In the mail....

Yesterday, the mailman brought cheer with the latest Poets & Writers.

Articles that look especially interesting:

1. Poetry - Built to Last
2. Five Debut Authors
3. After The Flood - A Writer Says Goodbye to Her books
4. The Writer's Web Site - Build It and They Will Come

There are a host of other yummy looking tid-bits between the pages. Those who may not be familiar with P & W should be aware that it also has great resources for:

• grants and awards
• contests
• conferences & residencies
• calls for manuscripts

Off the subject of poetry & writing for a moment but another subject that has peeked my interest of late, the arrogance of AT&T.

Thursday USA today reported that AT&T was adopting a new privacy policy that requires internet customers to consent to its ownership of their account information and authorizes it to tract consumer usage.

This policy change comes as AT&T is named as a defendant in a federal lawsuit filed by the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation that accuses AT& T with improperly sharing customers' private phone and internet records with the federal government without any court orders or oversight.

What the new language is saying to AT&T customers is this, "While your account information may be personal to you, these records constitute business records that are owned by AT&T. As Such, AT&T may disclose such records to protect its legitimate business interests..."

The USA Today article also states that the new policy drops a reference stating that company "does not access, read, upload, or store data contained in or delivered from private files without the member's authorization."

The EDT lawsuit accuses AT&T with providing the federal government with access to customer records on virtually all phone based communications since 2001.

I WOULD RECOMMEND PEOPLE CONSIDER BOYCOTTING ALL AT&T SERVICES - PHONE AND INTERNET. THEY OBVIOUSLY HAVE NOTHING BUT CONTEMPT FOR THE PRIVACY RIGHTS OF THEIR CUSTOMERS.

Tags: Writing and poetry flood Katrina books AT&T Boycott Civil Liberties

You Read Your Favorite Blogs and....

DRINK YOUR MORNING COFFEE IN WHAT?


Ok, there is still a week to save $2 on a Stick Poet Superhero Coffee Mug

HERE!

The Korea Times : Boon to Modern Korean Poetry

The Korea Times : Boon to Modern Korean Poetry: "Despite Korea's 3000-year-history of poetry, it is not sufficiently known outside Korea, poetry is a mark of civilization. It shows to what extent humanity has illuminated the darkness, to bring more light into human existence." - Ko Chang-soo

Real Imagination

Where exactly is the line between reality and imagination severed? I, from time to time think about this and of course have no concrete answer that I can uphold with fact. If that sounds a tad bit circular, that's because it is. Another, "Which came first..." sort of thing. In fact, just like the great Chicken and Egg debate, many would likely say of the reality and imagination question, "So What!"

The problem is, if you think this comes down to, one is real and the other isn't, then clearly you will think this is just a dog chasing his own tail. If this were "real vs. not real" then I likely would not even be blogging on the subject today.

Imagination is a product of the mind and the mind is real, therefore I see no reason to discount the imaginative powers that be. Such bold thoughts have put a man on the moon and may one day cure cancer, HIV, diabetes and a whole host of things we haven't even discovered yet.

Walk into a gallery and see a painting of a farm scene with great detail and you can easily say, wow that artist is good, that looks almost real. Further along the wall is an abstract piece of art on a canvass medium. On first glance you see nothing distinguishable in it. So, you convince yourself that the first one is closer to reality, and the latter one is not. However, both paintings were a product of the artist's creative thought process and it seems to me that being said, they both must be reality.

Sometimes I will write a poem and someone I know will ask, when did that happen to you? I have to chuckle because in many instances, it happened to me in my head over a period of time and several rewrites. It becomes difficult at times to assure someone that a particular poem is not a historical account of something that happened to me. And, sometimes it is. Then of course, I have written things that people will tell me seem not at all reality based and that that I should write straight more forward poems that are clear in meaning. If I conjured it up I my head, is it not real?

I think reality and fact must be separated. They are not one in the same. Especially where art is concerned. That is where the whole issue of reality and imagination get tangled up. Reality and fact are often interchanged, then we want to test imagination against a (factual) standard. This is how art in all forms, including poetry often get discounted in terms of importance. Factual, perhaps not, reality, always!


