Poetry Hut Blog
Nashville

Poetry News:

1. — New issue of New England Review features fiction, poetry and prose —
2. — An article about me and my husband, Darryl Dybka on the Tennessean (local Nashville) paper’s website & in the Ashland City Times newspaper —
3. — This week, a chilling journey to ‘the shadow side’ with a master of psychology —
4. — Southern Gothic meets metafiction in a new novel by Minton Sparks —
5. — David Gest claims to have collaborated with pop legend on album setting poems to music —
6. — New works of poetry inspired by Katrina —

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There is a bluntness here that I respect. Both McCain and Obama are running for Caesar. I get that. But part of the game of running for Caesar has always been pretending you don’t want it, that the proles need you, and you’re one of them.

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New anthology:

“This wonderful and important anthology…is a solid act of generosity…a gift of testimony from poets across a broad range of experience and language, poems that tell us we can gather ourselves from the shock of upset and loss in life and continue…After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery is a book that seeks to stand up and walk among us as a living thing, a force to activate the good and prepare us to weather the bad.”

—Afaa Michael Weaver
Author, The Plum Flower Dance
Alumnae Professor of English, Simmons College

The poets in After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events:

Rita Dove · Simon Armitage · Carol Dine · Douglas Dunn · Cathy Smith Bowers · Patricia Wellingham-Jones · Donald Hall · Carol Ann Duffy · Molly Gloss · Thomas Lux · Pam Bernard · Elizabeth Bernardin · Sandor Kányádi · Stellasue Lee · Doug Anderson · Jim McGarrah · Sonja Besford · Martha Collins · Rachel Tzvia Back · Brian Turner · Nazand Begikhani · Liu Hongbin · Paul Sohar · Satyendra Srivastava · Marjorie Wentworth · Diana Woodcock · Majid Naficy · Shelley Davidow · J. P. Dancing Bear · Margaret Chula · Major Jackson · Lisha Adela Garcia · Ron Rash · Annie Finch · Barbara Mitchell · Roseann Lloyd · Joy Helsing · Nehassaiu deGannes · Peter Cooley · Paul Allen · R. G. Evans · Barbara G.S. Hagerty · Clinton B. Campbell · Iain Haley Pollock · Laurel Blossom · Willie James King · Satyendra Srivastava · Georgia Ann Banks-Martin · Kevin Young · Tolu Ogunlesi · Meir Wieseltier · Randall Horton · Richard Garcia · György Faludy · Bette Lynch Husted · William Stafford · Terri Wolfe · J. Stephen Rhodes · Gail Rudd Entrekin · Anthony S. Abbott · Faye J. Hoops · Annie Finch · Farideh Hassanzadeh · Rebecca McClanahan · Sister Lou Ella Hickman · Anna Rabinowitz · David Bottoms · Janet Winans ·Stellasue · Lee Alexa Selph · Dennis Ward Stiles · Renée Michele Breeden · Ellen Doré Watson · Joseph Mills · Liesl Jobson · Deborah P. Kolodji · Aimee Nezhukumatathil · Kurtis Lamkin · C.C. Thomas · Barbara Presnell · Naomi Ruth Lowinsky · Jericho Brown · Therése Halscheid · Becky Thompson · John McAllister · J. E. Pitts · William Greenway · Susan Varon · Shaindel Beers · Genie Cotner · Marcia Slatkin · David Bottoms · Barbara Mitchell · Joan Houlihan · Jenni Meredith · Rhett Iseman Trull · Pramila Venkateswaran · Diane Holland · Valerie Nieman · Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda · Susan Meyers · Meir Wieseltier · Satyendra Srivastava · Joseph Enzweiler · Jane Gentry · Rachel Eliza Griffiths · Gail Peck · Jennifer Barber · Ilya Kaminsky · Allison Hedge Coke · Steven Cramer · Linda Annas Ferguson · Kevin Simmonds · Gail Rudd Entrekin · Nancy Tupper Ling · Carole Baldock · Deema Shehabi · Kate Gale · Jeffrey Levine · Bernardo Atxaga

Order at www.poetryofrecovery.com

Poetry News:

