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Tuesday, February 28, 2012
February 28 forum announcement
Dear Poetry Aficionados,
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
Death is in the air in Poetry & Poets in Rags this week. We begin with Fiona Sampson resigning as Editor of Poetry Review, and noting that she could not stay on because of death threats. She bucked the political furor within the Poetry Society last year by not resigning, by instead continuing to do her work, all the while as members of the group rallied for positions and reinstatements, getting the Poet Laureate and future Poet Laureate favorites involved in a great bashing and bullying movement, railroading we call it, throwing people under the bus.
Some within the Poetry Society had been let go. Some had resigned. A politically strong faction of the membership set up a blog arrogantly calling themselves the Poetry Society, and bullied people who disagreed with them in discussion threads, and arrogated ideas to themselves that were put forth by those whom they banned from the discussion. Politically, this was a smashing though shameful success, and now we know just how shameful. Online spats are one thing, but here we have groups of poets creating the atmosphere of death, Fiona being a victim of this furor created by a mob mentality.
I may be talking to the air. There may be no shame. The people involved may think that all that strong arm politicking is how you do it. It's not. There were death threats. That's shameful and anti-poetry, and I am about this close to calling for the dissolution of the Poetry Society as we know it.
That's what tyrannical politicians do to poets, lock them up, taunt them, threaten them with death. Poets should not be creating this atmosphere with each other. Here's what Bill Moyers says in our second article this week, as he introduces Rita Dove, "From the combative, ferocious and vituperative field of politics, we repair to a quieter place--a respite for the soul, if you will, against the tumult of our time." He's talking about poetry being the respite for the soul, while we're talking this week about poetry being the combative, ferocious and vituperative field of politics. Death threats even.
Yours,
Rus
Our links:
IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
IBPC Home
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
Death is in the air in Poetry & Poets in Rags this week. We begin with Fiona Sampson resigning as Editor of Poetry Review, and noting that she could not stay on because of death threats. She bucked the political furor within the Poetry Society last year by not resigning, by instead continuing to do her work, all the while as members of the group rallied for positions and reinstatements, getting the Poet Laureate and future Poet Laureate favorites involved in a great bashing and bullying movement, railroading we call it, throwing people under the bus.
Some within the Poetry Society had been let go. Some had resigned. A politically strong faction of the membership set up a blog arrogantly calling themselves the Poetry Society, and bullied people who disagreed with them in discussion threads, and arrogated ideas to themselves that were put forth by those whom they banned from the discussion. Politically, this was a smashing though shameful success, and now we know just how shameful. Online spats are one thing, but here we have groups of poets creating the atmosphere of death, Fiona being a victim of this furor created by a mob mentality.
I may be talking to the air. There may be no shame. The people involved may think that all that strong arm politicking is how you do it. It's not. There were death threats. That's shameful and anti-poetry, and I am about this close to calling for the dissolution of the Poetry Society as we know it.
That's what tyrannical politicians do to poets, lock them up, taunt them, threaten them with death. Poets should not be creating this atmosphere with each other. Here's what Bill Moyers says in our second article this week, as he introduces Rita Dove, "From the combative, ferocious and vituperative field of politics, we repair to a quieter place--a respite for the soul, if you will, against the tumult of our time." He's talking about poetry being the respite for the soul, while we're talking this week about poetry being the combative, ferocious and vituperative field of politics. Death threats even.
Yours,
Rus
Our links:
IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
IBPC Home
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: "The police were involved,"
she [Fiona Sampson] continued. "There were death threats. Would you stay after that had happened to you? It's not that the society has done anything wrong, but no more . . . I'm not interested in that kind of mess and struggle."It brings to an end a seven-year stewardship of the UK's premier poetry journal, which has seen the journal expand its horizons, combining an emphasis on championing new voices with the highest standards of literary excellence.
from The Guardian: Poetry Review editor Fiona Sampson resigns
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Bill Moyers: From the combative, ferocious
and vituperative field of politics, we repair to a quieter place--a respite for the soul, if you will, against the tumult of our time. A few days ago, in the East Room of the White House, along with such greats as the actor Al Pacino, sculptor Martin Puryear, and painter Will Barnet, President Obama presented the National Medal of Arts to the poet Rita Dove.
