Plath

"I wonder about all the roads not taken and I am moved to quote Frost... but I won't. It is sad to be able only to mouth other poets. I want someone to mouth me." - Sylvia Plath

On the occasion of the Birthday of Sylvia, I'm thinking about the irony of this quote.

SurelyThere Is A Mistake Here

Another Item I suripticiously Extracted from Quotidian Light

Your Ideal Pet is a Cat

You're both aloof, introverted, and moody.And your friends secretly wish that you were declawed!

What's" Your Ideal Pet?

Poetry Notes: Poets raising funds for Darfur

A Pittsburgh poets organization will hold a program of poetry and music to raise funds for relief efforts in Darfur, western Sudan, at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Carnegie Mellon University.


Judith Robinson, member of Poets for Humanity, said that a video appeal by Simon Deng, a refugee from the turmoil in his native Sudan, will also be shown. New York Daily News columnist Heather Robinson will introduce the video.

The scheduled poets are Richard St. John, whose work has appeared in the Post-Gazette, Anthony Butts, CMU writing professor, and Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, a native of Liberia.
UMOJA African Arts Company provides the music.

Tickets are $10. The program will be in the Adamson Wing of Baker Hall.
For details and reservations, call 412-681-3018.

Rogue PR visibility

After a week of exposure, I was pleased to see that Rogue PR has had 965 views in the first week since publication. Yeah!

I have enjoyed putting this together - And I will admit it is a chore (and not stress free) but a worthwhile experience none the less. Last week I was thinking that it seemed like a long way off till Vol 2 on mid-January. Now a week later I'm thinking, God, that will be hare fast! At any rate I will not be reading for it till Nov. 15 - so I have a bit of a breather.

Wednesday Poet Series - Break

I am taking a break from the Wednesday Poet series while I work on becoming more acquainted with a couple of poets I wish to feature here. I cannot say that I will be back with the series as early as next week, but that is a possibility. I want the presentations to be more in depth, and I simply cannot do justice to the next few presentations I want to do without more time. In the past, Stickpoet has undertaken some interviews and I am looking at incorporating interviews into this series from time to time, where the opportunity might be available.

Tuesday & Tootsie Rolls

Laurel Snyder's post of October 18th caught my attention. She said she has been busy, among other things thinking about people who have clean houses and how hard it is to trust people with super clean houses. But what really caught my attention was her thoughts on: how a century from now, people will look back and ask themselves why we allowed our government to kill people. They will ask themselves, as we ask ourselves about slavery and the holocaust, "Why didn't they know it was wrong?"

Anyway, I share her view on capital punishment and I would extend this to include how our government treats others it has in detention. Anyway, read her post. BTW - I would like to meet King Arthur too!

Then, the New Zoo Poet asks: What is the longest you've ever worked on one poem? Wow! I wish I could answer that.

Looking forward to tonight's World Series game. Hope Detroit's pitchers leave their Tootsie Rolls at home.

I found this item interesting. The Grand Rounds, is a weekly event at Dartmouth Medical School. It's an academic forum in which physicians and researchers make scientific presentations. Recently, U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall added a new dimension to the forum by reading works about illness, grief and living life fully. Hall is no stranger to these subjects, a cancer survivor himself and of course having lost his wife to that same illness. Dr. Ira Byock, director of Palliative Medicine at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center said that the union between medicine and poetry has great therapeutic potential

Balancing Act

The public clamoring for community poet laureates is on the rise. Almost at an unbelievable clip. Kind of like the Dow Jones average climbing higher and higher on a graph. This has of course given poets and poetry a much higher public profile in recent years. Not only do we have a U.S. poet laureate, but many states, cities and even smaller municipalities are crowning their own as well.

This of course affords these entities someone in an official capacity to represent the community at significant community and or public events and these individuals are often called upon to recite a poem that relates to the community or the occasion that is being acknowledged. Often the poet may write something specific for the occasion.

But poets are a rare breed. And to ask a poet to speak at a public gathering and use their talent to express imagery and emotion can be like striking a match to a stick of dynamite. That is because poets tend to pull from the deepest pool of their inner-self. Therein lies a rich honesty that not all may like.

Last week, the poet Nikki Giovanni was asked to recite at a dedication in Cincinnati and her poem I am Cincinnati was emotionally and politically charged. Her poem struck out at some politicians and was laced with language that raised a lot of eyebrows. I suspect it would have been impossible for Giovanni to have addressed the crowd on this occasion with, shall we say etiquette and social grace; and at the same time remain true to herself. Given this choice to balance, I believe more times than not, a poet is going to remain true to themselves.

There are many instances of poets whose words have fallen on disfavor of certain segments of the public. The poet Amiri Baraka, for example , who was fired as poet laureate of New Jersey after his words in a poem on 9-11 were upsetting to some.

The juxtaposition created by the growing desire for very public and "official" poetry on one hand and the sometimes resulting unhappiness with content of publicly read poems creates an interesting dilemma for the poets and the community at large.

tags: Nikki Giovanni poetry censorship Free Speech self censorship