Showing posts with label links. Show all posts
Showing posts with label links. Show all posts

Saturday, July 01, 2006

The most expensive reading ticket
I’ve heard of in some time
promises to be a bargain.

$60 Canadian
gets you a book-length reading
of The Men
by Lisa Robertson,
a three-course dinner
& all male fashion show

Friday, July 7, in Toronto
as part of
The Scream

literary festival

& for $5 more
you get the book too.

§

Soft Skull Press is bringing out a new edition of Eunoia.

§

I’ve been getting thank you notes
for shutting down
the comments stream.

But there has also been a drop-off
in the number of visits per day.

Personally, I miss the serious comments
that were on topic.
But toward the end,
that had declined to no more than
ten percent of the comments overall.

So if & when I reopen that feature
it will be after I have figured out
some way to ensure
that comments stay focused.

§

There will be a memorial event for
William Talcott
at Moe’s Books in Berkeley,
2476 Telegraph Ave,
Saturday, July 8
at 7:30 pm

§

One of the great presses
from the 1960s onward
finally has its own web site:

Coyote’s Journal

Check out those early journals
& those up-to-the-moment books

§

Sunday’s NY Times Book Review
looks at the collected poems
of Ishmael Reed.

§

The best piece I’ve read lately
on Donald Hall
is in the Harvard Crimson

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Thursday’s comments stream
proved a breaking point.
One person posted over 70 messages
& another descended
into overtly sexist name calling.
I don’t have the time to monitor & delete
over 70 messages a day
especially when I’m traveling
so the comments stream will remain turned off
for at least one month.

And I may investigate using another system
that permits me to block out abusers.

§

“If it would help stop the war
and bring down the Bush dictatorship
I'd go on tour
with Britney Spears tomorrow.”
Jello
Biafra

The generational problem
in anti-war arts.

§

ReadySteadyBook
is hosting
a Gilbert Sorrentino site

§

Documents of
the International Digital Publish Forum’s
work developing standards for
e-book publications

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Donald Hall,
Poet Laureate

§

William Logan’s latest blast,
targeting Heaney, Gallagher,
Geoffrey Hill, Anne
(“the acceptable face of the avant-garde”)
Carson et al

§

Charles Olson in San Francisco
this Sunday

§

Locus Solus,
the musical

§

A writers’ conference in Nigeria

§

A bookstore for Toronto’s castle.

§

Diary of a literary judge.

§

Kandinksy & synaesthesia:
Paint by music.

§

Bill Zavatsky
American neglectorino

§

Who owns
James Joyce

§

Who owns
John Steinbeck

§

Schjeldahl’s Picasso

Wednesday, June 04, 2003

Every Monday morning, the email in-box contains a message from the well-intentioned folks at Poetry Daily. In addition to listing whose poems will appear this week, appeared last week, and appeared one year ago last week, it includes a link to Poetry Daily’s own news page, which attempts to gather current articles and reviews of poetry from the English-speaking world’s daily media. This week’s listing looked something like this:

 

"Poet's Choice":

·         Edward Hirsch features poems by Roberta Spear and Ernesto Trejo. (From The Washington Post.)

The Arts and the Administration:

·         Frank Rich talks with NEA chairman Dana Gioia. (From The New York Times.)

Anthologies:

·         The Misread City: New Literary Los Angeles, edited by Scott Timberg and Dana Gioia, reviewed by Jonathan Kirsch. (From the Los Angeles Times.)

Charles Simic:

·         The Voice at 3 A.M.: Selected Late and New Poems reviewed by Karl Kirchwey. (From The Philadelphia Inquirer.)

Mark Ford:

·         Soft Sift reviewed by John Palattella. (From the Los Angeles Times.)

Billy Collins:

·         A chat with the U.S. Poet Laureate. (From The Independent.)

City Lights Books:

·         The store co-founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti turns 50. (From the Los Angeles Times.)

Paul Muldoon:

·         Jeffrey Brown talks with the Pulitzer Prize winner. (From The Online NewsHour.)

Children's Laureates:

·         Ceri Wyn Jones has been appointed Children's Laureate for Wales. (From ic Wales.)

·         A chat with UK Children's Laureate, Michael Morpurgo. (From the Guardian Online.)

