Poetry Hut Blog

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Poetry News:

1. — New pop-culture haiku says a lot with few words. thanks for letting me know —
2. — Favorite signatures: from Ginsberg to Sedaris —
3. — Poetry embraces Vancouver hotel tower —
4. — The Common Law Illusion: Literary Justice in Coleridge’s On the Constitution of the Church and State —
5. — Test your knowledge of literary trivia found in “Who the Hell is Pansy O’Hara” —
6. Poet Collin Kelly, author of the new chapbook “After the Poison,” will also be featured. —
7. — Half-rejected —

Wish me luck at my Dr appt today I’m hoping it will lead to some answers.

Poetry News:

1. — New issue of New England Review features fiction, poetry and prose —
2. — An article about me and my husband, Darryl Dybka on the Tennessean (local Nashville) paper’s website & in the Ashland City Times newspaper —
3. — This week, a chilling journey to ‘the shadow side’ with a master of psychology —
4. — Southern Gothic meets metafiction in a new novel by Minton Sparks —
5. — David Gest claims to have collaborated with pop legend on album setting poems to music —
6. — New works of poetry inspired by Katrina —

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There is a bluntness here that I respect. Both McCain and Obama are running for Caesar. I get that. But part of the game of running for Caesar has always been pretending you don’t want it, that the proles need you, and you’re one of them.

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New anthology:

“This wonderful and important anthology…is a solid act of generosity…a gift of testimony from poets across a broad range of experience and language, poems that tell us we can gather ourselves from the shock of upset and loss in life and continue…After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery is a book that seeks to stand up and walk among us as a living thing, a force to activate the good and prepare us to weather the bad.”

—Afaa Michael Weaver
Author, The Plum Flower Dance
Alumnae Professor of English, Simmons College

The poets in After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events:

Rita Dove · Simon Armitage · Carol Dine · Douglas Dunn · Cathy Smith Bowers · Patricia Wellingham-Jones · Donald Hall · Carol Ann Duffy · Molly Gloss · Thomas Lux · Pam Bernard · Elizabeth Bernardin · Sandor Kányádi · Stellasue Lee · Doug Anderson · Jim McGarrah · Sonja Besford · Martha Collins · Rachel Tzvia Back · Brian Turner · Nazand Begikhani · Liu Hongbin · Paul Sohar · Satyendra Srivastava · Marjorie Wentworth · Diana Woodcock · Majid Naficy · Shelley Davidow · J. P. Dancing Bear · Margaret Chula · Major Jackson · Lisha Adela Garcia · Ron Rash · Annie Finch · Barbara Mitchell · Roseann Lloyd · Joy Helsing · Nehassaiu deGannes · Peter Cooley · Paul Allen · R. G. Evans · Barbara G.S. Hagerty · Clinton B. Campbell · Iain Haley Pollock · Laurel Blossom · Willie James King · Satyendra Srivastava · Georgia Ann Banks-Martin · Kevin Young · Tolu Ogunlesi · Meir Wieseltier · Randall Horton · Richard Garcia · György Faludy · Bette Lynch Husted · William Stafford · Terri Wolfe · J. Stephen Rhodes · Gail Rudd Entrekin · Anthony S. Abbott · Faye J. Hoops · Annie Finch · Farideh Hassanzadeh · Rebecca McClanahan · Sister Lou Ella Hickman · Anna Rabinowitz · David Bottoms · Janet Winans ·Stellasue · Lee Alexa Selph · Dennis Ward Stiles · Renée Michele Breeden · Ellen Doré Watson · Joseph Mills · Liesl Jobson · Deborah P. Kolodji · Aimee Nezhukumatathil · Kurtis Lamkin · C.C. Thomas · Barbara Presnell · Naomi Ruth Lowinsky · Jericho Brown · Therése Halscheid · Becky Thompson · John McAllister · J. E. Pitts · William Greenway · Susan Varon · Shaindel Beers · Genie Cotner · Marcia Slatkin · David Bottoms · Barbara Mitchell · Joan Houlihan · Jenni Meredith · Rhett Iseman Trull · Pramila Venkateswaran · Diane Holland · Valerie Nieman · Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda · Susan Meyers · Meir Wieseltier · Satyendra Srivastava · Joseph Enzweiler · Jane Gentry · Rachel Eliza Griffiths · Gail Peck · Jennifer Barber · Ilya Kaminsky · Allison Hedge Coke · Steven Cramer · Linda Annas Ferguson · Kevin Simmonds · Gail Rudd Entrekin · Nancy Tupper Ling · Carole Baldock · Deema Shehabi · Kate Gale · Jeffrey Levine · Bernardo Atxaga

Order at www.poetryofrecovery.com

Poetry News:

1. — Claudia Emerson, a professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, is Virginia’s new poet laureate —
2. — Teaching a Nephew to Type by Rebecca McClanahan —
3. — UTC Professor Named Finalist In International Poetry Competition —
4. — Ahmed Faraz: poet of love and defiance —
5. — The City Has Moved Too Close to the Sun: A Detroit Cento Cut-Up poem —
6. — Poetry peepshow staged for literary voyeurs at Toronto arts festival —

Air-purifying Church Windows Were Early Nanotechnology: Stained glass windows that are painted with gold purify the air when they are lit up by sunlight, experts have discovered.

