Arthur Sze Is the New U.S. Poet Laureate

The Library of Congress announced this week that Arthur Sze, 74, will be the next Poet Laureate of the United States.

The NY Times describes Sze as an observational poet, whose work is grounded in nature and imagery. He said he first learned his craft by translating ancient Chinese poems. Over time, his poems grew longer, often made up of numbered sequences that changed perspective and tone from one section to another. His newer poems look simpler, but hopefully, he said, they are deeper.

“When you read a poem, you don’t need to feel like you get it all at once,” Sze said. “The best poems communicate through sound and rhythm and musicality. And as you read and reread, the poem emerges.”

Born in New York City to immigrants from China (his father had a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from M.I.T.), he has lived most of his life in New Mexico, where he taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts for more than two decades. As poet laureate, he said he plans to focus on poetry that has been translated into English from other languages.

His latest poetry collection - his 12th -  is Into the Hush.

Poet Laureate | Poetry & Literature | Programs | Library of Congress

View Resource Guide on Arthur Sze

News Release: Library of Congress Names Arthur Sze the Nation's 25th U.S. Poet Laureate

Arthur Sze | The Poetry Foundation

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Billy Collins Poetry Animated

Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate and one of America's best-selling poets, is not big on technology. As far as I know (based on a conversation way back in 2007), he was not big on using email or computers. But he recognizes the power of the web in promoting poetry. He has been doing a poetry podcast on Facebook that started in the Pandemic Times. His Poetry 180 project while he was Laureate is available online and in book form (including a sequel). 

Back when we had that 2007 conversation, there were 11 short animated films set to Billy reading his poems. There's not much information online about them. They are produced by JWT-NY. You can watch most of them on YouTube. I have embedded a few here to sample.

Here's an interpretation of Billy's poem "Forgetfulness" with animation by Julian Grey/Head Gear.

   

 "Budapest" is also animated by Julian Grey/Head Gear.

 

"Now and Then" is animated by Eun-ha Paek of Milky Elephant.

  

The Young People’s Poet Laureate

Margarita Engle is the national Young People’s Poet Laureate, and the first Latino to receive that honor. She is the Cuban-American author of many verse novels, including The Surrender Tree, a Newbery Honor winner, and The Lightning Dreamer, a PEN USA Award winner.

Margarita Engle was born in Pasadena, California, to a Cuban mother and an American father. She earned a BS from California State Polytechnic University and an MS from Iowa State University, and she studied for her doctoral degree in biology at the University of California, Riverside.

The Poetry Foundation announced in May of this year that Engle has been named the Young People’s Poet Laureate. Awarded every two years, the $25,000 laureate title is given to a living writer in recognition of a career devoted to writing exceptional poetry for young readers. The laureate advises the Poetry Foundation on matters relating to young people’s literature and may engage in a variety of projects to help instill a lifelong love of poetry among the nation’s developing readers. This laureateship aims to promote poetry to children and their families, teachers, and librarians over the course of its two-year tenure.

Official website margaritaengle.com

Listening to the New U.S. Poet Laureate: Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith has been named the next poet laureate of the United States and will begin her role this fall, succeeding Juan Felipe Herrera.

Smith is a professor at Princeton University, where she directs the creative writing program.

She has written three poetry collections, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Life on Mars , The Body’s Question and Duende, all from Graywolf Press. She has also written a memoir, Ordinary Light  (Knopf, 2015).

“As someone who has been sustained by poems and poets, I understand the powerful and necessary role poetry can play in sustaining a rich inner life and fostering a mindful, empathic and resourceful culture,” said Smith in the announcement from the Library of Congress. “I am eager to share the good news of poetry with readers and future-readers across this marvelously diverse country.”

Tracy K. Smith reads her poem "Wade in the Water," which will be published in a book of poetry in 2018.

Tracy K. Smith was twenty-two when her mother died in 1994. In The Body’s Question, her first book of poetry, she writes about that loss.

In the memoir, Ordinary Light, she also considers the loss of her mother and of her father, who died in 2008. That was also the year her daughter, Naomi, was born.

