Robert Bly

Robert Bly was born December 23rd, 1926 in Madison, Minnesota. I picked up a book of his prose poems from the local library titled: What Have I Ever Lost By Dying. He has worked as a poet, translator, and editor and published more than 30 books of poetry. Isn’t that amazing? I often think of prose as poetry-as-a-paragraph. That isn’t the true definition, but that is how I make the distinction for my own knowledge, and thought I would share it with you. Below are two links to give you more information on Robert Bly and connect you to some of his poems. Also, here is an excerpt from one of his prose poems, “ Two Sounds When We Sit By the Ocean:”

…pebbles going out…Its is a complicated sound, as of small sticks breaking, or kitchen sounds heard from another house…
…And always another sound, a heavy underground roaring in my ears from the surf farther out, as if the earth were reverberating under the feet of one dancer.

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/280

http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=653

Thanks for reading, please stop by tomorrow for another great website!

Poetry Tips: Avoid the Word Poetry

Many poets at one point or another write about writing poems… This is a little obvious for the world of poetry. Most poets I have read do at some point include a poem about writing poems or about being a poet. I, also, have done it. However, it may be time to change up this practice a bit. If you decide to do such a poem, please omit the words Poem, Poetry, and Poet from the poem itself. Try to be creative in how you present the feeling of crafting a poem, negative or positive, and the experience of being a poet, without mentioning that you are one. In other words, think outside of the box and use different terminology. This will engage the reader and push you to be more creative. As a result, better poems and more fascinated readers. I wish you luck in all your writing endeavors…

Please stop by tomorrow for another wonderful blog…

Pleaides Opens For Submissions

Please include telephone number and email address with all submissions.
Prose should be double spaced with reasonable margins. Poetry should be single spaced, with the author's name on each page.
Do not send your only copy of any manuscript.
Pleiades accepts simultaneous submissions. We ask, however, that you note if a piece has been sent to another magazine.
Poetry should be addressed to Kevin Prufer and Wayne Miller. Please do not send poetry after May 31. We resume reading poetry on September 1.

Pleiades: A Journal Of New Writing
Department of English
University of Central Missouri
Warrensburg, MO 64093

This is all straight from their guidelines page, good luck submitting! I’ll see you tomorrow for more Poetry Tips!

Poems Linked by Poet Hound

http://tonguefire.blogspot.com/search/label/reasoning%20rhyme
This isn’t actually a poem, this is a discussion on rhyme which I found enlightening and came by it by way of Jim Murdoch who has been kind enough to post comments and references to poets on my own blog. Please check out this link written by Andrew Philip for some great information about rhyme.

http://www.fishousepoems.org/archives/yona_harvey/blessing_blue_crabs.shtml
I love this poem because I am now in Florida and blue crabs are tasty and popular down here… join in the feast!


Thanks for reading/listening to the links, tomorrow is another Open Submissions…

Temporary Setback

Hello devoted readers and anyone dropping by for a glance! I will be unable to post for several days because the breaker box in our place burned up and I'll be without power and living temporarily with family until things are fixed. Shouldn't be more than a few days, thanks for your patience!

Louise Gluck's satisfying meal of Poetry

Louise Gluck was born in 1943 and is a professor and a former Poet Laureate. Her poems are well known, or at least as well known as they can be for poets… As always, the Poetry Foundation has a nice collection of her work that you can check out at:

http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=2578

I picked up her book, Averno, at the public library. This is a fairly recent publication, 2006, and therefore more easily found for purchase in book-stores. The beginning poem, “The Night Migrations” catches you right away and it is one of those short, seemingly simple poems. The last stanza asks a very good question in reference to the dead not being able to see things that we, the living, can. “What will the soul do for solace then?” and goes on to say “maybe just not being is simply enough/hard as that is to imagine.”
From there, the poems continue to reach out and pull you in a little more and a little more. Some poems you can read quickly, Gluck’s deserve some time to savor, to be read just a little slower. There are many lines that can be read too fast where you might miss the “pull” I described earlier. Lines such as:

Sunrise. A film of moisture
On each living thing.
--from the poem “October” number 3.

I often hear of dew, but I’ve never thought of a film of moisture on every living thing. Little things like this are throughout the poems and can be easy to miss. Louise has a wonderful way of making sure you are paying attention without being too flowery, intense, or confrontational. There are so many poems with great lines and I could go on and on but I won’t for your sake. Please look through the archive of poems on the Poetry Foundation and absolutely take the time to check her out in the library or the book-store. She is very pleasing, “pleasing” to me seems the perfect word for it.

Thanks for dropping in, please stop by tomorrow for another Monday edition of a Great Poetry Web-Site.