Santa Fe Jazz & Poetry at Blue Chip Contemporary

Jazz and Spoken Word
at Blue Chip Contemporary
Monday, Dec. 7
7-9 p.m.

Blue Chip Contemporary
(formerly Chado Contemporary Art)
112 W. San Francisco Street
Santa Fe

Multi-flutist Windy Dankoff, guitarist Denny Cicak and poet Wayne Lee
of Santa Fe will be joined by percussionist Griffin Brady of Buffalo, NY
for an evening of jazz and poetry. The four will collaborate in various settings as they explore the relationship between improvisational music and the spoken word.

Windy Dankoff chose to learn the flute in 1971 because it would fit in his backpack.
He now uses flutes of all shapes and sizes to play improvisational music based on
classic jazz, Native American, Indian, and who-knows.

Denny Cicak can't remember what song he's supposed to be playing at any given point in time, so he often improvises while the other people in the group play or sing whatever they want. This creates a fresh and interesting sound that can go in unlimited directions. Occasionally, after the music starts, the entire room will empty in seconds, creating a uniquely spacious atmosphere and an all-pervasive silence when the songs are finished.

Wayne Lee has been a commercial fisherman, professional actor/dancer, anodizing technician, waiter, account executive, carpet cleaner, journalist, marketing consultant, public information officer, tutor and small business owner. He had to write poetry to figure out who he was!

Griffin Brady performs in a number of groups including On the Sly (http://www.onthesly.org/) and the Joseph Glarner Blues Band. He can also be found on the educational workshop circuit in schools all over Western New York with the Rural Percussion Project and all over the East Coast
acting as a supporting player to master drummer Bernard Woma.

Seating is limited. Call (505) 820-0562 for more information.

Thanks to Santa Fe poet Rachelle Woods for this info

mots homophoniques

Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames or Mother Goose goes franco(homo)phonic.

 

The actor and polyglot Luis d'Antin van Rooten turned classic nursery rhymes into 18th-century French poetry in Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames (hint: try saying it out aloud).

Audio clips, podcast and 18th woodcut illustrations at A French excursion for classic nursery rhymes

Hamilton Stone Review: Call for work

From Halvard Johnson, halvard@GMAIL.COM: Hamilton Stone Review is currently seeking work for its February 2010 issue. Please send contributions (along with short bios) in the form of .doc or .rtf attachments as well as (to be on the safe side) in the body of your message. And please be sure to include "HSR20 submission from [your name]" in your subject line. Send to: For fiction, send your contribution to Lynda Schor at lynda.schor@gmail.com. For nonfiction, send your contribution to Reamy Jansen at reamyjj@gmail.com For poetry, send your contribution to Roger Mitchell at hsrpoetryroger@gmail.com And, if you will, pass this notice along. Thanks. Cross posted from the Poetics List, a moderated poetry discussion and announcement list. Check guidelines & sub/unsub info: http://epc.buffalo.edu/poetics/welcome.html

from the other P&W

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·       Writers Recommend

In the latest installment of Writers Recommend, author Laura van den Berg writes, "When I'm stuck on how to do something, I'll reread a book that accomplishes what I am attempting -- The Quick and The Dead by Joy Williams is one I return to often -- and try to figure out how the author pulled it off."

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Poetry Int'l Web: Poem of the week, ROOFTOP

ROOFTOP

sitting alone on our rooftop we feel as if we are sitting huddled in
some crowded basement

sitting like that the world’s voice sounds like continuous firing as if
with eyes and ears shut we are letting some brown airplane pass
overhead

a voice that could be a rooftop and sitting on the rooftop of the
house under it listening to the world that sounds like being fired
upon we were slowly losing the basement from under us which we
saw being created sitting alone on the rooftop

have you ever counted how many airplanes pass over you in one
day?

