Justin Barrett, not for the faint of heart

This poet is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended. His poems can make you laugh, think, or even make you uncomfortable. He pushes the envelope. Below I have included a link to his personal site filled with poems so you can see for yourself what I’m talking about. In the meantime, I asked the crew at the Guerrilla Poetics Project if I could have permission to post a poem from his book The Magnificent Seven produced by 12 Gauge Press and they said yes! Just to let you know, the book is available for purchase for $5.00 at the Guerrilla Poetics Store and that is how I came by purchasing it for myself. I love the cover, it is a watercolor painting of a man holding a guitar with the title of the poem I am about to reveal to you as the painting’s title.
Here are some useful links to check Justin Barrett out:
http://www.guerillapoetics.org/store/

http://justinbarrett.com/justinbarrett_lt.html

And without further delay, here is one of my favorite poems from Justin Barrett’s book:

they say robert johnson sold his soul to the devil, but i’m convinced the devil sold his soul to robert Johnson

the memphis heat,
sweltering and
humid,
drips off him like condensation down
a bottle of beer as he waits
at the crossroads.

the devil walks
towards him from the
north.

“howdy son,” the
devil says.

“howdy to you,”
robert returns.

“i got something for you
if you got something for me,”
the devil says

and that’s how it went.

when it was over
robert johnson returned
able to play his guitar
like it was a woman;

alternately turning
it on and pissing
it off,
making it moan
and sigh,

groan and cry.

they say robert johnson sold his
soul to the devil
but i’m convinced the devil
sold his soul to
robert johnson.

and it was the only time
the devil lost a bet.


Now how about that? The ending is my favorite part because how often do you ever hear of the devil losing? This poem rocks and I dare you to read more of his work on the GPP broadsides archive and on his personal site. Give him a shout out at GPP if you like, his work is awesome.

Thanks for reading, please drop in tomorrow for another great poetry web-site.

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!

Cannibal

Not only does the title of the blog warrant attention, so does the name of the web-site link to it, included below. Just like Press, Press, Press, this blog features poetry books for sale. Cannibal produces its own journal and chapbook series and upcoming events. This is another “rabbit-hole” find that I think is worth investigating.

http://flesheatingpoems.blogspot.com/

Thanks for checking in, please read about another living poet feature tomorrow…

Poetry Tips Friday: Reviews

How often do you read reviews about movies and writers? I read them from time to time and don’t always agree with them. However, if you are stuck in Writer’s Block or just looking for a new spin, try writing a review or article by way of a poem.
You can describe a movie, a book, and title it as “A Critical Poem Featuring ……”


If that doesn’t sound interesting, try reducing a novel or movie into a poem. Can you make it short? Can you turn it into an epic poem? Can you make it easy to name the movie or book if you leave off the title when coming up with your own title? Can you put a new ending or spin on it? The possibilities are endless and best of all, great practice for thinking up new poems to write.

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

Happy Thanksgiving, Open Submissions at The Qurik

Happy Thanksgiving Poets and Poetry Readers!

The Quirk is open to submissions! Send an SASE with up to 7 poems to Kaveh Akbar and Erik Scott for their third issue coming up. No simultaneous admissions, and if you send in previously published work it must be fantastic writing with credits towards who published it. If you send them an e-mail and want your poems returned, send the SASE (Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope). If you submit by e-mail please title it QUIRK SUBMISSION in the subject line and in the e-mail include your mailing address. Good luck to all of you submitting!

The Quirk c/o Kaveh Akbar and Erik Scott1275 N. Third Street, Shreve B507West Lafayette, IN 47906

editors@thequirk.org

Thanks for stopping in, and give thanks to all of the poets who inspire you on this wonderful day of fantastic food and relaxation…
Stop by tomorrow for more Poetry Tips on Friday if you’re able to pull out of the Turkey Coma.

Poems Linked by Poet Hound

http://www.versedaily.org/2007/wholeworlds.shtml
Perfect for a gray, cold day…a poem by Lynne Potts titled “Whole Worlds Had Already Happened”

http://www.jubilat.org/n13/wilkinson.html
“A Brief History of Lying” by Joshua Marie Wilkinson… all I have to say is a soft “wow…”

Thanks for checking out these poets, and please stop in tomorrow for another Thursday edition of Open Submissions, yes, even on Thanksgiving I’ll still be posting… Utilize that long turkey-induce coma to send out some poems…

William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams is a very well known poet whom many poetry writers look up to, and of course, many readers look up to as well. He was born in 1883 and passed in 1963. I picked up William Carlos Williams’ Selected Poems edited by Charles Tomlinson at the local library and below I have provided another link to the Poetry Foundation’s information and poems of this poet. Ezra Pound discovered his talents in 1913 and brought Williams’ work to a wider readership. Williams was a poet and novelist who explored America in all its glory. He describes simple scenes and intimate moments, his poems range in length of page and in length of lines. Some are very short lines such as in the poem “At the Faucet of June:”

to solve the core
of whirling flywheels
by cutting
….

and longer lines such as the poem “The Yachts:”

brilliance of cloudless days, with broad bellying sails
they glide to the wind tossing green water
from their sharp prows while over them the crew crawls
….

All in all, his poems are easy to understand when they are read, and they are so very beautiful. I highly recommend brushing up on poetry in general by reading Williams and please use the link below to find out more about him.

http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=81496

Thanks for reading, please stop by tomorrow for more linked poems from around the on-line literary journals…

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…