Book Launch for The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop

Book Launch for The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop

Sunday, November 10, 2013

2 PM

Join Diane Lockward and 20 poets featured in the book for a book launch reading for The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop at the West Caldwell Public Library (30 Clinton Road, West Caldwell, NJ)

. . . this is a poetry exercise/craft tip book poets (and English instructors) only dream about, a collection divided into sections such as "Sound," "Voice," and "Syntax," each addressing the stated topic with relevant writing/revision suggestions, plus a poem provided as a springboard for writing a poem in a similar mode or form. There are even examples of poems written from the prompt. . . I look forward to the next time I teach introduction to poetry writing because I definitely think students will appreciate the specificity of Lockward's prompts.
Martha Silano, Blue Positive

Diane Lockward is the author of three poetry books, most recently, Temptation by Water. Her poems have been included in such anthologies as Poetry Daily: 360 Poems from the World's Most Popular Poetry Website and Garrison Keillor's Good Poems for Hard Times, and have been published in such journals as Harvard Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. 

The book conatins model poems with prompts, writing tips, and interviews contributed by 56 of our nation's finest poets, including 13 former and current state Poets Laureate: Kim Addonizio, JoAnn Balingit, Ellen Bass, Jan Beatty, Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Robert Bense, Pam Bernard, Michelle Bitting, Deborah Bogen, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Edward Byrne, Kelly Cherry, Philip F. Deaver, Bruce Dethlefsen, Caitlin Doyle, Patricia Fargnoli, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Amy Gerstler, Karin Gottshall, Jennifer Gresham, Bruce Guernsey, Marilyn Hacker, Jeffrey Harrison, Lola Haskins, Jane Hirshfield, Gray Jacobik, Rod Jellema, Richard Jones, Julie Kane, Adele Kenny, Dorianne Laux, Sydney Lea, Hailey Leithauser, Jeffrey Levine, Diane Lockward, Denise Low, Jennifer Maier, Marie-Elizabeth Mali, Jeffrey McDaniel, Wesley McNair, Susan Laughter Meyers, Bronwen Butter Newcott, Alicia Ostriker, Linda Pastan, Stanley Plumly, Vern Rutsala, Martha Silano, Marilyn L. Taylor, Matthew Thorburn, Lee Upton, Nance Van Winckel, Ingrid Wendt, Nancy White, Cecilia Woloch, Baron Wormser, Suzanne Zweizig

And an additional 45 accomplished poets whose poems inspired by the prompts in the book serve as samples: Joel Allegretti, Linda Benninghoff, Broeck Blumberg, Rose Mary Boehm, Bob Bradshaw, Kelly Cressio-Moeller, Rachel Dacus, Ann DeVenezia, Liz Dolan, Kristina England, Laura Freedgood, Gail Fishman Gerwin, Erica Goss, Jeanie Greensfelder, Constance Hanstedt, John Hutchinson, Penny Harter, Wendy Elizabeth Ingersoll, Tina Kelley, Claire Keyes, Laurie Kolp, Joan Mazza, Janet McCann, Antoinette Libro, Charlotte Mandel, Joan Mazza, Janet McCann, Nancy Bailey Miller, Thomas Moudry, Drew Myron, Shawnte Orion, Donna Pflueger, Wanda Praisner, Susanna Rich, Ken Ronkowitz, Basil Rouskas, Nancy Scott, Martha Silano, Linda Simone, Melissa Studdard, Lisken Van Pelt Dus, Jeanne Wagner, Ingrid Wendt, Scott Wiggerman, Bill Wunder, Michael T. Young, Sander Zulauf

8th Biennial Warren County Poetry Festival in New Jersey September 28

The 8th Biennial Warren County Poetry Festival is a free one day event that will be held September 28, 2013 with a theme of "Blues Poetics: Working-Class Roots and Rhythms in Poetry."

The Festival is held every two years, and has won two Citation of Excellence from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. It features workshops, panel discussions, book signings, and open mic sessions.

The festival is held on the campus of the Blair Academy, in Blairstown, NJ.

The 2013 Featured Poets are Roger Bonair-Agard, Nick Flynn and Joy Harjo.

Roger Bonair-Agard is a veteran of the spoken-word scene and a two-time National Poetry Slam Champion. He is the author of Tarnish and Masquerade, co-author of Burning Down the House, GULLY and Bury My Clothes. Roger moved to the United States from his native Trinidad and Tobago in 1987.
books by Roger Bonair-Agard 

  Nick Flynn has worked as a ship's captain, an electrician, and as a case-worker with homeless adults. He is also the award-winning author of Some Ether, Blind Huber, The Ticking is the Bomb and Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Award. His most recent book is The Reenactments. He divides his time between Texas, where he teaches at the University of Houston, and Brooklyn, New York.         books by Nick Flynn

Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a member of the Mvskoke Nation. 

