- — Understanding Haiti’s Catastrophe through a Poet’s Eyes —
- — An octogenarian lensman yesterday unveiled never-before-seen photos of Marilyn Monroe lounging around a New York apartment with poet Carl Sandburg nine months before her death. —
- — Like Larkin, Tony Hoagland seems to draw inspiration and fluency as a poet from his disappointment and frustration as a human being. —
- — There are 15 or 20 better poets in America than Tony Hoagland, but few deliver more pure pleasure. —
- — For the second year running, a poet published by Twin Cities publisher Graywolf Press has won the prestigious (and lucrative) Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. —
- — Cathy Smith Bowers joins Wordplay! —
- — The 5,000 students graduating each year from creative writing programs (not to mention the thousands more who attend literary festivals and conferences) do not include insecurity, rejection and disappointment in their plans. —
- — Butter leads to lower blood fats than olive oil —
- — Fence Seeks Poetry Editor to Fill Open Spot —
- — poetry advice column: what should you learn from rejection letters? —
- — Colum McCann reads “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats at the 2008 Tribute to Chinua Achebe. [mp3] —
- — Language and Listening —
- — Sun Microsystems CEO’s 17-syllable resignation announcement is a useful innovation that could be more widely applied —
- — I wrote this poem at the end of the Fall semester of 2008, so it’s about a year old. I usually begin a poem with one line that I mutter under my breath for days, until I can’t hold it in any longer. —
- — Historically Speaking: Colonial-era female poet born in Lebanon, Conn. —
- — Gil Scott-Heron, survivor —
- — Is it vanity to self-publish? —
- — DOD Identifies Army Casualties —
- — It’s a profound statement, which is why in the 500+ pages of The Pleasure of the Damned you’ll find no sonnets, no sestinas, no haiku. —
- — The Winter of Our Self-Doubt: Writing, Solitude, and Companionship —
- — Minister to order poetry reading sessions in all radio stations —
- — Aberystwyth University in poetry ‘fevered brow’ test —
- — Ignorance as an asset —
- — Selected as the first place winner of qarrtsiluni’s 2009 poetry chapbook contest, Pamela Johnson Parker’s A Walk Through the Memory Palace is a gorgeous little treasure–a glossy chapbook with ten poems that sing as if they are 100. —
- — DOD Identifies Army Casualties —
- — Jack Kerouac’s Literary Estate in Limbo —
- — Defacing books: effluence of engagement —
- — Joe Milford Hosts WF Roby – Feb 07,2010 from Joe Milford Show | Great language poet and bad-ass. [mp3] —
- — DOD Identifies Army Casualty —
- — Poet Langston Hughes was born on 1 February 1902 in Joplin, Missouri.Personal planets in a combination of Aquarius, Pisces and Capricorn can be translated to humanitarian (Aquarius) dreams (Pisces) relating to (what ought to be) reality (Capricorn). —
- — SPD’s Poetry Bestsellers Jan 2010 —
- — “Dizzy in Your Eyes:” El Paso poet and author Pat Mora’s poetry gives voice to teen angst —
- — Joanna Rawson’s collection of poems unrest is one of four books of poetry nominated for this year’s Minnesota Book Awards. —
- — Ex-Iowa Poet Laureate Robert Dana dies —
- — When do you think a writer crosses the line between helping a publisher sell their book and entering into a cycle destructive to their creativity? —
- — … Fifteen Poems from Europe. —
- — This time, a simultaneously hardbitten and tender example of ‘cowboy poetry’ —
- — American Poetry Review, The, Jan/Feb 2010 —
- — With its daintily drawn cover artwork on a purple ground, this selection from the Poet Laureate’s work comes all tricked out like some Valentine’s Day gift. Beware. —
- — Steve Castro’s “Un monstruo oscuro encima de una gente clara” —
- — This program was inspired by an exhibition of photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, “Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans.” Frank’s book first appeared in 1959, and presented an unvarnished view of American life in all its hope, despair, and diversity. Our program includes two stories inspired by pictures in the exhibition; a rollicking poem by Frank’s friend Allen Ginsberg; and stories by two contemporary ?migr?s: Alexsandar Hemon (“Good Living,” read by Boyd Gaines) and Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie (“The Thing Around Your Neck,” read by Condola Rashad.) [mp3] —
Poetry News For February 9, 2010
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Feb 092010
- — Why danger can be good for children guess it is time to bring back these toys [youtube] —
- — Jeff Bezos in Disagreement With A Major Publisher, Pulls All Their Works’ “Buy Buttons” Off Amazon —
- — After years of mimicking her betters at poetry, she found her calling —
- — Zora Neale Hurston remembered on 50th anniversary of her death —
