April 2009

Archive for April, 2009

Meet Walter Bargen – The BCPaW National Poetry Month Featured Poet for April 30th, 2009

Posted in April, books, creative writing, emerging poets, internet poetry, internet poets, literature, live poetry, lyric poem, lyric poetry, Missouri, missouri poet, Missouri Poet Laureate, missouri poetry, missouri writers, narrative poem, narrative poetry, National Poetry Month, National Poetry Month 2009, NPM, performance, poem a day, poet, poet a day, poet laureate, poetry, poetry performance, poetry reading, poets, southwest missouri, state poet laureate, Uncategorized, Walter Bargen, writers, writing on April 30, 2009|

Walter Bargen is the Poet Laureate of Missouri, the first person to hold that post since its creation by Governor Matt Blunt in January, 2008. He has published numerous books of poems: Fields of Thenar, Mysteries in the Public Domain, Yet Other Waters, The Vertical River, Rising Water: Reflections on the Year of the Great Flood, At The Dead Center Of Day, Water Breathing Air, Harmonic Balance, Feast: Prose Poem Sequences, Remedies for Vertigo, and Theban Traffic. His poetry and fiction have appeared in over one hundred magazines, including American Literary Review, American Letters & Commentary, Beloit Poetry Journal, Denver Quarterly, Georgia Review, International Quarterly, Missouri Review, New Letters, New Novel Review, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, River Styx, Seneca Review, Sycamore Review, and Witness. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for theArts poetry fellowship (1991); winner of the Quarter After Eight Prose Prize (1996), the Hanks Prize (1996), and the Chester H. Jones Foundation poetry prize (1997).

Links:

Walter Bargen’s Web Page

Beirut Reading Audio Clip (MP3 audio file)

Civilized Sacrifice Reading Audio Clip (MP3 audio file)

Icebound Reading Audio Clip (MP3 audio file)

“Map to the Party” Audio Clip (MP3 audio file)

New Letters on the Air: Missouri Poet Laureate Walter Bargen – KCUR radio interview with Walter Bargen

Poetry gets wings: Missouri’s first-ever poet laureate will spread the word – MizzouWire interview with video.

An Interview with Walter Bargen, First Poet Laureate of Missouri – from BkMk Press

Arts on Monday: A talk with Missouri’s Poet Laureate, Ashland native Walter Bargen – Thinking Out Loud interview in MP3 audio format

Words of Joyful Power – Walter Bargen interviewed by Annie Nelson. Includes a number of MP3 audio clips

Missouri’s first poet laureate moves poetry toward the center of society – St. Louis Beacon article by Elia Powers

Poems On-Line:

Visual Appeal

In These Times

Results and Prospects

Paperwork

To Put By

Around the Flat World

Circus of Stares

CONJUGATING ANATOMIES

Dissolving

Stupid Dead

DOMINO COFFEE SHOP

Conversation

Sparrows

Rising Flocks

Chinese Boxes

ZOONOTIC

Video:

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Meet Joyce Sutphen – The BCPaW National Poetry Month Featured Poet for April 29th, 2009

Posted in April, books, creative writing, emerging poets, internet poetry, internet poets, Joyce Sutphen, literature, lyric poem, lyric poetry, Mid-West, Midwest, Midwest poetry, Minnesota, Minnesota poetry, Minnesota poets, Missouri, missouri poet, missouri poetry, missouri writers, narrative poem, narrative poetry, National Poetry Month, National Poetry Month 2009, NPM, poem a day, poet, poet a day, poetry, poets, southwest missouri, Uncategorized, women poets, writers, writing on April 29, 2009|

Joyce Sutphen lives in Chaska, Minnesota and teaches at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. She is the author of Naming the Stars (2003), Straight Out of View (Beacon Press, 1995), winner of the 1994 Barnard New Women Poets Prize, and Coming Back to the Body (Holy Cow! Press, 2000). Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, Water~Stone, Hayden’s Ferry, Shenandoah, Luna, and others.

Reviews:

Sutphen’s Coming Back to the Body is a powerful yet gentle recollection of the author’s past, beginning with life on the farm and meandering its way to her present state. As her tone and emphasis changes from page to page, you begin to develop a sense of the spectrum of her spiritual being. She takes you from childhood naivety, casually to heart wrenching loss and frustrating regret. What I found to be the most powerful in her writing was that at certain points in the book, one poem stands out as a crossroads for several previous threads that explodes with the depths of meaning one finds in Shakespeare. When you come across these poems, you will be very well aware of the author’s genius. A beautiful and touching read.

