David Caddy's Blog

David Caddy features commentary about poets, poetry, and every day life on his blog. I say it is an entertaining read, especially since he includes little facts about poets. If you are dedicated to learning more about poets, check him out at:

http://davidcaddy.blogspot.com/

Thanks for checking in, please stop by tomorrow for another live and writing poet…

P.S. Check out Poetry Foundation’s NPR Podcast link titled “excuse me while I offend you” all about “flarf,” it’s worth your time.

Poetry Tips: Reading

Today’s tip is relatively easy, or is it? Reading other people’s poetry will help you write your own. You’ll learn knew clever uses for language, new designs for stanzas, imagery, syntax, and all those other fancy terms you had to learn in school when it comes to writing. Don’t just read poets you like, read poets you don’t like as well. Find out why you find certain poets unnerving. For me, I can’t stand poets who use “O!” at the beginning of their lines. Unless they’re from the 1800s, I don’t want to see it. It’s a personal thing. Learn what kinds of poems you would like to grow into or out of. Reading poems of all kinds from all over the world will give you so much more insight into your writing than trying to employ all the “tips” you come across from other writers. Poets themselves are teachers to other writers by virtue of their own works. Discover new ideas and techniques. Read!

Thanks for dropping in, please stop by tomorrow for another poetry blog…

Juked Open Submissions

If you went to the Cowboy Junkies posted yesterday you probably looked around the site and found the submissions page, but just in case, it is included below.
Direct your poetry to the Poetry Editor, Lindsay Walker. You can e-mail up to five poems to their e-mail: submissions@juked.com and make absolutely sure to title it as follows: Submission: (genre). Yes, you may send simultaneous submissions so long as you notify Juked right away if your poems are accepted elsewhere. Good luck to all of you!

http://juked.com/info/

Please stop in tomorrow for more Poetry Tips…

Found Poems

http://juked.com/2007/11/cowboyjunkies.asp
Cowboy Junkies Live at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel by Helen R. Peterson, reminds me of unfaithful ex-boyfriends…

http://www.tinhouse.com/mag/issue_current/current_poem.htm
“Guess” by Rae Armantrout, beautifully written, I especially like the power of the line “So we’ll be alive next week”…

Walt Whitman

Now just in case you didn’t read yesterday’s blog, I am including a link to one of Walt Whitman’s poems being read aloud below:

http://classicpoetryaloud.podomatic.com/entry/2007-10-05T00_41_00-07_00

Walt Whitman lived from 1819 to 1892 and is well known for his book of poetry titled Leaves of Grass and was considered controversial for its time. My father has this book, and I picked up Walt Whitman’s Selected Poems by Gramercy Books at the local library. Poets.org also has information on his life at the following link if you wish to hear more:

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/126

In addition, let me add some information gleaned from this book at the site mentioned above: Walt Whitman was born in Long Island, New York and raised in Brooklyn. His father was a farmer who was also uneducated but Whitman left at the age of 13 for a job at a newspaper and worked his way up to being an editor. In 1855 he published the well known book, Leaves of Grass and marked his debut into the world of poetry. This book was considered so outrageous that he lost his job as a clerk in the Department of Interior because Secretary James Harlan disapproved of his works. So if you ever though Whitman was boring because of your school days, let me assure you, he is not.

An excerpt from poem #21 that I particularly enjoy has these attention-grabbing lines:
…
The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of
hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself….the latter I
Translate into a new tongue.

(the “….” Within the poem lines IS supposed to be there, I did not leave any words out).
Thanks for dropping in and I hope you will listen to Walt Whitman’s poem included in the link above. I’ll see you tomorrow for more linked poems I enjoy…

P.S. Let me just gush for a minute here about two wonderful men: Justin Barrett and Joseph Shields. Let me explain! I ordered a copy of Justin Barrett’s chapbook The Magnificent Seven from the Guerrilla Poetics Project Store and he enclosed a short hand-written letter! AND!!! Joseph Shields ALSO enclosed a short hand-written letter thanking me for subscribing to Nerve Cowboy. Thank you gentlemen! Not only does the chapbook and the journal rock, you have totally sealed the deal for my devotion by taking the time to send hand written letters thanking me for my interest in your journal/chapbook hoping I would enjoy them. I do enjoy them! Both are marvelous! I am thrilled that hand-written letters are still out there, thought I was one of the few who still did that…
Oh, and don’t worry Sheena, I include you in the hand-written letter category, too.
Thanks for making my week everybody!

Classic Poetry Aloud

In a world of podcasts, living legends who put out CDs of poetry, and wireless computers, someone finally decided to catch up the older poets who left this world behind before the internet was even a thought. Listen to all these poets’ poems read at the site link included below. Keats, Kipling, Byron, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and so many more are all here for your listening pleasure. Enjoy perusing the site!

http://classicpoetryaloud.wordpress.com/

Please stop by tomorrow for another poet who has passed…

Richard Howard

Richard Howard was born in 1929 and has been producing poetry for over four decades and is still producing poems. He is also a critic, translator, essayist, and editor. His poems are dramatic and often monologues of imagined conversations with various famous figures. His poems can be a page and a half long to many pages, but his subjects are all interesting. I will give you a sample of one, the poem “Giovanni Da Fiesole on the Sublime, or Fra Angelico’s Last Judgment” dedicated to Adrienne Rich:

…You may have noticed how
Hell, in these affairs, is on the right
invariably (though for an inside Judge,
of course, that would be the left. And we
are not inside.). I have no doctrine
intricate enough for Hell…

This poem is out of the book inner voices by Richard Howard and I found it at the local library. These are poems from 1963 through 2003 and the poem above is my favorite so far in the collection. It is dark in a comforting way, I cannot describe the poem any other way. It speaks of death and heaven and crossing from the living to the dead. It is only a page and a half long and leaves you to ponder for much longer than it takes to read. I hope you stumble upon this book and find this poem on page 86, until then, please learn more at the following link:

http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=3295

Thanks for reading, please stop in tomorrow for another great web-site!