November 15th: Get Sharp! 2025 Ohio Poetry Publishing Conference

Join the Ohio Poetry Association on November 15th from 10 to 4:30 at the Cuyahoga County Public Library's South Euclid-Lyndhurst branch for an absolutely free Ohio Poetry Publishing Conference. Registration and more details at https://attend.cuyahogalibrary.org/event/13881294.

Get Sharp! will include an Ohio small press book fair and fab workshop presentations by Dianne Borsenik, Geoff Anderson, Michael Salinger, and Susan Grimm.

Ten Years Old!

Clevelandpoetics: the blog just turned ten years old, with the first post by Michael Salinger announcing the blog on July 17, 2008.

Happy birthday to us! There's been 1,181 posts since then-- oops, that's 1,182 now-- and it's hard to believe we're still going. Year 11, here we come!

Now, with that said, if we're going to survive another year, I have to say we need your help-- we've always needed your help, and we need it now more than ever.  The blog isn't a one-man show: this blog belongs to the Cleveland poetry community: this blog is your blog.  

So, we want you to contribute. Join the team!  We want you!  Write up what happened at a poetry reading you attended, or a slam, or an author reading! Tell us about your philosophy of poetry, or why poetry is dead (or isn't dead)! Tell us why Cleveland is unique! Tell us about a poet we don't know, or about a part of the Cleveland poetry community that we haven't been covering-- Cleveland poetry is a big, big tent, and we each sometimes only see our only little corner of it: show us where poetry lives in your community.

Please-- we need you! We don't want your money-- Clevelandpoetics: the blog has been free (and ad-free!) since the beginning.  What we want is your posts.

Want to join team? Want to just write a guest post?  We want you.  Write us at clevelandpoetics@gmail.com and volunteer to join the team now!

Michael and Sara and Police and Poetry

Sara with her new poetry partner

Michael Salinger and Sara Holbrook's project, to bring kids and police together to write poetry, was featured in the News Herald. The theme of the workshop was “If These Streets Could Talk.”

Michael talks about the inception of the project on his blog:

• Michael Salinger: Poetry, police, pedagogy and perspective

and follows on with a post about how it worked

• Michael Salinger: Police, Poetry, Pupils and Pedagogy

---

• Poetry bring kids and police officers together in Eastlake

Now We Are Six

On Thursday, July 17, Clevelandpoetics: the blog turned six years old.

Michael Salinger set up the blog and made the first post, "Welcome to Clevelandpoetics – the blog!" on Thursday, July 17, 2008, followed in quick order by posts from Joshua Gage, Sara Holbrook, Bree, Larry Smith, Steve Ferguson, and Mark S. Kuhar.

Happy birthday, Clevelandpoetics.

Ohio Senate Passes Bill Establishing Ohio Poet Laureate - House Next!

Steve Abbott testifying on behalf of S.B. 84 on May 21st
in Columbus [photo by Michael Salinger]

Click here to read about it on the Ohio Senate's minority caucus blog.  

Many thanks to the senators, including many from our area and from both political parties, who have stepped up and supported Senate Bill 84.  Letters from poets and other bill supporters from across the state, as well as great support from the Ohio Arts Council and Ohio Poetry Association have helped immensely.  But our work's not done yet.

Now Senate Bill 84 is moving on to the Ohio House for consideration and this is the perfect time for us to write to our state representatives and express our support for the establishment of a Poet Laureate position in Ohio.  It doesn't seem right that Ohio, the home of so many fine poets statewide, is one of only five or six United States not to have such a position.

So please write to your state representative and urge him or her to pass this bill.

Click here to find your representative.
Click here to read Senate Bill 84, the Ohio Poet Laureate bill.
Click here to read Michael Salinger's testimony before the Senate in support of S.B. 84.
Click here to read John Burroughs' testimony before the Senate in support of S.B. 84.
Click here to read a statement by Steve Abbott on the O.P.A. blog in support of S.B. 84.

Michael Salinger on 30 Days of Poetry

The Cuyahoga County Public Library's "30 Days of Poetry" has been doing an great job in showcasing poetry from Cleveland and the surrounding area (including quite a few who contribute to this blog.)  I hope everybody's following along!

Today's featured poet is worth a special note, though.  In addition to being a poet, a teacher, and a tireless traveler, Michael Salinger has one other accomplishment that's worth highlighting here in particular: he started Clevelandpoetics: the blog.  So, if you read this blog to catch up on what's going on in the poetry scene (or just to pass the time)-- thank Michael.

