Westside Poetry Workshop

NEW:
I. Poetry Workshop WEST!
Fourth Thursday of Every Month
7-9pm @ Visible Voice Books
1023 Kenilworth Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44113

UPDATE - "Just wanted to let you know if you are interested, we've dropped the tuition fee for the Poetry West Workshop with Claire and Lou. It will now have a suggested donation of $10 per session, so people who can't otherwise afford it can still come." 

Fall Session Begins Wednesday October 27, 2010.
Finally! The LIT's Public Poetry Workshop comes to the West side, Poets of all ages and backgrounds are welcome once a month to bring a work-in-progress and receive recommendations for improving it. Our goal is friendly, yet serious critiques by emerging and experienced writers. Improvement of craft through reading, writing, and work shopping with Instructors Lou Suarez and Claire McMahon.

Lou Suarez is the author of two book-length collections of poetry, Traveler (2010) and Ask (2004), both published by Mid-List Press (Minneapolis), and three poetry chapbooks, Losses of Moment, The Grape Painter and On U. S. 6 to Providence. He is professor emeritus at Lorain County Community College and lives in Sheffield Lake, Ohio, with his wife Debby.


Claire McMahon has an MFA in Writing & Poetics from Naropa University (Boulder, Colorado) and a Ph.D. in 20th Cent. American & British Poetry from Kent State University. She is co-editor of MoonLit poetry journal (Drag City Press, Chicago) and the author of a book of poems entitled, Emergency Contact (Van Zeno Press, Cleveland). She has taught English writing courses locally at Lake Erie College, Baldwin-Wallace College, Cuyahoga Community College, and Chancellor University. Currently, Claire is an Adjunct Professor of Humanities at Bowling Green University’s Firelands campus.

Poetry @ IngenuityFest 2010

Ingenuity, Cleveland’s Festival of Art and Technology

The Ingenuity Festival returns with a weekend-long celebration of art and technology, designed for audiences of any age and experience, staged in the center of Downtown Cleveland. Prominent international masters present original works alongside the finest of Northeast Ohio’s performing and visual artists. High technology firms and major colleges and universities are presented alongside acclaimed artists to create a dazzling display of exciting and immersive new work! Ingenuity pushes boundaries, creating a unique festival experience that draws and celebrates diversity, and involves the audience as both spectator and participant!

This Year’s Poetry centered events include:

Malikee Ikiru

September 24, 2010 11:45PM - September 25, 2010 12:00AM@ Span Stage - West Concourse - West Side of Bridge

Malikee Ikiru has been active in the urban poetry scene in Cleveland since the early 90s. He combines the hard revolutionary stance of the late 60s with futuristic images military science fiction. Mixing politics, romanticism, spirituality, and a computer generated world to give his art a matrixesque feeling.  He has done hundreds of shows and opened for such acts as Sonia Sanchez, burning spear and krs1. Are you ready for the revolution? The matrix has you!

Midnight Poetry with Dr. McMahon

September 24, 2010 11:45PM - September 25, 2010 12:45AM@ Span Stage - West Concourse - West Side of Bridge

Hosted by Claire McMahon readers will include: Poetry by Eric Alleman,  Eric Anderson, Diane Borsenik,  Miles Budimir, John Burroughs,  Charlotte Mann, Claire McMahon,  Robert Miltner, Michael Salinger,  Theresa (T.M. Gottl), Russ Vidrick.

Poetry Workshop and Performance with Michael Salinger

September 25, 2010 4:00PM - 5:00PM@ West Courtyard Stage

Student workshops led by poet/educator Michael Salinger. Students will write, edit, rehearse and perform their own original works.

Ray McNiece - Haiku Slam

September 25, 2010 5:00PM - 6:00PM@ Span Stage - West Concourse - West Side of Bridge

Whether you participate or observe you will enjoy the fast paced action of Head to Head haiku – a poetry competition based on the rules of Sumo wrestling. Also, add your thoughts to the endless scroll that will be a Cleveland Rengku. Hosted by local haiku master Ray McNiece.

The festival will be held on the subway level of the Veterans Memorial (Detroit Superior) Bridge in Downtown Cleveland.  It can be accessed from the East and West sides of the river and is protected from the weather.

What is the state of American Poetry?

