January 24th forum announcement

Dear Poetry Aficionados,

Poetry & Poets in Rags blog


Tomorrow is Robert Burns' birthday. As usual this time of year, newspapers come out with stories about him and this worldwide celebration in his honor. This year's batch seems more varied than other years. That's where we begin Poetry & Poets in Rags, with Burns deserving jail, Burns deserving better, and what would be his best poem. Ten stories down, on our Back Page, is an important article for our times, about "the Afghan Women's Writing Project, an organization that mentors Afghan women writers and distributes their work to a global audience." Back one article up from there, and you'll find a story on poetry editing, poets and others who help other poets get their poems spiffed up for publication.

As with all weeks, there are many more and varied articles than these, and plenty of original poems, in all three of our sections. 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: There is a seldom seen painting

that hangs in the Museum of the Grand Lodge of Scottish Freemasonry in Edinburgh's George Street. [Robert] Burns is standing before the assembled Brethren of the Lodge, Cannongate Kilwinning, on the night of the 1 March 1787, when he was invested as the Bard of Scottish Craft Freemasonry.

The picture itself was not painted until 50 years after the supposed "investiture" but was not entirely an invention. In deciding who to include, the artist and the Grand Lodge had made use of the Lodge minutes for that particular night and other meetings, many of which Burns had attended. Sixty men, other than Burns, are shown; all real people, all Freemasons and all with a connection with Burns.

from Scotland on Sunday: 'Today Robert Burns might have been in Barlinnie Prison writing his jail diaries'
then The Guardian: Poor Robert Burns. He deserves better than this
then The Scotsman: 'Tam O'Shanter' voted best Robert Burns poem

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News at Eleven: Chinese writer and activist Zhu Yufu

was charged with publishing a provocative poem this past week (the official charge was "inciting subversion of state power"). Zhu's poem is entitled "It's Time," and here it is in translation:

from Huffington Post: A Poem May Get a Writer Jailed In China
then The New York Times: China Sentences Another Prominent Activist to Prison

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News at Eleven: Israel, former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin

once noted, must make peace with its enemies, not with its friends. Netanyahu must shake off his Masada complex, recognize that there is no nobility in self-destruction and open himself up to compromise. A lesser known-line from [Yitzhak] Lamdan's poem reminds us that Masada has nothing to offer other than mass suicide:

Listen. Masada weeps too. Do you hear? Surely Masada weeps too, and how should she not? . . . She knows that she can give nothing, that she can deliver no more!

from The Jerusalem Post: The Masada complex

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News at Eleven: Until his death on Jan. 20, 1962--

50 years ago--[Robinson] Jeffers celebrated the "transhuman magnificence" of nature, the beautiful things both vast and near that can provide even a 21st century reader with solace, even if we are often a muddled, ugly species and even if all things, as they do, fade away.

from The Los Angeles Times: Robinson Jeffers, nature's oracle

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News at Eleven: Javier Sicilia renounced poetry and became

the leader of a national protest against the drug war. Yet he says poetry has been an integral part of the "Peace with Justice and Dignity" movement.

"Poetry has been present, the poets have been part of it," Sicilia says. "The problem is that the mass media don't like to cover it and don't understand that this movement was born out of poetry, and the reason why it's important is because it's filled with a poetic content that has transformed the language. And behind all of this is a profound ethics, as with all poetry."

Sicilia says the poet has a moral responsibility to tell these stories.

from NPR: Artists React To Mexico's Drug War With Music And Poetry

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News at Eleven: The killing of two Senegalese migrants in

Florence just before Christmas has triggered a court case by the daughter of American poet Ezra Pound demanding the Casa Pound movement stop using her father's name.

The poet's 88-year-old daughter, Mary de Rachewiltz, who lives in northern Italy, has brought the action because Gianluca Casseri, the Florentine responsible for the murders, was a sympathiser of the local Casa Pound (Pound House) Movement.

from The Sydney Morning Herald: Ezra Pound's daughter takes on right-wing movement over name

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News at Eleven: The advantage of such a comprehensive volume

is the possibility of tracing the development of a writer's voice. It is possible to hear in his [Philip Larkin's] poem, "On Being Twenty-six" the tone of world-weariness an older Larkin would make into an art form, looking back on "the slag/Of burnt-out childhood" with his familiar tone of regret laced with misanthropy: "Life, you aren't a god, you're a bloody old sod."

from The Economist: Philip Larkin: Library book

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News at Eleven: You don't ever finish a [Christopher] Reid

poem feeling that it could have been done a little bit better. In the cadences of some of the early poems there's a hint, or more, of Larkin, in the careful and well-mannered grotesqueries of, say, the farm "where pigs on tip-toes/piss with such a haunted look", but Reid is thankfully free of his predecessor's studied weariness, and approaches his subjects with a more gracious and forgiving shake of the head.