And do make a point of checking out the "Read a poem" feature on the 30 Days of Poetry site: there are some amazing poets in the area.

---

"Cicadas"
by Michael Salinger

so thick
they were snow-shoveled
from the sidewalks on public square
my grandfather called them Canadian soldiers
but the thumb-sized black and green bugs
hadn’t flown across lake erie
they clawed up from the soil
after seventeen year sleep
claim staking the world
for ten summer days
filling the stagnant air with static
then they died
leaving
empty shells
translucent chrysalis
split along the back
clinging to trees
and brick wall
their bodies
crunching under foot
and bus tire
downtown in front of higbee’s
a doorman in a red coat
yellow trim at the cuffs
polished shoes
clears the entry
scrape of steel on concrete
white swath cutting through
the buzz-clicking mass
as if shaving a living beard
years ago
back when
playing with
mercury
on the black-and-white-checkered
asbestos-tiled kitchen floor
was not yet
dangerous

"Cicadas" by Michael Salinger in I Have My Own Song for It: Modern Poems of Ohio edited by Elton Glaser and William Greenway, Akron University Press, 2002. Used with permission of the author.

---

Michael Salinger is a father, poet and educator who travels the world promoting the use of poetry as a literacy tool in classrooms.

• from: http://www.cuyahogalibrary.org/What-to-Read/Read-Write-30-Days-of-Poetry.aspx

Salinger and Holbrook rock Carolina

Michael Salinger and Sara Holbrook rock! You knew that already, of course. But there's a nice article about their visit to East Aiken Elementary School classrooms in the Aiken Standard:

"Not just rhyme time: Authors bring poetry to area classrooms."

According to fourth-grader Allison McGarry:

"Poems are a fun way to talk to people."

Sarah Vowell

When

was the last time you had to worry about the Fire Marshall at a literary event due to crowd size?

I recently attended an appearance by Sarah Vowell in conjunction with the Cleveland Public Library’s Writers and Readers Series and there was an overflow crowd in the Lois Stokes Wing Auditorium. Now fans of Ira Glass’ This American Life would recognize Ms. Vowell’s voice – as Ron Antonucci mentioned in his introduction of the author voice is taken in both classifications here, writing and spoken. The humorist is a bestselling author, contributing editor to the NPR program This American Life as well as the voice of Violet Parr, the teenage super hero daughter in Pixar’s academy award winning animated feature The Incredibles.

Before she took the stage the standing room portion of the crowd (itself a hundred strong) had to be reseated outside the auditorium where they viewed her very entertaining presentation via closed circuit television. It was nice to be a part a large gathering of such literary intent. It’s not often you hear Marge Piercy’s name dropped in conversation by the folks sitting behind you (even if it was in error – the couple were actually trying to recall Margaret Atwood’s name – she an earlier speaker in this series.)

Vowell took to the stage first reading from her latest work The Wordy Shipmates a book about the Puritans and their trials and tribulations in a new world. She’s short with cropped straight dark hair, almost anti fashionably dressed in that artsy too cerebral to worry about it kind of way and speaks with the deadpan voice of an extremely precocious little girl with perfect enunciation.

Now, one might not think that Puritans, the assassinations of US Presidents, U.S. election history or radio are the usual subjects of humor, but Vowell succeeds. The selections she read were clinically precise in language and description. In fact, her humor is derived from the almost over exactness and factuality of her prose. Delivered with a pokerfaced self effacing affect she had the audience busting a gut over subjects as diverse as the Magna Carter, the King James Bible and President James A. Garfield’s tomb.

She kept her set list of excerpts to read scrawled on the palm of her right hand which she glanced at occasionally as she moved through her set confidently while never appearing smug or too “smarty pants” as can happen when the subjects are research heavy. Vowell then took questions from the audience. When asked what she went as for Halloween, she replied an author on book tour – rings under eyes, wrinkled clothes, suspect odor…

There were no bad smells associated with this event though.

Kudos to Cleveland Public Library for this series, earlier this year I saw national Book Award winner Sherman Alexie and I am looking forward to more events at The People’s University. Oh yeah, this and the rest of the Writers and Readers Series is absolutely free.

Hello - is there anybody in there?

Once again -

Billy Collins is peering inside the giant catfish searching, searching, and searching for a poem to fill this week's Blind Review Friday slot.

We don't know why he thinks there are poems in the fish - but then again we've never been asked to be poet laureate so he must be onto something.

Help the guy out – send your piece to

salinger@ameritech.net

with the subject line workshop the hell out of this poem just like it says over there in the left sidebar.

