Poetry & Poets in Rags

Last week, we headlined with Ted Hughes making it into Poets' Corner. This week, we lead with his family situation, what his daughter Frieda says caused the divorce of the two great poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. We then go into a sort of co-headliner, an article from Publishers Weekly which asks, among other questions, what is the point of poetry reviews. And it really is a week of headliners almost throughout News at Eleven. For instance, on our Back Page, the eleventh item of News at Eleven, where we find stories from different angles, Natalie Merchant has come out with a new album, on which she sings poems, accompanied by 130 remarkable musicians from varying genres of music. This may not only be a boost and boon for her as an artist, but she be taking the poetry world up with her to boot. Let's see.

The IBPC winners for March are up. Congrats to the poets! But a mountain of thanks to the judges Joseph Millar and Dorianne Laux, who have completed the winter stint for the InterBoard Poetry Community. Here are their selections, with commentary:

First Place: Eden in Winter by Russel Smith of The Write Idea
Second Place: nettles riff nettles the big tree by Steve Parker of criticalpoet.org
Third Place: Everything will be permitted, nothing will be desired by Laura Ring of Wild Poetry Forum
Honorable Mention: Lot by Richard Moorhead of Wild Poetry Forum
Honorable Mention: The First Cut by Lana Wiltshire Campbell of Blueline Poetry
Honorable Mention: Comfort by Cynthia Neely of The Waters
Honorable Mention: Song for the Ghost of Gabriel Gomez by Emily Brink of The Writers Block

Thanks for clicking in.

Yours,
Rus

Our links:

IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags

Poetry & Poets in Rags blog

IBPC Home

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*posted by Rus Bowden at 11:22 AM* 0 comments links to this post

the former poet laureate, has challenged the view that he destroyed her mother Sylvia Plath by his infidelity. Frieda Hughes dismisses "myths" about her father's behaviour towards Plath, claiming instead that his mother-in-law poisoned their marriage.

The claim has sparked a literary row, with others who knew Hughes and Plath well disputing Frieda's view.

from The Sunday Times: Daughter of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath accuses grandmother of killing their marriage

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and sarcastic personality, a deeply passionate sexual nature, and she lived in a family riven by adultery, multiple abortions, lesbianism, greed for land, death threats and much else besides.

What this book doesn't tell you in sufficient detail was that Emily's maid, fixer, go-between and, arguably, her closest friend was from Tipperary. Maggie Maher, 'the North wind of the family', knew everything, and she kept all the poems locked up in a trunk in her room. Nor does this book tell you much about Emily's other Irish servants, six in all, who carried her coffin to the grave in 1886.

from The Irish Independent: Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds by Lyndall Gordon

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on the topic of poetry reviews, one question comes up: what's the point? This question isn't always asked with the flippant air that actually means "who cares?" Often, people really want to know: what is accomplished by poetry reviews? Do they help sell books? Do they keep the art form in line? Do they spur writers into creating better poetry or kick bad writers out of the halls of Parnassus? Do poetry reviews help readers?

I've been reviewing poetry for a number of years and I'm constantly asking myself these questions. As PW's poetry reviews editor for the past four years, I've mostly seen my job as an ambassadorial one: I want to help bookstore buyers and interested readers figure out which poetry books to stock or buy.

from Publishers Weekly: What Poetry Reviews Are For (and Up Against)

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"What can happen to all this hate?/Where do I bury it?/To exit is the first stage of enlightenment."

To reach that exit, the music of Sanctificum deserves emphasis, for it restores much joy. Abani's use of Igbo, a tonal language that seems to defy poetry on the page, stuns with its clarity and jazz lines. The simple word holy, so much lovelier than its Latin counterpart, supplies rest at the end of demanding sections, as in "Dew": "Holy the glow./Holy the O./Holy the old. Amen."

