Tuesday, April 30, 2013

April 30th Poetic Ticker Clicking

News Article Tape:
Blog Entry Tape:

April 30th forum announcement


Dear Poetry Aficionados,

Poetry & Poets in Rags blog



Today is the last day of National Poetry Month. On our Back Page, which is the eleventh story in News at Eleven, we have articles, each with a multiple of book reviews. This is preceded by the results The Philadelphia Inquirer's annual poetry contest. Our Back Page is succeeded by our first links in our Great Regulars section, which has Seth Abramson giving his contemporary poetry reviews for National Poetry Month 2013. Just those three stories alone cover a slew of poetry.

While in our Great Regulars section, let me draw your attention to a few poems for various tastes. You'll find both Crazy by Sharon Olds and One Place to Begin by John Daniel in Garrison Keillor's links, and Four stills from "The Poet" (a film) for Tom Raworth by Anselm Hollo as the last link in that section, as The Time Literary Supplement's link. When perusing the Poetic Obituaries, which is our third section, scroll back up into Great Regulars, where you'll find that Portsmouth Herald News has brought us a poem by New Hampshire's now deceased poet laureate Walter Butts.

Let's begin the week in News at Eleven, though, where our first article is about a serial plagiarist, and is written by one of  the poets he plagiarized, Sandra Beasley.

Yours,
Rus

Our links:

IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags

Poetry & Poets in Rags blog

IBPC Home

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News at Eleven: "Published," it seems to me,

suggests [Christian] Ward is far less concerned about the core transgression than he is about the consequences of being caught. "Mistakes" suggests he still thinks of this as some errant drafting exercise, as if our poems are Mad Libs waiting for completion at his hand. And being truly "honest" dictates reaching out not only to the poets involved in your publicized thefts but to the rest of us whom you know to be waiting in the wings.

I am not the only American victim of Ward's plagiarism, instances of which have steadily continued to emerge since the [Helen] Mort revelation.

from The New York Times: Nice Poem; I'll Take It

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News at Eleven: The greatest virtue of [Clive] James's translation

is his gift for infusing poetry in the least likely places: the disquisitions on Christian doctrine. In Dante's age, theology was the queen of all intellectual disciplines, and the chief aim of "The Divine Comedy" is to create a song of Christian understanding. But centuries of Dante's readers have seen things otherwise. Victor Hugo even claimed that "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso" were beyond human comprehension: "We no longer recognize ourselves in the angels; the human eye was perhaps not made for so much sun, and when the poem becomes happy, it becomes boring." However compelling, this line of interpretation is misleading, and James shows us why.

from The New York Times: This Could Be 'Heaven,' or This Could Be 'Hell'

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News at Eleven: In 1943, in the midst of the Second World War,

[T.S.] Eliot published the cycle of four long poems he called "Four Quartets." It is the fullest expression of his deepest religious feelings and ideas. For me, it belongs firmly in the canon of 20th-century spiritual literature and can be read contemplatively for spiritual direction and affirmation. The poem confronts the paradox of permanence and change; time cannot exist without timelessness; there can be no order without chaos; no movement without stillness. And the stillness is the key. At the intersection of linear, chronological time--the time in which we all have to live--and eternal time, the time in which we all hope to endure, lies the still point. As Eliot describes it, "The light is still/At the still point of the turning world."

from The Georgia Bulletin: Poems Chart T.S. Eliot's Spiritual Evolution

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News at Eleven: Drysalter could also be described as a psalter

(an intentional echo, one assumes). The drift is devotional; many poems read like secular prayers. [Michael] Symmons Roberts has a gift for seeing the spirit in things even (as can happen in life) at unlikely moments and in bad weather (cars are unexpectedly present in his work--there is even something pushing an epiphany in a karaoke bar). And one cannot help noticing that summer is seldom mentioned.

from The Guardian: Drysalter by Michael Symmons Roberts--review

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News at Eleven: So poet and doctor talked about the brain,

and the doctor said something that stuck with [Bruce] Weigl.

