dumbfoundry

We would like to thank you for the submission of your untitled poem ("Roses are red/Violets are blue") to The Missouri Review. We assure you that it received the utmost attention of our editorial staff. Though we regret that we are unable to accept your poem for publication, we would like to share a few observations and to offer suggestions towards a revision. It is our belief that another draft or two might strengthen the chances of the poem's later publication—if not in the pages of our own humble journal, then perhaps in another of greater merit.

We might consider this poem a reunion poem in which two lovers come back together following the woman's recent dalliance with another. Though on the surface the reunion seems innocent enough, given the poem's traditional "roses are red" structure and meter, the apparent joy of the man at her return, his willingness to forgive and move forward, a closer reading reveals a more ambiguous, potentially darker interpretation of the lovers' reunion. [...]

What is a life worth? Lyn Gallacher speaks to writer Delia Falconer about her latest novel The Lost Thoughts Of Soldiers, a tale of remembering and re-evaluating a life. It’s the story of Frederick Benteen, a Captain in General Custer's ill-fated Seventh Cavalry during the Plains Indian Wars, trying to make sense of a lifetime which has been defined and by a brief but bloody moment in history.

Samantha Marlowe pulls back the curtain on editing a literary magazine in this podcast. She's executive editor of Swink.

Winner Charles Simic reads Shelley
Winner Roo Borson reads from Summer Grass
Shortlist nominee George Bowering reads Pale Blue Cover
Shortlist nominee Fanny Howe reads from Kneeling Bus
Shortlist nominee Don McKay reads Setting the Table
Shortlist nominee Michael Symmons Roberts reads Pelt
Shortlist nominee Matthew Rohrer reads Dog Boy

Tasmanian poet and author, Margaret Scott, has died at the age of 71.

For several years, she suffered from emphysema, and she passed away early this morning.

"How evil and world-worn I feel for a moment - no, not really. Spring has come here and I'm thinking of fishing." [...]

Robert Frost's fame may rest on his poems of rural New England, but it's among the red brick mills of Lawrence that he came of age.

Now the foundation that carries on his legacy is working to bring his verse to life in a Lawrence that is quite different from the one in which Frost grew up, where the language spoken in many homes is Spanish, not English. The foundation has commissioned Spanish translations of Frost's poems and emblazoned them next to the English originals on banners in the city this summer. [...]

The nation yesterday paid rich tributes to National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam on the occasion of his 29th death anniversary. [...]

KATHMANDU, Aug. 27: National Poet Madhav Prasad Ghimire has expressed the view that as meter in literature has a great importance, we should write literature on serious subjects by using it.

Releasing a book "Chhanda Parag" written by youth poet and critic Devi Nepal, he said the poet should only use simple rhyme to suit the readers. [...]

THE notion of a holiday built around literature is a contradiction, which makes Dublin the right destination for those inclined toward the literary life.
[...]

BERKELEY – The popular University of California, Berkeley's Lunch Poems series kicks off on Sept. 1 and this year will include readings by California Poet Laureate Al Young, beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Saskia Hamilton, Mary Karr and Mei-mei Berssenbrugge.

The free poetry reading program, now in its 10th year, is held in the Morrison Library, located within Doe Library. All readings begin at 12:10 p.m. and end at 12:50 p.m. on the first Thursday of the month. [...]

A video archive of readings can be found on the Web at: http://lunchpoems.berkeley.edu/

The deadline for the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize for Latino/a poets is coming up fast: January 6, 2006. The winner will receive $1000 and publication by the University of Notre Dame Press under a standard contract, as well as an invitation from the Creative Writing Program of the University of Notre Dame to read from his/her work, along with the judge, upon publication of the book, with all expenses paid. This year's judge is Valerie Martínez. You can find the guidelines here.

Poets dominated literary and art prizes worth $30,000 awarded by the University of Melbourne’s Australian Centre [...]

Documenting the quest to track down everything written by (and written about) the poet, translator, and radio dramatist, Henry Reed.

An obsessive attempt to assemble a comprehensive bibliography, not just for the work of a poet, but for his entire life.

Find regular updates, bulletins and notices of writing opportunities and events.

Singer, songwriter, poet and political activist Denis Kevans, known as Australia's 'Poet Lorikeet', has died. [...]

A regular at Australian folk festivals, Kevans wrote poems which celebrated working-class culture and barracked for environmental protection. He was also known for his anti-war sentiments, most notably when he had seven of his poems printed privately for the 50th anniversary of Anzac Day.

Kevans won a number of literary awards, including the Communist Party Poetry Award (1960) and the Mary Gilmore Award (1960 and 1962). [...]