Anis Shivani of the Huffington Post asks, What is the state of American Poetry?

"Is it savagely alive, reaching its tentacles into new corners of consciousness, or is it a moribund corpse, having long been administered last rites?"

He asks a bunch of poets this, including

Clayton Eshleman ("...Today the writing scene resembles a blizzard on an archipelago of sites...")

Annie Finch ("American poetry is at a dead-end. And that's a good thing!" ... "Poetic fashions change surprisingly fast, so don't spend too much energy on them.")

Ron Silliman ("Fifty years ago, there were well under 1,000 poets writing & publishing in English. Today, there are easily over 20,000. A dead-end? Hardly.")

Danielle Pafunda ("American poetry is a live wire. In fact, it is a tangle of live wires....")

...and also a pile of other people in the comments section ("I don't think poetry is dying, it's just that there are too many bad poets out there.")

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

* * *

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.

Lix & Kix present Philip Metres, Lou Suarez & Monica Igras on 9/15 @ Bela Dubby in Lakewood

The Lix and Kix Poetry Extravaganza is pleased to present featured readings by Monica Igras, Lou Suarez and Phil Metres -- followed by an open mic emceed by Dianne Borsenik and John "Jesus Crisis" Burroughs.

Monica Igras is a poet/performer from Erie, Pennsylvania, who Dianne and John had the pleasure of meeting and hearing for the first time during Snoetry: A Winter Wordfest at the Last Wordsmith Book Shoppe. Her work has appeared in numerous places including the Enhanced Poetry CD Live @ the Jive, available at http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00ZX7HHH.

Lou Suarez is the author of two books of poems, Traveler (Mid-List Press,2010) and Ask (Mid-List Press, 2004), as well as three poetry chapbooks: Losses of Moment (Kent State University Press, 1995), The Grape Painter (Frost Heaves Press, 2001), and On U.S. 6 to Providence (Red Mountain Review, 2006). Lou is currently Professor Emeritus at Lorain County Community College, and his book Traveler was a finalist for one of The Lit's Lantern Awards. Find him online at http://www.lousuarez.com.

Philip Metres, Professor of English at John Carroll University, 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.

We hope to see you there!

Lantern Award Winners

Last night at the Palace Theater, The Lit hosted their first-ever biennial Lantern Awards ceremony. Since Billy Crystal wasn't available, Cleveland's own Michael Heaton [left] emceed.

My favorite underappreciated cartoonist, Derf, proved appreciated after all, receiving a lifetime achievement award. Thankfully, he's not yet ready to retire.

The far-too-soon retired Harvey Pekar and Sheila Schwartz also received well deserved lifetime achievement awards.

As for the fab northeast Ohio writers who competed for the rest of the awards, there was no way every deserving candidate was going to win a uniquely sculpted Mark Yasenchack lantern. If that had happened, I imagine the artist might not have had time to create anything else this year. But ten writers both got lucky and very much earned their awards in ten highly competitive genres. Here they are:

Poetry Collection: George Bilgere of Cleveland Heights, for The White Museum.

Single Poem: Eric Anderson of Elyria, for "A Couple of Scars on My Back."

Fiction/Novel: Dan Chaon of Cleveland Heights, for Await Your Reply.

Short Fiction: Tricia Springstubb of Cleveland Heights, for "In the Dark."

Memoir - Book Length: Thrity Umrigar of Cleveland Heights, for First Darling of the Morning.

Non-Fiction - Book Length: Michael Rulman of Cleveland Heights, for The Elements of Cooking.

Non-Fiction - Essay: Kristin Ohlson of Cleveland Heights, for Watching TV in Kabul.

Journalism: Joanna Connors of Shaker Heights, for "Beyond Rape."

Performance: Michael Oatman of Shaker Heights, for Eclipse.

Blog: Erin O'Brien of Broadview Heights, for The Erin O'Brien Owner's Manual for Human Beings.

And appearances to the contrary, I assure you there has been no vast eastside conspiracy.

Thanks to The Lit's director Judith Mansour for spearheading this memorable event, and to everyone else who had a hand in making it happen. Hearty congratulations to the Lantern Award winners! For more about each of them, I encourage you to check out this morning's Plain Dealer article or click on their names above.

