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Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Christmas Day forum announcement
Dear Poetry Aficionados,
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog

Good morning. I'm up late searching for and selecting videos for the blog that go with the poetry news this week. Enjoy them. The News at Eleven and Great Regulars section both have holiday poems and articles. There is other news too. Hopefully something for everyone. For instance, for me, the new Lola Haskins poetry in Great Regulars is a great gift. Well, I better let you get to opening the links.
Merry Christmas!
Yours,
Rus
Our links:
IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
IBPC Home
IBPC Newswire
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog

Good morning. I'm up late searching for and selecting videos for the blog that go with the poetry news this week. Enjoy them. The News at Eleven and Great Regulars section both have holiday poems and articles. There is other news too. Hopefully something for everyone. For instance, for me, the new Lola Haskins poetry in Great Regulars is a great gift. Well, I better let you get to opening the links.
Merry Christmas!
Yours,
Rus
Our links:
IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
IBPC Home
IBPC Newswire
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Charles [Longellow] recovered, although
his injury affected him long after and the bullet that nicked his spine came one inch from causing permanent paralysis. The relief and gratitude [Henry Wadsworth] Longfellow felt is noted in the poem's final stanza, the one cited in Bush's speech.
But the poem addresses a range of strong feelings and internal conflicts, emanating from the irony and pain Longfellow felt, hearing traditional Christmas bells and comfortably walking the streets near his lavish Cambridge, Mass., home while cannons thundered farther south.
from Burlington Free Press: Jump Cut: War is hell, but inspires deep poetry
~~~~~~~~~~~
But the poem addresses a range of strong feelings and internal conflicts, emanating from the irony and pain Longfellow felt, hearing traditional Christmas bells and comfortably walking the streets near his lavish Cambridge, Mass., home while cannons thundered farther south.
from Burlington Free Press: Jump Cut: War is hell, but inspires deep poetry
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: [J. Cruickshank Muir] describes the "nightmare"

from Santa Barbara Independent: The Poetry of Peace (and War)
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: So persistently and enthusiastically
did he [William Winstanley] drum in the message that by the late 1680s Christmas had taken root again.
Holly and ivy were back. In Winstanley's ideal Christmas, there had to be roaring log fires in every room and an 'especially jolly blaze' in the hall.
"Good, nappy [nut-brown] ale" was to be on tap, and the sideboards should groan with "chines of beef, turkeys, geese, ducks and capons", then "minc'd pies, plumb-puddings and frumenty [a sweet milky porridge seasoned with cinnamon]".
from Daily Mail: William Winstanley: The man who saved Christmas from Cromwell's misery
~~~~~~~~~~~
Holly and ivy were back. In Winstanley's ideal Christmas, there had to be roaring log fires in every room and an 'especially jolly blaze' in the hall.
"Good, nappy [nut-brown] ale" was to be on tap, and the sideboards should groan with "chines of beef, turkeys, geese, ducks and capons", then "minc'd pies, plumb-puddings and frumenty [a sweet milky porridge seasoned with cinnamon]".
from Daily Mail: William Winstanley: The man who saved Christmas from Cromwell's misery
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: In "Cradle Song", "pity" brings both private pain
and public anxiety to the show, Othello's stricken cry and [Wilfred] Owen's deliberate artistic morality.
Eleanor Clark, whom "Cradle Song" addresses, was the young left-wing American writer with whom [Louis] MacNeice had been in love since 1939 (and in whose company he felt, as he reported in one letter, "timelessly happy").
from The Times Literary Supplement: Louis MacNeice from cradle to grave
also The Times Literary Supplement: Then and Now
~~~~~~~~~~~
Eleanor Clark, whom "Cradle Song" addresses, was the young left-wing American writer with whom [Louis] MacNeice had been in love since 1939 (and in whose company he felt, as he reported in one letter, "timelessly happy").
from The Times Literary Supplement: Louis MacNeice from cradle to grave
also The Times Literary Supplement: Then and Now
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Several plainclothes officers seized Yusuf Jumaev

In November, Yusuf Jumaev, 50, and his four sons held pickets in the western region of Bukhara, denouncing Karimov for running for a third term despite a two-term limit in the constitution.
from The Standard-Times: Uzbek dissident seized after protest
also The Guardian: Uzbek president returned in election 'farce'
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: In a first planned protest
in her support since controversial Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen fled Kolkata, close to 500 friends and supporters of the exiled Bangladeshi author are holding a protest march in Kolkata demanding that she be allowed entry into the city.
from IBN Live: Taslima supporters hold protest march in Kolkata
~~~~~~~~~~~
from IBN Live: Taslima supporters hold protest march in Kolkata
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Focus for a moment on [Wendy] Cope's argument