"He said, 'The truth that we never share is that some harm is always done when you operate on the brain,' " Weigl remembered last week over coffee in his office before a class. "'It's supposed to be enclosed, and when you open it up and you cut it, things happen.'"

from The Plain Dealer: Bruce Weigl is a Pulitzer Prize finalist for poems about Vietnam and his health battle

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News at Eleven: In [Charles] Simic's vision, a simple knife

and fork appear as strange talismans of some primitive civilization only a poet can unearth. Wandering the tangled byways of his imagination, we discover in our own workaday streets a phantasmagoria of the ordinary. The closed butcher shop contains "knives that glitter like altars/In a dark church"; the tailor's dummy in a dusty window almost winces from its ordeal, pins skewering the dark cloth.

from The Washington Post: Charles Simic collects his best poems from 1962-2012

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News at Eleven: As well as a source of such aesthetic

(or political or philosophical) play, [Chris] Wallace-Crabbe's distinctive comedy is always shadowed by an equally distinctive elegiac sensibility. As this book of New and Selected Poems shows, he has become simultaneously grimmer and lighter during the course of his multi-decade career.

One might ascribe a biographical source to the grimness (the death of Wallace-Crabbe's adult son), but even in his first elegy for his son--called, without adornment, An Elegy--there is a hint of the comic in the poem's final, tragic (and weather-filled) lines: "so that I wish again/it were possible to pluck my son/out of dawn's moist air//by the pylon-legs/in that dewy-green slurred valley/before he ever hit the ground,//to sweep under his plunge/like a pink-tinged angel/and gather him gasping back into his life".

from Sydney Morning Herald: Something extra in the ordinary

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News at Eleven: Laura [Milligan] recalls that her father [Spike Milligan]

didn't talk about his war experiences, rather he wrote about them.

'That was his release for the pain. I think the war had a lot to do with the black dog that plagued him all his life. Poetry and writing was his way of explaining how he felt about things, a release.'

He wrote moving, dark verse while in the grip of manic depression. Milligan wrote a poem called 'Manic Depression' at St Luke's Wing, Woodside Hospital Psychiatric Wing, 1953. The poems starts: The pain is too much, a thousand grim winters grow in my head, in my ears the sound of the coming dead. Laura remembers what it was like to live with her father during the bouts of depression.

from ABC Radio National: Poetica: Spike Milligan the (serious) poet

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News at Eleven: The collection’s last section is a hysterical compilation

of fictitious Q&A offerings that begins with an astute observation.

Noting the sexist use of “–ess” following the unnecessary delineation between men’s and women’s titles, she [Daisy Fried] replies, “The Poetess has long felt that women’s equality should be founded in the notion that a woman is no worse than a man. So it stands to reason that men are just as bad as women. The Poetess applies the term poetess to men and women, good poetesses and bad.”

She goes on to call Charles Bukowski “our greatest living poetess.” Brilliant.

from Montgomery Media: Book Bound: Poet Daisy Fried Nails 'Women’s Poetry: Poems and Advice'

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News at Eleven: We asked, you wrote, we like!

Our second annual Inquirer poetry contest attracted more than 200 entries from all over the place, on subjects ranging from swimming to astronomy, pets to love. So many people out there care about poetry and are writing good stuff. As we did last year, we're printing the three finest of many fine poems, with thanks to all. A further selection appears online at www.philly.com/poets.

