IBPC: Poetry and Poets in Rags

12/27/2005

News at Eleven

[Tilly Smith's] adamant warning of looming danger is credited with saving 100 lives.

She read those lines to thousands of people. Another part of the poem was read by Patiwat Komkla, 10, who survived two days at sea after the tsunami swept him from the shore.

from Reuters: British "Angel of the Beach" closes tsunami rites

The Parade
Billy Collins

from Los Angeles Times: The Parade

The poems feel undeveloped, and the language is often disappointing, as when the poet states that "All I wanted was to be a pea of being/ inside the green pod of time."

This is not quintessential [Billy] Collins.

from The Christian Science Monitor: The trouble with this book

Sitting at her table, sipping tea, stroking her cat and staring out the kitchen window, [Lyn] Lifshin said she wrote while transporting herself into Ruffian's world.

She smelled in her mind the clover pastures, the fresh-laid straw in the clean-swept barns, the adrenaline rush of the race.

from Lexington Herald-Leader: Ruffian inspiring fans after 30 years

Matthew Arnold, who thought that poetry should conduce to virtuous living, was shocked by the poem's hedonism. Robert Browning also disapproved and wrote "Rabbi Ben Ezra" as a versified retort. Chesterton judged the Rubaiyat to be brilliant, but evil and "a thing unfit for a white man, a thing like opium".

from The Times Literary Supplement: Omar Khayyam's Bible for drunkards

In a language ornamented with imagery, [Derek] Walcott describes his beloved Island; its rich flora and fauna and the daily struggle of the locals as they come to terms with their history, social and economic life.

from Vanguard: Derek Walcott?s Afro-Carribean blues

Others, faced with injustice or incompetence, might write letters, make speeches, march. Not [Jane] Canning. She breaks into verse, lobbing satirical squibs at councillors, officials, police. Anyone.

from The Guardian: From bad to verse

[Abraham Joshua] Heschel embodied many contradictions: he was a bearded Hasidic heir who marched alongside Martin Luther King; a neo-Romantic existentialist; and a mystic in the rationalistic halls of New York's Jewish Theological Seminary.

from Nextbook: Alone in Berlin

He was a minor poet, a writer of misty, Rossetti-like verse, who briefly flared into greatness and then reverted to being minor again, without ever quite understanding what had happened to him.

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon was a bundle of contradictions.

from The New York Times: A Wounded Poet Who Sang the Crucible of a Generation

The outcome of the American Civil War, which had claimed thousands of lives on both sides, was still in doubt. Longfellow's own family had suffered much (his wife had died and a son was wounded in the war).

The poet?s pessimism is expressed in the fourth through sixth verses--"for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth good-will to men."

from The Union Leader: Christmas Bells: Renewed hope from an old poem

Written by Grace Noll Crowell, a well-known poet and author in the 1930s and 1940s, this verse describes the sentiment of this day far better than we can.

This has been a trying year, rife with political feuds, war, disasters. But amid the chaos there has been much good.

from The Joplin Globe: In our view: Keeping Christmas

Great Regulars

[Carol Williams] "has a particular knack for re-imagining the world," said fellow poet and friend, Barbara DeCesare. "She sees the wolf in the puppy and vice versa. I admire how she risks sentimentality without giving in altogether at the expense of art."

from Bill Diskin: York Daily Record: Poetryork: Insights on the everyday

I'd guess that many women remember the risks and thrills of their first romantic encounters in much the same way California poet Leslie Monsour does in this poem.

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 038

Cafe Oleh invites readers to submit their poetry for publication. Please send a maximum of two poems at a time.

from Cafe Oleh: Jerusalem Post: Readers Verses: Poets Corner

In praising "public mirth" and "revelling," [Robert] Herrick takes sides in the religious controversies--and the religious wars and executions--of his time. But he also slides past the argument with the Puritans. He celebrates "the darling of the world" with pleasure rather than doctrine or commandments.