Life on Mars  in some ways is an elegy for her father who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope program.

... sealed tight, so nothing escapes. Not even time,
Which should curl in on itself and loop around like smoke.
So that I might be sitting now beside my father
As he raises a lit match to the bowl of his pipe
For the first time in the winter of 1959...

Smith reads “Digging” by Seamus Heaney, the poem she feels “invited her to start writing poetry,” and from “My God, It’s Full of Stars,” a poem she wrote about her father.

...Perhaps the great error is believing we’re alone,
That the others have come and gone — a momentary blip —
When all along, space might be choc-full of traffic,
Bursting at the seams with energy we neither feel
Nor see, flush against us, living, dying, deciding...
   
(excerpts from "My God, It's Full of Stars")

Tracy graduated from Harvard College in 1994 with a BA in English and American Literature and Afro-American Studies. She earned an MFA from Columbia University.

She taught at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York, and at the University of Pittsburgh before joining the faculty at Princeton University in 2005.

Tracy K. Smith discusses her interest in science-fiction and the research for her book, Life on Mars

Smith lives in Princeton with her husband, Raphael Allison, and their three children. Her twin sons, Atticus and Sterling, were born in 2013.



Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize
New York Times Notable Book of 2011
New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
New Yorker, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year

Poet Laureates and Presidents

The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, as they’re formally known, is appointed by the Librarian of Congress for a one year term, serving from October to May, though it is  fairly common to renew a Poet Laureate’s term for an additional year.

While the Poet Laureate’s primary duty is to write poetry that reflects the pulse of the nation, poets are also tasked with carrying on the legacy of former Poet Laureate Allen Tate by recruiting poets and authors to contribute to the Library of Congress’ Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature. Since the archive’s inception in 1943, over 2,000 writers have contributed audio recordings of their work.

Who might serve in the post under President Trump?

US Poet Laureates and the Presidents They Served Under, by My Poetic Side

Poems: Charles Wright

Now that Charles Wright is the 20th United States Poet Laureate, many people unaware of his poetry will finally read some of his poems.

The Poetry Foundation offers a selection of Wright’s poems:
A Short History of the Shadow
Black Zodiac
Clear Night
Lives of the Saints
Miles Davis and Elizabeth Bishop Fake the Break
Northhanger Ridge
The Appalachian Book of the Dead

You can read 50 of Wright’s poems that appeared in Poetry or listen to him read and discuss his poetry in some 1992 recordings.

Charles Wright To Be New Poet Laureate

The Library of Congress will announce this week that the next poet laureate will be Charles Wright.

He is the author of nearly two dozen collections of verse and known for blending modernism and the landscape of the American South.

At 78, Wright is retired from teaching at the University of Virginia. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bollingen Prize and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

After Reading Tu Fu, I Go Outside to the Dwarf Orchard

East of me, west of me, full summer.
How deeper than elsewhere the dusk is in your own yard.
Birds fly back and forth across the lawn
looking for home
As night drifts up like a little boat.

Day after day, I become of less use to myself.
Like this mockingbird,
I flit from one thing to the next.
What do I have to look forward to at fifty-four?
Tomorrow is dark.
Day-after-tomorrow is darker still.

The sky dogs are whimpering.
Fireflies are dragging the hush of evening
up from the damp grass.
Into the world's tumult, into the chaos of every day,
Go quietly, quietly.

Wright's latest collection of poems is Caribou (2014)





Read more about the new Poet Laureate - http://www.npr.org/2014/06/13/321586882/charles-wright-the-contemplative-poet-laureate

Children's Poets Laureates

Most of us think of THE Poet Laureate as the one that represents our country. For the U.S., that is Natasha Trethewey who was recently appointed to serve a second term as U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.
But many U.S. states and cities have also been designating laureates on a local level.

I'm pleased that there have also been more appointments for children’s poets laureate. Here are three recent appointments.

