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
Independent, UK - 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 Mail, Canada - 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.
