Poem-A-Day: Jabberwocky

 

	A happy belated birthday to  Carroll and the Jabberwock.  You could also celebrate by watching, Monty Python's Jabberwocky. Was Friday a Jabberwocky day for you? Yesterday? Today? Is every day a Jabberwocky Day?
	January 27's  Poem-A-Day commemorates the birthday of Lewis Carroll—born on January 27, 1832. This poem appears in The Annotated Alice, published by W. W. Norton & Company. Read more about this book. Other Carroll Poems A Boat, Beneath a Sunny Sky The Crocodile The Walrus and the Carpenter 75 Maiden Lane Suite 901 New York, NY 10038 212-274-0343 academy@poets.org		Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll     'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves    Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves,    And the mome raths outgrabe. "Beware the Jabberwock, my son    The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun    The frumious Bandersnatch!" He took his vorpal sword in hand;    Long time the manxome foe he sought— So rested he by the Tumtum tree,    And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood,    The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,    And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through    The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head    He went galumphing back. "And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?    Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"    He chortled in his joy. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves    Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves,    And the mome raths outgrabe.

Saturday, Jan28: Potluck Peace Party and Volunteer Drive

A poetry event announcement from Zachary Kluckman via Elaine Schwartz' excellent and indispensable mailing list

Potluck Peace Party and Volunteer Drive

Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice

202 Harvard SE, Albuquerque, NM 87112 

Saturday, January 28, 2012, 7:00-10:00pm

 

Join us for first in a new series of monthly events celebrating peace, sustainability and community! Featuring plenty of local poetry, music and food for everyone as well as some great opportunities to join the center as a member or as a volunteer.

 

Poets scheduled to perform include Zachary Kluckman, Damien Chavez, Julie Brokken, Sal Treppiedi, Nate Maxson, Marilena Vargas and more!

 

This is a potluck event so everyone is invited to bring something to share and anyone who wants to share a poem or song on the mic is invited as well!

 

For more information, contact Zachary at the Peace Center, 268-9557

ImmaStar College Scholarship « ImmaStar Productions

Build yourself some 1st rate good karma (you can never have too much): support, promote and contribute to ImmaStar(t) Up College Scholarship. Below are the scholarship Guidelines. For more details, to offer support or if you need a PDF of the guidelines, please email Carlos Contreras directly at soothxsayer@yahoo.com

Urban Verbers, Carlos and Hakim

IMMASTAR(T) UP COLLEGE FUND NOMINATION GUIDELINES

ImmaStar Productions is a locally run performance oriented collective, headed up by nationally awarded performance poet and educator Carlos Contreras. Carlos has dreamt up the first inaugural ImmaStar Productions Scholarship giveaway, and coined it the “Immastar(t) Up College Scholarship,” as a way of giving back to our Albuquerque Community. ImmaStar Productions strives to be a force within its community that provides opportunities for people of all ages, socio-economic backgrounds, and creative abilities. Through the avenues of : Visual, Performance, and Literary Arts, Carlos Contreras and ImmaStar Productions will continue to focus on the importance of Education, and creative expression. We at ImmaStar Productions believe that “There is no wrong, Just Write!”

ImmaStar College Scholarship « ImmaStar Productions

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Red Mountain Press Poetry Prize

Just in from Santa Fe Poetry and Prose...

Red Mountain Press Poetry Prize announces: It's time to be preparing your manuscript! Red Mountain Press will award a prize for poetry in 2012 with the publication of a full length book and a 2 week residency in Santa Fe. Please see the website http://www.redmountainpress.us for full information.

 

The submission period is now through March 1, 2012. Early submissions are appreciated. The judging, by Red Mountain authors, is through electronic submission and blind. See Guidelines online. Contact: Red Mountain Press, redmtnpress@gmail.com

via Paul White (white@grappawireless.com) from Santa Fe Poetry and Prose Meetup Group.

STOP SOPA: #SOPASTRIKE Jan18

My favorire "stop sopa" page is Zachary Johnson's shadowbox with the moving light (just move your cursor) on Zachstronaut. Adding this one to my feed reader... tomorrow. Today ..... 

 

Sites are striking in all different ways, but they are united by this: do the biggest thing you possibly can and drive contacts to Congress. *Put the source code for this page your site* ~ it's my main page at Mountainair Online (the web page). I have no control over blog policies. I'm not really up to tinker with source code to show a black out page on my blogs. So I am settling for posting information and exhortations (like this one). Except for following #sopastrike on Twitter and @fightfortheftr) and Reddit, I'm staying off public pages today. No Facebook or 

Personal blackouts seem to be running either 24 hours (midnight to midnight) or 8AM EST to 8PM EST. Major supporting sites like Wikipedia, WordPress, Google, Internet Archive (+ Wayback Machine), Electronic Frontier Foundation, Tucows and many, many more are striking for 24 hours. Looked like a major slow down on Facebook when I checked (before 8 am).  

What can you do to support the strike if you don't have a blog or web page, can't blog and RT #sopastrike stories? Make a call; sign the petition; learn more; the action of the hour is to speak out. Write a letter to the editor of your local paper, opposing the bills. Contact local news stations and let them know that this is an issue worth covering. And there is still email, what they could be coming after next...

Today's Google search page:

 

Tell Congress: Please don't censor the web! 

Poem: Justice

Justice

 

That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.

Langston Hughes

 

Circa 1960

Fixed & Free Anthology 2011 Available at January 26 Reading

Billy Brown writes, 

 

I am VERY pleased to report that the Fixed and Free Poetry Anthology 2011 is now a reality ... today I approved the proofs and ordered a bunch of copies to be available for sale at the January 26 Fixed and Free reading!

