IBPC: Poetry and Poets in Rags

4/25/2006

News at Eleven

[David Biespiel] expects poems to have "formal clarity," which doesn't necessarily refer to rhyme and meter: "You have to get a feeling when you read a poem of the shape of it, the way it moves from top to bottom, the argument, the stanzas, the lines . . . that all of it is strongly made. I think form and art is crucial. Otherwise it's no different than (two people) talking on the phone."

from The Portland Tribune: Portlander resurrects Poetry Northwest

Wanda Coleman

Wanda Why Aren't You Dead

from HuntingtonNews.Net: A Poem a Day: Day 21: Wanda Why Aren't You Dead by Wanda Coleman

The George Russell who had lived (and was indeed still living) to be a contemporary of Yeats in the 1920s found himself recollected in The Trembling of the Veil (1922) as someone who "saw visions continually, perhaps more continually than any modern man since Swedenborg".

from The Times Literary Supplement: Yeats's ghosts

I do not write "poetic" prose, but feel that my outlook on life and my perceptions of events are those of a poet. Whether in prose or verse, all creative writing is mysteriously connected with music and I always hope this factor is apparent throughout my work.

from The Guardian: In praise of poetry

"Up through the roof the smoke rolled on

His loss poor Dave bemoaned.

Then eastward by its mission drawn,

It reached Dock Ritcheys home."

from The Sentinel: From the Ashes: Poem recounts 1911 fire

These lines, in a subtle departure from the original, dramatise the way in which an environment believed to be safe, even miraculous, suddenly, unexpectedly, becomes dangerous. Epiphany turns to slaughter.

from The Guardian: What Actaeon saw

In her 2004 collection, In the Salt Marsh, Nancy Willard shares her passion for observing the mysteries of the natural world.

The Ladybugs

from HuntingtonNews.Net: A Poem a Day: Day 24: The Ladybugs by Nancy Willard

Regarding "Doctor's Orders." I woke in a panic believing I was being chased by foot stranglers. "Idiot," my wife said. "You went to bed with tight socks." Not exactly a story that advances the transcendental movement, but the experience inspired the poem.

from Portsmouth Herald: 2006 Random Acts of Poetry Anthology

Hazard Response
Tom Clark

from National Public Radio: 'Hazard Response'

"I have a number of books and a big volume, an anthology, of Chinese poetry," [Billy] Collins said, "and regularly, very often before I write, I'll just flip it open and read a few pages for the clarity and the lucidity and the very natural vocabulary. It's very calming, and haiku is too."

from Pasadena Weekly: From Victoria's Secret to Emily Dickinson's clothes

We got an order from higher up to tell us to close down this Web site. I'm not allowed to tell you the reason for the closure, she said.

Asked if this meant the government, she said: "Yes, yes, it was."

from Radio Free Asia: China Closes, Reopens Shandong-Based Poetry Forum

Great Regulars

"Who did it belong to before?" he [Christopher Gutkind] asks of his own moniker, before complaining that "my name is mine/yet it was given me by others/and others constantly use it/and I'm jealous".

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Old times

Finally it's warm, and the days are brighter, and the kids are playing outside.

These two poets [David Moreau and Tom Lyford] stepped back into the sounds and colors of their childhood games, and by doing so bring you memories of April baseball and jumping rope as fresh as last week!

from Elizabeth W. Garber: Village Soup: A Year of Poetry from a Wealth of Maine Poets: Playing games

When I complained about some of the tedious jobs I had as a boy, my mother would tell me, Ted, all work is honorable. In this poem, Don Welch gives us a man who's been fixing barbed wire fences all his life.

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 056

The river roars like a lion, its foam recalls a fleece, it "flutes" like a songbird, and lows or booms with bovine majesty. It contains all of creation, like some kind of primal, protean life-force.

Throughout the poem, [Gerard Manley] Hopkins explores the way nature flows between extremes to form one eternal circuit.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Today

a skin of small content
J.B. Mulligan

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

The poet is Lynn Rigney Schott, whose father, Bill Rigney, was a major league player and manager. I found her poem in Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend: Women Writers on Baseball .

