1136 posts tagged with poetry.
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Odd Jobs
“There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money either,” Robert Graves famously said. While there have certainly been numerous poets throughout history who have been “professional poets” (poets supported by patrons or sponsors in classical times or poets whose main income comes from their books, readings, etc., in more contemporary times), still larger is the number of poets who had surprising or unorthodox occupations outside of their literary careers...
🆆🅴🅻🅲🅾🅼🅴...🆃🅾...🆃🅷🅴 🅼🅰🅲🅷🅸🅽🅴
"Machinery will tend to lose its sensational glamour and appear in its true subsidiary order in human life as use and continual poetical allusion subdue its novelty. For, contrary to general prejudice, the wonderment experienced in watching nose dives is of less immediate creative promise to poetry than the familiar gesture of a motorist in the modest act of shifting gears."
'Hart Crane and the Machine Age'. 1933.
'Notes Torwards A Supreme Fiction'
"In the life of a poet, of course, there is no Election Day to distinguish the visionaries from the also-rans. So Stevens’s response, when it came, trickled down in dribs and drabs. Scholars argue over this: some see him as returning, defensively, to conservatism, particularly since in a 1940 letter he declared that “Communism is just the new romanticism,” and referred to “my rightism.”"
'What Mitt Romney Might Learn From Wallace Stevens' [archive link]
A tiny presence that changed the nature of the days
Even in a labyrinth with terrifying tall walls, where the ocean is no longer visible, a minotaur still needs a hummingbird, essential company in the endless journey through dead-ends, restarts, and new beginnings – as well as a reminder of the beauty of the world, the power of the sun, the rain, love, and life, all packed inside the body of a creature that weighs less than an ounce. A sign that within the smallest detail, the whole world is present, and just as the gravity and magnificence of life is present in the mountains, oceans, stars, and everything larger than life, it is also brilliantly present in its smallest bird. from Hummingbirds Are Wondrous by Zito Madu [Plough]
We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read
This is our story, simplified: Life. Loss. Transformation. Love. Death. Iteration. The first time you get our message, you only will only find one thread. Short fiction by Caroline M Yoachim.
Quoth the Pingu:
simultaneously beloved and overlooked
Even as stars among her contemporaries have faded into relative obscurity, Niedecker's poetry pitched resolutely between — between avant-garde experimentalism and ethnopoetics, between the gnomic and the manifest — has sustained, across the decades, stalwart devotion. Her position within the canon of twentieth-century American modernism may seem to be in flux, shifting between various contexts — Objectivism and ecopoetics, white settler colonialism, geological and geopolitical history, the artistic legacies of the New Deal and the Popular Front, midcentury feminism, Thoreauvian hermeticism transplanted to the Midwest. Her work can feel both elusive and profusive, her poetic evolution traced across fugitive volumes produced by tiny presses and now appearing in Selecteds and Collecteds rife with textual variations. In our attempts to locate Lorine Niedecker, we do not seek to pin her down but rather to let loose the frustrating delights and joyful contradictions of her art. from Locating Lorine Niedecker by Brandon Menke and Sarah Dimick [more inside]
Hardly the attitude of the next poet laureate
Helen Vendler, 1933 - 2024
Helen Vendler, perhaps the preeminent contemporary American poetry critic, has passed away at 90. [more inside]
We cherished the girls, grog and laughter
The Poetry of Actor William Smith. You may be familiar with William Smith as a "that guy" from hundreds and hundreds of movie performances, usually the heavy, such as bare-knuckle brawler Jack Wilson in 1980's Any Which Way You Can. But his poetic contributions have gone largely unnoticed, and courtesy of his still-up website -- Williams passed in 2021 -- you can read poems like The Reaper or thrill to these poems read in Williams' own roadworn voice.
Negative Space - animation
Negative Space - "a short film by Ru Kuwahata and Max Porter, was nominated for a 2018 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film." [more inside]
Lyn Hejinian, 1941-2024
Excerpts from Lyn Hejinian's My Life: "A name trimmed with colored ribbons"; "Reason looks for two, then arranges it from there"; "As for we who 'love to be astonished'"; "Yet we insist that life is full of happy chance"; "One begins as a student but becomes a friend of clouds." Lisa Samuels, "Eight justifications for canonizing Lyn Hejinian's My Life." "The Rejection of Closure," "Continuing Against Closure," and other work online. Obits: NYT (ungated / archived), Jacket2, and The Nation. Remembrances: Berkeley English, LARB, and The Paris Review. Colin Vanderburg (n+1, Apr. 5), "Tree, Chair, Cone, Dog, Bishop, Piano, Vineyard, Door, or Penny: On Lyn Hejinian": "There is no better way to end, or to begin, or to continue. The facts are finished, but the life is still open."
