IBPC: Poetry and Poets in Rags

2008-03-18T17:44:00.000-04:00

News at Eleven

A reader in love with [C.P.] Cavafy has no choice but to own several, since it often happens that where one translator comes up short, the other does better. Every time I'm struck with admiration for the poetic qualities of Haviaras's translation (he even manages to reproduce the rhymes of some of the early poems), I recall a poem Sachperoglou has done exceedingly well. Such as 'Ithaca':

from London Review of Books: Some Sort of a Solution

The junta increased U Win Tin's sentence by 10 more years. They put him alone in his cell. The cell was 8.5 x 11.5 feet. There was only a bamboo mat on the concrete floor. Sleeping, eating, walking and cleaning the bowels were done in the very same place. He could not see the sun, the moon or the stars. He was intentionally barred from breathing fresh air, tasting nourishing food and drinking a drop of fresh water. The worst thing was throwing the old writer into solitary confinement in such a cage for two decades.

from Asian Tribune: Burma's Longest Serving Prisoner of Conscience Must Be Free

"I can't take it anymore like this, I am leaving finally," Taslima [Nasreen] said. "They did not even allow me to go back to Kolkata to collect my things, you guys are there, take care of those."

They won, secular India lost. Taslima is finally leaving India for Europe, unable to cope up with life in solitary confinement in the dungeons of "safe house"- or should we call it gulags for cultural offences? - that exists in free India. Safe houses are nice places to keep safe from species like a "Muslim woman writer with a big mouth."

from Sify News: Goodbye Taslima, Welcome India without slogans

When he is not at his cottage 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

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'?

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

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

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

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 Rimes: A Giant's Roaring, Faintly Echoed

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

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

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

[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

Gunter Grass Reads Gabo
By Evan Fleischer

from 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

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

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'

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Woman who Worries Herself to Death by Kathryn Simmonds

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: The Woman who Worries Herself to Death by Kathryn Simmonds

Sean's suggestions for adding drama to poetry

A 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

Found Myself in Search of Matthias & Paul
by Robert Gibbons

from Guernica: Poetry: Found Myself in Search of Matthias & Paul

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'

For the Prisoners of Guantanamo
by Dennis Brutus

from MR Zine: For the Prisoners of Guantanamo

Midi
by Les Murray

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Midi

On Beauty
by James Longenbach

from The New Yorker: Poetry: On Beauty

Pharaoh's Daughter
By Erika Meitner

from Nextbook: Pharaoh's Daughter
also Nextbook: North Country Canzone

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

By Lauren Syphers

The Ginger Jar

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Lauren Syphers]

[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

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

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

"planting daffodils"
By Charlotte Boulay

from Slate: "planting daffodils" --By Charlotte Boulay

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

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

[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

"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'

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

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

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

[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

[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

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

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

2008-03-11T20:16:00.000-04:00

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

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

"Old Poets", from Elaine Feinstein's aptly titled new volume Talking to the Dead, reflects that "We were so sure/The words of their poems would last,/and that the next generation/would be equally in love with the past". If "love" can encompass every shade of rivalry and argument, she has every right to her confidence. Poetry itself, as the imprisoned Wyatt came to know, can be the most stalwart paramour of all.

The Poem that Changed My Life

Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate

I Look into my Glass, by Thomas Hardy

from The Independent: Why poetry still matters, by Boyd Tonkin

Robert Frost Lecture: No poem is intelligible except in light of all the other poems, and the poems that were ever written, so you better get about them, circulating among them. That's what I say in the spirit of poetry too, and you take as much stock in it as I'm telling you to take...'

from WBUR Newsroom: Robert Frost Unplugged

Such young people have, in effect, no history, and this being so, their own significance is diminished. The problem is not whether Shakespeare or the Bible or TS Eliot is "relevant" to them, but whether they can see themselves as part of a continuum, a community extending across history.

from The Guardian: 'Read poetry: it's quite hard'

T.S. Eliot, who achieved the lofty status of Nobel Prize winner--and, significantly--became one of his generation's most authoritative cultural critics, himself ironically remarked upon his genetic inheritance from "witch-hangers" and the cultural debt he owed to his common heritage with Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Indeed, as even a superficial acquaintance with American literature will reveal, Eliot's sensibilities and literary soul had much in common with Hawthorne's work, and with that other eminent American expatriate, Henry James.

from Salem Gazette: 'Between two waves of the sea' - T.S. Eliot's roots in the North Shore
also Salem Gazette: 'At the source of the longest river'--T.S. Eliot's ties to Salem
also Salem Gazette: T.S. Eliot:: 'The river is within us, the sea is all about us'

"No, not me. I can't go that. I get stage-fright. Wait till Allen comes back--he's great. He loves that."

To what did Kerouac attribute his sudden recognition on the West Coast, after years of the opposite here in the East: "One thing," he said. "Rexroth. A great man. A great critic. Interested in young people, interested in everything."

from Village Voice: Back to the Village

That they have taken note of him, he [Linton Kwesi Johnson] says, "is great. But they recognise me, not the other way round. Some black and Caribbean poets seek a kind of validation from these arbiters of British taste. But they really didn't exist for me. I was coming from a position of cultural autonomy. I did my own thing, built my own audience and established my own base. My audience was ordinary people."

from The Guardian: 'I did my own thing'

The poet wrestles all the way to the last lines between a readiness to make peace with her own passing versus a continued resistance, along with the mourning of friends, family and colleagues. For [Grace] Paley, who passed away before seeing the publication of this book, these last words sustain the truths she was committed to, and bear witness to new wisdom.

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: Peculiar Antennae

Split This Rock calls poets to a greater role in public life and fosters a national network of activist poets. The festival will explore and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for change: reaching across differences, considering personal and social responsibility, asserting the right to free speech, bearing witness to the diversity and complexity of human experience through language, imagining a better world.

from Foreign Policy in Focus: Hear This Hammer Ring

Reporters Without Borders will launch the first International Online Free Expression Day under UNESCO's patronage on 12 March, when it will also organise its second "24-hour online demo against Internet censorship," urging Internet users to come and demonstrate on its website, www.rsf.org.

from Reporters Without Borders: Wednesday 12 March : launch of Online Free Expression Day plus repeat of last year's "24-hour online demo"

Great Regulars

[Alison] Brackenbury is at her best when exploring details from her own life and from her immediate environment, when celebrating the possibilities of the near at hand, and, in the end, it's in these subtle evocations of everyday fragility that Singing in the Dark finds its strength.

from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: At home with the horses

[James] Frey has a contract for a novel and has started a blog. The scandal over [Margaret] Seltzer's book will blow over--until next time.

When Primus St. John, an English professor at Portland State, was asked about fake memoirs, his answer was telling.

"Which one?"

from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: Bookmarks: Memoir Mess

[Richard] Kenney is a muscular poet. Ideas leap toward emotions, images quicken into thoughts, consonants tick into consonants, and vowels elide into vowels. This sort of circular momentum is at the heart of his Italian sonnet, "Millenary," too. It's a wry, Y2K lament cushioned with a concluding punch line of self-deprecation.

Millenary

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: Poetry

"When you're writing your first novel and you're writing it in free verse, you have to pause every 15 pages and reassure yourself you're not crazy. You come up with a lot of different excuses for why you're not crazy.

"You really aren't expecting anyone to buy it," [Toby] Barlow said recently in a phone interview from San Francisco, where he was promoting the book.

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Sharp Teeth author couldn't tear himself away from the idea of a werewolf novel

Eastern Washington University Press recently brought back into print "Awake," Dorianne Laux's excellent debut poetry collection from 1990. It's great to have it back. Today, Parachute features the collection's title poem, courtesy of the author.

Awake

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: "Awake"

OK. People are responding by sending poems, so the blog will go on for now. But I STILL NEED MORE poems, screeds about poetry, rants, deep thoughts, considered observations and so on.

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Back from the brink

Back Yard

by Jon Herbert Arkham

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Back Yard'

'The Collection'
By Judith Bader Jones

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'The Collection'

So think of this as Poetry Lab # 1. What are your overall impressions? Are there things he could do to make the poem better? If so, what? Hit that ol' comment button. All I ask is that everyone offer respect along with honesty.

Crow

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Poetry Lab One

Here's a wonderfully naked poem by Carrie Allison. I make no apologies for printing it on a Sunday. Enjoy.

Trying

By Carrie Allison

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Procreation

Memory and Migration

By Van K. Brock

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Van's the man

At the Waffle House

By Shawn Pavey

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Waffle stomp

"Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me and I will be whiter than snow." (Psalm 51:7).

When I first read this, I could hardly believe it. "What? Me, clean as snow?" How stunning.

By the time I was 20 years old, I was a sexual mess.

from John Freeman: Philadelphia Daily News: Bible shows the way out of sin and addiction

The poem exemplifies one of his most frivolous attempts to squeeze a poem out the measured encumbrances of faulty modernism. [John] Betjeman identified himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Betjeman's 'Westgate-On-Sea'

Some tried to invent their own mythology and religion.

Influenced by a widespread failure to understand scientific advancement of their era, many began to think that the human being was a super-animal instead of child of God.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Four Modernist Poets

In the preface, [Malcolm M.] Sedam claims his poetic experience by stating, "Let me speak for my own poetry--that it happened to me--that I lived, enjoyed or suffered every scene and that these poems are the essence of these experiences."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Malcolm M. Sedam

Fine. Then let's define memoir as fiction and forget all this nonsense about the "truth."

According to [Lee] Gutkind, readers don't care anyway.

from Bob Hoover: Post-Gazette: A hoax? Nah, just a memoir

This is such an appropriate poem for March, and David Sutton's reminiscences of being cold in winter need no explanation. His childhood experience is familiar to me, and will be to anyone who has not been "coddled".

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: Chilling memories

Beyond the laconic remark in the subtitle, it is difficult to say how much, if at all, [Robert] Frost intended his poem to comment on Christian religion. But the editors of the TLS saw fit to publish the poem in the run-up to Easter 1954; and so in 2008 do we.

The Bad Island – Easter
(Perhaps so called because it may have risen once)

from Mick Imlah: The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: The Bad Island--Easter

The apocryphal story goes that he'd been promised a friend's daughter in marriage, but the friend reneged, allegedly because Archilochos' mother had been a slave. The resulting curse, "Liar," still sprays like seawater on your face.

Liar

from Mary Karr: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice: Poetic Staying Power

Poem: "San Antonio" by Naomi Shihab Nye from Is this Forever, or What? Poems and Paintings from Texas.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of March 10, 2008

Here, poet Yusef Komunyakaa, who teaches at New York University, shows us a fine portrait of the hard life of a worker in this case, a horse and, through metaphor, the terrible, clumsy beauty of his final moments.

Yellowjackets

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 154

Except that the marriage turned out to be exceptionally happy, and Dorothy [Wordsworth] never did anything but support it and call Mary "dear". Yet in the last part of Dorothy's long life (she stayed under her brother's roof until her death at the age of 84), the strains finally emerged and drove her to the edge of madness.

from Andrew Motion: The Guardian: The agony, the ecstasy and the hot soup

[Rob Wicks] wanted me to go and meet Harry [Patch], who is 109 years old and the last surviving "Tommy" who fought in the trenches during the First World War, share his memories, then come home to London and write something about him.

If things went well, there would be a second meeting, at which I'd read Harry his poem.

from Andrew Motion: Telegraph: Harry Patch: A century's life shaped by four months at war

The Five Acts of Harry Patch
'The Last Fighting Tommy'
by Andrew Motion

from Andrew Motion: Telegraph: The Five Acts of Harry Patch

[Charles] Kingsley repeats the form of this opening stanza as he turns to the rocks and streams. The "rosy rocks" remind us of blood, suggesting the elemental extremes of birth and death beyond the cozy designs of the seaside resort. This coloring may strike us as fanciful, but it faithfully describes the red rock so distinctive of the Devonshire and Cornish landscape.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: A reading of 'Dartside' by Charles Kingsley

But because of labels like "memoir" and "nonfiction," we have to preten? d the spectacle is based in reality. So, perhaps instead of rigorous policing, we need a new name for this hybrid category. We're talking about stories inspired by gritty real life--stories that claim to be outrageously "authentic," like the best reality TV, while also playing up their own tabloid qualities.

from Meghan O'Rourke: Slate: Lies and Consequences

by Susan Zenker

"Against the grain of white headboard you sketched
blue doves with gold open beaks, gold-scalloped wings
that cluttered the doorways--wishes
through which early evenings Diego slipped
out to markets, cantinas, and trysts."

Posted on March 7, 2008

Shrine to Frida Kahlo

from Donna Snyder: Newspaper Tree: Tumblewords Poetry: Poetry: "Shrine to Frida Kahlo"

aura
by Arlo Quint

from The Brooklyn Rail: aura

Big Box
by Ange Mlinko

from The Brooklyn Rail: Big Box

Cuckoo Nun
by Ange Mlinko

from The Brooklyn Rail: Cuckoo Nun

Caption
by Lihn Dinh

from The Brooklyn Rail: Caption

How to Foster
by Linh Dinh

from The Brooklyn Rail: How to Foster

Not Quite Symmetry
by Linh Dinh

from The Brooklyn Rail: Not Quite Symmetry

Typical Umbrella Fiasco
by Miles Champion

from The Brooklyn Rail: Typical Umbrella Fiasco

Fantasy of Gods

By Joseph Bassi

from The Daily Texan: Poetry: Fantasy of Gods

Ladybug

By Benjamin Toscher

from The Daily Texan: Poetry: Ladybug

A Summer Day in Winter

By Benjamin Toscher

from The Daily Texan: Poetry: A Summer Day in Winter

With this certitude anxiety can be mastered, for anxiety is invariably the result of a certain mode of being implicated in the game, of being caught by the game, of being as it were from the very beginning at stake in the game.

from Daily Times: Purple Patch: Structure, sign and play --Jacques Derrida

Editor's note: This week in Poetry Corner we feature the work of Jonell Esme Jel'enedra, who has lived and worked in the Santa Cruz community since 1980. She is the author of "Stilt Walking at Midnight" (Hummingbird press, 2004), a recipient of a Mary Lonnberg Smith award, and the Quarry West poetry award, First Prize, 1999.

Lullabies for an Insomniac

from Good Times Weekly: Poetry Corner: Poetry by Jonell Esme Jel'enedra

Candle at a Wake by Elena Shvarts, translated by Sasha Dugdale

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Candle at a Wake by Elena Shvarts, translated by Sasha Dugdale

Patricia Wallace Jones creates a highly resonant and engaging poem from the dawn exercise. As in some of Michael Longley's poems of the natural world, the brevity is extremely well-judged--less is so often more.

from The Guardian: Poetry Workshop: 'Thick with season'
plus T? he Guardian: Poetry Workshop: 'Thick with season' (continued)

'Dreaming of You as a Saint'
By Maril Crabtree

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'Dreaming of You as a Saint'

A Clean Slate
by Fred D'Aguiar

from The New Yorker: Poetry: A Clean Slate

Terrible Things Are Happening . . .
by Maureen N. McLane

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Terrible Things Are Happening . . .

By Sydne M. Klein

Inspiration

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Sydne M. Klein]

By Nicole Murray

I am the person who,

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Nicole Murray]

[by E. Bernard Arnold]
A Confused Husband

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: A Confused Husband

[Bradford] Morrow, in his introduction, intimates that this poem may have been the inspiration for Ginsberg's "Howl." In fact, Rexroth was one of the chief influences on the Beat Generation, a connection he later disavowed with the now famous statement, "an entymologist is not a bug."

from Powells: Review-A-Day: Selected Poems

American poet Tess Gallagher is in Scotland for the StAnza poetry festival (see interview, page 20). Her long-awaited eighth collection, Dear Ghosts (Graywolf Press), confronts illness, mortality and the loss of loved ones, including that of her poet and short-story writer husband Raymond Carver.

Little Match Box

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week

"For D."
By Rosanna Warren

from Slate: "For D." --By Rosanna Warren

Poetic Obituaries

Rodney L. Armstrong, March 6, 1965--December 22, 2005

Rod was a good friend during and following the years we worked together on the poetry board he created, Gandy Creek. He was also a fine poet himself, as this poem (originally published in Avatar Review 3) shows:

"Particles"

from The Compost Heap: In Memoriam

[Padma Barkataki] wrote 38 novels, five collections of short story and ? two collections of poetry as well as three children books. He also translated several classics of different languages into Assamese.

from Calcutta Telegraph: Padma Barkataki dies at 82

[Marilyn Jane Camp] started teaching in rural Madison County in 1949 and retired in 1989 from Muscatine public schools. Following retirement, she moved to Indianola. She enjoyed reading and poetry.

from The Des Moines Register: Marilyn Jane Camp, 77, Indianola

When the Rev. [Howard W.] Creecy [Sr.] took the pulpit, his son said, "He was the master mix of intellect, wisdom and spiritualism. You were going to hear great poetry, great prose and great preaching."

He was known for his prayers, his son said. For years, his sermons were broadcast on AM radio.

from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Howard Creecy Sr., 79, leader in SCLC

[Jeannie H.] Davis was given awards for her work by the Girl Scouts of America, North Philadelphia Community, and the Chapel of Four Chaplains. She enjoyed writing poetry.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Jeannie H. Davis: Elementary teacher, 90

"Raven truly was wonderful," he [Raven McConnell's father Tony] said. "She was loved by everybody. She was very interested in photography. She wrote great poems. She loved poetry and art."

from The Columbus Dispatch: Hit-and-run victim gives life to others

2008-03-04T19:47:00.001-05:00

News at Eleven

One initiator and participant will be the general secretary of the Friends of Tibet Organization, poet Mr Tenzin Tsundue.

The walkers will leave India in early March and trek through the Himalayas, reaching Tibet during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing in August.

from Epoch Times: An Epic Walk Home through Himalayas for Exiled Tibetan Poet

Earth Shattering has poems on destruction to alert and alarm anyone willing to read or listen as well as poems which illuminate the ecological balance of the rapidly vanishing world.

As the world's politicians and corporations orchestrate our headlong rush towards eco-Armageddon, poetry may seem like a hopeless gesture. But if Seferis and Heaney are right, poetry can at the very least be "strong enough to help".

from The Guardian: Something in nothing

[Paul Laurence] Dunbar's rebuttal that night was his own writing and elocution, a performance that was highly praised.

"Part of the remarkable thing about Dunbar's life is how he is able to negotiate what is truly an impossible climate of racial discrimination. This is one of the most horrific periods of racial repression in America," the BGSU professor [Timothy Messer-Kruse] said.

from The Toledo Blade: Toledo helped shine light on gifted black poet

Among the tourists, he [TS Eliot] would have seen some locals fishing from the jetty to supplement their diet with cod or eels, said Mr [David] Seabrook. Eliot may well have noticed others combing the beach for anything left from shipwrecks.

In the middle of November, Eliot left Thanet and went to Lausanne in Switzerland to undergo psychiatric treatment. The Waste Land came out in 1922.

from Kent News: How TS Eliot found inspiration at Margate

As [Robert] Frost says in what may be his best essay, "The Constant Symbol," "every poem is an epitome of the great predicament; a figure of the will braving alien entanglements." The out-setting poet should expect a series of surprises and even some lucky accidents. "It takes a hero to make a poem," Frost said in one of his interviews.

Every good poem involves risk-taking; not least with its eventual reader.

from The Washington Times: What the poet was thinking

The committee looked at nominees' résumés and their poetry, judging on the basis of quality of the work, contributions to the literary community and willingness to serve. The top three names were sent to the governor, and he personally selected Bly.

Driving Toward the Lac Qui Parle River

By Robert Bly

from Pioneer Press: Robert Bly is state's first poet laureate

"Writing those poems, I came to understand why people write elegies," [Mary Jo] Bang says. "One of their uses seems to be to keep the person alive in the world. I was aware from the beginning that I was keeping a conversation going with someone I was talking with for 37 years. Now, because of that event, I needed all the more to talk with him.

"At the end, you know that you have not kept that person alive. An elegy is a way of distracting yourself from lacerating grief."

from St. Louis Post-Dispatch: At home with Mary Jo Bang

Dorothy [Wordsworth] began writing the Grasmere Journals in 1800 "because I shall give William pleasure by it". William's pleasure included filching from Dorothy's pages to create his poetry. The connections are transparent: "I never saw daffodils so beautiful," wrote Dorothy. "They grew among the mossy stones. . . & the rest tossed & reeled & danced & seemed as if they verily laughed . . ."

from The Times: The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth by Frances Wilson

And once she [Daphne du Maurier] found [J. Alex] Symington--by then living a reclusive existence on the outskirts of Leeds, in a house filled with hundreds of boxes and overflowing files of Brontë papers and relics--he gave her a series of enticing clues to follow, suggesting in letters to her that Charlotte's signature had been forged on many of Branwell's youthful manuscripts, and that some of Branwell's most accomplished poems had been wilfully misattributed to Emily, so that they could be sold for a far higher price to collectors who were interested only in the famous sisters rather than their disappointing brother.

from The Times: The Great Bronte Mystery

Eve is compared to a wood-nymph in Diana's service. Raphael arrives in the garden of Eden like the god Mercury, shaking his plumes and giving out "Heavenly fragrance". And the garden itself is compared to:

that fair field
Of Enna, where Proserpin gathering flowers
Her self a fairer flower by gloomy
Dis
Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world . . .

These have always been my favourite lines in Paradise Lost, with their astonishing leap out of the Christian and into a pagan world picture.

from The Guardian: The devil's advocate

In his poem "Buffalo Bill's" for example, [E.E.] Cummings positioned the words on the page to suggest the shape of an arrowhead and the danger of Buffalo Bill's career.

"Cummings captures that dynamism of his life by the way he makes his lines move on the page, so you can see them moving further to the right and then back, and that's all connected with his painting at the time," [Milton] Cohen says.

from National Public Radio (NPR): College Restores Artwork by Poet E.E. Cummings

Great Regulars

Lisa Alvarado
Grieving

from Lisa Alvarado: Grieving

The standard model is a triumph of human thought, a masterpiece. Professor Richard Kenway, who led the QCDOC team, implored me to tell you just how amazing it is. Thanks to the standard model, the human mind has grasped the behaviour of the unimaginably small entities of which the universe consists.

But, like so much else in modern physics, it doesn't quite make sense.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Times: Supercomputer works on cracking the mystery of the universe

[Hadji] Ali used camels on a freight route between Yuma and Tucson, Ariz. Some of them went into the desert and became feral. After his death in 1902, Ali became a legendary Western figure, the subject of a folk song ("The Ballad of Hi Jolly") and a festival (Hi Jolly Daze in Quartzite, Ariz.).

from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: Common threads in U.S., Mideast

"But in Pakistan, the situation looked quite different," said Fatima [Bhutto] in a speech at the Foreign Correspondents' Club here.

"To say there was rigging in the February 18 elections is an understatement . . . It wasn't just rigging, it was quite open, unapologetic rigging. It was no longer under the table, it was very much on top."

from Fatima Bhutto: The News International Pakistan: Bhutto's niece slams Western media

Why are you crying? my father asked
in my dream, in which we faced each other,
knees touching, seated in a moving train.

I'm Li-Young Lee. I was born in Indonesia. I'm ethnic Chinese. I came to this country about '64. I was born in '57. My mother was the oldest granddaughter of the fifth wife, of the first president of the republic of China.

from Jeffrey Brown: PBS: Newshour: Poetry of Li-Young Lee Is 'Descended from Dreamers'

Admonition: If you are writing more poems than you read, you are writing too many poems (unless you're in one of those monthlong-or-so bubbles involving a manuscript nearing completion or some such; you know what I mean).

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Admonitions

I don't think it's wise to let February pass without a poem from John Donne. So:

Break of Day

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: John Donne

In a mere 64 pages of poems, [Natasha] Trethewey gets to the heart of why this war still troubles us. One could read a couple of shelves full of generic Civil War novels and never scratch so deeply at the issues of race and racism, of neighbor against neighbor, of the only war Americans ever fought against one another.

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Bibliofiles: On poetry, Civil War and cliches

On the Grasshopper and Cricket

The poetry of earth is never dead:

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: John Keats

By Seymour Glass

John Keats

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: "John Keats" haiku (wink, wink)

A little folk/blues for everyone. This is an excerpt from the lyrics to Roly Salley's "Killing the Blues":

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Killing the Blues

There are many variations--at least several dozen--of what is known as "The Month Poem," a mnemonic device.

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: The Month Poem

The late Stevie Smith's excellent "Thoughts About the Person From Porlock" is something of a meta-poem, reflecting, as it does, on Coleridge's composition of "Kubla Khan." Here is an excerpt.

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Punked by Porlock

[Zadie Smith's] instructions to the contributors were simple: "Make somebody up."

That permission seems to have rubbed off on the work. The Book of Other People is full of writers taking chances.

Some of the characters we meet here talk their way into existence, like Rhoda, the chatterbox grandmother in Jonathan Safran Foer's story.

from John Freeman: The Vancouver Sun: Anthology is full of writers taking chances

In fact, it often makes itself known in the shortest form possible: poetry. Paul Auster, Raymond Carver and Louise Erdrich all made their debuts with small volumes of verse. And 50 years ago, so did a 26-year-old ex-Talk of the Town reporter from The New Yorker named John Updike.

The Carpentered Hen and Other Tame Creatures, Updike's debut volume of light verse, was published in March of 1958 and it remains in print today.

from John Freeman: theblogbooks: A lighter shade of Updike

In the second quatrain, the speaker/artist addresses the profane reader who fails to understand the genuineness of this speaker's art, those who think his "jewels trifles are." This speaker is aware that there will always be those who denigrate the genuine and uplift the mediocre. To a dedicated artist, such an attitude is his "greatest grief."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 48

"For me Alice is an attempt to carve out a space in our rather noisy media world for a kind of online reading," [Kate] Pullinger said from her home in London. "It incorporates text, sound and image, but in some ways it bears quite a close relation to reading a book. I'm really interested in creating a story where people will want to do the equivalent of turning the page."

from Katie Haegele: Star Tribune: The way we 'read'

Yet "His eyes are empty as a statue's" which brings me back to thinking that he is one--and his heart is as hard as marble--perhaps because he's carved of marble. Then I read that his muscles are lightly haired and his skin is honey-tanned and think that he might be a figure in a painting--or perhaps a waxwork that shows every human crease and hair in an effort to replicate a human body.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: An object of desire

Severe, stony, sometimes ill-humoured, scathing alike of Welsh peasant and English influence, his [R. S. Thomas'] poems are widely taught in schools.

The Country Clergy

from Mick Imlah: The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: The Country Clergy

In this poem, young [Robert] Hass crosses that campus near where his hero Randall Jarrell had translated his own patriarch, Chekhov. Jarrell--a tennis player famous for charm--captured the misery of housewifery in the effortless '50s. "Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All . . ." He later shocked everyone with his suicide. By cross-dressing in Jarrell's angelic tennis garb, Hass questions the faux ease of academic life and the perils of inherited habits:

Old Dominion

from Mary Karr: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

Poem: "Moment of Inertia" by Debra Spencer from Pomegranate.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of March 03, 2008

In this endearing short poem by Californian Trish Dugger, we can imagin? e "what if?" What if we had been given "a baker's dozen of hearts?" I imagine many more and various love poems would be written. Here Ms. Dugger, Poet Laureate of the City of Encinitas, makes fine use of the one patched but good heart she has.

Spare Parts

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 153

E. Ethelbert Miller

Tomorrow

from E. Ethelbert Miller: Beltway Poetry Quarterly

As the New York Philharmonic left North Korea after its historic concert in Pyongyang, many North Korean defectors were left wondering what impact the event would have on the lives of ordinary people.

"The North Korean people have lived under the shadow of dictatorship and oppression for a long time, and most of them have no idea about music," Seoul-based defector Park Kwang Sun told RFA's Korean service.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: North Korean Defectors Left Skeptical by Concert

Books are about ideas and feelings. We read in order to find out what it would feel like to be in this or that situation. We explore other people’s way of thinking and we look and how they and the society changes.

Reading small extracts from books, followed closely by "fact" questions, misses all this.

from Michael Rosen: Socialist Worker: Michael Rosen explains how not to bore the pants off kids

This week's Poetry Corner features the work of Liberty Rose Elgart-Fail, a writer and performance artist living in Santa Cruz. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in expressive arts with concentrations in writing and speech communication from Ithaca College. Her work can be found in magazines, college curriculum and it is also featured in the Library of Congress Sept. 11 online collection.

Unrelated

from Good Times Weekly: Poetry Corner: Liberty Rose Elgart-Fail

At le Café de la Gare by Neil Curry

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: At le Café de la Gare by Neil Curry

by Reginald Shepherd

Experiment V

for Kate Bush

from Guernica: Poetry: Two Poems

History
by Stephen Dunn

from The New Yorker: Poetry: History

Needle's Eye
by Dan Chiasson

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Needle's Eye

[Eavan] Boland was born in Ireland and educated in London, New York and Dublin, and her many books of poetry, prose, criticism and translation include "Against Love Poetry" (W.W. Norton & Co., 2001), "Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time" (W.W. Norton & Co., 1995) and "New Collected Poems" (W.W. Norton & Co., 2008), where "Is It Still the Same" most recently appears.

from The Oregonian: Poetry

By Hediya Sizar

The Ink

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Hediya Sizar]

[by Hugh A. Harter]
Waves

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Waves

[by Eileen MacDonald]
Poem: There once was a sonnet quite fair

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: There once was a sonnet quite fair

Sarah Maguire's new collection, The Pomegranates of Kandahar (Chatto, £9), contains precisely observed and sensual poems that travel the devastated and troubled world we live in. Here she brings us home to her garden, but evokes perfectly the chill in the early spring air. She appears at StAnza poetry festival later this month speaking about poetry and conflict.

Field Capacity

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week

"Acorns"
By Linda Pastan

from Slate: "Acorns" --By Linda Pastan

Between
Linda Zisquit

from Zeek: Between: Linda Zisquit

Poetic Obituaries

Poetry was another of [Sarah Jeanne] Antrim's gifts, her aunt said. "I have some poetry that would knock your socks off. You'll cry. She was awesome."

Cassandra Kirschbaum, a friend of Antrim's and a freshman at Milford High School, remembers Antrim as a "very loving person."

from Community Press: Investigation into Milford student's death ongoing

In a profile for her [Nancy Hemenway Barton's] "Textures of the Earth" catalogue (1978), Benjamin Forgey, then the art critic for the Washington Star (and later The Post), wrote: "Painstaking observation of specific visual facts; careful nurturing of authentic personal experiences; skilled translation of these visual and emotional impressions into new tactile forms--these are the essential facets of Nancy Hemenway's art-making. It is a skilled, poetic enterprise that produces the evocative resonances we can find in these unusual tapestries."

from The Washington Post: Artist Nancy Hemenway Barton; Known for Tapestries

In 1947, she [Eliana Beam] sold her first poem, "Lament of a Beekeeper's Wife," to a beekeeping journal. Her first check, she remembered vividly, was for $2.50.

Other newspapers and magazines bought her verse, including McCall's, Better Homes and Gardens, The Cleveland Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cats magazine and Ohio Farmer. Then, she noted,

By the time I was publishing, safe in my stride,
Traditional poetry sickened and died.

from Star-News: She used her words to deal with what life handed her

[Kenneth G.] Kuchler was involved in transcribing traditional Shoshoni music, including lyrics, Wolf said. "He used to tell me writing out the music was the easier part of it all."

Some of his work is included in Newe Hupai, Shoshoni Poetry Songs, published by Utah State University Press, according to Ralph Kuchler.

from The Salt Lake Tribune: Kuchler, longest tenured member of the Utah Symphony, dies at 85

It was nearly 7:30 p.m., and Peter Osborne sat at his wife's bedside at Westchester Medical Center.

He was reading Walt Whitman to her, an 1865 poem titled, "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" He reached the last stanza:

Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak call, hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind,
Swift! to the head of the army! swift! spring to your places,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

With those final words, Janis Osborne was gone.

from Times Herald-Record: Port advocate, editor Osborne dead at 64

[Brittany] Romer penned poems and made home videos that spoofed popular movies. She aspired to a career in journalism or photography.

from The Tampa Tribune: Grief Consumes Driver Charged In Friend's Death

[Louis Ross] was in jail when he wrote the poem that ended up at the AA meeting.

"He was a smart guy," says [Carl] Taglianetti. "He was the kind of guy you'd love to have with you when he was straight."

from The Providence Journal: This story lives on in a poem

Along with being [Joyce Carol] Oates' partner as she ascended to the front rank of American writers, Smith also founded and served as editor in chief of Ontario Review, a highly regarded literary magazine whose pages glow with the work of major figures such as Margaret Atwood and Russell Banks, as well as with emerging writers.

from Chicago Tribune: Oates' husband was quiet voice

S. Rangarajan, who wrote under the pen name Sujatha, was known for his versatility in writing. He was the superstar among the world of present writers in Tamil. He had a way with words, whether it meant writing short stories, science fiction, plays, and pieces of writing on history or screenplay for films.

from Oneindia: Writer Sujatha passes away!

Simon "Si" Wakesberg, a veteran journalist and one of the longest-tenured staff members of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. (ISRI), died in late February at the age of 94.

Wakesberg, an award-winning poet and writer, was born in Poland in 1913 and emigrated to New York City at age 8.

from Recycling Today: In Memoriam: Si Wakesberg

2008-02-26T18:02:00.001-05:00

News at Eleven

There is a clich� about music writing, sometimes attributed to Thelonious Monk, among others: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." If so, Nathaniel Mackey is compelled, rather than deterred, by the multiform madness of the enterprise. He is the Balanchine of the architecture dance.

from The New York Times: Jazz Man

Guernica: Was it useful for you to know Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara, James Schuyler�other young poets, I mean.

John Ashbery: Oh yes. When we were young, we were our only audience. We would write poems and read them to each other, and in fact, for quite a few years, I didn't really think that anybody else was going to be interested. My first book was not at all successful. I'm talking about the Yale University one, which I think they printed 800 copies of, and it took eight years to run out.

from Guernica: Houses at Night

"Three dangerous moments will come to you," he [Vyasa] says. "The first will be at the time of your wedding: at that time, hold back your question. The second will be when your husbands are at the height of their power: at that time, hold back your laughter. The third will be when you're shamed as you'd never imagined possible: at that time, hold back your curse."

Panchaali, of course, does none of these and thus launches the conflicts and problems that are the stuff of all storytelling.

from Los Angeles Times: 'The Palace of Illusions' by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

[by Susan Tichy]

1.

Three men who look like Bedouin, but are not, pause with their camels in the snow--

from Foreign Policy in Focus: Fiesta!: American Ghazals

" . . . Australia will notice a New Zealand writer if someone in New York or London says they are interesting and New Zealand will notice Australian writers (in the same way). Everything has to go back to the old centres that we thought we had freed ourselves from."

The answer, he [Bill Manhire] thinks, would be to encourage much more trans-Tasman travel by publishers and editors of books pages, especially to events such as writers' festivals. But with the internet changing the way readers can access books, he says, maybe these old distribution networks will eventually lose their power, anyway.

from The Age: The accidental poet

The poem ends: 'This is an illusion: perspective is everything./Wherever I may stand/the vanishing point is my eye,/the beholden.' To write poems about seeing, you have to disappear; it is essential to relinquish your so-called perspective. The beholden, with its suggestion of gratitude, is for Maguire a self-cure for narrow-mindedness. Egotism dissolves in perception.

from The Guardian: Precise visions and visceral wit

One often feels while reading his work that if there is any misstep, any syllable or stress put wrong, not only the poem but its maker will either go up in flames or disappear down a black crevasse. This is the drama of [Robert] Creeley's defining work, and that drama never feels calculated or inauthentic.

from The New York Times: What Is Left Out

"It's like Frost unplugged," said Peter Campion, editor of the journal. "Previously unpublished lectures would drive scholars crazy in and of themselves, but in addition to that, we're getting him in discussion. He's sitting down with a bunch of 20-year-olds and trying to teach them. That involves anecdotes, stories, jokes, funny little disses on his contemporaries."

from GazetteXtra: Poet Robert Frost illuminated by previously unpublished transcript of 1947 Dartmouth lecture

It is widely expected among education circles, however, that the Irish syllabus committee of the NCCA will withdraw his poetry from the list of prescribed poets.

The move is the latest in a protracted saga surrounding [Cathal] O'Searcaigh's sexual relations with young men in Nepal, which was brought to light by Gortahork-based film-maker Neasa NiChian�in in her upcoming documentary 'Fairytale of Kathmandu'.

from The Donegal News: Poet to be taken off Leaving Cert?

Of Thomas Gray: "as if turning your poetry into published work were mortifying". Of the Alice books: they took "their life from a special relationship with children. They hardly belonged to the realm of commercial authorship". Of Sir Walter Scott: "his anonymity was a way of turning his personal experience into impersonal fiction".

from Times Literary Supplement: Hiding behind the pen

[Xhevdet Bajraj] said it was months before he could sleep without worrying that someone would break into the house to kill them. (Last week Kosovo formally declared its independence from Serbia, prompting protests in Belgrade.)

For weeks after Bajraj arrived in Mexico City, he sat at his computer, unable to write. Eventually the words came. His first book containing poems written in Mexico, The Liberty of Horror, won Kosovo's top literary prize.

from USA Today: Mex. refuge for world's persecuted writers

Great Regulars

"I don't quite understand about understanding poetry. I experience poems with pleasure: whether I understand them or not I'm not quite sure. I don't want to read something I already know or which is going to slide down easily: there has to be some crunch, a certain amount of resilience. It's certainly not meant not to be read. But I enjoy only works of art with an element of surprise in them. It's probably an essential feature of any work of art." [--John Ashbery]

from Bryan Appleyard: Carcanet: Interview with John Ashbery

The readers that write in to me are critical and aware, they're sharp and impassioned and I'd like to thank everyone of them who has written in with a question or a comment--you've helped me learn so much on this journey of ours.

However, and there is always a however, I do get my fair share bizzarro mail.

from Fatima Bhutto: The News International Pakistan: Frequently asked questions

Anna Beer talks to Sarah Crown about her new biography of poet John Milton published 400 years after his birth

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Books: Anna Beer on her new biography of poet John Milton

In the opening section he describes the death of his father in piercing detail, anchoring the exigent crisis with strands of earlier memories ("Appearing in his car on Sunday mornings/Impatient for the whole world to wake up,/He'd arrive for lunch before breakfast") that lend individual texture to this most commonplace of tragedies.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: On your marks

Clutter
By Alarie Tennille

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Clutter'

Another Spring
By Greg Field

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Field trip

Dawn Harris Rainey reminds us today of the wisdom of the late Wystan Hugh Auden:

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: A Nod to Auden

One Below
by Jon Herbert Arkham

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'One Below'

Through My Window

By Ryan P. Silva

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Student Poem # 3

Jonesburg, GA
By Shane P. Stricker
University of Missouri-Kansas City

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Student Poem # 4

Ever since I found the mass-market paperback of a novel by William T Vollmann at a small drugstore in Paris, I thought: retailers can do better.

Coffee shops seem the ideal place to start. Half the people who go to a coffee shop are there to chat. The other half go to read. Why can't Starbucks or Costa give the readers more?

from John Freeman: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Books with everything

She has enjoyed him carnally: his nipples are like ripe berries in her hand. He tastes "like grainmeal mingled with beer" and "[l]ike wine to the palate when taken with white bread." "White bread" used to a delicacy only the rich could afford.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Ancient Egyptian Poem

The speaker likens them to Christ who shed his blood for mankind. As the divinity of Christ portended a "better way" of life for those who understood His courage and followed in His brave footsteps, those who understand and follow the courageous path of these brave black soldiers will also find "a better way."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Jamison's 'The Negro Soldiers'

She will be grateful when her sister's soul has departed, and the dying one no longer has to suffer the sorrowful and painful transition she is now undergoing.

The speaker attempts to report as calmly and objectively as possible as she, at the same time, dramatizes the event that is so crucial, so vitally important.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: 'On the Death of Anne Bront�'

His creations remain with him, and even if his muse roves far from him, his inspirational urges cannot range farther than his thoughts. And through his poems, "I am still with them and they with thee." He is, therefore, never without his love, his muse, his inspiration.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 47

His mention of metal combs recalls the days when remedies for head lice were combed through the hair with just such combs; there is a punitive and controlling aspect to the use of these. And when he complains that he is sick of his annuals, I imagine that it is because his brain has developed beyond them, even while being artificially constrained by his medication.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: A suspicious degeneration

Poem: "Water" by Robert Lowell from Selected Poems.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of February 25, 2008

America's answer to Amy Winehouse may just be a former wedding singer whose r�sum� includes a lengthy stint as a prison guard. Atlanta-born Sharon Jones is a decade or two older than Winehouse, but the big-voiced African-American singer is doing her part to revive old-school soul music--and she's doing it without emulating Winehouse's tabloid-magnet antics.

from David Kirby: The Christian Science Monitor: Why Sharon Jones is the new face of old soul music

A child with a sense of the dramatic, well, many of us have been that child. Here's Carrie Shipers of Missouri reminiscing about how she once wished for a dramatic rescue by screaming ambulance, only to find she was really longing for the comfort of her mother's hands.

Medical History

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 152

In the next section, the poet [Albert Goldbarth] does look at the desiccated animal remains, but without poetic metaphor. He accepts "hard summer; the land enameled." He accepts life disintegrating into dust. Then he finds solace in prayer and love.

Wings

from Denise Low: Ad Astra Poetry Project: Albert Goldbarth (1948 - )

With the exception of Martin Luther King's, most political oratory is decidedly un-poetic and political poetry should not emulate a stump speech. You can write about the topics of war, poverty, racism, sexual abuse or other social problems, and perhaps you can move people to alter their way of thinking. If you want to motivate people to take some sort of action to make our country (and our world) a better place to live, then you must first move them.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Political poetry must first move the reader with an idea

"The situation is quite serious," Sandra Boss, interim chairwoman of the Mount's board, said in a telephone interview from London, where she works. "On the one hand, the Mount [Edith Wharton's estate in Lenox, Mass.] is winning awards for preservation and is internationally renowned as an institution. And it's well run from an efficiency perspective. We've made great progress by cutting costs and raising revenues. On the other hand, our current debt levels are unserviceable and unsustainable. We're not in control of our own destiny unless we can mount a restructuring of our debt."

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Landmark Massachusetts Building Where Wharton Wrote Faces Foreclosure

Nothing changes the pain of suffering, the humiliations of aging, our inability to change the past, guess the future, or capture the elusive present. We are thrown into the world and have barely a minute to make sense of it before we vanish.

It is the "moving finger" of the artist, poet, or otherwise, that helps us see through what is mere convention and face whatever lies outside�chaos or higher vision.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: A Reading of The Moving Finger by Omar Khayyam

For this, my farewell "Poet's Choice" column, here are two poems related by a form: the sonnet.

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

[Brigit Pegeen Kelly] moves straight on, into the mystery of metamorphosis. This dead creature "[ . . . ] tricked//our vision: at a distance she was/for a moment no deer/at all//but two swans: we saw two swans" and "this is the soul: like it or not". It is transformation which animates, often beautifully, even in death.

Yet, ambitious as this might seem set against our own poetic norms, it is not enough for Kelly.

from Fiona Sampson: The Guardian: The transforming soul

by Annette Marie Hyder

Your teeth flash halos of hate
as you try to turn my wine into water
lessen the loaves
subtract the leaven of pleasure
from this experience
leaving it flat like matzo bread.

Posted on February 21, 2008

Your company, a crown of thorns

from Donna Snyder: Newspaper Tree: Poetry: "Your company, a crown of thorns"

In 1924, [A A] Milne published a book of children's poems entitled 'When We Were Very Young', with drawings by Punch illustrator, Ernest Shepard. This book includes a poem about a Teddy Bear who 'however hard he tries grows tubby without exercise'. This was Pooh's first unofficial appearance in A A Milne's writing.

from V Sundaram: News Today: Inventing Wonderland --Fantasies of A A Milne

Dr. [Elisabeth] Kubler-Ross was greatly influenced by the poems of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) in his famous work 'Gitanjali' and other works. Almost every chapter in her famous maiden book called "On Death and Dying" carried a quotation from the writings of Tagore. She was very fond of the following lines of Tagore in his "Stray Birds":

'Death belongs to life as birth does The walk is in the raising of the foot as in the laying of it down'

from V Sundaram: News Today: Philosopher of death and dying

There are relatively few new outbreaks of violence. The current violence over Gaza has been with us at least since 1948, as has the division of Kashmir between India and Pakistan or the discontent of ethnic minorities in Burma. The violence in Sudan began on the eve of independence in 1956 and has been with us, in one form or another, since.

As governments are largely unwilling to admit that they are unable to cope with a new downward spiral of tensions and violence, it is up to non-governmental organizations to sound the warning bell.

from Ren� Wadlow: media for freedom: Acting in Time

[Glenn] Reynolds, who knows his away around the First Amendment, thinks that "the press establishment's general lack of enthusiasm for free speech for others (as evidenced by its support for campaign finance 'reform') suggests that it'll be happy to see alternative media muzzled. "

"You want to keep this media revolution going?" he asks. "Be ready to fight for it. "

from Frank Wilson: Books, Inq.: The Epilogue: Her wish . . .

Consider just one aspect: the slave who stood behind the general in the triumphal chariot and held above the honorand's head a golden crown while whispering, "Look behind you. Remember you are a man." Beard, who holds a chair in classics at Cambridge University, points out that this "has become one of the emblematic trademarks of the triumph," even figuring, in slightly different wording, in the closing sequence of the film Patton.

from Frank Wilson: Philadelphia Inquirer: A tradition not so well understood after all

Count ten by Arnold Wesker

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Count ten by Arnold Wesker

Near Field
by W. S. Merwin

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Near Field

Rain Light
by W. S. Merwin

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Rain Light

A Single Autumn
by W. S. Merwin

from The New Yorker: Poetry: A Single Autumn

--Vi Gale (1917-2007)

Born in Sweden and raised in Clatskanie, writer and publisher Vi Gale lived in Portland for 67 years. She began writing short stories and poetry in the 1950s, and her early books of poetry--including "Love, Always," in which "In a Loud Whisper" appears--were published by Alan Swallow in Denver. In 1974 she founded Prescott Street Press, publishing original work by some of Oregon's best-known poets, as well as translations.

from The Oregonian: Poetry

By Nicole Naticchia

Wind

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Nicole Naticchia ]

[by John J. Witherspoon]
Winter

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Winter

Toby Barlow's first book, Sharp Teeth, is a verse novel about werewolves. This makes it not only a decisive answer (nay!) to the age-old question "Is long-form monster poetry dead?" but also a perfect marriage of form and subject: Both the werewolf and the verse novel (which lopes across the centuries from Pushkin to Browning to Vikram Seth) are shaggy hybrids that appear once in a blue moon and terrify everyone in sight.

from Powells: Review-A-Day: Sharp Teeth

Gerry Cambridge opens a window on American poetry for UK readers, and in the 21st issue of The Dark Horse offers stimulating criticism alongside poems from both sides of the Atlantic.

He includes this touching and many-layered meditation on time and memory from the distinguished American poet Rachel Hadas.

Quickening

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week

"The Room"
By Michael Chitwood

from Slate: "The Room" --By Michael Chitwood

Poetic Obituaries

Mrs. [Mavis] Biesanz authored "The Costa Ricans," published in 1988 and "The Ticos: Culture and Social Change in Costa Rica" published in 1998, both with her son Richard and his wife, Karen Zubris Biesanz.

from A.M. Costa Rica: Prolific author and observer of Tico life, Mavis Biesanz, dies at 88

[Brian Hill] also wrote poetry and short stories, Rees said.

A graceful writer, Mr. Hill began his blog in December 2003 as physicians were diagnosing why "my left arm and leg are . . . acting funny. Lazy. Tingly. I have noticed myself stuttering, using the wrong word sometimes (broccoli instead of ravioli), slurring words, and 'mix-mashing' syllables . . . or just not remembering the word I need. I counted this up to getting older and having two small children."

from San Francisco Chronicle: Brian Hill dies--he blogged about his illness

Moving from Canton, Zaughn [Jones] was a homemaker. She was an active member at Howland Community Church where she attended. Zaughn was an avid golfer, enjoyed swimming, reading and poetry. She was very talented as an artist.

from Tribune Chronicle: Zaughn Jones 1920-2008

[Arun Kale's] first poem collection "Rock Garden" was published in 1993, following which his other collections including the popular 'City of Siren' went on to recieve accolades.

He was elected as a President of the proposed Akshar Manav Sahitya Sammelan to be held on Feb 26-27 at Bhosi in Chandrapur district.

from The Hindu: Poet Arun Kale passes away

[Amelia R. Lockhart-Battenhausen] was smart, funny and artistic, with a flair for writing poetry and loved the outdoors. Her adoration for children was well known, as was her uncanny ability to find the humor in every situation.

from Parkersburg News and Sentinel: Amelia R. Lockhart-Battenhausen

Mrs [Kim] Roye described her son [Jerome Roye] as "a very artistic boy", who loved to draw, paint, write poems and write his own music.

He also worked for a company called Hatlow Entertainment designing t-shirts and clothing.

He had recently been commissioned to paint graffiti in a pub opposite Herne Hill station.

from Croydon Guardian: Mum's tribute to son killed in Streatham crash

The community was saddened by the death of Omena native and long-time resident Barbara Foltz Schneidewind. Barbara was a talented writer of poetry and children's books.

from Leelanau Enterprise: Omena news

M. Shivanna (72), a Non-Resident Indian, who participated in the poetry reading session of 9th Kannada Sahitya Sammelana, died here on Friday following cardiac arrest.

from The Hindu: NRI poet dies after recital

Jonathan Tyler, 18, was a gifted poet who moved to Gilead this winter to work as a lift attendant at Sunday River Ski Resort in Newry.

The three inseparable friends went to nearby Gorham, N.H., on Saturday night to fuel up Tyler's 1994 Mitsubishi Eclipse and to buy cigarettes after a day's work.

from Sun Journal: 'Good boys' Community mourns teens killed in crash

[Tara Lynn] Woodman was wearing a 2004 "Just Move It" T-shirt when found and had participated in an event in Chinle where she received one of the shirts, Lewis later learned.

