in Donegal composing poetry or attending literary functions in Dublin, [Cathal] O'Searchaigh spends a good deal of his time in Nepal where he has raised money for charities over the past ten years and adopted a son.
But his preference for sex with younger men has placed him at the centre of a public storm in Ireland, with calls for his poetry to be taken off the syllabus.
from The Guardian: Film sparks storm over Irish poet
~~~~~~~~~~~
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
News at Eleven: But [Dan] Chiasson teases us
with his description of the dirtiest poem in the anthology, W.H. Auden's "The Platonic Blow," which Chiasson can only call "is the dirtiest verse written since Rochester--I can't even talk about it here."So how dirty is it, really?
from New York Magazine: How Dirty Is That Auden Poem That Was Too Dirty for the 'Times Book Review'?
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Can it be that William Wadsworth's
or Paul Violi's best erotic poems are better than Frank O'Hara's second or 10th or 50th best? I'd like to see someone make that case.It's good to encourage people who otherwise wouldn't read older poems to take a little Hart Crane with their Mark Doty, but it's odd to leverage a few old names merely to inflate the value of the new ones.
from The New York Times: Hot or Not
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: The Academy of American Poets has announced
the launch of a mobile poetry archive which provides free and direct access to the entire collection of over 2,500 poems on Poets.org, as well as hundreds of biographies and essays, all in the palm of a hand. from Wireless and Mobile News: 1st Mobile Poetry Archive Launched for National Poetry Month & Beyond
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Five years ago, on the same day
that British and American troops marched into Iraq, poets convened in St Andrews for the first day of the StAnza Poetry Festival. The invasion formed an uncomfortable backdrop to the festival that year--sitting listening to poetry felt like fiddling while Rome burned.This year, on the first day of StAnza, an explosion claimed 11 more lives in Baghdad, a reminder that the occupation continues.
from The Scotsman: Chapter and verse
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Samuel Johnson gave the poem first place
"among the productions of the human mind."
But it is now the quadricentennial of [John] Milton's birth in 1608, and it is startling that this work, once central to the literary and religious experience of the English-speaking world, is so much a curiosity, sentenced to the margins by its preoccupations with biblical interpretation, condemned by the density of its prosody, which does not instantly seduce but, instead, commands the reader to give way before it, persisting until no resistance is possible.
from The New York Times: A Giant's Roaring, Faintly Echoed
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Our images of Hell, the devil
and the fall of man have been irrevocably shaped by [John] Milton's versions of them. His "Areopagitica" remains one of the foundational texts of the argument for freedom of speech. The closing lines of "Lycidas", his elegy for an acquaintance drowned at sea, have always seemed to me one of the most moving passages in English verse.
For so to interpose a little ease,
[/. . . .]
from Telegraph: English poetry masters: John Milton
also Telegraph: English poetry masters: Percy Bysshe Shelley
also Telegraph: English poetry masters: Christina Rossetti
also Telegraph: English poetry masters: Robert Browning
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven (Back Page): In this series, the Guardian
brings together seven of the greatest poets of the 20th century. Each booklet includes a generous selection of the poet's best known and most acclaimed work.
from The Guardian: Great Poets of the 20th Century
also The Guardian: A poetry of atonement: Rowan Williams on WH Auden
also The Guardian: The mother of so much: Margaret Drabble on Sylvia Plath
also The Guardian: Foreword: Jeanette Winterson on Ted Hughes
also The Guardian: Playing the common world's melody: John Banville on Seamus Heaney
also The Guardian: Happy warrior, embittered pacifist: William Boyd: Siegrfried Sassoon
but also The Guardian: commentisfree: This great poets list has only one woman. About right, too
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Claire Ridley, the UK marketing manager
of the game, showed me, with a noticeable degree of pride, a rather gentle Spore tribe she had created. I asked her what would happen if she just left them alone. "They would die of hunger," she said with a note of real anxiety. "You have to nurture them and look after them."from Bryan Appleyard: The Times: Bryan Appleyard tries out Spore and creates his own species
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Now Powell's has taken another step
into the collector market and started a limited-edition, subscription-only book club. It features independent and small-press books in original sets with extra goodies such as CDs or DVDs, cookies or chocolates, and promotional material. from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: Bookmarks: Powell's starts limited-edition book club
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: [Tom Paulin] is wondrously nimble
at tracking a pattern of sound through a text, though the process rapidly become repetitive and over-technical: "There are three ih sounds in the next stanza, two in the next stanza, along with two i sounds. Then in the last stanza there are a total of nine ih sounds and three i sounds . . ."You can, in short, read too closely, just as you can squash your nose up against a canvas until the painting fades to a blur.
from Terry Eagleton: The Times: The Guardian: A puritan at play
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Gunter Grass Reads Gabo
By Evan Fleischerfrom John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Don't tell Gunter about this one
~~~~~~~~~~~
Approaching Fifty
By Tina Hacker
from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Life begins at . . . ?
