- — It’s the birthday of the woman who wrote “My candle burns at both ends; / It will not last the night; / But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends — / It gives a lovely light!” —
- — Charles Bukowski Stamp Running Out of Time —
- — Poem provides evidence that Anne Boleyn had numerous affairs —
- — Ancient Poet Joins WWE Smackdown —
- — Köhler painted the American poet and novelist Charles Bukowski— uninhibited, antisocial spokesman for drinking, fighting, and fucking; defender of the inescapable squalor, oppressiveness, and futility of life—in an earthy, visceral red. —
- — Honan channels the worst poet ever in Portland Stage’s ‘Real McGonagall’ —
- — The last time an opponent of the communist government died in Cuba during a hunger strike was 1972 with poet and activist Pedro Luis Boitel. —
- — As a young child, Edward Hirsch mistook Emily Bronte’s work for his grandfather’s. —
- — It’s not possible to bring back the dead, but yesterday the final work of Australian poet Dorothy Porter was bought vividly to life by actress Cate Blanchett in a sold-out Things On Sunday event at the Malthouse Theatre —
- — Rare Disease Day designed to raise public awareness of uncommon illnesses —
- — At the age of 17 Sylvia Plath referred to herself in her diary as ‘the girl who wanted to be god’, this use of the past tense perhaps foreshadowing her early demise. —
- — Bolano’s early novella reimagines the last days of Peruvian writer Vallejo during Spanish Civil War. —
- — Poems by Olympic poet-in-residence soar with athletes —
- — Book Review | ‘Leavings’ by Wendell Berry —
- — If Emily Dickinson had wanted to make a spectacle of herself, she could have wandered solo into a disreputable “rum resort” to sit on the lap of a not-so-gentlemanly scholar, as Jerome Charyn has her do in his daring novel about the Emily who might have been —
- — The Millay Society plans to open Steepletop, the home of the late poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, to the public for tours starting May 28. —
- — Israel turns down bid to teach Palestinian poems in schools —
- — When is a consonant a vowel? —
- — Feds push for tracking cell phones —
- — In poem after marvellous poem, Robertson creates a series of elusive identities. —
- — Keep and Give Away is driven by, as one reviewer has said, the central paradox of loving and letting go. —
- — 112-year-old Mother Ruby Muhammad plans to sing, read poetry on stage —
- — 5 Questions with Gary Young, Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County —
- — Michelangelo drawings of his muse go on display —
- — Juliana Gray, assistant professor of English in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at Alfred University, received the 2010 Bea Gonzalez Prize for Poetry —
- — Reviews of new Fiction, Mysteries, Thrillers, Romance, Science-Fiction, and Graphic Novels [and poetry] —
- — Nazi spoons, robots vie for oddest title —
- — In this week’s poem, a beautiful nocturne, the New York poet Samuel Menashe finds transcendence in everyday images —
- — To recognize and help celebrate the start of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games, P&PC goes into its archive to reprint this posting on Olympians and Olympic poetry. —
- — Five Questions with Collin Kelley, author of “Conquering Venus.” —
- — Ask a Poet: Why do women seem so normal at the workplace or in a board meeting or in evening classes, but then when you get to know them, you find out that they’re just so damn unreasonable and complicated? I like your column, but I bet you’re obnoxious, too. Just like the rest of them. —
- — Roger Robinson responds to your poems on fatherhood —
- — The dark horse candidate who would be Oxford’s new professor of poetry —
- — `Forty Rules of Love’ tells story of Rumi’s life —
- — A piece of history is lost as bookstore closes —
- — Poet-professor takes aim at women’s issues in ‘Hot Bullets’ —
- — Poem of the week: A Letter to a Brother of the Pen in Tribulation by Aphra Behn —
- — In my memory it goes like this: I wrote the poem in one sitting after watching a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin in January or February. The poem just sprang out of me, needing no revision. Everything in the poem happened just as I describe it. But here’s the truth: I keep a little “events” journal, and I still have the drafts of the poem, so I decided to check. —
- — … Louisville man charged with threatening to kill president in poem. —
- — Terza Rima – a defence of rhyme —
- — free verse done right —
- — Vile Poetry Hardly Worst Unwanted Detritus Stuffed in SF Weekly Box —
- — Fairy Tale Review: Call for The Brown Issue —
- — A short story collection by a Vanderbilt University professor described as “an amazingly original Flannery O’Connor/Loretta Lynn collision” is one of five nominees for the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. —