Her uncle, Mark Forster, spokesman for the family, said Friday, "She was a very fine poet and a very good athlete. She ran track and participated several times in the 'Just Move It' events."

from Gallup Independent: Navajo woman's body is identified

2008-02-19T20:09:00.000-05:00

News at Eleven

Poems such as "Floodtide: For the black tenant farmers of the south" by Aksia Muhammad Toure or June Jordan's "In Memorium: Martin Luther King, Jr.", Julia Field's "Poems: Birmingham 1962-64", and the many poems of Ishmael Reed, Richard Wright, Conrad Kent Rivers, Keorapetse W. Kgositsile., and a hundred more. Here are just a few.

Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song: A Poem to American Poets

from North Lake Tahoe Bonanza: Poet's Corner: 20th century Black history through poetry

[Countee Cullen] advised black writers to "let art portray things as they are, no matter what the consequences, no matter who is hurt is a blind bit of philosophy ... Every phase of Negro life should not be the white man's concern. The parlor should be large enough for his entertainment and instruction."

How revealing. In his own terms, Cullen merely stated that black art was to instruct the white reading public.

from The Capital: Our Legacy: Thank you, Countee Cullen, for your brilliance

Regarding the poems written by the students themselves, he [Henri Cole] gave advice almost offhandedly, as if he hadn't been a Pulitzer finalist.

"If you're trying to write iambic pentameter, then you start off striving for perfect iambic verse, but at some point you have to just say, (bleep) it, and then you use the right word instead."

from The Columbus Dispatch: A torch passed
also The Columbus Dispatch: Audio: Oil & Steel
also The Columbus Dispatch: Audio: Poppies

In the second segment, dubbed "Urban Renewal," the poems are given Roman numerals for titles. In one [Major] Jackson recalls, with bewilderment, how a teacher at Reynolds Elementary, unable to commit to memory names such as "Tarik, Shanequa, Amari and Aisha," nicknamed the entire class after French painters.

In another poem Jackson finds solace in his grandfather's backyard garden, shielded from encroaching crime, blight and despair.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Poetic nuances of Phila.

In [Louise Bernice] Halfe's story, women who have unhappy marriages, who, down through the years have been "give-away brides/starry eyed as I, as they trudged behind/their fur-trader husbands," who have been married for convenience rather than love, often develop an "obsession" to climb out of their own skin and run out of the life shackled to them.

Turn-Around Woman, in stories often remarkably like Halfe's [a.k.a. Sky Dancer], speaks of trying to be true to oneself as a Cree woman, as a wife and mother, as a daughter and granddaughter, to navigate between all the amenities and temptations of the white world while Rib Woman waits.

from Saskatoon Star Phoenix: Halfe joins many voices in her poetry

This belief led at its worst to a literature as limited and unwieldy as the language of objects in Swift's Laputa, where only a kettle itself can signify 'kettle'. Yet this unsustainable (if not anti-intellectual) attitude let [Robert] Creeley focus as few modern poets have on sound, which is to say on the sound of speech: on the ways intonation and rhythm carry attitude and emotion, and on how to put those ways down on the page.

To say this is to make Creeley sound much like [Robert] Frost, who said he could hear 'the sound of sense' in 'voices behind a door that cuts off the words'.

from London Review of Books: What Life Says to Us

Compare, for instance, [John] Anster's stiff rendering of lines from Faust's meditation in the "Forest and Cave" scene:

And when before my eye the pure moon walks
High over-head, diffusing a soft light,
Then from the rocks, and over the damp wood,
The pale bright shadows of the ancient times
Before me seem to love, and mitigate
The too severe delight of earnest thought!

with the more soulful, sinewy cadence of those being credited to [Samuel Taylor] Coleridge:

There may I gaze upon
The still moon wandering through the pathless heaven;
While on the rocky ramparts, from the damp
Moist bushes, rise the forms of ages past
In silvery majesty, and moderate
The too wild luxury of silent thought.

from The Times Literary Supplement: Coleridge and Goethe, together at last

New research has revealed that the radical writer [Hugh MacDiarmid] was at the heart of an audacious plot to retrieve the iconic artefact from Westminster Abbey, more than 15 years before the act was carried out by a band of young Scottish academics.

Previously, MacDiarmid's stated intention of seizing the Stone of Scone was largely laughed off as an alcohol-fuelled delusion.

from Scotland on Sunday: Proof of poet's date with Destiny revealed

Irritating he may have been, but also captivating, at least in the picture that his mentor, Ford Madox Hueffer, paints: "Ezra . . . would approach with the step of a dancer, making passes with a cane at an imaginary opponent. He would wear trousers made of green billiard cloth, a pink coat, a blue shirt, a tie hand-painted by a Japanese friend, an immense sombrero, a flaming beard cut to a point, and a single, large blue earring."

Hueffer played a major role in helping Pound move his writing from the elevated language of verse to a more natural voice, the "living tongue," as Hueffer put it.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Irritating, captivating, quirky Pound

South High School assistant principal Karl Perkins has been placed on administrative leave after school officials learned he was the author of some erotic poetry for sale on a Web site.

Springfield City Schools officials are investigating the incident after a student downloaded a book of poems written by Antonio Love, Perkins' pseudonym.

from Dayton Daily News: South High official on leave over sexy poems

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Burma Media Association (BMA) condemn the arrest of Myanmar Nation editor Thet Zin and his office manager, [poet] Sein Win Maung.

The Honolulu Community-Media Council (HCMC), which was established in 1970 and is the oldest of the 5 volunteer media councils that exist in the United States, has also joined the Burma Media Association, international journalist and human rights organizations in condemning the continued crack down on the Burmese media by the military regime. HCMC President, Chris Conybeare says: "We urge all who value human rights to join us in condemning these latest attacks and to demand the immediate release of all political prisoners of the despotic regime of General Than Shwe".

from Asian Tribune: Burma's Media completely under military dictatorship

Great Regulars

[Vi Gale] began writing stories and poetry and found an early mentor in poet May Sarton. Her first book, "Several Houses," was published in 1959 and was chosen one of the 100 best books in Oregon history from 1800-2000 by the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission.

Gale's other books include "Love Always," "Nineteen Ing Poems," "Clearwater" and "Odd Flowers & Short-Eared Owls."

from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: Celebrating the life of Vi Gale
also Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: Bookmarks: Vi Gale Celebration

Lloyd Schwartz: I think, in some way, it really is, that she writes about memory, but she writes about how important it is to have memories and how awful it is to remember some things.

She talks about how important it is to be an individual and have an individual identity and, in some ways, how lonely that is or what a nightmare it is to be an eye, an Elizabeth, as she says, in one of her most remarkable poems.

from Jeffrey Brown: PBS: Newshour: Elizabeth Bishop's Writings Honored by Library of America

[Toby] Barlow's book is being marketed mostly as a novel, but the prose is chopped up into poetic lines. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't, but when it does, it's powerful.

The first-person-plural opening, in fact, echoes the ceremonial tone of the firstborn English epic Beowulf.

from

Here is a poem by Kathleen Johnson.

February 14

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Good morning.

Here's one from Jo McDougall, whose books include Satisfied With Havoc.

Afternoon at Sunset Hills

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Jo McDougall

From 'Red Silk,' by Kansas City poet Maryfrances Wagner.

Softening Up

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Parachute Silk

I cannot say more than this: Keep them [Jeanie and Thomas Zvi Wilson] in your thoughts. And when you read Tom's final line here today, remember his voice. Hear him always.

Voices

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Poetic antiphony

Daisy Johnson, 17, is a student at the Friends' School in Saffron Walden, England.

On the Bench With You

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: Student poem # 2

For him the world no longer exists, and his despair makes him feel that "nothing now can ever come to any good."

Although the poem is easily accessible, the construction is quite clever, and even though the speaker is calling for the impossible, it is his deeply felt emotion that makes the reader understand and appreciate his anguish, as the reader also enjoys the execution of the expression.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: February Poet--W. H. Auden

He reminds him to "Fight on" even if he is spilling blood. He must "Fight on" and show that he is brave. Even if it is the end, he should show a "Brave end of the struggle if nothing beside." Even if he dies, if he dies bravely, he will die a hero.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Harpur's 'The Battle of Life'

While moonlight may be romantic for lovers, its pale light can seem cold and isolating to someone alone.

Although the speaker does not make clear why she is alone, the reader might suspect it is because of a divorce, because the speaker seems bitter. She refers to her lack of a man as "No heavy, impassive back to nudge." Not exactly a description of a loving relationship.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Kizer's 'Night Sounds'

What now is different that allows this character to "beg forgiveness," whereas he could not beg forgiveness before? According to the claim, it is because he is "Silhouetted almost into a woman." Does this imply that women can ask forgiveness but men cannot?

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Komunyakaa's 'Pride'

One might imagine that when the woman made of water laughs or rages she creates the whirlpools and waterspouts mentioned. And when she "scribbles her slippery name/ over and over down the glass" it is the rain streaking against the windows, each rivulet like a signature.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: Rites to fulfil a fantasy

This "belief" underpins his late poem, "Presence of an External Master of Knowledge"; the poem also relates to Tennyson's "Ulysses" (1842), whose ageing narrator resolves to "follow knowledge like a sinking star,/Beyond the utmost bound of human thought".

The TLS published "Presence of an External Master of Knowledge in [Wallace] Stevens's seventy-fifth year, in 1954. He died the following summer.

Presence of an External Master of Knowledge

from Mick Imlah: The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: Presence of an External Master of Knowledge

Poem: "Lament" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of February 18, 2008

Thirty, forty years ago, there were lots of hitchhikers, college students, bent old men and old women, and none of them seemed fearful of being out there on the highways at the mercy of strangers. All that's changed, and nobody wants to get in a car with a stranger. Here Steven Huff of New York tells us about a memorable ride.

Safe

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 151

Almost no one skates outdoors in New England anymore. People seldom do it even in Canada or Minnesota.

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Elegy for a Vanishing Pastime

"Does your office face south?" I asked Miller. "In Washington, D.C., southern windows get good light."

"My office faces Mecca," Miller informed me.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Which way is Mecca again?"

"I'm just kidding," Miller said.

from Washington City Paper: 3 Minutes with E. Ethelbert Miller

The pictures are always the same.

A group of young boys

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: God Holding a Camera and Waiting for Us to Smile

Then he finds it. His expression "the liquefaction of her clothes" should be pronounced with a note of triumph, as he captures in mere words the liquid, melting delight of her appearance. His use of such a conspicuously polysyllabic Latin-derived term seemingly raises the tone, as if we had been taken from a domestic interior and set down in a royal court, yet there is certain witty irony too.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Today: A Reading of 'Upon Julia's Clothes' by Robert Herrick

For instance, she [Matthea Harvey]'ll call a poem "Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form" and begin one of its syntax-bending sections:

Pity the bathtub its forced embrace of the human
Form may define external appearance but there is room
For improvement within try a soap dish that allows for
Slippage is inevitable . . .

As an essay on form--poetic and otherwise--it's a satisfying performance: light and quick rather than ponderous and self-occupied.

from David Orr: The New York Times: Dream logic

Alan Shapiro's new book contains a remarkable section headed "from The Book of Last Thoughts." Each poem presents the dying thoughts of a different character in a form appropriate to that speaker. This one, for instance, is in rhyme:

Country-Western Singer

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, movin? g, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

In an amazing moment, with a magician's speed, the last three words here make two separate verbs seem like one. That stroke also epitomizes [Elizabeth] Bishop's work: the fluid, rapid, and mortal action of knowledge, made live in words.

from Robert Pinsky: The Boston Globe: Soul deep

Even before he founded the Tamil Sangam in Madurai, Pandithurai Thevar had made a name for himself in the Tamil world through his poems, writings and speeches. He was celebrated as a powerful speaker. He had published two anthologies in Tamil--one literary and the other religious. He helped his teacher Ramaswami Pillai to bring out an excellent edition of the Thevaram hymns and gave liberal monetary help to many scholars for publishing their works.

from V Sundaram: News Today: The great Marava patron of Tamil language and literature

by Walt Whitman

Bardic Symbols

from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: Bardic Symbols

by Linda Gregerson

Constitutional

from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: Constitutional

by Mary Jo Salter

Executive Shoe Shine

from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: Executive Shoe Shine

Editor's note: This week's Poetry Corner features the work of David Sah? ner. His poetry has appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Connecticut Review, White Heron, Blood and Fire Review and Buffalo Spree. He is a physician involved in clinical research, and he lives with his family in Santa Cruz.

Grandma's Right Hand

from Good Times Weekly: Poetry Corner

Fame by Charlotte Mew

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Fame by Charlotte Mew

by Edip Cansever translated by Julia Clare Tillinghast and Richard Tillinghast

Sky-Meaning I

from Guernica: Poetry: Two Poems

By Larry M. Schilb

aluminum sky

from The Kansas City Star: 'Winter': A poem by Larry M. Schilb

Chinese Poem
by J. D. McClatchy

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Chinese Poem

Thrown
by Rae Armantrout

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Thrown

[by Li-Young Lee, To Hold]

So we're dust. In the meantime, my wife [. . .]

from The Oregonian: Poetry

By Alexa Garvey
Eastern Regional High School

My Bowl of Oranges

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Alexa Garvey]

By Samantha Morrow

Shadows

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Samantha Morrow]

By Sohale Sizar

The Violin

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Sohale Sizar]

By Andrew Van Dyk
Van Zant Elementary

My Dial-up Internet Service

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Andrew Van Dyk]

[by E. Bernard Arnold]
His Majesty Speaks

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: His Majesty Speaks

[by Judy Curtis]
Seasons

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Seasons

"Richard Noel"
By Harry Thomas

from Slate: "Richard Noel" --By Harry Thomas

Poetic Obituaries

The talented nonagenerian [Bert Batty] wrote a number of books, including A Ripe Old Age which charted events in Britain over the last century and The Pear Tree Chronicles which followed his own family history.

He also penned an epic poem entitled 'Great Britain's Glory Days and My Country's Pride and Fall' and told his friend's wartime story 'The Diary of Driver Don Hammett' by using the secret diary that he kept between 1939 and 1940.

from Redditch Standard: 99-year-old Bert Batty dies

[R. Paul] Cracroft loved to write and decided at age 13 that it would be his life's work. He was particularly proud of a 1979 479-page epic poem based on the Book of Mormon called "A Certain Testimony." The professor concluded his obituary by writing: "Since I can no longer write letters to the editor, this obituary will be my last hurrah!"

from The Salt Lake Tribune: Cracroft, a mentor to Utah journalists, dies at 85
also Making Everlasting Memories: Paul Cracroft

"An irony about Smoky, even though he was best known in the country music sphere, I would call him one of Australia's great folk artists," he [Philip Mortlock] said.

"While his music was tinged with country, he was also a great poet and a very creative man. He encompassed a great sense of Australiana."

from The Sydney Morning Herald: Folk legend Smoky Dawson dies

"In the old days it was, 'Burn the letters,'" she said. "Today, 'Clear the hard drive.'"

She [Kathryn Faughey] also had a romantic side, evident in a love of music and a touch of the poet that were as much a part of her Irish heritage as her red hair, blue eyes and ivory skin.

from New York Daily News: Slain therapist Kathryn Faughey plucked her guitar and heartstrings

Mr [Bernard] Gadd was a widely recognised poet, playwright and author of novels and collections of short stories, winning many awards and publishing a number of books.

He also edited Manukau in Poetry, a regional poetry website.

from Rodney Times: Poets pay tribute to fellow author

Aysel Gurel, one of Turkey's most famous lyrics writers, passed away on Sunday at the age of 80 in Istanbul.

Gurel, also a poet and a drama player, was medical attention since last December for lung cancer at Istanbul's Metropolitan Florence Nightingale Hospital.

from newstime7.com: Turkey lost Crazy Aysel

Elsie [J. Hobbs] was a member of the Akron Baptist Temple where she was in the Choir and the Whitfield Baptist Church in Dalton, Ga., where she had taught Sunday School and was a Church Secretary and the Lake Milton Baptist Temple of Lake Milton, where she had taught Sunday school until December 2007. Elsie wrote poetry and music along with flower gardening in her spare time.

from Tribune Chronicle: Elsie Hobbs 1921-2008

Many more were touched by his poetry, his drumming, his compassion and his humility.

Dr Roi Kwabena was named Birmingham's sixth Poet Laureate in 2001/2002. Born in 1956 in Trinidad, Roi Ankhkara Kwabena came to Britain in 1985 after political and cultural activities in his home country.

from African Echo: Tribute to Dr Roi Kwabena (1956-2008)

"He was not a lost soul. He was a happy guy. Some people don't understand it. They talk about him in these terms like he was a tortured person and he wasn't like that at all," Ron Kublin said [of Steven Kublin]. "He's a artist, he's a poet. He was a brilliant painter. He just had a joy for living and he cared about people. He would never raise a hand to anyone.

"We're not crying for the heads of whoever did this. We don't want another family to have to go through this."

from Montrose Daily Press: Break in murder case hinges on lab

A charity worker gunned down by police on the side of a busy Yorkshire ? road was hit by six live rounds, an inquest has heard.

Simon Murden, 26, was holding a book containing his own "stream of consciousness" poetry when he was shot--and was also found to have been carrying three African swords.

from Yorkshire Post: Man shot by police carried three swords

Mr [Gary] Murphy rejected suggestions that poetry found in the villa pointed to a crime of passion.

He said the poetry was written by Heidi [Murphy]'s friend.

Reports that Heidi was in the process of divorcing her estranged husband were also incorrect.

from Daily Liberal: Heidi's friends seek out truth
note Poetic Obituaries: Ms [Heidi] Murphy's distressed family

One of David Rosen's favorite childhood stories was when he and his sister melted crayons on the radiator, marveling in the beautiful swirls of color they left there.

"Most parents would get totally irate, but my mother would gently say, 'Oh, isn't that pretty!'" he said.

A wordsmith: An accomplished poet, [Barbara Jane] Rosen published many poems, including a book of poetry.

from The Kansas City Star: Tribute: Barbara Jane Rosen was an artist with a spiritual side

When he [Raúl Salinas] arrived "it seemed like we knew him already because we'd seen his pictures, we'd read his work," [José] Flores said.

Soon after it opened, the store became known as a place where he mentored poets and served as a breeding ground for political activism.

"The bookstore is more than books, sort of a multi-pronged community center," said Sandy Soto, who volunteered there in the late 1980s.

from American-Statesman: Raúl Salinas, poet, teacher and activist, dies

Most of [Mark] Stenberg's law-related issues were misdemeanors, but there were a handful of drug-related felonies.

"He came out doing rap," Aurelia Stenberg said of her husband's post-prison life. "He was not even into rap when I met him. He was a poet."

from The Oregonian: Portland rapper slain in Houston

2008-02-12T20:27:00.000-05:00

News at Eleven

Before you buy Ted Kooser's "Valentines" for someone, though, remember what the author's note says of these poems: "I suppose some of them have a little literary merit, but, really, they were written with pleasure and meant for the reader's fun."

In other words, don't think of "Valentines" as expensive red roses. This is a box of mixed chocolates, some of which are completely satisfying, while others boast just a sweet center.

from The Christian Science Monitor: Love Poems on a Post Card

Every sensible person ought to have a poem of her own. Of course it doesn't have to be something you've written; it could be a poem you have sought out, or one that has sought you out, and one, therefore, you cherish because it fits you like your own shadow.

from Trinidad & Tobago Express: Poetry as journalism

"The kids at Fresno State hadn't gotten into Berkeley. They were from families that hadn't been to college before. You'd tell them they had two or three lines out of 20 lines that were genuine and authentic, and they didn't have a problem with that. They might get angry; I had one swear at me. But they didn't cry."

from The Fresno Bee: Poet's work still flows from Fresno's inspiration

Now [Peter] Krok, the editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal, has shared his thoughts and feelings with a new book of poetry "Looking for an Eye."

The title poem "Looking for an Eye," speaks of the poet search to find his poet's eye: "Fumbling in the dark, always looking/for an eye, he hurls stones/at his shadow. Voices startle him."

from News of Delaware County: An 'Eye' for poetry

So my publisher sent the book to [Harold] Bloom. When he wrote back, he said my work reminded him not of an American-Jewish poet, but of Emily Dickinson! He described me as a flawed, almost-made-it Emily Dickinson. It's like when you have a beautiful vase in a museum, and then the appraiser looks at it and sees a fissure so it's worthless. [--Samuel Menashe]

from Nextbook: The Minimalist

" . . . I said to him, 'If I couldn't write poems like "Babi Yar" against something I didn't like, like anti-Semitism, I will never have the moral right to write poetry about Vietnam.' I dislike both, this is my position. You know the proverb 'You couldn't sit between two chairs'? . . ." [--Yevgeny Yevtushenko]

from The New York Sun: A Citizen of Human Grief

[Charles Allen's] book is a modest apologia on his subject's behalf, as he seeks to put Kipling's early views and writings into the context of the late 19th century.

He rightly points out how the poem "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet" has been shockingly and almost universally misinterpreted. Jump just one more line and Kipling intones, "But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth/When two strong men stand face to face/tho' they come from the ends of the earth!"

from Daily News & Analysis: The art of Kipling

You do not need to be Aristotle to see why most of us, shying away from the inherent violence in ourselves, and in everyday life, take refuge in the artificial violence of rituals, or films.

Sylvia Plath is a poet who confronts the inherent violence in everyday life, brings it to the surface. In her poem Cut, she begins "What a thrill -/My thumb instead of an onion" . . .

from Telegraph: Seduced by Sylvia Plath's gore and gloom

Or must [Alun] Lewis be left to lie with those he styled "the quiet dead"? "Quiet": the adjective signals his early commitment to a discourse deaf to "the loud celebrities/Exhorting us to slaughter". His were humble "poems in khaki" not only in being products of army experience.

from The Guardian: The outsider

Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association firmly condemn the transfers of journalist U Win Tin and blogger Nay Phone Latt to Insein prison, near Rangoon. The two organisations also condemn a government decision to restrict the content of newspapers' websites to the articles approved by military censors for the print editions.

from Reporters Without Borders: Journalist U Win Tin and blogger Nay Phone Latt transferred to Insein prison

At night, under generator-run lights, locals crowd into makeshift outdoor secondhand book markets, browsing.

The Internet cafes in these main cities are packed with youngsters overriding the blocks with endless formulas to reach proxy servers – and freely surfing the web, in open defiance of the law. They chat with friends across the border in Thailand, check gmail accounts, read news, search for scholarship opportunities overseas, and follow American celebrity antics.

from The Christian Science Monitor: Burma's censors monitor Internet, newspapers--and poets

Great Regulars

Frank [Wilson] was, in effect, my first glimpse of the higher joys--rather than the lower pleasures--of blogging. He raises the game. Last night I had a dream about being in Philadelphia and trying to find him. One day I will.

from Bryan Appleyard: Thought Experiments: Frank Wilson: How to Compliment Americans

I've been returning to Sir Philip Sidney's neglected Astrophil and Stella (which, weighing in at 108 poems along with 11 songs, has a pretty good claim to be the first major sonnet sequence in English) for just over 20 years. It's mysterious, elusive, frustrating and inspiring, woven through with brilliant lines and sudden exhilarating shifts of tone, but also with a dry and austere self-consciousness, an ornate and, at times, icy posturing.

from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: The dazzling world of Sir Philip Sidney

This was the third or fourth time I'd heard Allen [Ginsberg] read portions of "Howl" in public. I'd also read it, and heard him read from it, when under construction . . . at his cottage in Berkeley. He was already very much at home in the text, and it clearly spoke--as everyone could see--to the condition of the people. It sort of shocked some people awake. "Yes, that's life in our America today," they could begin to see. It was a poem that was precise to its historical moment. [--Gary Snyder]

from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: Gary Snyder on hitchhiking and "Howl" at Reed

The first known recording of [Allen] Ginsberg reading the poem was thought to be March 18, 1956, at a notorious performance in Berkeley, Calif.

Until now.

Last May, John Suiter was researching a biography of Snyder in the Hauser Library at Reed. Suiter knew Snyder and Ginsberg had been at Reed in 1956 and knew Ginsberg had read "Howl."

from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: 'Howl' tape gives Reed claim to first

"I don't have to be in dynasty politics to make a mark . . . my name does not prevent me or take me forward. Certain things I can say as a writer that I cannot as a politician. For instance, I can say that Mukhtar Mai changed the culture of silence. She is an illiterate woman who was punished for raising her voice after a gang-rape. But she stood up, and has now built a school for girls from the money that poured in for her . . . By writing we chronicle the injustices of our times."

from Fatima Bhutto: The Hindu: 'I don't believe in dynasty'

As devotional poetry goes, "The Unbosoming" is old-fashioned Enlightenment fare. Its stance begins with doubt, not piety; it dramatizes grief ("Crestfallen, Love. Of the fallen breast. Un-clean of eye"); and it discovers redemption ("I Live and I Wire. I Wive, Lord . . ."). And, like her compatriot from four centuries ago, Olena Davis also struggles not with monastic, but with worldly faith.

The Unbosoming

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: Dear God . . . two seek salvation

Instead of attending a conventional sitting, he submitted to a psychological test conducted at his New York apartment with a couple of Californian conceptual artists.

The result depicts [Salman] Rushdie, 60, a slightly donnish, bearded figure, as a purple lobster floating before a fiery red planet, surrounded by snowflakes.

from Olivia Cole: The Sunday Times: Artists delve into failing love of Salman Rushdie, the purple lobster

At last, I get Missouri into the mix. Here's a poem from Walter Bargen, who recently was named Missouri's first poet laureate.

'Forgotten History'

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'Forgotten History,' by Walter Bargen

The work is 14 lines in the style of a sonnet, though Sarah allowed herself a bit more freedom than the form traditionally requires--early in the poem, the lines tend more toward three and four beats than five. But the rhymes do follow the ABABCDCDEFEFGG pattern of the English (Shakespearean, to be specific) sonnet.

I Am Not a Writer

by Sarah Robinson

from John Mark Eberhart: Parachute: 'I Am Not a Writer': Student Poem # 1

And what's the sense in growing our cut flowers in Africa? The flowers we are talking about are not, for the most part, African species. They belong to the traditional European repertoire. We could grow them at home--we do grow most of them at home--if we were prepared to do two things: pay a bit more for them, and respect their growing season.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Flora international

It wasn't just Frank [Wilson]'s mindfulness of the future that made his section an inspiration, though. He began covering poetry in a serious way, started working creatively with local events (you can actually see him in an NBCC event later this month), and took for granted that the readers of his section cared about ideas. He brought in reviewers like Scott Esposito and M.A. Orthofer and Kate Haegele who have a point of view and unique and informed tastes.

from John Freeman: Critical Mass: Goodbye to Frank Wilson

The stroller is now empty, the crib is now empty, and more terrifyingly the hearts of the parents are empty from facing all this emptiness. The only complete sentence in the poem claims that this grieving mother "is as/small/as still//and silent/as the baby girl."

The mother rocked her baby girl to sleep, but the baby did not wake up.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Back's 'Her Hands'

The command, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," contains a perverse irony, considering that the speaker of the poem is advising young women to marry, an act that would result in their deflowering.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Herrick's 'To the Virgins'

[Rachel Tzvia] Back began writing poetry at a very early age. She admires Emily Dickinson, Charles Olson, George Oppen, and Joy Harjo. She wrote her doctoral dissertation on Susan Howe, an experimental poet often associated with the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets. She published the dissertation as a monograph, titled Led by Language: the Poetry and Poetics of Susan Howe.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Profile: Rachel Tzvia Back

The speaker in sonnet 46 claims that his heart and eye are locked in a deadly battle. They are fighting over whether the poem is most influenced by the poet's aesthetic capability, metaphorically represented by "eye," or by his ability to feel strongly, metaphorically represented by "heart."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 46

"With all its various centers of power and checks and balances, a newspaper is a lot less biased--for all its commercial pressures--and a lot less susceptible to hostile influences than the unchecked ego and will of a single blogger," [Lee] Siegel believes.

A book review in the Post-Gazette and other newspapers is the product of several people, from me, the editor who selects the book and its reviewer, to the critic to several editors who read the review and point out problems and errors in reasoning, fact and language.

from Bob Hoover: Post-Gazette: Internet critic questions blogs' place in culture

The door opens and the "tiger-master's wee pimp" enters. The tiger-master (the prisoners being caged like tigers) is surely Robespierre.

His pimp is so called because he is the procurer of the next individual to be beheaded; it is like a game of musical chairs.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: Final thoughts

The poem intends to honour those who fought against the Communists--the "swans" of the title refers to the men of the White Army, in which the poet's husband was an officer--but its sympathies are extensive, as this extract suggests.

Elaine Feinstein is the foremost translator of Tsvetayeva's poems into English. The version below was published in the TLS of October 10, 1980.

From "Swans' Encampment"

from Mick Imlah: The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: From 'Swans' Encampment'

Poem: "Windchime" by Tony Hoagland from What Narcissism Means to Me.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of February 11, 2008

There's a world of great interest and significance right under our feet, but most of us don't think to look down. We spend most of our time peering off into the future, speculating on how we will deal with whatever is coming our way. Or dwelling on the past. Here Ed Ochester stops in the middle of life to look down.

What the Frost Casts Up

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 150

Here's the first of what I hope will be many poems by some of the nation's best state poet laureates.

'Asters'

By Denise Low

from Denise Low: Parachute: 'Asters,' by Denise Low

Can an atheist write a moving psalm in praise of the Almighty? Probably not. Similarly, a poet who does not believe in and has never experienced an overpowering romantic passion cannot compose a convincing poem in praise of the subject, regardless of his or her mastery of the craft.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: A.S. Maulucci: Love doesn't need more poems written about it

". . . . It seemed eminently more sensible to live in a part of a hotel which you knew would not be struck by shell fire, because you knew where the shells lit, than to go to some other hotel further from the lines, the angles of which you had no data to figure and where you would maybe have a shell drop through the roof.

"Well, I had great confidence in the Florida and when Franco finally entered Madrid, Rooms 112 and 113 were still intact. There was very little else that was though." [--Ernest Hemingway]

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Hemingway, Your Letter Has Arrived

i'm just crazy about you and it has nothing [. . .]

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes

"The trial took about 15 minutes. As soon as Lu Gengsong was brought to the courtroom, the judge started to read the verdict. After 10 minutes when the reading finished Lu was taken away. No time was allowed for him to talk, but Lu Gengsong yelled 'Long Live Democracy' as he was taken away. As he was leaving, I yelled 'Lu Gengsong is innocent!"

Lu's wife, Wang Xue'e

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: China Frees Journalist Ahead of Lunar New Year, Jails Activist

"In the Barn" is about the strict, unavoidable grip of matter on life: Living things are stuck in the material world. As the poet says here, "the snake was helpless too." Some readers will recognize [Elise] Partridge's name and recall her poems about cancer treatment that appeared in the New Yorker in recent years, including "Chemo Side Effects: Vision."

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

"Lorca's Lady in a NYC Train," "Belly Dance Passion," and "Night Shadows."

[by Evie Ivy]

Lorca's Lady in a NYC Train

'Verde que te quiero verde ...'
'Green, I want you green ...'
Romance Sonambulo, Frederico Garcia Lorca

from Donna Snyder: Newspaper Tree: Tumblewords Poetry: Evie Ivy

[P Sundaram Pillai's] work Manonmaniam which was a poetical drama of over 4,500 lines was published in 1891.

This great work of drama met with a warm public reception. Rich tributes were paid by eminent Tamil scholars of that time. Sundaram Pillai in his preface stated: 'Among the rich and varied forms of poetic composition extant in the Tamil language, the dramatic type, so conspicuous in Sanskrit and English, does not seem to find a place. The play here submitted to the public is a humble attempt to see, whether the defect may not be easily removed.'

from V Sundaram: News Today: The creator of Manonmaniam and the Tamil anthem

The Vedas refer to Sun worship. Vishnu is also described as being seated in the midst of the disc of the Sun; so much so that over time Vishnu worship merged with sun worship leading to Surya being referred to as Suryanarayana. No wonder Ratha Sapthami is celebrated on a grand scale at Tirupati every year.

from V Sundaram: News Today: The glory and the radiance of Ratha Sapthami

Aisla Rose
2/5/08
5 lbs. 12 oz.
18 inches
baby girl

from Andrew Varnon: Flash & Yearn: Baby Picture

The simplicity of [Elizabeth] McFarland's verse reveals, very subtly, a singular personality, someone for whom a poem is not primarily a literary artifact, but rather a necessary utterance, without which a given experience would not be quite complete, setting the experience to a music made entirely of words:

O the rowantree lifts there

from Frank Wilson: Philadelphia Inquirer: She lived, breathed, made poems

That is why invited some to review for me. I would have invited more had I lasted longer.

The critical landscape is changing. I don't know anymore than anybody else does what it will look like when everything settles down, but I do know that, thanks in large measure to blogging and bloggers, it will be richer, more varied, and more alive.

from Frank Wilson: Books Inq.: The Epilogue: Well, here they are . . .

"Reading Jack's words after all these years, remembering how much they meant to me once, how I was sure I wouldn't don any gray flannel suit and trudge to an office day in, day out, and knowing full well that tomorrow morning and the day after and after I'll tie my tie and sit down at my desk yet again, well, it makes me wonder if I can still, even at this late date, salvage me some authenticity. Yeah, reading Jack has reminded me that living means more than just making a living, and that it's always easier to get along by going along. As Ray confesses, 'I had no guts anyway . . . .'"

Kass Mencher, my friend Eric Mencher's wife, is the only person I know who read this and inferred--quite correctly--that it signaled my plans to retire.

I could have continued to get along by going along, but I didn't have to, and I sure didn't want to. So I decided not to.

from Frank Wilson: Books Inq.: The Epilogue: Why I decided . . .

by Christopher Y. Lew

The dead shuffled forward in their camps

from The Brooklyn Rail: Necropolis

by Christopher Y. Lew

I returned to a city too busy

from The Brooklyn Rail: Return

by Christopher Y. Lew

Even when
the watermelon

from The Brooklyn Rail: Watermelons

by Jonas Mekas

Winter, don't ever be over. So that Spring

from The Brooklyn Rail: Update 2003

by Anne Waldman

the manatee is found in shallow slow moving rivers
the manatee moves in estuaries moves in saltwater bays

from The Brooklyn Rail: Manatee/Humanity

by John Yau

A french fry sticks its tongue out at you
Blue, swollen, unfathomable

from The Brooklyn Rail: After A Self-Portrait by Francis Picabia

Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love by Cole Porter

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love by Cole Porter

By Todd Hanks

He walked through
a caption,

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'Flat Character': A poem by Todd Hanks

Culture
by Aharon Shabtai

from MR Zine: Aharon Shabtai, 'Culture'

By Patrick Burns
Pleasant Valley School

Birthstones

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Patrick Burns]

By Kelsea Guckin

I Could Live Like That

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Kelsea Guckin]

By Morgan Halbruner
Eastern Regional High School

To My Dear and Loving Planet

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Morgan Halbruner]

[by John-Michael Albert]

Portsmouth from the Pavement

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Portsmouth from the Pavement

[by Vincent Denunzio]

Teacher Killjoy

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Teacher Killjoy

Poetic Obituaries

At 17, Salim Umarbhai Adambhai was unlike his contemporaries working in the saltpans across the Little Rann of Kutch.

He had a liking for poetry, and like many prodigies, he died young. But, he could have lived a little longer, if the fatal jaundice he was suffering from was detected earlier.

from Expressindia: Dearth of doctors makes death a reality for saltpans workers in Little Rann

A cousin to the boys, Samantha Warnecki, read a poem Greg [Browning] wrote for a class assignment that seemed to exemplify the Brownings' optimistic outlook.

"Life was not meant to be depressive and full of death," the poem said. "So live life to the fullest, even when drawing your last breath."

from WTOP News: Nearly 1,300 Remember Generosity and Humor of Slain Family

In biographical information on the CCSF [City College of San Francisco ] Web site, [John Alfred Pierre] Dennis [Jr.] wrote "students are at the heart of quality teaching. It's not about me, it's about the students. They always rise to the level of my highest expectations."

According to the CCSF site, Dennis was for 17 years a lay chaplain for Catholic Charities at the Bryant Street Jail in San Francisco, a lay "preacher" at Saint Benedict's in East Oakland, an avid journal writer, poet, liturgical dancer and an avid traveler.

from The Oakland Tribune: Popular college lecturer found slain

What we didn't know and appreciate about him [Thomas Hass] was that he was a poet and a musician who could do almost anything with his hands.

The minister, Jerry Pfaff, who conducted the service, spoke lovingly of their long friendship. "He convinced me to do what I'm doing. He saved my life," Pfaff said.

from Baraboo News Republic: Myra: Many will miss quiet, modest 'HR'

[Marjorie E. Hess'] poems were published in education and church magazines and she also self-published two collections of poems and essays.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Marjorie E. Hess: Teacher, 98

"He was a light that just was extinguished so soon," his mother, Jenny Lespi said. "I know he is in heaven reading, teaching or talking to his favorite poets."

[Jeremy] Lespi graduated from Shelby County High School and had earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in English literature at the University of Montevallo. He went on to earn his doctorate in creative writing and poetry from the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.

from The University of Alabama Crimson White: Beloved professor dies during break

In 1947 [William Turner] Levy was working on his dissertation on the poet William Barnes and wrote to Eliot seeking a meeting as part of his research. That meeting was the spark of a friendship that would last 18 years and include conversations and correspondence about their common interests: literature and cats, in particular Eliot's cat named Pettipaws and Levy's cats Judy and Lord Peter Wimsey.

from Los Angeles Times: William Turner Levy, 85; teacher wrote of friendships with luminaries

Greg [Monteforte] was a 1972 graduate of John F. Kennedy High School, Warren, and a 1976 graduate of Youngstown State University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.

Throughout his life, Greg was an avid writer of short stories and poems.

from Tribune Chronicle: Gregory J. Monteforte

Ms [Heidi] Murphy's distressed family and friends, who gathered outside the villa on Sunday, were interviewed last night. Her mother, Toni Delahunty, who lives in Flaxton, Queensland, said she was "shattered" at losing her only child. "She was a beautiful, beautiful person who had a wonderful life and lived the dream," she said.

from Brisbane Times: Victim's poetry points to crime of passion

Mr. [H.K.] Narayan worked with All India Radio for nearly four decades and played a vital role in popularising the genre of Sugama Sangeeta, which uses music as a vehicle to take poetry close to people.

from The Hindu: H.K. Narayan passes away

An artistic woman, she [Vianne Marie Shead] had also loved poetry and creating things. "Her poetry was very personal to hear and she expressed herself in her writing.

"She also loved making cards to give and would do so with style."

from Timaru Herald: Teen dies after car crash

[Jazeh Tabatabaii] displayed an interest in writing from the age of twelve and has authored more than 40 books comprising folktales, novels, poetry and plays.

He later turned his hand to directing, dramatic art, ballet, in addition to painting and sculpting.

from Tehran Times: Iranian sculptor Jazeh Tabatabaii dies at 77

[Ivylin Howell White] was a gifted writer of poetry and even had a poem published in an international book of poetry a few years ago. It was her first published poem and was featured as the first one in the book - a copy of which I shall always cherish

from The McDuffie Mirror: Mother-in-law set example for living life and following His path

2008-02-05T21:29:00.000-05:00

News at Eleven

The appearance by the 71-year-old writer from Massachusetts [Mary Oliver], arguably the country's most popular poet, had sparked the fastest sell-out in the 20-year history of the hallmark literary series. The response was so feverish that Oliver ticket buyers and sellers moved into the unlikely realm of Craigslist with prices as high as $100 per seat.

from Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Revered poet shows her witty side

[Robert] Pinsky's efforts in word and deed to reassert poetry's civic role have throughout been accompanied by another project of reclamation: his insistence, in his prose book "The Sounds of Poetry" and elsewhere, that poetry is made not only of ideas generated by the mind, but of sounds made in the body. The two projects may seem distinct, but they are not, since minds differ, but bodies are alike.

from The New York Times: The Civic Poet

"Music is just the sound of the words. But poets aren't trained; it's not like they go to singing school." [John] Giorno bounds and sweats on stage like a musician, too. "I am not playing with my body to amuse the audience, it is the poem that moves the body that way," he says.

from The McGill Daily: Dial-a-poet: verses for the masses

I wander now among names of the dead:
My mother's name, stone pillow for my head.

That image is real because my mother does not have any kind of stone on her grave. That sort of hit me, the history that had not been properly memorialized, remembered, tended by someone native to her -- it was my mother's history. She was just like those black soldiers. No monument existed, and in that way she was erased from the landscape.

from Bookslut: An Interview with Natasha Trethewey

The results might be surprising, however, for anyone who imagines that The Origin of the Milky Way [by Barbara Louise Ungar] is a series of serene ruminations on the blessings of motherhood. Rather, a primal form of terror is part and parcel of Origin, which is divided into four sections. These sections--ranging from mythos-inflected "Annunciations" through the bluesy musings of "Fourth Trimester" and the edgy observations of "Feast," where she comments on raising a child in a time of war--document the full process of pregnancy and the birth of her son Izaak, followed by the great afterwards of trying to write with an infant on the hip.

from Chronogram: Origins

One of his [George Gordon Byron's] digressions describes the treatment of wives in Muslim countries, their confinement, both physical and spiritual, with strange and ironic commendation: "They stare not on the stars from out their attics,/Nor deal (thank God for that!) in mathematics." The object of his irony would have been clear to a knowing reader: his wife's intellectual pretensions. For the benefit of the less knowing, he gestures heavily at what he isn't saying.

Why I thank God for that is no great matter,
I have my reasons, you no doubt suppose,
And as, perhaps, they would not highly flatter,
I'll keep them for my life (to come) in prose . . .

from The Guardian: A man of the world

[Philip Larkin's] picture of religion as "That vast moth-eaten musical brocade/ Created to pretend we never die" is so good--as music--that one remembers it almost every time one enters a church. But the rest of the verse, in which he itemises just what it is that we dread about extinction, for me--at any rate--spoils it. It lacks the bleakness, and brilliance, as the full-throttle death fears end and day begins.

from Telegraph: Philip Larkin's almost perfect poem

Translation serves as a bridge in terms of dialogue between different civilizations, [Özdemir] İnce said, drawing attention to the importance of literary translations from different cultures. Other Turkish translators, in addition to İnce, translate from Greek literary works. "Each work translated from Greek into Turkish is a message of peace and friendliness from Turkey to Greece and its people," İnce said.

from Turkish Daily News: Greek poets reach shores of Turkey

"The Vietnamese government should stop locking people up simply for expressing their views."

During her more than nine months of detention at Thanh Liet Detention Center (known as B14 Camp) in Hanoi, authorities prohibited [Tran Khai Thanh] Thuy from receiving visits or letters from her family. According to her family, authorities rejected requests that Thuy, who suffers from tuberculosis and diabetes, be transferred to the Dong Da Tuberculosis Center in Hanoi for better medical treatment. Instead, her health worsened and she developed rheumatism after months of sleeping without a blanket on the cement floor of a small cell, when Hanoi's winter temperatures drop below 7 degrees Celsius (45 degrees Fahrenheit).

from Human Rights Watch: Vietnam: Woman Writer Released, but Crackdown Continues

Though the magazine maintains a Web site, there are no plans to publish online. For one thing, says Christine Portell, president of the board of directors, "No one on board has the Web skills." For another, the editors prefer print. "We don't discuss going online much," says Michael Nye. "Reading still feels personal, despite the new media. There's something about curling up on a couch with a book, being alone, underlining and writing in the margins. That's not something we want to move away from."

from Rivert Front Times: River Styx keeps on rolling.

"I have never sat down to analyze it," he [Stephen Bunch] says. "There were things going on with kids and family. I know real poets deal with these things, too. I don't know other than I wasn't inspired to write."

That changed four years go, when, as he puts it, "the tap was turned again."

from Lawrence Journal-World: Winning writers discover voices later in life

Great Regulars

[Peter Wilson] told friends it felt like three years but it was only three months. In fact, when he consulted his notes, he found it was only three weeks. Something similar, he believes, happened to Ishmael Beah.

So do we have here a reformed mass killer, a man with a drug-scrambled memory or a brilliant young storyteller?

from Bryan Appleyard: The Sunday Times: Bryan Appleyard's full account of his interview with Ishmael Beah

On my last night in the pink city, I was watching television. The US Secretary of Defence was ready to send ground troops into Pakistan the headline blared. At that point, our differences became pointless. It was no longer us against each other; there were larger threats now. Siblings, though stymied by rivalries at times and shadowed by each other's ghosts, are still siblings.

from Fatima Bhutto: The News International Pakistan: The pink city
also Los Angeles Chronicle: Pakistan: Real Successor of Bhutto?

Charles Saatchi, the art collector, has risked the ire of Britain's Jewish establishment by buying a painting of Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi who planned the Holocaust, to put on the walls of his new London gallery.

from Olivia Cole: The Sunday Times: Saatchi makes space for a candy-coloured Himmler

As I have said elsewhere, and this is what you possibly have observed: poets "divine" the times in which they live. We choose what of our world today is worth carrying into the permanence of art. Such an undertaking, noble or not, requires us to approach our existence and presence and all of the accrual of things with a wonder that approximates first encounter. [--Major Jackson]

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Interview: Poet Major Jackson

Hans von Bülow almost instructed his students to make mistakes: "In large leaps, now and then you must claw a wrong note; otherwise no one will notice that it is difficult." The audience liked this. Wrong notes, we are told, were considered a sign of genius. Eugen d'Albert was celebrated for the wild inaccuracy of his playing.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Notes on a theme

I hope writers come back to the fringe at least, no matter who is elected. They're essential, on a larger level, to imagining what a government is capable of doing, and then reminding us, when it comes down to it--it's our leaders' imaginations which matter the most.

from John Freeman: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Creative presidential campaigners

She says, "My eyes burst closed." This oxymoronic claim seems odd: to describe "closing" with the word "burst" which usually refers to "opening." But the pressure mounting in her skill and throughout her body, no doubt, made it seem that her eyes closed because the eyeballs had burst open. In her mouth she felt blood that was clotting, and she describes the clots as ""blood curds."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Ann Stanford's ‘The Beating'

Then he likens his feelings to the opening of a rose in spring, implying that his emotional life has been closed, but this new baby motivates him to open his heart "petal by petal" as a rose opening in springtime to its natural surroundings.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Rethinking Cummings' Poem

His thought resembles air, and his desire resembles fire, and both elements become metaphors for the nature of creativity. They have the power of "swift motion." They contain and facilitate his thought processes that allow him to create.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 45

His pent-up fury at knowing that his words will be subject to scrutiny and deletion, no matter how carefully he chose them, is expressed in the way he likens them to caged monkeys with bared teeth, craving freedom.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: Springing into life again

"In the Basket Marty Brought to the Hospital After the Cesarean" by Thorpe Moeckel, from Odd Botany.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of February 04, 2008

Elsewhere in this newspaper you may find some advice for maintaining and repairing troubled relationships. Here, in a poem by Linda Pastan of Maryland, is one of those relationships in need of some help.

The Quarrel

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 149

[Trish] Reeves creates a new timekeeping paradigm here, suggested by Van Gogh and by farming, but instead more personal: anniversaries of family deaths. When I read this poem, I remember my ancient grandmother mourning her father's death anniversary. I memorialize my own family deaths.

Chronology

from Denise Low: Ad Astra Poetry Project: Trish Reeves

[Campbell] McGrath's audacity has a genial, sociable quality, often with a flippancy that he directs back at himself, in the American tradition of kidding, a humor that may tease greatness but makes the joke on itself. For example, "Rilke and God":

When Rilke talks about God I have no idea

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

It emerges from this book that in order to avoid the censors--or worse--[Marcel] Martinet published the poems in Switzerland, from where they were distributed as samizdat. Like Wilfred Owen or Ernst Friedrich in his book of photos War Against War, Martinet gives us the horrors of industrial warfare, piling up bodies and documenting horrific injuries.

from Michael Rosen: Europe's charnel house

Arumuga Navalar was as great an Editor of Tamil classics as he was a prose writer. All his editions are noted for their accuracy of text, minuteness and exactness in the concern for detail and marked by a great thoroughness in method. He edited the largest number of Tamil religious and literary works.

from V Sundaram: News Today: A religious leader and a man of letters from Jaffna

[George] Eliot steps apart from Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, T.H. Huxley, and John Stuart Mill, and in this particular, shows--directly because she thinks as an artist--that she was the greater thinker as well as imaginative writer. For too many scientists, engineering explains everything, in a closed-circuit determinist system. In fact, it has to. No it doesn't, Eliot said, and her fiction is great because she did.

from John Timpane: Philadelpia Inquirer: Did you know there was science in poetry?

"The baby has been born. She was born at 12:18 and she was 5lbs and 12oz and she's 18ins long and she's really beautiful and she has already breast fed and she latched on right away and we have not yet settled on a name but now I know what my mom was telling me when she said that she couldn't that she wanted me to know someday how it felt to hold in her arms when I was a baby. So bye."

from Andrew Varnon: Flash & Yearn: Voice Post

Of the universal mind each individual man is one more incarnation. All its properties consist in him. Each new fact in his private experience flashes a light on what great bodies of men have done, and the crises of his life refer to national crises. Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.

from Daily Times: Purple Patch: History --Ralph Waldo Emerson

6.25 by Alison Brackenbury

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: 6.25 by Alison Brackenbury

by Ales Debeljak translated by Andrew Zawacki and the author
The Kiss

from Guernica: Poetry: Two Poems

By Jan Sokoloff Harness

Driving in my car,

from The Kansas City Star: 'Static': A poem by Jan Sokoloff Harness

The Magic Kingdom
by Kathleen Graber

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Magic Kingdom

A Measuring Worm
by Richard Wilbur

from The New Yorker: Poetry: A Measuring Worm

The Saws
by Robert Pinsky

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Saws

[by Kate Gray]
Near the houses where we lived [. . .]

from The Oregonian: Poetry

By Jeff Bogel
Eastern Regional High School
Thanatopsis

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Jeff Bogel]

By Margie Brining

Triton High School
I Am From

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Margie Brining]

By Courtney Dalton
Martin Luther King Jr.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Courtney Dalton]

At the January Hoot, Nancy Donovan read this strong and sharp poem:

The Old Year Passes 2007

or

Grandpa Jim

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poetry Hoot: The Old Year Passes 2007 or Grandpa Jim

[by Kyle Potvin]
Sleep Sonnet

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Sleep Sonnet

[by Abby Suchocki]
Snow Dancing

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Snow Dancing

Window for a Small Blue Child (Carcanet, £8.95) tells the story of a child's creation by in vitro fertilisation, in which the languages of science and of human feeling interact. Nature and control of nature and uncontrollable emotions each have their place in this drama, beautifully constructed by Gerrie Fellows.

