Author Archive
Katie Hartsock
These Summer Sundays
Summer is at it again—flying right by me. I’ve been so busy doing my job (can you imagine?) that I haven’t had time to properly enjoy this short-lived staff writer opportunity, and now, with my end date as PF media assistant closing in fast, it’s as if I’m already gone (cue The Eagles). So goodbye for now but not for good, Harriet!
I began with a belated birthday, and I will end with one—Happy Birthday, Robert Hayden! Disclosure: I am slightly biased in this choice, because he and I share the same birthday—August 4th—along with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Louis Armstrong, Barack Obama, and Helen Thomas.
Katie Hartsock
A Glass Glass Factory
Hi again, Harriet! By the way, I’m the media assistant here at the Poetry Foundation. I’ll be posting until the end of the summer, when I’ll leave to begin a PhD program in Comp Lit at Northwestern, where I’ll work on classical and contemporary poetry.
When I began taking poetry workshops in college and forming an inkling of what contemporary poetry was up to, one of the books that most excited me was Matthea Harvey’s Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form: not only because I loved its surreal lyric landscapes, but I was dazzled by its use of zeugma, a “yoking” (the Greek translation) of two words modified or governed by one word, although that governing word only makes logical sense with one of the two at a time. Picture a cart with oxen hitched up and pulling on both sides, and compare with how the lines break here, from the beginning of “Paint Your Steps Blue”:
Katie Hartsock
Happy Birthday, Gwendolyn Brooks!
Remember that poetry is life distilled.
—Gwendolyn Brooks
June 7, 2009, would have been Gwendolyn Brooks’s 92nd birthday; to join us in celebrating one of America’s greatest poets, check out the Hall Library stop on the Chicago Poetry Tour, which features archival recordings of Brooks reading from and speaking about the span of her work. The program ranges from the intimate neighborhood portraits included in her first collection, A Street in Bronzeville, such as “kitchenette building” and “the rites for Cousin Vit,” to the political turn her poetry took in the ’60s as she became involved with the black arts movement:
And we did such exciting things. And we went into the park and recited our poetry and we went to city jail. And the most exciting thing we did was just to walk into a tavern, and someone like Haki Madhubuti, once known as Don L. Lee, would say, “Look folks, we’re gonna lay some poetry on you!” . . . And they would turn from their drinks, temporarily, and listen to poetry, which they hadn’t come to the tavern to hear, of course.
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Anselm Berrigan
Abigail Deutsch
Tonya Foster
Melissa Friedling
John S. O'Connor
Barbara Jane Reyes
Amber Tamblyn
Edwin Torres
STAFF WRITERS
Cathy Halley
Michael Marcinkowski
Travis Nichols
Fred Sasaki
Don Share
RECENT COMMENTS
-
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)
RECENT POSTS
- Señor Smith to you.
- Nocturne at High Noon. And the National Book Award Goes to . . .
- dubious poetry: the palin comparison
- Vladimir, Ron, and Gregori
MONTHLY ARCHIVE
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
CATEGORY ARCHIVE
- Arts (64)
- Audio (13)
- Awards (23)
- AWP (14)
- Best Sellers (6)
- Books (163)
- Criticism (202)
- Distribution (4)
- Education (35)
- Harriet (12)
- Interviews (10)
- Live Readings (32)
- Music (41)
- News (60)
- Obituaries (15)
- Photography (3)
- Poems (231)
- Poetry magazine (54)
- Poetry Out Loud (13)
- poetryfoundation.org (9)
- Politics (117)
- Readings (34)
- Science (5)
- Translation (18)
- Uncategorized (757)
- Video (16)
PREVIOUS WRITERS
- A.E. Stallings (54)
- Abigail Deutsch (11)
- Ada Limón (18)
- Alan Gilbert (30)
- Amber Tamblyn (3)
- Ange Mlinko (68)
- Annie Finch (44)
- Anselm Berrigan (12)
- Barbara Jane Reyes (20)
- Camille Dungy (31)
- Cathy Halley (19)
- Cathy Park Hong (12)
- Christian Bök (61)
- D.A. Powell (24)
- Daisy Fried (46)
- Don Share (57)
- Edwin Torres (10)
- Eileen Myles (40)
- Emily Warn (29)
- Forrest Gander (25)
- Fred Sasaki (16)
- Harriet Monroe (1)
- Jason Guriel (24)
- Javier Huerta (31)
- Jeffrey McDaniel (41)
- Joel Brouwer (22)
- John S. O'Connor (10)
- Katie Hartsock (3)
- Kenneth Goldsmith (105)
- Kwame Dawes (94)
- Lavinia Greenlaw (18)
- Linh Dinh (72)
- Lucia Perillo (13)
- Major Jackson (25)
- Mark Nowak (31)
- Martin Earl (17)
- Matvei Yankelevich (1)
- Melissa Friedling (9)
- Michael Marcinkowski (5)
- Milan Gagnon (1)
- Monica Youn (1)
- Nick Twemlow (8)
- Olena Kalytiak Davis (11)
- Patricia Smith (61)
- Poetry (1)
- Poetry Foundation (24)
- Rachel Zucker (25)
- Rebecca Wolff (20)
- Reginald Shepherd (43)
- Rigoberto González (71)
- Rodrigo Toscano (1)
- Stephen Burt (54)
- Tonya Foster (5)
- Travis Nichols (98)
- Valerie Johnson (1)
- Wanda Coleman (19)
OR SEARCH
CHICAGO EVENTS
Poetry Off the Shelf: Reginald Gibbons
Oidipous Tyrannos: Oedipus the King
Thu, December 3rd, 6:00 pm
National Hellenic Museum
801 West Adams Street, 4th Floor
Free admission
Copyright © 2009 Poetry Foundation Contact: mail@poetryfoundation.org Privacy Policy / Terms of Use
Poetryfoundation.org article RSS. Magazine RSS. Blog RSS.