P.S. I videoed the awards ceremony and took some photos at the after party. So stay tuned for a sequel to this blog entry when I have more time.

Congrats to Erin!

Clevelandpoetics was one of the three nominees for best blog at the Cleveland Literary Center's "All Lit Up" ceremony for the biennial "Lantern" literary awards. The awards ceremony just finished, with John Burroughs and me there to accept the award for Clevelandpoetics if we won....

Well, I regret to say that when the envelope was opened, Clevelandpoetics didn't win best blog... but I am thrilled to say that we lost to Rainy Day woman Erin O'Brien's blog, "The Erin O'Brien Owners Manual for Human Beings." If we have to lose, I think we can say that we lost to the very best. Erin's blog is funny, and insightful, and all in all a great read. I'm sure you all already read it, but if not, you should go there right now and add it to your bookmarks.

Congrats, Erin! Well deserved!

(Stay tuned for a post on the rest of the winners... )

Po-etiquette

When doing a poetry reading, it is always best NOT to take yourself too seriously. Prepare, yes. Have your papers in order, yes. Rehearse a little. Know your audience. But all of us who read our words aloud have grown to appreciate nobel prize winner Wislawa Szymborska's sentiment:

Poetry Reading

To be a boxer, or not to be there
at all. O Muse, where are our teeming crowds?
Twelve people in the room, eight seats to spare
it's time to start this cultural affair.
Half came inside because it started raining,
the rest are relatives. O Muse.
The women here would love to rant and rave,
but that's for boxing. Here they must behave.
Dante's Infemo is ringside nowadays.
Likewise his Paradise. O Muse.

Oh, not to be a boxer but a poet,
one sentenced to hard shelleying for life,
for lack of muscles forced to show the world
the sonnet that may make the high-school reading lists
with luck. O Muse,
O bobtailed angel, Pegasus.

In the first row, a sweet old man's soft snore:
he dreams his wife's alive again. What's more,
she's making him that tart she used to bake.
Aflame, but carefully-don't burn his cake!
we start to read. O Muse.

Okay, so I did Vertigo Xi'an Xavier's Canton First Friday! The Poetry Spectacular last night. Beautiful night, fun arts event for families and galleries. Highly recommended. Don't wait for a written invitation. The streets were hopping. It wasn't raining at all and some of the crowd even came inside for the poetry reading.

In the theater, the opening act was the local HS forensics team. They wept, screamed, and scratched their skin through three performances. The audience clapped politely as one watched her kids drown on the Titanic, one drank bleach, and one (even more frighteningly) attempted humor. Then they all stood up with their entourages and noisily discussed how well they did as they departed and as I was being introduced. Michael mentioned to a couple of them that my poems have been used to win several state forensic oral interp competitions. Perhaps one kid shrugged.

Then a young woman came to the stage as I was putting my folder on the music stand.
"What time is the open mic?"
"After the feature," answered Vertigo, the emcee (who is working overtime to build this event and sincerely seems to be a great guy).
"What time is that?" She asked.
"Are you leaving?" He asked.
"Yes. I’ll come back to read. I’m first on the open mic."
"You should stay for the feature," he nodded to me, standing at his elbow.
She looked me straight in the eye and said, “most poetry bores me, no offense.”

How could I take offense?

The rest of the evening went much better and we were treated to energetic performances by Mary Turzillo and Geoff Landis among others. Will the poetry gods forgive me for cutting out for the first poet in the open mic and then returning for the rest of the evening?

As I departed, the young woman (who had returned to chat through my last couple of poems and use her cell phone to take pictures of her friend) called to me, “you’re leaving? I’m crushed.”

My reply, “no offense.”



cross-posted at saraholbrook.blogspot

Late Great Cleveland: Langston Hughes

The Negro Speaks of Rivers
by Langston Hughes (1/1/1902 - 5/22/1967)

I've known rivers

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than
the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathe in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

* * * * *

"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" was first published in the
June 1921 issue of Crisis magazine, published by the NAACP.

Langston Hughes' biography & bibliography are available here.

Every Hughes poem in the public domain is online here.

Zombie Haiku

Actually saw Halloween candy at Walgreen’s yesterday…

What you reading there?