~~~~~~~~~~~
I have some great news: Washburn University's Woodley Press soon will release Lindsey Martin-Bowen's first full-length poetry collection, Standing on the Edge of the World. The poet generously agreed to give Parachute a preview:
Everyone Connects Kansas with Oz
from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Oz? It's over the rainbow
~~~~~~~~~~~
Iowa Poet Laureate Robert Dana today joins Kansas' Denise Low and Missouri's Walter Bargen on the roster of state poet laureates featured on Parachute.
Blood Harvest
By Robert Dana
from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: The Poet Laureate Project, Part 3
~~~~~~~~~~~
The author of today's poem is 12 years old; he lives in Independence, Missouri.
Wood Carving
by Danny Mallinson
from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Prodigy
~~~~~~~~~~~
A poem by Linda Rodriguez:
I Could Live in the Library
from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: The stacks are nice this time of year
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: When [Stanford] White was shot dead
by Harry K Thaw in 1906 and his mansion was sold off, Hearst and John D Rockefeller "fought like schoolboys" over the stained-glass windows, the weather vanes, the doorways and the ceilings. I was told once of a Rockefeller property where there were two huge Renaissance fireplaces--in the squash court.from James Fenton: The Guardian: Restoration and removal
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: The speaker assumes that if is difficult
for many citizens to understand the purpose of the death of soldier, so he is going to explain why that difficulty exists: "It is because like men we look too near,/Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere,/Our missiles always make too short an arc."Many ordinary citizens cannot see the bigger picture in the cosmic scheme of things: they "look too near."
from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Robert Frost's 'A Soldier'
~~~~~~~~~~~
Carl Sandburg is an excellent poet, who has written many fine poems, but this is not one of them. Nevertheless, because beginning students/readers of poetry need to be able to compare the well-written and the not-so-well-written works, it is important for those students/readers to experience even the uninspired work of the best poets.
from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Sandburg's 'Young Sea'
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: That is how I feel about this poem:
"Here" is where "the blockage" is; it is also the present moment (and place) in any of our lives. The "ache" appears to be the ache of ageing--even the poet's doctor says "I have that, we all have". "Here" is also wherever the poet is.from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: Here, by Ken Smith (Shed: Poems 1980-2001, Bloodaxe)
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: In "Carrion Comfort," [Gerard Manley] Hopkins
refuses to feast on the rotten meat of melancholy, though he can barely long for day and stave off suicide. Hopkins's syntax is so mangled, the lines so packed with heavy plodding accents and stilted comma stops, that he speaks as if through a chokehold. Yet somehow the depth of his suffering proves the vigor of his faith. Carrion Comfort
from Mary Karr: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice: Lenten remorse: Hopkins's dark night of the soul
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Poem: "Fishing On The Susquehanna In July"
by Billy Collins, from Picnic, Lightning.from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of March 17, 2008
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: The American poet Elizabeth Bishop
often wrote of how places--both familiar and foreign--looked, how they seemed. Here Marianne Boruch of Indiana begins her poem in this way, too, in a space familiar to us all but made new--made strange--by close observation. Hospital
from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 155
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: For a while it all got pretty nasty;
there were even suggestions that [Philip] Larkin's books might be banned from some libraries. But what is his reputation today, 23 years after his death? Even though the heat of debate has died down a bit, he remains a divisive figure.from Andrew Motion: The Guardian: The quarrel within ourselves
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: In one scene, I try to hold
a fellow student crushed by a tank, and realize his two legs are gone, with only blood gushing from his body. Such scenes are rewound and played again, night after night. No time for healing after such an event.It has been 18 years since I set foot in my hometown.
from Luisetta Mudie: ClatteryMacHinery on Poetry: Life and Death from Beijing: a Poetry Sequence by Luisetta Mudie and Dreamer Fei
~~~~~~~~~~~
(New to) Great Regulars: The key is to rethink the traditional
roles of art and science, to find a middle ground where we might frame aesthetic solutions to scientific questions, or apply a scientific rigor to the challenges of art."[T]he fused method that results," he [David Edwards] argues, "at once aesthetic and scientific--intuitive and deductive, sensual and analytical, comfortable with uncertainty and able to frame a problem, embracing nature in its complexity and able to simplify to nature in its essence--is what I call artscience."
from David L. Ulin: Los Angeles Times: 'Artscience' by David Edwards
~~~~~~~~~~~
In "God Particles," [Thomas] Lux's 11th volume of poetry, readers are confronted by the brutality, banality and violence of the modern world. But they also encounter God particles scattered throughout--an instance of kindness, a reason for joy, an impulse to forgive.
