W.Va. Poet Laureate Irene McKinney is going to read at the W.Va. Book Festival on Sunday, Oct. 17. Check out the transcript of a conversation I had with her last spring:
 http://tinyurl.com/2fg9qhc

The plan by a cracked reactionary to burn the Quran, however you may choose to spell it, on September 11, 2010, only serves to escalate tensions between Christians and Muslims. He does not speak for me.

Former motel manager turned pastor Terry Jones, the man behind “Burn a Koran Day,” has attracted worldwide attention on his promise to burn big stacks of the Quran — a book that Muslims are said to believe is “the book” of divine guidance for the planet.

Muslims consider the text of the Quran (AP’s spelling I follow at the newspaper) in its original Arabic to be literally the word of God. Where do you think this is headed, the burning of books, sacred containers of the history, heart and soul of humanity?

I’m of like mind with German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, who in 1820 wrote: “Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen,” that is, “Where books are burned in the end people will burn.”

Don’t you think Bin Laden saw these reactionaries like Jones in his crystal ball? He could count on them to drive people over to his side, the other side of the extremist coin opposite the “burn a Koran” people.

On May 10, 1933, Nazis, some call them students, burned 25,000 books that didn’t correspond to the German spirit as they saw it.

We all know what happened later on, in the Holocaust. We know not all of the tragedy of the genocidal state happened precisely in gas chambers, but that it happened gradually — first in laws that marginalized Jews even before the WWII began, then in Kristallnacht (1938), in the ghettos (1940 on), after that in mass shootings (1941 on), then in the extermination camps and on and on. These things unfold slowly, by bits and pieces.

Where do you think we — you and I — are headed, especially in today’s divisive political atmosphere, if we take a cue from people like Terry Jones? Where are we headed, when the Democrats say the sky is blue, the Republicans would say, “No”? Are we going to ride the tidal wave of political BSers out there, headwinds of the Ron Pauls, Glenn Becks and the rest? What happened to critical thinking, “purposeful reflective judgment concerning what to believe or what to do”? I plan to think for myself.

I think about the authors whose books the Nazis burned, a list that included authors I have actually read: Isaak Babel, Bertolt Brecht, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Heinrich Heine, Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka, Helen Keller, Jack London, Marcel Proust, Upton Sinclair, H.G. Wells and Émile Zola. I am without a doubt of the “don’t burn books” persuasion. What about you?

The 2010 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival Presented at Newark’s New Jersey Performing Arts Center October 7-10

20,000 expected to attend a Poetry Village to be established in Newark

NEW YORK, Sept. 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The largest and most renowned poetry event in North America, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation’s 13th Biennial Dodge Poetry Festival, will be hosted this year by the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) and the City of Newark. The Festival is expected to attract an audience of more than 20,000 people nationally and internationally. The Dodge Foundation will also provide free tickets to more than 4,500 high school students representing 250 schools across the country. The Festival features former U.S. Poets Laureate Kay Ryan, Billy Collins, Rita Dove, and Mark Strand as well as dozens of distinguished poets over four days of readings, discussions, and conversations.

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NEWS FLASH!
Poet Yusef Komunyakaa’s coming to Pittsburgh Saturday.
Click here to read about it in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

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Continue reading about the Dodge Poetry Festival »

John Cusack tweets his news: “Official I will play Edgar Allen Poe in fall. A film called The Raven, send any Poe gold my way as I begin this journey into the abyss.”

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Library of Congress news you may not have heard: W.S. Merwin has been named the new U.S. poet laureate.

Sample a poem from this stellar American poet:

Yesterday
by W. S. Merwin

My friend says I was not a good son
you understand
I say yes I understand

he says I did not go
to see my parents very often you know
and I say yes I know

even when I was living in the same city he says
maybe I would go there once
a month or maybe even less
I say oh yes

he says the last time I went to see my father
I say the last time I saw my father

he says the last time I saw my father
he was asking me about my life
how I was making out and he
went into the next room
to get something to give me

oh I say
feeling again the cold
of my father’s hand the last time

he says and my father turned
in the doorway and saw me
look at my wristwatch and he
said you know I would like you to stay
and talk with me

oh yes I say

but if you are busy he said
I don’t want you to feel that you
have to
just because I’m here

I say nothing

he says my father
said maybe
you have important work you are doing
or maybe you should be seeing
somebody I don’t want to keep you

I look out the window
my friend is older than I am
he says and I told my father it was so
and I got up and left him then
you know

though there was nowhere I had to go
and nothing I had to do

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Click here to visit Amazon.com‘s W.S. Merwin page.

My favorite Merwin book is “The Miner’s Pale Children,” a book of prose poems. I also like another of his groundbreaking books, “The Lice,” a masterpiece of open form poetry.