The award makes Rita Dove the first person to receive all three of the nation's highest arts and humanities distinctions: the Medal of Arts, the Humanities Medal, which she received in 1996, and the title Poet Laureate of the United States.
from Truth out: Bill Moyers Interviews Rita Dove on the Power of Poetry (Video)
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The award makes Rita Dove the first person to receive all three of the nation's highest arts and humanities distinctions: the Medal of Arts, the Humanities Medal, which she received in 1996, and the title Poet Laureate of the United States.
from Truth out: Bill Moyers Interviews Rita Dove on the Power of Poetry (Video)
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News at Eleven: Bill Moyers: After your diagnosis,
you went back to West Texas where you'd grown up, right? Is West Texas still the country of your heart?
Christian Wiman: Absolutely. It's the place that I return to in my imagination. And I find that nothing will take fire, except that landscape. Well, in places, it's just completely flat, so that you see all the way to the horizon. It's like the sky becomes this huge eye that's over you, just 'cause it takes on a curve from horizon to horizon. In other places, it's ranch land, and so it's cattle country. And so there are scrubs, scrub cedar and mesquite trees. And so it's incredibly rugged. The wind blows. We used to have these tremendous sand storms, where everything would just go dark.
from Poet Christian Wiman on Love, Faith, and Cancer
from Harvard Divinity School: By Love We Are Led to God
~~~~~~~~~~~
Christian Wiman: Absolutely. It's the place that I return to in my imagination. And I find that nothing will take fire, except that landscape. Well, in places, it's just completely flat, so that you see all the way to the horizon. It's like the sky becomes this huge eye that's over you, just 'cause it takes on a curve from horizon to horizon. In other places, it's ranch land, and so it's cattle country. And so there are scrubs, scrub cedar and mesquite trees. And so it's incredibly rugged. The wind blows. We used to have these tremendous sand storms, where everything would just go dark.
from Poet Christian Wiman on Love, Faith, and Cancer
from Harvard Divinity School: By Love We Are Led to God
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Great Regulars: [Antonia Pozzi] died the following day,
leaving behind diaries, notebooks and loose pages of poetry, documenting her twenty-six years of life. From these, her father Roberto Pozzi, a Milanese lawyer, selected and edited her first collection, publishing it as Parole the following year. References and dedications to her lover and classics tutor, Antonio Maria Cervi, were eliminated, titles were changed, lines were cut. Itfrom The Times Literary Supplement: The poems of Antonia Pozzi
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News at Eleven: The huge 1960s wave of poetry readings--
by everyone, everywhere--was not discernible on the horizon, so younger poets met each other at a relatively small number of venues where the famous or notorious performed their work. Peter Porter was there on the night Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso gave their first London reading--I believe--at the humanists' Contemporary Poetry and Music Circle just off High Street Kensington in 1957. But Martin Bell and Peter Redgrove were on the same platform, so they were making their mark.from The Times Literary Supplement: Alan Brownjohn remembers Peter Porter
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Great Regulars: Hard Life with Memory
Wisława Szymborska, translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczakfrom The New York Review of Books: Hard Life with Memory
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News at Eleven: Of the hundreds of submissions,
none met the criteria of visionary freshness and formal expertise quite as thrillingly as Joe Fletcher's "Thousand Hills Radio." It's a very bad dream of eternal war and pestilence and wonder, where darkly ecstatic pronouncements reel around with exquisitely muted intensity. Fletcher's visually complex yet vividly clear images need no amplification: "A wingless bird pried a nut/from the shadow of a smokestack."from Indy Week: 2012 Poetry Issue: The impossible art
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News at Eleven: One very revealing part of the Tang
legacy is the handful of poems that Li Bai and Du Fu wrote to each other. Poems about friendship or those exchanged between friends were a standard element of the Tang poetic canon. But the poems between Li Bai and Du Fu have an incredible poignancy as they say so much about how these two great poets saw themselves and each other.from The Epoch Times: Poems Li Bai and Du Fu Wrote to Each Other
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News at Eleven: So, while narrative remains
the driving force in these poems, the dimmer, harsher realities of postwar Europe are new territory for [Walter] Bargen. The result is often haunting, showing in stark detail the intersection of a young imagination with bullet-riddled walls and buried shell casings."I saw the black outline of a machine gun/exposed by the retreating water/but I couldn't swim the current to save it," he writes in "Lost Ordnance."