Like music, humor offers relief.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Poetry of cruelty and love

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last year's commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen democracy movement and her recent outraged Twitter posts at the jailing of a peaceful political activist. "Really, they want to punish me," Cui said Thursday sitting in an artsy coffee shop in the university district.

"They're afraid, one, of what I might say abroad," she said, "and two, they want to pressure me."

In the uproar over Google's tussle with Chinese Internet censorship, Cui's case is a reminder that the authoritarian government often resorts to more blunt ways to restrict the flow of ideas.

from The Associated Press: China bans poet from traveling to US conference

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released earlier this month, the decision means that the party that has served as the mainstay of the country's democratic movement for two decades, the National League for Democracy, will be automatically dissolved. Western governments, including the United States and Britain, had said that Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi's participation and that of her party were prerequisites for legitimate elections.

On Monday, U Win Tin, a founding member and strategist for the party, said that more than 100 delegates were unanimous in their decision. "We will ask the people around us not to vote in the election: Please boycott," he said in a telephone interview. He said that the party would try to continue political activities after it is disbanded. "We will work for the people," he said.

from The New York Times: Opposition to Boycott Myanmar Vote

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"Under the influence of the doctrine and belief of free love, I saw the two first poets of England . . . become monsters."

With her memoir she hoped to demonstrate "what evil passion free love assured, what tenderness it dissolves; how it abused affections that should be the solace and balm of life, into a destroying scourge". She continued: "The worshippers of free love not only preyed upon one another" but also on themselves, "turning their existence into a perfect hell".

She felt that "religion and morality of truth" demanded that she describe the misconduct of the "two great poets".

from The Observer: Byron's lover takes revenge from the grave

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of the final work in the collection. A Riddle, below, is translated from Anglo-Saxon.

While [Edwin] Morgan's friends said he was often over-critical in choosing his own work for the collection, the poet, who has been battling cancer, joked that not recalling some of the older poems helped his objectivity.

Glasgow-born Morgan was aided in the selection process by friends and fellow poets--publisher Hamish Whyte and James McGonigal, a Glasgow University professor.

from The Herald: New poems and a riddle for Scots Makar's 90th birthday

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Henry [VIII] took quill in hand and penned the lyrics that we have seen put to music, becoming Greensleeves long after his death. The title Greensleeves we believe came into being as Anne Boleyn was a lover of green and like most Tudor women, wore long sleeves that covered the wrists.

Henry's poetry led to a trend emerging within the Tudor courts where a knight would often uses poetry to woo his woman.

from The Economic Voice: Henry VIII--monarch and muse

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is that they address really the whole spectrum of human emotion, from intense despair and feelings of abandonment by God, feelings of betrayal by humankind, fear of mortality, to great joy and jubilance.

(reading from translation of Psalm 23): "And when I walk through the valley overshadowed by death, I will fear no harm, for you are with me."

In translating Psalm 23, I was very aware that it is the psalm that people are most familiar with, and so I wrestled with it.

from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly: A Poet on the Psalms

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takes selected works from poets (including Mervyn Peake, Gerard Manley Hopkins, ee cummings, Charles Causley, Rachel Field, Robert Graves, Edward Lear, Jack Prelutsky, Arthur Macy, Ogden Nash, Charles E Carryl, Nathalia Crane, Robert Louis Stevenson and Christina Rossetti) and sets them to what amounts to a global musical reach. [Natalie] Merchant, who was in Dublin recently to play a very rare one-off intimate show in Whelan's, had the project in mind for years.

"I thought it would be a really interesting exercise, for one," she says. "For years, I've been a singer-songwriter, and I've always done covers, but I just thought it would be great doing a full album of words where I didn't have to draw out the words myself.

from The Irish Times: Childhood, through poetic eyes
also The Sunday Times: Natalie Merchant on her most ambitious project ever

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I was winding him up. I'd be a complete idiot if I tried to undermine Christianity. It would mean undermining what I am as well," he [Philip Pullman] says.