Kiyoko Nagase

© 2001, Giriraj Kiradoo © Translation: 2009, Rahul Soni

Poem of the Week:

Giriraj Kiradoo page:

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Poetry Daily: Three Poems, by Archestratos

Poetry Daily: Three Poems, by Archestratos

Archestratus was also a foodie: 'Hedypatheia' (‘Pleasant Living’ or ‘Life of Luxury’) was one of the earliest cookbooks

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Call for Participation: Reimagining the Poet-Critic

March 12-13 in Humanities 210, UCSC:  "Reimagining the Poet-Critic: Practice, Pedagogy, Poetics" The UCSC Department of Literature invites you to participate in a discussions and investigations surrounding the role of the poet-scholar in this two-day conference at UCSC.  As a practitioner of both the arts of poetry or other "imaginative" writing and more theoretical or critical work, the poet-critic or poet-scholar inhabits a compelling space both inside and outside the university.   We are interested in the relationships between these two activities and the ways they come together to affect the reading and writing practices of the poet-critics themselves and their readership.  As many poet-critics are read within college classrooms or are themselves professors or teachers, we are interested in the relationship between such critical/creative writing practices and their pedagogical implications. This conference will provide an occasion for dialogue across genres, disciplines, readerships and pedagogical practices that will focus on the potential for creative and critical thinking both inside and outside the classroom that practices of the poet-critic can invigorate. The conference will consist of six panels across March 12th and 13th.  We will have three papers for each panel and only one panel in session at a time each day.  Each panel will feature an invited respondent and three papers. The conference will also include a pedagogy colloquium and short paper workshop as well as multiple poetry readings on and off campus. Panel topics include: Historicizing the Poet as Intellectual Poetics and Reading Methodologies Poetic Epistemologies and Alternative forms of Scholarship Writing and Thinking Between Genre Poetic Conceptualisms and Poetic Productions Poetry and Pedagogy Confirmed panel respondents so far: Craig Dworkin, Sina Queyras, Juliana Spahr and Vanessa Place. Instructions for paper submissions and pedagogy colloquium mini-papers: send 350 word abstracts to *both* organizers jbeard@ucsc.edu and aquaid@ucsc.edu by Dec 17th. Accepted papers will be notified by December 22nd and completed papers must be sent to conference organizers by Feb 15th. -- Jessica Beard UCSC Department of Literature Doctoral Candidate Associate-In Creative Writing

Call for Artwork/Poetry/Text Hybrid Experiments

Creative Responses : The work of Arakawa and Gins has been extremely influential for poets and artists. At the Second International Conference in 2008, a number of distinguished poets, performance artists, and media artists contributed to the program. We invite new creative responses that develop, investigate, explore and inflect aspects of Arakawa and Gins' written, drawn, built and unbuilt works. We can accept creative responses in the following forms: textual or graphic (which could include poetry in any form, visual works and/or image/text hybrids) net-based interactive works (flash, etc.) net-based video. In addition to the web exhibit, University of New Orleans Press has committed to publish a collection of the creative responses in book form. Proposal Website:  http://netpoetic.com/ag3art/call.html. AG3-Online will run from March 12-26, 2010. Submit proposals by December 1, 2009, with final projects due February 1, 2010. Proposals should be emailed to <ag3art@gmail.com> and should include: A 100-200 word description of the work, including how the work fits the theme. Please include links to relevant or past works. If the work is already complete, include either a url to the work or an attachment (open office, MS word, PDF, JPEG, PNG, GIF, etc.). Net based video should include a link to a preview version on youtube or some other location. Do not attach files larger than 5 mb to the proposal submission. A short bio. The Creative Responses section of AG3 is curated by Bill Lavender, Alan Prohm, and Jason Nelson. from Buffalo Poetics - a moderated list that I cannot recommend too highly.

The Saturday poem

I subscribe to a number of "poem by email" services [?] for my delectation and yours ~ plog fodder. There are many: some better than others. The topic might make an interest plost someday. The Guardian'd Poetry section is one of the best

 

 

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The Saturday poem

via Books: Poetry | guardian.co.uk by on 11/20/09

from The Shadow of Sirius, by WS Merwin

It appears now that there is only one

age and it knows

nothing of age as the flying birds know

nothing of the air they are flying through

or of the day that bears them up

through themselves

and I am a child before there are words

arms are holding me up in a shadow

voices murmur in a shadow

as I watch one patch of sunlight moving

across the green carpet

in a building

gone long ago and all the voices

silent and each word they said in that time

silent now

while I go on seeing that patch of sunlight

• Poetry

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Call for Submissions, various & sundry