- — Fine writers, lousy spouses —
- — Accompanying the photos is a sestina by Mr. Trinidad called “Playing With Dolls,” in which his mother defends his doll habit —
- — A Reading List for the Grieving —
- — A Kittery Point poet and teacher, Green spent four weeks at The MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, N.H., working on a manuscript of 100 poems that she wanted to revise. —
- — Ruth Padel on Derek Walcott, ‘dirty tricks’, and the worst mistake of her life —
- — A love poem is principally a way of wooing, a strategy for seduction – and the Poetry Archive has compiled a collection you can send to your beloved on their mobile phone —
- — New Lit Mag Alert —
- — Unusual Calls for Submissions —
- — Pros and Cons of Interning at a Lit Mag —
- — Homeless young adults express themselves through poetry, build community, better lives —
- — 3 questions with former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky —
- — Rarely do I come across a book of poems that reads as though it had to be written. When I do, I’m reminded why I read poems in the first place —
- — For starters Bukowski’s assertion that he was born a bastard is inaccurate: he was born on August 16th, 1920; his parent had married, albeit only a month before, on July 15th. —
- — Yet without medical classification, but real in its effects, let us call this pandemic by the name poet-oxemia. —
- — Howling at the Moon: The Poetics of Amateur Product Reviews —
- — “What is a cat but a reduced lion?” So muses the fictionalized Joseph Brodsky character in Andrey Khrzhanovsky’s whimsical and inventive film, A Room and a Half. —
- — There are a few things that make Wendy Barker, poet-in-residence and professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, angry. One of them is how intimidated people can be of poetry. —
- — Reviews of New Fiction, Poetry, Mystery, Science Fiction and Comics — Publishers Weekly, 1/25/2010 —
- — Can creative writing ever be taught? —
- — Spitball The Literary Baseball Magazine has moved —
- — Timothy Steele’s Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt against Meter: the case for a new Formalism —
- — DOD Identifies Army Casualty —
- — DOD Identifies Army Casualty —
- — Poetry roundup | Book review —
- — Uncovered: Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner —
- — How does an outfielder know where to run for a fly ball? —
- — Alan Lightman—scientist, essayist, novelist, and poet—takes on the big questions —
- — Patricia and Edward Submitted by Ryan from My Parents Were Awesome —
- — Abandon All Poetry, but Enter Hell With an Attitude —
- — The Romantic poets: The Human Image and The Divine Image by William Blake —
- — Invictus aside, poetry in cinema is embarrassing —
- — Poetry, in its power to burn experience into the soul in a concentrated perfection of language often becomes an unlikely balm. —
- — NaPoWriMo 2010 is coming! [from No Tell Motel thank you]—
- — A few years after the dedication, he decided to revisit “his” high school. By then a different principal was in charge. The new man thought Sandburg was a panhandler and threw him out. —
- — George Tsongas dies: poet, North Beach fixture —
- — Women and Disability and Poetry (Not Necessarily in That Order) —
- — More drawings from my notebook that is so small, I can only fit the faces of people I draw. Not to be confused with the online social network Facebook. —
- — Cerebral Meditation Hosted Roy Johnston – Join Roy as he talks to Stanley Plumly about his Keats Bio Poets who die young often have surprisingly lively posthumous careers. John Keats (1795-1821) provides the most celebrated example: Almost immediately after his death in Rome, at the age of 25, he entered the realm of legend. Though his poetry wasn’t much read at the time, he himself was quickly transformed into a figure of myth. For Shelley — who drowned with a copy of Keats’s last book in his pocket — he was “like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,” as he put it in “Adonais,” his elegy for the poet. At the opposite extreme, Shelley’s good friend Lord Byron detested Keats and snubbed him, referring to him in one letter as “a dirty little blackguard.” For the aristocratic Byron, Keats was a “Cockney” upstart — more a rank weed than a pale lily. But for Keats’s admirers, his humble origins only enhanced the pathos of his fate. For William Butler Yeats, Keats was both the “coarse-bred son of a livery-stable keeper” and a woebegone schoolboy “with face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window,” the very epitome of sensuousness unsatisfied. [mp3] —
- — The Reading Is Poetry Review – “Where Verse Becomes A Learning Lesson” Join Hip Hop Jazz Poet A K Toney as he reads and reviews selections from “Skovbo” by Viggo Mortenson. (Perceval Press 2009) A Collection of photographs, poems, and quotes. (in English, Spanish, and Danish [mp3] —
