Poetry & Poets in Rags

We begin with Aung San Suu Kyi this week, including her first Reith lecture on freedom, plus three more on her views from the Guardian newspaper and Radio Free Asia. That is followed by a post on poet Yusuf Juma being freed by Uzbek authorities after a lengthy imprisonment during which he was tortured. Further down, is a post on Bahraini poet Ayat al-Gormezi and her torture in prison. Further down, in our Great Regulars section is Luisetta Mudie, who has translated for us, not only an article on torture of prisoners in Tibet, but two articles on just-released Ai Weiwei, the world-renowned artist now confined to Beijing. There's also a poem about him in Foreign Policy in Focus, newly added as a Great Regular. A friend of mine has said that poets are the canaries in the mine shafts. If they are free, then so will the rest of us be free to express ourselves. We all need that spiritual revolution Aung San Suu Kyi is talking about.

Also, high in headlines this week is the death of poet Robert Kroetsch. You'll find three links on this in Poetic Obituaries. But please scroll to Judith Fitzgerald's spot in Great Regulars. She and Leonard Cohen have written a tribute poem to him.

But is Robert Kroetsch the only important poet to die this week, or be commemorated? No. So please take a scroll through the Poetic Obituaries. Are the imprisoned poets the only news on poetry in News at Eleven this week? No, there is so much more, same for Great Regulars, some excellent articles, and wonderful poetry to read in both sections.

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 9:20 PM* 0 comments links to this post

At that time, I had no recollection of Akhmatova's lines: "No, this is not me. This is somebody else that suffers. I could never face that and all that happened." It was only much later, back in my house but still under arrest, that these words of requiem came back to me. At the moment of remembrance, I felt almost as a physical force the strong bond that linked those of us who had only our inner resources to fall back on when we were most in need of strength and endurance.

Poetry is a great unifier that knows no frontiers of space or time. U Win Tin, he of the prison blue shirt, turned to Henley's Invictus to sustain him through the interrogation sessions he had to undergo. This poem had inspired my father and his contemporaries during the independent struggle, as it also seemed to have inspired freedom fighters in other places at other times. Struggle and suffering, the bloody unbowed head, and even death, all for the sake of freedom.

from BBC: The Reith lectures: Aung San Suu Kyi Lecture 1: Liberty
from BBC: The Reith lectures: Securing Freedom: 2011
then The Guardian: Aung San Suu Kyi's idea of freedom offers a radical message for the west
then Radio Free Asia: Suu Kyi Addresses Congress
then The Guardian: Is Aung San Suu Kyi rethinking her tactics?

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unexpectedly released dissident poet Yusuf Juma, 53, who was immediately stripped of his Uzbek citizenship and expelled from the country.

After rejoining his family in the United States, Juma thanked and gave full credit to the U.S. government for his release. He had been imprisoned for nearly three years and said torture is routine in Uzbek jails.

from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Wife Of Jailed Uzbek Activist Says His Health Deteriorating

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defense of his military assault on organized crime in an unusual public faceoff Thursday with his biggest critics: sometimes weeping relatives of murder victims who blame the government for the bloodshed.

Poet Javier Sicilia, who lost his son to drug violence in March, opened the publicly televised exchange by demanding that Calderon take the military off the streets and apologize to victims for a failed strategy that he and others say have caused more than 35,000 deaths since Calderon took office in late 2006.

from The Associated Press: Mexico president defends attack on organized crime
then Reuters: Mexican president apologizes to drug war victims
then CNN: Mexican troops replace police in half a state that borders Texas
then Forbes: Would Legalizing Marijuana Stop the Drug Violence in Mexico?