 Her seven books of poetry include How We Became Human- New and Selected Poems, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, and She Had Some Horses. For A Girl Becoming, a young adult/coming of age book, was released in 2009. She has also released four award-winning CD's of original music and in 2009 won a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best Female Artist of the Year for Winding Through the Milky Way. She performs nationally and internationally with her band, the Arrow Dynamics. 
  books and music by Joy Harjo

Other poets reading and participating in the day's workshops and panel discussion include: James Arthur,  Laura Boss, Martin Farawell, Maria Mazziotti Gillan,  Jim Haba, Leslie Heywood and Joe Weil.

For the festival schedule, directions and more about the poets, see http://poetsonline.org/wcpf/

Breaking Bad and Walt Whitman

There have been several Walt Whitman references during the four and a half seasons of AMC’s Breaking Bad. This month the final episodes of the series are being shown.

The two WW's - Whitman and Breaking Bad protagonist, Walter White - have a strange connection.

The two don't seem similar. White is a high school science teacher who finds out he has cancer and becomes a crystal meth maker and distributor to build up a cash reserve for his family. Over the seasons, he breaks very bad, going “from Mr. Chips to Scarface” as the show's creator, Vince Gilligan, has said.

Whitman is nothing like that. Whitman and his book, Leaves of Grass, were not part of some original plot plan by the creator, But he keeps popping up.

In season three, White’s lab assistant, Gale, recites Whitman's poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer", a poem about disillusionment with theory and a need to engage with the world.

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air,…

Gale gives Walt a copy of Leaves of Grass as a gift. In a later scene, Walt read the book which Gale inscribed with “To my other favorite W.W. It is an honor working with you.”

The name of this year's fifth season’s midpoint cliffhanger episode was “Gliding Over All,” which is an allusion to a poem in the book, "Song of Myself."

Gliding o’er all, through all,
Through Nature, Time, and Space,
As a ship on the waters advancing,
The voyage of the soul—not life alone,
Death, many deaths I’ll sing.

This poem connects with the Walt that White has become.

And then Walt’s brother-in-law Hank, a D.E.A. agent who has been pursuing the meth cook that is Walt, found the copy of Leaves of Grass in Walt's bathroom, and reading the inscription written by the now dead Gale, knows that Walt is the meth cook and drug lord also known as "Heisenberg."

Walter "Walt" Whitman the poet was a humanist and part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism. He is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse.

His work was very controversial in its time, particularly Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.

Will "The Good Gray Poet" figure in the final episodes of the series?

As at thy portals also death,
Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds...
I grave a monumental line, before I go, amid these songs,
And set a tombstone here.



More About WW and WW
http://breakingbad.wikia.com/wiki/Walt_Whitman
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/246218

Prompt: Alliteration, Masturbation and Other Literary Terms

We all were taught literary terms in school, especially during some poetry unit. Simile, metaphor, personification and many others were supposed to be the common vocabulary and grammar we used to dissect the poems.

This month's model poem for our prompt is one that is titled with a literary term - alliteration. The poem itself is no ars poetica though.

Alliteration
by Paul Hostovsky

I whacked off in these woods once.
But that was a long time ago when
everything rhymed a little with
the trees all facing upward and the sky
was full of itself and no one
was around. And everything smelled good.
I smelled good myself. A sweaty,
muddy, musky, burning smell of
autumn or late summer or very early
spring was in the air, and I was so
excited to be so young and existential
and solipsistic, that I peeled off my shirt
and pants and underpants, and stood there
erect and steeply rocking under a sycamore,
my peeled bark in a little pile at my feet,
my head tossing in the wind, my mouth
opening, wider, wider, as if trying
to pronounce all the vowels at the same time
and failing deliciously, and sinking down
to the ground, totally spent and spluttering
a few choice consonants like kisses meant
for the pursed lips of the wind.


We know that alliteration is the repetition of the initial sounds (usually consonants) of stressed syllables in neighboring words. Usually it occurs at word beginnings, as in this line from Shelley's "The Cloud":  I bear light shade for the leaves when laid.

The poem has alliteration, but do you see a connection from the term to the poem's subject?  Repetition? The "few choice consonants" of spluttered sound? How intentional was it in this somewhat naughty-boy poem that has several puns that another name for alliteration is head rhyme?

For our August prompt, select a literary term as your title and starting point. Besides the common terms, there are plenty of lesser known ones (like half rhyme). And a term like "meter" has many sub-topics to offer. Pentameter and caesura suggest things outside of poetry to me. What would a poem titled "Free Verse" or "Masculine Verse" or "Feminine Verse" address?

To avoid preconceived notions, perhaps you should just browse a list of literary terms for poetry and find one that gets your interest.

Paul Hostovsky is the author of four books of poetry, Hurt Into Beauty (2012), A Little in Love a Lot (2011), Dear Truth (2009), and Bending the Notes (2008). His poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net awards, numerous chapbook contests, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer's Almanac. He works in Boston as a sign language interpreter at the Massachusetts Commission for the Deaf

"Alliteration" is from his forthcoming book Naming Names which can be pre-ordered now online.

Paul is online at www.paulhostovsky.com