PoetryFoundation.org

Inventing Michael Field by Michelle Lee

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:37:14 GMT

Some 125 years ago, a new playwright named Michael Field created a buzz among London literati with the print debut of two blank-verse dramas in a single volume: the ancient Greek Callirrhoë and the English historical Fair Rosamund. Callirrhoë and Fair Rosamund announced the “ring of a new voice, which is likely to be heard far and wide among the English-speaking peoples,” according to the Spectator and other critics of the day.

Carl Sandburg Stops Making Sense by Ross Simonini

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:42:56 GMT

Nonsense is for everyone. It falls off the tongues of all speakers of all languages everywhere, from Hugo Ball in Switzerland to Aimé Césaire in Martinique to SpongeBob SquarePants in Bikini Bottom. True, nonsense words and sentences can’t make arguments or walk through A-ergo-B lessons, but this is part of nonsense’s reason for existence: anti-logic (“breaking the oppressor’s language,” says Césaire). It is a parody of language, a burlesque, and yet it still deeply resonates, not with specific emotions or ideas, but with the uncanniness of a life-altering dream.

The indisputable masters of nonsense are children. Without a lifetime of words to slough off, children remain mostly immune to language’s rules and so give us the Dada-est Dada-isms. But as each day passes, children around the world are sacrificing their verbal freedom for a language that may never be as exciting as their natural blathering.

Learning Lab: W.S. Merwin: “The Nails” by Jeffrey McDaniel

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:38:29 GMT

In Memoriam: Ruth Lilly, 1915-2009 by The Editors

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:18:55 GMT

The Poetry Foundation is grateful for Ruth Lilly’s extraordinarily generosity and kindness. The staff and trustees of the Poetry Foundation are greatly saddened by Ms. Lilly’s death and extend their condolences to her family. Thanks to Ms. Lilly’s munificence, the programs of the Poetry Foundation bring poems to 19 million Americans who would not otherwise read or hear them. From the annual $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize honoring a contemporary poet’s lifetime accomplishment, to five Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowships that go to aspiring poets, to ensuring Poetry magazine continues publishing in perpetuity, to a host of new programs and prizes established by the Poetry Foundation since receiving the bequest, Ruth Lilly’s legacy will allow millions of readers to discover the great magic of poetry for generations to come.

The Poetry of Deep Winter by Annie Finch

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:04:31 GMT

“Unlike autumn, in whose complex and fertile imagery poets love to linger, winter, that stylized season, is often evoked as a single deft emblem in just a line or two—lines that can be cold and heavy with the press of everything not said. It could be pain at a parent’s stoicism as in these lines from Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays”: “Sundays too my father got up early/and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold.” Or Edna St. Vincent Millay’s bittersweet desire to dwell on lost loves in "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why”: “Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree.” Or a child’s suppressed loneliness from Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Bed in Summer”: “In winter I get up at night/And dress by yellow candlelight.” One brief winter image can infuse an entire poem in a few pen-strokes, bare-branch-black and snowdrift-white.”

2000-2009: The Decade in Poetry by The Editors

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:05:54 GMT

The past ten years have changed poetry in ways that have shocked and delighted even the most forward-thinking readers and writers. Online communities have flourished, dominant paradigms have shifted, and readers have found new solace in traditional forms. Poetry—and poetry communities—will never be the same. We asked poets and critics whose work has had a wide influence over the art form to describe the poetry “event” that most shaped their view of the decade. They focused on events both private and public, and their responses reveal that poetry in the new decade will continue to be a living, breathing, and ever-changing thing.—The Editors

The Robert Burns Zombie Cottage of Hotlanta by Nick Marino

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:50:35 GMT

“To get to the Robert Burns replica cottage in the Ormewood Park neighborhood of Atlanta, you turn right at the Zesto burger hut. You pass a white picket fence draped in kudzu, then turn again when you see the Georgia Department of Public Safety building at the corner of Alloway Place and East Confederate Avenue. Then up a hill you go, through an ordinary residential block lined with modest brick homes, when suddenly and conspicuously it emerges: the landmark cottage where Scotland’s national poet was born in 1759. Or, rather, a painstaking reproduction.”—Nick Marino tracks down the Robert Burns replica cottage in Atlanta, Georgia.

Read the whole article.

The Good, the Bad, and the Good Bad by Abigail Deutsch

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:09:39 GMT

“Yet just as cheese sometimes gets too moldy—to plunge forward with my metaphor in the blithe manner of James McIntyre—so can bad poetry rot beyond possible appreciation. Charles Lee and D.B. Wyndham Lewis discussed this problem in their famed anthology The Stuffed Owl (1930), a collection of bad poetry that has served as a model for many such volumes to follow. They outlined distinctions between ‘good Bad Verse,’ which they sought for their book, and “bad Bad Verse,” which they avoided.”—Abigail Deutsch examines the good, the bad, and the good bad.

Read the entire article.

The Cranberry Cantos by The Editors

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:36:46 GMT

A list of Thanksgiving poems for family and friends.

Read the list.

Learning Lab: Mina Loy: “Lunar Baedeker” by Jessica Burstein

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:54:10 GMT

Mina Loy is not Myrna Loy. While the actress Myrna Loy starred in the “The Thin Man” films, the Modernist poet Mina Loy was busying herself with the avant gardes of Italian Futurism, Dada, and to a lesser extent American Surrealism. The confusion is recurrent. Yes, their names are similar and yes, they were contemporaries, but the mix-up makes an even deeper sense given the two Loys' shared elegance, and the Platonic rightness of imagining the poet ordering and lining up a sequence of martinis while in the company of William Powell.

Read the whole article.