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into panic as the Germans began shoving Jews by the tens of thousands on trains bound for Treblinka, 60 miles to the northeast. For a time, until it became morally unacceptable to him, [Wladyslaw] Szlengel had belonged to the ghetto's Jewish police force. Then, assigned to work in a brush factory, he continued to be spared the fate of so many of the others. But it took time to liquidate the ghetto, and for thousands of others, life went on. Szlengel kept writing his poems, first by hand, then typing them on carbon paper, so that they could circulate more easily. Often, he read them aloud to groups of Jewish factory workers. Others would copy and then recopy them: The grammatically incorrect Polish on some versions, Kassow notes, indicates that for some of those circulating them, Polish was not their native tongue. As conditions became more desperate, the impact of the poems grew. Emanuel Ringelblum, the historian who led the massive effort to chronicle ghetto life by stashing away documents in cans he hoped would be unearthed after the war, called Szlengel "the poet of the Ghetto."

from Tablet: Lost Words

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said her treatment in prison had improved in recent days, in contrast to the extreme mistreatment she received when she was first detained at the end of March when she was hit in the face with electric cable, held for nine days in a tiny cold cell and was forced to clean toilets with her hands.

Her family, who has has lodged an appeal against the sentence, say the change in the authorities' behaviour towards her is due to the international publicity given to her case.

A day after al-Gormezi's conviction more than thirty doctors and nurses appeared before a judge in a special security tribunal.

from The Muslim News: Poet and doctors jailed in Bahrain
then Reporters Without Borders: One blogger sentenced to life imprisonment, another to 15 years in jail

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9:17 PM · *posted by Rus Bowden at 9:17 PM* 0 comments links to this post

formed part of the firing squad. One of his cousins was the model for a rogue character in The House of Bernardo Alba, finished a few months earlier, in which [Federico García] Lorca deliberately took aim at the rival Alba family. "They were angry with the father and took their revenge on the son," said [Miguel] Caballero [Pérez].

Apart from Benavides, none of the firing squad seemed proud of what they had done. "They didn't speak to their families about all this. They are remembered as loving grandfathers who were silent about the civil war," said Caballero.

from The Guardian: Final hours of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca revealed

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*posted by Rus Bowden at 9:16 PM* 0 comments links to this post

for literature, for poetry, in the simple continuity of a tradition? I believe there is not. A relatively steady tradition, like English or French, accumulates a distinctive quality and tends to impose this on each new member. Does this give him a deeper feeling for the experience gathered up in the tradition, or a better understanding of it? I doubt it . . . For the present--especially in this present--it seems that every writer has to make the imaginative grasp at identity for himself; and if he can find no means in his inheritance to suit him, he will have to start from scratch."

In the poems he wrote after this essay, Kinsella sought a poetic language to match this idea that a broken tradition might nourish poems, that the legacy of Grey and Spenser, Wallop and Bryskett did not haunt or disable the Irish imagination but left something bare, an empty space that could be filled.

from The Irish Times: The poetry of an empty space

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is the private abecedary of a playful but serious imagination, a field guide to daydreams and frailties. It reads to me like the love child of Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology and Paul Muldoon's alphabetical survey of Irish literature, To Ireland, I. The collection is made up, as its title suggests, of verse and prose studies of the varieties of humans: "Adulterers," "Bookies," "Couch Potatoes," "Defectors from the Freudian Camp," "Eulogists," "The Lovesick," etc. But earnest, typecast, de rigueur efforts these are not. The poem "Missing Persons" is a mad lib. "One Night Stands" refers us to the entry "Wrong Numbers," a poem that doesn't appear in the book. "Queue Jumpers" butts in between "Bargain Hunters" and "Bookies." "Identical Twins" and the book's first poem, "Accidents" are, beautifully, exactly the same.

from The National Post: Gabe Foreman digs deep in his debut book

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Stumble out of the black and silver water,

from The Fortnightly Review: Two poems by Elliott Coleman
then The Fortnightly Review: Elliott Coleman's seminary for writers.

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not to be included in all-female poetry anthologies is still adhered to today.

