POETS ONLINE blog

Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards

2012-01-20T14:25:00.000-05:00

The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards are sponsored by The Poetry Center at PCCC, and honor Paterson poet Allen Ginsberg’s contribution to American Literature.

The first prize winner will receive $1,000; second, $200; and third $100.

The entry fee of $18 covers the cost of a subscription to The Paterson Literary Review, in which the winning poems will be published. The submissions deadline is April 1.

Winners will be asked to participate in a reading to take place in Paterson’s Historic District.

For guidelines and an entry form, go to www.pccc.edu/poetry or send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to:
Maria Mazziotti Gillan,
Executive Director,
Poetry Center,
Passaic County Community College,
One College Boulevard,
Paterson, N.J. 07505-1179.

Be sure to mark envelope with the contest name.

Dodge Poetry Festival 2012

2012-01-01T12:00:00.000-05:00

The 14th edition of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Poetry Festival will return to Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, for a second time in fall 2012.

The festival is a biennial event that has been held since 1986. The first 12 festivals had been held in more rural settings, mostly Waterloo Village in NJ. The Foundation moved to Newark for its 2010 festival.

Dates for the Festival have not been finalized at this time.

Some Extra Winter Prompting

2011-12-31T18:00:00.000-05:00

If you want to write more in the new year, another source of poetry writing prompts is "The Music In It", poet Adele Kenny's blog on poetry and poets – the craft and the community.

She posts a new writing prompt most weeks (usually on Saturdays) and there is an archive for past prompts.

Recently, she featured a winter prompt with a series of links to sample winter poems.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15465 “A Winter Without Snow” by J. D. McClatchy

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22693 “Approach of Winter” by Willian Carlos Williams

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22694 “An Old Man’s Winter Night” by Robert Frost

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20526 “Winter Distances” by Fanny Howe

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22050 “Winter Trees” by William Carlos Williams

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20938 “Return to Winter” by Elaine Terranova

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19217 “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden

Adele Kenny is the author of 23 books of poetry and non-fiction. Over 700 of her poems, articles, and reviews have been published in journals throughout North and South America, the UK, Europe, Australia, and Asia, as well as in books and anthologies published by Crown, Mc-Graw Hill, Tuttle, and Shambhala. She served as associate editor of The Antiquer: Fine Art & Antiques from 2000-2005 and is currently poetry editor of Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature.

Adele is the recipient of various honors and awards, including two poetry fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She has received a Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award and an Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award; and she has been a Pushcart Prize finalist, as well as a finalist for the Paumanok Poetry Award. She has also been awarded first place Merit Book and Henderson Awards, and a Writer's Digest Poetry Award. In 2011, she was honored with a Women of Excellence Award from the Union County Commission on the Status of Women for her personal achievements and volunteer work in the arts and humanities. One of her poems appeared on the marquee of the Rialto West Theater in NYC as part of the 42nd Street Art Project, and her book Staffordshire Animals has been cited by Home and Garden Television (Episode COL-713).

Adele is the Director of the Carriage House Poetry Reading Series, which she founded in December of 1998, Adele has also been director of the Fanwood Arts Council (at the Kuran Arts Center) since 1999. She has been a featured poet at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, and is active as a featured reader in a wide range of venues. She has worked as a Grants Review Panelist for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Union County Division of Cultural and Heritage Affairs and has also been a presenter, poetry workshop leader, and artist-in-residence for numerous agencies and organizations, including state and county Teen Arts Festivals, the NJ State Department of Education, Symposium for the Arts, and Very Special Arts Festivals (serving the handicapped).

Emily Dickinson First Book Award

2011-12-06T01:00:00.000-05:00

The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is pleased to announce the 2012 Emily Dickinson First Book Award. The occasional award is designed to recognize an American poet of at least 40 years of age who has yet to publish a first collection of poetry.

The winning poet will have one book-length poetry manuscript published by Graywolf Press. In addition to publication and promotion of the manuscript, the winner will receive a prize of $10,000.

Previous winners of the award include Landis Everson and Brian Culhane.

Manuscripts will be accepted from January 16 to February 17, 2012. The winner will be notified by April 30, 2012, and publicly announced at the Pegasus Awards ceremony in 2012.

For full contest rules, please visit www.poetryfoundation.org/dickinsonaward

Ars Poetica - Editing Your Memories

2011-11-28T01:30:00.000-05:00

You know those poems known as ars poetica? Latin for "the art of poetry" or "on the nature of poetry," they are poems about poetry. There are examples of them by Aristotle and Horace and many poets have written ars poetica since.

Some are titled "Ars Poetica" but many more are just on the nature and art of poetry. My own personal theory is that almost every poem has some ars poetica in it.

Of the moderns, the best known is probably Archibald MacLeish's poem that ends with the couplet "A poem should not mean / But be".

One of the first known treatises on poetry, Horace's Ars Poetica (also referred to as Letters to Piso) is literally translated as "The Art of Poetry" or "On the Art of Poetry." It was composed around 15 B.C.E. and it outlines principles of poetry. His advice to poets is still valid - read widely, strive for precision, and seek honest criticism.

The modern ars poetica has shifted from didactic argument to a more introspective take on a poet's individual art.

We use "Ars Poetica" by MacLeish from his Collected Poems as our model for this month's prompt. In the poem, MacLeish says:

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

Rereading the lines "Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves / Memory by memory the mind—" this time, I connected with an article I clipped some time ago about scientists trying to erase/edit memories.

Suppose scientists could erase certain memories by tinkering with a single substance in the brain. Could make you forget a chronic fear, a traumatic loss, even a bad habit.

For all that scientists have studied it, the brain remains the most complex and mysterious human organ — and, now, the focus of billions of dollars’ worth of research to penetrate its secrets.

Researchers in Brooklyn have recently accomplished comparable feats, with a single dose of an experimental drug delivered to areas of the brain critical for holding specific types of memory, like emotional associations, spatial knowledge or motor skills.

The drug blocks the activity of a substance that the brain apparently needs to retain much of its learned information. And if enhanced, the substance could help ward off dementias and other memory problems.

Editing and erasing memories - Isn't that what we all do every day? Perhaps not with total success. Of course, writers work at this and poets are the masters of editing.

In this excerpt from "Work" by Mary Oliver, the speaker is in the realm of ars poetica, but is also dealing with writing memory into poetry. She is able to conjure her dog to her side by throwing a "handful of words...into the air." This is the world that we create in our poems and it exists beyond what we touch, see and hear.

4.

All day I have been pining for the past.
That's when the big dog, Luke, breathed at my side.
Then she dashed away then she returned
in and out of the swales, in and out of the creeks,
her dark eyes snapping.
Then she broke, slowly,
in the rising arc of a fever.

And now she's nothing
except for mornings when I take a handful of words
and throw them into the air
so that she dashes up again out of the darkness,

like this--

this is the world.

For this prompt, try to write a poem about how you as a poet edit memories to create the world of the poem. It is an ars poetica on how we edit with a focus on the memory. It's more than just throwing a handful of words into the air, but when it works, it is that easy.

For some other takes on poets putting themselves and their relationship to the poem, and the act of writing, look at Sharon Old's "Take the I Out"; Heather McHugh's "What He Thought"; Billy Collins's "Workshop"; John Brehm's "The Poems I Have Not Written"; Mark Jarman's "Ground Swell"; Galway Kinnell's "The Bear" and James Galvin's "Art Class"

"Ars Poetica" Manuscript
Drafted March 14, 1925 by Archibald MacLeish

National Student Poets To Be Chosen

2011-11-24T09:24:00.001-05:00

This past week, First Lady Michelle Obama helped launched a new arts program to pick five high school student poets who will spend one year promoting poetry through readings, workshops and other activities.

The National Student Poets program is created by the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, of which the first lady is honorary chair, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services through a partnership with nonprofit group, the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers.

"What you learn through reading and writing poetry will stay with you throughout your life," Obama said in a statement. "It will spark your imagination and broaden your horizons and even help your performance in the classroom."

The five National Student Poets will be chosen from a pool of teenagers who have already received a national Scholastic Art & Writing Award for poetry. The selection panel will be comprised of poet Terrance Hayes, "Kenyon Review" editor David Lynn, Alice Quinn of the Poetry Society of America, and the Library of Congress' Robert Casper.

More than 185, 000 students apply annually for the Scholastic Art & Writing Award and since 1923, winners have included teenagers such as Truman Capote, Sylvia Plath, Joyce Carol Oates and others.

The first five National Student Poets will be announced in summer 2012, and will each receive academic awards of $5,000. They will serve as literary ambassadors in their communities and encourage kids to develop writing and creative skills.

The President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities focuses on increasing creativity in schools and engaging students in being innovative. The Institute of Museum and Library Services makes federal grants aimed at creating strong libraries and museums.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/21/us-finearts-poetry-obama-idUSTRE7AK0KT20111121

English Manor House Poetry Weekend (NJ)

2011-11-01T00:03:00.000-04:00

Join poets Laura Boss and Maria Mazzioti Gillan on Friday, December 9 through Sunday, December 11, 2011 (Friday dinner through Sunday lunch) at the St. Marguerite's Retreat House in Mendham, NJ for a poetry retreat that gives writers the space and time to focus totally on their own work in a serene and beautiful setting away from the pressures and distractions of daily life.

This writing intensive is open to all writers over the age of 18.

Saint Marguerite’s Retreat House is an English manor house situated on 93 acres of wooded land with pathways that lend themselves to the serene contemplation of nature and nurturing of your creative spirit. The Retreat House is located at the convent of Saint John the Baptist, 82 West Main Street, Mendham, NJ.

Participants arrive before 6 PM on Friday evening, have dinner, settle into their rooms, and begin to retreat from the distractions of the world.

That evening, participants will be lead into creating new work. After each workshop, each participant will have the opportunity to read their work in the group.

After Saturday breakfast, participants will move into two groups for morning workshops, followed by free time for socializing and exploring the grounds.

After lunch, writing workshops will take place, followed by time to write. Each participant will have a chance to sign up in advance with Maria or Laura for one-on-one help with revision.

After dinner on Saturday evening, participants will be invited to read their poems to the groups, and the faculty will lead another workshop session on how to get published.

After Sunday breakfast, a final writing workshop and concluding reading by participants will serve as the “closing ceremony” to this inspiring and productive weekend. Lunch will provide a final opportunity for socializing.

The leaders envision this weekend as a retreat from the noise and bustle of daily life and see this retreat as a spiritual and creative break from our usual lives. The setting certainly allows us to take some time to look at life in a new light, to listen for our own voices, and to create in stillness, in quiet, and in community. These are times of contemplation and welcoming the muse.

The workshops will concentrate on "writing your way home" and the way writing can save us, save our stories and our lives. Participants should bring papers, pens, and the willingness to take some risks. Please also bring previously-written work for one-on-one sessions and for the readings.

The workshops, room, and meals are all included in the fee of $375.
Late registration will be accepted on a first come, first served basis. Enrollment is limited.
NJ teachers may receive 15 professional development credits for attending.

For further information and to register, contact mariagillan@verizon.net or send SASE to Maria Mazziotti Gillan, 40 Post Ave., Hawthorne, NJ 07506 or call 973-684-6555.

Selected Books by the Poets

Taha Muhammad Ali

2011-10-16T13:05:00.000-04:00

From Blue Flower Arts, I saw the the announcement: "It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Taha Muhammad Ali, poet and person of exceptional powers. We will miss him dearly."

He is best known to an English-speaking audience by a collection of his work in English translation (with facing Arabic), So What: New & Selected Poems, 1971–2005, translated by Peter Cole published in 2006.

Taha Muhammad Ali
at the Dodge Poetry Festival
2006 (photos Lynn Saville)

At the Dodge Poetry Festival in 2006, I heard Taha Muhammad Ali and Peter Cole reading Taha’s powerful (and then unpublished) poem "Revenge" (see video below)

Tea and Sleep
by Taha Muhammad Ali (Palestine)

If, over this world, there’s a ruler
who holds in his hand bestowal and seizure,
at whose command seeds are sewn,
as with his will the harvest ripens,
I turn in prayer, asking him
to decree for the hour of my demise,
when my days draw to an end,
that I’ll be sitting and taking a sip
of weak tea with a little sugar
from my favorite glass
in the gentlest shade of the late afternoon
during the summer.
And if not tea and afternoon,
then let it be the hour
of my sweet sleep just after dawn.

Translator Peter Cole reads "Revenge" in English after Taha reads it in Arabic.

Games for National Poetry Day

2011-10-03T22:39:00.000-04:00

National Poetry Day 2011 in the UK is Thursday, October 6th. This year's theme is GAMES. They ask that you use the theme for a themed reading, a poetry marathon, a classroom poetry game, a poetry workshop - a poetry prompt.

The Poetry Society in the UK celebrates National Poetry Day with events, like National Poetry Day Live, an event to celebrate National Poetry Day, and this year they will be presenting an afternoon of free events to celebrate this years theme "Games."