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: THE CENTER FOR BOOK ARTS’ 2010 CHAPBOOK COMPETITION
Deadline: December 1, 2009
The winning manuscript will be chosen in April 2010 and will be awarded with the publication of a beautifully designed, letterpress-printed, limited-edition chapbook printed and bound by artists at the Center for Book Arts. The winning poet will also receive a cash award of $500, and a $500 honorarium for a reading, to be held at the Center in the fall of 2010. This year’s judges will be Terrance Hayes & Sharon Dolin.
Please submit a collection or sequence of original poems or a single long poem not to exceed five- hundred lines or twenty-four pages (no translations). The cover page should contain the manuscript title, author’s name, address, phone number, and email. The author’s name should not appear anywhere else. A second title page should be provided without the author’s name or other identification. Please provide a table of contents and a separate acknowledgements page containing prior magazine or anthology publication of individual poems. Manuscripts should be bound with a simple spring clip.
NOTE: Poems may have appeared in journals or anthologies but not as part of a book-length collection. Reading Fee: Please send a $25 check payable to The Center for Book Arts. Please Include: A #10 self-addressed stamped envelope for notification of the winner. Manuscripts will not be returned.
Send Entries to:
2010 CHAPBOOK COMPETITION The Center for Book Arts 28 West 27th St., 3rd Floor New York, NY 10001(212) 481-0295 or visit www.centerforbookarts.org. Sharon Dolin
sdolin@earthlink.net www.sharondolin.com
********************************************
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: THE ELLEN LaFORGE POETRY PRIZE
Deadline: December 31, 2009
Winner to receive $1000 and two copies of the Poetry Prize Annual
Open to all poets who have not yet published a book of poetry, including small press, chapbook or trade book. For more information please visit us online, or contact Kevin Bowen (joinercenter@umb.edu) at The William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences.
*****************************************
RED THREAD GOLD THREAD: THE POET’S VOICE
EDITED BY ALAN COHEN
Red Thread is a collection by 54 modern American poets sharing what hooked them on poetry and made them fall in love with the music of words. It is a heartfelt, sometimes funny, sometimes profound look into the poetic mind. Laced with poems and photographs, this book engages the reader on many levels. Be prepared to think, laugh, cry and be amazed.
To order, please go to: http://www.redthreadgoldthread.com/orders.htm
*******************************************
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: GRIST, THE JOURNAL FOR WRITERS, SEEKS TEN-MINUTE PLAYS FOR THEIR THIRD ISSUE
Deadline: December 15, 2009
Grist is a new national literary annual arising from support from the University of Tennessee. We feature world class fiction poetry and creative non-fiction along with interviews with renowned writers, and essays about craft.
Grist: The Journal for Writers
English Department
301 McClung Tower
Knoxville, TN 37996
http://www.charlottepence.blogspot.com/
********************************************
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: WILD APPLES’ THEMED JOURNAL
Animals, Creatures, Wild Beasts and Dwellings.
Wild Apples seeks submissions of visual arts, poetry, essays and creative nonfiction. We have a special interest in work that engages themes of nature, sustainability, spirituality, global interdependence, compassionate engagement, or sense of place.
Prose - Send us a letter with a brief description of your proposal. Articles run 600 - 2000 words. Prose queries may be submitted by email.
Poetry - Submit up to 5 poems by mail with a SASE with sufficient return postage. Include your name on each page. No email submissions.
Visual Art and Photographs - Submit on CD/DVD or email Low Resolution jpeg files no more than 72 dpi. Please send up to 8 images.
Please include a brief bio/artist statement with your name, email, and address.
Send email queries and art submissions to submissions@wildapples.org.
Email any questions to editors@wildapples.org. Wild Apples Editors
P.O. Box 171 Harvard, MA 01451

