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Tuesday, September 13, 2011
September 13th forum announcement
Dear Poetry Aficionados,
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
The poem that moves me most when it comes to 9/11, is Edwin Arlington Robinson's 1896-7 version of The House on the Hill. It was introduced to me as a 9/11 poem shortly after, when Robert Pinsky came to Lowell MA ten years ago, and shared his research, giving a talk on poetry that would apply to this tragedy.
Robinson's villanelle still holds, that "there is nothing more to say" as the refrain goes. Yet, we still need to keep facing it, talking about it, and writing and sharing poetry and art about it. 9/11 silences us, but with the silence of the poem when the read is done, never enough, always more to repeat, as I share this often-repeated verse:
By Edwin Arlington Robinson
The House on the Hill
They are all gone away,
The House is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.
Through broken walls and gray
The winds blow bleak and shrill:
They are all gone away.
Nor is there one to-day
To speak them good or ill:
There is nothing more to say.
Why is it then we stray
Around the sunken sill?
They are all gone away,
And our poor fancy-play
For them is wasted skill:
There is nothing more to say.
There is ruin and decay
In the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There is nothing more to say.
As we did last week, we begin Poetry & Poets in Rags with the 9/11 theme. Our first link is to an article that discusses 9/11 poetry. E.A.R.'s poem is not in the discussion. And there are many more articles about poets and poetry in all three of our sections, many not about 9/11, but a few more that 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
The poem that moves me most when it comes to 9/11, is Edwin Arlington Robinson's 1896-7 version of The House on the Hill. It was introduced to me as a 9/11 poem shortly after, when Robert Pinsky came to Lowell MA ten years ago, and shared his research, giving a talk on poetry that would apply to this tragedy.
Robinson's villanelle still holds, that "there is nothing more to say" as the refrain goes. Yet, we still need to keep facing it, talking about it, and writing and sharing poetry and art about it. 9/11 silences us, but with the silence of the poem when the read is done, never enough, always more to repeat, as I share this often-repeated verse:By Edwin Arlington Robinson
The House on the Hill
They are all gone away,
The House is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.
Through broken walls and gray
The winds blow bleak and shrill:
They are all gone away.
Nor is there one to-day
To speak them good or ill:
There is nothing more to say.
Why is it then we stray
Around the sunken sill?
They are all gone away,
And our poor fancy-play
For them is wasted skill:
There is nothing more to say.
There is ruin and decay
In the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There is nothing more to say.
As we did last week, we begin Poetry & Poets in Rags with the 9/11 theme. Our first link is to an article that discusses 9/11 poetry. E.A.R.'s poem is not in the discussion. And there are many more articles about poets and poetry in all three of our sections, many not about 9/11, but a few more that are.
Thanks for clicking in.
Yours,
Rus
Our links:
IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
IBPC Home
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Continuing to put forth Auden's poem,
regardless of its merits, neglects the vital response of contemporary poets to this tragedy.But we cannot be silent. So between the Scylla of cliché and the Charybdis of exploitation, poetry moves. Martín Espada's "Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100," for example, offers a globalist ode to the workers on the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center who perished in the attacks. By focusing on people often unnoticed, sometimes undocumented, and occasionally disparaged, Espada celebrates the diverse gathering of humanity that the American project has enabled, and that the attacks threatened to separate, in the rhetoric of security and the ideology of fear.
from The Huffington Post: The Poetry Of 9/11 And Its Aftermath
or Poetry Foundation: Beyond Grief and Grievance
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: I cannot say for certain whether
we are stronger or weaker as a people. We live within a shared experience, but I also realize there are losses I cannot comprehend though poetry. Our humanity which, like the word, is as resilient as it ever was.Consolation
By Perveen Shakir
(Translated by Baidar Bakht and Leslie Lavigne)
from The Brooklyn Paper: Chang: 9-11's legacy of words
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Younes Belmalha [a.k.a Inkicharia], a Moroccan poet
who used YouTube to share his thoughts on the Moroccan government has also been arrested, and his YouTube channel has since been wiped of all videos. It is, however, unclear if the disappearance of the videos was done out of choice or not.
from The Next Web: 3 Moroccan online activists arrested this week
~~~~~~~~~~~
from The Next Web: 3 Moroccan online activists arrested this week
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Ayat Al-Gormezi, a 20 year old poet
and student at the Faculty of Teachers, has been subjected to harassment, defamation, intimidation and threats of rape and murder. On the 12th of June 2011 a military court in Bahrain sentenced her to one year in prison for reading out a poem criticizing the country's King.Ayat was unexpectedly released from prison on 13 July 2011 on the condition that she would not travel outside Bahrain or speak to the media about her detention.