Alberta Turner, 83:

·         An obituary for the poet, co-founding editor of FIELD, and former director of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center. (From The Plain Dealer.)

DJ Enright:

·         Injury Time: A Memoir reviewed by Allan Massie. (From The Daily Telegraph.)

 

One obit, one historical piece on City Lights – nowadays a tourist bookshop, albeit one with a decent poetry room up the winding stairs to the rear – and a whole lot of the School of Quietude. Indeed, if it weren’t for the piece on City Lights and one comment made by the late Ms. Turner, one would not know – at least from this gathering of stories by Poetry Daily – that anything other than the School of Quietude existed at all.

 

Another way to ferret out news about poetry is the Google News service. On the same day I received the above list from Poetry Daily, I ran a search on “poems poet poetry poem” & got back the following:

 

 

Ian Hamilton Finlay
Guardian, UK - 21 hours ago
... with Jessie McGuffie, and published collections of poems ... of Creeley and the San Francisco
poet ... same time, Finlay set up a poetry ... POTH), after a line in a poem ...

 

PURPLE PATCH: Crediting Poetry
Daily Times, 
Pakistan - 13 hours ago
In one of the poems best known to ... available in capsule form, the American poet Archibald
MacLeish affirmed that “A poem ... As a defiant statement of poetry ...

 

Barns Festival to Include Poetry Slam
Winchester Star, VA - 6 hours ago
... he was once James Madison’s University’s poet ... a group of strangers and recite
a poem ... to have a great start for the poetry ... Poems can be any style, from free ...

 

Poet, 92, releases collection
Macomb Daily, MI - 
May 31, 2003

 

Poetic passions
Marion Star, OH - 
May 29, 2003
... about a photo, about what exactly the poet's ... she gets to explain that it's a poem ... she
took the class because she enjoyed poetry ... Her poems, she said, tend to be ...

 

Elderly residents share in the joy of poetry
Allston Brighton TAB, MA - May 30, 2003
... started writing at the time of beat poet ... The finished poems are posted throughout
the ... of faith upon its feet..." The poem's ... and plans to join her old poetry ...

 

Community Bulletin Board
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, WI - 
May 31, 2003
... Poems should be 20 lines or fewer, and the poet's name ... To enter, send one original
poem of any subject and style to: International Library of Poetry ...

 

Speak, memory
Guardian, UK - May 30, 2003
... to trigger a memory and in due course the poem ... lot of trouble to get into verse the
poems ... This is a brilliant example of how a poet reading his own poetry ...

 

Plaiting their stories
Natal Witness, 
South Africa - May 29, 2003
... My poetry ... While his poem spoke of the exploitation of cheap ... clear: "When I published
my first volume of poems ... a conversation I had had earlier with Ugandan poet ...

 

A poet of stocks and shares, bulls and bears
Seattle Post Intelligencer, WA - 
May 30, 2003

 

Slam Poets Compete on Road to Final Four
Berkeley Daily Planet, CA - May 30, 2003
... Other poems were more personal ... surprise Wednesday was the elimination of the poet ... ever
seen!” shouted Rupert during his poem ... Kat’s poetry drew from personal ...

 

Honoring Walt Whitman, 'a poet who changed us'
Oregonian, OR - 
May 29, 2003
... Vistas."
But it was in his poems ... of Myself," the long, great first poem ... Whitman's role
as a pivotal American poet is ... changed the course of what American poetry ...

 

Beautiful noise
Guardian, 
UK - May 30, 2003
... songs and, it is said, sang his poems to ... by the heavenly beauty of that poem ... He set
troubadour poetry, wrote violin music and ... it "may well be the finest poet's ...

 

In Garden State, They Put Verse Things First
Washington Post, DC - 
May 25, 2003
... and entitled his last book of poems ... life of
Passaic and Rutherford in his poetry ... honor
because the current laureate,
Newark poet Amiri Baraka, wrote a poem ...

 

Snapshots On The Journey - Rod McLeod
Stuff.co.nz, New Zealand - May 31, 2003
... Each contains poems that speak to the ... In the poem's hurt fury, we relive ... The great
Russian poet Osip Mandelstam - who ... widow, Nadezdha, later wrote that poetry ...