Friends,

Horse Less Review is currently accepting submissions for #3.

We want your poetry, your fiction, your genre-defying best.

Guidelines & a photo of some prize-winning goats at
www.horselesspress.com/howto.html.

For inspiration, view #2 at www.horselesspress.com/revspring05/review2.html.

Deadline is September 15 or until we are satisfied.
Please send all submissions and any queries to editors@horselesspress.com.


Yr Editrs,
Jen Tynes
Erika Howsare

Renowned Hebrew poet and Israel Prize laureate Dalia Rabikovitch was found dead in her Tel Aviv home yesterday. Rabikovitch suffered from depression, and had tried to commit suicide a number of times in the past.

The late Amy Clampitt has always been something of an enigma. Even now, 11 years after her death, many readers still don't know what to make of this literary late bloomer who published her first full-length book of poems, to great acclaim, at age 63. How did she rise to fame so quickly, after decades of writing failed novels? And how did those poems - layered, sinuous, and dense - come from a woman who seemed so childlike, with a wide, enthusiastic grin, and a high, girlish voice? [...]

As the book progresses, Clampitt works for the Oxford University Press and the National Audubon Society, and later as a freelance editor for Dutton. She also travels extensively, experiences a religious conversion, and continues to write novels that publishers find long on description and short on storyline. Religious fervor is eventually replaced by political zeal, and Clampitt campaigns for various causes, attends protests, and gets arrested several times. [...]

General calls for poems and other writing -- please read guidelines carefully.

Welcome to Poetry Critical, an online poetry workshop. To post your own poetry, rate that of others, or start a new thread on the message board, you'll need to create a user id by typing a name and password in the box above and hitting 'New User'. If you just want to critique or jump into the discussion, however, you can do that without logging in by typing your comment in the box under each poem or post.

Two women meet in a baby store in Long Beach California, and poet Kim Addonizio's first novel, Little Beauties, is off and running. Alan Cheuse has a review.

There are pressures on unknowns, people just starting out, to like, “Publish, publish, publish, get it out there, you gotta make a mark.” And I am saying that that is terrible for our culture and we need examples of people holding work back, working with it for quality. [...]

I’m still fighting [deconstructionalist philosopher Jacques] Derrida at this point. And also the embattled teachers who are always writing to me saying how they are silenced in their departments when they just want to do literature and art. There has been a tremendous flight from the grad schools of people who wanted to devote their lives to teaching literature and were driven out when they were forced to read post-structuralism. [...]

There is a kind of humanitarian do-gooder mentality abroad in the public schools these days, which is like, “We all get along. Here’s our quota. We are going to read the poem by the African American, the poem by the Native American. The poem by the Chicano.” Like that. There is no more quality. So we are not giving the kids anything to sustain them. Heaven forbid there should be anything about religion or sex. The far right keeps the sexual out—nudes from the history of painting. And the left keeps anything from religion out. The things that are the most substantive are not there. [...]

The script was originally written by the British sci-fi writer Neil Gaiman seven years ago with Roger Avary, who has previously worked on films including Pulp Fiction and The Rules of Attraction. [...]

Dr Paul Cavill, an Anglo-Saxon specialist at Nottingham University, approved of the project. "It sounds great fun. Some scholars are a bit sniffy about Seamus Heaney or about The 13th Warrior [another film inspired by Beowulf], but I think they add enormously to people's enjoyment of Anglo-Saxon literature," he said.

"Anglo-Saxon is, in many ways, inaccessible because you have to get someone's version of it or you learn the language. One is longer than the other. So I always welcome these things. They have to be done very badly not to contribute something to the accessibility of the literature." [...]

Baron Wormser and Belfast poet Elizabeth Garber will present an evening of poetry at the Camden Public Library at 6:30 pm, Thursday August 18. [...]

Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood will once again be filled with art from September 9-11th for the Around the Coyote Fall Arts Festival. This is fourth year the Poetry Center is partnering with Around the Coyote as poetry curator for the festival.

The Poetry Center will present two nights of poetry at Subterranean, featuring 16 Chicago poets, as well as two children's poetry programs in Wicker Park. [...]

The Poetry Center presents Paul Muldoon, Pulitzer Prize winning poet, performing with his band Rackett on Wednesday, September 7th, at 6:30 p.m., in the Ballroom of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, located at 112 South Michigan Avenue. Muldoon will also read his poetry. Born in Northern Ireland, Paul Muldoon has written songs for Bruce Springsteen and other musicians. [...]

Writers in all areas of literary activity, including drama, fiction and poetry, New Zealand art, biography, history, music, society and culture, are eligible to apply.

