Poetry Hut Blog

• — Why danger can be good for children guess it is time to bring back these toys [youtube] —
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• — Jeff Bezos in Disagreement With A Major Publisher, Pulls All Their Works’ “Buy Buttons” Off Amazon —
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• — After years of mimicking her betters at poetry, she found her calling —
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• — Zora Neale Hurston remembered on 50th anniversary of her death —
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• — Fine writers, lousy spouses —
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• — Accompanying the photos is a sestina by Mr. Trinidad called “Playing With Dolls,” in which his mother defends his doll habit —
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• — A Reading List for the Grieving —
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• — A Kittery Point poet and teacher, Green spent four weeks at The MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, N.H., working on a manuscript of 100 poems that she wanted to revise. —
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• — Ruth Padel on Derek Walcott, ‘dirty tricks’, and the worst mistake of her life —
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• — A love poem is principally a way of wooing, a strategy for seduction – and the Poetry Archive has compiled a collection you can send to your beloved on their mobile phone —
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• — New Lit Mag Alert —
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• — Unusual Calls for Submissions —
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• — Pros and Cons of Interning at a Lit Mag —
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• — Homeless young adults express themselves through poetry, build community, better lives —
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• — 3 questions with former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky —
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• — Rarely do I come across a book of poems that reads as though it had to be written. When I do, I’m reminded why I read poems in the first place —
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• — For starters Bukowski’s assertion that he was born a bastard is inaccurate: he was born on August 16th, 1920; his parent had married, albeit only a month before, on July 15th. —
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• — Yet without medical classification, but real in its effects, let us call this pandemic by the name poet-oxemia. —
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• — Howling at the Moon: The Poetics of Amateur Product Reviews —
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• — “What is a cat but a reduced lion?” So muses the fictionalized Joseph Brodsky character in Andrey Khrzhanovsky’s whimsical and inventive film, A Room and a Half. —
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• — There are a few things that make Wendy Barker, poet-in-residence and professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, angry. One of them is how intimidated people can be of poetry. —
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• — Reviews of New Fiction, Poetry, Mystery, Science Fiction and Comics — Publishers Weekly, 1/25/2010 —
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• — Can creative writing ever be taught? —
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• — Spitball The Literary Baseball Magazine has moved —
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• — Timothy Steele’s Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt against Meter: the case for a new Formalism —
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• — DOD Identifies Army Casualty —
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• — DOD Identifies Army Casualty —
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• — Poetry roundup | Book review —
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• — Uncovered: Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner —
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• — How does an outfielder know where to run for a fly ball? —
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• — Alan Lightman—scientist, essayist, novelist, and poet—takes on the big questions —
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• — Patricia and Edward Submitted by Ryan from My Parents Were Awesome —
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• — Abandon All Poetry, but Enter Hell With an Attitude —
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• — The Romantic poets: The Human Image and The Divine Image by William Blake —
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• — Invictus aside, poetry in cinema is embarrassing —
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• — Poetry, in its power to burn experience into the soul in a concentrated perfection of language often becomes an unlikely balm. —
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• — NaPoWriMo 2010 is coming! [from No Tell Motel thank you]—
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• — A few years after the dedication, he decided to revisit “his” high school. By then a different principal was in charge. The new man thought Sandburg was a panhandler and threw him out. —
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• — George Tsongas dies: poet, North Beach fixture —
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• — Women and Disability and Poetry (Not Necessarily in That Order) —
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• — More drawings from my notebook that is so small, I can only fit the faces of people I draw. Not to be confused with the online social network Facebook. —