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

What do we learn from the stories of Helen Keller, Richard Wright, Malcolm X and Anne Frank? They tell us that the world we perceive is the world we see through words. Words are symbols of man's finest qualities.

from V Sundaram: News Today: The powerful magic of language

Other words harmonize with ing--pink and think, which also rhyme with each other. Nicely spaced as well are drift and sift and shift--then comes soft. Notice lint and hints, and "spots that are not."

Next consider how the lines fit with one another.

from Frank Wilson: Philadelphia Inquirer: Kay Ryan has the eye, ear and mouth of a genuine poet

If we ask ourselves with regard to our writing: "what is it that won't leave me alone?" - this was one of those stories that wouldn't leave me alone. I tried telling it in his voice, in her voice, as a third person narrator and still it wasn't right.

from The Guardian: Poetry Workshop: Helen Farish's workshop

"In the Rose Garden"
By Mark Jarman

from Slate: "In the Rose Garden" By Mark Jarman

Poetic Obituaries

Born in Broken Hill in 1927, [Joe] Daly left school at 11 to work on a cattle station.

He went on to become one of Australian country music's pioneering poets, songwriters and authors.

from Seven News: Aussie bush balladeer, Joe Daly, dies

One of [Rocky] Main's five sons, Bruce, described his mother as a lover of the symphony and the arts, as well as poetry. She published her own poems, too, with titles like "Come In" and "Interlude" that remain on friends' bookshelves and in the library at University of California at Berkeley, her son said.

from The Record Searchlight: Philanthropist left mark on city

[Dr Miss Mary Agnes Saldanha] was professor of English and principal, Lady Amritbai Doga College of Women, Nagpur, founder-principal, Saraswati Girls' College, Gondia and principal, Bhopal School of Social Science. She also wrote poetry.

from Daijiworld: Dr Miss Mary Agnes Saldanha (97), Falnir, Mangalore

Earl "Buddy" Underwood was a postal worker with poetry in his heart, a man who, when he retired, didn't last a week before deciding to find another job.

from The Indianapolis Star: Retired mailman delivered poetry, too

12/20/2005

News at Eleven

In your remarkable experience, in your epic life, dear friend, we find what teaches us to overcome the fearsome and the tragic, and what pushes us to open our bosoms to the truth, and to our right to it, which is our right to life. [--Adonis]

from Dove's Eye View: Adonis to Ghassan Tueni

It was written to the paper's celebrated editor, Ghassan Tueni, whose outspoken son Gebran had been murdered the previous day by a car bomb. "We are witnessing the destruction of the soul and the spirit," wrote the poet, whose real name is Ali Ahmed Said. The people who killed Gebran want to create "a temple of fear."

from The Washington Post: Breaking The Assassins

But yes, I am afraid that is still Harold Pinter, spouting the same old anti-American drivel he was spouting 30 years ago.

Truth and falsehood are indeed hard to distinguish in Pinter's drama, and his Nobel soliloquy was no exception.

from The Australian: Harold Pinter should stick to writing plays

One rightly expects Whitman to explain our Evening Land to us, because his imagination is America's. A Free-Soiler, he opposed the Mexican war, as Emerson did. Do not our two Iraq invasions increasingly resemble the Mexican and Spanish-American conflicts?

from The Guardian: Reflections in the Evening Land

Published exactly 100 years ago, his [Rubn Daro's] bracing diatribe against Teddy Roosevelt--Hercules in riding boots--serves up the mixture of awe, fear and envy that has defined the attitude of many Latin Americans toward the Colossus to the north. Less prophetic, but equally powerful, are the poems and articles calling for pan-Hispanic solidarity in the wake of Spain's defeat in the Spanish-American War.

from The Washington Post: The Bard of Nicaragua

"The greatest weakness of being a Chilean and a woman has to be the following: I seek closeness very quickly; I want a good faith, I want a warm home to go to like migrants, I have been walking on a cold and windy road for years and my face is covered in dust. I thank each child for just calling me Gabriela and every teacher who accepts my behavior for his own." [--Gabriela Mistral]

from Turkish Daily News: A tribute to Chilean Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral

No one thinks that Tolstoy was less than a great writer because he failed to win the Nobel. The failure to win the Nobel has become, in the end, a mark of his greatness.

from The New Yorker: All That Glitters: Literature's global economy

The brio of this passage is pleasing in itself--the informed, careful poetic medium of [Anne] Winters showing itself more than adequate to the pace and the bizarre coherences of a technological world. Her intelligence penetrates and incorporates the material like a camera, but faster than computer-generated special effects, with more social nuance and more kinds of information.

from The Nation: 2005 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize

The only advantage in studying such poetry is that, instead of spending hours going through a truly powerful poem such as Owen's Strange Meeting--surely one of the best anti-war poems ever written ("I am the enemy you killed, my friend")--it takes only minutes to uncover the complexities of Hinkson, Letts and Margaret Postgate Cole. Yet one of the few chances many of these teenagers will have to be hooked on poetry for life has vanished.

from The Daily Telegraph: No prayers nor bells for the finest

This childlike quality is sustained: "the trees grew upside down, and the houses/appeared to have been turned inside out." However, once [Moniza] Alvi has drawn the reader in, darker implications begin to take over: "People laughed uneasily. A Long Way Off/was close enough to singe their hair."

from The Guardian: Strangers to ourselves

Poetry by George Herbert, the 17th-century priest, contains innumerable acrostics and anagrams, discoverable by reading the first letter of each line down the left-hand column of text, an American academic has found.

from The Times: Hidden meanings in priest's poems that stayed secret for 375 years

Great Regulars

This poem demonstrates the efficacy of silence; in addition to serving as an affirmation, it also instructs us on the very purpose of silence: our silence does not simply stand like an empty chamber, it "spreads everywhere."

from Linda Sue Grimes: BellaOnline: The Importance of Silence

It becomes immediately apparent that the speaker of Eavan Boland's poem, "It's a Woman's World," intends irony with the title of this poem: the world does not belong to a people who never change, who mark their lives by living outside of history, who calculate their failures as milestones, and who make excuses for remaining in this kind of stagnation.

from Linda Sue Grimes: BellaOnline: Eavan Boland's "It's a Woman's World"--A History of Women

A Kay Ryan poem is maybe an inch wide, rarely wanders onto a second page, and works in one or two muted colors at most. Rather than raise a righteous old hullabaloo, a Ryan poem sticks the reader with a little jab of smarts and then pulls back as fast as a doctor's hypodermic.

from David Kirby: The New York Times: The Biggest Little Poems

Painful separations, through divorce, through death, through alienation, sometimes cause us to focus on the objects around us, often invested with sentiment. Here's Shirley Buettner, having packed up what's left of a relationship.

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 037

Mortality, in the last words, caps a wry, strangely comforting perception: On the stage of attention, each person may be "not quite himself," but in death, as in the real, central part of life, each individual is "something more," beyond top billing or applause.

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

"Psalm, 1950 DA*"
By Josh Kellar

from Slate: "Psalm, 1950 DA*" By Josh Kellar

Poetic Obituaries

Boyi Bhimanna has to his credit many poems, stories, plays and other literary works. His work even fetched him the Sahitya Award. Everyone remembers his poem "Samaikyata Geetam" even today.

from Andhracafe: Boyi Bhimanna is no more

Pakistani intellectuals and writers have mourned the death of renowned Sindhi litterateur and human rights activist Popati Hiranandani who passed away in Mumbai.

from Webindia123: Pakistani literati pay homage to Indian Sindhi writer

[Dr Dilawarsinh Jadeja] had been awarded twice by the State Government for his outstanding contribution to Gujarati literature, particularly poetry, in which he had earned his doctorate.

from Webindia123: Eminent Gujarati educationist D Jadeja dead

[Laura] DeSalvo, 51, spent five years as [John] Johnson's companion, reading his poetry, watching his stand-up comedy and listening to his unusual perspective on life. But that all ended Wednesday when Johnson, an arborist who cut and pruned trees for a living, died in a tree-climbing accident.

from Newsday: Melville arborist dies in a tree-climbing accident

Laurence L. McLaughlin, a published poet and commercial artist known for his love of puns and wry sense of humor, died Dec. 5 in Oakland from heart failure, family members said. He was 81.

from The Oakland Tribune: Local poet, painter, traveler dies at 81

A tormented teenage poet and artist [Robert Sutton] fell to his death from a motorway bridge hours after asking a deeply religious friend if he would go to heaven or hell.

from South Manchester Reporter: Anguished teenager was artist and poet

12/13/2005

News at Eleven

You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection--unless you lie--in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.

