The West Virginia Poetry Out Loud Final will be on March 7 at Norman L. Fagan West Virginia State Theater, Cultural Center, 1900 Kanawha Boulevard, East, Charleston, W.Va. Contact number is (304) 558-0240.
Registration: 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Program starts: 2 p.m.

Guest MC Chris Sarandon
Special guest speaker first lady Gayle Manchin

Schools participating this year, according to WV Culture and History online: Cameron High School, Capital High School, Doddridge County High School, Greenbrier East High School, Nitro High School, Pocahontas County High School, Raleigh County, Richwood High School, Roane County High School, Spring Valley High School, Summers County High School, Wahama High School, Williamson High School.

The value of liberal arts in today’s difficult ecomomic and technological environment is the subject of this article by Patricia Cohen of The New York Times.

Click it: In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth

Here’s an interesting story from today’s New York Times Books section. It’s about the life and death of the amazing Christopher Nolan, an Irish writer who wrote and wrote, despite his huge difficulties…. even wrote “with a ‘unicorn stick’ strapped to his forehead, pecking a letter at a time on a typewriter as his mother held his chin with her hands.”

His autobiography, “Under the Eye of the Clock,” won prestigious awards.  His writing gift has been compared favorably to that of James Joyce and other great writers.

Study: People who trust the mass media seem to be healthier… to read all about it, click this link: http://is.gd/kzNH …. maybe this applies only to the Asian countries in the study, but the thought tantalizes, leads me on. Thanks, James I. Davison of the World Bank, for the uplifting news tip. James used to be the Web editor at the Gazette, but now he lives in D.C. and runs a niche blog for World Bank.

What’s that have to do with poetry? Well, I’ve been advocating health for poets for almost half of my life, contrary to the burn-out, brain-damage school of poetry which is still popular in some circles.

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Adults are showing a rapid increase in literary reading, according to a new National Endowment for the Arts study, “Reading on the Rise: A New Chapter in American Literacy.” Click here to read about it. Click here to download a .pdf of the study.

Reflecting on the news that more adults are reading literature, I thought of three quotations:

“A book should be an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us.”
– Franz Kafka

“Wear the old coat and buy the new book.”
– Austin Phelps

“Don’t forget to read the good stuff.”
– Topper Sherwood

I have a friend — nameless here — for whom books came to be and remain a profound deliverance to a better life. Then, by turns, again and again, I think of many more.

If you would like to submit a poem to MountainWord, click here to e-mail it to me. The poem will still belong to you, while you get a little place in the sun here at MountainWord.

If you’re concerned about preserving specific line breaks or other subtleties of how your poem appears on the page, turn it into a .pdf and attach it to the e-mail.

Thank you for reading this blog. Share your thoughts. If this is your first visit to MountainWord, please visit earlier posts in the archives.

It’s time to put in some kind words for Salvatore Buttaci.  He has written a fine book — A Family of Sicilians: Stories and Poems. Order a copy at his lulu.com storefront.

Read more about Buttaci at New Jersey Poets and Poetry.

This widely published poet and teacher lives in Princeton, W.Va. His wife is from McDowell County, W.Va., and when he retired from teaching college in New Jersey, the move to West Virginia was natural. He is the editor of The Poem Factory on the Internet, and we’ve published a few of his poems and recorded him before on MountainWord.

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Mary Ann Samyn, who lives in Morgantown, W.Va., has been named poet-in-residence at Olivet College.

She is associate professor of English and creative writing, and Bolton Professor of Teaching and Mentoring at West Virginia University.

Samyn has four collections of poetry: Purr, Rooms by the Sea, Captivity Narrative, and, most recently, Inside the Yellow Dress. She has won a Pushcart Prize and numerous other awards, including Outstanding Teacher at WVU. Click here to sample her poems at Verse Daily.

Olivet College, by the way, is in Michigan, about 30 miles from Lansing, the state capital.

Last October, I wrote about Mark Brazaitis, associate professor and director of creative writing in WVU’s Department of English. Brazaitis is the 2008 recipient of the ABZ Press Poetry Prize for his manuscript, The Other Language. As winner, his book of poems will be published on May 1, 2009.

If anyone out there would like to review The Other Language, please let me know. I have no money to give you, but if you have suitable skill as reviewer of poetry and review the book for MountainWord, a copy of the book is yours. I think the list price is $17. I have read some of the poems, taking care to savor them, and I believe the pleasure would be yours.

Brazaitis has taught writing at the college level for years. He is a former Peace Corps volunteer and brings to bear on his writing his experience with diverse cultures.

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Dedicated in 1974, the Lincoln* statue at the state Capitol in Charleston, W.Va., is a sculptural version of Vachel Lindsay’s** poem “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight.”

West Virginia is the only state born out of the Civil War, created by proclamation with Lincoln’s signature. It all became official 60 days later on June 20, 1863.

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