Tuesday, May 22, 2007

News at Eleven: E. Ethelbert Miller: Migration is an important

theme in African American literature. Do you see Katrina being written about many years from now?

Kalamu ya Salaam: Hopefully, Katrina will be understood as part of a larger issue of urban development in the 21st century. I'm not sure that Katrina will be a major issue because I foresee momentous changes in front of us in the aftermath of the Iraq debacle, larger environmental issues, and the shifting geo-political system that sees the rise to singular dominance of China.

from Foreign Policy in Focus: Interview with Kalamu ya Salaam
also see Foreign Policy in Focus: You can't survive on salt water

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News at Eleven: I ask him [Wole Soyinka] who

he thinks would win in a fight between Hamlet and Iago and--delight, delight--he actually rubs his chin.

"That's a very Zen question. There's so much to it that I think the situation would demand continual rematch. Hamlet is deeply intelligent, yes, but Iago is cunning. And intelligence so rarely wins out over cunning. If it did, the history of Nigeria's leadership would have been very different."

from The Telegraph: The god of war is my muse

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News at Eleven: The Garden of Lost Vespers

[by Nicos Alexiou], published by Salonika Press, a Seaburn Publishing Group imprint devoted to poetry, is available at Seaburn Books in Astoria.

Exile

from Greek News: The Garden of Lost Vespers: Poems by Nicos Alexiou

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News at Eleven: It's now certain

that the ailing Donald Hall, 78, will be leaving his post as U.S. poet laureate soon.

from Post-Gazette: Hall out, but Studs parties on

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News at Eleven: [Jill] Balcon was on occasion

visibly distressed by having to explore with me her husband's [Cecil Day-Lewis's] references in his verse to other women he was involved with during their almost 23 years together. Yet she always finally saw the bigger picture - the search to understand the poetry.

from The Independent: The literary wife: Working with the widow

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News at Eleven: Lack of confidence was not

his [John Keats'] problem. He would just have liked to live, thrive and grow wise. There is no good reason to believe that he would not have gone on developing: there are reasons, but they are all bad.

from The Times: Cultural Amnesia

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News at Eleven: In the essay, "Writers and

the War against Nature," [Gary] Snyder makes clear the role of the eco-poet: to be a "mirror of truth" and give in to a "heart of compassion."

from Santa Barbara Independent: Eco-Poet Gary Snyder to Read at the Third Biennial Ojai Poetry Festival

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News at Eleven (Back Page): For rent: 3 bdrm apt,

w/d hookup, $1,100 a mo., Centralville. Btw, Jack Kerouac was born here.

from The Lowell Sun: You can live in Beat history--for $1,100 a month

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Great Regulars: The brief lines and strong

simple words create a feeling of spaciousness and hush that I found intensely beguiling.

Coda to Briggflatts by Basil Bunting

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Poem of the week: This week, Basil Bunting

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Great Regulars: The education secretary, Alan Johnson,

who yesterday launched his campaign for the Labour party's deputy leadership, announced this morning that every state secondary school in England will be able to choose 20 of the titles in order to set up a dedicated "boys' bookshelf" in the library.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Education secretary arranges boys' bookshelves

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Great Regulars: I should also say thanks

to the editors at The York Daily Record. They have not only agreed to publish local poetry in the daily paper, they have embraced and encouraged the idea. I deeply appreciate the support and guidance Scott Fisher and Jim McClure have offered over the past two years. It was a life-long dream of mine to write a newspaper column and I have enjoyed the opportunity, with this "Poetryork" column, to shine the spotlight on so many talented local poets.

from Bill Diskin: The York Daily Record: Poetryork: Thanks to York for supporting poetry

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Great Regulars: The way mustard gas affects

the respiratory system mimics drowning, and thus the speaker is accurate is portraying the dying man as a drowning victim. The speaker likens the sight as “under a green sea” denoting the way the air would look after they had been bombarded with mustard gas.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Owen's 'Dulce et Decorum Est'

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Great Regulars: He wakes in the morning; ". . . you know

how if you've had a few/You’ll wake at dawn, all healthy, like sea breezes,/Raring to go . . . And then, oh Jesus,/It hits you." He looks down at the skip and sees his life there, "still sodden, on the bricks;/there lay my poor old life, arse over tip./Or was it mine?"

