Poetry News:

1. — Higginson has been ridiculed as a second-rater who allowed too much editorial tampering when he first published Dickinson’s poems, —
2. — Sylvia Plath—original hip-hop poet —
3. — This stunning Northern Irish poet is easily on a par with famous Seamus —
4. — Sex and the semicolon —
5. — A book of poems featured prominently in AMC’s widely lauded “Mad Men” sent viewers scrambling to find copies —
6. — I have a plea for any internet animation specialists out there: more poetry, please —
7. — UGA grad Trethewey named Georgia Woman of the Year —
8. — The verse novel (like the rock opera or the sound sculpture) is the awkward child of successful parents, destined to disappoint both of them —
9. — LOL —

Poetry News:

1. — These are poems of stark strength and startling honesty, constantly revealing the shock of the reality of everyday existence, touched often by a quiet dry humor —
2. — With invention, irony, and uncanny instinct, three poets show off their mastery of the surreal —
3. — T.S. ELIOT v. PORTISHEAD —
4. — Stray Questions for: Mary Jo Salter —
5. — Sounds of final partings fill Schultz’s verse —
6. — Ernest Cipolone, 87, of Brooklawn, who has been writing poetry for 60 years, read his verses before an audience for the first time —
7. — If anyone these days is hanging onto a notion of consistent stylistic evolution as aesthetic merit, this volume will do its best to disorient them —
8. — Sylvia Plath Trivia - Answers! —
9. — Poetry roundup —

“Third Genders” in Societies with Rigid Gender Roles

The Guardian recently asked its arts critics to cover sports for a day — and vice versa. The results are quite winning!

I don’t think my RSS feeds are working properly since my upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress. Sorry. If you have problems, please email. Though if folks aren’t getting the RSS feed they won’t see this request haha.

Poetry News:

1. — I love reworking, I love editing, love love love revision, revision, revision, revision. [not safe for work] —
2. — A poet reconciling verse and living —
3. — Mike Watt, Lee Ranaldo, more set James Joyce to music —
4. — Karen S. Williams June 30 Poetry Workshop, Reading and Booksigning - Open to the Public [Detroit: WCCC campus on the East Side] —
5. — Report: 2 million artists in US, many struggling —
6. — So far, Ostriker sounds the same yearning note that Cobain does elsewhere in the journals —
7. — A new survey says men are more likely than women to share their creative works online, even though both sexes participate in creative activities at roughly equal rates —

LOL I think if Persephone was a guy who was kidnapped by a big powerful God, then male-Persephone’s difficulties would be looked upon as a “heroic journey” rather than victimhood. Joseph Campbell stuff was 20 years ago for me (ask me about the Harmonic Convergence! haha) so let me know if I have this correct. Separation, initiation/ordeal, coming back — that’s the 3 parts of the journey right?

I was thinking about all this when I revisited How to trivialise women’s poetry by Eva Salzman:

“Male poets grappling with life and death issues in their writing are dragon-slayers. Women embarked on such odysseys are rarely granted similarly heroic status. Instead, they’re victims, a less noble assignation which handily renders them more vulnerable to any criticism embedded with ulterior motives, and more susceptible to being undervalued and misunderstood, except in the context of a tragedy and/or their role as mother. Is this an avoidance of any serious examination of Plath’s work? Sadly this lack of critical engagement is how most women poets are viewed, or are not viewed, as is more the case. It’s no doubt naïve to want ability and talent to be the king-makers’ main criteria.”

(Yes I’m still thinking about Pluto and Plath and that Gurlesque article from yesterday and my comments about it and Plath’s “Tulips” — that poem where it is wintertime and the country of health is far far away and springtime Tulips are oppressive.)

If you can spare some prayers for my father-in-law that would be great thank you.

Poetry News:

1. — Aleda Shirley (1955-2008): An Appreciation —
2. — On the Gurlesque part 2 —
3. — Holy Shit —
4. — Emerging writers are published with established writers around a loose theme —
5. — The Beat Generation’s jazz sensibility still resonates in a new century —
6. — Poetry with je ne sais quoi —
7. — It’s all in Buffalo, and it’s all housed in the University at Buffalo’s Poetry Collection —
8. — Sixteen poets, sixteen essays about mental illness and poetry —
9. — The end of an odyssey - Homer’s epic is finally pinned down —
10. — Could this be the way that literary magazines regain an audience —

I don’t think I have one shred of that “Gurlesque” going on. I think it is because I started working when I was 7 & didn’t have a middle-class suburban environment LOL? I’m not very glittery, anyway. That might be it. That is not anything judgmental in any way - I’m just being factual haha. I have a lot of male energy. Mars in my astrology chart conjuncts my ascendant, trines my Jupiter, trines my nodes, sextiles my midheaven & sun, and squares Chiron, Saturn, Uranus, & Pluto. (T-square with Mars/Asc and Uranus/Chiron.) Luckily (29 degree Sag.) Mars is in the 12th or I’d probably be a violent criminal haha instead of a somewhat peaceful Buddhist who just enjoys stirring things up when something is an affront to her sense of truth & justice & can’t shut up about it.

