Poetry & Poets in Rags

News at Eleven begins this week with a new $50,000 poetry prize for a single poem. I usually stay away from the economics of professional poetry, but the idea of such a prize struck me as someone finally recognizing the cultural value of good poems. And even though $50,000 is not a billion dollars, this more than any other prize approximates such pricelessness.

It's a varied and interesting week for news in poetry throughout News at Eleven. And you'll find some gems in Great Regulars also, as always. For instance, Adam Kirsch brings us a terrific review, and E. Ethelbert Miller relays Amiri Baraka's latest poem. Which reminds me, much of what we have is keyed into current affairs around the world.

There's more, much more. I'll let you get to your reading. Thanks for clicking in.

Yours,
Rus

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Rus Bowden · at 12:24 PM

announced on Thursday they will award $50,000 to a single poem.

Describing it as "the biggest poetry competition in history," organizers of the Montreal Poetry Prize said the initiative "represents a major contribution to the global cultural scene."

"The launch of such a large prize for poetry obviously marks an important moment for anyone interested in literature," said Michael Harris, a poet and member of the prize's editorial board, in a press release.

from National Post: $50,000 Montreal Poetry Prize announced
then Montreal International Poetry Prize

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Rus Bowden · at 12:24 PM

to the remote village of Cileni where the play was performed amidst burnt-out tanks.

"I knew that The Persians would be performed on the military range when I was writing my version," said Ms. [Kaite] O'Reilly.

"I was aware that soldiers had trained on the site before going to Iraq and Afghanistan, which were once part of the Persian empire.

"This provided a resonance that influenced my version of the play to try and imagine Aeschylus' voice without trying to be too academic."

from BBC News: Ceredigion poet Kaite O'Reilly wins Ted Hughes Award

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Rus Bowden · at 12:23 PM

then moved east and changed names. Nearly 30 years later, in 1976, one year after [Gary] Snyder received the Pulitzer Prize, she donated the fading pages to California's UC Davis. There, in a Special Collections folder, they sat, until I went looking for them as part of my research on Mount Hood. Upon contacting Snyder about the event and Cohn's preserved pages, he replied: "Nobody before noticed the Mt. Hood portion . . . I am charmed."

But make no mistake, Snyder is sensitive about his early work. "I have not published juvenilia poems for a good reason," he said in an email.

from The Oregonian: Gary Snyder: Atop Mount Hood in 1947, a copyboy sets course as a poet
then The Oregonian: Gary Snyder: In his own words, from Aug. 17, 1947

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Rus Bowden · at 12:23 PM

in many of the poems, most of the poems do not take race itself as their subject; there are poems about dogs, birds, bugs, storms, rivers, trees, rats, snakes, gardens, flowers, oceans and love of all kinds. Spanning most of U.S. history and written in a variety of forms and voices, this is a powerful, instructive, and also pleasurable and very readable collection, an important addition to the anthology bookshelf.

from Press-Register: 'Black Nature' an anthology of African American nature poetry

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Rus Bowden · at 12:22 PM

by Paul Adrian

from The Guardian: National Poetry Competition winning poem: Robin In Flight by Paul Adrian

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Rus Bowden · at 12:21 PM

celebrating the demise of small Canadian literary magazines, the new fund apparently works well for outfits like Chatelaine, Motorcycle Mojo, On-site Heavy Construction News and six other titles who together received the lion's share of the money and more than $1 million each. The six literary magazines that did qualify (down from 11 last year) scrabbled after a mere $126,000 ($93,000 less than last year) between them, and they were the lucky ones because many didn't qualify.

from Art Threat: Canada's "Harper Government" abandons poetry and literature

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Rus Bowden · at 12:21 PM

North Shore community, that held the strongest attraction for [Ralph Waldo] Emerson. During his lifetime, the philosopher would travel to Salem more than 30 times to speak at the Salem Lyceum on Church Street. These lectures would be a barometer for Emerson as to whether or not the topic covered in his talk was worth writing about.

