cpsmanchester

Meeting February 14, 2009

2009-02-10T10:37:00.003-05:00

FOR MEETINGS AFTER JANUARY 2009 CLICK THIS LINK:

CPSMANCHESTER

WHICH WILL TAKE YOU TO OUR WIKI PAGE WHICH WE FEEL IS EASIER TO BUILD AND A LOT MORE FUN TO WORK WITH.
THANKS!

Get your own - Open publication

WWWC Meeting December 13, 2008

2008-12-11T10:16:00.003-05:00

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Send up to 3 unpublished poems, any form, 80 line limit each.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

Meeting, November 8, 2008

2008-10-17T08:57:00.001-04:00

The Manchester Chapter of The Connecticut Poetry Society

Get a poem from Paul

Minutes of Last Meeting

Treasurer's Report

WWWC Topics
Do we really need an election of officers?
The next meeting is our holiday meeting, December 13, 2008-- let's make plans.
Freshwater request for submissions

CPS Topics

Dues due?
Current contests--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.

News Item

This link-- The London Times Online will take you to a London Times Online article I read from at the meeting. It discusses the impact of a program led by an Irish woman to introduce people to great poetry read by professional actors, actresses and entertainers. Definitely worth the read.

Barack Obama

Barack Obama still has time for a little poetry
President Elect Barack Obama may be busy assembling his transition team and meeting with economic advisers to discuss healing the blighted US economy.

By Catherine Elsworth
Last Updated: 8:37PM GMT 07 Nov 2008
Barack Obama still has time for a little poetry
Barack Obama carries the book of poems in his right arm as he and his wife Michelle leave their daughters' school Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

But it appears he still has time for a little poetry.

Three days after winning the presidential election, Barack Obama was spotted in Chicago carrying a book of poems by Derek Walcott, the West Indies Nobel laureate.

The Illinois senator was photographed holding the new-looking book, perhaps a gift he had just received, and reading a letter as he headed to his car with his wife, Michelle.

The 500-page volume, Collected Poems 1948-1984, is one of 20 collections by the poet, theatre director and playwright, who has also written more than 20 plays.

Walcott, who won the 1992 Nobel prize for Literature, is often described as the West Indies' greatest writer and intellectual. He was born in St Lucia in 1930 and is best known for his epic poem Omeros, a reworking of the story of the Odyssey in a 20th century Caribbean setting.

Collected Poems 1948-1984 includes selections from all of Walcott's previous seven books of verse, including the full text of Another Life, his 1974 autobiographical poem.

Midsummer, Tobago
by Derek Walcott

Broad sun-stoned beaches.

White heat.

A green river.

A bridge,

scorched yellow palms

from the summer-sleeping house

drowsing through August.

Days I have held,

days I have lost,

days that outgrow, like daughters,

my harbouring arms.

You can certainly see why this is of interest to President-elect Obama with two daughters who will outgrow his harboring arms.

If you get a chance to hear Derek Walcott read, do so. I met and heard him once at the University of Hartford about twenty years ago. It was in a small classroom with perhaps 15-20 in the audience. A far cry from the scene described in the article about the readings in England. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a president who supports the arts, esp poetry?

Educational Item

Correction of prior website address: Alpha Dictionary is at:

www.mississippireview.com/

Next Assignment

Several weeks ago I passed a house that was empty, trucks having apparently just left. The house was okay looking, not large, not small. The only thing remaining outside, at the roadside near a mailbox that was open was a steamer trunk-- the kind with straps and buckles. It was closed, the straps buckled. The assignment for the next meeting is to write a poem that tells what was in that trunk.

This Month's Assignment and Poems

This month's poems are to engage all five senses in some way.

One of the reasons for doing this is to enrich our poems with imagery that is real, sensible, tactile, visual, savory and olfactory. So often the poems we remember are the ones that tie in to our sense-experience of the world. Recent developments in neuroscience reveal that we recall events better when memory is accompanied by sense-stimuli that were present when the memory was first created even if that sense stimulus is unrelated to what is being recalled. An example from John Medina's Brain Rules describes two groups of students asked to memorized some material. One group was in a room where the scent of lilacs was present, the other in a room without a significant similar scent. The group with the lilac scent, when asked to recall the information recalled it better when the lilac scent was present than when it was not and the group without the sense stimulus recalled the information with the same accuracy as the other group without the lilacs but not nearly as well as the group with the lilac scent present at the recall event. What does this mean? Tie the poems down; anchor them for the reader so that the reader may bring her own sensory experiences to the reading of the poem.

Keeping this in mind we come to the educational item for the day-- alliteration. One of the key elements of good poetry is how the poem sounds. As obvious as this is we still sometimes neglect sonic aspects when we write and revise. I'm guilty of this all the time. Let's take an example-- alliteration. This is defined as The repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of two or more words (ie, Waves want to be wheels…).

Example:

Grief (an exercise in alliteration)

Tuesday, 14. August 2007, 02:30:34

Prayer, Alliteration, poetry, Hope, Grief
desultory, disconnected. defeated and undone
listless, languid, lethargic and alone
the love, the fun, the desire is gone
left in place to keep the faith
holding onto only grace in the face
of trials, troubles and woes
weary, wan and woebegone
wondering why and weeping
hot tears of despair
distress and hopelessness
hopeful heart hardens
from holding on when hope is gone.
rekindle the flame
revive and refresh me again
send strength into my soul
lest I swoon with the sorrow
of this love lost.

I'm not recommending you write that alliteratively but suggest that as you write and revise you pay attention to the ways you can enhance the sonic effects of your poems.

WWWC Meeting October 11, 2008

2008-10-14T09:46:00.000-04:00

Minutes of Last Meeting

September 13, 2008

Wit & Wisdom Writers Club

Attended: 13

Chaired: Ed Bartek chaired for Emerson Gilmore

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

We must LOCK FRONT DOOR AND DEADBOLT and then the last one out

should go out the back door. Lock back door before leaving.

Kathy is the music teacher and if there are any problems she can be reached at 860-328-1112.

It was briefly discussed that perhaps the Music Dept. could provide background music while reading our poems. Something to think about in the future.

CPS Topics:

Members have until September 30 to submit a poem of 40 lines or fewer

for automatic inclusion in the members-only Conn. River Review 11. Email copy to

emgil3@yahoo.com

September Meeting:

Ed read the minutes from last meeting and also worked from Emerson’s outline.

Read works of Claudia Emerson, Va. poet laureate.

Discussion of Membership. Charlie said to advertise! Target poets through Poet Calendar on line through CPS.

It was agreed that if Ed wrote the letter( Notice for Membership, Charlie would distribute it around town.

Discussion of to have work shops for us or keep it poet and social.

Nominations of officers were going to be held, members decided to wait your return.

Assignment: Members read their Haiku’s. Then other poems of their choice.

New Assignment: Write a poem of witness, one that bears testament or sheds light in the world.

Write a poem that is a letter to the editor about something, or somebody. Political or current events any style.

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

Other News: Poets Club, Oct 1 , open mike at MCC at Fireside Common Library.

Julia told us of the Dodge Poet Festival, Stanhoke, NJ., end of month. Thurs, Fri, Sat.25,26,27th.

Ollie came for a short time: Left a note and wanted us to know she was 1st runner up for the

Ms Connecticut Sr. Pageant and Best Gown of the evening, held on Sept 6th.

Treasurer's Report

WWWC Topics

Membership drive-- Charlie et alia

Dues $10

LRR II-- Email or give me your poems-- I'll get them in

CPS Topics

Current contests

LRR II

Not much

News Item

Educational Item

Part of this will be a monthly link to a website of particular use to writers. This month's is to The Sage www.sequencepublishing.com/thesage.html. From the site:

TheSage's English Dictionary and Thesaurus
A Comprehensive and Easy-to-use Language Reference System

TheSage's English Dictionary and Thesaurus is a professional software package that integrates a complete dictionary and multifaceted thesaurus of the English language into a single and powerful language reference system.

TheSage can look up words directly from almost any program (IE, Word, Firefox, Outlook, Thunderbird,... ) and is 100% portable.

Due to popular demand, TheSage's dictionary is now online. Note that only the definition database is consulted. If you are interested in TheSage's complete package (definition + thesaurus + examples), read on.

Feature List
Well Beyond Traditional Dictionaries

TheSage allows you to look up words directly from most applications, offering multiple detailed definitions each coupled with its own thesaurus.

Some of the most interesting characteristics of TheSage are:

Features Description
Comprehensive Dictionary Over 145,000 references with multiple detailed definitions (over 200,000)
Complete Thesaurus Nearly 1,200,000 relationships between definitions (synonyms, antonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms, meronyms, holonyms,...)
Example Sentences A large collection that already includes approximately 35,000 examples of usage.
System Integration Look up words directly from most applications.
Information Integration Each definition has its own specific thesaurus.
Cross-Referencing Any and all displayed words are clickable, triggering a new lookup.
Wildcard Search Match single/multiple characters as well as filter by single/groups of vowels and consonants.
Anagram Search Only valid english words are returned.
Portability Fully functional when run from portable devices such as a USB.
Clipboard Support Copy search results, examples, thesauri, single/multiple definitions, even the entire lookup.
Tabbed Interface Previous lookups and searches remain readily available.
Structured Display Clean, flexible, fast, and easy to use presentation of information.
Price Absolutely 100% free of charge.
Custom Appearance Choose your own font and color for each aspect of the display.
Multi-Session History Quickly available via dropdown or the 'history' tab.

I also owe you one from September. This one also concerns words but you type in the definition and it returns words that might meet it:

www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml

Here you insert a phrase representing what you need the word for and the site returns a list of words in order of relevance. I put in "intellecutal brilliance" and it returned more than 200 responses including synonyms, antonyms and related words. Further, when you click on a result word it takes you to a list of dictionaries where you can research the word's meanings, origins and scientific and medical usages. "Intellectual brilliance" yielded "magnificence" which led to twenty-four dictionaries from which I selected an online etymology dictionary.

From www.alphadictionary.com/langdir.html:

* Dictionaries ››
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o Fun & Games
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o Laughing Stock
* Services ››
o Translations
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* Products ››
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o Word Lists
* Alpha Agora
* Language Blog
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Search Website:

Alpha Dictionary Language Directory
Of the roughly 6,912 known languages and dialects spoken in the 191 countries of the world, only 2,287 have writing systems (the others are only spoken) and about 300 of these have online dictionaries. You can search for them on Google and wade through 50 million mostly irrelevant returns or quickly peruse the cream of the crop here at alphaDictionary. We carefully select and add new dictionaries, grammars, and LANGUAGES regularly, marking the new languages below with a bullet (•). If you know of any online dictionaries or grammars that we do not list, please let us know through our contact page.

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Literary Dictionary: poetry

poetry, language sung, chanted, spoken, or written according to some pattern of recurrence that emphasizes the relationships between words on the basis of sound as well as sense: this pattern is almost always a rhythm or metre, which may be supplemented by rhyme or alliteration or both. The demands of verbal patterning usually make poetry a more condensed medium than prose or everyday speech, often involving variations in syntax, the use of special words and phrases ( poetic diction) peculiar to poets, and a more frequent and more elaborate use of figures of speech, principally metaphor and simile. All cultures have their poetry, using it for various purposes from sacred ritual to obscene insult, but it is generally employed in those utterances and writings that call for heightened intensity of emotion, dignity of expression, or subtlety of meditation. Poetry is valued for combining pleasures of sound with freshness of ideas, whether these be solemn or comical. Some critics make an evaluative distinction between poetry, which is elevated or inspired, and verse, which is merely clever or mechanical. The three major categories of poetry are narrative, dramatic, and lyric, the last being the most extensive.

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: poetry
Writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through its meaning, sound, and rhythm. It may be distinguished from prose by its compression, frequent use of conventions of metre and rhyme, use of the line as a formal unit, heightened vocabulary, and freedom of syntax. Its emotional content is expressed through a variety of techniques, from direct description to symbolism, including the use of metaphor and simile. See also prose poem; prosody.

For more information on poetry, visit Britannica.com.

Poetry Glossary: Poetry

A literary expression in which language is used in a concentrated blend of sound and imagery to create an emotional response; essentially rhythmic, it is usually metrical and frequently structured in stanzas.

Devil's Dictionary: poetry
A cynical view of the world by Ambrose Bierce

n.

A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the Magazines.

Next Assignment
THE NEXT ASSIGNMENT IS TO WRITE A POEM THAT ENGAGES ALL FIVE OF THE SENSES-- SIGHT, TOUCH, SMELL, TASTE AND HEARING. IT MAY BE A REVISION OF A POEM THAT ENGAGES FEWER THAN ALL FIVE OF THE SENSES OR AN ENTIRELY NEW POEM. ANY STYLE/LENGTH.

Synonym Poetry*:

Choose any word. Write that word in capital letters on the first line. In a thesaurus (you can link the the WWWebster(TM) Dictionary based on Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary, Tenth Edition by clicking here) look up the word and find three to five synonyms for it. Write the synonyms on the second line. One the third line, write a descriptive phrase about the word. The last two lines of the poem should rhyme.

Student Examples:

LOVE

Attachment, adoration, warmth, adore

Love is so pure, right down to the core.

---Kimiko Brantley (Grade 10)

NOISE

Clamor, uproar, hullabaloo.

These things can really annoy you.

---Shasta Inman (Grade 9)

30 Days of Poetry - Day 19

A green line that divides the page

Sense Poems:

Think of a place that is special. Form an image in your mind of this place. If you need to, cluster this image. Then complete the following statements.
a. I see_________________________
b. I smell_______________________
c. I hear________________________
d. I feel________________________
e. I taste_______________________
f. I think_______________________ I see the sage-covered desert
I smell the freshness of the morning
I hear the scream of the hawk
I feel the caress of a breeze
I taste the dew on the wind
I think the new day is born

After you have written out the sentences, remove the pronouns, verbs, and articles as you need to:

sage-covered desert

freshness of morning

scream of the hawk

caress of a breeze

dew of the wind

new day born

For the next meeting write a "sense" poem, that is, one in which you use the five senses: sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste.

This Month's Assignment and Poems

September 13, 2008 Meeting Notes

2008-09-12T14:03:00.000-04:00

Minutes of Last Meeting

Treasurer's Report

WWWC Topics

Dues are due

How to gain membership?

CPS Topics

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 Va. poet laureate

English professor won Pulitzer Prize for a book of poetry two years ago

Wednesday, Aug 27, 2008 - 12:25 AM

By LAWRENCE LATANE III

TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

First it was a Pulitzer, then it was a state prize. Now, Fredericksburg poet Claudia Emerson has been named poet laureate of Virginia.

"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 University of Mary Washington, where Emerson works.

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. Virginia's most recent poet laureate is Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, who lives in Middlesex County. She graduated from UMW, then Mary Washington College, in 1969.

Emerson, who grew up in Chatham in Pittsylvania County, graduated from the University of Virginia in 1979 with a degree in English and earned a master's in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Contact Lawrence Latané III at (804) 333-3461 or llatane@timesdispatch.com.

Go Back

Two Poems

What They Want

They covet fields and seize them; and houses, and take them away.

Micah 2:2

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.

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.

Claudia Emerson

Figure Studies

Louisiana State University Press

Educational Item

I met and had a seminar with Dana Gioia at the Frost Place several years ago. He is a meticulous writer, a former businessman and a teacher of considerable skill. Check out his poems and read them for the craftsmanship he puts into them.

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)">

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 Washington, he feels a pressing need to return to writing. "If I don't return to poetry soon, I don't think I'll ever be able to bring the energy and stamina that one needs to do it seriously," he said.

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 North Africa.

"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 England

They have their graves at home:

And birds and bees of England

About the cross can roam.

But they that fought for England,

Following a falling star,

Alas, alas for England

They have their graves afar.

And they that rule in England,

In stately conclave met,

Alas, alas for England

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.'”

Dana Gioia quote

“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 Louisiana's second-biggest economy, right after oil. These organizations have suffered enormous losses.”

Dana Gioia quote

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!

In the lawn six skunks.

Brenna, two, chases after,

runs squealing, “Kitties!”

Brenna runs, squeals, “Kitties!”

Grandpa runs too, breathless, gasps,

“Stop! Those kitties-- bite!”

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.

My wife is away.

The dog craps in the bedroom

I do not see it.

Mistakenly I

vacuum the dark dog shit.

It sticks everywhere.

My wife is back home—

new carpeting, new vacuum.

She loves surprises.

Meeting June 14, 2008

2008-06-14T10:05:00.001-04:00

WWWC

Meeting June 14, 2008

News

Poetry of the pavement

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N. SCOTT TRIMBLE/The Columbian
Meg Farnis, 12, left, and Llerenda Lightner, 13, chalk out a theme poem on the subject of time. Vancouver School of Arts and Academics hosted its second annual sidewalk chalk poetry event Friday." border="0" width="250">

N. SCOTT TRIMBLE/The Columbian
Meg Farnis, 12, left, and Llerenda Lightner, 13, chalk out a theme poem on the subject of time. Vancouver School of Arts and Academics hosted its second annual sidewalk chalk poetry event Friday.