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• — Cerebral Meditation Hosted Roy Johnston – Join Roy as he talks to Stanley Plumly about his Keats Bio Poets who die young often have surprisingly lively posthumous careers. John Keats (1795-1821) provides the most celebrated example: Almost immediately after his death in Rome, at the age of 25, he entered the realm of legend. Though his poetry wasn’t much read at the time, he himself was quickly transformed into a figure of myth. For Shelley — who drowned with a copy of Keats’s last book in his pocket — he was “like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,” as he put it in “Adonais,” his elegy for the poet. At the opposite extreme, Shelley’s good friend Lord Byron detested Keats and snubbed him, referring to him in one letter as “a dirty little blackguard.” For the aristocratic Byron, Keats was a “Cockney” upstart — more a rank weed than a pale lily. But for Keats’s admirers, his humble origins only enhanced the pathos of his fate. For William Butler Yeats, Keats was both the “coarse-bred son of a livery-stable keeper” and a woebegone schoolboy “with face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window,” the very epitome of sensuousness unsatisfied. [mp3] —
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• — The Reading Is Poetry Review – “Where Verse Becomes A Learning Lesson” Join Hip Hop Jazz Poet A K Toney as he reads and reviews selections from “Skovbo” by Viggo Mortenson. (Perceval Press 2009) A Collection of photographs, poems, and quotes. (in English, Spanish, and Danish [mp3] —
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• — The Blood-Jet Writing Hour hosted by Rachelle Cruz – Join Rachelle as she Talks to Alicia Ostriker – Alicia Ostriker, twice a finalist for the National Book Award, has published 11 volumes of poetry, most recently No Heaven. Her most recent prose book is Dancing at the Devil’s Party: Essays on Poetry, Politics, and the Erotic. She has received awards and fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the Poetry Society of America, and the San Francisco State Poetry Center, among others. Ostriker lives in Princeton, NJ, is Professor Emerita of English at Rutgers University, and teaches in the low-residency Poetry MFA program of New England College. ***** Rachelle Cruz, Poet and Host of “The Blood-Jet Writing Hour” Radio Show www.thebloodjet.wordpress.com www.rachellecruz.com [mp3] —
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• — Jo Mcdougall – from Joe Milford Show | Jo McDougall is the author of five books of poetry: The Woman in the Next Booth, BkMk Press/University of Missouri-Kansas City; Towns Facing Railroads and From Darkening Porches, University of Arkansas Press; and, most recently, Dirt and Satisfied with Havoc, Autumn House Press, Pittsburgh. Her memoir in progress, Daddy’s Money, focuses on growing up on a rice farm in the Arkansas delta. [mp3] —
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• — Annie Finch explores the metaphorical meaning of winter. [mp3] —
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This blog will continue to be semi-hibernating for the next month.

Have a happy, healthy, safe, holiday and new year.

• — Legend has it that in the same room, Robert Lowell taught aspiring poets Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and George Starbuck, all of whom went on to become pivotal figures in modern American poetry. —
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• — Mexican writer Jose Emilio Pacheco wins Cervantes prize —
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• — An example of a book trailer done wrong? Nashville Post’s book writer Betsy Phillips points her finger at the trailer for Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book Eating Animals. —
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• — When hallowed beat goddess Lenore Kandel died six weeks ago, the Chronicle published a nice memorial, with quotes from fellow travelers Peter Coyote, Gerard Nicosia, and others. —
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• — Entertainment Weekly: Poetry You Need To Read: H.L. Hix’s ‘Incident Light’ and David Lehman’s ‘Yeshiva Boys’ —
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• — The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) has presented the 2009 National Translation Award to Norman Shapiro, professor of romance languages and literatures, for French Women Poets of Nine Centuries: The Distaff and the Pen —
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• — Poem of the week: Gascoigne’s Lullaby by George Gascoigne —
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• — Cause of Jane Austen’s death not universally acknowledged —
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• — In “Honor Thy Sow Bug,” Walnut Creek resident Seaborg shares his opinions on what makes a good poem and the state of contemporary poetry today —
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• — How to deal with poets —
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• — Dylan. Polka. Christmas song. Nothing more needs to be said —
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• — “I love rhyming for rhyming sake. I think that’s an incredible art form.” —
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• — “I want to leave a poem thinking that I’ve contributed to the larger conversation in a meaningful way.” —
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• — David Citino, Poets, and Baseball —
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• — Patrick Janson-Smith introduces Luis d’Antin van Rooten’s extraordinary transformations of classic nursery rhymes into 18th-century French poetry, Mots d’Heures: Gousses, Rames —
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• — The actor and polyglot Luis d’Antin van Rooten turned classic nursery rhymes into 18th-century French poetry in Mots d’Heures: Gousses, Rames (hint: try saying it out aloud). Here we publish his version of Jack and Jill, with scholarly notes, as well as a reading of the text by the publisher Patrick Janson-Smith —
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• — End of a chapter for Borders —
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• — The Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh is staging a celebration of sound poetry. It is part of a series of exhibitions and events that have looked at what is called concrete poetry. —
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• — A Love Letter to the Letterpress —
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• — Britain’s equivalent of the haiku is your challenge this time, with a number of fiendish variations available —