- — This is the first Plath audio release in more than three decades with new, previously unreleased recordings!! —
- — “Poetry of the Law: From Chaucer to the Present,” the first serious anthology of law-related poetry ever published in the United States, will become available March 1 from the University of Iowa Press. —
- — Poetry magazine Free Lunch ends its run —
- — The Saturday poem – On Lacking the Killer Instinct by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin From The Sun-fish —
- — Tuesday and Wednesday this week I had the great fortune to interact with Kay Ryan, our current U.S. Poet Laureate. She came to the University of Tennessee to give a poetry reading and interact with students and various campus groups. —
- — Fringe interview: Poet Bryan Roth on the Meaning of Poetry —
- — Covers and texts from underground poetry journals in “Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal, Issue #10” at White Columns, a show organized by Thurston Moore, Byron Coley and Eva Prinz. —
- — Chickens ‘one-up’ humans in ability to see color —
- — A dispute with Borges’s estate has left works he produced with the translator Norman Thomas di Giovanni in publishing limbo —
- — “Learning to Write the MFA Poem” [by Nin Andrews] —
- — Beware of Fake Awards —
- — John Ashbery Visits, Presents His Poetry —
- — Lucille Clifton, Poet Who Explored Intricacies of Black Lives, Dies at 73 New York Times —
- — DOD Identifies Army Casualties —
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- — The Blood-Jet Writing Hour hosted by Rachelle Cruz – join Rachelle as she talks to Ruth Forman A Poetry for the People alum, Ruth Forman is an award-winning young writer and filmmaker. Her first book of poetry, We Are The Young Magicians, won the Barnard New Women Poets Prize. In its starred and boxed review, Booklist said, “Ruth Forman[’s]… poems are alive and kicking; they pound and pulse with a hard-won sense of self, beauty, femininity, strength and righteous indignation.” Renaissance, Ruth Forman’s second book, is written with the same irrepressible voice. A graduate of UC Berkeley and the famed USC film school, Ms Forman works to inspire others with the power and magic of language, frequently collaborating on music and film projects, and providing readings and workshops to a wide variety of audiences. She most recently received the 2001 Durfee Artist Fellowship to continue work on Mama John, her first novel, as well as a third volume of poetry. [mp3] —
- — Margo Jefferson Reminisces about Langston Hughes [mp3] —
- — This program is devoted to two classic tales of terror. We begin with Bram Stoker’s “Dracula’s Guest,” which almost makes you hear the sound of the wolves on the windswept moor, as delivered by the regular performer on television’s “Daily Show,” Aasif Mandvi. Second, a privileged aristocracy can’t cheat death in this chiller by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Masque of the Red Death.” The reader is Fionnula Flanagan. [mp3] —
- — Joe Milford Hosts Patrick Lawler: Feeding the Fear of the Earth is out on Many Mountains Moving Press. Patrick Lawler’s two earlier collections of poetry are: A Drowning Man is Never Tall Enough (U of Georgia Press) and reading a burning book (Basfal Books). He has been awarded fellowships by the NY State Foundation for the Arts, the NEA, and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. In addition to being an Associate Professor at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry where he teaches Environmental Writing and Nature Literature, he teaches creative writing at Onondoga Community College. He is also part of the Creative Writing Program at LeMoyne College, where he teaches creative writing, playwriting, and writing for performance. [mp3] —
- — Joe Milford Hosts Ted Mathys: Ted Mathys is the author of The Spoils, forthcoming from Coffee House Press, and Forge, from the same publisher. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, his poems have appeared in such venues as American Poetry Review, BOMB, Conjunctions, and Jubilat. His work has been anthologized in A Best of Fence: the First Nine Years, and Verse, 1994 – 2004: The Second Decade, as well as translated into Italian for La nuova poesia Americana: New York. Originally from Ohio, he has lived and worked in Hong Kong, Berlin, and New York and currently studies international affairs at Tufts University in Boston. [mp3] —
- — Joe Milford Hosts Jerry Williams: With breakup and divorce rates so high in the United States, who wouldn’t want to read an eclectic volume of poems on the subject? Therapeutic and transformative, edgy yet sincere, enlightening, wideranging, female and male, gay and straight, innocent and guilty, It’s Not You, It’s Me: The Poetry of Breakup incorporates work from as many different perspectives as possible in order to explore the exquisite pain of heartbreak. Such top-shelf contributors as National Book Award finalist Kim Addonizio, bestselling author Denis Johnson, former poet laureate Mark Strand, Edward Hirsch, Maxine Kumin, David Lehman, and many others proudly offer up their wisdom on the various pains (and humors) of heartbreak. In this stunning collection, readers will not find false hope, but the real hope of genuine sympathy in love, hate, fury, and recuperation. [mp3] —
- — Poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay personified the life of a liberated, bohemian poet in Greenwich Village in the 1920s. [mp3] —
- — PBS: Former Maryland poet laureate and National Book Award winner Lucille Clifton died Saturday at age 73 after a long battle with cancer. [mp3] —
- — Join Beth Chang As She reviews E.E. Cummings Erotic Poems & Honor Comes Hard Wrintings from The California Prison System Honor Yard Edited by Luis J Rodriguez & Lucinda Thomas Prison writing has a long and illustrious history in the United States – home of the modern correctional system. In the first decade of the 21st century, this country also garnered the distinction of having more prisoners per capita than any other nation in the world. We need to hear from the incarcerated writings of incarcerated men and women. The largest state prison system is in California with some 175,000 people behind bars in close to 35 facilities. Yet the only approved Honor Yard in the Department of Corrections is at the California State Prison, Los Angeles County, in Lancaster, California. These are the men that despite often-horrendous crimes – many are lifers, with a few going on three decades – have proven their capacity to dream, to create, to write, to change. From poems, to stories, to novel excerpts, to reportage, to personal essays – and a few drawings – “Honor Comes Hard” depicts what can happen to people who are given, as Clarence Darrow expressed many years ago, ‘a chance to live’. The work is drawn from writing classes that Lucinda Thomas helped organize in the Honor Yard over several years, and from workshops conducted by Luis J. Rodriguez on most Sundays, for eight hours a day, through eight months in 2007-2008. [mp3] —
- — Join Rafael and Brett-Candace as she talks Erica Miriam Fabri – Erica Miriam Fabri is the author of “Dialect of a Skirt,” a collection of poetry published by Hanging Loose Press (November 2009). She is a writer and performer and a graduate of The American Academy of Dramatic Arts and received her MFA in Poetry from The New School. Her work has been published in numerous literary journals and magazines including: New York Quarterly, Texas Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Hanging Loose Magazine, Good Foot Magazine, Paper Street and more. She has performed and facilitated workshops and seminars at: Cooper Union School of the Arts, New York University, Columbia University, Penn State University, The Brooklyn Public Library, Poet’s House, The Fortune Society, The Robin Hood Foundation, and the PEN Prison Writing Program. She has worked on projects as a writer, editor and performance director for The New York Knicks, HBO and Nickelodeon Television. [mp3] —
- — Joe Milford Show | Ted Mathys is the author of The Spoils, forthcoming from Coffee House Press, and Forge, from the same publisher. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, his poems have appeared in such venues as American Poetry Review, BOMB, Conjunctions, and Jubilat. His work has been anthologized in A Best of Fence: the First Nine Years, and Verse, 1994 – 2004: The Second Decade, as well as translated into Italian for La nuova poesia Americana: New York. Originally from Ohio, he has lived and worked in Hong Kong, Berlin, and New York and currently studies international affairs at Tufts University in Boston. [mp3] —
- — Lucille Clifton, Reading, 21 May 1996 video —
- — “Hole” is from Naomi Ayala’s “This Side of Early” (Curbstone Press, 2008). Her first collection, “Wild Animals on the Moon,” was published in 1997, and a third is forthcoming. She lives in Washington, D.C., and works as an education consultant, translator and teacher. [mp3] —
- — Lucille Clifton with Quincy Troupe, Conversation, 21 May 1996 from Lannan Foundation video —
- — Willie Perdomo riffs on discovering the work of Hughes for the first time, as part of PEN’s Tribute to Langston Hughes. [mp3] —
- — The Expatriates By Anne Sexton from Poem of the Day [mp3] —
- — The Poetry Show: Friends from Cabrillo College honor the departed poet Jeff Towle [mp3] —
- — Poetry from In Celebration of the Muse, hosted by Susan Freeman [mp3] —
- — rules grammar change onion radio news [mp3] —
- — Archival recordings of poet Anne Sexton, with an introduction to her life and work. Recorded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1960. [mp3] —
Poetry News For November 25, 2009
Poetry News
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Nov 252009
For those of you celebrating Thanksgiving this week, have a happy Thanksgiving.