There are poems here, too, from a further three collections, including a somewhat modest selection from Reid's moving series of poems about the death of his wife, A Scattering, which won the 2009 Costa Book of the Year award.

from The Guardian: Selected Poems by Christopher Reid--review

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News at Eleven: What keeps certain breeds of birds

returning every year to the same place, many thousands of miles away, when equally suitable conditions exist nearby? And what makes people leave behind family and friends to encounter hostility and strangeness in a foreign land?

As the final poem in the volume, "Time to Fly", shows, the reasons are many and varied: some are biological imperatives, some financial, some emotional.

from The Independent: The Mara Crossing, By Ruth Padel

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News at Eleven: One of his [Don Paterson's] recent successes

was Rachael Boast, whose Sidereal won last year's Forward Prize for best first collection. Paterson honed the book with her for a number of years, which is "not unusual for a first book". Once their inner sense of what is valuable in their writing is better calibrated, he says, they don't require as much "intense feedback". How intense can it get? "I'll make a long list of specific queries, and then fight about it with the author in the office or the pub or the British Library for three days while we go through each poem a line at a time."

from The Telegraph: The mystery of poetry editing: from TS Eliot to John Burnside

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News at Eleven (Back Page): Like many other mentors, [Neha] Bawa

hails from academia, teaching poetry courses at a local university; others are professional journalists and published authors. The role of the mentor is twofold: to edit the pieces delicately, preserving the integrity of each writer's prose, language, and sentence structure; and to provide support, encouragement, and positive reinforcement.

"Many of these women have never shared their stories or written about their lives before, and they're very nervous," said Tina Singleton (pictured below), AWWP's country director on the ground in Afghanistan. "They're very vulnerable, and mentors have to be very careful because any kind of feedback that's perceived to be negative can be damaging to the woman's ability to continue writing."

Bawa became a mentor in 2009, shortly after AWWP was founded.

from Capital: In Crown Heights, the nerve center of a project to mentor and help protect Afghan women writers

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Great Regulars: Instead, unknown to the publisher,

he [Geoff Dyer] wrote a book on the 1979 Russian film Stalker. "I ­happened to see Stalker again, and I wrote a tiny thing about it for The Guardian--and, frustratingly, realised I had a lot more to say. I started bunking off from the tennis book to summarise the film. Then I found a tone I really liked. It's all about tone for me--having a tone, finding a tone. No tone, misery. After I get the tone, fun."

At some point, he had to break this huge change of direction to Canongate.

from Bryan Appleyard: from The Sunday Times: Geoff Dyer: The Hatchet Man

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Great Regulars: Some years back this column broke

a little-known record in American letters. It became the longest-running newspaper column about poetry in the United States. Today's piece kicks off our ninth year--for which I am grateful both to my longtime editor and to you, my devoted supporters, literary sticklers and regular critics.

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: In praise of the poetry of poise

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Great Regulars: Good Lard! Talk Grandiose Blandstanding!

Had either poet considered their position with a modicum of interest in the real world, each would most surely have allowed their works to compete against the remaining eight collections, UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy's The Bees (Picador), the 2011 recipient of the Forward Poetry Prize John Burnside's Black Cat Bone and Sean O'Brien's November (Pan Macmillan) foremost among them.

Nope. Nothing doing.

from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: Gimme a brick! The T. S. Eliot Prize controversy that shouldn't have been

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With Spring Training looming on the horizon next month (and keeping we baseballomaniacs barely alive), we at In Other Words feel particularly generous; thus, to aid us in our generosity, Canada's premier sporty poet, none other than our inaugural Parliamentary Poet Laureate himself, George Bowering, OC, graciously provided us with a gem of a prize for the baseballophile who correctly answers the following eight trivia questions concerning the guy we prefer to refer to as our resident bullshit artist in these har parts (where dulcet greens and soaring taters make for magnificent music and even more dazzling visuals):

from Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: Presenting . . . The George Bowering Baseball Trivia Quiz

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Great Regulars: Salman Rushdie, who was forced

to pull out of Asia's biggest literary festival in India after authorities revealed "specific intelligence" of a death threat against him, has said he believes the information was false.