 

CONVERSATION: AWARD WINNER
PBS - May 27, 2003
... would like to read his or her poem ... a recent writing class where student poems ... notice
of Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet ... Gravel" is his ninth collection of poetry ...

 

Second-grader becoming well-versed in world of poetry
Knoxville News Sentinel, TN - May 27, 2003
... Thomas, and she is a published poet at ... Devani's poem "My Own Room Blues" was inspired
by a book of poetry ... in the program called "Relatively Speaking: Poems ...

 

'For the love of Poetry' Club
Lorain Morning Journal, OH - 
May 25, 2003
... The nice thing was, no two poems were alike.''. ... 'My favorite poem is ... 'It takes a
person with a poet's heart to really understand and appreciate poetry ...

 

Lord of the word
The Herald News, NJ - May 18, 2003
... was inspired by his teaching experience and poetry ... He asks students to find a poem ... him
he had memorized one of his poems ... In the United States, the poet laureate ...

 

Hristo Botev and his revolutionary poetry
Sofia Echo, Bulgaria - May 22, 2003
... learn at school, and they recite his poems ... He was a poet of deep and mature ... With his
poetry Botev built the myth about ... Botev became famous with his first poem ...

 

Dancing on free speech's grave
Green Left, 
Australia - May 25, 2003
... student poets were “investigated” and their poems ... of free speech at RRHS, the
poem ... about students reading anti-war poetry ... and firing of RRHS teacher, poet ...

 

Military hand in attack on free speech
Green Left, 
Australia - May 18, 2003
... by the RRHS
administration and their poems ... 180 national program launched by US Poet ... high
school students to “turn back to poetry ... by reading at least one poem ...

 

The past is another country
IndependentUK - May 17, 2003
... than Seamus Heaney's." Like his fiction, the poems ... poetry of that other highly lauded
poet ... I think the same is true of poetry ... away until you find what the poem's ...

 

edited by Paul Keegan and Matthew Hollis
Guardian, 
UK - May 23, 2003
... no more terrorism!" Few campaigners in poetry's ... The sombre truth, which 101 Poems
Against ... about refusing to write a war poem ... in times like these, / A poet's ...

 

Denis Boyles :
National Review Online - May 27, 2003
... HM the Queen left a very metrical poem ... To us Americans, modern poetry is the broccoli ... Think
of it: Ten thousand "poems" from ... I too was a federally funded poet. ...

 

Musical composition, three years in the making, was commissioned ...
Jersey City Reporter, NJ - May 27, 2003
... However, Nytch saw the composition as a longer piece, and the poem that ... Nytch then
looked at other Tagore poems ... I like to work with Tagore's poetry ... If a poet's ...

 

Maxton resident releases first poetry book
Laurinburg Exchange, NC - May 18, 2003
... depression and panic attacks, began writing poetry ... Two of Aycock’s favorite poems
in ... entitled “Motherhood”, and the last poem ... of how the mind of a poet ...

 

Morgan's poems reflect on loves of his life
The Glasgow Herald, 
UK - May 18, 2003
... The first poem in the collection begins with a ... It's a new kind of poetry for me ... Morgan
met in 1999, has become the poet's ... are gay." He added: "I like these poems ...

 

A Mamita for the Hebrews, and Everyone Else
Forward, NY - May 28, 2003
... people," says 32-year-old spoken-word-poet ... In her Def Poetry performance, Hidary,
sporting cascading ... I can do that poem ... One of her most popular poems has an ...

 

The poet of power-tools
Guardian, 
UK - May 23, 2003
... snidey comments in the margins." The poem ... Not that all the poems in this ... thing to say
about any contemporary poet ... rather than simply be indifferent to, poetry.
...

 

Everybody's business: Writing creates discipline and ...
Minneapolis Star Tribune, MN - 
May 22, 2003
... characters I met was Ray the Cosmic Poet. ... He approached the creation of poetry with
uncommon ... was simple: Every one of his poems ... his job was to keep every poem ...

 

Poetry can provide a powerful surprise
St. Petersburg Times, FL - May 21, 2003
... he wants to study English and become a poet ... As a teenager, I loved poetry and wrote ... like
me just did not write nature poems ... I had written on Robert Frost's poem ...

