Thanks.

Warmest thanks to each of you for showing up here, for liking, commenting, and sharing. Thanks for sending along your own poetry news for these posts and for bringing more poetry into your community and the world. Whatever the challenges in the year ahead, poetry will help us express our doubts, certainties, and wonder, and will accompany us into our solitude and our gatherings.

Your host and companion, J.I. Kleinberg
The Poetry Department, post #2320, 31 December 2016.

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what we lost

Our losses in 2016 were profound. LitHub helps us recall Notable Literary Deaths in 2016.

east of the Cascades

In addition to being the home of Washington State’s current poet laureate, Tod Marshall, eastern Washington has plenty of poetry going on, if this week’s special Poetry Issue of The Pacific Northwest Inlander is any indication. Have a look!

holiday bonus time

Forbes calls him “Publishing’s richest penman.” His online biography says that “he has sold over 350 million books worldwide and currently holds the Guinness World Record for the most #1 New York Times bestsellers.” At the rate of about a dozen books a year, on his own and with co-authors, James Patterson is a writing phenomenon.

But even as he’s creating characters and stories, he’s also finding ways to encourage readers and support literacy. Through the Patterson Family Foundation he awards scholarships to students at 22 different colleges and universities around the country. In the last ten years, he has given away more than a million books to students all over the U.S. and has visited hundreds of schools to advocate for youth literacy. In 2015, Patterson showed his gratitude to independent bookstore employees through a donation of $250,000; in 2016 he is doing the same. Patterson is partnering with the American Booksellers Association to distribute the funds, which are granted as bonuses of $1,000 to $5,000 to individual booksellers.

The holiday bonus winners are nominated locally and selected by Patterson himself. We congratulate this year’s 149 winners, including the following independent bookstore employees at some of our favorite Cascadia-region stores:

• Caitlin Luce Baker, University Book Store, Seattle, WA
• Erin Ball, Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, WA
• Kenny Coble, King’s Books, Tacoma, WA
• Madison Duckworth, Liberty Bay Books, Poulsbo, WA
• Emily Fuggetta, Powell’s Books, Portland, OR
• Kim Hooyboer, The Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA
• Sarah Hutton, Village Books, Bellingham, WA
• Victoria Irwin, Eagle Harbor Book Co., Bainbridge Island, WA
• Ruby Meyers, Annie Bloom’s Books, Portland, OR
• Emma Nichols, The Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA
• Linda Watson, Powell’s Books, Portland, OR

on poetry

“A poem is a ‘line’ between any two points in creation.”
Charles Olson
(December 27, 1910 – January 10, 1970)

. . . . .
quote from Poetic Cosmologies: Black Mountain Poetry and Process Philosophy
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forthcoming

In addition to year-end best-of listings, publishers and publications have started announcing their most anticipated titles for 2017. Here are a few to start your browsing:

• Bustle ~ The most anticipated poetry collections of 2017
• Graywolf Press ~ Poetry preview
• Library Journal ~ Key Poetry January – April 2017
• The New York Review of Books ~ forthcoming poets and poetry
• Penguin ~ 11 poetry books to look forward to in 2017
• Publishers Weekly ~ Spring 2017 Announcements: Poetry
• Wave Books ~ Forthcoming titles

let your words be heard!

speak your piece on earth © j.i. kleinberg (with thanks to NASA)