- — The Blood-Jet Writing Hour hosted by Rachelle Cruz – Join Rachelle as she Talks to Alicia Ostriker – Alicia Ostriker, twice a finalist for the National Book Award, has published 11 volumes of poetry, most recently No Heaven. Her most recent prose book is Dancing at the Devil’s Party: Essays on Poetry, Politics, and the Erotic. She has received awards and fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the Poetry Society of America, and the San Francisco State Poetry Center, among others. Ostriker lives in Princeton, NJ, is Professor Emerita of English at Rutgers University, and teaches in the low-residency Poetry MFA program of New England College. ***** Rachelle Cruz, Poet and Host of “The Blood-Jet Writing Hour” Radio Show www.thebloodjet.wordpress.com www.rachellecruz.com [mp3] —
- — Jo Mcdougall – from Joe Milford Show | Jo McDougall is the author of five books of poetry: The Woman in the Next Booth, BkMk Press/University of Missouri-Kansas City; Towns Facing Railroads and From Darkening Porches, University of Arkansas Press; and, most recently, Dirt and Satisfied with Havoc, Autumn House Press, Pittsburgh. Her memoir in progress, Daddy’s Money, focuses on growing up on a rice farm in the Arkansas delta. [mp3] —
- — Annie Finch explores the metaphorical meaning of winter. [mp3] —
- — So how do funny poems actually work? Well, the same way serious poems work — there’s just, I think, less room for error —
- — Boris Pasternak -the Man who saw the other side of the Bolshevik Revolution —
- — Invicta: what a terrible choice of poem- The choice of Gordon Brown is also the choice of the Oklahoma bomber —
- — Ugly Reprint of Dante’s Inferno Aims For Gamers —
- — Once we understand Essbaum’s thrust, we can pierce her previous volumes, Necropolis (2008, neoNuma Arts) and Harlot (2007, No Tell Books). These books are best understood as two halves of the same quest: the reconciliation of spirit and flesh —
- — Machine Art lamps —
- — Minnesota Poetry: Sun Yung Shin’s “The House” —
- — Carol Anne Duffy’s Poetry corner – Snow Light —
- — I love spectator shoes —
- — Poem of the Week: “Airport Security” by Sherod Santos —
- — … On Poetry: Poets’ homes usually eccentric and full of character. —
- — CFS: Broadsided wants your poems. Once a month, Broadsided publishes a literary/artistic collaboration. —
- — Carl Sandburg Stops Making Sense: The Chicago poet’s overlooked adventures in linguistic anarchy. —
- — Why do we end poems the way we do? —
- — There’s not a thing about this process that comes easy. I sweat and suffer every syllable. —
- — New Lit on the Block :: Southern Women’s Review —
- — Sinclair sponsors 25th annual Paul Laurence Dunbar Poetry Writing Contest —
- — A Look Back in Anger: Poet-Prophet Gil Scott-Heron —
- — The Nation profiles Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, author of the (creepy, wonderful) short story collection There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby. —
- — Poet Philip Levine Recalls Life at the Factory
from Poetry | NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Podcast | PBS Jeffrey Brown profiles Philip Levine, a former auto worker who became a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. [mp3] — - — KUSP The Poetry Show with Dennis Morton James Scully, The Manhatten Review [MP3] —
- — “Mummies To Burn” from Slate Magazine – Poems by Charles Harper Webb [mp3] —
- — Puma Perl’s poetry and fiction have been published in over 100 print and online journals and anthologies.Her first chapbook, Belinda and Her Friends, published in 2008, was awarded the Erbacce Press 2009 Poetry Award; a full length collection, knuckle tattoos, will be published early in 2010. She performs her work in many venues, in and out of New York City, and was recently included in the Bowery Poetry Club’s yearly New Year’s Day Alternate Poetry Marathon. Upcoming features include Otto’s Shrunken Head Shout-Out, Cornelia Street Café’s Hydrogen Jukebox, as well as a book launch party at the Bowery Poetry Club, March 7,2010.She lives and writes on the Lower East Side and has facilitated writing workshops in community based agencies and at Riker’s Island, a NYC prison. She is a member of Harmattan Theater, a performance group dedicated to environmental and socially engaging theater. [mp3] —
Poetry News For January 11, 2010
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Jan 112010
- — poetry x 12: a yearlong poetry-collection reading challenge —
- — Carl Sandburg astrology —
- — Published Without Permission —
- — Costa Award winner Christopher Reid tells Olga Craig how writing helped him to express the helplessness of watching his wife die. —
- — Ambassador for poetry: Iowa’s Poet Laureate combines writing, teaching —
- — Richard Wilbur, two-time Pulitzer-winning poet, to be honored in Key West —
