Bloof Books Site

I know what you’re thinking, how do I find all these places to go? By going deep down the rabbit hole that is Poetry on the Web… This site features a store page where you can buy books of poetry and it also features readings they will be hosting throughout the US, including Florida State University for those of you who visit my site from here in Florida. I e-mailed Bloof Books to see if there was a physical location and they told me they are located in Mercer County, NJ but only as a virtual site and on-line store. Please check them out, they have a blog with pictures of their readings and plenty of events to keep you occupied!

http://www.bloofbooks.com/news.html

Thanks for dropping in, I’ll see you tomorrow for another poet who has passed but leaves behind their wonderful words…

W.S. Di Piero

Mr. Di Piero was born in 1945 and grew up in Philadelphia. Luckily for us all, the Poetry Foundation has great information on him and poems to look at by using the link below. I had picked up the book Skirts and Slacks by W.S. Di Piero at the library and this link talks about this book. Don’t you love it when the hard work has already been done for you? Mr. Di Piero’s poems talk about every day happenings and of life and death. The language is easy to read and full of imagery you wouldn’t normally think of. For example, in his poem “Psychopomp” there’s these two lines:

Consciousness taffied by drugs
Into and out of the dull light
….

I love those two lines because if you have ever seen a taffy pull then it is a very intriguing image to think of “consciousness” being taffied. These kinds of lines are throughout the poems in this book and I highly recommend you take a look. Surely if I can find it in a library you can find it, too. As always, the Poetry Foundation offers fantastic poetry resources and to find out more about Mr. Di Piero please click on the link below and explore the poems that are featured.

http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=1769

Thanks for dropping in, please come by tomorrow for another great poetry website…

Chicano Poet Blog

This poet’s name is Reyes Cardenas and he posted a comment on my blog some time ago and of course I had to see who he was. He writes poems regularly and I enjoy all of them, especially since he lives in Texas. Texas is another personal favorite of mine as I used to live there for many years. Mr. Cardenas recently had a series of poems naming plenty of well known poets and linking them in one way or another to Texas which was funny and clever and very Texan of him. Please check out his blog at:

http://chicanopoet.blogspot.com/

Thanks for checking in, please come by tomorrow for another living poet…

Poetry Tips: Writer's Block Navigation

It is unavoidable. Sooner or later you will experience complete writer’s block, the boulder will stretch so tall and wide you cannot find a way to get around it. Here are a couple of ideas you can use to write a poem.

The Telephone Game: Sometimes you may find yourself busy-on-purpose to avoid writing and therefore facing the writer’s block boulder. If one of your ways of avoidance is to call up someone just to strike up conversation, write your idea of the phone conversation as a poem. You can make it as literal, abstract, or straightforward as you like. Once you finish, go ahead and call the person you had in mind and see if your “conversation” was as creative as what you produced.

The Letter/Card Conundrum: If you are about to write a letter or a holiday card to someone, try writing it in poem form with the person in mind. How would you describe what you’ve been up to lately? Would you be able to make it rhyme, put it in stanzas instead of paragraphs, etc? The possibilities are endless! Holiday cards make it interesting because once you write a holiday themed poem for one person, you can duplicate it and send it to others. See if writing a normal letter or holiday card in poetry form helps chip away that large boulder.

The Picture Poem: As you know, each picture is said to be worth a thousand words. Try to find a picture that you really enjoy whether it is silly, beautiful, sad, or inspiring and write about it in poem form.


Hopefully these ideas will help in a pinch when Writer’s Block sits in your path. May the muse be with you, and please stop by tomorrow for another great poetry blog…

Chicago Review Open for Submissions

The Chicago Review features poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. For poetry, there are no specific lengths or subject requirements, but be sure to include a cover letter. They also ask that you send at least three poems, and as always, include a Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope.
Send your poems to:
Chicago Review 5801 South Kenwood Avenue Chicago IL 60637
Email: chicago hyphen review at uchicago dot edu

For further information, subscription rates, and samples go to:
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/review/submit.shtml


Thanks for checking in, good luck on your submissions! Tomorrow we will feature more Poetry Tips…

Linked Poems and Demise of Poems

Here are some poems I would like to share with you:

http://www.poetrymagazine.org/magazine/1107/poem_180160.html
Kevin Young’s Poem: From “Book of Hours”


http://www.alicebluereview.org/main.html
Prose by Mike Cunningham: Flowering Dogwood


I will feature a couple of poems I enjoy each week and link you to them. Enjoy the writing and as always, support living poets by seeking out their books and purchasing them, and of course, always write to poets whose work you enjoy and let them know.