But if the Catholic League had a problem with that film, its members are going to be incandescent about his new book. It is a novel or, perhaps, fable called The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Sunday Times: Philip Pullman's parable of 'the scoundrel Christ'

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she would sit with her father as he shaved in the morning and pretend to be him. Together, they would wash their faces, brush their teeth, then her father, the political activist Mir Murtaza Bhutto, would gently smooth his tiny daughter's face with shaving cream. And she imitated his movements, stroke by stroke. What Fatima loves the most about that memory, she says now, was that her father never scolded her, never told her that this was something she should not do because she was a girl. 'Lathering up and shaving,' she says, 'was just our little routine.'

from Fatima Bhutto: The Daily Telegraph: living by the bullet
also Fatima Bhutto: The Daily Telegraph: Video: Songs of Blood and Sword

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just 29, "Lycidas" elegizes Edward King, an acquaintance of Milton's from Cambridge, who had drowned. The poem attacks the pastoral, confronts friendship, challenges ecclesiastical authority and links local experience with a variety of mythological impulses, from Greek to Roman and from Anglo to Hebraic. All this in a mere 190-some lines. At the heart of the poem is the "uncouth swain." This is Milton's characterization of the poet, an average person who aspires to attain universal truth.

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: Milton's 'Lycidas' continues to influence

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that occasionally release translated works, Open Letter only publishes works in translation. Its printings are small--just about 3,000 per book--but the press serves its devoted readers by offering them a subscription service, a kind of book-of-the-month club featuring international writers. Open Letter also runs a blog called Three Percent, as well as a conversation series called Reading the World.

from Jeffrey Brown: PBS: Newshour: Conversation: Open Letter Finds a Ready Audience With Works in Translation

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the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Minnesota. His most recent book of poetry Faith Run, is a finalist for the 2010 Minnesota Book Award for Poetry, an award he's won twice before. Here's a poem from that collection, which places a Minnesota music legend in the heart of Gonzalez' old haunting ground.

Bob Dylan in El Paso, 1963

from Marianne Combs: Minnesota Public Radio: State of the Arts: Minnesota Poetry: Ray Gonzalez' "Bob Dylan in El Paso, 1963"

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on the egrets of the title--"abrupt angels", beautiful and vital--to stand for everything that matters to him as he enters his ninth decade. Their "electric stab" is a cipher for mental acuity; their voraciousness echoes his own ("We share one instinct, that ravenous feeding," he explains, "my pen's beak, plucking up wriggling insects/like nouns and gulping them"). Finally, and crucially, their ubiquity becomes a buttress against mortality.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: White Egrets by Derek Walcott

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recently released by Windsor's Black Moss Press, receives top-notch critical attention from the brilliant poet and play-maker George Elliott Clarke. Unanimous Night promises to garner further literary acclaim for Dabydeen whose poetry--filled with the spirit of exploration, fused with the challenges of immigration and peppered with indignation at issues of political injustice--simply wows. His language whisks the reader off in a whirlwind of iconic figures and exotic locations as diverse as Guevara, Havana and Newfoundland.

from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: Muse flashes

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If the pen is mightier than the sword, perhaps UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy might wish to investigate fencing next? (And, no, I don't mean light-fingered goods.)

Egawds, how the mighty have fallen, crawlin' all over what Allen Tate called mass mindset for the maltitudes--Oh, okay, I paraphrase--but, man-oh-mannequins!

from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: On the fools'-goad road . . .

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see foliage grow, he can also see through "a flint wall." And even more amazingly, he can see the soul leave the body of dying man. Startlingly, this speaker has the soul leaving the body through the "throat," and not from the spiritual eye, as most souls leaving the body are wont to do. The effect, however, demonstrates the rattled perspective that the suffering man is undergoing.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Robert Graves' Lost Love

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her well-formed breast buds will likewise provide a hearty pat on the back.