Washington, DC, Poetry Tour by The Editors

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:53:18 GMT

The Washington, DC, Poetry Tour reveals our nation’s capital through the eyes of its great poets, including Archibald MacLeish, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Elizabeth Bishop, among many others. From the hallowed halls of the federal buildings to neighborhood side streets, the tour features poems written in and about DC, as well as photographs by poet Thomas Sayers Ellis.

Narrated by inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander and produced by the Poetry Foundation, the tour showcases archival and contemporary recordings of DC poets, scholars, and musicians, all shedding new light on DC’s historic landmarks.

Poetry lovers in the city can download the audio tours and maps to explore the National Mall and Northwest DC, or take a walking tour beginning at the Library of Congress and ending in Dupont Circle.

Take the tour!

Absolute Necessities by Jeff Gordinier

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:24:08 GMT

“See, I can’t seem to stop myself. The other day I left Baby Grand Books in Warwick, New York, with John Keats. Last spring, somewhere between Phoenix and the Grand Canyon, I stumbled into a boxcar-shaped used-book outpost next to a taco stand and ended up riding northward with Tom Clark and Nikki Giovanni in the backseat of my rental car. In Manhattan I pass through Grand Central Terminal nearly every weekday; there, I have been known to drift into Posman Books and drift out three minutes later, dashing toward track 42 with Marie Ponsot or Leonard Cohen or Robin Robertson or Ada Limón under my arm. There are times when my purchases are random; there are times when they’re linked to some curious mental impulse—even pity.”—Jeff Gordinier explains his compulsion to purchase poetry.

Read the whole article.

Learning Lab: Anne Bradstreet: “To My Dear and Loving Husband” by Emily Warn

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:51:35 GMT

Why was Anne Hutchinson punished for being outspoken about religion and politics, while Bradstreet became a cultural icon? One answer can be found in her poem “To my Dear and Loving Husband.” From our contemporary perspective, it reads like a traditional Elizabethan love sonnet (composed of 12 lines instead of 14). Compared to Bradstreet’s earlier discourses on science, religion, and politics, it is written in a relatively plain style and unabashedly declares her abiding love for her husband.—Emily Warn examines Anne Bradstreet's “To my Dear and Loving Husband.”

Poetry and Project Runway by Stephen Burt

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:13:00 GMT

Many poets, like many designers, love technical challenges; some poets have organized books (Robyn Schiff's baroque Worth, Angie Estes's nimble Chez Nous) around haute couture. No wonder, then, that Project Runway counts poets among its fans.—Stephen Burt finds a connectiton between poetry and Project Runway.

James Schuyler in the Spotlight by Eric Ziegenhagen

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:41:42 GMT

“That feeling—the story happening as it’s being told—times ten, times a hundred, is what first struck me about James Schuyler’s poems: a specific time, place, room, garden, season, all happening in the present with the kind of balance, detail, and occasion more typical of a painting than a diary. That’s how Schuyler’s poems work for me, what gives them their own charge”—Eric Ziegenhagen reflects on James Schuyler.

Read article.

Learning Lab: Philip Larkin: “An Arundel Tomb” by Jeremy Axelrod

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:55:19 GMT

The last line of “An Arundel Tomb” is among the most quoted in all of Larkin: “What will survive of us is love.” Its popularity can seem ironic. Larkin is mainly known for the dry eloquence of his gloom, and for the sly precision of his phrasing. A line so keen on love looks odd, even mawkish, coming from Larkin, for whom starry-eyed imagery, as he wrote in “Sad Steps,” was “High and preposterous and separate.” Yet “An Arundel Tomb” is not a sentimental poem; it is about what sentimentality looks like the morning after. — Jeremy Axelrod explores Philip Larkin's “An Arundel Tomb.”

Read article.

The Poetry of Autumn by Annie Finch

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:19:38 GMT

“The poetry of earth is never dead,” wrote John Keats, and yet that quintessential poet of autumn, his own life fading as the colors of his glory blazed and flew, was exquisitely alive to the season’s dying. His sleeping Autumn, cheeks flushed and hair awry, personifies the sensual richness of the early part of the season as iconically as the yellow leaves of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 embody the forlorn grandeur of the late. And yet both of these poems contain the tinge of their opposites, more exquisite for being so subtle: the unspoken sexual passion in the sonnet, and the hint of the ominous in the ode (the wailing of the bugs, the swallows gathering) are so delicate they are barely there.

Read article.

You've Come a Long Way, Baby by Eileen Myles, CA Conrad

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:59:50 GMT

“CA Conrad came over to my apartment in Manhattan’s East Village one afternoon in April. I’d admired his poems for years, having met him on another afternoon in New York when he sought me out of enthusiasm for my work. Conrad always seeks out his favorite writers. It seemed a very traditional and direct method of establishing lineage.”—Eileen Myles interviews CA Conrad

Ten Poems I Love to Teach by Eric Selinger

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:47:20 GMT

“Some poems you love, and some you love to teach. What’s the difference? The teachable ones do half the work for you: the questions they raise and the pleasures they offer show that close reading is not, despite its chilly reputation, academia’s way of 'beating it [the poem] with a hose / to find out what it really means' (Billy Collins, 'Introduction to Poetry'). Quite the contrary: close reading is courtship, a passionate, delicate way to find out what makes this particular poem worth a second date (that is, writing a paper about) or maybe worth spending the rest of your life with (that is, memorizing).”—Eric Selinger lists the poems he loves to teach.

Twice-Told Tales by Tess Taylor

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:32:27 GMT

Two recent poets build such new rooms as they create large-scale works around two canonic 19th-century tales. In A Monster’s Notes, a sprawling, fragmented 500-page tome, poet Laurie Sheck reimagines Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, while Dan Beachy-Quick’s A Whaler’s Dictionary expands and enlarges Moby-Dick.

—Tess Taylor on Laurie Sheck and Dan Beachy-Quick.