"I've investigated, and believe that I was indeed lied to. I am outraged and very angry," the British writer wrote on Twitter.

from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Salman Rushdie may address Jaipur festival via video link

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Great Regulars: But the agenda of this speaker is not

to present reality but to set up a straw man against which she can protest. She attempts to indict this sauntering cowboy for wrongs she imagines, as she implies the cowboy's sauntering shows his hubris which she finds as silly as the "almost-/silly West." Again, the reader will remember that the stereotype being flaunted here is nothing more than a showbiz prop, and therefore cannot be taken at face value.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Margaret Atwood's Backdrop addresses cowboy

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Great Regulars: the click of miracle

by Charles Bukowski

at the quarterhorse meet

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: the click of miracle by Charles Bukowski

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Darkness (excerpt)

by Lord Byron

I had a dream, which was not all a dream:

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Darkness (excerpt) by Lord Byron

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A Dream Within a Dream
by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

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Red, Red Bra
by Hal Sirowitz

I bought a red bra, she said.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Red, Red Bra by Hal Sirowitz

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Rest.
by Richard Jones

It's so late I could cut my lights

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Rest. by Richard Jones

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Silo Solo
by Joyce Sutphen

My father climbs into the silo.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Silo Solo by Joyce Sutphen

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Great Regulars: No doubt a lot of these scamps grew up

to be lawyers and college professors--or, in this case [of Dave Grohl], a member of such acclaimed bands as Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, although Mr. and Mrs. Grohl couldn't have foreseen that at the time. Looking back on his childhood in a suburb of Washington, D.C., Grohl says his teachers "always said the same thing: 'David could be a great student if he could just stay in his . . . seat.' " When teenage Dave had to get permission to drop out of high school and go on the road with the band Scream, his mother's reaction was: "Hallelujah. . . . Because, of all the things he's done brilliantly in his life, school was never one of them."

from David Kirby: The New York Times: Dave Grohl: From Antsy Student to Nirvana to Foo Fighters

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Great Regulars: At the Cancer Clinic

by Ted Kooser

She is being helped toward the open door

from Ted Kooser via Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: At the Cancer Clinic by Ted Kooser

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The title of this beautiful poem by Edward Hirsch contradicts the poem, which is indeed a prayer. Hirsch lives in New York and is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, one of our country's most distinguished cultural endowments.

I Was Never Able To Pray

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 357

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Great Regulars: Mekeel McBride lives in Kittery and

teaches in the MFA program at the University of New Hampshire. In her poem she shows us what we have missed in the winter trees we observe every day.

Where Inspiration Has Learned a Thing or Two

from Wesley McNair: Maine Sunday Telegram: Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry

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Great Regulars: [Li Dunyong] said Zhu [Yufu]'s trial was

likely to take place after the Lunar New Year holiday, which begins this weekend.

"This case is related to the jasmine revolutions in the Middle East, because he wrote that poem under those particular circumstances," Li said. "If he had [written it] in ordinary times, then it wouldn't have mattered; it was a problem because he published it at that time."

However, he said Zhu remained defiant. "He's a tough old stick now, and he doesn't care," Li said. "He says it's not too bad inside; the detention center gave him a new overcoat because the weather has been cold lately."

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Dissident Charged Over 'Subversive' Poem

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Chinese authorities want netizens to register their real names before blogging, lest they post sensitive information.

China has announced it will expand controls on 330 million users of the country's hugely popular Twitter-like services, in a move critics say will curb microblogs as a vital source of news and unofficial opinion.

Real-name registration is necessary to ensure the "rapid and healthy growth of the Internet," Wang Chen, head of China's cabinet-level Internet management office, told reporters.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Further Controls on Microblogs

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Authorities in the central Chinese city of Wuhan have handed a 10-year jail term to Maoist writer Li Tie for subversion, after he wrote articles online calling for political reform and for the human dignity of ordinary people to be respected.

Li was sentenced by the Wuhan Intermediate People's Court, which found him guilty of "incitement to subvert state power" this week, his lawyer and family said.

