The Cleveland Manifesto of Poetry (1964)

Illustration by d.a.levy for 
"Permit Me Voyage" 
by Adelaide Simon (1963)

The Cleveland Manifesto of Poetry (1964)

 The Cleveland Manifesto of Poetry was published from Jim Lowell's Asphodel Bookshop in 1964, a year after the bookstore opened at 465 The Arcade. It prints statements by Russell Atkins, d. a. levy, Russell Salamon, Adelaide Simon, Jau Billera, and Kent Taylor. The statements still seem relevant today, especially those of Atkins and levy, whose manifesto begins "To write surface poems with the appearance of artificial flowers in order to communicate with persons by forcing them to resort to instinctive methods of understanding." It is a beautiful and surprising characterization of the concrete tendencies in levy's poetry and bookmaking. 

--considering today's Cleveland poetry scene, with a local reading just about every day and two on Saturdays, I'd say that by d.a. levy's standards, we're doing pretty good at "covering the city with lines"!
--but I do have to say, although I loved those old-fashioned manual typewriters and mimeograph stencils back in the day, our printing sure looks a lot nicer now--

 

(from the Spineless and Stapled blog.)

Deep Cleveland features the Dwarf Stars: Friday

This Friday, Feb. 8, the long-running Deep Cleveland Poetry Hour reading series will be featuring editors and authors of Dwarf Stars, an anthology of the best short-short speculative poetry of the year.  Every year, the Science Fiction Poetry Association awards the "Dwarf Stars" award to the best short speculative poetry of the year, where "short" is defined as "ten lines or fewer," and "speculative" means poems of science-fiction, fantasy, horror, surrealistic, or similar content.  The Dwarf Stars volume, which just came out, reprints the fifty best such short speculative poems of last year.

Cover Art: "Once Beyond a Time"
by overseer.deviantart.com

• Facebook event page for the reading

But, what does this have to do with Cleveland poetics, you might ask?  Well, as it turns out, this year the Dwarf Stars anthology was edited by two Cleveland poets: myself and Joshua Gage.  And the book contains, among others, poems by two Cleveland poets, J.E. Stanley and dan smith.  So the Deep Cleveland Poetry Hour is perfect for the debut of the anthology!

Should be a great night with some science fiction and fantasy poetry!
--anybody else out there write SF and fantasy?  Come on over!  We'll have an open mike!


Deep Cleveland is held on the second Friday of every month at the MugShotz Coffee Shop, 6556 Royalton Road North Royalton, Ohio; the event starts at 8, with the feature reading starting at 8:30 p.m.


Looking for a collection of scifaiku and other one-breath short-shorts that are science-fictional in the way of poetry?  The anthology will be for sale at the reading, or if you can't make it, it can be purchased from the SFPA for $8.00 plus $2.00 shipping (in the US).

Not-so-helpful advice from Rilke...

Courtesy of the Black Balloon Publishing blog, here's Rainer Marie Rilke playing dear-Abby with (not-so-helpful) advice to aspiring poets.

We all have that friend: the self-proclaimed poet and diehard romantic who loves to hand out advice that isn’t really helpful, like, at all. Okay, maybe we don’t all have that friend, but, we do have Rainer Maria Rilke. ... But Rilke is back! In advice column form, at least. He’s here to read your woeful attempts at eloquence and save your poor literary soul — or at least give it a shot. After all, you’re probably too far gone to be saved.

Poetry teaches East Cleveland students lessons about life

From the Cleveland Call and Post: "Poetry teaches East Cleveland students lessons about life"

The Silent Whisper poets

They write as well as perform poetry to help and encourage other teens dealing with the same problems. They settled on the name Silent Whisper because they believe… “If you stay silent, you can hear the heart speaking.”
...They address life and issues such as suicide, physical abuse, drugs, and alcohol.  “Sometimes, you can’t always hold everything in,” said Silent Whisper member Tanautica Bush, 17. “We just want to express ourselves through our life stories, let our peers know you can make something good out of every situation.”