Related:
» Chalk talk slideshow

Saturday, June 14, 2008
By ISOLDE RAFTERY, Columbian staff writer
Marilyn Moelhman was reading around midnight when she accidentally smushed a fly within the pages of her book. After killing it, a sense of dread and smallness consumed her.

“I felt really bad about it,” Marilyn, 12, said. “Because in the grand scheme of things, it probably affects as many things as me.”

Marilyn is a tiny, fast-talking sixth-grader at Vancouver School of Arts and Academics. On Friday, she was among a group of students writing poetry in chalk on the school’s sidewalks.

The annual poetry event, organized by English teacher Michael Carr, may look like a giddy exercise from the street. It involves, after all, rainbow-colored sidewalk chalk and an abundance of flip flops and cutoff shorts.

But walk through the school gates and to the main plaza, and watch students wrestle with metaphor and meaning.

Marilyn’s poetry, for example, questions whether humans or flies have a greater purpose of being other than just that: being.

“Really there’s no written rule about what we’re supposed to do — even the quest for happiness, that’s just to feel good,” Marilyn said. “And like, emos feel bad because they like feeling bad.”

Nearby, her identical twin sister Madison transcribed her own poem. Does her twin harbor transcendental thoughts?

“It’s not like I’m going to come down the stairs at breakfast and say, ‘Hey Maddie, did you think about the universe last night?’ ” Marilyn said. “I believe that she does, but we’re not telepathic.”

Christian Ivans, 14, wrote poignantly about depression. His poem begins:

Your soul
Bright and shining
Full of hope
No regrets,
Until your body
Is touched by something so dark
It creeps up your limbs.

“My dad inspired this poem because he’s always depressed,” Christian said. “So it’s about overcoming depression.”

Christian doesn’t know where his father lives now, but he knows that his father had been adversely affected by the dreary Pacific Northwest.

“When you’re not depressed, everything is all right,” Christian said. “But when you’re depressed, you find sadness in everything and you do things you wouldn’t normally do.”

Across the courtyard, Lexi Peterson-Burge, 14, held fast to optimism. She blasted Z100, a popular music station, and wrote across her concrete space: “CANCER.”

When asked to elaborate, she said she was diagnosed with leukemia last August. Then she said: “It’s like, cancer, what?”

Meaning, cancer doesn’t faze her. But it got her down one day in class, so she wrote about it, but more specifically, other people’s pity.

“The reality is that people hear cancer and they think death,” Lexi said. “Though it’s a grim thought, it’s the truth. I was scared at first, but I didn’t want to show it, because my parents were sad enough.”

Give me this cancer
I will grab it by the horns and take it on
By the end of this year, it will be gone.

Isolde Raftery can be reached at 360-735-4546 or isolde.raftery@columbian.com.

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Minutes of Last Meeting

WWWC Business

MusicMakers Academy is our new meeting place beginning in September 13, 2008.

Thanks again for the work of Joan, Joan, Linda and Sue on the Celebration of the Arts in Manchester at MCC.

Summer meetings?

CPS Business

Important CPS stuff is that if you are a paid-up CPS member then if you submit a poem to LRR 2 by the end of this month you will be published. Since I am the editor of the volume you won't be overlooked. We will be checking each entry to make certain that submissions are from current members.

Long River Run II
a CPS members-only journal

Long River Run II is a poetry journal open only to CPS members. CPS members receive it for free. The reading period for Long River Run II is May 1-June 30. Please submit one poem, maximum of 40 lines, typed, single-spaced. Include your name in upper left corner, and under that please put your town (and state if you are not a Connecticut resident). Previously published okay, provide credits. Simultaneous submission okay, please notify if accepted elsewhere. Enclose SASE.

Upon notification of acceptance, poem must be submitted to a specified e-mail address exactly as you wish poem to appear.

Send submission to:

Long River Run II

CPS

PO Box 270554

W. Hartford, CT 06127

BRODINE/BRODINSKY POETRY COMPETITION

Open to all poets.

Submit poems: May 1-July 31 (postmark)

Prizes of $150, $100, and $50.

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 Brodine/Brodinsky. Include SASE for results only (no poems will be returned). Winning poems must be submitted by disc or electronically following notification. Send fee of $10 for up to three poems; make check out to Connecticut Poetry Society. Prize winning poems will be published in Connecticut River Review.

Send submissions to Brodine/Brodinsky Poetry Contest, CPS, PO Box 270554, West Hartford, CT 06127

2008 Contest Judge: Maria Sassi Prize winning poet and playwright, writer, lecturer and teacher. She is the first Poet Laureate of West Hartford. Ms. Sassi has taught creative writing for nine years at The Hartford College for Women, University of Hartford. Her lecture, Our American Poet Laureates, has been presented at schools, libraries and literary organizations around Connecticut and New York. The first edition of her book of poems Rooted in Stars was selected for the permanent collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript library at Yale University.

Education

See article in news section

Assignment

Haiku

May 10, 2008 2

2008-05-08T15:05:00.000-04:00

The next meeting of the Wit and Wisdom Writers Club (Manchester Chapter of the Connecticut Poetry Society) will be on Saturday, May 10, 2008 from 1-4PM at the Mahoney Recreation Center, 114 Cedar St, Manchester. We will plan the June picnic meeting and (still) discuss relocation but perhaps with some new information. The assignment is to write a poem honoring, inspired by, dedicated to Ed Bartek of any other mentor who has influenced your poetry. Any form, any topic. By the time you receive this I will have posted my notes for the April meeting to http://cpsmanchester.blogspot.com.

Poetry is the special medium of spiritual crazy wisdom, the form of expression that comes closest to creating a bridge between words and what is wordless.

~ Wes "Scoop" Nisker ~

1. Minutes of Last Meeting

April 12, 2008

Wit & Wisdom Writers Club

Attended: 11

Emerson Gilmore chaired

April Dining was held at the Marco Polo Restaurant in East Hartford.

on April 12^{th at 1:00 pm. The luncheon was enjoyed by 11 members.}

^{Phyllis Karlson and Peter who have long been absent attend.}

^{It was our chance to honor Ed Bartek for all his years of service.}

^{Emerson, Charlie and other members offered kind words on how Ed made}

^{a difference. Emerson presented a plaque to Ed from the group. Our way of saying thank you.}

^{Ed spoke of how Wit and Wisdom Writers group got started with Wally W. Winchell.}

^{Members enjoyed the afternoon and read there poems while dining. It was fitting}

^{seeing April is National Poetry Month.}

^{The assignment was to write a food poem. Peter sang his food poem to the music of}

^{"Now or Never". Joan Moran for the first time also sang her food poem. It was enjoyed}

^{by all.}

^Business:

^{Relocation: Emerson said we will suspend the search for a new place to hold our meetings.}

^{Until the May 10th meeting. It will be held at the Mahoney Bld. In Manchester.}

^{June Picnic: It is yet to be decided where it will be held. Topic for discussion in May.}

^{Assignment: Next Assignment is to write a poem influenced, dedicated or inspired by Ed Bartek.}

^{Consciousness of you as a writer.}

^{2. Treasurer's Report}

^{3. WWWC Items}

^{4. CPS Items}

^{Remember: APRIL IS THE MONTH TO RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP IN THE CONNECTICUT POETRY SOCIETY!!!}

^{Relocation: The MusicMakers Academy director Paula Penna has offered us space for our meetings. I have toured the site and find it ideal in most every way. I tentatively agreed to begin there in September.}

^{Any discussion?}

^{June picnic meeting:}

^Where?

^{List, etc.}

^{Manchester Celebration of the Arts}

^{What shall we do?}

^{How shall we do it?}

^{Is there a better way?}

^{AL SAVARD MEMORIAL POETRY CONTEST}

^{Open only to Connecticut poets.}

^{Submit poems: March 1-June 15 (postmark)}

^{Prizes of $150, $100, and $50.}

^{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 Savard 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 $10 for up to three poems; make check out to Connecticut Poetry Society. Prize winning poems will be published in Long River Run II.}

^{Send submissions to Al Savard Poetry Contest, CPS, PO Box 270554, West Hartford, CT 06127.}

^{BRODINE/BRODINSKY POETRY COMPETITION}

^{Open to all poets.}

^{Submit poems: May 1-July 31 (postmark)}

^{Prizes of $150, $100, and $50.}

^{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 Brodine/Brodinsky. Include SASE for results only (no poems will be returned). Winning poems must be submitted by disc or electronically following notification. Send fee of $10 for up to three poems; make check out to Connecticut Poetry Society. Prize winning poems will be published in Connecticut River Review.}

^{Send submissions to Brodine/Brodinsky Poetry Contest, CPS, PO Box 270554, West Hartford, CT 06127}

^{5. News Item}

^{‘Love & Death & Love’ His first book of poetry at age 90}

^{BY JESSICA LYONS}

^{Wednesday, May 7, 2008 1:24 PM EDT}

^{At 90 years of age, Flushing House resident Leon Zuckrow has published his first book of poetry, "Love & Death & Love," which is comprised of works that were written following the death of his first wife.}

^{Previously, Zuckrow, who was born in Philadelphia, wrote occasional poetry, for events such as birthdays. He said that although he knew the mechanics of it, he "didn’t have any great need for it."}

^{When his wife passed away 45 years ago, Zuckrow began writing poetry as a way to deal with his wife’s death. However, he was doing it only for himself and not for anyone else.}

^{Zuckrow’s daughter and a couple other people had pushed him to publish his work. He finally decided to do so about a year ago. It came out shortly before he turned 90.}

^{"Love & Death & Love" features 95 of Zuckrow’s poems, although he said he has written many more than that. The poems take one through the stages that he went through when his wife passed away. He said first there was a period of grief and desolation, followed by a period of understanding. Finally, there was a feeling of elation that he had had love.}

^{"They’ll understand what loves means (and) that death intervenes," Zuckrow said. "It does not prevent or stop it. Love continues."}

^{Zuckrow, who also recently recorded the poems from the book onto CD, has four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, many of whom never knew his first wife.}

^{"This is a way for them to know what our life was like and what our love was like," he said.}

^{Although Zuckrow said it is "just a book," it has also said that it also means something special to him personally.}

^{"For me, this is like having my wife back again," Zuckrow said.}

^{Zuckrow moved to Flushing House seven years ago after his second wife passed away and his daughter already knew someone who was living there. He is a member of the Flushing House Drama Group, which reads acts of plays almost every Saturday afternoon.}

^{Along with his writing, Zuckrow also does non-conformist artwork, including sculptures. He said that he has been doing art longer than he has been writing poetry, and said that he works mostly with found materials.}

^{A graduate of Columbia University, Zuckrow has formerly worked as a teacher and worked in private industry and for the federal government.}

^{Zuckrow will be giving a reading at Flushing House in the near future and is available for public readings and book signings. For more information, contact Robert Salant at 347-532-3025 or rsalant@uam.org.}

^{Published by iUniverse, Zuckrow’s poetry book "Love & Death & Love" can be purchased through Barnes and Noble’s website, www.bn.com.}

^{Expected-the despair, the sigh and tears and moans because she has gone where body is stripped to bones. Yet?-silliness? laughter? frivolity? and mirth?-}

^{so scandalous after that consignment to earth!}

^{But she decrees it! Then, when I come from above}

^{we are masters again of joy as well as love.}

^{In revelry, not grief, she and I will resume,}

^{robbing time, that old thief, as a new bride and groom.}

^{6. Education}

In looking for something educational for the meeting I came across the following test which features real poems and parodies of poems. Which is which?

To take the test and get the answers online go to http://reverent.org/poetry_or_parody.html

^{Poetry, or parody?}

^{by Mikhail Simkin}

^{Some of these verses are masterpieces, created by the great modernist poets of the early 20th century, Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell. Ezra Pound was the founder of the Imagist poetic movement, while Amy Lowell was the "fair Trotsky of the Imagist revolution." The other verses are parodies, written by two poets, Witter Bynner and Arthur Davison Ficke, to mock the modernists. They used fake names, Emanuel Morgan and Anne Knish, to found the Spectric School of Poetry, which was meant as a spoof. Many advanced poets and critics were completely taken in by this Spectric hoax. And what about you? Can you tell true modernistic poems from ridiculous parodies? Take this quiz to find out.}

^{After each verse choose what it is. Hit the Submit button when done. The quiz will be graded and you will see the correct answers.}

^{I have not written, reader,}

^{That you may read...}

^{They sit in rows in the bare school-room}

^Reading.

^{Throwing rocks at windows is better,}

^{And oh the tortoise-shell cat with the can fled on!}

^{I would rather be a can-tier}

^{Than a writer for readers.}

^{I have written, reader,}

^{For abstruse reasons.}

^{Gold in the mine...}

^{Black water seeping into tunnels}

^{A plank breaks, and the roof falls...}

^{Three men suffocated.}

^{The wife of one now works in a laundry;}

^{The wife of another has married a fat man;}

^{I forget about the third.}

^{1. Poetry Parody}

^{Reiteration !...}

^{The seconds bob by,}

^{So many, so many,}

^{Each ugly in its own way}

^{As raw meats are all ugly.}

^{Why do we feed on the dead?}

^{Or would at least it were with cries and lust}

^{Of slaying our human food}

^{Beneath a cannibal sun!}

^{But these old corpses of alien creatures!...}

^{I loathe them!}

^{And too many heads go by the window,}

^{All alien-}

^{Filers of saws, doubtless,}

^{Or lechers}

^{Or Sabbath-keepers.}

^{Morality comes from God.}

^{He was busy.}

^{He forgot to make beauty.}

^{Why does he not call back into their hen-house}

^{This ugly straggling flock of seconds}

^{That trail by}

^{With pin-feathers showing?}

^{2. Poetry Parody}

^{Skeptical cat,}

^{Calm your eyes, and come to me.}

^{For long ago, in some palmed forest,}

^{I too felt claws curling}

^{Within my fingers...}

^{Moons wax and wane;}

^{My eyes, too, once narrowed and widened...}

^{Why do you shrink back?}

^{Come to me: let me pat you -}

^{Come, vast-eyed one...}

^{Or I will spring upon you}

^{And with steel-hook fingers}

^{Tear you limb from limb....}

^{There were twins in my cradle....}

^{3. Poetry Parody}

^{The gentleman with the grey-and-black whiskers}

^{Sneered languidly over his quail.}

^{Then my heart flew up and laboured,}

^{And I burst from my own holding}

^{And hurled myself forward.}

^{With straight blows I beat upon him,}

^{Furiously, with red-hot anger, I thrust against him.}

^{But my weapon slithered over his polished surface,}

^{And I recoiled upon myself,}

^Panting.

^{4. Poetry Parody}

^{They brought me a quilled, yellow dahlia,}

^{Opulent, flaunting.}

^{Round gold}

^{Flung out of a pale green stalk.}

^{Round, ripe gold}

^{Of maturity,}

^{Meticulously frilled and flaming,}

^{A fire-ball of proclamation:}

^{Fecundity decked in staring yellow}

^{For all the world to see.}

^{They brought a quilled, yellow dahlia,}

^{To me who am barren}

^{Shall I send it to you,}

^{You who have taken with you}

^{All I once possessed?}

^{5. Poetry Parody}

^{Red slippers in a shop-window, and outside in the street, flaws of grey, windy sleet!}

^{Behind the polished glass, the slippers hang in long threads of red, festooning from the ceiling like stalactites of blood, flooding the eyes of passers-by with dripping colour, jamming their crimson reflections against the windows of cabs and tram-cars, screaming their claret and salmon into the teeth of the sleet, plopping their little round maroon lights upon the tops of umbrellas.}

^{The row of white, sparkling shop fronts is gashed and bleeding, it bleeds red slippers. They spout under the electric light, fluid and fluctuating, a hot rain -- and freeze again to red slippers, myriadly multiplied in the mirror side of the window.}

^{They balance upon arched insteps like springing bridges of crimson lacquer; they swing up over curved heels like whirling tanagers sucked in a wind-pocket; they flatten out, heelless, like July ponds, flared and burnished by red rockets.}

^{Snap, snap, they are cracker-sparks of scarlet in the white, monotonous block of shops.}

^{They plunge the clangour of billions of vermilion trumpets into the crowd outside, and echo in faint rose over the pavement.}

^{People hurry by, for these are only shoes, and in a window, farther down, is a big lotus bud of cardboard whose petals open every few minutes and reveal a wax doll, with staring bead eyes and flaxen hair, lolling awkwardly in its flower chair.}

^{One has often seen shoes, but whoever saw a cardboard lotus bud before?}

^{The flaws of grey, windy sleet beat on the shop-window where there are only red slippers.}

^{6. Poetry Parody}

^{Two cocktails round a smile,}

^{A grapefruit after grace,}

^{Flowers in an aisle}

^{...Were your face.}

^{A strap in a street-car,}

^{A sea-fan on the sand,}

^{A beer on a bar}

^{...Were your hand.}

^{The pillar of a porch,}

^{The tapering of an egg,}

^{The pine of a torch}

^{...Were your leg,}

^{Sun on the Hellespont,}

^{White swimmers in the bowl}

^{Of the baptismal font}

^{Are your soul.}

^{7. Poetry Parody}

^{Beyond her lips in the dark are a man's feet}

^{Composed and dead...}

^{In the light between her lips is a moving tongue-tip sweet,}

^Red.