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• — In the age of the PC, a surprising number of authors remain wedded to rather older technology —
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• — After a recent call from Rose Metal Press urging more women to submit to their annual chapbook competition, I started to wonder how equal the gender line … —
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• — In her presentation, she analyzed an early prose experiment by Dickinson published in Amherst College’s student-run literary journal in 1850. … —
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• — Clarinda Harris – Clarinda Harriss teaches poetry, poetics, and editing at Towson University, where she chaired the English Department for a decade. Her most recently published collection is Air Travel, Half Moon Editions, 2005. Forthcoming from HME in the spring of 2007 is a new collection, Dirty Blue Voice. She is the winner of numerous awards for her poetry and short fiction. One of her primary research interests is writing by prison inmates; she has worked with incarcerated writers for many years. You may contact the author at charriss@towson.edu. —
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• — The Blood-Jet Writing Hour” Radio Show with Rachelle Cruz – Join Rachelle as she talks to Lee Herrick Lee Herrick is the author of This Many Miles from Desire (WordTech Editions, 2007). His poems have been published in ZYZZYVA, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Berkeley Poetry Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Many Mountains Moving, The Bloomsbury Review, MiPOesias, and others, including anthologies such as Seeds from a Silent Tree: Writings by Korean Adoptees, Hurricane Blues: Poems About Katrina and Rita, and the 2nd edition of Highway 99: A Literary Journey Through California’s Great Central Valley. He is the founding editor of the literary magazine In the Grove and teaches at Fresno City College in Fresno, California. —
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• — The MoE Green Poetry Dissicusion with Rafael F.J Alvarado & Chelsea Bayouth – join Rafael & Chelsea as they talk to Cecilia Woloch – Cecilia Woloch was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up there and in rural Kentucky, one of seven children of a homemaker and an airplane mechanic. She attended Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, earning degrees in English and Theater Arts, before moving to Los Angeles in 1979. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University L.A. in 1999. A celebrated teacher, Ms. Woloch has conducted poetry workshops for thousands of children and young people throughout the United States and around the world, as well as workshops for professional writers, educators, participants in Elderhostel programs for senior citizens, inmates at a prison, and residents at a shelter for homeless women and their children. She is the founding director of Summer Poetry in Idyllwild and of The Paris Poetry Workshop, and is currently a lecturer in the creative writing program at the University of Southern California as well as a member of the core faculty of the low-residency MFA Program in Professional Writing at Western Connecticut State University. Her previous books of poems are Sacrifice, a BookSense 76 selection in 2001; Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem; Late, for which she was named Georgia Author of the Year in Poetry in 2004; and a chapbook, Narcissus, winner of the Tupelo Press Snowbound Competition in 2006. Her poems have been anthologized in When She Named Fire: Contemporary American Women Poets; Best American Erotic Poetry: 1800 to the Present; Billy Collins’ 180 More (Extraordinary Poems for Every Day), Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems for Hard Times, among many others, and have been featured on Keillor’s The Writers’ Almanac as well as in Ted Kooser’s nationally syndicated column American Life in Poetry. She spends a part of each year traveling, and in recent years has divided her time between Los Angeles and Idyllwild, California; —
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• — Joe Milford Hosts Anne-Marie Cusac – Anne-Marie Cusac is the author of the poetry books, Silkie (Many Mountains Moving Press, 2007), winner of the Many Mountains Moving Press poetry book prize, and the Wisconsin Library Association award; and The Mean Days (Tia Chucha, 2001), which won recognition from both the Wisconsin Library Association and the Council for Wisconsin Writers. An As- sistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Roosevelt University, where she heads the Journalism Program, Cusac is also a George Polk Award-winning journalist and worked as an editor and investigative reporter for The Progressive magazine for ten years. She is currently a member of the blog team forThe Huffington Post. Her nonfiction book, Cruel and Unusual: The Culture of Punishment in America, was published by Yale University Press in 2009. [mp3] —
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• — Joe MIlford Hosts Clayton Eshleman – Clayton Eshleman’s most recent collection of poems, Anticline, is a manuscript to be published by Black Widow Press in April,2010. Recent book publications by Clayton Eshleman include he Grindstone of Rapport / A Clayton Eshleman Reader (Black Widow Press, 2008), his translation of The Complete Poetry of Cesar Vallejo (University of California Press, 2007), Archaic Design (Black Widow Press, 2007) and Reciprocal Distillations (Hot Whiskey Press, 2007). From time to time, in June, Clayton and his wife Caryl lead a tour to the Upper Paleolithic painted caves in southwestern France, sponsored by the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, FL. Next trip will be in June 2010, with the ethnographer Wade Davis coming along as guest lecturer. [mp3]—
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• — Weekly Poem: ‘Storm’ from Poetry | NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Podcast | PBS Kwame Dawes is director of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative and the University of South Carolina Arts Institute, where he also teaches as distinguished poet in residence. [mp3] —
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• — Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney has called for Ted Hughes to be honoured in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey. —
