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Poetry Weblog
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July 30, 2001
Surfing through the Library of Congress web site, an internet terrain I almost always feel ill prepared and lost within, I stumbled upon one of their exhibitions. Language of the Land: Journeys into Literary America mostly features a variety of maps, more than 200 the site claims, along with photographs, descriptions, and bibliographical information. Besides maps assembled according to region, the site contains by theme, such as Black writers and the Beats.
posted by Laurable on 7/30/2001 04:32:39 PM
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Back in May of this year I attended a reading by the poet Nick Flynn at Brooklyn's Salt Marsh Marine Park. Before the reading we toured the marsh and together wrote a Ghazal, each person contributing a stanza or Sher. Nick Flynn mentioned his inspiration for this exercise was the Brooklyn poet Agha Shahid Ali. Since the reading, the Paris Review via Salon dot com has provided a audio reading of Agha Shahid Ali's The Purse-Seiner Atlantis (listen). Last weekend NPR's Weekend All Things Considered aired a conversation (listen) with poet. Ali is also the editor of Ravishing Disunities : Real Ghazals in English.
posted by Laurable on 7/30/2001 03:57:48 PM
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Yet another take on the Ted Hughes/Sylvia Plath saga, this time from a man of contemporary circumstance and yet again Sylvia comes out on top.
posted by Laurable on 7/30/2001 03:39:05 PM
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Robert Pinsky, who has written his own translation of Dante's Inferno reviews in the New York Times Book Review a book by scholar R. W. B. Lewis on Dante Alighieri simply titled Dante.
posted by Laurable on 7/30/2001 03:35:58 PM
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July 27, 2001
the seamy psychosexual underworld of, um, poetry readings.
posted by Laurable on 7/27/2001 09:22:59 PM
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Samples from a WWII-era radio show by Groucho, along with Lucille Ball, Mel Blanc, and Verna Felton. Also three Flywheel and Ravelli shows.
posted by Laurable on 7/27/2001 09:15:37 PM
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National Poetry Slam 2001 starts next Tuesday in Seattle.
posted by Laurable on 7/27/2001 02:28:14 PM
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It's going to be a pun Olympics: The pinnacle of sporting events is leading the use of language straight downhill. In the second paragraph, it mentions the ancient Games were enhanced culturally by a poets' competition. I haven't run across a better arguement for poetry slams at the Olympics.
posted by Laurable on 7/27/2001 01:40:55 PM
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July 26, 2001
Form your own opinion.
posted by Laurable on 7/26/2001 03:48:17 PM
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A Prairie Home Companion homage to Kerouac (listen) in celebration of
the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Kerouac's book "On The Road," a book that all of us English majors enjoyed because the mention of it made our professors turn purple, and when you're nineteen, you enjoy having that effect on people.
posted by Laurable on 7/26/2001 02:47:30 PM
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It's the largest secret society in America -- bigger than the Mafia --- millions of men and women and they know each other only by their elegant syntax and grammar, their excellent word choice --- and their use of the pronoun "whom" --
on The Lives of the English Major (listen)...
from the June 14, 1997 Prairie Home Companion.
posted by Laurable on 7/26/2001 11:51:06 AM
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Somebody thinks poetry should says what it means.
posted by Laurable on 7/26/2001 09:44:43 AM
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July 25, 2001
I am not sure when it happened, but Poetry Daily is now truely living up to its name, poetry daily, Sunday through Saturday. Previously it was every business day. I get the weekly update and I still missed it somehow. Because I am back on David Lehman's "a poem a day" kick, here is an archive of his feat from April (National Poetry Month) 1998 when he (live) submitted a poem he wrote that day. You may also find a few audio selections of David Lehman's daily poems, plus some regular poems on my audio page conveniently anchored for you surfing pleasure.
posted by Laurable on 7/25/2001 10:35:00 PM
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Sifting through my stats log I found my site link on a Hebrew web site. Can anyone translate for me?
posted by Laurable on 7/25/2001 10:25:38 PM
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Poet and commentor Andrei Codrescu is lamenting the lack of poetry in today's newspapers (listen). He himself was poetry editor for the Baltimore Sun after 65 year of negligence. He also points out that even if newspapers don't get along with poetry, poetry get along very well with the newspapers. I will have to take up his suggestion, although I won't be cutting and pasting. I prefer the word processor in this process as I usually do.