Lumping together artistic work according to gender was, in Bishop's opinion, detrimental to women's writing. In a letter to Jean Keefe, she writes: 'undoubtedly gender does play an important role in the making of any art, but art is art, and to separate writings, paintings, musical compositions, etc., into two sexes is to emphasize values in them that are not art.'

from Granta: Elizabeth Bishop and Sacrificial Feminism

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as he considers "the greatest thing we did/was toss an apple core from a car" and ponders the risks of mushroom-picking. There is a rabbit, a nest, a clifftop, and a mole poem that Edmund Blunden might have admired, though Ted Hughes's pike still has its jaws round "Perfect":

Perfect; last night's velvet purse, with clumsy clasps,
carelessly dropped by arms wrapped in arms.
Or, kneeling closer, the barrel-bodied hostess in her fur coat,
her mouth relaxed to a smudge of rouge,
repugnant, sleeping off the garden party in the garden.

While it is mostly the young we encounter in this format, in what are usually their first publications, the "late pamphlet" has become something of a convention too.

from The Times Literary Supplement: Poetry pamphlets: small is beautiful

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How worried should we be? Very, says Eli Pariser, who has written a book--The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You--about the potential evils of excessive personalisation. It will, as the kids say, "creep you out".

"I do think," he says, "that it is one of the most dangerous fallacies about the online world that tools like Google are objective, because they are becoming increasingly subjective. If you are using them, you really need to understand what the biases are and how they are going to distort what you see."

from Bryan Appleyard: from The Sunday Times: The Filter Bubble

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This is a turning point for digital literature. The app does not merely illustrate the poem, it helps you read deeply into it. This is not just a way in for inexperienced readers of Eliot, or poetry in general. Since I was a teenager, I have known large parts of The Waste Land by heart. In a way, though, that was a way of forgetting it, of consigning it to automatic memory. The app is a much more profound reminder of a work of art that stands close to the summit not only of English poetry, but of human creativity in general. Spend a day with this app and the poem will be where it should be--lodged for ever in your mind.

from Bryan Appleyard: from The Sunday Times: iPads, eBooks and T.S.Eliot

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people tend to imagine. The history of modernity is, among other things, the history of substitutes for God. Art, culture, nation, Geist, humanity, society: all these, along with a clutch of other hopeful aspirants, have been tried from time to time. The most successful candidate currently on offer is sport, which, short of providing funeral rites for its spectators, fulfils almost every religious function in the book.

If Friedrich Nietzsche was the first sincere atheist, it is because he saw that the Almighty is exceedingly good at disguising Himself as something else, and that much so-called secularisation is accordingly bogus.

from Terry Eagleton: New Statesman: The Joy of Secularism: 11 Essays for How We Live Now

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Blood Culture: In Memoriam Robert Kroetsch (June 26, 1927--June 21, 2011)

Night comes quietly when you discover the simplest

from Judith Fitzgerald, with Leonard Cohen: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: A poem for Robert Kroetsch

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a strong, anti-booze man who was "a terrible man,/Grim, righteous, strong, courageous,/And a hater of saloons and drinkers." Logan, no doubt, sees himself as his "terrible man," who could "keep law and order in the village."Again, the town marshal shows the high estimation he has of himself. His strong sense of self accomplishment motivates his actions.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Edgar Lee Masters' The Town Marshal

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the end is the beginning of something else. It is the beginning of the unknown--that's why it can be so scary. That's why it can fill us with unease, but remember that we would get bored if life were predictable. We love the unknown in books, for example. We love movies that shock and awe, stories that end with a twist. We love poems whose endings make us hoot in delight:

[by Mona Van Duyn]

"Endings"

Part II

from Kristen Hoggatt: The Smart Set: Ask a Poet: The End

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I do understand where you're coming from. Reading is such an intimate, private activity that activates each individual imagination. When I was 13, I was reading Forever by Judy Blume on a flight seated right next to my dad when "Ralph" came into the scene. Thankfully Dad didn't have access to all the things I was imagining. Poems especially give our imaginations free range.