"No meaning, no magic, just the work of it: the work of art"
Adam Moss (Vulture, 04/04/2024), "How'd You Make That? Three masterpieces from glimmer through struggle to breakthrough": "So I began talking to creators ... here are three of those conversations with the artists Cheryl Pope and Kara Walker and the poet Louise Glück." Of related interest: Dungeons & Dragons (early draft; see the upcoming book). A first draft of Finnegans Wake. The first page of 1984. Story Synopsis and Rough Draft [PDF] for Star Wars. The Creative Process: A Symposium. For checkout, The Making of The Pré. Plus "Work in Progress: Notes, Drafts, Revision, Publication," "... Check Out These Drafts From Famous Authors," "Surprising secrets of writers' first book drafts," and "First drafts of famous novels."
Sunday Scaries
I Spy 🗿
moai.games is a list of 954 examples (and counting) of moai seen in video games, compiled by MeFi's Own game designer gingerbeardman. Why? "Moai are cool. And video games are cool. Oh, and lists are cool too." Read the NintendoLife interview for background on the project, get educated on the history of the grand sculptures (and real-life efforts to preserve them), or if you crave mo' moai, check out MoaiCulture.com's "Popular Culture" page for a comprehensive illustrated guide to 500+ moai in television, film, animation, comic books, literature, poetry, music, board games, magazines, advertising, and more. [more inside]
That's a beautiful speech, but nobody's listening. Let's go.
"As of 2024, UbuWeb is no longer active. The archive is preserved for perpetuity, in is entirety."
Ubuweb, founded by poet Kenneth Goldsmith in 1996, was the best repository of avant-garde material in the Internet. Over the decades it accumulated an unparalleled collection of poetry, mp3's and video. [more inside]
Ubuweb, founded by poet Kenneth Goldsmith in 1996, was the best repository of avant-garde material in the Internet. Over the decades it accumulated an unparalleled collection of poetry, mp3's and video. [more inside]
How did poetry manage to fall down the stairs of relevance?
Fast-forwarding to today, it seems that poetry no longer garners the attention that it used to. In the whirlwind of today’s society, poetry has found itself fighting for attention against newer art forms such as film and music. Movies and music have seamlessly captured the raw emotions and societal complexities that once danced within the lines of poems and they have done so in a manner that is outwardly more entertaining and approachable. All the while, poetry has taken a dramatic shift and evolved into an art form that is highly confessional and often accompanied by illustrations and other visuals. It is certainly possible that this increasingly personal style of poetry has not appealed to all enthusiasts of this genre and this may attribute to a decline in readership. from Should Modern Newspapers Publish Poetry? [The Artifice]
'Ut Sementem Feceris, Ita Metes'
Overlooked No More: Voltairine de Cleyre, America’s ‘Greatest Woman Anarchist’ (NYT-archive link) de Cleyre was a poet of merit as told by Elizabeth King's essay on her poetry, 'Pearl of Anarchy. Voltairine de Cleyre’s radical poetry is more timely than ever.' The anarchist library has a collection of her poetry on-line
"The earliest known author was married to the moon"
Wreckage of Ellipses by Anna Della Subin is a long essay on the Sumerian-language poet Enheduana, the world's oldest named author, and a review of Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World's First Author, a new translation by Sophus Helle. He was a guest on the podcast Poetry Off the Shelf, where he talked about Enheduana with Helena de Groot, and read some of his translations. A website accompanying the book provides background information and scholarly translations of Enheduana: Temple Hymns, a separate Hymn to Inana, and The Exaltation of Inana. The last poem was the jumping off point for the essay Poet of Impermanence, about what Enheduana can mean to modern readers. And here is the Exaltation of Inana in his literary translation.
Nothings which are made Great and dignified by an ardent pursuit
Keats had no particular regard for consistency, and what he says in his letters about poetry and the imagination constitutes no systematic defence. Poetry was essential to his existence; for others, he knew, its value might be less. Nevertheless, even in playful musings on the unreal and the unvalued he is thinking about the power of address, of recognition, to bring into being what might not otherwise exist. from Hooted from the Stage [LRB; ungated]
As if words could make a difference
What a concatenation of memories, then, strung itself together when I read Ken’s name in Raritan! The individual links in the chain are surprisingly vivid, but put them together and the result is as jumbled as a dream. As one gets older, dreams and memories become increasingly indistinguishable anyway. The occasions mashed together or juxtaposed; the different roles I was playing; the varied fields of knowledge, each with its distinct vocabulary and bibliography, each impinging on my life from a different direction, each with its own kind of urgency: had this congeries been in abeyance for the decade that had elapsed from 2006 to 2016? from The Trembling Web and the Storage Facility by Rachel Hadas
"nothing beside remains"
2023
Thomas Lynch' poem 'Par Rum Pum Pum Pum. 'I Don’t Know . . . But I Live in Hope': A Conversation with Poet, Undertaker, Essayist Thomas Lynch. PBS 'Frontline' did a great job on 'The Undertaking' (full documentary, slyt.) 'Refusing at Fifty-Two to Write Sonnets'.