Ayat's poem
The poem that led to her imprisonment:
from AhlulBayt News Agency: Ayat's poem
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: [Zehra Nigah] speaks in a woman's tongue,
using feminine imagery and idiom to make powerful social and political comments. She has alluded to the bitter fratricidal war that culminated in the creation of Bangladesh as well as the heart-rending situation in Afghanistan in lyrical, pathos-driven yet politically astute poems such as 'Bhejo Nabi ji Rehmatein' and 'Qissa Gul Badshah'. She has written of the repressive Hudood Ordinances introduced during General Zia's oppressive regime as also about love, friendship and small everyday joys and sorrows. A recent poem about female foeticide was occasioned by the brutal statistics on the sheer numbers of the girl child put to death before they have the chance to live.from The Friday Times: Flower of truth
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Tracy K. Smith's father worked on the Hubble
space telescope. Came home bursting with pride when Hubble unveiled the universe.Little did he know his daughter would be such a poet. That she would run and run with those images. Out to the ends of the cosmos. In to the heart of human joy and grief.
Tracy Smith's new collection is called "Life on Mars". It takes us far away, and very close to home. "We are part of it," she writes of the universe and its mysteries. "Not guests."
from 90.9 WBUR: On Point: Poet Tracy K. Smith: Life On Mars
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: A former U.S. poet laureate, [Donald] Hall
has always had this elemental power--to vividly evoke his particular New England climate and geography so that it can't be mistaken for any other--but what is more unexpected in this new collection of poems, his 16th, is passion. Eros and the particulars of skin-on-skin are found on nearly every page. Furtive teens in "After Prom" pause to think of "parents, preachers, pregnancy" before plunging in; the poem "Nymph and Shepherd" recalls the metaphor of orgasm as a little death--le petit mort--in its opening line: "She died a dozen times before I died."from Los Angeles Times: Donald Hall's poems in 'The Back Chamber'
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Ireland is internationally famous for
its literary giants: Yeats, Beckett and Wilde among them. Less well known is the poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh (1904-67), though the study of his works is compulsory in Irish schools. But I've not heard of him before this week, I confess to Rosaleen Kearney, the manager of the Patrick Kavanagh Centre in the village of Iniskeen, County Monaghan. "You're not alone," she says. "Patrick Kavanagh is not well known outside Ireland, which is a pity as his poetry is as important to us as Yeats's."from Stuff: Finding the Poetry of Old Ireland
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: . . . the barred owl calls
from the well of my mind,more echo than thought, as it fades through the wind
and flickers away to the silence beyond
like the voice, in myself, of another.
His [John Burnside's] poetry is best when dwelling in possibility, the imagination having been skilfully persuaded, by rhythm and by image, to postpone making up its mind indefinitely.
from The Guardian: Black Cat Bone by John Burnside--review
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: American writers' body the Authors Guild,
the Australian Society of Authors, the Union Des Écrivaines et des Écrivains Québécois and eight individual authors--[Fay] Weldon, [T.J.] Stiles, children's author Pat Cummings, novelists Angelo Loukakis, Roxana Robinson and Danièle Simpson, poet André Roy and Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro--have filed suit in Manhattan against the universities of Michigan, California, Wisconsin, Indiana and Cornell. They claim the universities obtained unauthorised scans of 7m copyright-protected books from Google--by authors including Simone de Beauvoir, Italo Calvino, Günter Grass, Michel Houellebecq, Mario Vargas Llosa, Herta Müller and Haruki Murakami--and pooled the files in a repository called HathiTrust, which is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit [PDF].from The Guardian: Writers sue US university libraries for copyright infringement
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven (Back Page): As a child, Philip Schultz didn't understand
why he couldn't learn. He was held back twice and both his classmates and teachers ignored him. When he revealed that he wanted to be a writer, he was ridiculed.Schultz went on to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. But it wasn't until his young son was diagnosed with dyslexia that Schultz, then 58, had a name for the disorder that had plagued him his entire life.