So in my book I have poems about war, gambling, sports, tooth extraction, surgery/body getting cut open, cut off hands (mentioned in 2 poems haha), 1 frozen decapitated head, someone hammering nails up his nose, tattoos, boxing, blood and scars. I think just about the only color mentioned in there is red, too. I didn’t even include the poems with gunshot wounds, taxidermy or sword swallowing. And I’m not a guy hahaha….

All Mars stuff I’ve realized but I try to be beautiful about it at least. So I guess my poetry is quite the antithesis of Gurlesque, actually….hahahaha. I’ll have to think of a snappy label for it. Warplay. haha.

Sylvia Plath had some pronounced Mars action in her astrology chart too & her poetry is pretty bloody. That & her brilliant music is probably why she’s my favorite poet. But that was probably Pluto, too, in her case. (With her issues about death.) So I would have to suggest that “Tulips” (as mentioned in the Gurlesque pt 2 link, above) is not merely submissive but rather it is Plutonian/underworldian in its theme. Because illness has a heavy aspect of destructive overpowering transformation, right, & you’re abducted by it. What, you’re NOT going to hand over your name to the nurses & give over your body to Pluto after you arrive in Hades? You really have no choice. You’ve been kidnapped!

Coincidentally we both have Venus in Virgo. Plath used the word “pure” a lot — (”Pure? What does it mean?”) — she wrote those heavy-duty hospital / health poems, too. (Virgo.) Face Lift, Tulips, Surgeon at 3 a.m, Fever 103.

Contemporary poetry needs more blood and guts…. I’d write more but I have to take Darryl to the airport.

PS William Carlos Williams was a Virgo — check out how many times he uses the word “white” in his poems — if this is not a “pure” Virgo poem I don’t know what is:

Nanucket

Flowers through the window
lavender and yellow

changed by white curtains-
Smell of cleanliness-

Sunshine of late afternoon-
On the glass tray

a glass pitcher, the tumbler
turned down, by which

a key is lying- And the
immaculate white bed

Poetry News:

1. — The lit mags that could —
2. — GK intros Maxine Kumin, she and GK read her poetry [real audio] —
3. — There are stereotypes about Sylvia Plath fangirls — that we’re mired in middle-class existential woe —
4. — In his new collection, Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems, poet Cornelius Eady writes of his transition from urban renter to rural homeowner and the encroachment of middle age —
5. — Blues And Haikus: Jack Kerouac with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims —
6. — Melissa Denes talks to Aeronwy Thomas about her father Dylan Thomas —
7. — Pulitzer Prize Winner Hass Answered Your Questions on Modern Poetry —

Meet my neighbors. I heard about that on XM Radio during the top of the hour news blurb & the news announcer just said it was in Tennessee. So I was thinking it was some crazy East Tennessee person (disclaimer: mom & them are from E TN LOL). Sadly, no.

Poetry News:

1. — You’re saying to the world, this is how I want to be read, this is how I want to be seen, and those are hard decisions to make —
2. — Poetry in Motion, Thanks to YouTube —
3. — The 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were awarded Friday evening, April 25, 2008, at UCLA’s Royce Hall —
4. — Manitoba Authors Honoured at Manitoba Book Awards —
5. — Gioia’s Poetry Set to Music as Hudson Review Turns 60 —
6. — It’s time for difficult writing to step up —
7. — Elegy for a Scarred Shoulder will debut May 1, 2008 at free reading and booksigning at 7:00 pm in Kalman Auditorium at Oakwood Hospital and Medical Center, 18101 Oakwood Blvd in Dearborn, Michigan —
8. — A Spring Bouquet of Poetry —
9. — Nuyorican Poets Cafe celebrates 35 years of odes —
10. — He currently writes for the New York Review of Books and is Poetry Editor of the Paris Review. He answered your questions on the state of poetry today. [links to MP3] —
11. — Fifteen months in India in the early 1960s had a lasting influence on Allen Ginsberg. —
12. — The metrical pattern, with its short, tumbling line, is sometimes known as “skeltonics” —
13. — Groundbreaking Book: Ariel, by Sylvia Plath —
14. — Cinderella Schools for Writers —
15. — Former beat movement member Gary Snyder wins $100,000 poetry prize —

Twelve Suggestions for Dealing with the Tibetan Situation, by Some Chinese Intellectuals

Ach, my appt at the pain clinic got moved back a week, due to a conference. You’d think a pain clinic consultation would be zippy.

How to be a jerk
1. Read a lukewarm review of your book on Amazon.
2. Explain to reader how she is mistaken.
3. Encourage deletion of reader’s review.
4. Have friends / fellow authors harass reviewer?
5. Have Private Investigator dig up personal information on reviewer. (?!)
6. There is no #6.
7. Amazon bans the reviewer.
8. Profit?
(there’s a boycott amazon group at Facebook BTW.)
And Writers call for 1 May Amazon, eBay boycott
…RSS feed backlog.

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. — 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.