So the Shortest Day came and the year died
An interview with Susan Cooper about, among other things, her poem "The Shortest Day" [SLNPR] [more inside]
"I'm not going to let anybody see you"
We are immersed in a world of wetness
Gathering Paradise:
“to know the tremor of your flesh within my own”
On November 15, 1966, five police officers entered the Psychedelic Shop, in San Francisco, and purchased a thin volume of poetry, “The Love Book,” for a dollar. This sequence of erotic poems celebrating a woman’s sexual pleasure was by the Beat poet Lenore Kandel. As soon as the money exchanged hands, the deputy arrested the clerk for selling obscene material.–The Forgotten Poet at the Center of San Francisco’s Longest Obscenity Trial by Joy Lanzendorfer. A poem, and another, and some poems and prose. Here are videos of Kandel reading a poem and being interviewed.
LIFE is MAGIC
"What is magic for me is ... it's so hard to say ... but it's the feeling that my own heartbeat, my own breathing, is as a response to and in parallel with a heartbeat and a breath that is already out there."
Poet Harry Owen on finding magic in the natural world, and in the seasons of our lives. (SLYT)
"Knowing what is missing is an important first step."
Zachary Turpin (Commonplace, 10/2023), "Have You Seen Me?: Missing Works of Nineteenth-Century American Literature": "To students new to the study of nineteenth-century American literature, it may seem that the field has been so thoroughly studied and catalogued that there can be very little left to discover about it. This could hardly be further from the truth." Partially inspired by Johanna Ortner (2015), "Lost No More: Recovering Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's Forest Leaves": "Having done my secondary source reading on her, I knew that Forest Leaves was deemed lost. Call it my naiveté as a young graduate student, but I figured I might as well type in the title in the society's catalogue."
Poet Louise Glück, in memoriam
Poet Louise Glück has died (NYT, gift link). Among many other accolades, she was the winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize for literature, for her "unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal." Previously. [more inside]
provoking, funny and more than a little bit freaky
"A literary journal? Well I guess so..." Going Down Swinging is one of Australia’s longest-running and most respected literary journals: publishing digital as well as print and audio anthologies since 1979. For all of their past editions in one place and freely accessible to readers, visit their digital archives. [more inside]
He stumbles on like a rumour of war..."
'The War Horse', by Eavan Boland.
"When studying Boland’s poetry, the students rightfully began to discuss their own struggles—and, remembering Yeats’s “I, being poor, have only my dreams”—were better able to resist the oppressive forces in their lives, to understand the strength needed to overcome provincial societal norms, to rally against antiquated ideas and histories that demand women conduct themselves in ways antithetical to a free-thinking person." from, “Shadows in the Story”: An Interview with Eavan Boland. [more inside]
Light verse, free to read
Light is an online poetry magazine that's been going since 1992. If you often think of poems as stodgy and hard to understand, you might want to give the sparkling light verse produced by their stable of poets a chance -- archives include work by Wendy Cope, frequent higgledy-piggledy (double dactyl) appearances, an "impossible rhymes" compilation including Tom Lehrer, Ogden Nash, and Roy Blount, Jr., and more. Poems reacting to current events, large and small, appear in the magazine's long-running Poems of the Week feature. [more inside]
"I am not a Caesar. I have simply ordered a box of maniacs."
Sylvia Plath and the Bees....in February 1963, Sylvia Plath wrote a cluster of extraordinary poems about Bees. She had taken up beekeeping that June and wrote excitedly to her mother in America to describe the events of attending a local beekeepers’ meeting in the Devon village of North Tawton", Sylvia Plath and the Bee Poems
The / picturesque / decay / remains / an idea / of the / beautiful
blackout.tilde.town is "a tool for making blackout poetry using nine million chunks of text extracted from Project Gutenberg." [more inside]
"The memory, news story you told me a week ago..."
Poet, essayist, activist Minnie Bruce Pratt has died. "Her books and poems have received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the American Library Association, the Poetry Society of America, Lambda Literary and the Publishing Triangle."
"All the Women Caught in Flaring Light".
What is God in ethly guise? One or mampus giant eyes?