William Carlos Williams had his own take on news and poetry:
It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there. Asphodel, That Greeny Flower
You can find this quote at the top of my newsfeed along with the days newsclippings mentioning the words poet poets poetry poem and/or poems.
posted by Laurable on 7/25/2001 10:15:09 PM
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Allen Ginsberg's brother, Eugene Brooks dies July 18, 2001.
posted by Laurable on 7/25/2001 06:24:29 PM
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I never did get to read this article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine on American poet Robinson Jeffers.
posted by Laurable on 7/25/2001 06:18:31 PM
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ABCNews dot com reports Psychosomatic Medicine magazine did a study which concluded that the suicidal poets gravitated toward words indicating their detachment from other people and preoccupation with themselves. No suprised to anyone there. The article does get a little more specific with the breakdown of words.
I think I found a goof in their study. They have a group of poets who committed suicide and a comparison group who did not. Robert Lowell is in the control group even though he did commit suicide, just not fatally. Randall Jarrell is in the suicide and even though most assume it is very likely that he committed suicide, it could possible have been a car accident and there wasn't any note left behind. I have sat around a few of these did he/didn't he arguements and it is not worth getting into.
But they didn't ask me.
posted by Laurable on 7/25/2001 02:29:43 PM
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Picked this up on my newsfeed and eh, so Bushie give the Pope a book of poetry as an introductory gift. Big deal. But then it started to bug me because the article didn't say what book of poetry it was and now I can't find it anywhere. Anyone know? It ain't Whitman.
posted by Laurable on 7/25/2001 11:31:46 AM
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July 21, 2001
I missed a new poetry challenge (listen) from WBUR Boston's Here and Now radio program back on July 16, although I don't know how since I looked for it on Wednesday. Oh, well. I guess that is just one reason why I subscribe to all these weekly program announcements. This new poetry challenge is for a polar poem, which in this case requires the first and last lines to be opposite or contrasting statements. Have fun.
posted by Laurable on 7/21/2001 01:51:51 PM
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July 20, 2001
I thought the author of this article's name was funny, at least if you know about the poet Marge Piercy.
posted by Laurable on 7/20/2001 05:37:43 PM
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Yes, there is to a Science Fiction Poetry Association.
posted by Laurable on 7/20/2001 05:29:38 PM
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While I am wandering around the Prairie Home Companion archives here is a poem by Roy Blount, Jr., Poem for the Twentieth Century (listen), a Valentine's Medley of Poetry and Song (listen), The Fire of Driftwood by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (listen), The Raven from Edgar Allen Poe (listen) and Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 (listen).
posted by Laurable on 7/20/2001 10:35:19 AM
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While I am at it here are some messages brought to you by the English Majors of America. May 5, 2001 (listen), October 28, 2000 (listen), June 30, 2001 (listen), Br'er Rabbit, November 11, 2000 (listen), June 23, 2001 (listen) and homage to Kerouac July 5, 1997 (listen)
The Lives of English Majors: June 14, 1997 (listen), My Antonia, February 10, 2001 (listen),
posted by Laurable on 7/20/2001 09:57:34 AM
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I admit it. I like the Celebrity Classics Theater a little too much. So I am just going to get it out of my system here and now and blog the last one I can find.
