PR dot com
Through the Thicket Press: the Beginning of a New Poetry Era
November 22, 2008

Through the Thicket Press was just a writer's dream for the past ten years. One day this writer decided to make it a reality, and she did so by simply creating an online press and publishing her first e-book of poetry, Entanglement. Through the Thicket Press is a up and coming small online press, wishing to publish only the most radical and fresh writing of our times.

Atlanta, GA, November 22, 2008 --(PR.com)-- In a world full of options, when it comes to poetry publishing, one has to be careful. There are so many groups that are not distinctive when it comes to who they will publish, and it is because of this that Through the Thicket Press was started.

The Washington Post
Poet's Choice
By Mary Karr, November 23, 2008; Page BW12

I'm a crank whose natural state is ingratitude, so I need to ingest some poetry to gear up for Thanksgiving. Polish poet Adam Zagajewski's "Try to Praise the Mutilated World" is as helpful as it is moving because it acknowledges some verifiable causes of grumpiness:

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of rose wine.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.

NPR
The Art of Translation
by Rick Kleffel, November 22, 2008

All Things Considered, November 22, 2008 · Living in America, it's easy to forget that most of the world does not speak English; and that much of the world's literature is not written in English. In order for us to read the best of what the rest of the world writes — and in order for the rest of the world to experience our best literature — skilled writers must work in the art of translation.

But it's not as straightforward as you might think. A good translation needs to be true to the original and able to stand on its own for a new audience.

Today's Zaman
Konya sends Mesnevi to world leaders
November 22, 2008

As part of its efforts to promote its city internationally, the Konya Metropolitan Municipality has sent copies of Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi's famous Sufi work, the Mesnevi, to celebrities around the world.

The Mesnevi is one of the best-known and most influential works of Sufism. Comprising more than 50,000 lines of poetry, it follows 424 stories that illustrate man's search for God.

In a statement to the Anatolia news agency, Konya Mayor Tahir Akyürek said his municipality sent out copies of the Mesnevi to increase tourism to cultural sites in Konya, where Mevlana died.

Guardian co UK
The spider in the glass
By Caitriona O'Reilly, November 22 2008

Caitriona O'Reilly finds revelation and concealment in an enjoyable collection/

Colette Bryce's "Self-Portrait in a Wing Mirror", which won the Cardiff international poetry competition in 2007, is the kind of patient, carefully written, perfectly sized poem much beloved of poetry competition committees. Bryce's phrasing is precise, her word-play sensuous, smart and snappy. In fact, it ticks all the boxes for what a contemporary poem should be:

Times Online
Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, edited by Thomas Trevisano and Saskia Hamilton
By Michael Schmidt, November 21, 2008

Elizabeth Bishop was my favourite poet. In 1971 I dedicated a book to her. She told Robert Lowell, “He writes nice letters - seems very young.” When Lowell was at All Souls, Oxford, I worked for six weeks as his amanuensis, typing some of the sonnets in Notebook, taking him for a picnic in Port Meadow, showing him one of Arnold's “two Hinkseys”, and bending his ear continually about Miss Bishop.

He liked talking about her. He told me how once when they were walking in New York a stranger rushed up and exclaimed, “Why, you're Elizabeth Bishop!” and didn't trouble to recognise him - despite his face having appeared on the cover of Time magazine. He was pleased to have been overlooked for a person he loved so deeply and who had not yet received her due.

STL Today dot com
Missouri Poets: Joe Benevento
By Walter Bargen, November 21, 2008

In this regular feature, Missouri poet laureate Walter Bargen highlights the work of writers from the state.

Joe Benevento lives in Kirksville and has taught for 25 years in the English Department at Truman State University. At 53, he has published more than 200 poems in magazines, three collections of poetry ("Holding On," "Willing to Believe" and "My Puerto Rican Past") and two novels ("Plumbing in Harlem" and "The Odd Squad"). He is co-editor and poetry editor of the Green Hills Literary Lantern.

The Roslyn News
Krapf Publishes 'Bloodroot' Collection
By Joe Scotchie, November 21, 2008

New Volume From Hoosier State Poet Laureate

Now living in retirement in his native Indiana, former Roslyn resident Norbert Krapf continues to stay busy. Currently poet laureate of Indiana, Krapf has now published Bloodroot, a volume that showcases poetry from Krapf's work over the past 35 years.

