- — Why would a poet, whose business is language, seek outside help with putting together a poetry manuscript? For me, the answer is complicated, but I can readily think of a one-word answer: contests. —
- — Veronica Forrest-Thomson, (1947-1975) brought her interests in critical theory to bear on arrestingly subtle and original poetry. —
- — Bats, to me, are cute. —
- — Leonard Cohen’s Temple of Doom —
- — It is a mistake when translators translate an obscure word in one language to make it easier to understand in a new. I try to go with my judgement of how awkward, hard, stuck up, dusty, a word is. —
- — Poetry needed! —
- — Lange, Dorothea, photographer. Fourth of July, near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Rural filling stations become community centers and general loafing grounds. The men in the baseball suits are on a local team which will play a game nearby. They are called the Cedargrove Team —
- — Poems without a definite meaning tend to engage a reader’s attention more than those that can be clearly understood and analyzed by the intellect. Ambiguous poetry has a mystery that fascinates.
- — —
*** - — You may accidentally get caught by something you didn’t mean to read. Like a column on poetry. —
*** - — I think there should be a level of enjoyment, of ideas and ways of expressing them, new things the reader has yet to be exposed, but also a healthy flirtation with the uncomfortable. —
*** - — Elizabeth Bishop Pulitzer Prize-winning poet —
*** - — “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 —
*** - — Why do some book publishers seem intent on wandering off a cliff? —
*** - — Anne Sexton Letters Part I —
*** - — The engravings, drawings, watercolors and handmade books of William Blake, the artist, poet and irritated ecstatic at the Morgan Library & Museum gets the fall season off to a transporting start. —
*** - — The contest invites Filterfresh customers to write a tribute to the celebrated beverage, explaining why “Coffee is the Greatest Beverage of All Time!” —
*** - — Fall Guide: Books: The Southern Festival of Books, new work by Alice Randall, Madison Smartt Bell and others jumpstarts the literary fall —
*** - — One burning question I remember having at the time was: Why doesn’t poetry rhyme anymore? —
*** - — Concrete Poetry – Let It Hit Your Head —
*** - — Whipping up a storm over the BBC shipping forecast sacking —
*** - — Some may say Shampoo is eclectic to a fault. I’d argue rather it’s been generous, broad rather than narrow, and actually quite consistent in its poetic pitch over the last ten years —
*** - — Chapbook Makes Its Debut – I’m so excited and grateful about this. Please check out the amazing job qarrtsiluni has done with the poems. —
*** If you've enjoyed this blog, how about buying me a cup of coffee?
Poetry News For October 6, 2009
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Oct 062009
- — Snagged by Bishop—Hook, Line & Sinker —
- — Saba’s achievement overflows the boundaries of any single poem, and now with this new translation, and the help of Joseph Cary’s Three Modern Italian Poets and Cary’s translations of a few key poems in his A Ghost in Trieste, English-speaking readers can at last begin to take the measure of, and perhaps to learn from, this deeply haunting poet. —
- — Athens Museum Opening Reprises Debate on Elgin Marbles —
- — Can’t Get Enough of Ryan Raburn’s Walk-Off Homer? —
- — Seeking truth in case of poem theft —
- — “I dreamed last night that I won a consolation prize after being in a contest of a bat whom I named Freddy. “ —
- — Mouse With ‘Humanized Version’ Of Human Language Gene Provides Clues To Language Development —
- — Another exciting type of poem is the CONCRETE POEM: I know you know this has nothing to do with sand, cement and construction. Some writers know it as pattern or shape poems because of its ocular appearance. —
- — Can Flarf Ever Be Taken Seriously? —
- — Simon & Schuster gives architect of American pro-torture policy a platform and a huge advance (and John Yoo is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer now. Blah.) —
- — I’m not going to link to the neocon-laden Washington Post anymore. So no more Poet’s Choice links from me. —
- — Turing believed that computers would eventually be able to model creativity. Now, 60 years later, we know that they can. —
- — Poetry’s life of grime: Why young rappers are the natural successors to Tennyson —
- — R.T. Smith Named Writer-In-Residence —
- — Though neither poet came away with a Minnesota Book Award, finalists Tim Nolan and Todd Boss have produced solid books of poetry unmistakably tinged with Midwestern sensibility and Minnesotan landscape —
- — On the heels of winning this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, W.S. Merwin joins Moyers for a wide-ranging talk about language, his writing process, the natural world, and the insights gleaned from a much-lauded career that’s spanned more than 50 years and 21 volumes of poetry. —
- — “Not infrequently, we get letters or blog-responses to individual poems published in Poetry that cite particular phrases or lines in order to prove somehow that a poem or poet (and, by implication, our taste) is lousy.” —
- — “I think my success as a writer comes from the fact that I don’t think that anything I write is much good—and so I’m always trying to make it better.” —
- — Permanent Bedtime: poetry, sedative, or just a weather report? —
They just showed up one day. I hose off the porch and they come back haha. I’ll have to put something over the window glass so they aren’t as fascinated.
