By: Maryann Yin,
on 12/31/2015
How do you react when you encounter lies? RJ Walker has crafted a powerful poem to address this topic called “Deceit & I.”
The video embedded above features Walker’s performance at the 2015 Individual World Poetry Slam. To hear more work from this poet, check out his YouTube channel.
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By: Hannah Paget,
on 12/10/2015
Ezra Pound was a major figure in the early modernist movement. During his lifetime he developed close interactions with leading writers and artists, such as Yeats, Ford, Joyce, Lewis, and Eliot. Yet his life was marked by controversy and tragedy, especially during his later years.
The post How well do you know Ezra Pound? [quiz] appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Hannah Paget,
on 10/7/2015
It was strikingly appropriate that Sir Geoffrey Hill should have focused his final lecture as Oxford Professor of Poetry on a quotation from Charles Williams. Not only was the lecture, in May 2015, delivered almost exactly seventy years after Williams’s death; but Williams himself had once hoped to become Professor of Poetry.
The post Charles Williams: Oxford’s lost poetry professor appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Carmela Martino and 5 other authors,
on 4/3/2015
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Howdy, Campers! Be sure to enter our Paul Janeczko BRAND NEW Poetry Book Give-Away (details below).
Happy Poetry Friday (today's host link is below)...and happy
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By: Marissa Wasseluk,
on 3/10/2015
We recently had the opportunity to talk with author Kwame Alexander about how poetry can draw a reluctant reader into a lifelong love of books and the creative process behind his book, “The Crossover,” awarded the 2015 Newbery Medal for Most Distinguished Contribution to American Literature for Children.
Author Kwame Alexander
Photo Credit: Pilar Vergara
The first thing we noticed about The Crossover: its rhythm. Why did you choose to have Josh’s voice rhythmic in that way?
When I decided the book was going to have a frame of basketball, I knew that I wanted the language to mirror the sport’s high energy and rhythm,
I thought that basketball was poetry in motion – so I created a story on the page that reflected the action on the court. I’ve been a poet most of my life, so it seemed like a good marriage.
How would you describe kids’ reaction to the book?
You want to impact young people. That’s the goal. That’s the only goal. You want to get them reading. The response initially came from librarians and teachers – they were loving it.
I thought, “Wow, how cool is that?”?
Then teachers started getting it to their students. My, my, my – the reaction from the students blew me away. There were quite a few boys who had never showed much interest in reading before. Their teachers and librarians contacted me and said, “They couldn’t put your book down.”
That’s pretty remarkable right there. That’s why I’m doing this.
Have you ever seen anyone perform a page from the book?
Yes! There was a school in Illinois – Granger Middle School – and the entire school read the book. They brought me in for the day to see some presentations, and the kids all 
memorized the poems. It was so awesome. Each kid – girl, boy, black, white – they all felt like they were the characters.
That’s all you really hope for from a book – that it’s going to resonate with young people and empower them in some way. I believe poetry can get kids reading.
Why is it so important to get kids reading?
Inside of a book, between the lines, is a world of possibility. The book opens it up.
Why is it important for kids to open books? Because they can see themselves and they can see what they can become… Open a book and find your possible.
Click here to browse First Book’s collection of ALA Award-winning books.
The post Kwame Alexander Q&A: Poetry Provides Possibilities appeared first on First Book Blog.
By: Mark Miller,
on 9/26/2014
This is a press release from Saint Julian Press about my friend Melissa Studdard's newest book.
By: Mary Lee,
on 9/26/2014
By: Darcy Pattison,
on 5/23/2014
" Saucy is a real character dealing with real stuff—hard stuff that doesn’t have easy answers, not in real life and not in fairy tales, either. This is a really compelling and ultimately hopeful story. Highly recommended."
– Debby Dahl Edwardson, National Book Award finalist and author of My Name is Not Easy
Read a sample chapter.
Yesterday, I was working on a picture book with rhyme in it. Now, I have two great rhyming dictionaries that I use. Yes, two. Because they are organized differently and provide slightly different answers. In addition, I use Rhymer.com, because again, it’s organized slightly different and has slightly different answers.
But my dictionaries are old and literally falling apart.
I need suggestions and recommendations. I am thinking that I want an ebook version so I can use the search function; that means it will need to be a recent publication date.