from The Guardian: theblogbooks: Free verse: getting copyright wrong
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: "Salvation" becomes "rescue".
"My soul thirsteth" becomes "my throat thirsts". "Pavilion" and "tabernacle" are both demoted to "tent".
Some--though not all--fixings-up of this sort are already available in other modern translations, and readers who go for mighty cadences will obviously prefer to stick with the King James Version.
from The Guardian: In the vale of death's shadow
~~~~~~~~~~~
Some--though not all--fixings-up of this sort are already available in other modern translations, and readers who go for mighty cadences will obviously prefer to stick with the King James Version.
from The Guardian: In the vale of death's shadow
~~~~~~~~~~~
Monday, December 24, 2007
News at Eleven: This sense of detachment can,

But this detached tone also creates a scrim for grief to tear, revealing what is behind the performance. It is when the ability to regard grief from an intellectual standpoint fails and the heartbreaking particulars emerge that this work takes on its greatest force.
from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Personal tragedy and nature of loss
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Yeah, a very depressing book,
compared to his early writing. I mean, his early writing and On the Road had this gusto for life, this joie de vivre, which is what appealed to Henry Miller in Kerouac's writing. And Miller wanted to meet him. But that's the descriptive passages--On the Road is marvelous, like they're hungry for life. And in a book twenty years later, like On the Road--it's an old tired prose compared to the early writing.
from Democracy Now!: Legendary Beat Generation Bookseller and Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books on the 50th Anniversary of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road", Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" and Poetry As Insurgent Art
~~~~~~~~~~~
from Democracy Now!: Legendary Beat Generation Bookseller and Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books on the 50th Anniversary of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road", Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" and Poetry As Insurgent Art
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven (Back Page): [Charles] Wesley understood
that hymns establish bridges among people; that they could not only "convict but also bring people to Christ."
What many do not know is that Wesley did not confine his poetic skills to religious hymns and poems. Among his manuscripts is a poem written for his children about horseback riding and another about a cat called Grimalkin.
from The United Methodist News Service: Britain celebrates Charles Wesley's life, legacy
~~~~~~~~~~~
What many do not know is that Wesley did not confine his poetic skills to religious hymns and poems. Among his manuscripts is a poem written for his children about horseback riding and another about a cat called Grimalkin.
from The United Methodist News Service: Britain celebrates Charles Wesley's life, legacy
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: 'Nocturnal'
from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: More Holiday Verse
also John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Winter lights, winter nights
~~~~~~~~~~~
And when he wheeled about
his bloody neck still bled.
His point was proved. The court
was deadened now with dread.
As delivered by Armitage, the poem's later sections--which concern a journey Gawain must take and his temptation by a mysterious lady--are stronger. Armitage seems more at home with love and wooing than war and hunting.
from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Latest translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight trips on its own sword
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: A pleasure in words alone

from James Fenton: The Guardian: A call to arms
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: He loves his work,

Anyone who has observed the solipsistic tendencies of some artists realizes the ugly display that such braggadocio engenders.
from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 39
~~~~~~~~~~~
He muses that even if his work takes all of his love, because of his love, the poem will assuredly be blamed if it deceives itself by taking his loves when the speaker will need his loves to enrich the poem.
The poem can only deplete itself by depleting the speaker.
from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 40
~~~~~~~~~~~
[Bruce] Wexler, for example, claims that with his busy life of career and mortgage payments, he lost interest in poetry, even after being quite an aficionado in college and even after writing poetry. So what? That he lost interest in poetry doesn't mean everyone has. Such is truly a warped logic.
from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: The State of Poetry
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: [Christina] Rossetti asks what

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: Love in a cold climate
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Poem: "Brothers Playing Catch on Christmas Day"

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of December 24, 2007
~~~~~~~~~~~
A big orange and some fresh pine boughs and "Silent Night" are all I need, and cookies, of course. They are the strings that when I pull on them I pull up the complete glittering storybook Christmases of my childhood.
from Garrison Keillor: Chicago Tribune: Stopping to smell the pine boughs
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: When, toward the end of "Windcatcher,"

