Bob & Margery's Poetry Blog

A great deal of attention is being paid to Dylan Thomas these days... His daughter Aeronwy recently completed a U.S. tour during which she gave readings of her father’s and her own poetry and guided the first Dylan Thomas Walking Tour of his favorite haunts in Greenwich Village, New York. Now a treasure trove of Thomas books, manuscripts and letters has been put up for sale in London by its collector, “an anonymous New York literature collector.” The collection includes a secret diary kept by Dylan’s wife Caitlin -- fascinating stuff. And there’s a new film out, The Edge of Love, chronicling “the second world war antics of... the rambunctious Welsh poet Dylan Thomas”

from Wales Online:
“Caitlin’s feelings for Dylan revealed in diary,” by Andrew Dagnell, Western Mail

from The Telegraph (UK):
“Dylan Thomas's widow Caitlin Macnamara did miss him after his death, journal reveals,” by Stephen Adams

from The Sunday Times (UK):
“Aeronwy Thomas on The Edge of Love and her father, Dylan Thomas”

More on Allen Ginsberg:
Allen Ginsberg, Beat American Buddha Bard, by Bob Holman
Our profile of Ginsberg
The Bard His Own Self: Allen Ginsberg says “That’s all Goodnight”
Encounters with Allen Ginsberg, by Bart Plantenga

On Ginsberg’s poetry:
Allen Ginsberg’s American Sentences, An introduction to his variation on haiku
Chorus of Poets Gather for “Howl” Celebration: the 50th anniversary, an account by Teresa Conboy
You can read the poem in print or listen to it on the Internet -- but you won’t hear it on the radio -- “Howl”
Hear Ginsberg’s first “Howl”

Once again there was only a single nomination posted in the InterBoard Poetry Competition folder, so Poetry Guide Margy Snyder has chosen a couple of her favorite poems from those recently posted in our Forum to round out our set of three entries in this month’s InterBoard Poetry Competition. The poems chosen to represent the About Poetry Forum are:

• “Thanking the Devil” by Radhamani, cited as “superb writing” by its nominator, pallasite, and as “nicely chanted” by another reader, Elianah.
• “Emily and Me in New York,” by Guy Kettelhack (GuyBlakeKett), whose rhyming quatrains beautifully echo Miss Dickinson’s poems–hesitation-dashes, transcendental language and all–in a contemporary ode to his muse-city.
• “Unnoticed,” a spooky and captivating sequence of images “just on the edge of familiarity” by Tim J. Brennan (68degrees).

More on the IBPC:
General information
Requirements for IBPC nominees
Anthology of the monthly IBPC winning poems
Archive of poems entered in the IBPC from our Poetry Forum
Background information, poem links and book-buying links for current IBPC judge Tony Barnstone

Patricia Smith has chosen a very interesting set of five poems as winners in her last month as IBPC judge (none of them from our Poetry Forum, but all worth your attention):

• In first place, “The Length of Never,” by dublinsteve, which Smith found “a dark and engaging mystery... mesmerizing and crammed with color and heat.”
• In second place, “A Fall from Grace,” by S. Thomas Summers, “a gift on the open air” that repays multiple rereadings.
• In third place, “Outwitting Your Angels,” by Dave Mehler, a tumble of words whose “relentless meter... urgency... unyielding pulse... was immediately addictive.”

Related resources:
About the IBPC
Just-past IBPC judge Patricia Smith
Current IBPC judge Tony Barnstone
Requirements for IBPC nominees
Anthology of winning poems
Archive of poems entered from our Poetry Forum

I never cease to marvel at how apropo the words of Emily Dickinson are to the thoughts and events of my life, even though I live it in a different century, a different world from hers. She is so strange, yet so on point—the best example I know of the poet’s integration of the most particular individuality and the widest universality. I’m clearly not the only one who thinks so. Every week, reading around the Web, I come across writers quoting her lines, struck by their uncanny resonance in many aspects of modern life. Here are a couple of pieces I’ve recently discovered that highlight both her oddity and her wide-ranging appeal:

from The New Yorker:
“Her Own Society: A new reading of Emily Dickinson,” by Judith Thurman
Thurman’s essay is a fascinating exploration of the interaction between ED’s strange life and stranger poems. Her new reading of Dickinson’s work was inspired by White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson by Brenda Wineapple, to be published August 12 by Knopf ().