Children’s Poet Laureate for Wales named at National Urdd Eisteddfod" from Wales Online

“Former Urdd Eisteddfod chair Aneirin Karadog has been named as Wales’ next Children’s Poet Laureate. Mr. Karadog said, ‘The role involves working with young people during their formative years, when the imagination is so alive.... One of the appealing factors is a chance to re-light my own imagination through theirs.’”

"UK’s first black children’s laureate: new history curriculum could alienate pupils” from The Guardian (UK)
“Ted Hughes, then poet laureate, and his friend and fellow author Michael Morpurgo devised the laureateship—first awarded in 1999 to illustrator Quentin Blake—to mark a lifetime’s contribution to children’s literature and highlight the importance of children’s books. Previous children’s laureates include Jacqueline Wilson, Anne Fine, Michael Rosen, Anthony Browne and Morpurgo.... Blackman is the eighth children’s laureate, inheriting the role from the Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson.”


From The Los Angeles Times "Poetry Foundation names Kenn Nesbitt its children’s poet laureate

“The Poetry Foundation announced Tuesday that Revenge of the Lunch Ladies author Kenn Nesbitt will be its next children’s poet laureate, a position the foundation created in 2006 to recognize that ‘children have a natural receptivity to poetry and are its most appreciative audience.’... This honor is not related to the U.S. poet laureate, who is named by the Library of Congress. Nor is it connected to regional poets laureate, such as Eloise Klein Healy in Los Angeles or Juan Felipe Herrera, California’s poet laureate. Nesbitt succeeds J. Patrick Lewis as the fourth poet to hold the position. His numerous books for children—all of them full of child-appropriate silliness—include The Tighty-Whitey Spider, My Hippo Has the Hiccups, and My Foot Fell Asleep. In an interview with outgoing laureate Lewis, Nesbitt listed influences including Lewis Carroll, MAD magazine, and ‘that greatest of all children’s poets, Anonymous.’”

Philip Levine Named New Poet Laureate

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.

W.S. Merwin Appointed as U.S. Poet Laureate

Merwin photograph © Matt Valentine
via http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2010/10-157.html

July 1, 2010

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington today announced the appointment of W.S. Merwin as the Library’s 17th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2010-2011.

Merwin will take up his duties in the fall, opening the Library’s annual literary series on Oct. 25 with a reading of his work.

"William Merwin’s poems are often profound and, at the same time, accessible to a vast audience," Billington said. "He leads us upstream from the flow of everyday things in life to half-hidden headwaters of wisdom about life itself. In his poem ‘Heartland,’ Merwin seems to suggest that a land of the heart within us might help map the heartland beyond—and that this ‘map’ might be rediscovered in something like a library, where ‘it survived beyond/ what could be known at the time/ in its archaic/ untaught language/ that brings the bees to the rosemary.’"

William Stanley Merwin succeeds Kay Ryan as Poet Laureate and joins a long line of distinguished poets who have served in the position, including Charles Simic, Donald Hall, Ted Kooser, Louise Glück, Billy Collins, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass, Rita Dove and Richard Wilbur.

During a 60-year writing career, Merwin has received nearly every major literary award. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, just recently in 2009 for "The Shadow of Sirius" and in 1971 for "The Carrier of Ladders." In 2006, he won the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress for "Present Company." His retrospective collection "Migration: New and Selected Poems" won the 2005 National Book Award for poetry.

Born in 1927, Merwin showed an early interest in language and music, writing hymns for his father, a Presbyterian minister. He studied poetry at Princeton and, in 1952, his first book, "A Mask for Janus," was selected by W.H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award.

The author of more than 30 books of poetry and prose, Merwin’s influence on American poetry is profound. Often noted by critics is his decision, in the 1960s, to relinquish the use of punctuation. "I had come to feel that punctuation stapled the poems to the page," Merwin wrote in his introduction to "The Second Four Books of Poems." "Whereas I wanted the poems to evoke the spoken language, and wanted the hearing of them to be essential to taking them in."

Merwin also has been long dedicated to translating poetry and plays from a wide array of languages, including Spanish and French. "I started translating partly as a discipline, hoping that the process might help me to learn to write."