Conversation (Blue Tablecloth)

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week

"Losing My Hair"
By Wesley McNair

from Slate: "Losing My Hair" --By Wesley McNair

Yerra Sugarman
Ash and Scar

from Zeek: Poems by Yerra Sugarman

Poetic Obituaries

[Louise Aldrich Bugbee] first writing for the Gazette was poetry. Then, when the Gazette's late editor Henry Beetle Hough needed an Oak Bluffs Social Notes columnist, he proposed that Mrs. Bugbee take over that post. She did, and continued to write Oak Bluffs Social Notes until--according to her version--she was fired. Henry Hough, however, vehemently denied it.

from Vineyard Gazette: Louise Aldrich Bugbee Wrote Well-Liked Column in Gazette

[Stefan Meller] was Poland's foreign minister 2005-2006, before that he served as ambassador to France and Russia. Mr. Meller was a historian, a poet and a diplomat at the same time.

from cafebabel.com: Former Polish MFA Stefan Meller died

Then that afternoon came a request from the Mormon Tabernacle choir director Craig Jessop to perform the song at Hinckley's funeral.

Saturday at President Hinckley's funeral service the very words of Hinckley's poem gave others comfort upon his own passing.

"What Is This Thing That Men Call Death"
By President Gordon B. Hinckley
Music by Janice Kapp Perry

from ABC4: President Hinckley's Poem

[Deepak] Mishra, whose literary compositions are marked by simple and lucid style, served as the president Orissa Sahitya Akademi at the time of his death. Mishra was selected for 2007 Central Sahitya Akademi award honour for his book `Sukha Sanhita'.

According to litterateurs from this part of the state, Mishra dealt on reality and his compositions often reflected the social milieu and trends.

from Kalinga Times: Poet Deepak Mishra passes away

The poem, "The Man, The Boy, The Indian," so touched local artist Suzanne Shipley when she read it that she created a painting to depict it. More than 2,000 prints of the painting with [Walter] Mize's words, "He was at Peace with nature. His spirit was the wind . . ." were requested by others.

from Cleburne Times-Review: Walter Mize--man of poetry

[Edith L. Pedersen] was a member and past treasurer of Alpha Delta Kappa sorority, was a member of the Seasoned Poets of the Blue Ridge, volunteered at the Henderson County Library and was a member of the Alumni Association of Miami University

from Times-News: Edith L. Pedersen, 85

It is not the sort of poetry that is easy to get into magazines--though Ray [Pospisil] did rack up some publication credits--but it was a poetry that was harrowing, but moving, possessed of humour, tenderness, and that aching sense of a beauty that you can only experience occasionally, or at a distance, or in memory.

And there were poems among them that should rank among the greatest of his generation. Allow me to quote one in full, "Insomnia":

Insomnia

from Eratosphere: Ray Pospisil has died

[Anthony] Yamashiro then read aloud from a poem written by Sammantha [Alexis Salas] titled, "The Importance of Your Family."

"Always keep and trust your family," he read. "Help out even if you dread it. You'll never know when they're gonna leave."

from Pasadena Star-News: Sammantha Salas is laid to rest

[Jeevanlal] Satyal had served also as Secretary at Ministry of Information and Communication and Director of Department of Industry. Late Satyal had also penned poem collection--'Othka Rekhiharu'.

Late Satyal was one of the founders of Nepali Congress.

from The Rising Nepal: Satyal dies at 80 [2008-2-3]

[Ann Marie] Shannon related well to her college students. She retired as an associate dean of the college in 1995 but continued to be an active voice on the campus. She gave tutorials in 17th-century poetry in the school's Oxbridge Honors Program, which she helped create.

from The Kansas City Star: Ann Marie Shannon was devoted to mission work at her church

To quote media visionary, and noted lyricist Amit Khanna, Majrooh Sultanpuri's reign of five decades in Hindi cinema has provided a "healing touch to a wounded society with poetry--moving with enviable ease from the lofty heights of the best in Urdu Ghazals to the latest foot-tapping chartbusters of their time".

from Tehelka: Lyrical Legend

In 1935, he [Volodia Teitelboim] published, in collaboration with Edurdo Anguita, the Antología de Poesía Chilena Nueva (Anthology of New Chilean Poetry), a title that gave rise to controversy, since Gabriela Mistral was not included in the book, and contributed to the famous literary polemic between Vicente Huidobro, Pablo de Rokha, and Pablo Neruda.

from Periodico 26: Marcelia Yeh dies at 91

Jarvis Thurston, former head of the English Department at Washington University and the man most responsible for the inception of the college's graduate writing program, died last night at his home in University City. Jarvis was married for more than half a century to former U.S. poet laureate Mona Van Duyn, who died in 2004

from River Front Times: Jarvis Thurston, 1914-2008

From early in life, Marcleia [Yeh] wrote poetry, winning many prizes and publishing numerous poems. The poems she wrote during her life in China are now housed at the New York University archive. During the Cultural Revolution, Marcelia began keeping a diary, which she continued for 7 or 8 years. The ten volumes are unique personal record of a transformational political revolution.

After her retirement in 1976, Marcelia returned to the United States. At 60, her strong curiosity and passion for learning propelled her into the University of California at Berkeley's Master's Program in Creative Writing, with a focus on women's literature.

from China Daily: Marcelia Yeh dies at 91

2008-01-29T18:52:00.000-05:00

News at Eleven

For poets, of course, [Robert] Burns has never gone away. The vigour, directness and sheer beauty of his verse has always enraptured them. As Seamus Heaney says: "He did not fail the Muse or us or himself as one of poetry's chosen instruments."

Here is the poem he has written as a tribute which is included in the book.

A Birl for Burns by Seamus Heaney

from Telegraph: Seamus Heaney: A Birl for Burns
also The Guardian: theblogbooks: Podcast: Poetry for Burns night
also The Official Gateway to Scotland: Burns Interactive

There is no romanticising of the past, no obsessive elegising in [N�ala] N� Dh�mhnaill's work. It is something far more disturbing than innocence or order she wants to recover.

'Of course,' the narrator remarks, 'there's a long history of merfolk in Ireland'--that is, a long history of men and women forced out of their element, forced to make unwilling concessions, forced into a self-denying forgetfulness and translation.

from The Guardian: Like a mermaid out of water

[Natasha] Trethewey was teaching at Auburn University and had gone to Gulfport to take her grandmother, Leretta Dixon Turnbough, out to dinner. They were in a restaurant talking about the time her grandmother's brother, Hubert, met Al Capone when the gangster took a boat full of people out to Ship Island to gamble. Trethewey said a woman from a nearby table came over and said: "'There's something else you need to know about Ship Island.'"

The woman told her about the black soldiers.

from The Associated Press: Poet Revives Neglected History

In "The Forgetting," [Robert] Pinsky begins with the acknowledgment that "The forgetting I notice most as I get older is really a form of memory:/The undergrowth of things unknown to you young, that I have forgotten." To read this and the other poems in the book is to see how individual memory flows into cultural memory.

from The Boston Globe: Poems of vitality and mortality

In the midst of admiring the Polish writer Adam Zagajewski in his essay collection, [Adam] Kirsch reflects, "Here (in the United States) poetry is such a minor, sidelined pursuit that its practitioners seldom even consider the possibility that their art has a duty to a larger cause. . . . The moral crisis of Eastern Europe under Communism gave poetry an urgency and stature it can never have in the United States, where it is largely a hobby confined to writing workshops."

from San Francisco Chronicle: 'The Modern Element' lauds some poets, takes others to task

[George] Oppen rejected both these strategies as self-congratulatory, untestable: "We must cease to believe in secret names and unexpected phrases which will burst the world." Without fanfare, he refused the notion that a poet could fulfill his social responsibilities by writing any kind of poem, and neither did this refusal engender any contempt for poetry.

"Is it more important to produce art or to take political action," he asks in the daybooks.

from The Nation: A Test of Poetry

For [Paul] Durcan, no sacred cow is beyond his satiric reach, which makes him rare in a country where reverential lip-service is so often obsequiously paid to the "great tradition".

These poems describing his mother's early life, marriage, loyalty to husband and especially her troubled eldest son, and finally her decline into old age and Alzheimer's, are very moving.

from The Guardian: A sharp and subtle voice

Their eyes might come across the words on the page, but they would create no frisson of recognition: "Casting a dim religious light"; "What hath night to do with sleep?"; "New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large"; "They also serve who only stand and waite"; "Better to reign in Hell than serve in heaven"; "Farewell remorse, all good to me is lost?/Evil be thou my good"; "O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon"; "Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail?/Or knock the breast".

from Telegraph: Why Milton needs restoring to glory

But [Germaine] Greer draws too sharp a contrast with life in the villages around Stratford. Tudor market towns were part of the countryside. Cows were milked there; butter, cheese and eggs would not, as she suggests, have been brought to Mary but purchased after a few minutes’ walk to the marketplace; Greer is not right about there being bakeries in every street: most families still had their own bread oven.

from The Times Literary Supplement: Germaine Greer and Mrs Shakespeare

But hidden in the poem was Mr [Saw] Wai's message about the regime's 74-year-old senior general, Than Shwe. In Burmese, the word for million is "Than" while the word for gold is "Shwe".

Myat Khaing, the editor of Love Journal, told journalists that he had been unaware of the poem's hidden meaning. It was published beneath a drawing of a heart with an arrow through it and the words, "I love you".

from The Independent: Secret message in Valentine's verse lands Burmese poet in prison

[Paul Ursell] said: "What I'm doing is perfectly peaceful but the council sees it as antisocial behaviour.

"They've confiscated my intellectual work. It's like the cultural revolution under Chairman Mao."

Mr Ursell, from Woolwich, used to set up his display of poems on Bankside where he would recite them to passing tourists and give out copies.

from South London Press: Poetic licence required . . .

Great Regulars

"It's sad," she [Marianne Keddington-Lang] says of life with the OHS [Oregon Historical Society] Press. "I loved it, and I felt like we still had work to do. There aren't that many opportunities for those kind of regional history books to be published. There are bright spots and new presses in town like Tin House and Hawthorne Books, but publishing memoirs and literature is not the same as publishing history."

from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: The State of Northwest Publishing

Good luck with that, we opened the door to those spooks decades ago and never bothered to close it. The Washington Post claims that the Special Forces are also desperate for a good old South Asia tourist experience and have kindly offered to come to Pakistan and undertake the task of training our armed forces. The fact that we have the seventh-largest army in the world, and one that seems to be doing their job just fine, doesn't concern anyone. Shouldn't it?

from Fatima Bhutto: The News International Pakistan: The New Year

The conflict remains ongoing; are artistic responses to it premature? Is it possible for a man [i.e. Brian Turner] so intimately involved in a war to avoid glorifying or pitying those also caught up in it? Well, the jury's still out on the first question, but when it comes to the second, the answer is an unequivocal yes.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Out of conflict

Last week, AL Kennedy's novel, Day, was named by Costa as their book of the year, beating Simon Sebag Montefiore's biography of Stalin, Jean Sprackland's poetry collection Tilt, Catherine O'Flynn's debut What Was Lost and Ann Kelley's novel for children The Bower Bird to the overall prize.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Podcast: AL Kennedy

" . . . I've had some bad times and I'm not too well now, so I suppose I have reasons to be pessimistic, but even now, in the last part of my life, what's there is still something I can be glad of, and use. There are very good reasons for thinking things are OK. And I go on doing that." [--Edwin Morgan]

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Zest and grit

It was recently announced by the university library in Heidelberg that a printed book in its possession contains a marginal note, handwritten in October 1503, confirming that Leonardo was at work on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo. This is taken as proof of the traditional identity of the sitter for the Mona Lisa. Vasari, it turns out, was right. Leonardo's portrait shows the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a known historical figure. The Italian title, La Gioconda, means both "the happy woman" and the wife of Signor Giocondo.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Portrait of a lady

"It seems to be easier for John Updike to stifle a yawn than to refrain from writing a book," he wrote about his short-story collection Licks of Love.

On a cold, windy day in Cambridge, Massachusetts, [James] Wood doesn't disavow these statements.

from John Freeman: The Times: John Freeman on fearsome literary critic, James Wood

Because of the way Milton handles the theme in this sonnet, the reader will realize that the speaker pursues the issue in a compartmentalized way as in the Elizabethan (also called Shakespearean or English) sonnet; therefore, a discussion based on quatrains/couplet is in order.

In the first quatrain, the speaker portrays his concern that he is going blind and worries that his "one talent," his writing, may suffer.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Milton's Blindness

Even if the beloved removes to a far planet, the lover can follow in thought.

This speaker is quite taken with the speed of thought, and by wishing his body had such powers, he begins to realize the efficacy of the creative powers inherent in thought. He finds a contradiction, but also a paradox, but waits for the next quatrain to resolve its mystery.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 44

And when the man on the roof opposite vanishes, we could draw the conclusion that he was possibly imprisoned (and tortured) as a consequence of living in a country under siege.

While this is only conjecture, we know that he is an artist who, by the end of the poem, can no longer paint.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: An infatuation killed by reality

Poem: "Opinion" by Baron Wormser, Subject Matter: Poems.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of January 28, 2008

I've written about the pleasures of poetry that offers us vivid scenes but which lets us draw our own conclusions about the implications of what we're being shown. The poet can steer us a little by the selection of details, but a lot of the effect of the poem is in what is not said, in what we deduce. Lee McCarthy is a California poet, and here is something seen from across the street, something quite ordinary yet packed with life.

Santa Paula

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 148

Not my soon-to-be ex-wife, surely. Was I going to invent an ideal lover as Petrarca had his Laura? Was I going to use the memory of a former lover or the haunting image of someone I had briefly met and barely spoken to as Dante had done with Beatrice in the "Vita Nuova"? Perhaps the solution would come to me as I wrote.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Sonnet form elevates poetry with structure, rhythym

At the same time he was writing "In a Station" he [Ezra Pound] was also writing a lot of verse that was old-fashioned and formulaic. In principle, he declared that poetry ought to be concrete and immediate; in practice, and in the "Cantos" especially, he often wrote poems so allusive and erudite that to understand them you had to be as well-read as Pound was.

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Il Miglior Fabbro

Meanwhile, Tibetan dancers are being trained to repeat Beijing's official line to the international community during the Olympics, the source said.

"They were told that they will perform Tibetan cultural dances in Beijing during the Olympics but in reality they are being trained to condemn His Holiness [the Dalai Lama] and propagate to the international community at the Olympics that they are happy under Chinese rule," a Tibetan source said.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: China Cracks Down on Tibetan Buddhism Ahead of Olympics

In myth, a hero is a totem animal--bull or dragon or bear--and resembles or becomes that animal. So Jay Parini, remembering his mother's storm-dark stories about crows, associates her power with the storm, and with those dark, powerful birds:

The Crow-Mother Tells All

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

by Belinda Subraman

"The implausible still interests me.
I am amused
when someone states
an interviewee is insane or mislead"

Posted on January 24, 2008

For the Critic of Ideas

from Donna Snyder: Newspaper Tree: Poetry: For the Critic of Ideas

by Andrew Hudgins

In the Arboretum

from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: In the Arboretum

by Stephen Sandy

Sea Chest

from The Atlantic Monthly: Poetry: Sea Chest

The fuss is that these poets who insulate themselves consciously (you can't blame the subconscious ones) are often the same poets complaining about the pathetically small audience for poetry.

Here's the deal. You can't consciously insulate yourself with senselessness and then bemoan the fact that people don't read poems--the poems you are purposefully excluding them from. You cannot have it both ways.

from Good Times Weekly: Poetry Corner: Poetry for the People

Incident by Jane Griffiths

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Incident by Jane Griffiths

by Glen Enloe

The aura of the oak

from The Kansas City Star: "Rainstorm in Winter": A poem by Glen Enloe

Coyote
by Jean Valentine

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Coyote

The Future
by Billy Collins

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Future

[by Don Colburn]
Snow is falling everywhere, even up [. . .]

from The Oregonian: Poetry

By Angelica M. Bratsis

Somewhere in the World Right Now

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Angelica M. Bratsis]

[by John J Nyhan]
An Agenda for Love?

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: An Agenda for Love?

[by Judy Curtis]
Reflections

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Reflections

While still clearly influenced by the heady surrealism which dominated so much of his early work, these poems increasingly reflect a preoccupation with the terrible events of our times. They are deeply moral, while not being cloyingly so; where [Charles] Simic can use a word, a phrase, an image to subtly explore or delineate a particular circumstance or event, he does.

from Powells: Review-A-Day: Sixty Poems by Charles Simic

"Body of Book"
By Rachel Hadas

from Slate: "Body of Book" --By Rachel Hadas

Poetic Obituaries

A Ledbury man who wrote for the Spectator magazine is to have the honour of a memorial service at an Oxford University college.

Godfrey Bullard, who was 78, died in November at Hereford Hospital but had just managed to make last-minute proof corrections to his second collection of humorous verse Mingled Measure, which came out this week.

from Ledbury Reporter: Farewell to an amazing person

[Ginny Bundy] recalls that her parents' greatest love was music and she inherited their talent. She sang with a band while still in high school and her beautiful voice was always in demand. She also was a great poet and composed poems for all occasions.

from The News-Herald: Virginia M. Bundy

As recently as Monday, noted Nancy Deutsch, who leads a writing group Mr. [Francis] Clay participated in for many years, he was laughing and reading his poetry for an audience of 300 seniors.

Mr. Clay's initial four-year stint with Waters included a 1960 appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival - the first by a blues performer - preserved on the "Live at Newport" album.

from San Francisco Chronicle: Francis Clay--star blues drummer--dies at 84

Glynda Cox, a co-owner of Chicago House, the long-closed but fabled downtown Austin coffeehouse and performance venue, died Sunday at home in Austin. She was 64.

"We suspect a cardiac event," said her partner, Peg Miller. "It was peaceful ... for her."

While nearby Sixth Street grew rowdier during the 1980s and '90s, Cox and Miller kept the quiet, soulful Chicago House alive in a two-story building on Trinity Street.

from The Austin American-Statesman: Longtime Chicago House co-owner Glynda Cox, 1943-2008

Edith [Mary Essex] was also a poet, with two small locally published books to her credit. The poems, often humorous, were about the seasons, nature, and her neighbors. Like the small community she lived in, Edith is now gone. In January 1996, during a frigid winter storm, Edith evidently got up during the night to put more wood on the fire and fell.

from Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Living Simply: Creating a New Life Off the Grid

Richard [Gomm] also compiled and wrote the first word anticipation computer program, to help him with his studies. He married Penny Morgan and the couple were living in Cirencester when he died.

One of Richard's poems:

Thinking of You in Switzerland . . .

from Gloucestershire Echo: 'Our Son Had a Wonderful Life'

Eddie [Graham] was a talented artist who spent a good deal of time each year making colorful cards with poems he wrote and giving them out for major holidays, as well as making beautiful collages for people's birthdays. He made hobbyhorses for kids on the block and saved the newspapers for neighbors every day.

from The Villager: Edward L. Graham, 62, the 'Mayor of E. Fourth St.'

Qazi Izhar used to be recognised in Pakistan with reference to his profound association with literature and poetry. He had produced eight compilations in Sindhi and Urdu poetry.

He was a great social worker and kept himself engaged in social welfare activities even after his retirement as Assistant Director Social Welfare.

from Associated Press of Pakistan: Noted poet Qazi Izhar passed away

"If my son did something wrong, he should pay, but not with his life," Oscar Martinez, 52, said [of Oscar Andres Martinez] at the family's Woodbridge home. "He was a poet, a writer and an athlete. He loved nature. He was never under any circumstances [violent]."

The Orange County District Attorney's Office is conducting an investigation into the shooting.

from Potomac News: Family wants answers in son's shooting

[Dr. Samuel Maxwell Plaut] loved to write poetry and sent her many poems during their courtship, his daughter recalled.

After going to medical school at the University of Colorado, he did his residency with the U.S. Army at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.

It was a mutual friend from his residency days who encouraged him to come out to San Bernardino.

from San Bernadino County Sun: Doctor 'treated . . . patients like family'

Bodhi [Bodhisattva Sherzer-Potter] was also partial to filmmaking and dreamed of attending film school. She penned her thoughts, philosophies and poems in a journal every day and had a profoundness uncommon for a girl her age, said her mother, Leah Sherzer.

from San Bernadino County Sun: Not-guilty pleas made in slayings

[The Tamarack Review] was also the most influential of the many influential projects in [Robert] Weaver's long, creative career as coach, guide and cheerleader for the best writers of the time--Alice Munro and Mordecai Richler, Al Purdy and Hugh Garner, and many more.

Weaver's day job for all of his adult life was at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where he served as literature's ambassador to radio.

from National Post: The best friend the Canadian short story ever had

[Keith Wilson] had aspirations of becoming a professional rapper but most recently talked of becoming a pediatrician. He had four sisters and a stepbrother and expressed the importance of family through poems he wrote, she [Keith's mother Rochonta Blackhawk] said.

from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Mother of boy killed in crash professes no ill will

2008-01-22T20:48:00.000-05:00

News at Eleven

In a forthcoming review to be published in March in Parnassus: Poetry in Review, an American poetry journal, Mr. [William] Logan writes: "Obliged though readers must be for this unknown Frost, the transcription is a scandal. To read this volume is to believe that Frost was a dyslexic and deranged speller, that his brisk notes frequently made no sense, that he often traded the expected word for some fanciful or perverse alternative."

But Mr. [Robert] Faggen suggests that Frost, who died in 1963, did often employ "odd spellings" in the notebooks.

from The New York Times: Editing of Frost Notebooks in Dispute

In the diorama battles between high and low, cooked and raw, there's no doubt of [Geoffrey] Hill's loyalties--you don't write on Holbein, on Blake, on Burke, on Handel without staking your claim in cold didactic ground. What to make, then, of his offhanded exclamation that "Things are not that bad. / H. Mirren's super"? So, Hill watches "Prime Suspect." Is he secretly boogieing to Eminem and P. Diddy? Not quite yet--but he talks about "lyric mojo."

from The New York Times: Living With Ghosts

Sam Porpora, a former church historian who led the fight to preserve the cemetery, claimed last summer that he cooked up the idea of the Poe toaster in the 1970s as a publicity stunt.

"We did it, myself and my tour guides," Porpora, a former advertising executive, said in August. "It was a promotional idea."

Porpora said someone else has since "become" the Poe toaster.

from KFWB News 980: Controversy Doesn't Deter 'Poe Toaster' From Annual Visit to Edgar Allan's Grave

I can't speak for others, but reading her [Nasra Al Adawi's] poems was like balm to a wound in my spirit. Hearing understanding from the voice of a stranger is an incalculable gift and one that I'll always treasure. I can't help but believe that the women to whom she has read these and other poems receive the same presents of hope and understanding that I received.

from Blogcritics: Brave Faces by Nasra Al Adawi

Sometimes he [Robert Alter] merely inverts the King James phrases. 'For I am poor and needy' (86) becomes 'for lowly and needy am I'; 'The sea is his, and he made it' (95) turns into 'His is the sea and He made it'; or similarly, 'Thy way is in the sea' (77) is now 'In the sea was Your way.' There are inversions on nearly every page and after a while, wonder, one does, if it's not the swamp of Yoda the Jedi Master we're in.

from London Review of Books: Praise Yah

His reputation rests today partly in the hands of the so-called Language poets, who find in [Louis] Zukofsky's brilliant subversions of syntax, word games and indeterminacy (his poem, after all, is called "A," not "The") an augury of their own methods. But "A" is not about anything as simple as "language" or "life": it is a poem about working on "A"--about the daily elations and impediments of an artist who sought, over the course of decades, to make something really hard really good.

from The New York Times: Alpha Poet

In Civil Engineer, the steady rhyme scheme mirrors disaster as seen through the lens of a by-the-book engineer:

A dense mist grips the mangled girders, a body bag or shroud

for the protruding beams, angled in unlikely shapes that crowd

into the water, pursuing the drowned

heart of the bridge. Efficiency our motto in engineering. No acting, nothing clowned.

Regionally, and for others interested in the event itself, Falsework [by Gary Geddes] is a very important artistic document--half creative product, half official narrative--and should be bought for every shelf in Vancouver.

from The Globe and Mail: A bridge too frail

[Anna] Beer's account of all this is vigorous, well researched and primed with piquant detail. How you prepare the heads of executed felons for display (answer: parboil them in bay salt and cumin seed to prevent putrefaction and to stop birds eating them) is not, for example, advice you come across in every biography.

But, by comparison, Milton's poetry gets little coverage.

from The Sunday Times: Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer and Patriot by Anna Beer

At last the great Shakespearean drama has begun. It moves from "Sylvia" to "Dearest darling Sylvia" and "Darling Sylvia Puss-Kish Ponky" and on to "Dearest Sylvia kish and puss and ponk" to settle finally at "Dearest Sylvia"--and then it is over.

"Sylvia killed herself on Monday morning," begins his letter bluntly to one of his closest friends. It is shocking in its rational, descriptive flatness.

from The Sydney Morning Herald: Letters Of Ted Hughes

No more than these writers should [Rabbie] Burns be forced to represent nationalism or rude ideology--that is not the way in which he is political, but more, much more, in the subtle manners of his comprehension when it comes to human freedom. Burns spoke in ways that not only defend the rights of the human imagination, but which embody that freedom in the manner of its defence.

from The Guardian: The people's poet

"Most of the kids were very remorseful," he [Sgt. Lee Hodsden] said. "Some were crying. . . . Two of them were indifferent to it, thought it was a big joke."

Hodsden said the parents of those involved were cooperative.

"I think a lot of how they found out their children were involved was at the supper table," said Middlebury Police Officer Scott Fisher, MUHS's school resource officer. "I would get calls, pass information along to Sgt. Hodsden."

from Rutland Herald: 28 face charges in Frost vandalism

Great Regulars

Books, Inq is a blog produced by Frank Wilson, the literary editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, which assiduously points you in the direction of countless literary links. Jenny Diski (jennydiski.typepad.com ) and Susan Hill (blog.susan-hill.com ) produce good examples of writer's blogs, though the latter recently made the rooky blogger's mistake of including pictures of her cats.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Times: Bryan Appleyard on art on the web

Waterboarding was a favourite of the fanatics running the Spanish Inquisition in the fifteenth century Europe and now it's a Gitmo specialty.

American army officials have been loath to call waterboarding a form of torture. They dance around the description and say that while it's surely uncomfortable, it can't really be called torture. That's what a democracy is all about, I suppose.

from Fatima Bhutto: The News International Pakistan: The road to Guantanamo

[Charles] Nicholl himself acknowledges that it was [AL] Rowse who first made full use of the notebooks of the doctor or magus Simon Forman.

It is through these records of consultations that we learn such facts of daily life as that, on September 10 1597, Marie Mountjoy lost in the street two rings and a French crown piece. She visited Forman in order to see if, by his astrological calculations, he could discover the present whereabouts of her property.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Bard times

Nevertheless, the speaker, before her hard-hitting yet softly-applied critique, makes it clear that winter holds much to be honored; after all the season is "Generic as a Quarry/And hearty--as a Rose." It generates enough to be considered a repository like a stone quarry that can be mined for all types of valuable rocks, gems, and granite.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Dickinson's Winter Welcome

The speaker in Shakespeare Sonnet 43, "When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see," claims that he sees best when he "sleeps," or visits the astral, mental world, because it is then that he experiences his beloved--the poetry muse.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 43

Don't judge her [Joyce Carol Oates] on the basis of, say, six titles, or 10, or even 24. Keep reading and her talent will emerge eventually.

That approach is like the one a relative of mine used to find the Brazil nut piece in the box of chocolates, taking bites out of all the other pieces until the right candy was found.

from Bob Hoover: Post-Gazette: Have you read your Oates today?

[Wordsworth] tells us that his beliefs might be "from heaven sent", for in his mind that must be where nature herself originates. And, when his appreciation of his surroundings leads him to thoughts of "what man has made of man" by way of contrast, he asks us "Have I not reason to lament?"

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: Happiness through nature

But it was in poetry that she [Muriel Spark] first made her name. From 1947–49 she was editor of the journal Poetry Review and her collection The Fanfarlo (1952) preceded her first published fiction. One of the poems in that book, "Chrysalis" was published in the TLS in June 1951.

Chrysalis

from Mick Imlah: The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: Chrysalis

Poem: "How To Kill" by Keith Douglas, from Keith Douglas: The Complete Poems.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of January 21, 2008

Those who bemoan the self-absorption of the postliterate generation will be happy to know that before the self-indulgent, amateurish blog there was the self-indulgent, amateurish log. "We understood that in our own way we'd performed an act of Zen," the book's last pages declare. The problem is that my Zen is just peachy; to me, your Zen is a snooze.

from David Kirby: The New York Times: Pas de Deux

But how can poetry do this?

One way is to recite the bare facts, in the hope they will resonate with the reader. In a poem about Korea titled "On Visiting the DMZ at Panmunjom: a Haibun," and containing information about military and civilian deaths and quantities of ordnance expended in that war, [Robert] Hass writes, "There is no evidence that human beings have absorbed these facts, which ought, at least, to provoke some communal sense of shame."

from Karl Kirchwey: The Philadelphia Inquirer: Images of war, 'sweetness' of art

Our earliest recollections are often imprinted in our memories because they were associated with some kind of stress. Here, in an untitled poem, the Nebraska State Poet, William Kloefkorn, brings back a difficult moment from many years before, and makes a late confession:

I stand alone at the foot

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 147

He finds a gar, a trash fish, imprisoned in a decorative pond. Its displacement resonates with "meat packing plants"--what hunting has become within a city landscape. At the end, as [John] Moritz turns his thoughts to poetry--Dante and Ezra Pound--he connects movement of consciousness to the gar's thrashing: all fight against confinement.

Omaha

from Denise Low: Ad Astra Poetry Project: John Moritz (1946-2007)

Their stories are at least self-sufficiently interesting and often actually amazing, but their special claim on our attention has to do with the ways they allow us to apprehend symbolic values at the same time as we enjoy actual events.

This combination of figurative and factual power is something that all creative artists aspire to--which helps to explain why one of the best-known myths, the story of Orpheus, should have been so often retold through the centuries.

from Andrew Motion: The Guardian: Foreword

All we can say for sure is that in the late 1630s Milton "almost single-handedly created the identity of the writer as a political activist, [and] of writing as a political vocation"--developing his remarks in "Lycidas" into a fully armed assault on church corruption, and then adding a pamphlet on divorce which immediately became (and to some extent remains) notorious for its insistence that "meet and happy conversation" rather than sexual fidelity be the foundation of a good marriage.

from Andrew Motion: The Guardian: The mystery of genius

Imagine the scene: an army tears through the streets of an ancient city, slaughtering every man, woman and child in its way. One soldier is about to charge into the nearest house to slit the throats of the occupants when he notices a scrap of paper pinned to the door. Tearing it off, he discovers a sonnet has been written on it.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Today: A Reading of 'When the Assault was Intended for the City' by John Milton

In its apparent simplicity and urbane candor, its detail, its allegiance to a past that is transitory and lost except in memory, these lines about a past "Appalachia downtown" remind me of the traditional Chinese poetry [Charles] Wright admires and often evokes. For instance, here is Burton Watson's translation of a poem by the 11th-century poet Su Tung-p'o, "Rhyming with Tzu-yu's 'At Mien-ch'ih, Recalling the Past' (1061)":

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

As is the Christian convention, [Pierre Jean] Jouve collocates language and metaphysical experience. Both are, in a sense, forms of thought. According to "Langue III", near death "one seeks the meaning and the letter and the spirit: the meaning is dear to God: the meaning is what reaches the God-consciousness".

from Fiona Sampson: The Guardian: The sunken piano

In every sense of the word he [C W Damodaram Pillai] was a great Pioneer and worthy Precursor of Dr. U.V. Swaminatha Iyer in the field of retrieval, re-editing and reprinting of ancient Tamil Classics.

Damodaram Pillai's most notable achievement was the editing of Tholkappiyam with Nachinarkiniyar's commentary. Tholkappiyam is generally considered to be the most ancient complete and whole single work in Tamil now extant.

from V Sundaram: News Today: A pioneer in Tamil and Tamil literature from Jaffna

[Edna St. Vincent Millay] was born in Maine, of a long line of Maine families, and the sea coast provides her with many of her early images--of anchors, shells, ships and sea-farers, but there was also a certain distance from her milieu:

"Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:

Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand."

from René Wadlow's The Flutes of Dionysus: Newropeans Magazine: Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892--1950)

You might just find yourself reading every last piece in the book, even those about poets you've never heard of. Most of all, you're likely to begin sensing that poetry is less a literary activity than a mode of being, and that you want the same thing [Christian] Wiman does: a "complete saturation of the actual . . . not merely my imagination trying to attach itself to reality."

from Frank Wilson: Philadelphia Inquirer: A poet reconciling verse and living

[Maram al-Massri's] work has appeared in many international anthologies and been translated into French, English, Spanish, Corsican, Serbian and Italian. The following poems, taken from "A Red Cherry on a White-tiled Floor," have been translated into English by Khaled Mattawa. He is the author of three books of poems. He teaches in the M.F.A. Creative Writing Program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

34

from Good Times Weekly: Poetry Corner: Poetry by Maram al-Massri

The River Road

by Sean O'Brien

from The Guardian: Saturday Poem: The River Road

By Jon Herbert Arkham

[Sea of Glass]

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'Sea of Glass': A poem by Jon Herbert Arkham

Fidget

by John Hollander

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Fidget

Science Fiction

by Les Murray

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Science Fiction

Through

by Ciaran Carson

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Through

Listen to Maya Pindyck read her poems

Long Distance

Judaism

Tin (Please) Is Real

from Nextbook: Three Poems by Maya Pindyck

[by Ann Staley]

At the back door on Church Street a note reads,

from The Oregonian: Poetry

By Malique Daniels

The sky, a big blue hot air balloon balancing over the sea

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Malique Daniels]

By Alfred G. Wagner

Pleasant Valley School

Zodiac Signs

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Alfred G. Wagner]

[by Bob Moore]

Justice

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Justice

[by Lucie Therrien]

Stilettos

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Stilettos

Fortunately for English-language readers, Joan Margarit's poems are getting easier to find. Tugs in the Fog (Bloodaxe), translated by Anna Crowe, is a great introduction: and Barcelona publisher Proa has also produced his Barcelona Amor Final in Catalan, Spanish and English, with black and white photographs, an evocative love song to the city.

My Ode to Barcelona

The city, wherever you go it will go.

--Kavafy

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week

"Food Lion, Winchester, Tennessee"

By Joe Osterhaus

from Slate: "Food Lion, Winchester, Tennessee"--By Joe Osterhaus

Poetic Obituaries

Yolanda met Eric [Barker] at a dance club seven years ago. He wrote her poems and surprised her with gifts. A year later, they married.

Yolanda Barker was five years younger than Eric and came to depend upon him. "I couldn't make a decision without him," she said.

He knew his way around the kitchen and knew how to cook food the kids would eat. He baked cakes for their birthdays because he believed store-bought wasn't "from the heart," his widow said.

from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Slain officer wanted to give his kids a father

After his death in 1982, she [Myrtle Butcher] began writing poems as part of the grieving process, and they were published in several American poetry anthologies, according to her daughter Maxine Nichols of West Lafayette, Ind.

Butcher was chosen for the Champion Windows ads after she had the windows installed at her home.

from The Enquirer: Myrtle Butcher seen in Champion Window ads

"Death comes as a new birth to Eternity. Live and love, then--Heaven is now," runs the last line of the poem that Fr. Paul DC Cunanan composed last New Year's eve.

On Saturday, January 19, 2008, at around 3:00 PM, he faced what he called "a new birth to Eternity", as he

from Philipine Information Agency: Davao's Fr. Paul Cunanan, 68

Georgia Frontiere was a chorus girl, a club singer, a philanthropist and a creative eccentric who wrote poetry and liked astrology.

She dined with movie stars and sang at Joseph P. Kennedy's mansion. At various times, she owned homes in London, Los Angeles, New York, Arizona and her native St. Louis.

from St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Georgia Frontiere: 'An extraordinary life'

After retiring, Mrs [Barbara] Hill took a creative writing course at Dewsbury College, where she developed her interest in poetry and prose.

She went on to write two collections of stories and poems, Dips and Rainbow Thoughts, which went on sale at Sue Carter's bookshop, Crackenedge Lane.

from Dewsbury Reporter: Tributes are paid to the prolific 'Dewsbury poet' Barbara Hill, 73

[Nikola] Kljusev has been a member of the council of the governing center-right VMRO-DPMNE party since 1997.

During his lifetime he published numerous studies on economics as well as several books of his own poetry and essays.

from Balkan Investigative Reporting Network: Macedonia's First PM Dies

Andy Palacio--a man who has worn the hats of teacher, singer, guitarist, drummer, composer, producer and poet--fell sick just over a week ago. On Saturday, he was diagnosed at the Belize Medical Associates with high blood pressure, and days later, his cholesterol level was found to be at dangerous levels.

from Amandala: R.I.P. Andy P

A bright girl, she [Chrissy Predham Newman] was involved in theatre in school, liked writing poetry and was named an Ontario scholar for having achieved at least an 80 per cent average in every high school subject.

Newman was involved in caring for children and the elderly at a young age, spending time babysitting and volunteering at a local nursing home.

from The Western Star: One year later: no one arrested, charged in Chrissy Predham Newman murder

Mr. [James LeVoy] Sorenson also was a poet and composer of LDS hymns, publishing some of them in a book titled, "Just Love the People, the World Is our Family."

After beginning his career selling pharmaceuticals to physicians for Upjohn Co. in Salt Lake City, Mr. Sorenson started buying real estate in the Salt Lake area. In 1957 he co-founded Deseret Pharmaceutical, and the company became the foundation for the establishment of Becton Dickinson Vascular Access.

from Deseret Morning News: Inventor James L. Sorenson dies at 86

[Hone Tuwhare] won two Montana Book Awards for poetry: in 1998 for Shapeshifter, and in 2002 for Piggy Back Moon.

He was honoured as the Te Mata Poet Laureate in 1999, and held Auckland University, Hocken Library, and Burns Fellowships. In 2005 his poems were set to music by artists as diverse as Don McGlashan, Goldenhorse, and Whirimako Black.

from The Epoch Times: Tribute to Great NZ Poet Hone Tuwhare

2008-01-15T20:24:00.000-05:00

News at Eleven

Though the mood and spirit of these poems are my own, they are formally modelled on poems by Herbert: in the cases of "Host", "Flash" and "This" on "Love (III)", "Virtue" and "Prayer (I)"--some of the loveliest of his poems, and among my favourites. One of the oddities of "Prayer (I)" is that it has no main verb, and I have kept to this feature.

from The Times Literary Supplement: Three poems inspired by George Herbert

From the first excruciating moments of infatuation with the woman he called "Lesbia," through the torrid transports of physical love, to the betrayals that leave him stricken, [Gaius] Catullus told it all, and, in so doing, did more than anyone to create the form we recognize today as the love story.

from Los Angeles Times: Introduction by Jeffrey Eugenides: to 'My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, From Checkhov to Munro'

At home, Bill [William Stafford] would rise at 4 a.m. every day to take a walk and write. He was very private with his creative process. Once, he showed Dorothy [Stafford] some poetry and she added a few corrections.

"He never showed me again," she said with a smile.

from Lake Oswego Review: The Secret to A Long life: Poetry, Friends and Family

Before postmodernism, says [Robert] Hass, many poets assumed they did know the thoughts of animals, because their worldviews were shaped by their religious beliefs. "Poets went to nature because they thought of nature as a divine book written in divine hand," he says. "I don't think that metaphor is dead anymore, but the feeling is that our sacred books and churches told us what divine was, and then we read it into nature."

from The Jerusalem Post: Natural poet

"Give me one good reason for reason", remonstrates a birch tree in "Scientists Have Discovered". [Sam] Gardiner experiments with Wordsworth's wise passivity in the face of nature, but finds the human-to-nonhuman gap too wide to bridge: "Trees are simply green things without thoughts/that stand in our way," he writes admiringly in "Believe It"; "Only by becoming brainless can we understand them."

from The Guardian: The lab rat's guide to happiness

At a reading at Amherst College's Ford Memorial Chapel, for example, in a previously uncollected typescript, we find him [Robert Frost] musing: "I was thinking the other day I could tear these books, tear the leaves out, and I could lay the poems pretty nearly to cover the little thirty-acred farm. I could find places where every single one of the poems took its rise. I could make a little map of the farm; in fact one of my children made such a map and from her incomplete work could locate as many as twenty to thirty of the poems."

from The Guardian: Chicken feed for the soul

Yet [Hershel] Parker shows convincingly that [Herman] Melville was immersed in thinking about poetry, aesthetics and the lives of poets. Perhaps more important, he reveals that if Melville wanted to engage the loftiest or the deepest matters, then poetry, meaning verse, was the appropriate cultural form in which it should be done. His first published book of poems was "Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War," the title suggestive of art, music and, grimly, other kinds of fragments.

from Los Angeles Times: The great American author didn't write poetry by accident, Parker argues, but entirely by plan.

[Louis] Zukofsky is neither an easy poet nor one you can warm up to immediately. But greater familiarity with what he does--more and more readings of his shorter poems--helps to crack the seeming code, and then you can begin to hear this special music, and possibly tackle some of the longer works.

from The Jewish Exponent: 'Vessels of Light'

In 1948 or thereabouts, [Marjorie] El-Kadi fell into a brief orbit around the man who once dismissed Walt Whitman as an "exceedingly nauseating pill." Invariably, Pound wore a hospital robe and a towel wrapped in a turban around his head. "He had a nervous twitch," she says, and he "turned a pencil over and over with his fingers."

Pound "wanted me to be his political secretary," and--dazzled by his celebrity, albeit dubious--El-Kadi ran errands for him.

from Herald-Tribune: War fuels the muse of a poet for peace

And it suggests an alternative to imperialism and violence--[Daniel] Berrigan's alternative. "Seed hope. Flower peace."

[Adrianna] Amari's project resonated with the publishing staff at Apprentice House for many reasons. [Gregg] Wilhelm, [Kevin] Atticks, and the students believed in the artistic merit of the book and were excited about the support it had already received. Not only had [Howard] Zinn written the book's introduction, but Martin Sheen and Kurt Vonnegut had read and praised the manuscript.

from Baltimore City Paper: University Press

But neither man was carrying a horn, or any instrument, when they arrived Tuesday at the Jazz Standard club on East 27th Street. The nation's current poet laureate, the 69-year-old [Charles] Simic, and its former poet laureate, [Robert] Pinsky, were there to do their practiced thing, read poems. And while they'd share the stage with three jazz musicians, it was still undecided, two hours before showtime, whether the two groups would perform together. In the best jazz tradition, the night was going to be an improvisation.

from Los Angeles Times: Poets and jazz artists find rhythm and rhyme

Great Regulars

It was here she [Elizabeth Barrett Browning] produced the remarkable poem Casa Guidi Windows, a stirring response to the Florentine bid for freedom in the late 1840s. Casa Guidi lies on the junction next to the church of San Felice and just around the corner from the Pitti Palace and from its windows the Brownings could witness the swerving political fortunes of their adopted city.

from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: Elizabeth Barrett Browning's ode to Florence

[John Donne's] poems combine sensuality with intelligence--what we think of as metaphysical. Which is to say, they are passionate and meditative simultaneously. And, they are examples of poems, in Theodore Roethke's phrase (and Roethke adored Donne, by the way), that think by feeling.

Air and Angels

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: Poetry

Consolation is hard to come by in Will Stone's universe. His view of humanity, present as enfeebled victims or pitiless murderers, is grim, religion provides little in the way of solace ("the ashen Christ sags helpless/hooked like a haunch of meat"), and his landscapes are heavy with morbidity.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Light verse

The last 12 months in poetry have definitely belonged to Sean O'Brien. After winning the Forward prize for best collection an unprecedented third time in October, the poet was tonight named the winner of the 2007 TS Eliot prize, making him the first author ever to take the UK's two top poetry awards in the same year.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Sean O'Brien wins unprecedented poetry double

Walter Bargen--a poet at home with writing in almost any style, from rural reveries to enigmatic surrealism--is the first poet laureate of Missouri.

His books include The Feast, in which some of the speakers, trapped in isolation, take on the persona of the biblical Jonah in the belly of the fish. In other works, such as the poem "Office of Forgetting," he is content to evoke nature, or the Midwestern seasons.

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Missouri names its first poet laureate

"The goal," said [Robert] Henri, "is not making art. It is living a life. Those who live their lives will leave the stuff that is really art." To inspire this kind of spirit in his students, he used to read to them from Walt Whitman.

The Ashcan artists were often cartoonists and illustrators--they grew up in a golden age of newspaper art--as well as painters.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Living a life

"It is good sometimes for poetry to disenchant us," he [Robert Hass] writes in "The Problem of Describing Trees," as if sick of it all.

But then what? Time and Materials, which recently won the National Book Award, seems to ask itself that question over and again: If not lovemaking, or the amber shiver of trees losing leaves, what are our elemental things? Is war the seasonal ritual to which we should become accustomed as our planet's seasons merge?

from John Freeman: Charleston City Paper: City Paper reviews the National Book Award winners in fiction and poetry

In the fourth stanza which is the second single couplet of the poem, the speaker claims that her fireworks display is so bright that it "shine[s] in the windows and light[s] up the trees." And then she says that this display comes from her hatred of the person to whom she is speaking.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Amy Lowell's 'Fireworks'

The speaker then speculates about the nature of loss, and he decides that if he loses that particular poem, he still wins because he has the ability to create others. If he loses the ability to create others, he would lose both that poem and any future poems he might create. And that loss would indeed result in his having a "cross" to bear.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 42

In the second stanza, the speaker reports his affection for the simple act of waking up to the sounds of the city: "I love to be roused/From silent sleep/By the early hum/Of active-city drum." The colorful description of a city's rousing itself awake infuses what may seem to be merely a "hum-drum" experience with new interest and appeal.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Yogananda's 'City Drum'

(We often forget that some men suffer very real domestic abuse.)

Line by line, the poem describes a life of persecution in a landscape that has been wantonly vandalised in the name of "love", which we can clearly see is something else entirely.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: When love turns to abuse

"Father in the Railway Buffet" [by U. A. Fanthorpe], which appeared in the TLS on February 27, 1981, is a typically measured release of certain private tensions.

Father in the Railway Buffet

from Mick Imlah: The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: Father in the Railway Buffet

Poem: "The Very Rich Hours of the Houses of France" by David Kirby, from I Think I Am Going to Call My Wife Paraguay.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of January 14, 2008

Post-traumatic stress disorder is a new name for "shell shock," a term once applied only to military veterans. Here the poet Marvin Bell describes a group of these emotionally damaged soldiers, gathered together for breakfast. I'd guess that just about everybody who reads this column has known one or two men like these.

Veterans of the Seventies

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 146

Poetry can greatly enhance our emotional health and grant us an increased sense of well being. Poetry can strengthen the vital core of a quiet mind. It can calm our emotional turbulence and deepen our serenity of soul. In short, poetry can be an essential ingredient of our inner peace.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Poetry can help us work through our darkest hours

The two categories overlap, strikingly so in the poems of James Schuyler, which are attentive to the evidence of the senses but with a distinctive personality. In "Evening," Schuyler emphasizes what he sees while also reflecting on it in his distinctive way:

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

There is much to be said for [Pierre] Teilhard [de Chardin]'s attempt to harmonize faith and science. The prologue to the Fourth Gospel refers to Christ as the Logos. [Christoph] Schönborn points out that the Greek word logos, while it does mean "word," can also mean "essential determining factor." In this respect, it has much in common with the Chinese word Tao; in fact, the Chinese translation of the Fourth Gospel begins with the phrase, "In the beginning was the Tao. . . ."

from Frank Wilson: Philadelphia Inquirer: A Catholic theologian on God and science

Out of the corner of the eye, and in and out of [Laurie] Byro's swooping time shifts, the Wild Fir is a baleful presence, possessive rather than protective, and jealously intrusive at moments of happiness or fulfilment.

from The Guardian: Poetry Workshop: After De la Mare

If your poem is slight, but it pleases you all the same, that's fine. If it's so slight that you feel it's pointless, put it to one side and start another. Of course, you may have to go out for another walk. This is starting to sound like a new year health programme as well as a writing exercise . . .

from The Guardian: Jean Sprackland's workshop

Rockface by Angela Leighton

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Rockface by Angela Leighton

by Michael Schiavo

Of Bedlam in its prairie pride. Of the roach that winds between the stars, triumphal. Of well-water served in garnet goblets. Of crusted penknife sitting on the pillow in the crib. [. . .]

from Guernica: Poetry: from The Mad Song

By Walter Bargen
[Consolation]

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'Consolation,' a poem by Walter Bargen

Fishing Around
by Robert Mezey

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Fishing Around

Old Marx
by Adam Zagajewski

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Old Marx

Poems by Sam Davis

An Age Old War

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Sam Davis]

By Hannah Taggart

William Allen Middle School

The Greatest Love Ever

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Hannah Taggart]

By Cameron Verge

Pleasant Valley School

Orchestra

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Cameron Verge ]

[by Joann Snow Duncanson]
City Planning

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: City Planning

[by Lincoln Edward Akerman]
The Marginal Way

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: The Marginal Way

[by Bob Moore]
Tanager

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poetry on the Seacoast: The music of Bob Moore's words

Post-Holiday Blues is Gerry Stewart's first collection from Flambard Press.