The sentence, of 10 years' imprisonment and three years' deprivation of political rights, follows hard on the heels of similar jail terms handed down to Sichuan-based activist Chen Wei and Guizhou-based dissident Chen Xi.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Maoist Writer Jailed for Subversion

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Great Regulars: The moment we start reading this poem

by Robert Louis Stevenson, we plunge into the joy of pure momentum. We find ourselves on a train, gazing out of the window at the landscape frantically whooshing by outside. Faster than "fairies" and "witches," the train seems to outstrip all the marvels and miracles of superstition. As Arthur C. Clarke's said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Curiously, however, from our perspective--warm and snug in our seat--it is the not the train that moves but all the "bridges and houses, hedges and ditches." The mind remains still while the earth becomes a blur.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: A Reading of 'From a Railway Carriage' by Robert Louis Stevenson

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Great Regulars: [Herman] Melville also wrote poems,

brilliantly. Here, as this month's Classic Poem, is one of the best-known of them, "The Maldive Shark." The "sleek little pilot-fish" that guide the "pale sot" of the shark function as the shark's "eyes and brains." Those nouns, eyes and brains, are not literally considered as food, but the poem in an irrational or subliminal way associates them with meat for the consuming "charnel of maw" in the shark's "Gorgonian head."

from Robert Pinsky: Slate: Truth in Darkness

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Great Regulars: These six short imagist poems are rather

like extended haiku, a form in which the poet has always excelled. They may centre on a single image, or use surreal combinations of imagery, as does the first, with its haunting triad of black hotel, sleeping child and dice. In this poem, even the proportions of the objects seem altered. The dice, having eyes, are larger and more menacing than real dice, for all that "wide-eyed", in English, has connotations of innocence. Perhaps these dice are being rolled by a vast, unseen, malevolent hand?

from Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Poem of the week: Six Winters by Tomas Tranströmer

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Great Regulars: Here, [Archie] Burnett's notes offer a

fascinating, compendious vade mecum into [Philip] Larkin's poetic world. Full of reassuring exactitude about variants, and extensive reference to the poet's own comments on the work, they are most stimulating of all when they cite buried sources, such as Eliot's use of the odd verb "construction" in the context of religion-founding.

These notes are at the heart of a fluently-organised volume. The four collections are followed by other poems published in the poet's lifetime, poems unpublished but dated, and other unpublished poems.

from Fiona Sampson: The Independent: The Complete Poems by Philip Larkin, edited by Archie Burnett

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Great Regulars: This week's Poetry Pairing matches

William Butler Yeats's "To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing" with an article about a Texas writer and artist, "Novelist and His Hero Wonder, Will It Last?"

from Katherine Schulten: The New York Times: Poetry Pairing: 'To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing'

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Great Regulars: The fifty-one tiny stories (vignettes?

prose poems? blipverts? flash fictions?) contained in Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty resolutely refuse total decryption. But they burrow into the reader's subconscious and sprout odd blossoms. Perhaps presenting one of the more miniature ones in its entirety might be the best way of conveying their strange flavors.

from The Barnes and Noble Review: Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty

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Great Regulars: [by Martha Helen Nelson]

Still Life in Motion

Beyond the bedroom

from The Christian Science Monitor: Still Life in Motion

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Great Regulars: Lament

by Paul Lojeski

The boss

from CounterPunch: Poets' Basement: 3 by Paul Lojeski

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Great Regulars: The Offer

By Olivia McCannon

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: The Offer

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Great Regulars: Dr. Rowan Williams is a fan of Wendy Cope,

once describing her as "without doubt the wittiest of contemporary English poets" and it's largely her sharp sense of humour that has won her so many fans both in and outside of the poetry establishment.

Loss

from Huffington Post: The Friday Poem: 'Loss' By Wendy Cope

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Great Regulars: by Graham Buchan

I do not shield Matilda from the news

from Morning Star: Well Versed: Bad

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Great Regulars: By Natasha Saje

At a party a woman tells the guests

from PBS: Newshour: Weekly Poem: 'Tale'

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Great Regulars: [by Warren Day, at 16]

Driftwood

If driftwood could talk it could tell a tale

from Portsmouth Herald News: Random Acts of Poetry: Driftwood

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Great Regulars: A dazzling verbal engineer, [Louis] Zukofsky

twice replicated in "A" the pervasive rhyme sounds of Guido Calvalcanti's famously intricate love poem "Donna mi priegha." (Zukofsky's actual words reflect on the Marxist theory of value and Spinoza's understanding of love.) This ideal of translating the aural structure of a poem eventually led to the poet's notorious versions of Catullus. In these Zukofsky actually emulates the original Latin sounds in his English words but also keeps close to their meaning.

from Powells: Review-A-Day: A Biography of a Poet Whose Work Demanded Attention

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Great Regulars: The crucifix, on the other hand,

flowing with "blood/and grief", has been "hacked not carved", to show "your body's/concentration on pain". But it is the small hidden Kristus with "lowered eyelids" that has the greater power. The pains of the flesh hold no panic compared to the fear of forgiveness.