I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now quote a poem of my own called 'Death'.

from The Guardian: Art, truth and politics

Not only bloated with self-righteousness and a desire to diss every other human on the planet, but brimful with pretentiousness and with the cheek to end with a homage to middle-class hippie dropouts. Utter nonsense.

If you want to read a poem that tells you about the pity of war, try Wilfred Owen's 'Strange Meeting'.

from spiked-culture: Why polemics are killing poetry

Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the snivelling, dribbling, dithering palsied pulse-less lot that make up England today. . . . God, how I hate them! God curse them, funkers. God blast them, wishwash. Exterminate them, slime. [--D. H. Lawrence]

from The New Yorker: The Deep End: A new life of D. H. Lawrence

Such description brings to mind what [Dorianne] Laux, along with co-author Kim Addonizio, wrote in a chapter titled "Writing the Erotic" in their splendid poetry-writing handbook, The Poet's Companion: "We won't begin to attempt to talk about the difference between 'erotic' and 'pornographic,' except to say that the best definition we ever heard was this: 'Erotica is what I like. Pornography is what you like.'"

from Kansas City Star: Poet harnesses the power of the moon

A generation of kids that found no meaning in Keats, Milton and Larkin can quote endlessly from Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and John Lennon. And somewhere in a bedroom near you, there will be an adolescent poring over the lyrics of The Streets, Pete Doherty or the Arctic Monkeys.

from The Guardian: Andrew Motion : Mr Speaker

I came to think that I could only write for adults and that, for me, to write badly for children was worse than not writing for them at all. What I had forgotten, of course, was childhood itself.

from Telegraph: The most natural gift

The Kennedys had a family tradition surrounding poetry.

"We had to pick out a poem for a birthday or for Christmas for my mother or my grandparents and illustrate it, and I think that's what got my brother and I started," she [Caroline Kennedy] said.

from CBS News: Caroline Kennedy's Gift Of Poetry

Her imaginative world--what the poet called her "undiscovered continent"--was a place as thrilling, terrifying and tangible as any spot on Earth. She wrote: "I never saw a Moor./I never saw the Sea-/Yet know I how the Heather looks/And what a Billow be - ."

from Hartford Courant: Emily Dickinson: 175, Immortal

On Thursday, this little-spoken-about place, the physical embodiment of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which was intended to prevent Chinese laborers from entering the country, received long-awaited recognition when President Bush signed into law the Angel Island Immigration Station Restoration and Preservation Act.

from The New York Times: Poetic Justice for a Feared Immigrant Stop

"I believe that I managed to make it through thanks to poetry. I wrote poems in prison, especially about my wife, my mother, and my city. [. . ."] [--Mario Enrique Mayo Hernández]

from International Freedon of Expression eXchange: Journalist released from prison recounts his sufferings

According to the Amnesty report, [Nasr] Daraji had fled his family home after friends had warned him that he was on a "wanted" list: "He went into hiding, but returned to his home late in the night of 6 November, to visit his aging parents and get some clean clothing. The house was immediately raided by police and he was arrested at about 3am. Police reportedly beat his mother, who is aged about 65 and suffering from diabetes, when she asked why her son was being arrested and where he was taken."

from british ahwazi friendship society: Amnesty appeal for Ahwazis in Iran detention

Great Regulars

All the elements of [Michael] Donaghy's disconcerting style come together in "The River Glideth of His Own Sweet Will", where the "you" of the poem is a sick man lying in St Thomas's Hospital, gazing across one iconic representation of time--the river--to another, Big Ben (whose face, like time, is "cracked").