According to its publisher, poems in Bloodroot pay homage to Krapf's experiences living in southern Indiana, and the intersection of life with his German ancestry.

MPN Now dot com
Lines of the times
By L. David Wheeler, November 20, 2008

Rochester, N.Y. — As Brian Guthrie recalls, he had the shortest of attention spans as a child — and as such, didn’t much like reading. That is, until his mother bought him a copy of “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” a collection of poems and drawings by the humorist-folksinger-cartoonist-poet Shel Silverstein.

He made up for lost time, reading voraciously both through high school and, even more intensely, in his years working factory jobs at Nalge-Nunc International in Perinton and Webster Plastics. And that’s when he picked up the pen himself.

The Christian Science Monitor
Poetry review: “Fire to Fire” by Mark Doty
By Elizabeth Lund, November 20, 2008

[Congratulations to Mark Doty for winning the 2008 National Book Award for his poetry collection “Fire to Fire.” This review of “Fire to Fire” by Elizabeth Lund originally ran in the Monitor on April 15, 2008.]

Mark Doty holds a magnifying glass to his subjects. He uses language as a way to highlight a moment, elevate it, and unearth hidden depth and meaning.

Fire to Fire, his new and selected poems, illustrates how he has done this over the past 20 years.

Striking imagery and a powerful imagination are two of his best tools, as evident in his earliest poems. When Doty writes about an Easter contest in “Ararat,” for example (from “Turtle, Swan,” 1987), he doesn’t recall an egg, but an oval full of glorious possibilities.

Times Online
Then and Now
By T. S. Eliot. His essay on Andrew Marvell was published in the TLS of March 31, 1921.
To accompany Edward Holberton's piece in this week's TLS about newly discovered evidence about Andrew Marvell, we look back to T. S. Eliot's Leading Article on the poet, published 300 years after the latter's birth.

The tercentenary of the former member for Hull deserves not only the celebration proposed by that favoured borough, but a little serious reflection upon his writing. That is an act of piety, which is very different from the resurrection of a deceased reputation. Marvell has stood high for some years; his best poems are not very many, and not only must be well known, from the Golden Treasury and the Oxford Book of English Verse, but must also have been enjoyed by numerous readers. His grave needs neither rose nor rue nor laurel; there is no imaginary justice to be done; we may think about him, if there be need for thinking, for our own benefit, not his.

RR Star dot com
Rockford College professor puts feelings about Beirut into poems
By Elizabeth Davies, November 19, 2008

People staff writer Elizabeth Davies interviewed Susan Azar Porterfield about her life as a poet. Davies wrote the following story from Porterfield’s point of view.

ROCKFORD — It was from a seat at my desk, overlooking the Mediterranean, that I knew there was a book of poems in my future.

I am a poet at heart, after all, and my experience in Lebanon had left me simply overflowing with words. I arrived in Lebanon — my father’s homeland — in 2003 as a Fulbright scholar, teaching at the country’s University of Balamand.

The Oregonian
Beat poets: 40 years of letters
By Jeff Baker, November 19, 2008

Gary Snyder's first letter to Allen Ginsberg, dated Feb. 24, 1956, starts with some poetry and ends with a request for money. Ginsberg responds with $10 and a promise to send more.

The two poets already were friends, and the exchange of letters was the first in a 40-year correspondence that didn't end until two years before Ginsberg's death in 1997. They were opposites who attracted, kindred spirits who bonded over poetry and remained loyal and supportive as they became famous and the world exploded around them.

Times Online
Pasolini's Roman poetry
The great filmmaker was also a writer with a distinctive voice –Rome's
By Ian Thomson, Novemer 19, 2008

“It might make one in love with death”, declared Shelley, “to be buried in so sweet a place.” Keats, on his deathbed, hearing that daisies and anemones grew wild on the graves there, rejoiced, saying that he “already felt the flowers growing over him”. They were referring to the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, which could be a churchyard in the English counties were it not for the cypresses and cicadas. It is appropriate that Shelley, with his Romantic proto-socialism, should lie here a few tombs from Antonio Gramsci, the grand theoretician of Italian Marxism and co-founder, in 1921, of the Partito Comunista Italiano – the now defunct PCI. Later, this drowsy place became the setting for one of the most audacious poems written in Italy since the Second World War: “The Ashes of Gramsci”, by the writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini.

