Poetry Hut Blog

• — The Genius of Thom Gunn —
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• — This week’s poem is an extract from “Medea in Athens”, one of a number of psychologically complex dramatic monologues by the remarkable Victorian poet, Augusta Webster. —
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• — One day later, early college and randomly, I acquired a Black Sparrow collection of Gertrude Stein’s interviews, poems, and portraits. They were too bizarre for words, pun intended, so I started to read them aloud to college friends on the phone to annoy them. I did this for awhile for I was a jokester and wanna-be comedian. Eventually, the joke became tired, and I finally had to admit that the phone was an excuse that permitted me to say the weird words aloud and revel in them. —
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• — These days, if I read a poem now of a certain kind — one that avoids feeling, a speaker, or making any connection with the reader, of which there are many — I feel sick. —
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• — Gather Ye Rosebuds, Etc: Things Which Have Already Been Said Many Times and the Pickup Artist Poem —
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• — The book is absolute pleasure, though it is sometimes a pleasure of the sort you might reserve for peeing in a shower, eating liverwurst, fiddling with a hangnail… —
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• — newspaper blackout poems also see the Wave Books erasures application —
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• — Weekly Poem: ‘New Year’s’ from NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Podcast | PBS Robert Creeley (1926-2005) was one of the most important and influential American poets of the twentieth century. —
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• — 2010 is the year in which Drunken Boat becomes a semi-annual publication. We will be launching our 11th issue on January 30th, featuring an interview with United States Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, a themed nonfiction folio looking at Life in a Time of Contraction around the world, as well as some of the best poetry, fiction, photography, sound and web art we’ve ever come across —
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• — The project (to give credit where credit is due) is inspired by PBS’ blog “Artbeat” which also posts a weekly poem. However Arbeat draws from the entire nation’s poetry archive; I find Minnesota has more than enough on offer to satisfy my needs. —
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• — Costa Award shortlist announced —
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• — Wherever you begin in a poem both a beginning and potential for infinite flows and “reflows” can be assured. —
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• — Anna Akhmatova – My Winter Poet —
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• — Kanye West vows to be more like Maya Angelou —
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• — Ladies & Gentlemen, Your 2010 Slash Pine Poetry Festival —
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• — Joe Milford Hosts Mark Bibbins – from Joe Milford Show | “Bibbins . . . has the courage to stop, to pin down the always irrational present moment, and the reader is eager to follow, to inhale its scathing or enticing perfume. . . . A brilliant young poet.”–John Ashbery In his second collection, The Dance of No Hard Feelings, Lambda Award winner Mark Bibbins pressures language into a performance of surprising, invigorating movements across syntax and line. Vulnerable, yet suspicious and sharp-witted, he responds to a nation responsible for and besieged by a bankrupted presidency, employing concise lyrics and longer sequences while in the process inventing a new form, the exploded double haiku. Incited by progressive blogs, ad campaigns, elegy, and Eros, Bibbins addresses environmental catastrophe and grotesque political posturing in our nascent millennium, as well as the corporate media’s willingness to front for the worst offenders as it both panders and condescends to audiences drunk on doublespeak. These are songs of passionate and ambivalence sung in a dark time. [mp3] —
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• — Ross Gay reads from his new manuscript Bringing the Shovel Down – from WFIU: The Poets Weave Podcast Ross Gay holds a Ph.D in American Literature from Temple University. He is a basketball coach, an occasional demolition man, a painter, and a faculty member at Indiana University and in the low-residency program at New England College. [mp3] —
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This blog will continue to be semi-hibernating for the next month.

Have a happy, healthy, safe, holiday and new year.