5. For further talking points, consult the master poet on relationships and reproduction, Sharon Olds:

New Mother

from Kristen Hoggatt: The Smart Set: Ask a Poet: Battle of the Sex

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by Patricia Fargnoli

The night you were conceived

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Breaking Silence--For My Son by Patricia Fargnoli

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Happiness Makes Up in Height for What It Lacks in Length
by Robert Frost

Oh, stormy stormy world,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Happiness Makes Up in Height for What It Lacks in Length by Robert Frost

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Naming My Daughter
by Patricia Fargnoli

In the Uruba tribe of Africa, children are
named not only at birth but throughout their
lives by their characteristics and the events
that befall them.

The one who took hold in the cold night

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Naming My Daughter by Patricia Fargnoli

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Osprey
by Kay Ryan

Book I

The great taloned osprey

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Osprey by Kay Ryan

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Profile of the Night Heron
by Anne Pierson Wiese

In the Brooklyn Botanic Garden the night

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Profile of the Night Heron by Anne Pierson Wiese

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Sunrise
by Mary Oliver

[audio only]

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Sunrise by Mary Oliver

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To My Son's Girlfriend
by Michael Milburn

I'm tempted to ask

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: To My Son's Girlfriend by Michael Milburn

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and therapists are right now speaking to couples about unspoken things. In this poem, Andrea Hollander Budy, an Arkansas poet, shows us one of those couples, suffering from things done and undone.

Betrayal

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 261

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Two cardinals

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: Palm Sunday

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Speaking of the Dead

(for Lucille and Ai)

They say death comes in threes

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: Speaking of the Dead

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the individuals affected by CNNIC's new requirements, as well as for the chilling effect we believe the requirements will have on new .CN domain name Registrations," she said.

"For these reasons, we have decided to discontinue offering new .CN domain names at this time. We continue to manage the .CN domain names of our existing customers."

Internet giant Google this week said it will redirect most China-based search functions to Hong Kong, where Chinese censorship rules don't apply.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: GoDaddy Drops China Domains

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of a newspaper, I spent an hour patiently identifying each constellation. Soon I could point at Ursa Minor, Pegasus, Cassiopeia's Chair, and Gemini. I could pick out Venus and Mars, even Saturn. The night sky, which had always seemed like a spread of random dots, suddenly snapped into sense and wonder.

So I'm in two minds about Whitman's poem, in which he contrasts the "learn'd astronomer" and the common man, hands in pockets, who despite his ignorance, can look up at the stars in reverence. I can appreciate the distinction Whitman draws between dusty, book-bound learning and personal feeling, yet I can't help but feel the two are not quite so opposed.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: A Reading of 'When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer' by Walt Whitman

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first big hit single but did you know it's also the title of a poem by a Welsh poet born in 1871? If you left school a few decades ago, you're probably more familiar with the poet as the author of "Leisure", with its famous opening couplet: "What is this life if, full of care,/We have no time to stand and stare." No doubt "Leisure" was once, for many young people, their first encounter with printed poetry. The author, of course, is William Henry Davies, sometimes nicknamed "the tramp poet".

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poem of the week: School's Out by W.H. Davies

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Where did "Remember to Wave" begin?

[Kaia] Sand: This project was launched from conversations with poet Lucille Clifton when we both lived in southern Maryland. Lucille would talk about the impermanence of slave grave markers, how rocks that marked the graves could have ended up in walls and manors and even the replica statehouse in the surrounding county. Without clear markers, how could we see the graves? Yet we knew they were there.

from B.T. Shaw: The Oregonian: Poet Kaia Sand walks through Portland history

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with someone who prefaced his remarks by saying, "The problem with Republicans is . . ." I have other friends who would preface their remarks by saying, "The problem with liberals is . . ."