What rhyming dictionary would you recommend and why?
Did you know that there’s a Hip Hop Rhyming Dictionary? Crazy!
And lots for song writers.
Suggestions?
By: Allison Finkel,
on 4/18/2014
Hip hop has influenced a generation of poets coming to prominence, poets I call “The Inheritors of Hip Hop.” Signaling how the music serves as a shared experience and inspiration, they mention performers and songs as well as anecdotes from the genre’s development and the artists’ lives, while epigraphs and titles quote songs. The influence of hip hop can be heard in the work of many poets including (but certainly not limited to): Kevin Coval, Erica Dawson, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Matthew Dickman, Major Jackson, Terrance Hayes, Dorothea Lasky, John Murillo, Eugene Ostashevsky, D.A. Powell, Roger Reeves, and Michael Robbins.
In no particular order, here are my five favorite hip hop references in poetry:
(1) Kevin Young, “Expecting”
To capture the experience of first hearing his child’s heartbeat during a sonogram exam, Young develops a wildly inventive simile followed by metaphors borrowed from hip hop:
And there
it is: faint, an echo, faster and further
away than mother’s, all beat box
and fuzzy feedback. You are like hearing
hip-hop for the first time–power
hijacked from the lamppost–all promise.
You couldn’t sound better, break-
dancer, my favorite song bumping
from a passing car. You’ve snuck
into the club underage and stayed!
(2) Rowan Ricardo Phillips, “Mappa Mundi”
Describing his hometown of the Bronx, Phillips combines Wu Tang Clan’s Raekwon’s verse in “Triumph,” “Aiyyo, that’s amazing gun-in-your-mouth talk,” and Samuel Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight,” “the redbreast sit and sing”:
Whether red birds sit and sing from rooftops
Or rappers cypher deep into the night,
The gun-in-your-mouth talk of a ransomed
God, nature is a lapse in city life.
(3) Harryette Mullen, “Dim Lady”
Hip hop is nearly everywhere in Mullen’s earlier collection, Muse and Drudge, but my single favorite reference in her work to hip hop appears in “Dim Lady,” collected in Sleeping with the Dictionary. The prose poem rewrites and updates Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130. In the place of Shakespeare’s lines,
“I love to hear her speak, yet well I know / That music hath a far more pleasing sound,”
Mullen offers,
“I love to hear her rap, yet I’m aware that Muzak has a hipper beat.”
(The poem’s ending always makes me laugh, “And yet, by gosh, my scrumptious Twinkie has as much sex appeal for me as any lanky model or platinum movie idol who’s hyped beyond belief.”
(4) A. Van Jordan, “R&B”
A subgenre of poems about hip hop criticizes the music. A rare exception to the ignorance such work typically show (see, for instance, Tony Hoagland’s “Rap Music”), “R & B” offers a well-informed, thoughtful critique. “Listen long enough to the radio, and you’ll think / maybe C. Dolores Tucker was right,” the poem opens and an endnote reminds readers of Tucker’s significant contributions to the black civil rights movement.
(5) Michael Cirelli, “Dead Ass”
“I am not afraid of dope lyrics,” Michael Cirelli writes in “Dead Ass.” Several poems in Lobster with Ol’ Dirty Bastard retell moments from hip hop history. To describe teens grooving to the music, “Dead Ass” borrows from Oakland slang, “hyphy,” meaning “crazy” in a good sense, “hyphy / music makes their bodies dip up and down / like oil drills.” (My favorite line in the book, though, describes eighties pop, not hip hop, “We danced incestuously to Michael and Janet that night.”)
(6) Adrien Matejka, “Wheels of Steel”
“I got me two songs instead of eyes,” the poem opens then swaggering quotes five songs in twenty-seven lines.
(7) Marcus Wicker, “Love Letter to Flavor Flav” tries to make sense of Public Enemy’s most puzzling member:
How you’ve lived saying nothing
save the same words each day
is a kind of freedom or beauty.
Please, tell me I’m not lying to us.
David Caplan is Charles M. Weis Chair in English and Associate Director of Creative Writing at Ohio Wesleyan University. He is the author of Rhyme’s Challenge: Hip Hop, Poetry, and Contemporary Rhyming Culture. His previous books include Questions of Possibility: Contemporary Poetry and Poetic Form and the poetry collection In the World He Created According to His Will.
