Happy St. Patrick's Day

"The poetry of the earth is never dead." -John Keats

Happy St. Patrick's Day

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And then there is a flash....

You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it tick.... You're back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in. ~Dylan Thomas, Poetic Manifesto, 1961

Come on Eileen, when you have THAT many peeps, you are going to be recognized when you come down out of the mountain!

Some day I may understand life. I don't really think today is going to be it though. Still, I am trying to be open to that possibility.

Slate Backlogged

"He Lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize." ~ Oscar Wilde


I noticed yesterday that Slate is not accepting submissions till December of this year. There must be some prolific writing and submitting going on these days. While I've not sent anything to Slate since maybe middle of last year, as long as I have paid any attention, I don't recall them restricting submissions or even having a reading window as such. This has me curious to know if other venues are experiencing a significant increase in manuscript submissions.

I got a note the other day that Victoria Chang's new book Circle is out. Having enjoyed her insights when she was blogging, I of course would like to read the work.

B. H. Fairchild is in town next week, and I have an opportunity to hear him read and do a workshop.

Catherine Meng has a great read --- If the Laundromat Doesn't Work Out I Will Gladly Offer My Bed. You gotta love the Walt Whitman line.

Any poets in the Kansas City area - are invited to check out the local chapter of the Missouri Poetry Society. Our blog site is here. We meet twice a month.

To quarrel with yourself....

Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry. ~W.B. Yeats

Conceptualization

Feel the grass blades
Between the toes of your mind
And how the shade holds the darkness tight
Within a room that is running out of a concept
We call space. I have little time to explain
Concepts - because I'm not sure when my time
Is up... and when it ends- all those concepts
In my mind are going to vaporize.

Taking It Right To Their Front Door

That is what Ted Kooser has in mind. Ted who? Ted Kooser, the new U.S. Poet Laureate.

Ted is intent on broadening interest in poetry. After all, that is his function as the Poet Laureate. How one accomplishes this feat is up to the individual Laureate.

The Kooser plan is to offer a free six to eight-inch column to local newspapers each week with a poem by a living American and a brief introduction written by himself. This idea catches my fancy since I am often hearing people talk about how. "poetry is dead... or at least all the poets are." Of course neither is true and more power To Ted Kooser if he can carve that misconception into little pieces and bury it.

Kooser's idea was the result of reading a prestigious literary journal in which he was unable to find a single poem he could use to show an average reader to demonstrate what he was missing. His assessment was that all the poems in the journal were geared for a "really sophisticated audience."

In spite of Koosers assention to the lofty position of Poet Laureate, he is not a household word. In fact he is not like most poets who have aspired to this position. Not a part of the northeast academia crowd, and his own poetry strives for the simplicity that mirrors his humble mid-west life. He rises every day at 4:30 and writes though he says that he probably produces only 10 to 12 poems a year that he considers worthy of publication.

If Ted Kooser is successful in his endeavor to broaden the interest in poetry in this country, it will likely be because he himself is more like the average American than perhaps most Poet Laureates in the past. Good Luck Ted Kooser!

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Poetry

The Surprising Journey

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. - Salman Rushdie


I think one of the most fascinating acts of writing is to discover that you have arrived someplace that you didn't think that you could possibly get to from where you were. To do the impossible or at minimum the improbable. I'm not talking about achieving some status. Yes, I'd fall over clutching my heart if I got a call that I was the next poet laureate. That is not at all what I am talking about. What I am speaking of is to be writing and all of a sudden to realize that you have learned something. The very creation of your piece of work opened up your eyes. By your own creation, you arrived at a point or place that you were not trying to reach. That is such a incredible event to a poet. Such is what keeps me writing... even on bad days.