Author Archive
Camille Dungy
green, yellow, grey: go!
I’m heading to Oregon tomorrow, and I can’t get Bob Kaufman out of my head.
Camille Dungy
Mujeres poetas de Venezuela/Women poets of Venezuela
I received an unanticipated package early this week. Each month, enough packages containing books or journals show up in my box that I tend to be unfazed when an unexpected package arrives. Often, when such books arrive, I take a cursory glace at the cover and the table of contents, register interest, then set the book aside, promising to return to it when I have a bit more time. Lately, I’ve been on the run, with too much to do in too few hours, and I’ll admit I opened the padded envelope without even bothering to see who/where it was from. But this little package was different. It had come all the way from Venezuela, carrying with it the work of twenty-five women I immediately wanted to get to know. Perfiles de la Noche/Profiles of Night: Mujeres poetas de Venezuela/Women poets of Venezuela compelled me to stop all my running, to sit down, to read.
Camille Dungy
Mother’s Day is on the way
Mother’s Day is, for mailing purposes, essentially tomorrow. Attempting to be on top of this, I had picked out three perfect cards. One for my mother, one for my grandmother, and one for my godmother, women who are still alive and well and happily involved in my life. Bless them. Each would have a suggestion, for instance, as to where I might have stored the bag with the cards. But now, rather than turning to the online Hallmark store to find replacement Mother’s Day cards, I’m looking for poems that might speak to a grown woman’s love for the key maternal figures in her life.
Camille Dungy
Poetry now
I’ve been posting quite a bit about the exciting work produced by some of our finest emerging poets, and I’ve also written about poems that are sonically engaging. So it may come as no surprise that I am pleased to announce that From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great arrived in my mailbox (and bookstore) this week.
Camille Dungy
What the Kids Are Reading These Days
Every week I introduce my students to a few poems I think speak to what they’ve tried to write themselves. I do this hoping they’ll read more and, reading more, learn to write better and better. Amen. It being near the end of the semester, I’ve been interested in what resonated most. As ever, the answers surprised me.
Camille Dungy
Dyslexicon
(An ode to words removed from the 2008 Oxford Junior Dictionary, a dictionary aimed at children ages 7 to 9, concluding with the newly-added words.)
Camille Dungy
Poetry is making things happen! Installment #2 (Help Him Woo Sarah Silverman)
Can poetry help this man woo the woman of his dreams (and support at-risk youth in the process)?
Camille Dungy
Sound makes sense
Yesterday a student came into my office with a guitar, and he sang me a song. He did so because he had realized the music could convey more than his words could. He wanted a boost behind the piece he’d written for our meeting. I listened to his song (with pleasure: he plays guitar well and has a pleasant voice), but afterwards we talked about how he could bring some of the power he sought from music into his own writing. To help him understand this better, I read him a few poems. I told him to pay attention to what he understood from the poems’ sounds.
For many of us, the fact that poets can orchestrate their poems is not news. Plenty of us know that sound can be used, in poetry, to manipulate emotional responses. Still, it was awfully fun to witness my student’s initiation into the joys of poetic sound. Therefore, because I believe there are always people for whom these joys will be news, I’m dedicating today’s post to a few of the poems I love to hear.
Camille Dungy
Poetry is making things happen! Installment #1 (Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project)
We’re nearly a week into National Poetry Month. Poems, poems, everywhere. Also economic chaos, heightened criminal activity, catastrophic climate change…and all the other worrying realities of our time. This world is full of real-time hard times. How can poetry make it better?
Camille Dungy
What’s the word for wonderful in your language?
Global capitalism is nothing new. Through history, the need to maintain the flow of capital has driven the diasporas of people, languages, and, yes, poetry. Whoever thinks contemporary North American poetry is provincial or isolationist hasn’t read the four poets I discuss in this post.
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Anselm Berrigan
Abigail Deutsch
Tonya Foster
Melissa Friedling
John S. O'Connor
Barbara Jane Reyes
Amber Tamblyn
Edwin Torres
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Cathy Halley
Michael Marcinkowski
Travis Nichols
Fred Sasaki
Don Share
RECENT COMMENTS
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Hi Teri,
I think I'm for it. Not in a spirit of separatism, but in ... MORE »
Annie Finch | 11.21.09 -
Henry Gould says:
"Terreson, you misrepresent Christianity, & probably all those other religions too.
You want ... MORE »
Terreson | 11.21.09 -
Barbara Jane Reyes says:
"And this brings me to my question: how do you write about ... MORE »
Terreson | 11.20.09 -
I like the idea of immanent transcendence. Any approximation of ultimate truth would have to ... MORE »
Wendy Babiak | 11.20.09 -
Terreson, you misrepresent Christianity, & probably all those other religions too.
You want to ... MORE »
Henry Gould | 11.20.09
Señor Smith to you. (1)
Vladimir, Ron, and Gregori (4)
dubious poetry: the palin comparison (3)
To Vaya in the Viva of Time (2)
Indie Publishing: Two Questions, Many More... (5)
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