• — Legend has it that in the same room, Robert Lowell taught aspiring poets Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and George Starbuck, all of whom went on to become pivotal figures in modern American poetry. —
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• — Mexican writer Jose Emilio Pacheco wins Cervantes prize —
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• — An example of a book trailer done wrong? Nashville Post’s book writer Betsy Phillips points her finger at the trailer for Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book Eating Animals. —
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• — When hallowed beat goddess Lenore Kandel died six weeks ago, the Chronicle published a nice memorial, with quotes from fellow travelers Peter Coyote, Gerard Nicosia, and others. —
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• — Entertainment Weekly: Poetry You Need To Read: H.L. Hix’s ‘Incident Light’ and David Lehman’s ‘Yeshiva Boys’ —
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• — The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) has presented the 2009 National Translation Award to Norman Shapiro, professor of romance languages and literatures, for French Women Poets of Nine Centuries: The Distaff and the Pen —
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• — Poem of the week: Gascoigne’s Lullaby by George Gascoigne —
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• — Cause of Jane Austen’s death not universally acknowledged —
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• — In “Honor Thy Sow Bug,” Walnut Creek resident Seaborg shares his opinions on what makes a good poem and the state of contemporary poetry today —
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• — How to deal with poets —
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• — Dylan. Polka. Christmas song. Nothing more needs to be said —
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• — “I love rhyming for rhyming sake. I think that’s an incredible art form.” —
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• — “I want to leave a poem thinking that I’ve contributed to the larger conversation in a meaningful way.” —
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• — David Citino, Poets, and Baseball —
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• — Patrick Janson-Smith introduces Luis d’Antin van Rooten’s extraordinary transformations of classic nursery rhymes into 18th-century French poetry, Mots d’Heures: Gousses, Rames —
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• — The actor and polyglot Luis d’Antin van Rooten turned classic nursery rhymes into 18th-century French poetry in Mots d’Heures: Gousses, Rames (hint: try saying it out aloud). Here we publish his version of Jack and Jill, with scholarly notes, as well as a reading of the text by the publisher Patrick Janson-Smith —
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• — End of a chapter for Borders —
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• — The Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh is staging a celebration of sound poetry. It is part of a series of exhibitions and events that have looked at what is called concrete poetry. —
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• — A Love Letter to the Letterpress —
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• — Britain’s equivalent of the haiku is your challenge this time, with a number of fiendish variations available —
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• — In the age of the PC, a surprising number of authors remain wedded to rather older technology —
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• — After a recent call from Rose Metal Press urging more women to submit to their annual chapbook competition, I started to wonder how equal the gender line … —
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• — In her presentation, she analyzed an early prose experiment by Dickinson published in Amherst College’s student-run literary journal in 1850. … —
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• — Clarinda Harris – Clarinda Harriss teaches poetry, poetics, and editing at Towson University, where she chaired the English Department for a decade. Her most recently published collection is Air Travel, Half Moon Editions, 2005. Forthcoming from HME in the spring of 2007 is a new collection, Dirty Blue Voice. She is the winner of numerous awards for her poetry and short fiction. One of her primary research interests is writing by prison inmates; she has worked with incarcerated writers for many years. You may contact the author at charriss@towson.edu. —
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• — The Blood-Jet Writing Hour” Radio Show with Rachelle Cruz – Join Rachelle as she talks to Lee Herrick Lee Herrick is the author of This Many Miles from Desire (WordTech Editions, 2007). His poems have been published in ZYZZYVA, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Berkeley Poetry Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Many Mountains Moving, The Bloomsbury Review, MiPOesias, and others, including anthologies such as Seeds from a Silent Tree: Writings by Korean Adoptees, Hurricane Blues: Poems About Katrina and Rita, and the 2nd edition of Highway 99: A Literary Journey Through California’s Great Central Valley. He is the founding editor of the literary magazine In the Grove and teaches at Fresno City College in Fresno, California. —