from St Louis Post-Dispatch: Poet Bargen writes of postwar Europe in 'Endearing Ruins'
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News at Eleven: Yet from "The Less Deceived" onwards,
[Philip] Larkin was a master of observation. His mature work is not only a record of his own soul, it's a record of post-war Britain. He immortalises bedsits, M&S, posters for Welsh seaside resorts, "Canals with floatings of industrial froth", "mug-faced middle-aged wives/Glaring at jellies". He'd gone from woolly to precise--and from wan to funny. What, or who, had opened his eyes?A clue may lie in his Selected Letters
from The Telegraph: Philip Larkin: the Complete Poems ed by Archie Burnett: review
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News at Eleven (Back Page): [Iain Sinclair] says the same
has happened today in Stratford, the site of the Olympic Games, but sadly no mob has been on hand to save east London: "Without consultation, overnight, a high blue fence encloses common land, marshland, lammas land, a place for walking free."He notes the bulldozing of the Manor Gardens allotments for a temporary Games car park--and ponders what [William] Blake would have made of it all.
from Camden New Journal: Blake's London: Poet 'would lament the loss of common land in the capital'
then The American Spectator: Poets and Capitalism
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: This wonderful selection, drawing
on [Mimi] Khalvati's five previous books as well as new material, is full of moving, quietly insightful meditations on family and domestic spaces, on routines and daily rhythms.One of the outstanding pieces, "Sundays", has a typically accomplished intimacy and directness.
from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: Child: New and Selected Poems 1991-2011 by Mimi Khalvati--review
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Great Regulars: What I mean is, to place one's
poems into a public space is to agree to be canny. It is to immerse one's self in the lyric values of the past to communicate with the future. As Philip Larkin once said, poetry is a "richness" and a "release of delight" that's meant to last beyond the next news cycle and the last reader. Phillis Levin is just this sort of poet. Since 1988, with the publication of her first book, "Temples and Fields," she has composed poems that invoke a dazzling fusion between the ancient and the contemporary.
from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: A poet who aims for poise and posterity
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Great Regulars: The removal of more than 4,000
Kindle ebooks, including IPG bestsellers Pamela Des Barres' groupie memoir I'm with the Band, child discipline title 1-2-3 Magic by Thomas Phelan and murder mystery Snow Blind by Lori Armstrong from Amazon.com follows the IPG's refusal to agree to new terms from online retail giant, according to its president Mark Suchomel.from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Amazon.com withdraws thousands of ebooks in pricing row with publishers
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Hurrah for the internet, which has unmasked and brought down another plagiariser: in this case a romance "writer" going under the name of Kay Manning. Her uncovering came courtesy of a crack team of authors: first Liz Fielding, who posted about a short story of hers which she'd discovered had been plagiarised.
from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Plagiarists, beware: the internet will find you out
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Great Regulars: Spurred on by guilt,
trying desperately to save his soul, he used his writing is an alternative to meditation.Willard stresses that he was "borne along by dreams/Of God's particular grace for me." Because he placed his mind so squarely on God, he was motivated to write those reams. His dreaming and writing served him as a form of worship.
from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Edgar Lee Masters' Willard Fluke
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Great Regulars: Barney Rosset was a publisher,
not an author, and struggled for decades to write the story of his brave and wild life. But few over the past 60 years had so profound an impact on the way we read today.The fiery and publisher Rosset, who introduced the country to countless political and avant-garde writers and risked prison and financial ruin to release such underground classics as "Tropic of Cancer" and "Lady Chatterley's Lover," has died.