Applicants should be writers of proven merit normally resident in New Zealand or New Zealanders currently resident overseas. The appointment will be for twelve months from 1 February 2006 to 31 January 2007, with a salary of NZ$50,000.

Applications close 30 September 2005. Please quote ref HSS 518.

A national level symposium on 'Konkani Sahity-Mukhlim Aahwana' (Emerging Challenges in Konkani Literature) and a poetry session of Konkani, Kannada, Marathi, Urdu, English and Hindi languages has been jointly organized by All India Konkani Parishat and Konkani Sahitya Parishat, Belgaum on August 20 and 21 at Kannada Sahitya Bhavan, Belgaum. [...]

Filming for a new screenplay about Dylan Thomas, written by a Swansea School of Arts lecturer, has started in the city. [...]

Edinburgh night-owls trawling the less-travelled byways of the Fringe may well have stumbled on Thick Richard last year, when their brand of northern club-turned-bardery came on like the surreal and dysfunctional bastard offspring of John Cooper Clarke and Bernard Manning. [...]

"You do comedy clubs," according to Moyler, "and they don't get you because they expect you to be funny all the way through, and then you do proper literary readings in libraries, and they absolutely hate you because you're not really literature."

"Only they're really quiet about hating you," deadpans Duffy.

The Israel English Poetry Association is organizing its sixteenth International Poetry contest and is currently accepting submissions. The deadline for submissions is October 7 and winners will be notified in November.

The Annual Voices Anthology 2006 is also accepting submissions. Winning poems will be published in the anthology and will receive cash prizes [...]

When Indigenous writer Samuel Wagan Watson recently won the NSW Premier's Literary Award, he was the first Aboriginal poet to do so.

Samuel Wagan Watson was born in Brisbane in 1972 of Irish, German and Aboriginal (Bundjalung and Birri Gubba) ancestory. [...]

His most recent collection Smoke-Encrypted Whispers has just won the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Book of the Year and Best fiction.

Jane Austen was one of the greatest English novelists in history. Despite a rather sheltered life, she was able to capture the subtleties of human interaction so perfectly that her novels continue to be immensely popular to this day. This 5-1/4" tall, hard vinyl action figure comes with a book (Pride & Prejudice) and a writing desk with removable quill pen!

'Don’t tell me that at our rate of reading—we have only been through about 65 submissions—is overwhelming. Do you think that one or two months is reasonable? It is not. It is sad.

[...]

'If you do not respond to the outstanding poems within 7 days, a week, then I shall assume that you do not care for this project/experiment or whatever you want to call it. Fair enough.'

Marta Kijowska would have like to have visited the poet and Nobel Prize winner Wislawa Szymborska in her studio, but she was not granted entry. "Szymborska is not comforatable talking about herself and she absolutely hates talking about poetry. She's apparantly only done it twice in public: when she was awarded the Goethe Prize (1991) and when she won the Nobel Prize (1996). This latter distinction did nothing to change her defensive way. To the contrary, since the 'Stockholm Tragedy' – as the prize is called among her friends – she is in fact at war with the media. She hardly gives interviews and turns down all photo shoots. She lives withdrawn and modestly. In her three room apartment on the edge of Crakow, there is room for two things: her books and all the absurd-excessive objects that she is constantly being given by her friends. Those who have witnessed one of her outbreaks of enthusiasm, or has heard her assertion that the first thing she would rescue if her apartment were to go up in flames is a casket-shaped silver box out of which a silver bird picks out cigarettes, gets hooked on her appreciation of life."

Verse Press is now officially defunct. The press is being folded into Wave Books, a new venture which will have Matthew Zapruder and Joshua Beckman as its editors and Lori Shine and Monica Fambrough as its managing editors. Charlie Wright will be the publisher of Wave Books. The press will be based in Seattle and western Massachusetts.

'The grant was established here, at Poesy Galore, and advertised through the work of other bloggers and listserv members. It is open to poets who are single mothers with two or more children under the age of thirteen. Look for an announcement on next year's application process (perhaps made through more official channels this time) in June 2006.'

Afrikaans poet Ina Rousseau has died in Cape Town. She had cancer and was 79.

Well appreciated and loved for her accessible, sonorous poems and dry sense of humour, she wrote in the tradition of Afrikaans poets who criticised social injustice under apartheid. [...]