Various Poetry Society competitions take place on or around, or have celebrations linked to, National Poetry Day.

The Stanza Poetry Competition winner is announced on National Poetry Day, as are the winners of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award.

The National Poetry Competition closes at the end of October, giving poets inspired by the day time to pen their poems and enter.

Follow @poetrydayuk on Twitter

Banned Poems

2011-10-02T23:09:00.002-04:00

We just closed Banned Books Week when libraries and bookstores celebrate freadom.

There are banned books read aloud in the Virtual Read-Out at YouTube.

You might also consider banned poems. Poetry.about.com suggested four:

The opening lines of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” from the Fayetteville Library
Heinrich Heine poems (read here by a professor of German at the University of Texas)
“To the Rich Givers” and “City of Ships” from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass
Shel Silverstein’s “If You Have to Dry the Dishes”

7th Biennial Warren County Poetry Festival This Weekend

2011-09-23T13:00:00.000-04:00

The 7th Biennial Warren County Poetry Festival is a free event to be held on Saturday, September 24, 2011. The festival is held on the campus of the Blair Academy, in Blairstown, New Jersey.

Featured poets this year include: Toi Derricotte, Mark Doty, Marie Howe, Jim Haba, Sander Zulauf, Martin Farawell, Stanley Barkan, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Lyn Lifshin, Joe Weil, and Laura Boss, who is also the Festival Artistic Director.

The Festival will feature workshops, panel discussions, book signings, and open mic sessions.

The Names by Billy Collins

2011-09-11T15:44:00.000-04:00

After the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, the Poet Laureate then in office, Billy Collins, was asked to write a poem to be read in front of a special joint session of Congress. Collins wrote "The Names, which he read on September 6, 2002.

The Names - Billy Collins

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night. 

A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze, 

And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows, 

I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened, 

Then Baxter and Calabro, 

Davis and Eberling, names falling into place 

As droplets fell through the dark. 

Names printed on the ceiling of the night. 

Names slipping around a watery bend. 

Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream. 

In the morning, I walked out barefoot 

Among thousands of flowers 

Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears, 

And each had a name -- 

Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal 

Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins. 

Names written in the air 

And stitched into the cloth of the day. 

A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox. 

Monogram on a torn shirt, 

I see you spelled out on storefront windows 

And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city. 

I say the syllables as I turn a corner -- 

Kelly and Lee, 

Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor. 

When I peer into the woods, 

I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden 

As in a puzzle concocted for children. 

Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash, 

Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton, 

Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple. 

Names written in the pale sky. 

Names rising in the updraft amid buildings. 

Names silent in stone 

Or cried out behind a door. 

Names blown over the earth and out to sea. 

In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows. 

A boy on a lake lifts his oars. 

A woman by a window puts a match to a candle, 

And the names are outlined on the rose clouds -- 

Vanacore and Wallace, 

(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound) 

Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z. 

Names etched on the head of a pin. 

One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel. 

A blue name needled into the skin. 

Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers, 

The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son. 

Alphabet of names in a green field. 

Names in the small tracks of birds. 

Names lifted from a hat 

Or balanced on the tip of the tongue. 

Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory. 

So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart. 

Autumn Haiku Workshop (NJ)

2011-09-09T03:00:00.000-04:00

We will be offering a another free haiku workshop next month in New Jersey. Our last workshop celebrated the start of summer and this next one will focus on autumn.

The autumn haiku workshop with Ken Ronkowitz is on both reading and writing haiku, that best known (and misunderstood?) form of Japanese verse. It will be held Saturday, October 8, 2011.

Though many Westerners associate haiku with early lessons on writing poetry as a child, the form dates back more than 300 years and is considered very serious poetry in the East.

Haiku consists of non-rhyming verses that frequently use nature and seasonal themes that aim to evoke vivid mental pictures and stir strong emotions in readers.

It is a form that has connections to other mediums of expression, aesthetics and Zen culture.

In the workshop, we will read and discuss the history of haiku, how it is composed in English and then compose and share our own haiku.

Our host location for this workshop is the Ringwood Public Library (New Jersey).

The event is also listed on Facebook.

Suggested Haiku Reading

End of Summer

2011-08-28T09:40:00.000-04:00

It is not quite the end of summer, but all the signs are appearing. So here is the first section of Jane Kenyon's "Three Songs at the End of Summer"

A second crop of hay lies cut
and turned. Five gleaming crows
search and peck between the rows.
They make a low, companionable squawk,
and like midwives and undertakers
possess a weird authority.

Crickets leap from the stubble,
parting before me like the Red Sea.
The garden sprawls and spoils.

Across the lake the campers have learned
to water ski. They have, or they haven’t.
Sounds of the instructor’s megaphone
suffuse the hazy air. “Relax! Relax!”

Cloud shadows rush over drying hay,
fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine.
The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod
brighten the margins of the woods.

Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts;
water, silver-still, and a vee of geese."

by Jane Kenyon

read the full "Three Songs at the End of Summer" from Poetry Magazine

Poetry and Song Lyrics

2011-08-26T15:48:00.000-04:00

The online school of Boston’s Berklee College of Music, is debuting the new online course, Creative Writing: Poetry, for their upcoming fall term, beginning September 26th, 2011.

The 12-week course focuses on writing better lyrics through the study of poetry.

“If you want to gain control over your writing, find out what makes poetry work, and what your compositional options are, then this is the course for you,” said Pat Pattison, course author and Professor of Lyric Writing and Poetry at Berklee. “By the time you finish this course, your eyes are going to be completely open to the possibilities of language. This course will make your writing better, and if you do music, it will make your music better.”

Bob Dylan's handwritten lyrics to Just Like a Woman

Are any of you poets reading this also musicians? Do you write poetry when you sit down to write lyrics? Those questions take me back to the late 1960s when students were arguing that their favorite musicians were writing poetry, and some teachers were beginning to use the lyrics of Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, The Beatles and others as a way to teach poetry.

The course says that you will learn "how to enhance your ideas through arranging lines into odd or even numbered line groups and creating either a feeling of tension or resolution with the composition itself, independent of the poem's meaning. You'll learn placement, timing, focus, and especially how to use rhythm in language expressively. By the end of the course you’ll be able to construct various chord types used in pop/rock and other styles, and have the improvisational (soloing) vocabulary used in pop/rock styles at your fingertips."

The course readings listed aren't from the world of music but from the very traditional class anthology with Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, Emerson, Browning, Wadsworth, Longfellow, Tennyson, Yeats, Frost, Cummings, Allen Ginsberg.

Poetry On Video

2011-08-24T11:23:00.009-04:00

A number of people have created videos to accompany poems. Not everyone gets the opportunities to go to festivals, workshops and reading and hear poets live, so sometimes video is the only alternative. And some videos are interesting films in themselves.

There are 11 Billy Collins poems animated at Billy Collins Action Poetry. (Also a Collins interview from Forum with Michael Krasny available to play (audio only).

Four Seasons Productions has made short films set to classic poetry. There are 21 that have won festival prizes and produced a DVD. Their best “poem videos” are available on their YouTube channel. and include Langston Hughes’ “The Weary Blues,” “Only Breath” by 13th century sufi poet Rumi and “100 Love Sonnets IX” by Pablo Neruda in the original Spanish.

Poetry Everywhere has 34 short videos of contemporary poets, one poem per video, hosted by Garrison Keillor, using footage from the Dodge Poetry Festival.

The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation's YouTube channel has video highlights from past Dodge Foundation Poetry Festivals, some of which have been featured on PBS.

Brian Turner reading "Caravan" and "Eulogy" at the 2006 Dodge Poetry Festival.

Philip Levine: Are You Happy and Starlight

2011-08-13T18:00:00.006-04:00

When I read that Philip Levine was named the newest U.S. Poet Laureate, I had been doing a little research on the Perseids meteor showers. The Perseids is a very prolific meteor shower that comes every August and I try to watch each year.

They are called the Perseids because they appear to come from a point, called the radiant, within the constellation Perseus.

Perseus was one of the founding myths of the Twelve Olympians. Perseus killed the Gorgon Medusa, and claimed Andromeda, having rescued her from a sea monster sent by Poseidon in retribution for Queen Cassiopeia declaring herself more beautiful than the sea nymphs. Many of those mythological characters are now found in the constellations of the night sky.

I went looking through Levine's poems and rediscovered his poem "Starlight" which seemed like a good connection.

Philip Levine always seems to be described as "blue-collar, working class, poet of the people, poet of work" and similar terms.He is that. Those poems are in his collection and they are important and powerful. But, I hope that doesn't limit his appeal because readers think that all his poems are about that world.

"Starlight" is a father-son poem and I suggest you watch the video below of Levine reading that poem online. He gives it the briefest of introductions - only to say that his father did not live long after the setting of the poem.

The question is asked in the poem "Are you happy?" Such an easy, such a difficult question.

For this month's prompt, write a poem that uses the stars as a way to help tell your story. From the mythology of the constellations, the science of the stars, the romance and history connected to the night sky or this month's shooting stars from Perseus - you have many places to find your stars. Perhaps, you will also find your story in the night sky.

Submissions Due: September 4, 2011

Philip Levine reads his "Starlight" is from Stranger to Nothing: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2006). This film is from In Person: 30 Poets.

News of the World

A Poetry App

2011-08-13T12:40:00.000-04:00

The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, offers a free POETRY app for Android and iPad/iPhone. The free app has been updated for all mobile devices, including the iPhone.

The updated POETRY app now offers audio versions of many of the 1,700-plus poems included in its virtual poetry library, links to biographies of poets whose work is featured in the app, source information for each poem, and newly added poetry from Francisco Aragon, Rita Dove, Carolyn Kizer, J. Patrick Lewis, and Michael Palmer, among others. Users can browse by poet, mood, subject, or audio availability. Text size may also be increased according to preference.

The iPad edition of the POETRY app includes all of the features available on Androids and iPhones, as well as free digital editions of Poetry magazine. When connected to the Internet, iPad users can download and read the three most recent issues of Poetry as they appeared in print. Electronic editions of the magazine can then be stored in iBook or other e-reader software, allowing app users to read these issues offline at any time.

The POETRY app offers hundreds of well-known poems by contemporary and classic poets, including Lucille Clifton, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Heather McHugh, Pablo Neruda, William Shakespeare, César Vallejo, and many, many others; easy access to new poems from the pages of Poetry magazine; a searchable database of poems to suit any mood or occasion; a folder for saving favorite poems; the capacity to share poems with friends through e-mail and social media; and an engaging, user-friendly interface.

Download the POETRY app for Android.
Download the POETRY app for iPads and iPhones.

Philip Levine Named New Poet Laureate

2011-08-10T16:58:00.004-04:00

The Library of Congress has named Philip Levine as the new U.S. Poet Laureate. He will succeed W.S. Merwin in the one year appointment.

Levine's poetry has long reflected his Detroit origins and his own and others "blue-collar life."
He was born in Detroit in 1928, to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, and educated at Wayne University (now Wayne State), the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Stanford University.

He is the author of twenty collections of poetry, and his honors include the Pulitzer Prize, two National Book Awards, and two National Book Critic Circle Awards.

The Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, described Philip Levine as

...one of America's great narrative poets. His plainspoken lyricism has, for half a century, championed the art of telling 'The Simple Truth'—about working in a Detroit auto factory, as he has, and about the hard work we do to make sense of our lives.

On November 29, 2007 a tribute was held in New York City in anticipation of Levine's 80th birthday. Among those celebrating Levine's career by reading Levine's work were Yusef Komunyakaa, Galway Kinnell, E. L. Doctorow, Charles Wright, Jean Valentine, and Sharon Olds. Levine himself read several new and interesting poems. He thanked his students and asked them to refrain from asking for any more letters of recommendation.

2011 Warren County Poetry Festival

2011-08-01T00:01:00.001-04:00

The 7th Biennial Warren County Poetry Festival is a free event to be held on Saturday, September 24, 2011. The festival is held on the campus of the Blair Academy, in Blairstown, New Jersey.

The theme of this year's festival is "Mapping the Landscape of Love and Loss in Poetry."

The Festival will feature workshops, panel discussions, book signings, and open mic sessions.

Featured poets this year include: Toi Derricotte, Mark Doty, Marie Howe, Jim Haba, Sander Zulauf, Martin Farawell, Stanley Barkan, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Lyn Lifshin, Joe Weil, and Laura Boss, who is also the Festival Artistic Director.

This 7th Biennial Warren County Poetry Festival is made possible by a grant from the by the NJ State Council on the Arts and the Warren County Cultural and Heritage Commission.