from Kristen Hoggatt: The Smart Set: Ask a Poet: Reading Habits

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by Paul Zimmer

Six days a week my father sold shoes

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Bach and My Father by Paul Zimmer

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Graduation Speech
by Charles W. Pratt

Like much that matters, baking bread is easy

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Graduation Speech by Charles W. Pratt

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The Immutable Laws
by Maxine Kumin

Never buy land on a slope, my father declared

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Immutable Laws by Maxine Kumin

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My Happiness
by Mary Ruefle

I laid my happiness in a field

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: My Happiness by Mary Ruefle

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The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
by Christopher Marlowe

Come live with me and be my Love,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe

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Siren
by Robert Hass

Here is the poem I meant to write

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Siren by Robert Hass

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Valediction
by Charles W. Pratt

Now the bumbling bees that hover

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Valediction by Charles W. Pratt

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lives than others, but all of us have them. Here Karin Gottshall, who lives in Vermont, shares a variety of loneliness that some of our readers may have experienced.

More Lies

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 327

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*posted by Rus Bowden at 8:48 PM* 1 comments links to this post

it can sometimes seem unfamiliar even to people who live here. Robert Chute of Poland Spring explores that theme in this week's poem about Down East.

Driving Down East

from Wesley McNair: The Portland Press herald: Poetry: Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry

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The Golden Gate

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: The Golden Gate

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[by E. Ethelbert Miller]

Postcard

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: Postcard

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says he is still under considerable restrictions at his Beijing home following his release from detention pending trial for "tax evasion."

"I can't give any interviews to the media," Ai said from his Beijing home shortly after his release. "I can't talk about anything."

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Ai Out But Not Free

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"The Chinese government's decision to arrest Ai Weiwei was political, and so is his release," said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

"But it is also an example of how international pressure works, since Beijing was paying a high cost to its reputation for his detention."

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Artist's Release Highlights Crackdown

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"Electric shocks, kicking and beatings, stripping naked, throwing boiling water on the face, standing barefoot on ice are commonly used by Chinese authorities on Tibetan political prisoners in a futile attempt to destroy their spirit and break their resolve," the statement said.

"In spite of attempts by the Chinese government to show off its ethnic unity to the rest of the world and its projects and work that it puts in to help Tibet, in reality it carries out a series of unequal and discriminatory policies against ethnic minorities," it said.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Tibetans Slam Widespread Torture

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describing the garden of the world's affairs, in which men strive hard to win crowns of "the palm, the oak, or bays." (Julius Caesar wearing his wreath of beaten-gold laurel leaves comes to mind.) These three trees represent military, civic, and poetic honors, respectively.

Yet somehow these efforts are in vain. When our "uncessant" or unceasing labors are directed at one goal and one goal only, we will never see the wood, or rather garden, for the flowering shrubs, topiary, and trees.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: A Reading of 'The Garden' By Andrew Marvell

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They're also vibrations that emerge from the human mouth. Leaving poetry aside, the different sentence rhythms of Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, the different consonant patterns of Jane Austen and Samuel Johnson, are in part bodily matters. If you imagine yourself saying the sentences of such different writers out loud, the physical sensation is different. The sentences in which [Tim] Parks describes his (former) terrible posture or his (dispelled) urinary problems have sounds and cadences different from those someone else might compose. Yet Parks insists that words are purely cerebral, quite removed from the body.

from Robert Pinsky: The New York Times: Curing the Pelvic Headache

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"Lines Written During a Period of Insanity," possibly [William] Cowper's best-known poem, delivers tremendous force, rooted, for me, in the self-contradiction of its energetic hopelessness: If the narrator's predicament is so absolute and unrelievable, how can he describe it with such explosive intellectual strength? Some readers may find something like a wit stripped of laughter (or is it just bitter laughter?) in the poem's final contrast with Abiram, who in the biblical story of punishment was swallowed up into the pit while still alive.