Drawing on the most authoritative sources available, some of them translated into English for the first time, Aminrazavi investigates the distinct, sometimes contradictory, interpretations of Khayyam proposed by the field of Khayyam studies, each of which, according to Aminrazavi, captures the spirit of but one aspect of Khayyam's multidimensional personality. He debunks the picture of Khayyam as a agnostic-hedonist, as presented by his illustrious translator Edward FitzGerald, by pointing out the religious context of his philosophical and scientific writings. He also explores Khayyam's endorsement of the Sufi path, his relationship with Islam, his alleged membership of a Persian nationalist movement, and his scientific, mathematical and astronomical work. Aminrazavi devotes a significant portion of the book to Khayyam in the West, including Khayyam's lasting influence on Western literature from Mark Twain to T. S. Eliot and his role in the creation of the Orientalist tradition. [...]

UNPUBLISHED poems and letters written by acclaimed playwright and poet Douglas Livingstone have come to light after a chance discovery in the home of one of Durban's art doyennes. [...]

We sought the best parody poems that have been submitted to 'vanity contests' as a joke.

Here is an excerpt from a poem written by one of the monks in praise of digital materials, which, in his eyes, are as exquiste as a patina made from lamp black, Yakskin glue, and brains, burnished to a gloss and inscribed with an ink made from crushed pearls and silver are to me.

…The light of the disk is endless
like the light of the disks in the sky, sun and moon.
With a single push of our finger on a button
We pull up the shining gems of text…

—Gelek Rinpoche

'Send us your poems or excerpts of your poems or quote your favorite poem, provided the text fits onto a piece of paper 2.5"x 6" or 6" x 2.5" (the size of a dollar bill) to michelleandrhett (at) gmail (dot) com. Send text files, word files, jpgs, however you'd like to embellish this size of paper. AND on the day of the wedding, we will distribute these poems amongst the guest's tables for them to pin on us, the bride and groom, with or without money or if they like it so much, they can keep the poems. Our wedding date is the 2nd Saturday in October, so if you get it in before September 15, I probably have enough time to print it out without my life getting too crazy.

'The poems can actually be on just about anything. But ideally they deal with the kinds of things that are needed in a marriage: commitment, love, laughter, etc. or whatever else you think.

'And yes, I'm serious. Poetry doesn't pay the rent, but I need a downpayment on my soul.'

Michael Rossington, a leading Shelley scholar, has discovered a previously unrecorded manuscript of 1820 — the Ode to Naples — in the beautiful handwriting of Clairmont (1798-1879), who captivated the poet with her wit, her intelligence and her black eyes. The manuscript, which was found in the library of University College London (UCL), bears Shelley’s amendments.

Its significance lies in that most of the fair copies of Shelley’s poems that were written out for publication were either in the hand of Shelley or Mary. But Clairmont was inseparable from the Shelleys, eloping with them to Switzerland in 1814, and living with them in 1816 and 1817 in Geneva and again, on their return to England, in Bath and Marlow. She continued to live with them from 1818 until Shelley’s death in 1822. The rivalry between the two women became overwhelming at times, as they recorded in their respective journals. [...]

Another noted Shelley expert, Professor Kelvin Everest, A C Bradley Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Liverpool, believes that the rediscovered manuscript reflects Clairmont’s intimacy with Shelley.

He said: “There is a great mystery about whether or not a child that Shelley registered as his in 1819 was his. And if it was, who was the mother? It certainly wasn’t Mary’s.”

DHARWAD: Noted Kannada writer Shantadevi Malawad died at her house at Kalyan Nagar at 4.30 AM on Sunday. She was 82.

Shantadevi Malwad was the president of All India Kannada Sahitya Sammelana held in Bagalkot in 2000. She was also the president of North Karnataka Women Writers' Association. She was suffering from backache for four months. She had written 44 valuable books.

Vizma Belsevica, one of Latvia's most famous poets and writers, died on Saturday at the age of 74 after a long illness, a spokeswoman for the country's president, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, said Sunday.

Belsevica suffered from a long, undisclosed illness that kept her wheelchair-bound for the last few years, said Vike-Freiberga's spokeswoman, Aiva Rosenberga.

Deadline: August 30, 2005
No Submission Fees
Email submissions within the body of email to GalateaTen @ aol.com

Submit 1-2 poems to a "pleasure-able" poetry contest sponsored by The Chatelaine's Poetics and Meritage Press. No restrictions on form or interpretations of "pleasure."

