Poetry Hut Blog

Poetry News:

1. — I don’t necessarily push dark imagery in my poems as much as I embrace darkness when it arrives in my life, and find a way for that darkness to exist inside language. —
2. — Halloween has changed a lot in my time but it has always been an inspiration to poets —
3. — Writer Lawrence Joseph keeps memories of old store alive [link from here thank you]—
4. — All good poems surprise. Great poems keep surprising for longer, for as long as we can imagine. —
5. — Through Lowell’s dizzying psychological dramas and fits of despair, Bishop remained a steadfast but unsparing correspondent. —
6. — Wendell Berry’s time is now —

In a sign of the times, the National Debt Clock in New York City has run out of digits to record the growing figure

Poetry News:

1. — That’s the least interesting aspect of his work, but it did produce this startler, “User’s Guide to Physical Debilitation,” from a forthcoming book of his poems —
2. — Brenda Shaughnessy’s poems bristle with imperatives: confuse me, spoon-feed me, stop the madness, decide. [I don't get that knock knock joke ]—
3. — Calavera poems joke in face of death —
4. — Former poet laureate Charles Simic, a longtime Review contributor, reads work from his two most recent collections, Sixty Poems and That Little Something. [mp3] —
5. — How not to be a literary critic —
6. — Poet explains his probation violation with rhyme —

There’s a rough-looking Hammond Trim-O-Saw listed on the Nashville Craigslist, if anyone is looking for printing equipment.

Poetry News:

1. — The BBC reports that the British Library has digitized some rare recordings of fifty-seven 20th-century writers’ voices —
2. — A longitudinal cinéma vérité-style documentary, “The Last Beat” follows Corso after the death of Ginsberg, as he goes “on the road” to discover his creative muse —
3. — Duke Anthropologist Translates Poems Lost During Holocaust —
4. — Poetry or otherwise, Gordon still taps into he calls the “most important” piece of advice he’s ever received, which —
5. — Shortlisted poems: a poll of readers to decide the outcome —
6. — I’m sort of wondering whether any other poet-bloggers want to throw together an informal late-night guerrilla reading? —

When it says Phillies Phillies Phillies on the label label label …

Poetry News:

1. — She was a brilliant student, poet and author, who contemplated life and death with passionate intensity, so typical of an individual with an eighth house Sun in Scorpio —
2. — The good news is that the relatively dreary climate of poetry-publishing ensures that the chapbook will continue to flourish —
3. — ‘Paper Woman’ writes on body —
4. — For more than 2500 years, classical epic has been the province of men: written by, for and about them, and passed down through the centuries by male translators. —
5. — Asahi Haikuist Network —
6. — Nowadays acmeism is remembered only due to the names of outstanding poets, such as Nikolay Gumilyov, Anna Akhmatova, and Osip Mandelstam —
7. — The Contester: Down Came a Contest, Cradle and All —

Poetry News:

1. — Arnold’s formal innovation in this honeymoon poem shows he could have been a great poet —
2. — People are at their most creative late at night with 10.04pm the most likely time for a eureka moment, research has shown —
3. — The poet whose verse was more feared by the Ottoman Empire than insurgents’ bullets has won the belated honour of a “day of celebration” in the country he romanticised, Greece —
4. — “The Dental Hygienist,” a poem by Western Kentucky University faculty member Tom C. Hunley will be featured on the Oct. 25 segment of “The Writer’s Almanac” —
5. — A list of the nominees for the Governor General’s Literary Awards —
6. — Jordan detains poet for religious crime —

Anniversaries: Oct 21

Poetry News:

1. — A wooden tablet dating from the latter half of the seventh century, found here in fiscal 2003 among the Ishigami ruins, contains a section of verse from the Manyoshu, Japan’s oldest existing collection of poetry, it’s been learned —
2. — Washington and Lee University’s R.T. Smith, editor of Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review, has won the 2008 Library of Virginia Poetry Book of the Year prize. —
3. — Poet Glen Downie has claimed the $15,000 Toronto Book Award for his collection Loyalty Management. —
4. — Sandburg Home marks 40 years as historic site —
5. — Poet Invents Eighth Deadly Sin In New Collection —
6. — Wordplay this week: Lee Ann Brown [MP3] —

Poetry News:

1. — The newly released “Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook” pulls together as-yet uncollected essays and stories by Charles Bukowski, written from 1944-1990 —
2. — Poetry being ‘frozen out of schools’ claims Children’s Laureate —
3. — “A lot of my poems are informed by Detroit … Even when I wasn’t living in Detroit. I can’t help it.” —
4. — The poetry of childhood is rarely simple; even an apparently straightforward poem of childhood memory, —
5. — U.Va.’s Rita Dove to Receive Library of Virginia Lifetime Achievement Award Oct. 18 —
6. — Brad Pitt teams up with Warner Bros. for ‘The Odyssey’ —
7. — Atkinson is as comfortable riffing on pop culture (Willie Nelson, “Three Days of the Condor”) as she is on Cicero, John Milton and Herodotus —
8. — In this election year when the cost of health care looms large for most of us, anybody would profit from reading this sad lyric by Roger Fanning, an only child who nursed both parents to their expensive graves within a single year. —

Stories Of ‘Appalachia’ Unearthed In PBS Series

Four Tops’ Levi Stubbs dies

video link

Eddie Holland is one of my favorite poets. I have a couple of very peripheral Motown Records stories (I was born in ‘67, after all.) Maybe I’ll write them out sometime.

The pride of Inkster, Michigan:

Marvelettes video.

