Poetry Hut Blog
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Poetry News:

1. — Joe Zawinul, jazz musician behind Bitches Brew, dies at 75 —
2. — Number of these [books sold in the USA] that sold fewer than 99 copies: 1,123,000 [link good for a few days] —
3. — ‘Uncanny coincidences’ lead police to explore Taslima angle to Hyderabad [bombings] —
4. — A thinking parrot’s loving good-bye —
5. — Poets with local ties honored [ congrats Amanda ]—
6. — Scandalous poem, novelized —
7. — look down this list of 10 words, choose seven of them, and immediately write a poem incorporating those seven words and your warped catchphrase or proverb —
8. — Jarman to read from new book at APSU —
9. — Anne Sexton: Teacher of Weird Abundance [link good for a few days] —

Does anybody have any tips about teaching someone the idea of stressed /unstressed syllables? Ironically, I had a hard time getting this across to my adult literacy student last time. (Totally my fault.)

When I saw Hairspray: the Musical (a while ago), the theater also showed a trailer for the forthcoming Beatles-based musical/music-video-thing, Across the Universe. Alright already, Baby Boomers — I get it! The ’60s were revolutionary. Sheesh. Oh and there are Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin biopics forthcoming too and Oliver Stone is doing another Vietnam movie.

Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Tool

There are 69 Poets born between 1931 and 1940

There are 112 Poets born between 1941 and 1950

There are 61 Poets born between 1951 and 1960

There are 10 Poets born between 1961 and 1970 (My generation — I’ll be 40 next month)

There are 0 Poets born between 1971 and 2007 Sorry, 36-year-olds!

Of course, there isn’t enough information to be statistically significant, really, but it does make me laugh. Har. Hee.

Epilogue:

A blogger (?) 20 years from now:

“When I saw Movie X, the theater (?) also showed a trailer for the forthcoming U2-based musical/music-video-thing, With or Without You. Alright already, Generation X — I get it! The ’80s were [I can't think of anything except "crappy"]. Sheesh. Oh and there are Joe Strummer and Ronald Reagan biopics forthcoming too and Oliver Stone is doing another Vietnam movie.

Poetry News:

1. — Poetry as Right-Hemispheric Language —
2. — “There certainly isn”™t enough genuine talent for us to take notice” —
3. — Poet John Donne was a compulsive conceit practitioner —
4. — The correspondence started after Schillaci submitted poems for publication in a now-defunct University of New Hampshire literary magazine —
5. — This remarkable true story is recounted in a new book, The Zookeeper’s Wife, by naturalist, poet and essayist Diane Ackerman —
6. — The war against Hitler was barely a year old before newspapers began asking: Where are the war poets? —
7. — Call for submissions on the literary grotesque - the monstrous, the unusual, the abnormal —
8. — a lot was taken from the single Graham lines I listed —
9. — Artists often think of their creations as brain-children, plucked from the air. But perhaps a work of art is closer to actual offspring. —
10. — I am sad but he had a good life I guess. —
11. — Muslim cleric demands Taslima be driven out sighgh —

I may work in a grim cubicle but at least it is not orange. I wonder what the suicide rate was for folks who worked in those? By 10:02am everything would be vibrating and spots would be floating in front of the monochrome CRT displays.

In 1973, basically the population of the entire lower-peninsula of Michigan was poisoned with Polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs). Sadly there isn’t much in Wikipedia about this. It was a chemical-based disaster in which cows were fed tainted feed — “Firemaster” flame-retardant accidentally got shipped with a cattle feed supplement called “Nutrimaster.” A dairy farmer, Frederic Halbert, (who fortunately had an MS in Chemical Engineering) tried to get the state to realize um, something is wrong with the feed, & they didn’t really listen to him at first. But he didn’t give up, thank gawd. But in the meantime everyone was drinking the milk, etc. Once the magnitude of everything became clear, Michigan asked the Federal Government to help out — $$$ — & it refused. Hard to believe, nowadays. I don’t know whatever happened with that.

I’m reading a book about it, Bitter Harvest, out of print 0-8028-7039-2. My Uncle’s dairy farm was quarantined I think? I’ll have to ask my dad; perhaps that is my imagination. But it was one of those haunting childhood things for me — thousands of bloated, frozen, hoove-up-dead-cows-in-the-snow on TV, alongside images of Vietnam …

… and so began my distrust of the government hahahaha. What’s that, Senator Clinton? The government intricately involved with my healthcare? No. No thank you. hahahaha.

There are thousands of PBB cows, chickens, etc buried in a big clay-lined pit in Kalkaska, Michigan and in Mio, Michigan. And PBBs all over the place. But people are working on it and maybe poetry is helping them a little bit?