked him to write lyrics for their compositions. from Payvand Iran News: Iranian songwriter Bijan Taraqqi dies at 80 [Deborah Thompson] took great pleasure in cooking for family and friends, writing poetry, and listening to classic country music. from Foster's Daily Democrat: Deborah Thompson 4/21/2009
News at Eleven
"My whole existence has been the merest Romance," [Edgar Allan] Poe wrote, the year before his death, "in the sense of the most utter unworldliness." This is Byronic bunk. Poe's life was tragic, but he was about as unworldly as a bale of cotton. Poe's world was Andrew Jackson's America, a world of banking collapse, financial panic, and grinding depression that had a particularly devastating effect on the publishing industry, where Poe sought a perch. from The New Yorker: The Humbug Two generations ago every educated person could have continued from memory any of these lines from The Rubaiyat: "Awake, for Morning in the Bowl of Night . . . A Book of Verses underneath the Bough . . . The Moving Finger Writes; and, having writ . . . Myself when young did eagerly frequent . . . Ah, Moon of my Delight that know'st no wane . . ." But something has gone wrong. [Edward] FitzGerald, far from being recognised as a leading poet, has been disregarded by the literary establishment. There could be several reasons for this. Has the poem proved too popular for its own good? Is it perhaps lightweight doggerel quickly seen through by experts? Does its origin (in translation) invalidate it as an independent work? Is The Rubaiyat affected by the way poetry is taught nowadays, with a ban on learning anything by heart? from Telegraph: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edward FitzGerald More recently, [August] Kleinzahler whacked the admired poet-critic Adam Kirsch, calling him and his contemporary William Logan "wannabe poets, reactionary buffoons", among other insults (in the Paris Review, in 2007). Logan shrugs it off lightheartedly: "He has every right to be vituperative. If I were August, I'd burst a gasket two or three times a day." Others have wondered whether Kleinzahler, whose father worked in real estate and sent his son to the elite Horace Mann school in New York, assumes a bad-boy mask shaped for the authentically pock-marked features of Charles Bukowski or Gregory Corso. To Kirsch, the "roughneck persona" appears to be "the product of a persistent American neurosis about poetry and art being unmasculine. To compensate for their presumed loss of masculine status, certain writers make alcohol and fighting part of their literary persona." from The Guardian: Writing in the realm of fire: August Kleinzahler The head of a Saudi literary forum received death threats for hosting a woman poet in one of the forum's seminars, local press reported Saturday. Ibrahim al-Hamid, head of al-Jawf Literary Forum, hosted poet Halima Mozafar and two other male poets in the two separate halls in the Prince Abdulellah cultural center. The seminar was attended by al-Jawf Police Chief and a considerable number of security officers, the Saudi newspaper al-Watan reported Sunday. from Al Arabiya News: Saudi literary forum head receives death threats The Slovakian PEN Centre, part of PEN International, criticised Slovakian magazine Dotyky "from an ethical and moral point of view" for publishing [Radovan] Karadzic's poetry earlier this month without any editorial commentary about his background while he is "indicted for war crimes in connection with the 1990s Bosnian conflict, including crimes against humanity". Dotyky magazine is published by the Slovakian Writers Association. Its editor Boris Brendza is a member of the Slovakian PEN centre, which said in an official statement that it would punish him for publishing the poems by withdrawing his membership for one year. from The Guardian: PEN condemns publication of Karadzic poems from The Guardian: Books Blog: Should PEN condemn Radovan Karadzic's poetry? [W. S. Merwin] said that he always looked to be taken by surprise--"surprise that it happens at all and surprise that it works and that it's complete." After writing several new poems, he continued, "I suddenly think there are quite a few poems and I want to see if they have any relation to each other and begin to see what order they might be in and see if they really come to a collection. I wouldn't make any rules about how it happens any more than you can do about what makes a birdsong complete or anything else." from The New York Times: Paper Cuts: Pleased by His Pulitzer, Surprised by Poetry also Peninsula Daily News: Port Townsend publisher's poet wins Pulitzer Prize In an effort to make these classic dramas user-friendly, [Anne] Carson serves up colloquialisms. She has the Chorus tell Agamemnon, "I wrote you off as a loose cannon." Her Orestes calls Hermione "the little bitch," and the Phrygian slave quips, "Helen screwed Greece as well as Troy." Some of Carson's rhyming comes off as cheesy: Helen is "that wife of strife," Paris is "the bridegroom of doom." In my opinion, the street-talk gamble seldom pays off: Greek tragedy achieves many of its effects through its majestic diction. from The Afterword: An Oresteia, translated by Anne Carson In one exercise, he plagiarized a translation of Lucretius by Sully Prudhomme, but considerably improved it in the process. In another, he fashioned a subtly erotic evocation of the graceful young carpenter of Nazareth from a bland poem whose author, says Guyaux, has not been identified. (It was a Vendean poet called Eugène Mordret, who had published "Le Christ à la scie" in the prestigious Revue contemporaine.) The "scholâ" changed, but Rimbaud continued to write poems as though they were exercises. Even the notorious "Sonnet du trou du cul" was a cunning pastiche of another poet, a technically irreproachable example of the traditional blason enumerating a lover's charms. from The Times Literary Supplement: Rimbaud in the Pléiade Today, [C.P.] Cavafy is well known for writing what might initially seem like two kinds of poems. Beginning in 1911, he wrote poems depicting homosexual desire with an unsensational directness: "They were slow getting dressed, they were sorry to cover/the beauty of their supple nudity/which harmonized so well with the comeliness of their faces." At the same time, he wrote poems about Greek history--not the well-known glories of the classical era but the long decline that finally concluded with the collapse of the Byzantine Empire: "He wasn't completely wrong, poor old Gemistus/(let Lord Andronicus and the patriarch suspect him if they like),/in wanting us, telling us to become pagan once again." from The New York Times: A Poet's Progress I love how [James] Merrill comes face-to-face with his mixed feelings about the changing city, with its simultaneous destruction and creation. He seems as upset about what's been torn down as he is at not being able to remember what was there in the first place. It's a quintessential response to the evolving cityscape--and a helpful thing to recall when your favorite little store turns into another bank branch. Now for the art. If Merrill freezes the frame in the destruction phase of construction, Brooklyn-based photographer Stanley Greenberg--whose photographs are shown here--arrives at the scene a few months later, after a building has become recognizable, but long before its completion. from WNYC: Cityscapes: Art & Poetry The assembly of poets this week--during National Poetry Week--marks the fourth biennial gathering of state poets and writers laureate, of which there are 40. Each serves as his or her state's official ambassador for the written word. Lisa Starr, Rhode Island's poet laureate, organized this year's Poetry for Hope meeting in collaboration with regional tourism offices, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities. from The Providence Journal: Well-versed poets visit schools in R.I. Great Regulars These latter began life as parodies of the vogue for François Villon, but very quickly transformed into something more topical and anarchic. Take these lines from "Ballade of a Stoic": "My mother's favourite chapel is in flames;/My father's best cashier is going blind;/My niece is mad; my nephew's name is James;/My aunt is murdered--and I do not mind." WS Gilbert is a strong influence here, but there's also Lewis Carroll. from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: Collected Poetry, Part II Written from the 1960s through to the 90s, [Larissa] Miller's poems are remarkable for their directness and apparent simplicity: "Everything happened that could/and which it was impossible to believe". And, at times, her extraordinary lyrics seem to conjure the experience of a whole generation--"They waited days, they waited years/for the right weather, for freedom,/they waited, believing in miracles"--the poem building to its bleak finale: "and while we were waiting for heaven/the damp earth awaited us". from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: Guests of Eternity [John Giorno's] poetry in the 1960s interwove to great effect extracts from adverts, newspaper articles, gay pornography and reports from the Vietnam war. In "Freaked", for example, a description of a soldier dying from phosphorous burns--"'Somebody shoot me!' he yelled uncontrollably"--is interspersed with extracts from a geometry textbook and with language drawn from the most trivial sources: "May we have/your name/for our mailing list?" from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: Subduing Demons in America In spite of his capacious intellect, James [Wright] and his wife Annie were like the two ponies in his poem, shy and awkward, preferring to roam the sun-filled fields in nearby Kennett Square, Pa., with me and my husband and two other friends. My son, then 7 years old, sat on a stump while James sang him the Swedish Chef's song from Sesame Street. from Fleda Brown: Traverse City Record-Eagle: On Poetry: Immediacy of experience Moonlight, plantlife, water: Alice Oswald has made these subjects her own, and she turns to them again in two superb new collections, both published this month. The first, A Sleepwalk on the Severn, is a meditation on the five stages of moonrise: "new moon, half moon, full moon, no moon, moon reborn". In the second, Weeds and Wild Flowers, Oswald has collaborated with the artist Jessica Greenman to produce an outlandish field guide, in which bright-coloured plates are replaced by queerly beautiful etchings and scrupulous descriptions exchanged for visionary poems from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: In brilliant moonlight Turns out Jo [McSweeney] knew more than she believed she knew, at least as far as Tim Appelo, in an article he crafted for the online edition of the American Poetry Foundation, "Desire to Burn," views it, the self-same one wherein he muses upon the notion that [Kurt] Cobain may well have died "because he misread a poem." from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: "Here we are now, entertain us" [by Lenore Langs] Song for the Third Millennium from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: In celebration of planetary poetry month 15 [by Irving Layton] Creation from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: In celebration of planetary poetry month 16 Poetry by itself may not change the world; poets are powerless to prevent the massacres in Darfur, end child abuse or cure multiple sclerosis. But poetry can and does mightily affect individual consciences, individual perceptions, individual memories. Collectively, who knows what sort of butterfly effect that