I like the candid, unfussy way the baseball metaphors arrive: half the season for the midpoint of life at 35, warmups and the oiled glove for preparations not yet fulfilled.

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

Ted Kooser: They knew I was writing poems. I never hid it from them. I don?t think they ever thought I was cheating on them. So, I think they probably saw it as being rather peculiar, that I was doing that sort of thing, but nobody ever suggested I shouldn?t be doing it. I think that would be different on Madison Avenue or Wall Street, where you?re really expected to be doing 110 percent for the company.

from Andrew Varnon: Guernica: The Crossing Over

The more I saw of my fellow-passengers, the less I was tempted to the lyric note. Comparatively few of the men were below thirty; many were married, and encumbered with families; not a few were already up in years; and this itself was out of tune with my imaginations, for the ideal emigrant should certainly be young.

from Daily Times: Purple Patch: The emigrant --Robert Louis Stevenson

FIELD

by E.D. Blodgett

from Edmonton Journal: The Poetry Project

Epilogue by Muriel Spark

from The Guardian: Original poetry: Epilogue by Muriel Spark

Sanctuary

By Susan Carman

from Lawrence Journal-World: Poet's Showcase

There comes a time to say goodbye. That time has come. This will be the last article from the Poets Corner. No need for grades or comments.

from The Monroe Times: Poets Corner

While You Were Out of Town"
By Robert Wrigley

from Slate: "While You Were Out of Town" By Robert Wrigley

Poetic Obituaries

The Rev. William Sloane Coffin, a United Church of Christ minister known globally for his peace and justice advocacy, died April 12 at his home in rural Strafford, Vermont.

from PrideSource: 'Pastor, prophet, poet' William Sloane Coffin dies at 81

The Poetry Man has died.
John King, 80, a former principal, coach and teacher at Knoxville High School, who was most recently known as the "Poetry Man" at Mable Woolsey Elementary School, died Tuesday morning.

from Galesburg Register-Mail: Knoxville's 'Poetry Man' a King and a clown

[Jesse] Knowles told of his experience in "They," a story in verse which he wrote in April 1943 while still captive. The war poem has earned a worldwide audience in recent years through numerous Internet postings.

from The Times-Picayune: WWII POW Jesse Knowles, longtime state lawmaker dead at 86

A tabletop shrine to Tony Padron sits in the living room, with family photos and Tony's art and poems.

"Now that we know what happened, we have told our relatives. They can't believe it. He was such a good person. Sometimes, when people act badly, what goes around comes around," Patricia said. "But my brother didn't deserve this."

from The Contra Costa Times: Bizarre tale ends search for brother

4/18/2006

News at Eleven

The letters, which were never sent, ended up in her [Claudia Emerson's] book of poetry, "Late Wife," for which the 49-year-old English professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va., earned a 2006 Pulitzer Prize, announced Monday.

from HappyNews: College Professor Wins Pulitzer for Poetry

"A Barred Owl" by Richard Wilbur

from U.S. Newswire: Richard Wilbur Wins 2006 Lilly Prize; $100,000 Award One of Largest to Poets

"In this study, I will ask you questions about poems or poetry. Poetry is unique because it uses rhythm and language in verses to create images in the mind of the reader. Sometimes poetry rhymes, but not always. I will use the words 'poetry' or 'poems' to refer to verses intended to be understood as poems, not as part of something else such as rap, song lyrics, Bible verses, or greeting card messages."

from PoetryFoundation.org: Poetry in America: Report Summary

All poems are different, all poets are different, and so you have to let poems teach you how to read them. This, just by itself, was a huge life lesson for me. It helped teach me how to read people. I'm serious! People are at least as various as poems--so why not allow each new person--and each familiar person--to teach us how to read them?