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: About time

[Reni] Fulton's poem "My Wildish Self" demonstrates her impressive poetic voice and artistic range.

from Bill Diskin: York Daily Record: Poetryork: Poetry as therapy

My guess is that if [Sylvia] Plath has not completed her suicide the poems in this volume would have taken a different interpretive turn for most readers. But as she did successfully close her life, most readers are directed to find those gloom-filled metaphors.

from Linda Sue Grimes: BellaOnline: Interpreting Sylvia Plath

But there is evidence that he [Clement Clarke Moore] called one of the newspaper's editors to find out if anyone had claimed authorship, before he included it in his book.

from Linda Sue Grimes: BellaOnline: Controversy Over Famous Christmas Poem

In this poem by western New Yorker Judith Slater, we're delivered to a location infamous for brewing American stories--a bar. Like the stories of John Henry, Paul Bunyan, or the crane operator in this poem, tales of work can be extraordinary, heroic and, if they are sad, sometimes leavened by a little light.

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 036

Cafe Oleh invites readers to submit their poetry for publication. Please send a maximum of two poems at a time.

from Cafe Oleh: Jerusalem Post: Readers Verses: Poets Corner

Poetry itself involves repetition: that's what form is, and that is part of why most children like poetry. An artist like [Robert Louis] Stevenson knows how to counter the repetition with variation. He also knows that good poems are inexhaustible because they confront mysteries.

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

As a distinguished writer of light verse, he composed an inspirational poem under the same title 'This too shall pass away'. His simple lines made an enormous appeal to the public; and for years tattered copies of 'This too shall pass away' by Paul Hamilton Hayne were carried around by millions of people in purse and pocket, as their favourite inspirational poem.

from V Sundaram: News Today: This, too, shall pass away!

But [Ted] Kooser isn't interested in the poetry of protest. "Poetry rarely changes anyone's opinion," he said. He thought the Poets Against the War movement was basically "preaching to the choir, to use that old thing."

from Andrew Varnon: Valley Advocate: Kooser for President

[John Singer] Sargent highlighted two of [Robert Louis] Stevenson's best-known characteristics: his animation and his penetrating gaze. Harry Jay Moors, the American trader who befriended Stevenson when the writer moved to Samoa, noted both at their first meeting: "He could not stand still. When I took him into my house, he walked about the room, plying me with questions, one after another, darting up and down."

from Frank Wilson: Philadelphia Inquirer: Robert Louis Stevenson biography rings with authenticity

Lisa Janice Cohen at Blue Muse Poetry proposes a fine answer to a frequently posed question:

What Good is Poetry?

from Frank Wilson: Books, Inq.: A good answer . . .

The reader responds primarily to the sound-system of this poem, inhabiting its linguistic medium with no expectation of strict referentiality. The free, associative quality of the writing makes a remarkable poem, close to music.

from The Guardian: Poetry workshop: 'Poems that tell a story'

Stillborn (a poem of occupation)
by Mickey Z.

from MR Zine: Mickey Z., "Stillborn"

"Draft of a Letter"
By James Longenbach

from Slate: "Draft of a Letter"

"A Myth of Innocence"
By Louise Glück

from Slate: "A Myth of Innocence"

Poetic Obituaries

Not many coaches relax by writing poetry. Dan [Crowe] did. He even wrote an entire volume of track poetry, "Whiz Wheels and a Cat Called Quick."

Margy Clark says he wrote the best poetry she's ever read, and she graduated from Smith College.

from Kingsport Times-News: Coach, friend, poet Dan Crowe was a good man

Drugs and alcohol don't appear to be a factor in the crash.