Should you have a touch of the post-holiday blues yourself, exploring the work of a poet is a very good antidote.

As well as the beautiful title poem, others like this one will refresh your mental palate at the start of the new year.

Jeg Skal Aldri Gråte (I Shall Never Cry)

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week

"My Young Mother"
Elvera Ryan (1911-2006)
By Michael Ryan

from Slate: "My Young Mother" --By Michael Ryan

Poetic Obituaries

Selim Al Deen was, again, an individual who went beyond the call of writing. As a teacher of drama at the university he worked for till the end of his life, he passed on to the young men and women under his tutelage the essential idea that Bengali history was necessarily underpinned by an understanding of the lyrical quality of the nation's poetry and the hard, prosaic facts of the lives of the people of Bangladesh. His satirical expositions of the social scene said it all.

from The Daily Star: A man of unbounded creativity

A medieval scholar and a poet and writer, Sister Consuelo Maria [Ahern] researched and wrote histories of her congregation and contributed book reviews and articles to the Catholic Historical Review. She was an editor of and contributor to the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Religion. It was published in 1979, and that year she presented a copy to Pope John Paul II.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Sister Consuelo Maria, 92, history professor

[Dani Simpson] Burch was a local artist and poet who formerly lived in Potter Valley. Her clay sculptures and funerary urns have been exhibited and sold in galleries in Sonoma, Marin, Lake and Mendocino counties, including the Grace Hudson Museum store in Ukiah.

from The Press Democrat: Lakeport artist found dead in suspicious circumstances

[Ashley] Cook, who previously had lived in Bridgeville and attended Chartiers Valley schools, moved to North Fayette Township and was a senior at West Allegheny, where she wrote a poetry book for her senior project.

from Elwood City Ledger: Teen critically injured in crash pronounced dead

Cousin Jason Emerson read from a poem written by [Meredith] Emerson at age 14, prefacing it by saying, "I don't think she would want us to be permanently bitter about what happened. She would want us to see the light in the darkness."

from Gainesville Times: Emerson memorial: 'Meredith's love shines down on you today'

From 1992 until his death, he invested in and managed residential rental properties.

True to his English-major roots, Mr. [Austin] Frum enjoyed poetry, fiction and history. He also liked local minor league baseball and George Washington University basketball.

He loved the outdoors.

from The Washington Post: Austin Frum, 74; Housing Lawyer

[Angel Gonzalez] also became a member of the literary movement Generation of 1950, which resisted the 1939-1975 regime of Franco.

Gonzalez, who went on to publish books of poetry and edited several anthologies, won the Prince of Asturias Award as well as a myriad of other honours in Spain, across Europe and in the U.S.

from CBC News: Spanish poet Angel Gonzalez dies

[Thelma Gooch] also enjoyed writing poetry and had poems published. In later years, she enjoyed activities at the New Horizon Center in Des Moines.

from Journal-Express/The Reminder: Thelma Gooch

Together they edited a publication for the Young Poets Project in Santa Fe.

[Deborah] Posen Hill had been a bankruptcy attorney in Eugene for several years.

from The Register-Guard: Freak accident takes life of lawyer

At the heart of Orgosolo's transformation from a hotbed of brigandry to a protest-art hub was Peppino Marotto, shepherd and bandit turned union organiser, poet and singer of shepherd songs inspired by the calls of animals and the sound of the wind.

from The Guardian: Vendetta fear after poet murdered

"He [Ian McDonald] was very gifted and had a natural ability to fix cars. He loved writing short stories and poetry too, and was good at oil painting. He liked creating things that had a meditative feel about them."

from South Manchester Reporter: Jail for drink driver who killed two

Jaleh Mohajer-Esfahani, who has died aged 86, was perhaps the last survivor of the 1946 intellectual gathering that launched the modernist movement in Persian poetry. The First Congress of Iran's Writers and Poets provided a springboard for a new generation of Iran's writers, inspired by the surrealist, free verse and modernist movements in France and the powerful wave of socialist ideals.

from The Guardian: Jaleh Mohajer-Esfahani

Andrés Henestrosa Morales, a prolific poet, essayist and journalist whose lyrical writings helped raise the cultural profile of Mexico's indigenous people, particularly the Zapotec Indians of southern Oaxaca state, and whose wide circle of friendships and intellectual partnerships included Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Langston Hughes, died Thursday at his Mexico City home after a months-long battle with pneumonia.

from Los Angeles Times: Andrés Henestrosa Morales, 101; writer promoted Zapotec Indian culture

[John O'Donohue] also saw that "a lot of suffering is just getting rid of dross in yourself, and lingering and hanging in the darkness is often--I say this against myself--a failure of imagination, to imagine the door into the light."

So it makes sense that O'Donohue's last book, To Bless the Space Between Us, would be nothing but invocations and blessings--a simple, how-to book that, in effect, takes him back to his father praying in the fields.

from The Huffington Post: John O'Donohue (1954-2008): Our New Friend on the Other Side

[Bill Purdie] was also a regular contributor to the Bucks Free Press with his letters, and an accomplished poet.

His son David, who owns a photography gallery in East Sussex, said: "He was a professional trouble maker--not in a nasty way--but he liked a bit of friction."

from Bucks Free Press: Political activist dies, aged 89

He was a gentle man, accepting of others, no matter who or what they were. Victor [Rodriguez] treated everyone with respect and didn't pass judgment.

In his spare time, he wrote his thoughts in the form of poetry penned in Spanish. And he read scores of history books.

from Orange County Register: Victor Rodriguez urged loved ones to be happy

"My son loved his two dogs, loved camping in Yosemite and climbing the Dome, and loved writing poetry and song lyrics.

"He was a gentle, loving man who never hurt anyone in his life. A big part of our family died with Kenny that night," she [Kenneth Russell's mother Joan Ahern] said.

from Los Angeles Daily News: Let's help police find a hit-run killer

Third-grader Alysha loved to draw. Fifth-grader Kendra loved to write poems and short stories.

As the girls' mother Marla told KMEG 14 in an exclusive interview, Kendra and Alysha [Suing] were inseparable.

from KMEG 14: Suing Sisters Laid to Rest on Friday

[George V.] Tsounis was a POW for 11 months after being shot down by antiaircraft artillery, receiving two flak wounds as the result of enemy fire. For several months he was listed as missing in action until he was discovered by the Red Cross in a stalag camp in Eastern Germany. He wrote poetry, read the Bible three times and a Greek Orthodox prayer book from the Holy Cross Seminary in Pomfret, Connecticut.

from The Queens Gazette: George Vlassios Tsounis, WW II Vet, Dies At Age 84

[Dr Aled Rhys Williams] was honoured in 1975 with the White Robe of the Gorsedd of Bards for his service to Wales, adopting the bardic name of Aled ap Steffan.

In 1964 he was awarded the chair at the Lampeter National Eisteddfod. His winning poem was entitled Y Pethau Bychan (The Small Things).

In recent years he was a valued member of the Tegeingl team of bards taking part in the popular BBC Radio Cymru Talwrn y Beirdd series.

from The Daily Post: Scholar, poet and broadcaster dies

2008-01-08T17:08:00.000-05:00

News at Eleven

Mr. [Jon] Scieszka, 53, who has written more than 25 books in the last two decades, is to be named to this new position by James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress. Mr. Billington said that unlike the role of the poet laureate, which does not come with specific responsibilities, this one calls for Mr. Scieszka (pronounced SHEH-ska) to be a spokesman who will travel and speak to groups of children, parents and teachers "to evangelize the need for reading."

from The New York Times: Stinky Cheese! Ambassador for Children’s Literature

1. Philip Larkin

2. George Orwell

3. William Golding

4. Ted Hughes

5. Doris Lessing

6. J. R. R. Tolkien

7. V. S. Naipaul

8. Muriel Spark

9. Kingsley Amis

10. Angela Carter

from The Times: The 50 greatest British writers since 1945
also The Times: Kingsley Amis
also The Times: George Mackay Brown
also The Times: Angela Carter
also The Times: Geoffrey Hill
also The Times: Ted Hughes
also The Times: Philip Larkin
also The Times: Alice Oswald
also The Times: Mervyn Peake
also The Times: Muriel Spark
also The Times: Derek Walcott
also The Times: Benjamin Zephaniah

He kissed one of her breasts, and that was all. She got dressed again. She knew that he had had affairs with other women, but he claimed that he was not "sexually minded," and furthermore that what she missed in their relationship was actually there. When they were apart, he said, they were together. They didn’t need to have "intercourse"; their whole friendship was "a continued intercourse." More than sex or marriage, it seems, what [Mary] Haskell wanted from [Kahlil] Gibran was simply to be acknowledged as the woman in his life

from The New Yorker: Prophet Motive

The accent has been 'racialised'; it has been made fun of on the television and in the streets. But I think it's a beautiful voice, and it's important to use it to talk back to the racialised voice. I want to say, 'I'm using this voice and I'm proud of it, so now it's your issue'. I'm not mocking my characters by giving them this accent.

from The Hindu: Jamming of two worlds

[Susan] Briante shows how our identifications with the world form through image and sound, as well as through memory and experience. The "new" must be encountered according to its terms.

In a sense, the "pioneers" of Briante's title are her readers who share in her cultural geography.

from Bookslut: Pioneers in a Field of Action

But the language rides on my nerves when I hear it; it stirs me in some fundamental way. I taught a workshop at Naropa one summer called "Lost Languages"--an attempt to write toward some never-had tongue. I sometimes think that is why I write poetry. Trying to conjure something barely available, seeking to retrieve it.

I know Vietnamese to be a very musical language (it's tonal).

from Bookslut: An Interview with Hoa Nguyen

It is no disparagement of the work to consider to what extent the loss of an eye made [Robert] Creeley a particular, even unique, poet--one who had to turn his head to scan the whole view, and so one for whom perception was always exaggeratedly temporal; one who could apprehend at once clarity and occlusion, and who was particularly aware of the sources and resonances of sound. His "one" was both universal and the unique quality of his I/eye.

from The Nation: A Human Pledge

OK, so probably Buk wasn't a Nazi, but was he anti-Semitic? FrancEyE isn't sure but says he never made a public issue of it if he was. He was born in Germany, and his maternal grandmother, whose last name was Israel, was Jewish. It's difficult to imagine anti-Semitism evolving from that. Basically, he was a man challenging the world, both with fists and words, a provocateur of amazing abilities.

from Los Angeles Times: Must we admire the poet to honor his work?

The two passed summers in a stone cottage in East Sussex, where they read to each other, polished their verses and fenced for exercise on rainy days. When Yeats married Georgie Hyde-Lees, Pound was his best man.

That's how it always was for Pound, playing the supporting role and never basking in the éclat of widespread acclaim. He lived in penury, yet whenever money came his way, he would channel it to Eliot or Joyce, who took it as their due, with little perceptible gratitude.

from Los Angeles Times: 'Ezra Pound: Poet' by A. David Moody

How much did [Gertrude] Stein and [Alice B.] Toklas know, or choose not to know, about [Bernard] Faÿ's wartime activities? What are we to make of Stein's claim that she knew nothing of the Gestapo raids that were taking place in neighbouring villages and, as she writes in Wars I Have Seen, that she heard "what had happened to others" only after the arrival of the American soldiers in August 1944?

from The Times Literary Supplement: Gertrude and Alice

The governments of China, Burma and Syria are trying to turn the Internet into an Intranet--a network limited to traffic inside the country between people authorised to participate. At least 2,676 websites were shut down or suspended around the world in 2007, most of them discussion forums.

from Reporters Without Borders: Press Freedom Round-up 2007: 86 journalists killed in 2007--up 244% over five years

Great Regulars

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto used to say that his mind was Western and his soul Eastern. By Western he meant he was a student of Bertrand Russel and Antonio Gramsci, among other great theorists and writers. But by Eastern, I believe he meant something different. The concept of love is paramount to Sufi philosophy.

from Fatima Bhutto: The News: A legacy of love

The babble of so many voices makes it harder to pick out individuals; the additional background noise, meanwhile, muffles rather than clarifies. Which is a shame, because, if you take the trouble to tease them apart, there are some very strong poets in the mix.

In a reversal of the usual trend in anthologies (and on prize shortlists, for that matter), women outnumber men 12-5 here, and the ratio exerts a tangible effect on the collection's atmosphere.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: A blackthorn winter

It was a private ceremony that no doubt had a private meaning--but whether that meaning was incest, or indeed an end to incest, seems impossible to know. Afterwards, Dorothy [Wordsworth] fails to go to the church for the ceremony, but does (contrary to modern custom) accompany William and Mary on their honeymoon. The marriage is a success.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Remember Dorothy

In the final stanza, the speaker personifies and addresses Death, asking him why he takes the healthy-minded and leaves this mentally defective "lingering": "O death! Thou awe-inspiring prince,/That keepst the world in fear;/Why dost thou tear more blest ones hence,/And leave him ling'ring here?"

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Abe Lincoln as Poet

Pushing an ordinary dead deer off the side of the cliff is one thing, but here is a deer whose baby is alive, almost ready to be born.

He knows that if he pushes the dead doe over the cliff, he is killing the unborn fawn, so "[b]eside that mountain road [he] hesitated."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: William Stafford's Dead Doe

But the poem was not written with tools that can be found in a literary education; the poem was written with the basic tools that the poet was born with, the simple, linguistic tools that are connected to his emotional core and visual reference library, and which he used skilfully enough to bring the rat to life.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: Animal instinct

Poem: "Sonnet for Mary" by Ralph Edwards.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of January 07, 2008

If one believes television commercials, insomnia, that thief of sleep, torments humans in ever-increasing numbers. Rynn Williams, a poet working in Brooklyn, New York, tries here to identify its causes and find a suitable remedy.

Insomnia

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 145

[William] Drummond's sonnet begins with a stark contrast of the divine and the apparently bestial: The greatest "Herald of Heaven's King," preaching the arrival of the long anticipated Messiah, stands like a caveman, "girt with rough skins." Pausing between the first and second lines helps to bring out the dramatic shock of this. Drummond makes the point that wisdom may be found where we least expect it, among the mad, the mocked, and the dispossessed.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Modern Life: A reading of Saint John Baptist by William Drummond

The English poet Edward Thomas (1878-1917) describes a New Year's Day encounter that includes many of these elements: giddiness and the grotesque, childhood and old age, convention and idiosyncrasy, the outlandish and the familiar:

The New Year

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

These poems of Ramanuja Kavirayar are in such simple and beautiful language, expressing fervent 'Bhakti' in a mood of self-surrender to the Lord. If only, he had devoted more time to poetry and composed more works of this kind, he would have been among the notable poets of that age. Some stray poems including a Pancharatnamala on Pachaiyappa Mudaliar, the great philanthropist, also stand to the credit of Kavirayar.

from V Sundaram: News Today: A great Tamil savant and guru of Dr G U Pope

To such opinionated and self-proclaiming arrogant 'leaders' wedded to their only chosen cause of anti-Hinduism and destruction of Hindu culture at any cost, R Subbarayulu has furnished formidable literary evidence, regarding the existence of Ramar Palam through his brilliant book in Tamil titled 'Sethu Bhandhanam (Ramar Palam)'.

from V Sundaram: News Today: Timeless Rama Sethu--Formidable Literary Evidence

Here it is: "The highest intelligences are soon bored, therefore the soonest bored possess the highest intelligence." Does he--or does Coetzee--really expect us to believe that a brilliant and sensitive "celebrity writer" would commit such an elementary error in logic ("all men are animals" obviously does not correctly convert into "all animals are men")?

from Frank Wilson: Philadelphia Inquirer: Coetzee's odd work of fiction is no prize

Winter Night

by Po Chü-i, translated by David Hinton

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Winter Night by Po Chü-i, translated by David Hinton

by Tina Hacker
[Music of Snow]

from The Kansas City Star: 'Music of Snow': A poem by Tina Hacker

Seeing Whales
by Michael Dickman

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Seeing Whales

The Star Market
by Marie Howe

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Star Market

[by John J. McDonald]
the river curves [. . .]

from The Oregonian: Poetry

[by Trudy Hanson]
Will-o'-the-Wisp

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Will-o'-the-Wisp

"Recording"
By Tom Sleigh

from Slate: "Recording" --By Tom Sleigh

Poetic Obituaries

[Vijay Kumar Beri] enjoyed reading, poetry, golf, tennis, ping-pong, and singing; but most of all, he loved to spend time with his loved ones. He was a kind and expressive man with a quiet confidence and humility. He was never afraid to show affection through his beautiful smile, warm hugs, and poetic words, spoken with a gentle and soothing voice.

from Sheboygan Press: Vijay Kumar Beri M.D.

Bill [Bonanno], honored by family and friends from all over the world, was described as a personable and loving man, a devoted husband, loving father, grandfather, poet, author and producer.

from KOLD: Services Held For Salvatore "Bill" Bonanno

Family members described [Cpl. Courtney G.] Brooks, who was 40, as a relentless prankster and dedicated Notre Dame football fan who wrote poetry, dabbled in photography and teared up during soppy movies. They all called him "Spanky."

from The Baltimore Sun: Family mourns officer killed in hit-and-run

Still reeling after hearing the most devastating news of his life, William H. Clark returned yesterday morning to his Tennessee home, now a crime scene, to find a poem his mother wrote for him.

"This is your mom speaking," Orange resident Gail Clark had scribbled on a chalkboard in the room where she was staying while visiting him and his wife, Mary.

from Worcester Telegram & Gazette: Son says women executed in Tenn.

Shortly after Mr. [Bryan] Edwards' death, Ms. [Jenny] Bush found a "chilling" poem he had written--the last poem he scribbled down before he died.

Untitled:

Love blinded me [. . .]

from Capital Gazette: Police moving ahead with homicide investigation

Ralph [Esau] loved the simple things in life, too, especially music. He was part of the Truro Jam Band for about 20 years and participated in other community music groups.

"He had a great gift for making songs or poems . . . and played at the veterans' wing at the Colchester Regional Hospital and seniors homes," to name only a few of his musical endeavours.

from Truro Daily News: Memories of Ralph Esau--1934 to 2007

Many of [Le Xuan] Hoa's calligraphic works have been collected and are currently displayed at the Museum of Vietnamese Revolution, including Nam Quoc Son Ha, the legendary poem written by historical figure Ly Thuong Kiet in the 10th century and literary works by President Ho Chi Minh.

from Viet Nam News: Local calligraphy expert passes away

But after he was shot repeatedly on Saturday, residents of his home town of Orgosolo, an isolated town tucked into the Sardinian hills, whispered that [Peppino] Marotto may have been the victim of a vendetta dating back half a century, part of a tradition of feuds and banditry that many believed had long since vanished from the Mediterranean island.

from The Guardian: 50-year-old vendetta suspected in killing of Sardinian poet, 82

[Liam] O'Gallagher's own work, and his top floor studio loft above Grant Avenue became a gathering place for some of the group. His concrete poetry and cut-up writings, which heralded a future of artificial intelligence, space migration, and expanding consciousness, began to appear in publications associated with City Lights Bookstore and the Nova Broadcast Press.

from ArtsJournal: Liam O'Gallagher, R.I.P.

Most recently I heard him [John O'Donoghue] speaking on the Marian Finucane show on RTE radio, where he spoke about the deep centre of Christmas and the space that it creates after all the hoo hah to discover that stillness within, often presenting itself as a sense of loss or longing. His most recent publication was a book of Blessings, a collection of his poems/prayers to mark different stages in our lives. The Blessing below is taken from an earlier book, 'Echoes of Memory' -GOSh.

Beannacht
("Blessing")

from Dew of Hermon: Death of John O'Donoghue

In "Friends," [Noah] Pierce wrote of Iraqi kids in need, and about one boy in particular, a 7-year-old who would get Pierce food, and to whom he would give water: "No english/No arabic/Yet we still understand each other."

In "Dust," Pierce wrote of the winds, and of the bucket of sand that seemed to be dumped in his lap. The landscape, he wrote, had vehicles "upside down all over."

from Star Tribune: A soldier's words push a mother to act

But the simplicity, acceptance and deliberate experience of each moment were always integral to [Sylvester] Pollet's life. Take, for instance, this poem written on his birthday in 1974:

June 28, 1974 MAINE

from The Ellsworth American: A Poet's Life

[Margaret Ruth Price] enjoyed sewing, scrapbooking, interior decorating, collecting dolls and writing poetry.

from Post-Bulletin: Margaret Ruth Price--Red Wing

Kyle [Quinn's] family has kept his memory alive by reading his poetry.

"You always think if I ever lost a child, I don't know how I am going to get up in the morning, how will I go on and there are days I think I would rather stay in bed and not go on but you can't do it," [his mother] Denise said.

from CBS3: Fundraiser Held For Murdered Kutztown Student

[Mary] Fraser remembered her first granddaughter [Stefanie Rengel] as a beautiful baby that grew into a beautiful young woman who loved to sing, write poetry and play with children.

She enjoyed visiting her grandparents farm, dressing up in her grandpa's clothes and driving the ATV around the property, she said.

from Canoe: Slain T.O. teen laid to rest

He used very little space and very few characters in his plays to jolt the reader. This feature was in his poetry too and it has great immediacy, not so much in images as in juxtaposition of ideas.

John Ruganda was the best playwright in English from East Africa. He crafted plays that dealt with the big question of human alienation. He questioned man's relationships with his environment.

from allAfrica.com: Uganda: Death of an East African Playwright

Mr [Norman] Webster died in Lancaster on December 29 last year.

Lakeland Rhapsody

from North-West Evening Mail: Farewell to Barrow Author and Gifted Nuclear Physicist

Nima [Youshij] manipulated the rhythm and rhyme so that the line length was determined by the idea rather than by the conventional Arabic meters which used to rule Persian poetry for centuries.

My house is Cloudy

from Press TV: Father of Iran's modern poetry honored

Titled "Endangered Species," it describes [Joseph Zeman as] the "old man, with hunched spine," sitting "embryonic" on the hydrant, and how, impulsively, he scooped up rice from a bucket, and soon was lined with pigeons, on his arms, atop his head, on his lap.

It is the poem's last line that lingered as the clutch of mourners dissolved, leaving behind the hydrant: "Who is to say you cannot collect love?"

from Chicago Tribune: Neighbors bid farewell to 'The Pigeon Man'

2008-01-01T19:14:00.000-05:00

News at Eleven

Especially when one person's passing makes the other one wonder whether there is a cusp to things and whether or not there really is a past and present to life.

I never agreed with her politics. I never did. I never agreed with those she kept around her, the political opportunists, hanger-ons, them. They repulse me.

I never agreed with her version of events. Never.

from The News: Farewell to Wadi Bua
also TimesNow.tv: "I have forgiven Benazir Bhutto"

When the travelling theatre, the Jatra, came to town he [Jasim Uddin] and his cousin, Nehaj Uddin, would sneak off and stay up all night listening lo the play. Throughout the year they enjoyed both the Hindu and the Moslem holidays.

Jasim Uddin was proud of belonging to the folk tradition of Bengali literature. He was pleased by a comment of one critic who, praising his autobiography, said: "Reading Jasim Uddin's Jiban Katha (autobiography) is like eating country cakes from mother's own hand."

from The Daily Star: On poet Jasim Uddin's 103rd birthday

At the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, an English teacher named Elizabeth Samet teaches this poem, "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner," to plebes, first-year students. It is about the death of gunner on a B-17 bomber over Germany in World War II, but it might as well be about the death of a turret gunner on a HMMWV rolling over an IED in Iraq.

from Newsweek: Warriors and Poets

For years, newspapers in this South American nation have published small notices, called "recordatorios" in Spanish, on the anniversaries of disappearances: poems and messages to the dead that Virginia Giannoni, the book's editor, said chilled her to the bone.

"To find such intimate letters published in a public space is so jarring," Giannoni said.

from Herald-Tribune: 'Everyday Poetry' Honors Dirty War Dead

"I am signaling you through the flames," he [Lawrence Ferlinghetti] begins in the new section from which his book takes its title. "The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it." Poetry, in this vision, must be a political statement, arrows slung for freedom of expression, thought and resistance. "Write living newspapers," he counsels.

from San Francisco Chronicle: Ferlinghetti argues that poetry can save the world

This [by John Ashbery] seems to be a pastoral poem about the countryside, a traditional poetic genre, but with odd things half-suggested; a load of hay could almost be a load of crap, and if the ages pass like this they're not very interesting; the flowers are a bit cartoony and are either rehearsing something or performing it, reminding us that flowers speak to us, as lots of poems tell us. But whose lines do they speak?

from The Guardian: Master of the nonsensical

Distributed around the floor of the room are giant beanbag chairs, each about 10 feet across; they look like boulders sunk into the ground or a school of beached whales.

The silvery and shadowy light creates a dreamy, lunar effect. The words, which become enlarged gigantically as they crawl up the farthermost walls, seem to shout at the viewer even as an ominous silence prevails.

from The New York Times: Jenny Holzer Makes Light of Poems and Beats Swords Into Paintings

The poem is handwritten, though not signed. While [Timmi] Pierce first believed Fink must have written it, an online search for some of the lines within the poem found it printed in full on several Web sites, though never with an author credited. Pierce met with Bob Farver, a descendant of the Fink family, who had some of Charles E. Fink's journals, which included poetry, to see if it was possible that Fink could be the anonymous author.

from Carroll County Times: Hidden poem, hidden treasure

A former home of poet Robert Frost has been vandalized, with intruders destroying dozens of items and setting fire to furniture in what police say was an underage-drinking party. Homer Noble Farm was ransacked late Friday night during a party attended by as many as 50 people, Sgt. Lee Hodsden said Monday.

from Inside Bay Area: Robert Frost home vandalized in Vermont

by Michelle Tandoc-Pichereau, December 21, 2007
For the women and children of Darfur

from Chronogram: Poem: How to Fetch Firewood

[Pamela] Porter graduated from the creative writing programs at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and the University of Montana. In 2008, her picture book Yellow Moon, Apple Moon, and a volume of poetry The Intelligence of Animals will be published.

A Prayer to the Infant Christ

from Victoria Times Colonist: Poems for the holidays: (Pamela Porter)
also Victoria Times Colonist: Poems for the holidays: (Steven Price)
also Victoria Times Colonist: Poems for the holidays: Barbara Pelman: Hanukkah at Harrison
also Victoria Times Colonist: Poems for the holidays: Christmas Eve at eight and ten (Yvonne Blomer)
also Victoria Times Colonist: Poems for the holidays: (Linda Rogers)
also Victoria Times Colonist: Poems for the holidays:

Great Regulars

Poetry, our national art, is, of course, dead for the common reader. I shall say again, as I have shouted repeatedly into deaf ears for three decades, that John Ashbery is the greatest living poet in English. But now I shall add a contender – Geoffrey Hill.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Sunday Times: Twilight of the greats?

A Perfect Hat
by John Ashbery

from Jeffrey Brown: PBS Newshour: Poetry Series: John Ashbery

Unfortunately for Robert Burns, however, so thunderous is the post-detox clamour for haggis and whisky that his poetic legacy--which extends far beyond "Auld Lang Syne" and "A Red Red Rose"--tends to be drowned out. A Night Out with Robert Burns (Canongate), a selection of the poet's greatest works made by Scottish novelist and Burns aficionado Andrew O'Hagan, redresses the balance.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: From Milton to the Next Generation

A Piranesi fireplace has much more going on: human faces and nude figures, satyr masks, lions, eagles, griffins, snakes, boars' heads, sphinxes--everything crammed together, none of the [Robert] Adam restraint. [Giovanni Battista] Piranesi thought architecture would just die if the architect was not free to invent and combine as he wished.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: The structure beneath

Last week, The New York Times finally ran a review of Michael O'Brien's lovely and wonderfully urban new poetry collection, Sleeping and Waking, and the book has now sold out of stock almost everywhere. So if you see a copy, nab it, because there wasn't a more limpid book of poetry published in 2007.

from John Freeman: Sacramento News & Review: Top 10 books

Several sites (for example, Poets.org) that feature this poem have misplaced the line "The Apple in the Cellar snug" after "Faint Deputies of Heat." By doing so, the meaning of the poem is changed, and instead of the "apple" being the only "one that played," the steed becomes the only on that played. That might seem to make more sense than saying that an "apple" was the only one that played.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Dickinson's Winter

In the first stanza, the great guru implies that he will be seeing again people he has known before in prior incarnations; he has "sleeping memories/Of friends once more to be." This hint points to one of the tenets of the philosophy he will be teaching--reincarnation. He is already in transit as the poem begins, "sailing o'er the sea."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: January Poet-Paramahansa Yogananda

In sonnet 41, the speaker addresses the poem again: sometimes when the poet/speaker is not practicing his art, his thoughts commit "pretty wrongs." He does not completely specify the wrongs, but the point is that even when he is "absent from [the poem's] heart," its loveliness of intent follows him.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 41

[Dorothea] Lasky, whose first full-length book of poems, Awe, was put out this fall by Wave Books, has posted videos of herself reading from the book on her Web site (www.birdinsnow.com). She's calling the readings the Tiny Tour because they all take place in her home, an apartment in Center City, with each "leg" in a different room.

from Katie Haegele: The Philadelphia Inquirer: Sharing her work without leaving home

This year was not kind to the people who write, sell and opine about books.

We marked the death of several major authors, the gutting of several major book review publications, the closings of more independent booksellers and the disappearance of the British boy wizard who created quite a buzz among readers.

from Bob Hoover: Post-Gazette: The year in books

Her husband drops his keys down beside her. The keys represent freedom and imprisonment, power and control. Importance. They appear to multiply annually, which indicates additional responsibilities, and that he may also have secrets from her, since each key represents an aspect of his daily life in which she is not included.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: Estranged days

Poem: "I Love the Way Men Crack" by Ellen Bass, from Mules of Love, Vol. 1.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of December 31, 2007

I'd guess you've heard it said that the reason we laugh when somebody slips on a banana peel is that we're happy that it didn't happen to us. That kind of happiness may be shameful, but many of us have known it. In the following poem, the California poet, Jackson Wheeler, tells us of a similar experience.

How Good Fortune Surprises Us

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 144

Readers enjoy following a beat that changes tempo.

No one has understood this better than the American beat poets of the 1950s. The poetic rhythms of these urban troubadours--especially Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Amiri Baraka and Gregory Corso--were highly influenced by jazz. (Supposedly, Jack Kerouac's prose-writing style in his novel "On the Road" was inspired by jazz improvisation.)

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Tempo can guide a reader through a poem

What is the purpose of Kwanzaa?

It started out in the black nationalist community as an alternative lifestyle. It was an enforcement of African values and culture. Today, it's more accepted in the mainstream. When you go to the store, you'll see Kwanzaa items next to the Christmas and Hanukkah decorations. That's a major achievement. I even see white people celebrating it now.

from E. Ethelbert Miller: Examiner: The 3-minute interview

E. Ethelbert Miller: How do you wish people to respond to Cut Loose the Body.

Rose Marie Berger: Umberto Eco wrote: "Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him." We are hoping that the poems in this collection establish a different kind of bond between the reader and those who are held without trial and subjected to inhuman interrogation techniques.

from E. Ethelbert Miller: Foreign Policy in Focus: Fiesta!: The Poetics of Botero's Abu Ghraib Paintings

[by E. Ethelbert Miller]
Panama

from E. Ethelbert Miller: Beltway Poetry Quarterly: Split This Rock: Poems of Provocation & Witness

The Tamil scholars and Pundits of those days, trained in the old school were somewhat tardy in recognising the genius of Mahakavi Bharati who was revolutionary in his outlook and spoke with a new voice and challenging tone. The Poet was a marked man and considered a dangerous character by the British Government and hence many prudent people who really admired the poet were silent and maintained an attitude of aloofness for their own safety.

from V Sundaram: News Today: A young boy's discovery of Bharathi's genius

The music prevents the conversation from becoming serious or even coherent, while the chatter of voices stops one from listening attentively to the music and thus prevents the onset of that dreaded thing, thought. For

The lights must never go out.
The music must always play,
Lest we should see where we are;
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the dark
Who have never been happy or good

from Daily Times: Purple Patch: Pleasure spots --George Orwell

Hometown Mystery Cycle by Glyn Maxwell

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Hometown Mystery Cycle by Glyn Maxwell

Untitled
by Pēters Brūveris translated by Inara Cedrins

from Guernica: Poetry: Untitled

by Trudie Homan
[Cell Soap]

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'Cell Soap,' a poem by Trudie Homan

Cairo, N.Y.
by Cornelius Eady

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Cairo, N.Y.

Self-Exam
by Sharon Olds

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Self-Exam

"Millenary" appears in Richard Kenney's fourth book of poetry, "One-Strand River: Poems, 1994-2007," coming in January from Knopf Publishing Co. In 1987, Kenney received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. He is a professor of English at the University of Washington and lives with his family in Port Townsend, Wash.

from The Oregonian: Poetry

By Kimberly Pelland

Burlington County College

Untitled I

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Kimberly Pelland]

By Matthew Slesinski

"Red Light, Green Light" in the Blue Ridge Mountains

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Matthew Slesinski]

[by Lynda L. True]
Eighteen in Iraq

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Eighteen in Iraq

"Aftermath"
By Rosanna Warren

from Slate: "Aftermath" --By Rosanna Warren

[by Patty Seyburn]
Three Friends
i. Interpret This

from Zeek: B'rachot: A Catalog and Three Friends--Patty Seyburn

Late Love Poem
Shirley Kaufman

from Zeek: Late Love Poem--Shirley Kaufman

Poetic Obituaries

[Bill Billings] made play sculptures for children at Netherfield--his concrete dinosaur at Peartree Bridge remains a local landmark.

His talents extended to sculpture, painting, drawing, comics and art history as well as poetry and music.

from Milton Keynes Citizen: 'People's artist' Bill Billings dies

"He could write poems like you couldn't believe. If somebody would be down, he'd write a poem that he came up with in 10 minutes, just to pep up your day," she [Betty Forehand] said [of Denzil "Denny" M. Cogar].

from The Journal Gazette: FWN's plant super dies

"I'm still in a state of shock," said Bowling Green businessman Jerry Baker, a collector who has organized and built the museum to exclusively house his collection of about 1,000 of [Joseph (Joe) Dudley] Downing's works.

Yesterday Baker received a letter from Downing about his art, as well as information about a new book he had published--he also successfully wrote some poetry and short story collections.

from Louisville Courier-Journal: Famed Ky. artist dies in France

"She was just a marvelous instructor," [Douglas] Garnar said.

A gardener, musician--on the cello and piano--dramatist, epicure and dancing enthusiast, Mrs. [Martha] Fenty filled her life with art. Her gift for reciting African-American poetry on stage was extraordinary, said [Brenda] Cave-James, herself a poet.

"She had an incredible one-woman show," she said. "It just blew me away."

from Press & Sun-Bulletin: Woman remembered as teacher, artist, performer

During his life, [Vincent] Ferrini published more than 30 volumes of poetry, including an autobiography written largely in verse and volumes of verse that seem more political and social criticism than poetry.

At his death, another volume, "Invisible Skin," is being prepared for publication in the spring, [his daughter] Sheila said.

Ferrini's blurring of the distinction between poetry and prose was intentional, [Peter] Anastas, a former Times columnist, insisted yesterday.

from Gloucester Daily Times: Poet Ferrini, 'the conscience of Gloucester,' dies at 94

Wilma Green did a lot with her 100 years.

She worked out in the garden of her west Biloxi home until she was 99. She had a poem published, traveled the South Seas, owned her own business and made lots of memories with her family.

from Sun Herald: Green 'was always the life of the party'

Distance requires formality, but I cannot be distant writing about Lizzie Hardwick since everything has come alarmingly closer--the curls, the infectious chuckles, the drawl like poured-out honey, the privilege of sharing her astute delight, and the benign devastations of her wit. Because she hated pomposity she was more fun than any American writer I have known.

from The New York Review of Books: Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007)

[Jaan] Kross, who died on Thursday, was nominated several times for the Nobel prize for literature, most recently this year, but never won.

He ranked as the most translated and internationally best-known Estonian writer and won numerous awards at home, including the People's Writer of the Estonian SSR (1985) and he received the State Prize of the Estonian SSR (1977) under Soviet rule.

from Breitbart: Estonian author Jaan Kross dies at 87

During this time his car had not moved from the driveway and his lawn had become overgrown, which was particularly unusual for him.

On entering the house the police discovered Mr [Derek] McCarthy's body along with a poem printed off from his computer, which could be interpreted as a suicide note.

from The Herts Advertiser: Missing card led to discovery of suicide

[Jim] Park was also a writer, publishing Verse-a-Tility, an anthology of poems, and the book Barrow, Furness and me: By an Offcomer.

He was also a regular in the Evening Mail letters pages.

from North-West Evening Mail: 'Asbestos Not to Blame' for Death of Jim

[Sylvester] Pollet's own poems were "admired and fairly widely read," [Burt] Hatlen said, but the greater legacy Pollet leaves behind is in the students he taught at the University of Maine and his "Backwoods Broadsides" poetry compilations. Pollet also edited poems published in Paideuma, a poetry journal published by the National Poetry Foundation, which was founded at UM in 1971.

from Bangor Daily News: UM teacher, poetry patron Pollet dies

[Hellen Robinson] was a political activist who wrote poetry and protested U.S. wars, her family said. She was inspired by her father, Eugene Rex Cantrell, who wrote for communist papers and was arrested trying to organize workers at a Southern California labor camp in the 1930s, said her sons, John and Gene Denos.

"She came out of that 'Dust Bowl' period," John Denos said. "Everything she wrote reflected that period of time, when people were struggling."

from The Sacramento Bee: Hellen Robinson was mom, Realtor, political activist

[Marsha E.] Roch was also a volunteer driver and ombudsman for Lewis County Office of the Aging. For a time, she was active with the American Cancer Society, and Relay for Life.

She enjoyed drawing, writing poetry, and word puzzles.

from newzjunky.com: Marsha E. Roch

[John Stangler] dealt with his large family with some hollering but mostly with humor, and treated everyone individually, his son said.

Mr. Stangler was an amateur poet, ace crossword-puzzle solver and avid reader, his son said, and was still playing an excellent game of pinochle a week before he died.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: John Stangler, 85, decorated veteran

2007-12-25T18:03:00.000-05:00

News at Eleven

Charles [Longellow] recovered, although his injury affected him long after and the bullet that nicked his spine came one inch from causing permanent paralysis. The relief and gratitude [Henry Wadsworth] Longfellow felt is noted in the poem's final stanza, the one cited in Bush's speech.

But the poem addresses a range of strong feelings and internal conflicts, emanating from the irony and pain Longfellow felt, hearing traditional Christmas bells and comfortably walking the streets near his lavish Cambridge, Mass., home while cannons thundered farther south.

from Burlington Free Press: Jump Cut: War is hell, but inspires deep poetry

[J. Cruickshank Muir] describes the "nightmare" of a vet returning to a society that "has no rituals for reintegrating its weary, wounded warriors." His poems sting with truth and humor, and the ordeal of finding yourself, if you survive. In the poem "Small Minds," Muir sums up in a few profound words one of the saddest effects of war for veterans:

from Santa Barbara Independent: The Poetry of Peace (and War)

So persistently and enthusiastically did he [William Winstanley] drum in the message that by the late 1680s Christmas had taken root again.

Holly and ivy were back. In Winstanley's ideal Christmas, there had to be roaring log fires in every room and an 'especially jolly blaze' in the hall.

"Good, nappy [nut-brown] ale" was to be on tap, and the sideboards should groan with "chines of beef, turkeys, geese, ducks and capons", then "minc'd pies, plumb-puddings and frumenty [a sweet milky porridge seasoned with cinnamon]".

from Daily Mail: William Winstanley: The man who saved Christmas from Cromwell's misery

In "Cradle Song", "pity" brings both private pain and public anxiety to the show, Othello's stricken cry and [Wilfred] Owen's deliberate artistic morality.

Eleanor Clark, whom "Cradle Song" addresses, was the young left-wing American writer with whom [Louis] MacNeice had been in love since 1939 (and in whose company he felt, as he reported in one letter, "timelessly happy").

from The Times Literary Supplement: Louis MacNeice from cradle to grave
also The Times Literary Supplement: Then and Now

Several plainclothes officers seized Yusuf Jumaev and his son, Bobur, and forced them into a car in the capital of Tashkent on Wednesday, said the poet's eldest son, Alisher Jumaev.

In November, Yusuf Jumaev, 50, and his four sons held pickets in the western region of Bukhara, denouncing Karimov for running for a third term despite a two-term limit in the constitution.

from The Standard-Times: Uzbek dissident seized after protest
also The Guardian: Uzbek president returned in election 'farce'

In a first planned protest in her support since controversial Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen fled Kolkata, close to 500 friends and supporters of the exiled Bangladeshi author are holding a protest march in Kolkata demanding that she be allowed entry into the city.

from IBN Live: Taslima supporters hold protest march in Kolkata

Focus for a moment on [Wendy] Cope's argument that it hurts her sales when someone sends one of her poems to their friends. Suppose I email a Cope poem to 10 people, along with a note urging them to read it. Most recipients, presumably, will be neither more nor less likely to buy one of her books as a result.

from The Guardian: theblogbooks: Free verse: getting copyright wrong

"Salvation" becomes "rescue". "My soul thirsteth" becomes "my throat thirsts". "Pavilion" and "tabernacle" are both demoted to "tent".

Some--though not all--fixings-up of this sort are already available in other modern translations, and readers who go for mighty cadences will obviously prefer to stick with the King James Version.

from The Guardian: In the vale of death's shadow

This sense of detachment can, at times, seem clinical, overly abstract, even cold.

But this detached tone also creates a scrim for grief to tear, revealing what is behind the performance. It is when the ability to regard grief from an intellectual standpoint fails and the heartbreaking particulars emerge that this work takes on its greatest force.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Personal tragedy and nature of loss

Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Yeah, a very depressing book, compared to his early writing. I mean, his early writing and On the Road had this gusto for life, this joie de vivre, which is what appealed to Henry Miller in Kerouac's writing. And Miller wanted to meet him. But that's the descriptive passages--On the Road is marvelous, like they're hungry for life. And in a book twenty years later, like On the Road--it's an old tired prose compared to the early writing.

from Democracy Now!: Legendary Beat Generation Bookseller and Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books on the 50th Anniversary of Jack Kerouac's “On The Road�?, Allen Ginsberg's “Howl�? and Poetry As Insurgent Art

[Charles] Wesley understood that hymns establish bridges among people; that they could not only "convict but also bring people to Christ."

What many do not know is that Wesley did not confine his poetic skills to religious hymns and poems. Among his manuscripts is a poem written for his children about horseback riding and another about a cat called Grimalkin.

from The United Methodist News Service: Britain celebrates Charles Wesley's life, legacy

Great Regulars

'Nocturnal'

As I sleep, the cat swallows the Christmas tree's tinsel,

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: More Holiday Verse
also John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Winter lights, winter nights

And when he wheeled about
his bloody neck still bled.
His point was proved. The court
was deadened now with dread.

As delivered by Armitage, the poem's later sections--which concern a journey Gawain must take and his temptation by a mysterious lady--are stronger. Armitage seems more at home with love and wooing than war and hunting.

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Latest translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight trips on its own sword

A pleasure in words alone might be one. I see, for instance, that to describe correctly the elements of the hilt of a rapier, from the blade to the button (the end point of the pommel), you must know and identify the side ring, the ricasso, the quillon block, the forward and the rear quillon, the grip and the knuckle guard.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: A call to arms

He loves his work, and he does not want to taint it by even the appearance of self-absorption.

Anyone who has observed the solipsistic tendencies of some artists realizes the ugly display that such braggadocio engenders.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 39

He muses that even if his work takes all of his love, because of his love, the poem will assuredly be blamed if it deceives itself by taking his loves when the speaker will need his loves to enrich the poem.

The poem can only deplete itself by depleting the speaker.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 40

[Bruce] Wexler, for example, claims that with his busy life of career and mortgage payments, he lost interest in poetry, even after being quite an aficionado in college and even after writing poetry. So what? That he lost interest in poetry doesn't mean everyone has. Such is truly a warped logic.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: The State of Poetry

[Christina] Rossetti asks what she can give to Jesus: a shepherd might bring a lamb, a wise man might impart knowledge or imbue the boy's future with some kind of helpful wisdom, but Rossetti must think of something else.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: Love in a cold climate

Poem: "Brothers Playing Catch on Christmas Day" by Gary Short, from 10 Moons and 13 Horses.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of December 24, 2007

A big orange and some fresh pine boughs and "Silent Night" are all I need, and cookies, of course. They are the strings that when I pull on them I pull up the complete glittering storybook Christmases of my childhood.

from Garrison Keillor: Chicago Tribune: Stopping to smell the pine boughs

When, toward the end of "Windcatcher," one reads that "poetry completes/what history leaves out," one is tempted to rewrite that last line as "what history erases." For in his prison memoir, "The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist," [Breyten] Breytenbach writes that the purpose of his interrogators was "to burgle and to burn down the storehouse of dreams and fantasies and hopes."

from David Kirby: The New York Times: Needing No Weatherman

This is one of those poems you're afraid to look at again for fear it might be less beautiful than you thought.

Of all the things that populate the world, then, both human and non-, a poem has the greatest potential to succeed or fail, which is why Pinsky can comfortably offer a piece called "Poems with Lines in Any Order" or observe, again in "Immature Song," that poems are adolescents, "confused, awkward, self-preoccupied, vaguely//Rebellious in a way that lacks practical focus, moving without/Discipline from thing to thing."

from David Kirby: The Washington Post: Soulful Sounds

Here is Arizona poet Steve Orlen's lovely tribute to the great opera singer, Maria Callas. Most of us never saw her perform, or even knew what she looked like, but many of us listened to her on the radio or on our parents' record players, perhaps in a parlor like the one in this poem.

In the House of the Voice of Maria Callas

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 143

More recently, Alan Dugan (1923-2003) began a poem "Dugan's deathward, darling." Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), in her "In the Waiting Room," wrote: "you are an I,/you are an Elizabeth,/you are one of them."

Possibly the most moving use of a poet's own name in English poetry is Ben Jonson's "On My First Son":

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now.

from Daily Times: Purple Patch: Letter to a young poet --Rainer Maria Rilke

[Lola Haskins] is the author of eight books of poetry and also, “The Wing on the Mailbox, A Beginner's Guide to the Poetic Life.�? Lola Haskins is no stranger to Santa Cruz, having read twice here in recent years and twice presented her popular poetry workshops.

Untitled

from Good Times Weekly: Poetry Corner: Poetry by Lola Haskins

[by Andrew Lack]
Real Life Christmas Card

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Real Life Christmas Card

By Judith Bader Jones
[Lonesome]

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'Lonesome,' a poem by Judith Bader Jones

[by Mark Pomeroy]

Stepping through a burn,

from The Oregonian: Poetry

By Eric Harmon

Snow is battering the scene,

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Eric Harmon]

By Rachel Howard

Haddonfield Memorial High School

Poland, 1939

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Rachel Howard ]

Teen author Damon Lomax recited selections from his recent book, "When My Eyes Were Closed," for members of Delsea High School's English Club on Dec. 11. Lomax's poems enter the world of a teenager trying to make sense of life. They explore themes of love, death, heartbreak and inspiration.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Damon Lomax]

[by Isabel Grasso]
The Contemporary Scene:

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: The Contemporary Scene

Thirty years ago this week, on December 23, 1977, the TLS published "Aubade", one of the greatest, and bleakest, and indeed one of the very last poems written by Philip Larkin, who was himself to die in 1985.

Office correspondence exists from the season of the poem's publication which refers to the poem as "Christmas without the baby".

Aubade

from The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: Aubade by Philip Larkin introduced by Mick Imlah

Poetic Obituaries

"He is a poet," [Pt. Jawaharlal] Nehru would say, and then pointing to Teji [Bachchan], he would add, "And this is his poem."

Even before the couple's first son Amitabh's now-illustrious acting career took off, they were names to reckon with in India's accomplished literary circuit and high society.

from Express India: 'The poet's poem'

Among them are a nursing-home resident who defiantly heads into a blinding snow, a mortician whose father has trained him never to emote, an abused wife who refuses her dying husband his morphine, and a skinflinty rooming-house landlady who perceives the smallest gift to be a bribe.

Author and writing instructor Tobias Wolff, of Palo Alto, Calif., called her [Carol Bly's] short stories "indelible, exemplary" and said he often uses them in the classroom at Stanford University.

from Star Tribune: Carol Bly, Minnesota's lioness of letters, dies

George Mifsud Chircop was born in Qormi and studied in St. Aloysius College and University of Malta. He specialised in Maltese folklore particularly its narrative element as shown by his thesis type index of the Maltese folk tale within the Mediterranean area [1978] for which he was awarded the Carmen Micallef Buhagiar prize for the best MA thesis.

from di-ve: Maltese folklore expert dies

According to her daughter, Helen Jeu, Mrs. [Rose Ng] Chong was an inspiring person who had nothing as a child but accomplished much.

Her faith never wavered throughout her hardships and she became a painter, local secretary for the National Lung Koon Association and published a poem at 80 years of age.

from The Friday Flyer: In Memoriam: Rose Ng Chong

[Mahbub ul Alam Chowdhury] was one of the pioneers of non-communal and democratic culture in the country.

Apart from the well-known Ekushey poem, Mahbub ul Alam also penned many poems, stories, dramas and essays.

He was the editor of the prestigious monthly literature magazine "Shimanto" from 1947 to 1952.

from The Daily Star: Language Movement hero Mahbub no more

Novelist, poet, drama author and critic, his [Julien Gracq's] literary debut came with 'At Argol's Castle', which sold only 150 copies and which he published in 1938 at his own costs.