Richard Blanco, Inaugural poet

Immigrant poet Richard Blanco was named to be the inaugural poet for President Obama's second inauguration.
Gay, Latino--and an engineer, to boot--he's the youngest poet yet selected for an inauguration.

Addie Whisenant, the inaugural committee’s spokeswoman, said Mr. Obama picked Mr. Blanco because the poet’s “deeply personal poems are rooted in the idea of what it means to be an American.”

Check in on what he's doing, or just check him out, on his Facebook page.

• Poetry by Richard Blanco
• bio

Erotic Haiku

There is a debate as to whether or not a haiku can be erotic, or erotica. The issue, of course, is that haiku is focused on seasons and the erotic is focused on intimate human experience. Most authors argue that erotic haiku should be classified as something else, possibly senryu. The other side argues that human events are usually considered seasonal references, and thus the erotic should be capable of capturing both the seasonal kigo of a haiku, as well as the erotic emotion.

This brings us to this week's Wednesday Haiku at Issa's Untidy Hut by local poet dan smith. It is a stunning, erotic piece that works to capture not only a seasonal kigo, but also the erotic spirit. Check out Dan's haiku, and then let's see your own erotic offerings!

Student suspended for poem

In San Francisco, a high-school student named Courtni Webb was suspended from school for her poem saying that she understood about the Sandy Hook killings.
"I understand the killings in Connecticut. I know why he pulled the trigger..." 

Yes, poetry is dangerous.

Have a happy New Year.

• SF student suspended over Connecticut poem (ABC San Francisco News)
• Courtni Webb suspended after writing poem about Adam Lanza (KSDK)
• Courtni Webb, San Francisco High School Senior, Suspended For Writing Poem About Sandy Hook Shooting (Huff Po)
• High school student defends poem on Sandy Hook shooting (MSN Now) 

Metres, in Poetry

In celebration of the season of peace, Phil Metres's poem "Compline"

"That we await a blessed hope, & that we will be struck..."

Christmas in the Trenches

Christmas, 1914

One of the most amazing stories of the first World War was that in 1914, the first year of the Great War, the soldiers in the trenches made an unofficial truce on Christmas Eve.  With no diplomats and no orders, a hundred thousand soldiers stopped fighting, and instead met each other in the no-man's-land between barbed wire, sang carols, exchanged chocolate, and even played soccer.  In some places along the front, the unofficial truce lasted as long as New Year's day.

John McCutcheon's poem (song) "Christmas in the Trenches" celebrates the truce.
"Christmas in the Trenches" on youtube.
lyrics

--By the second year of the war, 1915, it was clear that the Great War was not going to end soon, and the idealism and hope of the early years had corroded away.  The war was going badly for all the sides involved.  The commanders made a particular order that there was to be no truce with the enemy for Christmas (or any other time).  The Christmas truce of 1914 was not repeated, and the last known survivor of the Christmas Truce died in November 2005.

Still, for one single day during the Great War, there was what passed for peace on Earth.

 Oh ye who read this truthful rhyme
 From Flanders, kneel and say:
 God speed the time when every day
 Shall be as Christmas Day.

-- Frederick Niven (1878-1944), "A Carol from Flanders"

Merry Christmas to all.

Pine in moonlight (photo by Geoffrey A. Landis)

• ---

  A Carol from Flanders
• Christmas in the Trenches 1914
• The Christmas Truce 1914
• The Christmas Truce on BBC
• Letters from the Christmas Truce

It's the end of the world! Let's dance!

There Will Come Soft Rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone. 

--Sara Teasdale

---

Some more poetry to dance to, on the last night of the world:

• A Song On the End of the World (Czeslaw Milosz)
• Fire and Ice (Robert Frost)
• The Hollow Men (T.S. Eliot)

Got other suggestions?  List 'em in the comments!

The stars, on a desert night

Clouds of Jupiter, seen by Galileo spacecraft

“Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one - million - year - old light. A vast pattern - of which I am a part... What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?”

--Richard Feynmann

---

• Feynmann quotes
• Astropoetica
  

  ---

What to do when you've committed a book

The Line Break ("a poetry and wine blog") complies a long list of Presses with open readings for full-length poetry manuscripts.