from NPR: Prize-Winning Poet: Discovering 'My Dyslexia' At 58
then NPR: Excerpt: My Dyslexia
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Billy Collins: Not just on demand but
on something so big. You know some of my poems. My poems are about little things. They're about whether the salt and pepper shakers get along, you know, and that kind of stuff, walking the dog. They're not about geopolitical trauma, and I said I'll certainly show up. You can't just say I'm busy to Congress, but I thought at the time I would find something to read by another poet. In the back of my mind I thought probably Whitman. Anyway, a few weeks went by and one morning I woke up at 5 in the morning, early for me, and I just thought, you should give this try, you're copping out here, get off the bench. And so two things passed through my mind: One was that I could write an elegy, a poem for the dead. So I had the genre of the elegy.from Jeffrey Brown: PBS: Newshour: Preview of 'America Remembers 9/11': Reading by Poets Billy Collins, Nancy Mercado
then PBS: Poet Billy Collins Reflects on 9/11 Victims in 'The Names'
then PBS: New Yorker, Poet Nancy Mercado Reads 'Going to Work'
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: There've been rumblings for a while about
the possibility of Amazon launching an ebook rental service--but according to a report in the Wall Street Journal (which is, in turn, "according to people familiar with the matter"), Amazon is now "talking with book publishers about launching a Netflix Inc.-like service for digital books, in which customers would pay an annual fee to access a library of content."from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Is Amazon about to move into the book rental business?
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: George Bowering
The World, I Guess If you don't write it down, the poem will go away again,
from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: If it's Thursday, it's IOW Verse Day
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: [Michael] Hart began to type and scan
other texts: 100 by 1993, 1,000 by 1997--in 1998 he told Wired magazine that "20 or 30 years from now, there's going to be some gizmo that kids carry around in their back pocket that has everything in it--including our books, if they want"--and 10,000 by 2003. Today, with the help of hundreds of volunteers, Project Gutenberg offers readers access to 36,000 free ebooks, in 60 different languages and a range of formats. Run completely by volunteers, its mission is "to encourage the creation and distribution of ebooks".from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Michael Hart, inventor of the ebook, dies aged 64
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Jacob predicts that those 90 million souls
will be united in "the love of larger truth." He expects "a new Beauty" to take its birth from "Brotherhood and Wisdom." Even though he deems the war "unjust" and thus unnecessary, he is optimistic that those later generations will profit from the true goal of the war, which was to keep the nation united. Confusion of purpose never seems to bother those who traffic in political obfuscation.from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Edgar Lee Masters' Jacob Goodpasture
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Crying Man
by Charles DouthatAt O'Hare, after a first jump west to California,
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Crying Man by Charles Douthat
~~~~~~~~~~~
Fargo
by John Updike
"The fertillest soil this side of the Tigris
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Fargo by John Updike
~~~~~~~~~~~
I Ran Out Naked In The Sun
by Jane Hirshfield
I ran out naked
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: I Ran Out Naked In The Sun by Jane Hirshfield
~~~~~~~~~~~
The Merger
by Charles W. Pratt
for my son
Trying to think of something useful
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Merger by Charles W. Pratt
~~~~~~~~~~~
The Orchid Flower
by Sam Hamill
Just as I wonder
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Orchid Flower by Sam Hamill
~~~~~~~~~~~
Police Notes
by Alice N. Persons
Female reported running up Main Street yelling "No, no,
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Police Notes by Alice N. Persons
~~~~~~~~~~~
The Word
by Tony Hoagland
Down near the bottom
from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Word by Tony Hoagland
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: South Dakota poet Leo Dangel has
written some of the best and truest poems about rural life that I'm aware of. Here's a fine one about a chance discovery.Behind the Plow
from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 337
~~~~~~~~~~~
We all hope our children's lives will be better than our own, and invest in that hope in a variety of ways. Here Michael Ryan of California compares what we can provide for them with what we can't.