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• — Inauguration of the Pushkin Monument in Asmara —
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• — First anthology of nature poetry from black voices debuts —
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• — Jack Elliot Myers worked throughout his adult life to write poems to get closer to people. —
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• — The Louisville-based literary magazine The Lumberyard, the most physically beautiful new journal I’ve seen this year, is a brother-and-sister operation. —
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• — December 1st Updates to the Online Best of 2009 Book Lists —
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• — Tune into “The Reading Is Poetry Review” with your host Hip-Hop/Jazz Poet A. K. Toney tonight. We will have the honor and privilege of listening to and reviewing selections from percussionist, spoken word producer extraordinaire Leon Mobley. [mp3] —
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• — One of our most tender poets (tough but tender), James Galvin, investigates his growing tendency toward poems that express his bitterness? toward politics, environmental despoilment, big business. Still he affirms, in poems that breathe with sweet relief, the ongoing possibility of love. [mp3] —
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• — Linda Benninghoff – from Jane Crown’s Poetry Radio | The author of the new chapbook “The Spaces Between Things”from Erbacce press.She is well published in numerous magazines including Ocho,Mipoesias and Agenda.She has four other chaps and won an award for her last “Elegies for Mary” published by Kritya press.India. She possesses a BA in English w/honors from John’s Hopkins University and an MA in English with an emphasis on Creative Writing from Stony Brook. —
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• — In Exercises in Style, Raymond Queneau revisits a single event nearly 100 times. His noble goal was to help literature unburden itself ‘of some of its scabs’ —
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• — Walt Whitman’s home earns literary honor —
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• — Art in Paradise: How Not to Become Yeats —
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• — I’ve seen Philip Levine’s face on the back cover of his books, and once in a while, on podiums at readings. When I saw him two feet away, in an NYU bathroom of all places, I was totally baffled. —
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• — ‘I began writing in mystery’ A few words with Philip Levine —
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• — Even if Jara’s murder is solved, she says Chile can’t achieve justice without addressing all 3,197 people, according to an official count, who were slain for political reasons before Pinochet finally ceded the presidency in 1990. —
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• — According to the Burma Media Association and Reporters Sans Frontieres, at least 12 journalists and dozens of media workers including poets and writers are still in custody —
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• — Two exhibitions now up feature works that strive to embody poems in art objects. —
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• — In her first book of poetry, “Water the Moon” (Marick Press, November 2009), Sze-Lorrain presents her entire life—from first memories to seemingly recent dinner parties—with elegance, boldness, and, perhaps most importantly, complete believability. —
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• — “Domestic Fugues” showcases Newman’s complete assurance as he takes his poems through a number of formal paces —
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• — SOU prof publishes book of flarf —
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• — Baudelaire poems fetch record price —
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• — Personal letters, first edition copies and even a suicide note penned by 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire are part of an exceptional set of items that go up for auction on Tuesday in Paris. —
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• — Nine days after becoming the first female professor of poetry at Oxford, Ruth Padel resigned when it was revealed she had sent emails bad-mouthing a rival. Now the poet gives her first interview since the controversy —
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• — ‘Bright Wings’ elevates birdwatching through verse —
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• — Anger as pub calls time on old poets —
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• — “I wanted to write poems of religious devotion in a less obvious and, I hope, more humble way – one people might more easily identify with,” says poet Franz Wright —
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• — Poet Marie Ponsot Celebrating Life at 88 —
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• — Meet Ben Jonson and Robert Herrick, poetry’s most artful kvetches —
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• — Joe Milford Hosts Al Maginnes – Al Maginnes is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently a chapbook, Dry Glass Blues (Pudding House Publications, 2007) and Ghost Alphabet which won the 2007 White Pine Poetry Prize and will be available in October of 2008. New poems appear or are forthcoming in American Literary Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Green Moutains Review, Terminus, Mid American Review and Southern Poetry Review. He lives in Raleigh, NC and teaches at Wake Technical Community College. [mp3] —
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• — The Poetry Show: Host Dennis Morton read David Baker and more. [mp3] —
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• — The poetic legacy of James Schuyler. [mp3] —
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• — Vintage Fringed —