Higginson “had doubts about the wisdom of exposing to the world the runes of a protégée whom he had described as ‘my partially cracked poetess....’ Dickinson’s life has a before and an after, separated by an invisible catastrophe, or perhaps by a critical mass of cumulative blows—spiritual concussions that contributed to her fragility, but also to the release of her creative powers, which came in a tremendous gush in her late twenties. She corresponded with a wide and diverse circle of friends—some ninety people we know of—but as she aged her world contracted like the footage of a blast rewound.... Her studied unworldliness—the virginal or bridal habit of a white dress; the lily proffered breathlessly to an exceptional visitor; the elfin figure fleeing at the sound of a doorbell; the pretense of ‘insignificance’—was also a form of camouflage:

The Soul selects her own Society—
Then—shuts the Door—”

from The Guardian:
“The Sound of Startled Grass: How did quiet, introspective Emily Dickinson become the darling of modern composers?,” by Valentine Cunningham
On the occasion of the 2002 performance of the last of five parts of English composer Simon Holt’s musical sequence based on Dickinson’s poems, “The River of Time,” Cunningham wrote this interesting analysis of “...her appeal for composers? I think it is the rich musicality of her address to these modernist preoccupations. It makes her wonderfully adaptable, to music of all kinds. While her bareness, spareness and rhythmic variety make her specially attractive to musical modernists, minimalists and atonalists, there have also been madrigals, rags and even sub-Wagnerianisms in her name.” Reading it is a wonderful reminder of the music and the noises of life that ring throughout Dickinson’s spare lines.

More on Emily Dickinson:
Biographical profile of Emily Dickinson
Our Library: Poems by Emily Dickinson
“Emily’s Pearls Still Shine in the 21st Century”
“What Would Emily Say? An Indeath Interview,” by Robyn Sue Millerz
“Emily Dickinson: Continuing Enigma,” by Jone Johnson Lewis

Last March, we posted about two poems the youthful Barack Obama published in the Occidental College literary magazine in 1981:

• The Intersection of Politics and Autobiography in Poetry

• Harold Bloom comments on Barack Obama’s poems

Now the Blue Rose Arts Collective has transformed “Underground” into a poetry video on YouTube, combining footage of Japanese snow monkeys with Indonesian music by the Nyoman Jayus Bamboo Ensemble. I wonder what Obama thinks of their treatment of his poem. What do you think of it, as a poem and as a film? Come back after you’ve looked at the video and post your comments below.

More poetry videos:
A newly discovered cache of poetry video shorts
Poetry Everywhere Videos All Over the Place
Fun with Poetry Cartoons
Wordsworth’s Daffodils Spring Up on YouTube
“Fragile” — Shakespeare’s Sonnet 65 is a poetry film single
Our library of links to video poetry

I couldn’t help but smile when I saw the news that Kay Ryan has been chosen as the next Poet Laureate of the U.S. — and if you read a few of her poems (here are six in a New York Times Web Extra), you’ll find yourself smiling, too.

from The New York Times:
“Kay Ryan, Outsider With Sly Style, Named Poet Laureate”
by Patricia Cohen
“When Kay Ryan was a student at the University of California, Los Angeles, the poetry club rejected her application; she was perhaps too much of a loner, she recalls. Now Ms. Ryan is being inducted into one of the most elite poetry clubs around. She is to be named the country’s poet laureate.... Known for her sly, compact poems that revel in wordplay and internal rhymes, Ms. Ryan has won a carriage full of poetry prizes for her funny and philosophical work.”

from The San Francisco Chronicle:
“Poet Laureate of the United States: Kay Ryan
Poems that turn ordinary things grand
Fairfax poet's original voice draws notice and highest honors”
by Heidi Benson
“‘I usually do a lot of idle woolgathering, punctuated with bicycle riding and a certain amount of cooking,’ she said, holding the phone to her ear while buttering toast. ‘This will flip daily life upside down.’... Wit and understatement - applied to the quiddities of daily living - are key to Ryan’s poetry...”

Despite all her accolades and awards, Ryan is most definitely a loner, an outsider in the world of po-biz and writing workshops — witness her 2005 essay for Poetry magazine, “I Go to AWP.” But she’s also most definitely engaged in the public interactions of language, having taught remedial writing to community college students for 30 years. She’s a wonderful, witty poet whose poems are like pebbles dropped into a still pond, rippling out far beyond their small circumferences.