On one of these occasions, Emerson was invited to speak by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of the just-published romance, "The Scarlet Letter" and one of three Salem natives with whom he would develop a deep personal and professional relationship during his lifetime.

from Essex County Chronicle: 'Sage of Concord' had close ties to the North Shore

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Rus Bowden · at 12:18 PM

[William] Davenant, whose star was of course by then riding high again--repaid the compliment. He used his influence to make sure that Milton was not "excepted" from the King's Act of Indemnity and Oblivion which extended mercy to all who were not immediately concerned with the execution of his father, Charles I. And Richardson writes: "The nation forgave him though they little knew how well he would reward their clemency by his future writings, chiefly Paradise Lost."

from The Oxford Times: How a friendship saved John Milton's life

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Rus Bowden · at 12:17 PM

I thought the question was directed to that possible confusion. He was interrupted in the course of the examination.

Mr. Foran: I would love to know also but I don't think it has anything to do with this lawsuit . . . .

The Court: I will let him, over the objection of the government, tell what a be-in is.

A[nswer from witness Allen Ginsberg]: A gathering together of younger people aware of the planetary fate that we are all sitting in the middle of, imbued with a new consciousness and desiring a new kind of society involving prayer, music and spiritual life together rather than competition, acquisition and war . . . . There was what was called a gathering of the tribes of all of the different affinity groups--political groups, spiritual groups, Yoga groups, music groups and poetry groups that all felt the same crisis of identity and crisis of the planet and political crisis in America, who all came together in the largest assembiage of such younger people that had taken place since the war in the presence of the Zen Master Sazuki [whom] I mentioned before, in the presence of a number of Tibetan Buddhists and Japanese Zen Buddhists and in the presence of the rock bands and the presence of Timothy Leary and Mr. Rubin.

The Court: [To Mr. Foran] Now having it explained to me, I will hear from you.

Mr. Foran: I object, your Honor.

The Court: I sustain your objection . . . .

Q: Now do you know the defendant Abbie Hoffman? . . . Would you identify him for the jury?

A: At the corner of the table on your right with the wine-colored jacket . . . .

from The New York Review of Books: The Chicago Conspiracy Trial: Allen Ginsberg on the Stand
then The Atlantic Monthly (November 1966): The Great Marijuana Hoax

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Rus Bowden · at 12:16 PM

from the public eye to complete her poetry anthologies. She describes Divorce and Kholu' Poetry (published by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage's Poetry Academy) as an attempt to illustrate the freedoms Saudi women enjoyed in previous generations.

"I have collected poems from 50 to 300 years back that show these tribal women saying strong things against the male governor, speaking of coward men and generally saying their thoughts," she says. "Now women in Saudi Arabia can't even say five per cent of that, it is just impossible."

from The National: Hissa Hilal: You will see a lot of great things coming from Saudi women

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Rus Bowden · at 12:16 PM

and tweets and cellphone alerts registering yet another aftershock, Yoshikatsu Kurota quietly sent out his brief verse. It was published Thursday, in small type, on Page 14 of the mass-circulation Asahi daily, in the corner that Japan's newspapers still devote to such poetic endeavors.

Tossed like a pebble into a lake, it made not a splash but a gentle ripple. Seventeen syllables, radiating out into the universe, perhaps touching a few other distressed souls adrift in the chaos.

Mere trifle to some, a quintessence of Japan to others, maligned and beloved, the haiku endures.

from Los Angeles Times: Japan's disaster/fertile ground for haikuists/pain in a few words

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Rus Bowden · at 11:25 AM

the iron hand of post-war austerity was tightening its grip on British throats. Food was scarce, and its distribution and sale were regulated by petty bureaucrats. In November of that year, however, the nation was cheered by the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip in Westminster Abbey. Betty is named after the princess, and the trigger of the plot is the planning of a feast to celebrate the wedding. Are you getting this? Scroll forward 64 years and the iron hand of post-crash austerity is tightening its grip on the nation's throats. Food prices are rising and petty bureaucrats in government and the banks are gouging us for every penny we have left. Next month, however, the nation will be cheered by the wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William.

from Bryan Appleyard: from The Sunday Times: Cameron Mackintosh's Pigs

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So, for example, researchers in the lead-up to the 2004 U.S. election could say that Republicans drank Dr. Pepper, bourbon and red wine while Democrats drank gin, vodka and Pepsi. This is not trivial. Combining such insights with a few thousand others, researchers can--or, just as alarmingly, think they can--profile every member of the population with enough money to buy a cup of coffee, an iPad or an Aston Martin.