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• — This poem began after a writers conference in Asheville, NC to which I took a small group of women students. Eudora Welty had just died, and we spent a portion of the morning session talking about her work, so her influence was much on my mind as the rest of the day unfolded. —
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• — Stephen Dunn, the Poetry of the Personal —
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• — Pennsylvania poet Sarah Dowling stands guard with language in her brave new collection, winner of the 2009 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. —
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• — Here you can listen to Anna Akhmatova, Alexander Blok, Nikolai Gumilyov, Sergei Yesenin, Osip Mandelshtam, Maximilian Voloshin, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Arseny Tarkovsky reading their own work. —
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• — Homicide Rates Linked to Trust in Government, Sense of Belonging, Study Suggests —
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• — Brenda Starr makes way for Rumi, Neruda, and Merwin —
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• — SPD Poetry Best-Sellers November 2009 —
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• — Jordanian court convicts poet over Quranic verses —
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• — As to why such ethical concerns are important, look at Linda Gray Sexton’s 1994 book “Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton,” which is nothing if not a cautionary tale —
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• — Poems play an important role here. Nothing influences Iranians like poetry. And these days, everything is about influence and fear. —
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• — Family, friends mourn Iranian woman whose death was caught on video —
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• — Poet and Wayne State University professor M.L. Liebler is teaming up with two younger poets, Cassie Poe and LaShaun (Phoenix) Moore, to write a collaborative poem about summer in the city —
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• — Here’s the last published poem by late Brooklyn poet laureate, Ken Siegelman, who died on Friday at his home in Gravesend —
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• — mistakes in Iqbal’s poem in handbook, seven suspended —
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• — A nap that includes a period of REM sleep seems to improve performance on word-association tests, a new study shows. —
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• — On the podcast with Alok Jha are Poet Laureate Ruth Padel, University College London’s Steve Jones, and Cambridge University’s Gillian Beer, to discusses Darwin’s writings and what he read. [mp3] —
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• — What is American about this poem? —
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• — Tim Burton Unveils Alice in Wonderland Stills —
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• — “Please forward me the names of poets and the title of poems which you feel have some connection to a miraculous birth” —
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• — When Einstein and Bohr clashed over quantum theory —
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• — Poem of the week: Frieze by David Constantine from Books: Books blog | guardian.co.uk by Carol Rumens —
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• — Colbert Report: Paul Muldoon with Stephen Colbert —
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• — At meeting of scholarly presses, directors trade stories about layoffs, consider ways to better connect themselves to their universities and hear some dire warnings. —
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• — It’s good that painters and poets mock politicians | Germaine Greer —
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• — In Studio Performances: Neko Case 6-5-09 Recording engineer: Steven Kray —
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• — “I have always believed in Jean Cocteau’s dictum that the artist should find out what he can do and then do something else.” —
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• — Last week, after Pasha Malla delivered his acceptance speech at the Trillium Book Awards — he won for his debut collection of short stories, The Withdrawal Method — we (almost) immediately asked him if we could share it with our readers. —
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• — Translator accused of stealing poems —
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• — A Crowthorne man has written a poem dedicated to a member of his wife’s family who survived the sinking of the Titanic. —
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• — Thursday’s Poem: “Lyrical” by Joseph Millar, from Fortune. [mp3] —
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• — Poet Ruth Padel, who stepped down earlier this week from the post of Oxford professor of poetry after just nine days in the job, reads ‘Survival of the Fittest’ from her latest book, Darwin: A Life in Poems —
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• — Part-time Traverse City resident Mort Gallagher won a Florida contest for the best new poem about colonoscopies —
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• — Ruth Padel’s resignation: poetry has always been a rotten business —
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• — Fanny Howe, winner of the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, reads from her work. —
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• — How did his lonely experience in the Pacific Northwest shape his career as a poet? What did he learn about himself, and the wilderness around him? Gary Snyder is our guest, on “Weekday.” [mp3] and Poet Gary Snyder returns to Seattle for reading —
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• — FANS of Coventry poet Philip Larkin can now go on a literary safari of the places that were important to the genius wordsmith as he grew up in the city. —
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• — American poet Jane Hirshfield gulped down a cup of liquor that floated toward her on a lotus-shaped wooden plate, and improvised a lyric in line with a centuries-old Chinese tradition.
