Poetry Hut Blog
Elizabeth Bishop

Poetry News:

1. — Forgotten treasure from Brazil —
2. — Eyes, and whether or not to trust them, are central to Ode to Psyche by John Keats —
3. — Slain man identified as UC Riverside professor —
4. — Poetry Foundation clarifies the policy on their blog comments —
5. — The Poet’s Poet —
6. — A 21st-century warning from a 13th-century poet —
7. — Web Extra: Selected Poems by Kay Ryan —
8. — Radio 4 poet criticises BBC soaps and aggressive interviewers —

Brace yourselves

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Who voted for Kay Ryan in the poll last week? Raise your hands. Who was the “suggester”? Yay Kay! I think that’s great.

“Kay Ryan, Poet Laureate” anagrams to:

Ya! A natural! Eke poetry.
A yank poetry laureate.
An okay letter aura — yep!

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. — If birds come from something as bizarre as a smooth ovoid container with no exit or entry, then it’s not too far of a stretch to imagine that the backbone of a corpse becomes a snake —
2. — WordPlay - WPVM: Celebrating Jonathan Williams [links to MP3] —
3. — 2008 National Magazine Award Finalists —
4. — Interview with poet Mark Doty:A poet who goes from “Fire to Fire” & Mark Doty Video at Split This Rock —
5. — Editors Kathryn Stripling Byer and Marilyn Kallet gathered contributions from 52 female writers —
6. — Posthumously published, these poems by one of the great masters of the short story deal largely with aging and death —
7. — The sense of unknowing you feel at the end of a poem is not something you get and then get over. —
8. — Bishop’s poetry takes up about the first third of this Library of America volume; the rest is prose of varying kinds and interest — fiction and memoir, travel and literary pieces, translations and correspondence, some published for the first time —

Lest you think I’m not an idiot, I am. Before I even got my MFA I sent a poetry manuscript out to poetry contests. Even now that I’m wised up about poetry contests, there are some presses that I really like so I enter to support them (NMP’s chapbook contest deadline is coming up FYI). So yeah, I’m a hypocrite.

Thursday I’m meeting with the folks at the Vanderbilt Division of Medical Genetics. Wish me luck. I don’t know what to expect, though I know where they will be heading. Unfortunately, I’m in a lot of pain these days & didn’t help things when I slipped Saturday & fcked up my r. hip. Note to self: do not taunt Pluto.

Poetry News:

1. — With passion, precise imagery, astute description, the well-traveled poet covers a lot of ground —
2. — Some say that if we make a space for the person we wish for, then that spot may be suitably filled —
3. — As T. S. Eliot once remarked, we cannot say where technique begins or where it ends —
4. — He is a Pulitzer Prize nominee, a two-time Academy award nominee, the translator of Jacques Brel and the most successful living poet. And you’ve probably never heard of him. —
5. — A friend told me years ago that he read poetry because it cleaned up his act —
6. — Academic critics and high school students, feminists and curmudgeons, fellow poets as different as Frank O’Hara and James Merrill - all have embraced this sharp-edged, slyly elegant work, with its way of interlacing the domestic and the volcanic —
7. — Almodovar films story of poet jailed by Franco —

Outline of Monocle in Lady’s Veil Makes Latest Fashion

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Poetry News:

1. — Power Crazy Senior General Than Shwe: A chapbook edited by A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz —
2. — Are we all clear on what a chapbook is? —
3. — Taslima’s visa extended —
4. — Elizabeth Bishop’s Writings Collected in New Volume [with audio & video] —
5. — Upcoming exhibition: Notre Livre: À toute épreuve. A Collaboration between Joan Miró and Paul Éluard —
6. — Police say magazine secretary embezzled $30k —
7. — Robert Hass, later the US poet laureate, called ‘I Know a Man’ ‘the poem of the decade’ (he meant the 1950s) —
8. — Earliest-known recording of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” found in Reed College Archives—audio to be posted at Reed’s Multimedia Site, Friday, February 15, 9 a.m. (PST) —
9. — The day the persecuted Russian poet Joseph Brodsky went into exile, a recording of Mozart’s Divertimento in D (K. 136) was on his record player —
10. — The pull of an abstraction —
11. — Dear Mom: Someone stole my poem —
12. — Proponents say the time is right for a poet laureate to … um, do what, exactly? —

