In keeping with the ethos of the movement, I’ve taken my time getting to Dale Smith’s SloPo manifesto over on his Skanky Possum blog, and again (and better) over on Bookslut.

In his essay, Smith very politely proposes a poetics that would disrupt systems of thought in a more radical manner than the uber-presence of “conceptual poetry” or flarf have thus far done.

Instead of avant garde, SloPo is après tout.

The BBC says, "It is easy to describe Mahmoud as a national poet, but he is much more than that."

The New York Times says Darwish was "one of the greatest contemporary Arab poets"

The Los Angeles Times: "Despite his consistently nationalist themes, Darwish sometimes chafed under the title of Palestine's unofficial poet laureate."

Jordanian bloggers grieve.

The Lebanon Star presses for continued struggle in Darwish's name

The United Arab Emirates National says "every cause needs a poet; in the late Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine got much more."

Haaretz says "his greatness was rooted in his ability to capture and then forge the collective memory of the Palestinian refugee experience in his poems."

The Jerusalem Post weighs Darwish inspired bleeding hearts vs. open minds.

The Telegraph on one of Palestine's "most essential treasures."

The Financial Times places Darwish at the center of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The PLO's farewell program.

Nixon in China has been blaring from my speakers for the past month, partially because I love operas in English (Peter Grimes), but also because, well, the Olympics!

In Italian or German or French or what have you, the full dramaturgical dullness of many lines gets lost on me, but here lines like “Your flight was smooth, I hope?” sung at full bellow have me rolling on the floor with glee.

Opera, like poetry, is wonderfully goofy.

Andrea Rexilius from joshuamarie on Vimeo.

For the past couple of years, Chicago resident and Seattle native Joshua Marie Wilkinson has been shooting video of poets reading at various locales across the country. He shares these videos online via Rabbit Light Movies.

“I wanted to start a new journal to contribute to the world of small magazines and journals--but didn't want to just do another print or online one--with some catchy new name,” says Wilkinson, “Since I have a minor background in film, I thought it would be easy to start a dvd journal featuring 3-6 short videos of poets reading from their own work.”

At first, Wilkinson only burned these videos onto DVDs to send out to friends and “subscribers,” but that got too costly and cumbersome, so he began putting the videos online free for everyone.

Wilkinson shoots the poets reading, sometimes during public performance, other times at home, and still others in spots picked out for their resonances with the work.

Christian Hawkey from joshuamarie on Vimeo.

“Often times, I'll invite somebody over to my house, meet them in a city, capture stuff when I'm on road trips or reading trips, or ask the poets where they'd like to be filmed,” says Josh, “Sometimes I have only recordings of the poets' voices; in those cases I go and shoot stuff around cities and try to assemble a little montage of footage--footage I am careful to try not to illustrate their poems with. I think of it as a backdrop to the voice--something that neither distracts nor describes their words.”

Rabbit Light Movies is roughly bi-annual, with new editions appearing every six months. Anyone interested in further video/poetry sites should check out the Continental Review, or just search “Poetry” on YouTube and laugh until you cry (or vice versa).

Poet and teacher Bernadette Mayer has put out a call for poets to come out to her upstate New York house for weekend experimental writing workshops focusing on “investigations of traditional forms made new.”

Mayer is a legendary teacher, providing the catalyst for countless experimental movements large and small, from L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E to Studying Hunger to countless dorm room parlor games.

A few samples from her list of writing experiments:

-Attempt as a writer to win the Nobel Prize in Science by finding out how
thought becomes language, or does not.

-Construct a poem as if the words were three-dimensional objects to be
handled in space. Print them on large cards or bricks if necessary.

-Write a work that intersperses love with landlords.

Philadelphia resident Ish Klein is not only a fine poet whose work dances on the border between mawkish sentimentality and lyrical poignancy, she's also an excellent--if extremely bizarre--filmmaker.

Here's a taste:

James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress, has selected Kay Ryan to succeed Charles Simic as the next U.S. poet laureate. The Northern California poet will be the 16th poet to hold the post. Full story here.

UPDATE:

Seven responses from around teh internets:

Ron Silliman says Ryan is "the 47th consecutive School of Quietude poet to hold the position in its 71 year history."

Annie Wagner says not bad.

Vowel Movers say "congratulations Kay Ryan! Your one year of service as PLOTUS entitles you to no power whatsoever!"