In 1976, Merwin moved to Hawaii, where he and his wife Paula have fashioned a quiet life in beautiful, natural surroundings. An avid gardener, he has raised endangered palm trees on land that used to be a pineapple plantation.

"Although his poems often deal with simple everyday things, there is a nourishing quality about them that makes readers want more, "said Patricia Gray, head of the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center. "Like William Wordsworth, he is passionately interested in the natural world."

From 1999 to 2000, while Robert Pinsky served as Poet Laureate, Merwin along with Rita Dove and Louise Glück were named as Special Bicentennial Consultants in Poetry to help celebrate the Library’s bicentennial.

Merwin’s many honors also include the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, the Tanning Prize for Poetry, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Wallace Stevens Award, the PEN Translation Prize, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, and the Governor’s Award for Literature of the State of Hawaii. He has received a Ford Foundation grant and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation. Merwin is a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

The Shadow of Sirius
Migration: New & Selected Poems
The First Four Books of Poems
The Rain in the Trees
The Second Four Books of Poems: The Moving Target / The Lice / The Carrier of Ladders / Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment

            

Poet Laureate's Videoconference With Community College Students

Community College Poetry Day is April 1, and students around the country will be treated to a one-hour videoconference with U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, live from the Library of Congress

The videoconference and the day-long campus poetry festivities are part of Ryan’s "Poetry for the Mind’s Joy" project, sponsored by the Library in collaboration with the Community College Humanities Association (CCHA). Individual campuses are planning poetry readings, discussions, slams and other activities.

The videoconference on the process of writing poetry will start at 1 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, April 1. The event will be streamed live and can be viewed at www.loc.gov/poetry/mindsjoy/.

In the videoconference, Ryan will reveal some of her sources of inspiration, show how one of her poems developed through 10 drafts, and ask students to share some of their sources of inspiration and efforts in rewriting.


Ryan’s poetry project "Poetry for the Mind’s Joy," which she initiated during her second year as U.S. Poet Laureate, was designed to celebrate the poetry written by community college students. Besides the videoconference, Ryan’s project included a community college poetry contest administered by CCHA and its executive director, David Berry. Winners of the contest will be posted in an online anthology on the Library’s Website at by March 31.

As part of the project, Ryan named April 1 as Community College Poetry Day. April 1 is also the first day of National Poetry Month, a designation inaugurated in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets in New York.

Later, excerpts of the videoconference will be posted on www.loc.gov/poetry/ for students, their professors, poets and the public.

The Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress is the home of the U.S. Poet Laureate, a position that has existed since 1937.

Duffy Is First Woman Appointed Poet Laureate of Britain

Carol Ann Duffy was named this week as poet laureate of Britain. This is the first time in the 341-year history of the post that a woman will hold the post. She is also the first Scot and the first openly gay woman to be poet laureate.

Duffy, 53, is known for writing accessible, often witty poems on a wide range of topics, many of them to do with the minutiae of everyday life.

She succeeds Andrew Motion who held the post for ten years. Duffy was considered a favorite for the post before Motion was named in 1999, but it is thought that then prime minister Tony Blair felt her sexuality made her too controversial for the royal appointment.



Valentine
by Carol Ann Duffy


Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.

Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.


More about Carol Ann Duffy

5/1/09 Four of Duffy's books are on the Amazon Poetry Bestsellers list today.

The Newest Poet Laureate

The new United States Poet Laureate is Pat Ryan.

A resident of Marin County, California, Pat Ryan has written six books and has won numerous award including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, 2004 Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Award, the 2000 Union League Poetry Prize and the Maurice English Poetry Award and four Pushcart prizes.

Ryan was born in 1945 in San Jose, California. She received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles. Since 1971, Ryan has lived in Marin County. Her partner of 30 years is Carol Adair.

