Poetry Hut Blog
Arielle Greenberg

Poetry News:

1. — Why do his poems so often feature husbands who kill or resent their wives? —
2. — On The Gurlesque Part 3 —
3. — Poet keeps win close to chest —
4. — USC Pigskin Poets Get Kids Reading —
5. — Time, reconfigured by poetry, allows connection —
6. — Library of Congress Organizes Eighth Annual National Book Festival Hosted by Mrs. Laura Bush on the National Mall; Famed Authors To Participate —
7. — Southeast publishes 1921 poem by William Carlos Williams —
8. — Poet Hart Crane was born on this day in 1899 —
9. — Exactly why we take personal poems so, well, personally remains a mystery and a muddle. —
10. — Yeats Meets the Digital Age, Full of Passionate Intensity —
11. — a poem whose logic is a mockery of logic —
12. — Quantum poetics —

‘Frequency Hopping’ Showcases Screen Siren’s Smarts

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So do you think this poem is racist, as has been interpreted here? I can think of a few poems with the P word — Plath, Bukowski … Macbeth. Philip Levine I bet.

I am sooo getting sick of political-correctness groupthink. Die Gedanken sind frei.

Poetry News:

1. — Aleda Shirley (1955-2008): An Appreciation —
2. — On the Gurlesque part 2 —
3. — Holy Shit —
4. — Emerging writers are published with established writers around a loose theme —
5. — The Beat Generation’s jazz sensibility still resonates in a new century —
6. — Poetry with je ne sais quoi —
7. — It’s all in Buffalo, and it’s all housed in the University at Buffalo’s Poetry Collection —
8. — Sixteen poets, sixteen essays about mental illness and poetry —
9. — The end of an odyssey - Homer’s epic is finally pinned down —
10. — Could this be the way that literary magazines regain an audience —

I don’t think I have one shred of that “Gurlesque” going on. I think it is because I started working when I was 7 & didn’t have a middle-class suburban environment LOL? I’m not very glittery, anyway. That might be it. That is not anything judgmental in any way - I’m just being factual haha. I have a lot of male energy. Mars in my astrology chart conjuncts my ascendant, trines my Jupiter, trines my nodes, sextiles my midheaven & sun, and squares Chiron, Saturn, Uranus, & Pluto. (T-square with Mars/Asc and Uranus/Chiron.) Luckily (29 degree Sag.) Mars is in the 12th or I’d probably be a violent criminal haha instead of a somewhat peaceful Buddhist who just enjoys stirring things up when something is an affront to her sense of truth & justice & can’t shut up about it.

So in my book I have poems about war, gambling, sports, tooth extraction, surgery/body getting cut open, cut off hands (mentioned in 2 poems haha), 1 frozen decapitated head, someone hammering nails up his nose, tattoos, boxing, blood and scars. I think just about the only color mentioned in there is red, too. I didn’t even include the poems with gunshot wounds, taxidermy or sword swallowing. And I’m not a guy hahaha….

All Mars stuff I’ve realized but I try to be beautiful about it at least. So I guess my poetry is quite the antithesis of Gurlesque, actually….hahahaha. I’ll have to think of a snappy label for it. Warplay. haha.

Sylvia Plath had some pronounced Mars action in her astrology chart too & her poetry is pretty bloody. That & her brilliant music is probably why she’s my favorite poet. But that was probably Pluto, too, in her case. (With her issues about death.) So I would have to suggest that “Tulips” (as mentioned in the Gurlesque pt 2 link, above) is not merely submissive but rather it is Plutonian/underworldian in its theme. Because illness has a heavy aspect of destructive overpowering transformation, right, & you’re abducted by it. What, you’re NOT going to hand over your name to the nurses & give over your body to Pluto after you arrive in Hades? You really have no choice. You’ve been kidnapped!

Coincidentally we both have Venus in Virgo. Plath used the word “pure” a lot — (”Pure? What does it mean?”) — she wrote those heavy-duty hospital / health poems, too. (Virgo.) Face Lift, Tulips, Surgeon at 3 a.m, Fever 103.

Contemporary poetry needs more blood and guts…. I’d write more but I have to take Darryl to the airport.

