Apologies...

My apologies to readers who checked in yesterday expecting to see the Wednesday Poet Series. I simply was too busy this week to put it together. I am however working on some interviews that will be part of future WPS posts.

I added two new poetry books to my library last night -

• The Painted Bed by Donald Hall
• Forty-five by Frieda Hughes

The Republic of Poetry

What sort of place is "The Republic of Poetry"? As portrayed in the title poem of Martín Espada's dynamic eighth collection, it's a place where poets eat for free in restaurants, where "poets rent a helicopter/ to bombard the national palace/ with poems on bookmarks," and where "the guard at the airport/ will not allow you to leave the country/ until you declaim a poem for her/ and she says Ah! Beautiful." Review by Megan Harlan here

I met Martin Espada this past year at an event in Kansas City. Espada is an authority on Pablo Neruda as well as a widely published translator of Neruda's work. This looks to be another work inspired by Neruda's flair for language that has become such a strong influence on Espada. Should make for good reading.


Tags: Martin Espada Pablo Neruda

The Chase

The Chase


Those meringue urges—
They lead you on like no other.
I’ve seen your eyes swell and shine
Moonbeams to light the night sky
As you rise in your helium trance
On the hope you have whipped up for yourself.

Soar—

The award for originality in lies...

The woman told a writer that the manuscript had been aboard one of the planes hijacked in the September Eleventh attacks. That was just one of the excuses offered by a fifty-seven year old woman who bilked would-be authors with false promises to publish their books.

She'll have some time to read manuscripts now as she'll be doing five years in prison. She has also been ordered to pay 231 people more than $728,000 in restitution. [story here]

~0~

It now appears there will be two films rushing to bring the tempestuous relationship between Welch poet Dylan and his Irish wife Caitlin to the screen. Both promising to focus on the mythology of the poet and exposing his unorthodox love life and that of his wife Caitlin. [story]

A Thought from Albert Camus - Geezzz, He had so many good ones

"We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others." -- Albert Camus

Plath daughter puts her pain in poetry - Sunday Times - Times Online

Plath daaughter

Richard Brooks, Arts Editor

FRIEDA Hughes, the daughter of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, has written a frank autobiographical book of poetry about the tragedies in her life. The terse and painful style of her work is remarkably like that of her mother.
Published last week in America before it appears in Britain in the spring, Forty-Five has 45 poems about each of the years of her life. The most poignant cover the suicide in 1963 of her mother, her discovery in her teens that her mother had taken her own life, and her father’s death from cancer in 1998. ughter puts her pain in poetry - Sunday Times - Times Online

Tag: Frieda Hughes

Tagged with a Poetry Meme

Imagine that!

Thanks to Cindy I have been posed a series of questions. Hopefully the answers will not bore readers to death.

1. The first poem I remember reading/hearing/reacting to was....hard for me to say with certainty but I am sure the first I recall was a nursery rhyme. Probably read by my mother or grandmother. I can recall a big thick nursery rhyme book that they would both read from. My grandmother had enormous influence on me in my early years.

I think I was most impressed by the images of four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. I recall all these people being places and doing things, the King, the Queen, the Maid... counting money, eating bread and honey, hanging out clothes.... I liked how busy it seemed (perhaps a foreshadowing of ADD) but it would be a long time before I would view this a poetry.

Very likely the first poem to really speak to me as a poem was Frost's Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening. Whose woods these are I think I know/ seemed somber and formal and very strong. Still, I think it is these lines, The woods are lovely dark and deep / but I have promises to keep / and miles to go before I sleep / and miles to go before I sleep // that reached my deep and left an impression on me while yet still young. It became a mantra that to this day probably contributes to my uneasiness with aging and death because I feel the incredible drive to make a difference in this world. Which surely accounts for my involvement in politics much earlier in life than most people.

2. I was forced to memorize (name of poem) in school and... I really don't recall a lot about it. I remember thinking it was horrible at the time as did most all the students. I think we were given a choice between several but I have no idea what it was. What I do recall is that whatever it was the poem was about four or five stanzas and that when it came time to recite it I was very uneasy and could only recall about two-thirds of it. Others fell short but I remember several students that memorized very long poems and did them perfectly. I felt terribly inferior but that was not uncommon for me in those days.

To all those who point to such experiences and say being forced to memorize poems turned them against poetry at an early age, I can say in the end, the experience neither helped or hindered my love of poetry.

3. I read/don't read poetry because.... I read it because it speaks to me in a way that reading anything else fails to do. It often captures a spirit within me and causes it to stir. Poetry at times will awaken feelings and emotions to speak to things in my past that otherwise remain locked inside me. It is a freeing experience. Sometimes scary, often times quite enjoyable but always pushing me to think and feel.

4. A poem I'm likely to think about when asked about a favorite poem is ....... Oh wow, there are so many, but one that often comes to my mind is going to sound really funny coming from a guy. It would be The Blue Dress by Sharon Olds. Olds is able to bubble to the surface very deep emotions as though she were pouring peroxide over what appears to be a superficial wound but bring out so much more than you thought was there.

5. I write/don't write poetry, but... I write poetry. Writing has been therapeutic to me, but it is like more than just taking medicine for something it is also like a vitamin and mineral supplement. Even when it is not emotionally healing, it is strengthening.

I seriously believe that it also helped me deal with my issues of mortality. It is the best, no, the only way I know to beat death. Create a part of you that death cannot have.

In more recent year I have come to embrace the artistic value of poetry. Something I did not recognize in my younger writing. In this way, what and how I write have evolved and continues to change in voice and content.

6. My experience with reading poetry differs from my experience with reading other types of literature.....for several reasons. I like that when I read poetry it speaks to me on a level different from anything else. But I also enjoy reading poetry because my eyes are not as good as they used to be and sometimes I tire easy of reading longer material, which frustrates me. Especially since I am also learning that I am not as broadly well read as I would like to be. I do think this hinders to some degree my own writing.

7. I find poetry...... (chuckling here) much to the dismay of my family, I find poetry in almost everything. They do not share passion for poetry. Don't get me wrong, they are very supportive of my writing.

I see poetry in a 6-4-3 double play. I see it in an empty baseball diamond. I see it in my backyard, the kitchen, in politics, in the silence of the night. This can be troubling to some. ( smile)

8. The last time I heard poetry.... I suppose it was myself reading out loud from a manuscript before I sent it off yesterday. Trying to reassure myself I suppose.

I used to go to readings fairly regularly. And last year I was reading every month someplace and sometimes two or three times in a month. It has been a while since I've done that. I do listen to poetry as well from various podcast sources.

9. I think poetry is like... life itself. I think it's like complexities reduced to simplest terms. It is an affirmation of magic. Evidence of a higher power. It is the closest thing to a universal language of the soul. It is where the heart and mind meet and a great fission occurs that produces the art of ourselves in language.

Ah... now who to tag with this.....? Deborah, Robert and Kelli.