Poetry & Poets in Rags

Here are some of the crimes that governments and politicians are committing against poets and their freedom of expression this week. Nay Phone Latt is imprisoned and not receiving the medical treatment he needs. Faqir Mohammad Baloch was shot dead. Jangtsae Donkho and Buddha are going to trial after being imprisoned for four months. And, as of today, Aung San Suu Kyi has been detained for 15 years. This while Zakariya Amataya is free amid the threat of violence around him.

We also have reviews of fine poetry in News at Eleven, some great articles and terrific poetry in Great Regulars, and some important people to poetry in our Poetic Obituaries section.

Thanks for clicking in.

Yours,
Rus

Our links:

IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags

Poetry & Poets in Rags blog

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for various ailments, Nay Phone Latt continues his fight for free expression from his prison cell and Reporters Without Borders has received a number of moving poems written by him.

In one poem, he alludes to himself as "a guitar with loose cords, unable to play any tune and give meaning to the instrument, remains silent, stands quietly, and waits." Referring to free speech in Burma, he talks of "a newspaper . . . nostalgic and in mourning for this rounded [Burmese] writing."

from Reporters Without Borders: Jailed blogger manages to send poems written in his cell

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are Faqir Mohammad Baloch and Zahoor Baloch, whose bodies were discovered in the district of Mastung on 21 October 2010. Faqir Mohammad Baloch, a poet and member of the Voice of Missing Baloch Missing Persons, was abducted on 23 September.

Zahoor Baloch, a member of the Baloch Student Organization-Azad was abducted on 23 August. According to media reports, both received a single bullet wound to the head at point blank range and showed signs of being tortured.

The discovery of the two men's bodies is part of a growing trend of "kill and dump" operations. Bullet-ridden bodies of those who have been abducted, many showing signs of torture, are increasingly being found across Balochistan.

from Amnesty International: Pakistan urged to investigate murder and torture of Baloch activists

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described Jangtse Donkho, 32, as a poet and an editor of a newsletter called "I, of the Modern Century."

"He has a wife and two children," the source said. "He was detained on June 21 and is being held at the Barkham [in Chinese, Ma'erkang] county detention center."

Buddha, a doctor, "was practicing in Ngaba before his detention on June 21," the source said.

"He wrote many poems and articles in several magazines in Tibetan. He was detained for about a month at the Ngaba detention center, and was then moved to the Chuchen [in Chinese, Jinchuan] detention center, also in Sichuan."

from Radio Free Asia: Tibetan Writers Face Trial

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a 35-year-old poet who grew up in one of the districts now violently torn apart by long-held resentment over language, religion and nationalism. The insurgents are Muslim and ethnically Malay, and the Thai Army units sent here to fight them are largely Buddhist. Mr. Zakariya, a Muslim poet in a Buddhist land, is caught in the middle.

Next month, Mr. Zakariya will be formally awarded the region's top writing prize, honoring his first published book of poetry.

from The New York Times: A Poet's Return Home to Thailand's Violent South

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with this three acres here, where there were no trees. The mango trees down there along the streambed were here, and there were some Christmas berries, which is a weed tree, that were along the old track here, which was from the three or four disastrous years when they grew pineapple here, and ruined everything, by plowing slopes vertically, so they lost all the topsoil . . . But I had some idea--Handy and Handy wrote Native Planters of Hawaii . . . I knew there had been forest here up until around 1840. It was deforested very fast for fuel for the whalers in Lahaina and for the haole [Caucasian] settlers as they built houses . . . Then it was overgrazed; they put in cattle, but they didn't do very well. Then they started trying to grow sugarcane here; they built a railroad out here . . . It was technically described as 'wasteland'. . .

from The Progressive: An Interview with W. S. Merwin, Poet Laureate (raw transcript)

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tradition of poetry? The other country that springs to mind with a similar poetic slant is Poland, and there may be a clue in that. Poland has been, even more so than Ireland, a "most distressful country", as the ballad "The Wearing of the Green" has it, subject to the buffetings of history. I have a friend who thinks that only Polish poets should be allowed to write in free verse, after so many razings and rebuildings, after so many border-shifts.

from The Guardian: Author, author: Nick Laird
then Irish Times: MISSING: Have you seen thsese poets?
then Financial Times: The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry

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of startlingly sexually explicit Latin poems in 1425-26, there was an outcry from moralists. Effigies of [Antonio] Beccadelli were burned in Bologna and Milan. Pope Eugenius IV threatened to excommunicate anyone found reading The Hermaphrodite. The work is honey to a decadent sensibility. In the 19th century, one of Beccadelli's biggest fans was Leonard Smithers, up-market pornographer and publisher of Aubrey Beardsley and OscarWilde. These poems are vivid and raunchy. If there is a tendency to associate the Italian Renaissance only with high culture, then Beccadelli reminds you that Renaissance thinkers were all too familiar with the gutter.

from The Australian: What lies beneath

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of the Holy Land. [Rachel] Zolf doesn't tell you, but I will: according to the Israeli human rights organization B'tselem, the neighbor procedure of the book's title is a practice in which the Israeli military "use[s] Palestinian civilians to order other Palestinians to leave their houses to be arrested." This collection describes, obsessively and elliptically, the procedures of military occupation in Israel/Palestine. The poems here speak sometimes in occupation's own splintered language; at other times they repeat the blank spaces also produced by violence.

from Zeek: "The Family Playing Host to the Missile": A Review of Rachel Zolf's "Neighbour Procedure"

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to urge the reader to bear witness to the world with unreserved fervor and thus to live more abundantly. In this book she accomplishes this urgency through imperatives as well as interrogatives, issuing commands throughout the volume that the reader would be foolish not to obey: "Take your busy heart . . . to the forest"; "If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy. . . . Give in to it. . . . Don't be afraid of its plenty"; "Let laughter come to you now and again, that sturdy friend"; "Refuse all cooperation with the heart's death," and, "Sing, if you can, and if not still be/musical inside yourself."

from America Magazine: Mary's Good News

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considered the finest illustrated texts ever in the Islamic world, the "Shahnama" (Book of Kings) has just gone on view at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.

"The Shahnama: 1000 Years of the Persian Book of Kings", is "probably one of the finest shows we've ever put together," Massumeh Farhad, the Sackler and Freer Galleries' chief curator, curator of Islamic art, and organizer of the exhibition told a press preview before the exhibit opened on October 23.

The "Shahnama" is "the great Persian epic, comparable on its cultural significance and popularity to the works of Homer and Shakespeare . . .," Farhad explained.

from Examiner: Iran's 1000-year-old illuminated literary masterpiece at Smithsonian
then Freer/Sackler: Shahnama: 1000 Years of the Persian Book of Kings

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a total of 15 years in detention, Burma Campaign UK called for urgent international pressure to force Burma's dictatorship to unconditionally release her on 13th November. Aung San Suu Kyi's current period of detention expires on November 13th, following her being placed under house arrest after a sham trial in August 2009. Although there was an international outcry at the time, no concrete action was taken to try to secure her release.

from The Burma Campaign UK: Aung San Suu Kyi Reaches 15 Years in Detention
then The Burma Campaign UK: Free Aung San Suu Kyi: Actions: Write to Ban Ki-moon

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seven years younger than Trethewey, had rental properties that were damaged by the storm that he couldn't get loans to repair. He agreed to transport and deliver cocaine for a longtime acquaintance and was arrested and sent to prison. The story of his life, told in letters to his sister and in her prose and poetry, is the backbone of "Beyond Katrina."

"It was a story I had to write," Trethewey said, "but I wanted him to be a sympathetic character, and I wanted people to empathize with the story. I was worried that people would judge him too harshly or say things without knowing what happened, but people have responded wonderfully."

from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: Natasha Trethewey's 'Beyond Katrina' takes a personal look at the Gulf Coast

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sailing on Lake Erie. In the early 1980s, he worked delivering sailboats up and down the Eastern seabord, to the Bahamas and the Caribbean. He is the author of five books of poems, including "All Good Water" published by Holy Cow! Press. White currently sails a Cape Dory 25D out of St. Louis Bay on Lake Minnetonka, near Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Open or Closed

from Marianne Combs: Minnesota Public Radio: State of the Arts: Minnesota Poetry: J.P. White's "Open or Closed"

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'thank you' to people who have positive influence on his life. He writes them a poem.

"So many times we work with or around people and are not able to tell them how they have impacted our lives in one way or another," Hardin says. "There have been numerous instances over the years where I have written a brief tribute poem to my ministers, doctor, veterinarian, co-workers to try to let them know how special they really are."

from Bill Diskin: Independent Tribune: Poetry Corner: Concord poet finds unique way to express gratitude, tackle tough issues

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first met and love began to flower, she did not readily accept that the feelings were genuine; she refused "to build/Upon the event with marble." She questions whether love could endure for her "between/Sorrow and sorrow."