Remembering Stanley Kunitz

2011-07-29T14:11:00.001-04:00

THE ROUND

Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloomers
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me.
So I have shut the doors of my house,
so I have trudged downstairs to my cell,
so I am sitting in semi-dark
hunched over my desk
with nothing for a view
to tempt me
but a bloated compost heap,
steamy old stinkpile,
under my window;
and I pick my notebook up
and I start to read aloud
the still-wet words I scribbled
on the blotted page:
"Light splashed . . ."
I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.
by Stanley Kunitz
via http://www.theatlantic.com

It’s the birthday of poet Stanley Kunitz, born 1905 in Worcester, Massachusetts. He published his first book of poetry, Intellectual Things, in 1930.

His 1971 volume, The Testing-Tree, marked a shift in his work, from his early, formal style to one that was looser, more personal, and written in everyday language. He explained the shift in Publishers Weekly: “I think that as a young poet I looked for what Keats called ‘a fine excess,’ but as an old poet I look for spareness and rigor and a world of compassion.”

He was named U.S. poet laureate in 2000, at the age of 95. He was still publishing and promoting poetry. The Wild Braid: a Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden (2005) is a collection of essays and conversations about his two loves, poetry and gardening, and was released on his 100th birthday. He died the following spring.

(Source: writersalmanac.publicradio.org)

Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of stories of the soul. The old myths, the old gods, the old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our minds, waiting for our call. We have need of them, for in their sum they epitomize the wisdom and experience of the race.

— Stanley Kunitz

100 Thousand Poets For Change

2011-07-25T08:45:00.000-04:00

100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE is an event that will take place in many cities, at the same time and date, Saturday, September 24 from 11:30am - 11:30pm, outdoors when possible, and of course it will be televised.

Join other poets around the USA and across the planet in a demonstration/ celebration of poetry to promote serious social and political change.

If so sign up here and let's see if enough people are serious about an event like this. So far we have 170 cities representing 44 countries planning events. Join us here and please post comments and ideas.

What kind of CHANGE are we talking about?

The first order of change is for poets, writers, artists, anybody, to actually get together to create and perform, educate and demonstrate, simultaneously, with other communities around the world. This will change how we see our local community and the global community. We have all become incredibly alienated in recent years. We hardly know our neighbors down the street let alone our creative allies who live and share our concerns in other countries. We need to feel this kind of global solidarity. I think it will be empowering.

And of course there is the political/social change that many of us are talking about these days. There is trouble in the world. Wars, ecocide, the lack of affordable medical care, racism, the list goes on.

It appears that transformation towards a more sustainable world is a major concern and could be a global guiding principle for this event. Peace also seems to be a common cause. War is not sustainable. There is an increasing sense that we need to move forward and stop moving backwards. But I am trying not to be dogmatic. I am hoping that together we can develop our ideas of the "change/transformation" we are looking for as a group, and that each community group will decide their own specific area of focus for change for their particular event.

Do you want to organize in your area?

100 Thousand Poets for Change will organize “participants” by local region, city, or state, and find individuals in each area who would like to organize their local event.

You can send a message via their page in Facebook or e-mail walterblue@bigbridge.org

If you are an organizer for your community this means that first you will consider a location for the event and begin to contact people in your area who want to participate in the event. Participation means contacting the media, posting the event on the web, in calendars, newspapers, etc., reading poems, performing in general, supplying cupcakes and beer (it’s up to you), demonstrating, putting up an information table, inviting guest speakers, musicians, etc., organizing an art exhibit, and documenting the event (this is important, too), and cleaning up, of course.

Organizers and participants will create their own local event as an expression of who they are locally. Do they want a candlelight vigil or a circus, a march or a dance, do they want absolute silence, a group meditation on a main street; it’s up to the local organization.

However, groups should be sure to hold some part of the event, if not all of it, outdoors, in public view. (outdoors is not required). The point is to be seen and heard, not just stay behind closed walls.

It is also important that the event be documented. Photos, videos, poems, journals, paintings! Documentation is crucial. The rest of the 100 Thousand Poets for Change want to hear what you have to say about change and enjoy your creativity too! The documentation will be shared through a blog/website that I will set up, a blog/website where groups can share and announce event information, as well as post photos, videos, poetry, art, and thoughts. But an event doesn’t have to involve tons of people. It can be just you (the organizer) and your pet, on a street corner, with a sign.

Each local organization determines what it wants to focus on, something broad like, peace, sustainability, justice, equality, or more specific causes like Health Care, or Freedom of Speech, or local environmental or social concerns that need attention in your particular area right now, etc. Organizations will then come up with a mission statement/manifesto that describes who they are and what they think and care about. When the whole event has taken place all the mission statements can be collected from around the world and worked together into a grand statement of 100 Thousand Poets for Change.

FIND EVENT LOCATIONS and get more information on joining in at:
http://www.bigbridge.org/100thousandpoetsforchange/

Your Poem Was Off-Topic But

2011-07-14T13:01:00.000-04:00

Poets Online has been posting prompts since 1999. No matter what the prompt says, there are always at least as many submissions that have nothing to do with prompt as there are poems that address the prompt.

Many of the poems are off-topic are ones we would consider for publication if they addressed the current prompt. It is easy to set aside the cliched love poems, religious and political prompts and sets of a dozen poems sent in by one person.

But, at times, there will be a poem that we like that has nothing to do with the prompt. I will ask the other readers to consider again - "Does it address the prompt? Am I'm missing something?" Usually the answer is No.

But we save all the submissions in mail folders "Used" and "Rejected" and a few in that latter folder get a mail flag on them as being a poet that we may want to keep an eye out for next time.

Occasionally, I will email those poets with some encouraging rejection note. (Yes, there is a such a thing. I have received them.) Sometimes we suspect that the poet is a young poet in age or experience. Rejection is tough.

When we fell behind in our reading and updating recently (end of the semester, exams, unpoetic papers to grade and that distracting thing we call Life), we went back the rejected folder and looked for some poems that were off topic, but we liked.

In case you missed them, here's a link to where they are posted on the site in our archive.

Back Up Your Poems!

2011-07-14T10:46:00.003-04:00

I have had three poet friends in the past few month contact me frantically because their computers crashed. It wasn't just the lost hard drive that had them frantic - it was the "lost" poems.

None of them had full backups of their files (poems included, but also photos and other documents). I was able to retrieve all the files from one hard drive, retrieve some files from another and do nothing at all with the third.

As tech people say, it's not a question of IF your hard drive will crash, it's just a question of WHEN it will crash.

I highly recommend that you use some kind of regular backup. You can buy a backup drive or use those flashdrives - but they can crash too and you have to remember to do the backups. So, the thing to do these days is to store your work "in the cloud" - online on a computer server that will do regular backing up for you.

There are several well known services like this but I am recommending Dropbox because they offer a FREE 2 Gigabyte account (that's a lot of poems!) of basic backup protection.

You sign up, install a small program on your computer and it creates a folder on your computer to put files in. You use the folder just like any other folder - but it will be automatically backed up online. If you have other computers, you can add Dropbox there too and then those files will appear on both computers. No more emailing files back & forth or carrying them on a flashdrive. And you can access your files by signing in at Dropbox.com from any computer.

You can also share folders in your Dropbox with other Dropbox users. That would be great for collaborative writing or editing situations. If I make changes to a file, you would see them next time you open it.

Okay, I pointed you to a solution. Don't contact me when your computer crashes and you lose those poems!

Basho's Garden

2011-07-11T11:04:00.002-04:00

I seem to be caught up lately in the world of Japanese poetry. In some of my searching I came across this woodblock print by Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858), entitled "Bashō's Hermitage and Camellia Hill on the Kanda Aqueduct at Sekiguchi."

Basho is considered to be the original haiku master.

If you were to visit those rice fields on the left bank of the print today, you would be at Waseda University. ("Waseda" means "early rice field"). On the right side of the waterway is "Bashōen," or "Bashō's Garden," so named because Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) lived there for a time.

There ia pond in the garden that local legend has as the inspiration for one of Bashō's most famous haiku which is engraved on a stone next to the pond in Bashō's calligraphy.

The old pond
A frog leaps in
The sound of water.

Basho

In Henry D. Smith's edition of One Hundred Famous Views of Edo by Hiroshige, he describes the garden side of the print this way:

On the hillside to the right in this view was located Suijinsha, a shrine to the water god, protector of the Kanda Aqueduct, just as Suijin Shrine protected the Sumida. The shrine is located in the thick grove of trees seen to the far upper right, although the shrine building itself is not visible. Below, midway up the slope, is the Ryugean, a detached hermitage of a nearby Buddhist temple. The Ryugean was known for its beautiful natural setting, which looked out over the view we see here, with rice fields below a wooded rise, now the location of Waseda (“early rice-fields”) University, in the distance. The slopes surrounding the hermitage were covered with camellias, although Hiroshige here shows us only cherry blossoms. From this came the name "Camellia Hill," which survives in the name of the large banquet restaurant Chinzanso that occupies the site today.

Sometime in the late Edo period, as seen Hiroshige's title, the Ryugean came to be known as “Basho's Hermitage,” after the famous haiku poet who is said to have briefly lived in this area (but doubtfully in Ryugean itself) in the 1670s while in the service of a daimyo who had been charged with repairing the Kanda Aqueduct. In the early eighteenth century, some disciples of Basho set up a memorial mound to the poet within the precincts of Ryugean, apparently higher on the hill to the right of the view here, and some time later the Basho Hall (Bashodo containing images of the poet and his major followers was built nearby. The memorial mound and the Basho Hall survive today, although closed to the public, just outside the south corner of the Chinzanso gardens. Recently, a pleasant cherry-lined walk has been constructed along the bank we see to the right here, restoring some of the tranquillity of Hiroshige’s vision.

The Narrow Road to Oku (Illustrated Japanese Classics)
Illustrated Basho Haiku Poems
Basho: The Complete Haiku
The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Penguin Classics)

The Sixty-Nine Stations of the Kisokaido

The Sketchbooks of Hiroshige (Pictorial Archive Series)

Hiroshige: One Hundred Famous Views of Edo

Summer Tanka

2011-07-03T12:00:00.006-04:00

We last visited the tanka form more than ten years ago when we asked readers to consider a tanka on yearning. We return to the form this month for our July prompt.

The short tanka form (from the Japanese for "short poem") consists of five lines of 5,7,5,7 and 7 syllables for a total of 31 syllables. Tanka, along with haiku, is one of the better known waka forms.

Tanka has a long history going back over 1300 years. The most famous use of the poetry form of tanka was as secret messages between lovers.

It was the custom of well-mannered persons that after an evening of lovemaking one would write an immediate note about the pleasures of that time. More than just a "thank-you note", this highly stylized five lines of 5-7-5-7-7 onji expressing one's feelings were sent in special paper containers, written on a fan, or knotted on a branch or stem of a single blossom.

These were delivered to the lover by a personal messenger who waited for a responding tanka was to be written in reply to the first note renga-style which the messanger would return to his master.

Since English does not have the same rhythms and syllables as Japanese (see our brief earlier lesson) tankas written in English often do not adhere to the strict form.

Although many English tanka simply use five lines, the first and third being short and the other three being longer, for our prompt we will impose the stricter form.

Since the tanka contains as its first 3 lines a haiku (5-7-5), we should note what the two sections attempt to do. The first three lines (the kami no ku or upper poem) usually present an image or thought - much like we think of a haiku. The remaining two lines (the shimo no ku or lower poem) then shifts the focus to a related idea. For Westerners, this is often compared to a sonnet's "turn."

For our July prompt, we ask you to write a formal tanka of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables on summer and love. You may send your submissions via email - no fans, branches or blossoms required.

Submission deadline is July 31, 2011 - see the prompt and submission information at PoetsOnline.org

Examples of modern English tankas at http://www.americantanka.com/

A Long Rainy Season: Haiku and Tanka

Tangled Hair: Selected Tanka from Midaregami (Japanese Edition)

A Brief Haiku Lesson

2011-07-02T23:45:00.000-04:00

Our July prompt uses the tanka poetry form which is the "grandmother" of the newer haiku form. Here is a bit of haiku information that may add to your understanding of the tanka form.

Haiku verse consists of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. The tone of these poems are derived from a combination of this syllabic structure, imagery, and choice of words.

It reflects the values of Japanese culture and the strong influence of Zen Buddhism, especially in the way that haiku emphasizes a single moment. Most haiku give a very brief description of some event or object belonging to nature. In the traditional form, they contain either a direct or indirect reference to a season that turns the reader's attention to the passage of time.

Haiku came from the tanka form which itself was part of a longer renga. Renga (RAY'N-GAH) is "linked elegance" - a Japanese poetry form in which three-line stanzas of 5-7-5 are linked by a two-lines of 7-7 and were usually written by two or more persons. Poets such as Matsuo Basho developed the 3 lines as its own accepted form.

Traditional haiku also contains kigo (KEY-GO) - a seasonal word. Rather than say "spring", the mention of a cherry blossom signals the season, for example.