Girls' Middle School Orchestra
from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 338
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: There's a pleasing, no-nonsense simplicity
and precision to the expression--the same effect created by "24/7," only starker, and with none of the exaggeration. These four syllables are right at the end of language, where words turn into abstraction. Individually, they're just random, empty numbers, but yoked by that fateful slash they contain volumes.from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: The Lexicon
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: In the poetry of Gary Lawless,
who resides in Nobleboro, nature is often a source of inspiration and vision. This week's poem offers a compelling example.Some Clear Night
from Wesley McNair: The Portland Press Herald: Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: [by E. Ethelbert Miller]
Early Morning Temple FlightYour face
from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: Early Morning Temple Flight
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Doctor-turned-activist Wang Lihong, 55,
was sentenced for "creating a disturbance" by the Beijing Intermediate People's Court this week, according to her lawyer.Wang has been in detention for nearly six months already, and under Chinese law only has a little more than three months left to complete her sentence.
Her detention is believed to have been linked to her protest in support of three bloggers in Fujian, who were tried and sentenced in April 2010 for writing about the controversial death of a local woman.
from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Clampdown Around Activist's Trial
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: "Time and tide wait for no man."
This saying is brilliantly brought to life in Longfellow's poem, with its simple yet haunting scene of the waves lapping at the shore, while a mysterious "traveller" hastens toward the town, never to return. "The tide rises, the tide falls." This hypnotic line is repeated four times (five if you count the title), drumming it into our minds like a chant or mantra. The darkness of the "twilight" welcomes and overwhelms us, as we hear the "curlew" calling through the air with its piercing, unmistakable cry. And suddenly over the "sea-sands" we catch our first--and final--glimpse of the traveler.
from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: A Reading of "The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls"
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: American poetry criticism faces
a major problem, one that has nothing to do with poetry, or readers, or anything remotely literary. The problem is that a critic who wants to quote a poem in a book has to face a permissions regime that ranges from unpredictable to plain crazy, as I discovered while working on a guidebook to modern poetry for general readers. The permissions took months to compile, and the initial estimate was nearly $20,000.The difficulty is not so much that the copyright system is restrictive (although it can be), but that no one has any idea exactly how much of a poem can be quoted without payment.
from David Orr: The New York Times: When Quoting Verse, One Must Be Terse
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: This week's poem, "Balance," by James Womack,
recalls the mediaeval poet's desire to fix earthly events in their planetary context (Dante's geographical and cosmological scene-setting in the Divine Comedy springs to mind). The title itself evokes, for the astrologically inclined, the month of September, which, towards its end, is ruled by Libra, the only sign of the zodiac represented by an inanimate object, the scales of justice.Though astrology is no longer the respectable branch of enquiry it was in Dante's time, that dimension helps secure the poem's moral bearings.
from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Poem of the week: Balance by James Womack
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: This story may well raise a quizzical smile.
A little over 100 years ago--on Aug. 21, 1911--Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in Paris.The story has its hilarious aspects. No one noticed Mona was missing until the next day. But the theft may have helped bring to museums the era of modern security, "walking the fine line," as former FBI agent Robert K. Wittman puts it, "between making great art available to the public and protecting that art from the public."
from John Timpane: The Philadelphia Inquirer: "Mona Lisa" theft a century ago created modern museums
~~~~~~~~~~~
The word Jesus shouldn't freak anyone out, says self-described "secular progressive" Cohen, a longtime activist much at home with the passionate, radical social message of people like Claiborne. So, while Claiborne will "talk about Jesus," Cohen will talk about dollars, war, and the Pentagon. And they will end up at the same goal.