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• — The MoE Green Poetry Dissicusion with Rafael F.J Alvarado & Chelsea Bayouth – join Rafael & Chelsea as they talk to Cecilia Woloch – Cecilia Woloch was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up there and in rural Kentucky, one of seven children of a homemaker and an airplane mechanic. She attended Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, earning degrees in English and Theater Arts, before moving to Los Angeles in 1979. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University L.A. in 1999. A celebrated teacher, Ms. Woloch has conducted poetry workshops for thousands of children and young people throughout the United States and around the world, as well as workshops for professional writers, educators, participants in Elderhostel programs for senior citizens, inmates at a prison, and residents at a shelter for homeless women and their children. She is the founding director of Summer Poetry in Idyllwild and of The Paris Poetry Workshop, and is currently a lecturer in the creative writing program at the University of Southern California as well as a member of the core faculty of the low-residency MFA Program in Professional Writing at Western Connecticut State University. Her previous books of poems are Sacrifice, a BookSense 76 selection in 2001; Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem; Late, for which she was named Georgia Author of the Year in Poetry in 2004; and a chapbook, Narcissus, winner of the Tupelo Press Snowbound Competition in 2006. Her poems have been anthologized in When She Named Fire: Contemporary American Women Poets; Best American Erotic Poetry: 1800 to the Present; Billy Collins’ 180 More (Extraordinary Poems for Every Day), Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems for Hard Times, among many others, and have been featured on Keillor’s The Writers’ Almanac as well as in Ted Kooser’s nationally syndicated column American Life in Poetry. She spends a part of each year traveling, and in recent years has divided her time between Los Angeles and Idyllwild, California; —
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• — Joe Milford Hosts Anne-Marie Cusac – Anne-Marie Cusac is the author of the poetry books, Silkie (Many Mountains Moving Press, 2007), winner of the Many Mountains Moving Press poetry book prize, and the Wisconsin Library Association award; and The Mean Days (Tia Chucha, 2001), which won recognition from both the Wisconsin Library Association and the Council for Wisconsin Writers. An As- sistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Roosevelt University, where she heads the Journalism Program, Cusac is also a George Polk Award-winning journalist and worked as an editor and investigative reporter for The Progressive magazine for ten years. She is currently a member of the blog team forThe Huffington Post. Her nonfiction book, Cruel and Unusual: The Culture of Punishment in America, was published by Yale University Press in 2009. [mp3] —
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• — Joe MIlford Hosts Clayton Eshleman – Clayton Eshleman’s most recent collection of poems, Anticline, is a manuscript to be published by Black Widow Press in April,2010. Recent book publications by Clayton Eshleman include he Grindstone of Rapport / A Clayton Eshleman Reader (Black Widow Press, 2008), his translation of The Complete Poetry of Cesar Vallejo (University of California Press, 2007), Archaic Design (Black Widow Press, 2007) and Reciprocal Distillations (Hot Whiskey Press, 2007). From time to time, in June, Clayton and his wife Caryl lead a tour to the Upper Paleolithic painted caves in southwestern France, sponsored by the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, FL. Next trip will be in June 2010, with the ethnographer Wade Davis coming along as guest lecturer. [mp3]—
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• — Weekly Poem: ‘Storm’ from Poetry | NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Podcast | PBS Kwame Dawes is director of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative and the University of South Carolina Arts Institute, where he also teaches as distinguished poet in residence. [mp3] —
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• — Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney has called for Ted Hughes to be honoured in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey. —
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• — Inauguration of the Pushkin Monument in Asmara —
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• — First anthology of nature poetry from black voices debuts —
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• — Jack Elliot Myers worked throughout his adult life to write poems to get closer to people. —
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• — The Louisville-based literary magazine The Lumberyard, the most physically beautiful new journal I’ve seen this year, is a brother-and-sister operation. —
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• — December 1st Updates to the Online Best of 2009 Book Lists —
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• — Tune into “The Reading Is Poetry Review” with your host Hip-Hop/Jazz Poet A. K. Toney tonight. We will have the honor and privilege of listening to and reviewing selections from percussionist, spoken word producer extraordinaire Leon Mobley. [mp3] —
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• — One of our most tender poets (tough but tender), James Galvin, investigates his growing tendency toward poems that express his bitterness? toward politics, environmental despoilment, big business. Still he affirms, in poems that breathe with sweet relief, the ongoing possibility of love. [mp3] —