- — Oxford poetry job up for grabs again following ‘smear campaign’ controversy —
- — The Saturday poem: Pigeon by Lachlan Mackinnon —
- — Rossetti threw his love poems into the coffin with her. —
- — Even though narrative verse is a dead literary form today, Chaucer’s characters, like the raucous Wife of Bath, achieve an immortality similar to Shakespeare’s Falstaff or Dickens’ Mr. Pickwick. —
- — These special spiced olives are inspired by a poem by New England poet, Hayden Carruth —
- — Beckett is unusual for a writer in starting out enraged and disgusted, rather than being driven to it by critics, venal publishers, the mediocrity of public taste, or life itself on what Lucky – who is, among other things, a disappointed poet – calls “this bitch of an earth”. —
- — Book Review: Poetry Round-Up Robert Kelly, H. R. Stoneback, Patricia Carlin, Bruce Weber, Rebecca Wolff, Edward Sanders, Ann Lauterbach, Barry Sternlieb —
- — The book is haunted by loss: vanished lovers, spent dreams, erased landscapes. But hope drifts throughout it, too, drawn by Reyes in small details: fresh milk, clean rain, spring ligh —
- — Gordon Brown has described an attempted coup against him as “silliness” and revealed Nelson Mandela’s favourite poem gave him the strength to govern. —
- — Absence of verse disrupts our rhythm —
- — Alleged plagiarism sparks literary battle —
- — Pittsgrove artist has tell-tale style: Edgar Allen Poe heads —
- — Joe Milford Hosts David Oprava – “In a country where the corpses of political poems often litter our streets, with very little meaning being left behind, the poetry of Oprava offers an intense hope through the examination of a variety of issues, facing not only America, but the world. “American Means” offers readers of modern verse a narrative forum on homelessness, gay marriage, religion, corporate greed, health care, history, pop culture, nostalgia, and the end of the ice age. In this one book, Oprava has accomplished what many writers spend their whole literary careers working toward, he has given value back to our dreams.” -poet John Dorsey [mp3] —
- — Joe Milford Hosts Gina Myers – from Joe Milford Show – Gina Myers currently lives in Saginaw, MI, where she is the Associate Editor of 360 Main Street, the Reviews Editor of H_NGM_N, and the bookmaker for Lame House Press. Her first full-length collection of poetry, A Model Year, was published in July 2009 by Coconut Books [mp3] —
- — Joe Milford Hosts Rebecca Wolff – from Joe Milford Show – Wolff received her MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop, where she was an assistant editor of the Iowa Review. She created Fence Magazine in 1997, with an editorial staff including Jonathan Lethem, Frances Richard, Caroline Crumpacker, and Matthew Rohrer, and Fence Books in 2001.[2] Fence is now headquartered at the University at Albany, where Wolff teaches classes for the New York State Writers Institute in Poetry and Creative Writing. [mp3] —
- — Barbara Kingsolver from KCRW’s Bookworm What do Leon Trotsky, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera have to do with an invented author of Mayan and Incan historical romances? [mp3] —
- — Neeli Cherkovski hosted by Bill Gainer – from Jane Crown’s Poetry Radio – Bio: Neeli Cherkovski is a longtime contributor to the West Coast literary scene. Emerging from the Los Angeles underground of the Sixties, Cherkovski is an applauded poet, critic and literary biographer. He has written ten books of poetry, including the award winning Leaning Against Time , Elegy for Bob Kaufman and Animal; two acclaimed biographies, Bukowski: A Life and Ferlinghetti: A Biography; his book, Whitman’s Wild Children (a collection of critical memoirs), has become an underground classic. In the late 1960s Cherkovski co-edited the poetry anthology Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns with Charles Bukowski. Since 1975, Neeli has lived and worked in San Francisco . For ten years he was Writer-in-Residence at New College of California, where he taught literature and philosophy. [mp3] —
Poetry News For December 16, 2009
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Dec 162009
- — Talking Generosity-Based Publishing with Gregory Maguire —
- — Formula to Detect an Author’s Literary ‘fingerprint’ —
- — According to the researchers, structures such as these were quite common in the Roman era and were intended for poetry-reading performances and musical recitals for an elect audience —
- — “Inspiration,” in my experience, is a reward for persistent work when one is not in the least inspired. The “paragraph,” despite a name that makes it sound like a prose poem, is a fairly complex form. As Hayden Carruth used and described it, it is a fifteen-line poem, which, like a sonnet, can either stand alone or work in sequence. —
- — War is declared in the world of ebooks —
- — This time, a distinctly ‘cubist’ attempt to reclaim one of Picasso’s muses as her own woman —
