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Poetry news, poetry blogs, poetry magazines, poetry journals, poetry sites, poetry links, etc.

Mascara Literary Review

Friday, September 30, 2011
Editorial:
In "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" William Carlos Williams says that poetry has no news to deliver, nothing sensational or glamorous to advertise, “yet men die miserably everyday/ for lack/ of what is found there.” Poetry doesn’t make things happen, to use Auden’s words. It doesn’t stop wars, feed the hungry or stop the earth from being abused. Yet it is perhaps precisely of its non-utilitarian value that we need it so much, every crust, every scrap of it. In a world where everything is measured in economic terms, poetry is essential because it resists being calibrated, reminding us that the seemingly most useless things are the most vital to our being alive.

Prose Poem By Jean Follain

Monday, September 26, 2011
Excerpt…
People try to fight time. A pet is a help. But the number of infinitesimal creatures populating a house--how could you ever count them?
Rest here

We who are about to breed

Thursday, September 22, 2011
In which WWAATD asks writers and other artist types about life as breeders/parents/kid-keepers:
Mary Biddinger: 'I’m not sure I ever received advice about being a parent and a writer. Gabi was born when I was in graduate school, and I was one of the first of my friends to have a kid, so there weren’t any real mentors for me in that respect. However, my advice would be to remind yourself, parent to be, that you are a creative person who sometimes (or often) doubts common advice and trends.'

First thoughts on ebook publishing a poetry anthology

Monday, September 19, 2011
Kelli Rusell Agodon: 'The eBook formatting went past my comfort zone with poetry ... I just didn't feel comfortable formatting the book myself.'

The 2011 PEN Literary Awards

Sunday, September 18, 2011
This year, PEN will present 17 awards, fellowships, grants, and prizes…

'The Legible Body: or Melancholia'

Thursday, September 15, 2011
by Nadine Sabra Meyer:
It is 1842 and Napoleon has returned to Paris
as body-ash grey as the iron Seine,
Fuseli and Lavater have worked all winter painting
the soul’s character to flesh, each high forehead
a cathedral vaulted for the mind,
and in Italy Francesco Hayez paints this girl,
not so much a portrait as a study, the oval
of her face flattened and white as a cameo.
He paints her disheveled as the rumpled flowers
he places before her as if she, too, were perfumed
to lush disintegration, her bodice a waxy sheet
draped to falling, the lilies enveloped
in their private fluted mouths. He extends no grace
to her, but lets the light from one window
cut down the side of her face, her dress
pooling as if he can’t help himself, can’t stop
unlocking in his mind the pearly sheen
of each elasticized button, though she is sullen
and slouched as any preteen, awkward
[Rest here]

Poetry and Place, Displaced

Poet Robert Peake, former poetry editor for Silk Road, gives us an update from the London literary scene:
As I travelled by tube to the Southbank Centre to attend the first event of the London Literature Festival, and my first poetry reading since moving to London two months ago, I took with me my American expectations about poetry venues: coffee shops, small community centers, the occasional well-appointed-but-out-of-the way theater or library hall. Seated facing the podium on the sixth floor of this clean, bright temple to art, I kept examining the layers of the backdrop as if it were a painting. First, a Union Jack. Then the London Eye. And on the far side of the Thames, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. This was not a painting, however, but a window. The statement was clear: art, and for this evening, poetry, commands a central place in Britain.
However, centrality means anything but homogeneity, as the four readers in this “Poetry of Place” event demonstrated.

The many faces of "Humiliation"

Saturday, September 10, 2011
Ever since poet and critic Wayne Koestenbaum broke onto the scene with his acclaimed "The Queen's Throat," which theorized about the distinct connection between gay men and opera, his dazzlingly personal approach to his subjects has been known to draw both intense loyalty and furious detractors (his deconstructed approach to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, for example, "Jackie Under My Skin," seemed to draw exclusively either raves or raspberries).
'I gave two of my poetry books, warmly inscribed, to a major poet. A few years later, my protege told me that she'd found those very copies, with their embarrassingly effusive inscriptions, at a used-book store.'

Interview with Annette Spaulding-Convy

Thursday, September 08, 2011
'I’m not sure why many of us feel an initial resistance to electronic reading platforms, perhaps because as writers and readers we love the tactile, visual nature of printed books and we fear they might be endangered by this new technology. '

New Welsh Review giveaway

'Amazing Back Issue Give-away!' [Wales, UK]:
Following the success of World Book Night, we have decided to give away some lovely stuff too! We have a limited number of back issues up for grabs - simply email us your contact details, and you might be the lucky recipient of a FREE New Welsh Review . This offer is open to subscribers and non-subscribers.

Sweet Damper and Gossip Society

''Low Tea' at the Delirious Bakery:
The Delirious Bakery is a site-responsive bakery that collects and dispenses dissent via recovered oral traditions. During its residency in the Clubs & Societies historic basement storehouse, the artists and guests will host a series of ‘low teas’, where tales about the darker side of The Rocks are exchanged with each sticky bun.

Haiku Spirit: The Passing of Janice Bostok

Monday, September 05, 2011
Graham Nunn: 'News came to me today of the passing of one of Australia’s greatest haijin (haiku master), Janice Bostok.'

More from Haiku Oz

Turmoil surrounding BlazeVOX

C Dale Young: 'Some called this vanity press, and others said it was a good thing to do. I am pretty sure the real thing falls somewhere in between. But who knows?' 

Update: BlazeVOX rallies, 'It is just us and a love of strange poetry that keeps me going.'

The 11th International Literature Festival Berlin

Focus on the Asian-Pacific region

Mysterious paper sculptures appear

Sunday, September 04, 2011
As if by magic…

[via looktouch]

On "The Logic of Yoo"

Saturday, September 03, 2011
Michael Broek:
"The Logic of Yoo" is very different from the poetry I had written previously. My wife, the poet Laura McCullough, helped me think about this when we talked in the shower about a contest she had just finished judging (The shower is a great place to work out these problems. It's the only meditative space in our house). There were literally dozens of manuscripts written by men like me–sincere, passionate, loving, not burdened by public scarring. This, I realized, was the problem of the White, heterosexual, middle-class male with feelings, or the WIMF. I was not manic-depressive or a womanizer—but one cannot be a Robert Lowell or a John Berryman anymore. I had not worked in a factory or gone off to war—I was not a Yusef Komunyakaa or a Brian Turner. In short, I had nothing going for me as a poet. I had to think about my speaker in some new way. This was another thread.

Great artists take a turn for the verse

Friday, September 02, 2011
Poet Kate Middleton: 'My time in the States had given me a psychic distance from Australia but it made me more and more Australian...'

Ten poets on US postage stamps

Elizabeth Bishop, Joseph Brodsky, Gwendolyn Brooks and more...