Here’s an essay from a friend down south – all the way in Columbus – Scott Woods, poetry champion extraordinaire. This piece first ran at Got Poetry dot Com and is reprinted here with the author’s permission:
*********************************************
I was at the National Poetry Slam in St. Paul a couple of weeks ago (awesome time) and I noticed something right away: there were a lot more competitors reciting poetry from paper than usual. I mean, to the point of comment.

On one hand, this delighted me a great deal. In any given year I’m usually one of about three paper poets (a poet that performs a poem from paper or a journal or some other vehicle of codification) out of about nearly four hundred poets who show up to compete. Most people who consider themselves performance poets memorize, and in slam competitions particularly so. I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve heard from poets or audience members or judges that poems that are memorized are somehow better than ones that aren’t. There is the notion that a poet who bothers to commit their work to memory is somehow more dedicated to their craft than the poet who does not. I ask you, which poet is more dedicated: the poet who memorizes ten poems that they recite at every featured reading they have over the course of a few years, or the poet who performs ten times that number in the same amount of time, but from paper?

I have made a conscious decision not to memorize any of my poetry. It is, quite literally, a mission with me. I’ve memorized poetry in the past to see if I could do it, and when I did the results were pretty impressive. But in the end I have dedicated myself to not memorizing poems because I want poets to know that memorizing a poem doesn’t have to be the entry fee to performance poetry. You can still win slams – even the big ones - from paper. You can still give incredible features and do tours from paper. You can still make an audience lose its complete and utter mind from paper. It all comes down to the poem and how deeply you’re willing to commit to giving a performance of that poem.

I lay no claim whatsoever that my platform of performing from paper only had anything to do with the amount of paper I saw in slam competition this year. I think a case could be made, and I’ve certainly heard things over the years from coaches that imply my mission has had some effect. Whatever the reason is for more paper performances this year I don’t care...I’m just glad the day of acknowledging the power of papyrus has returned.

Not that it wasn’t here along, mind you: any random poetry reading that isn’t swamped with people trying to show their performance chops in equal measure to their writing chops will be a reading filled with paper. There are more poets reading from paper than there are poets who aren’t on the whole, so in the grand scheme of things it’s not that big a deal. It only really matters in those circles that place a premium on performance over writing ability.

Anyhow, while I ultimately do not care about who’s doing what for what reason, I do care about The Big Four. A while back I drafted four rules about performing poetry from paper. Application of these rules is sorely lacking in performances I see everywhere I go:
1. Commit.
2. Voice compensates for body.
3. You aren’t allowed to fuck up.
4. It always comes down to the poem.

1) Commit.
Knowing is not memorizing. I can recite back parts of my poems, but at some point I need my line fed to me because while I know my poems pretty well, I do not have them memorized.
Also, reading is not performing. Sounding like you’re reading makes me feel like I’m in school. I hated school, especially the poetry units. We can all try a little harder in this area.

2) Voice compensates for body.
If you’re performing from paper, you’re already down a hand or two, or blocked by a music stand. The audience will have a hard time not noticing these things. Adopt the principle that if you lose one thing you should compensate for it by amplifying another. After your poem, your voice is your most powerful tool, not your ability to memorize or move around on stage. The poem starts to live in the performance world when you open your mouth, so use it: play with the texture of your voice, the tone, the rhythm, the breadth of its range of meanings.

Also note that I have been saying “perform”, not “read”. Most problems with poets and paper stem from not making this distinction. Conversely they do two things that make me wish they’d just stop writing poetry altogether: a) they don’t bother to commit to a performance since they’re going to be seen reading from paper anyway, and b) they perform with those annoying gaps every other line (you know: EXCITED SHOUTING! Look for my line. EXCITED SHOUTING! Look for my line…). Neither of these is an excuse for a poor performance from paper. If you can memorize, there is no reason why your reading from paper should suck. In fact it should be easier.

3) You aren’t allowed to fuck up.
This one is pretty unforgiveable to me. If you lose your place in a poem that’s sitting in front of you, then you’re an idiot. People who do this tend to do it because they thought they had more of the poem memorized than they actually do, or they get so caught up in the performance they forget that a part is coming up that they don’t actually remember. Idiots. Look, it’s very simple math:
You – memory of poem = no poem in your head
…so quit pretending you know your poem and invest in some fucking focus.