from David Kirby: The New York Times: Needing No Weatherman
~~~~~~~~~~~
This is one of those poems you're afraid to look at again for fear it might be less beautiful than you thought.
Of all the things that populate the world, then, both human and non-, a poem has the greatest potential to succeed or fail, which is why Pinsky can comfortably offer a piece called "Poems with Lines in Any Order" or observe, again in "Immature Song," that poems are adolescents, "confused, awkward, self-preoccupied, vaguely//Rebellious in a way that lacks practical focus, moving without/Discipline from thing to thing."
from David Kirby: The Washington Post: Soulful Sounds
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Here is Arizona poet Steve Orlen's

In the House of the Voice of Maria Callas
from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 143
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: More recently, Alan Dugan (1923-2003)

Possibly the most moving use of a poet's own name in English poetry is Ben Jonson's "On My First Son":
from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: You send them to magazines.

from Daily Times: Purple Patch: Letter to a young poet --Rainer Maria Rilke
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: [Lola Haskins] is the author

Untitled
from Good Times Weekly: Poetry Corner: Poetry by Lola Haskins
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: By Eric Harmon

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Eric Harmon]
~~~~~~~~~~~

Haddonfield Memorial High School
Poland, 1939
from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Rachel Howard ]
~~~~~~~~~~~

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Damon Lomax]
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Thirty years ago this week,
on December 23, 1977, the TLS published "Aubade", one of the greatest, and bleakest, and indeed one of the very last poems written by Philip Larkin, who was himself to die in 1985.
Office correspondence exists from the season of the poem's publication which refers to the poem as "Christmas without the baby".
Aubade
from The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: Aubade by Philip Larkin introduced by Mick Imlah
~~~~~~~~~~~
Office correspondence exists from the season of the poem's publication which refers to the poem as "Christmas without the baby".
Aubade
from The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: Aubade by Philip Larkin introduced by Mick Imlah
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: "He is a poet,"
Even before the couple's first son Amitabh's now-illustrious acting career took off, they were names to reckon with in India's accomplished literary circuit and high society.
from Express India: 'The poet's poem'
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: Among them are a nursing-home resident
who defiantly heads into a blinding snow, a mortician whose father has trained him never to emote, an abused wife who refuses her dying husband his morphine, and a skinflinty rooming-house landlady who perceives the smallest gift to be a bribe.
Author and writing instructor Tobias Wolff, of Palo Alto, Calif., called her [Carol Bly's] short stories "indelible, exemplary" and said he often uses them in the classroom at Stanford University.
from Star Tribune: Carol Bly, Minnesota's lioness of letters, dies
~~~~~~~~~~~

from Star Tribune: Carol Bly, Minnesota's lioness of letters, dies
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: George Mifsud Chircop was born in Qormi

from di-ve: Maltese folklore expert dies
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: According to her daughter,

Her faith never wavered throughout her hardships and she became a painter, local secretary for the National Lung Koon Association and published a poem at 80 years of age.
from The Friday Flyer: In Memoriam: Rose Ng Chong
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: [Mahbub ul Alam Chowdhury] was one of the pioneers

Apart from the well-known Ekushey poem, Mahbub ul Alam also penned many poems, stories, dramas and essays.
He was the editor of the prestigious monthly literature magazine "Shimanto" from 1947 to 1952.
from The Daily Star: Language Movement hero Mahbub no more
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: Novelist, poet, drama author

Fiercely private, he stunned France for declining the Goncourt prize in 1951 for his masterpiece novel "The Opposite Shore" ('Rivage des Syrtes')--a tale about collective suicide in an imaginary landscape.
from Reuters: French hermit and surreal writer Gracq dies age 97
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: [James P. "Pete" Henderson] was a member
of Elyria Country Club and scored a hole-in-one on No. 13.
He enjoyed athletics, reading, lapidary, woodworking, golf, gardening, welding, debate, music and writing poetry; loved the West and traveled there. As a child in Texas he loved to race horses and won several times.
from The Morning Journal: James P. Henderson, 86, lawyer, ran for Congress
~~~~~~~~~~~
He enjoyed athletics, reading, lapidary, woodworking, golf, gardening, welding, debate, music and writing poetry; loved the West and traveled there. As a child in Texas he loved to race horses and won several times.
from The Morning Journal: James P. Henderson, 86, lawyer, ran for Congress
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: [Lori Kim Jackson] was a gifted poet