Japanese does not have syllables, so our Western haiku in 5-7-5 syllables is an approximation of the way on (OH'N), or sound units, are used in Japanese. Each sound in a word is an on. For example, the word "Tokyo" has three on: to- k - yo. These are similar to syllables in English.

Our syllable is an uninterrupted sound. The word "jump" contains two morae in Japanese as does "haiku". But in English language, those two words are not equal in syllables.

The Japanese mora is what we might call a short syllable and the shortest linguistic measure. A long syllable is two morae (the plural of mora). The word "jump" contains two morae (j-ump) and the word "haiku" contains three (ha-i-ku).

The Haiku Handbook -25th Anniversary Edition: How to Write, Teach, and Appreciate Haiku

Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A Hands-on Guide

The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, & Issa (Essential Poets)

Illustrated Basho Haiku Poems (Little eBook Classics)

Lazy Summer Prompt

2011-07-01T12:28:00.006-04:00

Poets Online has been on a bit of a hiatus lately (yes, there will be a new July prompt!), but not everyone in the poetry world has been lazy. Poet Diane Lockward is always active and her July newsletter she offers this prompt for you in the meantime.

The prompt poem is by Marie-Elizabeth Mali which Diane found in the 2011 collection, Steady, My Gaze.

Second Year of Marriage

Over breakfast and the staggering waft

of jasmine tea and pesto eggs, you say

if it were your job to create the senses,

you would have forgotten smell.

I keep my mouth shut, look

intrigued. A link to the limbic,

the olfactory: the pulse-quickening

scent-coffee, green-humid air, exhaust—

of the airport in Venezuela—or the way

the geranium in my living room sends me

straight back to my grandparents' deck,

those summer lunches. Last year,

I would have tried to convince you

of smell's virtues. Instead, I let it be.

Later, we fight over the best way to unlock

the car. No matter. Your scent, that wordless

telegram, still takes me apart, like it did

when it first arrived out of nowhere.

Diane's prompt: What intrigues me in this poem is the poet's use of smell. We are very accustomed to visual imagery, but not so much to olfactory imagery. And yet smell is such an important sense. When I read the lines about the geranium taking the speaker right back to her grandparents' deck, I knew just what she meant, that is, how closely tied to past experience smell can be. There's a certain kind of wet morning that takes me back to Red Raider Camp with its vile man-made lake full of frogs and mud. The morning smell triggers my memory, along with a sense of revulsion and a keen ache of nostalgia. Whenever I smell lilies of the valley, I remember my mother's Muguet des Bois, my mother all dolled up to go to Canasta Club. Let's see how the sense of smell might work for you in a poem.

Write down the names of some sensuous food items, ones with fabulous aromas.

Write down some other items with strong, distinctive smells.

Let one or more of these trigger a memory. Go back to another time and place.

Is there another person in your present scene and / or in the past scene?

Let this be a love poem, though it doesn't have to be a romantic love poem.

Now see how you might pull your material into a draft that shifts back and forth between past and present. Try just freewriting at first. Give yourself 10 minutes.

Shape your material into a poem, maybe eventually using 2-line stanzas as Marie-Elizabeth has.

Follow Diane at her blog dianelockward.blogspot.com and her official site dianelockward.com

Haiku Workshop in NJ June 25

2011-06-22T09:19:00.001-04:00

Poets Online is sponsoring a free haiku workshop this Saturday, June 25, at 7:00pm in North Plainfield, New Jersey.

This is a free workshop with Ken Ronkowitz on both reading and writing haiku, a form of Japanese verse.

Though many Westerners associate haiku with early lessons on writing poetry as a child, the form dates back more than 300 years and is considered very serious poetry in the East. Haiku consists of non-rhyming verses that frequently use nature themes and aim to evoke vivid mental pictures and stir strong emotions in readers.

We will discuss what is haiku and how it is composed in English, look at related forms, and examine the connections to other mediums of expression, aesthetics and Zen culture.

The host, Organigaya Cafe, will serve organic Japanese fare prior to the workshop, so arrive early and enjoy a great meal before the workshop begins. Free cup of House Green Tea to all attendees.

Organigaya Cafe

478 Somerset St

North Plainfield, New Jersey

information at http://organigaya.com

The event is also on Facebook.

Suggested Haiku Reading

Poets Online Haiku Workshop June 25

2011-06-04T13:18:00.000-04:00

Poets Online will sponsor a Haiku Workshop on Saturday, June 25, at 7:00pm in North Plainfield, New Jersey.

This is a free workshop with Ken Ronkowitz on both reading and writing haiku, a form of Japanese verse.

Though many Westerners associate haiku with early lessons on writing poetry as a child, the form dates back more than 300 years and is considered very serious poetry in the East. Haiku consists of non-rhyming verses that frequently use nature themes and aim to evoke vivid mental pictures and stir strong emotions in readers.

We will discuss what is haiku and how it is composed in English, look at related forms, and examine the connections to other mediums of expression, aesthetics and Zen culture.

The host, Organigaya Cafe, will serve organic Japanese fare prior to the workshop, so arrive early and enjoy a great meal before the workshop begins. Free cup of House Green Tea to all attendees.

Organigaya Cafe

478 Somerset St

North Plainfield, New Jersey

information at http://organigaya.com

The event is also on Facebook.

The Essential Haiku

The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets

Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A Hands-on Guide

Memorial Day Poetry

2011-05-28T18:00:00.039-04:00

Memorial Day brings to mind poems of war, soldiers and remembrance. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the American Civil War, and May 31 is also Walt Whitman’s birthday.

Bob Holman and Margery Snyder on the About.com poetry pages chose his poem “The Artilleryman’s Vision” as the newest addition to their collection of poems for Memorial Day.

It's a day we are supposed to reflect on those who gave their lives in the many wars fought in human history, but we are reminded that the world is ever yet in a state of war.

Shiloh: A Requiem (April 1862) is by Herman Melville

Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
The swallows fly low
Over the field in clouded days,
The forest-field of Shiloh —
Over the field where April rain
Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain
Through the pause of night
That followed the Sunday fight
Around the church of Shiloh —
The church so lone, the log-built one,
That echoed to many a parting groan
And natural prayer
Of dying foemen mingled there —
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve —
Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
But now they lie low,
While over them the swallows skim,
And all is hushed at Shiloh.

Whitman: Poetry and Prose

Selected Poems Of Herman Melville

Submit Your Poetry This Summer

2011-05-26T23:00:00.002-04:00

Is summer a time that you have more time for your writing - and to mail off poems for publication?

Poet Diane Lockward has again posted on her blog a useful, updated list (in 3 parts) of print journals that read during the summer and some that read only during the summer.

Journals
A - F
G - P
Q - Z

Unfortunately, there aren't links to the journal sites or addresses, so you'll have to do some of the work for yourself!

Submit Poems of War and Remembrance

2011-05-22T17:36:00.000-04:00

The anthology of classic war poems collected on the About.com poetry pages are in remembrance of those who gave their lives in the many wars fought in human history.

This year with Memorial Day near, they ask you to add some new poems to their war and remembrance collection. You are invited to submit your own poems or suggest your favorite classics.

NOTE: the text box on the submission page doesn’t convey your format accurately when you type a poem into it (a problem that we find on Poets Online with emailed poems) - so use slashes (“/”) to indicate line breaks and double slashes (“//”) to indicate stanzas.

Poetry - the film

2011-05-11T05:18:00.006-04:00

Poetry is a character study of a film (available on DVD) that examines many of the same big topics that poetry on paper has always addressed - like beauty, truth and mortality.

It comes from Korean writer-director Lee Chang-dong poetry poetry. His script won the best screenplay prize at Cannes last year. His previous directing effort, 2008's "Secret Sunshine," won the festival's best actress award for Jeon Do-yeon and some say that the new film's star, Yun Jung-hee, should have won best actress as well.

In the film, Mija is attempting to live life fully. Part of that attempt is focused on trying to write one good poem.

Her teacher tells her that her difficultly is not writing the poem but finding the heart to write it.

As with many foreign films for Americans, the pace of the film will comparatively slow, but, then again, that's part of the film's story.

The Lee Chang Dong DVD Collection: Green Fish (1997) / Peppermint Candy (1999) / Oasis (2002)

William Carlos Williams Society Conference

2011-05-10T12:53:00.000-04:00

The Fourth Biennial Conference of the William Carlos Williams Society will be held at William Paterson University in New Jersey on June 16-18, 2011.

The theme of the conference is "Life along the Passaic River" after William Carlos Williams' 1938 volume of short stories of the same name.

For those interested in Williams, there is no charge for attending the conference sessions.

There is also the option, for a modest charge, to take a Saturday tour of places from Williams' writing - including the Great Falls, Garret Mountain, and Rutherford.

Conference Website: http://www.wpunj.edu/william-carlos-williams/

Amazon.com Books for William Carlos Williams

In the Museum of Your Last Day

2011-05-06T11:45:00.000-04:00

In the Museum of Your Last Day

there is a coat on a coat hook in a hall. Work-gloves
in the pockets, pliers and bent nails.

There is a case of Quaker State for the Ford.
Two cans of spray paint in a crisp brown bag.

A mug on a book by the hi-fi.
A disk that starts on its own: Boccherini.

There is a dent in the soap the shape of your thumb.
A swirl in the glass when it fogs.

And a gray hair that twines
through the tines of a little black comb.

There is a watch laid smooth on a wallet.
And pairs of your shoes everywhere.

A phone no one answers. A note that says Friday.
Your voice on the tape talking softly.

"In the Museum of Your Last Day" by Patrick Phillips
from The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor:

Bringing Poetry into Communities

2011-04-30T06:52:00.019-04:00

How does one bring poetry to a community? And who is going to make it happen?

In response to these questions posed by the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, Katharine Coles and a cadre of poets and artists provide Blueprints: Bringing Poetry into Communities.

Blueprints creates for poets and arts organizers the sense that they are part of a larger, noble endeavor based in shared values and commitment to poetry. The first three sections include essays by a dozen poets and artists about ways they have brought poetry into different kinds of communities. These essays demonstrate what has been done and what can be done and will inspire others to bring poetry into their own communities. The final section provides a practical “toolkit” loaded with experience-based advice and the tools and strategies necessary to accomplish those endeavors.

Katharine Coles is a professor of English at the University of Utah, former director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, and Utah poet laureate. She is the author of numerous volumes of poetry and has published poems in a wide variety of literary journals and anthologies.

You can purchase the book or download the Free eBook (PDF)

Free NJ Poetry Workshop This Weekend

2011-04-27T09:31:00.008-04:00

Free Poetry Workshop this weekend at the Ringwood Public Library (30 Cannici Drive, Ringwood, NJ 07456)

Saturday, April 30, 2011 from 1:00 - 3:00 PM

Celebrate National Poetry Month and accomplish some mental spring cleaning. This workshop will offer a variety of starting places for poems through readings and exercises. Coordinator and poet Ken Ronkowitz is a lifelong educator and New Jersey resident. He has run poetsonline.org, an online poetry workshop, since 1998. His writing has been published in many magazines including English Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Roadmap, The Shakespeare Quarterly, Prague and in the anthology, The Paradelle. He is currently the Director of the Writing Initiative and teaches at Passaic County Community College, and is an adjunct professor at NJIT.

For more information and directions: http://www.ringwoodlibrary.org

Toni Morrison at Rutgers-Newark

2011-04-18T08:09:00.001-04:00

Toni Morrison is the author of nine major novels. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise, Love, and A Mercy have received extensive critical acclaim.

She received the National Book Critics Award in 1978 for Song of Solomon and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Beloved. In 2006, Beloved was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as the best work of American fiction published in the last quarter-century.

Toni Morrison reads in the Writers at Newark Reading Series on Tues., April 26, 2011, 5:30-7 p.m., in Multipurpose Room 231 at the Paul Robeson Campus Center, 350 Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard, Newark, New Jersey

Readings are free and open to the public.

Attention: No RSVPs are necessary for the Toni Morrison reading. Seating will be done on a first come, first serve basis. Please arrive early to give yourself plenty of time to park and to obtain seating. For High School teachers interested in bringing their students, please email rnmfa@andromeda.rutgers.edu

http://www.mfa.newark.rutgers.edu/visitingwriters/morrison.htm

Rutgers-Newark Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing | Visiting Writers | Toni Morrison

Poets Online Workshop in New Jersey

2011-04-15T19:19:00.001-04:00

Free Poetry Workshop
at the Ringwood Public Library

30 Cannici Drive

Ringwood, NJ 07456

Saturday, April 30, 2011

1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Finding Poems With Naomi Shihab Nye

2011-04-12T03:04:00.000-04:00

Nye

Have you ever had someone ask you to write them a poem?

As Naomi Shihab Nye says in her poem, "Valentine For Ernest Mann":

You can’t order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two”
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Maybe non-poets believe that poets can conjure up poems at will (or with a simple prompt). Nye continues and suggests that rather, poems hide in places where poets find them.