If you're looking to make book-- here's a bunch of places to submit.

Don't get boned.

We suggest you avoid the following contests and organizations. Many appear to be disguised vanity publishers, whose goal is to sell you expensive personalized products and attract you to conferences. Others may charge you membership or service fees for which the benefits are questionable, or which can be obtained elsewhere for free. Winning prizes from these organizations will add little to your resume, and may even make you look amateurish to publishers and other poets

A list of unethical contests and publications.

Why No?

Brian Doyle of Portland Magazine (writing in The Kenyon Review) explains: Why editors say no.


"Sometimes I daydream of having rejection slips made up for all sorts of things in life... for oleaginous politicians and other mountebanks (IF YOU TELL ONE MORE LIE I WILL COME UP THERE AND PUMMEL YOU WITH A MAMMAL)..."

the City, year zero

A new issue of Lady Smith's "the City" zine of poetry and art is out-- "Fall issue, Year Zero: Learning to Swim."
Contains some of your favorite poets from Cleveland (and elsewhere), along with stunning visuals: check it out!

“Beziers, France” photo by Lady

Shimmer: a Love Song to Cleveland

"Shine," by Mary Platz Hughes

Stars that in California glitter hard and crystal
shimmer over our lake.

We eat pierogis and walleye
we read of killers who lure women with promise of love.

We drive by crumbling mansions:
millionaire’s row.

Our emerald necklace is long as God’s arm.
Our children don’t ask why is the sky blue.

We scorn jibes: our river burned first;
we founder in floods on Deadman’s Curve.

We tell dour tales of declining empire.
We read Derf and take pride in our funk.

NASA Glenn lures us to starflight.
Our politicians star in the tabloids.

We make loud music and breed bitter genius.
We drink Nosferatu and Elliot Ness

Drunk on honeysuckle, day-lily, moonflower scent,
we make love on front porches in the blackout night.

We wear pants with elastic waistbands
and thumb noses at New Yorker black dresses.

Our names are unspellable, five consonants in a row:
ski is not a sport to our city, but a family suffix.

We consider moving, but where would we go?
What church in LA serves cabbage roll suppers?

We tell legends of freighters broken in two:
our lake is eerie, our tower is terminal.

We watch cats slink, old sly cats with rumpled fur.
We prevail and grow old. Our stars shimmer.

~ Mary A. Turzillo

New (FREE!) Scifaiku contest

Julie Bloss Kelsey is giving away a FREE subscription to Poets and Writers to the winners of a scifaiku contest on her blog here. Right now, there are three entries, so I hope lots of folks contribute their scifaiku, and make this a really exciting contest!

Pushcart Prize Nominations 2012

NightBallet Press is pleased once again to participate in the nominations process for the 38th Annual Pushcart Prize:  Best of the Small Presses XXXVIII, which will be published both in hardcover and paperback in late fall 2013. 

As editor of a small press, I was invited to make up to six nominations from work published by my press since December of last year (2011), or from a manuscript about to be published in the coming month.  If selected, both the press and the author will receive a copy of the Pushcart Prize book.  The deadline to nominate was December 1st.  Notification of selection for Pushcart Prize inclusion will be in April of 2013.  

It was extremely difficult for me to choose among the numerous excellent, unique, exciting and delectable poems, short stories, and plays that NBP has had the pleasure and honor of publishing this past year.  I truly struggled with the final decisions.  After all, I'm the one who accepted the works to publish in the first place because I loved them.  But to waffle and decline to nominate because I don't want to make hard and fast choices would be unfair to all those whom I've published.  I feel I have an editor's responsibility to participate.  After all, I've promised you respect, readings, reviews, and recognition wherever and whenever possible.  

Please know that if your work was not nominated, it had nothing to do with merit.  Your work deserved nomination, no doubt.  Your work is truly excellent, or it would never have appeared as a NBP publication.  As far as I'm concerned, you're all winners! 