^{Her arms are his white robes,}

^{They cover a king,}

^{His ornaments her crescent lobes}

^{And two moons on a string.}

^{Sheba, Sheba, Proserpina, Salome,}

^{See, I am come!- king, god, saint!-}

^{With the stone of a volcano O show that you know me,}

^{Pound till the true blood pricks through the paint!}

^{Twitch of the dead man's feet if he remembers}

^{A bunch of grapes and a ripped-open gown.}

^{And the live man's eyes are night after embers,}

^{Two black spots on a white-faced down...}

^{And in the dawn, lava ... rolling down...}

^{Downrolling lava on an up-pointing town.}

^{8. Poetry Parody}

^{Poet, a wreath!-}

^{No matter how we had combined our flowers,}

^{You would have worn them - being ours....}

^{On you, on them, the showers -}

^{O roots beneath!}

^{9. Poetry Parody}

^{Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth,}

^{Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.}

^{10. Poetry Parody}

^{See, they return; ah, see the tentative}

^{Movements, and the slow feet,}

^{The trouble in the pace and the uncertain}

^Wavering!

^{See, they return, one by one,}

^{With fear, as half-awakened;}

^{As if the snow should hesitate}

^{And murmur in the wind,}

^{and half turn back;}

^{These were the "Wing'd-with-Awe,"}

^Inviolable.

^{Gods of the Winged shoe!}

^{With them the silver hounds,}

^{sniffing the trace of air!}

^{Haie! Haie!}

^{These were the swift to harry;}

^{These the keen-scented;}

^{These were the souls of blood.}

^{Slow on the leash,}

^{pallid the leash-men!}

^{11. Poetry Parody}

^{Goddess of the murmuring courts,}

^{Nicotine, my Nicotine,}

^{Houri of the mystic sports,}

^{trailing-robed in gabardine,}

^{Gliding where the breath hath glided,}

^{Hidden sylph of filmy veils,}

^{Truth behind the dream is veiled}

^{E'en as thou art, smiling ever, ever gliding,}

^{Wraith of wraiths, dim lights dividing}

^{Purple, grey, and shadow green}

^{Goddess, Dream-grace, Nicotine.}

^{Goddess of the shadow's lights,}

^{Nicotine, my Nicotine,}

^{Some would set old Earth to rights,}

^{Thou I none such ween.}

^{Veils of shade our dream dividing,}

^{Houris dancing, intergliding,}

^{Wraith of wraiths and dream of faces,}

^{Silent guardian of the old unhallowed places,}

^{Utter symbol of all old sweet druidings,}

^{Mem'ry of witched wold and green,}

^{Nicotine, my Nicotine:}

^{Neath the shadows of thy weaving}

^{Dreams that need no undeceiving,}

^{Loves that longer hold me not,}

^{Dreams I dream not any more,}

^{Fragrance of old sweet forgotten places,}

^{Smiles of dream-lit, flit-by faces}

^{All as perfume Arab-sweet}

^{Deck the high road to thy feet}

^{As were Godiva's coming fated}

^{And all the April's blush belated}

^{Were lain before her, carpeting}

^{The stones of Coventry with spring,}

^{So thou my mist-enwreathed queen,}

^{Nicotine, white Nicotine,}

^{Riding engloried in they hair}

^{Mak'st by-road of our dreams}

^{Thy thorough-fare.}

^{12. Poetry Parody}

^{7. Next Assignment}

^{Write a poem about going home, finding a place, returning home, being home, etc.}

April 12, 2008 Meeting Notes

2008-04-30T14:58:00.000-04:00

=== April 12, 2008 ===

--- New node ---

--- Announcement text ---

Hi All!

The next meeting of the Wit and Wisdom Writers Club (Manchester Chapter of the Connecticut Poetry Society) is our annual dining event and will be on Saturday, April 12, 2008 from 1-4PM at the Marco Polo Restaurant 1250 Burnside Ave, East Hartford, CT 06108 (860) 289-2704. It is next to Wickham Park. We will order from the menu and will have separate checks. The assignment is to write a poem about food-any kind of food, any style of poem, happy, sad, neither, both.

'Tis the voice of the lobster; I heard him declare,
'You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.'
As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose
Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.
When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark,
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark:
But, when the tide rises and sharks are around,
His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.

Lewis Carroll

--- WWWC Items ---

--- Relocation ---

I've stalled somewhat here due to being busy with family stuff.

The 8th District space is unavailable per Charlie

I think we may hang fire on this until September, as we did last year, since we only have one meeting left for Mahoney Rec Center this year.

I spoke with Calvin Harris who advised me we'll be moved to the second floor for the May 10 meeting.

--- Member notes ---

Ed's lunch is on us.

LeeAnn sends her best from Fl. She's not writing much but is enjoying the sun.

--- Treasurer's Report ---

--- Minutes of the last meeting ---

We met as usual at Mahoney and had a good meeting replete with discussion about our poems which were all pretty good and done in rhyming couplets.

Today's assignment, a poem about food, nurturing etc.

Attendance was okay but we really need higher numbers, new members to enhance the mix, alter the chemistry some.

--- News Item ---

Who is America's Poet Laureate?

From the April 11 edition, The Christian Science Monitor

Poetry is essential to politics, and to us

The deepest reading of a good poem isn't just a wistful hobby, it's a revolutionary act.

By Danny Heitman

from the April 11, 2008 edition

E-mail Print Letter to the Editor Republish del.icio.us digg

Baton Rouge, LA. - While observance of April's National Poetry Month might prompt a shrug from the throngs of Americans who no longer read poetry, John Adams never seemed to doubt that poetry mattered. And as the nation prepares to elect another president, Adams's views on the subject couldn't be more timely.

The second president of the United States has renewed celebrity these days, thanks to HBO's "John Adams," a miniseries based on the acclaimed biography by David McCullough.

In the first few episodes viewers see that Adams was no sissy, following the Founding Father as he braves freezing horseback rides, pitches manure on his New England farm, and faces British cannon fire during a dangerous diplomatic voyage to France.

But as Mr. McCullough mentions in his chronicle of Adams's life, this man of action also loved poetry, a form of expression often dismissed as a dainty pastime for wallflowers.

In his attempt to fathom human nature, writes McCullough, Adams "was drawn to Shakespeare and Swift, and likely to carry Cervantes or a volume of English poetry with him on journeys. 'You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket,' he would tell his son Johnny."

In poetry, Adams found the graceful rhythms that would inform his development as a master of rhetoric. And in poetry, Adams found insights into human nature that sharpened his political skill. Clearly, Adams didn't rise to the pantheon of political leadership in spite of his love for poetry, but in some measure because of it.

No one should be surprised that this key player in the American Revolution loved poetry, since the deepest reading of a good poem isn't just a wistful hobby, it's a revolutionary act.

"Great poetry can alter the way we see ourselves," author Roger Housden writes. "It can alter the way we see the world." At its best, Mr. Housden adds, poetry "dares us to break free from the safe strategies of the cautious mind; it calls to us, like the wild geese, from an open sky."

Despite Housden's modern-day musing on poetry reading as a radical, relevant exercise in change, my guess is that many will regard Adams's poetry habit as a quaint period oddity, something as charmingly dated as powder wigs and quill pens.

After all, Americans aren't reading a lot of poetry these days, as evidenced by its relative absence from bookstore shelves. And let's face it: If poetry were popular, then earnest awareness-raising exercises like National Poetry Month wouldn't seem so plaintive.

But another Massa-chusetts leader who followed Adams into the White House once reminded us that poetry's power to drive change is timeless, and that it can also be a useful check on the less flattering impulses of governance.

"When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations," John F. Kennedy said in 1963. "When power narrows the areas of man's concerns, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses."

Which is why, this campaign year, we would do well to rediscover the power of poetry - and to ask if any of those who want to be president are following Adams's advice, and keeping a poet in their pocket.

• Danny Heitman is the author of "A Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House.

After all, this is National Poetry Month

--- Today's Assignment ---

A Supermarket in California

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the

streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit

supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!

What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles

full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! --- and you,

Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the

meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.

I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price

bananas? Are you my Angel?

I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and

followed in my imagination by the store detective.

We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting

artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does

your beard point tonight?

(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel

absurd.)

Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to

shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in

driveways, home to our silent cottage?

Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you

have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and

stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

Allen Ginsberg

Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market

Among the market greens,

a bullet

from the ocean

depths,

a swimming

projectile,

I saw you,

dead.

All around you

were lettuces,

sea foam

of the earth,

carrots,

grapes,

but

of the ocean

truth,

of the unknown,

of the

unfathomable

shadow, the

depths

of the sea,

the abyss,

only you had survived,

a pitch-black, varnished

witness

to deepest night.

Only you, well-aimed

dark bullet

from the abyss,

mangled

at one tip,

but constantly

reborn,

at anchor in the current,

winged fins

windmilling

in the swift

flight

the

marine

shadow,

a mourning arrow,

dart of the sea,

olive, oily fish.

I saw you dead,

a deceased king

of my own ocean,

green

assault, silver

submarine fir,

seed

of seaquakes,

now

only dead remains,

yet

in all the market

yours

was the only

purposeful form

amid

the bewildering rout

of nature;

amid the fragile greens

you were

a solitary ship,

armed

among the vegetables

fin and prow black and oiled,

as if you were still

the vessel of the wind,

the one and only

pure

ocean

machine:

unflawed, navigating

the waters of death.

Pablo Neruda

Watermelons

Green Buddhas

On the fruit stand.

We eat the smile

And spit out the teeth.

Charles Simic

--- Nest Assignment ---

It was suggested that I say some kind words about Ed. In truth, it has been done and he is our guest and we have all said what we have to say. Ed has become part of our experience hear, indvidual and collective. Since that is so and since we are poets, the assignment for the next meeting is to write a poem about or dedicated to Ed. It need not be an ode to Ed or even a tribute to Ed, rather a poem that by its mere presence is a thank-you to Ed for his presence among us and that exemplifies the quality of writer he has helped us to be.

--- CPS News ---

Annual dues of $25 are due April 1. Please mail to P O Box above

CPS Annual Meeting and reading will be Sunday April 29, 2-4 pm, Butterworth Hall, 1265 Asylum. Featured readers are Bob Jacob and Jean Tupper, followed by open mic.

AL SAVARD MEMORIAL POETRY CONTEST

Open only to Connecticut poets.

Submit poems: March 1-June 15 (postmark)

Prizes of $150, $100, and $50.

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 Savard 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 $10 for up to three poems; make check out to Connecticut Poetry Society. Prize winning poems will be published in Long River Run II.

Send submissions to Al Savard Poetry Contest, CPS, PO Box 270554, West Hartford, CT 06127.

BRODINE/BRODINSKY POETRY COMPETITION

Open to all poets.

Submit poems: May 1-July 31 (postmark)

Prizes of $150, $100, and $50.

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 Brodine/Brodinsky. Include SASE for results only (no poems will be returned). Winning poems must be submitted by disc or electronically following notification. Send fee of $10 for up to three poems; make check out to Connecticut Poetry Society. Prize winning poems will be published in Connecticut River Review.

Send submissions to Brodine/Brodinsky Poetry Contest, CPS, PO Box 270554, West Hartford, CT 06127

April 12, Saturday, 8 pm. Gallery on the Green, Canton. Poets who have recently published work with Antrim House: Rennie McQuilken, Geri Radacsi, Cheryl Della Pelle, and Jim Kelleher. For info, call 860-693-9391.

April 16, 7-8:30pm. "Calling all Poets!" reading followed by open mic. Featured readers Sandra Maneri, Lorna Cyr, Mary Elizabeth Lang and Victoria Munoz. Silas Bronson Library, 267 Grand St., Waterbury, CT. info: Anita Bologna 203-574-8222.

April 19, 2pm. Caduceus Book Reading. Editor Tony Fusco announces a reading to launch Caduceus 5, at which contributing poets will read their work. April 19 at 2 p.m. at the Yale Book Store, (Barnes & Noble, Broadway, New Haven.)

April 19, 1-3pm. Free poetry workshop with Eileen Albrizio, recipient of the 2008 Greater Hartford Arts Council New Boston Fund Individual Artist Fellowship. Cragin Memorial Library, 8 Linwood Avenue, Colchester, CT 06415. www.angelfire.com/art/albrizio.

Thursday, April 24, 6:30-8:30 pm, "Poetry Matters!" a community reading, featuring Ginny Connors and Jim Finnegan, Noah Webster Library, 20 South Main St., West Hartford. 860-561-6950.

Sue Holloway - a Remembrance in Prose and Verse, Wednesday, April 30, 6-8 pm. James Blackstone Memorial Library, Branford. For info: call Carol at 245-5764 or Sally at 481-0061.

a CPS members-only journal

Long River Run II is a poetry journal open only to CPS members. CPS members receive it for free. The reading period for Long River Run II is May 1-June 30. Please submit one poem, maximum of 40 lines, typed, single-spaced. Include your name in upper left corner, and under that please put your town (and state if you are not a Connecticut resident). Previously published okay, provide credits. Simultaneous submission okay, please notify if accepted elsewhere. Enclose SASE.

Upon notification of acceptance, poem must be submitted to a specified e-mail address exactly as you wish poem to appear.

Send submission to:

Long River Run II

CPS

PO Box 270554

W. Hartford, CT 06127

March 8, 2008

2008-03-13T14:50:00.000-04:00

--- March 8, 2008 ---

--- Announcement ---

The next meeting of the Wit and Wisdom Writers Club (Manchester Chapter of the Connecticut Poetry Society) will be on Saturday, March 8, 2008 from 1-4PM at the Mahoney Recreation Center, , 114 Cedar St, Manchester. We will plan the dining event for April and discuss relocation. The assignment is to write a minimum of 20 lines of rhyming couplets. Further notes and additional details may be found at http://cpsmanchester.blogspot.com.

Poetry is like fish: if it's fresh, it's good; if it's stale, it's bad; and if you're not certain, try it on the cat.

Osbert Sitwell (1892-1969)

--- Minutes of Last Meeting ---

A good meeting although ill-attended

--- Treasurer's Report ---

Debbie

--- CPS ---

Announcements

CPS sponsors Workshop on Poetry based on Nature and Art by Maria Sassi, followed by open mic; Saturday, March 29, 1:30-4p.m., University of Hartford, For more information.click here

April 19 Reading to launch poetry journal Caduceus 5 at Yale Book Store.click here

CPS Contests currently accepting submissions: DeCaro, Dehn

Click Here

Ct River Review accepting submissions.Click Here

Call for Submissions. click here

For a list of poetry books published by CPS members Members books

How to submit your poetry to magazines

Click Here.. #

How to order back issues of Connecticut River Review or Long River Review. full story...

--- WWWC Business ---

--- April dining ---

Sue, any word on Georgina's?

Any other ideas?

Anything wrong with Marco Polo?

What about treating Ed and honoring him?

Who will ask him? Charlie?

--- Relocation ---

Current status is undecided. The library advisory board offered little help, suggesting that we can get a waiver of insurance but that this will be of little value if we cannot find space in the town's buildings.

My Glastonbury office?

Julia's?

--- News ---

Stanford Report, March 5, 2008

Iran’s leading poet receives new Stanford literature prize

BY CYNTHIA HAVEN

* Printable Version

Simin Behbahani

Iranian poet Simin Behbahani is the first recipient of Stanford's Bita Prize for Literature and Freedom. The new $10,000 prize is part of the Daryabari Persian Studies Fund, recently endowed by Bita Daryabari to support and promote teaching, research and scholarship relating to Iran, including the area formerly known as Persia, and people of Iranian or Persian heritage.

The award ceremony is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 11, in Cubberley Auditorium. The ceremony will include a talk by Behbahani titled "Iran Today: A Poet's Vision."

Behbahani is one of the most prominent figures of modern Persian literature and one of the most outstanding among contemporary Persian poets, as well as a leading dissident. She is Iran's national poet and an icon of the Iranian intelligentsia and literati, who affectionately refer to her as the "lioness of Iran." Her poems are quoted like aphorisms and proverbs.

Behbahani was born in 1927 in Tehran. Her father was a writer and newspaper editor; her mother was a noted feminist, teacher, writer, newspaper editor and poet. Behbahani started writing poetry at 12 and published her first poem at 14.

She has expanded the range of the traditional Persian verse forms and has produced some of the most significant works of Persian literature of the 20th century. While many poets of her time embraced free verse, Behbahani's signature writing focused on the traditional ghazal form and took it to new lyrical heights-with a modern twist in perspective and voice. For example, while the form traditionally is a male poet courting a woman, in Behbahani's verse the man is the object.

She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature in 1997. She also was awarded a Human Rights Watch-Hellman/Hammett grant in 1998 and, in 1999, the Carl von Ossietzky Medal for her struggle for freedom of expression in Iran.

Behbahani said: "I have put my poems forward for everyone to see. What can they be from the year 1979 onward? We wrote our books not with ink but with blood. No doubt, the same is true about the works of every other poet."