In other words, freeing ourselves of the big beasts is not necessarily a liberation, and this niche phenomenon might just be the latest manifestation of an old process--capitalism's cycle of creation and destruction.

from Bryan Appleyard: New Statesman: Creative destruction

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Rus Bowden · at 11:25 AM

in over 10 years is packed with his love of detail and acerbic precision. There are vivid adaptations from Pasternak, there are varied narratives such as "High Table" and "Rashomon", but the book is dominated by two major elegiac sequences--"I Remember my Mother Dying" and "A la recherche du temps perdu" (the latter about the death of a former lover from Aids).

from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: Poetry in brief: How Snow Falls by Craig Raine and The Night Post: A New Selection by Matthew Sweeney--review

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Rus Bowden · at 11:24 AM

a large monitor but does not have email or Web access. She starts about 11:30 p.m., after she watches the news with Ray and he goes to bed, and works for at least three or four hours, sometimes until the sun is up. She adjusts the blinds in her office to let in more or less light, and isn't worried about working alone in a huge condominium. When the night's work is done, she goes to bed and gets up around 2 p.m. to spend the afternoon and evening with her husband before starting to work again.

Writing is the hardest work Auel has ever done.

from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: Where I write: Jean M. Auel works late in her Southwest Portland condo

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Rus Bowden · at 11:23 AM

oppressiveness of the bikini: "Last time I checked, no one's bum looked big in a burka," she says, and rejects the idea that anyone can impose their version of liberty on women.

A woman in the audience stands to ask me a question, barely containing her rage. "It's so nice you can go to France and wear a hijab but can you tell me where in the Muslim world I can wear a bikini?"

Yes of course, I say, watching her turn a curious shade of puce: Lebanon, Indonesia, Malaysia, Syria, Jordan, Turkey . . .

from Fatima Bhutto: Financial Times: Diary

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Rus Bowden · at 11:22 AM

on my desk. Ever since I have wanted to write about the contents of the box. But because I'm a judge for the National Book Critics Circle prize and the poems in the box were under consideration, I couldn't.

That prizewinner was named earlier this month, so I'm free to say that a box with poetry arrived on my desk and still sits here like the color of fog in the middle of a gray night. It contains photographs, ephemera, dictionary definitions, lyric shards, fragments, cutouts, clippings, handwritten jottings and corrupted incomplete narratives, and both live and dead languages. It contains bits of uncollected memories and discarded dissolutions. It even has some lines of poems.

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: Poetry: 'Catullus 101' from 'Nox,' translated by Anne Carson

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Rus Bowden · at 11:22 AM

that we or our Afghan allies could put together information messages that are similar to what the Taliban are doing.

Jeffrey Brown: You mean counterpoetry?

Thomas Johnson: Counternarratives, if you will. Counterpoetry. Exactly. And rather than some of the mundane information operations that I think we're pursuing right now that don't' resonate with the people.

Jeffrey Brown: Not to make light of it, but you're suggesting we need better poetry or a better story?

from Jeffrey Brown: PBS: Newshour: Poetry as a Weapon of War in Afghanistan

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Rus Bowden · at 11:21 AM

books of poetry, most recently darkacre (Coffee House Press 2010). He has received Fulbright fellowships to Denmark and Norway and is currently Associate Professor of English at Carleton College, in Northfield, Minnesota.

Under the Sun

from Marianne Combs: Minnesota Public Radio: State of the Arts: Minnesota Poetry: Greg Hewett's "Under the Sun"

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Rus Bowden · at 11:20 AM

about "the last letter written me" by a young man, whom she describes as "that estranged young soul."