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Image credit: turntable spinning. Photo by Tengilorg, 2005. CC-BY-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
The post Top five hip hop references in poetry appeared first on OUPblog.
© Image by Caroline Forbes Wendy Cope (b. 1945) is a poet whose witty lyrics and pitch-perfect parodies have gained her a readership far beyond most of her peers. Born in Erith, Kent, she read History at St. Hilda's College, Oxford. She then taught in primary schools in London before becoming a freelance writer in 1986. Her debut
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By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 4/4/2013
In Room 407 each fall, I begin the first couple of class meetings with a poem. Perhaps I start off the class kind of quietly bringing everyone in the room into the moment I launch into a reading of James W. Hall’s “Maybe Dat’s Your Pwoblem Too,” Elmer Fudd-like impediments and all.
By: Mark Miller,
on 6/28/2012
I'll admit, it has been a while since the last installment of One. The good news is that it's out now!
By: Claudette Young,
on 5/7/2012
I have a treat for you all. I’m visiting today with someone whom I’ve come to know over the past few years, though not as well as I’d like. Poet or playwright, Walt Wojtanik is someone to emulate, especially in this world of verse and meter.
Walt has made a place for himself in the world of poetry and in the hearts of those who’ve come to know him, even a little. On his poetry site “Poetic Bloomings,” that he co-administers with Marie Elena Good, he describes himself as a hibiscus.
I can see that about him; a large, brilliant carmine blossom, waving from its post at the end of branch, daring others to do as much, always teetering on the verge of romance or insight. And while the blossom might be short-lived, the impact of its existence is not. Walt’s poetry always touches the reader, whether with romance, humor, or philosophy.
This hard-working poet writes so prolifically that his cache of work boggles the mind. During the Poetic Asides PAD challenges, he contributes three or more new poems per day, all while administering multiple websites and taking care of the rest of his life. For the 2010 PAD challenge, he was selected as the Poet Laureate; a well-deserved title.
Hello, Walt. I want to thank you for doing this interview. I have some small idea of how busy you are with your own work, and I appreciate you taking time out to spend with us.
Walt: Thanks for the invitation to chat, Claudette. I’m flattered that you would deem my work as worthy.
Claudsy: It’s my pleasure. When I first met you, you were doing the Micro Poetry page on Facebook. I admit to being intimidated by you and all of the “Old-timers” that contributed regularly. Would you tell us about your work habits when it comes to poetry?
Walt: Although I have been writing song lyrics for 43 years, my poetry has only seen resurgence for the past four years. Attempting the 2009 Poetic Asides April Poem-A-Day Challenge, I began a journey that has brought me to this point in my writing career. It was surely serendipity in every sense of the word.
In being prodded to take on the challenge by a good friend, it had put me in contact with some incredible and very talented people. You mentioned Marie (Marie Elena Good). Three days into April I was ready to give up that foolishness and resign myself to the fact that I was a dreamer thinking I could write anything worth people’s attention. She placed a comment that was supportive and nurturing and kick started my muse into high gear. I built confidence and quite the following from that point.
Writing a poem a day was indeed a challenge, but writing 7 to 10 poems a day bordered on the certifiable. Half way through the first challenge I established my blog THROUGH THE EYES OF A POET’S HEART (link below) to keep my poems organized.
Claudsy: You and Marie Elena (whom I adore) have collaborated on two websites. Both are marvelous for the reader and aspiring poets alike. How did the two of you choose to create Across the Lake, Eerily? Both title and site are terrific.
Walt: I am from Buffalo, New
By: Claudette Young,
on 4/21/2012
Price Gun (Photo credit: Magic Robot)
Participants were handed an interesting writing challenge this morning. We were asked to write an “under the microscope” poem; either literal or metaphorical.
I doubt many of us can leap into our labs, scan a few slides and take up the scientific poetic slant, but you never know. I may try one later today; I do have a couple of ideas that travel that path.
My first attempt to satisfy this challenge is below. I’m not sure why Muse took me on this tangent, but it was the first thought to jump up and demand my attention.
I hope you enjoy the resulting fare.
What Price Celebrity
What price paid for fame
That we seek this scrutiny?
What price extracted in a game
Of hide and seek and infamy?
What price do innocents pay
For camera shots at school,
Where others are brought to bay
And thrill-makers stand to drool?