This blog is 5 years old today. Heck, here’s a video:

link: Anniversary Song on You Tube

Poetry News:

1. — Sharon Olds: ‘I’ve tried to make sense of my life … make a small embodiment of ordinary life, from a daughter’s, wife’s, mother’s point of view’ —
2. — From terror to relief, humour to grief, death may be a black subject, but is one of the richest seams of inspiration to poets, and you simply can’t avoid it… —
3. — Traveling Poetry Hut —
4. — Tibet’s most famous woman blogger, Woeser, detained by police —
5. — Decatur Book Fest: Billy Collins is a sellout —
6. — There are certain notions about poetry that must apparently always automatically spring to mind. I’ve decided to start a list of them here. —
7. — Cheap & ridiculous poetry messages hurting fans —
8. — Jane Crown’s poetry radio invites poets,novelists and small press publishers to interview on their craft —

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One of the editors of Cider Press — Robert Wynne — has responded to (what appears to be) unethical behavior regarding their Cider Press Review Book Award. And Stacey Lynn Brown’s rebuttal. (I’ve read that Pavement Saw Press’ contest has been problematic. And did you know that there was no winner chosen this year for the Cave Canem Poetry Prize?)

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Every year, there are thousands upon thousands of poets contributing money into contests. In many cases each poet is spending hundreds and sometimes over a thousand dollars a year doing this. If we do a very conservative estimate that there are 4000 poets a year spending $250 (that would be roughly 5-6 contests and doesn’t include postage) a year — that’s a million dollars into this contest system.

— read the rest and take the Take the “Are Poetry Contests Killing Your Soul?” Quiz

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Game Show Vs. Riefenstahl. There are better (?) pictures:

Come On Down! — XXXOOO Love, Leni.

ps. Looking at the DNC pics also makes me hear rows of slot machines in my head. There needs to be a Harley in the background, rotating slowly on a turntable platform, surrounded by a bank of slot machines.

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Poetry News:

1. — This month, your task is to carry on with Coleridge’s unfinished masterpiece Kubla Khan —
2. — Was New American Review the Best Literary Magazine Ever? —
3. — Nike Langston Hughes commercial [you tube] —
4. — “An important piece from poet (and good friend) Stacey Brown on an unethical press and its dealings with her and her book.” —
5. — With a fresh, wry voice, Meghan O’Rourke can make the quotidian sound strange, the same way Joseph Cornell could assemble a magical collage —
6. — One of the problems with political poetry, then, is that like all speech, it exists at the mercy of time, history, and other people. —
7. — 50 Greatest Books: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats —
8. — Lansing Community College Professor Dennis Hinrichsen has won the 12th annual FIELD Poetry Prize for his manuscript, “Kurosawa’s Dog.” —
9. — Bruce Cole, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, will speak about “The State of the Humanities” at Vanderbilt University, on Friday, Sept. 5, at Ingram Hall at the Blair School of Music. —
10. — Virgil, Monteverdi, James Joyce, Nikos Kazantzakis, Ralph Ellison and Derek Walcott are just a few of the artists to have transformed this spellbinding and mysterious epic into powerful works of their own —

Licking Your Wounds: Scientists Isolate Compound In Human Saliva That Speeds Wound Healing

Poetry News:

1. — New site: Postal poetry —
2. — City Lights: 50 years on the cutting edge of publishing —
3. — Half of his sonnets and songs were written during his travels which he regarded as a form of exile, an alternative to prison in Lisbon, imposed on him by cruel fate —
4. — Revisiting Coney Island of the Mind —
5. — How Seamus Heaney defines Ireland’s 1972 troubles with a portrait of a drunken seaman blown up in a pub [mp3] —
6. — faculty readings from the last two West Chester conferences are online: 2007 and 2008 —
7. — Joe Milford’s internet radio show feat. Ron Silliman [mp3] —
8. — Seeking poems that explore the twisted world of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet for The Private Press’s next chapbook anthology. Deadline 31 December 2008 —
9. — Is music just “auditory cheesecake” or can it provide deep insights into the workings of the brain and the evolution of language —
10. — Trying to explain this to younger/newer poets and those outside of the poetry community is frustrating [True -- 7.03% of regular readers of this blog bought my book, using my feed subscriber stats & # of Lulu orders to calculate... it's probably even less than 7%, because the calculation assumes that all the orders came from RSS feed subscribers, which is probably doubtful.] —
11. — Eileen Tabios & the Poetry Economics: A Moronic Oxymoron —

A bit of confession Wednesday — lately I’ve been posting here as a way to demonstrate to myself that I am doing better, healthwise, than I am — I think. Self-psyche-out. But I need to quit it until I get this cardiovascular / autonomic nervous system weirdness figured out. I am totally exhausted! From what?! All I’m doing is sleeping and eating really, and my PT routines. I’m getting fat too. I have an exam Friday. I’ll be back when I get some energy.

