Denise Levertov

Denise Levertov was born in Ilford Essex, England in 1923 and passed away in December 1997. During her lifespan she converted from Judaism to Christianity, was educated entirely at home, had her first poem published at the age of 17 and became a nurse while also maintaining a prolific writing career. Even after her death, her poems were still being published. More about her can be found at the link included below at poets.org. I picked up her book Sands of the Well, published by New Directions Books in 1994, at the library.

While Levertov is plain-spoken, that is, every poem is readily understandable, there is grace and beauty in every one. There are two poems that I will focus on and the first is titled “Threat.” It speaks of the majestic beauty of a pinetree and the fear that comes from having one so near your house yet also the fear of losing it altogether. For example, her lines say: “You can live for years next door/to a big pinetree, honored to have/so venerable a neighbor, even/when it sheds needles all over your flowers/….” Then goes on to say “under respect, under your faith/in the pinetree’s beauty, there lies/the fear it will crash some day/…the fragility of the safe/dailiness you have almost/grown used to.”
What I love is that she has such respect, love, and fear all mixed in the same poem about nature and human’s nature towards it.

The second poem is “A Gift” and I simply cannot do this one justice by talking about it. I wish that I could. The poem is gorgeous and contemplative. The beginning lines are fabulous: “Just when you seem to yourself/nothing but a flimsy web/of questions…” and goes on to say that questions from others are being given to you so that “in the emptiness of your hands,/…butterflies opening and closing themselves/in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure/their scintillant fur, their dust.” Essentially the poem says the questions you ask of life that are never answered are replaced with questions from others that somehow satisfy your need for answers. Isn’t that a beautiful idea?

There are many pages of this book that I “dog-eared” where I liked the poem so much I wanted to go back and absorb it again and again. I hope you will find her equally satisfying when you come across her in your own library or book-store, or perhaps on the web.

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/41

Thanks for reading, please stop by tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound

Tomasso Gervusatti's Site

Gervasutti discusses poets and their works in his blog. His comments are personable and I enjoy dropping in on him from time to time. I hope you will, too, check him out using the link below…

http://tommasogervasutti.blogspot.com/

Thanks for dropping in, please stop by tomorrow for another featured poet…

Poetry Tips: I talk of Dreams...

Poems about dreams can be interesting to read and fun to write. If you are so lucky as to have a Dream Dictionary on hand, you can go even further in writing a poem about a dream you’ve had because you can look up the hidden meaning and try to include it in some way. To write about dreams you can take several ways, one could be free-form thinking where images from your dreams are written line by line as they come to you. Or you can take a dream you’ve had and turn it into a story-line. You can also write a poem as though you have a dream for the future, much like many great speeches. For example, I have lots of dreams about caves, and according to my Dream Dictionary it a meeting with death and rebirth. I just may try writing a poem about my cave dreams and I challenge you to write poems about your own dreams. If you’re really motivated, keep a Dream Journal and then you’ll have plenty of material for poems.
Good luck and may the muse be with you!

Please stop by on Monday for another featured site…

Oranges and Sardines Open Submissions

This is entirely new; please check out the guidelines at the site using the link below. You can send 8 to 12 poems via e-mail to didimenendezAThotmailDOTcom. No simultaneous submissions, for more information, check it out at:

http://www.poetsandartists.com/

Thanks for dropping in, please stop by tomorrow for more Poetry Tips

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.conjunctions.com/webcon/steward08.htm
“Oktombro” by D.E. Stewart

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2008/03/poetry/aura
“aura” by Arlo Quint


Thanks for dropping in, please stop by tomorrow...

Adrienne Rich is Rich in Writing

Adrienne Rich was born in 1929 and is thought of very highly in the world of poetry and in literature in general. She is known as one of the front runners for feminism and has written many books of poetry and essays. I picked up Telephone Ringing In The Labyrinth, published by W.W. Norton and Company in 2007, a collection of poems from 2004 – 2006 at my local library. (What on earth would I do without a library? What would you do without one?) There are two poems I quite enjoy and they happen to be back to back, so to speak, in this collection.

One is titled “Calibrations” and it caught my eye because it mentions a prosthetic hand and a ghostlimb. “A prosthetic hand calibrates perfectly/the stem of a glass/or how to stroke a face/…” It catches my eye because in my personal life I am close to someone who uses a prosthetic limb. Also the same with “ghostlimb” where her lines say “it’ll come with you the ghostlimb/…the shadow blind/echo of your body spectre of your soul/…” Again, it catches my eye for personal reasons. However, the poem itself is beautiful and raises eyebrows as you ponder the person tuning their guitar in the beginning and the poem which then shifts to the idea of the person’s touch being replaced by the prosthetic hand which cannot feel touch.

