WWWC Meeting December 13, 2008

At the outset we thank Debbie Howard for again inviting us to celebrate our Christmas in her home. As always it is a delight and a highlight of the season.

Minutes of Last Meeting





November 08, 2008





Wit & Wisdom Writers Club

Attended: 12

Chaired: Emerson Gilmore





Location: The Music Makers Academy, 517 Hartford Rd., Manchester, CT. 06040





CPS Topics:

Christmas Party, Dec 13, 1-4 pm at the home of Debbie Howard, 47 Wellington Rd., Manchester, CT. Sign up for a dish to bring! Bring Grab Bag estimated cost of $5.00.





Fresh Water Magazine 10th anniv. Submit by Dec. 30th., Asnuntuck Community College.





Conn. River Review Contest - Dec. 1, 2008 up to three poems.

Judge: Brian Clements





Butterworth Hall, Univ. Of Hartford: Greater Hartford Chapter to read seasonal poems in Dec.

All CPS members welcome.



November Meeting:

Ready for November the assignment was to gaze the senses of sound.

Make use of the five senses using them in writing a poem.

See, Hear, Smell, Touch, and Taste.





Assignment Poems were read first, followed by other poems of poets choice.

Including works of new member Patricia Christie of Manchester . Welcome Pat!









New Assignment: December assignment is to write a poem about what was in the steamer trunk

in the yard where a house is for sale.





Treasurer: Membership dues $10.00. Debbie Howard for the new year

$25.00 Julia Paul CPS Membership dues









Poetry Interest:

Organized poetry readings were held in England,

with known readers to act.





Barrack Obama held a book of poems by West Indies Poet Derek Walcoltt (Epic Omeroes)





James Dicky, The Sharks Parlor (Poems about War)

Sleeping Beauty by Hayden Carrouth


Treasurer's Report


WWWC Topics



Paul, Julia, Ed, Joan Chaput and I were all published in Long River Run, the CPS members-only journal

Dues

Membership

Advertising

We can be in Hartford Courant I-Times (?)

I will send in announcement of the next meeting




CPS Topics

CONNECTICUT RIVER REVIEW POETRY CONTEST

Open to all poets. NEW GUIDELINES AND PRIZE AMOUNTS

Submit poems: Dec. 1- Feb. 28th 2009(postmark)

Prizes of $400, $200, and $100.

Send up to 3 unpublished poems, any form, 80 line limit each. Include two copies of each poem: one with complete contact info and one with NO contact info. Both copies should be marked CRR Contest. Include SASE for results only (no poems will be returned). Winning poems must be submitted by disc or electronically following notification. Send fee of $15 for up to three poems; make check out to Connecticut Poetry Society. Prize winning poems will be published in Connecticut River Review.

CPS is pleased to announce that the judge for the 2009 Connecticut River Review Contest will be Brian Clements, Professor of Writing at Western Connecticut State University and coordinator of WestConn’s MFA in Professional Writing. He edits Sentence: a journal of prose poetics and Sentence’s parent press, Firewheel Editions. His most recent books are Disappointed Psalms (Meritage Press) and And How to End It (prose poems from Quale Press).

Send submissions to CT River Review Poetry Contest, CPS, PO Box 270554, West Hartford, CT 06127.

LYNN DECARO POETRY CONTEST

Open to Connecticut high school students only (grades 9 - 12)

Dec. 1 - March 15th 2009 Deadline

Prizes of $75, $50, and $25.

This contest was established to honor Lynn DeCaro, a promising young CPS member who died of leukemia in 1986. Send up to 3 unpublished poems, any form, 40 line limit each. Include two copies of each poem: one with complete contact info and one with NO contact info. Both copies should be marked DeCaro Contest. Include SASE, a stamped, self-addressed, stamped envelope, for results only (no poems will be returned). Winning poems must be submitted by disc or electronically following notification. There is no entry fee for this contest. Prize winning poems will be published in Long River Review II.

Send submissions to Lynn DeCaro Poetry Contest, CPS, PO Box 270554, West Hartford, CT 06127.

Judge for 2009 Decaro Contest: Bessy Reyna is an opinion columnist for the Hartford Courant. Her poems and stories are found in U.S. and Latin American literary magazines and anthologies. Reyna’s latest book, The Battlefield of Your Body , a bilingual poetry collection, was released in June, 2005 by the Hill-Stead Museum.




News Item

Dorothy Featherstone Porter (26 March 1954 – 10 December 2008) was an Australian poet.



There is currently a lot of hope that Prersident-elect Obama will include a poet in his inauguration ceremony.



www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2442583.htm this links to a story about Australian poet Dorothy Porter who died of cancer at age 54


CHARLES BAUDELAIRE’S GRAVE
How do you bury a poet?

Surely not

how they buried Baudelaire

thrown in with his parents

like an infant death.

It stretches

to a ghastly irony

Pasternak’s remark

that poets should remain

children.

Do poets really want to trade

the lingering savour

of experience

for guileless eyes?

There’s something

repulsive

about an empty fresh

adult face.

Such baby faces

can be seen in uniform

or with a foot

on a slaughtered tiger.

They can be capable

of anything

or a long lullaby

of nothing.

I want to exhume Baudelaire

and give him his own

magnificent mercurial vault.

From one angle

an arching ebony cat.

From another

sneering black marble

spleen.

No poet

dead or alive

should rot

with their parents.

THE HAMPSTEAD HEATH TOAD
It was one of those

beautiful

English summer nights

when levitating

on the moonshine

of a moonlit world

was your entranced lucky

fate.

The lilac shimmer of silent

lakes.

The whisper of ghost fox

through your heartbeat.

But the toad in the hand

stank real.

Stank through his palpitating

skin.

Stank of fear.

Is the fabled hallucinogenic

touch of toads

just as Macbeth

witnessed

a hypnotising snare

of toxic apparition?

What thrilling doors of perception

open

to the musky ooze

of panting paralysed

terror?

Of course

on that silky intoxicating

night

you wanted

and will always want

the toad

to calm down

smell sweet

and give up his phantasmagorical

secrets

generously.

But the toad in the hand

protected himself.

The toad in the hand

stank real.


Educational Item





Al Daily



www.plagiarist.com/



This well-seasoned websiote has been a personal favorite for several years. Its list of poems grows daily and you can search by title, author, etc. It also offers
Plagiarist.com

Archive contains:

9231 Poems

460 Poets

& 55 Articles


Next Assignment

The next assignment is to write a poem for the new year in which you discuss what you will not do in the coming year-- sort of a reverse resolution poem. Any length, any style




This Month's Assignment and Poems