Monday, February 27, 2017

Thursday, February 23, 2017

Ohio Center for the Book: George Bilgere

The Ohio Center for the Book has been running a long series of feature articles on Ohio writers past and present.
Today's feature is Cleveland's own prizewinning poet George Bilgere.

George Bilgere with Garrison Keillor

--and check out Worldplay with co-hosts George Bilgere and John Donoghue, on WJCU (archive)

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Walt Whitman's lost novel found!


Before he became America's most famous poet, Walt Whitman tried his hand at fiction.
Three years before publishing his landmark first book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman anonymously published a short novel: "The Life and Adventures of Jack Engle, an Auto-Biography," which appeared “unsigned, practically unheralded and riddled with typographical errors” in 1852.


The novel-- a novella, really-- came out serialized in six parts in the New York Sunday Dispatch... and disappeared. The only copy still known to exist anywhere is the archive copy in the Library of Congress in Washington.
Until now. Want to read it? The novel has been published for free online by the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review.


Monday, February 6, 2017

Memorial Send Off for Jim Lang 

Tuesday, Feb 14, 7-10

 at Mahall's, 13200 Madison in Lakewood

Jim was always there...watching and listening and documenting the Cleveland poetry scene.
He contributed to so many Bottom Dog Press books by and about Cleveland poets.
 
I am listening to Tony Bennett sing "We Mustn't Say Goodbye" and it begins
"Goodbye, I hate to see you go,
but have a good time.
So long, I'll miss you dear, I know,
but have a good time."
 
 I hope Jim is out there and having a good time. 

 

Cited...

The poet doesn't invent. He listens. ~Jean Cocteau