Electra (listen): December 12, 1998. Starring Monica Lewinsky as Electra, Bill Clinton as Orestes, Henry Kissinger as the Servant, Linda Tripp as Chrysot hemis, Mister Rogers as the Chorus, and Julia Child as Clytemnestra.
posted by Laurable on 7/20/2001 09:42:05 AM
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July 19, 2001
From the New York Times, James Fenton, who lectured on 20th-century writers from Wilfred Owen and Marianne Moore to Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney, is featured with a Book Review and First Chapter selection from his book of essays, The Strenght of Poetry: Oxford Lectures.
posted by Laurable on 7/19/2001 01:23:57 PM
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J.R.R. Tolkien reads a poem in Elvish (listen, also available mp3). For those who are fans of fiction and living languages, Tolkien also reads in English a seven and a half minute selection from The Two Towers (listen, also mp3).
posted by Laurable on 7/19/2001 12:00:38 PM
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Yet another Celebrity Classic: Oedipus the King (listen).
Cast:
Jack Nicholson: Oedipus
George Bush: Creon
Edith Bunker: Jocasta
with a special guest appearance by Ross Perot as Tiresias.
posted by Laurable on 7/19/2001 11:16:48 AM
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Another Celebrity Classic: The Six Minute Macbeth (listen) (the voices you know bringing you the literature you love) from Prairie Home Companion, November 9, 1996.
Cast:
Mr. Rogers: MacBeth
Henry Kissinger : King Duncan
Jack Nicholson: Thane of Ross
Julia Child: Lady MacBeth
President Clinton: MacDuff
Mr. Rogers: When people bug me do you know what I like to do? Do you? I like to chop their heads off. Yes, I do. Would you like to have your head chopped off?
posted by Laurable on 7/19/2001 11:04:34 AM
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Emily Dickinson Suite (songs) from Prairie Home Companion, November 2, 1996 (listen).
posted by Laurable on 7/19/2001 10:28:40 AM
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July 18, 2001
A Prairie Home Companion Celebrity Classic: The Six-Minute Illiad (listen), from October 12, 1996.
Cast:
Jack Nicholson:Achilles
Elvis Presley:Agamemnon
Ross Perot:Hector
Mr. Rogers:Odysseus
Odysseus: Mr. Agamenmon said he was sorry and I think a real hero would accept his apology and return to the battle field and hack and hew and slaw indiscriminate thousands, don't you?
posted by Laurable on 7/18/2001 05:16:30 PM
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John Canaday wins the Walt Whitman award chosen by Sherod Santos. Humid from Slate magazine (listen, wmp).
posted by Laurable on 7/18/2001 11:08:12 AM
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Harvard acquires more Longfellow
posted by Laurable on 7/18/2001 11:03:38 AM
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A long neglected McSweeney's dot net article, Done in Pen: The Poems of New York Times Puzzle Editor Will Shortz.
posted by Laurable on 7/18/2001 10:55:05 AM
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July 13, 2001
Another Wired for Books audio link: Herbert Woodward Martin reads his lecture The African American Oral Tradition (listen). I have run into Herbert Woodward Martin as a scholar of Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first African-American to gain national eminence as a poet. He reads several of Dunbar's poems here.
posted by Laurable on 7/13/2001 08:45:35 PM
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Wow. Not finding things for Arna Bontemps is sure turning out to be fruitful. Wired for Books has a Communities Reconsidered program and here I found a discussion of discuss >Their Eyes Were Watching God (listen) by Zora Neale Hurston. They also include a question answer (via e-mail) session (listen). Communities Reconsidered also discusses books by Raymond Carver (listen), Leo Tolstoy (listen) and Toni Morrison (listen).
posted by Laurable on 7/13/2001 08:30:21 PM
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This isn't really poetry, but when I saw Zora Neale Hurston's Glossary of Harlem Slang, I knew I had to e-mail the link to my friend Rene. Rene lives in his own brownstone on 123rd St off Fredrick Douglas Avenue which is about as Harlem as you can get. Now that I am finally getting back on my feet, I will have him give me a proper Harlem tour.
posted by Laurable on 7/13/2001 08:15:50 PM
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Hmmmm. I wouldn't have to move out of New York City... I am gonna check this place out.
posted by Laurable on 7/13/2001 04:03:49 PM
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I found this site trying to track down a good biography/links page for Arna Bontemps. Back on July 8th, Masterpiece Theatre presented a Langston Hughes's Depression-era story of an African American domestic -- working in the 1930's tiny town of Melton, Iowa. Like many PBS programs, the program is accompanied by a handsome website featuring background material (on the Harlem Renaissance), timelines, essays, interviews, links and a teacher's guide.
