Phil Metres riffs on Ohio

Phil Metres ses:

“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, we’re finally on our own.”
 While I was in utero, the caterwauling of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young was a lament for the four students shot dead at Kent State University—just down the road from where I now live and teach. In a state called Ohio. Basically, to me, this state is a fiction. Nothing unites Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland—and the sundry towns between and around—except that every four years, this humble and homely flyover becomes the prom queen, as presidential hopefuls crisscross the state, promising the moon. 
“America is just a word but I use it,” Fugazi once sang. And “language keeps me/locked and repeating. Language keeps me/locked and repeating.”
When I wrote a poem based on the signs and voices I read and heard as I traveled down its spine, I gather that Ohio is afraid of its mortal soul, and everyone wants you to obey the God of their imaginings. Either Ohioans are very pious and like their radio religious, or they are very rebellious and many preachers are afraid of where we are all heading. Either way, there will be long drives down our very spine to find out the answers.

"Lovers and Killers" a nominee for Stoker award

Mary A Turzillo's recent poetry collection, Lovers and Killers, from Dark Regions Press, has been named a finalist for the Stoker Award for poetry by the Horror Writers Association.  Horray for Mary! The awards will be announced June 13-16, at the World Horror Convention/Bram Stoker Awards® Weekend in New Orleans.

It's been a good spring for Mary-- she also had the book nominated for the Science Fiction Poetry Association's new Elgin award, and she (along with other local poets J.E. Stanley and dan smith) had several poems nominated for the Rhysling award as well.  Congrats, all!

• Lovers and Killers, available from Dark Regions, discount price $4.95 (plus shipping)
• Review in Pedestal magazine

20 Awesome Examples Of Literary Graffiti...

 

 

20 Awesome Examples Of Literary Graffiti

Thank you, graffiti artists, for making our streets a little bit smarter. How many of these literary references do you recognize? 

Chinua Achebe, the internationally acclaimed Nigerian writer, has died in America, aged 82

 

 “We live in a society that is in transition from oral to written. There are oral stories that are still there, not exactly in their full magnificence, but still strong in their differentness from written stories. Each mode has its ways and methods and rules. They can reinforce each other; this is the advantage my generation has—we can bring to the written story something of that energy of the story told by word of mouth. This is really one of the contributions our literature has made to contemporary literature.” —Chinua Achebe, the Art of Fiction No. 139

Chinua Achebe and the great African novel.

 

Chinua Achebe: A life in writing

'Nigeria is once again on the brink of a precipice. We have to face up to our responsibilities before it is too late'

 

The Literary Tattoos of Team Book Riot

 

 Rap Genius, a site dedicated to the interpretation of hip-hop lyrics, explicates T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.”

 

 

 

Thoughts from sign painters on their disappearing profession.

 

A COLLECTED POEMS of Edward Dorn...

A COLLECTED POEMS of Edward Dorn, the American poet who died in 1999, is a necessary and overdue publication, and, whatever the circumstances, the fact that it was not published in U.S.A. suggests that there is something very wrong with the local culture over there, a fact of which Ed Dorn was very much aware. In fact most of the time it dominated his writing.

 http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2013/02/dorn-1/

Not Enough

Lawrence Ferlinghetti on his new book, the old days, and why poetry needs to be beat up.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/245690 

 

 

Don Draper reads Frank O’Hara in Mad Men
“Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.”

The Favorite Poets of Pop Culture Characters 

 

 Langston Hughes' Collection of Harlem Rent Party Advertisements

 http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/03/14/rent_parties_langston_hughes_collection_of_rent_party_cards.html

 

 

Googlesearch Poetry?

It's like flarf, but different. "'Google Poems' are hauntingly beautiful," says Alexis Kleinman.  The technique is simple: type the beginning into google, and let "autocomplete" finish the poem.  Here's an example:

Everybody is...

Everybody is a genius

everybody is a star

everybody is looking for something

everybody is fine.

Want more? Top googlesearch poems.

How hard could it be?  OK, I'll try it:



How Difficult Could it Be?

How difficult could it be to invent a new life?
how difficult would it be for a person to leave a gang?
how difficult would it be to consume a vegan diet?
how difficult would it be to go on hajj?

If it were easy...
If it were easy, everyone would do it
If it were easy
If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon ...
If It Were Easy It'd Be Your Mother
If it were easy, everyone would be doing it
if it were easy it wouldn't be worth doing.

• and, John Lundburg says "Robot Wins Jeopardy, But Can It Write Poetry?"

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)