But there were certain pieces that glistened, reverberated, ensnared, transcended, or just plain persisted in the editor's mind/heart/soul/body.  These are the six pieces that are this year's nominees:

Jack McGuane's poem "Deep Purple Desperado" from Lipsmack! A Sampler Platter of Poets from NightBallet Press Year One 2012

Terry Provost's poem "Consolations for a Cleveland Winter" from Lipsmack! A Sampler Platter of Poets from NightBallet Press Year One 2012

Steve Brightman's poem "Sputter and Fuse" from Sometimes, Illinois.

Jim Lang's poem "10 26 03 sexualize" from Coyote Moon.

Elise Geither's short play/prose poem "The Stone" from Lipsmack! A Sampler Platter of Poets from NightBallet Press Year One 2012

and

John Burroughs's poem/performance piece "Lens " from the very-soon-to-be-forthcoming The Eater of the Absurd.

I hope you will join with me in heartily and joyfully congratulating these six who are nominated by NBP this year!

For more information on the Pushcart Prize, please visit www.pushcartprize.com; for more information on Pushcart Press visit www.pushcartpress.org.   For this year's Pushcart Prize collection, or for past years' collections, go to www.Amazon.com.   And keep in mind that there will be numerous opportunities to participate in NBP publications next year, including in at least two anthologies (the theme for the 2013 NBP anthology will be announced around the New Year’s holiday, so stay tuned).

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi?

"Fallen Statue of Ramses" © Jim Henderson

In "Rocket and Lightship," Adam Kirsch points out that our words will certainly be transitory. Some of the great poets praised by the Greeks and Romans are now know only for the discussion by others of their works, or by one or two poems, or even fragments of poems, that survived only by the most outlandish coincidence.

Does pure chance determine what survives?  From this it follows, he says, that eventually "every work will lose its gamble and be forgotten."  Or, he asks, is every worthy work "registered in the eye of God the way books are registered for copyright"?  And, if so, then isn't its material fate irrelevant?  Does it matter if it's even published?  If it's even written at all?

He continues:

Literature claims to be a record of human existence through time; it is the only way we have to understand what people used to be like. But this is a basic mistake, if not a fraud, since in fact it only reflects the experience of writers—and writers are innately unrepresentative, precisely because they see life through and for writing. Literature tells us nothing really about what most people’s lives are like or have ever been like. If it has a memorial purpose, it is more like that of an altar at which priests continue to light a fire, generation after generation, even though it gives no heat and very little light.

Poetry in the Woods Thursday December 13, 2012

Yesterday there was Abbott and Costello, George and Gracie, Martin and Lewis, Heckyll and Jeckyll, and those great philosophers/entertainers Donnie and Marie.
Today there's Toner and Rourke. Let Joe Toner and Dan Rourke tickle your funny bone with their eclectic poems stories, bon mots and wry observations.
Thursday, December 13th 7pm
Bertram Woods Branch of the Shaker Library
20600 Fayette Rd, Shaker Heights 44122
216-991-2421
Poetry in the Woods
Thursday December 13, 2012
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Bertram Woods Branch
Enjoy poetry read by regional poets, Dan Rourke and Joe Toner.
Personals Haiku
Shlock poet seeks fawning fan
Reply with applause
- Dan Rourke
Dan Rourke is a former high school English teacher (Laurel School and Saint Ignatius) and a former editor at Northern Ohio LIVE Magazine. He is now a writer awaiting publication of his novel, Fine Spines and Dead Dollys. His muse is boredom and his prime motivators are decaf, black coffee and this month’s rent check.
Joe Toner is an English teacher at Rocky River High School. Toner taught at St. Ignatius High School for 15 years. He was a stay-at-home Dad for 15 months before returning to the classroom. He also writes for The Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Sun Newspapers. Toner’s poetry includes wry and witty observations on contemporary life.