[by Grey Gowrie]

Finnish

from The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: Finnish

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Poetic Obituaries: [Delbert Baker, Jr.] enjoyed music,

singing, poetry, even having a book of poetry published.

from The Kittanning Paper: Delbert Baker, Jr. (West Kittanning)

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Poetic Obituaries: A member of the Poets Society,

he [Emil Donatello Jr.] was a published author who had poetry readings at the Nutley Public Library.

from NorthJersey.com: Emil Donatello Jr., 72

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Poetic Obituaries: A musician, poet, traveler and wild

mushroom hunter, Dominic Ciavonne Ziegler made a lot of friends in his life of just 23 years.

"He brought joy to everyone," said Jack Ziegler of Santa Rosa, recalling his son's engaging smile and natural charm.

Dominic Ziegler, who graduated from UC Berkeley last year and played in a folk-punk band called the Crux, died Jan. 12 at a San Francisco hospital.

from Press Democrat: Dominic Ciavonne Ziegler, Santa Rosa high grad, dies at 23

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January 17th Poetic Ticker Clicking

News Article Tape: (ragline)___The Guardian: John Burnside wins most controversial T.S. Eliot prize in decades___(ragline)___The Telegraph: John Burnside: How poetry can change lives___(ragline)___The Guardian: Guardian books podcast: John Burnside wins T.S. Eliot poetry prize___(ragline)___London Review of Books: Two Poems: John Burnside___(ragline)___Granta: Interview: John Burnside___(ragline)___St. Louis Dispatch: A Look Back: Poet T.S. Eliot visits his home town in 1933___(ragline)___St. Louis Dispatch: Native poet Quincy Troupe thanks St. Louis friends in new collection, Erancities___(ragline)___The Ubyssey: In conversation with Fred Wah, the new poet laureate of Canada___(ragline)___Russia Beyond the Headlines: Pushkin Hills: The great poet's country retreat___(ragline)___Spectator: Simon Armitage interview: Ancient enmities___(ragline)___The Telegraph: The Death of King Arthur by Simon Armitage: review___(ragline)___The Guardian: Ezra Pound's daughter fights to wrest the renegade poet's legacy from fascists___(ragline)___The Associated Press: Suspicions rise in Pablo Neruda's death___(ragline)___Chicago Tribune: Chinese dissident to stand trial for poem___(ragline)___The Epoch Times: Du Fu: Poetry Wrought from Hardship___(ragline)___The Guardian: In theory: the death of literature___(ragline)___The Washington Post: Is poetry dead? Or, in the age of the Internet, does it offer us what nothing else can?___(ragline)___David Biespiel: The Oregonian: W.S. Di Piero's 'Only in Things'___(ragline)___Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: N-Joie! An exclusive winter's poem from our west coast___(ragline)___Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Bloody Mary by Susan Donnelly___(ragline)___Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Fight by Gregory Djanikian___(ragline)___Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Hitchhikers by Charles Simic___(ragline)___Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Kiss by Marcus Jackson___(ragline)___Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: New Year's by Dana Gioia___(ragline)___Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Polly Perkins by Harry Clifton___(ragline)___Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: To Marina (excerpt) by Kenneth Koch___(ragline)___Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 356___(ragline)___Wesley McNair: The Portland Press Herald: Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry___(ragline)___Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Poem of the week: Philosophy by Amy Levy___(ragline)___Katherine Schulten: The New York Times: Poetry Pairing: 'January'___(ragline)___Frank Wilson: When Falls the Coliseum: That's What He Said: The presumption that we are not alone___(ragline)___CounterPunch: Poets' Basement: Three by Max Hjortsberg___(ragline)___Forward: The Arty Semite: Laurie Patton's Poetry and Hermeneutics___(ragline)___The Guardian: The Saturday poem: He Stands So Still and Waits___(ragline)___Guernica: Poetry: Bamboo Grove and A Place Named for Deer___(ragline)___Guernica: Poetry: The Last Bestiary___(ragline)___Huffington Post: The Friday Poem: The Friday Poem Special: T.S. Eliot Prize Preview___(ragline)___Morning Star: Well Versed: Protest___(ragline)___The New Yorker: Leonard Cohen: "Going Home"___(ragline)___The Oregonian: Poetry: 'On Wanting to Tell about a Girl Eating Fish Eyes,' by Mary Szybist___(ragline)___PBS: Newshour: Weekly Poem: 'Root'___(ragline)___Portsmouth Herald News: Random Acts of Poetry: Remember?___(ragline)___San Antonio Express-News: Poem: 'Have You Seen Peach?'___(ragline)___Slate: "New Economy"--By Joshua Rivkin___(ragline)___The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: Invitation to a Resurrection___(ragline)___The Daily Star: Razia Khan Amin: teacher, poet, novelist___(ragline)___The Irish Times: Poet Pearse Hutchinson dies___(ragline)___iVillage: Wes Bentley: I Still Grieve for My Pal & Fellow Poet Heath Ledger___(ragline)___Kashmir Life: Lal ud din Mazloom___(ragline)___Chicago Tribune: Marshall Rosenthal, 1940-2012___(ragline)___The Aspen Times: Poetry-letter writer dies at 93___(ragline)___The Washington Post: Eleanor Ross Taylor, poet of women's lives in the South, dies at 91___