Jesus, Bombs, & Ice Cream rows against a tide in public affairs in which religion and secularism have become polarized.
from John Timpane: The Philadelphia Inquirer: Variety show with a point
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: I remember sitting in that bookstore,
wondering if anyone would come to a reading on such an evening, looking out at the quiet twilight, at the traffic on the Sunset Strip. I felt dissolute, disconnected. I didn't know how to respond. Once I had lived in the shadow of the World Trade Center, had eaten lunch in its plaza and relied on it to orient myself when I got out of the subway, but on this uneasy evening in West Hollywood, all that seemed a very long time ago.If you had asked me then, what I would have told you was that this felt like the moment New York disappeared for me.
from David Ulin: Granta: 9/11, Ten Years Later: The Art of Moving On
~~~~~~~~~~~
Indeed, to read "The 9/11 Commission Report" is to read what is almost a classic narrative, with heroes (counter-terrorism expert Richard Clarke, for one, and the passengers of United 93, who prevented what may have been an attack on the White House or the Capitol) and villains, with overlapping plot lines and tragic flaws. There are missed connections, disastrous betrayals, ambition and arrogance and hubris on every side. Most important, there is an authority to the language, not only in regard to the story it is telling but also in the way that it is told.
from David Ulin: The Los Angeles Times: Critic's Notebook: In pursuit of the great 9/11 book
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Ten years ago, Haven interviewed Milosz
at his home in Berkeley, Calif., and asked him about être and devenir. His reply was evasive: "My goodness. A big problem."And so it is. It has to do with the Ur-question of Western philosophy, posed and pondered by Parmenides ("what exists is uncreated and imperishable, for it is whole and unchanging and complete") and Heraclitus ("the only thing permanent is change"): How reconcile the one and the many, being and becoming, essence and existence, être and devenir? Parmenides and Heraclitus do not really disagree.
from Frank Wilson: When Falls the Coliseum: That's What He Said: We need techniques, not rules
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: The architects of "No Child Left Behind"
have no clue about kids like me, or the ones who wrote the following poems. Maybe they don't care, which is even scarier. Now public school budgets are being slashed, and a teacher's worth is being belittled.For the three kids who wrote these poems, and thousands like them, public schools are a refuge. Kids are not a number. Kids are not a statistic. They're not a test score. Children are young, developing human beings as different as snowflakes. Teachers are trying to educate them the best they possibly can. Art helps.
from Terry Wooten: Traverse City Record-Eagle: Lifelines: Thinking creatively again
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath
by Jared CarterThe 1971 photograph at the center of Minamata, a photo essay by W. Eugene Smith, on the effects of mercury poisoning due to corporate negligence in the fishing village of Minamata, Japan.
Tomoko is in her bath, where she is lifted
from CounterPunch: Poets' Basement
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: One can endlessly argue about the merits
of art imbued with political purposes, and the danger of it edging into propaganda. But, with Anat's "Reasons," such reservations simply fall by the wayside. The work is, in a way, anti-political. Instead it is strictly social, heart-breaking, beseeching--as perhaps the movement is itself.from Forward: The Arty Semite: Invitation to Protest: Poetic Summon From Anat Levin
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poem for 9/11
By Yossi Huttler
(for 9/11 loved ones) the in(di)visible
from Forward: The Arty Semite: Poem for 9/11
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: [by Jynne Martin]
A Spell For Going Safely Forth By DayThe hunter pushes a bullet beneath his tongue to fix his aim,
from Granta: A Spell For Going Safely Forth By Day
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Douglas Pugh is either American or
has set his poem in an American laundrette. Like him, I ignored the fact that a sticky magazine would not survive at all in archaeological conditions, and enjoyed the conceit of an entirely mundane, functional place being misinterpreted or missed entirely by archaeologists of the future. This is the great democracy of archaeology--that eventually the Laundromat gets equal billing with Ozymandias, and soap has equal currency with gold and frankincense.from The Guardian: Poetry workshop: Personal archaeology
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: [by William Wall]
for Illanis not the terror we feel
from Morning Star: Well Versed: What is unacceptable about dreams
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Poetry and art meet the urban transit system
in the classic Ezra Pound poem "In a Station of the Metro," provided by the Poetry Foundation, and a New York Times video about a subway portrait artist.from The New York Times: Poetry Pairing: Images of Transit Riders
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: [Vanecia] Parker said Tayanna [Brown] had
taken a break from school to work at Walmart in the bakery department and had recently transferred to the overnight stock crew because she was planning to go back to college.She said her daughter loved to read and wrote poems and short stories.