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Whose life is it anyway?

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Great Regulars: Poem: "Tornado Weather"

by Vincent Wixon, from The Square Grove: Poems.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of May 21, 2007

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Great Regulars: Not only do we have road rage,

but it seems we have road love, too. Here Elizabeth Hobbs of Maine offers us a two-car courtship. Be careful with whom you choose to try this little dance.

Slow Dancing on the Highway:
the Trip North

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 112

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Great Regulars: Then [Carl] Dennis makes the future

seem impractical, even delusional: those impatient drivers, honking to move on, seem oblivious to the inevitable loss, maybe even the incipient panic of having "started already" across a bridge that is narrow, with no turning back.

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poets Choice

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Great Regulars: To the Moon

by Soselo (Josef Stalin)

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: To the Moon by Soselo (Josef Stalin)

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Great Regulars: 'Last Night'

By Tonette Long

from The Kansas City Star: Poet's Corner: 'Last Night'

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Great Regulars: A Cartoon of Hurt

by Michael Ryan

from The New Yorker: Poetry: A Cartoon of Hurt

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Great Regulars: In Prison

by Jean Valentine

from The New Yorker: Poetry: In Prison

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Great Regulars: A Walk in March

by Grace Paley

from The New Yorker: Poetry: A Walk in March

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Great Regulars: Strength

[by Janice B. Mulcahey]

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Strength

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Great Regulars: We recognize these poems,

and we recognize ourselves in these poems, but in a way that goes beyond the power of words to make clear. As Wittgenstein put it, "I do not understand [[Georg] Trakl's poems]; but their tone pleases me."

Here's "De Profundis," one of my favorite of Trakl's individual poems:

from Powells: Review-A-Day: The Poems of Georg Trakl

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Great Regulars: Jane McKie's first collection,

Morocco Rococo travels far and wide - poems about Egypt, Brighton, France, Callanish, the Sahara, written by a woman living in Scotland and published by Cinnamon Press in Wales.

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week: Borderer by Jane McKie

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Great Regulars: "The Ball of Earth and Heaven"

At Shea Stadium
By Richard Marx Weinraub

from Slate: "The Ball of Earth and Heaven"--By Richard Marx Weinraub

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Great Regulars: When the TLS published

"View from an Upper Window" in July 1957, [C.] Day Lewis had just finished his tenure as Professor of Poetry at Oxford; and in 1968, four years before his death, he was made Poet Laureate. A review of [Peter] Stanford's book will appear in a forthcoming issue of the TLS.

View From an Upper Window
for Kenneth and Jane Clark

from The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week

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Poetic Obituaries: [Dame Mary Douglas's] most recently

published book, "Thinking in Circles: An Essay on Ring Composition," came out this year; it offers interpretations of texts structured in circular patterns like the Book of Numbers, Chinese novels and Zoroastrian poetry.

"Writings that used to baffle and dismay unprepared readers, when read correctly, turn out to be marvelously controlled and complex compositions," she wrote.

from The New York Times: Dame Mary Douglas, 86, a Wide-Ranging Anthropologist, Is Dead

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Poetic Obituaries: In other work, Dr. [Donald M.] Ginsberg

studied superconductors made from films of lead, tin and mercury. He also wrote and published often humorous poetry on subjects related to physics and laboratory research.

from The New York Times: Donald M. Ginsberg, 73, Expert in the Working of Superconductors, Is Dead

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Poetic Obituaries: Ruby [Lee Green] gave her family

a great legacy in a beautiful history of her family, a book of poetry, and many original paintings. She also wrote and published her husband's family history, which is on record at the Ketchum Community Library.

from The Idaho Mountain Express: Ruby Lee Green

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Poetic Obituaries: Spc. [Kyle A.] Little had already

done some thinking about heroism. As a teenager, he had penned a poem about the subject after the 1999 Worcester warehouse blaze in which six city firefighters died.