Members of OENOPHILES FOR POETRY (a for-profit, private organization) will judge the entrants -- probably during a meeting while they're also judging some wines (so consider that fair warning if, uh, that's something you need to be warned about). The poet whose poem most pleases the judges will receive wine (see end of this post) and the following poetry or poetry/art collections:


CATALOGUE: LIFE AS TABLEWARE by Ivy Alvarez

BRIDGEABLE SHORES: SELECTED POEMS 1961-2001 by Luis Cabalquinto

ER, UM by Garrett Caples and Hu Xin

PLAINWATER by Anne Carson

IDUNA by kari edwards

AFTER TAXES by Thomas Fink

MUSEUM OF ABSENCES by Luis H. Francia

THE TIME AT THE END OF THIS WRITING by Paolo Javier

POLES APART by Mark Young and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY by Sandy McIntosh

WATERMARK by Jacquelyn Pope

OPERA: POEMS 1981-2002 by Barry Schwabsky

[WAYS] by Barry Schwabsky and Hong Seung-Hye

REPRODUCTIONS OF THE EMPTY FLAGPOLE by Eileen R. Tabios

MENAGE A TROIS WITH THE 21ST CENTURY by Eileen R. Tabios

AUTUMN SONATA: SELECTED POEMS OF GEORGE TRAKL (English versions by Daniel Simko; Introduction by Carolyn Forche)

THE ANCHORED ANGEL: SELECTED WRITINGS BY JOSE GARCIA VILLA

100 MORE JOKES FROM THE BOOK OF THE DEAD by John Yau and Archie Rand

as well as Meritage Press' Fall 2005 release: THE OBEDIENT DOOR, the first poetry collection by Sean Finney with drawings by Ward Schumaker.

Last but not least, if the contest winner lives in a U.S. state that allows alcohol to be shipped from California, said contest winner will also receive a bottle of fine wine chosen by Eileen Tabios, "The Chatelaine Poet" aka "Missy WinePoetics."

[Pls direct all queries to Eileen Tabios @ GalateaTen @ aol.com]

An epic song collection project focused on the Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands) ethnic groups has finished its first stage, clocking in nearly 5,000 hours of song, but with such a vast amount of material, transcription and translation remain an unequivocal hurdle.

From 2001-05, the project, which the Centre of Social Science and Humanities launched in coordination with provinces in the central highlands, coastal and southeastern regions, including Phu Yen, Ninh Thuan and Binh Phuoc, involved in surveying, collecting, preserving, translating and publishing of Tay Nguyen epic poetry, both spoken and sung. [...]

The month of Shravana is extremely special in several respects. It is marked with different festivals and rain. Everything is auspicious during this month.

‘Gudda Gudda Sthavara Linga, Avaka Abhyanga, Eritavanno Hanga, Koodyava Moda - Suttella Noda Noda’

explains noted poet Da Ra Bendre, inspired by the grandeur of Shravana. Shravana, the auspicious month of the Hindu calender has arrived, bringing along with it the grandeur of greenery, rain and festivals. [...]

All in all, Shravana meant festival. Festival for the eyes, festival to rejoice, festival to celebrate. To end, couplet from Bendre’s poem reads like this:

‘Bana Bana Nodu Ivu Henga

Maduvi Maganhanga Singarisikondu,

Nintava Harshagondu’

ONE more issue of Chandrabhaga, the biannual literary journal edited by Jayanta Mahapatra, and subtitled "A Selection of Indian Writing", reaches our hands. The 11th issue in the new series. The content is exactly what one expects from the stable, though, it shouldn't stop one from turning the pages, because, for a literary buff, a journal like this is not just a periodical attempt at compiling poems, essays and short stories. It reminds one of the meaningful cultural practice of the modernist period, in which, it seemed, in each writer there was an Isaac Bashevis Singer character who gives himself over to running a "Little Magazine". Hence, in India and elsewhere in the world, the period of modernism witnessed, together with the emergence of pioneering writers and poets, the appearance and disappearance of a number of publications called the "little magazines", which were the real movers of the creative momentum of the avant-garde. [...]

'DAAIZ Committee' - will be conducting the seventh workshop on konkani poetry on Friday the 12th August 2005 at 5:30pm to 7:00pm in Salmiya, Kuwait. Well-known Urdu poet Mr. Sayed Qamar Minto and Well-known konkani activist Mr. Benna Fajir will be the guests of honor. [...]

The 64th death anniversary of great poet Rabindranath Tagore was observed yesterday in the capital and elsewhere across the country in a manner of proper dignity and honour.

The Bengalees recalled the poet with love, affection and gratitude. [...]

“He is the hero of the present generation, a character as bright as the sun and his country’s spirit as the children of this country will testify.”

Given the current political climate, one might be forgiven for assuming not many in today’s Maldives would use the above sentence as a description of President Maumoon Gayoom, but ‘poet’ Kopee Mohamed Rasheed thinks differently.

To Kopee the mention of the man Amnesty International has accused of heading a government responsible for torture “refreshes the spirit, and invigorates the heart.” [...]

Shopkeepers are unimpressed. One bookseller told Minivan Radio he felt the poems were “sycophantic”. But book-shop owners said they had no choice but to stock the poetry because they were dependent on Kopee for valuable supplies of textbooks from the Education Ministry, which are popular just before the school term starts. “We are not at all happy” an owner said. [...]