 

Izzia Ahmad: Poet of a New Democratic Order...
AllAfrica.com, 
Africa - May 13, 2003
... translates as a unified vision in the poetry ... Fawehinmi" may not be his best poem ... have
written some of their best poems ... democratic norms makes Izzia Ahmad a poet ...

 

Writing with the tide
Marin Independent-Journal, CA - 
May 24, 2003
... Ratcliffe does every day: He writes a poem ... There are other possibilities but poetry
is the ... in the lineup know you're a poet ... I sometimes put them in my poems and ...

 

'Poetry Slam' is short-handed until reporter steps in
HoldTheFrontPage.co.uk, UK - May 20, 2003
The Swindon Poetry Slam was short of a poet ... Somehow managing to compose myself, and
three poems ... The audience laughed most heartily throughout - at the poem ...

 

Red Shoes - Elizabeth Smither
Nzoom.com, 
New Zealand - May 18, 2003
... overseas, is expected to "actively promote poetry ... of Red Shoes , the handsomely bound
volume of poems she produced as poet ... d imagine the writer of a poem ...

 

Public Radio helps spread local poet ’ s fame
Shelbyville News, IN - May 16, 2003
... Orr is a poet ... also included “Soybeans” in an anthology of the poetry ... read on The
Writer’s Almanac entitled “Good Poems ... things I hoped to do with the poem ...

 

BARBARA LLOYD MCMICHAEL;
Tacoma News Tribune, WA - 
May 18, 2003
... as well as son of the late and venerated poet ... pieces in "This Art," a new anthology
of poems about poetry ... And in her poem titled "Singing Aloud," Carolyn ...

 

Recent editorials from New Jersey newspapers
Newsday - 
May 22, 2003
... New Jerseyans to appreciate and enjoy poetry.
... and continues to stand by the poem ... no
longer recognizes Mr. Baraka as poet ... after becoming well-versed in his poems ...

 

Speaker urges Colby seniors to wage peace
Central Maine Daily Sentinel, ME - May 25, 2003
... Harvard College professor and poetry critic Helen Vendler ... said, are made of "millions
of small gestures —poems ... Caribbean poet Derek Walcott, in his poem ...

 

Acts of Hope
AlterNet - May 20, 2003
... site, but our acts inspired the Kazakh poet ... gave him his platform was his poetry ... Perhaps
Suleimenov wrote all his poems so ... a TV camera and deliver not a poem ...

 

Prize for poets well versed in the Scots
The Glasgow Herald, UK - May 22, 2003
... from sonnet to free verse, dialogue poem ... Poems should be clearly printed, typed ... Entries
should submitted to: Scots Poetry ... will be Edwin Morgan, Glasgow's poet ...

 

Shaaban Robert Symbolises Epoch in EA History
AllAfrica.com, 
Africa - May 23, 2003
... letters of Shaaban Robert,
Tanzania's leading poet ... to collect data on Kiswahili poetry. ... while
he was writing the poem in ... the struggle mainly through their poems ...

 

Winners named in poetry competition
Chelsea Standard, MI - May 8, 2003
Chelsea’s fourth annual Poetry Competition and ... and featured local award-winning
poet ... Butcher, first place with her poems ... Whitesall, second place for her poem ...

 

It's 'Wasteland' on Witherspoon Street
Princeton Packet, NJ - 
May 23, 2003
... Mr. Sardi has memorized most of Eliot's poems ... of J. Alfred Prufrock" aloud because
the poet's ... and didn't touch an Eliot poem ... came upon a book of Eliot's poetry. ...

 

Everyday life, fresh and honest
Baltimore Sun, MD - May 18, 2003
... the most potent strategies of modern poetry ... voice is intimate, as if the poet ... powerful
and unflinching, dramatic and fresh poems ... In "The Older," a poem from The ...

 

The gruff with the smooth
Guardian, UK - May 9, 2003
... to distance us from the subject of the poem ... rhetorical effect in a short sequence
of poems ... In "The Art of Poetry: Two Lessons ... set of precepts to an aspiring poet ...

 

Life's twists give Aussie his verse
Houston Chronicle, TX - 
May 17, 2003
... By 1998 he was writing the poems that had ... said Sam Dawson, a
North Texas cowboy poet. ... We
talked Jack into doing a poem ... Poetry would open new doors for Sammon. ...