Fiercely private, he stunned France for declining the Goncourt prize in 1951 for his masterpiece novel "The Opposite Shore" ('Rivage des Syrtes')--a tale about collective suicide in an imaginary landscape.

from Reuters: French hermit and surreal writer Gracq dies age 97

[James P. "Pete" Henderson] was a member of Elyria Country Club and scored a hole-in-one on No. 13.

He enjoyed athletics, reading, lapidary, woodworking, golf, gardening, welding, debate, music and writing poetry; loved the West and traveled there. As a child in Texas he loved to race horses and won several times.

from The Morning Journal: James P. Henderson, 86, lawyer, ran for Congress

[Lori Kim Jackson] was a gifted poet and a creative cook who could whip up a tasty meal with an international flare.

On the practical side, she enjoyed figuring out how to fix just about anything!

In recent years, gardening had also become a passion. You could find Lori's apartment by looking for the flowers, plants and hummingbirds outside her window.

from York County Coast Star: Lori Kim Jackson

Diane Middlebrook, who died on December 15 aged 68, made her name by writing a controversial account of the life of the American poet Anne Sexton, in which she defied the unwritten rules of biography by quoting extensively from the tape recordings of her subject's psychotherapy sessions; in Britain, however, she was better known as the author of an astute and accomplished account of the marriage of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.

from Telegraph: Diane Middlebrook

Newt [Newton A. Miner] served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He was a graduate of George Washington University with a degree in English literature.

He was employed as a chief appraiser with the federal government and later worked as an independent appraiser. He was a published poet.

from The Free Lance-Star: Newton A. Miner

After the verdict, [Daphne] Pierre and several other women related to many of the missing women spoke at the news conference. Pierre also read a poem that she said was written by her deceased sister [Jackie Murdock].

from Prince George Citizen: First Nations woman says DNA of her sister found on Pickton farm

A group of older students gathered at the altar to sing, with his father remembering Isaraelu [Pele]'s love of rugby union, poetry and drawing.

He was the fastest runner in his class, Southern Cross Radio reported.

His white coffin was draped in silk and adorned with fairies, Santa toys and clowns.

A number of his Christmas presents were also placed inside his coffin.

from The Age: Tributes flow for meningitis victim

Founded in 1975 to publish poetry about his [Alexander "Sandy" Taylor's] experiences in Chile by a friend, James Scully, Curbstone went on to win state and national awards, establish the Miguel Mármol Prize, present Poetry in the Park readings and promote literacy through programs at schools and prisons.

Five collections of Taylor's own poetry have been published, including "Dreaming at the Gates of Fury: New and Selected Poems," which reflected his involvement in social protest and anti-war movements.

from Hartford Courant: Co-Founder Of Curbstone Press Dies

"A number of contributors met earlier this week and we agreed that, given the interest in Henry's work being expressed by friends and relatives, it would be appropriate to draw wider attention to the collection, both as a memorial to Henry and to highlight what a potentially great talent had been lost in such a tragic accident." [--Charles Christian, on Henry Wingate]

from Norwich Evening News 24: The final poems of tragic young driver

2007-12-18T17:51:00.000-05:00

News at Eleven

Etre po�te, c'est avoir de l'app�tit pour un malaise dont la consommation, parmi les tourbillons de la totalit� des choses existantes et pressenties, provoque, au moment de se clore, la f�licit�.
(1945)

To be a poet is to have an appetite for a discomfort whose consummation, among the whirlwinds of totality of things existing and foreseen, provokes, at the moment of closure, happiness.

from The Brooklyn Rail: Ren� Char--Resistance in Every Way
also Great Regulars: The Companions in the Garden

In December that year, in a fam-ous public confrontation, [Yevgeny] Yevtushenko directly challenged Khrushchev. At a meeting with artists and writers, the Soviet leader reprimanded cultural deviants, crudely citing an old Russian proverb, "Only the grave can correct a hunchback," whereupon Yevtushenko retorted, "Really Nikita Sergeievich, we thought the time was past when the grave was used as a means of correction." Yevtushenko's telegram about Czechoslovakia was leaked to the western press at the end of September 1968.

from Prospect: Oxford's Poetry Revolution

"It is very sad that our people are totally disoriented, and the disorientation spreads from top to bottom. Many people don't understand what literature is all about. The fact that somebody has a PhD does not mean that the person understands literature. For you to understand literature, you have to understand the human society, human politics and human psychology, and you can't study literature in the sky; you have to understand it from the point of view of human society and human interaction. Do you think that those people who preach in the church will succeed without literature? Do you think you can reach anybody without literature?" he [Ossie Enekwe] queries.

from Daily Sun: Lunatics have misled our literary scholars--Ossie Enekwe

[Philip] Whalen and [Joanne] Kyger are essentially School of Backyard poets, who look out their kitchen windows and see the universe. Both have given themselves permission to write about what is immediately in front of them and/or on their minds, no matter how exalted or mundane. They are both domestics who leave plenty of room for splendor. Both have mastered the conversational; both feed off slang. Everything is the subject of their poems.

from Los Angeles Times: 'The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen,' edited by Michael Rothenberg, and 'About Now' by Joanne Kyger

How eloquently this speaks to our present helplessness as we resign ourselves to our rulers' imperial delusions and hurtle down the road to yet another war. Yet it is useless to despair, [Robinson] Jeffers counsels:

Life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains:
shine, perishing republic.

This slide into the abyss is as natural as life itself, which can only end in death.

from The American Conservative: Robinson Jeffers: Peace Poet

If there is such a thing as a poetry jackpot, [Anne] Stevenson has just hit it: this year she has won three important American literary prizes, together worth $260,000 (�130,000), and in 2008 the Library of America will publish a new edition of her Selected Poems, edited by Andrew Motion. All the more remarkable, this sudden rush of recognition has come in her 75th year.

from The Times: Anne Stevenson: the secret life of a poet
also The Times: Beach Kites by Anne Stevenson

[Peter] Payack was also the driving force between the 1976 Phone a Poem program, in which poets were asked to record their work on a cassette tape to which callers could listen.

Before the advent of the Internet, "it was the only way that you could get poetry outside of a book or library," says Payack.

Payack has even transferred poetry from formal readings--quite literally--into peoples' mouths.

from The Harvard Crimson: City Populist Spreads Love of Poetry

The sole surviving copy of the manuscript, now kept securely in the British Library, was recorded by a scribe and bound up with three other poems probably by the same creator ("Pearl," "Patience" and "Cleanness"). Thus the author is generally known as the Gawain or Pearl poet. He was a contemporary of Chaucer and a master of our mongrel English tongue.

from The New York Times: A Stranger in Camelot

[Helen Vendler's] book's second chapter, "Antechamber and Afterlife," is a near microscopic examination of form poems: "Sailing to Byzantium," "Byzantium," "The Delphic Oracle upon Plotinus," and "News for the Delphic Oracle." The second and fourth poems are, as is easy to see, reworkings and continuations of the first and third. But Ms. Vendler shows, in examining the hidden formal movements of each poem--particularly by dissecting the organization of the stanzas--that their simultaneous continuity and struggle with each other, and the vision of the conflict between the temporal and the eternal they propose, are far more than just a matter of theory.

from The New York Sun: The Private Language of Form

[Zvi Sesling] presents it straight with no chaser. This is a poem that will make you cut yourself while shaving, as Auden said. It reminded me of the many whitefish staring at me in judgment through the plastic wrappers at the local delicatessen. Sesling makes this disembodied fish an oracle, a sage in the soup, much like Bernard Malamud did with his �Jew Bird.�

from The Somerville News: When I look at a poem

And of "Rukeyser," he [Gerald Stern] writes, "Muriel Rukeyser came from a specific line of privileged New York German Jews. Her own mission was to criticize, according to leftist and feminist politics deeply rooted in the Eastern European Socialist tradition, economic and social exploitation. Her poems, as I see it, are the beginning of a startling, deeply important movement, or series of movements, that involve fields as diverse as poetry, art, dancing, economics, and politics."

from Nextbook: Two Poems by Gerald Stern

Great Regulars

And print, far from dying out, is being consumed in massive quantities online. The issue, as it has always been, is pointing readers and viewers to the sort of material worth their time and attention, material that tells true stories about the world or enlarges our sense of what it means to be human or offers real entertainment.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: From the blogs

It's another vivid composition by the talented poet [Kim Addonizio], whose collections include Tell Me.

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Poetry lovers, put this on your list

No doubt, as far as their relation to [WS] Merwin's work was concerned, poets such as Neruda and Lorca had the greater weight. But the old Spanish ballads (which were themselves of capital importance to Lorca) must have had their place in the consciousness of this ambitious group of young writers, and it has often seemed to me that Merwin's volume (especially if it were provided with Spanish originals) would be worth reprinting.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Singing the songs of love

In truth, Manhattan has not been a writerly town for quite some time. Many of our storied independent bookstores have shut their doors. Starbucks lowered its shoulder and hip-checked many coffee shops off the island. And bohemia has gone, well, elsewhere.

from John Freeman: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Property boom, literary slump

In the fourth stanza, the speaker begins musing about the man's loved ones, how they were "weeping far away" and how they would be watching for his return. The speaker can be sure they were "sorrowful," because the speaker can empathize with the mourners, even though he knows they did not realize they were mourning a death and not merely an absence.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Bryant's 'The Murdered Traveller'

The quietness implied by "shadows holding their breath" is astounding; it is a miracle of striking awareness, undetectable to most and unceasingly secure to but a few.

Then the speaker avows that when the sense of melancholy goes, when the "[h]eavenly hurt" lightens into understanding, it is "like the Distance/On the look of Death."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Dickinson's Slant of Light

But this speaker invokes his talent to serve as the "tenth Muse," which he deems ten time more valuable than the other nine: "Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth/Than those old nine which rimers invocate." This poet is more than a rimer; he is indeed a true poet.

The poet who calls on his own soul/talent will produce works even greater then these earlier poets who relied upon the nine Muses.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 38

There's a question that sometimes comes up in conversations about interactive fiction: Is it literature, or a game?

I've wondered myself, as I've joined animated characters on their journeys and tried to fit their narratives into a preexisting slot in my mind. But recently, as I watched Inanimate Alice - an adventure story told through a series of 10 Flash-animated films - I began to think there might be a better way to look at it.

from Katie Haegele: The Philadelphia Inquirer: Art, film or game? 'Inanimate Alice' redefines 'publish'

Our mortality is written on our skin as we age; our place in our lifecycle is evident in the condition of our flesh--we are frail, withering creatures, and there's nothing like turning into a prune as we soak in the bath to remind us of this.

Our poet makes us conscious of her bones resting on the cold porcelain of the bath, which does not readily hold heat, as she lies staring at the ceiling.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Bathtime blues

It was Scrooge's ghost, lifting weights in the exercise room. Scrooge looked terrific. He said the afterlife was a blast. "You get to fly around and look in people's windows and--wowsa, the stuff you find out. Like Fred--he is a raging alcoholic. And the boy who ran to the poulterer's and bought me the goose? He has a boyfriend. Yikes!"

from Garrison Keillor: Chicago Tribune: Listen up, dear readers

Poem: "Medicine" by Carolyn Kizer, from Cool, Calm & Collected � Copper Canyon Press Press, 2000.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of December 17, 2007

There's that old business about the tree falling in the middle of the forest with no one to hear it: does it make a noise? Here Linda Gregg, of New York, offers us a look at an elegant beauty that can be presumed to exist and persist without an observer.

Elegance

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 142

Ken Irby is a Kansas poet who practices projective verse, a form based on physical acts of speechmaking rather than British poetics. Charles Olson of Black Mountain College (1930s-1950s) taught that a line should be the length of a breath. In poetry like Irby's, the words match human consciousness rather than creating a facsimile of reality.

from Denise Low: Ad Astra Poetry Project: Ken Irby (1936 - )

Similarly, the appeal of some linguistic and poetic rhythms is irresistible. They travel our nervous system and intoxicate the brain or stimulate the heart, inducing gloom, excitation, contemplation, or euphoria.

The poet's toolbox includes a system of metrics that has been standardized since the Middle Ages.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Maybe not for dancing, but all poetry has definite rhythm

In June, his lawyer Li Jianqiang said he had received a letter from Li [Hong] saying: "My illness is extremely rare. My condition has worsened and my muscles are atrophying. I can now barely move my arms and it is spreading to my legs. My feet are already paralyzed."

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: RFA Unplugged: Cyber-dissident Zhang Jianhong's condition worsening

The mind, wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins, has "cliffs of fall" that are "no-man-fathomed," suggesting a jagged, dangerous terrain with unexpected and potentially lethal gulfs. Sometimes, as in Jill Rosser's new collection of poetry, it's a comic, irritable gesture that recalls the abyss a footstep away:

Unthought

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

[by Bobby Byrd]

On the Death of my Brother

from Donna Snyder: Newspaper Tree: Tumblewords Poetry: "On the Death of my Brother," and Other Poems

Taunted by his sister-in-law's sarcasm, Narsi Mehta went and meditated before Shiva for seven days, whereupon Siva granted him darsan. Telling him, 'Your bhakti delights me,' Siva placed his hand on Narsi's head, purified him, cleansed him of his sins and awakened his 'sleeping speech.' Narsi Mehta asked HIM for a boon. Let us hear him.

from V Sundaram: News Today: The bard from Gujarat

Through his great poetry Mahakavi Bharathi made it clear that when we drink deep at this fountain of love, that we feel that, out of clay we have been made into men and from men we have risen with gods. According to Mahakavi Bharathi it is this gospel of love that binds the highest with the humblest, the lowest with the loftiest and creates a common comradeship that can be strengthened by common endeavour and unity of purpose.

from V Sundaram: News Today: Eternal flame of nationalism nay, rather universalism

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev has this to say about sacred poetry and poems: "When your heart bursts with love, ecstasy or sorrow, poetry is the only succour. Though words can never find expression for the deeper dimensions of life, poetry at least manages to tell you that it can not be said."

Absence

from V Sundaram: News Today: Evergreen mystical verses

We can see the genial ring of common sense about such lines as,

"For his aunt Jobiska said 'Everyone knows
That a Pobble is better without his toes'"

Edward Lear seems so easy on the matter that we are almost driven to pretend that we see his meaning.

from V Sundaram: News Today: Sense and nonsense--poet and painter -I

On the Coast of Coromandel
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
On this Coast of Coromandel
Shrimps and watercresses grow,
Prawns are plentiful and cheap,
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo

Edward Lear visited Mahalipuram on the 25th of August, 1874. He then visited Kanchipuram, Trichy and Thanjavur. He also went to Bangalore and the West Coast.

from V Sundaram: News Today: Sense and nonsense--poet and painter -II

Ashok Gupta

In memory of the 2000 men women and children killed in the state led genocide of Gujarat in 2002, and the 200,000 who lost their homes and dignity

Run Amina Run

from The American Muslim: Poetry: Run Amina Run

Ashok Gupta

In memory of the 2000 men women and children killed in the state led genocide of Gujarat in 2002, and the 200,000 who lost their homes and dignity

Shame

from The American Muslim: Poetry: Shame

The Companions in the Garden
by Ren� Char

Translated by Mary Ann Caws

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: The Companions in the Garden

Here's to the Snake!
by Ren� Char

Translated by Mary Ann Caws

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: Here's to the Snake!

Hypnos Moon
by Ren� Char

Translated by Nancy Kline

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: Hypnos Moon

Jacquemard and Julia
by Ren� Char

Translated by Mary Ann Caws

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: Jacquemard and Julia

Leaves of Hypnos
by Ren� Char

Translated by Nancy Kline

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: Leaves of Hypnos

The Library is on Fire
by Ren� Char

Translated by Mary Ann Caws

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: The Library is on Fire

Not to be Understood
by Ren� Char

Translated by Mary Ann Caws

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: Not to be Understood

The Shark and the Seagull
by Ren� Char

Translated by Mary Ann Caws

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: The Shark and the Seagull

Christmas Presents by UA Fanthorpe and RV Bailey

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Christmas Presents by UA Fanthorpe and RV Bailey

Three Poems
by Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said) translated by Adnan Haydar and Michael Beard
Mask of Songs

from Guernica: Poetry: Three Poems

by Todd Hanks
[Actor]

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: Actor, a poem by Todd Hanks

The Candlelighter
by Simon Armitage

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Candlelighter

One Day
by Grace Paley

from The New Yorker: Poetry: One Day

The Onion Poem
by Fady Joudah

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Onion Poem

Suddenly There's Poughkeepsie
by Grace Paley

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Suddenly There's Poughkeepsie

Tom Blood won the 2007 Oregon Book Awards' Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry for "The Sky Position" (Marriage Records Publishing House), in which "pretend you are real" appears. Judge Donald Revell praised Blood's perception as "a beautiful act of absolute sympathy and attention, a continuous evidence of perfect compassion."

from The Oregonian: Poetry

By Sean Brawley

Crime Redefined

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Sean Brawley]

By Julia Cassel

Bells Elementary School

Christmas Poem

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Julia Cassel ]

By Sung Ho Park

A Friend or a Foe

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Sung Ho Park ]

[by Joe Randall]
Sun room for Auntie

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Sun room for Auntie

[by Ron Tomanio]
When Moon Met June

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: When Moon Met June

In this tender piece, the title poem of a new collection of her adult and children's poetry, Jackie Kay puts into words what most of us feel and hope when we go through the experience of losing a loved one.

Darling

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week

"Below the Falls"
By Kevin Barents

from Slate: "Below the Falls"--By Kevin Barents

Poetic Obituaries

In her final moments, [Martha] Blum also spoke of her other loves, repeating the word "poetry" three times and reciting old folk songs.

"So that's what she was thinking of," said [her daughter] Irene. "She had her faculties right to the end, which gives me great comfort."

from The StarPhoenix: City writer Blum dies at 94

Ann [Darr]'s poems are distinctive in voice from most other poets of her generation in that they give voice to a wild vitality--I'm speaking of language here--and energy that could be outrageous and marvelously unpredictable. "Here it comes again, my raw-/boned poetry, with arms akimbo/and legs knock-kneed," she writes in "Storm Warning." She sometimes writes as though her poems are charging into the middle of a dying body in order to shock it back into life. Here's another, very different, example, from Mad Hannah, Gussie and Me in "Gussie Does Sunday Disguised as an Artist":

from Dryad Press: Ann Darr (1920-2007)

Clyde [S. De Long] was a scholar with a sharp wit and spirited sense of humor. He had a passion for learning and a heart for sharing his wisdom. He enjoyed reading poetry and lovingly published a collection of his own poems.

from The Free Lance-Star: Clyde S. De Long

In 1998, he [Terence B. Foley] and his wife coauthored In Memoriam, a literary guide to creating memorial services.

He knew a lot about classic American pop music and could talk about it all afternoon, said a friend, Frank Wilson. He also liked to read translations of Chinese poetry and could explain the imagery, said Wilson, The Inquirer's book editor.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Terence B. Foley, 67; scholar, musician

[Andrew Imbrie] wrote "Requiem" in his son's memory, using texts from the Latin funeral mass and the poem "To the Evening Star" by William Blake, John Donne's "Death Be Not Proud," and "Prayer" by George Herbert.

With "Prometheus Bound," a work for orchestra, chorus and dance (1980), Imbrie presented the Greek tragedy about the character of Prometheus, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals.

from UC Berkeley News: Andrew Imbrie, music professor and renowned composer, dies at age 86

[John M.] Lewis led the effort to build the church's education building next to the sanctuary in 1972. Later, the church named it after him.

After the death of his wife, Jean, in 1985, Lewis continued to preach, write poetry and paint in watercolor, returning to the church he served as a rank-and-file member.

from The News & Observer: Baptist pastor, educator John M. Lewis dies at 86

Nor was she terribly sympathetic to the notion that telling about one life intruded on lives of others: "The territoriality that people express about each other's lives requires some scrutiny." She added, however, "I feel that way because I am a biographer."

"The more that each of us knows about each of the other human beings in the world, the better off [we] are," she concluded. "It's true that it is very painful to be exposed to people's curiosity. But it's painful in a way that can only lead to self-knowledge, because it's really not a big deal. In the scope of human endeavor, it's not a big deal."

from Stanford News Service: Diane Middlebrook, Stanford professor and legendary biographer, dies at 68
also San Francisco Chronicle: Poet, biographer, feminist Diane Middlebrook dies of cancer at 68

We miss you, Danny.

As a tribute to Danny [Riley], friends and family have established a fund to help children with cancer enjoy the gift of music. The fund will be used to provide musical instruments, music lessons, and other musical experiences for children with cancer.

from Santa Barbara Independent: Danny Riley 1988-2007

[Gobinda Bahadur Manandhar a.k.a. Dhuswa Sayami] penned collections of poetry, 17 novels and three collections of plays in Newari, two works--The Eclipse and The Lotus of Flame--in English, some 14 novels and two poetry and a some essay collections in Hindi.

from eKantipur.com: Writer Dhuswa Sayami no more

[Evalyn Katz Shapiro's] persistence in knocking on the doors of magazine and book publishers yielded success. [Karl] Shapiro, the soldier-poet, published three books and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his "V-Letter and Other Poems" in 1945.

That same year, the two married in Baltimore's Belvedere Hotel.

from Washington Post: Evalyn Katz Shapiro, 89; Edited Prized War Poems

2007-12-11T19:51:00.000-05:00

News at Eleven

Arundhati Roy: It is like being sentenced to good behaviour for the rest of your life which is a death sentence for a writer. If I had to live somewhere in those conditions, I would become a yoga instructor or something. I would give up writing because this is such a nasty thing to do. Here is a woman [Taslima Nasreen] who is a Bengali writer. She can't function outside. It's a question of principle anyway. It is not about her, it is about us. What kind of society are we creating? Sure it's tough to take the kind of things she said about Islam but she should be put in her place, intellectually and otherwise. Not like this where she will become a martyr to somebody else.

from IBN Live: 'If treated like Taslima, I'd give up writing'

You could take a poetry book and ask the children to turn it into a play or what is in effect a revue. They could write their own poems and monologues to go alongside the poems in the book. When you break a poem down in order to perform it, you have to engage closely with many aspects of what it's about, how it works, how it's constructed and so on. If you write a poem alongside it, to complement it, you start to feel poetry's method, poetry's way of looking at things.

from The Guardian: Comment is free: Well versed

"There's definitely a core of regulars who come to them," says its owner Rob Calef, who founded Open Secret 18 years ago.

"This is probably the first time in human history that so many people have lived alone," he says. "One of the way they find community is to go listen to topics of interest and meet people of like mind."

A big draw, Calef says, is the opportunity for dialog with authors.

from Marin Independent Journal: Author talks: Readings and signings at Marin bookstores draw big crowds

Briefly explained, it is a process in which a poet, so impressed with an experience or image, is compelled to construct a verbal device, a poem, that will reproduce his emotional concept, recurrently, in anyone who cares to read it anywhere, anytime.

[Philip] Larkin's composition time for "The Explosion" was relatively brief. He already had a sense of the mining culture, for he had read D.H. Lawrence's writings of life in a mining village.

from The Wall Street Journal: The Poet's Alchemy

This allows a greater sense of mobility and greater intensities at each point: "Each spider/is a clump of spider longings & thrills." Crude, but exciting; sign me up.

But isn't this just an alibi for chaos? Maybe so. In imagining our way back to social reality, anarchy may be a more useful concept than chaos.

from The Nation: A Kind of Waiting Always

This describes, clearly and sensitively, how the poem has been read since its publication in 1820, but in recent years a group of historical critics has offered a more complicated, political reading of Keats. He was passionately interested in politics, and it would be surprising if that interest didn't shape his writing.

from The Guardian: Season of discontent

As Warning is included in an anthology I edited, I offered to send her a copy. "No," she said. "Don't bother. I'll get it off the internet." That was when it dawned on me that nowadays, if you want a copy of a particular poem, you don't have to buy a book.

My poems are all over the internet. I've managed to get them removed from one or two sites that were major offenders, but there are dozens, if not hundreds of sites displaying poems without permission.

from The Guardian: You like my poems? So pay for them

"Many young people download objectionable material from the internet, but it seems if you are a Muslim then this could lead to criminal charges, even if you have absolutely no intention to do harm to anyone else.

"Samina's so-called poetry was certainly offensive but I don't believe this case should really have been a criminal matter."

[--Muhammed Abdul Bari]

from BBC News: Terror manuals woman avoids jail

In A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway describes a visit to the home of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas at 27 rue de Fleurus in Paris during which he overhears a lovers' squabble. "'Don't, pussy,'" Hemingway reports Stein pleading. "'Don't. Don't, please don't. I'll do anything, pussy, but please don't do it. Please don't. Please don't, pussy.'"

from Baltimore City Paper: The Moderns: Re-Examining The Relationship Between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

[Gloria] Mindock continues her book with the sad indictment that, no matter how high the cost in human suffering, our attention will not be held. We will forget, turn away, move on with our lives. But maybe we can be persuaded to remember, if only for the time it takes to look at a painting. Or read a poem.

El Salvador, 1983

Somewhere, someone is mourning

from The Boston Globe: Poetry on El Salvador forces readers to see human tragedy

"Eternal Symbol" marks the 30th year that Mary V. Sponsler has had her annual Christmas poem published.

She has written a holiday-based work for more than 40 consecutive Christmas seasons. The 2007 effort is printed at the end of this article.

from Saline County Voice: Poet marks fifth Yuletide decade

Great Regulars

Perhaps the worst detail is the list of poems most likely to be taught in primary schools--Noyes, The Highwayman; Milligan, On the Ning, Nang, Nong; Carroll, Jabberwocky; Lear, The Owl and the Pusscat; Stevenson, From a Railway Carriage; de la Mare, The Listeners; Wright, The Magic Box; McGough, The Sound Collector; Dahl, Revolting Rhymes; Ahlberg Dog in the Playground.

from Thought Experiments: How to Teach Poetry

This one ran in all directions, from the Willamette River to the Portland Aerial Tram to a trip across the Columbia on Amtrak. A poem by Sharon Wood Wortman accompanies each trip, and illustrations by Ed Wortman are found throughout the book.

The "main span" of 41 poems follows the bridge tours and features poets singing the praises of the Broadway Bridge, the Steel, the Hawthorne and other bridges near and far.

from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: Bridges to inspired prose

For me, at least, these lines highlight [Robert] Lowell's thorny predicament, namely his desire not to be marginalized or banished from his own existence. Put another way: Sometimes it helps to ask of a poem, what hurts? The ache of erasure is what hurts in this one.

"Christmas"

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: Poetry

"Happy Birthday, Mr Korzeniowski!" trills Bibliobibuli [thebookaholic.blogspot.com]. "I hope you can find enough space on your cake for all 150 candles. Or would you rather we called you by your later name, Joseph Conrad, which you adopted when you became a naturalised Brit in 1886?

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: From the blogs

The heart is missing from Paul Henry's latest volume. From a mother's death to the ghosts that whisper in seashells, his poems revolve around absences. But instead of focusing on them, he considers them obliquely, sifting through the debris that accumulates around their verges.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Veiled kisses

The news was not unrelievedly gloomy, since a few of the paintings [PAB] Widener had bought were acknowledged as genuine. But the list of fakes included many of the great names of European art.

What is fascinating about the Apollo article, written by Jonathan Lopez, is that the story it tells has been, to an extent, covered up till now.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Old Master criminals

For every personality, every reading level, there's a book out there waiting to provide that lucky Christmas or Chanukah or Kwanzaa celebrant with a few hours--maybe a few weeks--of pleasure. To help you unlock that potential for joy, here are a few tips for the best books to buy this holiday season.

from John Freeman: Sacramento News & Review: Novel ideas

In his mammoth new novel, "A Free Life," however, he deploys elements of his own powerful journey in an epic tale about a young Chinese couple struggling to adapt in 1990s America.

Nan Wu is a poet who comes to the United States [. . .]

from John Freeman: Star Tribune: Caught between here and there

But he employs a rhetorical question to assert that people do not face loss with equanimity. Instead, they "writhe" "at passed joy."

He then makes an odd claim: he says that no poetry has been written about what it is like "To know the change and feel it,/When there is none to heal it,/Nor numbed sense to steal it."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Keats in Winter

Because of his great talent, the speaker knows he is not "lame, poor, nor despis'd." In the "shadow" of his creations, he can live abundantly. He is "suffic'd" by the glory of is works, but he claims only a part of that glory, giving much credit to the mystery that is talent.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 37

If there was such a thing as thought crime we would all be in jail, because even if we are incapable of murder--or any kind of real evil--there are times when each of us might flirt with the idea of what it would be like to rid ourselves of the person who has taken something from us, be it a lover, money or livelihood; the only free people would be those who were incapable of thought.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: The poisoned wedding dress

Poem: "I had thought the tumors..." by Grace Paley, from Fidelity.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of December 10, 2007

"My music classes were such an awful experience that I am pretty sure that every guy in school thought singing was a sissy sport," he writes. But when John Lennon howls the lyrics to "Please Mr. Postman," it's as though he's "playing football, tackle, no pads."

from David Kirby: The New York Times: Got a Hold on Me

Life becomes more complicated every day, and each of us can control only so much of what happens. As for the rest? Poet Thomas R. Smith of Wisconsin offers some practical advice.

Trust

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 141

Magnum is an agency that allows photographers to work independent of the commissioning processes of magazines and so on, it enables them to keep the copyright in their work, and it pretty well guarantees that clients will receive work of exceptional quality. This book may be the size of a tombstone, but actually it's a proof of great and enduring liveliness.

from Andrew Motion: The Guardian: Witnesses to the world

Not that any of this rich sexual tradition would have been apparent in modern times, post-1949. (Think baggy unisex Mao suits.) Not, that is, until quite recently. China's publishing industry has now rediscovered sex with a vengeance, and a cursory glance at Chinese magazine covers tells just one (highly profitable) part of the story.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Sex sells. Even in Communist China.

Indeed, many poems consist of nothing but juxtapositions and repetitions. "Another Autumn," for instance, is a series of one-line sketches--"a feathering of the ink whereby characters lose definition" is followed by "overlapping windowscreens, one pattern interfering with another," which is in turn followed by "sideways, all the politeness, all that irony, trying for a draw" (an echo of a line from "A Pillow-Book," a much earlier [Michael] O'Brien poem).

from David Orr: The New York Times: Words of the World

Eminent poets sometimes write poems to please children. Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) succeeded, with poems that are short, funny, well-rhymed and respectful of the reader's intelligence:

The Sloth

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

In a return to Galilee, where the poet was born, the making of "a poem, a myth creating reality" is pictured as a feminine art: "I'll enter a woman's needle in/one of the myths/and fly like a shawl with the wind" ("Not as a Foreign Tourist Does"). "Reality" can and must be remade; and [Mahmoud] Darwish, writing from embattlement, knows that to refuse the status quo he must refuse fixity.

from Fiona Sampson: The Guardian: In the serene land

The patriot in ['Mahakavi'] Bharathi writhed in agony, under the oppressive yoke of foreign rule and the poet in him, burst out in song, that was at once a call and a challenge. His words were power and his songs were fire; his music moved the people to mutiny and roused them to revolt.

from V Sundaram: News Today: Eternal flame of nationalism nay, rather universalism

The Gayatri 'richa'or verse is found in the 'Rig Veda' (3.62.10). It takes its name in part because it is written in a meter called 'Gayatri Meter'--24 syllables divided into three lines of 8 syllables each. But the word 'Gayatri' also means "She who protects the singer" (from gai, to sing and trai, to protect). Thus, Gayatri is a name of the Divine Mother, She who protects her children and leads them towards self-realization.

from V Sundaram: News Today: Timeless refulgence of Sandhya Vandanam

As you can see even from this brief passage, [David] Mason's supremely supple blank verse impels you forward: You not only imagine the people running, but also feel yourself - because of the rhythmic pulse of the lines - keeping pace with them. Like a good film director, Mason knows just when to cut from one scene to another, and this, too, impels the narrative forward, giving it a mounting sense of inexorability.

from Frank Wilson: Philadelphia Inquirer: Novel springs from a horrific event

Ghazal

DigarguN hai jahaN taroN ki gardish tez hai Saqi

from Muhammad Iqbal

translation by M. Shahid Alam

from The American Muslim: Ghazal from Muhammad Iqbal

I should also mention the internal world that overlaps with the external at every point in time/space. Those shadows you place on a page come from the merger of both realities, a poem takes its life from both sources, and by doing so sidesteps onsensus reality, offering new possibilities and renderings of what the external world itself means.

from CBC: Words at Large: Poet of the Month: Don Domanski

a) Write a poem taking as a starting point something indistinctly remembered, or seen with the corner of the eye, which silently moves, or;

b) Write a poem in response to one by De la Mare, but not a pastiche. If his work is new to you the recent Selected Poems from Faber, edited by Matthew Sweeney, is an excellent introduction.

from The Guardian: Poetry Workshop: Peter Bennet

A Gynaecologist in Dubai Fishing at Evening by Paul Durcan

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: A Gynaecologist in Dubai Fishing at Evening by Paul Durcan

By Philip Miller
[Late Early Middle Age]

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'Late Early Middle Age,' a poem by Philip Miller

An American in Hollywood
by Frank Bidart

from The New Yorker: Poetry: An American in Hollywood

Shrike
by Henri Cole

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Shrike

[by Trudy Hanson]
It all Comes Back to You

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: It all Comes Back to You

[by Frances N. Contreras]
Thoughts of You

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Thoughts of You

This elegant evocation of the nature of young girls comes from Scales Dog by Alexander Hutchison.

Fleurs-de-Lys

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week

"The World War Speaks"
By Sandra Beasley

from Slate: "The World War Speaks" --By Sandra Beasley

[William Sydney Graham] most admired volume, Nightfishing (1955), sets such a quest on a trawler fishing for herring. "Johann Joachim Quantz's Fourth Lesson" was published in the TLS in 1974. W. S. Graham died in 1986.

Johann Joachim Quantz's Fourth Lesson

from The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: Johann Joachim Quantz's Fourth Lesson

Poetic Obituaries

Also during that time, Mr. [William] Adams [Jr.] helped compile four books that were used in the Philadelphia public schools: Afro-American Literature: Nonfiction; Afro-American Literature: Drama; Afro-American Literature: Fiction, and Afro-American Literature: Poetry.

In 1968, Mr. Adams began working at the University of Pennsylvania as a lecturer in English. He quickly became a popular teacher and mentor, particularly among African American and other minority students.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: William Adams Jr., 71, educator and lawyer

Ibrahim Al-Hadhrani is considered a symbol of Yemeni poetry, both standard and traditional (popular). Since the early half of the 20th century, he has offered moving touches in Yemeni modern poetry. He's also one of the pioneers in Yemen's national struggle, confronting Imamate rule and ensuring victory for revolution and liberty.

from Yemen Times: Al-Hadhrani: Poet and patriot

Prof. Monico Atienza, a teacher, poet and revolutionary, succumbed to cancer of the throat after almost a year in coma. He was 60 years old.

In the last tribute of friends and comrades, Nick or Ka Togs as what his colleagues at the First Quarter Storm Movement call him, was praised for devoting his youth and all of his life for the revolutionary cause.

from bulatlat: Monico Atienza, True Revolutionary

When given the microphone at the Sabkuch Milega, he [Moshe Ben-Shaul] preceded his reading from Rimbaud with a reading of his own poem dedicated to the French prodigy. It was entitled: "I Am Speaking with a Dead Poet". Thursday night, at the age of 77, he joined Rimbaud at the super-hip bohemian cafe in the sky. Now they're really going to chat.

from Everywhere: In Memoriam, Moshe Ben-Shaul

During his long writing career [Vu] Cao was the editor-in-chief of the Tap Chi Van Nghe Quan Doi (Military Literature and Arts Magazine), the director of Ha Noi Publishing House and chairman of the Poetry Panel of the Viet Nam Writers Association. He received the State Prize for Literature and Arts in 2001.

from Viet Nam News: Poets of American, French wars die in Ha Noi

On his way to the southern front along the Truong Son Trail, [Pham Tien] Duat composed hundreds of poems that recorded the lives, loves, hardships and determination of fellow soldiers. He has been nicknamed "the man of Truong Son", "the Truong Son Firebird" and "Pride of the American War writers". He has published various collections, including Vang Trang Quang Lua (Moon and Fire Circle) and O Hai Dau Nui (On Two Sides of the Mountain).

from VietNamNet Bridge: Poet laureate passes away

[Ion Fiscuteanu] studied acting in Bucharest and worked in theater companies in his native region. Starting in the 1980s he appeared regularly in films, including "Glissando" (1985) and "Jacob" (1988), both directed by Mircea Daneliuc. After the 1989 revolution he continued to work in both theater and cinema. He also wrote short stories and poems.

from The New York Times: Ion Fiscuteanu, a Star of Romanian Stage and Film, Dies at 70

[Bob Granato] was the former chairman of the Planning and Zoning Commission, a poet, novelist and journalist, and a tireless proponent of the redevelopment of downtown Pawcatuck. He was active in issues affecting Korean War veterans, a master strategist in local Democratic politics, a union official, and an advocate for the redevelopment of the state's old mill complexes. He also seemed to know just about everyone in town.

from The Day: Bob Granato, Stonington's 'Patriarch,' Is Dead At 76

The day after her 33rd birthday, in 1949, [Elizabeth] Hardwick married [Robert] Lowell, one of the most prominent poets of his generation. They had one child, daughter Harriet.

In 1963 a lingering newspaper strike in New York City spurred Hardwick, Lowell and the Epsteins [Jason and Barbara] to found the New York Review of Books.

"We were having dinner and we said, 'Let's do a book review of our own to show what a good one could be,'" [Jason] Epstein recalled this week.

from Los Angeles Times: New York Review of Books co-founder

Among [Harry Thompson] Jones's recreations was writing verse, and he was the author of a poem--The Trainer--which became well known in racing circles. It begins: 'I envy the life of a trainer!'/Said a chap I met on a plane,/'A lucrative life in the open/Surrounded by birds and champagne!'

The poem then chronicles the setbacks and headaches endured by trainers before concluding: It's normal in other professions/To prosper, retire and die/But trainers go on training horses -/I'm buggered if I can think why!

from Telegraph: Tom Jones

Family members of Wednesday's mall shooting are trying to find a way to cope and comfort each other. A mother who's seen a lot of sorrow in her 91 years talks about losing her son.

"I've been through tragedy before and they're all more or less alike, you hurt and there's nothing you can do about it," says 91-year-old Inez Joy, grieving the death of her son Gary Joy. "He liked to write stories, did poetry, things like that."

from WOWT: 91-Year-Old Mom Faces Latest Tragedy

[Anita B. Morland's] poetry has been published in The Christian Science Monitor, Treasured Poems of America, Windows on the World, and numerous other anthologies. She also published her own personal book of poetry, A Potpourri of Poetry, which she felt was among her greatest accomplishments.

from Sheboygan Press: Anita B. Morland

[James M. Quimby] was an interesting and interested person, who loved to read. Jim enjoyed fishing and hunting. He taught his granddaughters how to fish and to love fishing as he did. Every little kid liked him. He was a great storyteller. He even made up "poetry" for his grandkids.

from Oshkosh Northwestern: James M. Quimby

Mildred Patterson 'was always doing for other people'

Mildred Patterson enjoyed doing many things such as cooking, sewing, artwork, playing the piano, writing poetry, attending church and helping others.

from The Huntsville Times: Mother was 'absolute personification of goodness'

Angela Raettig was a lot of things.

She was, her obituary noted, a ballet dancer, a poet, a lover of music. She was, her friends have said, a silly girl with a tender heart.

She had a certain "style" about her, her mother has told me more than once, and not just in the way she dressed, sort of "hippyish" and eclectic.

from Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Mom wishes drugs didn't define girl's life

[Leonard C. "Lenny" Ross Jr.] simplified his life, pursued a variety of interests, managing a costume shop, little league baseball umpire, caterer, and hospital volunteer. He loved travel, photography, cooking, music and dancing. He was a gifted writer and poet, and truly lived his life to the fullest.

from The News-Herald: Leonard C. "Lenny" Ross Jr.

[Trilochan] Shastri was among the famous trio of modern Hindi poetry along with Nagarjun and Shamsher Bahadur Singh. His famous works include the poetry collections 'Jeene ki Kala', 'Dingat' and 'Dharti'.

He also wrote a collection of stories titled 'Deshkal'.

from News From Sahara Samay: Noted Hindi litterateur Trilochan Shastri dead

The attendants of the meeting expressed their deep sorrow on the death of poet and senior member of Anjuman, Shaukat Ali Soofi. It was observed that the Anjuman suffered an irreparable loss with the demise of Shaukat Soofi.

from The Post: Poet's death condoled

[Mary Lou Strouse] was a former member of Flemington United Methodist Church and was a member of Liberty United Methodist Church at the time of her death. She was a volunteer for Community Nursing. She enjoyed playing piano and writing poetry.

from The Express: Mary Lou Strouse

"I'm not private about my feelings," she [Mildred Trivers] said in 1984. "Others have the same feelings I have. Poets merely express what we all feel and might not know how to express verbally. Writing poetry is not just a matter of describing things that happen to us. It's a matter of bringing out the general significance of what happens."

And sharing that with anyone who cared to read a poem or two.

from The Star Press Muncie, IN: A poetic life: Mildred Trivers, The Poet of Twin Ponds Lane, had a way with words

Rene O. Villanueva was one of my un-official mentors. One of the best Filipino writers who I look up to. One of my real friends from the literary and showbiz industry.

After reading the article, everything flashed back.

I see myself walking along Timog Avenue in Quezon City with Rene after a Sunday writers bloc session.

from Ian del Carmen: Ode to a Mentor and a Friend

"Dan's primary impact on the institution came in his collecting of modern literature and his interest in the history of science," Alan Jutzi, chief curator of rare books at the Huntington, said this week.

[Daniel] Woodward was actively involved in bringing the papers of poet Wallace Stevens and of poet and short story writer Conrad Aiken to the library. He also helped bring the papers of British novelist Kingsley Amis to the collection.

from Los Angeles Times: Huntington library director helped expand literary, science holdings

George Ziegenfuss, San Diego State's basketball coach for more than two decades, died early Sunday after suffering a massive stroke while composing a poem he planned to present to his granddaughter for her 27th birthday.

from The Union-Tribune: Legendary Ziegenfuss leaves sporting legacy

2007-12-04T20:18:00.000-05:00

News at Eleven

"There was burning going on and I was terrified. The two policemen who were supposed to be guarding my door had gone. People said I would be killed by Islamic fundamentalists, the mob would come and attack my house," [Taslima] Nasrin says, her voice shaky as she speaks from a safe house near Delhi.

from The Guardian: 'Condemned to life as an outsider'

"Downtown" meant a tiny cell in Evin prison, in North Tehran, and "a few questions" meant protracted torture. I found it difficult to believe that my cheerful protests could have roused my interrogators to such violence. Bruised black by fists and boots, my shoulders and arms livid with lash welts, my scalp left bare and bleeding after my hair was shorn, I persisted in thinking, even as I wept and raged at my captors, This is ridiculous!

from The New York Times: Poetry of Protest

"I decided to flee Burma because I don't want to spend time in jail and not be able to contribute to the movement," he [Kyaw Thu Moe Myint] said.

"I'd like to urge all people from the world of literature and all other people to continue with the movement, as it is the responsibility of everyone."

from Democratic Voice of Burma: Poet flees to Thai-Burma border

The publication of Handkerchief (1969) was an artistic turning point for Lee [Min-yung]. After Handkerchief, he was no longer "a sentimental youth whose poems were beautifully worded yet preoccupied with egocentric vanity for the purpose of self-redemption," says Lee. "I positioned myself as an antiwar poet and found my role--to voice my concerns."

Lee took on the voice of a war widow to drive home his antiwar message in Handkerchief.

from Taiwan Review: A Life Devoted to Poetry

The poetry in the books from this period often seemed aimed at turning the reader's attention away from beauty and meaning - those things for which language is so often made to serve as a vehicle--and toward the language itself.

But the more recent poems tend to divert the reader's attention not only from questions of meaning and beauty but from the language as well. One's attention instead is focused on the speaker of the poem, who assumes an insistent, even aggressive role.

from San Francisco Chronicle: Ashbery's anthology 'Notes From the Air' delivers, despite himself

James Emanuel is an excellent example of a poet who can smash down this false argument, as he has written quality poems in traditional forms, like the English sonnet, as well as free verse poems. Have a look at this Emanuel sonnet, which already feels like a ‘classic’ to readers of Cosmoetica:

For a Farmer

from Monsters and Critics: Featured Book Review: (another) Whole Grain Collected Poems by James Emanuel

Another letter ends: 'All all all all all love Your Ted.' And in another he says: 'I love you from your toes to your ankles to your knees to your thighs to your hips to your navel to your nipples to your shoulders to your throat to your mouth to your nose to your eyes and then in to the end of you. All my love every minute.'

Reading these letters we are thrown into the opening act of the lovers' tragedy.

from London Review of Books: Entrepreneurship

'My definition of "poetry",' he [Ted Hughes] writes, with characteristic generosity, to a student who had sent him a few questions, 'almost excludes anything coming from the ego under the ego's control . . . my whole writing career sometimes presents itself to me as a search for not one style in particular, but the style for this crisis or that.' The poet is not in search of a 'voice', or a position, or indeed a career; he is in search of a survival kit, of words that because they get him through get through to other people.

from The Guardian: The truth, the whole truth

The discipline of poetry requires that you keep yourself available. The muse "hits" unpredictably, almost like an accident. An artist keeps herself/himself "accident-prone." And then there is the whole practice of order--files and notes--manuscripts at different levels of finish--and having a few good dictionaries always at hand. [--Gary Snyder]

from The Union: Q & A with wordsmith Gary Snyder

Being fat bothered Philip Whalen his entire writing life. Even after years of studying and practicing Zen Buddhism, he was beset by shame and self-consciousness, expressed in lines such as these:

"Epigram, Upon Himself"

People can forgive all my faults; They despise me for being fat.

Intriguingly, "being fat" apparently is not included among his faults, a distinction fine enough to presage further psychological revelations.

from San Francisco Chronicle: Beat Philip Whalen's poetry collected in one sprawling volume

To date, Wang Chunhui has written nearly 500 classical poems, and over 50 of them have been published by various media.

Since Wang Chunhui gained access to the Internet on May 19, 2004, her world has expanded. She has made many friends online and has learned a lot more about poetry from them. However, spending time online also brings increased discomfort, as her family has to tie Wang Chunhui upright in a chair so she can see they screen and manipulate the keys.

from The Epoch Times: Disabled Woman Writes Poems Using a Chopstick in Her Mouth

Great Regulars

But they are also books that embody the big ideas of the time--both Wells and Lem were obsessed with human insignificance in the face of the immense otherness of the universe, Huxley with technology as a seductive destroyer and Orwell with our capacity for authoritarian evil. Borges, like Lem, suspects we know nothing of ourselves. Interested in these things? Of course you are. Read SF.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Times: Why don't we love science fiction?

"I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I haven't read most of these books (a few of them are sitting on my nightstand as bedroom decor--does that count?). I was amused to see Pierre Bayard's How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read listed in the non-fiction section . . . I guess if I read that one, it pretty much covers all my bases, doesn't it?"

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: From the blogs

[Mike Barlow's] attempts to bridge the gap between reality and the imagined world beyond see him reaching for telescopes, lenses, mirrors--anything that allows him to see the unseen. Reflections and echoes haunt him; the wind, cast as an invisible but powerful agent of movement between states, whistles through the lines.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Air in the mind

At four he glimpsed God's head at the window, at eight a tree shimmering with angels. For [William] Blake, being a visionary meant seeing beyond a version of politics centred chiefly on parliament. "House of Commons and House of Lords seem to me to be fools," he wrote. "They seem to me to be something other than human life."

from Terry Eagleton: The Guardian: The original political vision: sex, art and transformation

The Messiah ("Christos" in Greek) was regarded by the Jews as a kingly, warrior-like figure, whereas Jesus's satirical entry into Jerusalem on the back of an ass can be read as an anti-Messianic gesture, an ironic smack at all such notions of military sovereignty.

Was Jesus, then, a "spiritual" rather than a political leader?

For Jesus, there can be no negotiation between the domain of justice--the kingdom of God--and the powers of this world.

from Terry Eagleton: The Guardian: Comment is free: Jesus: Messiah or Bolshevik?

One could be in Timbuktu.

The chimneys have Darth Vader helmets. And then there are ventilation towers and badalots, which are the casings of the stairwells leading from the attic to the roof. Those that are visible from below in the Passeig de Gr� cia have the decorated surfaces.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: A landscape all of its own

Quite a lot of this power has to do with the script that the Coen brothers boiled down from [Cormac] McCarthy's already lean prose. It tells the camera what to do, the characters what to say, and makes a ridiculous situation frighteningly believable, and tense. This ought to be on studio heads' minds as they go to the bargaining table for the fourth week of the Writers Guild of America's strike.

from John Freeman: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Everybody needs writers

Finally, in poetry, there was some enjambment, as they say. Three books straddled first place: a massive new translation of Zbigniew Herbert's Selected Poems, along with two volumes of recent US poet laureates, Robert Hass (Time and Materials) and Robert Pinsky (Gulf Music). The list was rounded by Rae Armantrout (Next Life) and Mary Jo Bang (Elegy).

from John Freeman: The Guardian: theblogbooks: The year's best books? We do the math

She felt motivated to rise out of her coffin, but she was unable to do so; of course, death had immobilized her physical body, but her mind was still capable of comprehending her environment.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: December Poet--Emily Dickinson

The speaker then adds an impossible comparison: his life will shut like a flower imagining the fall of snow.

The reader can only guess at how a flower might feel, and when the reader does so, s/he will probably just be thinking about s/he (the reader) feels with snow "descending" "carefully everywhere."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: A Flawed Love Poem

However, the claim that "Somebody" committed those heinous acts is utterly disingenuous. Everybody knows who did it. By implying that he does not know who "blew up America," the speaker places himself with the conspiracy theorists, the truthers who claim that it was not "terrorist" who commandeered those planes, but the U. S. government.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Poet Laureate Loses Laureateship

For those who want to meet people who share their taste in books, the site can serve as a social network.