4) It always comes down to the poem.
This is my answer to everything about poetry, but it really means something here. A great poem will forgive a lot of things, will clear the way for a lot of risks you might take as a performer. Don’t worry about your performance more than your poem. In the end, you want audiences to remember your poem, not that you were really passionate about whatever it was you were up there talking about that they can’t somehow recall under questioning. Everything in life is easier if you start off by doing things correctly right out of the gate.

That's it.

I love performing poetry, and performing it from paper doesn’t diminish that for me or my audiences. I love pulling out that thick ragged folder – “Goldie” – and embracing the challenge of riffling through it for the perfect poem at the perfect moment. And I won’t let a little thing like memorization stop me from doing this. It may stop me from being asked to do certain gigs, but that’s the booker’s loss. I will fuck your audience up from paper, just as easily as someone who’s flailing about and giving you jazz hands for twenty minutes. I don’t apologize for not memorizing. No one should, if they believe that the work they will present is just as good read as it is memorized AND that they will deliver it with the extra mile required to make that belief true.

Is Poetry Evil? (Plato thought so.)

In today's Opinionator column at the New York Times, Alaxander Nehamas reminds us about Plato's arguments that poets should be banished from his ideal society, and suggests that Plato's arguments may still apply to our times.

"Plato knows how captivating and so how influential poetry can be but, unlike us today, he considers its influence catastrophic. To begin with, he accuses it of conflating the authentic and the fake. Its heroes appear genuinely admirable, and so worth emulating, although they are at best flawed and at worst vicious. In addition, characters of that sort are necessary because drama requires conflict — good characters are hardly as engaging as bad ones. Poetry’s subjects are therefore inevitably vulgar and repulsive — sex and violence. Finally, worst of all, by allowing us to enjoy depravity in our imagination, poetry condemns us to a depraved life."

The same reasoning, Nehamas points out, is at the heart of today’s denunciations of mass media.

(Wow-- so, Grand Theft Auto will, in a thousand years time, have the same status that Homer's poetry had in Plato's time? Well, if Nehamas is right, yes. After all, who are we to judge? We're not even dead yet!

Plato's argument was, in brief, that poets make stuff up, and hence is the enemy of truth.

Enemies of truth! Whoa!

Well, now we have talk radio and political bloggers for that. Same thing, I guess.

Starving Artists present annual 3-Part Slam Series

[Click poster to see a larger version]

From the Starving Artist Project press release:

It's the 1st Annual 3-Part Slam Series, hosted by the Starving Artist Project. There will be three different slams held at three different venues over three days. Each slam has a different theme, and will be open to poets of all ages. Each competitor WILL be required to pay a $10 entrance fee for each slam they compete in. This money will go into a pot and the top poet will win a percentage of this pot. Each slam will be three rounds and scores will not be cumulative.

The Slams:

September 8th, 2010 - "The Minute Slam" at The Root Cafe, 15118 Detroit Avenue in Lakewood, OH. (Each round of this slam will be restricted to a time limit. 1st round - 1 min, 2nd round - 2 min, 3rd round - 3 min.)

September 9th, 2010 - "Women's Only Slam" at the LGBT Community Center, 6600 Detroit Avenue in Cleveland, OH. (This slam is restricted to women poets only, but all are welcome to attend.)

September 10th, 2010 - "Men's Only Slam" at Urbean Joe's Cafe, 14804 St. Clair Avenue in Cleveland, OH 44110 (This slam is restricted to male poets only, but all are welcome.)

Visit the 3-Part Slam's Facebook event page here.

All LIT Up at the Palace on 9/11/2010

All LIT Up

The Academy has the Oscars...The LIT has the Lanterns. Join the Northeast Ohio Literary Community for a celebration of writers and writing in eight different genre categories and be there as we honor Sheila Schwartz and Harvey Pekar with a final tribute.

Saturday, September 11, 2010
Palace Theatre at Playhouse Square
8-10pm / Doors open at 7pm

Cocktails*, Book Browsing, Hob-knobbing, and a LITtle bit of Entertainment
* Cash bar

$35 ticket
$50 ticket includes Turn the Page After-Party

Purchase tix at www.playhousesquare.org
or 216-241-6000

Turn the Page After-Party
at the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative
1309 Euclid Avenue, Suite 200
10pm - Midnight

$50 ticket-holders admitted

HURRY - fewer than 50 tickets remain!