 

Literary Agents of Change
Washington Post - May 13, 2003
... Every Tuesday night is poet's night at ... has been spreading her antiwar poetry ... Her best-known
poem, distributed on ... to have taught it, including unpublished poems ...

 

Amitabh spins magic with Kaifi poems
Mid-Day Mumbai, 
India - May 9, 2003

 

Eschewing the message in search of the memory
The Daily Iowan - May 8, 2003
... think I came out a better poet ... Justice said, he attempts to write poems ... memory presents
obstacles for him that poetry ... With his poem "Vague Memory from Childhood ...

 

Schools art fest earns rave reviews from guests
Southgate News Herald, MI - May 24, 2003
... poetry and I shared some of my favorite poems ... We talked about who a poet ... work hard
on coming up with a poem ... The poetry readings earned rave reviews from parents ...

 

A Horse, A Jockey And His Daughter
New London Day, CT - May 13, 2003
... Emerson, but he never became his poet ... Norah Pollard's first book of poetry, “Leaning ... say,
‘No, no, there are other poems ... considered a ditty, not a real poem ...

 

Mother's Day gift of poetry
Cranbury Press, NJ - May 16, 2003
... A staff member who doubles as a poet ... I have some 70 poems that weren't included ... for
four years, said he started writing poetry ... the course, I had to write a poem ...

 

Ted Joans, 1928-2003
Village Voice, NY - May 16, 2003
n May 7, Ted Joans, extraordinary poet and ... While some of the poems explode like a ... diabetes,
and was surviving by reading poetry ... love I continue to live my poem ...

 

A plait not so plaintive
Kansas City Star, MO - May 11, 2003
... Harrison and Ted Kooser's "conversation in poetry ... clue is given as to which poet ... Braided
Creek presents dozens of short poems ... They unfold like that, poem after ...

 

Getting it on with wordsters
The Japan Times, 
Japan - May 20, 2003
... Sylvia Charczuk seduces her audience with a poetry ... launch for "Inside the
Kamakura
Buddha," poems ...
Tokyo's most prodigious political-polemical poet ... (See his poem ...

 

Cam Diary : Iqbal ’ s Cambridge connection — II
Daily Times, 
Pakistan - May 13, 2003
... s Wing), his second collection of Urdu poems ... Below this poem, Iqbal signs in Urdu ... writes:
“Sir Muhammad Iqbal, that immortal poet of Islam, whose poetry ...

 

Collections follow unusual path
USA Today - May 14, 2003
Poets Against the War, edited by poet Sam ... last winter when Laura Bush planned a poetry ... was
a hit, with more than 13000 poems ... Her poem, On His Way to Kuwait, is ...

 

Poets to duke it out in cyberspace
The Globe and
MailCanada - May 12, 2003
... challenge is to write an acrostic, a poem ... Sunday May 11 to complete their poems. ... votes
will be counted and the poet ... established editor and member of the poetry ...

 

He likes a downpour
Guardian, 
UK - May 16, 2003
... Crawford specialises in poems about Scottish ... of dependence" addressed to the poet's ... the
likable features of Crawford's poetry ... whole man": in the ideal poem's ...

 

Writer Support
New London Day, CT - May 25, 2003
... read assigned and established works of poetry ... a member feels like it, are original
poems ... back injury in 1990, reads a poem ... Jude Rittenhouse, a Mystic-based poet ...

 

Les Murray, bard with a barb
New Zealand Herald, New Zealand - May 9, 2003
... This then is Les Murray: Australian poet ... was provocatively titled Subhuman Redneck
Poems ... accepts his mortality and mentions a poem ... I'm just going to read poetry ...

 

Mushairah offers experience of high order
Times of Oman, Oman - May 14, 2003
... He has produced several volumes of poems and ... Ata is a poet of par excellence ... Author
of several volumes of poetry consisting of ... is author of two volumes of poem ...

 

in honor of Mother’s Day
East Brunswick Sentinel, NJ - May 8, 2003
VERONICA YANKOWSKI Poet Bob Jeannotte (left) looks over ... is the title of his new poetry ... publicist
who worked to get his poems ... Jeannotte has not written a poem ...

 

Where writers fear to tread Student poets step up at Art Beat ...
Oregonian, OR - May 15, 2003
... She studies poetry because it has always ... Another poet, Chris Cottrell, 27, grew up ... He's
had poems and short stories ... In her poem "Delete," Eckler describes her ...