****************************************
ALIMENTUM announces its first Poetry Contest!
DEADLINE: December 1, 2009.
First prize: $500 and publication for a single poem. Two second prizes of publication.Final judge: Internationally renowned poet Dorianne Laux.
Submit up to 3 unpublished poems related to the subject of food or drink.
Entry fee: $15, includes a one-year subscription.
No simultaneous submissions.
No SASE.
Winners will be contacted and announced on our website March 1, 2010.
Snail mail only: Alimentum Poetry Contest, P.O. Box 210028, Nashville, TN 37221
********************************************
ELLEN MELOY FUND DESERT WRITERS AWARD
Deadline: December 31, 2009
A prize of $2,000 is given annually to enable a creative nonfiction writer to spend creative time in a desert environment. Submit up to 10 pages of creative nonfiction, a project description, and a biography via e-mail by December 31. There is no entry fee. Visit the Web site for complete guidelines.
www.ellenmeloy.com
fund@ellenmeloy.com
Ellen Meloy Fund, Desert Writers Award, P.O. Box 484, Bluff, UT 84512.
********************************************
MONEY FOR WOMEN/ BARBARA DEMING MEMORIAL FUND
Individual Artist Grants for Women
Deadline: December 31, 2009
Grants of up to $1,500 are given twice yearly to feminist writers who are citizens of the United States or Canada. The current round of grants will be awarded to fiction writers. Submit three copies of a short story or novel excerpt of up to 25 pages, a project description, a budget, and a resumé with a $20 entry fee during the month of December. Send an SASE for the required entry form and complete guidelines.
Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Individual Artist Grants for Women, P.O. Box 309, Wilton, NH 03086. Susan Pliner, Executive Director.
**************************************

A big thank-you to poet Elaine Schwartz for compiling and forwarding this list!!

Poems: The Untangled Vine Becomes

11 Homophonic Translations from the Japanese by Tony Leuzzi 1 Before the dreaded taking leave you wrapped in a white sheet dim the lights     The room becomes a cave of recollection     a woman's laughter     falling water 2 It is difficult to say the man who in the moon's pale glow approached with slow and careful steps is he who as dawn crowned the evergreens in gold darted from my bed 3 In this irrational season we knell for no one If rage unfurls a road too narrow for our feet each step we fail to take will leave us tolling for the birds and rocks 4                    Walking east I call to mind              another time when done                    with walking east I turned the other way and walked alone because it was the other way 5 Watching mist rise from distant hills I am reminded of a time when after stealing through the woods I hurried home and saw a strange man leaning on our gate laughing with my mother 6 we are as are you now know how you know the untangled vine becomes 7 When Eve was run from Eden she came upon and then pursued a deer which in its coyness lured her further and further into a forest of tombs 8 A man rapped at my gate for bread I handed him an urn of ash which he would later knead to bake a loaf of darkened bone 9 The bow bends the rake gathers The first born has been left to die beneath a sky so blue the birds there soar then sink like small black ships 10 There are no secrets in this river A minnow brushes by my knees On another shore a man has finished the last of his wine and whispered from the bottle before he sent it floating on the water 11 I am not the mirror's me but you knew that having made a he of me when I reach to touch his face you're already there ~ Tony Leuzzi, summer '09

Pushcart Prize Nominations

I am thoroughly delighted to announce that my friend Tony Leuzzi, grad school classmate & poet ~ and featured plog poet (March 2009 post, Tony's Trio of Fibonacci Poems), is among this year's Pushcart Prize nominees for "from east to west:  bicoastal verse."  And the nominees are: Black Crow ~Dave Morrison, fall '09 Letters and Ladders ~Lynne Shapiro, fall '09 She gone/She gone 2 ~Peter Cicariello, summer '09 The Untangled Vine Becomes: 11 Homophonic Translations from the Japanese ~ Tony Leuzzi, summer '09 Before the Iron Age~Michael Macklin, spring '09 Why I Have A Crush On You, UPS Man~Alice Persons, winter '08/'09 Read / revisit the the nominated poems at http://fromeasttowestbv.com/pushcart09.html Announcement from PJ Nights ~ cross-posted from The (Buffalo) Poetics List. Posting guidelines & sub/unsub info Ed Note: this plog (aka poetry blog) invites, welcomes, encourages, vigorously exhorts readers and especially P&W Picnickers to send notice of prizes, nominations, readings, publications and so forth

