Sherry Chandler

The Henry K. Leadingham Prose & Poetry Reading & Reception will be held in Frankfort (Kentucky) on Saturday, April 23rd at 8:00 PM. Leatha Kendrick and Georgia Stamper will read from their works at the Kentucky History Center, then visit with attendees at a wine and cheese reception at the Kentucky Coffeetree Café just across down the street. For further information contact faf@dcr.net 502-875-4ART (4278) www.frankfortarts.com

Let me tell you that these are two of the most delightful women writing in Central Kentucky today, wonderful writers, wonderful readers. And I’m not just saying this because Georgia and I went to high school together. What better way to celebrate the bard’s birthday??

There’s actually probably a more interesting conversation – about form – going on over at Poesy Galore:

Repetition–also mentioned on Charles’s post, and posited as being “masculine”–also seems human condition-related to me (eternal recurrence and so on). And biological, astronomical, etc. Getting your period each month is nature’s lousiest villanelle–and, woe is I, feminine.

A, shall I say passionate?, Foetry conversation going on over at Silliman’s blog. I clipped this from a comment from Anonymous (several of those — are they all the same man [women don't usually talk pissing contests] or just cousins?):

Poetry contest entrants are paying money for the opportunity to be (purportedly) judged objectively, and it is this exchange of dollars that makes the poetry contest racket an especiallly heinous crime. Foetry was correct to label this as fraud punishable by law.

It’s too bad Foetry had to be run by a vengeful, emotional twit who delights in rumor mongering. Most of the site was devoted to dishing dirt — not solving the problem. I wonder how this might have turned out had the oppostion approached the problem with vehemence AND some modicum of grace. Foetry should have supplied the careful objectivity and judiciousness that’s missing from the poetry world, not just urinate from the opposite direction.

Perhaps most damaging: The whole episode, broadcast on NPR and written up in the Times, confirms the public’s worst suspicion about poets: They’re childish, back-biting academics who care only about themselves and their own petty agendas. Foetry didn’t clean up poetry; it just caked on a new color of dirt.

Thanks to that Exceptional Writer Jeff Hess for pointing out that tales of Foetry’s demise are premature. Says newly outed Alan Cordle:

It’s the biased and poorly researched article in the New York Times declaring a surrender. Reminds me of the Wicked Witch of the West flying through the sky, “Surrender Foetry.” You can thank Foets, Janet Holmes who has threatened me with legal action, and Jorie Graham, who said that I lied. Well, Foets, the site’s back up and I stand behind the information here.

The opposition is at whoisfoetry? and at Humanophone.

I stand sort of like Switzerland in this controversy – aggressively neutral. And I really didn’t want to express an opinion but—here I go with my Rodney King moment.

A famous poet once told me that contests are the way to get a poetry collection published, advice I will probably ignore. Although my first chapbook was published because I entered a contest I did not win, and I can understand why book publishers run contests – the market for poetry books is not huge – I tend to agree with those who argue that contests turn publishing into a lottery. Do I have an alternative? Other than passing a law that says each citizen must buy one poetry book a year, no.

I know on a very small scale that judging contests can present you with difficult choices – the community of poets is small and blinding is not always enough to keep you from recognizing the work of colleagues. And you can recognize that that work is far and away the best of the entries. Fortunately for me, I’ve nearly always judged as part of a team, so I had a built-in check of my perceptions (and the contests I’ve judged have been small and insignificant to all but the participants).

On the other hand, I don’t see the harm in shedding a little daylight on the process. Foetry is aggressive and offensive in approach – a little too “scorched earth” as The Reading Experience puts it – but I think I’m correct in stating that at least one publisher, Sarabande, decided to except former students of judges from their contests as a result of Foetry’s actions. That doesn’t really seem like a bad thing to me.

Steven R. Cope is a man of many parts. As I wrote about a year ago, in a review of Clover’s Log (Wind, 2004) that I somehow never managed to place:

Steven R. Cope is a latter day troubadour. For over thirty years, he has been singing the matter of Kentucky, sometimes in bars accompanied by a guitar, sometimes in gatherings of poets at coffee shops and bookstores. The troubadours invented Romance. It was they who defined chivalry and gave us the legends of King Arthur. Cope is just as romantic but his knight errant is a slippery mountain creature named Clover.

He’s also very busy – since 2002, he’s published a novel, two poetry collections, a book of fables, and a children’s book.

Steve has graciously consented to participate in my catblogging feature with the poem below, from Clover’s Log. (The photo is of William, a blind tabby who graced our household briefly.) Of Tabby, Steve says:

Tabby would be very pleased. She was a beautiful creature, born blind, that lived with me for 15 years–the most innocent thing I’ve ever known. (I wrote most of Sassafras and much of my poetry w/ Tabby on my lap.) As the poem suggests, I expect one day to see her again (and her to see me).

To Linda C., Safely in Orlando
—Sept. 7, 2001—

Tabby is dead.
First the gold eyes,

the one tooth,
then the ears, even,

blind. In the end
she had the hardest time

knowing which way to go,
where her round water was,

her litter was,
I was.

She finally stayed
in my chair,

waiting for my hand,
eyes wide out at nothing,

and when I returned
she was there,

no, not there, —
and not fifty miles away

beneath a rock with the others,
my old black tee-shirt

wearing her,
where I shall come for them

all together,
hair lit up like foxfire

and singing, oh—
like a prodigy.

I learn from the Kentucky Literary Newsletter & Calendar that the winners of the Kentucky Literary Awards for 2004 are: .

Fiction — The Coal Tattoo by Silas House
Poetry — The Total Light Process by James Baker Hall
Nonfiction — A Taste of the Sweet Apple by Joanna Holt-Watson

The awards were presented at Western Kentucky University & The Southern Kentucky Bookfest, April 15th