Well, the problem with all of this is that those terms apply to millions of individuals. It is really those individuals you are talking about when you use those terms. Unfortunately, when you use them in the manner cited it is precisely those individuals' individuality that you are factoring out.

from Frank Wilson: When Falls the Coliseum: That's What He Said: Political labels pose the danger of dehumanizing those you happen to disagree with

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by D.J. Moser

After the bombing

from CounterPunch: Poets' Basement: Three Poems by D.J. Moser

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the work of Robert McDowell, the author/editor/co-author/translator of 10 books, most recently "Poetry as Spiritual Practice: Reading, Writing, and Using Poetry in Your Daily Rituals," "Aspirations," and "Intentions" (Free Press/Simon & Schuster). He was co-founder and director of Story Line Press for 22 years, worked at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, taught at many universities, high schools, and conferences, and is a UC Santa Cruz graduate. To learn more about him, visit robertmcdowell.net or threeintentions.com.

Where I'm Going

from Good Times Weekly: Poetry Corner

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March 28, 2010

Daddy,

from Lawrence Journal-World: Poet's Showcase: "All Undone"

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It was Sunday the weather was fine

from Morning Star: Well Versed: A Charming Little Square

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by Cornelius Eady

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Emmett Till'S Glass-Top Casket

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Fire
by Matthew Dickman

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Fire

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critic and professor. His most recent collection, "Ludlow," is a novel in verse that tells the story of a handful of immigrants in southern Colorado and the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. Mason, who teaches literature and creative writing at Colorado College, will be featured on the NewsHour soon. His memoir, "News From the Village," will be published April 1.

"Luisa," Too Tall stopped to touch her hair.

from PBS: Newshour: Weekly Poem: From 'Ludlow'

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As a child

from San Antonio Express-News: Poetry: 'Pictures'

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By Kathryn Maris

from Slate: "The Witch and Macduff Exit My Neighbor's House"--By Kathryn Maris

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by Lisa Bellamy

I hear cooing and scuffling as I stand on the steps of my building

from The Sun Magazine: Poetry: Love Poem

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that sustained [Roy] Fuller throughout his poetic career (not to mention his careers as a novelist, lawyer and sometime BBC governor). "Autobiography of a Lungworm" was one of Fuller's first poems to appear in the TLS, in 1954; the last appeared in 1990, the year before his death.

Autobiography of a Lungworm

from The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: Autobiography of a Lungworm

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in the terse manner of Sam Shepard," the poet David Wojahn wrote in The New York Times Book Review in 1986, "and you have a good idea of what an Ai poem sounds like."

Though Ai's work was determinedly not autobiographical, its concern with disenfranchised people was informed, she often said, by her own fractional heritage. Many poems could be read as biting dissertations "On Being 1/2 Japanese, 1/8 Choctaw, 1/4 Black, and 1/16 Irish," as the title of a 1978 essay she wrote in Ms. magazine put it. (The proportions are telling, too, for not quite adding up to a complete person.)

The narrators of Ai's poems are male and female, young and old, famous and unsung. Many are profoundly unlikable, some genuinely evil. They do terrible things. In the worlds they inhabit, families are shattered, lovers abandoned, children abused.

from The New York Times: Ai, a Steadfast Poetic Channel of Hard Lives, Dies at 62
also The Guardian: Poet Ai dies at 62

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artist and poet and was proud to have won an international poetry competition. Catherine also enjoyed calligraphy, traveling around the world, reading, flowers and gardening. She loved all animals and wildlife.

from Doylestown Intelligencer: Catherine M. Anguillara

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well also knew her to be a philosopher and poet. Those were also the folks who knew of her great cooking and seamstress skills.

from The Daily Times: Catherine "Kitty" Hopkins Benton

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playing cards, games, working puzzles, her family, friends, singing, hairdressing and customers. She was also an author of short stories and poems.

from Journal & Courier: Florine M. Bryant, 88

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beautifully written, in calligraphic handwriting. He penned poems to illustrate a point in his letters. He had an amazing talent for poetry. It was a pleasure to receive his letters, always written with sincerity and style.