COFFEE drinkers can turn into culture vultures when they visit a poetry-themed coffee shop set to open on the Canongate.

The new branch of Starbucks is to offer customers the chance to browse Scottish poetry books in store, as well as read Robert Burns verses inscribed on the walls. [...]

Marcel Khalifé made it an evening to remember as part of the outstanding Beiteddine 2005 Festival. Poet extraordinaire Khalifé and his group performed to a full audience, amid heightened fears following the wave of car bombings. [...]

Calling on her fellow Sudanese to "honor" the memory of John Garang by remaining peaceful in the face their leader John Garang's untimely death, and voicing her complete trust in his replacement, Salva Kiir Mayardit, Sudan's controversial novelist-poet Kola Boof, an SPLA member living in exile in the United States, appeared on several radio programs to debut the poem "Choll Apieth" in honor of Garang's legacy and said that the poem is to represent a hope for peace in Sudan as well as the spirit of John Garang. When asked to describe Garang, Boof told Voice America Radio, "John Garang was a Dinka, a man of enormous kindness, honor and intelligence. He believed devoutly in the potential for all Sudanese people to rise and join as one. None of the Arab leaders in Khartoum have ever had the vision and integrity that John Garang had. He was Sudan's best son." [...]

TED KOOSER'S ''Flying at Night'' seems oddly, if not misleadingly, titled; the merits of these poems derive mostly from staying close to earth. A retired vice president of an insurance company in Lincoln, Neb., Kooser sets poem after poem out among the open-ended, wind-ransacked Great Plains. This terrain is notoriously inhospitable to any plant that would root deep or grow tall, but his tree is planted there -- his family tree -- and ''Flying at Night'' offers a densely peopled, multigenerational series of portraits and anecdotes drawn from a sparsely populated region.

In addition to being a retired businessman, Kooser is, as of last October, the poet laureate of the United States and the winner, this year, of a Pulitzer Prize. [...]

But he speaks as well, particularly in his new role as laureate, for another family -- that vast legion of poets, outspread across the country, who patiently compile one manuscript after another while pursuing a day job elsewhere. There's something heartening about those poets, like Kooser, like Wallace Stevens (who also spent his working life in the insurance business), like the doctor William Carlos Williams, whose lives reflect some vital integration of the ''real world'' and the realer world of art. If at the end of the day Kooser's poetic aesthetic is not mine (I prefer a thicker mix of language, a more complicated architecture), his poems are a tonic reminder that, in contemporary America, nearly all of our poets live in a Great Plains -- a region of thin crowds and long echoes. And that the only way for them to proceed is to write from the heart's home, as Kooser has done.

Worship at a literary shrine can take many forms: gazing at a blue plaque in London; joining the throngs who turn Dove Cottage into a babel that the Wordsworths would have loathed; strolling through Laugharne clutching a copy of Under Milk Wood, so that the rubicund jollity of Mr and Mrs Cherry Owen drowns out Mr and Mrs Dylan Thomas’s torment. Why do we do it, sometimes making detours of many miles to a birthplace or a grave?

Do we hope that through the genius loci, the spirit of place, we will gain insight into the work itself? [...]

His name is familiar not only to all Urdu-knowing people round the globe but also to millions who do not know the language but have heard Mehdi Hassan’s soulful rendering of his poem Ranjish hee sahee. Without doubt, he is the leading Urdu poet recognised as the third greatest, after Allama Iqbal and Faiz Ahmed Faiz. You may well ask "so what about him?" Well, he has been thrown out from his job as Chairman, Pakistan National Book Foundation, which has its headquarters in Islamabad. [...]

You may well ask why did General Musharraf’s government behave in this boorish manner towards a poet regarded by the common people as the pride of Pakistan? Believe it or not, it was under the political pressure of Muhajirs, migrants from Uttar Pradesh. They insisted that so important a post should be held by a man whose mother tongue is Urdu: Faraz’s mother tongues are Pushto and Punjabi, but he writes only in Urdu.

On Sunday, 7th August 2005, the splendid bastions of Valletta Waterfront will serve as a backdrop for 'Swar', a Maltese literary evening presented by Poezijaplus and Nafra. Co-ordinated by Sergio Grech, the recital will start at 8.30pm. Entrance is free.

Maltese poetry will be read over a soundtrack of Maltese ethnic instruments by the folk ensemble Nafra led by Ruben Zahra. [...]

Nepalis are raving about Shrawan Mukarung’s symbolic poem about Prithbi Narayan Shah’s tailor. [...]

