June 30th Poetic Ticker Clicking
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the poet Moyshe Leyb Halpern. Halpern, like the social realists, was also interested in social justice, but his style and tone is much more modernist. Indeed, Halpern was often criticized for his "coarse" writing, according to scholar Julian Levinson.
as people through the history of their poets," [Adina] Hoffman told GlobalPost. "Poetry and poets occupy such an essential role in Palestinian society: Throughout much of the last century, poetry has served as one of the most important means of political and social expression for the Palestinian people--and the poets who've given voice to that impulse are central to the culture."
are a small but indicative part of a unique body of [Siegfried] Sassoon's personal notes, unpublished poems, sketches and correspondence written over nearly half a century and at risk of being lost to the country.
the Oxford Poetry Professorship election debacle. "Would I like the job?" (Those might not have been her exact words, but that was the main thrust.) My answer (and these are far fewer than my exact words, but this is the thread) was: "I would love it, but not if I had to run in an election." She used only the first bit--that I would love to have the job--and the Guardian editors flagged it as "Clive James throws his hat in the ring".
that it wants the world to view China as a "responsible power." The best way to prove this would be to free Liu Xiaobo and allow an open discussion on the merits of Charter 08, a document which--like Liu himself--represents China's future rather than its past.
a flower-like assemblage of raw fish marinated in soy with a dash of karashi hot mustard and sesame oil. We order another bottle of chardonnay, and I attempt to ask another question. "That's a really pretty presentation, don't you think?" says Mr. Hass, admiring the dish that's just arrived. "Can we stop?" He then turns to my wife, who's a potter and chef, and asks, "What do you think about this presentation? And about saying this is carpaccio rather than sashimi?"
today condemned the military junta for intimidating the press trying to cover recent national and international events, as a journalist was jailed for two years after being arrested near the home of Aung San Suu Kyi.
that she and Joseph Duemer had translated the four poems.
also focus on the moments or transitions in life where our perspective begins to change. In "Halleluiah," [Mary] Oliver explains that "Everyone should be born into this world happy/and loving everything./But in truth it rarely works that way." She admits that she has spent her life "clamoring" for happiness, and then the poem poses several questions to the reader:
The Shortest Days [by Elizabeth Burns] is "very concentrated", said judge Richard Price, poet and head of modern British collections at the British Library. "Elizabeth uses a limited, light palette, which creates special, lyrical effects, particularly with her use of snow, and the colour white," he went on. "This is gradually layered across the book, and all the judges felt that the play of light over the whole book was really very moving. It combines skill and direct engagement with the reader."
I've been asked what my religion is, and I said poetry. I say it jokingly but kind of truly too. With poetry, if it is my religion, if I want to contradict myself I can, because it's like Walt Whitman once wrote, I contain multitudes. I can put my eye on anything and it's valid. I could actually contradict myself and I could be fine.
for free and if nobody puts much value on the difference between me and them, then what I bring to this party will be deflated to the point where it won't be worth doing. And if serious journalism dies, democracy will be next.
metaphorically likens that soul to the pulse that denotes life in the body. He then proclaims that that soul "pulse" which still contains his thoughts will give "back the thoughts by England given." As an English citizen, his thoughts are English, and after leaving the body, his soul thoughts will still enshrine the images and intuitions acquired as an Englishman.
all how precious life is, and maybe Michael Jackson was so huge that his death will be felt by people who really need to be reminded of that. Here's Mary Jo Bang's "A Sonata for Four Hands," from her book, appropriately titled in this case Elegy.
by Fred Andrele
is not only the English language's foremost translator of the poems of the 13th century poet, Rumi, but he's also a loving grandfather, and for me that's even more important. His poems about his granddaughter, Briny, are brim full of joy. Here's one:
by giving pleasure if it is to be read at all, it must also illuminate the depths of man's soul, enlarge his consciousness and inspire a positive affirmation of life.
The Women
Washington was "deeply disturbed" by the arrest [of Liu Xiaobo] and called on Beijing to respect the rights of those who peacefully criticize the government.
or to complicate their responses even further--[Marianne] Moore had it both ways by including the longer poem as a kind of endnote to the three-liner. She published the full, 1924 version (reprinted below), the one preferred by many of her admirers and later editors, in the back matter of that same 1967 Complete Poems with the laconic heading "Original Version." In various ways, the two incarnations of the poem annotate, challenge, and criticize one another. I think they amusingly challenge and criticize us readers, too.
