Poetry Hut Blog

Poetry News:

1. — Thanks to poetry, X=imagine the possibilities —
2. — Salt To Expand Its Stable Of Free Online Literary Magazines —
3. — His meteoric poetic output began with his first professionally published poem at 16, but by 20 he stopped writing poetry and would later declare of his work: “All of that was just pig swill.” —
4. — Bookstore and poet in war of words over reading —
5. — The work of American poet George Oppen is not widely known to a general audience, but some scholars at the University at Buffalo think it should be —
6. — Reading can generate as much of a hit as writing, says poet and author Edward Hirsch on today’s episode of Titlepage.tv —

Poetry News:

1. — How to trivialise women’s poetry —
2. — elitism is a laughable charge to levy against an art that doesn’t require tickets or a premium cable subscription —
3. — The antipoem’s burlesque charm hits like a nightstick —
4. — An interview with poet Mary Jo Salter —
5. — And I may say, perhaps, I’m happier writing about doctors than I would have been being one —
6. — If we could just do one or the other, we wouldn’t suffer such inner twists as bitter poems require, and there might not be so many nasty songs and poems —

Some favorite searches that lead people to this blog recently:
“I can’t stand Maya Angelou’s poetry”
“Sex Sex Sexton”

I find this rhetoric blog very entertaining.

Poetry News:

1. — The sonnet is a frequently misunderstood form with an enduring appeal. Fancy having a crack at your own ‘little song’? —
2. — it also cements her reputation as the greatest poet of her generation —
3. — This sense of freedom is produced by Ashbery’s diction (no American poet has had a larger, more diverse vocabulary, not Whitman, not Pound) as well as his formal choices. —
4. — Sometimes the hothouse of a partnership fosters frustration and magnifies our tiniest faults —
5. — Dylan Thomas revival proves death has no dominion —
6. — Crozier realised that with a sensibility as English as his own, he couldn’t create a postscript to Black Mountain, so he left America and came home —
7. — Wash. adviser fired for helping underground paper regains job —

Poetry News:

1. — It may be argued, then, that Plath’s “lasting achievement” was her ability to combine the personal and the mythical in her poetry, thereby endowing this with a timeless and “relevant” literary effect —
2. — A Russian Poet Unpeels Her Many Lives —
3. — Rare Emily Dickinson photo(?) purchased on Ebay —
4. — Intelligence And Rhythmic Accuracy Go Hand In Hand —
5. — Poetry workshop: Forward prize winner Matthew Francis invites readers to conjure sense impressions with metaphor and simile —
6. — In Paris in the 1930s he helped found the journal Black Student, which gave birth to the idea of “negritude,” a call to blacks to cultivate pride in their heritage —
7. — World-famous filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami is convinced that one of the problems Iranians encounter in understanding poetry is that they pay too much attention to rhythm —
8. — The Pulitzer jurists for this year’s poetry prize evidently felt the pain of Philip Schultz —
9. — Frequently asked questions about the business of verse By Robert Pinsky —

I have torn labrum in my hip & a cane now. I can do this. I just had to be freaked out for a while. I finally got an appt to the pain clinic & that is making me feel better — OK there are some tools and stuff out there.

I feel full of gristle.

edit: p.s. laughing is good.

The Newberry Library, an independent research library located in Chicago, IL, offers long-term and short-term fellowships to scholars who work primarily in the humanities. This year we have joined with the Poetry Foundation to offer a new short-term fellowship to poets and scholars of American Poetry. Please see below for a more thorough description of the award.

*Poetry Foundation/Newberry Library Fellowship in American Poetry*

This short-term fellowship is for working poets and scholars of American poetry. Preference will be given to poets who want to draw upon the Newberry’s collections as part of the creative process. The tenure of the fellowship may be one or two months. The amount of the award is generally $1600 per month. The fellowship is open to United States citizens only. Any American */poet/* with a record of publication is eligible to apply; we welcome applications both from poets residing in the Chicago area and from those who live elsewhere in the United States. */Historians/* or */critics/*/ /should hold a Ph.D. or other terminal degree or be Ph.D. candidates, and must reside outside the Chicago area.

Application due date is June 1st. For more information or to download application materials, visit our Web site at http://www.newberry.org/research/felshp/fellowshome.html. If you would like materials sent to you by mail, write to Committee on Awards, 60 West Walton Street, Chicago, IL 60610-3380. If you have questions about the fellowships program, contact research@newberry.org or (312) 255-3666.

Poetry News:

1. — So what did Peter Mark Roget, the creator of Roget’s Thesaurus, do to handle all the pain, grief, sorrow, affliction, woe, bitterness, unhappiness and misery in a life that lasted over 90 years? —
2. — Others believed poet Sylvia Plath was lead singer of pop group the Black Eyed Peas —
3. — Do not panic…yet. —
4. — Confusion in reading poetry, she says, is a “non-problem. I prefer to think of it as an alternative kind of knowing. It’s not one that gets a lot of credit in our culture.” —
5. — It’s hitting hardest the writers who write books that you dip in and out of: poetry, cookbooks, travel guides, short stories —
6. — Three Grand Prize winners will receive $100 each, plus their poems will be read to music, choreographed, costumed and danced by the Natica Angilly’s Poetic Dance Theater Company —
7. — O’Hara’s personality became famous long before his poetry did —
8. — From Punk Pioneer to Mother and Poet —
9. — Like many of the poet’s biographers, Greenblatt is convinced that Shakespeare despised his wife —

If you have any particular National Poetry Month resource you would like to share, email me or leave a blog comment and I will post it/them tomorrow.

Another request: if this blog has been in the least bit informative or entertaining, please donate to these folks (they take credit cards online, securely).

