Sherry Chandler

Links

First the heartbreaking: Dave Bonta on white-nose syndrome that is killing off our bats.

then the serious: David Ford’s interview of Helen Losse.

then the amazingly and amusingly techno: Quineau sonnets (via Matthew Lafferty)

And last, the just silly: Emergency Yodel Button (via Troy Teegarden)

Today, by the way, is the anniversary of the Gore vs. Bush election in 2000, the celebration of which puts us all in dire need of an emergency yodel button.

The Gitmo poets

Read Yemeni poets behind Gitmo’s bars.

Then read I Am an Enemy Combatant.

Wise statement of the day from Dave Bonta:

We truly are a nation of chickenshits.

Which has been my theme for some time now, since, say, about September 11, 2003. Cowards and bullies.

See also Federal complaint: Gitmo was “Animal House.” Oh, and there are photos

And then there’s this:

More items

Via Negative posting Honduran poetry here.

The Reluctant Poet Laureate

The Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature presents an opportunity to focus on the fine literature the state of Kentucky has produced, bringing it to the nation’s attention. Sarabande will publish one book annually of short stories, poetry, creative nonfiction, a novella(s), or short novel. (Must be postmarked in July.)

Call for Submissions to Motes Books Motif 2 with the theme of “Chance.” Deadline September 1.

First Annual Ruth Redel Poetry Prize

Items

A big shout-out to my Scrabble-playing buddy Ruth Bavetta, whose visual poem “The End and the Aim,” made the top fifteen most view poems on Rattle.com

Why Do Poets Say “O”? Dave Bonta wants to know.

There’s some hate speech going on in Chicago poetry circles. Turf wars are not uncommon in poetry circles, but I’d say you’re losing if you have to stoop to calling your opponent fat. “They don’t really like you better than me, they just feel sorry for you.” Convincing argument, huh?

Via Poetry Hut Blog and then via Modern Americans, check out American Poetry in the Age of Whitman and Dickinson

Via Silliman’s Blog, Billy Collins thinks people don’t read poetry because we have no good poets. My question, is the ability to make Patrick Moynihan cry the mark of a good poet?

My friend Nancy Fletcher Cassell pointed me to Karla M. Huston’s Burying the Red Shoes: Conversations with Four Poets at Margie. The four poets are Denise Duhamel, Naomi Shihab Nye, Shara McCallum, and Stellasue Lee.

Annie Finch, who is blogging at Harriet, on Why I Am a Woman Poet

Some recommended reading

I have some off-line reading to do today, so I’ll recommend some links for your online pleasure and enlightenment.

Poem of the week at The Guardian’s Books Blog is Wilfred Owen’s “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young.” I am an Owens fan so I like this one:

The story of how Abraham, in obedience to a direct command from God, almost sacrificed his only son, Isaac, is one of the most perfectly written short narratives in the Old Testament. This is the story that Wilfred Owen retells and revises in this week’s poem, The Parable of the Old Man and the Young.

Owen, you’ll notice, keeps close to the language of the King James Authorised Version. He also restrains himself rhythmically, conforming to the trudge of iambic pentameter. We like our war poetry, whether by Homer or Owen, to convey authenticity and guarantee its integrity by raw images and rough-hewn reportage. Owen can give us raw and rough-hewn, but in this poem he stands back from his subject matter: he is here to preach. And his matter is serious and specific enough to justify that technique.

It’s not until the imagery of “fire and iron” (Abraham’s implements were simply fire, wood and a knife) that we see the parable to be constructed. Owen’s modernising tactics become increasingly clear. The Old Testament Isaac was simply “bound” to the pyre, but here we have “straps and belts”, and then, unmistakably, “parapets and trenches”.

. . .

Owen’s poem chimes for me with Barack Obama’s recent speech in Cairo, in which the command of conscience is to kill the ram of violent extremism. Obama’s fundamental subject, too, I think, is “the pity of War.”

On the subject of health care reform, I recommend this post by Avedon Carol:

Let me put it another way: Bearing in mind that in the time I’ve lived here the value of the dollar to the pound has ranged between about $1.55=�1.00 to $2.00=�1.00, �30K a year is a pretty comfortable salary here. One of the things that makes it so comfortable is that you already have, regardless of who you work for or if you even have a regular job, a completely portable deluxe healthcare plan that doesn’t cost you any extra money when you see your doctor or go to a specialist or get tests or have surgery or endure a hospital stay. You have pretty much full coverage (excepting your glasses and dentistry) for free delivery of healthcare at the point of use, with no argument from some insurance industry hack. If your doctor thinks you need an operation, there’s no arguing with insurance agents about it – your doc just refers you to the hospital specialists, you see them, they do what’s necessary, and no one sends you a bill. No paperwork, no desperate phone calls, no deciding you can’t afford vital treatment.