Nov 18 ~ Urban Verbs @ The Harwood

Come to The Harwood for an even of free words and music ~ Urban Verbs: Hip Hop Conservatory and Theater debuts 7pm Nov. 18th, 2009 @ The Harwood Arts Center (1114 7th Street NW, ABQ) Words by Hakim Bellamy & Carlos Contreras. Music by Diles (Visceral View Entertainment) This 90 minute work-in-progress (full production to arrive Spring 2010) excursion travels the border between poetry and music, namely Spoken Word and Hip Hop. Two prolific spoken word performance artists, one producer/DJ and a myriad of topics ranging from the individual identity to artistic insurgency.

Int'l Poem of the week: The electric lights....

The electric lights, it may well be that the electric lights
will prevent the autumn fall
and the bird call at the window,
grey as an overcoat.

The jaw squeezes a verb
and no bird appears,
nothing happens: it’s the autumn
of the falling leaves, that’s all –
no verb can thus fall.

Only the bent,
welded, muffled, cold sound
of a tolling bell,

it may well be that the electric lights
and the stone blocks for example
may well prevent
the irregularity of pavements or the crushing
of hours against each other

it may well be that the shells
of the umbrellas that blur the city
may well draw your name
like in a musical

it may well be that the shops will stay
and the stone slabs will go
and it may well not be
that the rain will insist
in such an iniquitous way.

© 2005, Daniel Jonas © Translation: 2009, Ana Hudson

Poem of the Week ~ Daniel Jonas' page:

GeoPoemCaching

from Stephen Vincent, POETICS LISTSERV, BUFFALO.EDU "Geocaching, an online game in which players use global positioning devices to track down hidden containers at coordinates posted on a Web site, is soaring in popularity" Has anybody or group been doing with poems?  I think it would be an interesting challenge/adventure to "cache" poems in tins or boxes - either new or classic ones -  in environments that relate to the poem's contents. Say, different  Wordsworth poems at various, appropriate GPS sites through the Lake District. Frank O'Hara poems on x GPS Manhattan sites. A particular parking plot for Spicer's poem in relationship to  Robinson Jeffers.  New poems written on and in response to particular sites. (David Chirot writes a poem at x GPS location and Milwaukee poets go on the search!)   Found texts are then scanned, and the sites are photographed with a focus on the facts relate to the poem and then transmitted back to the host site (Class, online mag or what/where ever.).  I do wonder if anybody is doing this already???? Stephen Vincent http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ As active as ever, by the way!

Poem of the week: Stone Poems by Douglas Skrief

Canadian poet Douglas Skrief may not be new to you but he is to me. What a treat discovering new poems and the poets who write them. Bio from the Koochiching Economic Development Authority, "Douglas Skrief - An International Falls Renaissance Man" at http://www.businessupnorth.com/nl_0307_4.shtml

And another twitter link to follow poetry online. New Poetry Books at http://twitter.com/poetry_book. If I've neglected covering twitter as a poetry source (including but not limited to publishing original haikus), I hope to remedy that omission in due time.

 

 

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Poem of the week: Stone Poems by Douglas Skrief

via Culture | guardian.co.uk by Carol Rumens on 11/16/09

Skrief's nature poems sidestep the 'egotistical sublime' by allowing nature to speak

Some poems enrol us as respectful admirers: others walk straight in through an open door in our minds and make themselves at home, admired no less, but also intimate friends. I felt this about Douglas Skrief's new book-length sequence, Stone Poems, and I have chosen a handful of separate poems from different sections to give you a glimpse of its pleasures.

One way in which contemporary nature poets subvert the Wordsworthian "egotistical sublime" is by giving the natural world its own ego and voice. Ted Hughes and Alice Oswald employ this technique: the poet's thoughts "too deep for tears" are transferred to "the meanest flower" itself. Such dramatisation allows the writer unostentatiously to be present, while accessing unconventional or more powerful forms of utterance.

The ancient boulder which talks to the poet in Stone Poems inhabits the south shore of Rainy Lake, in the US/Canadian border region of the Upper Midwest. "Court records," Skrief writes, "say that for over half a century my family has owned the Northern Minnesota bedrock on which the stone sits. The records do not mention the stone." Skrief has rectified this: the stone has become its own vivid historian, and the poet owns it in the sense that he has fully imagined it.

