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Members have until September 30 to submit a poem of 40 lines or fewer for automatic inclusion in the members-only Connecticut River Review II. Email copy to emgil3@yahoo.com
No current contests
Anything from Julia or Debbie on this?
News Item
Claudia Emerson
I figured that with a name like Emerson she must be interesting and a good writer.
Mary Washington teacher named
English professor won Pulitzer Prize for a book of poetry two years ago
Wednesday, Aug 27, 2008 - 12:25 AM
By
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
First it was a Pulitzer, then it was a state prize. Now,
"I'm kind of getting used to Claudia coming up with all these fabulous prizes," said Teresa A. Kennedy, head of the department of English, linguistics and communications at the
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine announced Emerson's appointment yesterday. It is the third major honor that Emerson has gained in three years. She received the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 2006 for "Late Wife," her third book of poetry, and won a $10,000 prize awarded by the Virginia State Library Association in 2007.
"I'm so excited," said Emerson, whose fourth book of poetry, "Figure Studies," has just been published by the Louisiana State University Press.
Besides a prodigious output of art, Emerson is known for her love of teaching at UMW, where she has been a professor the past 10 years.
"She loves her students and is incredibly dedicated. I can't say enough what it's like to work with her," Kennedy said.
Emerson said her responsibilities as poet laureate remain unclear.
"Previous poet laureates have done a lot in terms of promoting poetry in the state," she said. "I'd love to think about doing something, perhaps for poetry month, at the campus."
Mary Washington is no stranger to poet laureates.
Emerson, who grew up in
Contact Lawrence Latané III at (804) 333-3461 or llatane@timesdispatch.com.
Two Poems
What They Want
They covet fields and seize them; and houses, and take them away.
Micah 2:2
1
The men faked a collective boredom, nodded, spat,
bid—and would buy it all divided: pasture,
tractor, flatbed, bulkbarns—then the house
where the auctioneer called, convincing us
to bid for all we had desired, had coveted
all those years: her hats would go for one money—
felt, fur, straw, the velvet one from which the feathers
of an egret rose white and trembled, as though her head
still turned to nod to us. He would make us admit it,
make us wear what she wore, what yet bore her favorite scent,
what we had sworn beneath the preacher's drone,
hissing, we would not be caught dead in.
2
The story had its way with us the way a bee bores first
into the mouth of one rose and then another: they found her
where how many days my word my God the coffin closed
of course can you imagine how sad she died alone, we said, how sad.
By the time we saw the doll wheeled out in its carriage, wicker-white,
it might as well have been her heart cradled, still warm. Held high
above us like a long-awaited heir—old, infant—she delighted us.
The bidding climbed, an aberrant vine, as the doll cried out
her one vowel, eyes opening, then closing inside the perfect
form of her face.—Oh, what we wouldn't give for her.
Great Depression Story
Sometimes the season changed in the telling,
sometimes the state, but it was always during
the Depression, and he was alone in the boxcar,
the train stalled beneath a sky wider
than any he'd seen so far, the fields of grass
wider than the sky. He'd been curious
to see if things were as bad somewhere else
as they were at home. They were—and worse,
he said, places with no trees, no water.
He hadn't eaten all day, all week, his hunger
hard-fixed, doubled, gleaming as the rails. A lone
house broke the sharp horizon, the train dreaming
beneath him, so he climbed down, walked out,
the grass parting at his knees. The windows
were open, curtainless, and the screendoor,
unlatched, moved to open, too, when he knocked.
He could see in all the way through to the kitchen—
and he smelled before he saw the lidded
pot on the stove, the steam escaping. Her clothes
moved on the line for all reply, the sheets,
a slip, one dress, washed thin, worn to translucence;
through it he could see what he mistook for fields
of roses until a crow flew in with the wind—
sudden, fleeting seam. By the time he got back to the train,
he'd guessed already what he'd taken—pot
and all—a hen, an old one that had quit
laying, he was sure, or she wouldn't have killed it.
The train began to move then, her house falling
away from him. The story ended with the meat
not quite done, but, believe him, he ate it
all, white and dark, back, breast, legs, and thighs,
strewing the still-warm bones behind him for miles.
Figure Studies
Louisiana State University Press
Educational Item
I met and had a seminar with Dana Gioia at the
Section: Arts+ > Printer-Friendly Version
Gioia Leaves NEA After Changing Debate Over Arts Funding
By KATE TAYLOR | September 12, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/arts/gioia-leaves-nea-after-changing-debate-over-arts/85697/
In the midst of a deeply contentious election, in which the major parties are divided on almost all of the issues, from abortion to health care to Iraq, one old rallying cry — that of the so-called culture wars — has hardly been heard at all.
Vance Jacobs
NEA Chairman Dana Gioia.
That one no longer hears Republican candidates calling for the abolition of the National Endowment for the Arts is a credit to the effectiveness of the NEA's chairman since 2003, the poet Dana Gioia, in changing the terms of the debate around government funding for the arts.
Mr. Gioia will announce Friday that he plans to resign in January to return to writing. He will also take a part-time position at the Aspen Institute, as the first director of the Harman-Eisner Program in the Arts.
Mr. Gioia leaves the NEA considerably strengthened. For fiscal year 2008, it received a budget increase of $20 million, the largest dollar increase in NEA funding in 29 years. A bill that is currently in the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Interior Appropriations would give the NEA another $15 million increase for fiscal year 2009.
"We have built a new national consensus about the importance of public support of the arts and arts education, and we did it by emphasizing artistic excellence, educational impact, and the democratic importance" of arts funding, Mr. Gioia said in an interview.