PS William Carlos Williams was a Virgo — check out how many times he uses the word “white” in his poems — if this is not a “pure” Virgo poem I don’t know what is:

Nanucket

Flowers through the window
lavender and yellow

changed by white curtains-
Smell of cleanliness-

Sunshine of late afternoon-
On the glass tray

a glass pitcher, the tumbler
turned down, by which

a key is lying- And the
immaculate white bed

Poetry News:

1. — In general, US poetry presents a disturbingly white face for a lot of nefarious reasons, but it strikes me that there may be an intriguing explanation for why so many white women writers take up the Gurlesque in particular —
2. — A Few Ways to Read a Book of Poems —
3. — scientists have taken an important step toward understanding how the human brain codes the meanings of words —
4. — Was William Shakespeare a Jewish woman in disguise? —
5. — Listen. There are poets, and then there are poets. —
6. — Last Things: Emily Brontë’s Poems —
7. — NH’s Frost Farm getting federal grant —
8. — Sonics’ lawyers don’t want author Sherman Alexie testifying —

I enjoyed this poem about Michigan. (Link found here thank you.)

posting here is going to be intermittent

Poetry News:

1. — Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet —
2. — Hilly Kristal, a Rock Midwife, Is Dead at 75 —
3. — Southeast Missouri State University’s manuscript by prize-winning poet William Carlos Williams is no longer unpublished —
4. — Why can”™t more writers be smart enough to be beautiful, handsome, or at least cute —
5. — he did it for poetry, and that’s a great thing —

I really like it when poetry disturbs me. (Said the Mercury/Neptune-conjunction-in-Scorpio woman.) Mr. Dybka was up in Michigan playing some gigs on Mackinac Island so I was home alone for a majority of the past week. One of the books I read while he was gone was Arielle Greenberg’s odd chapbook, Fa(r)ther Down: Songs from the Allergy Trials. Especially delicious on a full moon night when you are all alone in a house in the woods. Tree limb shadows and the dogs barking at deer. Mostly it is a verse play but it is a mix of poems, too. About a murder trial. And influenced by folk ballads/murder ballads.

Somehow I’ve fallen deeply in love with chapbooks. (Maybe it is my newly-acquired deficiency in concentration haha.) Every chapbook I’ve bought from New Michigan Press has been wonderful. Not a dud so far.

Poetry News:

1. — People believing that’s Angelou’s best poem ever, I figured, is justice enough —
2. — Sekou Sundiata: Defying Labels —
3. — Bookslut is looking for a columnist and also for a book designer —
4. — The Impoverishment of American Culture by Dana Gioia —
5. — Poetry doesn’t make a lot of money, and the quiet time doesn’t mean it’s easy —
6. — the e-mail congratulation ratio for the two achievements ran about 50 to 1 —
7. — A (Slightly Qualified) Defense of MFA Programs: Six Benefits of Graduate School by Arielle Greenberg —
8. — After the 1-0 loss, the Twins express themselves in Haiku and other verse —

I’ve been tagged:

Here are the rules:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.

2. Players start with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.

3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their 8 things and post these rules.

4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose 8 people to get tagged and list their names.

5. Don”™t forget to leave them a comment telling them they”™re tagged, and to read your blog.

1. I am an extraordinarily patient person but waiting in/on line/queue gives me the creeps/anxiety. Waiting rooms are OK though. It’s just standing in line.

2. If a poem doesn’t tickle my ear somehow it doesn’t resonate with me.

3. In 1983 I won a Spin Magazine trivia contest about the Flintstones. I received a t-shirt.

4. I have only workshopped poems in grad school. Not before nor since, I think. Can’t stand it. Never had a bad experience though. Not a fan.

5. I rarely write poems about myself (explicitly).

6. I hate talking about myself.

7. Thanks for reading.

8. The End.

I tag these 8 random people: tag, tag, tag, tag, tag, tag, tag, tag.

A new low. Dear 5th Amendment — I’m so sorry. !$@%# !&#*&#^ King George @)$ *#(#( @**!&!

Yay to Carol! Her chapbook is being published by Finishing Line Press because it was a top-ten finalist in their 2007 New Women’s Voices Prize in Poetry.