- — Weekly Poem: ‘From Here to There’ from Poetry | NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Podcast | PBS Brad Leithauser [mp3] —
- — Emily Dickinson Birthday Radio Show now available —
- — When you pick a fight with a poet, you expect to win. You are likely to be outmatched, however, if the poet you are up against is Alice Quinn —
- — The end of that relationship prompted her discovery of St. Vincent Millay and was the turning point in her jewelry-making —
- — A survey of 2009′s notable new nonfiction, fiction, and poetry —
- — On Poetry: Gilbran’s ‘The Prophet’ resonates with readers today —
- — Walcott finally wins his poetry professorship —
- — Christmas roundup: poetry books —
- — Women of the Avant-Garde —
- — Podcast: Charles Wright Reads Selected Sestets and Other Poems from The New York Review of Books —
- — With Rolling Stone going into the restaurant business, Slate imagines the possibilities for other magazine/restaurant hybrids. —
- — He scanned it — Staggered — —
- — This woman was one of my initial inspirations for the chapbook–originally I planned to tell the story from her perspective. [as a radio geek I've heard that story before and I am apt to believe it. and that is a good chapbook.] —
- — At the Baryshnikov Arts Center, the works of T. S. Eliot and Beethoven come together in an arresting, profound and a theatrically stunning piece titled “Four Quartets.” —
- — Poetry so bad it’s good, plus other verse tragedies. [mp3] —
- — Canadian sci-fi author beaten, imprisoned at US border crossing —
- — Sometimes, I work my poems hard, running them through several stress tests and changing lots of little things or some big things. —
- — Best American Poetry 2009: Statistical Overview —
- — Carl Sandburg from Poetry Lectures Archival recording of Carl Sandburg from 1956. [mp3] —
- — torqued enjambment —
- — Dharma Poetry: Hafiz —
- — Teri Garr: Wake Up Call from The Moth Podcast by marianne —
- — Music and the arts fight depression, promote health —
- — KUSP The Poetry Show: Dennis Morton and Leslie Anne Taylor read several holiday poems and more [mp3] —
- — Sapphire, Brian Turner, and Ai Among United States Artist Fellows —
- — Rare Tsvetayeva Production Struggles to Succeed —
- — To sum up: Sestina + apparently obscure references to Roseanne and Seinfeld = —
- — For Rumi, the reality accessible to our senses often obscures the true meaning that lies beneath —
- — Three-minute poetry? It’s all the rage —
- — What effect has being the editor of a poetry journal had on your own poetry? Is that another kind of feast? Or do you risk losing your appetite? —
- — The Bestselling Contemporary Poetry of 2009 —
- — Mad Girls’ Love Songs: Two Women Poets-a Professor and Graduate Student-Discuss Sylvia Plath, Angst, and the Poetics of Female Adolescence-College Literature, Fall 2009 by Greenberg, Arielle, Klaver, Becca —
- — Articles in Nov/Dec 2009 issue of American Poetry Review, The —
- — Tom Waits to star in The Hobbit? —
- — Sarah Palin and William Shatner do beat poetry on “Tonight Show” —
- — Letters to a Young Poet: “The Delicacy and Strength of Lace” The collected correspondence between Leslie Marmon Silko and the poet James Wright —
- — University Teams with Kundiman, Inc., to Support Poets —
Poetry News For May 8, 2009
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May 082009
- — Marin Poet Laureate Albert DeSilver and sculptor Todd Pickering are seen in Point Reyes with the Marin Poetry Chair they created from 58 poetry books. —
- — The New Pages Literary Magazine Reviews are fresh —
- — Reevaluating the Ouvre of John Giorno —
- — The National Endowment for the Arts today announced that Copper Canyon Press, an internationally renowned nonprofit literary publisher, will be the U.S. publisher for its International Literary Exchange with the People’s Republic of China. —
- — 2009 “Discovery” Poetry Contest Winners —
- — Sandburg site reopens —
- — It’s A Happy Buddha Birthday at the Full Moon of Taurus-Scorpio, also known as The Wesak Festival! —
- — Changing Gulf, Verse by Verse —
- — The Mainichi Daily News: Haiku in English: Daily Haiku Selection Archives —
- — The future of the book turns a page —
- — Here’s how the Pet Haiku contest works: Through May 22 at 6 p.m., post your best pet-related haiku poems here in the comments section, email them to me at pets@sfgate.com or tweet them using #SFGhaiku. —
- — It is a goddamned crime that Harris and Parsons aren’t still singing together, aging gracefully, gazing adoringly at each other as they harmonize in perfect sync, and touring the world making people happy with their music. —
- — I already miss the dogwoods —
What's my Line? Carl Sandburg
Blabbing, Poetry News
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Feb 172009
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