As she has written in one of her poems: "To stay alive, you must slay silence … / to pay homage to being, you must sing."

Behbahani was selected for the honor by Stanford's Program in Iranian Studies in consultation with leading members of the Iranian American community.

Click on photo(s) to enlarge.

* Contact

* Directories

* Maps & Directions

Stanford News Service

Gracefully she approached

Gracefully she approached,

in a dress of bright blue silk;

With an olive branch in her hand,

and many tales of sorrows in her eyes.

Running to her, I greeted her,

and took her hand in mine:

Pulses could still be felt in her veins;

warm was still her body with life.

"But you are dead, mother", I said;

"Oh, many years ago you died!"

Neither of embalmment she smelled,

Nor in a shroud was she wrapped.

I gave a glance at the olive branch;

she held it out to me,

And said with a smile,

"It is the sign of peace; take it."

I took it from her and said,

"Yes, it is the sign of...", when

My voice and peace were broken

by the violent arrival of a horseman.

He carried a dagger under his tunic

with which he shaped the olive branch

Into a rod and looking at it

he said to himself:

"Not too bad a cane

for punishing the sinners!"

A real image of a hellish pain!

Then, to hide the rod,

He opened his saddlebag.

in there, O God!

I saw a dead dove, with a string tied

round its broken neck.

My mother walked away with anger and sorrow;

my eyes followed her;

Like the mourners she wore

a dress of black silk.

washingtonpost.com

ad_icon

A Poet Who 'Never Sold Her Pen or Soul'

By Nora Boustany

Saturday, June 10, 2006; A16

The voice of poet Simin Behbahani rises, soothing the wounds of Iranians betrayed by a revolution that has curtailed their rights and failed to deliver social justice.

To stay alive, you must slay silence . . .

to pay homage to being, you must sing .

At 79, the revered poet has only peripheral vision, but she still writes. To defy the ravages of macular degeneration, she records her verses vertically, down the edge of the paper.

She described an incident in March when riot police approached her during a gathering in Tehran to mark International Women's Day. "Hey, don't hurt this lady. She is Simin Behbahani," a student in the crowd protested. "If you touch her, I will set myself on fire."

His outburst enraged the police. One of the officers lashed Behbahani's right arm and back with a whip and then beat her with a club that emitted electric shocks, she recalled. A passing policeman recognized her, intervened and bundled her into a taxi.

Sitting composedly in the solarium of her niece's home in McLean recently, Behbahani discussed her work and life through an interpreter. She was on her 15th tour of the United States, with speaking events in Washington, New York, Los Angeles and other cities, and will travel on to Canada.

"I have always been drawn to social issues. Even before the eruption of the revolution, while under the shah, I was also suffering," she said, referring to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown in the Islamic revolution of 1979. "There was no democracy in Iran. Even then, we had censorship."

Before the revolution, her poetry dealt with poverty, orphans and corruption, reflecting her concern for the outcast, the marginalized and the neglected. Her recent work has touched on the themes of freedom of expression and the rights of minorities and prisoners.

"I will identify her as the most iconic Iranian poet alive," said Farzaneh M. Milani , director of Studies in Women and Gender at the University of Virginia. "I can really say she has become a cultural hero, and she is treated as such outside and inside her country." Milani, an authority on Behbahani, teaches a course on Iranian female poets.

"She reminds me of T.S. Eliot," Milani said. "She dives deep into her culture and literature, and the product is a truly modern outlook on the role of the individual, concern for democracy and human rights. The form is traditional, but the perspective and poetic persona are quite progressive."

Behbahani is known for her ghazals , sonnet-like love poems distinguishable by their special rhyme scheme and lilting lyrics. Traditionally, the ghazal featured a male poet romancing a woman. Behbahani reversed the roles; in her poems, men are the objects of desire.

"It was not only sensuous but courageous," Milani said of her dedication to the form. "While most of her contemporaries from the '20s and '30s wrote free verse at the height of the modern movement, she stuck to ghazal . Some poets claimed the genre was dead, but she pursued it and took it to new heights."

Roya Hakakian , an Iranian American poet and author, said that when she was growing up in the 1970s, Behbahani was not at all fashionable, eclipsed by the late Forough Farrokhzad and Ahmad Shamlou, the literary giants of that time.

"When the revolution failed to deliver people to democracy and greater freedom, people turned away from modern poetry," Hakakian said. But Behbahani "has remained extremely loyal to the classical concept and has become a symbol of resistance, which is why, 30 years later, she looms so large," she said.

"She has been very fair to tradition and has never sold her pen or soul to any political group or political party. Yet, she is also very political because she has always spoken truth to power. Now some of her poems have become like aphorisms, sayings and proverbs," said Milani, who with Kaveh Safa translated some of Behbahani's poems into English in "A Cup of Sin: Selected Poems."

My country, I will build you again,

if need be, with bricks made from my life.

I will build columns to support your roof,

if need be, with my bones.

Unlike younger intellectuals swept up in the fervor of the early stages of the revolution, Behbahani was suspicious. "I realized changes were not going in the right direction," she said.

She was frightened by the wave of terror that followed, encompassing executions, kangaroo trials and mysterious disappearances of ordinary Iranians. "We had gone the wrong way from the very beginning," she said.

She took a public stand against the tyrannical rule of the ayatollahs and their infringements on freedom of expression. Her work was banned for 10 years after the revolution, and newspapers and magazines frequently published broadsides targeting her.

One night in 1996, while attending a gathering at a German diplomat's home, she was hauled off to jail. "I was slapped around, blindfolded and taken to prison," she recalled. "We were released the next morning. They led us out and dropped us in the middle of the street with our blindfolds still tied."

The Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi , who wrote about the incident in her recently released memoir, "Iran Awakening," described Behbahani as a "kindred spirit" and an inspiration for her own work on the suffering of women and the celebration of their rights.

Ebadi wrote that while she was in jail, she revisited her friend's ghazals, with their images of "monsters soaring the sky in trails of smoke, of plundered mermaids."

Behbahani smiles when asked whether she ever considered leaving Iran.

"I want to live there and die there," she said. "I feel for my people, the language, the ability to write about them through cultural bonds. The creativity in me comes from them, and I want to share it."

--- Education ---

Fill the blanks exercise:

The Hand

by Mary Ruefle

The teacher asks a question.

You know the answer, you suspect

you are the only one in the classroom

who knows the answer, because the person

in question is yourself, and on that

you are the greatest living authority,

but you don’t raise your hand.

You raise the top of your desk

and take out an apple.

You look out the window.

You don’t raise your hand and there is

some essential beauty in your fingers,

which aren’t even drumming, but lie

flat and peaceful.

The teacher repeats the question.

Outside the window, on an overhanging branch,

a robin is ruffling its feathers

and spring is in the air.

Reprinted from Cold Pluto: by permission of Carnegie Mellon University Press © by Mary Ruefle 1996.

The Hand

by Mary Ruefle

The _____ asks a question.

You know the answer, you suspect

you are the only one in the _____

who knows the answer, because the person

in question is _____, and on that

you are the greatest living _____,

but you don’t raise your hand.

You _____ the top of your desk

and take out a(n) _____.

You look out the window.

You don’t _____ and there is

some essential _____ in your fingers,

which aren’t even _____, but lie

_____ and peaceful.

The _____ repeats the question.

Outside the window, on a(n),_____

a robin is _____ its feathers

and _____ is _____.

Reprinted from Cold Pluto: by permission of Carnegie Mellon University Press © by Mary Ruefle 1996.

--- Next Assignment ---

The assignment for the April dining event is to write a poema bout food:

Deep Fat

I've had all I want of trans-fatty acid.

I will not be silent. I can't remain placid.

I couldn't care if my French fries are flaccid.

It lays on my belly for days till it's passed.

I think they use it because it won't spoil.

It's not a quality natural oil.

It gets so hot that an ice cube will boil.

Watch how the liquid will bubble and roil.

I think it has a bad taste that's synthetic.

It's an industrial solvent, pathetic.

It sits around in your gut like emetic.

You could throw up. It is not copacetic.

They won't disclose that it's some kind of lard.

They boil it and steam it and heat till it's charred.

There's nothing they won't disallow or is barred.

They're keeping secrets, so be on your guard.

They keep the barrels stored under the fryer.

The stuff never spoils, though it makes me a liar.

It doesn't have like potential for fire.

Restaurants like it and are the best buyer.

I think the stuff tastes like motor oil gunk.

It's nothing but acid and piggy fat junk.

Look at the globby white goop of the gunk.

To say it tastes better is restaurant bunk.

The prefix of trans implies something beyond.

They make it with heat and a chemical bond.

It probably stews in a pressurized pond.

I have opinions and want to respond.

My foremost thought is it tastes like some lube,

The kind that a grease monkey squeezed from a tube.

He must be thinking we're some kind of rube.

I've some choice words for this chemistry boob.

Wine comes in at the mouth

And love comes in at the eye;

That's all we shall know for truth

Before we grow old and die.

I lift the glass to my mouth,

I look at, and I sigh.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

I always eat my peas with honey;

I've done it all my life.

They do taste kind of funny

but It keeps them on my knife.

This poem is listed as Anonymous in all collections of poetry where I have seen it mentioned.

Random House book of Poetry; Ring a Ring O'Roses (Flint Public Library), etc.

It is said to be an old Bostonian rhyme, a jump rope rhyme etc.

I have also received emails attributing it to Shel Silverstein and Spike Milligan

Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain,

With grammar, and nonsense, and learning;

Good liquor, I stoutly maintain,

Gives genius better discerning.

Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774)

Pablo Neruda's "Ode to an Onion" on the centenary of his birth

Here's Pablo Neruda's "Ode To The Onion." Neruda, Chilean writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature was born a century ago this month.

Onion,

luminous flask,

your beauty formed

petal by petal,

crystal scales expanded you

and in the secrecy of the dark earth

your belly grew round with dew.

Under the earth

the miracle

happened

and when your clumsy

green stem appeared,

and your leaves were born

like swords

in the garden,

the earth heaped up her power

showing your naked transparency,

and as the remote sea

in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite

duplicating the magnolia,

so did the earth

make you,

onion

clear as a planet

and destined

to shine,

constant constellation,

round rose of water,

upon

the table

of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.

I have praised everything that exists,

but to me, onion, you are

more beautiful than a bird

of dazzling feathers,

heavenly globe, platinum goblet,

unmoving dance

of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives

in your crystalline nature.

What are your favorite food poems?

Meeting February 9, 2008

2008-02-11T10:25:00.000-05:00

WWWC
Meeting February 9, 2008
Although only sparsely attended the meeting was pretty good. We continue to look for another location and Emerson will attend the the libraries' BOD meeting to see if with the help of board member David Carlson we can gain entry into a suitable library room for our meetings. Our options at Cheney Hall seem limited and it is fading as an option.
We will make firm plans for the annual dining event at the March meeting. The dining event will be our April 12 meeting.

I've included some fairly long documents about Dryden and Pope since our conversation about couplets included references to them and also because they were prolific and profound political writers and civic in much the same sense as Robert Pinsky is today as is discussed in the article about him below.

Vaya con Dios,
Emerson

Minutes of Last Meeting

CPS Items
Check the website for further information and guidelines
http://ct-poetry-society.org

Guidelines and Contests
The Connecticut Poetry Society sponsors these poetry contests:
CONNECTICUT RIVER REVIEW POETRY CONTEST
Open to all poets. NEW GUIDELINES AND PRIZE AMOUNTS
Submit poems: Dec. 1-March 1 (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.
Send submissions to CT River Review Poetry Contest, CPS, PO Box 270554, West Hartford, CT 06127.
This year's CRR contest judge: Kim Bridgford is a professor of English at Fairfield University and editor of Dogwood and Mezzo Cammin. Her books include Undone, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; Instead of Maps, nominated for the Poetsâ€™ Prize; and In the Extreme: Sonnets about World Records, winner of the Donald Justice Prize. She is currently working on a three-book poetry/photography project with visual artist Jo Yarrington
LYNN DECARO POETRY CONTEST
Open to Connecticut high school students only
March 15th 2008 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.
DEHN POETRY COMPETITION
Open to college undergraduates.
Submit poems: Dec. 1-March 15 (postmark)
Prizes of $150, $100, and $50.
This contest is to honor the memory of Adolf and Virginia Dehn, visual artists who supported creativity and excellence in all art forms. Send up to 3 unpublished poems, any form, 40 line limit each. Include two copies of each poem: one with complete contact info, including college or university affiliation, and one with NO contact info. Both copies should be marked Dehn Competition. 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. Include the entry of fee of $10; checks should be made out to Connecticut Poetry Society. Prize winning poems will be published in Long River Review II.
Send submissions to Dehn Poetry Competition, CPS, PO Box 270554, West Hartford, CT 06127.

Treasurer's Report

WWWC Issues
Relocation
Cheney Hall director will offer us space but we need Charlie to open and close for us.
I will be attending the board meeting for the libraries to see if they will waive insurance and other requirements. David Carlson, a member of the board and former member of WWWC, will speak on our behalf and has said if we do not get satisfaction he may be willing to take it directly to the mayor.

I suggest we await the outcome of this.

Poetry dining
Will be in April. Should we consider inviting Ed as our guest, honor him in some way?

News
Robert Pinsky
This article features Robert Pinsky as a civic poet. As we will see from our consideration of John Dryden and Alexander Pope below, poetry is often used for social commentary. The most recent example I can recall of this is Baron Wormser's Carthage which is a savage commentary on the Bush administration and which Baron self-published for fear standard publishers would not take it for fear of its topicalism. Not so for Dryden and Pope (and Swift and others) in days when not only was poetry useful for social commentary and satire but it was also much more popular to the general public than it is today. So, that in mind, our news today is about Robert Pinsky whose reviewer on Feb 3 in the NY Times considers a very public poet.

Pinsky reading anecdote here.
The Night Game
Robert Pinsky

Some of us believe
We would have conceived romantic
Love out of our own passions
With no precedents,
Without songs and poetry--
Or have invented poetry and music
As a comb of cells for the honey.

Shaped by ignorance,
A succession of new worlds,
Congruities improvised by
Immigrants or children.

I once thought most people were Italian,
Jewish or Colored.
To be white and called
Something like Ed Ford
Seemed aristocratic,
A rare distinction.

Possibly I believed only gentiles
And blonds could be left-handed.

Already famous
After one year in the majors,
Whitey Ford was drafted by the Army
To play ball in the flannels
Of the Signal Corps, stationed
In Long Branch, New Jersey.

A night game, the silver potion
Of the lights, his pink skin
Shining like a burn.

Never a player
I liked or hated: a Yankee,
A mere success.

But white the chalked-off lines
In the grass, white and green
The immaculate uniform,
And white the unpigmented
Halo of his hair
When he shifted his cap:

So ordinary and distinct,
So close up, that I felt
As if I could have made him up,
Imagined him as I imagined

The ball, a scintilla
High in the black backdrop
Of the sky. Tight red stitches.
Rawlings. The bleached

Horsehide white: the color
Of nothing. Color of the past
And of the future, of the movie screen
At rest and of blank paper.

"I could have." The mind. The black
Backdrop, the white
Fly picked out by the towering
Lights. A few years later

On a blanket in the grass
By the same river
A girl and I came into
Being together
To the faint muttering
Of unthinkable
Troubadours and radios.

The emerald
Theater, the night.
Another time,
I devised a left-hander
Even more gifted
Than Whitey Ford: A Dodger.
People were amazed by him.
Once, when he was young,
He refused to pitch on Yom Kippur.

________________________________________
February 3, 2008
The Civic Poet
By JOEL BROUWER
Skip to next paragraph
GULF MUSIC
By Robert Pinsky.
83 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $22.