has? Indeed, in refutation of Auden, I'd argue that the very fact of that poem alone, that it is read, studied and anthologised, that being moved, he moves others, is itself sufficient refutation. [--Martin Levin] from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: In celebration of planetary poetry month 17 [by rob mclennan] 1. is for ______ from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: In celebration of planetary poetry month 18 The speaker's claims, at first, seem paradoxical, when he says, "I am displeased with the company of friends," but the reason for this displeasure is that to his friends his "bad qualities appear to be good." They even mistakenly accept his "faults as virtues." The speaker does not want to be told lies about his qualities; he realizes that if he is not aware of his faults, he will not be able to correct them. Therefore, he wants to know, "where is the bold and quick enemy/To make me aware of my defects?" from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Persian Poet Moslih Eddin Saadi The speaker seems to think he is flattering the woman by telling her she has the same sexual desire that he does, and he also flatters his own ego by telling her that not only does she have the sexual desire, she also has him and his desire. In his mind, she is thrice blessed: she has her own "will," she has his "will," and she has him, who is "Will," itself. from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 135 It is "for love" that he becomes a suitor in order to "fulfil" the desires of the lady--her lust, and his own lustful desires. He is, of course, rationalizing his lust again, but this time focusing more squarely on her own lust than his. He is somewhat an innocent who is merely willing to accompany the lady on her journey to lust fulfillment, he playfully suggests. from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 136 The speaker continues musing through questions: he wonders why his heart can be captured by a woman who behaves as a common prostitute. He wonders why he allows a tempting face, which he knows to be "foul," to lure him as if it were a model of "fair truth." He is, of course, again answering his own questions even as he asks them. The riddle of human behavior always shows that that behavior moves like a pendulum between good and evil. from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 137 Again because of the discipline of concentration, the speaker's soul can "constantly hum" the name of the Divine Beloved in all activities that engage the speaker, "waking, eating, working, dreaming, sleeping,/Serving, meditating, chanting, divinely loving." No matter what he does or where he goes, his mind remains focused one-pointedly on the Divine. from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Yogananda's God! God! God! Poets who self-publish trace their lineage to--well, to William Blake, at least--but more recently to Allen Ginsberg, who paid to have something like 25 early copies of Howl printed on a mimeograph machine. My collection, titled Obsolete, is like a book in some ways, but it's also kind of a zine. These things aren't always easy to define--mainly because they don't have to be. Poetry is especially well-suited to these kinds of projects. Amanda Laughtland, another zine friend of mine, lives in Seattle, where she makes her poetry journal, Teeny Tiny, from one sheet of paper, cunningly folded into eighths (www.teenytiny.org). from Katie Haegele: The Philadelphia Inquirer: How a local poet publishes, from zines to the Internet It surpassed any other wave of crackdowns and intimidations in our history. Thousands were jailed, including journalists and filmmakers. Under the mood of paranoia and patriotism advanced by the "progressive" President Wilson, vigilantes, many sanctioned by the U.S. Justice Department, harassed, beat and in a few cases, killed those suspected of disloyalty. Many others were illegally deported, including radicals Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, the man who tried to kill Henry Clay Frick during the Homestead steel turmoil in 1892. from Bob Hoover: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Three books cover attack on individual rights in America during early to mid-20th century Fighting with rocks and clubs made unsightly marks on men and left putrefying sores. They squatted around the smoking fires, put ashes on their wounds, exchanged myths, and felt a terrible ache for love and affection. They longed to see women exhibit an avid interest in them for their own merits and not have to go marauding against enemy tribes and stand toe to toe with their warriors and hack at them and bash their brains out and eviscerate and decapitate them and drag their women away screaming and sobbing. A lousy way of dating, especially as you, the winner, have plenty of hack marks on you and are not so interested in sex now, due to loss of blood. from Garrison Keillor: The Norman Transcript: The poet gets the girl After the Ice Storm My Son Does Not Come Home by Diane Lockward Hours after he stormed out, wind knocks from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: After the Ice Storm My Son Does Not Come Home by Diane Lockward Blueberry by Diane Lockward Deep-blue hue of the body, silvery bloom from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Blueberry by Diane Lockward Field Guide by Billy Collins No one I ask knows the name of the flower from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Field Guide by Billy Collins Life Story by Tennessee Williams After you've been to bed together for the first time, from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Life Story by Tennessee Williams Return I by Elisabeth Stevens When I am traveling, from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Return I by Elisabeth Stevens To This May by W. S. Merwin They know so much more now about from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: To This May by W. S. Merwin Treason by James Tate The man that was following me looked like a government from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Treason by James Tate The fact that Taha Muhammad Ali is a gifted poet and a very appealing personality--[Adina] Hoffman writes of his ability to charm Arab, Jewish, and American audiences alike--makes him easy for the reader to care about. But it does not make his fate inherently more significant than those of hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians who suffered the same injuries. Here, in fact, lies the main trouble with Hoffman's book: she is writing about one man, but she is really interested in what she calls, with polemical exaggeration, "the Palestinian century." Thus she devotes much of the first half of the book to recounting the Jewish-Arab clashes of the 1930s and 1940s, culminating in Israel's War of Independence. By focusing on Saffuriyya and its people, Hoffman makes the human costs of this conflict come to life, and she clearly means to confront American and Jewish readers with the facts of Palestinian suffering. But this Saffuriya-centric approach also allows Hoffman to neglect the larger history of the war and the period, and to portray Israel as the aggressor in what was in fact a war in defense of its very existence. Her retrospective indignation is not the best lens through which to view this complex history. from Adam Kirsch: Nextbook: The Reader: A Life Between Lines We've published this column about American life for over four years, and we have finally found a poem about one of the great American pastimes, bowling. "The Big Lebowski" caught bowling on film, and this poem by Regan Huff of Georgia captures it in words. Occurrence on Washburn Avenue from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 212 "I think very few people can manage free verse," wrote the poet W. H. Auden. "You need an infallible ear, like D. H. Lawrence, to determine where the lines should end." How true. Knowing where to end the line is, in fact, one of the most crucial elements for writing poetry without the use of an established metrical pattern. Formal verse has its own inherent challenges, of course, but when you are writing in the common metrical form of iambic pentameter, for example, you at least know where to stop the line. from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: On Poetry: Managing free verse can be difficult without control "I was looking after her one rainy Cambridge summer when she was pushing 100," Ms. [Ruth] Padel said of her grandmother. "She had lost her short-term memory, but her long-term memory was very keen. She politely asked me what I was working on, which at the time was my Ph.D. thesis at Oxford, about images of emotion in Greek poetry. 'That's very interesting,' she said, and then started talking about Darwin's book about the expression of emotion in man and animals. Five minutes later she'd ask me again and she'd have a completely different association with Darwin. It was like talking to a highly intelligent drunken ghost. She talked a lot about Charles and Emma and how it gave them both such pain that his ideas were leading him away from belief, and I thought, 'My God, I'd like to write that story someday.' " from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Darwin's Descendant, on Origin of Poetry One of the biggest growth areas in higher education these days is creative writing. In 1975, there were 52 degree-granting writing programs in American colleges and universities, and in 2004 there were more than 300. In his new book, "The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing," Mark McGurl, an associate professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, suggests that for this to happen in an era when American education has generally become more practical and vocational is not quite as odd as it seems. from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: The Ponzi Workshop The good poem kisses me and promises a second read and another date. I look for work that is memorable- the after taste that lingers or the nakedness that seduces again. Visual beauty is important. Control on the page. Order and clarity.I also want to inhale a degree of freshness. The good poem surprises me like magic or a one night affair. I want to take something away with me -even if it's just a fragrance. from E. Ethelbert Miller: First Person Plural: An Interview with E. Ethelbert Miller I Imagine One Day I Will Join Them I was walking down the street this morning from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: I Imagine One Day I Will Join Them You've Really Got A Hold On Me I'm trying to write this in falsetto. from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: You've Really Got A Hold On Me On the other hand, perhaps it would be better to be a GP. That way, I might feel more in the swim of ordinary life. If I could see, in the eyes of my patients, the gleam of gratitude I've often felt for my doctor when he's sorted me out, I'd be able to lie down at the end of the day feeling, in Keats's phrase, I'd chosen a path which allowed me to "[do] the world some good". from Andrew Motion: The Guardian: My other life also Andrew Motion: The Guardian: Andrew Motion on being poet laureate Two of Burma's leading comedians, known for their edgy political humor and barbs aimed at the military regime, say they've found a way around a ban that keeps them from performing in public. "We perform for tourists at home," Lu Maw, of the Moustache Brothers comedy team, said in an interview. "Last night there were nine tourists, and the day before there were five. They will