Aha! It was bound to happen sooner or later, an agent for a poet told me to delete a poem I had not asked permission to post. So I deleted it. However, I believe poetry should be free and shared. I didn’t plagiarize this poet or claim their work was mine or anything of the sort. My motive was to bring this poet’s work to the attention of other poetry readers. Of course, this poet is also a well known writer with many books under her belt and probably doesn’t need any help selling extra copies. For the other poets out there, I’d like to think they would be happy their work was featured and displayed for others to happily stumble upon. As a result, I have deleted several more posts that I think could lead to more agents requesting I take them down. I have also altered, deleted, or replaced poems with poetry links just in case. I will delete any and all work that an agent or poet asks me to, however, I still believe poetry was meant to be shared… This is why I am part of the Guerrilla Poetics Project.

Thanks for dropping in, see you tomorrow for another Open Submissions…

Dorothy Parker

Ah yes, Dorothy Parker. Not only is she well known, but I seem to encounter more and more women with her name. I often wonder if they get teased for having her name and whether any of them are poets, too. Dorothy Rothschild was born August 22nd, 1893. Her mother died young and Dorothy didn’t have a good relationship with her father and stepmother. Despite all of this, she became well known as a result of her editorial position at Vogue and then moved on to Vanity Fair. She married Edwin Parker whom she met at the Algonquin Round Table, the famous literary circle. Dorothy is best known for her poems, and published plays as well. Dorothy passed away on June 7th, 1967.

http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=174097


Thanks for stopping in, tomorrow I will feature links to poetry I enjoy rather than poems I have written. See you tomorrow…

Cloudy Day Art

Cloudy Day Art is a site with wonderful audio,podcasts, poetry, interviews, and blog features. And it also talks about how to make your own podcast poetry by explaining how to use audacity. Check it all out at:


http://www.cloudydayart.com/

Thanks for stopping in, tomorrow we’ll discuss another well-known poet who has passed…

Poetry's November Issue

Sometimes I run out of time to go to the local library to find living poets but I do try to subscribe to at least two publications a year that have poets featured in them. Poetry is the most obvious choice, and I would like to recommend this magazine for people who love poetry enough to have a whole literary journal dedicated to poets. Not only can this clue you in to living poets you may want to check out at the book-store, the poems selected often move you in some way.
The poet who moved me the most in the journal was Elfriede Jelinek, translated into English by Michael Hoffman. Elfriede does not write poetry much anymore, but the works included were wonderful, they all had a “bite” to them. She is better known for her fiction titled The Piano Teacher, however I implore you to check out this issue on-line, in book-stores, or libraries and seek her poems out. They are truly wonderful.
May I also mention that Neko Case has an article in this issue? For those of you who love the band The New Pornographers, this is a fabulous treat. I, for one, love her article because I can relate. I have no degree in English and yet I love poetry and feel the need to pursue it by sharing it with others or trying it myself. Fantastic little article…
In the meantime, check out Kevin Young’s poem “From Book of Hours”, a little long by my usual standards but I ate it up, and also Nicole Pekarske’s poem “Carolina Journal” which reminds me of all my relatives in their hometown of Linton, Indiana.

I would post the poems if I could, but I ran out of time to ask permission. And Poetry is wonderful about granting permission so long as the author also agrees should any of you ever want to share poems with a class, on a web-site, blog, etc. Keep reading poetry, and please check out this journal based out of Chicago. Thanks for dropping by!

P.S. I will be delayed in posting Monday's response as I will be going out of town and returning later in the afternoon. Also, don't forget to vote in the poll at the bottom...

Lame House Press

First of all, don’t you love the name? Second, definitely not lame. This blog doesn’t post about themselves much, in fact, it is geared to selling poetry books that are rather obscure in nature. This is a great place to find the needle in your haystack in regards to poetry. You can buy right on site by clicking the “buy now” button under each book and doesn’t that make life so much easier than following a link to a book or several links to get to a book you might want to look at and buy? Please check this place out at:

http://lamehouse.blogspot.com/

Happy hunting and please come by tomorrow for more living, breathing poets…

Poetry Tips: How do your poems rate?

