News
according to e. e. cummings
If you’re not familiar with the “common terms and phrases” feature on Google Books, then you should probably get familiar because it’s pretty great. It lists the words and word groups that appear most frequently in any full text available on Google Books. In novels, this list is often overrun by character names. But in E. E. Cumming’s Erotic Poems, things are a bit more interesting. For your Friday afternoon pleasure, please enjoy the Top Ten Most Unexpected Common Terms and Phrases in E. E. Cumming’s Erotic Poems:
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Whiting award winner Julie Sheehan’s third collection, Bar Book: Poems and Otherwise, will be published on June 7th. But she’ll be giving a sneak peak of the new bar-themed volume at New York’s legendary KGB Bar on Monday, May 3rd at 7pm [more info]. She’ll be reading with David Lehman who actually co-founded the Monday night poetry series back in 1997. Who else needs a drink?
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In the world of poetry awards, the Amy Award stands out. Why you ask? Not only does it support young women writing poetry and offer the opportunity to give a large public reading in New York City (a rare occurrence for an unpublished poet), but it also honors the memory of an extremely talented writer and actress, Amy Rothholz, who died at 25.
Poets & Writers is now accepting submissions for the 2010 Amy Awards, open to women poets age 30 and under living in the New York City metropolitan area or on Long Island. The deadline is June 1st. For full submission instructions, go to the Amy Award site.
Full disclosure: I was one of the winners last year, and I can honestly say that winning this award was one of the best experiences of my writing life. Awards and contests come and go (along with the award money), but I’ll never forget reading for a packed house with three other incredible writers. My own poems that I read that night have since been edited or abandoned, but the poem I read by Amy will be with me for a long time.
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Tonight, April 5th, the Poetry Society of America is hosting a star-studded poetry event to honor the original bard: Orpheus. It doesn’t get much better than this with poets John Ashbery and Mark Strand reading from their own work, and actors Maria Tucci and Chandler Williams performing poems by a range of contemporaries, from Czeslaw Milosz, Yusef Komunyakaa to Jack Gilbert, Linda Gregg and Sherod Santos. Pianist Paul Barnes will perform the Orphee Suite for Piano, his celebrated transcription from Philip Glass’s opera Orphee.
…AND IT’S FREE!
Details:
6PM, Bruno Walter Auditorium
111 Amsterdam Avenue (@ 65th Street), New York, NY
[more info]
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To recognize National Poetry Month, poet Sandra Beasley offers this fortune cookie guide to the “ways of poetry”. My favorite has to be, “You will step on the soil of many countries…in poetry”. If you’ll be in Denver for AWP next week be sure to come by the Norton booth (#309) at 3:30 on Friday, April 9th to help Norton, Poems Out Loud, and Joy Harjo celebrate the publication of Sandra’s lively second award-winning book of poetry, I Was the Jukebox.
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A Panel Not to Miss at AWP
Check out this short piece in Publishers Weekly, wherein poet and critic Craig Morgan Teicher examines the purpose of poetry reviews. Drawing input from poets and editors (including Matthew Zapruder of Wave Books, Timothy Donnelly of The Boston Review, Kevin Prufer of Pleiades and others), Teicher asks, quite seriously, what is the role of the reviewer? (Ambassador of poetry? Cheerleader? Gatekeeper?) Take a look and share your thoughts in the comment section below.
If you’re going to AWP in Denver don’t miss this panel. It will be on Friday, April 9th at 10:30 in Rooms 401 and 402. [More details]
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W. W. Norton will be at the AWP Conference in Denver (Exhibit Hall A, Booth 309) and we’ve got a stellar schedule of poets and writers coming by the booth. So you should join us. We can talk about books and stuff.
Thursday, April 8
Kimiko Hahn at 3:30
Editors and Contributors of Sudden Fiction Latino at 4:30
Friday, April 9
Brad Watson and John Dufresne at 1:45
Sandra Beasley and Joy Harjo at 3:30
Saturday, April 10
Nick Flynn at 1:45
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Sad news to share this morning. We’ve just learned that the National Book Award-winning poet Ai passed away over the weekend. Below is a statement from her colleagues in the Department of English at Oklahoma State University and the obituary notice that has been prepared by her estate:
It is with very great sadness that we inform the poetry community that the poet Ai died unexpectedly in the early hours of Saturday, March 20.
Ai was admitted to the emergency room at Stillwater Medical Center on Wednesday, March 17 with pneumonia, but tests indicated that she was in the last stages of breast cancer. She died comfortably in the company of her family.
The Creative Writing Program and the Department of English at Oklahoma State University, like the broader community of readers and writers, are devastated by the early loss of this fine poet and extraordinary colleague.
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Guest Contribution by Dai George
Poetry has a grand tradition of self-analysis. From Aristotle to Sidney, Shelley to Stevens, the question of poetry’s power and proper limits has been a vexed and fruitful one.
Consider two aspiring literary theorists: Fred and Alexander. Fred thinks that poetry can be defined as any passage of creative writing that’s organized into lines and stanzas. Alexander rebuts with a selection of his favorite prose poetry in which the run-on to a new line is completely insignificant. Muddying the waters even more, Alexander issues a counter strike by presenting Fred with a limerick and a perfectly formed but excruciatingly dull sonnet. Surely true poetry can’t be found in these trifles and smooth numbers? For Alexander, a piece of writing being poetry or not depends much more on spirit than a particular form.
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Editor’s note: For more erotic poems by E. E. Cummings, check out Erotic Poems, or learn more about E. E. Cummings erotic poetry by reading the Top Ten Most Unexpected Common Terms and Phrases in E. E. Cummings Erotic Poems. And, while you’re here, why not subscribe to Poems Out Loud if you enjoy poetry?
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Originally meant to shock the Puritanical sensibilities of the 1920s, Cummings’s poems of sexual and romantic love remain just as fresh and provocative today. The fifty poems included in Erotic Poems (all originally published in Cummings’s Complete Poems) are accompanied by twelve drawings by the poet himself which were recently featured in a slideshow on The Daily Beast. Poems Out Loud decided we’d call in the experts to take a close look at these erotic poems and report back on their findings. David Baker shows us how Cummings is in “so careful a rush”, Patricia Smith takes the express to Chicago, and Ann Townsend introduces the Grape-Vine Lady.
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