from The Daily Times: 'She was all about family, friends'
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: Jim [Clemens Jr.] was a published poet
and owner of Little House of Pancakes in Gatlinburg, TN. He served in the Navy as an aircraft carrier ranger and an operation line backer.
from The Mountain Press: James "Jim" Calvin Clemens Jr.
~~~~~~~~~~~
from The Mountain Press: James "Jim" Calvin Clemens Jr.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: Norman [Vernon Elliott] enjoyed writing
poetry, visiting with family and working on outside projects with Lynett where he felt blessed to be among all of God's creations. Deer season was always special with Norman Jr., Tony, Rick and his brothers-in-law. He was often heard laughing when he was in conversation with his daughters. And he and Eric shared a passion for weight lifting.
from The Moberly Monitor-Index: Norman Vernon Elliott
~~~~~~~~~~~
from The Moberly Monitor-Index: Norman Vernon Elliott
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: "She was a dreamer," he said.
"She'd sit on the hill with her dog and write poems and stories. We never had a whole lot but we were happy."She was a tough girl."
Nancy Harrington got her degree in journalism at Arkansas State University and also minored in social work, her brother [Tim Harrington] said.
from The East Montgomery County Observer: Ex-Women's Center leader dies in wreck
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: After attending a July 4 fireworks display,
he [Michael Hart] stopped in at a grocery store and received, with his purchase, a copy of the Declaration of Independence printed on parchment. He typed the text, intending to send it as an e-mail to the users of Arpanet, the government-sponsored precursor to today's Internet, but was dissuaded by a colleague who warned that the message would crash the system. Instead, he posted a notice that the text could be downloaded, and Project Gutenberg was born. Its goal, formulated by Mr. Hart, was "to encourage the creation and distribution of e-books" and, by making books available to computer users at no cost, "to help break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy."
from The New York Times: Michael Hart, a Pioneer of E-Books, Dies at 64
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: [Kenneth L. Jones Jr.] was a
HVAC operator with Key West Air.
He was an avid poet and musician and loved nature. His favorite sports team was the Washington Redskins.
from Burlington County Times: Kenneth L. Jones Jr.
~~~~~~~~~~~
He was an avid poet and musician and loved nature. His favorite sports team was the Washington Redskins.
from Burlington County Times: Kenneth L. Jones Jr.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: [Alexander K. Kwiek-Rysavy] continued to
be active with political causes, including volunteering on election and union campaigns in Chicago and other political issues.
Alex had a gift for uncanny irony and was passionate about music. He loved to express his passion for justice through his rap music compositions and poetry.
from Kenosha News: Alexander K. Kwiek-Rysavy
~~~~~~~~~~~
Alex had a gift for uncanny irony and was passionate about music. He loved to express his passion for justice through his rap music compositions and poetry.
from Kenosha News: Alexander K. Kwiek-Rysavy
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: [Margaret Ouellette] was an excellent pianist
and entertained many people with the Riverside String Band, Burnt Cork Chorus and Minstrel shows.
Her other musical skills include being church organist, singing in St. Peter's choir for many years, and also singing in various church cantatas in the area.
Her life was dedicated to music, sending greeting cards and creating her own poetry.
from phillyBurbs.com: Margaret Ouellette
~~~~~~~~~~~
Her other musical skills include being church organist, singing in St. Peter's choir for many years, and also singing in various church cantatas in the area.
Her life was dedicated to music, sending greeting cards and creating her own poetry.
from phillyBurbs.com: Margaret Ouellette
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: A member of St. Mary's Lutheran Church,
she [Alene Margaret Robinson] enjoyed caring for and spending time with her grandchildren and great grandchildren, in her spare time she liked to read, sew and do ceramics. She loved all her pets and writing poetry.from Kenosha News: Alene Margaret Robinson
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: In the 1970s, she [Jean Sinclair Symmes] helped
start the professional women's cooperative in Washington as a place were female therapists, lawyers and artists shared office space, classes and access to foundation support.Jean McKeown was born near Philadelphia and legally changed her surname to Sinclair. She was a graduate of the University of Chicago, where she also received a doctorate in psychology in 1956.