All poems received will be put into the cue.

Neo Poet Field Guide

Full name: Carmen "King Mob" Tracey

Age: 24

Habitat: Where understanding breaks down.

Range: The Lit(erary Cafe), The Language Foundry, bars with no
one in them, back alleys, dying cities, coast to coast.

Diet: Nate Thor Krieger, Rob Rosin, Michelle Krivanek, Nick
Flynn, Aesop Rock, John Darnielle.

Distinguishing Markings: Huge beard and lobster hands... er, claws.

Predators: None.

Prey: All of you.

Call:

"wish you were here / wine and split knuckles"

graveyard shift: i
sit in th sunroom and watch th lights flicker in th cemetery, th top floor dark
and mine.

th clever, clever dead. so quiet, and still. no sorrow,
no pain. their choke rattles my lungs, grasps my throat

a fresh
coat of black paint

or a swarm of red
ants

climbing.

my boundless envy fr them is mounting,
collecting lk melted wax into a monument embedded at th center of my brain, grey
and ready.

a candle.

a railroad spike.

a
dark root full of blood.

a pillar of ash.

those tricky
bastards. no dreams, no hopes, no heartache.
their nights are flat as playing
cards
and they have managed th spectacle of
nothingness
graceful and
poised,
tipping their hats, saying "goodnight,"
smiling grave teeth,
stepping into a long black car,

vanishing forever.

Contact info:

ctracey84@gmail.com
www.myspace.com/bloodshoes

Wot Eye Ment Wuz...

This

sort of plays along with all the discussion revolving around form and what constitutes a poem.

I think one of the themes that I have heard reiterated a couple times is once we decide to define groups of words as poems, haiku, sonnet, whatever - then the very labeling creates exclusion and everybody should be against exclusion. Bring grammar or syntax into the equation and one becomes downright draconian.

I’m very interested in this train of thought as I am currently writing a teacher’s text book on vocabulary acquisition – which if we take the former argument of bothering to define anything as being some form of elitism may be futile.

Personally I find this line of reasoning akin to watering down pitching in the major leagues, but that’s just one shmo’s opinion. Here's a news item that I feel fits into this discussion.

LONDON (Reuters) - Embaressed by yor spelling? Never you mind. Fed up with his students' complete inability to spell common English correctly, a British academic has suggested it may be time to accept "variant spellings" as legitimate.

Rather than grammarians getting in a huff about "argument" being spelled "arguement" or "opportunity" as "opertunity," why not accept anything that's phonetically (fonetickly anyone?) correct as long as it can be understood?

"Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I've got a better idea," Ken Smith, a criminology lecturer at Bucks New University, wrote in the Times Higher Education Supplement.

"University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell."

To kickstart his proposal, Smith suggested 10 common misspellings that should immediately be accepted into the pantheon of variants, including "ignor," "occured," "thier," "truely," "speach" and "twelth" (it should be "twelfth").

Then of course there are words like "misspelt" (often spelled "mispelt"), not to mention "varient," a commonly used variant of "variant."And that doesn't even begin to delve into all the problems English people have with words that use the letters "i" and "e" together, like weird, seize, leisure, foreign and neighbor.

The rhyme "i before e except after c" may be on the lips of every schoolchild in Britain, but that doesn't mean they remember the rule by the time they get to university.

Of course, such proposals have been made in the past.

The advent of text messaging turned many students into spelling neanderthals as
phrases such as "wot r u doin 2nite?" became socially, if not academically, acceptable.

Despite Smith's suggestion, language mavens are unconvinced. John Simpson, the chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, says rules are rules and they are there for good reason.

"There are enormous advantages in having a coherent system of spelling," he told the Times newspaper. "It makes it easier to communicate. Maybe during a learning phase there is some scope for error, but I would hope that by the time people get to university they have learnt to spell."

Yet even some of Britain's greatest wordsmiths have acknowledged it's a language with irritating quirkiness. Playwright George Bernard Shaw was fond of pointing out that the word "ghoti" could just as well be pronounced "fish" if you followed common pronunciation: 'gh' as in "tough," 'o' as in "women" and 'ti' as in "nation."

And he was a playright.

Kommentz?

Blind Review Friday

Time
for another edition of Blind Review Friday.

The author shall remain anonymous (unless they chose to divulge themselves in the comments.)

Those commenting are also welcome to remain anonymous if they wish.

Incendiary comments will be removed

If you would like your piece thrown to the wolves send it to salinger@ameritech.net with "Workshop the hell out of this poem" as the subject line.