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• — Linda Benninghoff – from Jane Crown’s Poetry Radio | The author of the new chapbook “The Spaces Between Things”from Erbacce press.She is well published in numerous magazines including Ocho,Mipoesias and Agenda.She has four other chaps and won an award for her last “Elegies for Mary” published by Kritya press.India. She possesses a BA in English w/honors from John’s Hopkins University and an MA in English with an emphasis on Creative Writing from Stony Brook. —
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• — In Exercises in Style, Raymond Queneau revisits a single event nearly 100 times. His noble goal was to help literature unburden itself ‘of some of its scabs’ —
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• — Walt Whitman’s home earns literary honor —
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• — Art in Paradise: How Not to Become Yeats —
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• — I’ve seen Philip Levine’s face on the back cover of his books, and once in a while, on podiums at readings. When I saw him two feet away, in an NYU bathroom of all places, I was totally baffled. —
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• — ‘I began writing in mystery’ A few words with Philip Levine —
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• — Even if Jara’s murder is solved, she says Chile can’t achieve justice without addressing all 3,197 people, according to an official count, who were slain for political reasons before Pinochet finally ceded the presidency in 1990. —
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• — According to the Burma Media Association and Reporters Sans Frontieres, at least 12 journalists and dozens of media workers including poets and writers are still in custody —
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• — Two exhibitions now up feature works that strive to embody poems in art objects. —
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• — In her first book of poetry, “Water the Moon” (Marick Press, November 2009), Sze-Lorrain presents her entire life—from first memories to seemingly recent dinner parties—with elegance, boldness, and, perhaps most importantly, complete believability. —
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• — “Domestic Fugues” showcases Newman’s complete assurance as he takes his poems through a number of formal paces —
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• — SOU prof publishes book of flarf —
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• — Baudelaire poems fetch record price —
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• — Personal letters, first edition copies and even a suicide note penned by 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire are part of an exceptional set of items that go up for auction on Tuesday in Paris. —
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• — Nine days after becoming the first female professor of poetry at Oxford, Ruth Padel resigned when it was revealed she had sent emails bad-mouthing a rival. Now the poet gives her first interview since the controversy —
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• — ‘Bright Wings’ elevates birdwatching through verse —
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• — Anger as pub calls time on old poets —
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• — “I wanted to write poems of religious devotion in a less obvious and, I hope, more humble way – one people might more easily identify with,” says poet Franz Wright —
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• — Poet Marie Ponsot Celebrating Life at 88 —
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• — Meet Ben Jonson and Robert Herrick, poetry’s most artful kvetches —
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• — Joe Milford Hosts Al Maginnes – Al Maginnes is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently a chapbook, Dry Glass Blues (Pudding House Publications, 2007) and Ghost Alphabet which won the 2007 White Pine Poetry Prize and will be available in October of 2008. New poems appear or are forthcoming in American Literary Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Green Moutains Review, Terminus, Mid American Review and Southern Poetry Review. He lives in Raleigh, NC and teaches at Wake Technical Community College. [mp3] —
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• — The Poetry Show: Host Dennis Morton read David Baker and more. [mp3] —
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• — The poetic legacy of James Schuyler. [mp3] —
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• — Vintage Fringed —
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• — This poem began after a writers conference in Asheville, NC to which I took a small group of women students. Eudora Welty had just died, and we spent a portion of the morning session talking about her work, so her influence was much on my mind as the rest of the day unfolded. —
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• — Stephen Dunn, the Poetry of the Personal —
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• — Pennsylvania poet Sarah Dowling stands guard with language in her brave new collection, winner of the 2009 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. —
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• — Here you can listen to Anna Akhmatova, Alexander Blok, Nikolai Gumilyov, Sergei Yesenin, Osip Mandelshtam, Maximilian Voloshin, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Arseny Tarkovsky reading their own work. —