even innovative for its age, moving from iambic pentameter for the first invocation to a mixture of tetrameter and pentameter in the following two stanzas. It exposes a process--that of liberation from the regularity of metre which convention demanded to a more flexible and vocal mode. The shorter lines are appropriate to a hymn, and heighten the rhetoric. While the poem is laden with classical and pastoral allusion, it's worth remembering that moonlit arbours and groves would have been local and ordinary features of the various country-houses Montagu inhabited.
by Charles Larson
the lie he was to speak. He turned the register round, examined our names, and while his face flushed a bit said, "I'm sorry, but we haven't got a vacant room." This statement, which I knew almost absolutely to be false, set a number of emotions in action: humiliation, chagrin, indignation, resentment, anger; but in the midst of them all I could detect a sense of pity for the man who had to make it, for he was, to all appearances, an honest, decent person. It was then about eleven o'clock and I sought the eyes of the clerk and asked if he expected any rooms to be vacated at noon.
by John Hartley Williams
Stirred by restlessness, pushed by history,
by Jorge Luis Borges
Twin Cities
Seamus Heaney's translation), Gilgamesh is a short, quick read, with lots of rollicking battles and sex. Part of the shortness comes from the fact that the story is incomplete--it is known that several books are missing from the original narrative. Hopefully one day those missing sections will surface.
ponders the third wish wasted; richly regretful, with midnight and wine and lengthening shadows, it speaks seductively of the magic and of everything that has come before.
by Teddy Macker
further by raising the question, as good elegies often do, of the elegist's role. The narrator claims to have "no rights" in this "matter"--a punning euphemism--but at the poem's end, his unauthorized speaking at the graveside ("I . . ./Neither father nor lover"), his bravura act of remembrance, would seem to matter more to him than Jane herself. The rest, it would seem, is far from being silence.
I thought I would be able to remember it clearly enough to write about it. During this vacation someone else cooked and delivered my meals. I ate, slept, walked, swam. The rest of the time I functioned as a memory machine, remembering and writing.
her greatest joy was caring for the elderly and listening to their life histories. She also enjoyed composing and writing poetry and sonnets.
Spence Baptist Church in Snow Hill, where she taught Sunday school. She will be remembered for her wonderful poetry and stories she shared. She had a great sense of humor and was always ready to share a joke, which would brighten your day.
the most recent being a second volume of Dobson on Dobson, covering the life and works of celebrated North architect John Dobson.
very close-knit, and that [my Pvt. Steven] Drees had never been away from home for long before he enlisted in the Army on July 25, 2008.
her [Beryl Fenton's] verses, The Eponymous K, for the Stroke Association's Bluenose anthology, and in 2004 Mario Petrucci chose Magnetic Poem as "fridge poem" winner on Radio 3's The Verb. Then, in 2008, came the publication of her collection Dandy Lady, where she displayed an unflinching but tender irony.
photographer, teacher and poet, was Kentucky's poet laureate from 2001 to 2003.
St. Olaf Lutheran Church in Fort Dodge where he was very active in the church. He was involved in St. Olaf Oles, poetry club, council and was a Sunday school teacher, council and usher.
"Cosmic surfer, artist, poet, lover." He had devised a dating system based on elementary astrology, and friends remember him as a matchmaker, both in people's personal and professional lives, "the consummate networker." Artistically he was known as a master of composition and always ready to help his fellow artists with their shows.
Fannie LaVelle] Kyker was a longtime member of Temple Baptist Church East Campus.
swam a mile daily and played boogie-woogie on any available piano, [his daughter Marjie] Farber said.
of writing, his command of the language and his encyclopaedic knowledge of a diverse range of subjects was truly remarkable. He had an elephant's memory and was a source of endless information and anecdotes for his younger colleagues. Apart from his journalism, Kaleem Omar was also recognised as one of the finest poets writing in the English language in the country.
aged 73, was never one of the Liverpool poets, the city is at the heart of nearly all his work, from his first full collection, Making Arrangements (1982), through An Elegy for the Galosherman: New and Selected Poems (1990), Catching Up With History (1995) and Getting There (2001) to In Deep (2006). Only one collection is different. In 1994 Simpson spent some months as writer-in-residence to Arts Tasmania. Intrigued by the journal kept by an earlier visitor to Tasmania, the 19th-century migrant Louisa Meredith, he produced, in Cutting the Clouds Towards (1998), a collection full of his quirky, humorously exact understanding of the worth of ordinary lives.
her hobbies were making fancy hats, jewelry, writing books, poems and recipes and passing them down through the generations. She could play any instrument, her favorites were piano, organ, banjo and harmonica.
could often make or break a new band, pointing to an NME article in which Mr. Wells simply wrote the word NO in capital letters and repeated it 387 times.