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• — Poetry, because the screen is so narrow, sometimes looks bad, and so do plays in verse. —
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• — Who cares about poetry, anyway? —
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• — Despite some profanity and graphic artwork, a local high school’s literary magazine is now for sale under one condition: students must present parents’ signatures to buy it. —
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• — Espresso Book Machine, born in St. Louis, is “ATM of books” —
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• — The glories of the Griffin: The trust and its annual prize continue to extend poetry’s reach —
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• — Poe’s bookcase stands in North Raleigh —
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• — Pandas and poetry: Salt Publishing spoofs WWF video to save itself —
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• — Having claimed the scalps of two distinguished poets in less than a fortnight, the job of professor of poetry at Oxford University is once again vacant. But what does the job involve and why is it so sought after? and also Revealed: The email sent by Oxford poetry professor Ruth Padel to smear rival —
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• — $2 Million Donation Supports Creative Writing Program —
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• — Poetry alone won’t keep the wolf from the door but prizes might —
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• — Weekly Poem: ‘White Song’
  from Poetry | NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Podcast | PBS
  J. Michael Martinez’s collection “Heredities” was selected for the Academy of American Poets’ Walt Whitman Award and will be published by Louisiana State University Press [mp3] —
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• — “Still, it’s searingly extreme, a triumph by a hair, that one almost wishes had never come about.” —
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• — Literary journals: The writers’ sandbox —
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• — Thank goodness no backbiting like this takes place Stateside! —
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• — The ‘previously unpublished’ versus the ‘piece that is becoming popular’ question is a big issue for me. —
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• — Bookslut is in need of an intern —
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• — One of the last surviving members of the Beat generation, Jack Gilbert still writes with a freshness that astonishes. —
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• — Cub Haikus —
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• — Gaylord Brewer: “Apologia to Mars and Moon” —
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• — As Lewis Carroll used to say —
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• — Scientists Reaching Consensus On How Brain Processes Speech —
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• — Siren is jam-packed with springtime goodness —
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• — The Poetry Show: Theodore Roethke [mp3] —
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• — Rapper Roland Pemberton, otherwise known as Cadence Weapon, has been selected to be the new poet laureate for the city of Edmonton —
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• — These poems have right answers. Does that diminish them? —
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• — Updates: Lit Mag Reviews —
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• — The recent election of the Oxford professor of poetry is the stuff of poetic satire, if only it weren’t so sad and pathetic. —
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• — To elucidate the neurobiological basis of music in human evolution and communication the researchers demonstrated an association of arginine vasopressin receptor 1A (AVPR1A) gene variants with musical aptitude. —
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May is Ehlers Danlos Awareness Month: Cape grad wants to educate public on painful condition

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• — Poetry professor quits over ’smear tactics’ allegation —
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• — Poem of the week: To his Mistress, Objecting … by Robert Herrick —
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• — The first issue of Poe from BOOM! Studios promises a Hellboy-esque supernatural mystery with everyone’s favorite dyspeptic poet (and his brother) at the helm. —
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• — Karla Morton learned that she would be the Texas poet laureate of 2010 on the one-year anniversary of the day she was to begin treatment for breast cancer. —
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• — “The entire Delirious Hem series on feminism is awesome” —
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• — Gaspereau cuts staff, postpones fall titles and an interview with the founder here —
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• — Bookmarks: Student hides banned books in locker, more kids lit on the big screen, BBC war poet? —
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• — Rooks show intelligence to rival chimpanzees in tests with tools —
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• — The Wordplay Archivew —
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• — Brontë Parsonage library and collections officer Sarah Laycock with the picture drawn by Branwell Brontë, which has the lewd sketches on the reverse —
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• — All-woman shortlist for Wales book of the year —