What price for bodies abused
For weight, highs, lows, or sleep?
What price to be so pursued,
In the name of love, admiration deep?
What price paid for a moment’s peace
Within the fish bowl of personal making?
Related websites:
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(littlefurrow.wordpress.com)
By: Claudette Young,
on 4/9/2012
For any of those readers out there who would like to discover any more of my “juicy secrets,” pop over to children’s writer Denise Stanley’s blog. A Room to Write. She posted her interview with me this morning.
Does that sound like self-promotion? Well, I supposed it is in some respects, but it’s more to the question of where to have promotion confined for the moment. Denise does good interviews. She asks great questions and goes a bit further to get good answers. Then again, I like to talk. It worked out well for both of us.
I’ll be stopping by there off and on for the next couple of days for those who wish to comment or ask another question.
Now, back to my poetry. I’ll be posting this afternoon to the Poetry Asides prompt and here, as usual. If you get a chance and really like poetry, stop by Robert Brewer’s site on Writer’s Digest and sit back with a large cup of whatever. You’ll be there a while. Poets from around the globe congregate there every day.
Enjoy,
Claudsy
By: Lisa Alvarado,
on 4/8/2012
When did you begin writing? Why?
I had a childhood that made Mommie, Dearest look like a fairytale, and reading and writing helped me survive it. So I started writing when I was quite young—poetry and stories that I wanted to think of as novels—but I really bega
By: Claudette Young,
on 3/28/2012
April will soon control the calendar and some writers’ lives—at least for 30 days. The favorite month of Parisians will take on a poetic ring on many websites across the globe. April is National Poetry Month, giving poets of every stripe impetus to fling words to passersby at every opportunity.
Robert Brewer’s Poetic Asides, an uncommonly good poetry blog operated through Writer’s Digest, issues a challenge each year to poets. The poets are set the task of creating a poem per day to a specific writing prompt. Many manage to post several poems per day, escalating the tension for others to “try to match this” on the blog.
Oddly enough, camaraderie is the norm here, with poets commenting on each other’s efforts, supporting and encouraging rather than critiquing. “The Street,” as the blog is known by regular contributors, fosters its patrons as community members with something to say and value to add to the whole. Not many blogs can claim that ability.
Along the same lines, other poetry blogs across cyberville also have their own challenges on a regular basis and will be cranking up the thermostat to get words on the screen and rhyme into the heart.
One of these sites is Poetic Bloomings, operated by Marie Elena Good and Walt Wojtanik. This daily blog has much to offer both poet and reader. Sunday’s writing prompt challenge might visual, emotional, or situational. It could be fiction/non-fiction. Each day has purpose and is filled with contributor participation. It’s a marvelous site all around.
Whether you wander over to The River or go to see the Sea Giraffes, you’ll find poetry everywhere at the click of the mouse. Of course, these sites have poetry all the time, but it gets accentuated at this time of year. Enjoy it.
I’ve chosen to take up Brewer’s gauntlet this time around again. I couldn’t participate last year since I was on the road, but this year will give me a chance to write enough to fill out a nice book of poetry with an eclectic flair, but themed nonetheless. I’m looking forward to it.
Brewer also issued a second challenge this year for those who felt their platforms needed reconstruction work done or those who hadn’t yet built their platforms. It consists of a task per day for the writer to build a viable, effective platform. The goal is a power platform by the end of the month of April.
Yep, you guessed it. I’m signing up for that one, too. Is it just me or does it seem like I just can’t leave a challenge lying on the table without at least giving it a shot? I hate not knowing whether I can do something or not.
Whether April has me showering words across specific blogs or in submissions to publications, I will be part of Ares’ madness come the first. That Fool’s Day could be the beginning of something very good or simply exhausting, but I will learn from it and that’s worth my time.
4 Comments on Whether–April Showers with Words, last added: 3/28/2012
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By: linda sarah,
on 1/21/2011
By: Susan Taylor Brown,
on 10/18/2010
So if all writers, novelist and poets, use imagery and metaphor and similes, if we all write with the intent to write beautiful language, is it merely the form that makes a poem a poem?
This is the thought I take with me to ponder in my dreams.
