From the blognoscenti: 04 January 2011 (3)

(a) Claudia Samperi-Warren, "The Room Is My Refuge From Light" in poetfranksamperi." I don't think this poem was ever published.It is one of a collection of poems that come from The Room Is My Refuge From Light which was then called SONG BOOK, published 1960"; 

(b) Geof Huth, "1,2,3,ing"in dbqp: visualizing poetics. "I'm still counting (in order to give a recap of my last year in the world of poetry), and I've come to the disturbing realization that I created over 3,000 poems (visual and otherwise) last year";

(c) Irina Moga, "The Annotated Bee & Me" in The Continuous Poem. “The Annotated Bee & Me is carefully architected creation, a series of poems that aggregate around “the large themes of our lives –Birth, Death, Time and Memory” (a quote from the volume’s back cover) and an original poetic topic: beekeeping";

(d) Bob Grumman,  "Entry 334 — One Reason I’m Not a Fan of Emily’s" in POETICKS. "A major problem I have with Emily Dickinson’s pieces is that they seem to me much more rhymed opinions than poems";

(e) William Michaelian, "In the Forum: He comes with words sublimely dull, / In garb superbly silly, / To tell us of the Beautiful, / The sunflower and the lily", in Recently Banned Literature;

(f) Dave Bonta, "Vinyl Poesie by Christoph Bruns" in Moving Poems. "This is a stop motion video i created around summer last year. It is a selfwritten poem created out of my vinyl collection. i looked out for interesting words and formed this little passages";

(g) Ed Baker (in email correspondence) cited  "Clouds Gather and Part: Tanka" by Karma Tenzing Wangchuk (Dennis H. Dutton) in tel let 2004;

(h) William Michaelian, "The Past Recaptured" in Recently Banned Literature. "Some other books I read during that time: Dylan Thomas in America, by John Malcolm Brinnin; Love is a Dog from Hell, by Charles Bukowski; The History of Reading and The Library at Night, by Alberto Manguel; Sonnets from the Portuguese, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning; John Brown’s Body, by Stephen Vincent Benét; Selected Poems, by Georg Trakl; A Listening Thing, by William Michaelian; parts of three poetry collections by Lawrence Ferlinghetti";

(i) Bob Grumman, "Entry 335 — “Mathemaku in Praise of Taxonomy” in POETICKS. "This is the mathemaku I hoped to finish yesterday evening–and did.   One of my best, it seems to me at the moment (which is around seven, 3 January 2011)";

(j) Ed Baker (in email correspondence) cited "The John Perlman Collection: A Guide and Inventory" by Jeffrey Rudzinski and John M. Bennett in University Libraries: Rare Books and Manuscripts; "Rim: Woodcuts,Stem, Az Two: Words of Travel, Side-Ways and Fist by David Giannini" in amazon.com; "Twelve Poems by John Levy in tel-let 2006.

Sentence: A refuge from the disturbing visuals of Birth, Death, Time & Self: a type of "sublimely dull" beekeeping, or a parting of the clouds, since the world is read during the moment and then inventoried into rare books.

From the blognoscenti: 03 January 2011 (2)

(a) Irina Moga, "Of Love and the Island" in The Continuous Poem. "In modern poetry the Embarkation for Cythera appears to be a theme of equally luxuriant mythologies." [See discussion of Verlaine, Laforgues Théodore de Banville, Baudelaire, Andrew Lang, David Ferry, John Glassco & Francis Poulenc];

(b) Don Wentworth, "Dandy in the Underworld: Issa's Sundary Service, #84 in Issa's Untidy Hut. "If ever there was a patron saint of poetry (as well as music), Orpheus is certainly a leading candidate";

(c) Vassilis Zambaras, "Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City" in vazambam. "No lyric poetry here, just pure Ionian tragedy";

(d) Dan Waber, "this is visual poetry by Jenee Mateer" in this is visual poetry. "Jenee says: 'I see my work as a meditation on issues of gender, desire, identity and the complexities of language (communication)'";

(e) Dave Bonta, "Paradoxes and Oxymorons by John Ashbery" in Moving Poems. "Art student Al Belancourt made this film of Ashbery’s poem as an assignment for a poetry class, he tells me, inspired by viewing Moving Poems in class";

(f) Ed Baker (in email correspondence) cited "Uncollected Poems (18): Found Poems from 'The Emergence Notebooks' (for the New Year 2011)" by Jerome Rothenberg in Poems and Poetics. "This sequence of poems from the early 1960s was recovered, along with numerous others, for Retrievals, a volume of Uncollected & New Poems 1955-2010, to be published early in 2011 by Mark Weiss & Junction Press";

(g) Ed Baker (in email correspondence) cited "On & By Blanchot" by Pierre Joris in Nomadics. "Here is my contribution — a brief remembrance of buying my first Blanchot book in Paris & a reading from The Unavowable Community —to the Maurice Blanchot Celebrations at Bard College in November 2007."

Sentence: The modern poem, however (if ever there was a candidate for Ionian tragedy!), is a meditation on language—a retrievable and complex one.