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Eye on Life Magazine is a Lifestyle and Literary Magazine. Enjoy articles on gardening, kitchen cooking, poetry, vintage decor, and more.
Hives is a product of my own chronic hives, an inability to let my alarm clock have the final say (also chronic), and a super-glued heart. The glue is superb, by the way. I got my BA in History at Brigham Young University and my MS in Literature and Writing at Utah State University. Now I spend most of my time playing with my sweet family… and I like to write about it.
Juxtaposed in their differences, Robert Pinsky and Louise Gluck read their favorite poems by other poets at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, Lowell High School Auditorium, 7pm to 8pm on Saturday night, October 17th. Both poets’ styles served the poems they read well, if in different ways. Pinsky brought his magnetic personality to bear, flavoring each poem with his personal style. Gluck, on the other hand, let the words hang in the air as if untouched by her, hung there with such deft gentleness and detachment, it is almost as if they had voiced themselves.
Longtime friends, the poets worked well together. At one point Gluck changed her program last minute because of the poem Pinsky had chosen to read immediately before her, and, not in possession of a copy of William Butler Yeats’ Sailing to Byzantium, she was able to borrow a copy on the spot from Pinsky. Why? Because Sailing to Byzantium is also one of his favorite poems, but, more importantly, because he keeps an anthology of 250 of his favorite poems to serve as a reference to points he might want to illustrate during lectures or workshops.
Pinsky urged all poets to type such an anthology for themselves, because in seeing great words “in your own font”, you may be inspired someday to “write something good.” This wording was telling, since, when a great poet reads, a large part of the audience will necessarily be made up of poets. This poet will take his advice to heart; I will begin selecting poems for my anthology this week.
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Day two at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival features readings by high school and collegiate poets, and city poets as well as workshops and other programs. Today’s Cafe Reading features poets Holly Guran and Alice Kociemba at Dharma Buns in Lowell, Massachusetts. For a full listing, visit the festival site at:
Her poetry is hard to find.
The first thing that struck me as I sought to acquaint myself with the poetry of Herta Müller, 2009 Nobel Prize-winning poet and novelist, was the lack of her work available in English translation. A search on the web catalog of my local public library consortium, the Minuteman Library Network, http://www.mln.lib.ma.us/ , serving the greater Boston area, yielded a scant 8 books, no poetry, for this world renowned poet who has been translated into 20 languages. My Amazon search proved slightly more fruitful, producing several non-English titles and some collaborative work in English: novels, essays, mentions in profiles of German writers and written contributions to a book of photographs of Romanian children living with HIV-AIDS, entitled, Children Of Ceausescu. I may be ordering this to see if her contribution to this work is poetry or prose. Checking my local bookstore did not produce any better results. Their website says that publishers are rushing back to the printers to hurriedly get her works back in print.
Rest assured, I will find her poetry someplace. If you can help me out, please do. Thanks!
The poem Rub me raw is about dark pockets of history that we do not often have the courage to revisit; it is about stripping down to the bare bones of the burden that these events create. Rub me raw is about the events in history that have been historically pushed under the proverbial rug because they are not aesthetically pleasing.This generation seems ready to confront the raw, ugly truth of history and realizes that we can only implement change when we fully understand the mistakes that have been made in the past. The poem, Hillbilly Rhetoric, is about trying to bring peace and harmony through an understanding of another perspective.
Read Jenn’s Poetry:
October 12th, Richard Deming & Dmitry Golynko read at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church 131 E. 10th St. New York
http://poetryproject.org/program-calendar/richard-deming-dmitry-golynko.html
Enter the competition to get your poem published on their site. This month’s prompt is a poem by W. S. Merwin.
If you happen to have 48 to 80 pages of poetry previously unpublished in a book, you may enter the competition for this award. Check out their site for complete guidelines.
Click here for Cider Press Review
Bruce Waller’s poems reveal the deep feelings and experiences that make the poet who he is. At times, they terrify. Other times, they calm. But, every time they compel readers to feel his palpable force and unrelenting spirit to break through and transform. His poems have appeared in Problem Child Magazine at Penn State, Black Insight Magazine and Argonaut Poets-in-Residence, an international poetry journal. He holds a degree from Penn State University and splits his time between Pennsylvania and Las Vegas.