1. — This month, your task is to carry on with Coleridge’s unfinished masterpiece Kubla Khan —
2. — Was New American Review the Best Literary Magazine Ever? —
3. — Nike Langston Hughes commercial [you tube] —
4. — “An important piece from poet (and good friend) Stacey Brown on an unethical press and its dealings with her and her book.” —
5. — With a fresh, wry voice, Meghan O’Rourke can make the quotidian sound strange, the same way Joseph Cornell could assemble a magical collage —
6. — One of the problems with political poetry, then, is that like all speech, it exists at the mercy of time, history, and other people. —
7. — 50 Greatest Books: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats —
8. — Lansing Community College Professor Dennis Hinrichsen has won the 12th annual FIELD Poetry Prize for his manuscript, “Kurosawa’s Dog.” —
9. — Bruce Cole, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, will speak about “The State of the Humanities” at Vanderbilt University, on Friday, Sept. 5, at Ingram Hall at the Blair School of Music. —
10. — Virgil, Monteverdi, James Joyce, Nikos Kazantzakis, Ralph Ellison and Derek Walcott are just a few of the artists to have transformed this spellbinding and mysterious epic into powerful works of their own —

Licking Your Wounds: Scientists Isolate Compound In Human Saliva That Speeds Wound Healing

Poetry News:

1. — The ethereal world of radio poetry —
2. — Beowulf Through the Eyes of Women —
3. — The poetry of pain —
4. — Byron, ghost and partisans enlisted to save Tuscan villa in ruins & Lord Byron’s fanmail uncovered —
5. — 100 Near Perfect Books of Poetry —
6. — Spillage from the Riptides of Desire: Poetry Blurbs —
7. — Mr. Alexander fashions from modern English a vivid reincarnation of Anglo-Saxon poetry — its grim pathos studded with brilliant figurations, its morbid griefs sung in an armorial tone of resolve —
8. — Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2008 Results —

*****
“A researcher argues in Science that a basic tenet of economics — that people always behave selfishly — can be wrong, sometimes badly so. He points to new experimental evidence that people do often act against their own personal self-interest in favor of the common good, and they do so in predictable, understandable ways. Poorly-designed economic institutions fail to take advantage of intrinsic moral behavior and often undermine it.”

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Steel Toe Books has an open reading period in October for formal-type full-length poetry book manuscripts.

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I don’t have any poetry rules. So I was reading Mary Biddinger’s blog post with everyone’s comments & I was going “I ummmmmmmm … errrrrrr … well … gee.” I   tend to need to have  require some sort of constraint to write up against, though. That’s not a rule though, it’s more like a pathology. I do like to see what I can get away with — in fact, I’ll probably use everyone’s rules about “what not to do” as writing prompts hardee har har har har.

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ABOUT
Baltimore Is Reads is an Outdoor Poetry journal founded by Publishing Genius in 2006. Today it functions in partnership with Nashville Is Reads, curated by Keyhole Publications.

The Outdoor Journals feature poetry broadsides posted in various locations around Baltimore and Nashville. Typical spots to find a page include light posts, abandoned buildings, shopping carts, bus benches, bulletin boards, public restrooms, and so on. It is the contention of the Outdoor Journal that being read outside changes the experience — confuses the reading and makes it deliberate.

http://www.nashvilleisreads.com/

Poetry News:

1. — Publish and Perish —
2. — What did it mean to buck the tide and take women writers’ works and lives seriously? [link found here thank you] —
3. — From Abolition to Dickinson, Rev. Higginson made his mark —
4. — His seminal poems, “The Neo-HooDoo Manifesto” and “The Neo-HooDoo Aesthetic,” delve even deeper into this artistic practice to demonstrate its vitality as an international, multicultural aesthetic that embraces spiritual creativity I guess this is safe for work… (?) —
5. — Blogging - is it worth it? —
6. — The coming economic giant also has a proud tradition of poetry that is being restored to its central position in the country’s culture —
7. — St. Louis cast mysterious spell on poet T.S. Eliot —
8. — That is where X is the length of lines, for Y = X – 2, Y ~ Poisson (lambda) —
9. — A new (to me) blog. —

Strange, because:

a.) Cher was in Nashville. (?)
b.) Nashvillians generally really don’t even acknowledge celebrities in public. That’s part of the reason why a lot of even non-musician celebs have moved here.
c.) There’s a “roped-off area” at Tootsies (no apostrophe) Orchid Lounge now???

ps no news this weekend — I’m getting over the stomach flu or bad tomato or something.

