Archive for the 'poetry' Category
 It’s a totally new literary genre!
Well, sorta. You may have noticed that mobile is getting to be a really big deal, and you may have noticed that Them Danged Kids® are texting until their thumbs fall off. You probably didn’t realize, though, the magnitude of mobile and the SMS phenomenon. There are now over 3 billion mobile phones in the world and nearly all of them have SMS capability. Telephia estimates that revenue from premium SMS entertainment services in the US topped $1B last year. And the stuff that people are paying for - $5/month for a joke of the day (and Yo Mama joke of the day!), horoscopes, music reviews, health tips, sports, and on and on. It’s all a little hard for a guy like me to believe, but there it is. Full Story »
As we watch gas prices surge past $4 per gallon many places in the country and we receive ever more alarming reports of the self-destructive effects of our war on nature, it behooves us to indulge in what John Stuart Mill might have called the consolation of poetry. First, we look at Wordsworth’s warning to us in “The World is too much with Us”:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not…. Full Story »
 by Chris Mackowski
Sharp Teeth
by Toby Barlow
Harper, 312 pages
Toby Barlow’s new book is a novel. It’s also an epic poem. It’s a love story, a crime thriller, and a werewolf story, too,
Throw out everything you think you know about any of those things.
Barlow’s book, “Sharp Teeth,” is nothing less than a bold literary experiment that rewrites the rules into free-verse poetry. It’s evocative, ferocious, and frequently funny–a pop-culture fusion drink that’s jacked up on its own juices. It’s a dark, compelling nightmare that reads like a gritty dream. Full Story »
The universe is destined to die. Some physicists believe that this death will occur as the rate of expansion tears every atom apart. Others believe that the Second Law of Thermodynamics means that, trillions of years into the future, all that will be left is the universal background radiation, after all the suns have burned out and all the black holes have even evaporated. But even before the Big Rip or the heat death of the universe, entropy - the degree of disorder in our own systems - is destined to rule our future. We can struggle against it, and we can even beat it back for a time, but ultimately entropy wins and we die. Our works fall apart. And memory fades.
Today, we explore entropy in the written word. Full Story »
Beginning tomorrow, S&R’s weekly literature feature, VerseDay, becomes WordsDay. We love poetry, but we felt like we were ignoring other literary forms, so it just made sense to expand the field.
WordsDay will continue to address poetry, but now we’ll also be writing about fiction and creative non-fiction, as well.
We hope you enjoy it.
 A couple of weeks ago I spoke with you about poetry of ideas. Today’s entry will look at poetry that controls emotion.
The poet pictured above is Ben Jonson - “O rare Ben Jonson” an admirer said of him. Jonson is like most great poets - a person of contradictions. Known as perhaps the greatest poet of controlled language (and subsequently of emotion) in the English language, he could be irascible to the point of misanthropy - and once killed a fellow actor in a duel - and almost went to the gallows for it (he did bear the brand of felon on his thumb the rest of his days). He was understated and subtle in his verse - yet his chief vehicle in his plays was satire. He feuded with the literary establishment often and yet became the first English Poet Laureate. Like most of us, Jonson was complicated. Full Story »
Most American students have been confronted with this famous poem by William Carlos Williams at some point in their academic careers:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
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The simplicity of this poem belies its complexity. As most students have learned to their disbelief, disgruntlement, and dismay, this poem is about much more than wheelbarrows, chickens, and rain water. It’s a poem (perhaps) about “reality” - and what “reality” is. It’s a poem about (to paraphrase Whitman, I hear America cringing) - ideas….. Full Story »
 On Wednesday, I “officially” became a journalist. Through the encouragement of several of my fellow Scrogues here, and my work on a number of issues that I’ve published here, I was accepted for membership by the Society of Environmental Journalists and received notice of my acceptance Wednesday.
It’s an absolutely wild feeling, a strange combination of elation and apprehension. It’s my first real step toward following my passion - writing - and if that step was toward journalism instead of fiction, then that means my need to write has become more encompassing than I anticipated a few years ago. My blogging, combined with finally self-publishing my first “short” story in December, makes me feel like I’m actually making progress toward being an honest-to-the-gods writer. My utter lack of progress on this goal for many years had bothered me a great deal. Full Story »
You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman - Mary Smith Whitall Costelloe, friend of the poet.He is America’s poet….
He IS America - Ezra Pound
The greatest American poet is Walt Whitman. He is often referred to as the “poet of democracy” and as “the chronicler of the American character.” No other American poet matches him for breadth of vision about our country, nor for exploration of the political and social divisions of the United States. One may not always agree with his vision, but one never doubts the open mindedness and basic truth in it. Full Story »
 I’ve long been convinced of two truths regarding poetry:
1: The easiest thing in the world to write is a love poem.
2: The hardest thing in the world to write is a good love poem.
Accordingly, I admire the hell out of a writer who can produce a tribute to his/her eternal love without making me a little sick to the stomach.
I think the problem I’ve often encountered is that great poetry - great art of any sort, really - is driven by tension. Whether it’s political rage, the fear of loss, the pain of mourning, whatever, it seems that the muse is more intrigued by that which is wrong with the world than that which is right. And love - real love, anyway - is an expression of two people’s triumph over the dark tension propelling most great artists. Most of the great love poems I can think of aren’t really love poems purely - they’re often driven by negative conditions. The love is unrequited, a lover is marching off to war, things like that. Full Story »
 According to the BBC, “Thomas Edison sent his agents round to the Poet Laureate’s home to record his voice on wax cylinders in 1890.” That poet laureate turns out to be none other than Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
No, the voice quality isn’t great (as you’d expect), but what a marvelous revelation - to be able to hear one of the greatest poets in English history, a man from the pre-electronic age, actually speaking.