Poetry News For May 27, 2009
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May 272009
- — Poe’s bookcase stands in North Raleigh —
- — Pandas and poetry: Salt Publishing spoofs WWF video to save itself —
- — Having claimed the scalps of two distinguished poets in less than a fortnight, the job of professor of poetry at Oxford University is once again vacant. But what does the job involve and why is it so sought after? and also Revealed: The email sent by Oxford poetry professor Ruth Padel to smear rival —
- — $2 Million Donation Supports Creative Writing Program —
- — Poetry alone won’t keep the wolf from the door but prizes might —
- — Weekly Poem: ‘White Song’
from Poetry | NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Podcast | PBS
J. Michael Martinez’s collection “Heredities” was selected for the Academy of American Poets’ Walt Whitman Award and will be published by Louisiana State University Press [mp3] — - — “Still, it’s searingly extreme, a triumph by a hair, that one almost wishes had never come about.” —
- — Literary journals: The writers’ sandbox —
- — Thank goodness no backbiting like this takes place Stateside! —
- — The ‘previously unpublished’ versus the ‘piece that is becoming popular’ question is a big issue for me. —
- — Bookslut is in need of an intern —
- — One of the last surviving members of the Beat generation, Jack Gilbert still writes with a freshness that astonishes. —
- — Cub Haikus —
- — Gaylord Brewer: “Apologia to Mars and Moon” —
- — As Lewis Carroll used to say —
- — Scientists Reaching Consensus On How Brain Processes Speech —
- — Siren is jam-packed with springtime goodness —
- — The Poetry Show: Theodore Roethke [mp3] —
- — Rapper Roland Pemberton, otherwise known as Cadence Weapon, has been selected to be the new poet laureate for the city of Edmonton —
- — These poems have right answers. Does that diminish them? —
- — Updates: Lit Mag Reviews —
- — The recent election of the Oxford professor of poetry is the stuff of poetic satire, if only it weren’t so sad and pathetic. —
- — To elucidate the neurobiological basis of music in human evolution and communication the researchers demonstrated an association of arginine vasopressin receptor 1A (AVPR1A) gene variants with musical aptitude. —
May is Ehlers Danlos Awareness Month: Cape grad wants to educate public on painful condition
Poetry News For May 25, 2009
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May 252009
- — Poet cornered: Ruth Padel fights to keep Oxford post over tip-offs about her rival and A male poet wouldn’t have been blamed for rough tactics: Ruthless power plays in academia are as common as good wine and Oxford’s top poet urged to quit for sex slurs against literary rival —
- — It measures, perhaps, the success of New Formalism’s self-serving argument that writing in meter is difficult that Joel Brouwer (“Poetry Chronicle,” April 26) should be astonished to the point of italics at the news that J. D. McClatchy spoke an iambic pentameter line in his sleep. —
- — Why do women defend Walcott? —
- — BBC plans to send poet to Afghanistan battlefields —
- — Litterbug released after 4 years in jail —
- — The lousy economy might be bad for artists when it comes to paying rent, but after a decade of record prices — and what some might call wretched excess — it might actually be good for art. —
- — Film Made About Rebellious Chilean Poetess and —
- — Wee row erupts over old Robbie: Town resists call to remove statue —
- — Sunday Poetry for the New Moon Jupiter/Chiron/Neptune conjunction —
- — Poet’s Choice by Paul Otremba: ‘In an Adirondack With You’ by Paul Otremba —
- — Frederick Seidel has spent the last half-century being the darkest and strangest sort of poet. —