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• — A keen reader, David started to write experimental poetry a few years ago, finding the process therapeutic. —
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• — John Clare (1793-1864) is one of English poetry’s most enduring hardship cases. —
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• — The book that changed my life —
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• — Disintegrating Poems —
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• — Happy Birthday Ralph Waldo Emerson, Father of Transcendentalism —
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• — “Employing strikingly different means, a pair of books by two New York-based, very cosmopolitan poets demonstrates an unseemly interest in God,” writes Ange Mlinko. “Robert Polito’s title, ‘Hollywood & God,’ and the title of ‘Money and God,’ a selection from Susan Wheeler’s ‘Assorted Poems’ (her first retrospective), are just the most obvious references to a desire to commune with the divine…. —
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• — “they didn’t have too many questions about the actual poetry. They asked about how to move up in the ranks….” —
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The Oxford poet saga made me pull out my Oxford photos from a long time ago.







That’s the Bodleian   fortress   Library in the bottom photo. (“I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library, or to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document, or other object belonging to it or in its custody; not to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.”)

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• — Poet cornered: Ruth Padel fights to keep Oxford post over tip-offs about her rival and A male poet wouldn’t have been blamed for rough tactics: Ruthless power plays in academia are as common as good wine and Oxford’s top poet urged to quit for sex slurs against literary rival —
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• — It measures, perhaps, the success of New Formalism’s self-serving argument that writing in meter is difficult that Joel Brouwer (“Poetry Chronicle,” April 26) should be astonished to the point of italics at the news that J. D. McClatchy spoke an iambic pentameter line in his sleep. —
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• — Why do women defend Walcott? —
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• — BBC plans to send poet to Afghanistan battlefields —
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• — Litterbug released after 4 years in jail —
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• — The lousy economy might be bad for artists when it comes to paying rent, but after a decade of record prices — and what some might call wretched excess — it might actually be good for art. —
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• — Film Made About Rebellious Chilean Poetess and —
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• — Wee row erupts over old Robbie: Town resists call to remove statue —
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• — Sunday Poetry for the New Moon Jupiter/Chiron/Neptune conjunction —
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• — Poet’s Choice by Paul Otremba: ‘In an Adirondack With You’ by Paul Otremba —
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• — Frederick Seidel has spent the last half-century being the darkest and strangest sort of poet. —
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• — People By Nature Are Universally Optimistic, Study Shows —
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• — A few years ago I used baseball as a metaphor to lament the lack of an amateur/professional split within the poetry world: no one thinks they have to be a major leaguer to have fun taking hacks at the batting cage, but for some reason the idea of being an amateur poet and having fun in the same way with words strikes us as embarrassing. —
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• — French artist Bernard Pras (scroll for biography) arranges everyday objects, then photographs them at such an angle as to recreate iconic portraits and artworks. —
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• — APSU literature professor to read his work in Nashville —
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• — So, just to be clear, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as we have come to call it, is an untitled poem written by an unknown author in about 1400. It is 2,530 lines long and written in Middle English. —
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• — Two engaging books in distinct styles and voices — clearly from male and female perspectives — experience our shared world, but translate it through individual visions worthy of a wide readership. —
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• — Ros, who died in 1939, abused (some would say, tortured) the English language in three novels and dozens of poems. you can read some poems here —
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• — Campbell McGrath’s anti-Tweet —
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• — Doomed to neglect were any films the jury doubtless deemed too conventional and/or too warm. These included “Bright Star,” Jane Campion’s exceptionally intimate and restrained examination of the tragic romance of poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, and “Looking for Eric,” a genial change-of-pace for British director Ken Loach. —
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• — The National Library of New Zealand is seeking nominations for the 2009-2011 New Zealand Poet Laureate Award. —