Review: Fortune Cookie by Dianne Borsenik

Fortune Cookie
by Dianne Borsenik
(Kattywompus Press, Cleveland Heights, Ohio. 2012)














The City and The Soul

“Cities have souls” and in Dianne Borsenik’s two-part “Fortune Cookie” she explores “The City,” “The Soul” and the myriad ways in which they interact. Although universal in appeal, several of Borsenik’s poems are centered in Cleveland, its past and its present, good and bad. Consider these lines from “Cleveland Spelled Backwards Is:”

D
N
A
Level C
unwinding
at last
. . .revealing a ceiling
unreachable

Borsenik also deals effectively with self and soul, when to be cool, when to “Howl” with a capital “H” and what to do “When It Doesn’t Add Up,” that perfect storm “when the world of even / meets the world of odd” and “the earth shifts / uneasily.”

Borsenik’s syntax has a rhythm all its own, fueled by a judicious use of repetition and internal rhyme. It sweeps the reader irresistibly from line to line, starting with “Got Soul?” a brilliant, metaphor-driven catalog of cities ending in her own city and then progressing through a cathartic journey from “Doubts and Redoubts” to “Thaumaturgy.”

This highly recommended collection surges with a poetic form of kinetic energy, but if you find yourself too intoxicated from “a sip or two / of the strong stuff,” don’t worry. Just “fasten your seatbelts” and enjoy the ride.

Reviewed by J.E. Stanley







Available from Amazon
and NightBallet Press  (Scroll down.In the left-hand column)

Another Clevelander in Issa's Untidy Hut!

Every Wednesday, Issa's Untidy Hut posts a few new haiku. Today, one of the featured poets is Cleveland's (and Cleveland Poetics's) own Geoffrey Landis.

Past issues have included Cleveland poets Dianne Borsenik and Dan Smith.

With all the great potential for haiku in Cleveland, the only question that remains is where are YOUR haiku?

When poetry pays the bills... or not

An old question, but still an important one.  In a blog post When Poetry Pays the Bills, poet and editor Mary Biddinger asks
Anyway, dear readers, those who pay the rent with poetry-related activity, or non-poetry-related activity, how do you keep going? What makes you channel energy into writing poems, rather than into vacuuming cat hair off the basement stairs?

So, how do you do it?  What keeps you going?  

Lovers and Killers

Mary Turzillo's new book of poetry, Lovers and Killers, is out from Dark Regions Press, appropriately in time for Halloween & the Day of the Dead.
It just got reviewed in Pedestal:
         "Award-winning poet Mary Turzillo delves into the abyss of the human soul in her new book, Lovers & Killers, a departure from her clever science fiction and fantasy work. She utilizes plain language enhanced by poetic devices such as alliteration and consonance in most of these poems, also employing the sharp imagery for which she is known. Many poems address such themes as human loss and desperation leading to abhorrent acts, while others border on outright satire...
         "Turzillo’s words flow like a winding road, the mark of a master wordsmith. The women in Turzillo’s poems are sometimes real, sometimes mythical. Each one has human flaws and, unfortunately, human reactions. Lovers & Killers is an unusual book of poems bound to leave an enduring impression on the reader. And isn’t that the trademark of any good book?"

The book can be purchased directly from Dark Regions ($9.95), or copies are available at readings.

Mary will be the feature reader in several upcoming readings, including the Canton First Friday Poetry Spectacular on November 2 (the Día de los Muertos) and then at the Deep Cleveland Poetry Hour on November 9, at MugShotz Cafe, 6556 Royalton Road in North Royalton.

Hallowe'en Poetry Podcast

The moon is waxing, and the trees are starting to poke skeletal fingers into the sky... Hallowe'en is coming!  Are you ready to be spooked?  How about listening to some Halloween poetry to set the mood?  The SFPA's annual Hallowe'en Reading is now online.  It's an audio compilation of thirteen Halloween-themed poems, from:

David Kopaska-Merkel

Dennis M. Lane

David L. Summers

Linda D. Addison and Stephen M. Wilson

Bryan Thao Worra

Chris Vera
Jacqueline West
Michael A. Arnzen

Maria Alexander
Elissa Malcohn
Liz Bennefeld
Kath Abela Wilson
F.J. Bergmann

image credits

"Pacific Rim" by Deborah P Kolodji

"Werewolf Moon" by Geoffrey A. Landis

This Sunday in Oberlin...