For more than 30 years, Ryan limited her professional responsibilities to the part-time teaching of remedial English at the College of Marin in Kentfield, Calif., thus leaving much of her life free for "a lot of mountain bike riding plus the idle maunderings poets feed upon." She said at one point that she has never taken a creative writing class, and in a 2004 interview in The Christian Science Monitor, she noted, "I have tried to live very quietly, so I could be happy."

Turtle


Who would be a turtle who could help it?
A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet,
She can ill afford the chances she must take
In rowing toward the grasses that she eats.
Her track is graceless, like dragging
A packing-case places, and almost any slope
Defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,
She’s often stuck up to the axle on her way
To something edible. With everything optimal,
She skirts the ditch which would convert
Her shell into a serving dish. She lives
Below luck-level, never imagining some lottery
Will change her load of pottery to wings.
Her only levity is patience,
The sport of truly chastened things.

'Turtle" is from Kay Ryan's Flamingo Watching, Copper Beach Press, 1994 and is also available at Poetry 180.

More on the new Laureate

Poetry at the Library of Congress

Most people probably think of the Library of Congress as, well, a library. Fans of poetry may also think of the Library of Congress as the home of our Poet Laureate.

Connected to that is a good number of other poetry-related events and resources that you can browse at Poetry at the Library of Congress.

One of those resources is the "Poet and the Poem" webcasts. This is an ongoing series of live poetry interviews (they run just under an hour in length) at the Library of Congress with distinguished artists that are available as webcasts online. The poets talk with host Grace Cavalieri about their craft and sources of inspiration.

Some of the poets featured include:

• Billy Collins
• Rita Dove
• and a NJ favorite, Maria M. Gillan
• Donald Hall
• Robert Hass
• Jane Hirshfield

Another program is "Poet Vision" that features poets reading and talking about their work in video that was originally filmed and broadcast in Philadelphia from 1988-90. The 12 episodes capture for posterity insights from and about Lucille Clifton, Rita Dove, Allen Ginsberg, Louise Glück, Sam Hamill, Michael Harper, Stanley Kunitz, Denise Levertov, and Robert Penn Warren. The original tapes were donated to the Library of Congress in 2000 by producers Rohm and Haas and are kept in the Library’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. View all webcasts in the Poet Vision series

Charles Simic, Poet Laureate #15

Charles Simic was named the 15th poet laureate of the U.S. by the Librarian of Congress this monthly. He succeeds Donald Hall. Laureate appointments can be one or two years and come with a $35,000 annual stipend.

The same day it was announced that the American Academy of Poets had given him its Wallace Stevens Award for "outstanding and proven mastery" of the art of poetry.

Simic, 69, received a MacArthur Foundation grant of $500,000 for the period 1984-1989 and won the 1990 Pulitzer for poetry for his collection The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems.''

Simic was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia and came to the U.S. with his family in 1954, was drafted into the Army in 1961 and received a bachelor's degree from New York University in 1966.

In 1967 he published his first full-length collection, What the Grass Says. He has published more than 60 books in the U.S. and abroad, including 18 books of poetry. He began teaching at the University of New Hampshire in 1973, where he is professor emeritus of creative writing and literature.

The actual title is Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. He will actually officially begin his appointment as poet laureate with a speech at the library's National Book Festival on Sept. 29 and a reading of his work Oct. 17 at the library's annual literary series.

Conicidentally, the previous Laureate, Donald Hall, was also from New Hampshire.

Eyes Fastened With Pins

How much death works,
No one knows what a long
Day he puts in. The little
Wife always alone
Ironing death's laundry.
The beautiful daughters
Setting death's supper table.
The neighbors playing
Pinochle in the backyard
Or just sitting on the steps
Drinking beer. Death,
Meanwhile, in a strange
Part of town looking for
Someone with a bad cough,
But the address somehow wrong,
Even death can't figure it out
Among all the locked doors...
And the rain beginning to fall.
Long windy night ahead.
Death with not even a newspaper
To cover his head, not even
A dime to call the one pining away,
Undressing slowly, sleepily,
And stretching naked
On death's side of the bed.

Charles Simic

The Thirst of Mary Oliver

An evening of poetry with some friends this past week sent me looking into the poems of Mary Oliver again.