Describing his educational background, Skrief lists Harvard and Oxford and "the sweat lodges of the Ojibway". So it seems he may owe his vision not only to the Romantic poets but to the animistic beliefs of this Native American people. His ease with a natural world infused with consciousness permeates all his observations.

Skrief's imagination is nonetheless soundly scientific: all the elements in his universe cohere as a vast family-unit, whether they are gases, glaciers, coyote or human beings. Time often seems compressed, as if, as some physicists believe, events are simultaneous. The inevitability of evolution and change also comes across strongly in the later poems. When the boulder describes how its lichens are learning to break down "the latest particulates" emitted by nearby industrial workings, we are reminded of nature's prodigious adaptability. Whatever its terrors, progress is seen as inevitable, already implicit when the lichens "first saw a two-leggèd skip a flat stone".

There are five sections in the sequence: Origins, Visitors, Awakenings, Words to the Word-Giver and Change. The boulder begins by recalling its originary "time amid stars" and "the crush/ before upheavals of deep horizons". It remembers how "A she-mastodon's single tusk dislodged iced lichens" and then evokes its human visitors: the priestess and the shaman, the fur-traders and "frost-bit men culling pine". In sections 3 and 4, the poet's personal relationship with the boulder is considered, and its own "character" emerges as it talks with the poet more intimately, and absorbs and reflects a more complex consciousness. The tone is authoritative, calm, amused, occasionally cranky or challenging, but un-judgmental. This stone values language, and sometimes addresses the human "Tongue of Creation" in a prayer-like chant. Whether rocks or pebbles, canticles, stories or haiku-like snapshots, the poems combine melody and harmony, clean outline and dense texture.

Together they form the portrait of a man and a boulder; they are also the celebration and song of a particular region, its wildlife, its history, its native and immigrant cultures. But these Stone Poems are good travellers: they talk to any reader willingly, as if they shared our own profoundest memories, too.

vii

For a moon, round an ash-wood fire,
seven warriors counselled, content
this point was theirs. One dragged his leg.
Another, with oak-bark skin, picked at scars
on his left shin. A boy, with the voice
of a brook, assented to every plan.
They laughed. They called him
The-Sapling-No-Wind-Can-Tame.
On their last day, they re-lashed spears,
ochred faces and launched their craft.
That evening a white-tailed coyote sniffed,
then lifted his leg – his scent a mix
of juniper berries and dead mice.
(from Visitors)

xvi

Words can't reattach a weasel paw left in a trap
or replant spruce seedlings uprooted when stags rut.
Moose shed their racks, and mice feast.
If I cracked in half, part of you would die –
your words careening like fireflies in a jar.
Be a grizzly. Swat open the anthill.
Release your needles to the squalls.
Let storm-washed gravel fret your banks
before frost sets the clay.
(from Words to the Word-Giver)

xiii

A shot. An elk avalanched, antlers
balanced even as it collapsed.
I'll be here in the morning.
It may not look like courage.
(from Awakenings)

ii

They flamed unwavering, long into the night.
Not stars washed up on the far beach.
Not lightning bolts persisting on singed retinas.
Not campfires diminishing to coals
as old storytellers lost momentum. No.
Streetlights. Houselights. Car lights. Approaching
till we could see up close how brashly they vied
with the splendid humility of the auroras.
(from Change)

x

Ants build mounds with my castoffs.
Bears splinter wild plum bows.
Frost heaves fox holes as easily
as fire sears dry yarrow. Their dreams –
all memory. You pile stones, yank up
the reed bed, mow the poplar volunteers.
Promise if you ever choose to move me,
Word-Giver, you'll start with a prayer.
(from Change)

Thanks are due to the author and to Starhaven for permission to reprint these poems.