Robert Pinsky has been writing outstanding poems for more than 30 years - "Gulf Music" is his seventh collection - but you're more likely to know him for his poetry advocacy than for his own examples of the art. Given Pinsky's public profile, this is more than understandable; he has served as a highly visible poet laureate of the United States for an unprecedented three terms, founded the acclaimed Favorite Poem Project (and edited or co-edited several resulting anthologies, including "Americans' Favorite Poems" and "An Invitation to Poetry"), fashioned an eloquent translation of Dante's "Inferno," written a regular "Poet's Choice" column for The Washington Post, moderated a "Meta-Free-Phor-All" on "The Colbert Report" and read one of his poems during a cameo appearance on "The Simpsons." (No token haiku, either! A real live longish poem!) No other living American poet - no other living American, probably - has done so much to put poetry before the public eye.
Pinsky's recent essays - particularly those in his succinct and sparkling "Democracy, Culture and the Voice of Poetry" - make clear his passion for promoting poetry's relevance, so perhaps he wouldn't be too troubled by the notion that his mass media presence has drawn more attention than his poems ever will. If that's the case, then I'll here volunteer to be troubled on his behalf, since it seems to me that in "Gulf Music" Pinsky offers us his most valuable contribution yet: not just an argument for but a demonstration of contemporary poetry's necessity and vitality in our democracy.
"Deciding to remember, and what to remember," Pinsky has written, "is how we decide who we are." Poetry's role in that process is simultaneously to preserve our common American memory and honor our diversity, to make music in the gulf between unum and pluribus. This is an intractable instance of the one-many problem if ever there was one, but Pinsky seeks from the first to address it in his new collection's opening "Poem of Disconnected Parts."
At Robben Island the political prisoners studied.
They coined the motto Each one Teach one.
In Argentina the torturers demanded the prisoners
Address them always as "Profesor."
Many of my friends are moved by guilt, but I
Am a creature of shame, I am ashamed to say.
Culture the lock, culture the key. Imagination
That calls the boiled sheep heads in the market "Smileys."
With its clear language and sturdy blank verse, the poem offers images of state violence past and present, intimate moments of self-analysis, allusions to Homer's "Odyssey," ambiguous references to the poet's own family history that no reader unfamiliar with his earlier books would understand, philosophical conjectures, even the thoughts of a traditional Zulu healer: "The Sangomo says in our Zulu culture we do not / Worship our ancestors: we consult them."
Given this range of seemingly unrelated subjects, it's as if Pinsky wants his poem, too, to be consulted for possibilities rather than worshiped for convictions. Each of the poem's 26 couplets is self-contained and set alongside its companions without any syntactical connective tissue, so it's impossible to read the work as a rhetorical argument demanding either assent or dissent. Instead, the poem throws us back on ourselves, requiring us to imagine how we might connect the Afghan writer Abdul Rahim Dost's imprisonment at Guantánamo, Pinsky's grandmother Becky, presidential malapropisms and Odysseus pouring out blood for thirsty shades in Hades. It is a singular poem that contains multitudes.
The second of the three sections in "Gulf Music" makes a radical shift in frame of reference, from sweeping historical and global topics to an inventory of everyday objects. Still, the poems maintain a metaphorical connection with Pinsky's overarching goal of melding the public and private without diluting either of them. "Thing," the section's first poem, gives an etymology of the word that shows its evolution from the "Old English thyngian, to parley, to assemble, to confer, to reach terms" to "the nearly opposite sense of a concrete object, a physical or bodily thing." The poems that follow seek to reverse that transformation by taking a series of apparently static objects - a book, a glass, a jar of pens and so forth - and imaginatively reanimating them as discussions in motion. In "Banknote," consideration of an inert scrap of paper leads to a vision of a vast and frantic system of commerce "turning the gear of custom"; in "Pliers," a simple tool designed to exert control evokes "this despair I feel / When I feel / I've lost my grip, can't manage a thing." Pinsky wants us to think of the things of this world - and, crucially, the words we assign them - as strange and changeable. We may have thought there was no simpler thing than a glass of water, but if we are directed to think of it as "Earth changed by fire, / Shaped by breath or pressure," or as "Time's / Viscid pawprint," suddenly it and everything else around us seems alive and unpredictable, and we feel a fresh imperative to negotiate anew our relationships with all we've thought of as certain.
Pinsky's efforts in word and deed to reassert poetry's civic role have throughout been accompanied by another project of reclamation: his insistence, in his prose book "The Sounds of Poetry" and elsewhere, that poetry is made not only of ideas generated by the mind, but of sounds made in the body. The two projects may seem distinct, but they are not, since minds differ, but bodies are alike. However much the presidential hopefuls at their lecterns may wish to distinguish their ideas from those of their rivals, they all breathe with the same in-and-out rhythm and voice their conflicting arguments through essentially identical esophageal machinery. Furthermore, poetry's sonic elements have traditionally served a mnemonic function, helping the culture to preserve its poetic heritage in common memory. (It is of course patently reactionary to ignore the possibilities of free verse, but it's undeniable that it's a heck of a lot easier to memorize Dickinson than Whitman.) To contend that poetry originates not only in ideas, books and traditions - all fine things, but indisputably all systems of differentiation rather than inclusion - but also in our indistinguishable mouths and lungs, is a fundamentally egalitarian act.
Throughout "Gulf Music," Pinsky strikes a balance between free verse's individualism and the communalism implied by regular sound patterns. "Work Song," an hommage to Yeats's famous poem "The Fascination of What's Difficult," begins:
Fascination that dries the sap out of Yeats's veins
And rends spontaneous joy out of his heart - with art,
Art not "dolts" or "management of men" the difficulty
Craved and admired more than pleasure, more
Than accomplishment certainly more than Eden.
Heroic fascination of an overwhelming difficulty:
Joan of Arc tortured to death by clergymen
And failure incidental as for Jackie Robinson engaging
At one and the same time two worthy difficulties.
A sharper prosodist than I will doubtless point out something I've missed, but it seems to me that there are no predictable sonic or metrical patterns at work in these lines. And yet there are any number of musical echoes that lend the passage a feel of regularity, from the obvious - ending each stanza with a version of the same word (just as Yeats ended every third line of his poem with a rhyme) - to the nearly invisible. Almost every line, for example, contains an internal full rhyme or other sonic echo, often near its end: Yeats's / veins, heart / art, pleasure / more, than / Eden, heroic / overwhelming, death / clergymen, and so forth. Echoes like these may be noticed by some minds and not by others, but they will resonate identically in any ear that hears the poem read aloud.
The story goes that once upon a time in America there existed a species known as the popular poet but that, alas, the last of this sweet and useful breed died out right around the time men stopped wearing suits to baseball games, and ever since then poetry has been about as approachable as an alligator with mommy issues and an unfinished dissertation on Wittgenstein. The account may sound persuasive, but it's hogwash. The fact is that a number of skilled American contemporaries regularly write books of general appeal that sell thousands of copies.
I'm not sure why people are so attached to the idea of poetry's unpopularity, but I do know that among the delusion's pernicious effects is its tendency to mask a genuine problem: the truly endangered status of the American civic poet, who strives not only to speak to us with vigor and sympathy in our common language, but also to reveal how crucial that language is to our struggles and hopes as citizens. Pinsky is our finest living specimen of this sadly rare breed, and the poems of "Gulf Music" are among the best examples we have of poetry's ability to illuminate not only who we are as humans, but who we are - and can be - as a nation.
Joel Brouwer is the author of two books of poems, "Exactly What Happened" and "Centuries." He teaches at the University of Alabama.

Education is about couplets

Rhyming couplets were basic for poetry for a long time. Even this day we find them. In this group Ed Bartek used them often. Shakespeare used them in his sonnets. The late 17th and early 18th writers of note, esp Milton and Dryden and Pope used them with great success and skill. We often think of them as solely for comic poetry but they can be put to serious use as well. It takes a while to get acclimated to their use and after getting comfortable with them it is often briefly difficult to adjust to other forms, esp free verse. However, the exercise of writing couplets is a useful way to remind us to keep the music in our poems, whatever the style. Sonic attirbutes are necessary to every poem.

The Heroic Couplet: Its Rhyme and Reason
by J. Paul Hunter

(Above: Alexander Pope, by Jonathan Richardson, British Museum.) This essay derives from a lecture presented at the National Humanities Center by J. Paul Hunter, 1995-96 Fellow and Chester D. Tripp Professor of Humanities and English at the University of Chicago. Editor of The Norton Introduction to Poetry and The Norton Introduction to Literature, Hunter, during an earlier residence at the Center, worked on a volume that received the 1991 Louis Gottschalk prize from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies--Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction. For three years he led the Center's summer institute for high school teachers of English.
When you go to a poetry reading today, look around and discover that all the listeners are other poets, you get the idea: Poetry, for most people at the end of the twentieth century, is not the nerve-center of their universe, not their idea of where to go to sort out important political, ethical, or economic issues. You therefore might conclude that studying poetry represents historical irrelevance, intellectual indulgence, and social flight--or, at best, a sweet and restful retreat to a haven from a heartless world. I suggest otherwise. Poetry--irrepressibly, irrationally, and sometimes irresponsibly pleasurable--can be public, powerful, resonant, central to the culture it lives in, representative of its institutions and practices, and reflective of larger structures of thought and expression.
A form as seemingly alien as the heroic couplet--even its pretentious name echoes a long-lost or never-existent world--can in fact tell us something about how the world of public affairs (defined as the process of putting ideas into action) works. What happens in poems has a lot to do with what is going on in a particular society at a particular time, what forms of thought and expression poets have to work with. The way they think and argue both reflects and modifies the larger public culture, especially in times when poets see themselves as public figures and claim a voice in national issues. It may be hard to imagine now, but there have been times when poetry and poets were near the center of political experience. Plato thought poets too dangerous to be trusted, because he imagined them actually being listened to as serious commentators, rather than as, at best, language decorators who are trotted out to grace ceremonial occasions. The poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, often close to seats of power, were always writing about public matters.
For 150 years, the heroic couplet was the dominant verse form in the English language (and closely related to verse forms dominating other European languages); it prevailed for nearly a quarter of the entire English poetic tradition. Before Ben Jonson and his contemporaries, there had been couplets galore--dating back to Chaucer--and after Alexander Pope and Charles Churchill some poets continued to choose the heroic couplet as their medium. But in the century and a half between Jonson and Churchill (from the 1630s to the 1780s) the couplet covered the British and American literary landscapes like the dew and dominated poetry like a tyrant. If forms can be hegemonic--and all but prevent meaningful departures--the couplet was such a form; never has any single poetic form before or since dominated the English language (or any other language I know about) so insistently and so thoroughly. There were, of course, during this long period, many poems written in other meters, stanza forms, and rhyme schemes; every major poet experimented with other possibilities (quatrains, Spenserian stanzas, odes, rime royal), and a few poets, such as Milton, resisted almost entirely the tyranny of the form. But most serious poets assumed that if they were writing an ambitious poem, they had no other choice, and even when Milton imitators or occasional odious odists resorted to wild warblings, they seldom roamed far from the couplet's principles of conciseness and balance.
As recently as ten years ago, it was widely assumed that women poets were considerably less likely to employ heroic couplets than men, largely because of differences in temperament and interests. But now that more women's poems of the period have become available, we can see that such was not the case. It turns out that the few poems by women that have been valued and anthologized over the years were singled out precisely because of their difference and what that presumably told us about women's sensibilities, but really about ourselves. These poems represent what we moderns have valued and isolated as distinctively feminine, not what women typically wrote and not what they themselves then valued most.
Why did couplets work so indisputably well for so many for so long? And why, subsequently, have they worked so unbelievably badly? With a few exceptions in the nineteenth century and with even fewer in the twentieth, the couplet has disappeared, along with most other traditional forms of rhymed verse. Do formal properties explain why the couplet dominated an epoch as never before or since? Can the fading of couplet verse be explained as an instance of the "exhaustion" of the form? Were poetic imaginers no longer up to the task, as traditional literary history has implied? Or, over time, did the ears of listeners change, or did structures of thought and expression change so that "hearing" was no longer the same? What can one deduce from the rough correspondence between (on the one hand) the formal properties of the couplet and (on the other) the public events and formal institutions of the period from about the time of the English troubles at home to the eruption of revolution abroad? I do not fully know the answers to these questions yet, but I am pretty sure that they are not entirely to be found within the history of poetry--that one needs to examine larger cultural patterns of thought and discourse, rhetoric and argument. My focus here, though, is on a preliminary issue: what formal features of couplets might we be prone to misread (or read too simply) because of changing assumptions? Here I will briefly review only two of many formal features that deserve re-examination.
Rhyme, which was an indispensable feature of poetry in the age of the heroic couplet, has fallen badly out of favor in the modern era. Few poets now employ rhyme at all, and, consequently, we are not used to regarding rhyme as an effective way of providing aural pleasure or as a structural device to convey meaning. We do have rhyme in our lives, but we reserve for it a quite specific and usually comic place: Rhyme is jingle, a memory device for slick commercials, complicity of sound become simplicity of thought, or some false claim of feeling enforced by cheap trick. Rhymes, in popular songs and other vestiges of the oral poetry tradition, are at our culture's intellectual margins.
For most modern ears rhyme falls pretty much into two categories, neither of them to be trusted, though both are distantly derived from historic applications of rhyme. The first category involves nostalgia and sentimentality: It is what happens in valentines and other greeting cards you don't want to receive. The rhymes are predictable and the sentiments easy: moon/June; kiss/bliss; hug/snug; pleasure/treasure; calm/balm; thine/mine/wine/fine. Such rhymes, conventional to the point of being clichés even before the second sound clunks into place, have long been with us, and Pope parodied them long ago--"the sure returns of still expected rhymes," he called them--in explaining why they were both ineffective and stupid:

Where-e'er you find "the cooling western breeze,"
In the next line, it "whispers through the trees;"
If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep,"
The reader's threatened (not in vain) with "sleep."
Such rhymes comfort with familiarity, and never do the rhyme words venture to connect things that romance or easy listening wish to stay disconnected: breeze/sleaze; love/shove; June/goon; hug/thug; romance/pants; eternity/paternity; court/snort; happy/nappy/yappy/sappy/crappy. The fact that sentimental rhymes persist in some strata of popular culture suggests that the similar sounds of words must once have been assumed to have some meaningful cohesive power, but thoughtful moderns seldom buy into such assumptions except in holiday states of mind: too easy, and too sleazy.
Rather, we are more apt to feed on rhyme that is comic or satiric--rhyme that parodies assumptions of hidden similarity and highlights ludicrous pairings. One of the more benign forms is in the popular Yuletide verse that Roger Angell annually presents readers of The New Yorker. His is always a high-spirited and chirpy performance, and it depends for its effects almost exclusively on playing with people's names; much of the fun is in making long strings of syllables rhyme (the challenges are names like Buttafuoco) especially if the rhyme can link celebrities together ludicrously or associate them with incongruous ideas or ideologies: It does in verse what The National Enquirer does in prose. Angell's latest effort, for example, manages to link Jose Mesa with Mother Theresa, Susan Lucci with Leo Nucci, Sharon Stone with John Malone, Andie MacDowell with Alma Powell, and Beverly Cleary with Timothy Leary. It's a good opportunistic idea, and Angell at his best reminds you a bit of Hudibras or Jonathan Swift, but in a lighter key.
Most contemporary musical satirists use similar comic rhyming: the Capitol Steps, Mark Russell, the Imis-in-the-morning parodists, and Tom Lehrer. Some of them do more with pyrotechnics of rhyme than others--Lehrer, for example, consistently makes his wit depend on ludicrous rhymes ("ave maria/gee it's good to see ya"), as do some popular lyricists ("magnifique/what I seek"). The Imis parodists (though they are often very silly) are surprisingly rhyme-sophisticated), while Mark Russell, though conceptually clever, gets little wit-mileage out of sound. All such strategies remind us that we are stuck with the sounds of our names and the associations they evoked to grade school wits and bullies--remember? Clinton thus largely escapes telling associations, and Gore does not; while poor Phil Gramm--rhymes with sham, scam, ham, damn, slam, whambam, and flimflam--probably needed to change his name, among other things, to survive the satiric process. Although these casual and teasing yokings may lead us to suspect that language and sound patterns can sometimes tell us things our conscious minds resist, most poets today (with the interesting exception of strongly oral poets, especially African Americans) no longer use rhyme seriously.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, poets viewed rhyme--and particularly the couplet rhyme--as a standard mode of communicating--and thinking. Couplet rhyme has a syntax of its own (as W. K. Wimsatt long ago pointed out) and makes a meaning claim in linking together words with the same sound. Something less than argument, this association creates a sense of relationship. The principle--so simple-minded-seeming when June is rhymed with moon or chills with thrills--operates in very sophisticated poetry. Thus, when John Dryden repeatedly makes kings rhyme with things (not wings or sings or brings or clings)--and rule with fool--he conveys particular opinions and values. Even though his actual syntax makes no specific claim, the rhyme makes the claim for him, seeming to deny the writer's agency and place the responsibility on language or the nature of things. Any rhyming of words performs some version of the same task, as do assonance, consonance, and alliteration, but couplet rhyming puts a special force on the association because of the rhyme's emphatic place in the line and the concentrated, insistent repetition of sound. The stress falls on rhyme and appears to give it finality and authority. Rhyme thus has a syntax distinct from that in conventional grammars, and parts of speech regularly cross over in rhyme to make the zaniest or most profound observations. The association of words at the ends of lines sets up comparisons that poets use rhetorically to assert and create attitudes.
What we need especially to note about couplet rhyme are two things: first, that rhyme tends to lead to judgments arrived at irrationally or at least a-rationally (sound alikes do not exactly prove similarities, even to committed homologists)--and thus ought to lead us to question the cliché about the couplet as an easy mouthpiece for age-of-reason propositions; and second, that the self-conscious process of noticing the jangle in the comparison tends somewhat to undercut the jingle aspects of couplets, something that unpracticed readers today have not been trained to hear or differentiate. The finality that may seem to result from the second shoe dropping in a couplet--when the expected sound comes home--is not nearly so dramatic as modern readers, who are victims of habit or innocent of history, hear it as being. For those in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this sound repetition--or rather the completed variation on the sound, the thump of the second shoe--would have created an expectation of future sound jingles and jangles--jingle to the ear, jangle to the mind--so that each couplet leads beyond itself to future connections, promising future harmonies and disruptions.
The perceived thump of the second shoe tempts modern readers to suppose that couplets are discrete, that they present closure of a thought. Before the middle of the seventeenth century, however, many couplets were not end-stopped but instead were en-jambed; that is, the end of a couplet did not necessarily coincide with the end of a clause or a thought unit. Poets such as Edmund Waller, Dryden, and Pope then made an issue of "closing" the couplet so that it would be tighter and more concise. The so-called closed couplet is certainly more demanding on the poet and tends, among critics and poets alike, to get more respect for its discipline and artistry. But just how closed is the closed couplet, and what are the relationships of individual couplets to each other?
The second-shoe theory seriously misleads us about the way couplets work in signaling completion. Second-shoe theory assumes we know how many shoes there are to drop, so that when the second one thumps down we know that the process is complete, the tension relieved, the expectation satisfied. That, however, is both true and not true for couplets. In one sense there are two shoes--that is, a second line to be chimed with the first. And the second shoe does signal completion of the cycle, at least in part. But if the rhyming sound signals that nothing more aurally can be predicted with certainty, it does not signal that no further sound developments lie ahead or that the thought is complete; in fact, it promises whole new sound patterns and new intellectual challenges of complication or modification. Often the repeated sound connects to other uses of sound within the same couplet or alludes ahead or backward to link up the sounds of one couplet with another and to make associations, again non-rational ones so that terms take on new associations and expanded meanings.
There are not neat pairs here--two shoes to a customer--just as sometimes the predictable number of feet in a line fools us by variation and rearrangement. In comedy routines and slapstick radio shows, the effect when (after we hear a second shoe drop) we hear a third and fourth--and then a fifth--may, depending on contexts, imply something quite more than we anticipated: someone going to bed; some two going to bed; no, even more, not just some ordinary coupling. And in poems, too, the satisfied anticipation is not necessarily the end of things, sounds being at least as promiscuous as people, and in couplet poems by nature so. But whether or not the rhyme sound directly connects one couplet to another, the closed couplet is not a closing down, not closure in the punning sense modern criticism has misleadingly implied--only an indication that a step has been achieved. Just as one sentence leads normally to another in prose--and together and with others adds up to an organized paragraph--so in poems the couplets add and accumulate. Couplets are not paragraphs, not completed units, not completed ideas.
We must therefore question the easy and misleading conclusion that a closed couplet means closure in a larger sense--pause, yes; indication of a step completed, yes; but nothing like a finished unit of thought. A couplet is something like a semicolon in a sentence that has several clauses and phrases. It is a mistake to think of couplets as stanzas; ordinarily, it takes about seven of them to become a verse paragraph, the closest approximation couplet poetry makes to a stanza, as the printings of couplets in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century books makes clear. (The fact that couplet verse paragraphs are frequently the length of sonnets is a little eerie, but as far as I can see it means nothing except that units of thought may tend to be of a more-or-less common length.)
One simple indicator of how couplet poets think is to notice how infrequently they are memorable epigrammatists (though many modern critics imagine them to be), how seldom in fact they even try to write pithy poems of two lines--or even four or six. Poets such as Jonson, or Dryden, or William Congreve, or Sarah Egerton, or Pope think in larger terms; they are arguers, essayists (as titles of their poems very frequently suggest) rather than apothegmatists or versified Henny Youngmans, and they use the two-line unit simply as a brick for building something bigger. You can think of a lot of famous single lines from couplet poets ("A little learning is a dangerous thing," or "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread") for couplet poets are concise and witty, but few of their observations are memorable as couplets, simply because they do not think that way. Their two-line sense of balance and antithesis is part of a larger combination of contrasts. Binariness is only the beginning of the rhetorical structure: The rest of the story lies in discontent and re-formations.
Turning again to a passage from Pope helps us to see what happens when a series of couplets are read together as a paragraph. The passage begins with what has become a famous line which is then seriously modified in its meanings by subsequent allusions, accruals, and refinements. Note that even the aphoristic opening move, much in need of qualification, does not constitute an epigrammatic couplet: The second line (where the qualifications begin) is always omitted by those who want to reduce Pope's poetic ideas to the truths of a bumper sticker.
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;
But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,
Th' eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:
The growing labours of the lengthened way,
Th' increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