Once my zines were added, all the other users who have them in their collections got linked to my page. Some of these, I soon saw, weren't personal collections but small libraries, infoshops, and other public collections that are using the site as a catalog.

from Katie Haegele: The Philadelphia Inquirer: Visit to LibraryThing can bring together readers and collectors

Sheryl St. Germain is both a poet and director of the graduate writing program at Chatham University and she's having a banner year in both roles.

First, the Chatham program was recognized by the Atlantic Monthly and Poets & Writers magazines recently for its distinctive and unique program.

from Bob Hoover: Post-Gazette: Video: An interview with poet Sheryl St. Germain

His parents do not appear to engage with the real man that their son has become, who has grown beyond their photo-fed recollections. In fact, they don't need him because they have the version that they have made up, and on which they feed their fantasies, who never leaves home.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Monday Poem: A foreign country

The instructor seemed to believe that he could tell us how to swim and then we should be able to do it, and he strutted up and down watching boys struggle in the water and yelling at them. After three lessons I stopped going. I went to the library instead, which was a block away from the YMCA.

from Garrison Keillor: The Washington Post: The Reading Life

Poem: "Grandma's Grave" by Freya Manfred, from Swimming With a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle (buy now) © Red Dragonfly Press, 2008.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of December 03, 2007

The voice of Pinsky's poetry is both learned and edgily unlearned. He cultivates the poetic persona of the chuchum, the wise guy, the kidder, the shape-shifter, "Loki the schemer," Hermes the divine messenger. There is about his voice always something of the high school troublemaker, but one who has taken the library seriously. "I have a small-town mind," he remarks in one new poem. "Like the Greeks and Trojans./Shame. Pride. Importance of looking bad or good."

from Karl Kirchwey: Sifting through detail for myth and archetype

Here's a holiday poem by Steven Schneider that I like very much for its light spirit and evocative sensory detail. Isn't this a party to which you'd like to be invited?

Chanukah Lights Tonight

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 140

The devil appears, but then is set aside for Kool-Aid. The poet's dead-pan delivery suggests a third presence: the open-eared listener who observes details, judges a tad, and chuckles at the absurd human condition--like an adult reader.

LTL

from Denise Low: Ad Astra Poetry Project: William C. Kloefkorn (1932 - )

Images are the distilled essence of poetry. Another modern master, E.E. Cummings (1894-1962), wrote this marvel of concision and economy: "L(a" l(a/le/af/fa/ll/s)/one/l/iness. Note the concrete image, "a leaf falls," is encapsulated parenthetically within the abstraction "loneliness"--the word itself arranged by line breaks that emphasize the one-ness of loneliness.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Use imagery to make your poetry blossom

Still, it's not much of a legacy for someone who was for a while probably the most famous writer in America--a couple of 50-year-old New Yorker articles, a sweep-up of assorted freelance chores for other magazines and a novel-like crime story (“Handcarved Coffins�?) that has its moments but that also strains credulity more than once. In fact, the whole volume won't do much for Capote's already tarnished reputation as a truth-teller.

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Shades of Capote

[by E. Ethelbert Miller]
Last Stand

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: Last Stand

[by E. Ethelbert Miller]
You Are A Galaxy To Me

from E. Ethelbert Miller: E-Notes: You Are A Galaxy To Me

"Five people came to see me at about 10 this morning," former journalist and editor of the nonprofit Minjian magazine Zhai Minglei told RFA's Mandarin service.

"Three of them showed ID that confirmed they were from the Shanghai cultural business bureau. They said that I was involved in the illegal publication and distribution of materials, and acting as a freelance editor. They took away 41 copies of Minjian magazine," Zhai said.

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: China Raids Blogger's Home, as Political Arrests Double

By evoking American history from unexpected, unsettling angles, Jordan demonstrates poetry's power to be at once intimate and wide-ranging.

(A. Van Jordan's poem "Flashback" is from his book "Quantum Lyrics: Poems." Norton. Copyright 2007 by A. Van Jordan.)

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

A selection of poems from Robin Scofield, curated by our friends at the Tumblewords Project.

from Donna Snyder: Newspaper Tree: Tumblewords Poetry: Cantalily Sequence

When 'The Times' invited several eminent authors to write essays on the theme 'What's wrong with the world?' Chesterton's contribution took the form of a letter:

Dear Sirs,
I am.
Sincerely yours,
G K Chesterton

from V Sundaram: News Today: The man who was Chesterton

. . . so I thought I'd post a poem of mine that I wrote on the subject. It's a villanelle and it was published in Boulevard last year. The painting is by Sassetta.

Advent

from Frank Wilson: Philadelphia Inquirer: Books, Inq.: Advent begins today . . .

Letterland by Sophie Hannah

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Letterland by Sophie Hannah

Why Can't We
by Kim Hyesoon translated by Don Mee Choi

from Guernica: Poetry: Why Can't We

By Tony Gardner
Driving Range

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'Driving Range,' a poem by Tony Gardner

For Whom the Bells Jingle
by Susie Day

from MR Zine: 'For Whom the Bells Jingle'

Farm Team
by Kevin Young

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Farm Team

Picnic by the Inland Sea
by D. Nurkse

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Picnic by the Inland Sea

To Boredom
by Charles Simic

from The New Yorker: Poetry: To Boredom

--Grace Paley[, "Here"]

Writer and activist Grace Paley died Aug. 22 at her home in Thetford Hill, Vt., at age 84.

from The Oregonian: Poetry

At the November Hoot, Hugh Harter read this haunting poem, filled with beauty and melancholy, in a structure of subtle rhythm and rhyme:

The Beach

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poems from the Hoot

[by Karen Langley Current]
"Fish House" Tears
--Plaice Cove, Hampton

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: "Fish House" Tears--Plaice Cove, Hampton

[by Amy Bedard]
J.R.

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: J.R.

To read this poem is to be transported straight to the vegetable patch late in the year. A new book places Edward Thomas's poems in the context of his letters to other writers, in his few years of poetic output before his death at the Battle of Arras.

Digging

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week

"Luanne Again, Southeastern Ohio"
By John Hazard

from Slate: "Luanne Again, Southeastern Ohio" --By John Hazard

Our poem of the week is the concluding section of the closing poem in The Space of Joy [by John Fuller], in which the poet looks back at a holiday with his parents in Switzerland over half a century ago. The whole poem was published in the TLS on May 5, 2006.

From "Thun 1947"

from The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: From "Thun 1947"

The following selection presents [Boaz] Kadman's solution to composing in words. "I always did, and still do, a lot of collage work," Kadman told Zeek. "So I pick up old books and such from wherever. I found a lot of old books with text only, so I started cutting up certain words and piecing them together without any clear plan. It's hard for me to write texts, stories, essays, and this way was easier."

from Zeek: Boaz Kadman: A Selection

Alicia Ostriker

The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip and the Dog

from Zeek: Three Poems by Alicia Ostriker

Poetic Obituaries

After Squat [Theater] split in two in 1985, Mr. [Stephan] Balint and the members who remained continued to perform.

Mr. Balint also worked in movies, writing and appearing in the photographer Robert Frank's 1989 film, "Hunter."

After Hungary's Communist regime collapsed, Mr. Balint returned in 1991 to the country of his birth. His most recent book was a 2005 collection of prose poems with drawings by the artist Gabor Rosko.

from The New York Times: Stephan Balint, 64, a Founder of the Squat Theater, Dies

While living in Dover for the past 21 years, Mrs. [A. Ruth] Braemer has also maintained a home in Orlando, Fla. since 1957.

from The Oneida Daily Dispatch: A. Ruth Braemer

[Ban Tai Doan's] works and poetic philosophy always reflected an innocence and the ethnic people's truthful state of mind. In his lifetime, Doan published 15 works of all kinds, including novels, critical works and volumes of poetry, which all showed his distinguished influence on readers nationwide, and went on to become a precious addition to the country's literary canon.

from Viet Nam News: Famed ethnic poet dies at age 94

After meeting [Ben] Mazer, [Landis] Everson wrote some 300 poems in three years.

In 2005, he received the Emily Dickinson Award, given by the Poetry Foundation to poets over age 50 who have never published a book. The following year Everson's first book, "Everything Preserved: Poems 1955-2005," was published by Graywolf Press.

from Los Angeles Times: Berkeley Renaissance poet dies

[Irene Hahn-Ausmus] enjoyed writing poetry and stories and building miniature houses.

from The Creswell Chronicle: Irene Hahn-Ausmus

[Elizabeth] Hardwick was among the last survivors of a promiscuous, hard-drinking circle of intellectuals that included Edmund Wilson, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Mary McCarthy, Philip Rahv and the celebrated poet Robert Lowell, with whom she had a famously difficult marriage.

from Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Author-critic dead at 91

With only his [Chinh Huu's] first collection, his poetry went down in the books of great Vietnamese literature. His poems were written in the trenches. Most contain few words but show incredible depth.

His most famous poems include Ngay Ve (Returning Day), Dong Chi (Comrades), Thu Nha (Letters from Home) and Ngon Den Dung Gac (Guarding Lamp).

from Viet Nam News: Revolutionary poet Chinh Huu, 82, dies

"I'll never forget a poem that he made up when we were seniors about his friends and the people he hung out with. It was incredible. Everybody was just astounded when he recited it in front of the whole school.''

Outstanding in track and field, ski jumping and ice hockey at Butte High School, [Evel] Knievel went on to win the Northern Rocky Mountain Ski Association Class A Men's ski jumping championship in 1957 and played with the Charlotte Clippers of the Eastern Hockey League in 1959.

from The Guardian: Iconic Daredevil Evel Knievel Dies at 69

[Sir John Loveridge's] poetry related mainly to the Elizabethan era, with which he had a special fascination. His published work included God Save the Queen: Sonnets of Elizabeth I (1981), Hunter of the Moon (1983) and Hunter of the Sun (1984). Loveridge's aesthetic sense also led him to acquire and restore Bindon Manor, near Axmouth in Devon; he wrote his most stirring verse and had his studio there, and with his wife ran the estate with enthusiasm.

from Telegraph: Sir John Loveridge

Rebecca [McCann] had the voice of a pop star and a white scrunchie around her wrist. [Her mother Penny] Manley's hand shook as she held the video camera.

Rebecca wrote songs and poems about God and a friend who recently died from overdosing on sleeping pills.

from St. Petersburg Times: Teens who died in crash had just started dating

In December 2005, he [Jay Meek] was invited by the nation's poet laureate to recite and discuss his poetry at the National Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Among his many honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize and a Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship.

Meek is the author of eight books of poetry, and other works.

from Star Tribune: Jay Meek, poetry professor at University of N. Dakota

[Keshav Tanaji Meshram] was suffering from lung cancer. With his death, a prolific literary career of a man (he had written about 40 books), who always maintained balance while voicing the pain, revolt and introspection of the plight of dalits, has also come to an end.

from Merinews: Keshav Meshram, great dalit poet and novelist, passes away in Mumbai

[Frances L.] Ramlo worked as a nurse at the Spring Grove Hospital and also provided care for patients in their homes. She loved to write and was an avid journalist, composed poetry and documented family history.

from Post-Bulletin: Frances L. Ramlo--Spring Grove

"Desert of the Heart [by Jane Rule]--coming as it did just before the late 60s women's movement--and containing as it did two lovers who were women--made Jane and Helen [Sonthoff] very famous in those circles," commented Margaret Atwood. "Her novels were never tracts, however. What interested her was character, in all its forms. The human-ness of human beings. The richness and unpredictability of life."

from The Globe and Mail: Jane Rule, 76

Pamela Uschuk, [Maxwell] Silver's creative writing professor, said her students used Monday's class to remember Max, telling stories, laughing, even throwing a cell-phone across the room, breaking it.

"We did whatever we could do," Uschuk said.

Toward the end of the program, Uschuk read a poem of Max's, and then an elegy of her own.

from The Durango Herald: Humility, kindness, and charisma: Student remembered

2007-11-27T19:06:00.000-05:00

News at Eleven

A Chinese student studying in the U.S. was arrested in China on November 12 for possession of a poem collection about the June 4 Tiananmen Square Massacre.

The student, Wu Qiang, was on a trip to Jilin Province in North-eastern China to visit his parents.

from Epoch Times: Returning Chinese Student Arrested for Political Poems

The 45-year-old [Taslima Nasrin] was taken to a safe house in Rajasthan for a night only to be then moved to a government apartment in New Delhi, guarded by police.

In brief telephone interviews with Indian journalists, Nasrin [or Nasreen] said she just wanted "to head back home as soon as possible". She added: "I have no place to go. India is my home and I would like to keep living in this country until I die."

from The Guardian: Bangladeshi writer goes into hiding

"You just said in the hearing that your mother brought you from Taiwan to the free world of the United States and created the conditions for your success. So you, as good a person as you are, why did you think that if Shi Tao was also an outstanding person you instead helped the evil laws that threw him into hell?" Gao [Qinsheng, Shi Tao's mother,] asked [Yahoo chief executive officer Jerry] Yang.

from Asia Times: Yahoo's apologies won't free dissidents

My verse is a sort of tribute to her [Samina Malik], in a way--it's a long time since we've banged someone up for writing a poem or two. The Americans tried to convict Ezra Pound and we incarcerated Oscar Wilde, of course. But in both of those cases it was for stuff they did in their spare time, when they weren't writing poetry, i.e. treason and sodomising men respectively.

from The Spectator: Free speech and the 'lyrical terrorist'

To his credit, [Charles] Bukowski seems to have recognized that; "this then/will be my destiny," he writes in "The Poetry Reading," originally published in the 1972 collection "Mockingbird Wish Me Luck":

scrabbling for pennies in dark tiny halls
reading poems I have long since become tired
of.
and I used to think
that men who drove buses
or cleaned out latrines
or murdered men in alleys were
fools.

So why, then--in L.A., anyway--does he remain a sacred cow?

from Los Angeles Times: 'The Pleasures of the Damned' by Charles Bukowski

[David] Solway brings into stark reality harsh truths that we must recognize, that terror and anti-Semitism are intimately linked as they have been before; that our very civilization is under prolonged attack; and that, for too many years, we have evaded the truth, craving ". . . asylum in conciliation, sophistry, and equivocation." David Solway reminds us of a primordial lesson: the Jews are the canaries in the mineshaft of history.

from The Suburban: Of Poetry and Power

Another quality which the Old Irish poet shares with his Japanese counterpart is a quality we might call "this worldness"--both are as alert as hunters to their physical surroundings--and yet there is also a strong sense of another world within this "this worldness", one to which poetic expression promises access.

from The Guardian: The pathos of things

"I remember starting [the collection]," [W.S.] Merwin says. "The first one of them was 'To the Unlikely Event,' and it came from being on an airplane for the umpteenth time listening to the speaker say, 'In the unlikely event of a water landing,' and all that airline lingo that they go into, which is a deformation of the English language, and I thought, 'In the unlikely event, what do they mean in the unlikely event?'

from Metroactive: Present in Company: Translator and poet W.S. Merwin muses on the importance of nothing

I have met a first-rate American poetess. She really is good. Certainly one of the best female poets I ever read, and a damned sight better than the run of good male. Her main enthusiasm at present is me, and she thinks my verses are as good as I think they are and has accordingly and efficiently dispatched about twenty five to various immensely paying American Mags. So. She has published stories and poems in some of the top American journals.

[--Ted Hughes]

from The Age: Love, Ted

[Ted Hughes] essay “Superstitions�? (in Winter Pollen, 1994) mounts a concessive defence of astrology: “To an outsider, astrology is a procession of puerile absurdities. A Babel of gibberish�?. It has no way of shedding its mistakes as science does. Yet, reviewing Louis MacNeice’s Astrology, Hughes offers up Evangeline Adams as testable data, showing that astrology works, whether as magic or as a science.

from The Times Literary Supplement: Ted Hughes untamed

Too much study of the Bible is either completely dismissive of it, or excessively reverential. It doesn't allow for creative, imaginative engagement with it, recognising its limitations and delighting in it as a resource through which to stimulate understanding, rather than a book of moral precepts. Blake is as indignant as anyone about those elements in the Bible which have been used to condone injustice, oppression and preoccupation with tradition.

from The Guardian: Comment is free: Face to faith

Great Regulars

Elizabeth Samet: As "The Iliad" shows warriors reveling in the battlefield, it also shows a warrior, like Hector, realizing the costs of war, realizing in the scene when he takes leave of his wife and son, realizing what he has to leave behind. And I think it's necessary for soldiers to realize both the rewards and the costs of their profession.

from Jeffrey Brown: PBS: Newshour:

"I'm not in the least bit penitent," says dovegreyreader. "I scribble and I'm proud of it and to my knowledge no one has died as a result ... Nothing sacred about my books; they are living and working extensions of my mind which, as I get older, is feeling slightly more full to overflowing . . . To get a book that has someone else's marginalia is even more special.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: From the blogs

A poem is a work of the imagination, and the self you create on the page isn't the same person who washes the dishes and goes to the grocery store and tries to figure out how to fix the computer. It's a deeper self, or maybe a self you can't actually access in your daily life.

Or maybe it's a self you don't, or can't, show to anyone in your daily life. It's a part of you, but not the factual part, if that makes any sense.

[--Kim Addonizio]

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Interview: Author Kim Addonizio is fearless in verse and prose

Once a single forgery from their garden workshop had been detected (by means of a cuneiform spelling mistake), it became possible to identify the atelier.

Generally speaking, we are susceptible to forgeries, ready to be hoodwinked, when the forger has understood and devised what it is we would most like to own.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Fakes and counterfeits

[Ha] Jin's descriptions of Nan's journey back to the page are amusing, with enough veiled references to well-known poets and writers to keep a literary sleuth busy. The book ends with an epilogue made up of Nan's poems, which refer to moments you'll recognize in the book. This, too, is clever.

But the truest weave of this book needs no decoding.

from John Freeman: Philadelphia Inquirer: A heartbreaking tale of newcomers to U.S.

One might point out that nature is not the perfect model this speaker seems to believe it is. The speaker has no way of knowing if the birds are really always so cheerful, and why should they be? They surely suffer greatly trying to procure their daily sustenance, building nests for their babies, whom they then must teach to be independent.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: 'Patience Taught By Nature'

He tries to convince her that by remaining in bed with him, she is saving time instead of wasting it, because he is sure that she "had rather lie in bed and kiss/Than anything."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Wilbur's 'A Late Aubade'

If you listen you can hear it roaring inside her [Natalie Babbitt's] sentences, as if you were holding a shell to your ear: "The edges of the roads are lost now in drifts of sand, and the grass, thinner, like the trees, is rough and tall, rising, kneeling, rising, kneeling, as the breeze combs by."

Set in an unspecified bygone era of buggies and lanterns but free of fancified old-timey verbiage, this book is a little gem--something to read in one evening, tucked up in bed.

from Katie Haegele: The Philadelphia Inquirer: Young Adult Reader: A girl, a grandmother, a cottage, and the music of the sea

Poem: "Coats" by Jane Kenyon , from Constance.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of November 26, 2007

Great cultural shifts are always like this. Medici Florence saw a Renaissance occur amidst wars with the papacy and the other city-states. Shakespeare's was an age of theater and global exploration but also conflict with France and Spain as well as civil strife. In 1950s Paris, Sartre and Beauvoir and Camus reinvented literature and philosophy while France struggled to extricate itself from Algeria and Indo-China.

from David Kirby: South Florida Sun-Sentinel: Forty is not just an age, it's part of history

You've surely heard it said that the old ought to move over to make room for the young. But in the best of all possible worlds, people who love their work should be able to do it as long as they wish. Those forced to retire, well, they're a sorry lot. Here the Chicago poet, Deborah Cummins, shows a man trying to adjust to life after work.

At a Certain Age

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 139

[Gloria Vando] regales her readers with dramatic stories set in Sarajevo, Vietnam, Korea, San Juan, New York, and Kansas City. She personalizes political comment by adding emotional reactions to factual events. She also tells her own larger-than-life stories in well wrought verse.

"Orphans" is one of these stories.

from Denise Low: Ad Astra Poetry Project: Gloria Vando (1936 - )

For years, Ms. [Amy] Beckwith thought the letter might be important, but she put off doing anything about it until she happened to be listening to the audio version of Ms. [Hermione] Lee's biography of Wharton, published earlier this year by Alfred A. Knopf. "I got to the part where she says that Lily's death was 'probably an accident,' and I thought, 'Well, let's not be so sure about that,'" Ms. Beckwith said. "That was what prompted me."

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Wharton Letter Reopens a Mystery

Ilan Stavans has edited a new, bilingual selection of Neruda, as translated into English over the years by many hands. Among the poems that have influenced poets all over the world is "Tonight I Can Write," published when Neruda was in his 20s. The graceful, penetrating translation is by W. S. Merwin:

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

[Kathleen] Halme conjures such spirits as Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore, but she speaks for herself.

"The mind wants more/than an urgency of images, words/furred and folded up like bats/hanging starched and knee-locked in the ward," Halme writes. Then she gives the head its due without shortchanging the heart.

from B.T. Shaw: The Oregonian: Four poets are Oregon finalists

In some communities, people keep doubling the number of lamps every day from the day of Deepavali till Karthigai Deepam and thus the burning lamps present an enchanting spectacle during the night.

One of the earliest references to the festival can be seen in the Ahananuru, a book of poems, which dates back to the Sangam Age (200 B.C. to 300 A.D.).

from V Sundaram: News Today: Karthigai Deepam or Kartik Purnima

The parents of the boy in question have alleged that the 150-year-old Doveton Corrie Group of Educational Institutions punished their son Kaushik Ram by asking him to stand in the centre of the playground for more than an hour for coming to school with mehendi on his hands, besides suspending him and imposing the fine on him.

from V Sundaram: News Today: 'Paganish', 'Heathenish' Indian Christianity-I

[Joanna Martin] is the independent producer of The Poetry Box on Community TV, and a winner of the Mary Lönnberg Smith Poetry Award. She is a mother of two and has been a nurse at Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz for 22 years, 11 years in Cardiac Care.

Middle-Aged Dating in Santa Cruz County

from Good Times Weekly: Poetry Corner: Poetry by Joanna Martin

Missing Things by Vernon Scannell

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Missing Things by Vernon Scannell

The New Monastics
by Dennis Brutus

from MR Zine: "The New Monastics"

Alba Red
by Richard Kenney

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Alba Red

Lorca
by Gerald Stern

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Lorca

Subject, Verb, Object
by James Richardson

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Subject, Verb, Object

By Austin Tally

The Dentist

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Austin Tally]

By Ryan Fisher, Rachel Henry, Stephanie Choe, Matt Bergan, Robert Stehm, Alison Brennan, Frank Brennan and Alexa Aulicino By Alana Pecchioli, Audrey Bishop, Eddie Runquist, Sarah Farkas, Morgan Kennedy, Sophia Riviello, Jackson Blanchard and Joey Cody

Cinnaminson Project Challenge 3A

Inspired by the quote "For food and for the roof above us/And light and warmth and those who love us, we give thanks," third graders in Cinnaminson's gifted program contributed stanzas to the following Thanksgiving group poems. They attend Rush Intermediate School. Once a month, they spend a "challenge" day with teacher Elaine Mendelow at the Memorial School.

Giving Thanks

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Memorial School students]

[by Judy Curtis]
Poem: In Dreams

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: In Dreams

[by Isabel Grasso]
Poem: Sturgeon

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Sturgeon

Writers often talk about "showing, not telling" in their work, creating images and ideas powerful enough not to need further explanations. Here, Andrew Forster evokes the endlessly subtle American poet Elizabeth Bishop, queen of "show, not tell", but the poem is also about what writers, and readers, search for.

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week: Elizabeth Bishop at Outer Banks

"Twenty-First Century Exhibit"
By Tomás Q. Morin

from Slate: "Twenty-First Century Exhibit" --By Tomás Q. Morin

An interest in poetry now developed alongside his boxing and drinking, and [Vernon] Scannell was eventually able to live as a freelancer. His prose account of his placement in the 1970s as Arts Council "Resident Poet" in the "new" village of Berinsfield, Oxfordshire, is as appalling in its way as any of his war stories.

Vernon Scannell was still writing poems in the last weeks of his illness. The TLS published "Views and Distances" on January 8, 1999.

Views and Distances

from Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: Views and Distances

Poetic Obituaries

Besides being a Master Gardener and avid ice fisherman, he [Bill Cox] also loved learning, music, poetry, visiting and spending time with his family.

Schafer said he also enjoyed the little things in life, like watching and listening to the birds.

County Administrator Brian Bensen said Cox was a true gentleman who cared about preserving heritage.

from Star News: Community giver passes away

Candace Richardson, 54, who supplied horses and buggies to area parades and events, and her son Shane Eichthaler, 15, a prize-winning cowboy poet, were fatally injured when their 1991 Volvo and a sport utility vehicle collided about 10:30 a.m. on U.S. 380.

from Star-Telegram: Woman, son killed in wreck near Decatur

Known for his booming voice, stern and imposing physical presence and sometimes irascible temper, Fernan Gomez appeared in more than 200 films, directed another 20 and wrote novels, plays and poetry.

from PRAVDA.Ru: Spaniards pay respects to Spanish actor Fernan Gomez

[Keith Hunt] enjoyed and lettered in all sports, especially excelling in baseball and boxing. His favorite class was speech with Mrs. Evans. He loved poetry and reciting for school and community programs.

from Idaho Mountain Express and Guide: Keith Hunt

Kate Mehigan, above, who wrote a book about her battle with cancer to give strength to other young sufferers, has died, aged 14.

My Story, about her fight against the disease, so impressed the children's cancer charity CLIC Sargent that it invited her to meet its patron, Cherie Blair, at her 50th birthday party in 2004.

from The Times: Girl who wrote inspirational book about fight with cancer dies at 14

In "Beirut Seizures," [Hassib] Mroue captured the horrors of the Lebanese Civil War, the Israeli invasion and the human cost of such wide-scale violence. He never spared his readers the truth, and he didn't mask brutal realities with palatable images. His depiction of violence in Lebanon was visceral, and his ability to paint a landscape of horror and loss was profound.

from The Daily Star: Coming full circle: insight into the work of Hassib Mroue

[R] Nirmala, a native of Jog in Shimoga, was a lecturer. She received Karnataka Sahitya Academy award in 1997 for her Chalmere Luna, a collection of essays. She has also penned Pachchepairu and Uriva Olevale Munde (collection of poems).

from Newindpress.com: Writer Nirmala passes away

[Milo] Radulovich retired in 1994. Twice a widower, he enjoyed writing and translating poetry and was active in the Serbian church in Jackson.

He also was clearly pleased when "Good Night, and Good Luck" thrust his case back into the spotlight.

"It's been a very valuable experience for me," Radulovich said. "There is a kind of resonant note to the case. Americans have an inherent feeling for fairness."

from The Record: Radulovich, who had role in fall of McCarthy, dies

This rough diamond of a man [Vernon Scannell] would recite Marvell's To His Coy Mistress when close to tears (from his memoirs I can perhaps tell why). If only we had known that he also wrote the stuff, wrote of a life without direction which, none the less, "Ran like a fuse/And brought me to you/And love's bright, soundless detonation".

Keats, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Hardy, cascaded from the walls.

from The Guardian: Created on a canvas of needless pain: a poet who inspired the underbelly
also The Times: Vernon Scannell

2007-11-20T20:10:00.000-05:00

News at Eleven

In 1943, when the sisters were 17 and 20 years old, they were sent to Nazi forced labor camps--first, Skarzysko-Kamienna and then HASAG-Buchenwald--where they wrote these poems, now translated into English by the poet Fanny Howe and collected in a volume entitled A Wall of Two: Poems of Resistance and Suffering from Krakow to Buchenwald and Beyond.

from Nextbook: Four Poems from A Wall of Two

Dear Noguchi,

I am profoundly surprised by the letter that you have written to me: neither its temper nor its contents harmonise with the spirit of Japan which I learnt to admire in your writings and came to love through my personal contacts with you. It is sad to think that the passion of collective militarism may on occasion helplessly overwhelm even the creative artist, that genuine intellectual power should be led to offer its dignity and truth to be sacrificed at the shrine of the dark gods of war.

from Japan Focus: Seduced by Nationalism: Yone Noguchi's 'Terrible Mistake'. Debating the China-Japan War With Tagore

'We got to Vienna, and in the station I bought a copy of The Times and thought Auden would like that. And he looked at the front page and he called out, "Chester! Chester!" and Chester came out of the kitchen. And Auden said, "Joe Orton's been murdered by his boyfriend!"?' [James] Fenton chuckles. 'And what was really impressive to me was that I'd read that story. But the story didn't include the word "murder" and it didn't contain the word "boyfriend". But it was completely clear to him.'

from Telegraph: James Fenton: 21st century renaissance man

[Charles Simic] went home and scratched out a few verses. He knew immediately they were terrible, but even the terrible ones worked on girls (in a 1998 interview with the Cortland Review, Simic recalled trembling "at the memory of a certain Linda listening breathlessly to my doggerel on her front steps"), and he found exhilaration in the act of writing.

from Wednesday Journal: Simply Simic

"Robert Hass' poetry is richly intelligent and keenly felt in the way it sees and hears the world around us. We come away from his poems with a fresh perception of our surroundings, and with a renewed conviction that this fragile world of ours is deeply worthy of our care." [--Tony Cascardi]

from UC Berkeley News: Robert Hass wins 2007 National Book Award for his latest poetry

Matthew [Sweeney] says he wrote 'Cows on the Beach' when "I was gathering momentum for the first of my children's books that Faber did,'The Flying Spring Onion' in 1992. I was home in Ballyliffen and I went down to Pollan Strand one day and it was empty except for two cows that had broken out of a field and were strolling down the beach.

from Derry Journal: Ballyliffen poem on 11 plus

In those early days it was the province only of scholars who preoccupied themselves with questions such as whether the manuscript was the product of two different scribes transcribing an earlier original.

They engaged in close study of its measure and meter, its heavy use of poetic 'kennings'--evocative euphemisms describing the sea as the "whale-road" and so forth--and its preoccupation with Anglo-Saxon alliteration. They were denizens of dusty diphthongs. Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagumpeodcyninga prym gefrunonhu oa æpelingas ellen fremedon.

from Irish Independent: Screen saxon violence

With few exceptions, serious poets stopped writing directly to or about God.

Enter Mark Jarman, Centennial Professor of English at Vanderbilt and the author of nine books of poetry, including the recently released Epistles, a collection of 30 prose poems based loosely on the epistles of St. Paul.

from Nashville Scene: A Poetry of Body and Soul

In another, he [John Trudell] spoke of a "yellow ribbon around my brain."

Trudell didn't apologize for the lack of sunshine and light in his words as he described a government and society he said mines the humanness from individuals and leaves behind the toxic waste of fear, doubt and insecurity.

"We're chasing chaos," he said.

The way out, he said, is not violence.

from The East Oregonian: Poet, activist shares his unique slant

Reached by cell phone in Caracas, Venezuela, [Amiri] Baraka said he was outraged by the court's decision, calling it further evidence of a right-wing agenda in government.

"I'm a citizen. How can I not have a claim to First Amendment rights? I thought that was guaranteed by the Bill of Rights," said Baraka, who was at an international book fair to give a speech titled "Is Revolution Possible in the United States?"

from The Star-Ledger: U.S. justices refuse Baraka's case over loss of post

I think I might be in trouble. Now that Samina Malik, the self-styled "lyrical terrorist", has been convicted for the possession of "records likely to be used for terrorism", I'm expecting a raid. When the police come to my house, they'll find a shelf full of books glorifying terrorism.

from The Guardian: Terror stricken
also The Times: Think no evil? Are you serious?
also Clattery MacHinery on Poetry: World Samina Malik Day December 6th

Great Regulars

Stuart is in no mood to answer such questions. "Just get the books," he says, with an imperious wave of his claw. And so you retreat to your library or, rather, to a large advisory panel consisting of the brilliant, the gifted, the great, the good and me. You keep the brief simple: five books to explain Britain to an alien. What do you get?

from Bryan Appleyard: The Times: Is this really what we are?

I was shocked and fascinated to learn how "green" the Nazis were and what far-reaching plans they had for controlling the genetic destiny of the entire planet. [--Diane Ackerman]

from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: Diane Ackerman in Portland

I saw him seven months ago on a cold, rainy weekday in Provincetown, and besides the fact that he did not stand and kept a throw over his lap, he seemed sharp and well. He warmed to talking quickly, his raspy voice ranging over all the old battles (and some new ones) with a self-retrospective quality that was weirdly charming. [--John Freeman on Norman Mailer]

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: From the blogs

There's something regenerative in the act of boarding a train in one place and disembarking in another, without having actively engaged in the process at any juncture; it transports, in both senses of the word. Perhaps Larkin has it best at the end of The Whitsun Weddings when, the journey "nearly done", he reflects on "all the power/That being changed can give".

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Poetry's railway lines

"What some people would like to see as a film of Beowulf is an empty stage, onto which an elderly English professor walks," he says. "He proceeds to read the entire poem, in as best an Old English accent as he can muster--and then walks off."

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Horrors or huzzahs? Beowulf gets the Hollywood treatment

Anyone who has any great interest in poetry will agree that we need a complete edition of the works of TS Eliot. Me, I can't wait. The admirable Auden edition, to which a new volume of the collected prose is just about to be added, keeps moving forward.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: The need to complete

The speaker has been implying all along that his own soul is this "infinitely gentle/Infinitely suffering thing," which is being stifled by all the ugliness in his environment. All he can do is frame the ugliness into images that may report his ultimate understanding, which is superior to others: "You had such a vision of the street/As the street hardly understands."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Eliot's 'Preludes'

But then the speaker says to the sonnet: no dear sonnet, you need not change chameleon-like, you have my heart because you belong to me, and my skill has made you truthful and valuable, and you will reflect well on me through the skill I have employed to create you.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 96

The vines are so large and tangled that they remind the speaker of "Nineveh's prophet" over whom a gourd grew to protect from the sun. This prophet allusion is to Jonah, who was sent by God to Nineveh to warn the people that if they did not correct their evil ways, their city would be destroyed.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Whittier's 'The Pumpkin'

Last month, Radiohead released its new album, In Rainbows (www.inrainbows.com), as a download and asked people to pay whatever they wanted for it. A few weeks later hip-hop artist Saul Williams did more or less the same thing with The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust, the album he produced without a record company. Visitors to the Web site (www.niggytardust.com) can pay either $5 or nothing.

from Katie Haegele: The Philadelphia Inquirer: Why creative people are putting their work free on the Net

For a moment, it could be a land where life is about to begin, but then she tells us that "here there was no sea,/here there could be no dawn." So any hope of life to come is removed; this place is born of the loss of her father and her mother's murderous betrayal.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Life before my father's murder

Poem: "When I Am Old" by Ray Nargis, from Almost Tomorrow.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of November 19, 2007

Acorns and wind are familiar images to Midwestern readers, and here these natural forces suggest wholeness. The last two lines are the sonnet's couplet, with the surprising final chord--acceptance of "luck." The mother empowers her orphaned (or fatherless) daughter by framing her within a larger cosmos.

Orphans

from Denise Low: Ad Astra Poetry Project: Gloria Vando (1936 - )

Although I'm concentrating on animals as poetic symbols, I don't mean to suggest they are in any way superior to other types of symbols. They are simply the most obvious, and the best suited for use as illustrations.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Animals are some of poetry's most indelible symbols

As is so often the case in [Stephen] King, the horror without is merely a manifestation of the evil within--in this case, as it turns out, paranoia and religious extremism--but it's horror nonetheless. The mist turns out to conceal, among other things, giant bugs and tentacled creatures.

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: A Foggy Reunion With Horror's Master

As [David] Moody says [of Ezra Pound]: "He had called for slaughter in a war without truce, meaning it metaphorically. The real thing seemed to him the final stupidity of the world he had wanted to destroy, a mindless murdering contest between detestable 'teutonic atavism' and 'unsatisfactory Democracy'."

from Andrew Motion: The Guardian: Waging war on the sublime

A 29-year-old leading monk in the recent demonstrations against the Burmese military regime, U Gambira, has been charged with treason by the junta, according to his family. The punishment for high treason in Burma is a life sentence or death. U Gambira was arrested from a hiding place in Kyaukse, central Burma, in early November. His mother, Daw Yay, spoke to RFA's Burmese service, and read a poem she composed:

In Mother's Heart

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Monks' Leader Detained: A Mother's Lament

The ceremonious gathering to eat sumptuous food is a basic ritual, involving memory and family or communal ties. The holiday of Thanksgiving in that sense is primal, as well as American. Mark Strand's New Selected Poems includes an evocation of food's deep meanings, appropriate to the holiday, though the dish is not turkey:

Pot Roast

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

[Susan Gillis:] Does food in my poems stand for that larger idea of nourishment? It's hard to resist supposing so. But I haven't consciously meant to lean on it as symbol or metaphor in this way. It's just that there tends to be food around when important moments occur.

When I'm writing well I often forget to eat.

from CBC: Words at Large: Poet of the Month: Susan Gillis

Country Station by Fleur Adcock

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Country Station by Fleur Adcock

In her new poems, Tina Chang steps from the terrain of history and loss navigated in her gorgeous first collection, Half-Lit Houses, toward the various places where one can sense the weight and the tug of public and private danger. Here, speakers move with quicksilver fluidity between the surreal or imagined and the grave realities of the worlds that contain them. --Tracy K. Smith

Strange Theater

from Guernica: Poetry: Three Poems [by Tina Chang]

Terrance Hayes is constantly pushing toward new possibilities for private inquiry and new structures against which to ballast his buoyant and boundless sense of language. These poems marry swank and swagger to what I like to think of as a 21st Century gravitas. --Tracy K. Smith

God is an American

from Guernica: Poetry: Three Poems [by Terrance Hayes]

Aaron Smith is an expert at locating the spaces within spaces. In these three poems, he zeroes in on the places where doubt and possibility collide and unsettle our beliefs. They are graceful, full of humility and hard fact, and they aren't afraid of making you laugh to yourself, or better--at yourself. --Tracy K. Smith

Mailbox Blue (Ars Poetica)

from Guernica: Poetry: Three Poems [by Aaron Smith]

Kyle Booten, the youngest writer in the group, is an undergraduate student of creative writing whose poems dwell in imaginative spaces on the far side of history. I'm dazzled by his ability to balance arresting beauty and lyrical grace with a mischievous wit that moves quietly and steadily throughout his poems. --Tracy K. Smith

Country Parson's Epitaph

from Guernica: Poetry: Two Poems [by Kyle Booten]

David Semanki's terse and elegant poems study the weight of gestures, silence, hope and misgiving as they exist within his human subjects. His gaze is cinematic in its precision, spotlighting the emotional and narrative significance of small yet key details within the everyday world: street lamps, roadside weeds, chimes in a courtyard, the frost on a window. --Tracy K. Smith

Film Study: Transcendence

from Guernica: Poetry: Two Poems [by David Semanski]

Sean Singer's obsession with jazz has not subsided. On the contrary, his new poems continue to push and bend the jazz lexicon, racing toward the lives and voices that sit at its center. With sonic agility, these poems stride and comp and croon and whimper in service, not just of music, but of the aches and the dilemmas that make music necessary. In the two poems included here, he channels legendary musicians Charlie Parker and Hank Mobley. --Tracy K. Smith

"This one's my Cadillac. This one's my house."

from Guernica: Poetry: Two Poems [by Sean Singer]

By Jon Herbert Arkham

Who is this fellow?

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'November Ghost,' a poem by Jon Herbert Arkham

First Snow
by Louise Glück

from The New Yorker: Poetry: First Snow

Ordinary Life
by Adam Zagajewski

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Ordinary Life

[by Caitlin Dwyer]

Smoke, like a lazy son, meanders [. . .]

from The Oregonian: Poetry

By Lauren Davis

Burlington Township High School

I Am Not Alone

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Lauren Davis]

By Lauren Griffith

I Am Poem

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Lauren Griffith]

By Allison Mongan

Night Snow

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Allison Mongan]

[by Janice B. Mulcahey]
Cycle

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Cycle

[by Bob Smith]
The Silent Invaders

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: The Silent Invaders

It is easy to imagine that parts of the Scottish coastline haven't changed since longboats landed on the shore. But it is difficult to write a poem as fresh and spare as this one by Caithness writer Donald Mackay, as vivid as a film but hinting at much older storytelling.

The Vikings are Coming

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week

"Definition of Stranger"
By Idra Novey

from Slate: "Definition of Stranger" --By Idra Novey

The translator, publisher and occasional poet James Michie has died at the age of eighty. His versions of Catullus, of La Fontaine's Fables and Virgil's Eclogues are among the best in English; and for thirty years, as "Jaspistos", he set a literary competition in the Spectator. On January 7, 1983 the TLS published his seasonal poem "The Last Wasp".

The Last Wasp

from The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: The Last Wasp

Poetic Obituaries

Artistic, she [Mellie Marie Broussard] painted, wrote poems and was working on the story of her life.

She planned dinners and get-togethers, [daughter Mona] Hester said, for 15 and 20 family members, especially at holidays.

from SunHerald: Mother took care of others

[Alfred J. "Jack" Clegg] wrote poetry and novels, she said, and enjoyed horseback riding, skiing, snorkeling, scuba diving and travel. He had an eclectic art collection and collected classic cars, his wife said, and had raced his Ferrari at Pocono International Raceway and at Watkins Glen International.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Alfred 'Jack' Clegg, 68, longtime businessman

[Jane Cooper's] most recent book, "The Flashboat: Poems Collected and Reclaimed," was published in 2000.

"I have boxes more," she said of her many unfinished works in a 1996 interview with the Times Union of Albany, N.Y. "Some are quite publishable," she added, but they were not yet up to her standards. "I've always been a rather slow writer," she said.

from Los Angeles Times: Poet Jane Cooper dies at 83

Many of [Landis] Everson's early poems were about the past or the process of writing ("Sometimes you write poetry about poetry /you can't help yourself /your fingers stray down there where there is still feeling"). Recent poems, though, have a subtle air of prophecy:

First you have to end it
if you want to begin. rain before the clouds and the exit
is where the subway enters.

The judge who sentences us is smiling.
He knows a crime is uncommitted.
After his judgment.
I left. So our tears will flow to no subject or object.

from Poetry Foundation: In Memoriam: Landis Everson, 1926-2007

[Lorraine Getz] enjoyed collecting plates, gardening, walking, world traveling, corresponding with friends, visiting with relatives, canning and baking. Getz also loved poetry, playing the violin, piano or playing board games, especially Scrabble.

from Alexandria Echo Press: Pedestrian killed in Nokomis crash

Here, reprinted from the BBC website, is Gwyn Thomas's tribute to [Ray] Gravell:

from Sports Journalists' Association News: Wales' bards and poets pay tribute to Gravell

Jack Kerouac in a plaid shirt, on a stage, arms thrust wide, February 15, 1959.

"That was when he was reading from 'On the Road' at a poetry gig on East Second Street. This was the first time I shot him. One of my great photos." [--Fred McDarrah]

from The Villager: Fred McDarrah, 81, photographer of Beat Generation

Valerie [Grosvenor Myer] was well-known for her literary contributions, sense of humour and her flamboyant hats.

She had been a critic, poet, biographer, playwright, editor and teacher during an impressive career spanning more than 50 years.

from The Ely Standard: Novelist's final note to husband

In a review of contemporary poetry in The Sunday Telegraph in 2003 [Vernon] Scannnell observed: "Apart from the so-called "Performance Poets", whose burblings can rarely stand scrutiny on the page, there are two kinds of poet writing today: the first seeks the approval of the loftier academic criticism and ignores the needs and possible limitations of the common reader and the second, as Thomas Hardy put it, wishes 'to touch our hearts by showing his own and not to exhibit his learning, or his fine taste'."

from Telegraph: Vernon Scannell

Hungary was on Tuesday mourning the passing of Magda Szabo, one of the nation's most loved and respected authors who died on Monday night aged 90. "Not long ago millions in Hungary and abroad alike lionized her, and every one of them were amazed by the dignity and life force that shone out of here even in her 90s," Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany said in a statement.

from Earthtimes.org: Hungary mourns death of much-loved author Szabo

2007-11-13T20:11:00.000-05:00

News at Eleven

An elliptical stroke of genius.

And yet the more one reads these lines [by Ivor Gurney], the more other meanings assert themselves. Why "minds" and not "mind"? Is the object of 'War made' the hells, or the minds? Or both at once, the inner war-torn mind being Hell, anyway?

from The Guardian: Strange hells

They are staking a tremendous lot on this great advancing movement as if it succeeds the war won't go on for long. You have no idea what enormous issues depend on the next few days.

This will be my last letter most likely for some time as we won't get any time for writing this next week, but I will try & send Field post cards.

Well so long dears. Dear love John. [--John Kipling]

from The Sunday Times: My doomed dear boy John Kipling

And as literature approaches our own times we see an even more dramatic shift in how poetry and war combine. Where poets used to write about war, now they almost exclusively write against it. And more often than not, they write against it from a distance.

from Ottawa Citizen: Where have the war poets gone?

One of the most famous of the odes is the one that includes the line "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" ... "it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country."

I didn't understand at the time that that was a poem about a Roman war in Iraq! It was about the Romans putting down Parthian insurgents in an imperialist war, which seemed too good to be true. And it's about the difference between the bravery of soldiers and the kind of courage that doesn't get you into unnecessary wars.

from Berkeleyan: Robert Hass: Eight years of activism, writing, and reflection

Comparisons are odious. But the strange fact is that [Robert] Hass is best when, within his own range, he aspires to a Strand-like coolness, while [Mark] Strand, in his sublime recent work, has found (always at a slant) a way of sounding like a confidant. Both long ago outgrew the manners that made them famous; their recent poems feel like repudiations of early, too easy mastery.

from The New Yorker: Late and Soon

A new Hollywood film opening in theatres Friday employs special-effects wizardry to tell the story of Beowulf, but a just-released illustrated edition of the epic tale from a UW English professor comes much closer to showing us the world where the action takes place.

from University of Wisconsin-Madison News: Beowulf's world comes to life in new book
also University of Wisconsin-Madison News: Beowulf expert says Hollywood makeover may do justice to epic poem

"The poem was a way for me to try to answer why Susan Smith invented a black kidnapper," said [Cornelius] Eady, who is the director of the creative writing program at the University of Notre Dame.

The poet had no intention of turning his work into a stage play when he began writing the 2001 book of poetry.

from The Pensacola News Journal: Brutal Imagination

[Samina Malik] told the court that she had initially used the pseudonym Lyrical Babe and had changed it to Lyrical Terrorist. "It was only because it was a cool name. It doesn't mean I'm a terrorist. It is just a user name."

She added: "I feel ashamed. This was me showing off, trying to be something I wasn't, trying to get that popularity from male users."

from The Times: Poetic shop assistant guilty of building library of terror

Then they said, 'Since you have not cooperated with us, every time you go abroad you will have to undergo a special check.' After that they asked me if I [Shmuel Yerushalmi] would now write a poem about the Shin Bet, so I told them I would write whatever I like. A few days later I wrote the poem, 'Fascist Police State.'"

from Haaretz: Big brother is reading your poetry

"Now I have been tried three times for this. My family is frustrated as well. I want this to end. I will be sent to jail for between a year and a year and a half this time if they find me guilty."

Kyaw Thu Moe Myint will be tried for illegal publishing under section 17 of the Printers and Publishers Registration Act.

from Democratic Voice of Burma: Poet to be retried for illegal publishing

"A poem sometimes possesses rhyme or meter, though this is not necessary," [U.S. District Judge John F.] Keenan wrote. "A poem is typically free from the usual rules of grammar, punctuation and capitalization." In a footnote, he cited testimony that before "World War Two, a poem almost always had rhyme or meter." Now, "the popular definition of poem has become much more lenient."

from Asbury Park Press: Judge rules on what makes a poem

Great Regulars

Selected from "Ovid's Poetry of Exile," translated by David R. Slavitt, Johns Hopkins University Press

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: Poetry

Responding to the fact that a new volume of poetry, no matter how outstanding, is highly unlikely to receive more than a single print run, it [the Poetry Book Society] has launched a "Back in Print" list, dedicated to the reissuing of major collections from the UK's finest poets.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Another chance to read

Some journalists who've seen screenings have asked the writers why they changed the story. The Web is replete with postings from folks who've seen the trailers and reacted negatively to various elements, such as the sexuality of Angelina Jolie, who portrays Grendel's mother.

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Horrors or huzzahs? Beowulf gets the Hollywood treatment

Through the years, that would be my experience with [Norman] Mailer; to read him was to be alternately vexed and dazzled. I couldn't wait to read Harlot's Ghost, his 1991 novel of espionage — then couldn't abandon it fast enough. But 1997's The Gospel According to the Son was captivating, an imaginative first-person life of Christ.

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star: Norman Mailer: A blend of beauty and the boast

The website is unrestricted and you can print off any image. A battle was won before this was allowed to happen, and the result is that anyone--student, teacher or amateur--can get hold of a decent A4 reproduction of the drawing or print they are interested in, for personal use.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Rembrandt reaches the web

The artist and the poem can never completely merge, but they share the same "sweet hours" that they steal "from love's delight." The artist, during his creative periods, is sometimes deceived into thinking the poem will always complement his creativity, but then the dark times return again and again to enhance their separation.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 36

The "bums in doorways": "the white/slugs of their bodies gleaming through slits in their/suits of compressed silt, the stained/flippers of their hands, the underwater/fire of their eyes, ships gone down with the/lanterns lit."

These fine images deserve a better place to reside. The poem is unconvincing and seems to exist for the sole purpose of displaying a few well-wrought images.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Sharon Olds' 'The Victims'

The British, including the poet's father, have fought to hold their island and have risen to fight injustice, including the rise of Hitler's Nazi Germany, and even now fighting the unjust and dangerous ideology of Islamofascism in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But the speaker in this poem claims that these young soldiers are "Lives Lost in Vain," that is, the lives of these fallen heroes are considered wasted.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Two Children's Poems

Has "Dad" cracked under the pressure of being responsible for the upkeep of his family? Perhaps as a result of an oppressed existence, and in a moment of madness, he imagines the freedom of flying without even a microlight, forgetting about the inevitable crunch at the end. Or maybe oblivion appeals?

