Sunday Weekend Summery

Updating Tour de France Fantasy Cycling team  results between my daughter and I.  Drum Roll Please......

• Team Poetry - 306  (my team) 
• DieuxVelo - 91 (Meghan's)

Being a San Francisco Giants fan, I was skipping around here after learning that on Friday night Jonathan Sanchez threw the Giants' first no-hitter since 1976, blanking the Padres, 8-0.    Highlight here

Writing this weekend has been touch-and-go.  Not nearly go as well as I'd like.  Perhaps I set my bar a little high as I really was expecting a lot out of myself this weekend. I'm thinking perhaps I had too many distractions.

Speaking of distractions, I read an interesting piece in the NY Times - Habitats for a Writer - a Home with a Hideout.   Audio Slide Show

Oh, and I read a poem of Kelli Russell Agodon's that was outstanding in so many ways. It can be read at DMQ Review - "Death & Birth in a Chinese Restaurant"

Technorati Tags: DMO Review,Fantasy Cycling team,San Francisco Giants No-Hitter,Kelli Russell Agodon

Spies Among Us

Hemingway a KGB spy? According to a new book out, Hemingway was recruited as a Spy in 1941.  The book, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press also indicated that his KGB file indicates he failed to provide any "political information" and was never "verified in practical work."  This has given rise to the thought that Hemingway was only a pseudo-spook, possibly seeing his clandestine dealings as potential literary material. Source

The You Aren't going to believe this Department

American International Group is preparing to pay millions of dollars more in bonuses to several dozen top corporate executives. This is not old news, this comes after an earlier round of payments four months the sent the "shit" flying against the fan.

The company is reportedly pressing the federal government to bless the payments in hopes of shielding itself from renewed public outrage. I'm officially outraged!  Source

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Key Reason Palin Gave For Quitting May Be False

Key Reason Palin Gave For Quitting May Be False

At least reading this it's hard to make a strong argument for it.

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Labor of Love

I love NPR for a number of reasons, but one that particularly feeds my curiosity is the attention they give the arts. They've had a series about artists and how they earn a living.  For poetry they focused there story on Elizabeth Haukaas. Earlier this year her book Leap which won the Walt McDonald poetry book award was published. You can check out the NPR Story including an audio about her & a couple of her poems here.

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Dad in the Dog House

Some interesting things coming forth on the page today.   I'm happy actually with last two days of writing.

My youngest daughter us a cyclist. She loves the Tour de France.  Once again she has engaged me in a fantasy racing team battle.  I'm not in good graces with her as of today.  I've beat her in points so far for three out of three stages. Her text messages are growing terse.

Love ya honey!  :)

Poetry & Mystery

Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away - Carl Sandburg

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An Independence Day Thought

I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery.  ~Author Unknown

 

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Journal bits

Battered by wind and rain / by tides and Lunar laughter / choked on unforgivingly / the night is pressed into servitude

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The Most Social Thing

Listening to: Fairy Tales  / Anita Bakers     Mood:  slightly melancholy

This week I've thought a lot about language as a social dynamic. I was writing in my journal the other day and I concluded the days post with a personal observation that language was the most social thing people do. The next day I picked up from that point the night before because it seemed like a heavy way to leave the day's entry. I thought to myself that I needed to defend that pronouncement.

Picking up on this point I continued the conversation with myself yet another day.  I felt that I needed to define social for the sake of this argument and I did, assigning it this definition: actions or things people do in groups (group consisting of at least 2 or more).  My quick list of social activities then looked like this:

• dinning
• talking
• traveling
• work(ing)
• governing
• fighting
• sex
• playing
• reading

In all these activities talking/communicating aka language is or can be a factor. Yes, I suppose you can have silent sex, but it is certainly possible, even likely that language will play a role. While two people don't have to be together for reading, it remains an interaction at minimum between an author and at least one other reader. And so I concluded my second day journal entry feeling I had  justified  my original elevation of the significance of language in society today. It most often can and will be the center point of any other social undertaking.

With the decline of language skill among many American students it is easy to envision trouble ahead in their lives when a core part of their social interactions are hindered by marginalized language capabilities.  I'd like to believe that this trend is not permanent, but then I'd like to believe that poetry would also enjoy a renaissance. As the John Lennon song Imagine says, "you may say that I'm a dreamer."

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Listen to Iran's National Poet Speaking out

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Partly Moody

The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather. ~Lionel Trilling

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Beatings continue on streets in Iran

 

Crackdown by Iranian government continues in the streets- Police remain vigilant and brutal. This footage is dated today.

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Sunday afternoon

The latest issue of Poets and Writers is out. I was slightly disappointed as I was expecting this to be the issue in which they feature the breakout poets for the year. I always enjoy seeing it and often am familiar with at least one of them. Instead it's a first fiction annual.