On the practical side, she enjoyed figuring out how to fix just about anything!
In recent years, gardening had also become a passion. You could find Lori's apartment by looking for the flowers, plants and hummingbirds outside her window.
from York County Coast Star: Lori Kim Jackson
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: Diane Middlebrook, who died on December 15

from Telegraph: Diane Middlebrook
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: Newt [Newton A. Miner] served
in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He was a graduate of George Washington University with a degree in English literature.
He was employed as a chief appraiser with the federal government and later worked as an independent appraiser. He was a published poet.
from The Free Lance-Star: Newton A. Miner
~~~~~~~~~~~
He was employed as a chief appraiser with the federal government and later worked as an independent appraiser. He was a published poet.
from The Free Lance-Star: Newton A. Miner
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: After the verdict,

from Prince George Citizen: First Nations woman says DNA of her sister found on Pickton farm
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: A group of older students gathered

He was the fastest runner in his class, Southern Cross Radio reported.
His white coffin was draped in silk and adorned with fairies, Santa toys and clowns.
A number of his Christmas presents were also placed inside his coffin.
from The Age: Tributes flow for meningitis victim
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: Founded in 1975 to publish poetry

Five collections of Taylor's own poetry have been published, including "Dreaming at the Gates of Fury: New and Selected Poems," which reflected his involvement in social protest and anti-war movements.
from Hartford Courant: Co-Founder Of Curbstone Press Dies
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: "A number of contributors met earlier

from Norwich Evening News 24: The final poems of tragic young driver
~~~~~~~~~~~
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
December 18th forum announcement
Dear Poetry Aficionados,
Poetry & Poets in Rags
This week, we get to look at poets within the contexts of their poetry movements and political environments, and through people they've known. And we do this in countries around the world. To have these articles all come out in the same week yields a remarkable perspective, as these poets and their environments speak across the margins and borders.

Look for Christmas in our Great Regulars section from Garrison Keillor, The Guardian and Philadelphia Inquirer. Check out the articles by V Sundaram there too. Also, in that section, several poems of René Char are translated for us in The Brooklyn Rail. Their article on him is our News at Eleven headliner.
People important to poetry have died this week. Be sure to scroll through the Poetic Obituaries as well.

Thanks for coming by.
Yours,
Rus
Our links:
IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
IBPC Home
IBPC Newswire
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetry & Poets in Rags
This week, we get to look at poets within the contexts of their poetry movements and political environments, and through people they've known. And we do this in countries around the world. To have these articles all come out in the same week yields a remarkable perspective, as these poets and their environments speak across the margins and borders.

Look for Christmas in our Great Regulars section from Garrison Keillor, The Guardian and Philadelphia Inquirer. Check out the articles by V Sundaram there too. Also, in that section, several poems of René Char are translated for us in The Brooklyn Rail. Their article on him is our News at Eleven headliner.
People important to poetry have died this week. Be sure to scroll through the Poetic Obituaries as well.