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• — Homicide Rates Linked to Trust in Government, Sense of Belonging, Study Suggests —
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• — Brenda Starr makes way for Rumi, Neruda, and Merwin —
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• — SPD Poetry Best-Sellers November 2009 —
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• — POETRY November 28, 1915, Sunday —
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• — On Poetry: Superiority of true poets is in their dignified manner —
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• — Poem of the week: Whoso List to Hunt by Thomas Wyatt —
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• — Poets On Twitter 2.0 —
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• — “Winter smoke is blue and bitter: women comfort you in winter. Scent of thyme is cool and…” —
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• — “Congress has apparently outlawed my hobby.” —
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• — “And we’re loving this…and wouldn’t mind giving away a few more books in the drawing…so we’re extending the deadline to Sunday, August 23.” —
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• — Among the voices featured in the audio archive are Alexander Kerensky, Prime Minister during the 1917 Russian Revolution; Nobel Laureates for Literature Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky; one of Russia’s great poets Anna Akhmatova; and Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva. [here are links to Akhmatova and to Brodsky] —
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• — David Rawlings Machine: Newport Folk Festival 2009 from NPR: Live Concerts from All Songs Considered Podcast [mp3] —
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• — Women in Literature is the theme of a new literary conference and organization that is being formed by a group of writers who have concerns about the organization of this year’s AWP conference and its panel discussions. —
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• — Weekly Poem: ‘Too Here’ from Poetry | NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Podcast | PBS Albert Goldbarth [mp3] —
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• — The history of country music, little-known stories behind the design of prominent Washington, D.C., buildings and Southern poetry are among a wide variety of courses offered by The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Vanderbilt this fall. —
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• — Joe Milford Hosts Matthew Hittinger: Joe Milford Show [mp3] —
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• — Only five poets will go through to the final episode which will be held next Thursday —
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• Akhmatova Reading Poem Without A Hero
• Akhmatova Reading Requiem
• Collection 1
• Collection 2
• Collection 3

The links go to Andrew Perensky’s digital library

• — Adrienne Rich studies the space between art and politics in new collection of essays —
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• — Discover poetry @ ALA Annual Conference —
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• — It’s official: A Murmuration of Starlings is the winner of the 2009 Colorado Book Award in Poetry, given by the Colorado Center for the Book. —
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• — Famous Quotes: democracy vs plutocracy —
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• — Weekly Poem: ‘Graffiti’ from Poetry | NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Podcast | PBS [mp3] —
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• — Former U.S. Poet Laureate: The U.S. needs better poets —
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• — “Poets aren’t recession-proof,” said Tom Cassidy, who supports his “poetry addiction” with a full-time job —
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• — In the second of our walks, we explore the towns and countryside beloved by the iconic Welsh poet Dylan Thomas —
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• — The idea is simple: write a short poem involving both dogs and physics in one of the usual short verse forms (haiku, limerick, double dactyl, whatever, as long as it has some sort of rhyme and meter). —
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• — The spirit of Hughes and Plath is alive in West Yorkshire —
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• — Translated By with Shaindel Beers: Shaindel will interview A. M. Juster, translator of The Satires of Horace. [mp3] —
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• — An Appreciation of Ai —
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• — New research from Vanderbilt University indicates the way our brain handles how we move through space–including being able to imagine literally stepping into someone else’s shoes–may be related to how and why we experience empathy toward others —
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• — The public has been stirred by the scandal related to translator Dao Kim Hoa, a member of the Vietnam Writers’ Association, who has reportedly stole some poems by poets Huu Thinh and Lo Ngan Sun. Hoa said that it is a misunderstanding. —
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• — How frequently do I get “exciting” submissions? More frequently than I thought I would. —