 [by Helen Townsend]

A Wall-Eyed Pike in a Glass Tank

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Inquirer 2013 Poetry contest winners
then The Philadelphia Inquirer: Philly Poetry Scene: 2013 Honorable Mentions

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News at Eleven (Back Page): April is National Poetry Month, and what

better way to celebrate than with new poetry releases? Here are four of this month's highlights--a new translation, a "best of" collection, a "collected works" worth revisiting and a camera-eye view of the world.

from NPR: Just In Time For Poetry Month, Four Fantastic Books Of Verse
then The Wichita Eagle: W.S. Merwin's 'Selected Translations' and two new versions of classic poetic works show why we need world literature
then The Globe and Mail: Peak poetry is here: A review of the season's best collections
then Star Tribune: Poetry reviews: Sarah Fox, Dobby Gibson, Matt Rasmussen

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Great Regulars: Gentrification is the process by which residents

(often minority residents) of poor urban areas are displaced, due to rising rents and property taxes, by newer, wealthier (often young and white) residents. It's seen as a possibly inevitable but nevertheless regrettable and even cruel phenomenon. It's also one of the most cockamamie metaphors for academic-institutional literary production this author has encountered, given that prior to the popularization of the creative writing MFA the literary establishment in the United States was almost exclusively white, male, straight, and coastal.

from Seth Abramson: The Huffington Post: National Poetry Month 2013 Contemporary Poetry Reviews (Part 1)
then Seth Abramson: The Huffington Post: National Poetry Month 2013 Contemporary Poetry Reviews (Part 2)

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Great Regulars: Not just heroes, of course,

but all of us will be vulnerable to cyberexposure, and, should we wish to check out by going "off-grid", I'm afraid that will only make matters worse. In their chapter on terrorism, the authors point out that governments will be suspicious of anybody who strives to be "online anonymous". Travel restrictions and--is this even possible?--even more rigorous airline screening will ensue.

from Bryan Appleyard: from The Sunday Times: The Future According to Google

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Great Regulars: On April 29th and 30th, Poetry Out Loud

will hold its National Finals of Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest. In honor of this celebration of bringing poetry to an audience of not just readers, but listeners as well, this week's Poetry Pairing matches "The Windhover" by Gerard Manley Hopkins, a popular choice for Poetry Out Loud participants, with the article, "Open Mike, Insert Verse" by David Orr.

from Shannon Doyne: The New York Times: Poetry Pairing: 'The Windhover'

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Great Regulars: It used to be that a book was published,

and that was it. Permanent, physical, tangible, it could be referred to for as long as the copy survived. That's not the case any more. We live in a world where page numbers--if they exist at all--don't correlate from device to device, where digital text can be updated at the touch of a button, where the ebooks we own can vanish without our say-so. It's something which is becoming a real issue, particularly for academics.

from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Ebook anxieties increase as publishing revolution rolls on

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As the merger of publishing giants Penguin and Random House rumbles on, the latest phase of publishing's gradual consolidation into larger and larger companies, one of the UK's most successful children's editors, the man who brought readers His Dark Materials, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, is heading in the opposite direction.

David Fickling announced today that he would be leaving Random House, where he has headed up his own imprint since 2001, to set up an independent publishing company, David Fickling Books.

from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Editor of Philip Pullman and Mark Haddon bestsellers leaves Random House

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A.A. Milne famously denounced war in his pacifist essay Peace with Honour, but classified documents found in an old trunk reveal the author of Winnie the Pooh was recruited by a secret propaganda unit during the first world war.

Jeremy Arter was sorting through old paperwork in his aunt's home when he stumbled across rare, classified documents from MI7b, a military propaganda outfit that worked with writers to present a positive version of the war to those at home.

from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Winnie the Pooh author A.A. Milne was first world war propagandist

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Great Regulars: John Freeman: Many readers cannot read great

literature because of language barriers, and another big issue is that many works of literature have never been translated at all. We are publishing Granta in Chinese to counter this problem.

