Poetry Hut Blog
Michael Longley

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. — The hijacker of everyday logic —
2. — Writers and Poets on Film —
3. — Pothole Poet Guilty —
4. — Putting Feelings Into Words Produces Therapeutic Effects In The Brain —
5. — Here is a poem by Wislawa Szymborska, translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh —
6. — Stage work dissects complexity and demons of poet Roethke —
7. — But I had recited three poems, each with its own theme —
8. — it was Raymond Queneau, founder of Oulipo (Workshop for Potential Literature), though, who wrote the first proper example of the genre in 1967 —
9. — In recent collections, poets from Ireland and Scotland artfully offer truth, wisdom, and remembrance —
10. — Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers collectively more than doubled the world’s supply of singable tunes, he declares —

Poetry News:

1. “I was willing to resign before I was going to continue with him,” Ms. Giovanni told CNN —
2. After John Berryman, American poetry turned toward having the weight and feeling of its words overshadow the story —
3. Contemporary poet Blas Falconer to read works at APSU Thursday [Nashville] —
4. Drunk vandals target poet’s garden —
5. Helvetica is his film marking the typeface’s 50th anniversary —
6. Remarkably for the 18th century, Finch’s husband often acted as her secretary, transcribing many of her poems —