Poems of War and Remembrance

Poetry for Veteran's Day from About Poetry and elsewhere 

"The beginning of the end of war lies in remembrance.”  Herman Wouk

Still can't beat either the Iliad (war) or the Odyssey (a veteran's homecoming). Nor the Aeneid (defeated escape into exile, memories of loss) for that matter. Lucan's Pharsalia either. Then there are the medieval epics: El Cid, Roland and others. 

• 20th Century Poetry and War (UK)
• Poets against War 
• Sourcebook for British WWI poetry 
• Vietnam War poetry (one of many online collections)
• Poetry and Music of the War between the States

---

and now to About's War and Remembrance feature ...

Community-wide reads with Big Read

The Big Read is accepting applications from nonprofit organizations seeking funding to conduct month-long, community-wide reads between September 2011 and June 2012. The Big Read is a national program designed to revitalize the role of literature in American culture. 

Organizations selected to participate in The Big Read will receive grants ranging from $2,500 to $20,000, access to online training resources, educational and promotional materials, inclusion of your organization and activities on The Big Read Web site, and the prestige of participating in a highly visible national program. Approximately 75 organizations from across the country will be selected by a panel of experts. The deadline to submit applications is February 1, 2011.

The Big Read gives communities the opportunity to come together to read, discuss, and celebrate one of 31 selections from U.S. and world literature. The Big Read catalog includes the great American poets Emily Dickinson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Robinson Jeffers, and Edgar Allan Poe.

To review the Guidelines & Application Instructions visit The Big Read web site.

Questions? 

Call Arts Midwest at 612.238.8010 or email, TheBigRead@artsmidwest.org

Reposted from The Poetry Foundation newsletter. The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in cooperation with Arts Midwest. 

Mountainair Writers Group meets Nov 9

Writers from Mountainair, Punta de Agua and Manzano held their first meeting October 12th at Jerry's Ancient Cities Restaurant in Mountainair to discuss forming a writers group.

The group decided to hold meetings twice a month on the second Tuesday evening of the month at the Ancient Cities starting at 6:30 p.m. and the last Saturday morning of the month at the Alpine Alley Coffee Shop at 10:00 a.m.  Due to Thanksgiving, November's Saturday meeting will be held November 20.

Tomorrow, Tuesday November 9, Ben Steinlage will present a short lecture on publishing e books. Members are encouraged to bring their personal writing for discussion and will decide on a name for the group.

Writers of all genres and experience levels are invited and encouraged to join. If interested or have questions contact: Ben Steinlage at happyplate@wildblue.net or Dixie Boyle at mtairtwo@wildblue.net.

Falling Back

Six poems to mark the end of daylight saving time via 3quarksdaily by Abbas Raza on 11/7/10, From the Op-Ed page of the New York Times:

Light Verse

It's just five, but it's light like six.
It's lighter than we think.
Mind and day are out of sync.
The dog is restless.
The dog's owner is sleeping and dreaming of Elvis.
The treetops should be dark purple,
but they're pink.

Here and now. Here and now.
The sun shakes off an hour.
The sun assumes its pre-calendrical power.
(It is, though, only what we make it seem.)
Now in the dog-owner's dream,
the dog replaces Elvis and grows bigger
than that big tower

in Singapore, and keeps on growing until
he arrives at a size
with which only the planets can empathize.
He sprints down the ecliptic's plane,
chased by his owner Jane
(that's not really her name), who yells at him
to come back and synchronize.

— VIJAY SESHADRI, author of "The Long Meadow"

More here.

More Poems for election day

via Harriet: The Blog by Poetry News on 11/2/10

The highly-anticipated 2010 midterm elections are finally here, so let's restore a few shreds of sanity with some poems about voting and the political process. Harriet is exhausted by stale rhetoric, political yakety yak and partisanship, so these poems are organized by interest or affiliation rather than political party.

If you're an optimist tired of hearing that Washington is broken, then listen to Whitman trilling a love song to our deteriorating empire. "For You O Democracy" is an ode to America, and you can listen to a related Whitman podcast here.

If you're a cynic who would rather contract swine flu than reach across the aisle, then read Jerome Rothenberg's "A Poem for the Cruel Majority." It perfectly captures the vitriol and hopelessness that distinguishes this election cycle. "Today the cruel majority vote to enlarge the darkness," he writes. Uplifting!

For idealists, Marxists, and vegan hipster farmers, there's Vachel Lindsay's  "Why I Voted the Socialist Ticket."

Political dilettante might enjoy Hemingway's ruminations on democracy, dictators and farts in "The Soul of Spain With McAlmon and Bird the Publishers." He even wrote the line "Democracy is the shit" in a time when that didn't make democracy a good thing.

For everyone there's "Poem on the Occasion of the Midterm Election" by Matthew Rohrer, to be published by Wave books in his forthcoming collection, Destroyer and Preserver.

If these poems are too breezy for you, then why not revisit some contentious prose? Check out an old blog post about why it's problematic to automatically align poets with the bleeding, sensitive hearts on the left, or this article about Hillary Clinton branding the Obama campaign with the scarlet letter of poetry when she criticized the president's lofty language.

For wordsmiths, revisit these posts about the Queen Bee of Political Poetry, Sarah "Refudiate" Palin.

Will these poems restore faith in the democratic process? Probably not, but suffrage is a cherished and hard-earned freedom, so wear that "I Voted Today" sticker with pride.