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• — Publisher says it was a mistake to offer gift cards to those who would give top ratings on Amazon or Barnes & Noble to a new textbook. —
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• — Baseball has become unruly By Hunter S. Thompson —
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• — One video features Divine Comedy imagery while the other features imagery from the Biblia Sacra (Sacred Bible); all of the artwork comes from the Park West Dali Collection. The videos give viewers an opportunity to enjoy Dali artwork in a unique way; the works are shown one after the other, each one seemingly morphing into the next, all set to music that perfectly complements the imagery. —
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• — ‘Dante’s Inferno’ (PS3/X360) – 12 New Screens —
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• — Poet Elizabeth Alexander, DJ Spooky to honor NAACP with new works —
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• — Corso: The Last Beat — Film Review —
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• — MS Won’t Stop Exene Cervenka —
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• — Novelists such as Salman Rushdie and Italy’s Umberto Eco, as well as Nobel laureates in literature including Irish poet Seamus Heaney have also campaigned for him to be set free. —
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I forgot: yesterday was Anna Akhmatova’s birthday. This is a Lomonosov cup and saucer I got on Ebay shortly after they launched as Ebay.



Haven’t found out anything about it, since then, really. That photo doesn’t do it justice, because the rest of it is just gorgeous & the saucer is too. If you click on the picture you can see a bigger one.

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• — While there are many female poets in Korea, her lyrical poems from a woman’s perspective on life and things show boldness and beauty, and have made her a favorite of Korean poetry lovers —
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• — Cirque founder will take poetry into orbit —
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• — Malla, Dodds take home Trillium Book Awards —
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• — Ask a Poet —
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• — Catherine Carter, an assistant professor of English at Western Carolina University, has won the 2009 Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition, —
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• — Poem of the week: The Parable of the Old Man and the Young, by Wilfred Owen —
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• — Poem of the week: From A Midsummer Night’s Dream —
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• — Exclusive: Patti Smith interview —
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• — Obama Picks G.O.P. Ex-Congressman to Lead National Endowment for the Humanities —
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• — The 13th annual Mainichi Haiku Contest is now open! For information on the contest and how to apply, please click here. —
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• — Happy the poet whose life and work remain so well-remembered that his name becomes an adjective. —
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• — ‘Poets for Palestine’ negotiates an imagined better future, harsh reality —
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• — Based on the turbulent life of the celebrated Russian poet, The Ships Pass Quietly was originally produced at The Blue Room to acclaim with Vivienne Glance as Akhmatova. —
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• — Spirit bear captured on camera —
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• — Juan Felipe Herrera’s “Half of the World in Light” collection wins the International Latino Book Award. —
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• — The new poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, has chosen to attack politicians in her first composition in the post —
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• — Poets reveal the strangest places they’ve ‘done it’ —
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• — Nonfiction/Poetry Reviews: Publishers Weekly, 6/15/2009 —
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• — Women of the futurists —
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• — Paul Muldoon reads and discusses his own work. [mp3] —
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• — Happy Birthday, Gwendolyn Brooks! —
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• — Higher-ed pinching pushes college presses to brink —
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• — Happy Birthday, William Butler Yeats, Irish Poet and Dramatist —
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My brother is looking for someone to translate a passage in Dutch – helpful if you know some trigonometry. $.

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• — A book that is shut is just a block —
• — SPD Poetry Best-sellers January/February 09! —
• — Lynda Barry talks to the Chicago Tribune. —
• — Kay Ryan Talks About Her Very Public Role as Poet Laureate —
• — New Book on Plath Published —
• — Marina Tsvetaeva and the Poet-Pair —
• — ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has named Barbara Liskov of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) the winner of the 2008 ACM A.M. Turing Award —
• — Erica Jong Tells Y’s Women of the Importance of Poetry —
• — The Dalai Lama Is Highly Annoyed —