Kevin Prufer remembers Russell Atkins in this month's issue of Poetry Magazine

Kevin Prufer says: "I think Russell Atkins is one of the most fascinating, unique, and brilliant poets of the 2nd half of the 20th century. He's also one of the most under-appreciated. He died earlier this year. Here's a piece I wrote about him for the Poetry Foundation and Poetry Magazine."

 

 

Permalink: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/1637023/a-syntax-of-his-own-remembering-russell-atkins.

Hart Crane and Cleveland

At the poetry foundation blog, Harriett Staff writes:

Cleveland, Ohio, and Hart Crane
by Harriett Staff

Hart Crane, one of America’s most mythologized poets, had a lifelong love/hate relationship with Cleveland, where he was raised. The Los Angeles Review of Books’s Anne Trubek calls him “not a New York poet but a Cleveland poet: a mess of a thing, a striving wreck of promise and all too human failings:”

At seventeen he wanted out of Cleveland, and he left for New York. He would soon return. And he would repeat that pattern for another decade, coming back to Cleveland when he was broke and needed a job, or at the behest of his needy mother, or because he wanted to. He worked at a munitions plant on the waterfront, working seventeen-hour days six days a week tightening bolts. (C.A. always gave him lowly jobs to test his mettle, a test Crane always failed.) That job didn’t last long — nor did his job as a camp counselor, or as a riveter for another war-related plant. The first world war ended right when it looked like he would be drafted. He wrote a poem about the armistice that was published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, who then hired him as a cub reporter. He lasted seven weeks. He went back to New York, and then came back home again.
…In Cleveland, he supervised bulk storage. He had affairs. He went out on “mad carouses” that began with “pigs’ feet and sauerkraut” and ended in his tower, where he played classical music for his arty friends. At one point someone in town found out about his penchant for sailors and truck drivers. Crane paid $10 week, out of his $25 weekly wage, to buy the man’s silence.

Read more about Crane and his hometown here.

The Public Responsibilities of Poets

Christina Brooks pointed out this article from The University Bookman, "The Public Responsibilities of Known American Poets," and suggested it might be a good post for the Clevelandpoetics blog, saying "It makes some really good points in it about poetry... and a poets role in society."

"But if poetry has a greater purpose because ostensibly it is capable of directly advancing a collective social good, one must commiserate with those sincere poets who are excluded from these inner circles. Under these conditions one hopes that their love of their art will sufficiently inspire them despite their long treks towards probable nothingness."

Poems for Peace by Philip Metres

The Poetry Foundation has just published an article about "How to build a collection that moves beyond anti-war poetry" by Cleveland area author, educator and peace activist Philip Metres. Check it out here:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=240142

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About Philip Metres:

Professor of English at John Carroll University, Dr. Metres was recently awarded the 2010 Cleveland Arts Prize for Emerging Artist. His books include To See the Earth (2008), Come Together: Imagine Peace (anthology of peace poems, 2008), Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront since 1941 (2007), Instants (2006), Primer for Non-Native Speakers (2004), Catalogue of Comedic Novelties: Selected Poems of Lev Rubinstein (2004), and A Kindred Orphanhood: Selected Poems of Sergey Gandlevsky (2003). His poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry and Inclined to Speak: Contemporary Arab American Poetry. Find him online at www.philipmetres.com and http://behindthelinespoetry.blogspot.com.