• Poetry

Carol Rumens

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Cowboy Poetry Newsletter

Find the current newslettter and details about the information mentioned in this newsletter--with links and more--on the newsletter page at CowboyPoetry.com: http://www.cowboypoetry.com/news.htm#enews Friends of CowboyPoetry.com, We hope you'll come by the BAR-D and view all of the latest news and features. There's a new Art Spur featuring a Tim Cox painting, Christmas at the BAR-D is getting underway and submissions are open, you can get involved in next year's 9th annual Cowboy Poetry Week, there's a new (fifth) edition of "The BAR-D Roundup" coming...and there are continual postings of news and features about classic and contemporary cowboy poetry, Western music,  Western radio, events, and more. You can view vintage and modern photos in "Picture the West"; read regular columns, including Jeri Dobrowski's "Cowboy Jam Session" and "Rick Huff's Best of the West Reviews"; check out the events calendar for a gathering near you; learn about new books and CDs; read about people, organizations, museums, and the latest in the news of our wide community; and much more. Find the latest news here: http://www.cowboypoetry.com/sincenews.htm#Curren

The Saturday poem by John Glenday

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The Saturday poem by John Glenday via Books: Poetry | guardian.co.uk, 11/13/09

(the can opener was invented
forty-eight years after the tin can)
When you asked me for a love poem,
(another love poem) my thoughts
were immediately drawn to the early days
of the food canning industry –
all those strangely familiar trade-names from childhood:
Del Monte, Green Giant, Fray Bentos, Heinz.
I thought of Franklin and his poisoned men
drifting quietly northwest by north
towards the scooped shale of their graves
and I thought of the first tin of cling peaches
glowing on a dusty pantry shelf
like yet-to-be-discovered radium –
the very first tin of cling peaches
in the world, and for half a century
my fingers reaching out to it.

• Poetry
• Original writing

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 

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Author-friends, We Have A Winners

The Rejectionist, snark queen & book bloggng role-model, presents winners of rejection letter writing competition

 

 

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Author-friends, We Have A Winners

via The Rejectionist by The Rejectionist on 11/9/09

Oh good lord almighty, Author-friends, we knew you were clever and talented BUT REALLY THIS IS TOO MUCH, and, thanks to you, we have spent our ENTIRE WEEKEND IN AN AGONY OF INDECISION. But it was a deliciously happy agony, all the same. We laughed so hard we cried, ladies and gentlemen. We are so proud of you. For reals. EVERY ONE OF YOU deserves a pat on the back and a nice pastry (except for maybe one or two persons who mistook "incorporates foxy assistants" for "please pen a totally delusional and fairly creepy fantasy about the office help," AHEM).

We were expecting awesome, but we were not expecting quite so much awesome, and thus have revised our contest slightly by incorporating a small quantity of Additional Prizewinning Categories, as is our Prerogative. Because YOU have inspired US to be a little more amazing, ALL of the following longlist of persons may feel free to email us at rejectionistandyourmom [at] gmail.com with your mailing address and, as promised, either your query letter or the first five pages of your manuscript, and we will presently a. mail you a treatlike item and b. provide you with insightful critique of said query letter/pages BECAUSE THAT IS THE SORT OF GENEROUS, SELFLESS PERSON WE ARE.

And now! THE WINNERS!

HONORABLE MENTIONS; Or, The Longlist of True and Total Amazement

Best Musical Number: Jess Haines

Best Zombie/Best Insinuation That Reading Young Adult Literature Is More Fun Than Our Actual Job, Which is Definitely True: Rachel Menard

Best Usage of the Acrostic From Someone Who Probably Does Not Need Our Help With a Query Letter: Janet Reid

Most Pleasing Haiku: Hiero

Most Delightfully Succinct and Deliciously Subtle: scott g.f.bailey

Most Severely Mindblowing Misappropriation of Canonical Text To Create A Narrative That Cannot Exactly Be Described As a Form Rejection But Is So Amazing We Had To Make Up A Special Category For It: A TIE between Ink ("OMFG MY HEAD JUST MELTED," says Chérie L'Ecrivain) and Ulysses ("ULYSSES WINS, although he seems to be laboring under the misapprehension that you have cleavage," says Chérie L'Ecrivain)

AND NOW... DRUMROLL PLEASE!!!

The Right Honorable Compositor of THE MOST AMAZING Form Rejection in the History of the Universe is...

