Dana Goodyear - Kansas City - September 5th

Dana Goodyear - Poet & senior editor and staff writer at the New Yorker will appear at the Kansas City Public Library in the Halzberg Auditorium - 14 W.10th St. - Kansas City, Missouri on Wednesday - September 5th. Reception is at 6:00 PM and program begins at 6:30PM.

Goodyear will discuss her debut book of poetry, Honey and Junk. Goodyear first hit my radar screen when she became one of the 18 debut poets of 2005 that were featured in Poets & Writers.

I've read a few of her poems and she is remarkably impressionable with creating an undercurrent to her often melancholy voice.

I beseech you, don't make me beg...

I’m scaling down this weeks summit and being careful, but not particularly graceful in my descent. Monday and Tuesday were relatively speaking manageable days. Wednesday was on the other hand, one of those days where it all falls apart and topples down on you. So today, I continue down the incline, but with concern as not to create an avalanche behind me.

There are but two days left for people to respond to my survey on the sidebar about rewrites. I want to blog some next week on revisions and while such a survey is of course not scientifically representative of the poet population as a whole, it will give me some idea as to what readers here might consider their norm. So please, don’t make be beg, (I look so undignified) if you haven’t done so already, take a moment to respond.

Couple of bits from my journal this week:

• The lady up the street powered up her nose / in a mammoth snub / I flashed an Indian corm smile / like I wanted her approving curtsy
• Afternoon slumps / Holding its hands in its pockets
• I would watch her sleep / Sometimes in silent fog
• You popped my bubble wrap / In italicized arrogance / I popped yours in return

Poet's Pulpit

So you wake up one morning and "poof" you're the poet laureate. Okay, it didn't quite happen that way. First you get a call from out of the blue and you mull the offer around in your crowded head, bounce the idea off family and finally call back and say, "yes, I'll do it."

Then comes that fateful morning when you realize "you are it!" This has come and passed for Charles Simic. So what's going on with him?

For all the fan fair and hoop-la about raising the interest in poetry in this country by recent past laureates, Simic is not as passionately optimistic. He views Americans as a people who are not particularly proud of our literature and he is not inclined to believe you can force the issue. Oh, I'll admit that a part of me wants to be more idealistic about the picture than that, but perhaps Simic is more reality grounded here. At any point, we all really do know that the evangelism of poetry is not going to bring everyone the their knees in verse.

If I were asked to do a state of the union on poetry, I believe first of all, not a lot of people would tune in. There is a large segment of society who really could care less. Still, for a good many people poetry remains a valued commodity. And like the American economy, the leading indicators here are truly mixed.

It seems fewer presses are turning out poetry. Yet we are seeing poetry all over the Internet. There are few economic success stories among contemporary poets, yet MFA programs are everywhere. To be sure, there are a significant number of people who do in fact turn to poetry, but it is also true that this is a representatively low percentage of the American public. Simic is right, as a nation we do not proud of our literature, poetry or otherwise. Our interests are splintered and divided among so many possibilities it is like vying a piece of the Nielsen ratings.

Of course I want to see poetry promoted. And I am already pleased to know from things Simic has said that he is not about to set out to define what poetry is or should be to readers or poets. To create "ramps for poetically handicapped people" (borrowing a phrase from Billy Collins) is not going to bring America to some profound awakening about poetry. The best we can do is to support the art, gain exposure for it, and let it reach those who are receptive to it.

Simic is in his own right a very talented poet. I believe he can be a outstanding ambassador for the art. Like everyone else, we'll have to set back and give him time to develop his methodology.

Right Hand Pointing - # 16 With 2 Of My Poems

Right Hand Pointing 16: "the paradox of going on" here

• Animal Instinct here
• The Cousin here

The Challenge - So you think you know Stickpoet...

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Monday Blues...

It's Monday and and of course I wish it wasn't. Of course next week I have Labor Day to look forward to. But that is then and this is now. I hate that it's Monday. (sigh)

• This month, another poetic voice was lost with the passing of poet and short-story writer Grace Paley. The 84 year old Paley was also a prominent political voice in the '60s and '70's in pro-peace and anti-nuclear rallies.

• Poetry Hut turned 4 years old this past weekend.

• News this morning.... Alberto Gonzalez is resigning. Nice start. He still needs to be prosecuted along with a host of others in the Bush administration.

Bush hails freedom, but can he handle a lousy T-shirt?

President Bush's speech at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on Independence Day in 2004, invoked the nation's highest ideals: "On this Fourth of July, we confirm our love of freedom, the freedom for people to speak their minds. ... Free thought, free expression, that's what we believe," Bush told the crowd.

Ringing words. Unfortunately, the White House advance team didn't get the memo. Or the message. But the taxpayer got a bill for $80,000. Click here to here about the $80,000.