Poet Shrawan Mukarung happened to be in Gorkha and watched the Nagarchis forced out of their homes. Something snapped in the poet’s psyche: centuries of exclusion of Nepal’s dalits and janajatis suddenly became focussed in one point of light. Mukarung could express his outrage the only way he knew how: by sitting down to write a poem about the incident.

What he didn’t expect was ‘Bise Nagarchi ko Bayan’ (translated excerpt in box) to be so popular so quickly. At a recital at Gurukul theatre this month, Mukarung read this and other poems to a packed hall. Something unheard of had happened–people paid to listen to poetry and Mukarung made nearly Rs 40,000. Not only is it rare for Nepalis to buy tickets for a poetry recital but the audience clamoured for Mukarung to recite ‘Bise Nagarchi ko Bayan’ over and over again. [...]

Bise Nagarchi’s Account
by Shrawan Mukarung

Master!
The lofty peaks of the Gorkha Kingdom
why have they suddenly shrivelled?
These decent and dignified people
why are they bleeding and bent?
Why has the Daraundi turned around to flow uphill?
Why do I see the Palace in fragments?
I’ve gone mad, I’ve gone mad.

Master!
Does your sword now chop heads, or petals?
I’ve been mistaken.
Does your rifle shoot down dreams, or people?
I’ve been mistaken.
Did your subjects make this kingdom, or you?
I’ve been mistaken.
Master, I’ve been with you now 250 years,
how can I be a terrorist?
I’ve gone mad, Master. Mad.

Excerpt from Bise Nagarchi’s Account translated by Kunda Dixit

"In the Trial" was written by Ayin Tur-Malka, the pen name of Aliza Grinberg, widow of the great Hebrew-language poet Uri Zvi Grinberg (1896-1981), and it appears in the volume of her collected poems "Shuvi nafshi l'tcheletech" ("Go Back My Soul to Your Azure") published in Hebrew by the Bialik Institute. This poem, as well as others, paints a portrait of a woman who lives in the shadow of her husband, but also defies him. [...]

The book "Satire and Humor in Persian Poetry" by Khwaja Hamid Yazdani was recently published by the Iran-Pakistan Persian Study Center in Islamabad, the center announced.

The first edition of the book will have a print run of 300 copies, according to MNA. [...]

Poet Guirgis Shukri’s Wa Al Aydi Otla Rasmeya (And the Hands are on an Official Holiday) is a collection of poems so thematically connected to each other that they in fact form one poem divided into six chapters. Written in powerful and angry language, this work reflects a sense of estrangement and a lack of identity that is compensated for by savage nihilism, cynical absurdity and a guilty conscience. [...]

Born in Sohag in 1967, Shukri has published four books of poetry, which have been translated into several languages, including English. He is one of the representatives of the so-called “90’s generation.” Like many of his contemporaries, he focuses on meaning rather than form, using simple vocabulary and constructions, merging classical and colloquial Arabic. Unfortunately, the neglect of form for the sake of substance leads some verses to resemble awkward rough drafts, or bland logical formulas devoid of passion or color. By avoiding fusha vocabulary that has come to seem funny, pretentious or heavy-handed, even to poets, Shukri limits his linguistic range. But his blank verse compositions are nonetheless free, honest and intense. In this reviewer’s opinion, Shukri is one of the young rising stars in contemporary poetry.

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I am pleased to announce that CARVE 6 is now available. Featuring:

Bill Marsh
Clark Coolidge
Dorothea Lasky
Emma Barnes
Yuri Hospodar
Mark Lamoureux

Cover by Wendy Hyman.

40 pp., $5.

You can order via paypal at http://www.carvepoems.org or by sending a check (or
cleverly concealed cash) made out to Aaron Tieger at:

221 W. Lincoln #2
Ithaca, NY 14850

Subscriptions: $25/1 year.

Please note that as of August 1, 2005 the subscription rate will be increased by five dollars. This reflects the additional cost of my latest endeavor: CARVE Editions, a line of chapbooks featuring the kinds of poets you would expect to see in CARVE. Current plans are to replace the fall issue of the magazine with two of these chapbooks, beginning this year with two offerings from CARVE contributors: Jess Mynes' birds for example, and Christopher Rizzo's Zing. Each chapbook will cost $5 and be available through the usual channels. I'm very excited about this new development, and look forward to bringing you these excellent poems by these excellent poets.

Back issues ($5 each):

#5, April 2005: Stacy Szymaszek, Jordan Davis, Guillermo Juan Parra, Cheryl Clark, William Corbett on Richard Caddel, Richard Caddel. Cover by Aaron Tieger. 32 pp.