 

 

The list price for the anthology is $15.00. The book has a beautiful design, created by Stewart Warren, and contains 79 poems by 79 Fixed and Free poets -- poets who all have read at one or more Fixed and Free readings since Fixed and Free began more than three years ago.

 

We included a poem by every Fixed and Free poet who submitted their poetry for the anthology. I am very grateful to Greg Candela and Elaine Schwartz for their excellent and indispensable work choosing which poems are included. (I helped mostly in cases of ties ... :-)

 

I am confident that everyone will be very pleased with this volume, and that the Fixed and Free community will be proud to be represented by the poems contained in it. All of the beyond-cost proceeds from the sale of copies of this anthology will be used to support the Fixed and Free community activities: to pay for our monthly venue and to pay our featured poets. 

Therefore I encourage each member of the Fixed and Free poetry community to purchase a copy for her/his own use and perhaps additional copies as gifts. Here is the plan for sales/distribution of our anthology within our community:

1.  One free copy will go to each of the four members of the anthology editorial/publication team: Billy Brown, Greg Candela, Elaine Schwartz, and Stewart Warren
2. One copy at a discount price of $ 10 will be available to each poet with a poem in the anthology, and to each of the poets who "blurbed" the book (wrote a "blurb" for the back cover or 2-3 pages inside the front cover).
3. All other copies will be sold at the list price of $ 15.

People can purchase the anthology at all future Fixed and Free monthly readings,

and for a limited time, can obtain copies from me at my home (you just need to arrange a pick up time with me by calling 401-8139). I plan to schedule a release party & reading for the anthology in the near future. Stay tuned for an announcement.

 

Other plans for sharing our anthology in the wider Albuquerque and New Mexico communities will be formulated and carried out by a team which I hope to form in the next couple of weeks. If you are interested in working with me on this team, please let me know ASAP, by emailing me at welbert53@aol.com, and including your phone number.

 

I shall contact those who will serve on this team soon to begin our planning process.

 

I am very excited by the quality of the design of this anthology, and I am very inspired by the excellent poetry therein.

 

As I said in my Introduction:

"I am grateful to all the poets who have read at Fixed and Free. My life is enriched by your poetry.  I trust that this collection honors you, represents your talents to the wider poetry world and strengthens our Fixed and Free community."

I'll see many of you at the Fixed and Free reading on Thursday, January 26, with plenty of books in hand ... :-)  We shall not have featured poets, but rather take that time to distribute and discuss the book!

 

Yours for powerful poetry, Billy Brown,401-8139

 

Friendship in the time of terror

Portrait by Nathan Altman, 1912

Nadezhda Mandelstam's unique personal tribute to poet Anna Akhmatova

Although the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) never received the highest literary honour, the Nobel Prize, the veneration she enjoyed during her lifetime as well as her ever increasing posthumous fame have made her one of the luminary figures of modern Europe. Few authors of the past century have been portrayed more often in paintings, sculptures or photographs; few bodies of poetry has been more extensively translated, interpreted, recorded and illustrated; few individuals have featured more in the letters, journals or memoirs of her contemporaries. The extensive biographical chronicles of Lydia Chukovskaya, Emma Gerstein, Mikhail Ardov and other associates have helped create a larger-than-life and almost heroic image of the poet, which has become inseparable from her work.

Read the rest of Friendship in the time of terror in signandsight, 9/19/2012, originally published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 1/3/2012.

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Poem: "Poppies"

"Poppies" by Jennifer Grotz:

There is a sadness everywhere present
but impossible to point to, a sadness that hides in the world
and lingers. You look for it because it is everywhere.
When you give up, it haunts your dreams
with black pepper and blood and when you wake
you don't know where you are.

But then you see the poppies, a disheveled stand of them.
And the sun shining down like God, loving all of us equally,
mountain and valley, plant, animal, human, and therefore
shouldn't we love all things equally back?
And then you see the clouds.

The poppies are wild, they are only beautiful and tall
so long as you do not cut them,
they are like the feral cat who purrs and rubs against your leg
but will scratch you if you touch back.
Love is letting the world be half-tamed.

The poem continues. TNC shares his appreciation:

Grotz writes of our constant desire to tame the world, and even the righteousness of that desire ("shouldn't we love all things equally back?"). She writes of the anguish that ultimately comes from trying (the poppies are beautiful but only "like the feral cat who purrs and rubs against your leg / But will scratch if you touch back") and then, finally, our sadness at the whole thing. "Love is letting the world be half-tamed," Grotz writes. I think you could say that about a lot more than just the natural world that she is addressing. That's a lesson we're constantly learning.

(Photo by Jura Wanderer)

A Poem For Sunday from The Daily Dish | by Andrew Sullivan

Broadsided, January 2012

What is Broadsided? Think of it as web-enhanced grassroots guerilla art. On the first of every month, a new art/poetry collaboration is posted for you to download. Free. Broadsided Press hopes you'll print it and post it in your local haunts— coffee shops, libraries, office doors, telephone poles, etc. That will make you a Vector. Vectors are posting around the world.  This plog is an eVector. Help us and Broadsided put literature and art on the streets. 

The 2011 Haiku Year-in-Review 

Writing by Peter Kline, Steve Brightman & Jennifer Jabaily-Blackburn
Art by Kara Searcy, Caleb Brown, Jennifer Moses, Kevin Morrow
Broadsided January 1, 2012

Download the Broadsided file
to print & post (488kb PDF)