We'll translate the best literary works in the world to Chinese, and we will also translate Chinese works into English, Spanish and other languages, bringing Chinese literature to the world.

from John Freeman: International Business Times: Granta Magazine's China Edition Launches With First Issue On Britain: An Interview With Editor John Freeman On The State of Chinese Literature

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Great Regulars: Crazy

by Sharon Olds

I've said that he and I had been crazy

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Crazy by Sharon Olds

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Journey by Train
by May Sarton

Stretched across counties, countries, the train

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Journey by Train by May Sarton

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One Place to Begin
by John Daniel

You need a reason, any reason--skiing, a job in movies,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: One Place to Begin by John Daniel

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Poem
by Frank O'Hara

Let's take a walk, you

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Poem by Frank O'Hara

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Pretty Halcyon Days
by Ogden Nash

How pleasant to sit on the beach,

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Pretty Halcyon Days by Ogden Nash

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A Sighting
by Connie Wanek

The gray owl had seen us and had fled

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: A Sighting by Connie Wanek

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A Slice of Wedding Cake
by Robert Graves

Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: A Slice of Wedding Cake by Robert Graves

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Great Regulars: But to make that poem a modern poem,

the kind of poem that speaks immediately and naturally to us even a century later, something more is required: the kind of modesty and forbearance that knows the danger of the pathetic fallacy, and uses nature metaphorically only with a quiet, ironic reticence. What we learn about [Edward] Thomas from this poem is that he is the kind of man who sees the winter prolonged in the spring, death counterfeiting life, and takes a bitter satisfaction in the sight.

As [Matthew] Hollis shows, Thomas was at the heart of the Georgian milieu.

from Adam Kirsch: New Republic: The Greatest English Poet You Haven't Heard of

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In other words, they know what they need the Bible to show; their problem is how to find what must already be there.

And the rabbis know the answer is there because the Torah is unlike every other document in the world, since it alone was authored (or dictated) by God. God is absolute, and he introduces a kind of absoluteness into the text that it would be absurd to expect to find in merely human productions. Humans may use words randomly, picking the ones that come to hand; but God is omniscient, and everything he does has a purpose. Once this idea is accepted, gezeirah shavah becomes not just rational but necessary. Of course God intends the linkages that tradition has identified: To say otherwise would be to say that God writes like a human being.

from Adam Kirsch: Tablet: The Talmud's Absolute Value

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Great Regulars: If you had to divide your favorite things

between yourself and somebody else, what would you keep? Patricia Clark, a Michigan poet, has it figured out.

Fifty-Fifty

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 423

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Great Regulars: Bruce Guernsey of Bethel has appeared twice

before in the Take Heart column. Today he offers a group portrait of a family at the dump.

The Dump Pickers

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

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Great Regulars: [by E. Ethelbert Miller]

When Love Is Like Death

I love you again (today)

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-notes: When Love Is Like Death

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Great Regulars: Liu Xia, 54, was pictured in a black car

outside the court building, and told reporters waiting there, "I'm not free."

She later said that the charges against Liu Hui were politically motivated.

"That's for sure," an emotional and defiant Liu Xia told Hong Kong media. "They want to break one of my legs, and then break the other one. But I am only happy when I am standing up straight by myself."

She said her brother had been a constant source of emotional support to her, and that she was still able to visit Liu Xiaobo in prison once a month. "He's OK," she added.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Liu Xia Attends Brother's Trial in Chinese Capital

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Great Regulars: "No man but a blockhead,"

Samuel Johnson famously observed, "ever wrote, except for money." This is tough news for poets, since the writing they do is often less immediately profitable than a second-grader's math homework (the kid gets a cookie or a hug; the poet gets a rejection letter from The Kenyon Review). Poetry itself is tremendously valuable, of course, but that value is often realized many years after a poem's composition, and sometimes long after the end of its author's life.

from David Orr: NPR: From Dissections To Depositions, Poets' Second Jobs

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Great Regulars: by Tiffany Anne Tondut

we did silly things to those library books,

from Jody Porter: Morning Star: Well Versed: Tiffany Anne Tondut--anarchists in love

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Great Regulars: While not dealing directly with the first world war

and the poet's pacifism, "Hymn of Hymns" plainly reveals a mind repelled by heroics. In the Hymn's most memorable lines, [John] Rodker's speaker detonates the hubris of "Attacking the stars/from eyes five feet above ground". At the same time, he's undoubtedly exhilarated by the surge of his iconoclasm. The traditional psalmic devices--strong rhythms, incantatory repetition--underlie the force of this hymn against hymns. Although not apparently designed as such, it would have made a rousing performance poem.