- — People By Nature Are Universally Optimistic, Study Shows —
- — A few years ago I used baseball as a metaphor to lament the lack of an amateur/professional split within the poetry world: no one thinks they have to be a major leaguer to have fun taking hacks at the batting cage, but for some reason the idea of being an amateur poet and having fun in the same way with words strikes us as embarrassing. —
- — French artist Bernard Pras (scroll for biography) arranges everyday objects, then photographs them at such an angle as to recreate iconic portraits and artworks. —
- — APSU literature professor to read his work in Nashville —
- — So, just to be clear, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as we have come to call it, is an untitled poem written by an unknown author in about 1400. It is 2,530 lines long and written in Middle English. —
- — Two engaging books in distinct styles and voices — clearly from male and female perspectives — experience our shared world, but translate it through individual visions worthy of a wide readership. —
- — Ros, who died in 1939, abused (some would say, tortured) the English language in three novels and dozens of poems. you can read some poems here —
- — Campbell McGrath’s anti-Tweet —
- — Doomed to neglect were any films the jury doubtless deemed too conventional and/or too warm. These included “Bright Star,” Jane Campion’s exceptionally intimate and restrained examination of the tragic romance of poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, and “Looking for Eric,” a genial change-of-pace for British director Ken Loach. —
- — The National Library of New Zealand is seeking nominations for the 2009-2011 New Zealand Poet Laureate Award. —
- — Poets of the Central Committee of the Writers Union of Korea produced more than 100 poems and words of songs encouraging the army and people by conducting dynamic creative activities in the seething reality. —
- — Computer scientist to ‘unroll’ papyrus scrolls buried by Vesuvius —
- — Rafael Escalona, 81, Folk Musician and Balladeer of Colombia, Is Dead —
- — The Futurists: masters of outrage who embraced the new —
- — Peter Sacks finds common themes between the paintings of Edward Hopper and the works of poets such as Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and TS Eliot. [mp3] —
- — Researchers mine millions of metaphors through computer-based techniques —
- — Joe Milford Show: John Poch is poetry editor of the journal 32 Poems. His first book, Poems (Orchises Press), appeared in 2004. His work has appeared in many journals, and in 2004, he was a Howard Nemerov Fellow at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He teaches at Texas Tech University. —
- — Conferences, Festivals Taking a Hit —
- — The Jane Crown Show: Lyn Lifshin —
- — “If the occupation is afraid of a literature festival,” he said, addressing the elephant in the room of literature buffs and the culturally inclined, “than they are very fragile indeed.” —
- — In this essay Gary muses on how a poem or in
this case how a poem fragment works, complete with excellent illustrations. — - — How did you and your publishers decide that now was the time for your “Collected Poems”? —
- — The end of an era in American letters —
- — Recently, I’ve been reading through Jim Elledge’s Sweet Nothings: An Anthology of Rock & Roll in American Poetry.” —
- — Anna Journey’s first book of poems, “If Birds Gather Your Hair for Nesting” (University of Georgia Press: 104 pp., $16.95 paper), is a deeply American debut —
Have you noticed lately that people are acting ugly all of a sudden out of the blue? I’m not sure what to make of it. Maybe I’m just being in the wrong time at the wrong place.
