Saint Elizabeth Street Blog

Jennifer Bartlett offers up her perspective with great articles throughout the blog. I love that she describes her life and in a fabulous way at that! Check it out at:

http://saintelizabethstreet.blogspot.com/

Thanks for looking in, please stop by tomorrow for another living poet…

Six Word Memoir Challenge

Thanks to Allen of World Class Poetry Blog I have been tagged for the Six Word Memoir Challenge! Click on the title to find out more details at World Class Poetry, in the meantime here is my six-word memoir:

Persevere,
struggle,
renew,
subside into
patience


I am tagging Talia, Don Wentworth, Reyes Cardenas, Laurel Snyder, and David King
Thank you for tagging me and hope those who are tagged will participate...

Poetry Tips: Mad Lib Poetry

Yes, it is just what you think it means. Start a poem and leave blanks for nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and see if you can fill them with words given by friends, family, and snatches of conversation. This idea came to me when my husband and I started playing Mad Libs several nights in a row. You could turn this idea into all kinds of things. For one, you could solicit e-mails from friends requesting nouns, verbs, etc., select the winner, fill out the poem, then e-mail the winning rendition to everyone. You could also leave the blanks, mail it via snail mail and see if you get any response. Plus, think of all the times you try to write poems and get stuck on a word that fits in with a particular line, or trying to create a rhythm but the words for it don’t materialize right away. Now you can turn it into something much more fun by leaving some blanks for others to fill out. Happy Leap Year!
Have fun and may the muse be with you!

Note: For my regular readers you may know that I’ve been seeking answers to several questions in my Feb. 15th post for Poetry Tips and I now have enough responses to post answers to the tip questions for each Friday in March and the first week of April. Thanks to everyone for their participation!

Also, thanks for reading and please come by tomorrow for another poetry blog…

Wicked Alice Open Submissions

This is a women-centered magazine but any gender can send 3-5 poems via e-mail to:
wickedalicepoetryATyahooDOTcom. Simultaneous submissions are accepted so long as you notify the magazine if your poems are accepted elsewhere. They also explain it may take up to 3 months to receive a response. Below I’ve included the link to their submission guidelines and I urge you to look around the site for further insight.

http://www.sundress.net/wickedalice/submissions.html

Good luck with submissions, please come by tomorrow for more Poetry Tips!

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=13925
“My Affair with Rumpelstiltskin” by Ina Loewenburg is darned clever and so very good.

http://www.jubilat.org/n13/hong.html
“Protean Woods” by Cathy Park Hong, great imagery

Out of Order

Sorry folks, there really aren’t any poets who have passed on left in the library. I’d rather buy the books of poets who are still living as they need the funds more than dead ones. So for now the Tuesday feature is suspended until I come up with something else. Any suggestions? Let me know!

Also, I have plenty of responses to my Poetry Tips and do not need any more, thanks to everyone who answered!

Thanks for dropping in, please stop by tomorrow for poems found by Poet Hound…

Debbie Yee's Site

I featured a poem by Debbie Yee in an earlier post and found her website which features poetry, art, and she sells her own DIY chapbooks. Frankly, I’m jealous! Why not everyone have a website where they can sell their own DIY chapbooks? Brilliant! I hope you’ll check out her site and agree that it is a worthwhile exploration.

http://www.debbieyee.com/

As always, thanks for checking in and I will see you tomorrow…

John Ashberry

John Ashberry is well known in the poetry world and has had a prolific literary career. Mr. Ashberry was born on July 28th, 1927 in New York and has won numerous awards. Until recently I had not been able to get my hands on a book of his and was quite happy to find one in the library since I’d heard of him so often. I’ll also admit that some of his poems were a little over my head at times but there is something for everyone in the volume of poems titled Where Shall I Wander published in 2005 by HarperCollins.
“A Visit to the House of Fools” has clever imagery from the opening line: “The year subsides into clouds/more beautiful than any I have seen—“ and further down the poem is “Test tubes doze. A wide window watches the sea.” I love reading such lines because my imagination soars to soak in what the images would look like.
“Interesting People of Newfoundland” is funny as it discusses all the local townsfolk and their quirks as well as town landmarks. I wish I was able to write something like this. For example: “Doc Hanks, the sawbones, was a real good surgeon/when he wasn’t completely drunk, which was most of the time.”
This is only the tip of the iceberg of Ashberry’s poems. The link below provides links to some poems he has written along with an audio poem. Please check him out at:

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/238

Thanks for reading and please drop in tomorrow for another poetry web-site…