Lux, recipient of the 1995 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for "Split Horizon," is known for his uncompromising and bold poetry.
from David L. Ulin: Los Angeles Times: 'God Particles: Poems' by Thomas Lux
~~~~~~~~~~~
That's a gorgeous image, and exactly right, for this is what we are, brief sparks flashing, momentary bursts of illumination animated by a creative force so indifferent that "it/exaggerates our self-/importance even/to think you would/ignore the prayer."
At the heart of this, of course, is God--or a conception of eternity at any rate. For [Alan] Shapiro, that's less a source of comfort than of silence, a caesura in the face of everything we cannot know.
from David L. Ulin: Los Angeles Times: Songs of experience, of loss and longing
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: The number one way to combat counterfeiting
of U.S. currency, Don Drosehn says, is not through the complicated patterns of engraving, or the red and blue threads in the paper, or even the watermark of a bill.“Nothing is as effective as the feel,” says Drosehn. He proceeds to take a bill out of his pocket, grasping it in his fingers at the edges and pulling.
from Andrew Varnon: UMass Amherst: The Buck Starts Here
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: by Jonathan Musgrove
The Day I Saw the Emperor's Clay Soldiers
from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: The Day I Saw the Emperor's Clay Soldiers
~~~~~~~~~~~
by Paul Muldoon
The Windshield
from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: The Windshield
~~~~~~~~~~~
from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: The Day I Saw the Emperor's Clay Soldiers
~~~~~~~~~~~
by Paul Muldoon The Windshield
from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: The Windshield
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Sean's suggestions for adding drama
to poetryA fundamental skill is the ability to dramatize a poem, to give it the sense of three-dimensional life, rather than simply let it comment on its subject. Few of us are sufficiently remarkable to have interesting general opinions about life, but if we renew proverbial truths in fresh contexts we may be on to something.
from The Guardian: Poetry Workshop: Sean O'Brien's workshop
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: By Martin Zehr
She fumbles in her purse for reading glasses
from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: Between the Lines: 'Waiting to Read'
~~~~~~~~~~~
from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: Between the Lines: 'Waiting to Read'
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Midi
by Les Murrayfrom The New Yorker: Poetry: Midi
~~~~~~~~~~~
On Beautyby James Longenbach
from The New Yorker: Poetry: On Beauty
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: Pancho Savery's poem "Full Moon"
is the winner of Hubbub magazine's 2008 Stout Award and will appear in Volume 24 of the magazine, available Monday. Savery teaches English, Humanities and American Studies at Reed College, and his poems have appeared in journals such as Rainy Day and Hanging Loose.from The Oregonian: Poetry
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: [by Jane Allen]
Memories
from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Memories
~~~~~~~~~~~
[by B. Kelton]
An Ode to the Overgrown Forest
from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: An Ode to the Overgrown Forest
~~~~~~~~~~~
from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Memories
~~~~~~~~~~~
[by B. Kelton]
An Ode to the Overgrown Forest
from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: An Ode to the Overgrown Forest
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: In themselves, the visual components
are hardly enough for a poem: but once [Charles] Wright has mediated the landscape--through an aphorism, a few metaphors, some minatory concepts, an evanescent life-cycle, a hope, and a regret--the painting-poem assumes that atmosphere of visual intensity, intellectual spareness, and colloquial interruptions by which we recognize Wright's hand. The poet uses a palette of strictness and grayness and deadness, but at the end creates a change in hue:from Powells: Review-A-Day: Snatched from the Air
~~~~~~~~~~~
Great Regulars: In his new bi-lingual collection
Nort Atlantik Drift (Luath, £15), Robert Alan Jamieson takes the reader on a journey to the rhythms and voices of Shetland, creating a lyrical blend of mythology, autobiography and culture. He appears at the StAnza poetry festival this weekend.Laamint fir da tristie
from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week: Robert Alan Jamieson
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: A powerful writer known for his
uncompromising stand, [Padma] Barkataki's creations encompassed diverse realms from short story and novel to drama and poetry to children's literature and translation works. He was also an acclaimed critic and prose writer. Realism had been Barkataki's forte, and his works touched the deepest chords of the reader. from The Assam Tribune: Padma Barkataki passes away
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: With painter Don Kommit, [Angela] Costa
founded the Silk City Poets in Paterson, N.J., a poetry performance group in the early 1970s. She received the William Carlos Williams Poetry Award in 1975, and, in New York, studied with Diane Wakowski and Ntozake Shange. Various literary magazines and anthologies (Black Creation, Diversitas and Howling Dog) published her work. She often read on WBAI ("Ghosts in the Machine") and appeared on Manhattan Cable's "Radio Thin Air." from Downtown Express: Angela Costa, 54, Tribeca musician and writer
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: [Tanikka] West said her family belongs
to Restoration Christian Center and that Sydney [Dailey] participated in volleyball, chorus and dance at school. She enjoyed writing poetry. "She wrote about her family. She wrote about things she loved, flowers and wanting her family to be happy and being happy herself," she said.