LINED IN PEDESTRIAL

Mufflers Crickets Birds
Call From Thickets

:brick lined
wide ruled
leger for pedestrial

banking on words
language mattering
less than surge:


Mufflers Crickets Birds
Call From Thickets


:or serged like sewn in
to maybe widely matter

ruled
by brick
languages:


Mufflers Crickets Birds
Call From Thickets

(note - some of the word spacing on lines could not be translated into this post due to constraints of the blogger template, line breaks have been preserved - mgs)

What I meant was...

Okay,
All this talk about form revolving around what is a haiku - what isn't haiku and who decides has got me to pondering.

What about punctuation, correct grammar, strict adherence to other forms and then of course the grand daddy question - is the piece poetry? I mean, can we just slap down 14 lines and call it a sonnet - or do we go that extra graded on a curve step of trying to have around 10 syllables a line, or do we actually attempt iambic pentameter and what the hell is a downbeat anyway?

What makes a piece a poem? I been known to say the next time I hear a poem being performed by some slick preeminent performance poet who is strutting and spouting about his or her metaphors and similes doing this or that without using any metaphors or similes that I will blow my brains out (metaphorically speaking of course.)

So how important is form?
Is it a poem if the only meaning to be discerned from the piece is that which is bobbing right on the surface?
Does correct grammar come into play at all?
Is it an affront to the artist to demand more than preaching to the choir?
Does lack of narrative constitute experimentalism?
Questions questions questions.

I'll leave you with a sonnet:

The Poetry Instructor


They look at me and ask “What should I write?
Which of our thoughts deserve to be on page?”
As if I flip the switch on a spotlight
Illuminating images for stage

I tell them to grab hold of moments
Sufficiently firm they cannot escape
Buoyantly enough they are not bent
That one may reproduce their shape

Instead they wear their hearts upon their sleeves
Rend open boxes full of misery
Lay siege to concepts which we all agree
Are safely held by the majority

I sigh a weary sigh, throw up my hands
What can I say; they’ve gone and won the slam

NEO Poet Field Guide

Full name: Gina M. Tabasso
Age: 39 (July 14, 1969)
Habitat: Brunswick, OH townhouse
Range: Microbreweries, Asian restaurants, rib and wing joints, coffee shops, barns (yes, with an “n” though “bars” are fun, too), overseas, vertical hills on trail rides through mud and rivers and rock, Maine, Nova Scotia, Chicago
Diet: 20th-century British novels, contemporary and canonical poets, Russian lit, horse books, nonfiction; mostly protein, beer and vodka
Distinguishing Markings: Mangrove, The Common Review, Upstairs at Duroc, The MacGuffin, Mid-American Review, Slant, Blue Mesa Review, Pavement Saw, and many others; long, curly hair; tall; lots of curves
Predators: Gasoline costs, inflation, illness, car accidents, raccoon urine in my house, insane men who are trouble, my parents
Prey: Hot, young contractors; men under 35
Call: excerpted from “Forming”

What is your collapsed name,
the one that folded you
imploding like a
star
when your leg bone gave out
when you were born to race,
a dappled
comet streaking
jet and cranberry breath?

What club do you
belong to
that loves foam and sweat
pulls hair from your neck
ties your
windpipe open
mummy wraps your legs
until you want to drink moon
juice
and run through the center
of the sun, lightning
flickering in the
tornado?

Contact info: gtabasso@hotmail.com

Blind Review Friday

Okay - here's our second blind review Friday selection. The author shall remain anonymous (unless they chose to divulge themselves in the comments.)

Those commenting are also welcome to remain anonymous if they wish.

Incendiary comments will be removed

If you would like your piece thrown to the wolves send it to salinger@ameritech.net with "Workshop the hell out of this poem" as the subject line.

Guilt

Too much sugar on a Friday.
too much guilt on a Sunday.
Need me some veggies

and time to clean my dirt road soul
who walks alone. Time to party
with the road kill dead rot sadness
shouting in my head.

I remember the slow pull
of your sticky lip
when I drove away.

No more pills snuck into my cake

All pills out, with frosting on them
All to see and take without me
Around a table they pass them out
And drink a cup of tea with a spoonful
of sugar.

My pink cheeks will lower into a cool bath
with my eyes closed
in a satin Victorian squeezed dress,
mermaid hair, soft water.
Death will come in a breath of wind
A knife lay on the side tub
just in case.

Stack the days on top of what isn’t said
like weights from a workout machine
with blue edged bubbles of evil thoughts:
Die you slut, die you whore, die you cunt.

