Poetry News:

1. — There is little that can make us as acutely conscious of the fact that we are still alive as being shown the body of someone who is dead —
2. — Start a Notebook on Poets.org - 30 Ways To Celebrate National Poetry Month —
3. — “if anything the poem and video are poking fun at a stereotype of libertarianism” —
4. — In recent years, the splendid American poet Elizabeth Bishop has undergone both a canonization and a demystification —
5. — Lighght Verse —
6. — The poem that saved a terribly English spy from death in Dublin —
7. — Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott is one of the great mongrels of American poetry, serving as a singular melting pot for a variety of traditions —
8. — Detroit Tiger Haikus —
9. — Fewer people may be reading, but everywhere you turn, Americans are sounding their barbaric yawps over the roofs of the world, as good old Walt Whitman, himself a self-published author, once put it —

My brother Jason has posted a bunch of word games / word puzzles on his blog.

Poetry News:

1. — Robert and Jean Hollander have just completed a beautiful translation of the astonishing fourteenth-century poem —
2. — PBS transforms downtown New Bedford into Walt Whitman’s America —
3. — The Poets.org Poetcast: Charles Simic goes to the planetarium [links to MP3] —
4. — Baseball has long been the sport with the strongest literary heritage —
5. — ** Enter the 11th annual Mainichi Haiku Contest here! ** —
6. — How seven letters managed to freak out an entire nation —

The Nashville Sounds won our division again. I went to exactly *one* game all year. But I have playoff tickets.

Like rats from a sinking ship.

Poetry News:

1. — “That letters, words and sentences are all involved in reading is nothing new, but finding that their contributions to reading rate is additive is startling” —
2. — Borges and Lowell —
3. — Shhh, the ‘poetry librarian’ is in town —
4. — Eight Poems by Pierre Reverdy —
5. — English literature, as we know it, begins with the works of two great poets who wrote in London during the second half of the 14th century: Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland —
6. — Complete Minimal Poems by Aram Saroyan —
7. — For example, here is a fairly recent Simic self-portrait —
8. — Saginaw celebrates poet —
9. — why are Nick Laird’s poems so sombre? —

My web host moved this site to a newer server. I think everything is working OK?

“In a stunning follow-up to the attack on Taslima Nasreen by Muslim activists, the Hyderabad police on Saturday booked the exiled Bangladeshi author for promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, language ” a charge that can get her two years in prison, if proven. The attackers are roaming freely, charged with minor misdemeanours.” [more]

Got my hair CUT OFF Saturday. Maybe it isn’t such a good idea to go to the salon when you have slid into surgical menopause hahaha? Speaking of which, I am taking a break from the internet for a bit because the world is really starting to piss me off (more) & I need to hibernate & straighten my brain. See you in a bit. Have a poem xoxo:

Remedy
(for Sylvia Plath)

This cure is a quake of the brain. In a cracked
room sits a cracked bell, convalescent. Shaken
until erased, I seek a grand plan, yet

fail without ceremony. I’m simply an immigrant
in a monochrome country. The doctors are delinquent
to tender this gift (spark-volts,

spark-lids): even the shadows sleepwalk
inside the ruinous afternoon. Suddenly I am
at the kitchen table. Suddenly I am

an oracle, inconsequent. In an electric
mist, I smell hot wire and I smell possession.
The ink of my pen is shaping a rook,

arranging and rearranging his feathers
in the rain. I feel the flare of an angel
at my elbow. I feel her random descent.