from Tulsa World: Mother: Victim was harassed
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: "All his students knew his passion
for literature, the sharpness of his insights, the breadth of his knowledge, and his certainty that a poem or a novel could make a difference in lives," [Roland] Dille recently wrote [of Clarence Glasrud] in the school's alumni magazine. "And all of them knew that he was always there for them, a man unable to find any question silly, a man whose every response avoided condescension." from The Forum: Former MSUM professor Clarence 'Soc' Glasrud dies at age 96; called 'a legend in his own time'
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: In 1983, she [Marcia E. Hensley] began
her work as a co-owner with her husband in a newspaper business. During their time in the business, the couple moved back and forth several times between Minnesota and Iowa. Mrs. Hensley retired in 2001, and the couple moved to Luverne in June 2003. She was a member of ARC and enjoyed writing poetry, spectator sports, and working alongside her husband. from Post-Bulletin: Marcia E. Hensley--Rochester
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: During World War II, she [Elizabeth L. Hoadley]
served with the U.S. Navy as a nurse. Following her military service, she worked as a nurse in the family nursing home in West Franklin and later at Lakes Region General Hospital in Laconia.
She traveled throughout the United States over the years and enjoyed motorcycles. She also wrote poetry.
from Concord Monitor: Elizabeth L. Hoadley
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: Janet said that [her daughter] Kayley [Howson],
a former pupil of Rosehill Primary School and Gawthorpe School, loved her music, reading and writing poetry.She said: "Kayley had trouble expressing her feelings to people but somehow she could find the words to write poetry. We didn't realise how much she had written--but we found hundreds of poems. [. . ."]
from Lancashire Telegraph: Pink tribute to tragic girl
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: [Ryan Kell] was an artist,
drawing, painting and writing poetry, and had played bass guitar for several local bands, Paul Kell said. Ryan worked for a construction business owned by his stepfather, Brad Darrell, and had learned to install tile. Paul Kell said his son learned guitar from Darrell and had picked up his artistic talents from Cynthia.
from Canton Repository: N. Canton man's body found after fall into pit
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: [Virginia Fedor Poole] was noted
there both for her ability to memorize and recite long poems and for her imitation of the child actress of the 1940s, Margaret O'Brien. In high school, Virginia not only performed in school plays, but acquired the "Jini" spelling of her nickname. from Vineyard Gazette: Virginia F. Poole, 73, Touched Island With Enthusiasm for Life
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: Months after her initial diagnosis,
she [Martha Rapaport] wrote transcendent poems and let herself be photographed bald from chemotherapy, then sent that transformational project, called "In the Spirit of Healing," to health centers to inspire others.from The Virginian-Pilot: Troupe's founder had creative, healing roles
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetic Obituaries: As a publisher, [Jonathan] Williams produced more
than 100 books with some of the 20th century's best poets and photographers. Among Williams' first titles was Olson's "Maximus Poems," an influential landmark in contemporary poetry.
But Williams saw no barriers between high and low art, writing, by turns, elegant and earthy poems inspired by rusted roadside signs and classical forms.
from Asheville Citizen-Times: Poet, photographer and publisher Jonathan Williams dies at 79
~~~~~~~~~~~
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
March 11th forum announcement
Dear Poetry Aficionados,
Poetry & Poets in Rags
Rodney Armstrong, rodarms, owner of the poetry board Gandy Creek. Here's your link, and there's an online one up in Poetic Obituaries. I'm reading the blogs, and one is reporting your death, linking to a 2005 item announcing your not making it home, and I cannot remember knowing about this. I love sharing forums with you. Rodarms, you, one of the best passed in 2005. But this is what we do, isn't it, we migrate forums, and reconnect years later somewhere else. Rod, geez, if you have Gandy Creek going wherever you are, reserve me my screen name. I'll bring some poetry.