Blog Entry Tape: (ragline)___The Guardian: John Burnside wins most controversial T.S. Eliot prize in decades___(ragline)___The Telegraph: John Burnside: How poetry can change lives___(ragline)___The Guardian: Guardian books podcast: John Burnside wins T.S. Eliot poetry prize___(ragline)___London Review of Books: Two Poems: John Burnside___(ragline)___Granta: Interview: John Burnside___(ragline)___St. Louis Dispatch: A Look Back: Poet T.S. Eliot visits his home town in 1933___(ragline)___St. Louis Dispatch: Native poet Quincy Troupe thanks St. Louis friends in new collection, Erancities___(ragline)___The Ubyssey: In conversation with Fred Wah, the new poet laureate of Canada___(ragline)___Russia Beyond the Headlines: Pushkin Hills: The great poet's country retreat___(ragline)___Spectator: Simon Armitage interview: Ancient enmities___(ragline)___The Telegraph: The Death of King Arthur by Simon Armitage: review___(ragline)___The Guardian: Ezra Pound's daughter fights to wrest the renegade poet's legacy from fascists___(ragline)___The Associated Press: Suspicions rise in Pablo Neruda's death___(ragline)___Chicago Tribune: Chinese dissident to stand trial for poem___(ragline)___The Epoch Times: Du Fu: Poetry Wrought from Hardship___(ragline)___The Guardian: In theory: the death of literature___(ragline)___The Washington Post: Is poetry dead? Or, in the age of the Internet, does it offer us what nothing else can?___(ragline)___David Biespiel: The Oregonian: W.S. Di Piero's 'Only in Things'___(ragline)___Judith Fitzgerald: The Globe and Mail: In Other Words: N-Joie! An exclusive winter's poem from our west coast___(ragline)___Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Bloody Mary by Susan Donnelly___(ragline)___Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: The Fight by Gregory Djanikian___(ragline)___Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Hitchhikers by Charles Simic___(ragline)___Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Kiss by Marcus Jackson___(ragline)___Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: New Year's by Dana Gioia___(ragline)___Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: Polly Perkins by Harry Clifton___(ragline)___Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: To Marina (excerpt) by Kenneth Koch___(ragline)___Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 356___(ragline)___Wesley McNair: The Portland Press Herald: Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry___(ragline)___Carol Rumens: The Guardian: Poem of the week: Philosophy by Amy Levy___(ragline)___Katherine Schulten: The New York Times: Poetry Pairing: 'January'___(ragline)___Frank Wilson: When Falls the Coliseum: That's What He Said: The presumption that we are not alone___(ragline)___CounterPunch: Poets' Basement: Three by Max Hjortsberg___(ragline)___Forward: The Arty Semite: Laurie Patton's Poetry and Hermeneutics___(ragline)___The Guardian: The Saturday poem: He Stands So Still and Waits___(ragline)___Guernica: Poetry: Bamboo Grove and A Place Named for Deer___(ragline)___Guernica: Poetry: The Last Bestiary___(ragline)___Huffington Post: The Friday Poem: The Friday Poem Special: T.S. Eliot Prize Preview___(ragline)___Morning Star: Well Versed: Protest___(ragline)___The New Yorker: Leonard Cohen: "Going Home"___(ragline)___The Oregonian: Poetry: 'On Wanting to Tell about a Girl Eating Fish Eyes,' by Mary Szybist___(ragline)___PBS: Newshour: Weekly Poem: 'Root'___(ragline)___Portsmouth Herald News: Random Acts of Poetry: Remember?___(ragline)___San Antonio Express-News: Poem: 'Have You Seen Peach?'___(ragline)___Slate: "New Economy"--By Joshua Rivkin___(ragline)___The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: Invitation to a Resurrection___(ragline)___The Daily Star: Razia Khan Amin: teacher, poet, novelist___(ragline)___The Irish Times: Poet Pearse Hutchinson dies___(ragline)___iVillage: Wes Bentley: I Still Grieve for My Pal & Fellow Poet Heath Ledger___(ragline)___Kashmir Life: Lal ud din Mazloom___(ragline)___Chicago Tribune: Marshall Rosenthal, 1940-2012___(ragline)___The Aspen Times: Poetry-letter writer dies at 93___(ragline)___The Washington Post: Eleanor Ross Taylor, poet of women's lives in the South, dies at 91___

