Saturday, October 30, 2010

Poems for Election Day




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!

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Poetry Foundation’s Free POETRY App Updated

Poetry on your iPhone: app adds almost 400 contemporary poems, "Browse by Poet" feature


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/foundation/release_052010.html?id=186222

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Poem: A Ghost Abandons the Haunted

American Life in Poetry editor, former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser writes, "here's our Halloween poem for this year, in the thin dry voice of a ghost, as captured by Katie Cappello who lives in Northern California.

A Ghost Abandons the Haunted 

You ignore the way light filters through my cells,
the way I have of fading out—still
there 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 empty
toilet paper roll, black mold
misted on old sponges,
strands of hair woven into
carpet, a warped door
that won't open, the soft spot
in an avocado, celery, a pear,
a metallic taste in the beer, a cold sore
on your lip—and when I finally lose my hold
you will hear a rustle and watch me spill
grains of rice across the cracked tile.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Katie Cappello, from her first book of poetry, Perpetual Care, Elixir Press, 2009. Reprinted by permission of Katie Cappello and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. 

American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. 

Halloween Poems

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 Poems

Halloween Poems

BY BECCA KLAVER
A collection of classic and contemporary poems from the Poetry Foundation archive to celebrate Halloween.

PS Mountainair Arts will also be doing it's own seasonally appropriate thing but with links, backstory, local happenings and, of course, Dia de la Muerte art and graphics

Monday, October 25, 2010

Sat Oct 30: Poets Guild Reading




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.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Teaching Poetry

This synthesizing post from Teaching College English draws on notes from The CHE forum on Teaching Poetry + observations added by the blogger,

"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."

st-jerome-carvaggio-gothic-writing

The long central passage, a citing the forum on "close reading," that the passage above leads into is particularly interesting and closes by returning to real life, non-academic readers:

When I have taught poetry, I usually start with questions like:
Who writes poetry?
How does one write poetry?
Who reads poetry?

Then I talk about places where poetry exists that people might not expect, like references to Poe’s “The Raven” in a comic strip and “I think that I shall never see” in Letters to the Editor.

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.


Wednesday, October 20, 2010

machine translation, verse and worse


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: 

read the rest at the  guardian.co.ukAnd read that article along with "How Google understands language like a 10-year-old"

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."

Read more at SFGate


Monday, October 18, 2010

Sat Oct 23: NM Poetry Review Reading

Cross posted from Miriam's Well by Miriam Sagan on 10/18/10. I've been planning an overview / reference piece on NM hard copy poetry pubs, presses, reviews, anthologies and the like. Until then, it's a piecemeal project: I post items as they turn up on my rss reader. The planning list for NM poetry topics includes organizations (i.e. institutions, departments, programs and other entities), blogs and (other) online publishing. The distinctions blur at times.



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.



Hope to see you there!

Friday, October 15, 2010

Big Tent's Poetry Gong

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRu04cHp-zKbT-lj5P_rHsJq_OAznSmQdqEB4Wu5rcpuOOFV4A&t=1&usg=__9UBgsuGeaS8SnFT2ALwpYUZmUDE=

POETRY GONG #1 / New to you, October 12, 2010, from Big Tent Poetry

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.

Wilderness

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.


See Laughing Dove for continuing gong day poems

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Arts recognition awards honor NM poet Miriam Sagan

...and I would add, Picnic performer & Writing Workshop faculty (hence super eligibility for frequent plogging miles). Joan Logghe, NM poet laureate, writes

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 FeNM 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

Monday, October 11, 2010

Thurs Oct14: NMBA Self-publishing Workshop

... presumably taking at least some of the guesswork out of DIY. Presumably the workshop will (or should) cover subsidy press (which takes a cut) vs go straight to a POD (print on demand) printer. The major POD players are Hulu, CreateSpace, Xlibris. The more you know going in, the more you will get out of the workshop: "Self-Publishing a book: 25 things you need to know." Read the article and follow the embedded links too. 

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.


FLASHnews October 11, 2010


Self Publishing with a Professional Look
NMBA Professional Development Workshop
Thursday, October 14

 

Register now for NMBA's next professional development workshop with Richard Polese, Richard Harris, Cinny Green, and Carol Eastes. Our panel of experts will discuss setting up your own imprint, choosing the right printing option, working with editors and book designers, and other aspects of creating a self-published book that compares favorably to those produced by professional publishers. 

Register here online or mail your check to NMBA, PO Box 1285, Santa Fe, NM 87504. Members pay only $15 and nonmembers $20. (Becoming a member is easy on our website.) For more information contact Paula Lozar: 505.473.3479; lozarpaula@cs.com.

Thursday, October 14
6:30 to 8:30pm
St. Bede's Episcopal Church
1601 South Saint Francis Drive, Santa Fe, NM

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Harwood call for poets

"Calling all poets! The Harwood Art Center is seeking poetry for a book of essays and poetry scheduled for publication in the spring of 2011.