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Flight of fancy

Poem: "Letter of Recommendation" by Robert B. Shaw, from Solving for X.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of November 12, 2007

Here's a fine seasonal poem by Todd Davis, who lives and teaches in Pennsylvania. It's about the drowsiness that arrives with the early days of autumn. Can a bear imagine the future? Surely not as a human would, but perhaps it can sense that the world seems to be slowing toward slumber. Who knows?

Sleep

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 137

[Norman Mailer's] editor, Jason Epstein, said of this period, "There are two sides to Norman Mailer, and the good side has won."

In 1984 Mr. Mailer was elected president of PEN American Center, the writers' organization, and was the main force in bringing together writers from all over the world for a much publicized literary conference called "The Writer's Imagination and the Imagination of the State."

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Norman Mailer, Towering Writer With a Matching Ego, Dies at 84

[Yahoo! founder Jerry Yang] ". . . . repeated his apology. He said Shi Tao is a good person and I have let him down. How do you think I will feel if something happens to him during 10 years of labor camp, and I lose my son?

I said that people were more important than money, and that perhaps he believed that money was more important that a person's life? He said, yes, yes, and kept nodding and apologizing to me.

[--Gao Qinsheng]

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: RFA Unplugged: The cyberdissident's mother and the cyberdissident's wife

With thousands of others (including Mailer), I marched on the Pentagon in 1967. This was one of the first major anti-Vietnam marches, and I remember eagerly buying Armies of the Night (1968), Mailer's compelling account of that protest. I was, however, dismayed by the focus on himself: the Vietnam War was not about him.

from Jay Parini: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Mailer's talent was never as big as his ego

The distinguished fiction writer Margaret Atwood is also a terrific poet. She even writes memorable poems about being a poet, for example, "The poet has come back . . . ," a sharp reminder that poetry is not merely good thoughts well expressed:

The poet has come back to being a poet

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

Far from confessional surrender, this strategy allows the writer to construct and control her own authorial presence. Material normally open to speculative literary biography--[Jackie] Kay's adoption, her ethnicity, sexuality, even her own parenting--is rehearsed, and therefore to some degree determined, on the page.

from Fiona Sampson: The Guardian: The map on her face

Today, we speak of Latin as a "dead" language. If it is dead, [Nicholas] Ostler argues, the seeds of its demise may have lain within what gave it life: the very institutions (Rome, Christianity, scholastic learning, humanism) that disseminated it so wide and fierce.

But Ostler wonders aloud: Is it really dead?

from John Timpane: Philadelpia Inquirer: The epic, and relevant, story of the Latin language

No, [Harry] Mount says, "the really useful thing about Latin is . . . that it will help you to understand Latin, in which some of the most stirring prose and poetry ever was written."

from Frank Wilson: Philadelphia Inquirer: Seize the Latin, or fun with a dead language

[Norman Mailer's] death "is a huge loss," John Freeman, president of the National Book Critics Circle, said in a telephone interview last night.

"No one invented as many forms as he did, from new journalism . . . to a certain kind of war novel which, in some ways, didn't exist before he wrote it and changed the way people would write about war in fiction," Freeman said.

Mr. Mailer did nothing small.

from Frank Wilson, contributor: Michael D. Schaffer: Philadelphia Inquirer: An American literary giant

from Goodbye Tissues
by Deborah Meadows

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry: from Goodbye Tissues

by Carmen Gimenez Smith
Fortune: A Conversation

from The Brooklyn Rail: Poetry:Poetry by Carmen Gimenez Smith

Editor's note: This week we feature the work of Barbara Leon, an Aptos resident and a writer/editor in the natural health field. Her poetry has appeared in americas review, the Anthology of Monterey Bay Poets, Bathyspheric Review, BorderSenses, Calyx, Crab Orchard Review, In Our Own Words, Paterson Literary Review (Honorable Mention 2007 Allen Ginsberg Awards) and Porter Gulch Review (2004 Poet of the Year).

Elkhorn Slough in Springtime

from Good Times Weekly: Poetry by Barbara Leon

The Silent One by Ivor Gurney

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: The Silent One by Ivor Gurney

By H.C. Palmer

Turbine towers stalk,

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'Prairie Towers,' a poem by H.C. Palmer

Cloudberries
by Michael Longley

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Cloudberries

Visiting the Library in a Strange City
by Franz Wright

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Visiting the Library in a Strange City

By Madeline Bowne

Pleasant Valley School

Waiting for Autumn

from Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Madeline Bowne]

By Allison Cavanaugh

Each scene is slowly fading

from Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Allison Cavanaugh ]

By Megan McFarland

Are You Alone

from Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Megan McFarland]

Harmony
[by Judy Curtis]

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Harmony

Your Cup of Tea
[by SGP]

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Your Cup of Tea

Ippolit Konovaloff

Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology (1915) is an American classic, a series of poems in the voices of people buried in a fictional small town in the American Midwest. This poem's uneasy combination of war and peace will bring to mind other poems about war, both then and since.

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week:

"Candidate"
--By Frank Bidart

from Slate: "Candidate" --By Frank Bidart

Poetic Obituaries

[Jonathan] Chapman's mother sat with a picture Jonathan drew of his family when he was in kindergarten and talked about missing the poems her son wrote to her.

"I will never be the same. That was my baby," she said.

from WUSA 9: Family, Friends Grieving Over Loss Of Teens

Family was important to Sam [Grenz] and he enjoyed every opportunity to spend time together. He had incredible creativity and a particular talent for art, Poetry, and construction.

from KXMB: Samual J. Grenz

[James Michael Jones] also sang and wrote music, wrote poetry, drew and took photographs.

"He was real active in his church. He was a complex young man. He thought in an abstract manner you and I wouldn't understand," James Jones said. "It made sense when you had a discussion with him, you thought he was in left field. After you thought about it and pondered, he really had good points. He broke it down to the very simple parts of the discussion. It's hard to describe."

from The Dispatch: Shooting victim remembered for his generosity

This, in the end, is why he [Norman Mailer] chose the technique he did. "Once History inhabits a crazy house," he informs readers who might be puzzled by the choice, "egotism may be the last tool left to History."

There's more. Much more.

But as Dick Fontaine said: To see Norman Mailer clearly, you have to read "Armies" for yourself.

from The Washington Post: Army of One

[Susanne Steinem Patch] enjoyed collecting minerals and objets d'art, and making jewelry, much of which she donated to raise money for the FTC's day-care center. She also enjoyed memorizing and writing poetry and reading mysteries.

from The Washington Post: Susanne Steinem Patch, 82; Gem Expert

[Aloysius John Pereira] also wrote poems under the pen-names of Louie Pereir, Louiebaba, Bamnnalo Pilo.

He has won first prize for 8 consecutive years for his poems in "Raknno" Literary Competitions.

from Daijiworld: Mangalore: Well-known Konkani Poet 'Louie Pereir' is No More

[Paula Riker] published her light poetry about local dogs as "Going to the Dogs and Other Species" (Golden Quill Press) and took the Great Writers School correspondence course and studied writing with poet Lisa Grannel.

from The Villager: Paula Riker, 83, a woman of eclectic interests

Paul Roche, who died on October 30 aged 91, was a critically acclaimed poet and novelist, and translated Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Sappho and Plautus; he also conducted a 32-year relationship with the Bloomsbury painter, Duncan Grant.

Editions of Roche's works have sold in their hundreds of thousands, and are still used as standard texts in many schools and colleges in America and Europe

from Telegraph: Paul Roche

Father [Chad] Varah, who was said to be able to recite every poem he had ever heard, was more curious than concerned about death, because of his belief in reincarnation. His favorite three words of advice were intended to provide a sense of proportion: "It doesn't matter."

from The New York Times: Rev. Chad Varah, Anglican Priest Who Helped the Suicidal, Dies at 95

"The one line that sticks with me is 'the trees are melting black.' It was late fall, and the trees had no leaves. He saw how those limbs were etched against the sky, and he described them the way a poet would."

Though she gained fame through her son [Kanye West], becoming one of the higher-profile mothers in hip-hop, Ms. [Donda] West also was an academic and former chairwoman of the English Department at Chicago State University.

from Chicago Tribune: Kanye West's mom dies

2007-11-06T18:15:00.000-05:00

News at Eleven

During a recent ceremony at Assumption College, Mrs. [Gertrude] Halstead read one of her poems, "the hanging tree," which recalls her childhood memories of a massive tree on a hilltop at the side of a road in Germany where people had been hanged in the past for various wrongs.

Using her special "Halsteading" technique, she carefully spaces words so an image appears on a printed page of her works.

from Worcester Telegram & Gazette: City honors its poet laureate: Demons vanish as Halstead talent infuses poetry

On June 7, 1944, at the height of the deportation of Hungarian Jews, Szenes crossed the border into Hungary. She was caught almost immediately by the Hungarian police, and although tortured cruelly and repeatedly over the next several months, refused to divulge any information.

from IsraCast: Hannah Szenes (1921-1944)

[Nadia] Anjuman's work evokes "a great sorrow directly linked to her status as a woman and an Afghan," says Leili Anvar, a literature expert who has translated some of her poems into French.

Under the Taliban, girls could not go to school, women were barred from working and confined largely to their homes.

from AFP: Afghan woman poet Nadia Anjuman remembered two years on

Life as an ordinary person is a faraway bliss for her [Taslima Nasreen].

"It is more so because since the attack on me in Hyderabad in August. I have been confined to my house in Kolkata for three months and went out only three times. So coming to Taiwan is a relief for me," she said in an interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

from Digital Journal: Bangladeshi writer to fight for human rights despite fatwa

A huge row has broken out in Tamil Nadu over state Chief Minister and DMK strongman M Karunanidhi penning an ode in support of slain LTTE leader Thamilselvan. Predictably first off the block in taking on Karunanidhi is his chief rival DMK supremo J Jayalalithaa.

from Timesnow.tv: Jaya slams Karuna for Pro-LTTE poem

They resisted the rule of parents whom they considered disgraced by lives led in all too quiet desperation. They cried for youth, honesty, an unwritten future. Thus, [Yevgeny] Yevtushenko's discomfort in the present may stem from the fact that he, the most brightly burning of sons, now finds himself a father, forgotten by the young, his face creased from worry about how he will be judged by that ultimate arbiter--history.

I. "So youth asked if childhood would help,

and childhood smiled and promised it would."

from Bookslut: A Man of the '60s: Yevgeny Yevtushenko Parachutes into the 21st Century and Finds the Landing Rocky

Mr. [Wilfrid] Meynell recorded the visit [by Francis Thompson] thusly: "The door opened and a strange hand was thrust in. The door closed but Thompson had not entered. Again it opened, again it shut. At the third attempt a waif of a man came in. No such figure had been looked for; more ragged and unkempt than the average beggar, his feet without stockings, showing through his boots, his coat torn and no shirt."

He looked so thin and haggard that "he seemed in the last stage of physical collapse."

from National Catholic Reporter: A misfit poet of heaven

[Ted Hughes] attended committee meetings of angling associations. He did research. He spent money on river restoration. He sent a copy of The Poisoned Womb, a rather creaky polemic by John Elkington on the impacts of chemicals on human reproduction, to Margaret Thatcher. He even sat on a committee for the National Rivers Authority, when some of his readers might have preferred him to focus on the day job.

from The Guardian: Portrait of a poet as eco warrior

[Robert] Hass still appears skeptical of poetry like this. He admits to arguing from facts he doesn't possess. And his avidity for the light of "reason" flickers with sarcasm. This is loose language, but he gives it his best shot:

from Slate: When Poetry Meets Politics

Poet Richard Marggraf Turley has won the Keats-Shelley Prize for Elisions, his work on the subject of slavery

Elisions explores the contradictory attitudes towards slavery in the early 19th century. A boss describes his engines--but his language betrays the dark heart of his business.

from Telegraph: Elisions by Richard Marggraf Turley

Great Regulars

However, she [Frances Leviston] now finds herself pitched into competition with some of contemporary British poetry's leading lights. Edwin Morgan, Leviston's senior by over 60 years, is widely regarded as one of Scotland's greatest living poets, while Sean O'Brien's scooping of the 2007 Forward prize for his latest collection The Drowned Book makes him the only poet to have won the award three times.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: First collection vies with established names for TS Eliot prize

The Guardian First Book Award is unique among book prizes as it is open to all first-time authors and because of the input of readers' groups. The groups are based in seven Waterstone's stores across the country and their views are given voice in discussions on the seven-strong panel of judges by Waterstone's Stuart Broom.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: From Bangladesh to Baghdad: the Guardian book award

Roosting fruit bats flit from trees, loot last light, fly

from thunder's heat-charged columns to the sun-

spilled crimson of the lake's sheen.

[--Graham Mort]

Verbs pursue each other through the lines in a rush of assonance, braiding together a verse already pinned by the central half-rhyme of "trees", "heat" and "sheen"; creating the impression of an integrated universe while simultaneously miming the skittering coherence of the bats' flight.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Sex, death and foxes

[Archer Milton] Huntington himself wrote poems about Spain. He had a mission in life, and it was a big enough mission to prevent him from falling victim to a narrow obsession.

Every wall, every vitrine, every drawer of his museum is crammed with objects illustrating the history of glazed pottery, of decorated tiles, of Hispanic lustreware, of Roman mosaic, of textiles and so on.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Memories of Spain

[Lydia Davis'] "Television," for instance, begins with a series of riffs on why we watch the flickering screen. Each line manages to weave sociological and sensory insights:

We listen to the ads until we're exhausted, punished with lists:

they want us to buy so much, and we try, but we don't have a lot of money. Yet we can't help admiring the science of it all.

from John Freeman: The Philadelphia Inquiere: Varieties of Disturbances

The speaker then reasons why Lincoln would be distressed and unable to rest: he is thinking about the conditions of the world. He thinks about "men and kings." He stresses over the struggles of poor people and "sins of all the war-lords."

These worldly problems "He carries on his shawl-draped shoulders now/The bitterness, the folly and the pain." The figure paces the town at midnight because of the many worries that trouble the citizens.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: November Poet --Vachel Lindsay

The muse has given in to laziness perhaps, but even overzealousness could qualify as a "sensual fault" as well.

Whatever the fault is, it has prevented the speaker's talent from creating at the top of his ability, which he feels is a stain on his poetry and ultimately his reputation.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 35

[Garrison] Keillor has been tricked by Eliot's poem, and in Keillor's comment about the poem, two assertions demonstrate his misunderstanding: 1) "small, dark mopefest of a poem": This is a false assertion because the poem is too funny to be a "dark mopefest," plus it is really a longer poem than most lyrics, and 2) "old Pru worries about whether to eat a peach or roll up his trousers": This assertion is partially false also. While "old Pru" does ask if he dares "eat a peach," he does not question whether he will roll up his trousers.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Tricked by J. Alfred Prufrock

[Elizabeth] Gregory's inference of sexuality from these lines demonstrates the interpretive fallacy of "reading into" a poem something that is not there, and her assertion that "the boy's activities are unmistakeably (sic) sexual" strains reason. The "lexical choices" to which Gregory refers are, no doubt, the words "riding," "stiffness," "hung limp," and "launching out too soon."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Tricked by Robert Frost

The speaker approaches the dead enemy in his coffin, and instead of cursing him and taking joy in his death as the ordinary person would do, the speaker proceeds to "Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin." He kisses the face of the enemy.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Whitman's 'Reconciliation'

Every verb is chosen for its ability to propel us forward. "All of the sights of the hill and the plain/Fly as thick as driving rain" also brings to mind the manner in which rain hits the windows of a train, streaking horizontally as the train is driven forwards.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Track Record

Poem: "Gate C22" by Ellen Bass, from The Human Line.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of November 05, 2007

[Jonathan] Holden uses a passel of rich descriptive verbs, like "pirouette" and "stab," to describe reflexive movements of the birds and players. These contrast to hesitations--reflection and philosophy--in the poem. Instinct keeps us alive, even when in the dark of night.

Night Game

from Denise Low: Lawrence Journal-World: Ad Astra Poetry Project: Jonathan Holden (1941 - )

If you've seen the film "Il Postino," you probably remember the scene where the actor playing the part of Pablo Neruda explains the meaning of the term "metaphor" to his new friend, the postman. Pablo Neruda: "When you say ‘the sky weeps,' what do you mean?" Mario Ruoppolo (the postman): "That it's raining." Neruda: "That's a metaphor."

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Nothing like a good simile, metaphor

[Elizabeth D.] Samet describes a general, lecturing at West Point, who shows a slide with the headlines "My Lai," "Tigris Bridge," "Pat Tillman," "Haditha" and "Abu Ghraib." The point of his lecture--Samet describes him as "outraged"--is the responsibility of officers to speak out against negligence, abuse and criminal conduct: bound by their honor.

West Point--unlike many campuses where the English department has dwindled away from such notions--adheres to the idea that the general's project has some relation to the student of Samet's who reads Wallace Stevens's poem "The Idea of Order at Key West" while on active duty in the Iraqi desert.

from Robert Pinsky: The New York Times: The Things They Carried

[Reed Whittemore's] new prose memoir, by quoting entire poems, encloses what is in effect a "Selected Poems." Whittemore dips a word like "correct" into the cleansing, restorative medium of his understated wit, in "On the Death of Someone Close":

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

It's great to be back as Poetry Curator of Newspaper Tree with Sito Negron as editor. I already have some great poetry lined up for the coming issues, so get ready to rock. For our first installment, I have selected several pieces submitted by artists from throughout the United States, each of whom have a connection to la frontera. In honor of the recent visit to the beautiful Plaza Theater by legendary blues great Mr. Johnny Winter, here is a sampling of wintertime blues on the border. Long live the Blues!

from Donna Snyder: Newspaper Tree: Tumblewords Poetry: The Blues

The emphasis here is on developing a writing process that prioritises experience as a starting point for writing poetry, and foregrounds the materiality of language.

I want to show you how, in a poem, language can be drawn from the tangible world and turned in the imagination of the poet into artifice--a step away from experience without the loss of the trace of that primary reality.

from The Guardian: Poetry workshop: Eleanor Rees's workshop

Bread and Butter by Jo Roach

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Bread and Butter by Jo Roach

In this haunting poem, Cynthia Cruz channels a street-savvy child-speaker who wields language by turns agile and coy, by turns grim and cacophonic, to weave the various loose ends of her life into a single, fluid plea. --Tracy K. Smith

Cinderella

from Guernica: Poetry: Cinderella

By Mark Scheel

Tonight marks season's

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: "First Freeze," a poem by Mark Scheel

The Japanese Garden

by Jean Valentine

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Japanese Garden

The Panorama

by Yusef Komunyakaa

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Panorama

"Equinox"--which originally appeared in [Joy] Harjo's book "How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems" (W.W. Norton, 2002)--appears in the new anthology "We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon" (Interlink Books, edited by Kathy Engel and Kamal Boullata).

from The Oregonian: Poetry

By Samantha Nash

The Halloween Plan

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Samantha Nash]

The Glance

[by Chris Vaughan]

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: The Glance

The Way to Work

[by Ronald Tomanio]

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: The Way to Work

Jane Hirshfield is a US poet who reveals how the simplest things are the most important. Between Hallowe'en, All Souls Day and Bonfire night, there are plenty of chances to think about this witty, gentle, unsettling poem from her latest collection, After.

The Dead Do Not Want Us Dead

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week

"A Wedding at Cana, Lebanon, 2007"

By Tom Sleigh

from Slate: "A Wedding at Cana, Lebanon, 2007" --By Tom Sleigh

The best known of these pre-Remembrance poems is [Thomas] Hardy's "Song of the Soldiers", whose repeated phrase, "Men who march away" gave Ian Parsons the title for his anthology of poems of the First World War (1987). Hardy's poem was printed in the TLS of September 10, 1914.

Song of the Soldiers

from The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: Song of the Soldiers

Rodger Kamenetz

The Real

from Zeek: Three Poems by Rodger Kamenetz

Poetic Obituaries

[Robert] Goulet won a Grammy Award for best new artist of 1962.

He became a spokesman for the American Cancer Society after surviving prostate cancer, which was diagnosed in 1993.

In a 2006 poem on his Web site, Goulet mused on the thrill of first experiences: "I'll probably never be that young and green again, and I miss it."

from Bloomberg: Goulet, Dapper Singer, `Camelot' Star, Dead at Age 73 (Update1)

[Duncan] Grant was passionate about the history, geography and wildlife of the North. He pored over journals of early explorers such as Alexander Mackenzie and Benjamin Franklin. Then he'd take off in his plane and look for the places they'd been.

"He was passionate about these men and the challenges they'd faced. He could recite poetry, passages from Mackenzie's journal, Robert Service," said Cheryl [Grant].

from Northern News Service: Pilot and student of the North Duncan Grant dies at 86

The youngest of two children, Elizabeth [Greenhalgh] enjoyed art and photography and played the guitar, in addition to writing poetry, said Chariho Supt. Barry Ricci. She had expressed an interest in becoming a lawyer, but her mother said Elizabeth had most recently been interested in becoming an English teacher.

"She loved to write," she said.

from The Providence Journal: 2 Hopkinton teens die in car accident

[Christine J. Hogan] attended St. Jude Catholic Church and was a scholarly member of the International Thomas Merton Society. She was a published poet and playwright. Mrs. Hogan had served as a docent at Kenmore Plantation and as a volunteer at George Washington's Ferry Farm.

from The Free Lance-Star: Christine J. Hogan

[Margaret Legum's] granddaughter, Mariam Wheeldon, remembered Legum as an extraordinarily engaging person who was "concerned about economic justice and the poor".

Wheeldon said that Legum had a great love for poetry, so much so that she published an anthology titled Learning to Saunter earlier in 2007.

from Mail & Guardian: Journalist Margaret Legum passes away

In the balmy weather there, Mr. [Alann] Lewis wrote, published and produced six plays. Four of his works were performed or given staged readings. He also penned short stories and children's stories. He also held playwriting workshops from his home. He published his first book, a collection of poems, last year. His wealth was gone, but he managed to scrape together enough cash to live.

from The Washington Post: Alann Lewis; Vagabond Turned Playwright

Those contacts and travels served his children well when it came time for them to travel through Europe, [Samuel P.] Meyers' oldest son, Stephen Meyers, said.

He said that as important as his father's career was to him, after retirement his dad focused on introspection through the writing of poetry.

"It was a whole different side of him than was there in his professional life," he said.

from The Advocate: Noted LSU professor, researcher dies

WH Auden included two of his [James Michie's] poems--Park Concert and Arizona Nature Myth--in his published commonplace book, A Certain World (1970). He also held the highest opinion of Michie's verse translations.

"Horace has always been one of my favourite poets," Auden wrote, "and I have often toyed with the idea of translating him. After reading Michie's translation [of the Odes] however, I see that I must dismiss the idea. I do not expect to read a better one." Michie's version, first published in 1964, was several times reprinted by Penguin.

from Telegraph: James Michie

A poet, historian, gastronome, environmentalist and romantic, he [Eric C. Rolls] published more than 20 books, including a two-volume history of Chinese immigration, "Citizens " and "Sojourners ", "Celebration of the Senses" and "Australia: A Biography ".

"A Million Wild Acres", his 1981 history of the conquest--and destruction--of the Australian wilderness was his "masterpiece", said the historian Tom Griffiths.

"It was such an original voice and made such an impact. He was really a very significant Australian writer."

from The Sydney Morning Herald: Author Rolls dies aged 84

2007-10-30T20:11:00.000-04:00

News at Eleven

It is astonishing how many poets have written about them. Ogden Nash wrote: "Myself, I rather like the bat,/It's not a mouse, it's not a rat", and William Allingham: "Bat, bat, come under my hat,/And I'll give you a slice of bacon." But most of the poets here seem fascinated rather than really fond of them.

from The Times: On a Bat's Wing, edited by Michael Baron
also The Times: Extract from On a Bat's Wing, edited by Michael Baron

[Walt Whitman] called the first phrenology lecture he attended "the greatest conglomeration of pretension and absurdity it has ever been our lot to listen to. . . . We do not mean to assert that there is no truth whatsoever in phrenology, but we do say that its claims to confidence, as set forth by Mr. Fowler, are preposterous to the last degree." More than a decade later, however, that same Mr. Fowler, of the publishing house Fowler and Wells in Manhattan, became the sole distributor of the first edition of Leaves of Grass. Whitman couldn't find anyone else to publish his poems.

from Los Angeles Times: Book Excerpt: From Chapter 1 of 'Proust Was a Neuroscientist' by Jonah Lehrer

If [Ted] Hughes's question was how you use human language to minimise the humanising of nature, [John] Burnside's question is how you use human language to invent the language of the non-human. The narrator must be in some sense aware of, if not accustomed to, the rule of the tundra because he has just described it (that is, invented it in words that it doesn't speak).

from The Guardian: Masters of all they survey

Apple plum, carpet steak, seed clam, coloured wine, calm seen, cold cream, best shake, potato, potato and no no gold work with pet, a green seen is called bake and change sweet is bready, a little piece a little piece please.

from The Guardian: The odd couple

"I am generally thought of as a human paperweight," he [Paul Guest] proclaims to visitors in his windowless office at West Georgia University in Carrollton. "A doorstop. An impediment. A fire hazard."

Cue the irony, the sarcasm, the acerbic humor that underpins the stark, clear, sometimes opposing images in his poetry--work that today will earn him the prestigious $50,000 Whiting Prize, awarded to 10 American writers of exceptional promise.

from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Award-winning poet links art form to influences of daily life
also The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Notes for My Body Double

"In one sense, I feel justified in what I do--I'm supposed to come over here and stop this guy from shooting people with this thing," [Brian] Turner said.

"But I have a little boy walk up to me and say to me in English, 'Let go of my father! My father no bad man. Let free my father!' And when he looked at me, I guarantee he'll remember my face for the rest of his life.

from Times Argus: In poetry, war's grim words

"An Ordinary Day", a poem from Bells of Speech (Ambit, 2006) by Kurdish poet Nazand Begikhani has been selected and nominated for this year's UK Forward Book of Poetry prize.

from Kurdish Aspect: Kurdish Poet nominated for UK Forward Poetry Prize

But the 87-year-old poet remembers the electric shocks and brutal whippings that left his body covered in sores; the hunger that compelled him to eat grass sprouting between the stones of the prison patio; his crumpled mother, clinging to the shins of a prison guard, begging mercy for her bloodied and beaten son.

from The New York Times: Bill in Spanish Parliament Aims to End 'Amnesia' About Civil War Victims

Such a conversation might not take place elsewhere on the continent, but Mr. Simic points out some broader differences between American and European approaches to poetry. "In Europe poetry has always been a literary undertaking, it's really part of literature," Mr. Simic says. "If you write poetry in a serious way you are participating in a very long tradition, over a thousand years . . . they don't have, for example, the tradition of confessional poetry, they never had a Walt Whitman."

from The Wall Street Journal: The Immigrant 'Outsider' Is Now Poetry's Insider

As well as this, [Ciaran] Carson can approach the Táin from the north, as it were: where Kinsella's version seemed to tremble with the foreboding of internecine strife, as something threatening and partly alien, Carson's translation comes out of a long intimacy with the effects of conflict, and even with its untidy and conditional cessation.

Cú Chulainn is a fascinating monster.

from The Guardian: Courage's brutal core

"Like a bolt out of the blue, Freddy watched Lefty's first pitch come bouncing back to him, hissing sibilantly as it cut towards him in wild capers. A real 'grass-cutter,' he [Jack Kerouac] wrote in "Raw Rookie Nerves."

The novella ends with the rookie second baseman turning a triple play, knocking himself out in the process of winning the pennant.

"I think that was going a little too far," Kerouac later wrote of his romantic tale. "But in all seriousness, heroism is still my goal, and I don't care how childish that may be, it's it."

from Colorado Rockies News: Kerouac, baseball and Denver

Great Regulars

No nation has produced better essayists than France, none has produced better composers that the Germans, better painters than the Italians, nor better novelists than the Russians. America invented jazz and still masters the form and, though some may dissent, her record in film is unsurpassed. And the English? The English do poetry.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Liberal: Poetry and the English Imagination

And it is while on Dido's Lament that [Oliver] Sacks makes his greatest point (it underpins all he says), which is that music saves us. "And there is, finally, a deep and mysterious paradox here, for while such music makes one experience pain and grief more intensely, it brings solace and consolation at the same time."

from Bryan Appleyard: The Sunday Times: Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks

One weaver, according to the Met catalogue, could produce about one square yard of medium-quality tapestry in a month, but the rate would be slower for the really fine work. It follows that, for any large-scale commission, a considerable number of people would have to be employed.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Life's rich tapestries

As cultural literacy declined with each passing year, these skills at transporting readers become more important--something Updike was worrying about back in 1983. "The world craves book reviews far more heartily than it craves books," he lamented in his introduction to Hugging the Shore. "They excuse us from reading the books themselves."

from John Freeman: The Guardian: theblogbooks: Great review for a great reviewer

Apparently, the mother and the man who used to inhabit the bones had done something "cruel" to the mother's husband. The reader is never told exactly what the act was, but there are many hints that lead to the assumption that they committed adultery, and instead of killing her, the husband killed her lover, and they buried him in the cellar.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Frost's 'The Witch of Coös'

Of course, most people believe those consequences are positive and worth the effort, but according to this wise man, losing one's heart to another merely causes pain and sorrow: "'Tis paid with sighs a plenty/And sold for endless rue."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Housman's Sage Advice

In the first stanza, the speaker describes the melancholy that the human mind encounters in times of stress that causes one to act against one's better interests.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Kipling's 'Helen All Alone'

Sonnet 33 is highly metaphorical; it is, in fact, an extended metaphor. The sun is a metaphor for the artist's talent or muse, and the clouds represent the intermittent lulls in inspiration to create. Therefore the artist can realize that despite the lulls, the talent, like the sun, is always present, always the motivation that keeps the artist's love alive.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 33

But he is not so quick to forgive the bright star, because although the sun is drying his face, the speaker is still counting himself as being injured by the drenching: the "salve" is healing the "wound" but "cures not the disgrace."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 34

One problem here is that the speaker has set up the vast difference between his friend and his foe, yet in the end we wants readers to believe that if he had discussed his anger with the foe, the outcome would have been different, but how can that necessarily be? Because the foe is a foe, it is quite possible that if the speaker had expressed his anger, the foe's reaction might still have triggered his wrath to grow.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: William Blake's 'A Poison Tree'

[William] Wordsworth's obvious purpose is to support his notion that a pastoral life is pure, moral, and happy. He believed that living close to nature, living an uncomplicated, spiritual life devoted to honest labor was the ideal. His narrative suggests that if Luke had remained in the natural valley with his parents and continued to live the pastoral life, he would have retained his moral character and saved his parents' later years from grief.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Wordsworth's 'Michael'

Even the edition itself is pretty, hardbound and slender like a book of poems and illustrated with bold drawings in yellow, black and gray that capture the story's stark sentiments. This is one for the bookshelf, a book to be read and saved and rediscovered in adulthood, when it will be remembered as an early lesson in looking for the universe inside every small thing.

from Katie Haegele: The Philadelphia Inquirer: Young Adult Reader: 8-year-old learns about the world, through a cat's words

This is perhaps the last complete poem that Nicholas Heiney wrote before taking his own life at the age of 23 after a long battle with severe mental disturbance. It is from an extraordinary book of his poems, sea-logs and journals.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: The sound of silence

Poem: "Jet Lag" by Eve Robillard, from when gertrude married alice.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of October 29, 2007

What motivates us to keep moving forward through our lives, despite all the effort required to do so? Here, North Carolina poet Ruth Moose attributes human characteristics to an animal to speculate upon what that force might be.

The Crossing

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 135

[Harley Elliott] suggests all words can limit direct experience of reality. In this case, the monarch butterfly walks on his face, and "blinded by words," he fails to match its "shining light." He addresses his readers and asks us to join in his quandary about how to express relationship with nature. Elliott’s "hinged mosaic" description for butterfly wings here is one of my favorites.

Butterfly Master

from Denise Low: Ad Astra Poetry Project: Harley Elliott (1940 - )

In "Blessing," [Jo] McDougall creates a story with selected details. The Kansas setting is alluded to with the presence of wind, storm and sun. The small-town intimacy with neighbors is suggested by the narrator’s nosiness. How long was the narrator watching in order to see all these details, including hidden panties? The last line opens the scene to larger questions.

Blessing

from Denise Low: Economy of state’s landscape has influence on Kansas poet

In the beginning, at least, Ray [Raymond Carver] was both obliging and skittish. If I had said, "I think we should print this line upside down," he would have immediately said, "Yeah, yeah, that's a great idea." But then, even if I'd suggested just changing a comma, there would be a pause. I'd hear him take a drag on his cigarette and he'd say: "Oh, oh. Well, let's take another look at that."

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: I, ~~Editor~~ Author

Deploying those images, Robert Bridges (1844-1930), England's poet laureate during World War I, compares inner and outer weather: As reduced air pressure releases the tremendous, sometimes destructive energy of a storm, so, too, can the reduced pressures of custom or inhibition release tremendous, sometimes destructive human terrors, guilts and impulses:

Low Barometer

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

I am neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Gabr, nor Moslem. I am not of the East, nor the West, nor the land, nor the sea . . . My place is the Placeless, my trace is the Traceless.

Rumi, a poet and mystic of Persian culture, was born in what is today Afghanistan and died in what is now Turkey.

from René Wadlow's The Flutes of Dionysus: Newropeans Magazine: Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273)

On the morning of October 27th, [John] Calvin went to see [Michael] Severtus in his cell and told Servetus that he bore him no ill-will and reminded him of how in their early days in Paris, he had worked to convert Servetus from his errors. Servetus did not make a deathbed revision. Servetus was burned on a small hill about a mile outside the city walls of Geneva.

Servetus was the only case of a man put to death for his religious opinions in Calvin's Geneva.

from René Wadlow: Toward Freedom: Michael Servetus: To Kill a Man Does Not Defend an Idea

The author’s position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they are impossible to define. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort.

from Daily Times: Purple Patch: Art, truth and politics --Harold Pinter

Humbles by Frances Leviston

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Humbles by Frances Leviston

By Mark Scheel
Pumpkins by corn shock,

from The Kansas City Star: Between the Lines: 'Samhain,' a poem by Mark Scheel

Insult
by Michael Ryan

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Insult

A Kosmos
by Rosanna Warren

from The New Yorker: Poetry: A Kosmos

Wanting Sumptuous Heavens
by Robert Bly

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Wanting Sumptuous Heavens

[by Julie Benton Siegel]
That spooky premonition's back again,

from The Oregonian: Poetry

Karen Zaborowski Duffy: When I wrote the poem, all of this came together, and I was keenly aware of the importance of capturing moments, in poetry and in life.

World Series, Game 5

from PBS: Newshour: Poet Reflects on Family and a Trip to the World Series

By Kaitlin Kortonick

Thomas Bowe Elementary School

The Key to Changing the World

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Kaitlin Kortonick]

By Kelsey Little and Megan Hennelly

A Family Bond

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Kelsey Little and Megan Hennelly]

By Davey Meyers

Battle Wounds

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Davey Meyers]

[by Judy Curtis]
Rhythm

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Rhythm

Raman Mundair's second collection, A Choreographer's Cartography (Peepal Tree, £8.99), begins with a sequence of poems about Shetland, moves on to encompass global themes of war and exploitation and includes intimate poems about love and desire.

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week: Sheep Hill, Fair Isle

"On Desperate Days"
By Barry Spacks

from Slate: "On Desperate Days" --By Barry Spacks

Poetic Obituaries

[Qeisar Aminpour's] poetry is composed of simple but effective words and images, along with a unique ability to portray life in contemporary Iran in innovative ways.

Aminpour is noted for his easy-to-understand poems as well as his remarkable skill in giving vivid expression to children's wishes and dreams.

from Press TV: Contemporary Iranian poet dies at 48

I'd like, please, to leave on your sill
Just one cold flower, whose beauty

Would leave you inconsolable all day.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.

Jon [Anderson] was a renowned teacher of poetry, especially in his early years. He told great stories about poets and poetry.

from The University of Arizona Poetry Center: John Anderson

In his own words he wrote furiously from the time he was 12 until his death, on Monday morning, in a hospital in Berlin.

The poet Sargon Boulus, who championed free verse, honored the depth and breadth of the Arabic language and translated the likes of Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and Ho Chin Minh, was just 63 years old.

from The Daily Star: Iraqi poet Sargon Boulus dies at age 63

Shail Chaturvedi, eminent Hindi poet, humorist, lyricist and Bollywood character actor, passed away here early Monday morning.

from The Earth Times: Eminent Hindi poet Shail Chaturvedi dead

[Roy Lowell "Ted" Davee] was a freelance writer of prose and poetry with poems published in more than 80 books. He wrote hundreds of poems, many of which have been published in the Reporter-Times. His favorite subjects were nature, religion and pets. He was especially fond of his poem titled "What I Found on My 75th Birthday."

from Reporter-Times: Ted Davee remembered as a Hoosier poet

Despite her emphasis on good grammar, [Melba] Davis wasn't a curmudgeon about her nouns and verbs.

"She was a gentle teacher," Summerfield said. "It was the joy of learning and the joy of words, as opposed to cracking somebody's knuckles."

Her persnicketiness for pronouns made Davis a supreme proofreader.

from Jackson Hole Star-Tribune: Wordsmith left her mark in Big Horn Basin

[John J.] Donnelly took glider lessons, sailed on the Chesapeake and camped in New England with his family, and enjoyed birding and gardening. He was a talented sketch artist and calligrapher, his son said, and read and wrote poetry.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: J.J. Donnelly, 84, builder and activist

[Stephen P. Ellison] enjoyed reading, writing poetry, and was self taught and played the guitar.

from Newzjunky: Stephen P. Ellison

[Paul Quinn's] crime was to have won a fight with a senior republican who had been bothering his sister.

In a separate incident he had also humiliated the son of another local senior Provisional who had picked a fight with him. Mr Quinn ignored the order to leave, but his concerns were evident in a poem that he wrote and posted on Bebo, the internet networking site.

from The Times: Writing's on the wall for IRA after murder

[Robert Shields] paid bills by teaching, working for a high-school yearbook company and doctoring books for vanity presses. Less lucratively, he wrote an unpublished history of a train-robbing gang, and 1,200 poems, of which he said five, maybe six, were good.

from The New York Times: Robert Shields, Wordy Diarist, Dies at 89

Madhumita [Shukla] was spared brutality before her death, a bullet from a country-made pistol ending her life instantly. But her family isn't happy with the judgement.

"I am not at all satisfied. Why should Amarmani not get the death penalty for what he has done?" said Nidhi Shukla, Madhumita's sister.

from NDTV: Madhumita murder: Amarmani gets life

[Julius E.] Thompson, 61, wrote several books, including two collections of poetry. Considered a specialist in Mississippi history and one of the most highly-published black writers from the Southern state, Thompson was a major proponent of giving MU's Black Studies Program status as a department.

from Columbia Missourian: Director of MU's black studies department dies

[Art Tobergte] lived his motto: "a day is wasted without laughter." He had a passion for loving, serving, and teaching God's people, and was a creative poet who also enjoyed the challenge, fellowship, and exercise of golf.

from The News-Herald: Rev. Arthur L. "Art" Tobergte

Some of her [Ursula Vaughan Williams'] finest work is contained in a series of poems, The Dictated Theme, written in the days after [her husband Ralph] Vaughan Williams died and published in a selection called Silence and Music. These are some of the most moving love-poems written by a woman and explain why, in spite of her gaiety, she could tell a friend in the 1990s: "Ralph has been dead for over 35 years and every year has seemed as long as the first."

from Telegraph: Ursula Vaughan Williams

2007-10-23T18:26:00.000-04:00

News at Eleven

"Ah yes," exclaims [Gen Yakuba] Gowon. "You were my house guest."

[Wole] Soyinka tells him of the solitary confinement, the hardship, and Gowon seems genuinely surprised. "I had no idea," he says.

Soyinka breaks the sombre mood with a flash of humour: "Let me tell you publicly, if the boot had been on the other foot, I would have slung your arse in jail much earlier."

from BBC News: Watching Wole's return to Biafra

The police force of the transitional federal government raided the house of Abshir Nor Farah 'Bacadle' in KM4 intersection, south of the capital where he was taken into custody.

from SomaliNet: Somalia: well known poet arrested

Newspaper columnist and poet Fatima Bhutto, the granddaughter of late Pakistani premier Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, also told AFP in an interview that her aunt's [Benazir Bhutto's] return from exile would plunge the country further into turmoil.

"She insisted on this grand show, she bears a responsibility for these deaths and for these injuries," the 25-year-old said at her plush family home in Karachi two days after the bombings.

from AFP: Bhutto must take responsibility for blast deaths: niece

For example, many years ago, as a lawyer he [Martin Espada] got involved with Lynn English High School parents who were angry at school officials who banned Spanish at lunchtime. Espada showed up at the school to discuss the matter with what he said was his greatest weapon--a copy of the US Constitution. The school backed off its policy, but it inspired him to write "The New Bathroom Policy at English High School."

from The Boston Globe: Latino poet shines spotlight on Lawrence

"I believe that without a harassment restraining order, ([Andrea R.] Campbell) will continue to contact and harass me both at work and home, and that (her) behavior could potentially escalate to physical confrontation, violent behavior, or public disturbances with the intent of disrupting the radio show," [Garrison] Keillor wrote.

from Pioneer Press: Garrison Keillor files restraining order against zealous fan

Kirsch wants to resituate the so-called "Confessional" poets--John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell, and Delmore Schwartz--as Eliot's "rebellious heirs," prodigal modernists rather than sensationalists who commodified their most painful, private experiences. The vital link between this group and their immediate forebears, Kirsch argues, was their mastery of the art of the objective correlative, which enabled them to "transform experience into art" in a much more valuable and permanent way than their common caricature would allow.

from Christianity Today International: Eliot's Rebellious Heirs

"More and more what I want is some complete saturation of the actual, to feel some part of the real world wanting me to make it into words," he writes in "Fugitive Pieces II." That calling, at once religious, ethical, and aesthetic, is one that only a genuine poet can hear--and very few poets can explain it as compellingly as Mr. [Christian] Wiman does.

from The New York Sun: The Poet's Ambition

A Yorkshire boy in affluent, postwar America, he [Ted Hughes] is amazed by the cars "like wingless airliners streaming through woods" and by the "Himalayan heaps" of food Americans eat. His love letters to Plath flame with physical sensation: "That night was nothing but getting to know how smooth your body is. The memory of it goes through me like brandy."

from The Sunday Times: Letters of Ted Hughes edited by Christopher Reid

But the effect is the same. We have a fleeting sense of Shakespeare's "other" life, the daily, ordinary (or ordinary-seeming) life which we know he must have led, but about which we know so little. He is merely the lodger, the gent in the upstairs chamber: a certain Mr Shakespeare.

from The Guardian: The gent upstairs

Back in the 1960s, Yevgeny Yevtushenko packed out stadiums across Russia, gathering thousands of people who came simply to listen to him reading his poetry. Now, at the age of 74, he plans to do it again. He has booked Moscow's Olimpiisky Stadium--with a capacity of 17,000--for a single date in December, when he will read his work and take part in a staging of a rock opera based on his poems.

from The Moscow Times: The Power of Verse: Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko returns to his roots with a stadium show

The audience plays a key part in this poetic duelling, clapping rhythmically and chorusing the refrains, and the poetry is also allied to dance.

This [Zajal] is a sophisticated art that uses classical allusion, clever turns of phrase, rhyme, assonance, and paranomasia (punning, play on words with similar sounds).

from Middle East Online: Make poetic dueling not war

Great Regulars

It turns out--in a plot twist reminiscent of Auden and Isherwood's The Dog Beneath the Skin (but neither author could have known the Wagner opera)--that the dancing bear is in fact the jeweller's long-lost brother. The marriage is called off and in due course the jeweller, having proved that men are more cunning than women, gets to marry the veiled lady.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Wagner's happy bears prowl again

The poem exemplifies the fact that poetry can function without, or with few, poetic devices. It consists of 28 rimed couplets. It is quite literal and does not rely on metaphor. The Duke has a gift of rhetoric, but not poetry.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Browning's 'My Last Duchess'

The "Buzz" sound would be the sound of the coccygeal center of spiritual energy as it begins its journey up the spine. (Or depending on the spiritual advancement of the speaker, the "om" sound might be described as a buzz.)

With the "Buzz" sound emanating from the departing soul beginning it journey from the coccygeal center, the physical eyesight begins to fail--"then the Windows failed/and then/I could not see to see."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Dickinson's 'I heard a Fly buzz'

The dead man assumes that his girl would have mourned his passing and still might be in mourning.

But the friend replies that the sweetheart is contented, and when she goes to bed at night, she is not weeping. At this point, the reader become suspicious: how does this friend know that the dead man's sweetheart is no longer mourning and that when she goes to bed she is not weeping?

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Housman's 'Is my team ploughing'

If the speaker is limiting being true only to himself and a beloved, he is seeking isolation from the world and just how would that improve anything?

On the other hand, if the speaker is really imploring all humanity take this vow of truth, his musings have a far greater universal appeal.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Matthew Arnold's 'Dover Beach'

The point is that early presences give way to later ones.

Then the speaker alludes to the Garden of Eden to emphasize that even paradise cannot stay. And not only did it subside, but also "Eden sank to grief."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Robert Frost's Golden Moments

But ironically, instead of merely lying in the grave, the buried love "doth live." That is the magic of the speaker's talent, that he has the ability to keep his love alive with his poetry. He is once again cherishing his talent for its amazing ability to transform the dead into the living

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 31

In truth, the skill of this poem that seems to belittle his poems once again elevates them to a high stature, while the poet covers his bases just in case a better poet does happen along after his demise. It demonstrates not only the poetic skill that he prizes so, but a certain prescience that he has neither to worry about nor confront.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 32

"Magnetic North" by Linda Gregerson; "Time and Materials" by Robert Hass; "The House on Boulevard Street" by David Kirby; "Old Heart" by Stanley Plumly; and "Messenger" by Ellen Bryant Voigt.

Kirby's the "new guy" in this list of old standards.

from Bob Hoover: Post-Gazette: Lessing unmoved by Nobel

These two poems by Robin Robertson both describe moments in which the past meets the future in the present; what is to come has not yet obliterated what used to be and both are visible.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: As one stage ends, another begins

Poem: "The Pistachio Nut" by Robert Bly, from My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of October 22, 2007

When ancient people gathered around the fire at nightfall, I like to think that they told stories, about where each of them had been that day, and what that person had seen in the forest. Those were among our first stories, and we still venture into the world and return to tell others what happened. It's part of community. Here Kathleen Flenniken of Washington tells us about a woman she saw at an airport.

Old Woman With Protea Flowers, Kahalui Airport

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 134

(Note: I could have used "fastidious" or "exacting" instead of "persnickety")

A good poet must love keeping company with words. Words are fascinating to him.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: A poem is made up of the best words in the best order

Even if we don't do anything to them, they will go to hell for these things that they have done. It is really sad that these things happened in a Buddhist country. I don't even know whether to say the prayer, "Sangha saranam gichchami [translation: I seek the refuge of the monks]" or "Sangha saranam gant-gant-mi [translation: I seek the refuge and got caught in death]" [note: punning]

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: RFA Unplugged: Burma: Comedian had 'nice room' in Insein

Some of them were alcoholic and since they were not able to get alcohol, they lost their minds. One died right in front of me. He had to sleep on the cement floor and he was mentally ill and people didn't want to be near him. He was dead in the morning. He was a mentally ill person. [--U Ye Lwin]

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: RFA Unplugged: Burma: A musician's view of Insein prison

Our four score years and ten are indeed a short measure in the music of time. Most of our time is wasted in doubt and pointless activity punctuated by tragedy: The crushed ambition, the silly squabble that turns into a family feud, and the agony of bereavement. Yet when we least expect it, there is a sudden moment of grace--a moment that bathes the mystery of life in the light of perfection.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Today: A Reading of 'Proportion' by Ben Jonson

We've all been there: backs up against the wall, dragged into an argument that appears to have no end. We know we're right, we've stated why and can't understand why the people around us aren't listening! The words go back and forth until the actual point is lost. We just want to have the last word.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Today: A Reading of 'The Last Word' by Matthew Arnold

Also, I think it would be odd to say that hip-hop doesn't get enough attention, that I should correct and pay less attention to this guy reading Sylvia Plath or this young woman reading Langston Hughes and give more attention to hip-hop, as though I'm hogging all the attention. There I am, trying to recognize that people love the poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, our great heritage, and somebody is saying, "You're not paying enough attention to hip-hop!"

from Robert Pinsky: Mother Jones: Spreading the Word

The last phrase [by Mary Kinzie] is no longer a bas relief standing out, polished, "rather good," above the smooth ground. It is desolate. Anger watches it. Fear drains it. Spirit is already gone from it. It is an afterwards, not an apex. Nothing follows.

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

LEDA by Carol Ann Duffy

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: LEDA by Carol Ann Duffy

Man and Derailment
by Dan Chiasson

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Man and Derailment

Consolation and the Order of the World
by Charles Wright

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Consolation and the Order of the World

"It's Sweet to Be Remembered"
by Charles Wright

from The New Yorker: Poetry: "It's Sweet to Be Remembered"

We Hope that Love Calls Us, But Sometimes We're Not So Sure
by Charles Wright

from The New Yorker: Poetry: We Hope that Love Calls Us, But Sometimes We're Not So Sure

[by Pam Crow]
Every year we turn this corner [. . .]

from The Oregonian: Poetry

By Estelle Zhu

An Artist's Medium

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Estelle Zhu]

[by Lucie Therrien]
Berceuse

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Berceuse

Thomas A Clark's poems are as much about the spaces between things as the things themselves, and his eye is that of an artist as well as a poet.