The reader is by now quite familiar with the sadness, pain, and grief the speaker has suffered in her life and that she continues to suffer these maladies.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 36

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otherwise unavailable on tape, from Thomas Pynchon's "V." and "Gravity's Rainbow" to "The Essays of E.B. White" and Norman Mailer's "The Armies of the Night." Prominent collections of poetry, an art form made for being read out loud, can only be heard through the library's program, including the collected poems of Richard Wilbur, W.S. Merwin's "Opening the Hand" and Richard Hass' Pulitzer Prize winning "Time and Materials."

from Hillel Italie: Associated Press: 'Catcher' caught: Audiobook of Salinger novel made for library service for the blind

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by Candace Black

In the pasture behind

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Gold Horse, Brown Horse by Candace Black

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Ketchican Wrestling
by Jenifer Rae Vernon

You look like you wrestled 140

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Ketchican Wrestling by Jenifer Rae Vernon

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My Father's Green Flannel Shirt
by Andrea Hollander Budy

He wore it when he mowed the grass, walked the dog,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: My Father's Green Flannel Shirt by Andrea Hollander Budy

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Night Bicycle
by Jonathan Johnson

Black mamba of the front tire

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Night Bicycle by Jonathan Johnson

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Old Men
by Ken Hada

I make it a point now

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Old Men by Ken Hada

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You Just Think the Last Time
by Greg Kosmicki

for Tim O'Connor

you saw your uncle down

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: You Just Think the Last Time by Greg Kosmicki

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Your Punishment in Hell
by Gary Leising

Someone will douse a cobra in gasoline,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Your Punishment in Hell by Gary Leising

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with the other folk-song writers of his day. Realizing that to continue with the traditional melodies would be an artistic dead end, he began to write the songs that, as he says in his 2004 autobiography, established him as "a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows." These are the songs that appear on the eight albums from "Bob Dylan" (1962) to "John Wesley Harding" (1968) that make up the new mono recordings.

from David Kirby: The Christian Science Monitor: Bob Dylan unfiltered: Fall tour brings new releases, old recordings

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in the thin dry voice of a ghost, as captured by Katie Cappello who lives in Northern California.

A Ghost Abandons the Haunted

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 292

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Stone

Maybe next year

from E. Ethelbert Miller: Stone

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2010 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo ahead of the December award presentation ceremony in Oslo, as more than a dozen Nobel laureates campaigned for his release.

A group of 15 former peace prize winners urged U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders in a letter to increase the pressure on Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Signed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Lech Walesa, and Jimmy Carter, among others, the letter called for Liu's case to be raised in talks with Hu at the G20 summit on Nov. 10-11.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Pressure Mounts to Free Liu

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of quatrains, to be spotted "cresting the gable/of someone's roof"--only now it becomes a mere "graven image" without the poet's voice to give it life. Words are the Dragon, and the poem itself, long and slim and elegantly draped over the pages, resembles a live, if mythic, creature, animated by the poet's breath, and exhaling imagination's fire.

[by Fleur Adcock]

Dragon Talk

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poem of the week: Dragon Talk by Fleur Adcock

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[John] Cornford begins dramatically, as if to invoke some great, abstract power. His innovative stroke, the repetition of "heart" three times, is wonderfully successful. A surge of emotion is created with each repetition, and, every time, the word earns its place by acquiring a faintly different meaning, and tracing a movement from impersonal register to intimate.

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poem of the week: Poem by John Cornford

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Buika sings "Ciudades" in a way that pays tribute to a famous song yet delivers it as if it had never been sung before. It's impossible to describe the fire with which she sings "Y mi alma completa/se me cubrio de hielo" ("And my whole soul was covered in ice").

In "Vámonos" ("Let's Go"), the last, perfect close of El Ultimo Trago, the lyrics speak of love defiant in the midst of difference, redolent with the clash of class, race, and passion:

from John Timpane: The Philadelphia Inquirer: Buika's unifying mix of the muses

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New Directions is pumping out the shorter Bolaño. Of the titles considered here, Monsieur Pain (first published in Spanish in 1982) and Antwerp (1980, published in Spanish in 2002) are novels (sort of), the other two collections of tales.