I did enjoy the article FLARF POETS, they can't be serious. Can They? I about to read How the NEA is spending that $50 MILLION.

Just for grins I'm thinking I'll put up a poll on flarf for a couple of weeks.

Technorati Tags: Flarf,poetry,Poets and Writers magazine,NEA spending

Holy Cow -A Pastor Celebrates Handguns

The Saturday Night Special is defined by Wikipedia as pejorative slang used in the United States and Canada for any inexpensive handgun.  Tonight pastor is Ken Pagano of the New Bethel Church in Louisville, Kentucky is having “Saturday night special” service for gun owners.

According to CSMonitor.com article, 'About 200 people took him up on the invitation. It wasn’t mandatory to have a gun to get in. In fact, according to the church website, you didn’t even have to believe in God. The only requirement was to be a supporter of the First and Second Amendments.'

Actually the Saturday Night Specials were the target of most of the early gun control legislation.  They are not hunting sport weapons and really have only one purpose, a cheap weapon to use against another person.

I find the mixture of Church and cheap handguns to be a most interesting marriage. We do love our guns in this country. In fact the gun culture in America has within it a a cult base that harbors a fanatical fixation on guns. Some to almost a level of "gun worship." Perhaps Pastor Pagano is one such worshiper. I don't know him personally but what I do know is his works and I am suspect of any pastor who feels compelled to use church resources to advance and celebrate the cause of "Saturday Night Specials." These cheap handguns have victimized so many families, from accidental shootings (many of which are children) to suicides to passionate arguments that end in one or more shootings and last but not least armed criminal acts.

Technorati Tags: Saturday Night Specials,Firearms,New Bethel Church in Louisville Kentucky,Pastor Ken Pagano,gun culture

BBC Poetry Series Boosts Poetry Sales in U.K.

 

A recent spate of poetry-related material has driven poetry sales in the U.K., selling copies of books that had languished on national shelves.

The BBC's Poetry Season project appears to have motivated people to go to the buy poetry. Imagine that!

A multimedia series with interviews and other related poetry items is credited with generating a 92 % bump in the sales of Sylvia Plath's poetry works and a whooping 300 % increase in the sales of John Donne.

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Local Poetry Events

 

 

Friday - June 26 / 7:30pm

MUSIC, ART, AND POETRY @ THE NEON GALLERY 1921 Truman Road

Thomas Cobian’s art, River Cow Orchestra’s music, and local poets reading.

Friday - July 10 - 8:00 pm

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Poet Laureate of Kansas - Landed is her new collection of poetry, and The Sky Begins at Your Feet, the title of her forthcoming memoir. Her books include My Tree Called Life: Writing and Living Through Serious Illness and Lot’s Wife.

Anastacia (Stacey) Tolbert is a writer, playwright, and fifth grade teacher at Seattle Girls School, in Seattle, Washington.  Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have been published nationally, and she is writer, co-director, and co-producer of GOTBREAST (2007), a documentary on women’s views about breast and body image.

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In Case You Didn't Know Department

"I quote Irish poets all the time because they're the best poets."

- Vice President Joe Biden

English-Only Group Can't Spell the Word 'Conference' -- Politics Daily

This item caught my attention today and I had a good laugh. I hope this makes Morning Joe on MSNBC. Would be a great story for Willie Geist who has the New You Can't Use segment that is generally humorous material. Click the link below to see a photo of the banner.

Filed Under:Republicans, Barack Obama, Gaffes, Humor, Immigration

Should English be the official language of the United States? That assertion was made over the weekend at a conference hosted by talk-show personality and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan. Oddly, as the featured speakers delivered their remarks ridiculing Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor for her supposed lack of English proficiency while at Princeton University, and warning that the Obama administration is "going to gradually institute institutional bilingualism in the country," they did so beneath a large banner that contained a doozy of a typo

English-Only Group Can't Spell the Word 'Conference' -- Politics Daily

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Nice Bright Colors

Kodak created Kodachrome in 1935 and by the mid-1970's it was so culturally ingrained into society no one gave it a second thought when Paul Simon  immortalized the film in song.   These digital times have reduced the film, known for its vivid colors to a business loser. So much so that Kodak announced today that it will stop making it.

Like the typewriter (you remember that don't you?) the 35 mm film will soon be lost from the vocabulary of a generation who know nothing but digital photography.  Momma won't even have have a chance to take your Kodachrome away.

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Thirty-five / for Cathy

Thirty-five


Two numbers open
to possibilities-
the three and five
each with open cupped hand

Coral and Jade
are its traditional and modern
representations

It's a long time for people
to be together these days
but not to long for love
its symmetry
which defies math
or any defining number
rebuking any summation
or equal sign

Thirty-five is not a destination
but a mile marker
a momentary pause
on an odometer
to be be eclipsed

It is green with passion
green with hope
and ivory tough
to carry on
for the years
to come