from Dragonfire: Sketchy Species: Reading poetry, living poetry

A short list of well-respected online magazines that publish poetry might include Slate.com, Electronic Poetry Review (www.epoetry.org), La Petite Zine (www.lapetitezine.org), How2 (www.asu.edu/pipercwcenter/how2journal), and Octopus Magazine (www.octopusmagazine.com). These and other publications, like the vast Web-poetry archives UbuWeb (www.ubu.com) and PENNsound (www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound) bring poetry to the screens (and headpones) of thousands of readers every day.

from Publishers Weekly: Poetry Off the Books

Listen to great poets reading their own works.
"Howl" by Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

"The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

"How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix" by Robert Browning (1812-1889)

"America" by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

"Wonder" by Sharon Olds (1942- )

"Parsley" by Rita Dove (1952- )

"Some Herons" by Mary Oliver (1935- )

from The Washington Post: Poetry On Audio

Now I Understand
Linda Gregg

from National Public Radio: 'Now I Understand'

Then, moments later, they gave a collective sigh when [X.J.] Kennedy read,

"Time to plant trees is when you're young,
So you will have them to walk among--
So, aging, you can walk in shade
That you and time together made."

from The Christian Science Monitor: A poet who celebrates the joy of verse

In "Traffic," the poet returns to Earth after having "wandered a lifetime among galaxies" to find "the people gone, ruin taking their place. . . . Freddie Bauer is dead. . . . Agnes McSparren is dead. . . . Harry Bailey is dead. . . . Karl Kapp is dead,/who loaded his van at dawn,/conveyor belt supplying butter, cottage cheese, heavy cream."

from The Washington Post: American Idyll

[Chinua Achebe's] failure to persuade others against violence is reflected in "1966", written just after the quelling of Biafran secession, in which he sees the "absentminded" descent into war as a "diamond-tipped drill point" delving towards the "rare artesian hatred/that once squirted warm/blood in God's face/confirming His first/disappointment in Eden".

from The Guardian: War and remembrance

U.S. District Judge Brian Sandoval has ruled that Jacob Behymer-Smith would experience irreparable harm if a restraining order were denied him and ordered that the Coral Academy of Science defendants "are restrained and enjoined from prohibiting Jacob Behymer-Smith from reciting Auden's poem, The More Loving One, at the Poetry Out Loud competition on April 22, 2006."

from National Coalition Against Censorship: Nevada School Attacks "Profane" Speech in Poem

Great Regulars

Strikingly real images are scattered among anecdotes, one-liners (". . . epic discontent in a state/where men were so abundant/led her to grumble that/though the odds were good/the goods were odd.") and musical reveries. Playfulness and internal music carry the words swinging and dancing from line to line, and that?s before you even get to the fiddle and music poems.

from Angela Becerra: WOAI: Crash Survivor Turns Traveling Poet

The name of the project? Spoke'n'word.

There's no doubt that from the moment this pun was conceived, a union of the apparently disparate activities of cycling and reading was essential in order that it might be unleashed on the world.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Culture Vulture: Moving poetry

Early spring is the time for using up the last of the canned peaches and the frozen strawberries, and the woodpiles get lean. The following poem is a poignant tribute to these last gifts of seasons past. Lauren Murray, from Searsport, has been writing poetry and finding solace in poetry since she could spell.

from Elizabeth W. Garber: Village Soup: A Year of Poetry from a Wealth of Maine Poets: Honoring Maine?s gracious fine poet Constance Hunting

[Charles Bernstein] then goes on to accuse the "mainstream" Academy of promoting only mainstream or "safe poetry" and excluding the innovative poets whose works "form the inchoate heart of the art of poetry." Bernstein argues that the promotion of "easy listening" poetry does the disservice of keeping poetry irrelevant in American culture.

from Linda Sue Grimes: BellaOnline: Is April the Cruelest Month for Poetry?

A circus is an assemblage of illusions, and here Jo McDougall, a Kansas poet, shows us a couple of performers, drab and weary in their ordinary lives, away from the lights at the center of the ring.

