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Thursday, May 05, 2005

Check Out This Place

I saw an ad in Poets & Writers magazine for library hotel in New York so I had to check out the internet site. Kind of pricey - but hey, isn't everything in NY?

Check out the Poetry Garden. The Writer's Den. Or the Erotica Literature Room.


There are some specials. Check out this Suite.

An idea of price ranges........

Room Types :
Love Room w/terrace
$ 415
Junior Suite/king bed
$ 415
Deluxe/queen bed
$ 385
Petite/full bed
$ 315
Family Unit/2 rooms
$ 800


Ok, adding this to my list of things I'm NOT doing anytime soon.

Kansas City Events For May

The following events represent a few of the May Poetry scene happenings in the Kansas City, Missouri Metro area.

May 6th - Riverfront Readings and The Writers Place
Host a reading by Elizabeth Dodd and Susan Rodgers at The Writers Place - 8:00 p.m. Suggested donations at the door at $2 for members, $3 for non-members and $1 for students.

Elizabeth Dodd is Professor of English, and Director of the Creative Writing Program at K-State in Manhattan, KS. She earned an M.F.A. and a Ph.D., both from Indiana University. She is the author of: Like Memory, Caverns and Archetypal Light (poems); The Veiled Mirror and the Woman Poet (criticism); and most recently Prospect: Journeys & Landscapes (nonfiction essays).

Susan Jackson Rodgers is an assistant professor teaching fiction writing at K-State in Manhattan, KS. Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in a variety of literary magazines including Nimrod, StoryQuarterly, Beloit Fiction Journal, Prairie Schooner, North American Review and Glimmer Train. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize Special Mention. Her story "Bodies" won the 2002 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition. Her collection of stories, The Trouble With You Is, won the Mid-List First Series Award in Short Fiction and will be published in the fall of 2003.

May 10th - KC Metro Verse -chapter meeting 6:00pm

May 19th - U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser will speak at Rockhurst College at 8:00pm

MAY 20 - The Writers Place, Michelle Boisseau and Katrina Vandenberg will read as part of TWP Reading Series starting at 7:30pm.

Michelle Boisseau was educated at Ohio University (BA, MA) and the University of Houston (PhD). Her books of poetry include, Trembling Air, University of Arkansas Press, 2003; Understory, winner of the Morse Prize, Northeastern University Press, 1996; and No Private Life, Vanderbilt, 1990. She is also the author of the popular textbook, Writing Poems (Longman), in its 6th printing. Her work has appeared in The Yale Review, Threepenny Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Poetry, and elsewhere. She's has received a National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowship and two Poetry Society of America awards. She is Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City where she is also associate editor of BkMk Press and coordinator of the Creative Writing program.


Katrina Vandenberg was raised in the Downriver area of Detroit, and her poems have appeared in American Scholar, The Iowa Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry Northwest, and other magazines. She was a 1999-2000 Fulbright fellow to the Netherlands and a hemophilia-AIDS activist and is currently the visiting writer at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

May 22nd - Jonathan Holden - Kansas State Poet Laureate will be at the Writers Place at 2pm

May 23 - Writers Place Open Mic 8PM

May 24th KC Metro Verse - chapter Meeting 6:00pm

The Port Townsend Leader OnLine

Saturday, May 7 -Port Townsend, Washington there is a rally of marchers at Indian Island Park, where poets Sam Hamill, Gary Lemons, Zeke Green, Barbara Bowen, Sarah Zale and Rebecca Rafuse read their anti-war poetry.

Click heading for complete story.

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

I was thinking....

If I could only rewrite in my sleep and upload it in the morning.

Alone With The Night

The wind touched my face,
With brisk fingertips it stroked the integument.
I shook with the chill of a starry night
Stuck in-between, the way seasons often do.
Spring tugging and summer pulling to no avail.
I felt it- half-frozen ice cube water
Within my veins, fluid enough to circulate
The chill evenly throughout my limbs,
To fight off any sensation of fraternity
That might come with the memory
Of another in human form or even a dog
That might have communicated by presence
A care or inclination to mutual necessity.
I am alone within the still of a night so big
That I shiver and telepathically give notice
Only to the stars beyond, and not another soul
Intercepts, knows of the journey or cares. No one.
There is an inexplicable beauty here, but wasted.
The rising spiral of a Hail Mary
Without a soul downfield.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Jilly for Blogger Poet Laureate

I drug my sorry assed self into the office this morning. I have been sink am under the weather (which seems such an interesting term as I think of the weather being about us all, sick or not) and am trying to declare victory- all the while this depressing little fellow- in a black hood sits across the room with his cycle*{see comments below} sickle in hand fidgeting.

Alright... enough about me...

WOW - I just went over to cast my vote for Blogger Poet Laureate [here] and found an amazing hot race going on. My vote, and I don't mind saying so... was for JILLY. After voting, Jilly now has 32 of a total of 68 votes cast. She has 47% of the total vote and is just one vote behind. Come on folks- get over and vote for Jilly to be the Blogging Poet Laureate for the next year!



Sunday, May 01, 2005

Safe Word - a review

Christine Hamm's dirty little secret is out. You'll find it here. While I'm not a big reader of erotica in poetry form or otherwise, Safe Word has shown me just how versatile Hamm is as a wordsmith. My earliest exposure to Christine's poetry came through material that has appeared in VLQ - her poem Diary of a Thief was to me, nothing if it was not brilliant.

Her work can be edgy, a quality that I rather like. I suspect that some will get snookered into thinking Safe Word is simply about sex... and that she is just cleverly using some shocking verse to raise some eyebrows and libido at the same time. Is Animal Husbandry really about a woman distraught over her two-timing dog who no longer is satisfied by her? If you say so... but I find that Christine has a way of getting us all tangled up with this chapbook in social commentary that blings with a little linguistic glitter.

She makes you laugh and makes you cry - even in the same poem. Safe Word unwraps the emotional baggage often a part of the human sexual experience and too often wrought with interdiction where our written language is concerned.