She wrote poetry and plays, some of which were produced locally.
from The Washington Post: Jean Symmes, psychologist
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: Edith L. Tiempo was a poet, fictionist
and literary critic, and one of the finest writers in English in the country. Locally, she was a recipient of several awards from the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature and the Philippines Free Press literary contests. She was also listed in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poets and Poetics, the International Authors and Writers Who's Who, the Contemporary Living Poets in the English Language, and the Marquis' Who's Who in the World.from GMA News: A morning of loving memories for Mom Edith Tiempo
then Inquirer: Everybody called her 'Mom'
~~~~~~~~~~~
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
September 6th forum announcement
Dear Poetry Aficionados,
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
The tenth anniversary of 9/11 is this coming Sunday, and its commemoration articles are coming out. We begin News at Eleven with one about Adam Zagajewski called, "The Poet of Sept. 11." From our Great Regulars, we have 9/11 articles by Bryan Appleyard, Adam Kirsch, Katherine Schulten, and John Timpane. Each one approaches the event and ensuing decade differently, going a long way to help fill out or at least begin to address our collective experience, such as Bryan does in bringing up The Falling Man in just one of his paragraphs. There are dozens more articles and poems in all three sections, including Poetic Obituaries, more articles than most weeks, maybe because of the 9/11 ones.
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
The tenth anniversary of 9/11 is this coming Sunday, and its commemoration articles are coming out. We begin News at Eleven with one about Adam Zagajewski called, "The Poet of Sept. 11." From our Great Regulars, we have 9/11 articles by Bryan Appleyard, Adam Kirsch, Katherine Schulten, and John Timpane. Each one approaches the event and ensuing decade differently, going a long way to help fill out or at least begin to address our collective experience, such as Bryan does in bringing up The Falling Man in just one of his paragraphs. There are dozens more articles and poems in all three sections, including Poetic Obituaries, more articles than most weeks, maybe because of the 9/11 ones.
Thanks for clicking in.
Yours,
Rus
Our links:
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News at Eleven: "Try to Praise the Mutilated World" recalls
a trip [Adam] Zagajewski took with his father through Ukrainian villages in Poland forcibly abandoned in the population transfers of the post-Yalta years. "This was one of the strongest impressions I ever had," he says. "There were these empty villages with some apple trees going wild. And I saw the villages became prey to nettles; nettles were everywhere. There were these broken houses. It became in my memory this mutilated world, these villages, and at the same time they were beautiful. It was in the summer, beautiful weather. It's something that I reacted to, this contest between beauty and disaster."from The Daily Beast: The Poet Of Sept. 11
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News at Eleven: Maria Rivera was there to denounce,
to point a finger, to stand nearly under the threshold of Mexico's presidential palace to blame and empower. Everyone shares the blame for the killings. Everyone has the power to recreate it into a better one.
Jen Hofer joined UCLA literature grad student Roman Lujan to translate the poem into English so that people in the United States could hear an account of what this country's drug consumption is doing to a society. Lujan read the first draft at the literary salon. He took the mostly English speaking crowd in the darkened room straight to Mexico City's Zocalo.
from KCET: L.A. Writers Translate Poem Denouncing Mexico's Drug Cartel Dead
then Jacket 2: To speak or speak to what cannot be spoken
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Jen Hofer joined UCLA literature grad student Roman Lujan to translate the poem into English so that people in the United States could hear an account of what this country's drug consumption is doing to a society. Lujan read the first draft at the literary salon. He took the mostly English speaking crowd in the darkened room straight to Mexico City's Zocalo.
from KCET: L.A. Writers Translate Poem Denouncing Mexico's Drug Cartel Dead
then Jacket 2: To speak or speak to what cannot be spoken
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