It turns out that Julia married the old man, with whom she has just quarreled, to cover up the fact that this "estranged young soul" had impregnated her and then deserted her. Had she admitted to the old man her true reason for becoming his wife? She allows the listener only to speculate.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Edgar Lee Masters' Julia Miller

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As the speaker continues to address the peak, it becomes evident that he is addressing God as well. Fully cognizant that everything is endowed with the essences of its Maker, the speaker conveys his understanding in every utterance: "Thy palace I approached by woodsy road;/Where on both sides there stood/Thy columned trees."

The reverence with which he addresses the peak's forest reflects the reverence he holds in his heart for the Divine Creator.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Yogananda's Paupack's Peak

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Rus Bowden · at 11:20 AM

so you don't lose your training--imitations, or translating an existing free verse poem into a form, something that's not too demanding but will keep you fit technically, even if your heart is not exactly in it. And once the clouds have cleared, poetry will be there, waiting for you.

[by Heather McHugh]

"What He Thought"

from Kristen Hoggatt: The Smart Set: Ask a Poet: Words vs. Work

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Rus Bowden · at 11:19 AM

by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost

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Awake
by Michael Heffernan

I lay down in my bed and went to sleep

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Awake by Michael Heffernan

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Chicory
by John Updike

Show me a piece of land that God forgot--

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Chicory by John Updike

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His Good Felt Hat
by Bruce Taylor

All dogs and children awaiting

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: His Good Felt Hat by Bruce Taylor

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Lenten Dissent
by Cherie Lashway

There once was a logger, named Paddy O'Connell,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Lenten Dissent by Cherie Lashway

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MAP
by Julie Cadwallader-Staub

Reaching back from the front seat while Mom drove,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: MAP by Julie Cadwallader-Staub

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My Father's Body
by William Matthews

First they take it away,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: My Father's Body by William Matthews

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Rus Bowden · at 11:19 AM

by Paul Verlaine, translated by Karl Kirchwey

from Karl Kirchwey: The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Il bacio by Paul Verlaine, translated by Karl Kirchwey

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Rus Bowden · at 11:18 AM

at work today--including some of the most highly esteemed, like Adrienne Rich and Robert Pinsky--but no one, I think, is as successful as [Jacqueline] Osherow at making Jewishness a productive subject for poetry. This is not because her work is saturated with biblical references, or because she writes piously about a vanished past, or because she waxes kabbalistic and makes play with Golems and gematria--all techniques that have grown overfamiliar in American Jewish writing. Rather, Osherow allows Judaism and Jewish history into her work as problems--as things to think about, with, and sometimes against; as sources of questions and, occasionally, answers. In this way, she comes much closer than most poets to an honest expression of contemporary American Jewish sensibility.

from Adam Kirsch: Tablet: Rooted

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Rus Bowden · at 11:17 AM

to get away with sniffing the paws of a dog, and I have sniffed the paws of all of mine, which almost always smell like hayfields in sunlight. Here Jane Varley, who lives in Ohio, offers us a touching last moment with a dear friend.

Packing the Car for Our Western Camping Trip

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 314

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Rus Bowden · at 11:17 AM

It is excellent, representative of a certain insightful Pan Africanist perspective. It should be read several times before one addresses its content:

The New Invasion of Africa
So it wd be this way

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: An Open Letter to E. Ethelbert Miller and Amiri Baraka

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Rus Bowden · at 11:16 AM

from the medieval Sufi poem "The Conference of the Birds" to the English nursery rhyme "Cock Robin" to the birds of the caucus-race in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, our mythologies have paired birds and discourse. We've put our arguments in the mouths of birds, and we've tried, like John Keats and Walt Whitman, to imagine the songs they would sing if they were human.