New Mexico Daily Lobo
Poets dig for truth in 'Full Frontal'
By Sara Cobble, November 19, 2008

An ensemble of UNM students is baring it all onstage.

Baring their souls, that is.

"Full Frontal Poetry," showing at Theatre X, features the confessional works of 13 actor-writers.

The show, directed by Paul Ford, explores the themes of sin, confession, journey and the loss of innocence through poetry, fable, art and nursery rhyme.

The Weekender
Novel Approach: Angelou's Latest Inspires
By Kacy Muir, November 18, 2008

Many readers would agree that “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” is one of Maya Angelou’s most popular nonfiction works. However, her newest title, “Letter To My Daughter,” is soon to gain similar recognition for its message to believe.

The memoir, which took Angelou some time to write, or, as she explains, “getting itself together,” was written while she was well into her 70s. The content of the book is about Angelou’s upbringing and life struggles with an infusion of poetry that expounds upon the theme of guidance.

The St. Louis American
Artists Respond To K. Curtis Lyle Poem About 9/11 Tragedy
By Chris King, November 18, 2008

As historical events go, the terrorist attacks on 9/11 were about as visual as you get. How about planes crashing into the World Trade Towers, which catch on fire, causing desperate people in business suits to jump out of their windows, with their ties flapping in the wind for 80 stories, before both massive towers pancake to the ground?

Horrible and terrifying? Yes. Visual? Also, yes.

Daily Vidette
RSO Spotlight This Week: Creative I.N.K
By Chelsea Peck, November 18, 2008

The Registered Student Organization Creative Illustration of Natural Knowledge gives minority and underrepresented students a chance to get their voices heard through writing.

Creative I.N.K. is a student-run publication started by Vernetta Cail, senior sociology major and president of the RSO. Cail read and contributed to the online student publication Euphemism, but did not see many underrepresented students involved in it.

"I started [Creative I.N.K.] because I saw that a lot of people submitting poetry to Euphemism were not minorities. I thought they [minorities] would be more comfortable to submit writing to a publication for minorities by minorities," Cail said.

The Evening Sun
A good time to remember Dylan Thomas
By Michael Hoover and Katy Giebenhain, November 18, 2008

During Michael Hoover's convalescing, area poets will be featured each week. This week's poet/columnist is Katy Giebenhain who lives in Gettysburg.

What else does this part of autumn bring besides raking our leaf-choked lawns, mid-term exams and finally packing away shorts and sandals? The anniversaries of both the birth and death of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, and the annual Dylan Thomas Festival, which coincides with these dates. Fresh on the heels of this year's Oct. 23 to Nov. 10 festival, it's an appropriate time to remember a man who has greatly influenced writers around the world including innumerable Americans.

For a few days I attended festival events in Swansea, the city where Thomas was born. It was interesting to hear news coverage of Pennsylvania in the last days of the presidential campaign. The election was followed closely in Wales.

The Amplifier Online
Five Kentucky Poets Laureate: An Anthology
By Ed Lawrence, Kentucky Arts Council, November 17, 2008

The Kentucky Arts Council has published a new anthology of more than 40 poems and essays by a distinguished club of Kentucky contemporary literati; the commonwealth's poets laureate. "Five Kentucky Poets Laureate: An Anthology," includes the writings of Richard Taylor (Kentucky Poet Laureate 1999-2000), James Baker Hall (2001-2002), Joe Survant (2003-2004), Sena Jeter Naslund (2005-2006), and Jane Gentry (2007-2008). The anthology has been edited by Jane Gentry and Frederick Smock with a cover illustration by photographer Geoff Carr.

"We're very grateful for the support we received from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Masterpieces grant to produce this book," says Lori Meadows, executive director of the Kentucky Arts Council. "It gives us an opportunity to showcase the literary arts of Kentucky and to acquaint students with acclaimed Kentucky writers."