BRIAN BUCKLEY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dear Sir or Madam:

Please don't be offended. Your query's horrendous.
We can't understand why you'd bother to send us
a missive so deeply in need of an edit
we wanted to vomit as soon as we read it.
Its hook was insipid, its grammar revolting,
its font microscopic, its manner insulting,
its lies unconvincing, its structure confusing,
its efforts at comedy less than amusing.
We think that on average the writing is better
in comments on YouTube than inside your letter.
"No matter," we said to ourselves after retching,
"The novel itself may be perfectly fetching."
On reading your pages we promptly were greeted
with something a wallaby might have excreted:
a plot so moronic, a premise so weary,
and characters so unrelentingly dreary,
descriptions so lifeless, a setting so boring
that only our nausea kept us from snoring.
In short: if your book was a vaccine for cancer,
its margins inscribed with Life's Ultimate Answer,
and all other novels on Earth were rejected,
we're still pretty sure we would not have selected
this terrible, awful, impossibly hated,
unspeakably horrible thing you've created.
But thanks for submitting! We hope you'll consider
alternative ways to get published (like Twitter)!

DEAR GOD, sir, YOU HAVE AMAZED US.

Thank you so much, Author-friends, for making our week. We adore you. ONWARD!

 

 

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Résumé writing for the job hunting poet

From Savage Chickens

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Résumé More interviews.

 

WORD!

from the Weekly Alibi

Films by and about writers starts today at Guild. See poets move from page and stage to the silver screen in WORD! ~ billed by Poets & Songwriters Movie Program as "films by and about writers"

WORD! features full-length films on Carl Sandburg, Amiri Baraka, Robert Creeley and more. And while no tribute to spoken word would be complete without a bit about Jack Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg (check), the program's short films also look at local poets such as Richard Vargas, Mary Oishi and Levi Romero.

See WORD! Monday, Nov. 9, through Wednesday, Nov. 11, at Guild Cinema (3405 Central NE). To check out a list of the movies, go to

Women Conspicuous by Absence on Publisher's Weekly 2009 List

Why Weren't Any Women Invited To Publishers Weekly's Weenie Roast? Publishers Weekly recently announced their Best Books Of 2009 list. Of their top ten, chosen by editorial staff, no books written by women were included. Quoted in The Huffington Post, PW confidently admitted that they're "not the most politically correct" choices. This statement comes in a year in which new books appeared by writers such as Lorrie Moore, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, Rita Dove, Heather McHugh and Alicia Ostriker. "The absence made me nearly speechless." said writer Cate Marvin, cofounder of the newly launched national literary organization WILLA (Women In Letters And Literary Arts), which, since August, has attracted close to 5400 members on their Facebook web page, including many major and emerging women writers. "It continues to surprise me that literary editors are so comfortable with their bias toward male writing, despite the great and obvious contributions that women authors make to our contemporary literary culture." WILLA's other cofounder, Erin Belieu, Director Of The Creative Writing Program at Florida State University, asked, "So is the flipside here that including women authors on the list would just have been an empty, politically correct gesture? When PW's editors tell us they're not worried about 'political correctness,' that's code for  'your concerns as a feminist aren't legitimate.' They know they're being blatantly sexist, but it looks like they feel good about that. I, on the other hand, have heard from a whole lot of people—writers and readers--who don't feel good about it at all." PW also did a Top 100 list and, of the authors included, only 29 were women. The WILLA Advisory Board is in the process of putting together a list titled "Great Books Published By Women In 2009." This will be posted to the organization's Facebook page and website. A WILLA Wiki has also been started for people to share their nominations for Great Books By Women in 2009. Press release to follow. WILLA was founded to bring increased attention to women's literary accomplishments and to question the American literary establishment's historical slow-footedness in recognizing and rewarding women writer's achievements. WILLA is about to launch their website and is in the process of planning their first national conference to be held next year. (Note: until recently, WILLA went under the acronym WILA, with one "L." If you're interested in the organization, please Google WILA with one "L" to see background on how this group was originally formed.) For more information contact: Erin Belieu ebelieu@fsu.edu (850) 559-4030 Cate Marvin catemarvin@gmail.com (718) 749-8613