Just stumbled across a great half-hour reading by Mary Ruefle on Google Video courtesy of the Lunch Poems series at UC Berkeley.

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Over at One Poet’s Notes, Ed Byrne has a really good idea: the recently rich Poetry Foundation should partner up to keep Parnassus alive as a partner publication for the evolving Poetry magazine. I like the changes in Poetry but there is a limited amount of space to fit an increase the quantity and [...]

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Peggy Shumaker, who I was privileged to have as an instructor long ago, has a new book of poetry coming out called Just Breathe Normally. Word on the street is you can pre-order and get a 20% discount if you use the code AF71. Just buy it (you know you want to).

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I’m the first to admit my almost complete ignorance of the work of Ezra Pound. I duly did required reading in college, read some of the translations from the Chinese, and skimmed some of The Cantos. But I never really paid a lot of attention to his work and have generally understood his influence through [...]

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Good news… Aimee Nez has a new book out At the Drive-In Volcano! Will let you know what I think as soon as my copy gets here…

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JforJames sez:
Sometimes when faced with difficult or complex poetry, the detective’s words to Jake Gittes at the end of the movie Chinatown come to mind: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
Amen.

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A work in progress…

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In the Good News for Poetry People dept., Barry Spacks is blogging. Check it out at Poetry Matters.

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From Subterranean Frost, Adam Kirsch’s review of the recently published Notebooks of Robert Frost:
Trilling insisted on calling Frost, to his face, “a terrifying poet.” Really, he had less in common with Longfellow than with Sophocles, “who made plain … the terrible things of human life.”
As of late, there’s been some interesting discussion of Frost on [...]

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The question being asked by Dana Goodyear (and many, many others) remains: is Ruth Lilly’s 200 million dollar bequest to Poetry good for poetry? Depending on how you look at it this could mean the same thing as asking whether it will make poetry more popular. It might have to do with having the effect [...]

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Use the Shakespeare Sonnet Shakeup to compose your own sonnets by remixing the Bard’s best.

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Bob Holman, Poetry Guide, has posted his selection for the Top 10 books of poetry published in 2006. What are your picks?

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While browsing (OK, egosurfing, but only because I am curious– and a little frightened– about what Bob might have to say about this under-read mainstreamer’s offhand, rarely-edited blog) I not only discovered Bob Grumman’s coinage stasguard, “defender of the stasis quo” who, among other things, assume “without reflection that the small slice of the arts [...]

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Here’s Jonathan Ross’ poem, one of just a few runners-up in a limerick contest to “elucide the scientific study The Relationship of Illumination to the Color and Acceptability of Fermented Sausage:

Some salamis exposed to a spectrum
Of light make us want to reject ‘em
For their discolored look
Makes them often mistook
For the product of somebody’s rectum

To read [...]

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Scott Rosenberg draws a connection between a Breughel and a photo taken on 9/11. He also points to one of my favorite Auden poems about the painting: Musee des Beaux Arts. The parallel between my feelings about 9/11 and the poem/painting are clear and raw. 9/11 was a horrific, tragic event. But it, like any [...]

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Lately I’ve started memorizing poems– just short, favorite, mostly rhyming poems that I’ve always loved by Shelley, Hopkins, Cummings, etc.
It started as something to do during the interminable walks I’ve started going on in an attempt to work some exercise into my otherwise sedentary lifestyle, but it’s become an important part of my day.
As a [...]

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Such as they are… rules are made to be broken…

First draft, best draft… in pen, directly on the postcard, on-the-spot corrections allowed but no rewrites
Any kind of less-than-letter-sized format is fine: correspondence cards, greeting cards, honest-to-god postcards
Subject may or may not have anything to do with pictures or art, if any, on the postcards
Blank cards [...]

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If you go quickly, you can read a great little poem by Rachel Loden on the Poetry Daily site: “What the Gravedigger Needs”
Hotel Imperium is a favorite of mine…

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Bookslut reports that NPR is asking authors about their buttonhole books, “the ones you urge passionately on friends, colleagues and passersby.” I have a small menagerie of books that fit this cateogry, the ones I have bought– some many times– for others. Not coincidentally, they are also the kind that can cause a real strain [...]

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From 1993-2004, the number of books in the poetry/drama category of US trade publications grew almost four times over. I have no numbers, but I imagine that small press and online publications grew at least 100x. The decline of mainstream poetry publication– like the decline of poetry publication in general– is a myth.
We can still [...]

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