"All of those men . . . were definitely heroic," he wrote. "When anyone gives their life for other people you must respect them. I will always honor these people, as long as I live."

from Worcester Telegram & Gazette: Son, husband, hero

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Poetic Obituaries: The mother found many of the poems

her daughter [Jennifer McCallum] enjoyed writing. Her daughter's friends say she was working on a novel--probably science fiction.

from The Dallas Morning News: Missing woman's body is identified

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Poetic Obituaries: [Murari Prasad Mishra] had written

and published a number of lyrics, poems, Sambalpuri folk songs short stories and plays. Some of his popular dramas are "Akbar Rai" and "Gountia Babu".

from The Times of India: Former Orissa minister Murari Prasad Misra dies

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Poetic Obituaries: [Zain Mohammed Qadri Al-Saqqaf] penetrated the inner

expression that goes beyond the Egyptian prose known as "Zagal." His writings are closer to home, and touch the life of villagers and city folk alike. These feelings are not accidental, but represent a shared concern for the neglected and isolated mass in the village and inner cities.

from Yemen Times: The voice of the village

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Poetic Obituaries: A technical writer, book editor,

reviewer and poet, Ryan was also the author of the pithy prose for the long-running Chronicle cartoon T.O. Sylvester. But the work that brought her a popular audience was the memoir that critics called "unforgettable."

from San Francisco Chronicle: Ryan spread her mom's wisdom to vast audience

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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

May 15th Poetic Ticker Clicking

News Article Tape:
Blog Entry Tape:
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May 15th forum announcement

Dear Poetry Aficionados,

Poetry & Poets in Rags

I leave all that is in News at Eleven, Great Regulars, and Poetic Obituaries to your discovery.

Today we set aside some Wordpad territory just to thank Gina Bryson and David Ayers for all they do for us in the InterBoard Poetry Community. New and improved judge's pages are in the works, new and improved interviews, and much more. But beyond this, micro decisions get made all the time, always to the benefit of the online poet. They are forever trying to make IBPC better than it ever was.

Thanks for clicking in.

Yours,
Rus

Our links:

IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags

Poetry & Poets in Rags blog

IBPC Home

IBPC Newswire

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News at Eleven: Limen

[by Natasha Trethewey]

from The Clarion-Ledger: Poet earns praise, Pulitzer Gulfport native joins an elite class

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News at Eleven: A Natasha Trethewey poem

Miscegenation

from The Roanoke Times: Eulogies inspire Pulitzer-winning poet

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News at Eleven: "Part of the reason for doing this,"

[Donald] Hall had said in an interview Wednesday, "is that English and American poetry in the '50s and '60s was a sort of continuum," in which poets on both sides of the Atlantic stayed familiar with each other's work. After that, for reasons he doesn't know, "we drew apart."

from The Washington Post: Crossing The Pond With Poetry

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News at Eleven: [Rabindranath Tagore] had no time for [Mahatma] Gandhi's

rejection of European machines and preference for primitive Indian ones like the 'charkha', or the spinning wheel.

"If a man is stunted by big machines", Tagore wrote, "the danger of being stunted by small machines must not be lost sight of. The charkha in its proper place can do no harm . . . but where . . . it is in the wrong place, then the thread can only be spun at the cost of a great deal of the mind itself. The man is no less valuable than the cotton thread."

from Mangalorean: Tagore--his work will live for generations

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News at Eleven: And they are, admittedly, fantastic.

