on poetry

“Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.”
Lucy Maud Montgomery
(November 30, 1874 – April 24, 1942)

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photo

Thanks

it has begun

Best-of Season is here again. Here’s what we have so far for listings of favorite poetry for 2019:

• Financial Times
• Morning Star
• New York Public Library (note the categories: Kids, Los Mejores Libros para Pequeños, Teens, Adults, Poetry)
• Washington Post

a place to dream and write

Perhaps you, too, have imagined your ideal writing space. Poet John Barr had the imagination, the time, and the resources to create the writing studio of his dreams near his home in Greenwich, Connecticut. The story appeared last week in The New York Times, reprinted in The Seattle Times.

on poetry

“It was language I loved, not meaning. I liked poetry better when I wasn’t sure what it meant. Eliot has said that the meaning of the poem is provided to keep the mind busy while the poem gets on with its work — like the bone thrown to the dog by the robber so he can get on with his work. Borges, when asked to read some of his poetry to a class of American students, said he would read it in Spanish. And that those who didn’t know Spanish would possibly get more out of it than those who did.”
P.K. Page
(November 23, 1916 – January 14, 2010)

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photo by Ken McAllister, courtesy of Library and Archives Canada
quote from The Filled Pen: Selected Non-Fiction, page 30

social poetry

With Instagram poetry all the rage, it was bound to happen: a poetry social media site. Poetizer has stepped up to fill the gap. A home-grown poetry-sharing app out of the Czech Republic, Poetizer has been around for a year and, according to this article in Ozy, they have “a user base of over 60,000 users in 120 countries, mainly from the U.S. To date, over 500,000 poems have been contributed (more than 35,000 are added each month). Fifty six percent of users are aged 18-24, followed by 27% in the 25-34 range.”

Scan some poems. Read the privacy policy and Terms of Service. Watch the promo on YouTube. If you’re still feeling socially or poetically bereft, sign up.

honoring Robert Sund

The Empty Bowl Poetry Reading Series (fourth Fridays in Anacortes) will honor the life and work of Robert Sund this Friday, November 22, 2019, 7:00pm, at Pelican Bay Books & Coffeehouse. Nice venue, good company, fine readers. Stop by.

stop and rest, Iowa style

For more than 20 years, the Iowa Department of Transportation has been redefining the term rest area. Rather than the minimal parking-plus-basic-amenities, each of Iowa’s “New Generation Rest Areas” reflects local history, culture, or natural resources.

Iowa City is the home of the University of Iowa and the venerable Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Appropriately, the Tiffin rest area on I-80 eastbound at milepost 237, less than ten miles from Iowa City, salutes Writing.

Designed by RDG Dahlquist Art Studio and called “It Has Iowa Written All Over It,” the facility includes, among other writing-specific objects and information, picnic shelters with pierced-metal walls displaying quotes from writers with an Iowa connection.

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photo above, plus others
thanks to Miriam Sagan for the heads up!

far out!

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has made the full range of their content — images, audio, video, and computer files used in the rendition of 3-dimensional models, such as texture maps and polygon data in any format — available at no charge, online, for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits, computer graphical simulations and web pages. Fully searchable, downloadable in high, medium, and low resolution.

Your next 140,000 poetry prompts have landed. Have a look.

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Image: intricate cloud patterns in the northern hemisphere of Jupiter
Thanks to Ina Roy-Faderman for the heads up.

jobs for poets

In case you’re looking for a way to supplement the income you earn as a poet, Poets & Writers has a rather robust Jobs for Writers bulletin board with listings of both academic and non-academic positions.