Three UK newspapers are looking at poetry through the canon. And this is where we begin in News at Eleven. T.S Eliot gets many looks this week, and I really like the series from the Salem News here in Massachusetts. So check that out too. Also in this section, several remarkable looks at the poets we love. But be sure to look at the Back Page. Reporters Without Borders has called for tomorrow to be Online Free Expression Day.
In Great Regulars, lots going on, so let me focus on a couple John Mark Eberhart links to his Parachute. He called for submissions, and he added a new feature called Poetry Lab, where after you read the poem, you give the poet feedback. Try it. If you haven't before, that's what we online poets do. It makes for some good conversation among us aficionados.
Good old congratulations are in order for three IBPC poets. Results for November 2007, the month that was to be canceled, are in. The turnaround came because of feedback from the poetry boards. Ellen Kombiyil from Blueline, first place for "First Born". Second went to Guy Kettelhack from About Poetry for his "The Bird Painter". And third place, for the poem "The Gravity of it Beautiful" went to Wild Poetry Forum and Melanie G. Firth.
Special thanks to E. Ethelbert Miller, our judge for October, November and December 2007, for his responsiveness, his patience, his invaluable expertise, and for his excellent commentary on all the poems. He will be at the Split This Rock Poetry Festival. A story on this is in News at Eleven. He is also mentioned in another article in that section, the Foreign Policy in Focus one.
Yours,
Rus
Our links:
IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
IBPC Home
~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetry & Poets in Rags
Rodney Armstrong, rodarms, owner of the poetry board Gandy Creek. Here's your link, and there's an online one up in Poetic Obituaries. I'm reading the blogs, and one is reporting your death, linking to a 2005 item announcing your not making it home, and I cannot remember knowing about this. I love sharing forums with you. Rodarms, you, one of the best passed in 2005. But this is what we do, isn't it, we migrate forums, and reconnect years later somewhere else. Rod, geez, if you have Gandy Creek going wherever you are, reserve me my screen name. I'll bring some poetry.
Three UK newspapers are looking at poetry through the canon. And this is where we begin in News at Eleven. T.S Eliot gets many looks this week, and I really like the series from the Salem News here in Massachusetts. So check that out too. Also in this section, several remarkable looks at the poets we love. But be sure to look at the Back Page. Reporters Without Borders has called for tomorrow to be Online Free Expression Day.In Great Regulars, lots going on, so let me focus on a couple John Mark Eberhart links to his Parachute. He called for submissions, and he added a new feature called Poetry Lab, where after you read the poem, you give the poet feedback. Try it. If you haven't before, that's what we online poets do. It makes for some good conversation among us aficionados.
Good old congratulations are in order for three IBPC poets. Results for November 2007, the month that was to be canceled, are in. The turnaround came because of feedback from the poetry boards. Ellen Kombiyil from Blueline, first place for "First Born". Second went to Guy Kettelhack from About Poetry for his "The Bird Painter". And third place, for the poem "The Gravity of it Beautiful" went to Wild Poetry Forum and Melanie G. Firth.
Special thanks to E. Ethelbert Miller, our judge for October, November and December 2007, for his responsiveness, his patience, his invaluable expertise, and for his excellent commentary on all the poems. He will be at the Split This Rock Poetry Festival. A story on this is in News at Eleven. He is also mentioned in another article in that section, the Foreign Policy in Focus one.Yours,
Rus
Our links:
IBPC: Poetry & Poets in Rags
Poetry & Poets in Rags blog
IBPC Home
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: Poetry is written out of the true self,
in all its complexity, in all its saving incoherence, its authentic internal contradictions, its existential candour, a self utterly remote from the self deduced by the world, the glib caricature we recognise reflected in the eyes of others, "eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase".from The Guardian: All jokes aside
see The Guardian: Great poets of the 20th century: Eliot
and The Guardian: Great poets of the 20th century
~~~~~~~~~~~
News at Eleven: By writing in the English vernacular
and moving from alliterative to metrical arrangements of sound, his [Geoffrey Chaucer's] work was the incubator for modern English prosody.from Telegraph: English poetry masters: Geoffrey Chaucer
~~~~~~~~~~~
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