Tiara parents, Franklin and Bevelyn Fisher, live on Evergreen just yards from where their daughter died. Tiara wanted to be a choreographer when she grew up and was a quiet girl who wrote poetry, Taylor said.

from The Oakland Press: Truck kills girl trying to get on school bus

Read and hear the message of a bard made politician:

My Lai Converation

from TheRealityCheck.Org: Eugene Joseph McCarthy a Man of Courage

[Dr Masuri Salikun] was best remembered as one of the founder members of Angkatan Sasterawan 50 (in short "Asas 50") or the "Fifties Writers Movement". Together with Usman Awang (Tongkat Warrant), Kamaluddin Muhammad (Keris Mas), Hamzah Hussin, Asraf Abdul Wahab, Jaafar Mohamad (Jymy Asmara), Abu Yazid Abidin (Wijaya Mala) and Muhammad Arif Ahmad (Mas), the movement helped redefine the literary scene of Malaya and Singapore at the time.

from New Straits Times: Goodbye to the quiet man of Asas 50

[Jonathan] McCoy was a member of McKinney Chapel Missionary Baptist Church. His mother, Mary McCoy, said her son loved to read.

"He was," she said, "an outstanding poet and artist."

from The Greenwood Commonwealth: Youth, 16, charged with murder

12/6/2005

News at Eleven

David Tucker's Poems

from American Journalism Review: David Tucker's Poems

[Forough Farrokhzad] once wrote:

"I believe in being a poet in every moment of my life. Being a poet means being human. I know some poets whose daily behaviour has nothing to do with their poetry. In short, they are only poets while they are writing their poetry. [. . .]"

from Persian Journal: Lament for Forough Farrokhzad

"I noticed suddenly the doctor had taken Paruyr [Sevak]'s heart out. Taking advantage of my authority of a judge I went in, asked everybody to leave the room and approached the doctor, who stood holding the heart in his hand," remembers [Ashot] Tadevosyan.

from ArmeniaNow.com: Passion Beyond the Grave: Admirer of Armenia?s great poet has a special place in his heart for Sevak

In the local literary circles, it appears perfectly respectable to write about the pain of an ingrown toenail or the death of your grandmother but not about torture or thousands dying of starvation in Darfur.

I think such criticism reflects more on the critics than the author. It shows how small-minded and mealy-mouthed these timorous clowns are.

from Sun2Surf: Poetic Reason, acidic rhyme

A poem in a school textbook has been removed by embarrassed education officials in Pakistan after it was found that the first letters of each line spelt out "President George W. Bush".

from The Age: Textbook case of Pakistan verses the President

Children love to hear them and woe betide the parent who might absent-mindedly change a word or line. Children are notoriously conservative little creatures and they love repetition, exact repetition, and they will remind you if you make a mistake.

from The Globe and Mail: Verse to open young hearts and minds

[Piet] Hein wanted grooks to belong to everybody, and from 1940 to 1963 twenty volumes of grook collections were published. Nearly two million copies have been sold in a number of languages.

from Denmark.dk: Piet Hein--the rational idealist

Cultural voices from the Great Book speak with vitality of many Irish cultures. Secular. Roman Catholic. Protestant. Jewish. Muslim. Atheist.

But all cry out from that soul peculiar to the Irish, which forged a land where all the wars are merry, and all the songs are sad.

from San Francisco Sentinel: The Great Book of Ireland rivals The Book of Kells

Again, Christmas gifts were exchanged and meals were prepared openly and attended by the opposing forces. [Stanley] Weintraub quotes one soldier?s observation of the event: "Never . . . was I so keenly aware of the insanity of war." (p. 33).

from LewRockwell.com: Soldiers Against War

Coming to the end of this year, and this column, I would like to leave everyone with the thoughts of one of America's greatest poets, Amy Lowell.

from Oroville Mercury-Register: Finding The Words

The poet's house is wonderful, the neighborhood is Arcadian, and the rent is comparable to what we would have paid for the stinky-rug place. And yes, James Kennedy in California--a heroic personage I may never meet--has paid our entire rent in advance.

from Slate: Miracle at Gainesville

Great Regulars

Reading this poem through these multiple, linked narratives makes one thing clear: [Peter] Campion is a poet who knows that what a poet sees is nothing without a mixture of formal prowess and emotional insight.

