Archive for March, 2009
Jason Guriel
Poetry in Motion: A Slightly Awkward Attempt to Figure Out What This Term Means (and Thus Maybe Not the Best Example of the Term); Also, an Excuse to Quote Passages of Poetry about Baseball
Occasionally, when we admire a thing – a particular pastime, say – we claim there’s a certain “poetry” to it. If the thing’s a moving body then we might call it “poetry in motion.” For example, we sometimes claim there’s a certain “poetry” to baseball. Or we describe one of its players as “poetry in motion.” But what exactly do we mean by “poetry” in these boasts? In the former, we probably mean “elegance”; in the latter, something made elegant through its mastery of a certain set of rules, through the nimbleness of its follow through. In general, we probably just mean formal poetry. Bear with me here.
Annie Finch
Trochees: An African American Tradition
Countee Cullen
In a recent blog for Lemon Hound on Claude McKay, one topic that came up was the importance of the trochaic undercurrent in McKay’s famous sonnet “If We Must Die.” I wrote that the power of this rhythm for McKay is no surprise in the context of African American poetics, since the trochaic meter has been established as a powerful alternative to iambic meter in some centrally influential African American poems of the twentieth century.
Travis Nichols
This Concept Makes Me Feel
Vanessa Place and Robert Fitterman have a new collaborative book due out from the fashionistas at Ugly Duckling Presse this May called Notes on Conceptualisms.
To celebrate the book’s launch, they’re hosting an evening of performances at The Kitchen in NYC tomorrow night, an event featuring “an array of conceptualists: Jen Bervin, Nada Gordon, Kim Rosenfield, Steve Zultanski, and Lytle Shaw.”
What is conceptual poetry you ask?
Well, if you can’t make it to the Kitchen tomorrow to find out first-hand, here’s a little video tutorial that might help.
Though, personally, I think this video is more instructive.
Or is that more Flarf? It can be a little confusing sometimes.
Catherine Halley
Take the Poetry Poll and Pass it On
In response to Travis’s last post, Iain says: “I’d be very interested in a poll that asked people what stereotypes they associate with poetry and poets.”
So would we. So let’s ask that question far and wide:
What stereotypes do you associate with poetry and poets?
Jason Guriel
Some Thoughts On Poetry Readings: Part Three (Legendary Gigs)
I was there at the Six Gallery in San Francisco where Allen Ginsberg read Howl for the first time. (I suggested the venue.)
Travis Nichols
Is this the end for poetry?
Poetry is in trouble. At least according to the NEA and Newsweek.
“In 2008, just 8.3 percent of adults had read any poetry in the preceding 12 months,” Marc Bain writes in an online article this week, citing January’s NEA report “Reading on the Rise.”
“That figure was 12.1 percent in 2002, and in 1992, it was 17.1 percent, meaning the number of people reading poetry has decreased by approximately half over the past 16 years.”
The NEA report showed fiction readership on the rise, a fact met with general enthusiasm among literary types, but poetry readership in the dumps:
“Almost as an afterthought, the report also noted that the number of adults reading poetry had continued to decline, bringing poetry’s readership to its lowest point in at least 16 years.”
Is it because contemporary poetry is exceptionally bad?
Is it because advocacy organizations aren’t doing their jobs?
Is it because critcs aren’t doing theirs?
Is it because the public just doesn’t get it?
Is it because teachers haven’t read their Kenneth Koch?
The whole article, and a few answers, can be found here.
Camille Dungy
My Mississippi Spring
I am on my way to Oxford, Mississippi where I will be reading on Friday. I’ve never been to Mississippi before, and though all sorts of poems and stories and songs come to mind when I think of Mississippi, because I realize it will be springtime in the South and because I love springtime in the South (the pear trees, the cherries, the forsythia, oh my!), I am thinking, most often, about the poem “My Mississippi Spring.”
Annie Finch
Poetry in Notion: What Does That Word Mean Anyway?
In last week’s “Ideas” section of the Boston Globe (a section which, btw, is alone worth the price of that excellent newspaper), I came across two references to poetry. One, not surprisingly, had absolutely nothing to do with poetry. It appeared in a review of a biography of novelist Don Barthelme, whom I recall playing in the creative writing band when I was a grad student at U of Houston. The headline dubbed Don a “poet” (”new biography shows Barthelme as prankster, poet, pioneer”) though there was not a single word in the review about him ever writing poetry.
Don Share
Happy Birthday!!!
Some folks didn’t care for our recent commemoration of the centennial of Futurism – like we were endorsing it somehow, sheesh! Well, it’s time to celebrate yet another birthday.
Daisy Fried
Fish’s Night Song
Here’s Christian Morgenstern’s (1871-1914) “Fisches Nachtgesang,” or, “Fish’s Night Song.”
It’s one more example of American parochialism that nowhere in Bartlett’s Quotations is a line of this poem reproduced.
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Thom Donovan
Bhanu Kapil
Fred Moten
Craig Santos Perez
Sina Queyras
Sotère Torregian
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Cathy Halley
Michael Marcinkowski
Travis Nichols
Fred Sasaki
Don Share
RECENT COMMENTS
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Michael R. wrote:
>If you’d been reading, you’d realize that the point of that passage is ... MORE »
Kent Johnson | 03.21.10 -
Very cool. I had not heard of Piet Hein, and will look him up. A ... MORE »
LH | 03.21.10 -
Definitely very cool, Craig. Very much liked kari edwards' book and will put this on ... MORE »
Sina Queyras | 03.21.10 -
Yay, Janet! MORE »
Mary Meriam | 03.20.10 -
@Sina:
I have not heard of an opera singing poet,
... MORE »
Colin Ward | 03.20.10
Beyond Careerism? (Redistributing Poetic... (31)
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To Sonnet, to Son-net, Tuscon Net (55)
All sides now: a correspondence with Lisa... (4)
Women’s History Month: A Salute (3)
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IN THIS ISSUE: March 2010
A selection of new work from Dorothea Grossman; new poems by Lavinia Greenlaw, David Yezzi, A.E. Stallings, Gerald Stern, and Dan Gerber; translations of Carlo Betocchi, and Mahmoud Darwish; an Editorial on Ruth Lilly; an exchange between Ilya Kaminsky and Adam Kirsch; an essay by Chen Li; and a review by Daisy Fried.
CHICAGO EVENTS
Poetry Off the Shelf: David Baker
Fri, March 26th, 6:00 PM
Open Books
213 West Institute Place
Free admission
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