Tags: Writing and poetry Arts Creativity Mind

Anniversary / Reading List / World Cup / Journaling

I know my wife will on occasion read my blog, so let me start my post for the day wishing Cathy a Happy Anniversary! Thirty-two years today. Can you believe that? Thirty-two years with an anal retentive poet. ::grin:: Ok, I have not been a poet all that time.

Well, I've put together my reading list for the summer. It consists of the following:

1. Wooroloo by Frieda Hughes
2. Swarm by Jorie Graham
3. Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
4. Her Husband: Hugh and Plath - a Marriage by Diane Middlebrook

I must digress for a moment to the subject of World Cup Soccer. I mentioned the other day that I am by no means a soccer fan and I'll make no apology for that. I find it perhaps the most boring sport or athletic event on the face of the earth. Now let me underscore just one more perplexing aspect of the World Cup frenzy. The USA is looking to advance into round two. They have played two games. Lost one and tied another. One loss and a tie, and get this... they have yet to score a goal. Yes, even their tie game came because the opposition kicked the ball by accident into their own goal. Hence, the U.S. ties not because it scored, but because it didn't manage to kick one in it's own goal.

Finished another journal last night.... Started it on April 1st so I filled it in less than three months. Ready for the next volume today.

Tags: Poetry Reading List World Cup Journaling

The Corner on National Review Online

The Corner on National Review Online


NBC's Progressive Poetry Moment [Tim Graham]
MRC’s Geoff Dickens discovered that NBC’s Today brought on “deadline poet” Calvin Trillin and giggled over his “hilarious” book of Bush-bashing verse titled A Heckuva Job.

What they are saying about Donald Hall

Here is a sampling of things that are being said about our next Poet Laureate - Donald Hall:

• "He's a highly sophisticated intellectual with an Oxford education who nevertheless presents himself as a poet of simple New England pleasures and forthright passions." National Post (part of Canada.com)
• "Upon the selection of Donald Hall, a 77-year-old New Hampshire resident, last week, I discovered that no federal money is spent on the position. The $40,000 annual budget -- $35,000 for expenses and $5,000 for travel -- is donated by the Archer M. Huntington Foundation, so don't blame poetry for the $8.4 trillion U.S. budget deficit." Arizona Daily Star
• "Hall, the nation's new poet laureate, writes about love and death, war, baseball, life in rural America and other things. Yet, we Americans turn instead to Oprah and Jerry Springer, ESPN and the Weather Channel. We lust for news, day and night, about Brad and Angelina. Is it possible for any poet to get a verse in edgewise in this culture? It is Hall's job to try. As the poet laureate, his assignment is to find ways to raise America's awareness of poetry." Herald-Tribune
• "In this country there is no job description for the poet laureate. And yet the title, which carries a stipend and a travel grant, is not entirely honorific. It's assumed that the laureate will try to advance the cause of poetry
• " especially the public awareness of poetry" in a manner somehow separate from the writing of poems. To speak on behalf of poetry sounds like a natural task for a poet, and for some poets it certainly is. I don't know whether Hall will turn out to be that kind of laureate, and, in a way, I hope he doesn't. So much of his poetry has emerged from the rigor of his privacy from what appears in his verse to be a deep, unsettling sense of what's possible in one's life. There's always the temptation for the laureate to find some anodyne ground to stand on. But these are not anodyne times." Rutland Herald
• His life (Hall's) has not been without tragedy. When Hall was diagnosed with cancer several years ago, it was widely assumed that the disease would claim his life. He made a remarkable recovery, only to lose his wife and fellow poet Jane Kenyon to leukemia. Hall has chronicled their marriage in an eloquent recent memoir, "The Best Day the Worst Day." "String Too Short to Be Save," a lyrical memoir of Hall's New England childhood, appeared many years ago. A representative sample of Hall's poetry can be found in "The Museum of Clear Ideas," which includes, among other things, a set of poems about one of Hall's favorite subjects, baseball. We do not know whether poetry, like baseball, will ever be hailed as a great American pastime. But if anyone can promote the idea of poetry as something to be savored, it's Donald Hall." 2the advocate.com
• "The NY Times announced this morning that New England poet Donald Hall is expected to be named the successor to Ted Koosner. So how many of us immediately thought of Robert Frost when we heard the phrase "New England Poet"? It just conjures up all these bucolic images of white clapboard cottages and low-rise stone walls (good fence make good neighbors, after all), maple trees forever caught in the fall explosion of color, soft spoken poets with down-home folksy attitudes. A sort of Garrison Keillor vision for the northeast. According to the story (which I'm going to have to go on because I have NO idea who Donald Hall is), our new laureate-to-be is rather outspoken about arts funding and plans to use his new position as a means for expanding the reach of poetry in society. Noble, noble aims. This was something both Robert Pinsky and Billy Collins advocated (and still do). If anything needed to be brought out of the Ivory Towers of academia and into people's everyday consciousness, it would be poetry." Orlando Sentinel
• "I don't know the work of Donald Hall. Indeed, until yesterday, I'm not sure that I had even heard of him. Certainly, the name hadn't stuck." Ready Steady Book
• "Hall's a good choice for the role of laureate, because his real strength is not so much his own poetry as his support for other poets, and the position is one that's as much about politics as it is about poetry. He's definitely a denizen of the more traditional and (aesthetically) conservative wing of the poetry world, and often passionately so, but he has nonetheless supported quite a wide range of writers. He helped found and continues to guide the Eagle Pond Poetry Series at a local college, a reading series that's often diverse and illuminating." The Mumpsimus
• "I'm pleased by the news Donald Hall has been appointed the new Poet Laureate of the United States. I have a very low opinion of modern American poetry, but Hall seems like the best of a bad bunch. His poetry especially after his wife died was particularly moving. I'm not that familiar with Hall's work--I think I may have an anthology of someone else's poetry that was compiled by him--mostly because I tend to dislike modern US poetry. But, frankly, I like the idea of government-funded highbrow culture, even in the United States. " Voyeuristic self-indulgence
• "Donald Hall is the new Poet Laureate. I have always loved him. Specially since the 90's when I saw him read poems at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He was teaching there then." tiny things are nice
• "Donald Hall is the first poet I discovered on my own. I was in highschool and held to the idea that modern poetry was crap and if it wasn't written by one of the early greats then it isn't worth reading. I was a teenager. I knew everything. I found scurrying through the magazine rack a poetry journal with a few of his poems. I was so blown away by his work that I went right out and bought one of his books. Two years ago I finally got to meet him." Cubicle Reverend
• "Nothing against the new U.S. Poet Laureate, Donald Hall. I'm sure he's due, well-qualified, palatable to the masses, etc. Alas, there were no worthwhile poets of the other gender available for the position? Any recommendations? And I won't even get into race. So without further ado, for the love of poetry:
  U.S. Poet Laureate Timeline [1937 - 2006 = 36 Men and 8 Women]" amy king.org
• "Yes! Yes! Donald Hall has defied the odds to be named the new poet laureate of the United States! Hall, dude, you rock!I feel kind of bad for Oates, though." The At Largee Blog
• "Donald Hall is one of the better poets around, and certainly rises above the mediocre ranks of the established names. His lyrical style is quite sharp and straightforward, and he's superbly economical (the white space on the page plays a big role in many Donald Hall poems). His voice is never flowery or airy, but neither does he indulge in sweaty vulgarity like many poets who fear being flowery or airy." metaxucafe
• "Hall's poetry just doesn't grab me. A Poet at Twenty really doesn't do much for me, I'm afraid. In fact, I downright dislike it. An Old Life, I get, though it still doesn't really sing to me. I get The Man in the Dead Machine, and no, not because it's about an airplane! It's not just any airplane, incidently. It's a Hellcat. Nonetheless, it still doesn't hit me where I think I should feel poetry. Where is Keats when you need him? What's happened to Yeats? Maybe I'm just spoiled by collected poetry going back (for me, at least) to John Donne, but I'm really not so sure of Hall's poetry. Anybody find his poetry arresting? Please tell me about it." Mojave Jack
• "I'm sure many of you have heard this already but I just found out that the new poet laureate is Donald Hall. I'm sure Robert Bly is thrilled..." Steve's House of Love
• "- an exponential improvement over his prairie predecessor." The Elegant Variation

There you have it... some good, bad and indifferent.