Thanks for coming by.
Yours,
Rus
Our links:
IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
IBPC Home
IBPC Newswire
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Etre poète, c'est avoir de l'appétit
pour un malaise dont la consommation, parmi les tourbillons de la totalité des choses existantes et pressenties, provoque, au moment de se clore, la félicité.
(1945)
To be a poet is to have an appetite for a discomfort whose consummation, among the whirlwinds of totality of things existing and foreseen, provokes, at the moment of closure, happiness.
from The Brooklyn Rail: René Char--Resistance in Every Way
also Great Regulars: The Companions in the Garden
~~~~~~~~~~~
(1945)
To be a poet is to have an appetite for a discomfort whose consummation, among the whirlwinds of totality of things existing and foreseen, provokes, at the moment of closure, happiness.
from The Brooklyn Rail: René Char--Resistance in Every Way
also Great Regulars: The Companions in the Garden
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: In December that year, in a fam-ous

from Prospect: Oxford's Poetry Revolution
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: "It is very sad that our people are totally

from Daily Sun: Lunatics have misled our literary scholars--Ossie Enekwe
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: [Philip] Whalen and [Joanne] Kyger
are essentially School of Backyard poets, who look out their kitchen windows and see the universe. Both have given themselves permission to write about what is immediately in front of them and/or on their minds, no matter how exalted or mundane. They are both domestics who leave plenty of room for splendor. Both have mastered the conversational; both feed off slang. Everything is the subject of their poems.
from Los Angeles Times: 'The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen,' edited by Michael Rothenberg, and 'About Now' by Joanne Kyger
~~~~~~~~~~~
from Los Angeles Times: 'The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen,' edited by Michael Rothenberg, and 'About Now' by Joanne Kyger
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: How eloquently this speaks to our present helplessness
as we resign ourselves to our rulers' imperial delusions and hurtle down the road to yet another war. Yet it is useless to despair, [Robinson] Jeffers counsels:
Life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains:
shine, perishing republic.
This slide into the abyss is as natural as life itself, which can only end in death.
from The American Conservative: Robinson Jeffers: Peace Poet
~~~~~~~~~~~
Life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains:
shine, perishing republic.
This slide into the abyss is as natural as life itself, which can only end in death.
from The American Conservative: Robinson Jeffers: Peace Poet
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: If there is such a thing as a poetry jackpot,

from The Times: Anne Stevenson: the secret life of a poet
also The Times: Beach Kites by Anne Stevenson
also The Cortland Review (Issue 14, November 2000): Anne Stevenson Interview with Cynthia Haven
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: [Peter] Payack was also the driving force

Before the advent of the Internet, "it was the only way that you could get poetry outside of a book or library," says Payack.
Payack has even transferred poetry from formal readings--quite literally--into peoples' mouths.
from The Harvard Crimson: City Populist Spreads Love of Poetry
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: The sole surviving copy

from The New York Times: A Stranger in Camelot
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: [Helen Vendler's] book's second chapter,
"Antechamber and Afterlife," is a near microscopic examination of form poems: "Sailing to Byzantium," "Byzantium," "The Delphic Oracle upon Plotinus," and "News for the Delphic Oracle." The second and fourth poems are, as is easy to see, reworkings and continuations of the first and third. But Ms. Vendler shows, in examining the hidden formal movements of each poem--particularly by dissecting the organization of the stanzas--that their simultaneous continuity and struggle with each other, and the vision of the conflict between the temporal and the eternal they propose, are far more than just a matter of theory.
from The New York Sun: The Private Language of Form
~~~~~~~~~~~
from The New York Sun: The Private Language of Form
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: [Zvi Sesling] presents it straight

from The Somerville News: When I look at a poem
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven (Back Page): And of "Rukeyser," he [Gerald Stern] writes,

from Nextbook: Two Poems by Gerald Stern
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: And print, far from dying out,

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: From the blogs
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: It's another vivid composition
from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Poetry lovers, put this on your list
~~~~~~~~~~~
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