Salon
says, "She's neither folksy and ultra-accessible like the popular Billy Collins nor mandarin and imperious like the critical darling Louise Glück."

The New Yorker has selected emails.

David Orr is down with Kay.

Daily Kos says being a gay-married Californian is a statement in itself.

While the context of a reading can often mean everything, there is also something to be said for readings ripped free from their spatial/temporal trappings and escorted into the private, headphoned world.

Summer has come slowly to Seattle, but it was fully present last weekend. The audience at Gallery 1412--there to hear Don Mee Choi read her translations of the South Korean poet Kim Hyesoon--arrived sun-dazed and pink-cheeked, with swimming hair, flip flops, and (in my case) ice cream.

We shuffled into the dark makeshift gallery—a rickety retail space taken over by artists— where an old cassette tape recorder had been placed on a folding chair in the middle of the stage. Without much fuss or introduction, Don Mee walked up to the tape recorder, pressed play, and then sat back down as Kim Hyesoon’s voice came hissing out of the speakers.

Poet and critic William Logan offered his take on the life and work of Frank O'Hara in Sunday's New York Times Book Review.

Among other things, Mr. Logan restated his belief that if O'Hara were alive today, "he might have written a blog."

Bloggers took note, and they quickly offered up their take on the life and work of Mr. Logan.

To wit:

Up on literary agent Nathan Bransford’s blog there’s a discussion raging over what the optimum rate of production is for contemporary writers. One book a year? Two? A book a decade? One good book a generation?

Bransford’s debate centers on fiction, but it’s quite applicable to poetry as well. The terms, though, seem quite different.

With Andrew Motion’s tenure as Britain’s Poet Laureate coming to a close next year, there’s been active campaigning for the post to be filled for the first time by a female poet.

The post—formerly held by Ted Hughes and Ben Johnson, among other dudes—involves a five thousand pound salary, free sherry, and an obligation to write poems for state occasions. While the idea of a female laureate has gained wide support, three of the leading female contenders have caused a minor kerfuffle by shrugging off the honor in advance.

Galleycat wonders ablog if social networking sites like Goodreads can supplant the studied expertise of professional book critics.

Martial Flourish

VS.

Or something like that.

It's an interesting question not just for the Steinbeckian pre-teens in the UK or dead Russian novelists, but for the contemporary poetry tribes, too, since poetry criticism in major media outlets is pretty slim, and seeming to get slimmer or more fatuous by the year.

I get emails every day from people asking me to connect with them on Goodreads, to look at their updated Goodreads page, or to just read a goddamn book already. But I have yet to get involved because I have nagging icky feelings about the whole process.

I'd rather ask someone face to face what she's reading than go check online, but I also like to forage for berries after a long morning of waxing my handlebar moustache, so perhaps I'm not so au courant.

Talking with a friend at Open Books the other day, we both agreed it would be nice to feel like we could ride the crest of the present's wave with a giddy optimism, but most of the time our little rafts feel swamped.

But as I type this, I think I should go check out my dormant Goodreads account to find out what my friends have been reading, how many stars they're giving what, and if they've uploaded a super cute picture to their profile (OMG! They totally have!)

Via Jason B. Jones at Bookslut, a questionnaire sent by poet and impresario Gerard Malanga to Daisy Aldan back in the real gone days of 1960: Are You a Beatnik?

Four sentences that stand out from the NYT's story on the NEA's study of Artists in the Workforce:

1. "If every artist in America’s work force banded together, their ranks would be double the size of the United States Army. "

2. "Among artists under 35, writers are the only group in which 80 percent or more are non-Hispanic white."

3. "Overall, the median income that artists reported in 2005 was $34,800 — $42,000 for men and $27,300 for women. "

4. "'Many performing artists are underemployed,' Mr. Gioia said, 'but one of the stereotypes we’re trying to debunk is that artists are mostly marginal and unemployed.'"

After more than fifteen years, the Poetry in Motion program that put poems by W.S. Merwin, Lucille Clifton, Lorine Niedecker, and Emily Dickinson—among many, many others—alongside ads for Dr. Z’s acne treatment and Lasik surgery on New York City’s subways, has ended.

The New York Times reported last month that the "Poetry in Motion" partnership between the Poetry Society of America and the Metro Transportation Authority would phase out in May and transform into a new SubTalk program entitled “Train of Thought.�?