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 055

It should be an honor recognizing excellence as an artist. I sometimes worry that Rita Dove, Bob Hass and I ruined the position by making it seem that the Laureate must be active and extroverted or public.

Shy people like Elizabeth Bishop, older people like Stanley Kunitz, private people like Louise Gluck, have brought honor to the post.

from Robert Pinsky: The Washington Post: Book World Live

S.O.S.

Dorothy Molloy

from The Guardian: Original poetry: S.O.S.

Habit
[by Jane Hirshfield]

from The Oregonian: Poetry

"Eating the Peach"
By Henri Cole

from Slate: "Eating the Peach" By Henri Cole

This stunning small poem does so much to capture the spirit of the time and of great-souled Rosa Parks in a few words. It made me think how much Rita Dove's poems are about the right to a vivid inner life.

from The Washington Post: Poet's Choice

Poetic Obituaries

At first, the family doubted the son [U.S. Army Pfc. Roland Calderon-Ascencio] would go through with his plan.

"He wanted to be a poet, a businessman, even a model at one point," said his mother. "The military thing came from nowhere."

from South Florida Siun-Sentinel: South Florida soldier killed by bomb in Iraq

In a poem titled, "Life is what you make it," he [Edward Hill Jr.] wrote, "All my bridges lie in rubble, I'm crushed from all my trouble. I'm begging for some help, and I'm screaming for a shovel. But my problems seem to double and my hope begins to die. I'm looking for the truth, but I'm living in a lie. I hate this other guy."

from The Martha's Vineyard Times: 26-year-old jail inmate hangs himself in cell

[Harold] Horwood was also among the province's most prolific writers, publishing about two dozen books ranging from history and biography to fiction and poetry.

from Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: Nfld. writer Harold Horwood dies at 82

"Our society is situated in such a way that it is not safe for women," Ms. [Mary-Ann] Ossman told The Blade in 1998. In an interview the next year, she described her own 21-year marriage as a battlefield.

from The Toledo Blade: Activist counseled victims of violence

William Reese Petty, 51, professor of American and contemporary literature, American drama and poetry composition at OSU, died of a heart attack Thurs. March 30.

from Oregon State Daily Barometer: Long-time English prof dies

[Dame Muriel Spark's] first collection, The Fanfarlo and Other Verse, was published in 1952. A year earlier, too, she had entered a short story competition run by the Observer newspaper. Her poem, The Seraph and the Zambesi, out of nearly 7000 entries, won the £250 first prize.

from The Guardian: Dame Muriel Spark

4/11/2006

News at Eleven

One night a week in a small corner of New Orleans' French Quarter, local poets tell their stories of Hurricane Katrina. Jeffrey Brown reports on their stormy words.

from The Online NewsHour: Hurricane Katrina Gives Birth to Poetry

For David Tucker, an assistant managing editor of the Metro section of The Star-Ledger of Newark, there is poetry in the maligned and grimy practice of journalism. Here's "City Editor Looking for News," his poetic rendering of a frantic editor haranguing his hapless reporters.

from The New York Times: Looking for Poetry in the Newsroom, and Finding It

It would make you so damn famous if you did [win a Nobel prize] your life wouldn't be your own any more".

"I asked Seamus [Heaney] once, 'How long does it last?' He [Les Murray] said: 'About two years. They drive you mad for two years.' And of course, every little gun fighter in Laramie wants to take you down."

from The Australian: Songs of experience

Abandoned by all who had known him, the man's sad, solitary life would have been echoed in a sad, solitary funeral, were it not for a poet he had never met.

from Reuters: Poets break the silence for Amsterdam's unmourned dead

"People move across territory and settle it to make it invulnerable," [Sandra] Alcosser said. "It?s about the exhilaration of discovery . . . and the ultimate exhaustion that takes place, after resources and people are (used)."