Related resources:
Poets Laureate, a brief history
Poets Laureate of the U.S.A., a Net-annotated list

Our profiles of recent U.S. Poet Laureates
Charles Simic (2007-2008)
Donald Hall (2006-2007)
Ted Kooser (2004-2006)
Louise Glück (2003-2004)
Stanley Kunitz (2000-2001)
Robert Pinsky (1997-2000)

We are still awaiting notice of the June IBPC winners chosen by Patricia Smith, and of course the July winners chosen by Tony Barnstone won’t be announced until after the end of the month — but in the meantime we have word from judge Kelly Cherry, who was asked to choose the IBPC Poem of the Year from among all the poems that were awarded first, second, or third place from April 2007 through March 2008. Hurrahs for our Forum poet Guy Kettelhack, whose poem “Bird Painter” received honorable mention in this annual best-of-the-best competition! We’ve added Kelly Cherry’s commentary to the winning poems:

• First Place: “Bad Weather,” by Dale McLain
• Second Place: “A Second Look at Creation,” by Sergio Lima Facchini
• Third Place: “The Man Next Door According to His Pockets,” by Adam Elgar
• Honorable Mention: “Bird Painter,” by Guy Kettelhack
• Honorable Mention: “Spring Dance,” by Brenda Levy Tate
• Honorable Mention: “Carol for the Brokenhearted,” by Brenda Levy Tate

In the meantime, please remember it’s up to you to keep the IBPC nominations coming! Whenever you see a great poem posted on our Forum, no matter where it is, come on over to the InterBoard Poetry Competition folder and nominate it! And be sure to notify the poet whose work you are putting forward, so that he or she can post the required permission and information before Poetry Guide Margy Snyder selects next month’s entries.

Related resources:
About the IBPC
Requirements for IBPC nominees
Anthology of the monthly IBPC winning poems
Archive of poems entered in the IBPC from our Poetry Forum
July - September judge, Tony Barnstone

The plaque for Auden on St Mark’s Place... Baudelaire’s grave in the Cimetiere de Montparnasse, Paris... the Wallace Stevens walk in Connecticut... Gaudier-Brzeska’s Hieretic Head of Ezra Pound... Joe Gould’s portrait at the Minetta Tavern.... Let’s hear it for the physicalization of poets, the sites and objects that evoke!

In line with this, we’re happy to bring you the new Poetry Walking Tour built around the White Horse Tavern’s favorite denizen, Mr. Dylan Thomas. Written by Aeronwy Thomas, daughter of Dylan, and Welsh poet Peter Thabit Jones, and kindly given to us for publication here at About Poetry by Catrin Brace of the Welsh Assembly Government in New York, it’s a self-guided tour of ten places in Greenwich Village, where Dylan Thomas spent a lot of time on his US visits and where he died on November 9, 1953. The leisurely 2-hour tour will introduce you to some of Dylan’s poetry, the bars and restaurants he frequented, the places where he stayed, his readings, his friendships, and the real facts behind his premature death in the city.

For other poetry walking tours, we recommend Bill Morgan’s Beat Generation in New York: A Walking Tour of Jack Kerouac’s City and The Beat Generation in San Francisco: A Literary Tour.

More articles on the celebration of poets’ home places:
“Archipoetry 101,” Gary Mex Glazner explores community building & Poet’s Plaza becomes a reality (1999)
“Poets’ Way,” Boulder blazes a poetic trail, by Michael Evans Smith (2000)
“Herman Berlandt’s International Poetry Museum,” by Marj Hahne (2002)
“The Empty House Tour,” Tom Devaney explores Edgar Allan Poe’s Philadelphia house (2004)
The connection between a poet & his chosen place, Charles Olson (2005)
Langston Hughes’ home brought back to artistic life (2007)
Artistic power remains in the place where poetry was made: the poet’s home, Federico García Lorca (2007)

Our Forum has been graced with some very fine work by new members in the last month, and poems by two newcomers have been chosen for entry in the IBPC along with one by a poet whose work has represented us several times before. Our July entries are:

• “The Critic” by Sergio Ortiz (saore), a poem full of images that some readers saw as “original,” others as “unnecessarily arcane,” reminding one Forum poet of “Yevtushenko’s emotionally honest and searing style.”
• “Along the Chippewa,” a lovely memory-song by Tim J. Brennan (68degrees), described by the poet who chose to nominate it as “a beautiful, tranquil tribute that captures the essence of the river.”
• “Water the Fish” by Brooke Watson aka Doctorshoot, an echoing long-lined poem that was voted co-winner of the most recently concluded challenge.

Related resources:
About the IBPC
Requirements for IBPC nominees
Anthology of the monthly IBPC winning poems
Archive of poems entered in the IBPC from our Poetry Forum
July - September judge, Tony Barnstone