Poetry Hut Blog

Poetry News:

1. — The prose poem in California —
2. — In which I answer questions like: “How do you see lady death?” —
3. — Trying to get to the core of Dylan Thomas’ Big Apple – and see through the booze —
4. — What counts as a “personal rejection”? —
5. — “The Warrior” by Frances Richey is composed of 28 poems written by the poet to her son, Ben, a Green Beret who has served two tours of duty in Iraq. Jeffrey Brown speaks with Richey and her son about the collection and their unique perspectives on the war. [MP3] —
6. — Most of Thomas Hardy’s poems were written after his celebrated novels. But in poetry, his first love, his talent shines just as strongly —
7. — Trust your reader. Leave space for his or her imagination and knowledge. —

Poetry News:

1. — … violence in Baltimore, poetry, Buddhism, and the unexpected convergence of all these things —
2. — The institute has recently invited the world’s poets to send a maximum of three pieces with English translation to poet.peace@Gmail.com webserver in Tehran is slow be patient —
3. — Pain as an Art Form —
4. — Meanwhile, Language Poetry distinguished itself as the slowest art movement ever. It took 20 years to get off the ground. —
5. — Calgary Bestsellers Wow I’m moving to Calgary. Nashville, Calgary, same thing haha. —
6. — Hard to imagine how unremembered we all become —
7. — When a few literary journals aren’t enough —
8. — Zen poems are the party at Buddha b-day —
9. — If a child writes a poem and proudly reads it, adults may wink and ask, “Think there’sa lot of money in that?” —
10. — The Naropa University Archive Project is preserving and providing access to over 5000 hours of recordings made at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado —

You can subscribe to the Poetry Foundation/NPR podcast “Poetry Off The Shelf” RSS feed here.

This is a past podcast on Fever 103

Poetry News:

1. — Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins is so moved by a shipwreck that he starts writing again —
2. — Quiet, dear, Mummy’s writing —
3. — Pulp Fiction was a seminal film. Will Shakespeare was a seminal poet. Obviously it follows that the two should be mixed together, which is exactly what has been done at Pulp Bard. LOL —
4. — But Pritikin is taking nothing for granted, and continues to promote Wrigley’s salvation. Here is his poem to rally the troops —
5. — Pupils were asked to imagine how it feels to be imprisoned without access to a fair trial and then express their feelings in the form of a poem —
6. — Alexander Pope’s longest and most elaborate poem, The Dunciad, has a good claim to be the greatest unread poem in the language. —
7. — place the pauses in his lines in different places and you get different poems, like removing the dashes from Emily Dickinson’s poems —

“Guns buried in flowers” is how Schumann described them.

ha.

ps. I hope you moms have a nice Mother’s Day today.

Poetry News:

1. — Instead of starting with a blank page, poet Austin Kleon grabs the New York Times and a permanent marker — and eliminates the words he doesn’t need —
2. — On an unconscious level, this final replication exceeds the early rhyme but also thwarts it when the two sounds become identical (as the mother and daughter must not) —
3. — The idea that science and poetry are mutually exclusive realms is a widespread misconception. Please prove it wrong here. —
4. — In A Birthday, from her first collection, Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), the sensuous aesthete is in the ascendant —
5. — What, if anything, is Arab American poetry? —
6. — “It would seem soft for instance to look in my life for the sentiments in ‘The Death of the Hired Man.’ There’s nothing to it believe me.” —
7. — Nevertheless, she apparently did and wrote the poem the “Mother’s Day Proclamation” as a call for a Mother’s Day for Peace to be established in the United States. —

6 days until a very special episode of Poetry Hut Blog.

…I’m off to pretend that I’m a lipstick. (MRI).

Poetry News:

1. — Anonymous Greeting-Card Writers Put Their Heart Into Their Work —
2. — May Day was never the same after Allen Ginsberg’s 1965 visit to Prague —
3. — Use poetry in the workplace, says arts conference speaker —
4. — Poet fined for insulting Mexican flag, calls ruling threat to free speech
   —
5. — After 50 Years, Will Quality Management Shoot Down minnesota review? —
6. — Inkster author publishes book of poetry —
7. — ‘Poem’ teenager cleared of murder —

Poetry News:

1. — Things fall apart: is the post-9/11 imagination disintegrating? —
2. — Happy Birthday, Archibald MacLeish! —
3. — Dante, Primo Levi and the intertextualists —
4. — On other occasions he complained he looked like “a cross between an egg and a bloodhound” and “an egg sculpted in lard, with goggles on” —
5. — It reminds me of the old black and white films; the mist, the looming shapes that become familiar upon approach, the necessary promise of a romantic meeting… the poem is pregnant with possibilities that remain non-specific —
6. — There’s no point in piling up a mountain of poems that no one wants to read —
7. — wikipedia’s list of American poets is strange & they have weird rules for notability. The discussions about Shanna Compton’s John Gallaher’s articles are kind of hilarious in their ignorance. I’m not a huge fan of Wikipedia…just different arbiters. —
8. — Wheaton College Prof. Resigns After School Questions Details of Divorce —

Virginia Quarterly Review apologized for publicly making fun of their slushpile & took down the offending comments. Google cached it though. I’m a Libra and I like “nice” I guess, because I am starting to get really really sick of snottiness disguised as cleverness or intellect. Or maybe it is because I didn’t really grow up in that whole middle class world? I grew up with people who mostly knew life is rough, and gave everyone else a begrudging respect at least, because of that shared experience. And if you are going to be a smart ass / asshole, you better be prepared to back it up / defend yourself. Anyway, the thing that bothered me about the post was that the prose poem genre (as a whole) was lumped in with poor writing.

Poetry News:

1. — The day Thoreau died —
2. — Sexually explicit poetry forces educator out —
3. — Dylan’s mystery girl tells it like it was —
4. — Poetry readers tend to lead active lives, listen to music, read a lot, use the Internet and volunteer at significantly higher rates than non-poetry readers, according to a study looking at U.S. involvement with poetry —
5. — A Lone Tibetan Voice, Intent on Speaking Out —
6. — Regarding the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize —

Poetry News:

1. — The lit mags that could —
2. — GK intros Maxine Kumin, she and GK read her poetry [real audio] —
3. — There are stereotypes about Sylvia Plath fangirls — that we’re mired in middle-class existential woe —
4. — In his new collection, Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems, poet Cornelius Eady writes of his transition from urban renter to rural homeowner and the encroachment of middle age —
5. — Blues And Haikus: Jack Kerouac with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims —
6. — Melissa Denes talks to Aeronwy Thomas about her father Dylan Thomas —
7. — Pulitzer Prize Winner Hass Answered Your Questions on Modern Poetry —

Meet my neighbors. I heard about that on XM Radio during the top of the hour news blurb & the news announcer just said it was in Tennessee. So I was thinking it was some crazy East Tennessee person (disclaimer: mom & them are from E TN LOL). Sadly, no.

Poetry News:

1. — The Mainichi Newspapers is inviting participation in the 12th Annual Mainichi Haiku Contest —
2. — Punk rocker Exene explores a creative space in Missouri —
3. — DNA Analysis Exposes Fake Schiller Skull —
4. — “Sort of Gone,” a collection of poems by Sarah Freligh, follows the adventures and misadventures - mostly misadventures - of a ballplayer who makes a life in the game in part to show his worthless sot of a father that he can do it. —
5. — “I mask it. I make my poems seem simpler then they really are,” Snyder said. —
6. — Everyday world sizzles with alarm in his poetic vision —
7. — Stafford’s wartime poetry shows the power of his convictions —
8. — A web of associations connects a group of New England writers, including Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe. —
9. — This is pretty cool - congrats —

A prediction that Google will end up buying Ingram Digital (and Booksurge). I’m sure those folks over in La Vergne, TN would be surprised to hear that.

All I can say is, I’m glad that I forgot to watch the Kentucky Derby this weekend.  Sometimes  I think there’s something wrong with me - I cannot cannot cannot stand to see an animal get hurt. I have a greater reaction to that than I do from seeing a human get hurt. Though in my defense, I don’t like to watch those stupid home video TV shows where people get hit in the balls and stuff, either.

The Kentucky Derby was always a big deal when I was growing up. My dad’s drive-in restaurant wasn’t too far from the Detroit Race Course (actually in Livonia) and a lot of the regular customers (my extended family) were bookies and gamblers. So on derby day my mom would make sure we’d pick the horse’s names out of a hat (a “to go” white paper bag, actually) and my dad would put the b&w TV with a coat hanger antenna up on the counter & we’d watch the race.

I have a diagram, A Magnetically Actuated Exercise and Amusement Device for Use with Cats, up at DIAGRAM, which is fresh.