In the bottoms of our shoes,they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

It reminds me of Gary Snyder’s little poem “How Poetry Comes To Me” from 1992 that also talks about how we find poems and how they find us.

It comes blundering over the

Boulders at night, it stays

Frightened outside the

Range of my campfire

I go to meet it at the

Edge of the light

Poetry is a wild animal that is sometimes clumsy and dwells outside our knowledge and awareness. It comes to us only so far. Then, we need to "meet it at the edge of the light” in that place between the known and the unknown.

How do poets do this? Again, Nye suggests:

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.

For our April writing prompt, write about how you find poems (or found one poem) or how they find you. Yes, it's a poem about inspiration and the Muses.

Red Suitcase

National Poetry Month 2011

2011-04-01T15:45:00.021-04:00

Since 1996, the Academy of American Poets has sponsored National Poetry Month each April.

It's a month when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together to celebrate poetry and its place in American culture.

Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events.

Some events online include:

	Poem In Your Pocket Day: Join thousands of individuals across the U.S. by carrying a poem in your pocket on Thursday, April 14.
	Poetry & the Creative Mind: Each April, The Academy of American Poets presents a star-studded celebration of American poetry.

	Poem-A-Day: Great poems from new books emailed each day of National Poetry Month. Sign up for your daily dose of new poems from new spring poetry titles.
	Spring Book List: Check out the new books of poetry available each spring.

	National Poetry Map: Find out what is happening in your state by visiting our redesigned and updated National Poetry Map.

Fashion and Poets

2011-03-27T15:37:00.001-04:00

Fashion and poets - a disturbing mix...

From O, The Oprah Magazine, March 08, 2011

Modeling the latest looks, eight rising poets express their dynamic personal styles—and show you how to cultivate your own.

see the photographic evidence - Oprah.com

Gerald Stern at WCCC

2011-03-26T22:31:00.000-04:00

The WCCC Visiting Authors Series continues on Wednesday, March 30th, with a reading by Gerald Stern, recipient of the National Book Award for Poetry.

This event, beginning at 7:30 p.m. at Warren County Community College in New Jersey in Room E208, is free and open to the public. The WCCC Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, the international honor society for two-year colleges, will provide complimentary refreshments. Originally scheduled for January 26th, Mr. Stern’s reading was moved to March 30th due to inclement weather.

Gerald Stern was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1925. His books of poetry include Early Collected Poems: 1965-1992 (W. W. Norton, 2010), Save the Last Dance: Poems (2008); This Time: New and Selected Poems (1998), which won the National Book Award; Bread Without Sugar (1992), winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize; The Red Coal (1981), which received the Melville Caine Award from the Poetry Society of America; and Lucky Life, the 1977 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets.

His honors include the Paris Review's Bernard F. Conners Award, the Bess Hokin Award from Poetry, the Ruth Lilly Prize, four National Endowment for the Arts grants, the Pennsylvania Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from American Poetry Review, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In 2005, Stern was selected to receive the Wallace Stevens Award for mastery in the art of poetry. He also served as the first Poet Laureate of the State of New Jersey from 2000 to 2002. For many years a teacher at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, Stern now lives in Lambertville, New Jersey.

The WCCC Visiting Authors Series is supported by a grant from the Warren County Cultural and Heritage Commission. All facilities comply with ADA regulations and are fully accessible. After the reading, there will be brief Q & A with the audience and a book signing. Books will be available for purchase at the event.

For directions to the college or to find out about WCCC’s Creative Writing degree program, please call (908) 835-9222 or visit www.warren.edu.

The Green Heron Poetry Project

2011-03-21T09:22:00.001-04:00

The Upper Delaware Writers Collective Announces

The 2011 Green Heron Poetry Project
http://www.upperdelawarewriterscollective.com

The Upper Delaware Writers Collective (UDWC) was founded in 1993 as a charity organization. Based in Sullivan County, NY, it also has members and activities in Wayne and Pike counties in PA and Orange County, NY.

The green heron is a native bird whose numbers are increasing in the region. It is adaptable and wily and uses tools to catch its prey.

Themes such as green herons, birds, bird watching, landscapes, places, nature, bodies of water, adaptability (for humans and animals), contemplation, conservation and sustainability are welcomed.

These themes can be interpreted loosely and are for inspiration only. We are open to well-crafted poetry in all styles.

The UDWC sponsors events designed to preserve and extend the cultural and literary legacy of the Delaware River and the Upper Delaware River Valley.

For this contest, poets must reside in New York, New Jersey or Pennsylvania.

Each poem must be 26 lines or less; prose poems of 250 words or less, one poem per page.
Entry free of $5 per poem; entries limited to four previously unpublished poems. Make
checks payable to UDWC.

Include a cover sheet listing your full contact information, poem titles, and a short bio (50
words or less). Judging will be anonymous. Do not include any contact information on poem submissions.

A panel consisting of UDWC members will judge.
Submission deadline: Friday, May 27th, 2011.
Winners will be notified by July 1st, 2011.
Send SASE for announcement of winners.
Poems may be submitted by first class mail or online. If online, manuscript will be
considered once the entry fee has been received by mail. Word documents only.

First Prize: $100
Second Prize: $50
Third Prize: $25

Winning poems will be artfully rendered on a poster with the green heron and presented at our annual awards ceremony and celebration in Narrowsburg, New York, September 17th, 2011.

For information and to send submissions via first class mail:

Green Heron Poetry Project
Georganna Millman
PO Box 120
Big Indian, NY 12410

For information and to send submissions online:
GreenHeronPoetryProject@yahoo.com

For more information: 845.252.7506

2011 Writing Contest - TIFERET Journal

2011-03-18T09:08:00.001-04:00

TIFERET, A Journal of Spiritual Literature, offers three awards of $500 in the categories of fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

TIFFERET publishes writing from a variety of spiritual and religious traditions with a mission to help reveal spirit through the written word.

The poetry judge is Alicia Ostriker. Josip Novakovich is the non-fiction judge and Gayle Brandeis will be the fiction judge.

Contest Guidelines:
* Unpublished poems in English must be received through our online submissions manager by May 1, 2011 deadline.
* First prize in each genre: $500 and publication in TIFERET.
* Honorable Mention Prizes will receive publication in TIFERET ONLINE.
* $20 fee for each entry. Limit 6 poems (must be submitted in one document), one story or essay up to 25 pages in length.
* To enter, go to: http://tiferet.submishmash.com/Submit Specify the genre and pay your appropriate entry fee using PayPal.

Winners will be announced June 30, 2011.

Poetry With a Sheen

2011-03-17T01:05:00.000-04:00

On the lighter side of the poetry world, comes the news that Charlie Sheen has been reading from A Peace of My Mind, a long out of print book he self-published 20 years ago, on his webcast, "Sheen's Korner."

A sample verse from the poem "A Thoughtless Soul"

A night of drink
A night of hate
A night as dark,
As last night's date.

I have Tiger Blood and Adonis DNA T-shirt
suitable for reading his poems.

Suitable attire if you are auditioning

for the Charlie role on Two and a Half Men

Sheen poetry, lean and mean, hot on eBay - Washington Post

Great Falls, Paterson

2011-03-14T12:32:00.002-04:00

Great Falls, Paterson, originally uploaded by ronk53.

The Great Falls were booming this past week after heavy rain.

In 1778, they inspired Alexander Hamilton (statue in photo) to see something to power American industry. Paterson, New Jersey became the site for the new nation’s first planned industrial city, a “national manufactory.”

They are also the falls that appear in William Carlos Williams' poetry.

"Paterson lies in the valley under the Passaic Falls
its spent waters forming the outline of his back. He
lies on his right side, head near the thunder
of the waters filling his dreams! Eternally asleep,
his dreams walk about the city where he persists
incognito. Butterflies settle on his stone ear.
Immortal he neither moves nor rouses and is seldom
seen, though he breathes and the subtleties of his machinations
drawing their substance from the noise of the pouring river
animate a thousand automations. Who because they
neither know their sources nor the sills of their
disappointments walk outside their bodies aimlessly
for the most part,
locked and forgot in their desires-unroused.

—Say it, no ideas but in things—"

Paterson (Revised Edition)

Taha Muhammad Ali and a Kind of Revenge

2011-03-05T21:44:00.002-05:00

The past month has been full of revolution and change in the world. I was reading some poetry online and came upon a talk given by Mark Doty titled "Tide of Voices: Why Poetry Matters Now" (read or listen to it online).

In one section of his talk he says:

"But I was also thinking about the tide of voices lapping at this country's shores in our moment. The sounds of all the rest of the world speaking. To get a sense of how little we listen to that tide, all it takes is a quick look at the statistics on the publication of translated books, which make up the tiniest fraction of what's published in the states. Lots of American books find their way into other languages, but few indeed come the other way. The message is plainly that while the world beyond our boundaries speaks, giving us the opportunity to see who's out there and how they see things and how they feel, we have not been paying attention. That's the painful, inescapable lesson of 9/11. When suddenly so many Americans found themselves asking, "Why?" "Where'd that hatred of American power come from?" There's no answering this question if we are not listening.

I can't think of a better place to turn, thinking about this need, than to the Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali."

Taha Muhammad Ali
at the Dodge Poetry Festival
2006 (photos Lynn Saville)

I was at the Dodge Poetry Festival in 2006 when Taha Muhammad Ali and Peter Cole gave a reading of Taha’s then unpublished poem "Revenge". I remember that it shook the audience first in fear and then in another direction.

In 1948, Taha fled from Galilee to Lebanon with his family when their village came under heavy bombardment during the Arab-Israeli war. A year later, still a teenager, he slipped back across the border and settled in Nazareth where he still lives, now as an Israeli citizen.

“Revenge” has all the elements of revenge, and revenge hasn't changed much from ancient times. A father has been killed, a village destroyed. And the speaker in the poem has thought about his revenge. He has even played out outcomes.

But the bomb made of revenge that he is building in his mind gets dismantled before it can go off as he plays out relationships (mother and father, sisters and a brother, neighbors and friends) which transform his enemy.

He uses memories of places and moments (a prison, a hospital room, a father’s hand over the heart when his son is late) and in the end he imagines finding his enemy all alone and, rather than taking his revenge, he leaves him, knowing that the pain of aloneness is punishment enough.

For this month's writing prompt, we are writing about revenge. Of course, this ancient and basic human act takes many forms. It can be small and personal or very large and frighteningly impersonal.

I'm in a frame of mind where (as in the poem) where we can use our imagination to change wrong action into right action and turn over stones instead of throwing them.

Taha Muhammad Ali says that in his poetry “there is no Palestine, no Israel. But, in my poetry, suffering, sadness, longing, fear, and this is, together, make the results: Palestine and Israel. The art is to take from life something real, then to build it anew with your imagination.”

Your own poem should take on an example of revenge and carry it out in whatever direction suits the poem.

I recommend that you listen to the reading of the poem in the video below. Translator Peter Cole reads the poem in English after Taha reads it in Arabic.

One last thought from Mark Doty's talk - from after he read the poem to his audience -

It is revenge, of course, that brought the great corporate monuments of New York City down into the dust. And revenge that fueled the seemingly endless, capricious war-making that has followed. There is no end to revenge in sight but here on the page, within one life, a life which presents some excellent reasons the speaker might want revenge, might be moved to strike back. The chain of reprisal is ended for the duration of the poem and in whatever ways the text goes on reverberating in the minds of its readers and listeners.

Read the printed text of "Revenge" in Arabic and in in English.

The poem was was initially published by TWO LINES: World Writing in Translation, along with a short introduction to the poet and the poem by Peter Cole. catranslation.org

Second Biennial Princeton Poetry Festival

2011-02-16T12:55:00.000-05:00

The second biennial Princeton Poetry Festival will be held April 29-30, 2011.

The event will include poets who are at present teaching at Princeton University, including Michael Dickman, Meghan O'Rourke, Brenda Shaughnessy, Tracy K. Smith, Susan Wheeler and C.K. Williams.

It will also include poets from around the world, including the Brazilian poet Paolo Henriques Britto and his US translator, Idra Novey, the Israeli poet Agi Mishol, and the Slovenian poet Aleš Šteger along with his US translator, Brian Henry.

Other American poets taking part are Anthony Carelli and Kathleen Graber, both published by Princeton University Press, along with Mark Doty, Sharon Olds, Carl Philips, Charles Simic, and Natasha Trethewey.

Event Information

Friday, April 29, 2011

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Readings and discussions begin at 2 PM each day

Ticket Information:

$15 per day, $25 for both days and $10 per day for students

For advance tickets, call University Ticketing at 609.258.9220

See http://www.princeton.edu/arts/ for more information

The Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest

2011-02-15T10:05:00.000-05:00

Is there a story in you that's too long for a poem?

There's still time left to enter The Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest

Submissions must be 1200 words or less. There is no entry fee. Ron Carlson, celebrated author of four novels and five short story collections, will be the final judge.