from Robert Pinsky: Slate: Damned Great

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impressionistic portrait, related to Monet's windswept figure of the "Woman with a Parasol". It's not "about" the Monet paintings, but the allusion helps us visualise the strange, dissolving quality of the poem's central image. "Everywhere you see her . . ." could signal a love poem, obsessed by a particular woman. Equally, it could be about "Everywoman". Her identity is unstable, because the weather of the receptive imagination constantly reshapes it. Monet himself painted two women with parasols--his wife and, later, his step-daughter. [Mimi] Khalvati's figure, like Monet's, seems at first to be composed of sky and wind.

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Books blog: Poem of the week: Mimi Khalvati

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and so clearly that the least historically-minded reader can follow this story of shifting fortunes. But this isn't popular history; it's a book about a book. As with all poetry, the devil of the Divine Comedy is in its detail.

Wilson shows just how intimately-lived political experience informed the work, creating an intricate cross-patterning that binds the poem together. Canto XXIV of Purgatorio portrays Corso Donati dealt, after death, the traditional punishment for a traitor: "dragged by the tail of a beast,/towards the valley where sins are not forgiven". Personal references sit side by side with contemporary events. Canto XX records the fatal imprisonment of Pope Boniface by the French army: "I see the Fleur-de-lis enter Anagni/and in his vicar Christ made prisoner./I see the gall and vinegar renewed;/I see Him being mocked a second time,/Killed once again between the living thieves."

from Fiona Sampson: The Independent: Dante in Love, By A.N. Wilson

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"Our Lady of Perpetual Help," and an article from 2009, "A Home to Prayers of Healing and Hope."

from Katherine Schulten: The New York Times: Poetry Pairing: June 23, 2011

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I would go to the poetry section (811 in the Dewey System . . . 821 English Poetry, 831 and 841 German, French Poetry, respectively, and onward through the nations). I would pick three volumes, pretty much at random, and take them to the map room, where I would read not only the content but also the cover material and the copyright page. I did that every day for many years. [--Carl Adamshick]

from B.T. Shaw: The Oregonian: Carl Adamshick, embracing the heart's ire and desire

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*posted by Rus Bowden at 8:43 PM* 0 comments links to this post

another section of the app compares passages from the original scroll manuscript with the finished book, highlighting just those sections (detailing drug use or graphic sexuality) that had to be scaled back. The result is a three-dimensional look at the novel as a function of process--not just its author's process but also the process by which the book was edited and brought out.

from David L. Ulin: Los Angeles Times: Critic's Notebook: Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road' book app is a road trip and a map to the future

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by Leonard Cirino

With passion the dead ring their bones

from CounterPunch: Poets' Basement: Three by Cirino

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By J. P., June 27, 2011

April 3, 2011, Ai Weiwei was detained at the Beijing Airport

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .hello hello hello . . . Weiwei . . . where have you been? . . . I see you in

from Foreign Policy in Focus: The Last Son of China

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gravitate towards irony, aesthetics and metaphysics. The first poem, "How Long," is apocalyptic in a way reminiscent of Franz Kafka's parables or Samuel Becket's "Waiting for Godot." The poem "Wild Tumult" echoes with biblical rhetoric, as in Psalm 65:5: "The roaring of the billows and the wild tumult of the nations . . ." Juxtaposed with the word "inspected" positioned vertically on the side, the poem proposes a divine (or poetic) perspective: a remote and contemplative observation of the world's wild tumult.

from Forward: The Arty Semite: Dog-Eared Poetry: Three Works by Erica Baum

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By Tim Liardet

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: '. . . Lay Thee Down'

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Wednesday 22 June 2011 by Iain Sinclair

On the morning the blue fence

from Morning Star: Well Versed: Blue Fence Blues

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8:40 PM · *posted by Rus Bowden at 8:40 PM* 0 comments links to this post

of poetry and prose, including four volumes which together have won the Academy of American Poets' Lamont prize, a National Poetry Series Selection and two nominations for the National Book Award. He is poet-in-residence and professor of English at North Carolina State University

from PBS: Newshour: 'Georgi Borrisov in Paris' by John Balaban

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Santa Cruz Inspiration," a poem about the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake.