I remember when the story "The Insufferable Gaucho" appeared in the New Yorker. Within days, three friends weighed in. One loved it, something about "the whole world it creates" and "how much you sort of like the main character" but "how nothing really gets figured out." The next person said something like, "The New Yorker is printing anything these days--that was just terrible, a waste of my time." The third: "Please tell me what is going on and why I should like this."

I can't do the last two things, but I can speak of why I like this story.

from John Timpane: The Philadelphia Inquirer: Tales by Chilean master of malaise

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Poet

For the poet

from The Christian Science Monitor: Poet

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by José M. Tirado

We can ask the seasoned

from CounterPunch: Poets' Basement: José M. Tirado

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wrote while her children were asleep or at school. Her poems were often published, but it wasn't until 1962 that her genre-defying storytelling found a literary home. Two stories sold within months of each other: one, a work of fantastical historical fiction, paid her with copies of the magazine it was printed in. The other, a science fiction piece, earned her $30. It was then that, she says, she made the decision to write for the more lucrative market.

from findingDulcinea: Happy Birthday: Ursula K. Le Guin, Writer

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[Pablo] Picasso died on April 8, 1973, of a heart attack at his home in France. At the time of his death, his estate was valued at $50 million. His will left his large private art collection to the Louvre Museum in Paris. Information about current exhibitions and auctions of his work can be found at Picasso's official Web site.

Time magazine said of Picasso, "His death left the public with a nostalgia for genius that no talent today, in the field of painting, can satisfy."

from findingDulcinea: Happy Birthday: Pablo Picasso, Painter

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Although poetry can sometimes be perceived as an old-fashioned medium, Pinsky is a technophile. In 1984, he wrote the script for a text-based adventure game, "Mindwheel," in which the player must restore a world from chaos by probing the knowledge of four deceased residents. The game was released with a book (written by another author) that featured some of Pinsky's poems as keys to the game.

from findingDulcinea: Happy Birthday: Robert Pinsky, Former US Poet Laureate

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translated from the Russian by Stephanie Sandler, October 2010

The Ministry of Hot Water

from Guernica: Poetry: [The Ministry of Hot Water]

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Each winter my skeleton & I stand

from The Oregonian: Poetry: 'Grocery Conveyor'

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)))) Listen

Who did I think was listening

from PBS: Newshour: 'From the Start'

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and consultant for U.S.-Mexico youth exchanges. She is now retired and spends most of her time writing and traveling to schools and other events to teach young writers.

This poem, "Legal Alien," captures an important quality of our evolving and emerging multi-national, multi racial, and multi-ethnic culture.

Legal Alien

by Pat Mora

Bi-lingual, Bi-cultural,

from People's World: Poem of the Week: Pat Mora's "Legal Alien"

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I have saved

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Petals

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By Adam Zagajewski

from Slate: "About My Mother"---By Adam Zagajewski

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developing new skills and methods to use with her students as a member of the Southwestern Pennsylvania and National Writing projects. A prolific writer, Sue sought to impart her love of literature and poetry to those around her every day.

from Indiana Gazette: Amendt

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cooking, canning, playing piano, walking, and reading and writing poetry.

from Great Falls Tribune: Patty Lee Austin

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the poet [A. Ayyappan] known for his intensity, meditative beauty and romance in his poetry, was believed to be on his way to Chennai where he was to accept the prestigious Asan Poetry Prize today.
Organisers have said the ceremony has been cancelled and the award carrying a cash prize of Rs 30,000, citation and statuette would be presented to his relatives later.

from Gulf Times: Malayalam poet Ayyappan dies unrecognised

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three books: "Paramo de Sueños" (Plateau of Dreams), "Imagenes Desterradas" (Images in Exile) and "Palabras en Reposo" (Words at Rest), which were published between 1944 and 1956.

He also published a book of essays entitled "Los Momentos Criticos" (Critical Moments) in 1987, and in 1997 he produced the CD "En la Orilla del Silencio y Otros Poemas" (On the Edge of Silence and Other Poems) recited by the author.

from Latin American Herald Tribune: Mexican Poet and Editor Ali Chumacero Lora Dies in Mexico City

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and was very enthused with science and would continually follow NASA happenings. Todd also enjoyed music; writing poetry; and drawing.

from The Star Press: Todd Earl Ice, 47

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William McCall, [Alvin] Lawson began using hypnosis on people who said they had been abducted. Over time, as Lawson became more sceptical of their accounts, he and McCall decided to hypnotise people with no experience of meeting extraterrestrials. When they, too, were asked to imagine being abducted, and their accounts compared to reported abductions, Lawson was struck by the similarities.