Poetry News:

1. — Poetry should have punch. It should jab, it should undercut, clinch in the corners and consider in hard times the head butt —
2. — The mother of so much —
3. — MLB Poetry Preview: Minnesota Twins —
4. — English poetry masters: Percy Bysshe Shelley —
5. — Call for Entries to the Festival of Visual Poetry 2008 —
6. — It’s a great shame that the work of a great poet has spawned so many mawkish imitations —
7. — Revealed: how poet set up ‘charity’ fund —

Oklahoma! where the wind comes sweepin’ down [state legislator Sally Kern's] brain

Have a great weekend. No news this weekend.

Poetry News:

1. — The need for warmth is more important than people who have never been truly cold know —
2. — This great poets list has only one woman. About right, too —
3. — The poetry journal as mixtape —
4. — Two things often said about great poets are that they create the taste by which they are appreciated, and that they have the capacity to constantly reinvent themselves —
5. — Math lovers, teachers and families around the world are gearing up to celebrate Pi Day on March 14, or more precisely to the pi second, 3/14 (the American date format) at 1:59:26 p.m —
6. — The Resurrection Trade, Miller’s fifth book of poems, delves into the mysteries of early women’s anatomical studies and medical illustrations —
7. — New Vancouver opera focuses on poet Pauline Johnson - Margaret Atwood writes libretto, Christos Hatzis composes —

Poetry News:

1. — The poems of Melissa Green reflect an acute sensitivity and a troubled upbringing and Breaking a Long Poetic Silence [with poems] —
2. — How Ted Kooser wooed 2,600 women with a few yearly lines —
3. — Double dactyl keeps poet Hodge amused and busy —
4. — Seduced by Sylvia Plath’s gore and gloom —
5. — Ladies’ Home Journal? What’s that got to do with poetry? —
6. — What make us interesting to each other are our various miseries —

Poetry News:

1. — In ‘‘Elegy,’’ poet Mary Jo Bang has taken on one of the largest and most difficult subjects in all of literature —
2. — National Book Critics Circle finalists —
3. — John Milton: the poet who gave us ‘Star Trek’ and ‘The Matrix’ —
4. — Former poet laureate opening another chapter in his life —
5. — How lovely it is that there are words and sounds —
6. — John Ashbery, Octavio Paz, Stanley Kunitz and Robert Pinsky all wrote poems for him —
7. — he calls for the impeachment of George W. Bush, whom he calls “a booted, sombrero’d/cowboy Caligula/who couldn’t manage a straw/horse on a parade float…” —
8. — Ex-carpenter warms up tp poet laureate honor —
9. — Editorial: Frost home vandalism is deeply disturbing —
10. — Poets and jazz artists find rhythm and rhyme —
11. — Taslima Nasreen has been chosen for the prestigious Simon de Beauvoir feminist award in recognition of her writing on rights for women —
12. — Vendetta fear after poet murdered —
13. — Denise Clarke is entertaining as poet Anne Sexton in Sylvia Plath Must Not Die —
14. — If Fence magazine were an actual fence, it would be a portable one —
15. — A different kind of poetry concentrates more strikingly on expressiveness —

I’m going to Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness in March. I bought a plane ticket but I don’t know where I’m staying yet. I’ve only been to D.C. once, for some computer security training. But I took a train to the Mall area and wandered around for half a day. Saw about an hour’s worth of the Smithsonian. I wish I had more time to see stuff but I won’t. I’d like to meet with my members of Congress, too, but I won’t be there on those specified constituent days. After all the letters I’ve written them I’m not sure their staff would schedule me anyway hahaha.

Poetry News:

1. — The most important American love poet in living memory, and certainly one of the most important American poets —
2. — Vet Post Honors PTSD Victim, a Suicide [his poems are here] —
3. — Sylvia Plath’s art of the visual —
4. — New York poet and Toledo’s Zin String Quartet to perform multimedia tribute to geniuses —
5. — “Poesía diaria” rinde honor a desaparecidos en Argentina [English translation at this link]—
6. — Jean Sprackland, of Southport, took the title in the poetry category of the Costa Book awards, formerly known as the Whitbread Prize —

So what online archive can I pillage for poetry news now? I already did the free NYT and Time Magazine archives. What I learned from those articles:

a. the public has never supported poetry
b. poets have never made any $ from poetry
c. women poets have always been marginalized but at least some aren’t called “spinsters” anymore
d. poetry has never sold
hahaha

Poetry News:

1. — How Does the New Poetry Differ from the Old?; Amy Lowell Laments the Lack of Authoritative Criticism in America — Says No One Should Make a Living by Writing — By Joyce Kilmer —
2. — it’s impossible not to ask some hard questions about his status and whether it is deserved —
3. — In a poem of this sort one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective —
4. — BJP seeks political refugee status for Taslima —
5. — Havana-born, Chicago-based writer Achy Obejas first won a NEA grant for her poetry in 1986 —
6. — As good as life gets —
7. — Love, Ted —
8. — Many thought that Ivor Gurney’s claim to be ‘England’s first war poet’ was a symptom of his insanity —

My mom is intensive care again, so I may stop blogging (without much notice).