come again today as well." from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Comedians Work Around Ban Compounded or compacted terms [used by Gerard Manley Hopkins] like "darksome" and "lionlimb" are expressive in a way that seems the opposite of [Edward] Thomas' "unable to rejoice" and "others could not": the power of explosive compression, forcing meanings together, rather than the unfolding power of directness. Hyper-concentrated phrases, strong words and accents forced together, convey struggle and tension, as of mighty industrial springs and chemical reactions barely contained. from Robert Pinsky: Slate: The Calm and the Restless It is a stiller poem than many, but somehow more frightening, in its sullen concentration, than those that relish forceful brutal movement, in which bodies enjoy at least some level of release. The Language School drops into the pit of numbness and silence. The reader knows that the trap has been dug long before the prisoner reached the courtroom. Tim Liardet's next full collection, The Storm House, is due from Carcanet in 2011. Grateful thanks to Seren Books, and to the author for permission to reproduce The Language School. The Language School from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poem of the week: The Language School This area offers renowned journals such as the American Poetry Review and a whole raft of vibrant Web sites for poetry and literature, such as the Fox Chase Review and the Wild River Review. Besides its series of readings by the world-famous, the Free Library also offers Monday Poets, a reading series/open-mike (where all comers can read), on the first Monday of every month from October to April. It's in the Skyline Room of the Central Library, which, says coordinator Amy Thatcher, "has got to have the best view of Center City" in town. For next year, she's looking for good poets from all over the area. from John Timpane: Philadelpia Inquirer: Philly poetry scene offers variety of venues for verse This one goes out to all the physicists I've known over the years. It's a response, in a way, to the sort of college class named something like "Physics for Poets," as if poetry were the furthest thing from a hard science like physics you could possibly imagine. from Andrew Varnon: Flash & Yearn: Poetry for Physicists So blogging, oddly enough, has reinforced my natural tendency toward economy in writing. I say "oddly" because there is nothing about writing online that would seem to make this necessary. You can keep writing away indefinitely in the hope that people will keep scrolling indefinitely. I suspect that is a vain hope. There seems to me--and I know I am not alone in this--a natural limit to what can be comfortably read at one sitting on a screen. from Frank Wilson: When Falls the Coliseum: That's What He Said: What blogging can teach a writer The Future By Peter Buknatski a reason to keep breathing, from CounterPunch: Poets' Basement: Moser, McTeer and Buknatski By Nora M. Olivares - In these tough economic times from Express-News: Poetry: 'Twitter' Canada by Henrietta Goodman When he rows out to collect the geese, from Guernica: Poetry: Canada A pause for poetry: 'Hitchcock' By B.H. Fairchild Before the lights went out, looking back from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: A pause for poetry: 'Hitchcock' Let the Record Show by Dora Malech from The New Yorker: Poetry: Let the Record Show A Modern Greek Folk Song by Anonymous from The New Yorker: Poetry: A Modern Greek Folk Song Sketch for a Novel by Franz Wright from The New Yorker: Poetry: Sketch for a Novel [Nathalie Handal:] They're like, "Oh, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania." And I'm like, "No, Palestine." They're like, "Oh, Pakistan." This next poem is called "Blue Hours." And it really reflects all countries and all the languages that are now part of me, but never forgetting where I'm from. "Blue Hours." from PBS: Newshour: Well-traveled Poet Finds Consistency in Words This poem by Diana Hendry from her new collection, Late Love & Other Whodunits (Peterloo/Mariscat, £7.95), perfectly captures that strange feeling of bereftness that descends upon us when a loved one goes away, even if just for a few days. You, Going Away from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week T'ao Ch'ien (365-427) was the first major Chinese poet to speak in a direct personal voice about the full range of his immediate experience. This is the voice that came to typify the Chinese tradition, and it is why classical Chinese poetry has felt so contemporary to American readers. T'ao lived in relative poverty on a quiet farm, but when this poem was written he was living in a nearby village where he encountered the kind of noise that modern urban-dwellers take for granted. For Chinese poets, wine was a way of easing the urge to extract meaning from the world, and what interests me most about this drinking poem is the ending, with its skepticism about language, and all the possibility that offers. from The Washington Post: Poet's Choice by David Hinton: 'Drinking Wine' by T'ao Ch'ien Poetic Obituaries [Iqbal Bano] was considered a specialist in singing the works of Faiz Ahmed Faiz. She has given such musical relevance to the ghazals of Faiz, that Bano and Faiz are apparently inseparable in popular imagination. Because of Faiz's imprisonment and hatred of the Pakistani Government towards him, Bano roused a strong crowd of 50,000 people in Lahore by singing his passionate Urdu nazm, "Hum Dekhenge." Iqbal Bano can sing Persian ghazals with the same fluency as Urdu. She is always applauded in Iran and Afghanistan for her Persian ghazals. Her recitals stick to the old classical style that lays more stress on the raag purity. Basically a ghazal singer, Iqbal Bano has also sung many memorable Pakistani film songs. from Associated Press of Pakistan: Subcontinent's great singer Iqbal Bano passes away [Betty] Barta was a lifelong poet. She delighted in gardening--growing large vegetable gardens on the farm and in her later years, perfectly manicured flower gardens, family members said. Drawing and embroidering were additional pastimes, as well as caring for her beloved cat, Chester. from The Gothenburg Times: Betty Barta, 77 A loving mother, she [Lorraine Bridget Boudry] was also an accomplished musician, playing the electric steel guitar, piano, organ and omni chord. She was a published poet and creative writer. Lorraine also loved to dance. She was known for her "Y" dance. from Fond du Lac Reporter: Lorraine Bridget Boudry Mrs. [Barbara Anne] Byrnes remained at Wheaton Central and its successor school, Wheaton Warrenville South High School, until retiring in 2003. When not teaching, Mrs. Byrnes enjoyed writing poems, with several being published in the College of DuPage's Prairie Light magazine and others in an academic publication, English Journal. from Chicago Tribune: Barbara Anne Byrnes, 1943-2009: English teacher at Wheaton high schools [Deborah Digges] won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize from New York University for her first book, "Vesper Sparrows," and the Kingsley Tufts Prize for her 1995 book "Rough Music." She grew up in Missouri. Other books by Digges include the memoir "Fugitive Spring," published by Knopf in 1989, and "The Stardust Lounge," a volume described as stories about a boy's adolescence, published by Random House in 2000. "Deborah was a person who always saw the world in terms of creativity," said Lee Edelman, longtime colleague at Tufts University, where Digges taught. "Anyone reading her work will encounter a mind that is fascinated with the particularities of the world." from Amherst Bulletin: Admirers remember Deborah Digges, gifted poet "She told me that it was her greatest dream to read at the Muse,'" said [Amber Coverdale] Sumrall of [Kathleen Flowers]. Soon enough, she was reading regularly at the event. And, in 2007, Flowers was awarded the first ever Chapbook Award at the "Muse," a prize that allowed her to publish a chapbook of her poetry. "Call it Gladness" was published last year. "She had a real sense of the sacred," said Joe Stroud, one of the most prominent names in the Santa Cruz poetry community, who taught Flowers at Cabrillo College and in many workshops over the years. "Her work was celebratory, introspective, very much engaged in the natural world." from Santa Cruz Sentinel: Kathleen Flowers, 1964-2009: A teacher of passion, a poet at heart Nonetheless, everyone who surrounded [Mikhail] Gendelev recognized him from the start as a "great poet." In 1982, Gendelev served as a military doctor in the First Lebanon War. It was his last experience working as a doctor and resulted in a cycle of poems called "War in the Garden," which put him on the literary map. His poems continued to discuss war for the rest of his life, with lines such as "I would so like to walk out from our speech/walk out in torment and not in human/rather/to take a fiery tire neath my tongue/a pill for entering the asthma of Gaza ever-burning" (taken from "To Arabic Speech," 2004, translated by Boris Dralyuk and David Stromberg). from The Jerusalem Post: 'I'm a great poet, but if you ask nicely I'll work as a doctor' [Edward David Gompf] was a lifetime member of the National Library of Poetry, International Poetry Hall of Fame; some poems were set to music, and published in London and other countries overseas. He started writing poetry when his two year old son was killed in an auto accident. He won many awards and trophies and even wrote two Volumes of "Soul Food From The Farm: poetry, and a short book "Positive Side of 75", a book of his life. He also belonged to the American Legion and N.R.A. from The Marion Star: Edward David Gompf [June W. MacKnight] was a lover of art and music, and enjoyed theatrical presentations and the symphony. An artistic individual with a gift for drawing and painting, she also wrote extensively as a young woman, and particularly enjoyed writing poetry. from The Free Lance-Star: June W. MacKnight [Katie Myers] said she cherished the memory of Ryan putting together a play set for her children. LeRoy Myers also read a Valentine's Day poem Ryan wrote to his fiancée, Brandy Kinna. from The Herald-Mail: Hundreds attend service for Ryan Myers [Nancy K. Piencikowski] enjoyed traveling that included international destinations. Her interests included deer hunting, writing poetry, and meeting the girls for dinner. from Appleton Post-Crescent: Piencikowski, Nancy K. Mr. [Franklin] Rosemont pursued multiple avenues of expression. He was a surrealist poet whose collections include "Lamps Hurled at the Stunning Algebra of Ants" and "The Apple of the Automatic Zebra's Eye." He also drew and created assemblage art, notably a piece titled "Entrance to the Non-Euclidean Zoo" which was shown at Old Town's Gallery Bugs Bunny in a notable 1968 surrealist show. Capable of "the most incredibly vituperative manifestoes," he produced leaflets that he passed out at demonstrations or on the steps of museums. from Chicago Tribune: Franklin Rosemont, 1943-2009: Surrealist poet, labor historian also CounterPunch: The Surreal Life of Franklin Rosemont [Elizabeth Hickman Smith] was a member of the LDS Church and served in the primary, young womens and relief society and was also a singing mother. She belong to the Rebekah Lodge #17. She loved to write poetry and had one of her poems published in the Relief Society Magazine. She also had a talent for drawing pictures. from The Spectrum: Erma Elizabeth Hickman Smith A guitarist, [Melvyn L.] Smith sang with a barbershop quartet, The Round Town Sound. He sailed, built furniture and gardened--the last hobby earning him a certificate of achievement from the National Wildlife Federation. For his wife, he wrote poetry; for his children, "Uncle Wormy" tales that emphasized "the miracle of fun and success through feelings." from Houston Chronicle: Sugar Land doctor Melvyn Smith 4/14/2009