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: Poetry

What a treat this morning to hear, among the Today programme's usual roll-call of bombs, pensions and global warming, the measured tones of the poet laureate talking about a new website, the Poetry Archive, on which are stored recordings of poets reading their works.

from Sarah Crown: Guardian Unlimited: Culture Vulture: Voice recognition

The weight of detail can sometimes leave the poems feeling overloaded, as in "Bad Quarto", when the speaker is "Off-spindle, missish, lo-fi and hissy,/Tangled, denatured, petty, a crosspatch . . ." At best, however, [Jane] Yeh's taste for intricacy gives her poetry rich texture and life.

from Sarah Crown: Guardian Unlimited: Fire and water

Gerard Manley Hopkins' motivation is to know God; therefore, he crafts his poems in forms. After all, God creates in forms--the form of an insect, the form of a flower, a fish, a bird, a planet, or a human being. Hopkins usually employs the sonnet form.

from Linda Sue Grimes: BellaOnline: G. M. Hopkins' "God's Grandeur"

Massachusetts poet J. Lorraine Brown has used an unusual image in "Tintype on the Pond, 1925." This poem, like many others, offers us a unique experience, presented as a gift, for us to respond to as we will. We need not ferret out a hidden message. How many of us will recall this little scene the next time we see ice skates or a Sunday-dinner roast?

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 035

Cafe Oleh invites readers to submit their poetry for publication. Please send a maximum of two poems at a time.

from Cafe Oleh: Jerusalem Post: Readers Verses: Poets Corner

The "fair fancy" that "childhood used to know," the meek mild oxen kneeling at midnight, comes ultimately from a world of animal myth--a world older than the religions that incorporate its images. This particular myth, like the stanza by Phillips Brooks, expresses a yearning for peace.

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

Against Light by Lavinia Greenlaw

from The Guardian: Original poetry: Against Light by Lavinia Greenlaw

If they have to wait an hour or so for a train, they fall into a stupid trance with their eyes open. To see them, you would suppose there was nothing to look at and no one to speak with; you would imagine they were paralysed or alienated: and yet very possibly they are hard workers in their own way . . .

from Purple Patch: Daily Times: Apology for idlers --Robert Louis Stevenson

I love the word 'must-stained' without desire to gaze upon the feet of the treader of grapes; the words 'spikenard' and 'alabaster' without longing for pot or jar. I am crazy for 'jasmine' and for 'jade' . . . But if I am in love with words, it must not be supposed that I have no affection for the idea also.

from Purple Patch: Daily Times: My likings --James Agate

Poetic Obituaries

Mrs. [Miriam Wise] Andrews was the editor of a reader participation poetry column called the Silver Braid at the Akron Times Press, which was a predecessor of the Akron Beacon Journal.

During the 1970s, she was executive editor of Poet Lore, a national poetry quarterly. She also wrote her own poetry, which mostly appeared in magazines such as the Saturday Review.

from Akron Beacon Journal: Akron-area poet and editor dies at age 96

Stan Berenstain, whose Berenstain Bear books--written and illustrated with his wife--helped millions of children learn to deal with trips to the dentist, the first day of school and getting new siblings, has died.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: Stan Berenstain, co-creator of Berenstain Bears, dies

A declared poetry major Columbia College, Joseph Flynn spent his freshman year at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He had been on the dean's list for both the spring and fall semesters, and was selected to be an English tutor.

from Libertyville Review: Services held today for Joseph Flynn, 19

"We learned to sharpen the points of bamboo sticks and use stolen Vietnamese medicine or ink. Ink can be made by mixing charcoal with soap."

Adm. [William P.] Lawrence was a Nashville native and while a prisoner, he wrote what became the official state poem of Tennessee.

from Annapolis Capital: Former POW, superintendent Lawrence dies at 75

The poet and academic Juan Mari Lekuona has died at 2:00am at 78. Lekuona is regarded as one of the most representative authors in the latest Basque poetry.

from EiTB: Basque outstanding poet Juan Mari Lekuona dies

Former Univarta journalist Rajendra Nutan passed away here this evening after battling cancer for the past few years.

He was 67.

from Webindia123: Former Univarta journalist dead

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