Poetry Hut Blog

Poetry News:

1. — “David Alpaugh, who has both run and won a poetry book contest himself, offers his astute analysis of the business of selecting poetry books for publication by holding a competition…” —
2. — Colossus of Rhodes to be rebuilt as giant light sculpture —
3. — Trinity Rep Radio Theater: This program will feature stories and poems that explore the relationship between mothers and daughters. [MP3] —
4. — In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours —
5. — Not the original? A new translation by Burton Raffel offers a modern version of Chaucer’s medieval masterpiece. —
6. — The National Book Awards winners —
7. — The Review Review reviews lit mags (just print ones?) —
8. — DIY Poetry Movements from alt.NPR: Poetry Off the Shelf Podcast: How Zukofsky and the Language Poets got started, and the rules for starting a movement of your own. [MP3] —
9. — What is the social role of a micro-press in today’s literary marketplace, environment, and economy? —

Google has Life Magazine photo archives online. Not too many poets & no women. Some Millay, etc if you search “poetess” though. (And you better behave or Bette Davis is going to get you. I have to say, that is a very weird combo of reader/poet.)

Is there anyone out there who has cable TV / Discovery Health & can tape a show for me?

Dec 08, 10:00 pm
(60 minutes)

repeat:
Dec 09, 2:00 am
(60 minutes)

Mystery Diagnosis
The Baby Who Wouldn’t Stop Crying

Baby Averi Williams develops a bluish tint to the whites of her eyes and a bulging forehead; 15 year-old, Lynn Sanders is leading a normal life when she begins to experience a deep nagging pain in her hands during swim practice.

Poetry News:

1. — Poster poems: Terza rima —
2. — Those overly punctuated lines make you stop and start, forcing you to inhabit a mind formulating an opinion, one phrase at a time —
3. — Though the lives of poets often remain mysteriously veiled during our earliest encounters with poetry, biographical details can provide an important bridge of accessibility for young readers —
4. — I was engaging in a dubious art form that has no audience —
5. — Like the 18th-century Galante style in music, Merrill’s work has a high, almost lacquered finish and prizes the qualities of refinement, intricacy of design and formal containment —
6. — Irish poet Ciaran Berry has won the £3000 Jerwood Aldeburgh first collection prize for what judges described as an unusually assured and mature collection of poetry. —

Lit mag readership poll is still open.

Poetry News:

1. — Aleda Shirley (1955-2008): An Appreciation —
2. — On the Gurlesque part 2 —
3. — Holy Shit —
4. — Emerging writers are published with established writers around a loose theme —
5. — The Beat Generation’s jazz sensibility still resonates in a new century —
6. — Poetry with je ne sais quoi —
7. — It’s all in Buffalo, and it’s all housed in the University at Buffalo’s Poetry Collection —
8. — Sixteen poets, sixteen essays about mental illness and poetry —
9. — The end of an odyssey - Homer’s epic is finally pinned down —
10. — Could this be the way that literary magazines regain an audience —

I don’t think I have one shred of that “Gurlesque” going on. I think it is because I started working when I was 7 & didn’t have a middle-class suburban environment LOL? I’m not very glittery, anyway. That might be it. That is not anything judgmental in any way - I’m just being factual haha. I have a lot of male energy. Mars in my astrology chart conjuncts my ascendant, trines my Jupiter, trines my nodes, sextiles my midheaven & sun, and squares Chiron, Saturn, Uranus, & Pluto. (T-square with Mars/Asc and Uranus/Chiron.) Luckily (29 degree Sag.) Mars is in the 12th or I’d probably be a violent criminal haha instead of a somewhat peaceful Buddhist who just enjoys stirring things up when something is an affront to her sense of truth & justice & can’t shut up about it.

So in my book I have poems about war, gambling, sports, tooth extraction, surgery/body getting cut open, cut off hands (mentioned in 2 poems haha), 1 frozen decapitated head, someone hammering nails up his nose, tattoos, boxing, blood and scars. I think just about the only color mentioned in there is red, too. I didn’t even include the poems with gunshot wounds, taxidermy or sword swallowing. And I’m not a guy hahaha….

All Mars stuff I’ve realized but I try to be beautiful about it at least. So I guess my poetry is quite the antithesis of Gurlesque, actually….hahahaha. I’ll have to think of a snappy label for it. Warplay. haha.

Sylvia Plath had some pronounced Mars action in her astrology chart too & her poetry is pretty bloody. That & her brilliant music is probably why she’s my favorite poet. But that was probably Pluto, too, in her case. (With her issues about death.) So I would have to suggest that “Tulips” (as mentioned in the Gurlesque pt 2 link, above) is not merely submissive but rather it is Plutonian/underworldian in its theme. Because illness has a heavy aspect of destructive overpowering transformation, right, & you’re abducted by it. What, you’re NOT going to hand over your name to the nurses & give over your body to Pluto after you arrive in Hades? You really have no choice. You’ve been kidnapped!

Coincidentally we both have Venus in Virgo. Plath used the word “pure” a lot — (”Pure? What does it mean?”) — she wrote those heavy-duty hospital / health poems, too. (Virgo.) Face Lift, Tulips, Surgeon at 3 a.m, Fever 103.

Contemporary poetry needs more blood and guts…. I’d write more but I have to take Darryl to the airport.

PS William Carlos Williams was a Virgo — check out how many times he uses the word “white” in his poems — if this is not a “pure” Virgo poem I don’t know what is:

Nanucket

Flowers through the window
lavender and yellow

changed by white curtains-
Smell of cleanliness-

Sunshine of late afternoon-
On the glass tray

a glass pitcher, the tumbler
turned down, by which

a key is lying- And the
immaculate white bed

Go somewhere you haven’t been yet.