An Evening with Poet Mary Oliver March 23 -

Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: The Lied Center of Kansas
Humanities Lecture Series  -  Kansas University





The author of 18 collections of poetry, most notably the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Primitive (1983) and New and Selected Poems, Volume One (1992), which garnered a National Book Award, Mary Oliver will share her work and take questions from the audience. Her most recent collections are The Truro Bear and Other Adventures (2008), new poems and beloved classics about creatures of all sorts, and Evidence (2009). Red Bird (2008) was an immediate national bestseller. Oliver is a past recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship.


For additional information contact Hall Center for the Humanities 785/864-4798

Nathalie Handal - "Lost Poet Of Nightly Dreams"

The Neverfield is an energetically lyrical work by Nathalie Handal. She begins this book length poem, “Riding through the skies wearing different costumes.” An apparent parallel to her own life, for Nathalie Handal is a poet of the world who embraces her universal ties while still searching for the meaning of her roots.

In truth, The Neverfield could be any Palestinian or other person longing for meaning in their existence. There is such passion in these words.

“I felt you browsing through my mind… / and warned you that / the republic inside of you / might / tumble / down / your / chest… / warned you / not to go near the notebooks / piled up by the cup of tea / and the half-moon… / instead to go beside the clay sculpture / by the pinewood… / I heard the march of the patriots / you read the notebooks…/ stood in the middle / of dying and death”

Handal uses her craft well, spacing in the book accentuates her words, and she is a wordsmith of incredible gift or at minimum very learned ability.

Nathalie mimics the spirit of another Palestinian poet. The poet referred to as entering the world on the 13th day of March is Mahmoud Darwish. There is a real sense Darwish’s presence in her words which so beautifully seek to establish The Neverfield as both a place in one’s mind and a geographical place that can be found for real in a poet’s words.

This book is an easy read. It almost glides once started like a self propelled lawn mower pulling you along with little strain. This is a book I will return to often. A book I recommend.

Unconscious Mutterings Week 372

You say, I think....

 

• Children :: kids
• Saddlebags :: horse
• Restraint :: control
• Awake :: alert
• Blood :: sugar
• Shutter ::  camera
• Posted :: mailed
• Corn cob :: roasting ear
• Flagrant :: blatant
• Fart :: gas

get your own list

Journal Bits March 8 - 14

• March 8 - After assessing the potential of what I have so far towards my working manuscript, I'm about five off my time lines. Counld be worse.
• I guess I'm going to do the 30 days- 30 poems challenge for April again. I'm an idiot. I like to think of them as 30 drafts. Last year I had about five keepers out of the work.
• March 9 - After reading Susan Rich's poem What to Make of Such Beauty from her upcoming book The Alchemist's Kitchen my book want list just grew.
• When you are young / before death has any real grip on you / leaving an empty no-deposit-no-return
• March 11 - there is a phantom disorder / hiding within the order of us all...  there is a dark side to out toast / it is not what is buttered with sunshine
• The shelf has bowed under the its weight / heavy in insignifance
• March 12 - Is it time again for daylight savings? / A bouquet of bunk. Show me / the savings. Like all capatalism it's just shifting ledger columns / hocus pocus
• March 13 - After the minute and hour hands collide at midnight / after the house listens to itself for groans and settlements in the walls

Wordle - Composit Thoughts #1

Wordle - Composit Thoughts #1: ""

Friday Briefs

While I'm not an iPhone person, those who are might want to check out the app named Poem Flow where you can read or experience a poem per day.

~0~

Ran across this Margaret Atwood quote and thought how true...

"A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason."

Russian poetry takes translation prizes

The poetry prize went to Elena Fanailova's The Russian Version, translated by Genya Turovskaya and Stephanie Sandler and published by Ugly Duckling Presse.

Fanailova is a Russian poet, doctor and radio reporter whose poems brood on bloody, wrenching changes of the last 30 years in Russian history.