dumbfoundry

I am selling a number of books on Plath and Hughes, mainly criticism and bios of academic interest, some out of print. Please contact me if you are interested in buying them (shipping from Germany!).

"poets anonymous put up billboards all over Los Angeles featuring memorable lines from poems. there were at least four that featured Bukowski quotes..."

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
SUBJECT: Charles Bukowski FILE: 140-35907

In 1968 various branches of the U.S. government performed an investigation into the background of civil servant Charles Bukowski. Apparently the FBI took offense to some of his writing (mainly the notes of a dirty old man column he wrote for the Los Angeles hippie tabloid Open City), and had their 'informants' report Bukowski to higher-ups in the post office. The bulk of these files are mundane reportage of interviews with neighbors and employers who scarcely remember Bukowski. However, the files do hold some secrets. In fact, we have uncovered one very interesting fact in our research into the files: Bukowski was married to Jane Cooney.

Hear poems from Ivy Alvarez, Thomas Heise, Peggy Munson (via DVD!), Liz Bradfield, Brandi Homan, Sean Norton, Jason Bredle, Charles Hood, Eva Saulitis, Nickole Brown, Cate Marvin, Jen Tynes, Monica de la Torre, Simone Muench, and Caroline Noble Whitbeck.

Mark your calendars for Friday, February 1, 2008, starting 7pm at the 11th St Bar, 510 E. 11th St. New York, NY.

[for Facebook members]

On Thursday, January 31, 2008 (from 3-4pm), Ivy Alvarez will sign copies of 'Mortal', along with Sean Norton, author of 'Bad With Faces'.

On Friday, February 1, 2008 (from 3-4pm), Ivy Alvarez will sign copies of 'Mortal', along with Jen Tynes, author of 'The End Of Rude Handles.

Both signings are located at the AWP Bookfair [booth #488] in the Hilton New York, 1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY and hosted by their publisher, Red Morning Press.

[Facebook members: click here for Thursday, here for Friday]

You are cordially invited to participate in THE CHAINED HAY(NA)KU PROJECT!
[...]
We now invite other poets to collaborate with others in creating other chained hay(na)ku. Authors can then contribute their collaborations (including excerpts from such collaborations) for possible publication, which Meritage Press will release as either a journal, anthology, or hand-made limited edition (the final format will depend on the nature of and number of contributions).

On Thursday morning, the day of the poetry stand, I gave this assignment: An old widow has just moved to Bloomfield. She plans to make an embroidery or needlepoint and would like a rhymed couplet blessing her house.

To some in the room, this was the last straw. They had come to an exclusive arts program, to write eight hours a day for four weeks, and they were being asked to do this? I asked if they thought I had suddenly become some kind of conservative. They knew better. I asked if they thought the prompt itself was too conservative, or just silly, and they said, “Hell yes: a housewarming poem for an old lady’s needlepoint?”

“It’s just writing,” I said. “An old lady wants a poem.”

“No she doesn’t. You made her up.”

“You don’t think there’s old ladies doing needlepoint out there in deep dark New Jersey?”

“Okay, but what’s that got to do with real poetry?”

The editors of Upstairs at Duroc magazine are currently considering submissions of poetry, fiction and art work for Issue 10, our 10th anniversary annual issue.

The letters of Ted Hughes led David Hare to reflect on the uneasy question: do you have to die to be understood?

ENGL 310 - Modern Poetry
with Professor Langdon Hammer
Spring, 2007

This course covers the body of modern poetry, its characteristic techniques, concerns, and major practitioners. The authors discussed range from Yeats, Eliot, and Pound, to Stevens, Moore, Bishop, and Frost with additional lectures on the poetry of World War One, Imagism, and the Harlem Renaissance. Diverse methods of literary criticism are employed, such as historical, biographical, and gender criticism ...

Here are the specs for the next free ad space on MiPOesias Magazine Print edition scheduled to launch February 2008.

• 1 high resolution 600 min dpi and 2400 pixels or higher (color, black and white or sepia) of yourself, looking away, perhaps a silhouette - Full length, 3/4 view are best.
• 1 Logo and/or book cover, also high resolution although does not have to be as high as the photo.
• Web site URL or address where the book, journal magazine may be purchased or read online.
• A one to two sentence answering the question - Where were you June 15th, 1962.

The answer should have your name underneath, with your title, author, publisher, editor, artist (what have you).

I know many of you may not have been around then, you are a poet, so answer it poetically.

The free ads selected will take one full page in the printed version of MiPOesias Magazine.

For a current issue, stop by http://www.mipoesias.com

Ads are at my discretion. Send all ads to my email at didimenendez @ hotmail.com

Deadline: January 15, 2008

"We live in a kingdom of insects. Glancing from the infinitesimally small fairyfly to the giant stick insect, we find that this is a weird and various world. The catalogue of nocturnal moths, thrips, butterflies, caddisflies, angel insects, snow fleas, bristletails, mayflies, silverfish, and bugs is endless and the names evocative.

For this issue of qarrtsiluni, we are interested in art — poem, painting, story, nonfiction, photograph — inspired by insects. We are equally interested in writing about insects, being just as enamored by Thoreau’s ant battle in Walden as Frost’s butterflies, "Tossed, tangled, whirled and whirled above, / Like a limp rose-wreath in a fairy dance."

We expect a wild variety of explorations on this subject, with work undergoing that mysterious metamorphosis of revision, to be finally shined up to a high beetle-like polish. In insects, the final step in transformations leads to the fully-formed imago — Latin plural, imagines."

Bloom agreed to meet with me weekly. At my adviser’s suggestion, he wrote me a letter of reference for my Rhodes Scholarship application. Then I could not get a meeting with him. The semester was slipping away. When I saw him on campus, he would promise to go over my poetry manuscript “over a glass of Amontillado.” I’d heard that some faculty met with students at Mory’s, and that Bloom drank often with his male students there. I also knew that there was an atmosphere at Yale in which female students were expected to be sociable with male professors. I had discussed with my friends the pressure to be charming but still seen as serious.

Finally, Bloom suggested that he come to the house I shared with one of his editorial assistants and her boyfriend. At dinnertime. I agreed.

The four of us ate a meal. He had, as promised, brought a bottle of Amontillado, which he drank continually. I also drank. We had set out candles—a grown-up occasion. The others eventually left and—finally!—I thought we could discuss my poetry manuscript. I set it between us. He did not open it. He did not look at it. He leaned toward me and put his face inches from mine. “You have the aura of election upon you,” he breathed.

I hoped he was talking about my poetry. I moved back and took the manuscript and turned it around so he could read.

The next thing I knew, his heavy, boneless hand was hot on my thigh.