from Hillel Italie: Associated Press: First Amendment crusader Barney Rosset dies
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Great Regulars: I'd Rather be the Father
by Faith ShearinRight from the start, it's easier to be the father: no morning
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: I'd Rather be the Father by Faith Shearin
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Live Oaks, New Orleans
by Jennifer Maier
They square off along Napoleon avenue,
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Live Oaks, New Orleans by Jennifer Maier
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My Dead Friends
by Marie Howe
I have begun,
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: My Dead Friends by Marie Howe
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Pursuit
by Stephen Dobyns
Each thing I do I rush through so I can do
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Pursuit by Stephen Dobyns
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Rose Colored Glasses
by Kenneth Rexroth
Ten years, and it's still on the
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Rose Colored Glasses by Kenneth Rexroth
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Sun Gazers
by Stephen Dobyns
My stepdaughter is three and we have some games
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Sun Gazers by Stephen Dobyns
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The Thousand-foot Ore Boat
by Barton Sutter
To live until we die--
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Thousand-foot Ore Boat by Barton Sutter
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Sara Ries is a poet from
Buffalo, N.Y., whose parents run a diner. Here's one of her delightful poems about family life for a short order cook.Fish Fry Daughter
from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 362
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Great Regulars: [Bruce Taylor's] form supplies
a good deal of his meaning.We get a sense of this in the first lines of the first poem, "Nature." Taylor writes: "The assignment was,/you took some moistened bread/and put it under glass for seven days/and soon a tiny wilderness of mould/would start to grow." Taylor's voice is as plain and unfashionable as the white bread he writes about, and as deceptively clear and taken-for-granted as the water that moistens it; he writes in what Wordsworth called "the real language of men."
from Michael Lista: National Post: On Poetry: Bruce Taylor's 'No End in Strangeness'
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: In the mostly tweedy, genteel
world of book publishing in the 1960s and '70s, Barney Rosset, who died on Tuesday at 89, was a bit of an outlaw: a raffish, unconventional figure who loved breaking the rules and challenging the conventions. He published the books that nobody else would, because they were too risqué or too avant-garde (often that meant the same thing) or too unprofitable, and his imprint, Grove Press, quickly became a badge of coolness and sophistication.from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: The Man Who Made Publishing a High-Wire Act
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: What does a tiny winged insect
at the periphery of human awareness have to do with holiness? This question lies behind today's poem by Betsy Sholl, Maine's former poet laureate."To the Infinitesimal"
By Betsy Sholl
from Wesley McNair: The Portland Press Herald: Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry
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Great Regulars: [by E. Ethelbert Miller]
The Five Stages of GriefDenial
from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-notes: The Five Stages of Grief
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: HD's sequence of 43 poems,
The Walls Do Not Fall, first appeared in 1944, dedicated by the 56-year-old poet to her lover and friend, Bryher (Winifred Ellerman). Poems 9 and 10 are this week's choice, two connected but contrasting lyrics that make an elegant pair, and together represent something of the technique and ambition of the whole work. HD produced two further books, Tribute to the Angels and The Flowering of the Rod, and published all three as Trilogy--which can be read as a single epically-proportioned poem.from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Poem of the week: Extract from The Walls Do Not Fall by HD
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Great Regulars: This week's Poetry Pairing matches
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's poem "Let the Light Enter" with the Feb. 11 obituary of Whitney Houston by Jon Pareles and Adam Nagourney.from Katherine Schulten: The New York Times: Poetry Pairing: 'Let the Light Enter'
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Great Regulars: Sure, he was part of a lineage;
it's difficult to imagine [Barney] Rosset doing what he did for more than 30 years at Grove Press without the example of James Laughlin at the seminal independent New Directions or (further afield) Jack Kahane at Paris' Obelisk Press. And yet Grove, which Rosset bought in 1951 for $3,000 and ran until 1985, remains the touchstone, the publisher most responsible for breaking down American literary puritanism, for defending the idea that art, that literature, is meant to unsettle us, that among its central purposes is to challenge the status quo.from David L. Ulin: Los Angeles Times: An appreciation: Barney Rosset, contemporary literature's champion
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Great Regulars: The upshot of this is that death
makes sense, not as something natural, but as something condign: a just punishment for a grievous transgression, "the proper existential response" to which is "to think of the badness of death in conjunction with the still greater badness of the previous fault, and freely submit to the punishment."I mention all this, not to argue in favor of it, or to object to it, but simply because I think it is so different from what we usually hear on the subject.