The working title of the book is How-to: Multiple Perspectives on Creating a Garden, a Life, Relationships and Community. Using the metaphor of a garden for a community, How-to offers poets an opportunity to consider life, relationships and the development of community from start to sustainability, from individual to group."

Saturday, October 9, 2010

poetry downloads

... free printable e-books, as posted on U Buffalo's Poetics List, which, in addition to smart, interesting, not infrequently arcane discussions of poets, poetry and poetry. Initially I thought to include poetry e-zines and poetry publishing blogs but decided to save those for another post ~ calls for submissions yet another. If you tire of waiting for them to appear, you can always subscribe to Poetics on your own.

Poetics 2, mobile by Alexander Calder, 1898-1976


Little Red Leaves: 5 new titles from LRL e-editions by Sarah Campbell, Brian Mornar, Gloria Frym, Mathew Timmons, and Eléna Rivera. As always, titles are available as FREE downloads or in paperback through Lulu
  • minimalist Sarah Campbell's Everything We Could Ask For
  • Brian Mornar's Three American Letters, part poetics, part physical manifesto and essa
  • Gloria Frym's Any Time Soonfrom the reality that "there is no post war" or external context from which to view our current saturation. Language occurs in the thick of it. 
  • Mathew Timmons' Sound Noise: pries apart how we receive and process sensory information, the subtle difference between Sound and Noise
  • Eléna Rivera' Remembrance of Things Plasticcharts a path between cultural displacement and the hyper-pull of consumer images. 
  • Full catalog of free books, including work by Tina Darragh & Marcella Durand, Divya Victor, Norma Cole, Susan Gevirtz, Ted Greenwald, Yedda Morrison, and Harold Abramowitz 
  • Official launch of Little Red Leaves Issue 5, biggest issue yet with over 30 new poets, extended project features from Carmen Giménez Smith and Robin Tremblay-McGaw, an interview with Brenda Ilijima by Thomas Fink, a gorgeous selection from the Paros Translation Symposium as well as 5 new e-editions above
IMPROVISATIONS by Vernon Frazer now on Scribd

Chalk Editions on ScribdEditors: Peter Ganick and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen: 
"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..."


New 20th anniversary edition of The Plagiarist Codexinformation hieroglyphs, colorized, on Scribd. Also available online as a slide show.

Open Culture: e-books, audio books, the Tate's ekphrasis collection (Art Inspired Poetry), mobile apps (i.e. City Poems) for poetry on the go, video clips, and more

Gutenberg Projectthe first producer of free ebooks. Poetry (Bookshelf)


Editor's Note: Please note potential of Scribd for self-publishing print on demand. Pdf documents on Google docs whether e-mailed or linked online are another. A possible future topic. Do you have links to poetry e-books, online journals, ezines or blogs to share? Please send 

new spoken-word literary journal

Raft ~ text + audio files (even for the book reviews), is now online, http://www.raftmagazineonline.com


Issue 1 features new work from:

  Scott Abels
      Niamh Bagnell
         Susan Powers Bourne
            Ric Carfagna
         Jan Carson
      Joel Chace
  Arkava Das
      Mark DuCharme
          Iris Jamahl Dunkle
              Bonnie Emerick
          Michael Farrell
      Adam Fieled
  Thomas Fink
      Vernon Frazer
          R. Jess Lavolette
              David Mohan
          Debrah Morkun
      Paul Nelson
  Francis Raven
      Chad Scheel
          Sam Schild
              Brian Seabolt
          Adam Strauss
      Mark Stricker
  Samuel Day Wharton
      Karena Youtz

Raft is currently accepting new work for Issue 2 (deadline: December 16, 2010). Brian Seabolt, Raft Magazine


While he read Moll held a little aloof, with downcast eyes, saying to herself, Now he's at the part where, and a little later, Now he's at the part where, and so remained until the rustle of the sheet going back into the envelope announced that he had finished
. from Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies

Reposted from U Buffalo's Poetics List

Friday, October 8, 2010

Poetry Learning Lab

Poetry Learning Lab launches its updated second season

Poetry Learning Lab launches its updated second season

Peruse 10 additional poems and poem guides in the Lab, along with new poetics essays and glossary terms.


From the Poetry Foundation newsletter

Thursday, October 7, 2010

NM Book Associ. seeking newsletter editor

NMBA is offering a talented newsletter editor/designer a small stipend to take charge of our Libro bi-monthly newsletter. (cross-posted verbatim from NMBA email notice)

Libro is widely considered one of the best regional publications of its kind because of its rich content and broad perspective encompassing publishers, authors, book designers, booksellers, and librarians. Review past issues on our website.

Being 
Libro's editor is a splendid venue for letting people know about your business or professional service, and being the designer of the newsletter gives you an opportunity to exercise your creativity. You'll be recognized as a true player in New Mexico's book and literary realm.

Mary Neighbour, who has been Libro editor since December 2009, would be happy to discuss this in detail with interested candidates. Please call Mary at 505-660-6357 or
email her at office@nmbook.org.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...