News at Eleven
Word of the problem started spreading across blogs and Twitter on Sunday after Mark R. Probst, the author of "The Filly," a gay western romance for young adults, posted on his blog that several gay romances, including his, had lost their sales rankings on Amazon. Mr. Probst e-mailed Amazon and got a reply that said the company was excluding " 'adult' material from appearing in some searches and best-seller lists." from The New York Times: Amazon Says Error Removed Listings also InternetRetailer.com: Amazon takes heat for dropping rankings of many gay-themed books also The Guardian: 'Gay writing' falls foul of Amazon sales ranking system An Egyptian court has banned a liberal literature journal for running a poem two years ago likening God to a villager who feeds ducks and milks cows, an Egyptian paper reported Wednesday. The Tuesday ruling by Egypt's administrative court came after a lawyer filed a lawsuit against the journal Ibdaa, or Creativity for publishing a poem titled "On the Balcony of Leila Murad" by a well-known poet Helmi Salem, according to the Al-Ahram daily. The court said the poem carries "insulting expressions" about God. from newser: Egyptian journal banned over 'blasphemous' poem Novelist and critic John Updike also was a poet. His newly published final collection, Endpoint and Other Poems (Knopf, $25), was completed just weeks before his death Jan. 27 at age 76. It deals with aging, death and golf, as well as flying to Florida. Flying to Florida from USA Today: Our final measure of Updike in 'Endpoint and Other Poems' also The SanFrancisco Chronicle: 'Endpoint: And Other Poems,' by John Updike It wasn't until age 14, when she joined a slam poetry group in New York City, that she really began to develop a passion for the craft. "That was the first time I caught the bug," said Acevedo, who performed on Saturday night at an Organization of Latin American Students event. She will perform in the 2009 Capitol Funk Showcase on April 26. "It's not a class, it's not a grade," she said. "At the end of the day, you write because you have something to say." "Language Lessons" by Elizabeth Acevedo from The GW Hatchet: Poetic Passion "Those lines caused a great ruckus," [Frederick] Seidel told me during dinner, ruefully. "I got lots of extraordinarily unpleasant mail." At first, it would seem easy to understand why. In a poem that features an old man having sex with a very young woman, so frank a statement as "A naked woman my age is just a total nightmare" could seem uncomplicatedly cruel, could seem merely cruel. And yet, aging is a nightmare, totally so, a nightmare from which each of us--when we become, inevitably, "the train wreck" the poet has by poem's end--would only too gladly awake. from The New York Times: Laureate of the Louche In his complex fidelity to these sources, [Andrew] Motion has steadily demonstrated that the central part of his work is elegy. This is not wholly a matter of choice (as a young man he wrote of his mother's death after she spent several years in a coma following an accident), but you need considerable powers to make the individual story take on the contours of the general fate. With The Cinder Path, at whose centre lies the death of his father three years ago, Motion arrives at a new authority, a sober clarity of method in the expression of love for a man with a "slightly lifted hand/either showing I should stay,/or pushing me away". from The Sunday Times: The Cinder Path by Andrew Motion To [Axel] Kaun he [Samuel Beckett] describes language as a veil that the modern writer needs to tear apart if he wants to reach what lies beyond, even if what lies beyond may only be silence and nothingness. In this respect writers have lagged behind painters and musicians (he points to Beethoven and the silences in his scores). Gertrude Stein, with her minimalist verbal style, has the right idea, whereas Joyce is moving in quite the wrong direction, toward "an apotheosis of the word." Though Beckett does not explain to Kaun why French should be a better vehicle than English for the "literature of the non-word" that he looks forward to, he identifies " offizielles Englisch," formal or cultivated English, as the greatest obstacle to his ambitions. A year later he has begun to leave English behind, composing his new poems in French. from The New York Review of Books: The Making of Samuel Beckett [Thom Gunn] wrote dream-vision poems, where he imagined himself as a prisoner, a centaur, an explorer, the last man on Earth; he wrote, more often, clear poems about places and people, set in hospitals, on city streets, on airplanes ("Flying Above California") or in discos, portraying car mechanics, skateboarders, adoptive gay fathers, cautious, affectionate cats. We can find most of them in this spare selection: We can find, too, the tough, manly motorcyclists, "in gleaming jackets trophied with the dust," who reappear now and then throughout the career. from The SanFrancisco Chronicle: 'Thom Gunn: Selected Poems' "Look here," Gertrude Stein begins briskly, on the opening track of American Writers, when an anonymous interviewer suggests that her libretto for the opera Four Saints in Three Acts is beyond comprehension, "being intelligible is not what it seems. . . . Everybody has their own English and it is only a matter of anybody getting used to an English, anybody's English, and then it's all right. . . .You mean by understanding that you can talk about it in the way that you have a habit of talking, putting it in other words, but I mean by understanding, enjoyment. If you enjoy it, you understand it, and lots of people have enjoyed it, so lots of people have understood it." Whew! from The Smithsonian: Voices from Literature's Past The lack of money in poetry can also make the creation of it seem undemocratic--profits from publications are small, and while poets are paid for live readings, it can be the case that only those who can afford to write without payment, or for very little, produce work. Yet our young poets continue to write, and despite the hardships of cutting it as a poet, the future looks bright for the form. Quizzing ten of Britain's most successful young poets, it is clear they would be writing no matter what: money or no money, fame or no fame. Why? from The Times: The Facebook poets: ten rising stars of British poetry It's every writer's nightmare. You've invested years of blood, sweat and, in my case, HB pencils in the British Library to construct your tale of deep passion and pent-up desire and now--at last--your central characters are edging towards the bedroom. At which point you start to suffer from writer's droop. How are you going to encapsulate the earth-moving wonder, the erotic arousal and tender protectiveness of the longed-for moment? Imagine this and multiply it by ten when the main character of your novel, The Lady and The Poet, happens to be John Donne, perhaps the greatest erotic love poet in the English language, whose poetry glitters with clever seductiveness, carnal longing and a subversive delight in sex? from Telegraph: Why is sex so hard to put into words? Great Regulars The Gerard Manly Hopkins epigraph that begins "Moon Sighting" is filled with startling music and turns of phrase that are echoed in [Melissa Gurley] Bancks' poem, in which a mother reads to a son who is just learning to speak. The child speaks the word "moon," but there is the moon in the book, the moon in the sky and the moon in his mouth. The sudden grasp of the interconnectedness becomes a transcendent moment for the boy with the "moon" being lifted out of the "bone house" of language, and the boy being lifted out of his own body--Hopkins' "bone house." from Walter Bargen: The Post-Dispatch: Mom helps boyreach for the moon By library, by bookshelf or by bookstore, I call on you to get yourself a book of poems and commit to one poem a week at night just before you drop off. If youth is wasted on the young, let's not waste poetry on the young, too. Reading poetry is a non-electronic, Y1K pastime that'll transport you to that childhood pleasure--transport you, that is, in the full universe of your adult experience--where you can revel in the great questions of humanity such Ogden Nash's why the "Lord in His wisdom made the fly/And then forgot to tell us why." Stately Verse from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: Childhood's bedtime ritual of poetry reading overdue for adulthood revival [Kay] Ryan says, "Poems are transmissions from the depths of whoever wrote them to the depths of the reader. To a greater extent than with any other kind of reading, the reader of a poem is making that poem, is inhabiting those words in the most personal sort of way. That doesn't mean that you read a poem and make it whatever you want it to be, but that it's operating so deeply in you, that it is the most special kind of reading." Turtle from Fleda Brown: Traverse City Record-Eagle: On Poetry: Poem for poetry month Astute readers, such as Michael W. Higgins, president of Fredericton's St. Thomas University, who has long championed [Margaret] Avison as a true poet who celebrates God and doesn't compromise her art in so doing, will, of course, immediately catch the reference to Mark 8:24 (King James Version) with Avison's pointed quotation marks hugging the phrase "like trees walking," a simile both timely and timeless, given Higgins's abiding reverence for Avison's sapientially attuned verse, which he describes as drawing heavily upon "the Christian narrative, a detailed familiarity with the Scriptures and an enlightened appreciation of doctrine." from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: On Other Words: Avison's awesome afterlife This crab-wise approach gets thrown in the pot along with a genuine sorrow at circumstance and weariness with the intellect's downgraded predicament; what's boiling over in this début is a humane love, and a love for humane acts, appropriate to our culturally frightened Present. Some of [A.J.] Levin's poems have a cubist's mania about them that can only lend itself to fresh insight." Pythagoras from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: On Other Words: In celebration of planetary poetry month 9 K. I. Press, a Winnipeg writer originally from northern Alberta, became a mother for the first time last month. Her most recent work, Types of Canadian Women (Gaspereau, 2006), was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther and ReLit Awards for Poetry. She teaches creative writing and literature at Red River College in Winnipeg. Zachariah Wells: "Press is delightfully irreverent, her writing laced with irony and wit . . . Press handles tone beautifully." Angles from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: On Other Words: On Other Words: In celebration of planetary poetry month 10 Easter's Poet (April 12): Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) LVIII from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: On Other Words: On Other Words: In celebration of planetary poetry month 11 (He even writes reviews of [imaginary] films in verse!) [David] McKelvie brings his interest and study of mathematics to his poetry to create a remarkable amalgamation between the two. His use of rhyme--sometimes peculiar, sometimes startling, often