from Frank Wilson: When Falls the Coliseum: That's What He Said: The resurrection of the body
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Like all wars, World War II was one
of the great tragedies in world history, but a major side effect was a forward shift in women's rights. I think Susan and Joan would have been proud of Rosie the Riveter.Throughout history, women have been discriminated against. The gender war, especially in certain parts of the world continues.
March is Women's Herstory Month. To celebrate the leap, here are three women's voices from my Elders Projects.
from Terry Wooten: Traverse City Record-Eagle: Elders Project: WWII and women's rights
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Great Regulars: [by Tom Sexton]
The Loon at Shackford Head
In the cove below where I stand,
from The Christian Science Monitor: The Loon at Shackford Head
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In the cove below where I stand,
from The Christian Science Monitor: The Loon at Shackford Head
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Great Regulars: By Stephen Haven
February 2012Then it begins, "some famous Beijing band,"
from Guernica: Poetry: Fu Han at the Nuts Café, Chongqing, China, April 9, 2011
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Great Regulars: [Hilaire Belloc's] humorous poems about
Matilda, who lied repeatedly and was burned to death; Jim, who was eaten by a lion after running away from his nurse; and Lord Lundy, whose inability to stop crying ended his political career, make the poet live up to his name. Hilare-ious.We've chosen an arguably lesser known work from a selection of monthly sonnets. It's called February. Enjoy.
February
from Huffington Post: The Friday Poem: 'February' by Hilaire Belloc
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Great Regulars: by Sam Riviere
the act of resistance can take many different formsfrom Morning Star: Well Versed: Quick Resistance Poem
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Great Regulars: [Craig M.] Teicher sat down with
Melissa Block to talk about the poem he wrote--and the process. He was inspired, he said, by a story in the news about Google. Rumor has it that the company plans to create eyeglasses that have smartphone capabilities."I love the Internet," Teicher explained. "I walk around with an iPad everywhere I go. But the idea of the Internet superimposed on what you see really changes the stakes. It's kind of creepy."
Teicher also explained how he structured his poem.
from NPR: Newspoet: Craig M. Teicher Writes The Day In Verse
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Great Regulars: [by Jean Esteve]
Notebook: She and the Mothsfrom The Oregonian: Poetry: 'Notebook: She and the Moths' by Jean Esteve
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Great Regulars: By Susan Briante
Green tree in the yard and a dogfrom PBS: Newshour: Weekly Poem: 'Other Denver Economies'
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Great Regulars: Moral instruction is one of poetry's
oldest functions, but it is often hard for modern poets to muster the confidence that earlier writers must have felt, both about their own wisdom and their position in society, to tell us how to live. So it can be startling to encounter an unknown work that speaks directly to us with this lost confidence. Here is a poem by the 12th century Tamil poet Avvaiyar, in Thomas H. Pruiksma's beautiful translations of her short, aphoristic poems:from Powells: Review-A-Day: A Moral Education
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Great Regulars: [by Sharon Olinka]
Beneath Everything, CalicheThese stubborn flecks: white powder
from San Antonio Express-News: Poem: 'Beneath Everything, Caliche'
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: The poet in Joydeb [Basu] had
started scripting his literary work--Meghdoot--that was applauded by the young and the old including his senior Sunil Gangopadhyay. Bhramankahini, Bhabishyat, Sreshtha Kabita are some his best works.
from The Times of India: Joydeb Basu passes away
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from The Times of India: Joydeb Basu passes away
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Poetic Obituaries: [Bhim Birag] has also many compilations
of songs, stories and poem to his credit.Poet Birag served as the editor of Narayani vernacular weekly and Bigool weekly, and was decorated with the Chinnalata Song Prize, Gorkha Dakshin Bahu among others.
