Bloghopping

Browsing poetblogs this morning to get ideas, see what’s new, who’s writing/publishing what. Lots of po-bloggers out there.

One of my favorites is Diane Lockward, whose Blogalicious enries are so well-written it’s like picking up a favorite newspaper column.

On Diane’s blog, I found Poets Online, a site that posts poem-prompts. Today’s is a poem by Mary Oliver (from the new book, Thirst). That got me thinking about what prompts me to start poems. Often it’s a line that comes while I take my morning walk — a line I usually wind up throwing out of the poem after it has served the purpose of informing me about what’s roiling under the surface-mind. Today’s was: Divinity everywhere awakening. Now that’s an eminently vague line, but it turned into a terrific prompt. And will ultimately not appear in the title or body of the poem.

I also regularly read Kelli Russell Agodon for interesting topics and a great blogroll. Kelli has a terrific poem on Verse Daily.

For poetry news you can’t beat Jilly Dybka’s fabulous Poetry Hut Blog. A sample of interesting things I learned there: they’re making a movie of Kerouac’s On The Road; Kelli’s poem is on Verse Daily; the world’s first “itinerant poet librarian” may be visiting your city soon; Virginia Quarterly Review and U. of Georgia Press are teaming up to create new poetry book series; and much more. I don’t know how she finds all this press on poetry — my local rag, the San Francisco Chronicle seems to barely know poetry exists — but it’s rich reading and a huge service to the po-community.

And last, but surely note least, Steve Mueske’s Poetry 365, in which Steve (of Three Candles Press fame) is posting a notable poem for every day in the year. When he reaches 365, he’ll start a new poetry year. Links to all poems. Good reading.

It’s good to have so much poetry news to read of an August morning.

erest. I find in the blogosphere the entries that are actually worth the time are fewer and farther between the more people start blogging.