"We had expected the people imagining the abductions would be giving us real predictable, stultified, cardboard encounters. But they made up incredible stuff," he told a reporter. "It was just as rich, variable and interesting as the supposedly real abductions."

from The Daily Telegraph: Alvin Lawson

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came out from the Ceolfrith Press in 1970, followed by two collections from Taxus Press, Cracknrigg (1983) and Hinny Beata (1987), and two collections from Bloodaxe Books, Marra Familia (1993) and Lammas Alanna (2000), to which he added his own lettering and artwork. The beauty of these books is an expression of Bill's underlying concern as a poet, to restore the collective symbols, releaf the ikons with gold.

from The Guardian: William Martin obituary

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"Slow Newsreel of Man Riding Train," was published in 1962 by City Lights in its Pocket Poets Series. A four-part series of novels published by New Directions is set in the fictional utopia of Nghsi-Altai. A collection of short stories, "In the Air," was published by John Hopkins University Press. Nichols's "From the Steam Room," published by Tilbury House, is a satiric novel that takes place in New York City during the 1970's financial crisis. "Red Shift," a book of his poetry, was printed by Peter Schumann, founder of Bread and Puppet Theater and a friend and neighbor of Bob Nichols and Grace Paley in Thetford.

from The Villager: Robert Nichols, 91, led Wash. Sq. '69 renovation

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in 1922. Since 1947 she worked as an artist, writing poetry, essays, criticisms and children's literature.

She was the first woman in Croatia who lived exclusively from literature and for literature.

She was also a painter and translator from several languages.

from Croatian Times: Vesna Parun dies

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of one of the 20th century's most famous poets, Natasha Spender, who has died aged 91, achieved much more than partnership in her life. A concert pianist, she became a lecturer at the Royal College of Art after illness curtailed her performing career. Her first book, An English Garden in Provence, published when she was 80, was part memoir, part history of the garden she had created at Mas St Jerome, the home in France she shared with her husband, Sir Stephen Spender, whose legacy she strove to protect after his death in 1995.

from The Guardian: Natasha Spender obituary
then The Daily Telegraph: Lady Spender

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Stroudsburg High School, Class of 1985. She enjoyed cross stitching, word puzzles and writing poetry.

from Pocono Record: Vicki L. Strunk

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for the BBC, including "ballad-operas" intended to present American life to British listeners, that starred Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Burl Ives and others. Under the name Elizabeth Lyttleton, her mother's surname, she wrote several books, as well as poetry that appeared in Saturday Review and elsewhere, and interviewed American personalities like Martha Ledbetter, the wife of the blues singer Lead Belly.

from The New York Times: Elizabeth L. Sturz, Salvaged Troubled Lives, Dies at 93

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as an investment advisor, and in his later years he co-managed an investment advisory firm with his daughter, Beckie Trumpy Ethell.

Robert was famous for his magic tricks and his tall tales, and he published a book of poetry. He loved to fish, golf and was a member of the Pasfield Park Golf League.

from Pekin Daily Times: Robert Trumpy Sr.

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for research he could not predict," [Virginia] Maiorana said [of Leigh Van Valen]. "In a way, he upset the status quo at the university. He had a creative mind. You never knew what way it would go."

The paper that introduced the Red Queen hypothesis, rejected by several leading journals, appeared in 1973 on Page 1, Volume 1 of Evolutionary Theory, which Mr. Van Valen created.

Although the delivery of Evolutionary Theory was irregular and its aesthetics incidental, the journal developed loyal readers, according to Mr. Van Valen's U. of C. colleague David Jablonski.

Mr. Van Valen also created the Journal of Irreproducible Results to publish his poetry and songs. Maiorana recalls the lyrics to one song about dinosaurs mating, which went "stomp your foot, crash your tail, 6.5 on the Richter scale."

from Chicago Tribune: Leigh Van Valen, 1935-2010

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Lawrence, read a poem written by his grandfather called Gratitude.

Before and after the service the Wisdom family joined celebrities in Sir Norman's Bar at the Sefton Hotel. Films including Early Bird, his 1965 classic in which he played Norman Pitkin, were played on television screens.

from Daily Express: Sir Norman Wisdom is laid to rest

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