In Oliver's newest book, Thirst, there are 43 new poems. You'd expect to find poems about nature, and readers familiar with her work might also expect a kind of spirituality. As several reviewers have written, you will also find her exploring in this book grief and faith.

I returned to reading Oliver's poems after my friend, Leon, talked about how approaching her poems recently had been a kind of spiritual reading. Oliver recently lost her long time companion, and in this book she writes through and with her grief into a place that seems overtly spiritual, perhaps even religious.

Some of the poems sound like prayers-

Oh Lord of melons, of mercy, though I am
not ready, nor worthy, I am climbing toward you.

and in the poem, "Praying" she offers:

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice can speak.

Patching a few words together into a prayer, or into a poem (I have long believed that almost all poems touch upon the writing of poetry) is, as she writes early in the book, her doing her life's work - "loving the world."

And the poems are still full of place: ponds, ocean and marsh full of "salt brightness," grass, fields and cattails occupied by herons, ravens, dogs, bees, hawks, snakes, turtles, and bears.

My other poetic companion last week, Susan, might call these Oliver's signature tropes (as Susan is currently deep into a thesis on the topic). That's not a bad path into the poems either, but I might have to walk down several definition roads to see tropes linguistically, as in music, philosophy or in the most obvious literary meaning.

As she spends a "Long Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister Pond," Oliver writes:

Every day I walk out into the world
to be dazzled, then to be reflective

For me, these poems are a kind of natural praying. They are natural in the sense of nature, full of wonder and admiration for the majesty of what surrounds us, and they are natural in their inherent sense of right and wrong and their higher qualities of human nature.

Belief isn't always easy.
But this much I have learned—
if not enough else—
to live with my eyes open.
I know what everyone wants
is a miracle.
This wasn't a miracle.
Unless, of course, kindness—

as now and again
some rare person has suggested—
is a miracle.
As surely it is.

For August, we ask for our new writing prompt that you try to write a natural prayer. You may use any definition of natural, any form of prayer, whether that be overtly religious or spiritual without any religious attachments. This term, "natural prayer," is not my own invention - Celan said: "Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul," so there are precedents for this type of poem.

If you have examples of poets who have written poems of this type, post a link in the comments below for others to follow.



Information on this writing prompt and poem submission is at poetsonline.org

The Poet Laminate Becomes a Poet Laureate

Jack Prelutsky, a popular children's poet, met then-U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky in 2000.

Prelutsky said, "I'm something you're not."
"What's that?" Pinsky asked.
Prelutsky visits hundreds of schools and libraries where his poems are laminated and posted on the walls. "I'm the poet laminate."

Now, at 66, Prelutsky has been named the nation's first children's poet laureate by the Poetry Foundation.

I know that children's poetry doesn't get much respect from the "grownup" poetry world. They don't get invited to the Dodge Poetry Festival.

But my boys really loved Shel Silverstein and Prelutsky when they were new readers, and even wrote their own imitations, and for that I thank them.

He has published more than 40 books, including Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant and Other Poems, and has more than 1 million copies in print. The folk singer turned poet recites and sings on the audio version of his latest books.

In his 2 years as laureate, he will give speeches, recommend other poets online and, something I don't recall any laureates doing, he plans a contest to give away part of the laureate's $25,000 award. (He'll ask children to write why their school libraries need more books.)

Jack Prelutsky's web site (a work in progress as of now)

Info & poems at The Academy of American Poets

Prelutsky info on Wikipedia

Donald Hall and the Position of Poet Laureate

I spent some time reading articles about Donald Hall being appointed the 14th Poet Laureate of the United States.

ON DONALD HALL:

"I think Don's a natural choice for our new laureate. He's been part of the poetic conversation ... for 50 years. He's a poet who's deeply rooted in a place, as fewer Americans are now, and also one even more rooted in the history of the language, in a lifelong love of musical speech." - Mark Doty

He is the third poet laureate from New Hampshire. (Robert Frost and Maxine Kumin are the others)

He is 77 and still has a reputation for outspokenness, particularly on 1st Amendment issues, so there's hope that this resident of the "Live Free or Die" state may stir things up.