One of the hardest things to do is to grade your own poems after you’ve finished. You don’t have to be in school to realize the value of your work.
The way I often grade myself is by using the following:
1 = Poor, 2 = Fair 3= Average 4= Good 5= Excellent

These are the questions I use to grade my own poetry on the 1 – 5 scale:
Does the poem make sense to the intended audience?
Does the title make sense in relation to the poem?
Is the poem the appropriate length for the content?
Is this poem unique to your voice/style?
Is the subject matter presented in a unique way?
Is the subject trite?
Would you publish this if it were your journal/book to edit?

I don’t use this scale on every poem. Sometimes poems are written just to be written. But I highly recommend grading yourself on poems you wish to submit for publication and you can always create your own grading criteria, after all, you know you best.

Good luck with writing, please stop by tomorrow for another poetry blog…

No Tell Motel Open Submissions

No Tell Motel is an awesome web-site that is open to submissions year round. Send between 5 to 8 poems to submit(at)notellmotel.org with the heading: “(Your Last Name)_Submission and be sure not to submit too often, once every four months is acceptable. Don’t forget your bio, and for more details, check them out at:

http://www.notellmotel.org/index.php

Thanks for stopping in, best of luck with your submissions!

Poem by Poet Hound

This Evening at Home (for Kathryn)

Mauled fur-kitten
mess on the floor,
animal sacrifice of
the dogs of chaos.
Now, two souls led
to death-row sentence
kennel unless adopted
by kinder-hearted souls
unaware of the guilty
verdict: Cold-blooded murder.

Thanks for reading, please come by tomorrow for Open Submissions. Also, don't forget to take the poll by scrolling to the bottom picture...

The Page Site

This site features poetry, essays, and more. Lots of information to search at your leisure and if you ever wanted to create a list of poets to check out at the library, quickly, this is the place to go. Poets both obscure and well-known are featured, lots of news items done on poets, this site is “manna from heaven” for poetry lovers. You can look at individual poems featured in all kinds of literary journals, which is great because you can sample poems from journals you may want to submit to, and you can get a sense of certain contemporary styles that are popular here and now. Please check this site out at:

http://thepage.name/

Also, please take a moment to fill out the poll by scrolling to the bottom picture

Thanks for checking in, please come back tomorrow for a poet missed but not forgotten…

Traveling Without A Map by Margaret J. Hoehn

I picked up a poetry chapbook at a local indie book-store by Anabiosis Press and felt I should share it with you. It is titled Traveling Without A Map by Margaret J. Hoehn and it is delightful. I was hoping to find a way to contact her but ran out of time. She is from Sacramento, California and while this chapbook was the winner of the 2004 Anabiosis Press Chapbook Contest she has won other prizes before and since then. If you are able to find any work by her, please take a look and see for yourself how clean and refreshing her poems are, particularly in this chapbook if you happen to come across it. I also bet you can ask Anabiosis Press if they have any more copies or could produce a copy for you. Chapbooks are typically very inexpensive.
Here is one of her refreshing poems:

Georgia O’Keefe Writes Her Friends:
“I Won’t Return To New York”

At Ghost Ranch,
I chip turquoise from sky,
gather bits of summer
into my pockets,
watch the skull of a horse
rise, luminous and white:
morning star above the ridges,
lit bone spilling
back to the land,
memory of scrub
and stone,
of a colt that grazed
wild with its herd.
Here, I savor the lavish
Desire of light,
walk unfettered
toward four horizons,
forget how to sleep,
stack longing
in the shade of a cliff.
Between angular hours,
I study the syntax
of wind, of cliffs,
of my lover’s
blue veins.
Here, I am a grain
of warm sand, I am
the desert’s bright door,
shaped
like a slender green leaf.

This poem is the very first poem in Margaret Hoehn’s chapbook and I was hooked right then and there to read the rest of them. Excellent arrangement of poems,too, all of them connected to each other so the book flows very well.
Thanks for reading Margaret J. Hoehn’s work, please stop by tomorrow for another great poetry web-site!