For Alcosser, Montana is only just starting to explore its own poetic and literary past.

from New West: Poet Laureate Embraces Montana's Poetry Legacy

Although they remained lifelong friends, [Marianne] Moore ceased being a mentor in 1940 when she and her mother rewrote and retitled [Elizabeth] Bishop's antiwar poem "Roosters," objecting to its impolite language. In their view, a proper young lady did not speak of a water closet in a poem.

from The New York Review of Books: The Power of Reticence

~~~~~~~~~~~

"The poem," explains Auden's literary executor Edward Mendelson, "is an address to a beloved, hoping that the beloved might enter the lover's life, not like the fantasy figure of an arriving conqueror ('all these depart'), but as someone who responds to 'The one who needs you,' the one--who may be inside in the beloved's self, not a real person--whose needs may become 'like a vocation,' something that the beloved may never abandon."

from Huntington News: A Poem a day: Day 5: Like a Vocation by W.H. Auden, Chosen by Joan Didion

[Robert Service] took all sorts of jobs, and by taking low paying, unskilled labour work, he met and spent hours with men and women who lived, moved and had their being at the lowest end of the social scale and class structure. These experiences were to have a profound impact on the way Service wrote his poetry, prose and novels. Service was a poet of the people before Milton Acorn was offered such an award in 1970.

from Vive le Canada: Robert Service: People?s Poet

When he [Jack Kerouac] sketched, he later told his friend, poet Allen Ginsberg, he felt he wrote with 100% honesty; he had finally found a voice at last.

from The Los Angeles Times: 'Book of Sketches'

The names of the seven students are as follows (the first two are women) : Hnin Wint Wint Soe, May Su Su Win, Ne Linn Kyaw, Thet Oo, Win Min Htut, Maung Maung Oo and Zeya Aung. The title of the poem they composed and circulated is "Daung Man," which means the Strength of the Fighting Peacock, the symbol of the Burmese pro-democracy movement.

from Reporters Without Borders: Seven students arrested for publishing a poem

Stone Bird
Pattiann Rogers

from NPR: "Stone Bird"

Great Regulars

It begins by turning away from its own occasion--"There is a moment after you move your eye away/when you forget where you are." Although poetry is often thought of as the art of memory, forgetting can sometimes be crucial for a poet, too.

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: Sometimes what's important is what isn't there (same article, but better link than last week's)

Even though the speaker of [Sara] Teasdale's poem might be celebrating affection for a spouse, that intense love motivates the speaker to transcend the pull of the earth, and she "can tread on the grass or the stars."

from Linda Sue Grimes: BellaOnline: Spiritual Joy--Sara Teasdale?s Legacy

Poet Ruth L. Schwartz writes of the glimpse of possibility, of something sweeter than we already have that comes to us, grows in us. The unrealizable part of it causes bitterness; the other opens outward, the cycle complete. This is both a poem about a tangerine and about more than that.

from Ted Kooser: (American Life in Poetry: Column 054): The Philadelphia Inquirer: April is National Poetry Month

We take a brave step outside into the cool, clean, unforgiving night air and bang we're on the sidewalk. And once there, the weirdest thoughts go round.

[Thomas Ernest] Hulme's inebriated gentleman has fallen down on London's Embankment, by the river Thames, halfway between the Houses of Parliament and the Inns of Court.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Today

I like the way "each to each" sounds both like Renaissance lyric poetry and the screech of the birds. I like the literary flamboyance of "feckless gestures, ineffective hosannas" played against the vernacular flamboyance of "small fry hoods who smoke/and joke."

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

Ghosts by Vona Groarke

from The Guardian: Original poetry: Ghosts by Vona Groarke

This is a moving and graceful poem. "I wheel you toward spring on Highway 20" is such a wonderful line, the journey vibrant with colour and light, strong, active verbs giving a sense of movement and change.

from The Guardian: Poetry Workshop: Opposition victories