sublime--imbues his work with that edge of difference and, in so doing, almost demands it be read aloud so its primeval purely sonic enchantment can be fully appreciated." Lunar Self-Portrait from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: On Other Words: On Other Words: In celebration of planetary poetry month 12 [Nancy-Gay Rotstein's] most recent collection, 2005's This Horizon and Beyond: Poems Selected and New, contains "an emotionally charged cycle of poems that, written over a 20-year period and purposely held for publication as a unit, captures the changing stages in a family's life. Throughout, Rotstein's work is suffused with an awareness of time, the realisation that we are living in history and a sensibility that goes beyond the surface of what is being described." (from the publisher) Eyeing the Shark: Homage to Irving Layton at Maimonides Geriatric Centre from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: On Other Words: On Other Words: In celebration of planetary poetry month 13 [Vince Gotera]: Tough question. So many great poets! Even within only the last 100 years, my favorite poet changes from day to day. Today, it's Yusef Komunyakaa, my poetry teacher. He changed my life with one sentence: "Why don't you write about being Filipino?" Then there's Molly Peacock, a consummate artist in rime, meter, and "inherited" forms like the sonnet. Also Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Wilfred Owen, Carlos Bulosan, Lucille Clifton, Garrett Hongo, Denise Duhamel, Marilyn Hacker. All these poets work hard to say something crucial--something important for everyone--in the best possible way. I hope I do that as well. from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Interview with Vince Gotera Emily Dickinson's speaker remains somewhat hazy about what that special light looks like, but she has made it abundantly clear how it makes her feel, and that aspect of the poem endears it to children. The experience of this light affects her so deeply that she cannot describe its physical appearance but only the strange influence it exerts upon her mind and heart. from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Poems for Children He queries, isn't it enough that you torment me? must you also cause my Muse, who is "my sweet'st friend" to suffer? The speaker is probably finding his musings invaded with thoughts of the mistress, and because of his intense infatuation with her, he feels his creations are suffering. The complaint resembles the one wherein he would chide his Muse for abandoning him, implying that he could not write without her, yet he continued to make poems about that very topic. from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 133 In sonnet 134, the speaker again is addressing the dark lady, while lamenting her control over his other self. This time the "other self" is not the spiritual persona, not the Muse, but quite specifically he refers to his male member as "he." It is quite a common vulgar traditional part of coarse conversation, and both male and females engage it, often even giving names to their private parts. from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 134 It might be therapeutic for you, Kyle, but I don't think it would be therapeutic for you and your girlfriend as a couple, especially if you have an argument in limerick form. You will probably rhyme an unflattering term with your girlfriend's name, as she will rhyme an unflattering term with yours: "There once was a jerk named Kyle/ Who smelled like a garbage pile/ grotesque bile/ a dead fish from the Nile." And as the original purpose of rhyme was to enable memorization, you both will have difficulty letting the argument blow over. from Kristen Hoggatt: The Smart Set: Ask a Poet: There Once Was a Question From Nantucket . . . [The American Academy of Arts and Letters] is announcing Monday that nine artists have been voted in (openings occur when a member dies). Besides [Richard] Price and [T. Coraghessan] Boyle, inductees include poets Jorie Graham and Yusef Komunyakaa, artist Judy Pfaff, architect Tod Williams and composers Stephen Hartke, Frederic Rzewski and Augusta Read Thomas. Upon the official ceremony in May, they will enter a 250-member club that has included Henry Adams, Mark Twain and Mark Rothko, and currently features Edward Albee, Philip Glass and Toni Morrison. from Hillel Italie: Associated Press: Richard Price, T.C. Boyle elected to arts academy Banking Rules by James Tate I was standing in line at the bank and from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Banking Rules by James Tate Before the Trip by Jim Harrison When old people travel, it's for relief from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Before the Trip by Jim Harrison Feeding the New Calf by Joyce Sutphen The torso comes out slick and black, from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Feeding the New Calf by Joyce Sutphen Keep America Beautiful by Kenneth Hart Somebody hung out his red, white and blue from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Keep America Beautiful by Kenneth Hart Man Eating by Jane Kenyon The man at the table across from mine from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Man Eating by Jane Kenyon A Prayer for the Self by John Berryman Who am I worthless that You spent such pains from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: A Prayer for the Self by John Berryman The Titanic by June Robertson Beisch So this is how it feels, the deck tilting, from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Titanic by June Robertson Beisch The huge risk that [Frederick] Seidel takes is to trust the reader to be able to sense the double meaning in that declaration. Seidel is "hopeless" in the sense of incorrigible, a provocateur who, like Baudelaire, dares us to behold evil and horror and find it compelling. Yet he also allows us to see, again like Baudelaire, that only a genuinely hopeless man would find his own image so accurately reflected in scenes of evil and horror. If sin means being cut off--from other people, from God, from oneself--then no poet has found more effective symbols of the sinner's plight than Seidel, in a poem like "Contents Under Pressure": from Adam Kirsch: Nextbook: The Reader: Mr. Delicious Context is everything: by now we've guessed that she has been killed by a rejected lover, and here he is, cheering the new grad like everyone else, though murder is in his smile, and the hand that raises a toast will take a life. Not every poem is as riveting as this. Some are merely documentary; a certain amount of fact is necessary to push the story forward. In fact, there is little here that stands alone. When I put the book down and walked away, as I had to do more than once, I found myself thinking not of individual poems, as is usually the case, but of an overall effect, a sense of horror mixed with anger and disbelief. from David Kirby: The New York Times: My Daughter's Murder Some of you are so accustomed to flying that you no longer sit by the windows. But I'd guess that at one time you gazed down, after dark, and looked at the lights below you with innocent wonder. This poem by Anne Marie Macari of New Jersey perfectly captures the gauziness of those lights as well as the loneliness that often accompanies travel. From the Plane from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 211 [Andrew] Motion has perfected the art of excavating his own poems from others' prose. For example, [Harry] Patch records in his memoir how, when asked by a schoolmaster to define a curve, he wrote that it was "a straight line with a bend in it", and took a rap over the knuckles for his wit. Motion borrows the idea, with equal wit, to introduce another Patch anecdote, about scrumping: "A curve is a straight line caught bending/and this one runs under the kitchen window/where the bright eyes of your mum and dad/might flash any minute and find you down/on all fours, stomach hard to the ground,/slinking along a furrow between the potatoes/and dead set on a prospect of rich pickings . . ." from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: From the ground up But I also love going back in time, into the opening pages of anthologies, where the poems are still songs (and possibly dances) and no one dwells obsessively on the fact that the daffodils will be wasting away so soon. Since it's spring (cold, grey, sunless, but still spring) as I write, here are two poems for the price of one to brighten your post-Easter week: the 13th-century Cuckoo Song, "Sumer is icumen in", and the 19th-century "Rondeau" by Leigh Hunt. Compare and contrast, or, if that's too much chocolate, savour separately. from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poems of the week: spring songs Enough people, I think, have experienced this "sense sublime/Of something far more deeply interfused" that "rolls through all things"--to borrow from Wordsworth--that it ought not to be dismissed out of hand because it is not subject to scientific verification. Truth can be arrived at as much by introspection as by dissection. If you quietly observe something--a still life, a junco hopping about in your back yard, a potted geranium atop a crumbling wall--what you observe ceases after a time to be entirely "out there." from Frank Wilson: When Falls the Coliseum: That's What He Said: Death and the importance of imagination by Grace Schulman Celebration Seeing, in April, hostas unfurl like arias, from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: Celebration by Andrew Hudgins Under the Maypole Ribbons, pearl and purple, from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: Under the Maypole by Maxine Kumin Winter's Tale Even from my study at the back from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: Winter's Tale Roots by Gary Corseri "People must have wings," he says, from CounterPunch: Poets' Basement: Corseri and Corzett In 1883, [Joseph] Pulitzer bought the magazine The New York World, according to the Pulizer Web site. The purchase turned out to be the right one, as "sensationalized features" on "public and private corruption" caused the magazine's audience to steadily grow. Within a decade from his purchase, circulation for the paper climbed to 600,000 copies, making it the largest in the country, and making Pulitzer even wealthier than he had been. from findingDulcinea: Happy Birthday: Happy Birthday, Joseph Pulitzer, Founder of the Pulitzer Prizes Narcissus Once I was half flower, half self, from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Narcissus by Alice Oswald Lunch Poem for F.S. by Jonathan Galassi from The New Yorker: Poetry: Lunch Poem for F.S. Moth by Katha Pollitt from The New Yorker: Poetry: Moth Newfane by D. Nurkse from The New Yorker: Poetry: Newfane By C.P. Cavafy, translated and read by Daniel Medelsohn Half past twelve. The time has quickly passed from PBS: Newshour: Weekly Poem: 'Since Nine--' [by Chip Walker] Get Naked It's time to return to spears and loincloths from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Get Naked The inextricable link between our suffering, our sense of celebration and our hopes for healing is concisely and mysteriously captured in this poem by Andrew Philip. It is from his first full collection, The Ambulance Box (Salt, 12.99). The Ambulance Box from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week: Andrew Philip "After the Service, the Widow Considers the Etymology of the Word Salary" By J. Allyn Rosser from Slate: "After the Service, the Widow Considers the Etymology of the Word Salary" --By J. Allyn