#4, January 2005: John Mulrooney, Mairead Byrne, Aaron Kunin, Jane Sprague, Gia Myers, Anthony Robinson, Dan Bouchard interviewed by Michael Carr. Cover by Emily Belz. 36 pp.

#3, Summer 2004: Shin Yu Pai, Jess Mynes, Catherine A. Meng, Christopher Rizzo, Sean Cole, Lori Lubeski. Cover by Emily Belz. 40 pp.

#2, Winter 2004: kari edwards, John Bradley, Matvei Yankelevich, W. B. Keckler, Andrew Felsinger, Ed Barrett, Alan De Niro, Joel Sloman, Gregory Ford, Ron Starr, Jim Dunn, Mike County, Amanda Cook. Cover by Eric McDade. 34 pp.

#1, Summer 2003: Gregory Ford, William Corbett, Joseph Torra, Dorothea Lasky, J. Kates, Sara Veglahn, Eric Baus/Noah Eli Gordon/Nick Moudry/Travis Nichols, Michael Carr, Aaron Belz, Beth Woodcome, Mark Lamoureux, Brenda Iijima, Anna Mochovakis, Aaron Tieger, Christina Strong, Kent Johnson. Cover by Brenda Iijima. 28 pp.

Thank you!

Aaron Tieger
Editor, CARVE

Are we not yet adult enough as a culture to acknowledge that the arts are not for everyone, and that bad art is worse than no art at all; and that good or bad, art's exclusive function is to entertain, not to improve or nourish or console, simply entertain. [...]

It is worth reflecting during National Poetry Month that creative writing, over the past forty years, has subsumed American poetry and become a 250-million-dollar industry, a rather seamy industry, and an off-shoot of the rather seamy Human Potential Movement industry. American poetry is now an international joke. And not just internationally: American novelists, nonfiction writers, scholars, the enlightened general reader who a generation ago read poetry as a matter of course, for pleasure, rarely attend to it anymore. [...]

Let me put it starkly: the better animals in the jungle aren't drawn to poetry anymore, and they're certainly not tuned in to Keillor's Writer's Almanac. Just as the new genre of the novel drew off most of the brilliant young writers of the nineteenth century, movies, television, MTV, advertising, rock 'n' roll, and the internet have taken the best among the recent crop of young talent. Do you suppose for a moment that a spirited youngster with a brilliant, original mind and gifted up the yin-yang is going to sit still for two years of creative writing poetry workshops presided over by a dispirited, compromised mediocrity, all the while critiquing and being critiqued by younger versions of the same? [...]

Some of the songs I have enjoyed the most in my life I can no longer really enjoy, because they have quite simply expired from overuse. I think of most Ramones, Patsy Cline, and Beatles songs in this regard. This doesn't mean that those songs have expired universally; for generations of listeners, they are as fresh and exciting as they once were for me. And there's no real reason they should continue to engage me. They worked great when I needed them. I could say the same thing of certain poets: E. E. Cummings, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, James Tate. I think I've discussed this before, if not on this blog, then in actual conversation with humans--I consider these writers "gateway poets." They turn people on to poetry. They prepare you for the "hard stuff." One tendency is to turn one's nose up at such poets once one has "grown out" of them, and I have been guilty of this myself. But this is like saying that stuffed animals are worthless because one no longer sleeps with them, and one prefers instead to sleep with attractive humans; at one time, those stuffed animals were absolutely indispensable companions, and they may even in a small way have prepared one to be a better bed partner. [...]

[...] While those who pay no attention to poetry have probably never heard of him, Mr. Kleinzahler has gradually become a poetry star. His work is a modernist swirl of sex, surrealism, urban life and melancholy with a jazzy backbeat. His personality combines Allen Ginsberg's goofball charm and Norman Mailer's inveterate pugnacity.

"I don't like to call myself a poet," Mr. Kleinzahler said with characteristic bluntness. "Most poets are shiftless, no-account fools." [...]

On August 22, 1957, Pete Rademacher fought Floyd Patterson in Seattle for the world heavyweight championship. In the stands that day were two boxing fans from the English Department of the University of Washington: Theodore Roethke, a forty-nine-year-old professor, and his twenty-nine-year-old student James Wright, who was celebrating the completion of his Ph.D. [...]

Yet Roethke and Wright were unusual in their early and intense mistrust not just of modernism but of the whole idea of poetic sophistication. Each was the product of a decidedly unliterary Midwestern setting—before Wright, the last writer to emerge from Martins Ferry, Ohio, had been William Dean Howells—and retained a lifelong suspicion of cleverness. To justify their calling, they had to insist that poetry had more to do with authenticity than with artistry. [...]