No one could possibly deny the brilliance of Auden's early crack-of-doom phrase-making, which maps the mythic and the psychological on to a landscape. "Who stands the crux left of the watershed,/On the wet road between the chafing grass".

from The Guardian: Saviour and scapegoat

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News at Eleven: [Siegfried Sassoon] wasn't nicknamed "Mad Jack" lightly--

his displays of courage were manic. On one occasion (spurred by the trauma of witnessing a friend shot dead in the forehead before him) he single-handedly charged and captured a substantial German trench, only to flop down into it, pull a poetry book out of his pocket and begin to read from it.

from Daily Mail: Siegfried Sassoon: A very strange kind of rebel

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News at Eleven: Less than two months after his [Roque Dalton's]

return, he was arrested, held incommunicado, tortured and interrogated by the CIA, and again sentenced to death.

As he awaited execution, there was another miracle: the 1965 earthquake struck. The prison was fractured in half and Dalton simply walked out into the streets and freedom.

from Party for Socialism and Liberation: The revolutionary poetry and life of Roque Dalton

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News at Eleven: We sit and look Across the room.

You shift your elbow, smoke And tap your pipe by turns . . . There are enormous silences between groups of words, big enough to make Pinter sound overstacked, as if she [Josephine Dickinson] is waiting for the resonance of each to be thoroughly gone before the next arrives.

from The Sunday Times: The silence and the lambs

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News at Eleven: by Heather A. McMacken

The Gods of Poetry

from Metro Times: Gets hard for language

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News at Eleven: "It's not war, it's not freedom,

it's just hair," said Ms. [Suzanne] Shah, who points out to her students how Ms. [Mohja] Kahf is more observer than judge. In the poem about American women seeing her grandmother washing her feet before prayers, for example, Ms. Kahf writes, "They fluster about and flutter their hands, and I can see a clash of civilizations brewing in the Sears bathroom."

from The New York Times: She Carries Weapons; They Are Called Words

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News at Eleven (Back Page): A poem arranged as a picture . . .

a blurred street grid of Seattle . . . a dancer's feet drawn with her feet . . . Yes, these lines are art. What do they mean?

All sorts of stuff.

from New Haven Independent: Talk The Line

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Great Regulars: Audiences are clamouring for art

of almost all kinds (they never clamour for poetry), and the only way to satisfy the demand is long-term investment. The arts must escape the prison of state funding or die. Slowly.

All the big arts companies have been diversifying their income streams, with a good deal of success.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Sunday Times: The gift that keeps on giving

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Great Regulars: "Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus"

is one of Catullus' sillier, bedroom romps of a poem. As an invocation of sexual fantasy, it dramatizes sex not as romantic or tragic (that comes elsewhere), but as comic. Still, I suspect that some, like Mrs. [Margaret] Kennedy, will find the poem's sensual trance a delight.

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: Poetry

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Great Regulars: "Publishing is one of the industries

in which women have been able to forge careers that takes them to the top, but I still think it hides a lot of very talented women who are achieving huge things," said [Catherine] Clarke, explaining the need for the prize.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Macmillan director scoops women's publishing prize

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The image is such a simple one that in the hands of a less skilled poet it would almost certainly have drifted into banality; Frost, however, sustains it effortlessly, turning its simplicity into a virtue. Here it is, in full.

Mending Wall by Robert Frost

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Poem of the week: This week, something from Robert Frost.

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Great Regulars: "Certainly what I'm seeing at fiction readings,

and not just mine, are audiences made up almost entirely of women," [Jennifer] Weiner said. "I'm really grateful from a purely personal point of view. But it is strange to think men have abandoned fiction and women have ceded the rest of the culture."

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Not just for chicks

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Great Regulars: When poetasters spew forth their garbage

and call it poetry, both poetry and potential readers of poetry lose. The speaker refers to poetasters as "half poets," and the so-called poetry of "half poets" "is not poetry."

Plus she asserts that the real poets "among us" must be "literalists of the imagination." And until they are, their work will be examples of "insolence and triviality."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Marianne Moore's 'Poetry'

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Great Regulars: We should have moments in our lives

when we take a holiday from our "must-have" anxieties to enjoy a "what-we’ve-got" axolotl epiphany, evolution being evident in our state of mind and not our most recent acquisition.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Happy with their lot

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