May our collection of Poems for Election Day—classic American poems by John Greenleaf Whittier, Walt Whitman, Vachel Lindsay and William Carlos Williams, plus two contemporary contributions from Jim Finnegan and Guy Kettelhack—inspire those of you who are eligible to get out and vote on Tuesday!
CHICAGO — The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is pleased to announce an update to its award-winning POETRY iPhone app. The update has three main components, the first—and most exciting—of which is the addition of nearly 400 contemporary poems. Over one hundred of these poems come from the pages of Poetry magazine.
Called "essential" by New York Times reviewer Bob Tedeschi, the free POETRY iPhone app now offers more than 1,700 poems. With work by David Bottoms, Martín Espada, Tess Gallagher, Cathy Park Hong, Edwin Torres, Natasha Trethewey, Rachel Wetzsteon, and more just added, poetry fans can now experience even more contemporary poetry.
Better yet, this addition to the POETRY app archive will be far from the last. Poetry fans will discover new favorites every time they use the app as regular updates of new poets and poems are added several times over the next year.
There's also a new way to search the consistently expanding archive. The new "Browse by Poet" feature allows users to seek out favorite poets and learn which of their poems are available on the app. The app's original search functions remain: search by keyword, subject or title by choosing the "Find Poetry" interface, or select the "Discover Poetry" interface to reveal poems delivered through a virtual slot machine.
In addition, the improved POETRY app now ensures that results from the "Discover Poetry" interface are always fresh. Presented in a randomized order, findings from commonly searched category pairings—"Love" and "Frustration," for instance—always look different.
"The updated POETRY app builds on the best parts of the original while introducing exciting new features, such as additional poems and further ways to discover poetry and poets," said Catherine Halley, editor of poetryfoundation.org. "With the popularity of the first edition—100,000 downloads in five months—we're successfully bringing poetry to people in a unique and revolutionary way. Now, even more users will share poems on Facebook and Twitter, and even more people will have the opportunity to experience poetry at unexpected moments."
Though the update to the Poetry Foundation's POETRY app enriches the user experience by offering more poetry and more ways to find poetry, original user-friendly features remain intact. Poetry fans can still maintain a folder of favorite poems; share poems with friends through social media or e-mail; and enjoy an engaging interface designed specifically for the iPhone. As always, the app is free to download and use.
The POETRY app is available in the Apple iTunes Store. For more information or to download the app, visitpoetryfoundation.org/iphone.
To learn more about the app and its original release, visitwww.poetryfoundation.org/
You ignore the way light filters through my cells,the way I have of fading out—stillthere is a constant tug, a stretching,what is left of me is coming loose. Soon,I will be only crumbs of popcorn,a blue ring in the tub, an emptytoilet paper roll, black moldmisted on old sponges,strands of hair woven intocarpet, a warped doorthat won't open, the soft spotin an avocado, celery, a pear,a metallic taste in the beer, a cold soreon your lip—and when I finally lose my holdyou will hear a rustle and watch me spillgrains of rice across the cracked tile.
Welcome to a week of poetry and accounts of poetry happenings appropriate to the season: Halloween, Dia de la muerte, danse macabre, dead poets society, and other thanatopic items Halloween PoemsBY BECCA KLAVERA collection of classic and contemporary poems from the Poetry Foundation archive to celebrate Halloween. |
Gary Jackson, Lauren Camp and Richard Vargas
UNM alumnus Gary Jackson, graduate student Richard Vargas and Lauren Camp are featured poets at "Triptych," a reading presented by the Local Poets Guild on Saturday, Oct. 30, at 3 p.m. at The Kosmos, 1715-5th Street NW.
Jackson's poetry manuscript, "Missing You, Metropolis," was selected as the winner of the Cave Canem Prize and published by Graywolf Press. Yusef Komunyakaa, contest judge, said the book "embodies a voice uniquely shaped and tuned for the 21st century. Playful, jaunty, rueful, and highly serious – sometimes within a singular poem – this persona has been forged in the caldron of popular iconography, especially in the culture of the comic book." Jackson completed his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at UNM and has lived in Korea for the past year. This will be his first event back in the United States and the official release of "Missing You, Metropolis."
Vargas is the author of "McLife" and "American Jesus." He studies creative writing in the MFA program at UNM and edits a new poetry magazine, The Mas Tequila Review.
Camp juggles a visual art career, teaching creative writing workshops, tutoring English and producing the music and poetry program "Audio Saucepan" for KSFR-FM. She is the author of "This Business of Wisdom."
The suggested donation for the reading is $5. For more information, contact Lisa Gill at nearartexperience@yahoo.com or (505) 382‑0704.
"At the beginning of the poetry unit, I devote a class session investigating what poetry actually is. I have students talk/write about their notions/conceptions of poetry, how to tell a “good” poem from a “bad” poem, etc., and work from there. I bring in some poems that show different approaches to poetry in terms of form, content, etc., and help students figure out what’s going on in those. Then, I have students search on the Internet for what they think is a “good” poem, and have them explain, in writing, why it qualifies as a good poem. I’ve had very good luck with this method, and it makes the rest of our poetry study much more interesting for all of us."
I also teach the “grammar” of poetry, recognition of terms, and, after we have practiced on a few poems in class, I have them bring in three copies of some song lyrics. Then we trade those around. Everyone looks for the poetic devices in the lyrics of their neighbors’ songs.