— , Book Reviewer, Amazon.com

Sutphen’s poetry can hit you like a bright sunset after a day of gloomy rain. Although she claims in one poem to be burning the woods of her childhood tree by tree, she proceeds to show the subtle pleasures of growing up on a midwestern farm and briefly resurrect friends who have since passed out of her life. Elsewhere, she takes such luminaries as Plath, Yeats, Eliot, and Socrates as subjects without ever losing the controlled energy and observant eye that make her more personal poems so powerful. Her words and images fly, but not out of view. It is possible to appreciate the grace and sweep of every poem without any sacrifice of meaning; each poem raises its wings and leaves us grateful for such poetic flight.

— Elizabeth Gunderson, Booklist

Sutphen’s first collection, awarded the 1994 Barnard New Women Poets Prize, reveals a poet of place whose assured, straightforward style seems sprung from the Minnesota farmlands where she was raised: melodious language disarmingly combined with a wry practicality towards the business of poetry. Her subject matter, however, extends beyond the homegrown, moving from the sudden disaster of “Tornado Warning” to sweeping landscapes of the American West to London, where in gentler tones she confronts Sylvia Plath through the medium of poetry. Sutphen’s voice is refreshing in that she examines the everyday without being overtly confessional, often capturing emotion with swift (sometimes too swift) imagistic strokes. Throughout she attends closely to the internal realities of quite ordinary existence: “It bothered my sense of symmetry to notice how a perfectly/ unplanned life could take on such an intricate pattern.”

— Publisher’s Weekly

Links:

Joyce Sutphen’s Professorial Profile – Associate Professor of English, Gustavus Adolphus College

Good Thunder Reading Series – from the Minnesota State University Department of English. These are MP3 audio files. You can listen to an interview with Joyce Sutphen here. Hear a talk presented by Joyce Sutphen here.

Straight Out of View – Joyce Sutphen’s first book reviewed by Chris Lott

Poems On-Line:

Crossroads

A Kind of Villanelle

All Reason and No Rhyme

At the Moment

Casino

Evening Angelus

Ever After

In Black

Key of Dust

Living in the Body

Naming the Stars

Older, Younger, Both

Sometimes Never

The Exorcism

The Farm

From the 16th Floor

Winter’s Night

Some Glad Morning

Soundings

Getting the Machine

Semi-Literate

Girl on a Tractor

In the Beginning

The Day

Things You Didn’t Put On Your Resumé

Guys Like That

Secret Agent Man

The Book of Hours

The Wordsworth Effect

The Shop

My Brother’s Hat

After, Always After

Seeing, Up Close Again

Death, Inc.

As Time Always Does

Homesteading

The Peaches

High Heels

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Meet Stephen Dobyns – The BCPaW National Poetry Month Featured Poet for April 28th, 2009

Posted in April, books, contemporary poetry, contemporary poets, creative writing, death poem, death poetry, internet poetry, internet poets, literature, live poetry, lyric poem, lyric poetry, Mid-West, Midwest, Midwest poetry, Missouri, missouri poet, missouri poetry, missouri writers, narrative poem, narrative poetry, National Poetry Month, National Poetry Month 2009, NPM, poem a day, poet, poet a day, poetry, poetry of death, poetry performance, poetry reading, poets, southwest missouri, stephen dobyns, Uncategorized, writers, writing on April 28, 2009|

Stephen Dobyns has published ten books of poetry and twenty novels. His books of poetry include Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides (Penguin, 1999); Common Carnage (1996); Velocities: New and Selected Poems, 1966-1992 (1994); Cemetery Nights (1987), which won a Melville Cane Award; Black Dog, Red Dog (1984), which was a winner in the National Poetry Series; Heat Death (1980); and Concurring Beasts (1972), which was the 1972 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets. His most recent novels are Boy in the Water (Holt/Metropolitan, 1999), The Church of Dead Girls (1997), Saratoga Fleshpot (1995), The Wrestler’s Cruel Study (1993), and Saratoga Haunting (1993). His novels have been translated into more than ten languages. Dobyns is also the author of a collection of short stories, Eating Naked (2000) and a book of essays, Best Words, Best Order (1996). Among his many honors and awards are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, including the University of Iowa and Boston University. Stephen Dobyns lives in Boston with his wife and three children.

Links:

Cortland Review Interview with Stephen Dobyns – text with a selection of audio clips

Sidelights – Informative Biography Research Center article on Stephen Dobyns

The Afterlife: Letter to Stephen Dobyns II – Hayden Carruth’s poem written TO Stephen Dobyns, from American Poetry Review

The Muse and the Contemporary Classic – Scholarly article on the work of Stephen Dobyns by Dana Wilde, from The Antigonish.

An Interview with Stephen Dobyns – From Ploughshares, interviewed by Laure-Anne Bosselaar

Stephen Dobyns Discusses The Church of Dead Girls – Interviewed by Joseph Mallozzi

Alsop Review Interview with Stephen Dobyns

Poems On-Line:

Yellow Beak

Loud Music

The Dark and Turbulent Sea

How to Like It

Favorite Iraqi Soldier

In A Row

It’s Like This

Spite

[Over a cup of coffee]

Waking

Where We Are (after Bede)

Santiago: Five Men in the Street: Number One

Sloth

The Body’s Curse

Spiritual Chickens

Bravado

Freight Cars

No Map

Cezanne’s Outrageousness

Long Story

Santiago: Forestal Park

Why Fool Around?