Poetry News:

1. — There should be a place for more original poetry to be posted and shared - let’s start right here —
2. — Needed: Contemporary Visual Poetry for Poetry —
3. — Psalms offer source of inspiration for prayer —
4. — University Comes To Aid Of Literary Magazine —
5. — Here are 15 short poems as animated films. They’re the first in a series from Poetry Everywhere, a fresh initiative to introduce new audiences to poetry through cinema —
6. — Custom Ringtones From Poets.org —
7. — The UK’s biggest poetry competition, founded in 1978, attracts thousands of entries – here are this year’s winners —
8. — Mr. Williams founded the Jargon Society, a small publishing house that has introduced the works of little-known writers, photographers and artists —

A Veteran MAD Man Remains in the Fold

Yay, baseball. As always, there’s free baseball poetry in a PDF chapbook here. The Nashiville Sounds’ first home game is on the 11th.

Poetry News:

1. — Scantily Clad e-chaps —
2. — When James Woolley, Smith Professor of English, discovered a lost manuscript of the 18th century Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, he was met with a jaw-dropping surprise: the poet’s first unpublished poem in centuries —
3. — “I do not think that more information always makes a richer poem. I am attracted to ellipsis, to the unsaid, to suggestion. . . .” —
4. — The Boston Public Library is seeking to fill the Curator of Manuscripts position in its Rare Books and Manuscripts Department —
5. — Job: Curator of Poetry in the George Edward Woodberry Poetry Room Harvard —
6. — Robert Fagles, Translator of the Classics, Dies at 74 —
7. — It’s time her genius was more widely recognised —
8. — The poet doubts the redemptive power of her own gift while simultaneously using it to find a tone that — in the final line — wavers perfectly between her contempt for consolation and her desire for it —

Poetry News:

1. — This poem was written by thirteen-year-old Helen Keller (1880-1968) who, only six years before, was “a wild little creature” —
2. — new small press alert —
3. — Byron, Shelley and Miss Havisham —
4. — MLB Poetry Previews: Boston Red Sox —
5. — Romantic, Surrealist, clear-as-glass, impenetrable charlatan: Ashbery has been called all of these —
6. — new lit mag alert —
7. — Markov chains appear in everything from mathematics to music to gambling to Google searches, but Allmann decided to put a different spin on the algorithm by feeding it poetry —
8. — Beth Ann Fennelly’s best poems are as noisy as a rat in a coffee can —

Could be worse.

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. — The poet who may be prime minister —
2. — I still begin with the particular, and hope to arrive at the universal —
3. — Her husband, the poet Osip Mandelstam, wrote a famous epigram about the great leader, for which he met an early death —
4. — Vehicle of literary endeavour —
5. — With breakneck pacing he packed all of life and death into scintillating, transcendent incantations —
6. — Grace Paley’s poems read nicely as first thoughts, as impressions in a journal, a pause on an afternoon stroll —

Poetry News:

1. — Official State Author and Poet Are Named —
2. — Owners To Open ‘Mystery Room’ Sealed For 50 Years —
3. — What are your feelings on MFA programs in regard to authors publishing in today’s market? —
4. — The rubric “poet among painters” does not adequately explain the radical shifts between formal and personal values in O’Hara’s poetry —
5. — What does zazen do for the poetry? Do you feel that there is a relation there that helps somehow in the writing? —
6. — Even though running a press is costly, it’s still important for folks to have the opportunity, even though it’s infrequent, to be published —
7. — Two books published by St. Paul-based Graywolf Press and one from Minneapolis-based Coffee House Press have been nominated for the 28th annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes —

Anna Akhmatova died March 5, 1966.

Most popular outgoing links for February 2008 (as far as Feedburner is concerned):

• “One of Ireland’s best-known poets today denied he sexually exploited young men as police investigated allegations against him”
• “Barack Obama’s creditable poems are in an erratic tradition of political versifying” (tie)
• “Interview: Major Jackson” (tie)
• “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”

Poetry News:

1. — Initially championed by TS Eliot, the poetry of Lynette Roberts has long since fallen out of fashion, but her voice remains fresh and challenging —
2. — MLB Poetry Previews —
3. — Inventory By Frances Richey —
4. — Frances Wilson’s The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth reveals a passionate, talented woman whose love for her brother defined her and finally destroyed her —
5. — Allen Grossman writes the poems that inspire poets —
6. — At home with Mary Jo Bang —
7. — How the complete works of four 20th-century poets with complicated publishing histories found their homes —
8. — 50 arts secrets revealed —
9. — Though it remains to be seen what will become of the new position, it augers well that the city has recognized a need to help foster the burgeoning literary scene. —

Poetry News:

1. — Soon, she was weaving together poems about the employees’ experiences in America and at work at the factory —
2. — In the meantime, his poetry is massively overrated: rhymes are amateur, scansion is sloppy and the content is unintelligible, bordering on insane —
3. — Armed with magnifying glasses and mirrors, the censors are on a mission to root out hidden political messages in poems, novels, stories and advertisements —
4. — Robert Frost, shown above circa 1915, wrote to his son that “you can say a lot in prose that verse won’t let you say.” —
5. — Toledo helped shine light on gifted black poet —
6. — “To me, this is the Grammy of poetry” —
7. — College Restores Artwork by Poet E.E. Cummings —
8. — the day Wallace Stevens punched out Ernest Hemingway —
9. — Because language isn’t simple and poetry isn’t simply language, translation is never a zero-sum game —
10. — Robert has good news, congrats —
11. — Massive gathering celebrates Stegner as bard of the West —
12. — Free online barcode generator for DIYers —
13. — Edward Limonov, a poet-turned-populist, has joined the chess master Garry Kasparov to form a threadbare alliance that constitutes the only genuine opposition to President Vladimir Putin —