As easy as the turn of the page, walk half a block to the CUDC where the celebration with finalists and award-winning writers begins! Enjoy cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, and desserts as you connect with the literati against the backdrop of this stunning space and beats by DJ Jugoe.

Follow The Lit on Twitter.
Like The Lit on Facebook.

Read a recent Plain Dealer article about the Lantern Awards here.

The Lit is located in the ArtCraft Building | 2570 Superior Avenue Suite 203 | Cleveland, Ohio 44114 | Phone: 216.694.0000 | www.the-lit.org

[Full disclosure: Cleveland Poetics - The Blog is in the running for a 2010 Lantern Award.]
.

Ohio Poetry Day: October 15-16 2010

The 2010 Ohio Poetry Day will be celebrated on October 15 and 16 at Heidelberg University, in Tiffin, Ohio.

Ohio Poetry Day is celebrated on the third Friday and Saturday of October. From the page, I see that "Ohio Poetry Day was the first government sanctioned Poetry Day in the United States. It was through this day that other states began to celebrate a poetry Day and eventually National Poetry Month came to be."

The poetry day celebration includes the Friday evening "poets meet and greet," followed by the poets heading to Carmie's for an open mike and other amusements, but the main event on Saturday (October 15), with readings from the Ohio poet of the year, awards to the poets who won the Ohio Poetry Day contests (followed by readings), and various other readings and poetry events; not to mention the book room. The events finish up at 5, except for the after party.

Check the website at ohiopoetryday.org for more, and read the Ohio Poetry Day forum if you want to comment, ask questions, or get the most up-to-date information.

If you're on Facebook, check out the Ohio Poetry Association group.

--by the way, this year's winners of the 2010 Ohio Poetry Day contest includes a good sampling of area poets. Just noticing the names who contribute to clevelandpoetics, I see T.M. Gottl, Mary A. Turzillo, Geoffrey A. Landis (um, that would be me), Dianne Borsenik, and Joshua Gage. Congrats, poets!

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.

This week's offering is from a Clevelandpoetics the Blog contributor.

Love is a nail in eternity's coffin
love is a box of rusty needles
love is rotten fruit and a malignant smile
love sweetens and wheedles

la la la, Kathy, will you marry me

Love always ends with somebody dying first
love is a crack of the whip, a jagged tooth

Not today, not ever, Brian.

Love is the giant bass lurking in the shallows
love is a trick God plays on those he hates
Marry me, marry me, Kathy, marry me.

Never, Brian. Go away.

Love is the subway to the hidden message
love eats your heart and spits out the stones

Kathy, will you marry me.

Love is the cat that won't come when you call her.
Love crushes your moral vision like a road-killed rat.

Okay.

Love is the wilderness behind the horse's eyes
love floats in a palanquin of violets.

We will be so happy, yes, Brian, love, I will be happy forever.

Can I be the bridesmaid who trips on your train?
Can I be the Elvis impersonator in purple vestments?
Can I be the usher who gets drunk and steals your car?
Can we get married in a submarine?
Can we get married on the space shuttle?
Can we get married on the Goodyear Blimp?
Can I carry the ring in my hot little paw?
Can I be the best man with a mosquito bite on his ass?
Can I be the flower girl who cries because she got jam on her dress?
Can I catch the garter and sell it to aliens?
Can I be the late-comer who yells "Stop! I know why they should not be joined"?
Can I wear my vest made of Sillyputty and string beans?
Can I catch the bouquet in my teeth?

Love is a mess of spare parts and elusive perfume
Love is the nail in eternity's coffin.

Late Great Cleveland: Hart Crane

Garden Abstract
by Hart Crane (7/21/1899 - 4/27/1932)

The apple on its bough is her desire,—
Shining suspension, mimic of the sun.
The bough has caught her breath up, and her voice,
Dumbly articulate in the slant and rise
Of branch on branch above her, blurs her eyes.
She is prisoner of the tree and its green fingers.

And so she comes to dream herself the tree,
The wind possessing her, weaving her young veins,
Holding her to the sky and its quick blue,
Drowning the fever of her hands in sunlight.
She has no memory, nor fear, nor hope
Beyond the grass and shadows at her feet.