Rosser William Edmondson, a Nashville stone carver (c. 1874-1951), was the first black artist to have a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in 1937. The son of freed slaves, he said he carved by divine inspiration. By the end of his life, over 300 of his remarkable stone carvings of humans, animals and mythological and Biblical figures were in public museums and private collections. This poem is one of 23 that I wrote about his life and work. from The Washington Post: Poet's Choice: Poet's Choice: Angel with a Pocketbook By Elizabeth Spires Poetic Obituaries [Deborah] Digges's writings garnered a wealth of honors, including the Pushcart Prize, and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She taught graduate writing classes at New York, Boston, and Columbia universities. Her first book of poetry, "Vesper Sparrows" won the 1987 Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize, awarded to the author of the best first book published in the past two years. She also wrote a memoir, "The Stardust Lounge: Stories from a Boy's Adolescence," about her son Stephen's teenage years. A forthcoming book of poems, "Dance of the Seven Veils" was scheduled to be published this fall, the university said. She was also working on a historical novel based on the life of Sarah Winchester. from The Boston Globe: Tufts mourns acclaimed poet, professor also The Republican: Poet, Tufts professor Deborah Digges of Amherst an apparent suicide at UMass stadium also The Tufts Daily: Deborah Digges, poet and Tufts English professor, dies at 59 also One Poet's Notes: Remembering Deborah Digges Indeed, some of his [Nicholas Hughes'] colleagues in the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, worked with him for years without knowing he was the son of two major 20th-century poets. All that changed on March 16. It was sunny, the temperature hovering just below zero, and Mr. Hughes seemed in good spirits. For years he had battled depression, as his mother had, and on a recent trip to New Zealand he had even talked of suicide. But he had endured other low periods, leaning on close friends, getting medical help and managing his illness with exercise and regular winter migrations to New Zealand's sunnier climes. At his cabin that afternoon, he drank tea with his girlfriend, Christine M. Hunter. from The New York Times: A New Chapter of Grief in Plath-Hughes Legacy [B.M. Idinabba] had also taken active part in pro- Kannada movement and integration of Kasargod into Karnataka along with Kayyara Kinhanna Rai. He also held the post of Chairman of the Kannada Development Authority which was his last political appointment in 2005. The soft natured Idinabba had participated in the freedom struggle and was also a dedicated Kannada activist. Throughout his life, he fought for development of Kannada language and literature and he had published a collection of poems. from Mangalorean: Freedom figher Idinabba passes away [Suma Paz'] most acclaimed works include "La incomparable Suma Paz" (1960), "Guitarra, dimelo tu" (1961), "Una mujer con alma de guitarra" (1970), "Llenar de coplas el campo" (1972), "Para el que mira sin ver" (1982), "Homenaje a Atahualpa Yupanqui" (1994) and "Parte de mi alma" (2005), her last release. Paz, who was recognized in 2006 with the Leading Personality in Buenos Aires Culture award, also published three books of poetry. from Latin American Herald Tribune: Argentine Folk Singer Suma Paz Dies Writer of over 50 published works, Dr [Vishnu] Prabhakaran had written novels, plays and story collections in his lifetime. A unique characteristic of his works is that it had elements of patriotism, nationalism and messages of social upliftment. Dr Prabhakar was awarded Padma Bhushan and the Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel Ardhanarishvara (The Androgynous God or Shiva). He had also won lot of acclaim for his biography ''Awara Maseeha''. from Top News: Noted writer Vishnu Prabhakar passes away The author [Mario Rivero] burst onto the Colombian literary scene in 1966 with "Poemas Urbanas" (Urban Poems), a title covering the most ordinary everyday experiences he used to spark the country's urban poetry trend that was just in its beginnings. This volume of verse was followed by another 13 volumes, including two anthologies and a long interview, which Rivero published in the course of his literary career right up to his final work, "Balada de la Gran Señora" (Ballad of the Great Lady), in 2004. from Latin American Herald Tribune: Colombian Poet Mario Rivero Passes Away Franklin Rosemont, celebrated poet, artist, historian, street speaker, and surrealist activist, died Sunday, April 12 in Chicago. He was 65 years old. With his partner and comrade, Penelope Rosemont, and lifelong friend Paul Garon, he co-founded the Chicago Surrealist Group, an enduring and adventuresome collection of characters that would make the city a center for the reemergence of that movement of artistic and political revolt. Over the course of the following four decades, Franklin and his Chicago comrades produced a body of work, of declarations, manifestos, poetry, collage, hidden histories, and other interventions that has, without doubt, inspired an entirely new generation of revolution in the service of the marvelous. from libcom.org: Franklin Rosemont 1943-2009 In the late 80s [Ali Bin] Ali Sabra was appointed as a cultural attaché in Yemen's embassy in Jordan where he also supervised the Yemeni information center in Amman. Ali Sabrah had founded al-Misbah 'Lantern' magazine. He also wrote and published several books and poetry collections. Among them were Yemen's revolution and its historical roots, towards a unified Arab ideology, the Arab issue and the International Zionism, Yemen the Mother Homeland and Blood and Olives Branches. Sabrah also published two lyrical books entitled Love and War Poems. He also wrote some other books that are underway to be published. from Yemen Observer: Ali Bin Ali Sabrah poet of love and war It is difficult to calculate the impact of [Eve Kosofsky] Sedgwick's scholarship, in part because its legacy is still in the making, but also because she worked at a skew to so many fields of inquiry. Feminism, queer theory, psychoanalysis and literary, legal and disability studies--Sedgwick complicated and upended them all, sometimes in ways that infuriated more anodyne scholars, but always in ways that pushed established parameters. In one of her more audacious insights, Sedgwick proposed two ways of understanding homosexuality: a "minoritizing view" in which there is "a distinct population of persons who 'really are' gay," and a "universalizing view" in which sexual desire is unpredictable and fluid, in which "apparently heterosexual persons. . .are strongly marked by same-sex influences." from The Nation: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, 1950-2009 Mari Trini, who was born in Caravaca de la Cruz, Murcia, on July 12, 1947, was a highly popular singer in the 1970s and '80s who came out with 25 albums, some of them big hits like "Escuchame" (Listen to Me) that included the songs "Yo No Soy Esa" (I'm Not That One) and "Una Estrella en Mi Jardin" (A Star in My Garden). In 2005 she made a double album of her greatest hits plus a video and was honored by the General Authors and Editors Society in recognition of her extensive artistic career. Since last year the singer lived on the outskirts of the city of Murcia readying what was meant to be her farewell concert as well as a book of poems, according to her official Web site. from Latin American Herald Tribune: Spanish Singer Mari Trini Dies Derek [Weiler] graduated from the University of Waterloo with Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in English Literature, and from Centennial College in Toronto with a Certificate in Magazine and Book Publishing. He was the editor of Quill & Quire, the magazine of the Canadian book trade, and wrote about books for such publications as the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, Driven and Chatelaine. from Quill & Quire: Derek Weiler, 1968-2009 also That Shakespeherian Rag: R.I.P. Derek Weiler also The Globe and Mail: Farewell, Derek Weiler [Peter Wild's] text persuades other writers to pen higher. Historical prose crafted by a master wordsmith goes down deliciously; even dry facts linger on the tongue. On writing, my client mused, "as the writer you're the guide, and it's best to assume that your readers are pretty ignorant about where they are going. Therefore, you need to lead them by the hand, as if you're giving a tour of a garden." from Las Vegas Sun: Poet left behind a legacy of loving words 4/07/2009
News at Eleven
I had clearly pushed the right button--not an easy feat with [Philip] Larkin--and he glowed visibly. [John] Betjeman, he said, was his favourite poet. "He is also the greatest living English poet together with T. S. Eliot. But Eliot is too obscure while Betjeman communicates directly with the general reader." I was particularly struck by Larkin's loathing of work, including, I suspected, his job as a librarian, although he carefully did not specify this. We discussed his career and much of what he told me I included in my profile. He said that on going down from Oxford he could have taught or gone into the Civil Service. from The Times Literary Supplement: Larkin's first interview [Samuel Beckett] writes, with great difficulty and doubt, difficult and doubtful poems. He alternates between self-laceration and cockiness. He is profoundly alienated, not least because he inhabits a world of rejection slips, indefinite longings, extreme aesthetic sensitivity and (in the words of a friend) "passionate nihilism." He is moody. A flâneur as well as a great hill-walker, he is given to "St. Germainizing" and to the company, actual or potential, of Sartre and Djuna Barnes and Kandinsky. His creativity is a source of torment because, although he is a genius, as yet he lacks the wherewithal to bring his vocation to satisfactory fruition. He is, in short, waiting. from The New York Times: I'll Go On I will say that the book's cover completely freaked out my five-year-old--not because of the striking picture of [William] Edmondson, but because of the title! He doesn't want to worry about the prospect of God addressing him directly, and so he insisted I keep the book out of sight. And while I've done that, I'm half-inclined to teach him a poem [Elizabeth] Spires has cobbled out of Edmondson's interviews: "It's wonderful when God/gives you something./You've got it for good,/and yet you ain't got it./You got to do it and work for it." from Bookslut: I Heard God Talking to Me: William Edmondson and His Stone Carvings by Elizabeth Spires In that spirit, why not read aloud the following lines: you can hear water cooped up in moss and moving slowly uphill through lean-to trees where every day the sun gets twisted and shut with the weak sound of the wind rubbing one indolent twig upon another Sound is fundamental to [Alice] Oswald's poetry, though never, she hopes, at the cost of sense. Negative reviews trouble her, especially if they question her meaning. "I hate not managing to speak clearly," she says, as agitated as she gets during our al fresco conversation. "I really hate it. I get a feeling of claustrophobia--like I'm locked in my own head--if what I've said hasn't reached someone." from The Independent: Tales from the riverbank: Nature poet Alice Oswald on her own turf [Michael Donaghy] is one of those writers whose flights of fancy have a knack of surprising not just his readers but himself. "'My father's sudden