from The Himalayan Times: Poet‚ lyricist Bhim Birag passes away
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: [George Fennell] was also a musician,
playing the violin and piano, (Mozart and Wagner were his favourite composers) and a poet, his verse often humorous and in the style of Robert Service. His poem Resurrection, read eloquently by his elder daughter Sybil at his funeral, deeply moved the large congregation.from Irish Times: Leading surgeon who wrote poetry and treated Saddam Hussein
then the-unscripted-self.com: Poems by George Fennell
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: In 1957 he [Barney Rosset] helped usher
in a new counterculture when he began the literary journal Evergreen Review, originally a quarterly. (It later became a bimonthly and then a glossy monthly.) The Review, published until 1973, sparkled with writers like Beckett, who had a story and poem in the first issue, and Allen Ginsberg, whose poem "Howl" appeared in the second.from The New York Times: Defied Censors, Making Racy a Literary Staple
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: [Eileen S. Tarcay] wrote feature stories,
poetry, book reviews and profiles, much of which was published in The Baltimore Sun, The Evening Sun, the Sun Magazine and the Baltimore Jewish Times.
from The Baltimore Sun: Eileen S. Tarcay, writer and professor
~~~~~~~~~~~
from The Baltimore Sun: Eileen S. Tarcay, writer and professor
~~~~~~~~~~~
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
February 21st forum announcement
Dear Poetry Aficionados,
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
Our first link in News at Eleven takes us on a journey into Afghanistan through writing, especially poetry. Our last link in that section, our Back Page item, is called "The U.S. Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin and his Maui Journey." In between we go through Palestine, China, the days of King Arthur, the works of Homer, the month of February around the world, New Zealand, and more. Of course poetry has to do with imagination and ideas too, and the articles and poems in News at Eleven, Great Regulars, and yes Poetic Obituaries as well, take us through, not only the poets' and writers' but our own poetic sensibilities and the humanness we all share. Again, be sure to visit Poetic Obituaries. You'll find a link to a tribute to Wislawa Szymborska by Katha Pollitt, which includes the poem "Could Have" that should touch you wherever you are.
Thanks for clicking in.
Yours,
Rus
Our links:
IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
IBPC Home
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
Our first link in News at Eleven takes us on a journey into Afghanistan through writing, especially poetry. Our last link in that section, our Back Page item, is called "The U.S. Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin and his Maui Journey." In between we go through Palestine, China, the days of King Arthur, the works of Homer, the month of February around the world, New Zealand, and more. Of course poetry has to do with imagination and ideas too, and the articles and poems in News at Eleven, Great Regulars, and yes Poetic Obituaries as well, take us through, not only the poets' and writers' but our own poetic sensibilities and the humanness we all share. Again, be sure to visit Poetic Obituaries. You'll find a link to a tribute to Wislawa Szymborska by Katha Pollitt, which includes the poem "Could Have" that should touch you wherever you are.
Thanks for clicking in.
Yours,
Rus
Our links:
IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
IBPC Home
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: [Emily Dickinson] had stayed in her room,
[Steven] Kuusisto surmised, because she was legally blind--a fact that led one of the men at the table to joke that the burka made the woman in blue as blind as the American poet. But she had the last word, reciting a landai--a poetic form used by Pashto women to express themselves, often anonymously, in a culture that does not want to hear from them. The poem concluded with a threefold curse:May you fail all your exams.
May you become a slave, like me.
May tears run down your face, like mine.
from Granta: Leaving Afghanistan
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News at Eleven: Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan,
held for over 2 months by Israel without being accused of any crime, entered his 65th day of hunger strike Monday.O to go with a bang,
from +972: Khader Adnan poem
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: While Beijing has done everything
in its power to suppress Liu [Xiaobo]'s work and his international recognition, a recent collection of essays and poems allows readers to explore his unique insight. No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems [Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, January 2012] features essays interspersed with poems selected by Liu's wife. The most poignant are written to her and represent, ultimately, what the struggle is about--the choice between love and hatred.from Forbes: Review: No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems by Liu Xiaobo
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