He lives at Eagle Pond, in a New Hampshire farmhouse built by his great-grandfather in 1865 with his two cats, Thelma and Louise.

Eagle Pond was built by Hall's great-grandfather in 1865 and it's been in the family ever since. This places figures in much of his poetry. He says he remembers his grandfather telling stories here and reciting poems and summers haying in the morning and reading in the afternoon. He wrote his first poems about this house when he was 12.

He said that at 12 he wrote his first poem and it began: "have you ever thought about the nearness of death to you?"

Former Poet Laureate Billy Collins, called Hall a poet of "elegiac preoccupations," for whom "death is a favorite lens."

At 16, he was a fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont.

Got his bachelor's degree in literature from Harvard in 1951. Dated poet Adrienne Rich there and knew Robert Bly (still a close friiend), Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch.

At 29, he went to teach at the University of Michigan, where he remained until 1975.

There he met Jane Kenyon, then 19 and a student of his.

They married in 1972. Jane persuaded Hall to stop teaching, move back to Eagle Pond and support himself by writing. The prospect of no regular income terrified him, but they did it.

Hall and Kenyon together attracted almost as much attention as their poetry. Bill Moyers made an Emmy-winning documentary about the couple called "A Life Together."

Hall was appointed poet laureate of New Hampshire from 1984 - 1989.

In 1989, he learned he had colon cancer which metastasized to his liver. After chemotherapy, he went into remission, but was told he had a 1 in 3 chance of living three years.

In 1994, Kenyon was diagnosed with leukemia. Fifteen months later, at 47, she died.

Their life together, their love and her dying has been the subject of much of his writing since.

"I really got going as an elegiac poet when Jane died. It was the only thing that gave me comfort. I spent about 22 hours yelling and screaming and then I sat down to write. I was happy when I was writing to her. After a year it became impossible to say 'you,' while addressing her. I would like to write her many letters. There's so much she doesn't know."

He enjoys watching baseball on his satellite dish and like many from that area of the nation is a Red Sox fan.

These days, Hall wakes early, often by 4:30 a.m., and puts in several hours of writing, editing, revising ("the first drafts are always hideous") and dictating letters before taking a midday nap. He will assume his duties as poet laureate Oct. 1, but is not entirely sure how that will change his routine. "I will," he said, "administer prizes and fellowships and oversee a reading series at the Library of Congress." He will travel to Washington every six weeks and would like to start a poetry channel on satellite radio.

He has 15 poetry collections, several children's books, and essays on poets and their work. His latest poetry collection is White Apples and the Taste of Stone (Harcourt).


ABOUT THE POET LAUREATE POSITION

• Established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937.
• Usually held for one year but can be extended to as many as three.
• Hall succeeds Ted Kooser, from Nebraska, who held the post since 2004.
• It "pays" $40,000 a year ($35,000 for expenses and $5,000 for travel) The money is not paid by your taxes. It is donated by the Archer M. Huntington Foundation who endowed the position in 1936.
• The official title is "Poet Laureate Consultant to the Librarian of Congress.
• Official duty is one thing - an appearance at the opening of the Library of Congress' annual literary series in the fall.
• Some Laureates take up a cause or focus on a project.
• Ted Kooser set up a Web site americanlifeinpoetry.org where there's a poem a week with an introduction by him and is intended to be used by newspapers to promote poetry.
• Billy Collins created Poetry 180 at www.loc.gov/poetry/180/ which also became a book and has produced a second volume. It was intended to promote K-12 teachers using a poem a day in their classes.
• Robert Pinsky started the Favorite Poem Project favoritepoem.org
• Robert Hass promoted the River of Words project for writing about nature and the environment by children riverofwords.org
• Still, some poets just act as ambassadors of poetry without any special project, like Louise Gluck (2003-04) or the late Stanley Kunitz (2000-01) who, of course, was 95 at the time.