PJ Harvey comes to each album more or less a different person, playing different instruments, pondering different subjects in her elliptical lyrics. If you thrilled to the strident, triumphant To Bring You My Love, you might not be prepared for the explosive joy of Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. If you loved that one, you’d still have to make an adjustment for the politically barbed Let England Shake or the ghostly White Chalk. Harvey’s tenth album, I Inside the Old Year Dying, is much the same in that it is not the same as any of the artist’s previous work. [more inside]
things, sensations, experiences, places, memories
A list of good things. "...dirt paths and the way dirt lies at the base of tree roots, the internet, babies laughing uncontrollably, the sound of sprinklers, mohair sweaters..." By Holly K. Hein.
"We watched him/swallowed by the crowd"
In 1936, Edwin Denby co- wrote: "Horse Eats Hat" with one Orson Welles, age 21. Denby was a dance critic and poet. 'Denby and Balanchine: A Dance Critic’s Work'. 'On an Edwin Denby NYC Traffic Sonnet' is a wonderful look at one of his poems. The Folks at Pennsound has a collection of spoken material. In 2016, the NYPL staff contributed, 'Edwin Denby: Memory, History and Documentation'.
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor / Me with You / The Splendid and the Vile
Annette Dauphin Simon's book spine poetry is now a book with its own spine. Definition and examples from Marquette Law School staff.
Second place winner (ages 5-8 bracket) of the Saskatchewan Library Association's 2018 book spine poetry contest.
Fortunately the milk
Speechless
Cold as ice
Mmm, cookies!
And previously on MeFi. [more inside]
Second place winner (ages 5-8 bracket) of the Saskatchewan Library Association's 2018 book spine poetry contest.
Fortunately the milk
Speechless
Cold as ice
Mmm, cookies!
And previously on MeFi. [more inside]
I can't talk about my work without talking about someone else's work.
Happy Pride Month! I was surprised to learn that Kara Jackson is not only a raw, inventive young musician [Kara Jackson Uses Rage, Channels Brandy, Ponders The Human Predicament On Astonishing New LP, Country Queer], but she was a 2019 National Youth Poet Laureate. The Poetry Vlog interviewed her in 2019 about where she was then. [31m] She talked to Kyle Meredith recently about where she is now. [23m] Her recently released album, Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love? [YT playlist] is an emotional dreamscape full of searching.
“Don’t speak of how women can’t become heroes”
Qiu Jin was a Chinese feminist revolutionary [archive link] beheaded by agents of the Qing empire in 1907, becoming a martyred hero to her cause. She was also a poet, and Canadian translator (and SF writer) Yilin Wang has been publishing new translations of her poetry in various venues. For more about her approach, you can read her essay about translating. These new translations have been widely appreciated, including by the British Museum, who stole them and published without attribution or compensation.
"Still the walls do not fall, I do not know why;"
H.D.(Hilda Doolittle) epic poem, 'The Walls Do No Fall'. H.D. Reads "Helen in Egypt" (slyt). "HERmione is a lyrical act of sense-making, the reverse of a time capsule—gazing backwards, at a younger self now rendered a stranger in the wistful eye of hindsight." from: 'Dream of a Past. 'Going Through Hell With H.D.’s ‘Eurydice’
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'Fortress of the Sky' (slyt) A short documentary on the B-17 Bomber. 'The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner'. 'The life of a ball turret gunner.'
Islam’s forgotten bohemians
"I am love’s infidel; the Muslims’ creed is no use to me.
My veins are taut like wire; I’ve no need of the Hindus’ holy belt.
So go away from my sick bed you foolish physician:
For the lovesick, the only cure is a glimpse of the beloved.
"That is why fundamentalists, whether the Pakistani Taliban, the Saudi government or ISIS, have destroyed so many Sufi shrines and places of pilgrimage. The poetry sung at those places celebrates and advances an Islam that rejects political power, an Islam incompatible with the ambitions of religious fundamentalism." [more inside]
My veins are taut like wire; I’ve no need of the Hindus’ holy belt.
So go away from my sick bed you foolish physician:
For the lovesick, the only cure is a glimpse of the beloved.
"That is why fundamentalists, whether the Pakistani Taliban, the Saudi government or ISIS, have destroyed so many Sufi shrines and places of pilgrimage. The poetry sung at those places celebrates and advances an Islam that rejects political power, an Islam incompatible with the ambitions of religious fundamentalism." [more inside]
and if we looked out the window it would be all California
always a liar, always a thief and never caught
"that survival apparatus"
Write on a piece of paper where something is already printed
Bernadette Mayer's Writing Prompts. Hat tip: Bernadette Mayer will give you ideas. Recommended not just for writers. [more inside]