- — scorching criticism —
- — Psychological therapy 32 times more cost effective at increasing happiness than money —
- — Can Nick Cave rival Bad Sex Award favorite Philip Roth? —
- — A list of Thanksgiving poems for family and friends. —
- — Just in time for Thanksgiving – a PennSound podcast excerpting poems of giving thanks from the PennSound archive [mp3] —
- — Comestibles that are too tempting to terrorists include: gravy…. —
- — A Dinner to Make Even Futurists Happy —
- — Providence Poet Wins National Book Award —
- — Framing W.H. Auden and Benjamin Britten at the National Theatre —
- — Urgent: Check Your Withholdings (Americans) —
- — In an online poll conducted by the National Book Foundation, the O’Connor collection “The Complete Stories” was named the best work to have won the National Book Award for fiction in the contest’s 60-year history & the Flannery O’Connor episode of Religion and Ethics Newsweekly —
- — Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Asshole, and the Haiku of Fight Club —
- — Poetry reading honors late haiku professor —
- — Co-vocabularists may be interested to know that the promised broadcast on Oulipo is now available online here —
- — Serious plagiarists have been at it forever; it’s a way of life —
- — Writing poems doesn’t mean he’s gay —
- — Chapbooks Make Great Stocking Stuffers —
- — Director Andy Goldberg links speech with movement in his Bard boot camp. —
- — A lot of archived audio and video files from the Poem Present Reading and Lecture series at U of Chicago —
- — Poetry Series Spurs Debate on the Use of an Old Slur Against Latinos —
- — Fathers and fatherhood have spawned much great poetry, and this month poet and creative writing teacher Roger Robinson wants to read your take on this most intimate of subjects —
- — PEN American Center is accepting submissions and nominations for the 2010 Literary Awards. —
- — Weekly Poems: Keith Waldrop, 2009 National Book Award Winner from Poetry | NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Podcast | PBS [mp3] —
- — A “boxer” recites as her opponent looks on at the 7th annual national poetry boxing competition in 2007. (Photo courtesy of the Japan Reading Boxing Association) —
- — True poetry fans ‘love’ Dante’s Inferno game —
- — When is a Poetry Workshop not Really a Poetry Workshop? —
- — The 11 Most Fashionable Pulitzer Prize Winners —
- — Miserablist Larkin loved his mum and dad after all —
- — Robo-Rocky vs. Edgar Allen Poe vs. JCVD. Fight! Fight! Fight! —
- — City boss ‘shocked woman with vile email’ quoting Latin poet —
- — Books on Basho and his haiku at the library —
- — Portland’s Gertrude Press and The Little Journal That Could —
- — Reading John Ashbery’s Poetry —
- — Little Richard is asking fans to pray for his speedy recovery after undergoing hip surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville —
- — it seems to combine elements both from that safe-as-houses mediaeval form, the sestina, and from the intricate pantoum: its accumulative structure also suggests folk-tales such as The House That Jack Built. —
- — New collection of T.S. Eliot’s letters sheds light on the poet’s day job and troubled home life —
Poetry News For May 12, 2009
Poetry News
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May 122009
- — Hall County Commissioner Ashley Bell is one of 100 people nationwide invited by President Barak Obama [sic] to attend the premiere White House Poetry Slam on Tuesday. —
- — Debra Kang Dean is the author of Back to Back, a chapbook of poems, News of Home, and Precipitates. She teaches in the Asian American Studies Program at Indiana University, Bloomington and also in Spalding University’s brief-residency MFA in Writing Program. [mp3] —
- — Right now there is a glut of guides to “Being an Author in the Age of Web 2.0!” We’re told to use blogs in the following ways… —
- — Pilot Books will hold our first open reading period in May of 2009 to select a manuscript to be published in our new Meddling Kids Series. —
- — Dante Gabriel Rossetti exhumed his wife seven years after her death to retrieve an unfinished manuscript of his poems —
- — Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, great grand-niece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, felt overshadowed by her illustrious ancestor, but hers was nonetheless a talent to reckon with. —
- — Sonnets are dotted about the collection like neat islands, composed with an easy skill and a musicality that reminds us of the melodic origins of the form —
- — Nicole Rubin, 18, of Norwich won the Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize, sponsored by the University of Connecticut. —
- — After a considerable delay (see previous post) I’ve released Issue 23 into the wild this afternoon. —
- — Louisiana State U. Press Might Get the Ax —
- — Happy Short Story Month! —
- — Political poetry and change in Latin America —
- — In the first of a series of collaborations between poets and photographers, Sarah Maguire and Martin Argles present an illustrated performance of her poem, ‘My Father’s Piano’ —
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- — The Lambda Literary Awards has announced its 105 finalists (representing 72 publishers) in its in 22 award categories. —
- — Would Yeats recognise his ‘land of heart’s desire’? —
- — the style suits Hammad because it accomplishes what many spoken-word poets fail to achieve: a seamless transition from the energy and cadence of live performance to the printed page. —
- — I read this poem at the ceremony commemorating the 200th anniversary of the United States Capitol and the restoration of the Statue of Freedom to the Capitol dome on October 23, 1993. It was first published in the Congressional Record of the same day —
- — Dante’s surprising rhymes —
- — ‘Genius and need’ wins prose poet Gary Young Shelley Memorial award —
- — Late Cambodian monk’s poems detail homeland terror —
- — Better than God —
- — Last week’s epistolatory challenge was the 50th Poster poems blog, so now seems like a good time to consider the anthology idea that has been proposed on a few occasions in the past. —
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