Among the programs Mr. Gioia initiated are Shakespeare in American Communities, a program that funds professional theater companies to tour Shakespeare productions in schools; the Big Read, which encourages communities to read and discuss one of 26 selected works of American and world literature; NEA Jazz Masters, which includes both live performances and educational resources about jazz; Poetry Out Loud, a national poetry recitation contest for high school students, and Operation Homecoming, which provides writing workshops for troops and their spouses.
During Mr. Gioia's tenure, the NEA has also produced several major research reports, including "Reading at Risk" (2004), which found dramatic declines in adult reading of literature; "The Arts and Civic Engagement" (2006), which showed that people who participate in the arts also participate in other civic activities, and "Artists in the Workforce: 1990-2005" (2008), a nationwide look at artists' demographic and employment patterns.
Under Mr. Gioia, the NEA has also dramatically broadened the geographic impact of its funding through an initiative called Challenge America, which awards grants to small- and midsize organizations that bring art to underserved populations. Previously, in an average year, direct grants reached only three-quarters of the country, as measured by congressional district. Since 2005, grants have reached at least one organization in every congressional district.
"I can go into a congressman's office and ask him to name any high school in his district, and we've been there," Mr. Gioia said. "That changes the conversation."
The NEA's grants are largely one-to-one matching grants — that is, they require that the recipient get the same amount of funding from a private source, as well.
"The NEA does not subsidize the arts: We give the grants that make a project possible," Mr. Gioia said, offering what is clearly a finely honed argument. "If we give [our] grant, it tells other potential funders that on a national basis this project was selected as of the highest quality." An organization can go to a potential funding source and say, "'[I]f you don't match this we'll lose it,'" Mr. Gioia said. "It gives it a level of urgency. And that's the leverage that makes the American system, which is largely privately funded, work better."
Mr. Gioia said that while he could easily continue working in
Asked what lies ahead for the NEA after he leaves, and what its major challenges and opportunities are, Mr. Gioia said that the agency should expand its education programs directed at elementary school students and focus more on international cultural exchanges.
Toward that end, the NEA recently put out a request for proposals from institutions to host a new NEA arts-journalism institute focused on the visual arts. The NEA already sponsors arts-journalism institutes focused on dance, theater, and classical music. The new institute, on which the NEA is collaborating with the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, will focus on American art from the last 150 years. Half of the participants will be American journalists, and half will be journalists from the Middle East, the Far East, and
"It will create a second level of dialogue," Mr. Gioia said.
Next Assignment
In the past we have discussed poetry of witness, poetry that bears testament to or shed light on wrongs in our world. This is perhaps the most tumultuous political season in our memories. Write a poem that is a "letter to the editor" about something/somebody/some event in politics. Make it strong, opinionated. Don't be shy. It can even be satirical as with this from G.K. Chesterton--
Elegy in a Country Churchyard
THE men that worked for
They have their graves at home:
And birds and bees of
About the cross can roam.
But they that fought for
Following a falling star,
Alas, alas for
They have their graves afar.
And they that rule in
In stately conclave met,
Alas, alas for
They have no graves as yet.
G. K. Chesterton
Or it could be serious as this sonnet:
EASTER SONNET 2001
Like Aztec pyramids, stinking with human blood,
burnt offerings on an altar built to greed,
we turn from care of our dependants' need
to sacrifice them to a demon god.
The smoke that stains this low white Easter sky
is raised to nostrils of a higher breed
in places far away. They plant their seed,
Corruption, while a million voices die.
Once more the nails thud in to sever love
once more the deadly clouds obscure the sun
once more incomprehension in the one
who follows orders filtering from above.
To God this feeble thanks we can return:
It's animals, not humans, that they burn.
O© Richard Lawson
Congresbury
13/4/01
Whatever style you choose, 'tis the season.
This Month's Assignment and Poems
The assignment was to write a haiku a week over the summer. Read, comment and enjoy!
I'll see you all in October and I would like to hear from you all reagarding the meeting, any proposals to increase membership, how the new place is, etc.
“This is no longer as case of 'Johnny can't read,' ... It's Johnny won't read.'”
“People have to recognize that the arts are a major industry and need to be at the table for the recovery plan, ... There is no way for these local economies to recover unless we invest in the cultural life. Culture was
My haiku from the summer-- the numbered ones go together, the rest stand alone
Various Haiku
The restaurant is out
of Guinness and crab slammers.
I begin my diet.
The black cat stretches,
recoils, flexes to pounce.
The mouse runs in vain.
Swelter fills the air,
the swooning fuchsia blossoms
can’t ask for water.
The turtle races
slowly across the loud road.
Goddam! He makes it!
1.
In the lawn six skunks.
Brenna, two, chases after,
runs squealing, “Kitties!”
2.
Brenna runs, squeals, “Kitties!”
Grandpa runs too, breathless, gasps,
“Stop! Those kitties-- bite!”
3.
Brenna learns to leave skunks
alone in Grandpa’s back yard.
Grandpa is still breathless.
Bush repeals the ban.
Oil drilling soon begins.
The wounded earth weeps.
Corey, born dieing,
refuses the prognosis,
lives. We laugh. We cry.
Betty dozes off.
Not one for lengthy good-byes,
she quietly dies.
Cabby mutilates
his fare, severing its head.
The court gives him life.
The growling dog
hounds the four cats unaware
they will live here longer.
1.
My wife is away.
The dog craps in the bedroom
I do not see it.
2.
Mistakenly I
vacuum the dark dog shit.
It sticks everywhere.
3.
My wife is back home—
new carpeting, new vacuum.
She loves surprises.
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