Hymn of Hymns

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Poem of the week: Hymn of Hymns by John Rodker

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Great Regulars: Bob Hicok is one of my favorite poets.

Partly, it's the movement of his lines, which are both conversational and utterly unexpected, almost as if he (or we) are joining a conversation that extends beyond the framework of the poem. "My heart is cold," he writes in "Pilgrimage," the opening effort in his new collection "Elegy Owed" (Copper Canyon: 112 pp., $22), "it should wear a mitten. My heart/is whatever temperature a heart is/in a man who doesn't believe in heaven."

from David L. Ulin: Los Angeles Times: Bob Hicok's relentless vision marks 'Elegy Owed'

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Great Regulars: "There's potential for poetry to have more

of a presence in public life," she continues. "At formal events like readings, or things like the poems that have been posted on buses--you know, I love that idea of that sort of carrying a poem in your pocket. That might be a way to start incorporating poetry into one's everyday life."

[by Dilruba Ahmed]

Ghazal

It's wine I need. Is it a sin to have another?

from NPR: Poetry: Dilruba Ahmed: An Outsider Turns To Poetry

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Great Regulars: [by Andrew Zawacki]

accelerator

Enzeroed by the ozone

from The Oregonian: Poetry: 'accelerator' by Andrew Zawacki

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Great Regulars: By Christian Barter

Down the driveway, standing on the Russell Farm Road,

from PBS: Newshour: Weekly Poem: 'Stars'

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Great Regulars: [by Walter E. Butts]

Monarch*

for Bill Kemmett

We're sitting here in summer green

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poems from the Hoot

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Great Regulars: "Sonnet 29" is a favorite of mine because

it makes me laugh about unhappiness--my own and Shakespeare's.

An occupational hazard of poets is feeling oneself an unappreciated outsider. One compares oneself to others in the trade. One decides one isn't really any good anyway. But Shakespeare? Can it be possible that Shakespeare could get depressed and want another poet's "art"?

from Slate: When the Bard Had the Blues

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Great Regulars: When "Four stills from 'The Poet' (a film) for Tom Raworth"

was printed in the TLS, it appeared alongside the works of concrete and beat poets, including Ian Hamilton Finlay's "Large Mural Poem", Michael Horovitz's "Polyglottal Stop" and an untitled piece by Dom Sylvester Houédard. The notes of bathos and satire in [Anselm] Hollo's verse echo the mock-heroic poetry of the eighteenth century; he uses numbered stanzas (a pastiche of cantos, film stills and storyboard technique).

from The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: "Four stills from 'The Poet' (a film) for Tom Raworth"

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Poetic Obituaries: The late Abdilahi Ma'alim Dodan, who was

born in Ethiopia in 1941, gained prominence as poet when he was expelled by the Ethiopian government of whom he had become a thorn in the flesh and continued to do in his exile home in Somalia.

from Somaliland Sun: Prominent Poet Dodan Dies in Ethiopia

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Poetic Obituaries: Before she died on 28 December, 2012

at the age of 78, the renowned American poet and and human rights activist [Jayne Cortez] had instructed her family that she be buried in Africa, the place she called home.