Notice the way Pope manipulates the meter to speed up or slow down the reading pace and indicate swift movement and the quick passage of time on the one hand, or heavy, laborious dragging along on the other; the way the resources of classical learning and ancient time are summoned up, with the Alps which modern aristocrats and gentlemen visit on the grand tour fading into the old mountains of Greece, and contemporary springs drawing from the ancient fountains of the muses; the way the metaphors of intoxification and sobering operate first literally to confirm common sense, then magically to reverse it; the way the metaphors of heating and cooling--of fire and water in its various states from fountains to clouds to snow--suggest both physical conditions and human states of mind and body; the way drinking is manipulated to stand for reading, depth for persistence, distance for altitude, youth for freshness and length for age, as whole orders of being and activity are crossed and recrossed; the way perspective moves--and sights change--as we go from couplet to couplet, as if the crafter here were demonstrating just what closure does and does not mean; the way the experiences of everyday life are transformed into mythic travels and labors; and (ultimately) the way the simple summary pith of aphoristic expression is complicated and diversified into a statement almost of the experiential human condition, as it moves through bald generalizations, to nuanced argument, to meditation.
Comprehending why the heroic couplet held so tenacious a grip for so long a time is no easy venture: It involves renewed formal analysis properly historicized, and then larger cultural analysis of other kinds of texts and institutions. It requires exploring how poetic form related to the public culture of that 150 years when the halvings of the British nation took different forms and revised and recast the combatants in different combinations, when the culture became the two and many. It requires thinking of antithesis in pre-Hegelian, not necessarily synthesizing, ways in which contradictions continue to exist and to reassert and redefine themselves rather than being resolved. It requires rethinking dominant prose forms such as the dialogue and whole cultural institutions and practices--such as the rise of the two-party system--along with the crucial properties of the couplet itself. And it requires thinking about how different kinds of expression represent in different ways central patterns of experience and thought-formation. If I am right in formulating the questions about couplet hegemony in the way I have, reading a poetic form (or even a single poem) can provide insights into political, ethical, and economic (as well as aesthetic) issues--and especially into a historical era's way of framing and trying to resolve them.

________________________________________
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Return to National Humanities Center Home Page.
Ideas is published twice a year. Editor: Jean Anne Leuchtenburg.
Copyright © 1996 by the National Humanities Center.
Comments to: lmorgan@ga.unc.edu
Revised: September 1996
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Riff on vomit

Julia, what did you do with your vomit?

Samples of poems in the third person as an alter ego

2008-01-31T15:58:00.000-05:00

Here are two examples of poems written in the third person. They are essentially about the writer (keeping in mind that they are not necessarily factual but remain truthful). Seeing one's self as "out there" as opposed to within one's own head can be liberating. I certainly would not write these in the first person for reasons that are not fully clear to me other than not wanting to own up despite knowing that poems are less factual than they are truthful. It's a peculiar art.

Remainder Asleep

His dreams are ferocious

as Homer, the pit bull he had to put down.

They come at three in the morning,

drool over his dark face.

Homer’s odyssey ended with

a needle in a leg vein,

a strangle loop around his neck.

Reminder knows he won’t

fight so, will embrace the gods

that swarm from the depths

to surround him and hustle him off.

He admires Homer’s willingness

to bite and then strut across the deck,

black body glistening as if in a pose down.

He was beautiful, without guile,

aggressive without apology.

Five times he tasted Remainder’s blood.

Unable to wait for the animal

to devour him, Remainder unhappily

euthanized the beast. He regrets

the dog’s death more than

any human’s he can think of.

He is normal as any man:

“People are so hard to love,” he says.

He puts his head down to welcome

his predatory dreams. In the half-light

he becomes the hound,

on his hind legs lopes confidently

toward the next victim.

Jobhunter Reads a Book

Unaccountably Jobhunter is optimistic.

He feels good, ready to work

He begins to believe his name

has been Heartpatient all along

and Heartpatient is just now

after three years really able to work.

He wants the Simpson job,

can taste it with his spine,

knows where he’ll buy coffee

on his way in and wine

on his way home.

Interviewing, the karma was abundant,

palpable as his depression.

There are no other prospects.

He dreams about past jobs and bosses--

these are not nightmares

but not good and he tries to use them

to temper his optimism

but fails and thinks something

big is about to wash ashore

before the transmission in the Dodge

halts again, before his wife

loses her job, before Kuloff and Abrahamson

tracks him down for not paying

his credit card bill. He tries to deny

denial, be objective to prove he’s objective.

The layers in his head overwhelm

so he resumes reading Moby Dick,

sits by the phone waiting for a call from

the Simpson headhunter and reads

how Ahab kills the great whale.

CPS Manchester meeting January 12, 2008

2008-01-12T19:27:00.000-05:00

1/12/2008

Minutes

Treasurer’s Report

Get check for my expenses

Notes

Linda away until April meeting.

Carol Shapiro, NFI

I need a check for postage and supplies

Relocation

Julia?

CAST:

scheduling issues

donation necessary?

Whiton Library

Does the second floor have handicap access?

News

Shelley
for M. Follain

Poet of the dead leaves driven like ghosts,
Driven like pestilence-stricken multitudes,
I read you first
One rainy evening in New York City,

In my atrocious Slavic accent,
Saying the mellifluous verses
From a battered, much-stained volume
I had bought earlier that day
In a second-hand bookstore on Fourth Avenue
Run by an initiate of the occult masters.

The little money I had being almost spent,
I walked the streets my nose in the book.
I sat in a dingy coffee shop
With last summer’s dead flies on the table.
The owner was an ex-sailor
Who had grown a huge hump on his back
While watching the rain, the empty street.
He was glad to have me sit and read.
He’d refill my cup with a liquid dark as river Styx.

Shelley spoke of a mad, blind, dying king;
Of rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know;
Of graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst to illumine our tempestuous day.

I too felt like a glorious phantom
Going to have my dinner
In a Chinese restaurant I knew so well.
It had a three-fingered waiter
Who’d bring my soup and rice each night
Without ever saying a word.

I never saw anyone else there.
The kitchen was separated by a curtain
Of glass beads which clicked faintly
Whenever the front door opened.
The front door opened that evening
To admit a pale little girl with glasses.

The poet spoke of the everlasting universe
Of things … of gleams of a remoter world
Which visit the soul in sleep …
Of a desert peopled by storms alone …

The streets were strewn with broken umbrellas
Which looked like funereal kites
This little Chinese girl might have made.
The bars on MacDougal Street were emptying.
There had been a fist fight.
A man leaned against a lamp post arms extended as if
crucified,
The rain washing the blood off his face.

In a dimly lit side street,
Where the sidewalk shone like a ballroom mirror
At closing time –
A well-dressed man without any shoes
Asked me for money.
His eyes shone, he looked triumphant
Like a fencing master
Who had just struck a mortal blow.

How strange it all was … The world’s raffle
That dark October night …
The yellowed volume of poetry
With its Splendors and Glooms
Which I studied by the light of storefronts:
Drugstores and barbershops,
Afraid of my small windowless room
Cold as a tomb of an infant emperor.

Ginza Samba

By Robert Pinsky

Listen

A monosyllabic European called Sax
Invents a horn, walla whirledy wah, a kind of twisted
Brazen clarinet, but with its column of vibrating
Air shaped not in a cylinder but in a cone
Widening ever outward and bawaah spouting
Infinitely upward through an upturned
Swollen golden bell rimmed
Like a gloxinia flowering
In Sax's Belgian imagination

And in the unfathomable matrix
Of mothers and fathers as a genius graven
Humming into the cells of the body
Or cupped in the resonating grail
Of memory changed and exchanged
As in the trading of brasses,
Pearls and ivory, calicos and slaves,
Laborers and girls, two

Cousins in a royal family
Of Niger known as the Birds or Hawks.
In Christendom one cousin's child
Becomes a "favorite negro" ennobled
By decree of the Czar and founds
A great family, a line of generals,
Dandies and courtiers including the poet
Pushkin, killed in a duel concerning
His wife's honor, while the other cousin sails

In the belly of a slaveship to the port
Of Baltimore where she is raped
And dies in childbirth, but the infant
Will marry a Seminole and in the next
Chorus of time their child fathers
A great Hawk or Bird, with many followers
Among them this great-grandchild of the Jewish
Manager of a Pushkin estate, blowing

His American breath out into the wiggly
Tune uncurling its triplets and sixteenths--the Ginza
Samba of breath and brass, the reed
Vibrating as a valve, the aether, the unimaginable
Wires and circuits of an ingenious box
Here in my room in this house built
A hundred years ago while I was elsewhere:

It is like falling in love, the atavistic
Imperative of some one
Voice or face--the skill, the copper filament,
The golden bellful of notes twirling through
Their invisible element from
Rio to Tokyo and back again gathering
Speed in the variations as they tunnel
The twin haunted labyrinths of stirrup
And anvil echoing here in the hearkening
Instrument of my skull.

CPS contests

http://www.ct-poetry-society.org/

Guidelines and Contests

The Connecticut Poetry Society sponsors these poetry contests:

CONNECTICUT RIVER REVIEW POETRY CONTEST

Open to all poets. NEW GUIDELINES AND PRIZE AMOUNTS

Submit poems: Dec. 1-March 1 (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.

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

This year's CRR contest judge: Kim Bridgford is a professor of English at Fairfield University and editor of Dogwood and Mezzo Cammin. Her books include Undone, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; Instead of Maps, nominated for the Poetsâ€™ Prize; and In the Extreme: Sonnets about World Records, winner of the Donald Justice Prize. She is currently working on a three-book poetry/photography project with visual artist Jo Yarrington

LYNN DECARO POETRY CONTEST

Open to Connecticut high school students only

March 15th 2008 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.

Poetry Dining

I would like to move it to April since we’ll have Linda back then.

Education

Wordsworth also makes the points that "poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility" (151). These two points form the basis for Wordsworth's explanation of the process of writing poetry. First, some experience triggers a transcendent moment, an instance of the sublime. The senses are overwhelmed by this experience; the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" leaves an individual incapable of articulating the true nature and beauty of the event. It is only when this emotion is "recollected in tranquility" that the poet can assemble words to do the instance justice.

Psychology tells us that memory is not accurate, that each time we remember something the memory is re-constructed anew and not always the same way. Thus the recreation of the moment of impulse is destined to be flawed, inaccurate in some ways. This puts great importance upon the details we do remember since they will mix with the somewhat inaccurate memory depiction of the incident. When writing we start with the impulse and try to recreate the feeling of it, the sense of it in both physical sensation and the emotional feeling of it. I find that at some point in every first draft I reach a point at which I ask “How do I go on?” At this point I see that I am not reconstructing the event as it was but as I can remember it and as it has been modified by the attempt to put it into words. This is where the poem will rise or fall dependent upon my willingness to accept that the poem now cannot do what I may want. By the application of suspect memory and the rigors of word and language the poem has become something different from any intention I may have had at the start and I must grant the poem its own life and work with it to let it express itself. It is no longer my will alone that drives it forward. With luck and practice the poem will go to a surprising end that is informed well enough by the original impulse to create an emotional experience perfectly relevant to the original although far different from it. The poem becomes its own experience. When this works the reader recognizes that the poet has indeed been struck by lightning and we share in the shower of sparks from it.

I came to pondering this from considering Joan Chaput’s poems in which there is great detail about earlier events—clamming, whatever—associated with profound memories and the struggle to get the emotion and detail to harmonize toward the resolution of the poem. I think the understanding that the memory is flawed and the emotion outside the specifics will help the process. It also requires great faith and the courage to trust the process. And it takes practice.

I thus come to Guns ‘n’ Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine”.

Print: Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child O' Mine Lyrics print version

She's got a smile that it seems to me
Reminds me of childhood memories
Where everything
Was as fresh as the bright blue sky
Now and then when I see her face
She takes me away to that special place
And if I'd stare too long
I'd probably break down and cry

Sweet child o' mine
Sweet love of mine

She's got eyes of the bluest skies
As if they thought of rain
I hate to look into those eyes
And see an ounce of pain
Her hair reminds me of a warm safe place
Where as a child I'd hide
And pray for the thunder
And the rain
To quietly pass me by

Sweet child o' mine
Sweet love of mine

Where do we go
Where do we go now
Where do we go
Sweet child o' mine

This song expresses somewhat unwittingly the point at which the poet says “How do I go on from here?” except that in the song it never gets beyond that point even with chord progressions taking it into another key. The music cannot carry the song and fails to amend the words where the song gets stuck. As poets the challenge is to get beyond the sticking point and permit the poem to become itself.

Assignment

Over the past couple of years I have addressed some of the difficulties posed by writing about powerful, passionate topics by writing in the third person. I have used several names for this person—Jobhunter, Remainder and Neoman—with varying success. Earlier this meeting year we wrote prompted by favorite poems and writers and experimented somewhat with changing voices. The assignment for next time is to write a poem in the third person. It can be Uncle John, your dog Rover, simply she, it, or make up a person in whose name to write. The key is to write without the first person singular or plural—no I, no we. Put the person out there and see what that person will do in your poem. If you wish, re-write a poem by changing it from first person to third person.