Thus He Endured

Thelonious Monk

The Invitations Overhead

The Casualties of April

When a Friend

Being Happy

Funeral

Folk Tales

The Music One Looks Back On

Cezanne and the Love of Color

Confession

Video:

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Meet Billy Collins – The BCPaW National Poetry Month Featured Poet for April 27th, 2009

Posted in animatyed poetry, April, Billy Collins, books, contemporary poetry, contemporary poets, creative writing, DC poetry, DC Poets, internet poetry, internet poets, literature, live poetry, lyric poem, lyric poetry, Mid-West, Midwest, missouri poet, missouri poetry, narrative poetry, National Poetry Month, National Poetry Month 2009, New York, New York Poetry, New York Poets, NPM, poem a day, poet, poet a day, poet laureate, poetry, poetry performance, poetry reading, poets, southwest missouri, Uncategorized, Washington DC, writers, writing on April 27, 2009|

William “Billy” Collins served two terms as the Poet Laureate of the United States, from 2001 to 2003. In his home state, Collins has been recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library (1992) and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004. He was recently appointed Claire Berman Artist in Residence at The Roxbury Latin School, in West Roxbury, MA. He is a distinguished professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York. His books of poetry include Sailing Alone Around the Room (Random House, 2001); Picnic, Lightning (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998); The Art of Drowning (1995), which was a Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize finalist; Questions About Angels (1991), a National Poetry Series selection by Edward Hirsch; The Apple That Astonished Paris (1988); Video Poems (1980); and Pokerface (1977). In 2005 Collins was the first annual recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry, bestowed by the Poetry Foundation (Poetry Magazine). He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 1993, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Collins served as judge for the 2005 Brittingham Prize in Poetry.

Links:

Audio recording of Billy Collins reading at the 2003 Key West Literary Seminar

Poetry Matters: Q&A With Professor Billy Collins – Billy Collins interviewed by Nabil Rahman

11 animated poems read aloud by Billy Collins – This is a MUST SEE! The animated shorts that started the poetry video revolution!

Watch Billy Collins recite his work at Open-Door Poetry

33 poems read aloud by Billy Collins, no charge (Creative Commons)

A Brisk Walk: An interview with Billy Collins – From Guernica Magazine

Billy Collins, Bringing Poetry to the Public – Interview by Dave Weich

Billy Collins on National Poetry Month – NPR’s Renee Montagne speaks with Billy Collins on the occasion of National Poetry Month. Collins reads two poems — one war-related, one not — and explains how poetry of any kind is useful when coping with difficult situations like the war in Iraq.

Poems On-Line:

Aristotle

Canada

Creatures

Design

Forgetfulness

Her

Introduction to Poetry

Irish Poetry

Litany

Madmen

Man in Space

Morning

No Time

Nostalgia

Print

Questions About Angels

Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles

Silence

Snow Day

Study in Orange and White

The Breather

The Chairs That No One Sits In

The Death of Allegory

The Parade

The Wires of the Night

Today

Workshop

Writing in the Afterlife

Fishing on the Susquehanna in July

Forgetfulness

Introduction to Poetry

Litany

Some Days

The First Night

The Golden Years

Workshop

Video:

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Meet Albert Goldbarth – The BCPaW National Poetry Month Featured Poet for April 26th, 2009

Posted in albert goldbarth. kewish poets, April, books, creative writing, internet poetry, internet poets, kitsch, literature, live poetry, lyric poem, lyric poetry, Missouri, missouri poet, missouri poetry, missouri writers, narrative poem, narrative poetry, National Poetry Month, National Poetry Month 2009, NPM, poetry reading, poets, southwest missouri, Uncategorized on April 26, 2009|

Albert Goldbarth is an American poet known for his prolific production, his gregarious tone, his eclectic interests and his distinctive ‘talky’ style. He has been a Guggenheim fellow and won the National Book Critics Circle award in 1991 and 2001, the only poet to receive the honor two times. He also won the Mark Twain Award for Humorous Poetry, awarded by the Poetry Foundation, in 2008. He has published more than twenty-five collections of poetry, including The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems 1972-2007 (Graywolf Press, 2007); Saving Lives (2001) and Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology (1991), both of which won the National Book Critics Circle award for poetry (Goldbarth is the only poet to have received the award twice); Popular Culture (1990), which received the Ohio State University Press / The Journal Award; and Jan. 31 (1974), which was nominated in 1975 for the National Book Award. He is Adele Davis Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Wichita State University, where he has taught since 1987. He lives in Wichita, Kansas.