Go somewhere you haven’t been yet.

Poetry News:

1. — When Hank Williams died on New Year’s day in 1953, he left behind a legacy of honky tonk hits as well as an extended family that would grow to include a son, daughters and grandchildren. Milo Miles reviews an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame called, “Family Tradition: The Williams Family Legacy.” —
2. — alt.NPR: Poetry Off the Shelf Podcast, Linh Dinh catalogues the myriad grades of Vietnamese chuckles. [MP3] —
3. — John Ingram, Chairman of the Ingram Content Companies, announced last Thursday that the company would fold the leading print-on-demand publisher, Lightning Source, Inc. into its main book business to create Ingram Lightning Group. —
4. — One of the failings of our education system is that we are educating people out of creativity. —
5. — That era of the poetry readings was also the folk era. So our intermission would be a folk singer, usually playing the auto harp. —
6. — Author of new book discusses his work linking corporate values with the decline of the tenure-track position, especially in the humanities. —
7. — His latest collection, The Late Show, includes “Gloss of the Past,” composed entirely of the names of lip glosses —
8. — ‘Paradise Lost’ poet turns 400 —
9. — Poetry, our national art, has never been so neglected or unloved. —

The magnitude of circadian advantage influences the outcome of Major League Baseball games in that teams with greater circadian advantage are more likely to win. Crossing multiple time zones further reduces the probability of success for traveling teams.

Poetry News:

1. — The Mainichi Newspapers is inviting participation in the 12th Annual Mainichi Haiku Contest —
2. — Punk rocker Exene explores a creative space in Missouri —
3. — DNA Analysis Exposes Fake Schiller Skull —
4. — “Sort of Gone,” a collection of poems by Sarah Freligh, follows the adventures and misadventures - mostly misadventures - of a ballplayer who makes a life in the game in part to show his worthless sot of a father that he can do it. —
5. — “I mask it. I make my poems seem simpler then they really are,” Snyder said. —
6. — Everyday world sizzles with alarm in his poetic vision —
7. — Stafford’s wartime poetry shows the power of his convictions —
8. — A web of associations connects a group of New England writers, including Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe. —
9. — This is pretty cool - congrats —

A prediction that Google will end up buying Ingram Digital (and Booksurge). I’m sure those folks over in La Vergne, TN would be surprised to hear that.

All I can say is, I’m glad that I forgot to watch the Kentucky Derby this weekend.  Sometimes  I think there’s something wrong with me - I cannot cannot cannot stand to see an animal get hurt. I have a greater reaction to that than I do from seeing a human get hurt. Though in my defense, I don’t like to watch those stupid home video TV shows where people get hit in the balls and stuff, either.

The Kentucky Derby was always a big deal when I was growing up. My dad’s drive-in restaurant wasn’t too far from the Detroit Race Course (actually in Livonia) and a lot of the regular customers (my extended family) were bookies and gamblers. So on derby day my mom would make sure we’d pick the horse’s names out of a hat (a “to go” white paper bag, actually) and my dad would put the b&w TV with a coat hanger antenna up on the counter & we’d watch the race.

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.

Hey

I’ll be back around May 1st. Since my Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome diagnosis :/ my body has been somewhat falling apart haha. I don’t know if it is some weird psychosomatic shock, or this is a slide into physical disability or this is a temporary musculoskeletal freakout or ?.

The geneticist offered to refer me to a pain clinic when I was diagnosed but I said nah when she asked, although I have changed my mind haha and am waiting for a referral.

I’m trying an anti-inflammatory diet, exercise, I’m learning reiki, going to the chiropractor, etc. I bet I start PT again too. Mostly I am still, like, WTF? and as the primary breadwinner of the family (i.e. I pay the mortgage, have the job with health insurance, etc.) I am fighting a tendency to play catch with various scenarios in my head, all of which involve wrack and ruin WRACK! AND! RUIN!, hahaha. Plus there is the underlying fear of “am I going to be in this much pain - or worse - for the rest of my life?” And I have a weirdly high pain tolerance. Not that I enjoy pain. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that haha.)

I’m lucky though, from what I have read, a lot of people with EDS go years or decades without a diagnosis (it’s a rare condition) and/or a diagnosis of “it is all in your head.” Evidently, somatoform disorder is the new “hysteria.”