January 17th forum announcement

Dear Poetry Aficionados,

Poetry & Poets in Rags blog


We begin with John Burnside winning the T.S. Eliot Prize. The Huffington Post, a Great Regular now with its Friday Poem, goes poetically over board and brings us a poem from each of the finalists in that contest. Our second story in News at Eleven is about T.S. Eliot returning to St. Louis, which is followed by an article about native St. Louis poet Quincy Troupe. We then go north for an article on Fred Wah, Canada's poet laureate, and then to Pushkin Hills for an article on Pushkin, before returning to Great Britain, but this time in the days of King Arthur. And this sampling is just the beginning of our journey around the poetry globe this week, which includes translations of Du Fu one up from our Back Page, and Wang Wei in Great Regulars, from Guernica.

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: The Scottish poet John Burnside has won

the most controversial T.S. Eliot poetry prize in years, for a collection described as "haunting", after two of the original shortlisted poets dropped out in protest over funding from the hedge fund Aurum.

Burnside, a former winner of the Whitbread poetry prize, took the £15,000 prize for his 11th collection, Black Cat Bone. He beat a notably strong surviving list, including the poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy; Sean O'Brien, for his first collection since winning both the T.S. Eliot and the Forward prizes in 2008; and David Harsent, also a previous Forward winner.

from The Guardian: John Burnside wins most controversial T.S. Eliot prize in decades
then The Telegraph: John Burnside: How poetry can change lives
then The Guardian: Guardian books podcast: John Burnside wins T.S. Eliot poetry prize
then London Review of Books: Two Poems: John Burnside
then Granta: Interview: John Burnside

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News at Eleven: [T.S. Eliot] returned in 1933 to

lecture on William Shakespeare at Washington University. Because Eliot was a famous poet and critic, local reporters jotted down his every public utterance. Eliot said he was surprised by growth west of Forest Park, but otherwise recognized his home town.

"It is bigger and all that sort of thing, but it is still the St. Louis I knew," Eliot said in his developed British accent.

He said he never moved back from London "because I had a job there, so I stayed."

from St. Louis Dispatch: A Look Back: Poet T.S. Eliot visits his home town in 1933

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News at Eleven: In a lengthy dedication, he name-checks

no fewer than eight African-American men from the St. Louis region: the musicians Miles Davis, Hamiet Bluiett and Kelvyn Bell; the poets K. Curtis Lyle and Eugene B. Redmond; the artist Oliver Jackson; his cousin Donald Troupe; and his friend Donald M. Suggs, publisher of The St. Louis American.

"In this particular book, I really wanted to thank the people who really have supported me over the years," Troupe said.

from St. Louis Dispatch: Native poet Quincy Troupe thanks St. Louis friends in new collection, Erancities

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News at Eleven: [Fred] Wah is tasked with representing

Canadian literature by a government that has made significant cuts to the arts. He admitted that "in regards to this particular government--much of which I disagree with ideologically--is that I have to find a way to work that ideology. But that's no different from the parliamentarians on the hill who represent different ideas.