 

For artists only
Christian Science Monitor - May 15, 2003
... chance to finish her fifth book of poetry ... up and recited from memory a favorite poem ... work"
at home, agrees Gail Taylor, a poet ... She's working on a book of poems ...

 

On Edge
Village Voice, NY - 
May 13, 2003
... Poet Tracie Morris and choreographer David Thomson ... from the script she calls a poem ... Morris
has been a poetry slam ... two dimensions (the page) became sound poems. ...

 

Kerouac's haiku a revelation
Daily Yomiuri, 
Japan - May 10, 2003
... he also wrote a considerable amount of poetry ... Under the tutelage of poet Gary Snyder
and ... may, it is a terrific little poem ... a major selection, with over 500 poems ...

 

The Sage and the Self-Promoter
Humanities Magazine, DC - 
May 16, 2003
... said at the time that Whitman’s poems ... although admitting “the essential spirit
of poetry ... he had called for such a poet as ... Yet America is a poem in our eyes ...

 

Exiled Iraqi Poets Ponder Returning Home
Voice of America - May 9, 2003
... At their first post-war poetry reading here ... In this poem, he compares Iraq to water ... Another
Iraqi poet at the recent event ... he and others can read their poems ...

 

There is, so far as I’ve been able to ascertain, no overlap. The 71 items Google found were missed by Poetry Daily, while its 11 items fail to show up in Google. That’s a conundrum. Even if one simply presumes that the registration requirement at the New York Times tends to keep it out of Google’s still beta news service, the Philadelphia Inquirer has no such requirement. Poetry Daily catches Ed Hirsch’s weekly mawkish poetry column from The Washington Post, but misses the story on poetry & fiction in contemporary Egypt that also ran in the Post.

 

The world as viewed by Google is more various & diverse. It starts with, of all people, Ian Hamilton Finlay, but also includes the inescapable sentimental tales of nonagenarian versifiers. It also has a significantly more international bent. Poetry Daily replicates the School of Quietude myth that first there was England & then there was little pockets of “New English” verse over here in the colonies & that’s your history of literature. Google brings in Africa, Australia, Israel, central Asia, Japan, all still drawing only from English language publications. Each service has one obit, although Google’s belongs to Ted Joans.

 

It’s not that there is no representation of the School of Quietude in Google. Names like Ted Kooser & Donald Justice pop out of these search engine snippets. So long as newspapers let advertising predispose their approach to editorial content – there is no commercial newspaper I know of that doesn’t confront this problem – the fact that trade publishers have budgets for advertising means that their small press scene will be treated differently, even if trade publishers’ original content differs from presses such as Pressed Wafer or Talisman mostly by being mediocre. Yet while the Baltimore Sun ran an article on Sharon Olds that turns up on Google’s list, the Marin Independent-Journal has an interview with Stephen Ratcliffe on poetry & surfing!

 

Even during the best of times, poetry tends to fly below the radar of most news outlets for the simple reason that it is, if not absolutely non-economic activity, economically trivial in terms of the larger society. Print publications – and the vast majority of these news sites are merely the web face of traditional print media – tend thus to look at poetry primarily as human interest filler unless something has occurred that is noteworthy because

 

  • it confirms stereotypes about poetry (poet laureate is naughty fellow)
  • it conflicts with stereotypes about poetry (poet has best seller), or
  • it is economic (heiress donates $$$ to magazine)

 

What one wants, finally, is something not so terribly far from the mythic journalistic standard – observed universally only in its breach – of, if not objectivity, at least neutrality. If, as August Highland’s Muse Apprentice Guild’s 467 contributors to its winter 2003 issue suggests – given that it just scratches the surface of the scene – the post-avant literary scene in the U.S. has grown to such proportions, isn’t it reasonable to expect more out of a collection of 71 items than one piece on Stephen Ratcliffe, another on Ian Hamilton Finlay, a couple of tidbits on Amiri Baraka’s job as New Jersey Poet Laureate & an obit for Ted Joans? And isn’t it almost incumbent upon the folks at Poetry Daily to do a far better job at representing the scene news-wise? Including one post-avant poet every other week among their poems simply doesn’t cut it.