The second poem is “Skeleton Key” and I just love each and every line I have to say. Adrienne Rich is just wonderful at poems with marvelous lines that catch your eye and set you thinking, but I just happen to love the long and short lines of this poem. How does she do it? The way she spaces words out or divides them up makes it an enjoyable read. I can’t copy the way the lines are arranged thanks to the blog program being a bit stubborn, but I can quote some lines: “a small wound, swallow-shaped, on my wrist/ripped by a thorn/exacerbated by ash and salt/…” the imagery there is beautiful and somber at the same time don’t you think? Then there is “Then I slept, and had a dream/ No more/No mas/From now on, only/reason’s drugged and dreamless sleep/…” it seems such a simple thing to say yet it makes you pause… Just a wonderful poem.

The entire book is, of course, a worthwhile read and I hope you will look up her books in the store or library. I have also included a link below so you can find out more about her.

http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=5680

Thanks for reading, please stop by tomorrow…

Poemeleon

This is an on-line journal with great personality. Last I checked their open submissions closed in February but you can still poke around and see what’s happening in events and links and other posts. Check them out at:

http://www.poemeleon.org/

Thanks for dropping in, stay tuned for tomorrow’s featured poet…

Poetry TIps: Linking to Your Neighbor, The Poet

I have to say I am thrilled to find that Talia at http://taliatulledge.blogspot.com/
(her blog link is also on the sidebar) has been posting links on her own blog to poets’ work found on the web and I think it would be great if more people took the time to do the same. Regular readers know that I post two links to other poets’ poems found on the web every Wednesday. Since it is National Poetry Month why not try finding some poems you like on the web and posting it on your web-site, blog, or in your e-mail and spread the word to inspire others. Not only will this increase readership for the poet it will also expose more people to all kinds of poems they may not have encountered before.

Good luck and please drop by on Monday…

Lilliput Review Open Submissions

Lilliput Review is open to submissions year round and specializes in short poems. Please send up to 3 poems and make sure they are all less than 10 lines long. Don’t forget to include your Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope and mail it to:

Lilliput ReviewDon Wentworth, Editor282 Main StreetPittsburgh, PA 15201

Also, Don’t forget that it is Poems in Your Pocket Day! So while you are sending off poems for Editors to pocket, give some away to friends, family, co-workers, strangers in honor of this great day for spreading Poetry. Good luck!

Poems Found By Poet Hound

http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=13971
Anne Stevenson’s “Dreaming of the Dead”

http://juked.com/2008/04/thereitis.asp
Leslie LaChance’s “So There It Is”

Thanks for dropping by, please visit tomorrow for another Open Submissions!

An Interview with Christopher Cunningham

Thanks to Bill Shute at Kendra Steiner Editions I was able to purchase a fabulous collection of Chris Cunningham’s poems titled Next Exit: Five and Chris was also happy to oblige to an interview:

When did you fall in love with poetry and who, or what collection, did you fall in love with?

I’ve always toyed with the poem, starting in high school after my first collision with T.S. Eliot and “The Hollow Men.” I was struck by the darkness at first, and the magic of words creating instant images in my mind. To this day it’s how I write poems: fix the image/scene in my mind and then describe it, letting the metaphor take care of itself.

Which poets (living or dead) would you like to gather in a bar with?

All of my choices would be living poets, I prefer to let the dead rest: they’ve earned it. I’d tip a glass with Hosho McCreesh, justin.barrett, Luis C. Berriozabal, Michael Philips, Bill Roberts, Father Luke…there are others but that would be a hell of a start right there.


When did you start taking poetry seriously enough to try and publish it and why?

I really started ‘finding my voice’ and the words to get across what I wanted to say around 2000. I began sending out submissions and got my first accepts at American Dissident and the fantastic Nerve Cowboy. As for the ‘why,’ poetry for me has always been about communication, about conveying the depths of the human condition, the suffering and the hope and the finer details of our passing thru. It’s about reaching an actual level of pure communication between humans who are alive and awake enough to experience it. Although, to be fair, I also use the act of writing poetry as a kind of therapy, as a way into that mental place where art is created and the rest this brutal world falls away, so not all of it is for public consumption.


How did you come about your collection of poems for Next Exit: Five?

Bill Shute at Kendra Steiner Editions asked me for some poems for his fantastic series Next Exit, so I sat down and wrote ten new poems for him with the chapbook in mind. He’d planned on pairing me up with another poet (as he’d done with the other versions) but felt the poems worked well enough as a whole that he published the whole batch.


I love your poem, “Mobile, Alabama.” I especially love the lines “everyone is tired/and the world is/a difficult place.” Could you tell me how this poem came about and may I post it?

Sure, feel free to post it. That poem is a true story. All the poems in the chapbook are true stories. A couple of friends and I had a nasty bout of car trouble at the top of that big bridge in Mobile and our car died in the middle of the night. We had to coast down that long slope with semis blasting past, holding a tiny maglite out the window for illumination. We were on our way back from New Orleans. It turned out to be a long night with many revelations.

Mobile, Alabama

as the trucks
pound across the
giant expanse of
bridge looming
in the distance

the water
somewhere below

exhales and inhales.

everyone is tired
and the world is
a difficult place.

nothing is very reliable.

people are lost, much
is broken.

this road seems
endless.

but it
isn’t.

taillights
disappear into the southern air.

metal, mostly,

groans.