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• — Poets of the Central Committee of the Writers Union of Korea produced more than 100 poems and words of songs encouraging the army and people by conducting dynamic creative activities in the seething reality. —
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• — Computer scientist to ‘unroll’ papyrus scrolls buried by Vesuvius —
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• — Rafael Escalona, 81, Folk Musician and Balladeer of Colombia, Is Dead —
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• — The Futurists: masters of outrage who embraced the new —
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• — Peter Sacks finds common themes between the paintings of Edward Hopper and the works of poets such as Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and TS Eliot. [mp3] —
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• — Researchers mine millions of metaphors through computer-based techniques —
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• — Joe Milford Show: John Poch is poetry editor of the journal 32 Poems. His first book, Poems (Orchises Press), appeared in 2004. His work has appeared in many journals, and in 2004, he was a Howard Nemerov Fellow at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He teaches at Texas Tech University. —
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• — Conferences, Festivals Taking a Hit —
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• — The Jane Crown Show: Lyn Lifshin —
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• — “If the occupation is afraid of a literature festival,” he said, addressing the elephant in the room of literature buffs and the culturally inclined, “than they are very fragile indeed.” —
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• — In this essay Gary muses on how a poem or in
  this case how a poem fragment works, complete with excellent illustrations. —
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• — How did you and your publishers decide that now was the time for your “Collected Poems”? —
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• — The end of an era in American letters —
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• — Recently, I’ve been reading through Jim Elledge’s Sweet Nothings: An Anthology of Rock & Roll in American Poetry.” —
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• — Anna Journey’s first book of poems, “If Birds Gather Your Hair for Nesting” (University of Georgia Press: 104 pp., $16.95 paper), is a deeply American debut —
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Have you noticed lately that people are acting ugly all of a sudden out of the blue? I’m not sure what to make of it. Maybe I’m just being in the wrong time at the wrong place.

If you've enjoyed this blog, how about buying me a cup of coffee?

Sylvia Plath poem, November 1950 Seventeen Magazine.

Another old Ebay find. {PDF file.}

Actual magazine is on its way to the Plath collection at the Lilly Library in Bloomington. (Thanks to Anne Haines for suggesting it a long time ago.)

If there are any copyright objections I’ll remove the PDF file.

Here’s today’s news:

• — “Perhaps the most refreshingly honest set of guidelines I’ve ever read.” —
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• — George Harrison’s teenage angst… —
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• — Grand Rapids poetry therapist harnesses the power of words —
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• — Almost all his life Jack Kerouac played a fantasy baseball game of his own invention, a hobby that even close friends and fellow Beats never knew about.
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• — fallen idols: Walcott joins Shelley and Byron —
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• — Recommended Summer Reading – Evie Shockley —
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• — Scarred For Life. Physically, Not So Much Mentally —
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• — Christopher Ricks speaks with Giles Harvey about Posthumous Keats, Stanley Plumly’s recent biography of John Keats, and about the poet’s death and his idealized “immediate afterlife.” [mp3] —
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• — 20th Annual Independent Press Award Winners Announced —
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• — The Shakespeare Sonnets, from 1 to 154 – the full links —
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• — First a filly wins the Preakness, and now, a 301-year male only streak is broken with the appointment of Ruth Padel as the new Oxford professor of poetry, the first woman to hold the post since it was established in 1708. —
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• — Wordplay, May 17: Robin Blaser [mp3] —
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• — This is something new in the life of poetry, and I’m excited to be part of it and to see where it may take us. —
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If you've enjoyed this blog, how about buying me a cup of coffee?

• — Articles in Jan/Feb 2009 issue of American Poetry Review, The —
• — [from Fanny Howe's interview in Daniel Kane's What Is Poetry [Conversations with the American Avant-Garde], T&W, 2003] —
• — In Arab World, Ancient Tradition Finds New Voice —
• — Reviewing the book review —
• — In her poem “The Foretelling,” Jody Zorgdrager recounts how she discovered a disconcerting talent for sensing things that others couldn’t. [mp3] —
• — Detroit’s Beautiful, Horrible Decline —
• — Derek Walcott joins race to become Oxford professor of poetry —
• — Quirks of behavior provoke rhymes from professor —
• — Indeed she displays a bewildering variety of stanza forms to tell Darwin’s story: terza rima, quatrains, syllabics, alexandrines, free verse and some marvellous sonnets. —