The new program will still feature one poem a year, but will focus more on quotations from history, philosophy, and science. The new quotations will be chosen by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for, according to their press release, “both their significance and accessibility.�?

Alicia Martinez, MTA’s Director of Marketing & Corporate Communications, says, “New Yorkers have wide-ranging interests, and we felt that we could include material from a variety of other disciplines in addition to poetry to bring important, engaging, insightful quotes to our riders, and entice them to explore the author or subject further. We believe this approach will reach a broader and larger audience.�?

Jim Dwyer wrote a eulogy of sorts last week for “Poetry in Motion" that has made the rounds via email and blogs, but for the most part it has been a quite transition.

The program has spawned similar programs across the country, from Los Angleles to St. Louis to here in Seattle, where we have a Poetry in Motion-inspired program called Poetry on the Buses. Since I only saw "Poetry in Motion" in fits and starts, my main experience with the response to poetry on public transportation has been through Poetry on the Buses, which is mixed to say the least.

Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

Following up on last week’s Robert-Frost-as-punishment story (see also: the NYT, NPR, and WCAX TV in Vermont ), I asked Jay Parini a few questions about his role as teacher of wayward youth.

His answers shed some light on the proceedings, though letting Kent Johnson or Aaron Fagan have at him might have been more revelatory (see their comments on my last post ).

TN: How are your goals in these sessions different from your goals in other classroom settings?

JP: In these sessions, I was trying to make the poetry relevant to their unique situation, and to make them see that poetry is about serious matters. I would do more or less the same in my Middlebury classroom; but this situation was, as I say, unique; these kids were both guilty of a crime and trying to make amends....

TN: Do you think Frost's poetry is particularly suited to providing lessons in civics and justice?

JP: I think Frost is very much an especially useful case here. His poems deal with Vermont people of a certain class -- and the students could connect, I think, to these people, such as the boy who loses his hand in "'Out, Out--'"

TN: How are the students responding so far?

JP: The students seemed very attentive, quite riveted by the material.

TN: Did the prosecutors contact you in particular for this job, or did you seek them out?

JP: I was asked by the prosecutors to do these classes. It was never my idea. I was actually quite skeptical at first....

Generally, I would say I was quite moved by the situation, and was very impressed by the results. The students had a direct encounter with Frost's poetry, and I was able to facilitate that contact. That was all I could do. The rest is of course up to them.

****
For further study on Frost-As-Teaching-Tool (as well as the ever-changing level of commenter discourse on this site), see Karen Glenn's piece from last year.

In honor of the famously cynical poet, local actors in costume will give dramatic readings of Masters' Spoon River Anthology in the cemetery, the city council will honor local poets for their work, and "members and friends of the South Fulton Antique Tractor Club and Old Iron Club will show their equipment from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. "

"It used to be kind of a big deal with food and vendors and stuff," a Lewiston city hall representative said over the phone, "but it's kind of died out. The tractor people are the only ones left really holding out."

The Canton Daily Ledger has a full schedule of events here.

John Ashbery and Robin Blaser split the prestigious Griffin Prize for Poetry last night, each taking home a pat on the back as well as $50,000 Canadian.

The 80-year old Ashbery won for his selected later poems, Notes from the Air, and the 83-year old Blaser for his collected poems, The Holy Forest.

The Griffin Prize, in its eighth year, is "the richest poetry prize in the world for a single volume" and celebrates its winners with a gala event in Toronto.

Here is the full story with humorous and touching quotes from both gents. And here's a photo of the two happy winners courtesy of the Quill Blog:

In his review of the Kingsley Amis compendium “Everyday Drinking,�? Dwight Garner recounts the elder Amis' cure for the “metaphysical�? hangover:

“Amis recommended, among other things, a course of 'hangover reading,' one that “rests on the principle that you must feel worse emotionally before you start to feel better. A good cry is the initial aim.'

All good suggestions, of course, but instead of leaving the poetry behind at Milton, I wonder if anyone has any ideas on the proper lineated treatment for the post-bender spiritual malaise?

Prosecutors have assigned poetry classes to the group of "beer and marijuana fueled" revelers who broke into Robert Frost’s former home in Ripton, Vermont last December. Middlebury College professor and Frost biographer Jay Parini is providing the verse qua punishment, with hopes of showing the "redemptive power of poetry" to the guilty parties. The Associated Press has the full story, along with some fascinating comments on the nature of crime and punishment in Vermont.