Proetry Month Quote -April 7th

A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music... and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: "Sing for us soon again;" that is as much as to say, "May new sufferings torment your soul." ~Soren Kierkegaard

Poetry Month Quote - April 6th

A poem is never finished, only abandoned. ~Paul Valéry

UCR News: Creative Writing Professor Reads from Book of Poetry

Christopher Buckley, a professor in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, will read from and discuss his book of poetry “Sky” from 3:15 to 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 20, in Special Collections on the fourth floor of the Tomás Rivera Library at UCR, 900 University Ave. The event will be web cast live and will be archived for later viewing. For more information call Special Collections at the UCR Libraries at (951) 827–3233

The Bards Celebrate

Last night - about 35 people attended an Open Mic presented by the Raytown Bards ( Raytown, MO - a Kansas City suburb) in celebration of National Poetry Month.

The event started with guest poets Don Queen, Kathy West, and Bob Savino then followed as one-by-one guests came to the microphone to add their own work or that of someone else they has chosen.

Hot topics of poems were "spring" & "Iraq war" - though there was a poem dedicated to Pope John Paul II, a poem about baseball dreams dying hard, first day home with a newborn, cowboy poems, domestic violence, childhood memories and so on. Very good mixture of light material and some heavier poems with very pointed statements.

Raytown Bards is just one of several chapters of the Missouri Poetry Society.

Poetry Month Quote - April 5

"Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know."
~ Joseph Roux, Meditations of a Parish Priest

Poetry Month Quote - April 4

"Poetry comes with anger, hunger and dismay: it does not often visit groups of citizens sitting down to be literary together, and would appall them if it did." ~ Christopher Morley, John Mistletoe

Poetry Month Quote - April 3rd

"Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own." ~ Salvatore Quasimodo