Want to listen? Click here and enjoy as Tennyson offers up one of his classics, “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”
In honor of Primary Season, which launched with a bang last night in Iowa, VerseDay today offers a poem about the campaign trail, submitted by reader and author Mary Hamrick.
———-
“Campaigning”
“Strange how words can be true, and yet have no truth in them.”
–We Are Not Alone. Performer, Paul Muni. Warner Bros. film, 1939.
Politics is puffing like a steam engine.
It needs a serape to keep it warm.
It needs a little makeup on bright days
to hide the lines of wear.
Politics has lost its milk teeth;
nasty-nice, the bite is smart
and at times menacing: flip-flop. Full Story »
 Not long ago I was bitching about how utterly banal I think a lot of contemporary poetry is. Shortly thereafter I got a note from scrogue JS O’Brien saying he thought I might appreciate a poet he knew a little about, Brigit Pegeen Kelly.
So I hit my Internets and tracked her down. The first poem of hers that I came across is called “Song,” and it’s the title track of her 1995 book. In the spirit of “show, don’t tell,” let me begin by asking you to read it. Full Story »
We live in an unfortunate age artistically. There is more freedom than ever, more tools for creation, more outlets to publish and display, but we have largely used this freedom to fetishize banality. The great leveling, as it were - everybody is an artist, everything is poetry.
When I entered my Master’s program at Iowa State the prof who would eventually become my advisor, the estimable Dr. Neal Bowers, told my first poetry workshop that there was no subject unfit for poetry. Steeped in the traditions of the old masters, I guess I recoiled from that idea a bit. Full Story »
You just heard a Ronald Reagan speech from a president of France. It was an almost out-of-body experience for all of us.
— Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) after French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke to a joint session of Congress, Nov. 7.
I have a partner in peace, somebody who has clear vision, basic values, who is willing to take tough positions to achieve peace. And so when you ask, am I comfortable with the Sarkozy government sending messages, you bet I’m comfortable.
— President Bush praising French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Nov. 7.
In view of everything we know now — the flawed intelligence, the miserable execution of the post-military phase — the French certainly were right.
— Rep. Tom Lantos, (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, who said that France was correct to refuse to back the war in Iraq.
Full Story »
 Poets have the (un)enviable duty to explore the entirety of human experience, from birth to death and everything in between. But in my experience, few poets have tried to fully explore the darker emotions and experiences of humanity, and fewer still have tried to use verse to create entirely new and fantastic worlds.
In the spirit of Halloween and the Celtic festival of Samhain, I present a number of poems, or excerpts from longer works, that deal with some of the darker aspects of our lives.
I’d like to start with a poem from the mistress of all things death, Emily Dickinson: Full Story »
 I recall once hearing in a lecture that the Easter Rising rebels were influenced by the poetry of William Butler Yeats, and that they perhaps even read his work amongst themselves during the seven days they occupied Dublin’s General Post Office in April 1916. I can’t find a source to verify that they were reading Yeats while awaiting slaughter, but he was certainly a major player in the renaissance of Irish culture in the years leading up to the rebellion. He was also a prominent national figure after the Rising, being appointed to the new republic’s Senate just six years later.
It’s not clear, though, that Yeats ever dreamed of being a “sixty-year-old smiling public man” of an overtly political cast. Full Story »
 In fall of 1987 I was in my first semester of an English MA program at Iowa State, and was taking a seminar in contemporary American poets. The class was an eye-opener for me, as I’d not read many poets later than Dylan Thomas, and if you’re going to be a real writer it’s always helpful to know a thing or two about the present day, right?
One of the writers we were reading was Charles Wright, a fellow Southerner who’s won a lot of awards and prizes, up to and including the Pulitzer. I have come to regard him as our finest living poet (although I have to admit that since I still don’t read as many contemporaries as I should, there may be somebody out there better that I just haven’t found yet).
Full Story »
“Arms and the man, I sing…” opens Virgil’s Aeneid.
This poem creates the model of the heroic figure using his battle skills to escape destruction, woo lovelies, and ultimately, found an Empire (well, found the blood line who later found an empire). In this heroic world, war is not about horror, blood, and loss - instead it’s about gaining honor, renown, and legacy.
It’s important to remember that the poets telling these epic stories, whether known or unknown, are hirelings of the ruling classes. It’s also important to notice a gradual shift as these stories evolve through history. From snatching triumph from the ashes (literally) of defeat as Aeneas does, heroes defined by their prowess in battle either become super-human (Beowulf) or tragic (Roland, Siegfried) or both (Arthur).
And it all makes for marvelous poetry. But it has given us a horribly inaccurate set of ideas about war. Full Story »
 My fellow Scrogue Denny Wilkins (Dr. Denny to you) passed along a great essay by Steve Wasserman, former editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review on the gradual disappearance of book reviews and book news coverage from newspapers that appears in the latest issue of Columbia Journalism Review. Wasserman’s essay hits on some points near and dear to my heart as a writer, professor, and pedantic bastard (as a friend once addressed me in a high school yearbook salutation) so I figured you (and I address this affectionately, as my high school friend addressed me) pedantic bastards who read S&R might find those points of interest, too. Full Story »
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