I was hoping to find some audio files, but there were none to be had.
posted by Laurable on 7/13/2001 02:01:46 PM
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July 12, 2001
An old (June 11, 2000) poem by Nick Flynn in the New York Times.
posted by Laurable on 7/12/2001 06:21:52 PM
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From June 13, 2001, on the Online New Hour with Jim Lehrer, Robert Pinsky reads two poems from the Middle East, one from Palestinian Mahmoud Darwish and another from the late Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai.
posted by Laurable on 7/12/2001 06:11:43 PM
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I forgot to add this earlier. For their July/August issue the Atlantic Monthly has an article about McLean Hospital and the Boston poets, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, and Anne Sexton, who passed through there.
posted by Laurable on 7/12/2001 05:58:41 PM
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I don't know about you, but I keep running into Paul Celan's poetry and have never studied up and reconciled myself with him and his poetry. As a first step in remedying this, I listened to a Bookworm (listen) (KCRW) program from June 28, 2001 featuring the translator of Norton's new Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan.
Through listening to the program, I learned that WW Norton is providing real audio of Paul Celan reading, in German, twelve poems. The real audio is downloadable by the way.
posted by Laurable on 7/12/2001 12:50:52 PM
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I was reading this Times (British) article on Seamus Heaney not winning the Forward Prize. The article had this strange tone about it, as if it is a universal assumption that of course Seamus Heaney should have one the prize. Whatever. An interesting item I did find was then mention of the British National Poetry Day on October 3. I have put it on my calendar.
posted by Laurable on 7/12/2001 11:30:05 AM
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The New York Times is featuring Sarah Jones, a spoken word poet whose poem got the attention of the F.C.C. The Federal Communications Commission lodged a $7,000 fine against KBOO-FM, a radio station in Portland, Ore., for broadcasting "Your Revolution," (listen) a poem she recorded in 1999. The agency concluded that the sexual references in the song were "patently offensive."
What is so hard about understanding that obscenities parodying other obscenities are still obscene. "Anyone can see it's a parody," she says indignantly. Do we really want the FCC to discern intent and then make a moral judgement on a piece: music, poetry or otherwise?
posted by Laurable on 7/12/2001 10:58:12 AM
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Long before Robert Pinsky's favorite poem parties there were the Burn's Clubs which turns 200 this month.
posted by Laurable on 7/12/2001 09:16:46 AM
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July 11, 2001
I stumbled into a weekly news summary report within the Poets & Writers Magazine website. Although the magazine is a great resource, I must confession that I shy away from the site because it isn't exclusively poetry and I get impatience wading through fiction, non-fiction and technical writing material. Two out of the nine new summaries were about poetry, but the format is clear, concise and easy to read so it is worth checking back on. The site also includes an archive back to June 1996.
posted by Laurable on 7/11/2001 02:03:32 PM
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The Academy of American Poets at Poets dot org has launched their Online Poetry Classroom site. The site is geared toward high school students and teachers and indeed there is a large teachers' resource center with essays, tips, lesson plans and links to outside projects. In fact, two of the major sections or the site are How to Teach and What to Teach.