'Dandelion'

By Beverly Boyd

from Lawrence Journal-World: Poet's Showcase

"Grandparents"
By Paul Breslin

from Slate: "Grandparents" By Paul Breslin

Poetic Obituaries

According to John, Hilary [Freeman]'s great passion was for reading. "She also wanted to write novels and wrote a couple of part fiction, part factual (stories) based on her coming from England to Australia."

from Magnetic Island News: Vale: Hilary Freeman 1949 - 2006

[Constance ] Hunting's own poetry is remarkable for its clarity, precision and quick humor. [Burton] Hatlen, who is also director of the National Poetry Foundation, described it as "elegant . . . mildly ironic and always very civilized, with a broad sense of cultural heritage."

from Bangor Daily News: Constance Hunting, a literary legend, dies

"She wrote every day," said Lori Gilbert, her longtime friend and caregiver. In her 80s, Mrs. [Sally Gibbs] McClure contributed articles to Main Line Magazine. She published two volumes of poetry and a collection of short stories in the 1990s, and in 2001 she self-published her memoirs, Main Line Maverick.

from The Philadelphia Inquirer: S. McClure, 94, dancer and author

A bachelor, [Jalal] Moradabadi had written four Urdu poetry books, including "Tapish-e-Gul" and "Lab-e-Khamosh", which delved into the lives of prophets and waxed eloquent on beauty and lovers.

from The Hindu: Urdu poet Jalal Moradabadi dead

Internationally renowned writer and Brigham Young University professor Leslie Norris spent nearly eight decades crafting lyrical poems and stories from words that flowed into his mind.

from The Salt Lake Tribune: Wales native, BYU professor, star poet dies

The former chairman of both the Foreign Language Department at Shortridge High School and the English Department at Washington High School [Allen Sutherland] turned out 1,000 poems during those three years.

from The Indianapolis Star: His thirst for literature endured

In the wake of Katrina, no one had heard from Alex [Weathers] since Sept. 2. In December, Muhammad posted one of the thousands of terse, heartbreaking messages on a missing persons Web site: "Alex, please call Michelle in Mobile, Alabama," and listed her numbers.

from Lexington Herald-Leader: Lost in Katrina's wake

4/4/2006

News at Eleven

Twenty-five New Zealand poems published during 2005 have been selected for their originality and their energy for the latest edition of Best New Zealand Poems.

Paris-based poet Andrew Johnston has edited the latest version, available online from today.

from Arts Calendar: Poetic energy

This selection is from Averno, a collection by Louise Gluck that mines the ancient myth of Persephone for the light that it sheds on the experience of death and dying.

from National Public Radio: 'A Myth of Devotion'

Bottom Dweller
[by Peter Krok]

from Philadelphia Inquirer: Bottom Dweller

"You never know . . . even if you've won awards, even if you've been published, [and] been recognized.

"I think a writer never feels he or she has made it, because what you always want to make is the next poem," [Joyce] Peseroff said. "You want your next poem always to be your best poem, and you never know if that's going to happen."

from The Boston Globe: A poet and scholar spins her narrative

[George] Kalamaras, who has published five books of poetry and 500 poems in magazines and literary journals, chose a painting by Ando Hiroshinge called "Revenge of the Faithful Servant." The painting complements his poem "Hypnosis of Breathing," he says.

from Fort Wayne Journal Gazette: Marriage of art and words

Many poets have written so-called "memory poems," meditations on a lost world of innocence. What sets [B.H.] Fairchild apart is the lyric grace he brings to a past made of such unlovely things: machine shops; dusty, old-field towns; aimless teenagers; lonely, embittered men.

from Wichita Eagle: Poetry under a big sky B.H. Fairchild is one of the great poets to come from Kansas. Tell us your favorite.

"[Anne] Sexton was always going to commit suicide--that helped her get through an awful lot of her misery," [Diane Wood] Middlebrook said. "But she did think of it as a career move. She understood the market. She was a salesman's daughter."

from The Baltimore Sun: Hearing again the life-altering, haunting words of poet Sexton