(At the next meeting we’ll re-write these poems in the first person.)

An exercise for today

Last April you wrote a collaborative poem at the poetry dining meeting. Today we’re going to do something a little bit different. Take a blank sheet and write a line of poetry, perhaps from today’s poem, as the first line of a new poem. Then, pass the paper to the person on your left and that person will add a second line. Then pass to the next and so on. When you get your own paper back you’ll have a poem of lines by each of us and we’ll have ten or so new poems in the room.

CPS Manchester Meeting Notes November 17, 2007

2007-11-19T09:41:00.000-05:00

Meeting November 17, 2007

Minutes of Last Meeting

CPS Business

Guidelines and Contests

The Connecticut Poetry Society sponsors these poetry contests:

WALLACE W. WINCHELL POETRY CONTEST

Open to all poets. NEW GUIDELINES AND PRIZE AMOUNTS

Submit poems: Oct. 1-Dec. 31 (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 Wallace Winchell. 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.

Send submissions to Wallace W. Winchell Poetry Contest, CPS, PO Box 270554, West Hartford, CT 06127.

Go to source>>

Remember your CPS dues were due in April

WWWC Business

1. Relocation

Summit Studios

Questionable due to public location in their coffee shop which Tom says has virtually no business on Sat PM. I saw a lot of traffic there Sat around noon on the 10th.

Ollie's home-- I am averse to meeting in homes

Big Y-- I don't like this one-- too iffy and subject to change; may also be noisy. It's not important to Big Y

Remain where we are

Does anyone have other ideas?

I have contacted the Arts Commission with no response

Treasurer's Report

News

Middleton rewrote some of Shakespeare's greatest plays: Study

By ANI

Saturday November 10, 03:06 PM

London, November 10 (ANI): Hundreds of lines in Shakespeare's Macbeth and Measure for Measure were written by English Jacobean playwright and poet Thomas Middleton, according to a new computer-assisted research.

For long, it has been suggested that both plays have passages uncharacteristic of Shakespeare, and that Middleton had edited them after The Bard's death.

Now, the new research shows that Middleton made about 10 per cent contribution in each of Shakespeare's plays.

The evidence has been found both on stylistic grounds, and in references to historical events that took place after Shakespeare wrote the plays.

Middleton's contribution seems to be so extensive that Oxford University Press (OUP) has included both Macbeth and Measure for Measure in a new two-volume complete works of Middleton (1580-1627).

Gary Taylor, Middleton's joint general editor at OUP, said that the two Shakespeare plays would not have been included without compelling evidence.

"What's new is that we have greater confidence that it was Middleton. We can precisely identify which bits are Middleton," Times Online quoted him as saying.

The Oxford Middleton provides evidence that in Macbeth, elements like perjury, remarriage, a mother whose husband is legally but not actually dead, and a husband/father/Scot suspected of treason are linked to the scandalous political trials associated with the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in 1616.

The passage also echoes the circumstances of Middleton's childhood, as his father died when he was just five, and his mother remarried less than ten months later. His stepfather left him and his mother to go abroad, and was assumed to have died.

Professor Taylor said that Middleton had been overshadowed by Shakespeare perhaps because the latter's plays were published in 1623, just seven years after his death.

"Middleton's plays weren't similarly collected . . . While Shakespeare's company owned the legal right to have his plays printed, Middleton owned his own, and no one published one volume of his plays," he said.

"That meant that, with the closing of the theatres in the Civil War, when they started up again following the Restoration, people only knew of three playwrights - Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and John Fletcher," he added.

It was not until the 19th century that interest in Middleton was revived. By then, Professor Taylor said, "Shakespeare had more than a 200-year headstart".

The researchers checked every word and phrase against databases of early modern English literature.

They suggest that Middleton is responsible for these lines in Macbeth: "Everyone that does so is a traitor and must be hanged" "And must they all be hanged that swear and lie"

According to them, Middleton's own plays include lines such as: "Have 'em all hanged up" "swear and lie". (ANI)

Assignment

Write a villanelle. What is a villanelle?

villanelle

villanelle, a poem composed of an uneven number (usually five) of tercets rhyming aba, with a final quatrain rhyming abaa. In this French fixed form, the first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately as the third lines of the succeeding tercets, and together as the final couplet of the quatrain. Representing these repeated lines in capitals, with the second of them given in italic, the rhyme scheme may be displayed thus: AbA abA abA abA abA abAA. The form was established in France in the 16th century, and used chiefly for pastoral songs. In English, it was used for light vers de société by some minor poets of the late 19th century; but it has been adopted for more serious use by W. H. Auden, William Empson, and Derek Mahon. The best‐known villanelle in English, however, is Dylan Thomas's ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’ (1952).

Form

The villanelle has no established meter, although most nineteenth-century villanelles had eight or six syllables per line and most twentieth-century villanelles had ten syllables per line. The essence of the fixed modern form is its distinctive pattern of rhyme and repetition.

The villanelle is a poem of 19 lines, five triplets and a quatrain, using only two rhymes throughout the whole form. The entire first line is repeated as lines 6, 12 and 18 and the third line is repeated as lines 9, 15 and 19 -- so that the lines which frame the first triplet weave through the poem like refrains in a traditional song, and form the end of the concluding stanza. With these repeating lines represented as A1 and A2 (because they rhyme), the entire rhyme scheme is A1bA2 abA1 abA2 abA1 abA2 abA1A2.

It looks like this:

a1 (repeat entire line)

a2 (repeat entire line)

a1 (repeat entire line)

a2 (repeat entire line)

a1 (repeat entire line)

a2 (repeat entire line)

There are only two rhymes.

Prospects
Anthony Hecht

We have set out from here for the sublime
Pastures of summer shade and mountain stream;
I have no doubt we shall arrive on time.

Is all the green of that enameled prime
A snapshot recollection or a dream?
We have set out from here for the sublime

Without provisions, without one thin dime,
And yet, for all our clumsiness, I deem
It certain that we shall arrive on time.

No guidebook tells you if you'll have to climb
Or swim. However foolish we may seem,
We have set out from here for the sublime

And must get past the scene of an old crime
Before we falter and run out of steam,
Riddled by doubt that we'll arrive on time.

Yet even in winter a pale paradigm
Of birdsong utters its obsessive theme.
We have set out from here for the sublime;
I have no doubt we shall arrive on time.

Do not go gentle into that good night
by Dylan Thomas


Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath "I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.) The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. (I think I made you up inside my head.) God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade: Exit seraphim and Satan's men: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I fancied you'd return the way you said, But I grow old and I forget your name. (I think I made you up inside my head.) I should have loved a thunderbird instead; At least when spring comes they roar back again. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. (I think I made you up inside my head.)"
From The Poems of Dylan Thomas, published by New Directions. Copyright © 1952, 1953 Dylan Thomas. Copyright © 1937, 1945, 1955, 1962, 1966, 1967 the Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas. Copyright © 1938, 1939, 1943, 1946, 1971 New Directions Publishing Corp. Used with permission.

Education

See Villanelle above

Meeting October 13, 2007

2007-10-14T11:15:00.000-04:00

Minutes of September Meeting

Small meeting made worse by the absence of anyone at Mahoney Rec Center to let us in.

Moved to Marco Polo and had a successful meeting. Decided to defer dues collection until October meeting. Will discuss relocation since we’ve been left out in the cold twice by Parks and Rec people. Assignment for next time is to write a disconnected poem, i.e. one in which each line has no apparent connection to the other lines in the poem. It must be grammatical and use real words. We missed and began to grieve over Carol Shapiro’s missing status.

Treasurer’s Report

Chapter News, etc.

Dues are due: $10 per.

We have finally put to bed the Golden Shoe chapbook and any ensuing profits belong to us. On reflection it was a marvelous piece of work well done by all. Thank you all and special thanks to the people who did the collating, editing, publishing, distribution, collection and etc. and etc.

Shall we relocate? Calvin Harris assures me that the scheduling is okay. He apologized for the problem in September and assured me that the problem has been solved. The usual issues vis-à-vis moving are appropriateness to the meetings, centrality of location and accessibility to those of us who continue to age rapidly. Ollie Jones offers her home. We need some specifics about arrangements. (I personally would rather not meet in someone’s home.) Shaws supermarket on Broad St has rooms that Sue Betko is excited about. I visited the site and concur with reservations. Charlie Gilbert may have checked with the Eight District.

The Poetry Corner is all but defunct. NFI at the moment.

CPS News

Members should have received their copies of Long River Run and The Connecticut River Review.

Why don’t we have more submissions? All you have to do is send a poem. It’s one of the benefits of being a member—publication in a nicely done journal. And you can use it in the credits you cite when you submit to other journals.

Current contests are:

WALLACE W. WINCHELL POETRY CONTEST

Open to all poets. NEW GUIDELINES AND PRIZE AMOUNTS

Submit poems: Oct. 1-Dec. 31 (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 Wallace Winchell. 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.

Send submissions to Wallace W. Winchell Poetry Contest, CPS, PO Box 270554, West Hartford, CT 06127.

LYNN DECARO POETRY CONTEST

Open to high school students

September 7, 2007t>

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

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

News

Scurlock passes, runs Poets to win

By Bob Daily Correspondent

Article Launched: 09/30/2007 12:12:24 AM PDT

WHITTIER - With a versatile offense and a thwarting defense, the Whittier College Poets posted a 28-7 victory over the visiting Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens in the SCIAC football opener for both teams on Saturday evening.

Whittier's offense, which scored on three consecutive possessions in the middle of the first half, was led by quarterback Josh Scurlock, who completed 19-of-36 passes for 289 yards and two touchdowns. He also rushed for 117 yards on 16 carries.

Meanwhile the defense had its shining moment with a goal-line stand midway through the fourth quarter.

The Poets (2-1 overall) began their scoring when Richard Gonzales ran 2 yards for a touchdown with six seconds left in the first quarter.

The TD capped a 55-yard drive, which featured passes of 47 and 13 yards from Scurlock to John Ollison.

On the Poets' next possession, Ollison caught a 19-yard scoring pass from Scurlock. The key play in the drive was a 45-yard scramble by Scurlock as he followed the blocks of Chris Anderson, Keith Hernandez and Ethan Schillinger.

Pomona Pitzer (1-2) responded with a 63-yard scoring march, capped by Russell Oka's 2-yard scoring run to reduce the deficit to 14-7 midway through the second

quarter.

Building the lead back to 14 points, Whittier put together a 74-yard scoring drive, culminated by a 14-yard touchdown pass from Scurlock to Chris Delgado.

The Poets concluded the game's scoring late in the third quarter when Ollison ran it in on an 8-yard reverse. Two plays prior to the touchdown, a pressured Scurlock flipped a pass to Gonzales, who turned the short pass into a 25-yard gain as he broke three tackles.

Whittier's defense stopped the Sagehens after Pomona had driven to the Whittier 7-yard line early in the fourth quarter.

On the first play in the series, a tackle by Whittier linebacker David Taylor sent the helmet of the Pomona ball carrier back into the Pomona backfield.

On fourth down, an aggressive pass rush by Poets lineman Daniel Lopez forced a hurried pass, which fell incomplete and ended Pomona's last threat.

Other defensive highlights for the Poets included an interception by defensive back James Monaco, which was eventually converted into the Poets' first touchdown.

On the opening possession of the second half, Whittier defensive back Brent Barstow intercepted a pass to stop another potential Pomona drive

Quotation

There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.

Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867), Mon Coeur Mis a Nu, XXII

Many brave men lived before Agamemnon; but all are overwhelmed in eternal night, unwept, unknown, because they lack a sacred poet.

Horace (65 BC - 8 BC), Odes

"Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind,
because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science."

Poetry Qoute by Sigmund Freud

Education

Go to this part after the first reading of poems that are normal, not disconnected, unless the disconnected poems make more sense in reverse.

Following our look last time into spamoetry, poetry made from the subject line in spam received in peoples’ emails, I searched for new forms of poetry and found “Versus RE Versus”.

Saxophonist delves into new form of inverted poetry (10/7/1999)

MUNCIE, Ind. – Ball State University saxophone professor George Wolfe’s latest exploration into music, creativity and cosmology is turning poetry upside down.

A new book of poems Wolfe produced this fall presents a new approach to writing poetry that he developed called "Verses Re Versus." Sixteen poems by Wolfe and a few other writers, including local poet Michael Brockley, illustrate the new form.

Published by Jomar Press, the book will make its debut at Muncie’s Humpback Barn Festival Oct. 16-17. Copies will be available for sale during the art and poetry festival.

Wolfe’s new form of poetry takes the first stanza of a poem and reverses the order of its words to comprise the second stanza. Punctuation and sentence division can be modified to help the second stanza make sense. The rearrangement usually gives the two stanzas very different meanings.

"When you turn it around, you can’t control the meaning," Wolfe said. "The poem then dictates its own meaning, and it’s a valuable educational exercise. This forces a person to allow meaning to emerge on its own."

Young artists and musicians often want to weave a specific, intended meaning into their work, Wolfe noted. "Verses Re Versus" shows them that various levels of meaning can arise from artwork as it’s created, and the artist might be pleasantly surprised.

"This is a very useful educational tool for teaching people about meaning in art and one’s own poetic creativity," he said.

The concept for the poetic form arose from Wolfe’s studies of Mozart’s "Canon Inversus," a musical duet in which the second half of the piece is the first half reversed. Wolfe recorded the work on his 1998 compact disc "Lifting the Veil."

"It shows how you can take a concept and express it in more than one artistic medium," he said. "I’m actively showing that music and poetry can interrelate and inspire each other."

For Wolfe, the "Verses Re Versus" poetry and Mozart’s "Canon Inversus" are also metaphors for the way creation can be viewed from opposing perspectives, such as theology and science, and still make sense, each perspective leading to the perception of a "wondrous order."

Two poems in Wolfe’s new book come from Ball State faculty composer Jody Nagel’s musical work "Three Universes." Another Wolfe poem in the book demonstrates his new approach:

Moon, deceptive, crisp,
that wildness with brittle
alluring light, receding into
time, turning cold, forgotten,
still...now passions with
restless rays, hiding love.
This is romance, fleeting,
like passing starlight.
Starlight passing like
fleeting romance. Is this
love, hiding rays restless
with passions, now still,
forgotten, cold, turning time
into receding light, alluring,
brittle with wildness? That
crisp, deceptive moon.

Wolfe has shared his new poetic form and discussed its relationship to cosmology with an English class at Muncie Central High School. The educational appendix to his new book might be used by Ball State classes, he said.

Wolfe is an associate professor of music performance at Ball State, where he received the university’s Outstanding Creative Endeavor Award in 1997. His creative projects over the years have included extensive studies of North Indian music and the historical relationship between music and cosmology.

As a saxophone performer and teacher, Wolfe promotes a motivic approach to classical improvisation and has performed throughout the United States and in Europe, Costa Rica, Canada, Korea and Japan.

By Ted Buck, Communications Manager

One of mine:

Meditation, yoga—

cheap tricks to muffle the pain.

Alcohol just abets the serpent.

In the beginning was pain.

I wonder if all birth is painful,

if the earth grimaces

as each new tumor issues forth.

Forth issues tumor

as each grimaces the earth.

Painful is birth.

All wonder.

Pain was beginning

The serpent abets alcohol

to pain the muffle, tricks cheap—

yoga, meditation.

Today’s Assignment Notes

First we wrote poems referencing lines from our favorite poets. At the last meeting we looked at spamoetry and today we had a look at verses re versus. The disconnected poems reveal something about sound in poetry in that, being meaningless, (but are they really?) they feature only sound. As T. S. Eliot reminds us a poem should mean before it is understood. Music affects us without words. The sonic elements of poetry areessential and the disconnected poems bring out the value of sonics. Paul’s poetry relies heavily upon the sonic elements. I’ve been reading Basil Bunting lately and his sonic elements are apparent when you hear his poems—here read the quotation from the introduction to the book. Frost’s sonics are essential to his meanings. Frost, however, tricks us into misunderstandings via sonics, as with his “The Road Not Taken” which sounds far simpler than the meaning.

(CONSIDER READING THE DISCONNECTED POEMS IN REVERSE.)

Another aspect of the disconnected poems is apparent if you ponder that all the images used (and look at how image-based the poems might be—mine is largely so) came to mind for some reason—all from within you. I referenced Crabtree’s Bludgeon last week:

"No set of mutually inconsistent observations can exist for which some human intellect cannot conceive a coherent explanation, however complicated."

Is it possible, then, to relate the disconnections in any way? I went nuts trying to. My head hurt afterward. One of the exercises employed by people trying to activate the creative (right) brain is to find ways to connect the disconnected, the apparently unrelated, usually done with a pair of items. In the case of our poems we might wonder how the whole relates, how the relationships occur outside of word and logic, perhaps solely in sonics. As we go forward from here, take an awareness to your next poems that permits a deeper reading of relationships in the images and words that come up and seem unrelated. That is, entertain some of those things you normally discard. I discovered myself doing this over the summer during the writing of the chapbook I now have out in search of a publisher.