Blackbirds Flying Backwards

"Before the shaking begins, cats and dogs run away, and
blackbirds fly backwards."
--Folkloric tradition

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

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*posted by Rus Bowden at 7:57 PM* 0 comments links to this post

local legend. The American-born Adams was a keen Christian and an eager entertainer. He busked, performing poetry and original songs--but his default setting was The Gambler. That, and his look, earned him his nickname.

from Stuff: Remembering 'Kenny' the busker

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continued as a volunteer with St. Mary-Corwin's Good Medicine Program, providing health care screenings and checkups in a mobile clinic.

Beauvais' professional dedication was recognized in 2002 with an award from the Colorado's House of Representatives. An accomplished poet, Beauvais the same year received the Poet of Merit/Distinguished Poetry Award during the annual International Poetry Convention in Orlando, Fla.

from The Pueblo Chieftain: Pueblo native, nun dies in Cincinnati

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of her role as an author. Her books were written under terrible circumstances--time snatched while abroad getting medical treatment or under the watchful eye of KGB guards when in Gorki. While "Alone, Together" and "Mothers And Daughters" are personal chronicles, she consciously speaks for many voiceless people in the era of Stalinist repression in Moscow and the Soviet republics that took away her father, consigned her mother to years in the gulag, and whose effects lingered throughout her lifetime.

from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Yelena Bonner In Her Own Right

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aged 83, was the inventor of the original women's Seder (now proliferating throughout the United States and Israel); co-author with Naomi Nimrod of "The Women's Haggadah" (published in Ms. magazine in 1977 and later in Esther's book, "The Telling"); creator of enduring Jewish feminist rituals; published poet, novelist, pamphleteer, autobiographer; literature professor; political organizer, activist and all-around holy troublemaker. But Esther was, above all, a weaver of women.

from Forward: Esther Broner, Activist, Author, Mother of the Women's Seder, Is Dead at 83

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and an avid whistler. He enjoyed gardening, woodworking, and studying and sharing the Scriptures.

from The Examiner: Ira L. Brosam

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and had several published poems.

from The Advertiser-Tribune: Patricia Jean Clay

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and book author, and was a member of the Concerned Women of the Philippines, mother, grandmother and great grandmother who loved God.

from The Visayan Daily Star: Ex-Silliman president's wife dies

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who enjoyed writing poems, drawing and walking.

from The News Leader: Velma F. Doyle

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in 1958 from Harvard and performing six months' active duty in the Army Reserves, he [Arthur Whitney Ellsworth] was hired at The Atlantic Monthly.

As publisher of The New York Review of Books, Mr. Ellsworth expanded the journal's presence abroad by publishing a British edition, distributed by a London cabdriver with whom he struck up an acquaintance. In 1979, taking advantage of a strike that halted publication of The Times Literary Supplement, he helped create The London Review of Books, published for its first six months as an insert in The New York Review of Books.

from The New York Times: A. Whitney Ellsworth, First Publisher of New York Review, Dies at 75

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and poet. She was skilled at crossword puzzles, great with her pets, and had a great sense of humor.

from The Shawnee News-Star: Billie Annette Heacock

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Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins and series on American regionalisms, he [Robert Hendrickson] also penned books on countless other topics--from how chewing gum came to be to why the Civil War began. His real passion, however, was writing short stories and poems, of which many have appeared in literary magazines around the globe and a full collection of which will be published by his family in remembrance of his literary life.

from The Suffolk Times: Robert Tierney Hendrickson

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completed an MA in Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University.