"Each of us comes from a specific constituency of opinion and imagination and I think mine is pretty easy to pin down. I don't know quite yet how I'm going to negotiate it, but I find it intriguing."

from The Ubyssey: In conversation with Fred Wah, the new poet laureate of Canada

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News at Eleven: The matriarch was enamored of [Alexander] Pushkin,

and he was pleasantly spoiled during his visits to their house. But the poet's attentions were directed to [Praskovya] Osipova's niece, Anna Petrovna Kern, who visited Trigorskoye in the summer of 1825. Pushkin had met Kern previously in St. Petersburg, and this unexpected reacquaintance stimulated his desire. He wrote for her one of his most passionate love lyrics: "I remember the miraculous moment." When Osipova got wind of this romance, she spirited Kern back to her husband in Riga.

from Russia Beyond the Headlines: Pushkin Hills: The great poet's country retreat

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News at Eleven: Britain's awkward relationship with

the continent is just one parallel with the present. [Simon] Armitage says, "I didn't realise, until I started translating it, that so many parallels come across. There is one scene where the British kill the king of Libya, who had been on a really murderous spree. And there is the whole business of England's very complicated relationship with the rest of the British Isles, which is something that has come up again recently. Also, there is the religious conflict, which seems to lurk at the back of this poem, with an early form of Protestantism being pursued against Rome."

from Spectator: Simon Armitage interview: Ancient enmities
then The Telegraph: The Death of King Arthur by Simon Armitage: review

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News at Eleven: But Mary De Rachewiltz's peace has been

shattered by the murky world of Italian neofascist politics and the fallout from a bloody shooting spree through Florence's ancient piazzas that left two immigrants dead in December.

Angered by the decision of a rising fascist group called CasaPound to name itself after her father in honour of his support for dictator Benito Mussolini, De Rachewiltz is seeking through the courts to force the group to drop the name, and has accelerated her efforts after a CasaPound sympathiser shot dead two Senegalese street traders and wounded three others before turning the gun on himself.

from The Guardian: Ezra Pound's daughter fights to wrest the renegade poet's legacy from fascists

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News at Eleven: Chilean Communist Party lawyer Eduardo Contreras

said he believes the poet was murdered, and he is supported by Manuel Araya, who was Neruda's driver, bodyguard and assistant in the year leading up to his death.

While Neruda's widow and his own foundation have rejected the theory, its resurgence nearly 40 years later reflects the suspicions haunting this nation of 17 million that the full story behind the coup and the dictatorship remains untold.

from The Associated Press: Suspicions rise in Pablo Neruda's death

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News at Eleven: The authorities disclosed their decision

to prosecute Zhu [Yufu] nearly a year after Zhu had written the poem, which was titled "It's time."

A verse reads: "It's time, Chinese people!/The square belongs to everyone/the feet are yours/it's time to use your feet and take to the square to make a choice". Zhu's lawyer said the poem had been published on the Internet

Li [Weimin] said, however, that Zhu had nothing to do with the online calls for "Jasmine Revolution" rallies inspired by uprisings in the Middle East.

from Chicago Tribune: Chinese dissident to stand trial for poem

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News at Eleven: But while the rebellion brought

great adversity, it also proved to be the source of inspiration for some of Du Fu's greatest verse. The social collapse transformed his outlook, and endowed him with deep compassion for the suffering he saw all around. Much more so than the other major Tang poets, many of Du Fu's later poems reflect a developed social conscience. And the occasionally querulous tone of his earlier work matures into a lyric that has been informed by a tragic sense of life.

So here are two poems by Du Fu. The first is from his earlier years and is a more conventional Tang lyric about the sadness occasioned by springtime.

from The Epoch Times: Du Fu: Poetry Wrought from Hardship

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News at Eleven (Back Page): This implies that writing is not,

primarily, about self-expression, but about reception and transmission; as Winnie the Pooh once put it, with uncharacteristic menace, "Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you". What is striking here is that [George] Steiner--steeped in the Judaeo-Christian tradition; scourge of Gallic theory--should be in total agreement, on this point, with novelist Tom McCarthy, who comes, as it were, from the other side of the barricades.

from The Guardian: In theory: the death of literature
then The Washington Post: Is poetry dead? Or, in the age of the Internet, does it offer us what nothing else can?

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Great Regulars: What it feels like, experientially,

to see a red rose is different from what it feels like to see a yellow rose. Likewise for hearing a musical note played by a piano and hearing the same musical note played by a tuba. The qualia of these experiences are what give each of them its characteristic 'feel' and also what distinguish them from one another." So these perceptions that [W.S.] Di Piero says "we feel in our stomachs" aren't literal or literary. They are dynamic and nameless. And they inspire a poet's imagination into awe and into language. The qualia "make us who we are becoming."

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: W.S. Di Piero's 'Only in Things'

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