The Kenyon Review will publish the winning short story in the Winter 2012 issue, and the author will be awarded a scholarship to attend the 2011 Writers Workshop, June 18th-25th, in Gambier, Ohio.

Submission Guidelines
* Writers must be 30 years of age or younger at the time of submission.
* Stories must be no more than 1200 words in length.
* One submission per entrant.
* Please do not simultaneously submit your contest entry to another magazine or contest.
* The submissions link will be active February 1st to February 28th. All work must be submitted through our electronic system. We cannot accept paper submissions.
* Winners will be announced in the late spring. You will receive an e-mail notifying you of any decisions regarding your work.

http://www.kenyonreview.org/krsubmit/shortfictioncontest/

Elizabeth Bishop at 100

2011-02-08T01:00:00.007-05:00

The poet Elizabeth Bishop was born 100 years ago on Feb. 8. Her father died months later, and her mother was institutionalized early in her childhood, so she was raised by relatives in Nova Scotia and Massachusetts.

She became one of the most beloved and important American poets of the 20th century, although her greatest fame came after her death in 1979.

To celebrate her centennial, Farrar Straus & Giroux, her publisher for most of her career, is bringing out three new editions of her writing :

Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker: The Complete Correspondence - her letters to and from The New Yorker
and a pair of companion volumes called simply Poems and
Prose

These books make clear that Bishop was as much a prose writer as she was a poet. Prose is in fact considerably fatter than Poems, which contains all of the The Complete Poems, 1927-1979 plus a selection from the posthumous collections of drafts and fragments.

Mammogram by Jo McDougall

2011-02-04T18:12:00.001-05:00

via The Writer's Almanac

Mammogram

'They're benign,' the radiologist says,
pointing to specks on the x ray
that look like dust motes
stopped cold in their dance.
His words take my spine like flame.
I suddenly love
the radiologist, the nurse, my paper gown,
the vapid print on the dressing room wall.
I pull on my radiant clothes.
I step out into the Hanging Gardens, the Taj Mahal,
the Niagara Falls of the parking lot.

by Jo McDougall
from her book Satisfied with Havoc, Autumn House Press, 2004

http://www.JoMcDougall.net

A Story About Rooms With Phillip Levine

2011-01-22T19:05:00.004-05:00

The word stanza means "room." The origin is late 16th century from Italian.

A poem divided into stanzas is a house of rooms. It's not a great hall with space not formally separated by walls and doors.

When you write a poem instead of prose, the act of creating stanzas and breaks has an effect. Yes, prose has paragraphs, but they are "logical" and stanza breaks do other things with those divisions.

Then it might seem odd that I chose the poem "A Story" by Philip Levine as a model this month since it is all one stanza.

Levine is writing about how a story can be a house, a series of rooms, filled with things -

"tables, chairs, cupboards, drawers
closed to hide tiny beds where children once slept
or big drawers that yawn open to reveal
precisely folded garments washed half to death"

For this month's writing prompt, our subject is a room or rooms. The form is any number of stanzas, but we ask you to think carefully about how you arrange those stanzas. Should 4 rooms be 4 stanzas? Should the movement from room to room be done only by stanza breaks? If a poem about one room has 4 stanzas, why is that?

When you use a poetic form, the rooms are affceted. In ottava rima or rhyme-royal, the rooms all have the same size and shape. Very tidy rooms that rhyme nicely with each other.

Two lines is a couplet. 3 lines, a tercet, 4 lines, a quatrain and so on... Does size have something to say about the size of the rooms - or does it indicate...

Let me be a formalist here and say that style and meaning are inextricably connected.

What kind of building would have the rooms of a sestina?

WCCC Visiting Authors Series - Gerald Stern

2011-01-20T08:41:00.001-05:00

The reading by Gerald Stern at Warren County Community College
has been postponed until Wednesday, March 30th, due to inclement weather.

The Warren County Community College (New Jersey) Visiting Authors Series continues on Wednesday, January 26th, with a reading by Gerald Stern.

Gerald Stern was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1925. His books of poetry include Early Collected Poems: 1965-1992 (W. W. Norton, 2010), Save the Last Dance: Poems (2008); This Time: New and Selected Poems (1998), which won the National Book Award; Bread Without Sugar (1992), winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize; The Red Coal (1981), which received the Melville Caine Award from the Poetry Society of America; and Lucky Life, the 1977 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets.

He was Poet Laureate of New Jersey from 2000 to 2002, and received the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets in 2005. Since 2006, Stern has been a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Stern has taught at Temple University and Indiana University of Pennsylvania and for a number of years prior to achieving fame, he taught at Raritan Valley Community College in New Jersey. Stern is currently serving as distinguished poet-in-residence at Drew University's low-residency MFA Program in Poetry.

This reading, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in Room E208, is free and open to the public.

The WCCC Visiting Authors Series is supported by a grant from the Warren County Cultural and Heritage Commission. All facilities comply with ADA regulations and are fully accessible. After the reading, there will be brief Q&A with the audience and a book signing. Books will be available for purchase at the event.

For directions to the college or to find out about WCCC’s Creative Writing degree program, please call (908) 835-9222 or visit www.warren.edu

2011 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize

2011-01-05T21:55:00.000-05:00

2011 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize

Submit a manuscript of 48-84 pages of original poetry in any style in English. The manuscript must not have been published previously in book form, although individual poems appearing in print or on the web are permitted. Entries may consist of individual poems, a book-length poem, or any combination of long or short poems. Collaborations are welcome.

Submission deadline: April 30, 2011

Alicia Ostriker will judge the 8th Annual Contest. Ostriker has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award, has published 12 volumes of poetry, most recently The Book of Seventy, for which she received the Jewish National Book Award for 2009. Her most recent book of criticism is Dancing at the Devil's Party: Essays on Poetry, Politics, and the Erotic. She has received awards and fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the Poetry Society of America, and the San Francisco State Poetry Center, among others. Ostriker lives in Princeton, NJ, is Professor Emerita of English at Rutgers University, and teaches in the low-residency Poetry MFA program of Drew University.

W. S. Merwin on Poetry

2011-01-04T02:41:00.000-05:00

Listen to The Leonard Lopate Show with W. S. Merwin on Poetry (WNYC)

Poet W. S. Merwin talks about his collection of poems, The Shadow of Sirius, which earned him his second Pulitzer Prize. The poems focus on subjects from childhood and memory to age and, of course, dogs.

Mercy

2010-12-22T01:10:00.005-05:00

This powerful little prose poem would have been a good example to include in our post for the prompt from November...

Shooting the Horse

I unlatch the stall door, step inside, and stroke the silky neck
of the old mare like a lover about to leave. I take an ear in
hand, fold it over, and run my fingers across her muzzle. I
coax her head up so I can blow into those nostrils. All part of
the routine we taught each other long ago. I turn a half turn,
pull a pistol from my coat, raise it to that long brow with the
white blaze and place it between her sleepy eyes. I clear my
throat. A sound much louder than it should be. I squeeze the
trigger and the horse's feet fly out from under her as gravity
gives way to a force even more austere, which we have named
mercy.

by David Shumate,

from High Water Mark

Also:

The Floating Bridge: Prose Poems

Moving Into Winter: Solstice Poems

2010-12-14T17:00:00.000-05:00

There's an interesting astronomical coincidence this month. On December 21, 2010, there will be a full moon on the day of the Winter Solstice.

I did some online searching for poems about both events combined, but couldn't find any. There are a large number of poems about full moons and solstices and winter, of course.

I wrote a post last year at this time, because we had another coincidence - a full moon to end 2009 on December 31, and it was also the second full moon of the month - so it was a "Blue Moon.”

Solstices have long been celebrated and written about. It is the shortest day of the year and the longest night, and it officially marks the first day of winter.

Solstices are one of the oldest known holidays in human history. Anthropologists believe that solstice celebrations go back at least 30,000 years.

You probably know that many of the most ancient stone structures made by human beings were designed to pinpoint the precise date of the solstice. The most famous example is the stone circles of Stonehenge which were placed to receive the first rays of midwinter sun.

We often see winter - in everyday life and in poetry - as a depressing time of year. Death symbolism abounds. At least in northern climes, you tend to be confined indoors. Outside looks bare and dead.

But solstice celebrations focus on hope with ithe reversal of shortening days. It is more seen as a time to celebrate the rebirth of the year.

The word solstice derives from Latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still) since to the ancients the sun did seem to stand still. In Greek mythology, the gods and goddesses had meetings on the winter and summer solstice.

In many cultural histories, this is the time when virgin mothers give birth to sacred sons: Rhiannon to Pryderi, Isis to Horus, Demeter to Persephone and Mary to Jesus.

You can take a scientific look at the solstice. We know that as the Earth travels around the Sun in its orbit, the north-south position of the Sun changes over the course of the year. That is because of the changing orientation of the Earth's tilted rotation axes with respect to the Sun. When we arrive at the points of maximum tilt (marked at the equator), we get the summer and winter solstice.

This month our writing prompt is to write a poem that uses the solstice (and perhaps the Full Moon) without falling into the cliches of winter and moon symbolism.

Two of the poems I did find in my moon and solstice search are the models for our writing prompt for this month.

The first is "December Moon" from May Sarton's collection Coming into Eighty.

The second model is Mary Oliver's poem "Herons in Winter in the Frozen Marsh" (from Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays)

With the busy holiday season and a late start with this prompt, I have moved the submission deadline a bit further into next month - Sunday, January 9.

Have a great solstice, winter, and new year!

Celebrating Elvis Presley's Birthday in Poetry and Song

2010-12-09T12:10:00.000-05:00

Elvis reading

Expressing Elvis: Celebrating Elvis Presley's Birthday in Poetry and Song is an event in Ridgewood, NJ on January 8, 2011.

"Elvis Presley is Alive and Well on Lincoln Avenue in Fair Lawn, New Jersey...." So reads the title of a poem by Maria Mazziotti Gillan.

On that same road but a little farther north -- in Ridgewood -- Elvis will be coming back. He will be alive and well -- in poetry and song.

It seems like every poet has an Elvis poem or two. In honor of Elvis Presley's birthday, join poets Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Laura Boss, James Gwyn, and others as they share their Elvis poems.

January 8, 2011, from 1-4 pm at Ridgewood Christian Reformed Church, 271 Lincoln Avenue, Ridgewood, NJ. Plenty of free parking. A large space to accommodate all manner of bards and balladeers. Express Elvis in verse or in any variety of expression. Come on out to listen or to participate. Tune up your guitar. Dust off your jumpsuit. It will be a memorable afternoon. It's free. All are welcome.

Note to Poets: If you'd like to participate, please submit your intent to James Gwyn at ERGO.therefore@gmail.com by Dec. 31st so he can get a reading list together. RSVP

Note to Singers: Acoustic, please. There are some mics, but best to bring your own. RSVP

Caring Communication Heals - Bringing Caregivers Closer

2010-12-01T14:14:00.001-05:00

The Victor A. Bressler Humanities in Medicine Retreat

Caring Communication Heals - Bringing Caregivers Closer

The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey • Carnegie Library • Atlantic City, NJ

Friday, December 10, 2010

Featuring Keynote Speakers: John L. Coulehan, MD, MPH, FACP and poet on “Gentle and Humane Temper: Empathy and Engagement in Clinical Practice,” and Jon Nussbaum, PhD, speaking on “The Challenge of Effective Intergenerational Communicatio."

Caregivers attending the 20th Annual “Bringing Caregivers Closer” will explore the role of ethical healthcare communication inspired by the arts and humanities which are vital to the healing process.

Panelists and breakout leaders include poets and writers, Renee Ashley, Barbara Daniels, Douglas Goetsch, Kenneth Hart, Penny Harter, Diane Kaufman & J.C. Todd. Facilitated by Peter E. Murphy.

Breakout sessions involve reading, discussing and writing poetry and short prose pieces.

7:45 a.m. - 8:15 a.m. Registration & Continental Breakfast
8:30 a.m. - 4:15 p.m. Presentations

$20 to offset cost of meals (Includes continental breakfast & lunch)

CME's available for Physicians, Nurses, Social Workers, Marriage and Family Therapists, Licensed Professional Counselors and NJ Public Health Professionals.

Pre-registration required

Target Audience: Physicians, Residents, Nurses, Physician Assistants, Nurse Practitioners, Multi-Disciplinary Allied and Mental Health Professionals, Physical/Occupational Therapists, First Responders, Poets, Writers, Students of the Humanities and Public Health.

• Utilize a variety of approaches, including lecture, panel, small group discussion, review of literature
and personal writing to explore barriers and solutions in healthcare communication.
• Analyze poems, short fiction, non-fiction and personal writing to recognize their personal choice and responsibility to communicate ethically to foster healing communication.