From what I understand, these lit mags also have new issues up or out, too and I see lots of poet-bloggers:

anti

coconut

la petite zine

linebreak

tuesday; an art project

and as always, No Tell Motel has a new poet every week.

A couple fine poets I actually know in real life, Terri McCord and Carol Peters, have chapbooks coming out from Finishing Line Press. I highly recommend that you pick up their chapbooks so you can have a good swig of poetry.

The Art and The Wait: Terri McCord
Muddy Prints, Water Shine: Carol Peters

And there are a couple poet-bloggers with chapbooks forthcoming from Finishing Line:

After the Poison: Collin Kelley
and Anne Haines‘ chapbook, Breach, is being released too this year but it isn’t up on that site yet.

Yay! I can’t wait to read them!

You can pre-order the chapbooks & if you do so, you get free shipping.

… and I just realized that the Washington Post totally spelled Virgil wrong yesterday throughout that Le Guin review. (Unless I’m an idiot and Vergil is an alternate spelling I don’t know about. I’m mostly an autodidact haha. Is it?)

If your lit mag is fresh or you have a chapbook coming out, leave a comment.

Poetry News:

1. — With her new novel, Lavinia, fantasy and science fiction virtuoso Ursula K. Le Guin vividly fills some of the blanks in Vergil’s Aeneid —
2. — “I’m trying to get people to see a book as an aesthetic artifact, not as a generic container,” says Dave Wofford, who operates the one-man letterpress Horse and Buggy Press. —
3. — But what if the plagiarists are children who won the KidsPost poetry contest, children who said the work was their own? —
4. — In Heather McHugh’s Broken English, I found Ulli Beier’s translations of these ancient songs succinctly moving —
5. — At 99, New Hampshire man becomes a first-time author —
6. — Jorie Graham’s poetry is all about the vertiginous (and sometimes heady) experience of falling through the cracks —
7. — In his day, Jeffers was a star: he appeared on the cover of Time, read his poems in the US Congress and was respected for the alternative he provided to the Modernist juggernaut —

Poetry News:

1. — Using a complex array of perforations, the pavilion’s surface allows light to pass through creating shifting patterns, which-during specific times of the year-transform into the legible text of a poem —
2. — UMKC’s New Letters is a winner in the National Magazine Awards —
3. — Poet staves off poverty in exotic Edmonton —
4. — and the winner was a student from the Virgin Islands who recited “Frederick Douglass” by Robert E. Hayden —
5. — Jason Shinder, 52, Poet and Teacher, Dies —
6. — Seeking 21st century poetic satire —
7. — The winner of the Seattle PI’s inaugural poetry contest is her own font of creativity —

Most popular outgoing links for April 2008, as far as Feedburner is concerned:

“Unfortunately, poetry in general has a bad reputation”

“UNM’s director of creative writing said she will resign because her colleague has not been punished for posing in sexually explicit photos with students.”

“Taking the Pain Out of Poetry”

Poetry News:

1. — Her early writing is set in a structured style with familiar rhyming schemes, yet its tone foreshadows her charged works to come —
2. — Consistencies Found In Synaesthesia: Letter ‘A’ Is Red For Many; ‘V’ Is Purple —
3. — Poet Giovanni honored with historic marker —
4. — Poems not only rhymed but the syllables of each line were exactly calculated; to make matters trickier, there were tonal patterns as well, dictated by the pitch accents of the language. —
5. — Though he is best known for his medicine–related poems, Peter Pereira successfully exploits his devotion to anagrams and other word games in poems that celebrate the malleabality and surprises possible in language —
6. — Twas the year 2008, when the world’s worst poet got his day - a little late —
7. — The true legacy of the inventor of LSD, who died yesterday aged 102, is in the music, literature and visual arts that were produced as a result of acid —
8. — The problem of describing trees —

This country sure is going to hell in a handbasket. Maybe someone else will do an Idiocracy-type movie that won’t be as terrible.

Poetry News:

1. — I tend to write poetry when I need to scratch an itch, something has been triggered and I need to study why. —
2. — Gillian K Ferguson has spent five years working on a mirror ’sequence’ of 1,000 poems inspired by her wonder at the human DNA code being cracked —
3. — Features On Mercury Receive New Names —
4. — For scientists trying to parse the mystery of brain and mind, she is one more case of the possible link between mental illness and artistic creativity —
5. — Contest Culture and Poetic Community —