Poetry News:

1. — Piper Center’s Jensen finds poetry success [congrats] —
2. — Poet, novelist Judson Mitcham to read from work at Vanderbilt; Author of A Little Salvation and Sabbath Creek —
3. — Accessibility cuts two ways in poetry —
4. — Maker of occasions and fashioner of thin books that Bishop was, I wonder how she would greet the publication now of the thick Library of America compendium —
5. — Revered poet shows her witty side —
6. — Fordham’s Poet in Residence Awarded Sandeen Prize —

Dear 2008 - when I told you to “bring it on” I was half-way kidding. But if you want to be that way, fine, hahahaha.

Poetry News:

1. — The second part of this post is about my impression of the role that some phantasmatic nightmare image of AWP plays in the imaginations of many participants in the various online poetry worlds —
2. — The poet laureate talks about how he’s not enamored of nature, his vote in the New Hampshire primary and the American preoccupation with happiness —
3. — Robert Pinsky’s work speaks to us in our common language and relates that language to our hopes as citizens —
4. — LOC Guide to Poetry & Literature Webcasts: Individual Poets, Novelists, and Writers —
5. — McGrath’s audacity has a genial, sociable quality, often with a flippancy that he directs back at himself, in the American tradition of kidding —
6. — Bukowski’s typewriter and night lair in daylight. Does this seem at all familiar to you? —
7. — Drunk poet climbs over cliff, seeking inspiration —

This song is being beamed to the “North Star” tomorrow. Hint: John Lennon wrote it. link. Happy 40th birthday, cool song.

Solving The Mystery Of The Metallic Sheen Of Fish

Poetry News:

1. — with its closing lines inscribed on Bishop’s tombstone… —
2. — One of an avant-garde group called the Neoteric, or “new’’ poets, he lived a short, libidinous life —
3. — Blogging the AWP —
4. — Haiku poet aims to preserve seasonal words —
5. — Richard Newman has spent the past thirteen years working to keep St. Louis’ oldest literary magazine alive —
6. — New Voices in Writing Offer Their Advice —

Poetry News:

1. — Scratching poems on cell floors, or making ink from the brick powder of the walls, Burmese writers have managed to continue writing despite imprisonment and censorship —
2. — Haiku Poet Documented Life in Japanese Camps —
3. — To write vital poems, Notley has said, “it’s necessary to maintain a state of disobedience against … everything.” —
4. — The End of America: Naomi Wolf’s Call to Action —
5. — poetry written by English colonists before there was a United States, and by citizens of the new republic shortly after its founding —
6. — Poetry can’t topple dictatorships or stop fascist terror, but… —
7. — As human beings we should be judged by our minds, by our creativity, not by our biology —
8. — Terrible. (That looks like a good documentary.) —
9. — Questions You Should Never Ask a Writer —
10. — When You Have Ideas You Cannot Yet Execute —
11. — Walnut Hill School in Natick will name its new residence hall in honor of poet Elizabeth Bishop —
12. — He wakes from dreams and walks into the woods, sometimes for hours, reciting and memorizing the poems that come to him in his sleep —
13. — Poetry Center design an exacting, contradictory task for architects —
14. — it displays a line from one of Shelton’s poems that appears in computer punch-card code similar to that of the 1970s —
15. — You”™re a Good Prop, Cruel Muse —

Today is the Feast Day of St. Teresa of Avila, who wrote “I am more afraid of those who are terrified of the devil than I am of the devil himself” and “”May God protect me from gloomy saints.” My Grandma, Theresa (Korte) Zimba, was named after her. And I was named after my Grandma Zimba (one of my middle names is Theresa). There is a famous statue of her.