I’m so grateful time continues
Maybe she will forget.

I’m so grateful
time continues.
Maybe she was drunk.

I’m so grateful time continues.
Maybe she won’t see.
She did see. Someone told me.

Looking for a poem.

We're looking for a submission for this week's Blind Review Friday poem.

Just follow the instructions in the upper left sidebar. In the meantime here is a picture of a man putting his head inside the mouth of a giant catfish.

Somehow this image just seems to go with having one's poetry thrown to the masses for critique.

UPDATE:

We've got three poems in the cue now! Thanks for the submissions. One of these three will be randomly selected for your perusal tomorrow. The other two will remain in the pile 'till picked at a future date.

Update 2:

Sources do confirm that yes indeed -the man in the photo with his head in a catfish is, former poet laureat, Billy Collins.

What rhymes with thug?

Mark's post below serves some food for thought.

What other poets throughout history have reputations as being real jerk offs or worse?

Does having artistic talent provide a free pass for scurrilous behavior?

What about our buddy here to the right?

Mr. Pound was an unabashed Nazi collaborator.

Comments please – who belongs in the rogue’s gallery of poetic despots?

Blind Review Friday

Okay - here's our first blind review Friday selection. The author shall remain anonymous (unless they chose to divulge themselves in the comments.)

Those commenting are also welcome to remain anonymous if they wish.

Incendiary comments will be removed

If you would like your piece thrown to the wolves send it to salinger@ameritech.net with "Workshop the hell out of this poem" as the subject line.

---

From now on, I'm gonna need every letter beginning every sentence to fade out a little bit
because when I grab the back of your neck, I want it to feel like a whisper.
I want you to concentrate on my breath
your heartbeat pounding in my hand
my hand holding in your heartbeat
and I don't want you to tell me the difference
even when I am talking to you in another language, you will understand.

Sunday night and in the booth in front of me, Christopher looks white as a ghost
and Ulee walks in with a Greek Tony Soprano.
Christopher leans forward like he just killed somebody's poodle and Tony's unhappy about it.

Now when Tony ain't happy
ain't nobody happy.

Tony is a mad Greek
he is round, balding and straight to the point and he's got me shaking in my seat
and I like it. In between Tony's pauses,
I whisper confessions to friends across from me
I tap teaspoon against decaf coffee cup

waiting for the kiss of death
waiting atleast for the words, say me fee lay.

but I never hear him say it
I only imagine his love this devotion he has with each trip back to the table
and one more thing
and one more thing
and one more thing,

I love you, kid.

Northeast Ohio Poet Field Guide:

Full name: Roger James Craik
Age: 52
Habitat: Ashtabula, Ohio
Range: Cleveland, Youngstown, out of state and international.
Diet: Unknown
Distinguishing Markings: I Simply Stared (2002), Rhinoceros in Clumber Park (2003), The Darkening Green (2004), Those Years (2007), and poems published in national journals.
Predators: None Stated
Prey: None Stated
Call:

Friday night

My arms are folded
round the girl; the pillow’s
pulled
cool and simple to my cheek.

The ebb and warmth. Birds in
darkening trees.
Insensibly, beyond the reach of tenderness,
the mind
withdraws, goes embering down the years

to where a schoolboy’s on
his way upstairs,
-- no school tomorrow, or the next day too! --
and now
he is throwing off his clothes ecstatically to feel

the crispness
of this special evening’s sheets,
the pillow’s linen meadow at his
cheek,
and in the dark to be imagining as real

within his
self-embracing arms a sleeping girl.

Contact info: rcraik@kent.edu

Welcome to Clevelandpoetics – the blog!

We hope for this forum to be an adjunct to the Clevelandpoetics list serve. You want to know what is happening, when, and where, literary-wise in Northeast Ohio – subscribe to the Clevelandpoetics list serve.

You want that ya should chew the fat about those events, the scene, talk shop or read posts from some of the top writers and publishers in the area and leave your two cents on what they have to say – this is the place for you.

There is no set format although we will have a few recurring themes – if they work out we’ll keep them if not we’ll try something else. What we really need is input via comments and submissions to make this thing float.

We’ve assembled a pretty crack crew to get this baby rolling and each has free reign over what they want to post and each is a volunteer. We think you’ll be happy with this initial incarnation. Later we’ll be looking for guest posters and switch up the writing staff just enough to keep folks guessing.

Thanks – we’ll try real hard to be worth your attention.

Clevelandpoetics: the blog

We'll be going live with content tomorrow Friday the 18th of July!

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