Poetry News:

1. — The death of the poet Reginald Shepherd has Alan Contreras puzzling over how to judge a student prize in his memory. —
2. — Those eleven [poems] were composed at the ages of twenty-three, forty-one, forty-eight, forty, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty, twenty-eight, thirty-eight, forty-two, and fifty-nine, respectively. There is no evidence, Galenson concluded, for the notion that lyric poetry is a young person’s game. [link thanks] —
3. — Mills College will be the first college in the nation to offer a graduate degree in book art and creative writing. —
4. — Gen Xers and Academia, Revisited —
5. — If you find her elusive approach vexing, there’s an aesthetic and moralistic reasoning behind it: “Fables” is, in part, a protest against the trend toward confessional literature, and the notion that the self represented is the author’s real one. —
6. — Can’t we leave Hughes and Plath alone? —
7. — Burger King Restaurants of Canada Inc. has announced the launch of MeatHaiku.com —

Iraq War Vets Left Bloody at the Debates & more here

Poetry News:

1. — Poem of the week: To a Louse —
2. — British Library acquires Ted Hughes archive for nation —
3. — Podcast: Children’s Author and Poet Carole Boston Weatherford —
4. — Giovanni Finds Funky Beats To Teach Poetry To Kids - NPR —
5. — When Boston-based playwright, poet and Simmons College English professor Afaa Michael Weaver returns home to Baltimore, he often can be found doing tai chi under the trees at Lake Montebello. —
6. — Published last month by Coffee House Press, Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith is a searing portrait of the horrors wrought by Hurricane Katrina —
7. — The distant enchantress who stole a poet’s heart —

Poetry News:

1. — The Oxford English Dictionary is 80! —
2. — … I returned to the business at hand, one of the students raised his arm and said, “Sir, there are bombs exploding outside and we are reading poetry here. …” —
3. — I think a certain amount of stupidity is necessary to cultivate an appreciation for poetry —
4. — The Jane Crown Show Show: Jane hosts Joan d’Arc,Cori Brackett,BL Kennedy for HG2 —
5. — Poems for Autumn —
6. — New Lit Mag Alert —
7. — Literary criticism and other humanities fields need to devote more attention to the military, writes Keith Gandal —

Did anyone out there go to the Southern Festival of Books? How was it?

I watched a lot of TV while I was in the hospital, something I don’t really do much of. I saw a trailer for the new Oliver Stone movie about GWB & it’s kind of nightmarish-looking haha.

Poetry News:

1. — Versed in the Blood —
2. — Liquor laureate whose poetry is the toast of the town —
3. — Yeah like there’s a lot of money in jazz —
4. — Marie Ponsot with Sally Dawidoff and Jean Gallagher —
5. — Which poems best sum up teaching and academia? —
6. — Polish poet’s pet immortalised —

What’s wrong with baseball - mathematically that is?

“MTSU’s Gaylord Brewer may be America’s least cynical nihilistic poet. A good chunk of his work features a keen awareness of what’s coming–it’s not good–while reveling in the knowledge that what’s coming isn’t yet here. In The Martini Diet, his latest collection, Brewer writes, “But they’ve not arrived yet, / the monsters of our reckoning, / and my boys and I still live the brilliant / moments we were born to.” Vandy’s Kate Daniels, who knew (correctly) from the moment she turned five that she was born to write, shares a similar sentiment in her poem “Crowns,” which she dedicated to the almost-nihilist Philip Levine: “[A]nd your mind opening up like the pine forest swishing fragrantly overhead / way up in the dark that is coming, but remains, for the moment, blissfully at bay.”
Wed., Oct. 22, 4 p.m., 2008 @ Austin Peay State University [more here]

Poetry News:

1. — American poets, beloved by critics, have never passed muster with the Swedes —
2. — 50 of your favourite words —
3. — One would have to be a genius oneself to grasp the full significance of Arthur Rimbaud, or at least have the ability to hold many opposed ideas in one’s mind at the same time and still function fully —
4. — Boston Orchestra Makes Typewriters Sing —
5. — Nick Flynn at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival —
6. — The TLS’s poetry editor wins the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2008 —
7. — Emily Dickinson, Immoral Hussy?! —
8. — Chicago-based writer Brandi Homan’s first full length collection of poems, Hard Reds, is a fun read chock full of all those things hard red might suggest —
9. — Back in high school, I fell in love with Bill Knott’s visionary poems, some only a few lines long —
10. — And despite the narrative and emotional tilt of the passage, this is a collage —
11. — I’m sure that most of my neighbors don’t know I’m a poet —

Bossa Nova Still Sexy At 50

Hey I’m back. That was an interesting experience. If anyone has any questions about the Vanderbilt Autonomic Dysfunction Center (like if you got here through a Google search) you can email me. I have to eat 10 GRAMS of salt per day. hahaha. I might try a pair of these too. More tests next month. What a weird life.

Poetry News:

1. — If we could read the poets that move huge audiences elsewhere in the world, would it wake up our own? —
2. — “Accident Plays a Part in Art” from Poetry Magazine Podcast … with Kasischke on Ken Burns, Lindsay on Krakatau, Sheffield on fishing, and Logan on Hart Crane (and David Foster Wallace). [mp3] —
3. — Ted Hughes’s letters contain some splendid perceptions and useful biographical material among a mass of interminable explication. —
4. — As the title suggests, Cities of Flesh and the Dead isn’t afraid of addressing loss or fear or violence. —
5. — Hey Bookslut reviewed my book thanks some happy in a cruddy week. Thanks for getting my jokes. —
6. — Poetry that doesn’t toe a party line —

Yep - testing is all scheduled. I’m looking forward to a resolution.