from Ange Mlinko: The Nation: Out of the Mouths of Birds

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Rus Bowden · at 11:16 AM

but none are starker than this Web headline in the April issue of O: The Oprah Magazine: "Spring Fashion Modeled by Rising Young Poets." Yes. Spring fashion. Modeled. By rising young poets. There follows a photomontage of attractive younger women--some of whom are rising poets mostly in the "I get up in the morning" sense, but all of whom certainly look poetic--in outfits costing from $472 to $5,003. This is all part of O's special issue celebrating National Poetry Month, edited by the noted verse aficionado Maria Shriver and including interviews with "all-star readers" like Bono, Ashton Kutcher, the gossip columnist Liz Smith and someone named James Franco, who is apparently an actor.

from David Orr: The New York Times: Oprah Magazine's Adventures in Poetry

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Rus Bowden · at 11:15 AM

it's not unlike what makes a three-year-old at a wedding begin to dance when the band starts up and the grown-ups begin to dance. So, Emily Dickinson and Ben Jonson and Walt Whitman and John Keats inspire me. Poems like Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" or Dickinson's "Because I could not stop for death" or Jonson's "Let it not your wonder move" give me a certain feeling, and I start to want to try to create that feeling.

from Robert Pinsky: BU Today: Why Poetry Should Be Spoken

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Rus Bowden · at 11:15 AM

ours has become thrilling and terrifying; the study of the microcosm of human consciousness is perhaps even more enthralling, though harder to visualise, than the multiversing of the astronomers. But I'm also reminded of the warnings uttered by the neuroscientist Susan Greenfield when she talks about the dangers of reducing our intellectual worlds to virtual reality. We living bodies need to see faces and hear voices. [Coventry] Patmore hymns imaginative perception of local realities at the expense of scientific discovery: the reverse position is today's default. The poem, despite itself, illustrates how to combine the two.

The Two Deserts

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poem of the week: The Two Deserts by Coventry Patmore

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Rus Bowden · at 11:14 AM

"Back From the Fields" with a 2009 article from the "Summer Rituals" series, "Play Street Becomes a Sanctuary."

from Katherine Schulten: The New York Times: Poetry Pairing: March 24, 2011

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Rus Bowden · at 11:12 AM

made the way a watch is. It is quite another to conclude that, because it not made that way, it is not made at all--especially if you are going to continue using the term design.

Nature may, for example, be made the way music is made. After all, the whole notion of God is not of some super being among other lesser beings cobbling those other beings into existence.

from Frank Wilson: When Falls the Coliseum: That's What He Said: More interesting than a watchmaker

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Rus Bowden · at 11:12 AM

Garden Lesson

My little cousin picked

from The Christian Science Monitor: Garden Lesson

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Rus Bowden · at 11:11 AM

by Martin Burke

1

A place where no one has died is a place where no one has lived.

from CounterPunch: Poets' Basement: Moser, Burke, Versey

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Rus Bowden · at 11:11 AM

Two birds came upon a crust of bread lying on the path through the woods.

from PBS: Newshour: Weekly Poem: 'The Virtues of Birds'

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Rus Bowden · at 11:10 AM

highly personal free verse. Her work shows a lifelong commitment to progressive social change (what she might call, in terms, tikkun olam, or the repair of the world). The poem below, "To be of use", exemplifies her love of those who do the work of the world.

She lives in Wellfleet, Massachusetts with her husband, Ira Wood.

To Be Of Use

from People's World: Poem of the Week: Marge Piercy and workers of the world

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Rus Bowden · at 11:09 AM

The humming of the diesels

from Post-Bulletin: Poem: The Rhythm of Spring

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Rus Bowden · at 11:09 AM

an ongoing dialogue with his [David Ulin's] fifteen-year-old son, Noah, who gets assigned The Great Gatsby for school. Noah hates underlining key passages (complaining, rightly, "It would be so much easier if they'd let me read it.") and would rather be doing something else with his time. In a moment of both frustration and baiting, he tells his book critic father, "This is why reading is over . . . . Nobody wants to do it anymore."

Ulin has heard this before, of course--at work, from interviewers, and in civic debate.

from Powells: Review-A-Day: Go On, Please . . .