Of a more Laurable interest, the Media Center contains a Guide to poetry recordings, a link to the Acadamy's Listening Booth and a link to the Favorite Poem Project.
posted by Laurable on 7/11/2001 01:54:54 PM
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ABCnews dot com uses Whitman's habit of pinning together early snippets of Leaves of Grass to muse about future historians potential problems with digital material.
posted by Laurable on 7/11/2001 01:01:04 PM
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It was Czeslaw Milosz's ninethieth birthday June 30th and birthday wishes come from Robert Hass, Linda Gregg, Les Murry and one from the birthday boy himself.
posted by Laurable on 7/11/2001 11:23:15 AM
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July 10, 2001
I found this on my referrals log. Someone was looking for Emily Dickenson links I think. Gee, downloadable doesn't translate in to English very well. I suppose if it was actually a word, it might help. Anybody have any suggestions or is it o.k.?
posted by Laurable on 7/10/2001 09:03:36 PM
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I just stumbled upon a D.H. Lawrence poem, Violets (listen) recited by Kenneth Branagh. The poem's voice has a heavy dialect, which I certainly balked at upon first glance, and Branagh's reading is very helpful.
posted by Laurable on 7/10/2001 08:53:47 PM
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A friend and I were reading from The Library of America's edition of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century (Eliot's The Waste Land among others). I took it as happy happenstance that the New York Times featured an article about the Library of America's editor Cheryl J. Hurley. I highly recommend these volumes, which offer great bang for your buck as well as an invaluable resource.
posted by Laurable on 7/10/2001 08:38:45 PM
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July 9, 2001
Lyrics as poetry? The New York Times Magazine ponders pop stars publishing their lyrics as poetry as well as poets doing the sing song serenade.
The online version comes with an multimedia poll asking you to judge if the song lyrics of Eminem, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Radiohead and Steely Dan are poetry. Real Audio files of the music are available, but the lyrics are not provided on for the page. An unfortunately layout decision in my opinion.
I haphazardly took the poll hoping I could view the results, unfortunately all I received was a terse thank you for your submission message.
posted by Laurable on 7/09/2001 06:15:25 PM
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From Oh Captain, My Captain to Oh, euro, my euro!. Enough said.
posted by Laurable on 7/09/2001 04:40:58 PM
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July 8, 2001
I found site from following a Rafael Campo link months ago, but since forgot about it. Praxis Post, a medical magazine which describes itself as a place to go for culture, ideas, analysis and literature unavailable in most medical literature and journals, has a nifty site called Williams Corner. As you may have guessed, William's Corner is inspired by Williams Carlos Williams who practiced as a physician and as a poet with equal success.
Poet/physicians such as Rafael Campo, David Watts and of course William Carlos Williams, contribute their poems with commentary. Also are included non physician poets writing on medical issues such as Elizabeth Bishop on suffering in a waiting room, Virginia Hamilton Adair on her hysterectomy and Walt Whitman on amputation during the Civil War.
I also found a mention of an upcoming PBS documentary entitled Poetry and Medicine being produced by poet-physician David Watts. I will be looking out for it.
posted by Laurable on 7/08/2001 07:50:33 PM
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Before the Chicago poetry slams...
posted by Laurable on 7/08/2001 02:24:30 PM
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In the David Schickler's novel Kissing in Manhattan, an in-your-facedly hip restaurant bar doesn't allow poetry.
posted by Laurable on 7/08/2001 01:45:52 PM
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July 6, 2001
South Carolina is looking for a new poet laureate.
posted by Laurable on 7/06/2001 07:35:21 PM
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Yesterday, poet Carol Muske-Dukes was on Fresh Air (NPR) (listen) although she is talking about her new novel and not much about poetry.
posted by Laurable on 7/06/2001 07:17:04 PM
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July 3, 2001
What is the deal with British austricism of American poety. O.k., maybe that is a ridiculous question, but why exactly? I read this article awhile ago and had little patience for it. Now I read the Brits like Billy Collins, our new Poet Laureate, and I am even more confused. Anyone have a simple explaination?
posted by Laurable on 7/03/2001 07:08:37 PM
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Civil War commemoration in Washington D.C. kicked off with the first of 21 street signs on the spot where Walt Whitman watched the parade of the Grand Army of the Republic in 1865. Listen to a probable recording of Whitman reading America (listen). History of the recording.
posted by Laurable on 7/03/2001 07:05:10 PM
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