Information and registration link, or call 1-888-569-1000

This Is Your Brain on Metaphors

2010-11-27T10:08:00.001-05:00

"This Is Your Brain on Metaphors" is an essay by Robert Sapolsky that I read on The New York Times’s website. Sapolsky is a professor of Biology, Neurology and Neurosurgery at Stanford University, and is a research associate at the Institute of Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya.

It doesn't sound like the CV for someone to discuss metaphors.

He starts by talking about why humans beat out gophers and fruit flies even though
under a microscope they look the same. Neurons are the same basic building blocks in both species.

So where’s the difference? It’s numbers — humans have roughly one million neurons for each one in a fly. And out of a human’s 100 billion neurons emerge some pretty remarkable things. With enough quantity, you generate quality.

So, we can understand symbols, metaphors, analogies, parables, synecdoche, figures of speech and all the stuff of poetry.

We understand that a captain wants more than just hands when he orders all of them on deck. We understand that Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” isn’t really about a cockroach. If we are of a certain theological ilk, we see bread and wine intertwined with body and blood. We grasp that the right piece of cloth can represent a nation and its values, and that setting fire to such a flag is a highly charged act. We can learn that a certain combination of sounds put together by Tchaikovsky represents Napoleon getting his butt kicked just outside Moscow. And that the name “Napoleon,” in this case, represents thousands and thousands of soldiers dying cold and hungry, far from home.

He cites a number of studies. I like this example of how the brain links the literal and the metaphorical. It was a study by Lawrence Williams and John Bargh where volunteers would meet one of the experimenters, believing that they would be starting the experiment shortly. Actually, the meeting was the experiment. They asked the volunteer to briefly hold their coffee cup - a cup that was hot or iced. The subjects then read a description of some individual, and those who had held the warmer cup tended to rate the individual as having a warmer personality, with no change in ratings of other attributes.

I'm not sure how all this science will help you finish that poem that you last started, but maybe...

Books by Robert Sapolsky

Kim Dower:Joan Didion meets Tinker Bell

2010-11-22T18:00:00.006-05:00

I had not heard of poet Kim Dower until I read an article about her "return" to poetry. For several decades, she had turned her back on the poet's life she was leading in Boston for a literary publicist's career in Los Angeles.

"Poetry came back to me," Dower says. "I never decided I'm going to start writing again. The truth is I was watching The O.C. with my son, who was at that point a senior in high school, and that was one of the few things we continued to do together. And I got up during a commercial break and I wrote a poem."

Maybe it's an inspiring story for those of us who feel some writer's block.

That was a few years ago and the spark must have caught fire because she has a collection out now titled Air Kissing On Mars from Red Hen Press.

Some samplings:

She can’t work

if the chair is there
she can’t think
if the clothes are dirty

She wrote at home, on nights and weekends after work for clients and traveled to poetry festivals and workshops in Florida and every summer for three years, she took 10 days at a nondescript hotel to write as the traffic rushed past on Pacific Coast Highway.

The Nudists Are Getting Ready to Pack

How do the nudists get ready to pack?
Do they pack in the nude
or do they dress to get in the mood?
What will the nudists pack
when the nudists are ready to pack?

These poems start from such normal places -

She’s awakened by a hair in her mouth.
It’s not enough to kill her, no
that would take a locomotive crashing
through her window, a train way off track

thundering through her bedroom,
the moon on its back,
simply a hair
stuck to the roof of her mouth,

and

They took the mailbox away

on Cahuenga and Clinton.
I know because I wasn’t feeling right,
decided to take a walk, figure things out,
remember why I love the clouds.
Found my rent check still in my purse,
gave me a goal, a project I could complete.
But when I got to the corner it was gone,
just space in the place where the box had been...

When she was told that her poems are like "Joan Didion meets Tinker Bell," she agreed that she has a "California sensibility – poems about driving, poems about L.A. and the quirkiness and desperation.. and the Tinker Bell element, I think I'm very whimsical."

The poems are accessible and often funny. Those are qualities that often don't serve poets well with critics. Think of the early success of Billy Collins. But deeper reading of many of the poems reveals deeper meanings.

Dower reads some true stories from her book in a noisy outdoor setting.

Taking Dinner To My Mother with Burt Kimmelman

2010-11-14T23:45:00.001-05:00

Burt Kimmelman's poem "Taking Dinner to My Mother" serves as our model for this month's writing prompt.

The poem marks a point in the poet's relationship with his mother just before she died. The poem's movement is from "mother sits on the edge of her bed", to a cafe where "a new mother fed her infant daughter", and finally to his own daughter, the granddaughter, who "met a boy for a moment in a fleamarket, who is now a first love."

Usually, we avoid assuming that the voice in the poem is the poet. But, Burt is a friend and colleague at NJIT and I know something of the poem's genesis.

It's a poem that I connect more directly to myself lately because I maintain the same ritual of bringing dinner to my 92 year old mother.

There was an article in Poets And Writers magazine about reading John Donne (The Sick Genius Of Remorse) by William Giraldi where he talks about his own depression that hit him after his father’s untimely death. He rediscovered the poetry of John Donne as a way out of the darkness.

Of course, the John Donne of “Death, be not proud, though some have called thee/Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so...” is part of a body of poems of grief that includes Gerard Manley Hopkins and poems like "Deathfugue" by Paul Celan, or many of Marilyn Hacker’s poems, My Mother’s Body by Marge Piercy and “Little Father” by Li-Young Lee.

But that's not what Kimmelman is doing in his poem, or what I want you to try in your own writing this month.

I hesitated to even list those poems because I don't want to receive an inbox of elegies.

Burt also sent me two other poems that he feels serve nicely as companion poems. Both about the end of his mother's life.

The Waves

When you told me, "I'm dying - it's
all right," I dreamt I was treading
water in the ocean, no land

in sight, and a great ship, its sails
jutting into the night sky, was

making its slow way toward the far
horizon. The world of the dead
must be like that realm where dreams hold

the living, where we come and go,
breathing stars. If I could rouse you

from that place I would tell you how
I swam, swam to shore, exhausted,
where I hear your voice in the waves.

The Sleep of the Dead

My mother would sleep "the sleep of the dead,"
she used to say. We would wake her and she
would sigh, saying she had slept longer than
she had meant to. On the day my father
was to leave our home he lay in bed with
his back to her, a single tear in his
eye - and she, breathing softly, lay with her
back to him. "I wake to sleep," Roethke wrote.
In her sleep she seemed to leave her daily
torments behind with her two sons, boyfriends,
job, landlord, books, music, movies, paintings
and sculptures - as if sleep were without thought,
without language or dream, the stepping out
of time and into a still and deep lake.

In her old age she grew sick, too full of
pain to walk more than a few steps from her
bed. One night, after a light meal with wine,
she fell asleep. When we found her in the
morning she was lying on her side, her
arm crooked at the elbow and tucked under
her pillow, her eyes and lips closed, her cheek
smooth. A thin thread of saliva and blood
had trickled from the corner of her mouth
and turned brittle on her chin. Her heart had
surged and stopped, She looked like she had not known
it. Perhaps that night she dreamed - dreaming of
lying in her mother's arms, of sinking
into the calm water of her embrace.

For this month's writing prompt, try writing a poem about caring for someone old, or sick, or dying. But don't write an elegy. Celebrate the life, the ritual and the connections that caring has to other parts of life.

You can hear Burt read all three poems at the page for his poetry at PennSound from a reading at the Kelly Writers House. The reading of "Taking Dinner to My Mother" includes some back story about the poem, and refers to Garrison Keillor's reading of the poem on public radio's The Writer's Almanac.

On his blog, Al Filreis has commentary on Burt's poetry and two videos of him reading at the University of Pennsylvania.

Burt Kimmelman has published six collections of poetry. "Taking Dinner to My Mother" is from As If Free (Talisman House, Publishers, 2009).

He has also published There Are Words (Dos Madres Press, 2007), Somehow (Marsh Hawk Press, 2005), The Pond at Cape May Point (Marsh Hawk Press, 2002), a collaboration with the painter Fred Caruso, First Life (Jensen/Daniels Publishing, 2000), and Musaics (Sputyen Duyvil Press, 1992).

Burt Kimmelman is a professor of English at New Jersey Institute of Technology and the author of two book-length literary studies: The "Winter Mind": William Bronk and American Letters and The Poetics of Authorship in the Later Middle Ages: The Emergence of the Modern Literary Persona. He also edited The Facts on File Companion to 20th-Century American Poetry and co- edited The Facts on File Companion to American Poetry. He has published scores of essays on medieval, modern, and contemporary poetry.

Poet Liu Xiaobo — Nobel Peace Prize Winner

2010-11-07T21:04:00.000-05:00

Did you know that Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize Winner, is a poet in prison?

He is a poet and literary critic, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner, and an advocate for human rights and freedom of expression. He is in prison in China, serving an 11-year sentence for “inciting subversion of state power.”

The Chinese government has reacted, not surprisingly, with anger to the award. They call it “blasphemy” and refer to Liu as a criminal.

Liu Xiaobo’s wife Liu Xia was finally permitted to visit her husband and tell him he had won the award. He dedicates it to the victims of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy movement demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Xiaobo

Liu Xiaobo

Last Letter to Sylvia Plath From Ted Hughes

2010-11-03T17:12:00.002-04:00

Hughes and Plath 1957

"Last Letter" is a previously unknown poem by Ted Hughes, about the night his estranged wife Sylvia Plath killed herself.

Hughes published 88 poems years ago in Birthday Letters, but said that some of the poems were “too personal to publish.”

Last month, Hughes’ papers including letters and unpublished poems were acquired by the British Library.

One poem was “Last Letter” to Sylvia. It deals with the story of her death, including her “Last Letter” to him. That was actually a suicide note that was mailed too early and caused him to go to her. She ended up going through with the suicide later anyway.

"What happened that night, inside your hours
Is as unknown as if it never happened....

And I had started to write when the telephone
Jerked awake, in a jabbering alarm,
Remembering everything. It recovered in my hand.
Then a voice like a selected weapon
Or a measured injection,
Coolly delivered its four words
Deep into my ear: 'Your wife is dead.'"

Hughes was appointed the UK's poet laureate in 1984.

There are a number of articles online about the poems including one from the http://www.newstatesman.com and in this video report you can hear a portion of the poem read.

Have A Poetic Halloween

2010-10-29T11:14:00.000-04:00

If you're headed to a party this weekend with a literary theme for Halloween, you can try some inexpensive costume ideas from poets.org.

You can dress up as Emily Dickinson with just an old-school nightgown or simple white cotton dress, a ribbon, your hair pulled back in a modest bun and carrying a small bundle of folded poems. Extra credit if you hand out plastic flies while reciting "I heard a Fly buzz—when I died..."

They also suggest and illustrate Whitman, Sappho, W.C. Williams and Poe.

Poetry Publishers Who Accept Electronic Submissions

2010-10-27T12:35:00.000-04:00

I received two emails recently from poets who submitted poems to Poets Online and had their poem "discovered" online by another publisher who wanted to put it in print.

For example, Violet Nesdoly wrote "In Stitches" for our February 2006 prompt about being "in the moment". Recently, she heard from the editor of Vogue Patterns magazine, asking if they could publish it in an upcoming edition. I'm encouraged that a everyday publication not known for printing poetry would print one for their readers.

The Internet offers so many opportunities to share your poetry and find new audiences.
There are more and more places to put your poetry online or submit your poems online for print publication. An increasing number of established publishers now accept online publication as a first publication.

Louie Crew, Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University has been listing websites (including Poets Online) of Poetry Publishers Who Accept Electronic Submissions

Haiku 575 Twitter 140

2010-10-25T12:40:00.008-04:00

I'm not claiming that Twitter is poetic, but -

I have read several articles online about using that 140 character posting service to share haiku.

Sun Microsystems' ex-CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, was an early company blogger and when he resigned (after the company was acquired by Oracle) he posted the news as a haiku on his Twitter feed.

The public radio show Fresh Air asked listeners once to write comments in haiku form, and tag their haiku with #publicradiohaiku on Twitter to share with others.

It has spread and "twaiku", as some call these Twitter haiku, are now online for NASCAR haiku, cat haiku, zombie haiku et cetera. Jimmy Kimmel offered tickets to his show to whoever tweeted the best haiku about the final episode of the TV show Lost.

Some haiku on Twitter to look at and follow would include http://twitter.com/issa_haiku and http://twitter.com/dengary

You can post your own Twitter haiku and tag them as #haiku for our readers to follow.

An Autumn Haiku Lesson

2010-10-23T05:44:00.000-04:00

The four most prominent "masters" of haiku in the Japanese tradition are Bashô (1644-94) Buson (1716-83), Issa (1763-1828) and Shiki (1867-1902).

Here are a few by Issa on autumn to start this lesson.

autumn wind--
singing in the duckweed
how many insects?

autumn begins–
lying down, looking at
snowy mountains

sleeping mat--
the autumn gale blowing
the soles of my feet

evening cicada--
a last loud song
to autumn

Bashô, Buson and Issa worked in haikai short for haikai no renga which was a popular style of Japanese linked verse originating in the sixteenth century.