Bryan was fiercely loyal to his old school, Wesley College.

from The Sunday Times: A fine a man as he was a player

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will remember her creativity, laughter and her willingness to help anyone in need. Mom was a poet, writing beautiful verses from any given situation or circumstance. She was independent and strong-willed.

from Great Falls Tribune: Margaret E. Cloud

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wrote poems to share with Wapakoneta Daily News readers. The poems reflected on holidays and special events. Her last published poem was in honor of St. Patrick's Day.

While she had sold poetry and published some in books, she said the ones she wrote to family and friends meant the most to her. She bought blank cards and filled them in instead of buying cards with verses already on them.
She kept a notepad and pencil by her bed so she was ready when an idea hit.

from Wapakoneta Daily News: Fire claims life of Wapak woman

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short stories. He memorized poetry and spent long hours in reading and authorship. He had many studies and research papers, last of which is a study he prepared for the Kampala workshop on criminal law in the Sudan since the Funj Sultanate. The theme of the workshop consisted of a discussion on criminal law. Dr. Amin Makki Madani , a famous lawyer, who joined Abdul Salam in his efforts to re-launch the Sudan Human Rights Organization and co-worked with him at the Kampala workshop, said Abdul Salam looked good-humored during the workshop, cracking jokes and making smart comments.

from Anyuak Media: Sudanese Human Rights Activist Killed in London

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have discovered poignant poems dotted around the house whose subject matter reveal she probably knew more than she let on about the seriousness of her condition.

Mrs. Helsdon said: "We just lived everything she wanted in the last three months. We had a brilliant party on New Years Eve until 3am. She was such a little trooper.

"She just kept us all going. She loved seeing everyone and some of the things she said had us in fits. We cannot believe the amount of flowers, she just touched so many people's lives. She never once complained, she was just marvellous."

from Norwich Evening News: Mother's emotional tribute to brave teen

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she loved to write poems and songs.

One of her most recent ones, "Can People See Jesus In Me?" was read bitter-sweetly during her funeral.

from WBKO: Interstate 65 Crash Victim Laid To Rest

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She was a correspondent for the Arizona Daily Star in the 1960s and 1970s, and had freelance articles in the Phoenix Gazette during the same period.

She was a published poet, winning several awards, and wrote several small books that she self-published. She was an active member of the Word Weavers Poetry group, even serving as president for several years. To her, words were a thing of joy.

from Arizona Silver Belt: Margaret Bufford Mazei, 93

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[Ai] Ogawa described her work as "rather edgy and very dark."

Ogawa was working on several projects, including a memoir. A new volume of her poems called "No Surrender," is scheduled to publish in September.

[Jeff] Simpson said Ogawa will live on through her words.

"To me the biggest loss is the work we're not going to get to see from her, because it is so fierce and direct and honest and fearless," Simpson said.

"That's the kind of work that stands the test of time. Ai's the kind of writer that you really can't ignore."

from The Oklahoman: OSU professor's death leaves void for friends

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and had several songs recorded by Dynasty Records in Nashville, Tenn. Her favorite and God-given gift was cooking for family and friends.

from The Tifton Gazette: Marie Tidwell

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including A Tale of Two Gardens (2003), The London Gardener (2004) and The Wonderful Weekend Book (2008). She also presented a popular four-part series on trees for Radio 4.

Apart from gardening, Italy and her lurchers, Elspeth Thompson loved poetry and photography and the songs of Bob Dylan. Irises and tiny Paperwhite Narcissi were among her favourite flowers. She always counted herself lucky to have been able to make a career from writing about what she loved.

from The Daily Telegraph: Elspeth Thompson

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all those who visited her home, were blessed with her good cooking and savored the excellent bread she made. She was a artist and enjoyed writing poems, collecting porcellene dolls, crocheting, and writing letters which included an extensive life history.

from The Desert Valley Times: Myra S. Tobler

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