Poetry & Poets in Rags
Boom! Sgt. Jeffrey L. Kirk, not a famous or accomplished poet in Poetic Obituaries, but a young soldier, receives a posthumous Silver Star, posthumous because he was blown up by a grenade in December 2004. Months earlier, he heroically saved his fellow soldiers' lives. Maybe like you, he loved to write poetry. Writing on the "boom" of bombs, in Great Regulars Israeli poet Agi Mishol says, "Being a poet, I want to 'taste' this sentence. I must put it in a poem." In News at Eleven, our headliner is about a suicide bomb that goes off killing dozens in Baghdad. What's that got to do with poetry? It was on Booksellers' Row, on Al-Mutanabi Street named after maybe the greatest classical Arab poet. Not only was the poetry gone in a boom, but surely poets and poetry lovers as well. This was a historic, significant, conscious, and vicious attack on poetry and poets. But, we do not dwell on explosions this week.
We welcome a new Great Regular. When Philadelphia Inquirer's Katie Haegele has written of poetry, invariably she has made News at Eleven. This week, she writes a terrific book review--about the family of Frieda Hughes, herself a Great Regular, and who has an article written about her in News at Eleven as well. Katie, though, looks specifically at Assia Wevill in her review.
Yours,
Rus
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