Shiki actually coined the term "haiku" which he viewed as its own poetic genre. In English, the term haiku covers both haikai and haiku.

Unfortunately, these one-breath poems of connection are often not treated in the West as "serious" poetry.

Haiku in English are written as unrhymed three-line verse. The fragmented images are not typical of English poetry.For modern readers and writers, perhaps even the connecting of nature or the seasons to the human condition might seem foreign.

Does a haiku really need 17 syllables? Traditional Japanese haiku consists of seventeen onji) arranged in a 5-7-5 pattern. Onji is an obsolete Japanese word used in English-language discussion of Japanese poetry to mean the phonetic units or sounds counted in haiku, tanka and other such poetic forms.

Most Japanese words are polysyllabic. English has lots of one syllable words like fall, sky, and tree, so many haiku poets writing in English don't follow the 5-7-5 syllable rule. (17 syllables could be 17 words which would not honor the sense of haiku.)

We put haiku on the page the page in three lines. Traditional haiku in the time of Issa was two parts with a pause in between. The juxtaposition of the two images and a sense of surprise or revelation has been compared to a good joke - setup, then punchline

Haiku always contain nature and that includes human nature. The natural world and season might be invoked by the mention of a single word or image rather than the more typical Western telling. The haiku might mention a cherry blossom, rather than to say it was spring. In fact, the cherry blossom is more specific to a particular part of spring.

There is much discussion of the translation of classical haiku into English by translators such as R.H.Blyth, Lucien Stryck, Peter Beilenson and Kenneth Rexroth. I am a fan of those done by contemporary American poet Robert Hass.

It's interesting to compare different translations of the same haiku to see the process.

Translations by Robert Hass

Two by Basho

Climb Mount Fuji,
O snail,
but slowly, slowly.

Even in Kyoto --
hearing the cuckoo's cry --
I long for Kyoto.

Six by Issa

Mosquito at my ear--
does it think
I'm deaf?

New Year's morning--
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.

Even with insects--
some can sing,
some can't.

The snow is melting
and the village is flooded
with children.

Don't kill that fly!
Look--it's wringing its hands,
wringing its feet.

Don't worry, spiders,
I keep house
casually.

haiku collections

Patterns of Poetry Podcast Series

2010-10-15T01:23:00.015-04:00

I came across this nice series of podcasts (audio files) on "Patterns of Poetry" series. They are short (about 5 minutes each) discussions of poetic techniques. It's not the "how to find them in a poem" exercise that you may have had to do in some class, but more on how to use them in your writing. (Though I suppose it also accomplishes the "how to find them" mission too.)

They are presented by the English Department of St Columba's College, Whitechurch, Dublin, Ireland on their blog site.

The first one I stumbled upon through a search is on simile, and looks at how Sylvia Plath uses it in her poem 'Morning Song'.

The series (so far):

1: Introduction
2: Titles - illustrated with 'The Fish' by Elizabeth Bishop, and 'Out, Out' by Robert Frost.
3: Alliteration - 'The Windhover' by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
4: Personification - "Shancoduff' by Patrick Kavanagh.
5: Symbols - 'The Stare's Nest by my Window' by W.B. Yeats.
6. Onomatopoeia - 'A Constable Calls' and 'Sunlight' by Seamus Heaney.
7. Cliché - Sonnet 130 by Shakespeare, and 'Valentine' by Carol Ann Duffy.
8. Simile - Morning Song' by Sylvia Plath.

They have now also put together one handy compilation of the first eight Patterns of Poetry talks, if you want all the lessons at once.

They are available for play from your browser and also available using iTunes which is useful if you want to "archive" a copy for later.

MORE
Patterns of Poetry: An Encyclopedia of Forms
Patterns in Poetry: Recognizing and Analyzing Poetic Form and Meter
Poetry Patterns & Themes (for younger readers)

Poet Phillip Schultz Reading in NJ

2010-10-11T18:42:00.000-04:00

Philip Schultz photo by Monica Banks

The Warren County Community College Visiting Authors Series continues this Wednesday, October 13th, with a reading by Philip Schultz, recipient of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

The event is free and open to the public.

It will be held in Room 123 at WCCC and will begin at 7:00 p.m. The WCCC Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, the international honor society for two-year colleges, will provide complimentary refreshments.

One of American poetry's longtime masters of the art, Philip Schultz is the founder/director of The Writers Studio, a private school for fiction and poetry writing based in New York City. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Failure (Harcourt 2007), winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. His other collections include The God of Loneliness: New and Selected Poems (2010), Living in the Past (2004), and The Holy Worm of Praise (2002), all published by Harcourt. He is also the author of Deep Within the Ravine (Viking 1984), recipient of The Academy of American Poets Lamont Prize; Like Wings (Viking 1978), winner of an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award as well as a National Book Award nomination; and the poetry chapbook, My Guardian Angel Stein (1986).

He lives in East Hampton, New York, with his wife, sculptor Monica Banks, and their two sons, Elias and August.

The WCCC Visiting Authors Series is supported by a grant from the Warren County Cultural and Heritage Commission. All facilities comply with ADA regulations and are fully accessible.

After Mr. Schultz’s reading, there will be a brief Q & A with the audience and a book signing. Books will be available for purchase at the event.

For directions to the college or to find out about WCCC’s Creative Writing degree program, please call (908) 835-9222 or visit www.warren.edu.

Redefinition

2010-10-10T15:00:00.005-04:00

I heard Garrison Keillor read a poem recently on his Writer's Almanac program and knew that I read it myself once. It was from a book I bought back in 1987.

The poem was "Clara: In the Post Office" by Linda Hasselstrom who is a poet and essayist - and also a working ranch woman.

She is a writer of the High Plains whose work is rooted in the landscape. Her land is southwestern South Dakota around Hermosa where she lives. She writes, ranches, conducts writing retreats, and tends a botanic garden on the land homesteaded by her grandfather in 1899.

She was dubbed a “prairie philosopher” by Booklist magazine and is the winner of the Western American Writer award.

Her books include No Place Like Home: Notes from a Western Life , Between Grass and Sky: Where I Live and Work , Bitter Creek Junction,and Feels Like Far: A Rancher's Life on the Great Plains .

The poem surprised me then and it still surprises me. That's always a compliment for a poem.

In the poem, she redefines the word "feminist."

I keep telling you, I'm not a feminist.
I grew up an only child on a ranch,
so I drove tractors, learned to ride.
When the truck wouldn't start, I went to town
for parts. The man behind the counter
told me I couldn't rebuild a carburetor.
I could: every carburetor on the place. That's
necessity, not feminism.

I think about all the words that might be used to define me - teacher, poet, writer, father, son, husband and others. For most, if not all of them, I would want to redefine the usual definition which doesn't quite fit me.

Hasselstrom doesn't define with a definition, but as we often do in life, she defines by example.

It's not
that I don't like men; I love them - when I can.
But I've stopped counting on them
to change my flats or open my doors.
That's not feminism; that's just good sense.

"Clara: In the Post Office" is from her book Roadkill which appears to be out of print right now. That's too bad. So, I'm happy to give it another chance this month on our October prompt page on the main site.

We ask you this month to write a poem that redefines a word. You might choose one that describes you but doesn't describe you. But you can also just redefine a word that you'd assume we all know by now.

Live Webcast From The Dodge Poetry Festival

2010-10-07T12:30:00.000-04:00

Can't make it to the Dodge Poetry Festival this week? There will be two free live webcasts done by NJN.

Thursday, October 7, 2010 7:30 - 10:30 (EST)
Opening Night "Poetry Sampler" featuring: Amiri Baraka, Tara Betts, Jericho Brown, Michael Cirelli, Billy Collins, Kwame Dawes, Matthew Dickman, Rita Dove, Martín Espada, Rigoberto González, Rachel Hadas, Bob Hicok, Tyehimba Jess, Galway Kinnell, Dorianne Laux, Dunya Mikhail, Nancy Morejón, Joseph Millar, Malena Mörling, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Sharon Olds, Marie Ponsot, Claudia Rankine, Kay Ryan

Sunday, October 10, 2010, Noon - 1 pm (EST)
U.S. Poets Laureates read: Billy Collins, Rita Dove, Kay Ryan, Mark Strand

Webcast link: http://www.njn.net/arts/dodgepoetryfestival

Geraldine R. Dodge Festival Begins Today

2010-10-07T06:42:00.003-04:00

The 4-day Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival begins tonight.

Now in it's 24th year, the biennial festival - the largest poetry event in North America - will be held for the first time in Newark, New Jersey, the state's largest city.

A Poetry Sampler reading on Thursday evening, October 7th, features 24 poets and launches the Festival.

Friday is High School Student Day.

The full Festival schedule is online as a printable pdf document, and a list of festival poets with biographies is also online.

Events will be held in venues accommodating anywhere from 100 to over 2,700 people. The evening programs will be held in NJPAC’s Prudential Hall - a world-class performance space.There are single and multi-day ticket options.

The Festival is accessible via Newark's mass-transit hubs, including an international airport, major bus lines, a light-rail system and PATH service from Manhattan.

The I Ching Poetry Engine

2010-09-29T01:29:00.052-04:00

I am always a bit suspicious of electronic poetry and software that "generates" poems. Still, I am pretty tech-oriented and have dabbled in that area myself.

Poets Online posted its own poetry first line generator years ago at poetsonline.org/generator.html
and a second version at poetsonline.org/generator2.html

We used them as a prompt, so that a user might generate a line or two to get started.

There's an I'Ching Poetry Engine web site that gives you 64 uniquely generated states. If you're not familiar with the ancient I Ching, also known as the Book of Changes, it is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts.

It is a divination system for foretelling the future, somewhat comparable to Western geomancy. It is still used for that purpose in both Western cultures and modern East Asia in the same way that someone might use tarot cards.

The site's tech explanation is complex, but the best way to understand it is to just go to the site and play.

The site will gnerate "poems" of five lines each and approximately 30 words. Some poems enter a looping phase, creating much longer narratives.

After each poem generates and displays all of its words, the I'Ching interface returns, and the observer begins supplying the seeds for the next poem.

You can test drive it at http://www.levitated.net/exhibit/iching/and also see excerpts of generated poems

Thanks to Steve for sending us the site.

Poetry Writing Weekend Intensive in NJ

2010-09-22T01:10:00.003-04:00

WRITING YOUR WAY HOME
a poetry weekend intensive
at an English manor house
in Mendham, New Jersey

Join poets Laura Boss and Maria Mazzioti Gillan on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday,
December 10, 11, and 12 at the St. Marguerite's Retreat House in Mendham, NJ for a poetry retreat that gives writers the space and time to focus totally on their own work in a serene and beautiful setting away from the pressures and distractions of daily life.

This writing intensive is open to all writers over the age of 18.

Saint Marguerite’s Retreat House is situated on 93 acres of wooded land with pathways that lend themselves to the serene contemplation of nature and nurturing of your creative spirit. The Retreat House is located at the convent of Saint John the Baptist, 82 West Main Street, Mendham, NJ.

Participants arrive before 6 PM on Friday evening, have dinner, settle into their rooms, and begin to retreat from the distractions of the world.

That evening, participants will be lead into creating new work. After each workshop, each participant will have the opportunity to read their work in the group.

After Saturday breakfast, participants will move into two groups for morning workshops, followed by free time for socializing and exploring the grounds.

After lunch, writing workshops will take place, followed by time to write. Each participant will have a chance to sign up in advance with Maria or Laura for one-on-one help with revision.

After dinner on Saturday evening, participants will be invited to read their poems to the groups, and the faculty will lead another workshop session on how to get published.

After Sunday breakfast, a final writing workshop and concluding reading by participants will serve as the “closing ceremony” to this inspiring and productive weekend. Lunch will provide a final opportunity for socializing.

The leaders envision this weekend as a retreat from the noise and bustle of daily life. They see this retreat as a spiritual and creative break from our usual lives. The setting certainly allows us to take some time to look at life in a new light, to listen for our own voices, and to create in stillness, in quiet, and in community. These are times of contemplation and welcoming the muse.

The workshops will concentrate on "writing your way home" and the way writing can save us, save our stories and our lives.

Participants should bring papers, pens, and the willingness to take risks. Please also bring previously-written work for one-on-one sessions and for the readings

NJ teachers may receive 15 professional development credits for attending.

The fee of $375 includes room, meals, and all workshops. (Deposit by November 1 of $225 with the balance due by December 1 for $150)
Early Bird Discount: Deduct $25 if paid in full by November 7, 2010
Full refund will be given prior to December 1, 2010.
Late registration will be accepted on a first come, first served basis. Enrollment is limited. There are people already signed up for this workshop, so if you are interested, please sign up as early as possible.

To register and for additional information contact Maria Mazziotti Gillan mgillan@pccc.edu or call (973) 684-6555.