"A selection of her poems entitled Equal Viewing is now going to press. She was a restless enquirer into art and ideas which may teach us how to live." [John Birtwhistle on Joan Hoare]

from Sheffield Telegraph: Sad farewell to people's champ

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and autobiographer [Tom (T.A.G.) Hungerford] was best known for his 1983 bestseller, Stories from Suburban Road, later adapted into a sell-out play and television series, which described his adventurous childhood in South Perth during the Great Depression.

from inMyCommunity: Vale Tom Hungerford

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and poetry. Visitors to her Facebook page also referenced her writing talent in their condolences.

from Daily Camera: Woman who died after Longmont party ID'd as Cassandra Johnson

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experimenting with magic realism in What the Crow Said and parodying the myths of the founding of the West in many of his books, often to comic effect.

Kroetsch wrote seven non-fiction works, nine books of fiction and 14 poetry collections, including Seed Catalogue and The Hornbooks of Rita K (2001), a nominee for the Governor General's Literary Award.

He is also considered a mentor, editor and teacher to many students and writers, among them Aritha VanHerk, Rudy Wiebe and Myrna Kostash.

from CBC News: Alberta writer Robert Kroetsch dies at 83
then Edmonton Journal: Robert Kroetsch killed in highway crash
then Quill & Quire: Robert Kroetsch: 1927--2011

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*posted by Rus Bowden at 7:44 PM* 0 comments links to this post

the presentation which is half of poetry. The oral aspect of it, Ed had that more than anybody I've ever known."

A son of a Butte miner and with Irish roots running as deep as copper in a mine, [Ed] Lahey captured a rich piece of Montana unlike anyone else.

from KAJ18: Late Montana poet laureate Ed Lahey remembered

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*posted by Rus Bowden at 7:43 PM* 0 comments links to this post

an encyclopedic grasp of Jewish heritage, and a rare ability to understand--and an even rarer capacity to reproduce--the richly allusive Hebrew poetry of medieval Spain, focusing especially on the works of the 11th-century poet and philosopher Solomon Ibn Gabirol.

Loewe mastered the complex language and metres of such works, and deployed these in poems exploring a subtle theology based on Greek and later sources. His education allowed him to write about matters for which most others lack a vocabulary even to think. At times he claimed to be aware of "the ghost of Ibn Gabirol over my shoulder as I wrote".

He rendered English poetry, including sonnets by Milton and Donne and Gray's Elegy, into appropriate Hebrew forms, as well as medieval Hebrew verse into English metres that echo those of the originals, and occasionally worked in Latin and Greek.

from The Telegraph: Professor Raphael Loewe

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*posted by Rus Bowden at 7:43 PM* 0 comments links to this post

Second Baptist Church and American Legion Auxiliary and enjoyed spending time with her sons and grandsons, playing guitar, singing, writing poetry and music.

from Journal and Courier: V. McDaniel-Mackey

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*posted by Rus Bowden at 7:42 PM* 0 comments links to this post

of the Malawi PEN Alfred Msadala said he was shocked at Nazombe's death: "Nazombe contributed a lot to the growth of poetry through his radio programme. We will miss his creativity as well as good organisation skills, which he maximised through live poetry recitals called Chitsinda cha Ndakatulo."

from The Nation: Poet O'brien Nazombe dead

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*posted by Rus Bowden at 7:41 PM* 0 comments links to this post

Heworth Grange Comprehensive, in Gateshead, was very creative, particularly in the kitchen, and wanted to be a chef when she left school.

"She was always making things," said [her dad] Terry.

