I’ve been in a lively discussion of poetry book contest publishing, the economics of the field, how to best support poetry, new paradigms of eBook publishing and more. It sparked my interest in the topic again, and I’ve updated my list of resources for poets seeking to publish without going the contest route: Non-Contest Poetry Book Publishers – updated list How much we have to spend to support a career in poetry! And why can’t…
My poem “Penny” can be read and heard — at quarrtsiluni, their new ECONOMY issue. No, that doesn’t mean short poems, though I guess it can. Editors Dave Bonta and Beth Adams came up with a theme that resonates on many levels, goes in lots of directions.A good theme, I think — being a person who’s thrifty, time-conscious, and even occasionally concise. PLUS — a recording! This new thing in zines is what makes Internet…
A couple of things about the revolution in Iran that struck me are today: Good summary of the current situation and the possibilities for the coming week by blogger Black Hat Journalist. I’ll be following this blog. And a new Wikipedia entry for Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman gunned down Saturday, June 20 in Tehran, allegedly by a Basij gunman. Lighting a candle tonight in her memory. Women of Iran – “lioness” is a Farsi…
Seldom do you get to watch history unfold so rapidly — unless you live in times such as ours. What was the Chinese curse? May you live in interesting times. I think curses are meant to be transformed into blessings of insight through hard work, endurance and love. In Iran this weekend, they are doing very hard work, deciding what they want to be as a country, and standing up, one by one, for their…
I’ve been following events in Tehran via Twitter and learning a lot about that networking site in the process. One of the people in Iran getting clear, consistent and insightful tweets out is a woman using the name oxfordgirl. Obviously a born leader, her tweets are a combination of advice to those on the streets and in Iran and reports to those outside. For those of you who don’t use Twitter, a post is limited…
I’m green on Twitter and glued to the screen. Someone just said, “If Iran sleeps tonight, it will sleep forever.” But it doesn’t appear that is the case, with cries of “God is great” echoing through Tehran. I wonder what is happening in other Iranian cities, and how many months it will be before we know what is the import of all of this. I have a friend who contends the demonstrations are incited by…
Edward Hirsch’s excellent Poet’s Choice column yesterday has me thinking about these neglected dimensions in discussions of contemporary poetry, what I think of as the question of a poem’s emotive undertones. It reminds me of Emily Dickinson’s reply to Thomas Higginson as to how she defined poetry: “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically…
We are all so addicted to our devices, and naturally poetry, like every other form of communication, seems to have taken a quantum leap into the virtual. I mean, you can now tweet a poem. As I perused the thinnest Sunday newspaper I have ever received, then read a report on publishing trends and how magazine sales are triumphantly less down than the rest of the retail sector, I get the feeling that everyone’s showing…
I’m so pleased to have my poem “A Walk After Reading Dante’s Paradiso” online this week at Susan Culver’s eminently readable Poetry Friends. Susan’s a good editor and so I enjoy reading the weekly poems. Plus it has an elegantly simple submission system, which means it’s likely to be around for awhile. Good! I know how hard it can be to keep a zine going. Also was pleased to have word that two of my…
I want to propose something you may find radical: that spending time on Facebook is not only not a waste, but a good influence on your writing. I hear you thinking of the fifty ways it is bad for your writing: the many varieties of distraction, the dumbing-down of social intercourse, invitations to sleaze and prurience, absurd brevity of newsfeed posts (who actually “reads more”), and the five-second-attention-span atmosphere, when your considered comment scrolls into…