* * * * *

"Garden Abstract" was composed and first published in 1920,
then collected in Crane's White Buildings [Boni & Liveright, 1926].

Hart Crane's biography & bibliography are available here.

Every Crane poem in the public domain is online here.

Nin Andrews - Poem of the Day from Poets.org

Congrats to NEO's own Nin Andrews for being selected as today's "poem of the day" author by the Academy of American Poets!

Click here to read the piece

Hooray!

Six poets make the top 15 list!

Anis Shivani of the Huffington Post slaps the sh!t out of the literary establishment with his list of the 15 most overrated writers in America.

Oooh! I love it when media pundits slam on writers who aren't me! (especially when the writers being dissed get eviscerated with witty insults.) More! Do more!

(He's wrong about Junot Diaz, though. The man's cool; he teaches at MIT! How cool is that? Oh, and I like Billy Collins, too, so sue me.)

Amazingly, of his list of fourteen* "most over-rated" writers, six are poets. Wow, he thinks Americans rate poetry that highly?? Really? Almost half** of the "most overrated" writers are poets?

Here's his poets, and a quote from his hatchet job each one:

• John Ashbery (Self-Portrait in a Broken Mirror): "More responsible than anyone else for turning late twentieth-century American poetry into a hermetic, self-enclosed, utterly private affair"
• Mary Oliver (Porcupines and Toads and Opossums and Turtles): "Publishes a book a year with interchangeable contents--how she has put on the brakes on her own evolution is the real wonder. Poems are free of striking images, ideas, or form."
• Sharon Olds (Tampons and Lactation): "Childbirth, her father's penis, her son's cock, and her daughter's vagina are repeated obsessions she can always count on in a pinch. Has given confessionalism such a bad name it can't possibly recover."
• Jorie Graham (The Dream of the Unified Field): "With her last few books, this philosopher of language has sought to become more and more unreadable."
• Louise Gluck (Odysseus and Ostracization): "She is perhaps our greatest example of mediocrity ascending to the very top."
• Billy Collins (Angels on Pins and Walking Across the Atlantic): "His poems have lately become mostly about writing poems--in his pajamas, with a cup of coffee in hand."

Lots of responses, on the webs and in the blogosphere, most of which (paraphrasing here) say he's a dick. Maybe the most succinct summary comes from Charles Jensen, who titles his post "everyone's a critic, but you're a bad one."

----

*(he lists a book reviewer who likes the preceeding authors as his final entry)

**42.9%, really. 40%, if you count the reviewer he saved for last.

Introduction to poetry

So, I see that the Library of Congress has Billy Collins' "Introduction to Poetry" posted on their site. Good for them! Bruce Weber called him “the most popular poet in America” in no less etheric a place than the New York Times, so I guess it's kinda plebian to like Billy Collins these days, but still, I think maybe he nailed it.

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room

and feel the walls for a light switch...

For some light amusement, check out the whole poem. (My good friend Mr. Google tells me that it's posted about 4,640 places on the web... but it's officially still Mr. Collins' property, and so I'll let you go somewhere else for the whole thing.)

Part of Library of Congress' "Poetry 180" project-- 180 poems on the web.

Late Great Cleveland: d.a. levy

the wandering white
by d.a. levy (10/29/1942 - 11/24/1968)

Tulips burst their languid lips
Riveras Lenin leaps up to world chaos of fresco
shattering HAMMERS
Sombre ugly tongue of protest

if it is too tired to yell
or put it down on paper
slap it in the coughing crib
or laugh it silently
who hears it anyway?
except snakes rippling knives of grass

the blasphemy of your necessity
nigger - jew - faggot - wop
indian squaw we conned the country from your innocence
raped you with cut glass and catholic beads

We Learned So Fast
We Forget The Weight
Of Lions Eyes

Spic don't lay my sister
Chink dont poison my eggroll
Brother dont look me face to face
the color never washes out but the HATE of it IS
ivy entwining limestone
CRUMBLES

of our death
We Learned So Fast
to forget the scars

We are only clouds that darken
and rains of suffering on ourselves
cast urgent shadows in our paths
we pile our precious gems
they SPARKLE - reflect a melange of
color in the sand our dreams wash
away with the brutal surf
we understand yet
Build Our Dams anyway