Poetry News:

1. — In an ideal world the writer would like to say one’s only allegiance is to his/her art or craft —
2. — “Bukowski had a story that essentially was saying that it’s the little things that drive men mad” —
3. — The poem I’ve chosen, “Come the Revolution” relishes the human comedy - especially when human aspires to be poet —
4. — That experience inspired her first collection of poetry, The Adoption Papers (Bloodaxe), about an adopted child’s awareness of being different, and her search for her cultural identity —
5. — Bay Area journal is an improbable success story in world of letters —

Taking a break again.

Poetry News:

1. — Where’s Weldon? —
2. — Just what is a university press? Plenty —
3. — “Everything she did made headlines,” said Bergman, executive director of the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society. “She was a rock star.” —
4. — Poet’s works discovered in war diary —
5. — Poet explains his own creative process —
6. — In his ninth book of poetry, Nurkse sees the nuances in the smallest moments —

Nashville Is Reads Pictures

You Are Archery

You are a bit of a traditionalist. You like old fashioned things with deep traditions. You also like to see the result of your accomplishments right in front of you. If practice makes perfect, that’s fine by you. You like to practice a skill.

here thanks>

Poetry News:

1. — Is it harder to write a great sonnet than a great hip-hop verse? —
2. — The reclusive Dickinson had a worldly mentor and friend —
3. — Dylan’s Poetic Pause in Hollywood on the Way to Folk Music Fame —
4. — The 2008 recipients of the Iowa Poetry Prize —
5. — Philip Larkin almost tried to sound unattractive and misanthropic —
6. — LOL —

Poetry News:

1. — I interviewed you about 10 years ago and you talked about how you like to write poetry. Do you still do that? —
2. — Mauritanian poet wins Abu Dhabi’s ‘Prince of Poets’ —
3. — They might look simple, but writing well in Edward Fitzgerald’s adopted form is a lot harder than it looks —
4. — Hospital offers patients poetry therapy —
5. — Theft snuffs 5 years’ work on poet’s life —
6. — Is Modern Literature Out of Compelling Quotations? —

Lunar Eclipse weekend’s Eclipse Cam!

Poetry News:

1. — The ethereal world of radio poetry —
2. — Beowulf Through the Eyes of Women —
3. — The poetry of pain —
4. — Byron, ghost and partisans enlisted to save Tuscan villa in ruins & Lord Byron’s fanmail uncovered —
5. — 100 Near Perfect Books of Poetry —
6. — Spillage from the Riptides of Desire: Poetry Blurbs —
7. — Mr. Alexander fashions from modern English a vivid reincarnation of Anglo-Saxon poetry — its grim pathos studded with brilliant figurations, its morbid griefs sung in an armorial tone of resolve —
8. — Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2008 Results —

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“A researcher argues in Science that a basic tenet of economics — that people always behave selfishly — can be wrong, sometimes badly so. He points to new experimental evidence that people do often act against their own personal self-interest in favor of the common good, and they do so in predictable, understandable ways. Poorly-designed economic institutions fail to take advantage of intrinsic moral behavior and often undermine it.”

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Steel Toe Books has an open reading period in October for formal-type full-length poetry book manuscripts.

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I don’t have any poetry rules. So I was reading Mary Biddinger’s blog post with everyone’s comments & I was going “I ummmmmmmm … errrrrrr … well … gee.” I   tend to need to have  require some sort of constraint to write up against, though. That’s not a rule though, it’s more like a pathology. I do like to see what I can get away with — in fact, I’ll probably use everyone’s rules about “what not to do” as writing prompts hardee har har har har.

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Poetry News:

1. — Poetry Buying Survey (3 questions) —
2. — Fitting farewell to Palestinian poet —
3. — Counter-Revolution of the Word:The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945–1960 —
4. — San Francisco looking for next poet laureate —
5. — Library of Congress Adds New Authors to Eighth Annual National Book Festival; Free Podcasts Invite Nationwide Participation in Celebration of Reading —
6. — Poet Ricardo Pau-Llosa Reflects on Influences, Art [MP3 @ PBS] —
7. — A question about scansion in a country music song —

If anyone would like a review copy of my book or chapbook, email me. I have a few that I bought to send out (other than the ones I have already sent as a thank-you to folks who have published my poems before). Lotsa publications won’t accept a review a self-published/DIY-published book, however, so be aware of that before you email me. If you want to review it on your blog that’s fine.