[Christopher] Marlowe's plays, triumphant commercial successes on the public stage, were the first great mass entertainments of modern England. In theatrical performances at court in the winter of 1592-1593, the Queen may have finally seen for herself what the London crowds were so excited about. The daughter of the ruthless Henry VIII and a determined survivor, Elizabeth I was no fool: she wanted this kind of thing stopped: "Prosecute it to the full."

from The New York Review of Books: Who Killed Christopher Marlowe?

[Abdul Rahim Muslim] Dost was allowed to keep his final sheaf of poems and was told the rest would be returned on arrival at Bagram airbase, near Kabul. But they were not, and he was set free without apology or compensation.

from The Guardian: Return my work, says Guantánamo poet

In the opening poem, 'The Turnip-Snedder', the farmyard 'snedding', or chopping, machine becomes an armoured monstrosity--'Breast-plate/standing guard/on four braced greaves'--whose purpose is violence, even torture or genocide: 'Its clamp-on meat-mincer . . . dropping its raw sliced mess,/bucketful by glistering bucketful.'

from The Observer: Arms around the world

"My role as an editor," explains [Michael] Wiegers, "is to sometimes change words, sometimes gracefully suggest to an author that he has used the same word several times. I want to see an arc of movement in a book, some discussion, some echoes, some cohesion to the book beyond it's written by one poet."

from Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Copper Canyon basks in the glow of huge prizes and illustrious writers

Great Regulars

Lost and Certain of It is his latest work, published in London by Aark Arts. The first part of the book is a collection of poems, followed by a few of [Bryce] Milligan's songs. It reads as a journey through memories, myths and dreamscapes, creating an atmosphere that is serene and melancholy, but also joyous and hopeful.

from Angela Becerra: WOAI: Lost, and Found, in San Antonio

It begins by turning away from its own occasion--"There is a moment after you move your eye away/when you forget where you are." Although poetry is often thought of as the art of memory, forgetting can sometimes be crucial for a poet, too.

from David Biespiel: The Oregonian: Poetry

In "A Species of Limbo", in which [Christopher] Middleton considers "these old Turks who sit on the terrace", the delicate precision of his portraits of the minutiae of their lives--the way "they sit, hungry for/Music, exchanging an amiable nod/With a neighbour, who calculates the extent/To which the other has washed his nose"--is so intimate that it feels, almost, like a form of love.

from Sarah Crown: The Guardian: Shifting strands

[J Ebon Proctor Sr.] has been writing and performing poetry for 25 years. Over the years, he has not lost sight of the significance of his efforts. "Poetry is important," he says, "because what you write may have a lasting impact on the world we live in."

from Bill Diskin: York Daily Record: Poetryork: Proc Da Poet hopes to inspire young people

We know that we have emerged from winter when we take the first spring climb, before anything has turned green, when the potential for of all the growing warmth lies ahead.

Kristen Lindquist's poem takes us up Clarry Hill on Spring Equinox, when the earth is in balance between the light and the dark.

from Elizabeth W. Garber: Village Soup: A Year of Poetry from a Wealth of Maine Poets: A first spring climb up Clarry Hill

Writing poetry, reading poetry, we are invited to join with others in celebrating life, even the ordinary, daily pleasures. Here the Seattle poet and physician, Peter Pereira, offer us a simple meal.

from Ted Kooser: American Life in Poetry: Column 053

[Seamus Heaney's] "adoring" of the natural world is intensified by worry about the planet--about "rising waters" in "In Iowa", and about a melting glacier in "Höfn" ("What will we do, they ask, when boulder-milt/Comes wallowing across the delta flats/And the miles-deep shag-ice makes its move?").

from Andrew Motion: The Guardian: Digging deep

Written when the author was 75, [Walter Savage] Landor's poem might give us a head start. Read and memorized in a few seconds (try it), it can be meditated on for a lifetime. Its language is simple, its meaning plain?and yet we can muse on every line.

