Newsweek points out a recent study that shows while more people are reading fiction, fewer people seem to be reading poetry. What factors are at work in the decline of poetry, and are these statistics true? Read all about it in Marc Bain’s Newsweek Web Exclusive.
I think some readers find much poetry too long, too bad, too inaccessible or obscure.
Regarding the latest chapter in the Sylvia Plath/Ted Hughes family history, I recommend this perspective from Times Online: “Death of Ted Hughes ‘drove his son Nicholas towards suicide’ “
Back now to what interests me most in the life of Sylvia Plath: her poems.
You could do a worldwide search and not find a more well-experienced and effective writing workshop faculty than the one gathering this weekend in Charleston, W.Va.
The West Virginia Division of Culture and History and the West Virginia Library Commission will present an extraordinary intensive creative writing skills workshop this Saturday, March 28, 2009, 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., at the Cultural Center, Capitol Complex, Charleston, W.Va. The conference, Writers’ Toolkit, is free and open to the public.
At MountainWord, we’d like to help more poets be noticed. Have you published a poetry book? Some of your poems printed somewhere? Have a poetry blog? Also, are you writing new work, rewriting old work, or are you in a creative writing class? Tell us about your poems. Send some examples. Click here to send e-mail to MountainWord.
W.Va. Poet Laureate Irene McKinney has a new book out from Red Hen Press titled “Unthinkable: Selected Poems 1976-2004,” 192 pages. Click on the book cover to buy the book.
She will read from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 2 in Room 2W16 of the Memorial Student Center on Marshall University’s Huntington campus. Free and open to the public.
For more information, contact Art Stringer in Marshall’s English Department at 304-696-2403.
Click here to check out some earlier blog posts about Irene McKinney.
W.Va. Blue has notes of interest about Ezra Pound and St. Elizabeths, with a W.Va. hook. Brings to mind Pound’s famous quip: “America is a lunatic asylum” … on some days I could almost agree. Click here to read all about it online.
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Now, speaking of personal struggles, I point you at a nytimes story about the suicide of Nicholas Hughes, son of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Very sad. I think of The Bell Jar, and I think of one of her poems:
WORDS
Axes
After whose stroke the wood rings,
And the echoes!
Echoes traveling
Off from the center like horses.
The sap
Wells like tears, like the
Water striving
To re-establish its mirror
Over the rock
That drops and turns,
A white skull,
Eaten by weedy greens.
Years later I
Encounter them on the road—
Words dry and riderless,
The indefatigable hoof-taps.
While
From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars
Govern a life.
— Sylvia Plath
Michael Blumenthal, the visiting Copenhaver Chair of West Virginia University’s College of Law, will present his seventh book of poems, “And,” at 7:30 p.m. April 6, 2009, at the WVU Library Robinson Reading Room. The event is free and open to the public. A book signing will follow.
In addition, his work has been published in The New Yorker, the Harvard Review, Paris Review and other fine magazines and newspapers. His books of poetry include “Dusty Angel” and “Against Romance.”
A graduate of Cornell Law School, Blumenthal is the former director of creative writing at Harvard University. An Amazon.com product review of his new book says he holds the Mina Hohenberg Darden Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University.
The reading is sponsored by the Department of English and the Council of Writers, an organization for WVU Master of Fine Arts in writing graduate students in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences.
For more information, contact James Harms at 304-293-9720 or James.Harms@mail.wvu.edu.
Sal Buttaci tipped me off that he will be one of the poets in A Poet’s Haggadah who will be reading live today on blogtalkradio. Click here to listen to the live show at 5 p.m. our time in WV.
He will be reading after Peggy Landsman and hopes you get to listen.
Again, to listen to the show live, go to http://www.blogtalkradio.com/psh.
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UPDATE: Sal Buttaci read today — a little over 24 minutes in — on Part II of A Poet’s Virtual Seder on the Poetry Super Highway. The poem was called “Saying the Blessing over Matzah” … and his part of the show lasted about four minutes including the poem and a short interview. The worldwide poetry show and others are archived for downloading on blogtalkradio.com.
Read more of Buttaci’s work online at http://www.geocities.com/sambpoet/.
I am glad to note that Jasmine Lewis, a junior at Spring Valley High School in Huntington, Wayne County, is the state winner of the Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest, held at the Cultural Center on March 7, 2009. She recited “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes, “War is Kind” by Stephen Crane, Gwendolyn Brooks’ “the mother.” I was unable to attend this year, but enjoyed hearing Lewis last year when she was runner-up with Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise.” Read more about the event at wvculture.org.
Congratulations, Jasmine! The fourth annual Poetry Out Loud National Finals will be on April 28, 2009, in Washington, DC.
The 2009 W.Va. runner-up was Jessica Jenkins, and other finalists were Erica Fitzpatrick, Leah Yoho, and Maria Keathley.
An Afternoon of Song, Stories and Poetry will be presented at the Cultural Center, Charleston, W.Va., 4 p.m., Sunday, March 29, 2009. The program includes Colleen Anderson, Karen Vuranch, womanSong, and Mountain Laurel Ensemble. Read all about it online at the Division of Culture and History.
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