St. Teresa of Avila was a mystic and the first female Doctor of the Catholic Church & is the Patron Saint of:

headache sufferers
(protection from?) heart attacks
sick people
Spain
Pozega, Croatia
laceworkers
loss of parents
people in need of grace
people in religious orders
people ridiculed for their piety
and she could levitate

So the word of the day is transverberation

Rosmarie Waldrop — Our Moments
Thomas Sayers Ellis — Mr. Drum
Jonathan Weinert — Solving for y
Jilly Dybka — Obstacles I Have Faced in Life and How I Have Overcome Them
Mary Tautin Moloney — Damage Reflected
Nubar Alexanian — Fisheye
Greg Delanty — Prayer in Summer
Frannie Lindsay — After a Sermon on Giving Up Everything
Jeffrey McDaniel — Confessions of a Flawed Diety
Jeffrey Perkins — Squirrel
Ravi Shankar — Rodeo Cowboy No. 1, Oil on Canvas, 1978
John Caserta — Keys
Joan Houlihan — The New Cruel
Mike Perrow — In a Time of the Tendered Ocean
Don Share — Symbiosis
Bill Gallery — Chair & Palm Trees, California, 1997
Steven Cramer — Rereading Stevens in Mid-February
John Hodgen — For Mr. Grimes Who Tried to Teach Me Physics After My Father Died
Noelle Kocot — The Peace That So Lovingly Descends

hahaha I am in a funny mood. I think they’re going to take my webmaster license away for using that <blink> tag. I’m cracking myself up. That really is a beautiful journal though so go buy one.

Poetry News:

1. — Blogs versus Print: is there a prejudice? [and more, kinda, about the legitimacy of blogging.] —
2. — Elizabeth Bishop, in her early 20s, doing cart-wheels across the field at the farm —
3. — English Professor Sets Poetry Wheels in Motion for Luzerne County Residents —
4. — Poet Cathal O’Searcaigh wins €20,000 literary prize —
5. — Anna Akhmatova’s Portrait by Modigliani Presented to Russia —
6. — Fascinating —
7. — Len Sousa’s Poetry/Music Mashup [wandered there via a link here thank you] —
8. — These words gave me hope for humanity —

So why haven’t you read this book yet? Mmm.

Poetry News:

1. — Sometimes, he keeps his musing, vernacular voice so moderate in tone that the writing reminds me of a baseball term for certain pitchers, “sneaky fast” —
2. — Conjugated Visits by Diane Kirsten Martin —
3. — Truro hosts exhibit on poet Elizabeth Bishop —
4. — best known for his poem “Over the Hill to the Poor House” —
5. — Love nest of poets Ted and Sylvia up for sale and [pics]—
6. — BOOKS THROWN AT ‘LEROY’ - FRAUD AUTHOR MUST PAY —
7. — Recalling the time when Americans learned and recited poetry together —

Poetry News:

1. Gwendolyn Brooks Captures Chicago ‘Cool’ —
2. Elizabeth Bishop’s Christian sin —
3. Who Gives Away Books Online? “Scabs,” Says Prominent Sci-Fi Writer —
4. 2007 Pulitzer Prizes for Letters, Drama and Music —
5. Irish poet Eavan Boland turns to “the charged spaces in which people live ….” —
6. Egypt cleric sues poet for comparing God to cop —
7. Romantic poetry will never rock the house —

Poetry News:

1. Patti Smith’s stars align —
2. Emory Buys Poet’s Love Letters —
3. I couldn’t believe it. It was like writing a letter. —
4. Outsider’s 52 cantos go the distance to take poetry title from Heaney —
5. Three worthy literary/arts journals have released new issues recently —
6. Hear poems read by the nominees of one of the most coveted award in poetry —

Bad Word-of-Mouth Kills Sobol Prize

Letter delivered 52 years after postmarked Maybe that is what happened to the poetry submissions I mailed last summer haha.