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Rus Bowden · at 11:07 AM

Fulbright scholar, Pushcart Prize nominee and editor of 'Local Poets, Local Inspiration,' a dog poem.

Doggie Dementia

from Santa Cruz News: Santa Cruz Poets, Santa Cruz Inspiration: Robert Sward

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Two poems from the late Santa Cruz poet and Cabrillo writing and film instructor.

Dawn

from Santa Cruz News: Santa Cruz Poets, Santa Cruz Inspiration: Morton Marcus

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Rus Bowden · at 11:06 AM

By David Ferry

from Slate: "Soul"--By David Ferry

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Rus Bowden · at 11:06 AM

touches so lightly here is deep indeed: the way life dissolves into death and back again across a membrane made permeable by the imagination. Or, as she once put it, "Ancestors and poetry and religion are the same. All about wonder. Having a sense of wonder."

Over the Edge

from The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: Over the Edge

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Rus Bowden · at 11:05 AM

"It's World Book Day," the teacher said

from West Sussex Gazette: Poem of the Week: World Book Day

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Rus Bowden · at 11:01 AM

she wrote for people who passed on. Her poems were published in The Independent Republic, a local Goshen newspaper.

from Times Herald-Record: Elizabeth Mable Coddington

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Rus Bowden · at 11:01 AM

he [Jihmye Collins] published essays, illustrated books and conducted workshops in art as an educational tool. His works include several public art projects in San Diego, including one at the Lillian Place housing development in the East Village area.

He was active with the Public Arts Advisory Council, County Commission on Human Relations, African American Artists Collective, Spanish Village Art Center and Combined Organization of Visual Arts.

from The San Diego Union-Tribune: Artist, activist Jihmye Collins dies at 71

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Rus Bowden · at 11:00 AM

some of which had been used in greeting cards.

from The Observer: Chastity Cooke

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Rus Bowden · at 10:59 AM

to family and friends. Occasionally, the storyteller didn't mind being at the center of a tale.

A former circulation supervisor at Newsday, Gilkes, who died recently at age 92, dabbled in community theater, wrote poetry, designed his own Christmas cards and was active in his church, family said.

from Newsday: Al Gilkes, 92, ex-Newsday manager, dies

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Rus Bowden · at 10:59 AM

has passed away. Friends and fans say the iconic singer, musician and poet succumbed to terminal cancer, last night.

The 60-year-old--who held an honours degree in music--produced ten albums and was the subject of two documentaries about his life.

from East Coast Radio: Syd Kitchen dies, aged 60

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Rus Bowden · at 10:58 AM

with the publication of his first book, Black Bull Guarding Apples in 1965, and went on to compile Frost Gods and Sonatas and Dreams. Black Bull Guarding Apples won him the acclaimed Cholmondeley Award in 1968. Other winners include Seamus Heaney, who was a close personal friend, and Philip Larkin.

As a crossword setter, Mr Massingham compiled puzzles for The Spectator, The Listener and the Sunday Telegraph.

from Manchester Evening News: Farewell to 'Mass': Crossword king Harold Massingham dies, aged 78

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Rus Bowden · at 10:58 AM

and longest epic in the world preceding Mahabharata of India, Surek Galigo, or, as it is notably called, La Galigo, died at 75, on Sunday, March 27.

La Galigo is originated from South Sulawesi, and is written in the Indonesian language Bugisnese.

from VIVAnews: Translator of Indonesia La Galigo Dies at 75

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Rus Bowden · at 10:56 AM

scholar who received numerous grants and awards, including a prestigious Andrew J. Mellon fellowship, to pursue her scholarly interests, which included early writers of the African Diaspora, African American literature, and jazz and hip-hop as literature. She wrote poetry and was working on a memoir, "Visa, My Visa," which told the story of her courtship and engagement to her Jamaican husband, Ralph Tait.

Most recently, Jennifer was awarded a GLCA New Directions grant to study the life and work of Bai T. Moore, a contemporary Liberian poet.

from The Holland Sentinel: Dr. Jennifer Tait, 35

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