If you are looking for a orthopedic doctor in Nashville, I can recommend Dr. William B. Kurtz at Tennessee Orthopedic Alliance. He’s the smarty pants who noticed the EDS symptoms. The Division of Medical Genetics at Vanderbilt confirmed it, during a very thorough 3+ hour office visit.

Anyway, this is the last time I’ll probably blog about this so much; this whole thing is a drag. I know that readers come here for poetry news. I’m going to blog EDS stuff at Bad Glue — there’s a placeholder there now.

I’ll be back in the beginning of May, I think.

I posted some links last week regarding Amazon.com’s attempt to force publishers to use Amazon’s BookSurge print-on-demand service. Or the book won’t be available for sale on Amazon. I think Amazon took some non-BookSurge POD book’s “buy” buttons off, too. Is that still the case? My friend Scott’s book is only available through the used book interface now.

Evidently, most (all?) print-on-demand services (other than BookSurge) use Lightning Source to actually print the book. Lightning Source is a subsidiary of Ingram Book Group, which is a local (to me) Nashville company. (The printing biz is big in Nashville.)

I find it strange that I haven’t seen any local media stories about this, since Ingram is such a large local company (and the family is so prominent in the community). Unless I missed any mainstream media articles about this, the only local attention this has gotten is from some well-respected local bloggers — Rex Hammock & Newscoma. I guess POD is small potatoes in the business world.

POD & the WWW are 2 of the main reasons that I think that, for American poetry, this is one of the most exciting periods of time, ever. OK, I understand that hardly anyone buys poetry books these days, but for those of us who do, whoo boy, is there a groaning table.

An overview of why this sucks so much for small publishers.

A more detailed analysis of how this would affect a small poetry publisher.

And in the “first they came for POD” department: Newspapers, magazines, press syndicates, not just e-book and POD publishers, should beware of Amazon’s lock-ins.

So what can you do about it? Here are some ideas:

There are contact addresses here, so you can tell Amazon to quit bogarting POD distribution.

Boycott them & quit generating revenue for Amazon.com via your websites.

The Authors Guild is seeking input that will help them move forward with legal plans because of Amazon’s possible violation of antitrust laws.

This article suggests that the California Attorney General would be most interested in Amazon’s business practices.

(I still plan on using Lulu.com to publish my poetry manuscript this year.)

Poetry News:

1. — Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen has arrived in Europe to begin a new life, reports say, after protests by Muslim groups forced her into hiding in India. —
2. — The Polish Immigrant, by Peter Skrzynecki —
3. — Despite T.S. Eliot’s doubts that the traditional sonnet could figure importantly in modern poetry, it thrives to this day —
4. — The Austin Peay State University Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts will host a reading by poet and translator Francisco Aragon —
5. — Dylan daughter on US poetry tour —
6. — A surprise for some will be a little known but incredibly talented poet named Charlotte Smith —
7. — In a fog of megalomania, Robert Frost undertook a grueling trek to Russia to negotiate with Nikita Khrushchev —
8. — Split This Rock’s Army of Poets Marches Into Town and Raises the Anti —
9. — For a while, Wright’s phone message was, “At the sound of the gunshot, leave a message,” which effectively terrified the casual caller into hanging up. —

link

Poetry News:

1. — Why this bevy of bards, this plethora of poetry, this Vesuvian eruption of verse? —
2. — MLB Poetry Preview: Chicago Cubs —
3. — My first reaction was, “What are you smoking?” —
4. — This week, the Academy of American Poets announced the launch of … a mobile poetry archive providing free access to a collection of more than 2,500 poems —
5. — Today, Sam Leith profiles the highly-influential poet of the English revolution, John Milton —
6. — With 16 books between them, four authors will take part in the first “Gathering of Tennessee Writers” at MTSU, on Thursday, March 20, 4:30 p.m. —
7. — All contemporary poetry when it is contemporary is initially baffling to its readers —
8. — Introducing seven of the greatest poets of the 20th century —

Women writers from lower and working class backgrounds will gather for the 2008 Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series Spring Symposium to share their experiences and work with readers and each other.

Beyond Our Beginnings – Women Writers from Lower and Working Class Backgrounds will be held March 25-27 on the Vanderbilt campus. The discussions and readings are free and open to the public.

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