We Learned So Fast
We Forgot The Weight
Of Lions Eyes

* * * * *

taken from ukanhavyrfuckinciti bak
originally collected and edited by rjs and
published by t.l. kryss, GHOST PRESS CLEVELAND, 1967

For more levy, visit http://www.clevelandmemory.org/levy

*

Trenchcoat Manifesto, Borsenik & Burroughs

Trenchcoat Manifesto (Tom Adams and Richard Hearn) will perform at Visible Voice Books, 1023 Kenilworth in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, on Wednesday August 4th at 7 p.m. Featured poets Dianne Borsenik and John Burroughs will join them. Here's just a taste of what Trenchcoat Manifesto do.


And expect the unexpected. Hope to see you there!

Our Facebook event page is here.

Jack Kerouac: Belief and Technique for Modern Prose

Mary posted this list of advice from Jack Kerouac in her blog the other day (part of a longer discussion on style with Joshua), and I thought it worth reposting. Here's what that ol' dharma bum Jack said about writing more than fifty years ago:

Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, a list of thirty "essentials".


1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside your own house
4. Be in love with your life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see your exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

--Jack Kerouac, "Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" from a 1958 letter to Don Allen, published in Heaven & Other Poems (1958, Grey Fox Press).

Want more advice from uncle Jack? Check out "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose."

And you Slammers thought you started something...

The Word of the Day for August 01, 2010 is:

eisteddfod • \eye-STETH-vawd\ • noun

: a usually Welsh competitive festival of the arts especially in poetry and singing

Example Sentence:

This year's eisteddfod featured some exceptional recorder and guitar playing, but as in past years it was the bards who were the highlight of the festival.

Did you know?

In Medieval times, Welsh bards and minstrels would assemble together for an "eisteddfod" (the Welsh word for "session") of poetry and music competition. Over time, participation and interest in these competitions lessened, and by the 17th century an eisteddfod was far from the courtly affair it once was. The competition was revived in the 19th century as a way to showcase Wales's artistic culture. It was also in that century that an official council was formed to organize the annual National Eisteddfod of Wales, an event still held each summer alternately in North or South Wales. There are awards for music, prose, drama, and art, but the one for poetry remains the eisteddfod's pinnacle.

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• Theme music by Joshua Stamper ©2006 New Jerusalem Music/ASCAP

NEO Poet Field Guide: Dianne Lynn Keith Borsenik

Full name: Dianne Lynn Keith Borsenik. The First. Lol.

Age: eternal flowerchild, born 02/02/1955, year of the Sheep, sign of Aquarius

Habitat: in my skin, quite comfortably

Range: Borders Books, Visible Voice, Macs Backs , Regal, Cinemark, and Cedar Lee cinemas,
Carrabbas Italian Grill, Pier W, McDonalds, China Renaissance, Bela Dubby Art Gallery and Beer Café, and on the road…again!

Diet: Robert Plant/Led Zeppelin, Devo, Rammstein, Monkees, Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller, apocalyptic movies, biographies, sunshine, vampires, British television, mojitos, coffee, asparagus, shrimp cocktail, steak, spaghetti, lobster, and yes, poetry- all kinds of poetry

Distinguishing Markings: HardDrive/SoftWear (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2009), The Magnetic Poetry Book of Poetry (Workman Publishing, 1997) , Haiku World: An International Poetry Almanac (Kodansha International, 1996), Voices of Cleveland (CSU Poetry Center, 1996), Ship of Fools , Nerve Cowboy, Naturally Magazine, Slipstream, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Deep Cleveland Junkmail Oracle, S. A. Griffin's Poetry Bomb project, Jonathan Frid's Genesis of Evil, Cleveland's RTA poetry projects, Crisis Chronicles Online Library and Co-Host of the Lix & Kix reading series.

Predators:
migraines, asthma, grass and hay fever allergies, procrastination, impatience, distraction

Prey:
places I’ve never been, sights I’ve never seen, music I’ve never heard, books I’ve never read, food I’ve never tasted, things I’ve never experienced, words I’ve never known, and the deliciously perfect poem

Call:

Downpour

on the roof
the drum of rain

on the bed
the drum of hearts

...raining harder, now

Contact info : http://www.pw.org/content/dianne_borsenik_0, dborsenik@gmail.com