At the Guardian, we see that Google is to start translating poetry:
Who'd be a translator? By day you struggle with the German for "babbitt-lined bearing" (Weißmetallfutterlager, of course), by night you worry how you'll pay the bills. Online translation services such as Babel Fish may not be able to match you for nuance and naturalness, but they're a) instant, b) improving and c) free, free, free.
And now their creators are eyeing up the poetry market. According to Dmitriy Genzel, a Google software engineer, the internet's favourite one-stop shop is now working on the machine-translation of not just words, but meter and rhyme.
Remember Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem Jabberwocky? In 1931 the New Yorker's Frank L Warrin came up with a fantastic French version, Le Jaseroque. Here's what Google's existing offering, Google Translate, came up with when we asked it to turn that back into English:
The algorithm's understanding of language "has moved from a 2-year-old infant to something close to an 8 or 10-year-old child," said Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow, an honorific reserved for the company's top engineers. "They're still not approaching the conversations you'd have as a teenager."
Please join us … for the New Mexico Poetry Review fall issue launch and contributor reading Saturday, October 23rd at 4 pm at Collected Works Bookstore and Coffeehouse, Santa Fe, New Mexico (on the corner of Galisteo & Water)
Poets reading:
Robyn Covelli-Hunt, Lauren Camp, Donald Levering, Gary Brower, Judith Toler, James McGrath, Michael L. Johnson, Jane Lipman, Nena Villamil, Cynthia West, Blair Cooper, Aurelio Sanchez, Linda Whittenberg, Lew Watts, and K.M. White
The new fall 2010 New Mexico Poetry Review will be available for purchase. Note: Contributors to the fall issue will receive a 15% discount on the magazine.
Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls! Follow us to Ring #2 where we will attempt, for the very first time under this big tent, the death-defying, awe-inspiring poetry gong!
The assignment
For our inaugural poetry gong, we will write a poem-a-day for seven days on the idea "new to you." Find a poet you have never read or a poet you haven't read recently and let a poem or a line that's "new to you" inspire your writing. You may want to buy a new book. You may want to exchange some of your old books for a used one at a local shop. You may want to go to your own shelves and admit it's been ages since you pulled down the books you've collected. We bet many of them will seem "new to you."
You will do this each day for seven days: read something "new to you" and write a poem. At the end of the seven days, you will have seven brand new drafts.
What is a poetry gong?
A gong is any practice that is repeated daily for many days, so a poetry gong is a multi-day writing challenge. Our first one here is seven days, but they can be any length. The goal is to write one poem each day as part of a community of writers. The idea is that fellow writers provide the encouragement and accountability we sometimes need to shake up our writing practice. We love the gongs so much, we designated a ring in our circus for them from the very beginning.
Missed the opening? Here's Tamra's down to earth high wire act...
I think I'll join in this 7 day challenge – New to You – from the folks at Big Tent Poetry. For the daily inspirations, I'll probably use the daily poem from The Writer's Almanac, in the case, Paul J. Willis' Common Ground.
Today I planted rosemary in the no-man's land
between my house and my neighbor's.
My grandmother planted sage
at the end of the back sidewalk
where it marked the boundary between her house
and The Neal Motor Company where my grandfather
and his two sons sold Studebakers and repaired cars.
My grandfather died the year before I was born,
but his sons kept the business going for a few more years,
and those I remember: the smell of gasoline and grease,
steel and rubber, the clank and grind of tools,
and the smell of sage as we went back and forth.
"It ain't no good no how," she used to say,
whether about the cooking, the weather, or the business
I never knew. But then the business was sold,
and the sage forgotten, except on Thanksgivings
when she would send me out to collect
a few sprigs from the wilderness.
At the risk of being repetitive, I just want to invite people to the Mayor's Award, and to honor Miriam Sagan. She has been such a staunch and generous supporter of poetry and of all of us and it really makes it fun if friends are around. There will be good food, a band, a cool video about the recipients, an altogether wonderful and jazzy night....Deadline this Friday, Oct 15, for reservations...
You are cordially invited to attend a dinner for THE 2010 MAYOR'S RECOGNITION AWARDS
FOR EXCELLENCE IN THE ARTS honoring: The Santa Fe Children's Museum | Arts Organization; Santa Fe New Music | Performing Arts; Darren Vigil Gray | Artist; Dr. Linda Raney | Music; Miriam Sagan | Literary Arts; and Kinsey Spude | Melissa Engestrom Youth Artist Award
Thursday, October 21st, 6:30 – 9: 30 pm, Santa Fe Community Convention Center, 201 East Marcy Street, Sweeney Ballroom, Santa Fe, NM 87501
$50 per person, $500 per table of ten. Includes the awards ceremony and dinner. RSVP by October 15th ~ Call 505.955.6710, artscommission@santafenm.gov
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"usually poetry attempts to conquer time and insert an immortality-factor to its texts – this possibility has reverted against itself recently – the physical book is a dinosaur – we, at chalk editions, don't like this event, however, it is the reality of a now, almost into the second decade of the 21st decade – hardcopy books are expensive to produce and purchase, soon, hardcopy books will be the present tense for either the rich elite, or collectors – digital paper and ink are i..."
 Poetry Learning Lab launches its updated second seasonPeruse 10 additional poems and poem guides in the Lab, along with new poetics essays and glossary terms. From the Poetry Foundation newsletter |