death has shocked us all'/Even me, and I've just made it up," he writes in "The Excuse". A basic mistake in approaching Donaghy's work would be to assume its emotional core was at odds with its frequent leg-pulling and cod-scholarly tangents. What is undeniable, though, is that his game-playing has a darker edge than may at first appear. A typical Donaghy strategy is the unveiling of layers of narration within narration. from The Guardian: Between the flash and the report Goya's apocalyptic images of the war between Spain and Napoleonic France, the subject of another poem later in the volume, dispel any hope of a new human era after the events of Blake's prophesy. As [Louis] Simpson puts it, in a different context, "It seems that finally/life is real, not a joke." The context of these lines, in a poem set in a physical rehabilitation center, differs by being personal rather than political. from Bookslut: Struggling Times by Louis Simpson The poems in this book remind me of songs, not just because they're short and sonnet-like, although they are, but because they're sorrowful and tuneful and colloquial like American songs. (The one they remind me of most often is "Shenandoah," with its mixture of traditional homesickness and moving on--"I long to hear you," but "I'm bound away.") Often the poems are not only musical but also about music: the music of Little Richard or Etta James or just the everyday human music that hums along down here on earth while things are falling apart for the "grand architect of the universe." Sometimes Wright evokes music by taking his titles from songs, "On the Trail of the Lonesome Pine," "No Direction Home," Well Get Up Rounder, Let a Working Man Lay Down." In "Music for Midsummer's Eve," time is an "untuned harmonium/That Muzaks our nights and days." from Bookslut: Sestets by Charles Wright But the best example of condescending praise has to be Ezra Pound's, who wrote to his friend Harriet Monroe, editor of Poetry magazine in Chicago: 'I think you may as well give this poor devil a show. . . .He has something in him, horribly rough but then "Stepney, East". . . . We ought to have a real burglar . . . ma che!!!' And yet if anyone might have been expected to understand [Isaac] Rosenberg by 1915, when these words were written, it was Pound, or his fellow innovator T.S. Eliot, with whom Rosenberg has sometimes been compared. For Rosenberg was a Modernist before his time, something of an exception among First World War poets, and not only with regard to his technique. from The Wall Street Journal: 'Isaac Rosenberg: The Making of a Great War Poet' I came to love his [Wallace Stevens'] literalness, his taste for letters and signs; his turning the poem into its own object (blurring of the distinction between object and subject); his sense of the magnetic attraction between word and word, between meaning and means. When I first read him I was dazzled by his audacities. Who ever ended a poem with a sentence like "The the."? That's how "The Man on the Dump" ends: "Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the." My god, in my teens and early twenties, I couldn't stop re-reading that ending! from Hartford Advocate: Wallace Stevens For the rest of us, the key to memorizing a poem painlessly is to do it incrementally, in tiny bits. I knock a couple of new lines into my head each morning before breakfast, hooking them onto what I've already got. At the moment, I'm 22 lines into Tennyson's "Ulysses," with 48 lines to go. It will take me about a month to learn the whole thing at this leisurely pace, but in the end I'll be the possessor of a nice big piece of poetical real estate, one that I will always be able to revisit and roam about in. The process of memorizing a poem is fairly mechanical at first. from The New York Times: Got Poetry? Teachers have attacked politicians' meddling in the national curriculum and the censorship of English literature, warning against the schools secretary, Ed Balls, winning the power to dictate what pupils read and learn. Delegates at the annual conference of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) voted to raise the issue of censorship with Balls following the banning of Carol Ann Duffy's poem Education for Leisure, which refers to knife crime, from an AQA exam board anthology last year after "extreme pressure" from a group of MPs. from The Guardian: Censorship row over Carol Ann Duffy poem dropped from syllabus Great Regulars What I like seems to go through two phases--an initial fondness which may go no further, but, if it does, I suddenly find myself utterly stricken. In neither phase am I capable of explaining my enthusiasm. I have just moved to phase two with Geoffrey Hill. It happened when I was killing time between events at the Oxford Literary Festival. from Bryan Appleyard: Thought Experiments: Geoffrey Hill--the Shiver Together we guide the rams into a holding pen, where we divide them up and then take them in a trailer to their allowed paddocks. It takes all day and, at the end of it all, I tell [Graham] Pickles, truthfully, that it's been the most relaxing day of my life. He grins. He talks about being out on the quads with Bill Royal, manager of this land for 30 years and wearer of some of the biggest hats I have ever seen. "Sometimes we just look at each other and ask, 'Is there any place you'd rather be?' The answer's no." from Bryan Appleyard: The Sunday Times: From outback to beach in Australia In 1998, he won the prestigious Toronto's Harbourfront Festival Prize for his contributions to Canadian letters and to emerging writers. Awarded the Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award for his book, Tearing Into A Summer Day, Gervais was featured in the 2004 film, Heart of a Poet, made by Maureen Judge for Bravo TV. Robert Hilles: "[Gervais] is a smart genuine poet we are all wiser for having read." 9by Marty Gervais] The Angel at My Bedside For Stéphane from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: On Other Words: In celebration of planetary poetry month 2 This is poetry linked firmly to the invisible labouring of a raw faith, which has grown out of body and mind. The vision here is one aesthetically grounded in the world, a world that in turn is replenished by these poems, by [Emily McGiffin's] beautifully cadenced work. After a Journey from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: On Other Words: In celebration of planetary poetry month 3 Inviting comparison with Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), the Zen monk who revitalised haiku, [Leonard] Cohen elects to translate hai (amusement) and ku (sentence) literally--emphasising the associative while permitting differentiation without exclusion. Here, too, he reveals a poetic aesthetic founded upon principles of Imagism: Common speech, precise language, arresting diction and compressed imagery combine with novel approaches to form and content to elucidate the drama of quotidian existence. from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: On Other Words: In celebration of planetary poetry month 5 [Alexandra Wilder's] poetry is full of magic and myth and mysterious beauty. She had a very soft and musical voice; and, from what I've read, her readings cast an incantatory spell over the audience. Dark Pines Under Water from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: On Other Words: In celebration of planetary poetry month 6 Unlike the unidentified man who claimed that being interred in a mausoleum was the "Stateliest Possible Manner of Interment," the speaker who has a traveler's heart finds the old-fashioned earth burial more suitable to his wandering ways. Instead of resting in a cold marble facility, the speaker prefers to be "one with the dark, dark earth." But he will not rest in that earth, he plans to "follow the plough with a yokel tread." from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Lindsay's The Traveller-Heart Nevertheless, the point is made that men should not behave as penned up animals do when confronted with an enemy who would kill them. In a battle against an enemy, soldiers must stand bravely with their fellow soldiers to protect their own lives, their family, and their countrymen. This position is the one Winston Churchill was extolling by using this poem. from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Mckay's If We Must Die The speaker then declares that the negativity associated with blackness exists only in the woman's "deeds." Her physical beauty does not suffer when compared to blondes and other fair-haired woman, but her cruelty and her tyrannical behavior make her deserve the "slander" she receives. He cannot defend her ugly deeds, even if he is drawn to her natural, dark beauty. from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 131 Addressing his dark lady, the speaker again focuses on her foul disposition, as he wishes for a better attitude from her. He dramatizes her moods by comparing them to sunrise and sunset, and punning on the word "mourning." He wishes for "morning" but continues to receive "mourning" instead. from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 132 The speaker again reiterates, "Though many lives I had to wait/On mountain crags of high devotions/I sadly sang my song, my song, my song." Again, the speaker/singer/poet drives home the importance of constancy, of never giving up, of continuing to sing and chant until the Divine Singer comes to blend His melodies with those of the devotee. from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Yogananda's Divine Love Sorrows Buddhism spread to Tibet from India around fifteen hundred years ago. Although it then declined in land of its birth, we were able to preserve it in Tibet as well as helping others benefit from the teachings of the Buddha. We feel we have gone some way towards repaying India's kindness. We shall be very happy if we are able to contribute to restoring India's rich Buddhist heritage. In order to fulfil this dream, Pandit Nehru established the Sikkim Research Institute of Tibetology, Central Institute of Buddhist Studies, Leh, Ladakh, and the Central University of Tibetan Studies in Varanasi. In these places, initiatives have been taken to translate important texts, whose originals once existed in Indian languages but have since been lost, from Tibetan back into Indian languages such as Sanskrit. This significant project has been both successful and satisfying. As a token of Tibetan people's willingness to restore to India the rich culture we have preserved so far,I would like to tell you that we plan to offer the Indian nation, complete sets of the Kangyur (Tibetan translations of the Buddha's teachings), and Tengyur (Tibetan translations of commentaries by subsequent Indian masters), as well as 63 titles restored from Tibetans into Sanskrit and over 150 translated into Hindi and other languages. from Tenzin Gyatso: The Office of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama: His Holiness the Dalai Lama's Thank You India Address Choice of Diseases by Hal Sirowitz Correcting an Unbalance by Hal Sirowitz Choice of Diseases Now that I'm sick & have from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Choice of Diseases by Hal Sirowitz A Father's Pain by Larry Smith My father ignored his pain, from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: A Father's Pain by Larry Smith Have You Met Miss Jones? by Charles Simic I have. At the funeral from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Have You Met Miss Jones? by Charles Simic Honey, Can You Hear Me by James Tate Alison stared into the mirror and