The late poet was an all round artist: a poet, performer , theatre director and an active change agent. Besides writing a couple of poetry works published with her imprint, Bola Press,Cortez founded the Watts Repertory Theatre company for which she served as it's artistic director.

from Vanguard: Nigeria: Jayne Cortez--African American Poet
then Art for Humanity: Jayne Cortez dies at 78

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Poetic Obituaries: Although he [Patrick Garland] harboured ambitions

in feature films, and directed a 1971 television adaptation of Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose (starring Richard Harris and an Emmy award-winning Jenny Agutter), as well as a creditable 1973 movie of Ibsen's A Doll's House (with Claire Bloom and Anthony Hopkins), his life developed in the theatre. Much of his work was informed by his love of literature, and the poetry of Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Philip Larkin and John Clare. In 1963 he formed Poetry International with Ted Hughes and Charles Osborne.

from The Guardian: Patrick Garland obituary

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Poetic Obituaries: [Shri Krishna Tiwari] was recently awarded

with 'Hindi Gaurav Samman' by the Uttar Pradesh government.

He has previously been awarded with Sahitya Bhushan and UP Gaurav Samman.

from Business Standard: Hindi poet Shri Krishna Tiwari passes away

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Tuesday, April 23, 2013

April 23rd Poetic Ticker Clicking

News Article Tape:
Blog Entry Tape:

April 23rd forum announcement


Dear Poetry Aficionados,

Poetry & Poets in Rags blog



We begin this week with a clutch of links to poems about and dedicated to the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings. Even last week, a day after the tragedy, we had one on our Back Page. They are still coming in. On this subject too, scroll down and check out the articles by Great Regulars Jeff Baker, David Biespiel, and E. Ethelbert Miller.

It's a week with a variety of topics. The second story in News at Eleven is about poet Liu Xia reminding the world, "I'm not free." This is followed by a clutch of links to poems at Indian Country in celebration of National Poetry Month. Our Back Page brings you to an item about Poetry in Unexpected Places, or PUP.

We link to dozens more poetry items and reviews this week. I'll let you get to your reading. Thanks for clicking in.

Yours,
Rus

Our links:

IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags

Poetry & Poets in Rags blog

IBPC Home

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News at Eleven: [Scott] Poole tells Here & Now's Robin Young

that he sees the pain involved in running a marathon as a metaphor for what's happening now.

"The fact that the marathoners push through that pain and conquer it inspires us and makes us hope for something better, and I think we're all just hoping the same exact thing for Boston right now," he said.

By Scott Poole:

To Run
 ~a prayer for Boston

from 90.9WBUR: Here & Now: Pacific Northwest Poet Pays Tribute To Boston
then The Press-Enterprise: UCR: Poems to head to Boston
then The Quad: Creative Submission: "A Runner's Day", a poem by Adam Vevang
then The New Yorker: Takes: A Boston Poem
then Democrat and Chronicle: Leo Roth: Poems hit home after bombings
then Los Angeles Times: Amanda Palmer posts 'A Poem for Dzhokhar' and responds to commenters

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News at Eleven: Liu [Xia] was allowed to leave

the Beijing apartment where she has been held for two-and-a-half years to attend the trial of her brother on fraud charges that his lawyers said are trumped up to punish the family. Taken by car to the court in Beijing's suburbs, she sat through the morning-long proceedings, and when she came out accompanied by her lawyer, she shouted from an open window at diplomats and reporters.

"I'm not free. When they tell you I'm free, tell them I'm not," she said.

from The Washington Post via Associated Press: Wife of China's Jailed Nobel Winner: I'm Not Free

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News at Eleven: Erika T. Wurth

April 18, 2013

Inside Both of Us

. . . the sheep were like the dead like his

from Indian Country: 'Inside Both of Us,' a Poem by Erika T. Wurth for National Poetry Month
then Indian Country: 'The Cedar Tree,' a Poem by Richard Walker for National Poetry Month
then Indian Country: 'Soldiers of Bone,' a Poem by Simon Moya-Smith for National Poetry Month
then Indian Country: 'Prescription Sticks,' a Poem by Diane Glancy for National Poetry Month
then Indian Country: Poems From Flood Song by Navajo Sherwin Bitsui, for National Poetry Month

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