Next Assignment

The conachlann is a simple bardic form of chain verse. The last word of one line, starts as the first word of the next line. You have a bit of slight leeway, as you will see in the examples. This is a medieval Irish poetic form.

Here is a modern example of a conachlann that I pulled from a Celtic poetry forum.

Conachlonn Anam: A Prayer by Ben

Only because of the Tuatha De Dannan do I draw breath
From first breath to last breath
Breath of spirit
Spirit that gives Life
Sustainer of Life, she who is the Land
Land of shining mountains
Mountains of my birth
Birth of song
Song churning in my blood
My blood the Land
The Land of Elder Gods
The Elder Gods giving my breath
Only because of the Tuatha De Dannan do I draw breath

Rannaicheacht Ghairid (ron-a'yach cha'r-rid):

A quatrain stanza with uneven lines. The first line has three syllables, the other three have seven. The stanza rhymes a a b a, with a cross-rhyme between three and four.

x x a
x x x x x x a
x x x x x x b
x x b x x x A

#35 RANNAIGHEACHT GHAIRID EXAMPLE

Father mourned,
cried all month, the year, and scorned
serene calls for happiness
though he blessed whom he forlorned.

His daughters
cried: "Go to China." One purrs:
"Give yourself something to talk
about," walking, she demurs,

"if you come
back, or if not, we'll have some
occasion to mourn forlorn."
Though quite torn he went still numb

"Never fear,"
he said, going with a tear,
off to China at eighty.
Now pity Father's mourned year.

Jan Haag....2-4-98

Internet Connection

www.mobysaurus.com

Mobysaurus Thesaurus is a comprehensive, feature-rich, easy-to-use English thesaurus for Windows.

In addition to numerous built-in powerful features (usually seen only in commercial products), it offers some major unique benefits that no other thesaurus product (software or otherwise) does, including a huge database of 2.5 million synonyms, Find Synonymous Headwords and Suggest Headwords, that make this free thesaurus software the right tool for you to find the right words at the right time.

NB If you are using MSWord in a fairly recent version if you right-click a word with the cursor within it or at the end of it you open a menu that includes a “synonym” link which, selected instantly gives you a list of synonyms for that word. There is also a link to a thesaurus. Failing this try Mobysaurus.

Meeting September 15, 2007

2007-09-15T08:51:00.000-04:00

Saturday, September 15, 2007

WWWC

Meeting September 15, 2007

Missing persons report:

Carol Shapiro—I have no further news

Julia, Peter and Debbie will not be here today

Minutes of last meeting

Thanks to Mina for the use of her house for the picnic. Again, grand and gracious.

Welcome to Chuck Haddad who attended for the first time and also to Louise Botelle who we met and horsecollared at the Arts Festival at MCC.

Business

$10 dues due today

In the absence of the treasurer who would like to collect and keep track of the dues?

We have a balance of approx $450 after the final check to the MACC for proceeds from the Gold Shoe chapbook

What about the Poetry Corner

I will call Richard Tambling but I think he has ceased to promote the item. He seems to be gaining responsibilities at the JI and hasn’t returned by emails. Contributions have been dismal.

Is it time to cancel the PO box and seek another outlet?

CPS

IN MEMORIAM: GUSS STEPP

With sadness we announce the passing of Guss Stepp, Jr., treasurer and long-time member of CPS. A retired electrical engineer and human resources executive, Guss also served as Vice President of Connecticut Renaissance, one of the oldest nonprofit drug treatment agencies in the state. An award-winning poet, he facilitated the Saugatuck Poets and was a frequent host and visitor at the Tuesday Night Poetry Series in Wilton.

CT River Review and Long River Run 2007 in the Mail

The 2007 editions of the CT River Review and Long River Run are back from the printers and should be in the mail to members and contributors by mid September.

The Connecticut Poetry Society sponsors these poetry contests:

WALLACE W. WINCHELL POETRY CONTEST

Open to all poets. NEW GUIDELINES AND PRIZE AMOUNTS

Submit poems: Oct. 1-Dec. 31 (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 Wallace Winchell. 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.

Send submissions to Wallace W. Winchell Poetry Contest, CPS, PO Box 270554, West Hartford, CT 06127.

Education and news

See Ashberry, Morrisey below.

Spamoetry

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Spamoetry? (Spam Poetry)

From Wikipedia:

A recent phenomenon is an e-mail spam tactic in which randomly-generated text passages are used to thwart Bayesian filters. For example,

The first question of course was, how to get dry again: they me as I walked, the remembrance of my churlishness and that I must confidence between himself and Mrs. Micawber. After which, he for his dagger till his hand gripped it. Then he spoke. I kissed her, and my baby brother, and was very sorry then; but not

Even grammatically consistent sentences can be formed, such as

Then, from sea to shining sea, the God-King sang the praises of teflon, and with his face to the sunshine, he churned lots of butter.

Such text is called spamoetry (spam poetry) or spam art. Since the text is often derived from actual books, this is effectively a cut-up method.

Assignment

Write a disconnected poem. That is one in which the sentences have nothing to do with one another. It’s like a conversation in which each speaker says something completely alien to anything said before. Somewhat like spamoetry, it will be a poem (rhythm, rhyme, stress, etc) in which the language becomes somewhat meaningless although all the words are real. It will be a test of Crabtree’s Bludgeon which states that "No set of mutually inconsistent observations can exist for which some human intellect cannot conceive a coherent explanation, however complicated."

This is sort of opposite to the poems we brought today in that we were required to contextualize lines we took from other poets. We are de-contextualizing for the October meeting.

Poems

John Berryman - Dream Song 77: Seedy Henry rose up shy

Seedy Henry rose up shy in de world

& shaved & swung his barbells, duded Henry up

and p.a.'d poor thousands of persons on topics of grand

moment to Henry, ah to those less & none.

Wif a book of his in either hand

he is stript down to move on.

—Come away, Mr. Bones.

—Henry is tired of the winter,

& haircuts, & a squeamish comfy ruin-prone proud national

mind, & Spring (in the city so called).

Henry likes Fall.

Hé would be prepared to lÃve in a world of FÃ¡ll

for ever, impenitent Henry.

But the snows and summers grieve & dream;

thése fierce & airy occupations, and love,

raved away so many of Henry's years

it is a wonder that, with in each hand

one of his own mad books and all,

ancient fires for eyes, his head full

& his heart full, he's making ready to move on.

Change date to Sep 15

Sep 15 meeting

Sometimes I know how the poem will feel in the end
Spamoetry
Update members list with Debbie's referral, Chuck Haddad and new person from Bolton

The Monster of Mr Cogito

1

Lucky Saint George
from his knight's saddle
could exactly evaluate
the strength and movements of the dragon

the first principle of strategy
is to assess the enemy accurately

Mr Cogito
is in a worse position
he sits in the low
saddle of a valley
covered with thick fog

through fog it is impossible to perceive
fiery eyes
greedy claws
jaws

through fog
one sees only
the shimmering of nothingness

the monster of Mr Cogito
has no measurements
it is difficult to describe
escapes definition

it is like an immense depression
spread out over the country

it can't be pierced
with a pen

with an argument
or spear

were it not for its suffocating weight
and the death it sends down
one would think
it is the hallucination
of a sick imagination
but it exists
for certain it exists

like carbon monoxide it fills
houses temples markets

poisons wells
destroys the structures of the mind
covers bread with mould

the proof of the existence of the monster
is its victims

it is not direct proof
but sufficient

2

reasonable people say
we can live together
with the monster

we only have to avoid
sudden movements
sudden speech

if there is a threat assume
the form of a rock or a leaf

listen to wise Nature
recommending mimicry

that we breathe shallowly
pretend we aren't there

Mr Cogito however
does not want a life of make-believe
he would like to fight
with the monster
on firm ground

so he walks out at dawn
into a sleepy suburb
carefully equipped
with a long sharp object

he calls to the monster
on the empty streets
he offends the monster
provokes the monster

like a bold skirmisher
of an army that doesn't exist

he calls -
come out contemptible coward

through the fog
one sees only
the huge snout of nothingness

Mr Cogito wants to enter
the uneven battle
it ought to happen
possibly soon

before there is
a fall from inertia
an ordinary death without glory
suffocation from formlessness

Zbigniew Herbert

Emerson, I thought the following article might be an interesting one to share with the group. I'm not totally sure that I can make the 15th, but I will try my damndest (is that a word?). Julia

An 80-Year-Old Poet for the MTV Generation

By MELENA RYZIK

Published: August 27, 2007

MtvU, the subsidiary of MTV Networks that is broadcast only on college campuses, will announce today that it has selected its first poet laureate. No, he doesn’t rap. And it’s not Bob Dylan, or even Justin Timberlake.

Skip to next paragraph

Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

John Ashbery, poet laureate for mtvU, at home in Hudson, N.Y.

Times Topics

John Ashbery

Additional articles, links, poems, recordings and the poet's own MySpace page.

Multimedia

Video

The New Higher: A Poem by John Ashbery

Video

Soonest Mended

Poem: ‘Some Trees’ (August 27, 2007)

It is John Ashbery, the prolific 80-year-old poet and frequent award winner known for his dense, postmodern style and playful language. One of the most celebrated living poets, Mr. Ashbery has won MacArthur Foundation and Guggenheim fellowships and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.”

Excerpts of his poems will appear in 18 short promotional spots — like commercials for verse — on the channel and its Web site (mtvu.com, which will also feature the full text of the poems). In another first, mtvU will help sponsor a poetry contest for college students. The winner, chosen by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, will have a book published next year by HarperCollins as part of the National Poetry Series.

“We hope that we’ll help discover the next great poet that we’ll be talking about for years to come,” said Stephen K. Friedman, the general manager of mtvU, which broadcasts at 750 campuses nationwide.

The idea of the laureate program was not to create more English majors, but simply to whet an appetite, said Mr. Friedman, a poetry aficionado since he majored in literature, philosophy and history at Wesleyan. Mr. Ashbery, he added, was the No. 1 choice to inaugurate the position. “He resonates with college students that we’ve talked with,” he said.

And Mr. Ashbery, who was the poet laureate of New York State from 2001 to 2003, was immediately receptive. “It seemed like it would be a chance to broaden the audience for poetry,” he said.

The poems used in the campaign span his career, and the spots are simple: on a white background, black text floats in to a sound like a crashing wave, appears on the screen for a minute, then floats away. From “Retro” (2005): “It’s really quite a thrill/When the moon rises over the hill/and you’ve gotten over someone/salty and mercurial, the only person you’ve ever loved.” From “Soonest Mended” (2000): “Barely tolerated, living on the margin/In our technological society, we are always having to be rescued.”

The excerpts were chosen by David Kermani, Mr. Ashbery’s business manager, and two interns and an employee, all in their early 20s, in his office.

“We were just trying to pick lines that were catchy and sort of meaningful in some way, something that would appeal to what we thought younger people would be interested in,” Mr. Kermani said. These young people picked “things that had sort of raunchy references,” he added. “They thought it was sort of a hoot.”

Mr. Ashbery too was pleased by their choices, particularly because they reminded him of what was in his own canon. “I have a lot poems, so there are a lot of them that I don’t really think of very much,” he said. (Mr. Ashbery published “A Worldly Country: New Poems” in February, and an anthology, “Notes From the Air: Selected Later Poems,” is due out in November.)

But will droves of young people respond?

“It’s our hope that we will interest college kids in poetry in a new way, make it hip for them,” said Daniel Halpern, the publisher of Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins that has published Mr. Ashbery’s work. But, Mr. Halpern admitted, “it’s very hard to tell what exactly is going to come of all this.”

Though his roots are in 1950s bohemia, Mr. Ashbery is perhaps not the most obvious choice for the iPod generation. He works on a typewriter and doesn’t listen to popular music, with the exception of a chance encounter with the Peaches & Herb song “Reunited” in a cab in the 1980s; it inspired his poem “The Songs We Know Best.” (“Just like a shadow in an empty room/Like a breeze that’s pointed from beyond the tomb/Just like a project of which no one tells-/Or didja really think that I was somebody else?”)

But Mr. Friedman is optimistic that verse will find its new audience, and mtvU plans to continue the program with other laureates after Mr. Ashbery’s one-year tenure is up.

“I don’t think there’s such a big leap from the artists we’re playing to the poetry that John is creating,” Mr. Friedman said. “Some of the music we play, Bright Eyes and the Decemberists, they’re phenomenal poets. I feel like there’s a connection there.”

Though he has not been offered the job, Mr. Ashbery has said that he wouldn’t necessarily be interested in being the United States poet laureate.

“There is a great deal of responsibility that comes with it,” he said. “You have to spend part of the time in Washington. It’s really a public post.”

But the mtvU gig — which is unpaid — came with few strings attached, and was not very demanding of his time, he said.

“I don’t have any specific duties,” he said. “They’re going to publicize my poetry and maybe people will get interested in it and other poets will benefit. That’s about as much work or responsibility as I would want.”

After a 50-year career and nearly as many published volumes, is Mr. Ashbery finally slacking off? He laughed. No, he said. “I’d rather keep the effort for writing poetry.”

Job Profile: Life as a poet

What's it like to be a zookeeper? Or a poet? The BBC went on the road to find out. In this online series, we look at four jobs, from the quirky to the extraordinary. Today, part three looks at what it's like to work as a poet.

Name: Sinead Morrissey

Hometown: Portadown

Occupation: Poet

How's the pay?
As a poet, it's rubbish, but you don't do it because you want to make money it.

How are the hours?
The hours are entirely self-determined.

Where do you spend most of the day?
In my office at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry.

Best part of the job?
Well, it's a reason for living. There are more, but it's one of them.

Worst part of the job?
Self-doubt. Doubt that what you've written is good. Doubt that if what you've written is good, that you'll be able to do it again. And doubt that if you do it again that you'll be able to do something different.

Sinéad Morrissey was born in Portadown, Northern Ireland, in 1972 and has been writing poetry from a very early age. She has published three collections of poetry, There Was Fire in Vancouver (1996), Between Here and There (2002) and The State of The Prisons (2005). In 1990 she became the youngest poet ever to receive the Patrick Kavanagh Award for Poetry, and has since been honoured with numerous other awards, amongst them the Michael Hartnett Award for Poetry. She has twice been shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize and her work has been the subject of translation.

Genetics

My father’s in my fingers, but my mother’s in my palms.
I lift them up and look at them with pleasure –
I know my parents made me by my hands.

They may have been repelled to separate lands,
to separate hemispheres, may sleep with other lovers,
but in me they touch where fingers link to palms.

With nothing left of their togetherness but friends
who quarry for their image by a river,
at least I know their marriage by my hands.

I shape a chapel where a steeple stands.
And when I turn it over,
my father’s by my fingers, my mother’s by my palms

demure before a priest reciting psalms.
My body is their marriage register.
I re-enact their wedding with my hands.

So take me with you, take up the skin’s demands
for mirroring in bodies of the future.
I’ll bequeath my fingers, if you bequeath your palms.
We know our parents make us by our hands.

Poetry Corner issues

cpsmanchester

Meeting February 14, 2009

WWWC Meeting December 13, 2008

Meeting, November 8, 2008

WWWC Meeting October 11, 2008

September 13, 2008 Meeting Notes

Minutes of Last Meeting

Treasurer's Report

WWWC Topics

CPS Topics

News Item

What They Want

Great Depression Story

Educational Item

Gioia Leaves NEA After Changing Debate Over Arts Funding

Next Assignment

Elegy in a Country Churchyard

This Month's Assignment and Poems

My haiku from the summer-- the numbered ones go together, the rest stand alone

Meeting June 14, 2008

WWWC

Meeting June 14, 2008

Send submission to:

May 10, 2008 2

April 12, 2008 Meeting Notes

March 8, 2008

--- March 8, 2008 ---

--- Announcement ---

--- Minutes of Last Meeting ---

--- Treasurer's Report ---

--- CPS ---

--- WWWC Business ---

--- Relocation ---

--- News ---

--- Education ---

--- Next Assignment ---

Meeting February 9, 2008

Samples of poems in the third person as an alter ego

CPS Manchester meeting January 12, 2008

CPS Manchester Meeting Notes November 17, 2007

Middleton rewrote some of Shakespeare's greatest plays: Study

Form

Mad Girl's Love Song

Meeting October 13, 2007

Minutes of September Meeting

Treasurer’s Report

Chapter News, etc.

CPS News

News

Quotation

Education

Today’s Assignment Notes

Next Assignment

Internet Connection

Meeting September 15, 2007

Saturday, September 15, 2007

WWWC

Meeting September 15, 2007

CT River Review and Long River Run 2007 in the Mail

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Spamoetry? (Spam Poetry)

Emerson, I thought the following article might be an interesting one to share with the group. I'm not totally sure that I can make the 15th, but I will try my damndest (is that a word?). Julia

An 80-Year-Old Poet for the MTV Generation

Times Topics

John Ashbery

Multimedia

The New Higher: A Poem by John Ashbery

Soonest Mended

Related

Poem: ‘Some Trees’ (August 27, 2007)