By: Susan Taylor Brown,
on 10/18/2010
In keeping with finally claiming my poet's hat, I've been thinking about what it means to be a poet. I'm going to try and spend a few days thinking out loud about this idea and I hope you'll think along with me.
On one hand I think that being a poet is as simple as what makes a writer: a writer writes and a poet writes poems. But on the other hand I know it is much more complicated than that. I think it's a way of looking at the world around you as well as a way of recording what you see. And it is, of course, how you choose to record it. There are many aspects of being a poet but today I'm just thinking of one side of it all, slowing down so you can pay attention.
I think to be a poet you need to be willing to sit still and be. Later you can sit still and think and ponder one word over the other but there needs to be a willingness to just sit and be. And I have trouble with that. I always feel like I need to be racing off to do one thing or another (because I usually do need to be heading off to do one thing or the other) and I short-cut my way through too much of my life.
When I wrote my father poems last April for National Poetry Month I didn't try to do them in the middle of my busy day. I did them at night, the last thing before bed. My brain was full and tired. I sat on the couch, my laptop on my lap, and thought back over my childhood, forcing myself to remember as much as I could. Then I would pick an age and a scene and I just wrote. The poems came quickly, probably because they have been festering all my life. But I also think it was because I spent some quiet time before trying to write, time where I let myself just be.
If this is what I need to be a poet why is it so hard to give that gift of quiet time to myself?
I don't know the answer to that. But perhaps, like the acceptance of myself as a poet, it is enough for me to know that is something I need. That it is part of my job description. The trick, I suppose, is how to find those quiet times in the midst of our crazy days.
So what about you? What does it mean to you to be a poet (whether or not you are one?)
By: Rudy Garcia,
on 5/29/2010
In our years online, La Bloga has nurtured a significant body of lore in the form of interviews of Chicano authors, poets and others, and non-Chicanos as well. Coincidentally we know the site is used by students, collegiate and non, literally across the planet, although we have little info on the numbers or purposes. I'd assume many are students using La Bloga material to bulk up their theses or term papers. Qué bueno!
The interviews do and will serve a higher purpose than bibliographical cites; they're the authors' own words about what inspired them, how they write, and why, where they come from and where they think Chicano lit might be headed. In that sense they're a pulse of how Chicano lit lives and breathes, and one day, dies, though the authors' prose and poesy lives on.
La Bloga's staff is a bunch of dedicated individuals who've managed to build this body of work into something we know is enjoyed, utilized and perhaps even visited every day by many. But, given the inherently thin definition of what constitutes our staff, we could use help from readers.
We'd like your ideas about adding to this body of literary history:
We're especially open to interviews of those who've published books or collections in hard copy. At the same time, someone who's published stories, poems, essays, etc. in several publications could also deserve our attention, within our given time constraints.
We're not limited to covering Chicanos. We've been known to post interviews of boriquas, newyorquians, mexicanos, peludos y a veces the occasional gringo, even.
If you as a reader would enjoy seeing an interview of a particular author, poet, editor, o cualquier tipo del mundo de literatura, write one or all of us and let us know who that is, especially if you have a way of contacting them that we might not.
Autor, autor!
Or if you yourself are published and have wondered why we never contacted you before, mándanos un mensaje, and we might surprise you. I assure you we've never meant to neglect anyone; it's just how slowly La Bloga works as an unpaid enterprise. So, contact us, whether you're Gabriel Garcia Marquez or quién-sabe-quién.
Hell, if you're a gringo and think you'd pass RudyG's
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By: Rebecca,
on 4/30/2010
Happy Friday to all! The sun is out, spring is in full force and the weekend is almost upon us. Get busy procrastinating with the links below and before you know it the day will be over.
There are dancers among us.
How I’d like to spend the month of June.
Coming soon to Thailand, Professors Without Borders.
How long can you go without sleep?
The Supreme Court may be coming to a television near you.
Watch the sky reboot.
Confessions of a poet laureate.
For the love of homemade maps.
Saving the world’s languages.
Truly, an interview on both sides of the “mike” that expressed the individual
Great poem. I had to tweet this Carole!
She certainly is, Eve, do share :0)
Hahaha I love this poem. :-)
Her work is rather special, isn't it, Misha.
"Piss off, Jake!" Awesome. And giving a kidney and a liver--now THAT is true love.
Just adore the use of the famous poem, Susan, so very clever.