What is your favorite poem in this collection, why, and may I post it?

Probably standing indian, north carolina. I don’t write many poems that might be classified as ‘love’ poems, unless it’s the difficult kind, but this is a poem for my girlfriend of eighteen years writ about a camping trip that was full of thunder and madness and a deeper appreciation for the power of nature, and the nature of love and trust.

Standing Indian, North Carolina

as the storm built
a castle of silver
rain
in the distance
and the wind
struck down
non-believers
in its path,

as the emeralds
lining the trail
flashed and waved on
slender stalks of
rusted copper wire,

as the husked remnants
of fallen trees
became strange wild animals
and the air vibrated with
current,

the river
tumbled over the falls
nearby and

your fingers
tightened
around mine.


Where do you live in Georgia and have you been to all of the towns you name in your collection?

I live outside of Atlanta near the airport, a city called College Park, in a house with my girl and my dog, Stella Blue. I have indeed been to all those towns, and more…I love the inspiration of travel and especially discovering weird and strange new places.

What is your favorite place to visit of all the towns named in your collection?

Really, my favorite city is mentioned in one of the poems: New Orleans. Though we’re probably moving to Asheville, NC at some point…we love the mountains too.

What is your favorite word?

That’s a tough one. It’s either “savage” or an obscenity and all its myriad variations that gets used frequently around here: rhymes with “chuck.”

What is your least favorite word?

It’s the word “like” when not being used in a poem for metaphorical purposes, as in, “I mean, oh my god, she was all, like, whatever.”


What does your family think of you as a poet and about poetry in general?

I’m lucky to have a family that enjoys my poems and thinks it’s a worthy pursuit. My mom in particular is a big supporter of the small press and small press poets; she’s recently bought books by William Taylor, Jr., Luis Berriozabal, Hosho McCreesh, others. She’s even tried her hand at a few poems and they turned out damn fine.

What work and hobbies do you have outside of poetry?

I write prose and paint. I also play some poker. As a hobby.


As a member of the Guerrilla Poetics Project are there any hurdles you’ve had to overcome or are still overcoming in the process of distributing poems to all?

I love the mission of the GPP and support it with time and energy, as well as cash. Every small press publishing outfit has hurdles to vault, and we’ve had our share. They just make the Project stronger…


Finally, what would you like to accomplish for your own poetry in the next two to five years?

Keep writing the kind of poems I need to write and putting together books, keep attempting that deep communication with my fellow human beings, keep trying to understand the savagery and beauty of our species.

Thanks for asking and for the chance to run my mouth.

Thanks Chris!

If you’re a regular reader you know that Kendra Steiner Editions (link is on the sidebar) offers chapbooks one for $4.00 or three for $10.00 and that is an excellent deal if I may say so. I urge you to support the small presses and the poets they feature so I hope you’ll visit the site and pick out a few titles for yourself. You won’t be disappointed and the poets may even sign their work for you if you ask nicely.

Thanks for reading, please drop by tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…

Read Write Poem Site

Aha! Here is a great resource for all of you writing poems out there. If you have writer’s block or need a new idea this is the site to go to, and if you want to learn about poetry holidays, bingo, this is the site. Check it all out at:

http://readwritepoem.org/

Please stop by tomorrow for an interview with Christopher Cunningham…

Poetry Tips: Random Acts of Kindness

I stumbled onto some Random Acts of Kindness and wondered if it was possible to do random acts of kindness through poetry? So I figured why not create a “thank you poem” to all of you for reading my blog and challenge you to create random acts of kindness through poetry. Pass on thank you poems of your own, or give a random person a free poem that inspires you, or even a broadside, chapbook, book, something related to Poetry. After all, April is Poetry Month and why not double the “wonderfulness” of it by turning towards Random Acts of Kindness through Poetry?

Thank You Blog Readers

I thank you for your insight,
wisdom and comments,
trials and hindsight corrections.
I thank you for
fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants
poems sent sailing to the floor
which end up published with high scores.

I wish you happiness, health,
an ever-present muse
and a poetic rendezvous
of thanking the poets
who inspire you.

Thank you blog readers and contributors! May the muse be with you and may you inspire everyone you meet with poetry…

27 Rue De Fleures Open Submissions

If you are female and know that your poetry is experimental, then this is the place for you! You can submit via e-mail or snail mail. Send up to 3 pieces to
Submissions[at]27rue[dot]com (do not use attachments, just paste into the e-mail) snail mail to: 27 rue de fleures (submissions)/ 600 N. Walnut St./ Bay City, MI 48706.

You can find out more by going to their website and familiarizing yourself with the poems available on their site.

http://www.27rue.com/

Good luck and please stop by tomorrow for more Poetry Tips!

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=13956
Mary Jo Salter’s “Point of View”

http://www.mascarapoetry.com/issue3/papa_osmubal.htm
Papa Osumbal’s poems—all of them.


Thanks for reading, please stop by tomorrow for another Open Submissions…