And why shouldn’t Americans have that kind of care, too? After all, you’re already paying for it – in taxes. Every time you pay taxes, regardless of your own healthcare plan, you also pay for someone else’s healthcare – Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, NIH, SCHIP, whatever – you’re paying for government health services and research (which, by the way, is also a subsidy to the commercial medical industry that makes use of the research and development at bargain rates) – only you’re paying for a lot of it more expensively than you need to because so much waste is involved in servicing the myriad different commercial providers who have their fingers in the pie. And then when you get your own commercial healthcare, you pay extra for the very fact that someone has to ask you to name your insurance company and give them your insurance details. No one ever asks me my insurance details here – they already know them, because they’re the same for everyone.

And A Waiting Room IS a Line by Lance Mannion:

I’m in line right now.

Not sure how many people are in the line with me.

Lots, probably.

We can’t see each other because our places in the line are widely separated.

Some of us are in an actual line at the reception desk at the doctor’s office.

But some of us are in line at home. Some of us are in line at work. Some of us are in line in our cars. Wherever the phone we’re hoping will ring any moment is, that’s where our place in line is.

We’re all in line, waiting to hear back from our insurance company.

Eventually, assuming the insurance company gives us permission to have the operation or the procedure or the test we need, we’ll all get into different lines.

We’ll wait in other virtual or actual lines to make an appointment to see the doctor or the specialist or the technician.

After we get out of that line, we’ll wait in another line for the day to come when we can go to the office or hospital or the lab where we will then wait in another line to see the doctor or the specialist or the technician who will perform the operation or the procedure or the test we need.

And after we’re finally out of those lines, there are still other lines—at the pharmacy, back at our doctor’s office for the follow up, by the phone again to argue with the insurance company because somebody’s decided that the operation or the procedure or the test we were told was covered isn’t covered.

Of all the objections to national health insurance, the silliest and most baffling to me is that it will mean we’ll all have to wait in lines to see the doctor.

Helen Losse and Dave Bonta have poems up today that I would definitely recommend you read.

__________
P.S. Here’s another Mannion missive to the world you might like to read:

[Louis] Menand [in the New Yorker] is reviewing a book by Mark McGurl, The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing , a literary survey of the last seventy or so years that attempts to trace the effects of creative writing programs on the shape, direction, fads, and styles of American fiction. Menand, though, seems more interested in the questions, can people be taught how to write and if not (the answer he leans towards) what good are workshops?

. . .

Students at creative writing programs are learning from each other all the time. But what are they learning?

According to Menand, they aren’t learning to write well. They are learning to write what is fashionable well. This is what McGurl’s looks at in The Program Era, what has been fashionable and how fiction writing programs have responded to and shaped those fashions.

I went off to Iowa full up to my eyeballs with the works of Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Herman Melville, only to find that just about every other fiction writer there was only interested in what was in the New Yorker that week. . . .
Raymond Carver and Bobbie Ann Mason were the literary heroes of the day.

Minimalism was the fashion.

You’ll notice that among my literary heroes of the time there’s nobody who could be by any stretch described as a minimalist.

The upshot of this was that one of the lessons I learned at Iowa was that Raymond Carver and Bobbie Ann Mason were my mortal enemies.

Beginning National Poetry Month

Via Negativa will be doing an e-mailable poetry-related postcard a day for National Poetry Month. Be sure to check in there daily to see what Dave is up to. Check for possible satirical content:

Readwritepoem will be giving us a prompt a day to start our engines for NaPoWriMo. I’ve put their button on the sidebar for easy use. One can register with them or with Gourd is My Co-Pilot or just work alone.

Stoney Moss has given us her list of 50 words (well 51) in preparation for something Readwritepoem has up its sleeve.

The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature has released their National Poetry Month issue.

Amy King gets us off to a linky beginning, including one to Bloof Books daily poetry podcast for the month. Knopf Poetry will also send you a poem a day, subscribe here, and Poetry Daily continues their excellent “Poet’s Pick” newsletter. Today’s was one of my particular favorites: E. E. Cummings’s “Buffalo Bill’s”, picked by Linda Pasten.

So, we’re off to a great start! I myself will be trying to bring you one Kentucky poet a day for the next thirty days, starting with the poem below from Steve Cope.

Loads of fun in store!

Getting my bearings

I am constantly inspired and amused by what goes on over at Via Negativa. For one thing, he has lots of pictures and I like pictures.

Here is Dave’s latest video, entitled Bearings.

Bearings from Dave Bonta on Vimeo.

Dave is also exploring the interface between poetry and video over here at Moving Poems.

an on-going compendium of the best video poetry from around the web. Video interpretations of poems are the main focus, but poetry readings, spoken word performances, and interviews with poets are also eligible for inclusion.

Be sure to check it out. The site is only 4 days old and already it goes from Emily Dickinson to Billy Collins. The Sylvia Plath is good.