combed her hair. How from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Honey, Can You Hear Me by James Tate In Early Spring by Larry Smith April Prayer by Stuart Kestenbaum In Early Spring Road catkins, russet and tan, let the from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: In Early Spring by Larry Smith Lies My Mother Told Me by Elizabeth Thomas If you keep eating raw spaghetti from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Lies My Mother Told Me by Elizabeth Thomas Thoreau and the Toads by David Wagoner After the spring thaw, their voices ringing from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Thoreau and the Toads by David Wagoner My father was the manager of a store in which chairs were strategically placed for those dutiful souls waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for shoppers. Such patience is the most exhausting work there is, or so it seems at the time. This poem by Joseph O. Legaspi perfectly captures one of those scenes. At the Bridal Shop from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 210 Having lived in Mexico for almost two years, I can vouch for the veracity of [Octavio] Paz' statements. It seems the main reason Americans have trouble understanding Mexican culture is this fundamental difference in our social, religious and political histories. In his poetry as well as his essays, Paz writes about this Mexican worldview, which he seems to share in spite of his education and his liberalism, his world travels and his political work. And yet it is the personal redemption through love and eroticism that he seems to believe will transcend all barriers. from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: On Poetry: Modern Mexican writer felt love could transcend all The title echoes the Scottish poet William Dunbar's Lament for the Makers. That poem's famous refrain, "timor mortis conturbat me" ("fear of death confounds me"), turns Dunbar's grief for the lost poets with poignant candour towards himself. [Francis] Ledwidge, in the poem to his mother quoted earlier, had described himself as "this poor, bird-hearted singer of a day". It is tempting to imagine that the elegy was written in some kind of foreknowledge of the untimely silencing of his own sweet blackbird song. Lament for the Poets: 1916 from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poem of the week: Lament for the Poets: 1916 Tom Clark complicates any easy notion of the self, exploring lyric form as a vehicle that relates the myriad facets of poetic identity in language. He is one of only a few writing today who can use the lyric effectively, with flexibility and nerve. from Dale Smith: Bookslut: Marsupial Inquirer: Tom Clark and the Lyric Self It makes sense that [John] Updike, who spent his career translating everything into language, would not back away from writing about dying. It also makes sense that he would do it in poetry--no time to construct a narrative with existence so compressed. What's curious, though, is how few writers have reported back on their experience of the end of life. Janet Hobhouse was at work on her final novel "The Furies," when she died of cancer in 1991; the closing chapters chart the vagaries of "this dying business" with a fierce unwillingness to look away. Raymond Carver's poetry collection "A New Path to the Waterfall" was completed days before his death in August 1988; here's the last poem, "Late Fragment," in its entirety: from David L. Ulin: Los Angeles Times: Jacket Copy: The literature of death I think the perfect image of love is to be seen when a mother and a very young boy are together by themselves. I don't often agree with Freud, but I think the old fellor was right on the money when he said, "If a man has been his mother's undisputed darling he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in success, which not seldom brings actual success along with it." from Frank Wilson: When Falls the Coliseum: That's What He Said: Love is something we do What's Left? By Igor Gregory Kozak [Semi-inspired by Sergey Esenin] A questioning fatalism-pessimism from CounterPunch: Poets' Basement: Foley, Valentine and Kozak Paul Farley Cyan from Granta: Cyan In the second in a series showcasing important contemporary poets, Granta.com publishes a new poem by Wislawa Szymborska, the Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet. Me--a teenager? from Granta: Poem The Sod Farm by Paul Muldoon from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: The Sod Farm by Paul Muldoon For example: Katherine Hepburn has just been stood up for a date on the Great Barrier Reef. What is she feeling, thinking? What time of day is it? How did she get here? Is she hot or cold? Tired or exhilarated? It's entirely up to you. You might find the exercise takes you into a creative dead end--try a different combination. Feel free to choose any form you like. You don't have to rhyme, but I'd like you to think about making some beautiful collisions in the language as well as the character, place and situation you choose. from The Guardian: Poetry Workshop: Christopher James's workshop by Rafael Acevedo translated by Ricardo Alberto Maldonado Of Cannibals With these five bones, human bones, from Guernica: Poetry: Two Poems By Wayne Miller I'm wading in the pupil of my life. from The Kansas City Star: Poet's Corner: 'Walking Through the House With a Candle' The Long-Term Marriage by Spencer Reece from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Long-Term Marriage Siblings and Half Siblings by Jana Prikryl from The New Yorker: Poetry: Siblings and Half Siblings By Bob Hicok I know a woman about to lose her house. from PBS: Newshour: Weekly Poem: 'Weebles wobble but they don't fall down' [by Joe Mulqueen] Springtime I've had enough of snow. from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Springtime At the outset of The Winter Sun, an apologia for the writing life, Fanny Howe confesses, "Since early adolescence I have wanted to live the life of a poet. What this meant to me was a life outside the law; it would include disobedience and uprootedness. I would be at liberty to observe, drift, read, travel, take notes, converse with friends, and struggle with form." The outlaw poet has a long lineage, from the Beats and Rimbaud back to the troubadours, and it doesn't accommodate the vulnerabilities of womankind. from Powells: Review-A-Day: A Nameless Vocation "Bombs Rock Cairo" By Christian Wiman from Slate: "Bombs Rock Cairo" --By Christian Wiman My new collection of poetry, "Bicycles," is a book about love mostly, but also loss. Bicycles are about trust and balance, though we do fall sometimes. Falling in love can be great fun. Falling off bicycles can hurt. I said to my class that I wanted to go on "Deal or No Deal" since I have figured out what you need to do to be successful. They all said, "NO! You will embarrass yourself." My responjse was, "If the only time I am embarrassed is by this television show, I have led a charmed life!" Ecstasy is about risk. Deal! Deal or No Deal (for ENGL 4714 CRN 16937) from The Washington Post: Poet's Choice: Deal or No Deal by Nikki Giovanni Poetic Obituaries [Carol Ann Davis] loved her grandchildren dearly and enjoyed taking them shopping on Saturday mornings. Her passions were her home, gardening, writing poetry and making jewelry as well as many other crafts and hobbies. from The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead: Carol Ann Davis She was born Winifred Mary Mason on July 25 1914 at the pit village of Brierley near Cinderford. Her father, Charlie, was a coal miner who read widely, debated politics and philosophy, and learned sign language to converse with the village's lone deaf mute. Although her great-aunt's tumbledown cottage, where the Masons lived, had no gas, electricity or running water, and there was never enough to eat, young Poll (as Winifred was known in the family) shared her father's love of books. At school she was regularly beaten by the tyrannical headmaster until he noticed the compositions and poems in her exercise book and marched her into the top class. from Telegraph: Winifred Foley The blonde 24-year-old [Kirsty Grabham] was reported missing by her family after catching a taxi back to the home she shared with her husband Paul, 25, in Swansea at 4am. Her family have described her disappearance as a 'living hell'. An unnamed man had already been arrested on suspicion of murder and yesterday detectives discovered a woman's body in bushes close to the M4 near Bridgend, South Wales, 20 miles away from her home. Police have taken away the hard drive from Mrs Grabham's computer in the search for clues, as well as a notebook of poems she had written. from Daily Mail: Police find body of missing model dumped in woodland [Dan R. Griffith] married the former Suzanne Greenfield in 1994 and lived with her, her daughter Isabel Storto, and Isabel's daughter, Aurora. Dan was a kind and passionate man who believed strongly in equality for all men and women. He loved reading, with interests ranging from history to science, natural disasters and UFOs. from Kitsap Sun: Dan R. Griffith, 59 In 1974 [Tran Quang] Huy became a researcher at the Vietnamese Institute of Musicology. In 1984 he became an editor at Ho Chi Minh City Television, where, besides editing musical programs, he also produced the program "Tho ca giao hoa" (Harmony of poetry) for many years. As a composer, he was known for ballads like "Ngo vang xon xao" (Desert alley whispers), "Bong hong tang co" (A rose for the teacher), "Tinh bien" (Love of the sea), "Vuong van mua xuan" (Miss the spring), and "Mot nua mua dong" (A half of winter). from VietNamNet Bridge: Talented ballad composer passes away [Jay] Mochizuki described [Kazuo] Inafuku, whom he had known for more than 20 years, as a quiet man, deeply involved in the cultural life of Houston's Japanese-American community. He proposed creation of a Japanese drum corps, which Mochizuki later led, and helped start a Japanese poetry society. "He was just a funny guy," Norma Inafuku said. "He was quite an unassuming person. Very humble. . . . He was interested in keeping in touch with his roots." from Houston Chronicle: Inafuku, longtime journalist at Japanese-English newspaper Mumbai Noora Kaskar, a name with links to the Mumbai's underworld, passed away while taking a nap in Karachi, Pakistan, on Monday evening. Few know that he was Dawood Ibrahim's younger brother. Still fewer know that he used to write poetry, and that one of his songs made it to a movie. But in the Mumbai Police circles it was known well, that Noora was one underworld character who wrote poetry. from Express India: Dawood brother who wrote poetry passes away [Maxine L. Smith] also served as the organist at the Christian Science Church in Appleton. She was a past board member of Pastoral Counseling Center (Samaritan Counseling). She was a Girl Scout leader, taught piano lessons, and was an avid reader. She wrote poems for everyone on special occasions. from Appleton Post-Crescent: Smith, Maxine L. The poet Alexei Parshchikov has died in Cologne, age 54 (Lenta.ru, in Russian). I knew him in the 80s, when his girlfriend--or was it wife?--was Olga Sviblova and he was part of the metametaphor (????????????) group of writers and artists that included the painters Evgeni Dybsky, Igor Ganikovsky, Boris Markovnikov and Zakhar Sherman. from IZO: The poet Alexei Parshchikov has died . . . also Lenta.ru: The poet Alexei Parshchikov has died(Russian) also avmalgin: It is impossible to believe (Russian) ARCHIVES
July 2003
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