from Christopher Nield: The Epoch Times: The Antidote--Classic Poetry for Today

The more one reads a Bishop poem, the greater the sense of huge forces being held barely but precisely in check--like currents pressing heavily on the glass walls of some delicate undersea installation. It doesn't seem as if the glass will break, but if it were to do so, we'd find ourselves engulfed by what Frost (her truest predecessor) called "black and utter chaos."

from David Orr: The New York Times: Rough Gems

The grandfather resists the decay of his neighborhood and responds to a crime by planting a garden. The grandson vows to continue the work with a pen:

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

The Birch Grove by Seamus Heaney

from The Guardian: Original poetry: The Birch Grove by Seamus Heaney

Thoughtful Haiku

By Robert Barnes

from Lawrence Journal-World: Poet's Showcase

Wit is reason on its judgment seat; and though the offenders may be touched lightly, the point is that the judge is not touched at all. But humour always has in it some idea of the humorist himself being at a disadvantage and caught in the entanglements and contradictions of human life.

from Purple Patch: Daily Times: Humour --G K Chesterton

My father Shandy solaced himself with Bruscambille. Give me for this purpose a volume of Peregrine Pickle or Tom Jones. Open either of them anywhere . . . and there I find the same delightful, busy, bustling scene as ever, and feel myself the same as when I was first introduced into the midst of it.

from Purple Patch: Daily Times: On reading old books --William Hazlitt

The Core of the Navel Crux after Wallace Stevens Rough bumps of flesh roll down in curves; peel off the rind, aroma fresh seeps into nasal pores so deep, the Fibonacci number parts symmetric flower petal chic.

from Portsmouth Herald News: Spotlight Poems from the Hoot:

"The Unfortunates"
By Cate Marvin

from Slate: "The Unfortunates" By Cate Marvin

Poetic Obituaries

Santa Fe author Carol Bergé, 78, died Feb. 12, 2006. Survived by a large circle of poets, writers and artists, and son Peter.

from Sante Fe New Mexican: Local author Carol Bergé dies at 78

Though primarily known for his poetry, 18 volumes, [Charles] Eaton also published four volumes of stories, a novel, a critical biography of painter Karl Knaths and a volume of nonfiction, "The man from Buena Vista."

from The News & Observer: Charles Eaton, poet

Ms. [Cornelia Arvaniti] Erskine also wrote poems for family and friends and had a children's short story published in Cobblestone magazine, Farnham said.

from Knoxville News Sentinel: Former community activist, teacher at Knoxville High dies at 93

[John Haag] was also a poet, proprietor of the Beat generation Venice West Cafe and a founder of the Free Venice (California) movement. He was an early state chairperson of P&F and a candidate for office, including controller and lieutenant governor, a number of times.

from Antiwar.com Blog: Peace & Freedom Party Co-Founder John Haag Dies

Syrian writer Mohammad al-Maghout, whose poems and plays fiercely criticized Arab regimes, died on Monday aged 72, the official news agency SANA said.

"Syria and the Arab world lost a giant today," the agency said, adding that Maghout had died after a long illness.

from Reuters Canada: Arab literary giant Mohammad al-Maghout dies

[John McGahern] was said to believe that good writing, regardless of when it was written, was always contemporary; and good writing was poetry, even if it was written in prose.

from Colgate University News: Novelist John McGahern, long associated with Colgate, dies

[Lyn] Nofziger grabbed his White House badge and twirled it, telling him that the same people who wouldn't return his calls before he joined the White House wouldn't return them after he left.

In his final years, Mr. Nofziger established his own blog, wrote poetry and became prolific as a book critic for this newspaper.

from The Washington Times: Lyn Nofziger

"[Malik Museeb-ur-]Rehman was a true lover of Urdu. Urdu in the Gulf became half-orphaned by the death of Salim Ja'fry, the pioneer of Urdu Mushaira in Dubai, in 1997 and now it is completely orphaned. The vacuum left by Rehman will never be filled," he [Mohamed Atiq] said.

from Gulf Times: Doha Urdu champion dies in Pakistan

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