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week: A Clear Space

"Breasts Like Martinis"
By Jill McDonough

from Slate: "Breasts Like Martinis" --By Jill McDonough

On October 17, 1986, we published a group of nine unpublished poems by [William] Empson: the latest and most personal of them "Letter vi. A marriage", from which the following extract is taken.

from Letter vi. A Marriage

from The Times Literary Supplement: from Letter vi. A Marriage

Poetic Obituaries

[Jana~ Nolley] Bellinger also loved crafts, according to her nieces, and was always making gifts.

"One year for our birthdays, she wrote each one of us a poem and framed it," Nolley said. "Each poem was about us, our children, what we liked to do."

from Central Kentucky News-Journal: Woman dies Tuesday in fatal crash

I first came into contact with Kwesi Brew's poetic dispensations to mankind through the Henry Swanzy anthology to celebrate Ghana's attainment of independence, The Voices of Ghana, (1957) and the Okyeame Magazine whose maiden edition I had the honour of distributing to shops in 1960 from the office of Miss Cecile McHardy, the Secretary of the Ghana Society of Authors (now the Ghana Association of Writers, GAW).

from Accra Daily Mail: The World View of the Psyche of a Poet: a Tribute to Mr. Kwesi Brew

Throughout the 1970s, [Sammy] Duddy would have been a fixture at UDA headquarters on the Newtownards Road, working for years as the organisation's public relations officer. For a time he edited a UDA magazine and later had a book of poetry published.

from Belfast Telegraph: Leading UDA man dies after suffering heart attack

"The company of great thinkers was as essential to him as your daily bread was to you and me."

Mr. [Lester C] Dufford [II] wrote poetry and played drums for several groups, including the Dominoes, the first racially mixed band to perform on the beaches for an integrated audience.

from St. Petersburg Times: Once a professor, later homeless

Christopher Fullick, who worked at Romolo's Ristorante on Route 303, was a waiter by trade, but preferred to be known as an artist and poet. He was a graduate of North Rockland High School and Rockland Community College, his brother said.

from The Journal News: Police investigate death of West Haverstraw man struck by train

But before earning that degree, in the early 1970s, Mr. [Nick] Gallo and his wife [Laurie Brown] were hippies, she said.

Brown said the couple worked from June until October in Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington, picking fruit. On good days, she said, they earned $100 together.

They lived on their savings the rest of the year, with Mr. Gallo writing poetry and Brown doing art projects.

from The Seattle Times: Nick Gallo, curious and fastidious freelance writer, dies at 57

[Martin] Greenbaum, 82, who sat on the 11th Judicial Circuit Court bench from 1984-97, had numerous health problems, said his wife [Shirley Ann Greenbaum], a Miami-Dade County court mediator.

He leaves a family who'll miss his poetry and puns, an office of 25 lawyers who called him the Answer Grape, because he always had the answers, and an NFL stadium.

from The Miami Herald: Dade judge loved poetry, puns

His name is Ioan Grosaru. John was born in the province of Bucovina in the Northern part of Romania. His friends say he was a soldier poet. His passion was to write about what he saw; to write about what he felt and to write about what he believed. He published two books of poetry, "Call from Unknown" and "The Clipper from the Storm".

from Helicopters, Honor, and Healthy Perspectives PROUD in Iraq AT 57!: Who Was John Grosaru?

Roland Mathias, who has died aged 91, was a poet of uncommon intellectual strength and metrical skill, a leading literary critic and editor of a magazine that became an institution, the Anglo-Welsh Review.

from The Guardian: Roland Mathias

[Rev. Robert] Shields told [Michael] Feldman he wrote the base story for Elvis Presley's first movie, "Love Me Tender," although he did not write the screenplay.

He was also a ghost writer and poet. He wrote 1,200 poems, and "at least five of them were good," he told Feldman.

He then launched into a recitation of a ribald poem about Helen of Troy.

from Walla Walla Union-Bulletin: Dayton man, famous for diary, remembered

[Muhammad Siddiq Surwech Sujawali] used to recite his revolutionary poetry in public gatherings of almost all noted politicians and leaders including GM Sayed, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Fazil Rahu, Mumtaz Bhutto and others.

He also wrote and recited Sindhi nationalist poetry during Gen Ayub Khan's tenure when the general made 'One Unit'. Surwech was jailed several times during the tenure of Gen Ziaul Haq.

from The News International: Noted poet Surwech Sujawali passes away

Dutch novelist, poet and sculptor Jan Wolkers--whose sex-charged books helped shake off the shackles of postwar conservatism in the Netherlands--died on Friday at his home on the North Sea island of Texel, his publisher said.

from International Herald Tribune: Jan Wolkers, Dutch novelist, poet and sculptor dies at 81

[3rd article, etc.]

2007-10-16T20:19:00.000-04:00

News at Eleven

[Doris Lessing] had to sit for a moment on the steps of her home to digest the news. But she took it with characteristic aplomb. "This has been going on for 30 years. I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one, so I'm delighted to win them all. It's a royal flush."

Later, during an interview on Radio 4's "The World at One" program, she commented on her career and the Nobel Prize: "They can't give a Nobel to someone who's dead, so I guess they were thinking they'd better give it to me now before I popped off. This is the way I'm thinking."

from Los Angeles Times: Nobel goes to Doris Lessing

During a recent conversation about his passion for poetry and getting things done, the 67-year-old Moose Jaw man [Gary Hyland] interjects: "To be brutally realistic, I've got maybe six months of life, and I may be bedridden for three or four of those." While resigned to his fate, he's frustrated at being forced to slow down.

The man who helped his hometown become a federally designated 2007 Cultural Capital of Canada was diagnosed at the start of the year with amyotrophic lateral sceloris (ALS), known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

from The Leader-Post: Final chapter in Hyland's life story takes turn for worse

That time he [Zargana] got five years, several months of which were spent in solitary confinement. Reading and writing were banned, so he scratched poems on the floor of his cell with a piece of broken pottery, and committed them to memory.

Poems--words--have power in Burma, and the military authorities realise it.

from The Guardian: A war on words

This was the moment when my 11-year-old son David, sitting beside me, stopped fiddling with his i-Pod and leaned forward to listen intently. The poem is written as a message from a little boy after Operation Murambatsvina ("filth removal"), in which the Zimbabwean government destroyed 700,000 houses as collective punishment against oppositional communities.

nights with ghosts

from MUT Gegen Rechte Gewalt: Poets Against Dictatorship

"What provoked me was that these posters were displayed under the title 'Poetry on Streets'. I didn't understand what that meant; therefore, I began reading and I discovered that I was reading poetry. The strangest thing of all is that it turned out to be Israeli poetry, and to be honest I was angry."

from Gulf News: Street poems go from bad to verse

Words and music--a union not always equal or necessarily tranquil. Serious words, expressing perceptive thought in an artful way is hardly the norm in jazz or any music, especially since music is generally constrained by beats and measures in a way much modern poetry is not. As such, the combination of the arts of poetry and music is a rarely attempted feat and one that is hardly ever pulled off successfully, with most lyricists reverting to moon and June rhymes and shallow platitudes.

from JazzChicago.net: Sam Sadigursky: "The Words Project"

Like so many other young Yugoslavs Dušan [Simić (Charles Simic)] played chess as a child. The poem he recited on ABC News on the George Stephanopoulos show was Prodigy. It is about the lad who learnt the game from a retired professor of astronomy, who grew up bent over a chessboard, using chipped pieces and missing a white king. It ia a poem about growing up in Belgrade during the Second World War.

from ChessBase News: Charles Simic: 'I grew up bent over a chessboard'

[Alice] Notley's ambition is different; she seeks to establish or continue no tradition except one that literally can't exist--the celebration of the singular thought sung at a particular instant in a unique voice--and it seems she's getting closer to it all the time. As she writes in this collection:

Who do you serve? Do you serve somebody?
I serve the poem, no one.

from The New York Times: A State of Disobedience

Poetry is a vocation: it possesses you. So the choices are either: write poetry or go mad, or: write poetry and go mad. The attrition rate among poets is high, and even given the vocation there is no guarantee that any of what you write will prove to be good or durable. As TS Eliot said, you may have messed up your life for nothing.

from The Guardian: Vocation, vocation, vocation

The fact is that, in all the shortlisted poems, there are going to be ideas, images, lines that will have impressed the judge and these will, given the individual vision of each shortlisted poet, impress in different ways. The shortlist, really, is where the arguments begin; and since I was the sole judge of the competition I had to argue with myself.

Between us, I and myself argued Carole Bromley into first place.

from Yorkshire Post: Competition reveals how poets speak from the heart
also Yorkshire Post: Teacher wins Yorkshire poetry contest
also Yorkshire Post: Teacher wins Yorkshire poetry contest (cont.)

At one minute after midnight on Sunday--notably after deadline--a dark-haired figure in black cape and boots tossed two sheets of paper into The Inquirer's lobby, then fled. They contained only a poem, written in black ink, apparently in third person:

"The War Over E.A.P."

(With Apologies to My Darling, My Darling, Annabel Lee)

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Quoth the blogger: Bring Poe home

Great Regulars

In other words, there is something behind language, it is a window not a wall, a window onto human nature. Language is a product of the way we are made to understand the world from the moment we are born.

But what and where are these ways?

from Bryan Appleyard: The Times: Steven Pinker knows what's going on inside your head

On his [Orhan Pamuk's] essay "How I Got Rid of Some of My Books": "There was a major earthquake in Turkey in 1998 and my library got a crack in it. I have 16,000 books and I was worried that if there was a new earthquake they would fall on me, so I went through my books and pulled out those I don't like, those by writers who don't like me, and other nasty authors who don't matter anymore."

from Jeff Baker: The Oregonian: Loving freedom (but not free time)

"Cut the Grass," from [A.R.] Ammons' 1983 book "Lake Country Effect," has a similar theme. I love how the poem turns on these two lines--"I think how much/revelation concealment necessitates"--as if to say that the self is a vessel of many selves united first by intuition, and then by the desire to understand how the entirety of the inner life transcends the physical world.

Cut the Grass

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: Poetry

Just 11 days shy of her 88th birthday, [Doris] Lessing is now the oldest person to have been awarded the prize--a title previously held by Theodor Mommsen, who was 85 when he won the award in 1902. Lessing's laureateship makes this the second time in three years that the award has gone to a British author, following Harold Pinter's in 2005.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Doris Lessing wins Nobel prize

The real crime in the professor's view is to have drawn attention to [Martin] Amis's words. Perhaps it would have been healthier for liberal democracy to have hushed the thing up, so that insensate student radicals do not swarm into Amis's classes on Nabokov and string him up by his thumbs.

[John] Sutherland even gently insinuates that one might be censured for such uncollegial conduct. Perhaps forcible political disagreements with colleagues should land you on the dean's carpet, like playground brawlers before the beak. Would this include feminists objecting to sexist comments?

from Terry Eagleton: The Guardian: commentisfree: Rebuking obnoxious views is not just a personality kink

A harpsichord from outer space: that must have been precisely the designers' aim. The author of this passage was himself a harpsichord-maker (responsible for, among other things, the Zuckermann kits from which people used to build, or try to build, their own harpsichords) and the least likely authority to see the point of this radical rethink.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Keyboard words

The speaker then further boasts, "Dying/Is an art, like everything else,/I do it exceptionally well." However, the reader might wonder, if she does it so well, why has she failed three times?

In verse paragraphs 16 and 17, she describes how "exceptionally well" she does it. Then the bell jar distorted vision kicks in full throttle when she says, after coming back "'A miracle!'/That knocks me out./There is a charge."

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: October Poet

This sonnet has the "when-then" structure of many of the sonnets. The speaker says that when something happens, then another thing follows it. In this sonnet, in the first stanza, the speaker's "when" clause consists of a looking back on his life: "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought/I summon up remembrance of things past." The "sessions of sweet silent thought" refer directly to the times that he is musing about a poem.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 30

In the third quatrain, the speaker again introduces a new metaphor: this time he compares his ebbing life to a fire that "on the ashes of his youth doth lie." His youth once burned brightly, but now his flame is dwindling, and the very things that fed his youth's flame are being consumed by the low-burning fire of old age.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 73

[Charles Baudelaire] observes himself unmoved as he watches the "hideous pageant"; he is a voyeur; an outsider, transfixed by the frenzied efforts of the gamblers in pursuing their nemesis.

When all around us are focused in one direction we are ignored unless we join in and take the drug, place the bet or swig the drink.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: A throw of the dice

Poem: "A Disappointment" by Louis Jenkins, from North of the Cities.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of October 15, 2007

It may be that we are most alone when attending funerals, at least that's how it seems to me. By alone I mean that even among throngs of mourners we pull back within ourselves and peer out at life as if through a window. David Baker, an Ohio poet, offers us a picture of a funeral that could be anybody's.

Afterwards

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 133

Obviously in my uncle's case and in the case of these mosques, this rule was broken. So you can say that a neighborhood, a society, is truly unraveling when these things happen. In my view, though, the body is sacred, yet people are raped, maimed, beaten and killed. Breath is sacred, yet we smother it every day. We do not value people either as much as we should. A writer cannot really restore hope to any of that, at least not the kind of writer I am. All I can do is document it. [--Edwidge Danticat]

from E. Ethelbert Miller: Foreign Policy in Focus: Fiesta!:

But Huang [Xiang] hasn't stopped writing. His work includes poems, ballads, meditations in poetry and prose on philosophy and other subjects, a short story, commentaries, and memoirs, making a total of 16 volumes of published work overseas.

Huang arrived in the United States in 1997, publishing a collection of his poems soon afterward.

The Day is Fading

A 16-line poem by Huang Xiang

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Writing Himself Home: Chinese Poet Honored in Pittsburgh

Without spectacular language, the poem attains the conviction of a polished, heartfelt plainness. In a later generation, Philip Freneau (1752-1832) of New Jersey writes a delicate lyric about an American flower. The splendid last lines seem to foreshadow the resourceful, attentive intelligence of Robert Frost:

The Wild Honey Suckle

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

Doris Lessing has remained, in an unfashionably essentialist way, a feminist writer: struggling to conceptualise what makes a woman's experience. That struggle, expressed in profoundly unorthodox genres--whether a painstaking record of daily consciousness or a fantasia on the impossibility of a man-free society--is necessary because Lessing understands only too well the paradox that even an intellect such as hers has been formed in an asymmetric, gendered society.

from Fiona Sampson: The Guardian: Lessing's Nobel is about more than words

(17) My Blood Oath by Zargana

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: (17) My Blood Oath by Zargana

'struth
by Christopher Mulrooney

from Guernica: Poetry: 'struth

Marriage
by Louise Glück

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Marriage

The Spell Cast Over
by Jack Gilbert

from The New Yorker: Poetry: The Spell Cast Over

Wheeling Motel
by Franz Wright

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Wheeling Motel

"The News!"
by Raul Amaya

"Who makes the news? The rich and the powerful."--A poem by Raul Amaya

from Newspaper Tree: Poetry: "The News!"

By Jessica Jones

Love Lost

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Jessica Jones]

By Damon Lomax

Delsea Regional High School

A Question to Myself

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Damon Lomax]

By Catherine Northington

1964

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Catherine Northington]

By Kimberly Pelland

Burlington County College

The Creation of Love

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Kimberly Pelland]

By Emily Tubbs

Haviland Avenue School

What I Didn't Do On My Summer Vacation

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Emily Tubbs]

[by Phyllis Giglio]
Flowers Bloom

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Flowers Bloom

[by Bob Moore]
Message from a Chemist

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Message from a chemist

"Failure"
By Philip Schultz

from Slate: "Failure" --By Philip Schultz

[Sean O'Brien] is also one of Britain's foremost reviewers of poetry, especially for the TLS and The Sunday Times. Four of the poems in The Drowned Book were first published in the TLS: one of them "The Thing" (January 28, 2005), which shows O'Brien's enjoyable talent for invective. As the poem suggests, the poet has recently been working in the theatre.

The Thing

from The Times Literary Supplement: The Thing

Poetic Obituaries

[Lisa Basham] was eager to vote today for the first time in her life--for the Green party naturally, which suited her love of the environment.

This is the girl, after all, who ordered a bamboo-fibre prom dress from the U.S. This is the girl who tried converting her family to vegetarianism and who used to organize neighbourhood kids into litter pick-up crews.

from The Record: Nature lover left her mark on the world

[Sri Chinmoy's] followers said he had written 1,500 books, 115,000 poems and 20,000 songs, created 200,000 paintings and had given almost 800 peace concerts.

Drawing upon Hindu principles, Mr. Chinmoy advocated a spiritual path to God through prayer and meditation.

from The New York Times: Sri Chinmoy, Athletic Spiritual Leader, Dies at 76

According to [Russ] Rutherford she [Kelsey Fuqua] also enjoyed writing creatively.

"The family has found notebooks of poems and song lyrics that Kelsey has written, revealing a very insightful and caring person," he said. "We love her, and we have been forever changed by her life and her presence."

from The Celina Record: Celina mourns after fatal accident

[Joan] Lefkow and [Judy Humphrey] Smith see publishing the poems as a way to put a face on their mother [Donna G. Humphrey] and memorialize the lives of so many women like her, women who battled depression and hard times and kept homes and raised families.

At [Matt] Lauer's request, Lefkow read one of her mother's poems, entitled "Widows":

from MSNBC: Federal judge moves on after murder of family

For years, Dean Johnson was a rollicking fixture in rock 'n' roll clubs, gay bars, drag queen circles and poetry readings. He was 6-foot-6, with a gleaming shaved head, and he often wore outsize sunglasses to match his outsize frame and personality.

from The New York Times: A Fond and Boisterous Memorial Is Held for a Symbol of Gay Night Life

Famous Urdu personality, freedom fighter and social activist Begum Zakia Sultana Nayyar has died at the age of 83 after prolonged illness in Delhi, on 10th October, 2007 .

Poet and writer, she wrote books such as "Beetay Lamhay", " Yaadon Kay Chiragh", "Saghar Nizami: Fun aur Shakhsiat", "Kuliyat -e-Saghar Nizami" and "Vaadiyan".

from Indian Muslims: Famous Urdu personality and freedom fighter Zakia Sultana Nayyar dies

In the little time she had, [Cristina] Perez had launched her own Web site titled "Through the Eyes of a Patient" fully committed to raising awareness for EB.

Among other things, she spent countless hours writing poetry and investing in her online store "EB Home and Health," which catered to those afflicted with the disease by offering them homeopathic products and other forms of alternative medicine.

from North County Times: 'Butterfly Girl' dies at age 24

2007-10-09T19:36:00.000-04:00

News at Eleven

To Aurelia Plath 13 May 1963

[Aurelia Plath was Sylvia Plath's mother]

As you understand, your coming over this June presents me with a manifold problem. Naturally, you want to visit the children, but while our memories are still so very raw, this is going to need thoughtful handling. For one thing, what is your state of mind going to be while you are with them? [--Ted Hughes]

from Telegraph: Ted Hughes: a life thrown into turmoil
also Telegraph: Sincerely, Ted Hughes
from Telegraph: Ted Hughes:'I'd like to see the whole truth told'

Reality has become so unreal during the war that the experimental language of modernism suddenly fails [Gertrude] Stein. Despite herself, she can't help but acknowledge the terror and fear, which gives way to a kind of frantic joy at the Liberation, but meanwhile the terror becomes displaced, focusing on the deportation of young Frenchmen rather than on the fate of Jews like herself.

from The New York Review of Books: The Last Act

"Why, 50 years later after a judge ruled that children could read this poem, people are afraid the courts will say that their ears shouldn't hear it," said Ron Collins, a constitutional law instructor and First Amendment advocate who is leading a small group of authors, broadcasters and free-speech advocates pushing to broadcast the poem eventually. "Yet they can go on the Internet and see far, far worse things."

from San Francisco Chronicle: 'Howl' too hot to hear
also Pacifica.org: Howl Against Censorship

"You just don't want to know how I felt when at first my son did not recognise us at all. I felt like my heart had just been cut by half, and then something almost miraculous happened: after some days at his bedside, his brother started singing a tune they were all familiar with. It was the voice, his brother's singing voice, that brought him back to us: he turned around, and exclaimed: 'Oh, bra Doug, when did you arrive here?'

"Douglas ran towards me, telling me my son's memory was coming back. [. . ."]

from The Times, South Africa: The random return of a poet's life

The faery has lured the child into a trap, our world knows troubles but it has good things too. In the past, faeries were used as a means to scare children into bed: if the child did not go to sleep at bedtime, a faery would come and take it to a world where it would never see its parents again. This is what happens now: the child is taken to another world.

from WaarMaarRaar: Deep Thought

For the poet, the banal sight of the clouds momentarily parting to reveal the moon suggests a woman smoothing "her cloudy locks" from off her face, so she can appreciate her beauty in its full light. Her narcissism recalls the story of the preening youth Narcissus who wasted away because he could not tear himself from his own reflection. Yet her unblinking eye also recalls God himself, brooding over the primordial waters in the Book of Genesis.

from The Epoch Times: Today's Antidote--Classic Poetry: A Reading of 'The Moon and Sea' by George Darley

Sean O'Brien has pulled off an unprecedented third victory in the Forward prize, cementing his place as a Forward favourite by winning the �10,000 prize for best collection with The Drowned Book.

from The Guardian: O'Brien breaks poetry record

The online betting site Ladbrokes saw its credibility soar last year when Turkish author Orhan Pamuk had the site's best odds and ended up taking home the honour.

This year, the site has Italian novelist and essayist Claudio Magris in the top spot with 5-to-1 odds, followed closely by Australian poet Les Murray and American author Philip Roth, who is frequently mentioned as a Nobel contender.

from France 24: Date is set for Nobel Literature Prize

The 19th century Scots bard's notorious lament for The Tay Bridge Disaster:

And the cry rang out all o'er the town, Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down

has been challenged in favour of a single appalling last line by a more exotic British versifier, Theophile Jules-Henri Marzials: "Dro /Dead./Plop, flop./Plop".

from The Guardian: New contender for world's worst poem

For me it's one of the greatest works of literature ever produced.

Catullus 64 is full of tricks and false turns, paths that wind back on themselves, and red herrings. At its heart is the story of Ariadne, who helped Theseus kill the minotaur in the labyrinth of Knossos, and whom Theseus abandoned on the deserted shore of Naxos.

from The Guardian: In love's labyrinth

The theme of this year's Cheltenham festival, "What does change mean to use?" is explored in a specially-commissioned poem by the Children's Laureate [Michael Rosen]

Take the thing into your hands

from The Times: A poem by Michael Rosen

Great Regulars

[Bjorn Lomborg] says that polar bears--the poster beasts for the greens--are not dying off as the ice pack melts; in fact, they are increasing in numbers. He accepts that rising temperatures will result in more heat deaths, but there will be far fewer deaths from cold.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Sunday Times: Bryan Appleyard meets Bjorn Lomborg

In Tony Curtis's latest collection, the "crossing over" of the title refers to the movement from one state to another: paintings to poetry, youth to age, life to death.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: On the move

What is this, and how is this done? are the first two questions to ask of any work of art. The second question immediately illuminates the first, but it often doesn't get asked. Perhaps it sounds too technical. Perhaps it sounds pedestrian.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: A touch of expertise

This is not the poetry world's inability to play nice with itself - to hear about that, one need only buy an American poet a beer. This is the poetry world attempting, in an environment where poetry is as marginalised as it's ever been - despite the volume of the stuff being produced - to figure what is good, and why it should matter, and then make those judgments heard.

from John Freeman: The Guardian: Verse-slinging

That's what books really are to children and young people - gateways to new experiences, greater complexities. And what better way to protect them from these things--otherwise known as 'the world'--than by staunching the problem at its source?

This week is Banned Books Week, and once again some of our worst pushers will be forced to own up to their activities.

from John Freeman: The Guardian: theblogbooks: The war on books

In the second the stanza, the speakers shifts his focus from a description to a direct address of the season, speaking to autumn as if it were a person: "Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find/Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,/Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind." Autumn now appears as a woman whose "soft-hair" is blown by the wind.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Keats' 'Ode to Autumn'

Remember "shock and awe"? It's one of those memorable phrases uttered before the United States invaded Iraq four years ago, but it set in motion a unique protest movement that continues to flourish.

It began as a one-man revolt by Sam Hamill, prolific poet and founder of Copper Canyon Press, who was so appalled at the implications of the phrase that he spurned an invitation to read at the White House.

from Bob Hoover: Post-Gazette: Poet remains unbowed against Iraq war

This poem is as sexy as a soft-porn script. However, I once sat on someone's sofa wearing a skirt and got up to find the backs of my legs had been bitten raw by fleas, so I heartily detest them and any sexual analogy escaped me at the time.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: The go-between

Poem: "They'll" by Cheryl Denise, from I Saw God Dancing. � Dream Seeker Books, 2005.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of October 08, 2007

Children at play give personalities to lifeless objects, and we don't need to give up that pleasure as we grow older. Poets are good at discerning life within what otherwise might seem lifeless. Here the poet Peter Pereira, a family physician in the Seattle area, contemplates a smiling statue, and in that moment of contemplation the smile is given by the statue to the man.

The Garden Buddha

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 132

To paraphrase the wise Greek (Aristotle), humor is a triumph over the annoying. American author Langston Hughes, who used writing to overcome the vicissitudes of racism, incorporated the street slang of Harlem into some of his poems and turned that so-called illiterate speech into a kind of soulful music.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Don't forget, poetry has power to make us laugh

[Edmund Wilson] also reviewed all the new books of the period, which meant that he was writing an early draft of literary history. He wrote the first American review of "The Waste Land," even before T. S. Eliot added the notes, and one of the first reviews of "Ulysses." He was among the first critics to make a substantial case for Yeats as a major poet.

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: A Shaper of the Canon Gets His Place in It

What's getting the heave are most hyphens linking the halves of a compound noun. Some, like "ice cream," "fig leaf," "hobby horse" and "water bed," have been fractured into two words, while many others, like " bumblebee," "crybaby" and "pigeonhole," have been squeezed into one.

from Charles McGrath: The New York Times: Death-Knell. Or Death Knell.

To put this in the context of our discussion today: poetry can speak decisively to power - perhaps most decisively to power - when it reveals truths by combining hearts with heads. When it presents all sides of an argument and allows us to make our own decisions about what's right and what's wrong. When it is democratic in its appeal to the imagination and our intellect.

from Andrew Motion: The Guardian: 'Poetry can speak decisively to power'

And wherever I've lived, I've always placed two things at eye level--the tinted photograph of my mother as a girl, and an ancient blue-painted Indian figure I bought in Cawnpore years ago. They are my good luck charms; the presiding spirits of my mixed order and muddle.

from Andrew Motion: The Guardian: Writers' rooms: Andrew Motion

In "Gethsemane", possibly one of the finest Christian poems of our time, she [Mary Oliver] begins:

The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.

She then enters the gospel narrative: "Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept."

from Jay Parini: The Guardian: The grass never sleeps

Here from the middle of the volume is a poem of summer. [Robert] Hass uses the name of plants expressively, the way a casting director might use faces. Nature here is attractive, significant, severe and distinctly not human:

That Music

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

But the crucial question is a fairly simple one: How readable is it? The principal reason e-books haven't caught on is that print on a screen hasn't been able to compete with ink on paper when it comes to readability. E-books have, for example, proved less than ideal for reading in full sunlight.

The Sony Reader seems to have solved that problem.

from Frank Wilson: Philadelphia Inquirer: Sony's e-book, a few glitches yet pretty nifty

The Brooklyn Song
by Patricia Spears Jones

from The Brooklyn Rail: The Brooklyn Song

Early Language, Quite Simply
by Jennifer Bartlett

from The Brooklyn Rail: Early Language, Quite Simply

I start with a few words that make a particular noise, then I go in search of others. As I'm searching for the others, I try to be simultaneously allowing the new ones and those initial ones to inform me of some kind of appropriate patterning device or guiding principle so that they don't simply dissolve into a meaningless verbal porridge like this sentence . . .

from CBC: Words at Large: Poet of the Month: Ken Babstock

Drains by Sean O'Brien

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Drains by Sean O'Brien

Do flying fish have feathers? And does it matter whether they do or not? The warped phrase at the beginning of this exercise slightly bothered me. There's some well-observed description here. I particularly liked: "a silver pool of diminishing movement/between the wooden ribs of the boat".

from The Guardian: Poetry Workshop: Proverbial wisdom

Aubade in Autumn
by Peter Everwine

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Aubade in Autumn

Coda
by Richard Kenney

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Coda

[by Rick Piet]
Thank you has replaced Sorry, [. . .]

from The Oregonian: Poetry

By Jackson Buttery

Disaster

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Jackson Buttery]

By Alexa Garvey

Eastern Regional High School

Angry Nothings

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Alexa Garvey]

By Audrey Alyse Jenkins

The Bird

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Audrey Alyse Jenkins]

By John Kampmeyer III

The Squirrel Caper

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by John Kampmeyer III]

[by Tammi Truax]
Haiku for the Crit

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Haiku for the Crit

[by Isabel Grasso]
When the Magic's Gone

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: When the Magic's Gone

In "Mosquitoes" (1982) it is night, and mosquitoes keep [Franz] Wright from sleep; he has no electricity, and so has to hunt them down with a match. The situation is ordinary enough, but Wright's metaphors are all alive with feeling as he addresses the mosquitoes:

Playing your trumpets
thin as a needle
in my ear,

from Powells: Review-A-Day: From the Homicidal to the Ecstatic

This poem, translated from the Catalan by Anna Crowe, appears in Light Off Water: XXV Catalan Poems (Carcanet/Scottish Poetry Library, �8.95). In an everyday scene, the distant past and the present moment overlap, and life seems both unbearably brief and eternal.

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week: The Egyptian Room

"Against the Grain"
--for Joy Young
By David Gewanter

from Slate: "Against the Grain" --By David Gewanter

Poetic Obituaries

The prolific writer and poet [Deas�n Breatnach] died on the same day of his wife Lucy's funeral.

Last night, his daughter Lucilita said her parents were a devoted couple and it was no coincidence that her father died just before midnight on Wednesday, the same day of her mother Lucy's funeral.

from Independent.ie: Writer Breatnach dies on day of wife's funeral

Wearing sunglasses and a beige wedding suit, he [Tom O'Driscoll] spoke bravely about his year-long relationship and also read a poem by the vivacious Hannah [Ciobo-O'Driscoll], a talented writer and artist who wanted to be a veterinarian.

from The Daily Telegraph: Final farewell to tragic Hannah

My heart perceives nothing
day to day
summer at its peak in highland

[by Violet de Cristoforo]

A notation suggests that the poem was written when prisoners in the Tule Lake stockade were on a hunger strike.

from Los Angeles Times: Violet de Cristoforo, 90; California haiku poet sent to WWII internment camps

[Zachary] Douglas will be remembered by his large number of family and friends as an artistic young man who composed rap songs, loved to sing and dance, and acted--most notably in the film Legends and briefly alongside his brother Corey in the series The Beachcombers.

from Squamish Chief: Local man found murdered

[Staff Sgt. Darrell Griffin Jr.'s] messages back to his wife, Diana, father, stepmother and five siblings alternated between gruesome details of the horror of battle--a dog dragging away a corpse's head, a body identified only by its shoes because nothing else remained, trucks awash with blood and guts--and tender remembrances of home.

He called Diana frequently and sent her love poems.

from LA Daily News: Father tries to finish story of son killed in Iraq

Despite his extensive academic background, [Bill] Hatke chose a profession as an organic gardener. Patricia Marvin, Bob's wife, said Hatke wrote all winter, anything from novels to epic poems. He then gardened during the summer.

from Lawrence Journal-World: E. Lawrence resident known for simple life dies

[Florence] Keras also continued volunteering at Milford Regional Medical Center, where she had begun a tradition of writing extensive letters from Santa Claus as a hospital fundraiser.

"She was always one to send a note, a funny card to cheer someone up," [Barbara] Brunelli said, adding that her mother also submitted poems and letters to different newspapers in honor of local residents' accomplishments.

from The Milford Daily News: Flo Keras led a full life

[Thomas] Lennox's mother and his two sisters, ages 8 and 15, were too emotionally distraught to attend the trial, his father said.

"He loved women, cars and writing poetry," Lennox's aunt, Dolly McNichol, said. "He was just a sweet, sweet, young man."

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Guilty of killing Delco bizman

"When he suggested I change something it was usually in the direction of the colloquial and plain," Wilbur said. "Bill Meredith's poems, almost from the very beginning, sounded like a civil, witty and serious man conversing with a few friends."

from The Day: At Conn, A Final Ode To Meredith

[Joseph Milledge] left for his second tour just a couple months ago after being there to see his one-year-old son baptized.

His mom said, "You couldn't have asked for a better father or husband. He loved his wife and son. He loved them with his whole being."

She added that her son also enjoyed karate, reading, and writing poetry.

from KETV: Iowa Soldier Killed In Iraq

[Rosetta Moore] loved to write poetry and is a published author. She also was the columnist for the 'Senior Scene' in the Mason Valley News.

She enjoyed the outdoors and the many "critters" on the farm. Rosetta was fiercely patriotic and loved her country.

from Reno Gazette-Journal: Rosetta Moore

The picture that emerged from [Grace] Paley's poems was of a woman connected by ties of affection to babies, friends, her husband, neighbors, the earth and daily life. Her activism grew out of the threat she perceived that war posed to those loved.

On the other hand, David Budbill, who read "The Poet's Occasional Alternative," revealed Paley's love of fun and lack of pretensiousness:

from Times Argua: Paley remembered

"She got me into dancing, and I danced with her," said Kordale Perry, Rochelle [Perry]'s brother. "She had a dance group, it was empire and I was dancing with her sometimes and she made up her own poems, she likes to sing."

from Local 12: WKRC-TV: Family Asks For Help Finding Driver Who Hit Girl

Liam [Rector] told me, during that last summer residency, that he refused to endure again the healing tortures of modern medicine--"healing" if you were lucky--or to put up with an invalid's life. He told me about the shotgun. He didn't tell me that this wasn't hypothetical.

from Newsweek: Elegy for the Executive Director

[Betty Lorene Rossi] became the head of Special Services for Goodview and Central Elementary School. Betty retired in 1985 at the age of 66. A passion for beauty manifested itself in elaborate gardens, poetry, piano playing and singing. It was a demonstration of her love for her family as she shared her adoration of nature and the arts.

from Post-Bulletin: Betty Lorene Rossi--Northfield

Dr [Laxmi Mall (L.M.)] Singhvi was a leading constitutional expert, a distinguished parliamentarian and an expert in public and private international law. Besides being a doyen of the Indian Bar, Dr Singhvi was also a poet, publicist, a linguist and a litterateur.

from Hindustan Times: L.M. Singhvi: A muti-faceted personality

Sepehri (mostly known by his first name Sohrab) was born in Kashan, Isfahan Province on October 7, 1928 and died on April 21, 1980.

He was a notable modern Iranian painter and poet who used the "New Poetry" (blank verse) style.

He is regarded as one of the most famous modern Iranian poets.

from Mehr News: Sohrab Sepehri, man of verse and color

In his last years, he [M N Vijayan] formed the Anti-Colonial Front along with like-minded pro-Left activists, which was after his long innings as the president of the pro-CPM cultural outfit--Pu Ka Sa--the Progressive Arts and Literary Society.

Vijayan stepped into Malayalam literature in the 1950s by writing on the works of poet Vyloppilli Sreedhara Menon.

from The Peninsula: Noted Kerala writer-activist Vijayan dies

2007-10-02T18:28:00.000-04:00

News at Eleven

Human rights organizations called for the release of Myanmar's best-known political satirist, film star and poet, fearing he has been tortured since his arrest last week in the middle of the night.

Maung Thura, 45, known by the stage and pen name Zargana, was arrested in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, site of the biggest anti-government demonstrations.

from Bloomberg: Burmese Comedian's Arrest Sparks Protests, Concern of Torture

The poet Elizabeth Alexander, who is professor of African-American literature, followed him [Walter Mosley] and American studies at Yale University. Then Rafael Campo, a poet and professor at Harvard Medical School, and Mary Jo Salter, a poet and a professor at Johns Hopkins University quit. Finally at the weekend the poet William Louis-Dreyfus, the president of the board for the past six years, abruptly flounced out.

from The Independent: Poetry in commotion: poets and prejudice

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
There is a field. I'll meet you there.
A soul who lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other' doesn't make any sense."

The Iranian community in the United States several years ago took out a whole page in the New York Times and put just those first two lines as a way of inviting the Americans to meet the Iranians in a place where there is no judgment, out beyond political right and wrong, and moral right and wrong.

from San Francisco Chronicle: Finding My Religion

Though I walk in the vale of death's shadow,
I fear no harm,
for You are with me.

Of course he's right that there are fewer syllables here than in "through the valley of the shadow of death." But if what you're after is condensing, why not something a little wilder, like "deathshadow valley"? Or "death's shadowvalley"? Why use the distinctly 19th century word "vale"?

But therein lies the problem, right?

from The Los Angeles Times: 'The Book of Psalms,' translated by Robert Alter

When [Alice B.] Toklas discovered that [Gertrude] Stein had fallen in love with a woman named May, in a frenzy of rage she destroyed May's letters, which had served as raw material for one of Stein's early novels. By Toklas's own admission, she became irrational about the very word "may." In Stein's poem "Stanzas," every "may" becomes "can," adding illogic to what one critic called "perhaps the dreariest long poem in the world."

from The Washington Post: Staying on

On the next page you'll find one of [Countee] Cullen's most homoerotic poems, "Tableau". We've also included two other pieces, "Incident" and "Brown Girl Dead," which we find absolutely heartbreaking.

from Queerty: Homo History: Countee Cullen

In "My Brother's Grave," [Dorianne] Laux conveys emotion indirectly, through vivid imagery--in her "pulling up/weeds from the roadside, . . ./tough, stringy stems/I had to chew off with my teeth,/the pitiful blossoms sodden, barely there"--and directly, in the final lines: "How could I have imagined then/how alone I would become."

from Salem Monthly: Poetry Collection Offers Simple Language

Lost she was. At a bash to celebrate the mural's completion, legend has it, [Blanca Luz] Brum and Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet, enjoyed a romantic assignation in the pool-house tower while another visiting author, Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, kept a lookout.

"In Buenos Aires," she later wrote of [David Alfaro] Siqueiros, "I untangled myself from his terrible knot."

from The Los Angeles Times: 'Lost' Siqueiros mural to be restored

Rarely did students from mill towns in New Hampshire and Massachusetts have even an inkling of labor history.

"They sort of imagine that factory owners decided, 'I think these people are working too hard. I think they should be working five days a week and maybe get some health insurance,' " he [Charles Simic] said. "This stuns me. I used to ask, 'I mean, your grandparents, don't they ever talk about the old days?' Not a clue."

from Concord Monitor: Poet relishes new challenge

[James] Farrar wrote the following poem, aged 16, watching aerial dogfights over Woodcote during the Battle of Britain.

September 1940

from Wimbledon Guardian: He was a poet and you never knew it

Which books do they ban?

Scholarly books. Virtually all of them.

Once upon a time, many newspapers, like literary publications, printed lists of "Books Received." The quaint notion was that the birth of a book, like a car crash on I-95 or a murder in North Philadelphia, was an event that might interest more people than those directly involved.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: There, in the mirror--a book banner!

Great Regulars

Our minds, our selves, our awareness are merely the outcome of the electrical activity of the few pounds of hyperconnected matter between our ears. All claims to the contrary are wishful thinking or superstitious remnants.

But the materialists have two problems.

from Bryan Appleyard: The Philadelphia Inquirer: A response to atheists, materialists

EE Cummings' wonderful maggie and milly and molly and may sits next to John Masefield's Sea-Fever, followed a page later by Billy Collins' Walking Across the Atlantic.

There are many poems here I remember reading as a child: Victorian triumphs of absurdity like Lewis Carroll's Father William, a work underpinned by a darkened humour and energy:

from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: Vibrant children's anthology lacks visual bite

I mean, the best things that happen in poems are discoveries. They're accidents--what comes out of our imagination, out of our deepest self, out of our memory--and when they're good, they always surprise us.

"The Absentee Landlord."

from Jeffrey Brown: PBS: Newshour: Charles Simic: From Belgrade to Poet Laureate

No "Beowulf."

"This is getting ridiculous," I say to Sherri, and we walk back down the stairs to the front desk. I ask the man about "Beowulf," and he says three words:

"It's being rested."

from John Mark Eberhart: The Kansas City Star:

[Daniel J.] Levitin gives an admirable example of a musical illusion: in Sardinian a cappella music, apparently, a fifth female voice emerges from the four male voices when the harmony and the timbres are just right. This fifth voice is called the Quintina.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: The food of love

Bad mistakes had been made, especially in the sale of 19th-century paintings from provincial museums in a period just before they began to be appreciated again. Those museums made very little from these sales, and are never likely now to be able to afford to buy back the sort of thing they lost.

from James Fenton: The Guardian: Hanging on

And all this envy of others causes him to disdain the very things he loves most: "With what I most enjoy contented least." He becomes negligent and oblivious even failing to find joy in the things in his life that usually make him happy.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Shakespeare Sonnet 29

The ludicrous image of a fetus "slouching" toward a geographical location "to be born" is never acknowledged by critics, but it is a serious flaw that simply completes the other serious flaw in Yeats' misunderstanding of the true meaning the Second Coming.

from Linda Sue Grimes: Suite101.com: Yeats' 'The Second Coming'

[Chris] Joseph is Digital Writer in Residence at the Institute of Creative Technologies at De Montfort University in Leicester, England. His multimedia project Animalamina (www.animalamina.com) is an unusual and delightful piece of interactive poetry for children. He created it in collaboration with 12 visual artists.

"I think collaboration is very common, and almost essential, for a full multimedia project," Joseph says.

from Katie Haegele: The Philadelphia Inquirer: Multimedia: The more the merrier

[Janet] Malcolm herself fumbles the chance to interview [Leon] Katz about the dust-up when she says the two confused the date of their meeting and missed connections. Katz then refused to reschedule.

Malcolm says she understands his reticence: He wants the [Alice B.] Toklas material for himself.

from Bob Hoover: Post-Gazette: 'Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice' by Janet Malcolm

On October 3, the eve of National Poetry Day, a handful of poets will find themselves somewhat richer when the winners of the Forward Prizes for poetry are announced. This week's poem is from the book of shortlisted and highly commended poems. It illustrates our desire to imbue a photograph, icon or memento, with power.

from Frieda Hughes: The Times: Every picture tells a story

Poem: "The Hunkering" by Donald Hall, from White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1946-2006.

from Garrison Keillor: The Writer's Almanac: For the week of October 01, 2007

Sometimes beginning writers tell me they get discouraged because it seems that everything has already been written about. But every experience, however commonplace, is unique to he or she who seizes it. There have undoubtedly been many poems about how dandelions pass from yellow to wind-borne gossamer, but this one by the Maryland poet, Jean Nordhaus, offers an experience that was unique to her and is a gift to us.

A Dandelion for My Mother

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 131

Dylan Thomas ("Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night") revealed he wrote most of his poems with a mental template by which he could visualize the entire poem and arrange where certain key words would fit into the overall pattern for maximum effect. I'm certain many other poets have discovered and applied these playful methods for getting poems started, though they may be abashed to admit it.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: Playful poetry can be fun exercise

E. Ethelbert Miller

Sneakers

from E. Ethelbert Miller: Beltway Poetry Quartlerly: The Evolving City

"When we crossed to Anauk Yat from the main road, they followed us. They followed us slowly. Then they beat up the group of women, shouting, 'Beat them. Beat them.' They beat up everyone in sight . . . I saw about 20 people in the prison trucks," he said.

Most of the demonstrators were just saying, 'May we be free from people torturing people.'

from Luisetta Mudie: Radio Free Asia: Burma Violence Continues During U.N. Visit

Well, why not? A lyric poem delivers its payload efficiently. It doesn’t require an extraordinary investment of time on the reader’s part. So you can figure out quickly whether you like something. More important, the lyric poem is the most powerful embodiment of the paradoxes of life and art. [--Meghan O'Rourke]

from Meghan O'Rourke interviewed by David Baker: A Conversation with Meghan O'Rourke

In a way, the word "personal" is what diminishes emotion, by bleaching away the social or political meanings of what we feel. That is why Adrienne Rich's poetry has enduring importance. Here is a poem from her new book:

Archaic

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

In Satori in Paris, Jack--he calls himself by his real name in that book--sees "a half dozen eager or worried writers with their manuscripts" in the office of his French editor. They "gave me a positively dirty look when they heard my name as tho they were muttering to themselves, 'Kerouac? I can write ten times better than that beatnik maniac . . . '" But Jack, sitting there, says, "all I feel like singing is Jimmy Lunceford's old tune:

'It aint watcha do
It's the way atcha do it!'"

from Frank Wilson: Philadelphia Inquirer: Jack Kerouac's sound of America

It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone. We have broken the laws.

from Daily Times: Purple Patch: Anthem --Ayn Rand

'Political' poems are notoriously difficult to write. Finding a tone that refuses to preach, but does not surrender its message, even its fervency, is a challenge. Dan Gerber more than meets that challenge in his poem "2004."

2004

from Good Times Weekly: Poetry Corner: Introducing Poetry by Dan Gerber

Hubris by Neil Rollinson

from The Guardian: The Saturday poem: Hubris by Neil Rollinson

Mambo Cinema
by Barbara Hamby

from Guernica: Poetry: Mambo Cinema

Handymen
by Cornelius Eady

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Handymen

Karmelicka
by Adam Zagajewski

from The New Yorker: Poetry: Karmelicka

Fever too high, her dreams, like her fists . . .
[by Sarah Lantz]

from The Oregonian: Poetry

By Taylor Bracy

McGowan Elementary School

School's in, School's in

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Taylor Bracy]

By Orunima Chakraborti

My Nature Home

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Orunima Chakraborti]

By Ryan Navin

Poem

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Your Poem: [by Ryan Navin]

Fields of War
[by Ty J.]

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Fields of War

Orpheus and Eurydice
in the Lemon Groves
[by David Craig]

from Portsmouth Herald News: Poem: Orpheus and Eurydice in the Lemon Groves

The theme for National Poetry Day this year is "dreams", and the Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis is one of the four poets reading in four UK cities in the coming week. Each poet has a postcard poem, and Lewis's evokes the dream of sea-going that outweighs any other passion.

Sea Virus

from The Scotsman: Poem of the Week

"Elegy, Father's Day"
By Kevin Young

from Slate: "Elegy, Father's Day" --By Kevin Young

[Ivan] Lalic died in 1996. The English version by Francis Jones of his poem "Genius Loci" appeared in the TLS of June 6, 1997: it is reprinted in TLS: A century of poems (2002)

Genius Loci

from The Times Literary Supplement: Genius Loci

Given that the poem was not offered for publication, and that it was composed through pain in the last months of Kipling's life (1934–5), it is no surprise if the verse is a little less crisp than some of his best. However rough or ready, though, Rudyard Kipling needs no apology from us.

Namely
(Chant Merchant-Maritime of Names)

from The Times Literary Supplement: Namely

In The Beginning
Jake Marmer

from Zeek: In The Beginning: Jake Marmer

Poetic Obituaries

In later years, he would lull himself to sleep by taking virtual walks around La Serenissima--or by reciting Keats to himself. He had, of course, a vast amount of English poetry by heart, and reams of Shakespeare. In fact I never knew anyone with a deeper textual knowledge of Shakespeare--and his Shakespeare lessons had a lasting impact.

from Thought Experiments: A Teacher Remembered

Popularly known as Veechi-Chikkaveeraiah won many a state awards including the Sahithya Academy and Rajyotsava awards.

His works include anthologies of poems--'Pranaya Chaitra', 'Nitya maduvanagitti', 'Navilamane' and others.

from Newindpress: Poet 'Veechi' Chikkaveeraiah passes away

[Shaun Henderson] was well known in Stevenage for his youth work, his musical talent and his poetry.

[Daniel] Ellis, of Wigram Way, Stevenage, pleaded guilty to causing death by careless driving while unfit through alcohol.

from The Comet: Two years jail for death crash driver

Jennie [Knudson] was known for her excellent memory. She could recite the list of United States presidents forward and backward, their vice presidents and secretaries of state, as well as poems from her school days.

from The Creswell Chronicle: Jennie Knudson

When their six children were grown, she [Catharine H. McGlaughlin] joined the faculty of Philadelphia High School for Girls. For 15 years, she taught English and creative writing and was adviser to the staff of the school's literary and poetry publication.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: C.H. McGlaughlin: English teacher, 89

John [Paul Perala] traveled for his job and visited all continents except Australia. He enjoyed playing his drums, listening to music, family activities, car enthusiast, camping, working around the house, traveling, writing poetry, and most of all rocking his children in the rocking chair.

from The Mining Journal: John Paul Perala

[Natalya Pivovarova] studied with the Litsedei clown troupe's studio and conceived Kolibri (Russian for "hummingbirds") as a theatrical project--"a mix of music, poetry and show"--which later developed into a music group. "Then we were carried by different undercurrents and it turned into a musical project. I didn't like it too much because I think on a wider scale," she said in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times in March 2000.

from The St. Petersburg Times: Natalya Pivovarova (1963-2007)

[Donna Riddick-Rosser] wrote poetry, created artistic scrapbooks and painted. Her letters were also cherished by family and friends.

She was also an outstanding cook, famous for her fried chicken, spaghetti, macaroni and cheese, and, especially, her apple pie.

"People were drawn to her because of her goodwill and generosity," her family said.

from Philadelphia Daily News: Donna Riddick-Rosser, 67, devoted to children

[Nooruddin] Sarki translated Tolstoy's "What's to be done". Besides his letters to and from friends, selected poems of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai's poetry are among his compiled works.

Comrade Roochi Ram, a noted lawyer and Sarki's friend, said Sarki took up hundreds of cases of the political activists free of charge.

from The News: International: Nooruddin Sarki passes away

[Patricia Ann Sparks] will be remembered for her wholehearted laugh, her keen sense of humor and her love for life.

Trish enjoyed baking her famous apple pies for birthdays. She was gifted in poetry and shared that talent with many of her relatives and friends.

from Idaho Mountain Express and Guide: Patricia A. Sparks