"She loved to write poems, make pictures and cards.["]

from Chronicle News: Anguish at 14-year-old Gateshead girl's death

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*posted by Rus Bowden at 7:41 PM* 0 comments links to this post

a poet and avid lover of nature.

from Napa Valley Register: Victor Osorio

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*posted by Rus Bowden at 7:40 PM* 0 comments links to this post

a social worker in Columbia and Spartanburg before her children were born. A poet and gardener at heart, Kit was a devoted wife of 47 years, a generous and unconditionally loving mother to her three children, and a proud grandmother to her two grandsons.

from Legacy: Catherine Hale (Kit) Peck

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Poetry & Poets in Rags

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

June 28th Poetic Ticker Clicking

June 28 forum announcement

News at Eleven: At that time, I had no recollection of Akhmatova's lines:

News at Eleven: Last month, the Uzbek authorities

News at Eleven: President Felipe Calderon made an impassioned

News at Eleven: In July 1942, the ghetto was thrown

News at Eleven: [Ayat al-Gormezi's] brother, Yousif Mohammed

News at Eleven: A member of the Roldán clan, [Antonio] Benavides,

News at Eleven: "Is there," he [Thomas Kinsella] asked, "any virtue,

News at Eleven: A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Types of People

News at Eleven: from 'An American in Augustland'

News at Eleven: [Elizabeth Bishop's] additional stipulation

News at Eleven (Back Page): [Tom Warner's] is a less urban aesthetic

Great Regulars: We are watched like lab rats with credit cards.

Great Regulars: Secularisation is a lot harder than

Great Regulars: [by Leonard Cohen & Judith Fitzgerald]

Great Regulars: Logan explains that prohibitionists wanted

Great Regulars: Well, as the old adage goes,

Great Regulars: Bach and My Father

Great Regulars: Some of us have more active fantasy

Great Regulars: Maine is such a diverse state,

Great Regulars: [by E. Ethelbert Miller]

Great Regulars: Chinese artist and social critic Ai Weiwei

Great Regulars: [Andrew] Marvell's poem begins by

Great Regulars: Words aren't just conceptual.

Great Regulars: The poem I've chosen is a mysterious,

Great Regulars: As ever, [A.N.] Wilson writes elegantly

Great Regulars: This week's pairing: the poem

Great Regulars: Since I had nothing but time,

Great Regulars: As if to highlight this,

Great Regulars: The Lonely

(New to) Great Regulars: The Last Son of China

Great Regulars: Often, the meanings framed by [Erica] Baum

Great Regulars: '. . . Lay Thee Down'

Great Regulars: Blue Fence Blues

Great Regulars: John Balaban is the author of 12 books

Great Regulars: From the editor of "Santa Cruz Poets,

Poetic Obituaries: [John Adams, a.k.a.] "Kenny" was a

Poetic Obituaries: After retiring in 2000, [Sister Marilyn Therese] Beauvais

Poetic Obituaries: [Yelena] Bonner seemed most proud

Poetic Obituaries: Esther Broner, who died on June 21,

Poetic Obituaries: [Ira L. Brosam] was a poet

Poetic Obituaries: Patty [Clay] loved to write

Poetic Obituaries: [Pearl Gamboa Doromal] was a poet

Poetic Obituaries: [Velma F. Doyle] was a homemaker,

Poetic Obituaries: After earning a bachelor's degree

Poetic Obituaries: Billie [Annette Heacock] was an artist

Poetic Obituaries: Perhaps best known for his

Poetic Obituaries: "When she died she had just

Poetic Obituaries: The novelist, poet, playwright

Poetic Obituaries: [Cassandra Johnson] was known for creative writing

Poetic Obituaries: [Robert Kroetsch] is considered a post-modern writer,

Poetic Obituaries: "The voice, the power of delivery,

Poetic Obituaries: [Professor Raphael Loewe] brought to his teaching

Poetic Obituaries: [Valerie A. McDaniel-Mackey] was a member of

Poetic Obituaries: Fellow poet [of O'brien Nazombe] and president

Poetic Obituaries: Paige [Newton], who went to

Poetic Obituaries: Victor [Osorio] was a spiritual soul,

Poetic Obituaries: [Catherine Hale (Kit) Peck] proudly worked as

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