Related posts:

1. "The British-based Poetry Archive has released statistics that visitors to its website are now viewing a total of more than one million pages a month. More than 125,000 individuals - or 'unique visitors' in web jargon - have visited the site, which hosts poems and audio readings by the poets themselves." via The Telegraph (UK)

2. The Beat Generation t-shirt sale has ended. My apologies, but I promise it will come again.

   Thanks as always for shopping in the real, and for your continued support of Beat Poetics.

   The more exposure to the beats the better off we all will be…

   You can still order a custom Beat lit t-shirt (or other) on the Custom page, or pick one up at Book People at 6th and Lamar in Austin. They’re graciously featuring Beat Generation writers in the store this month to coincide with the On the Road with the Beats exhibit at the University of Texas at Austin / Harry Ransom Center.

   The exhibit explores the lives and works of the artists who made up the “Beat Generation.”

   Featuring more than 250 items drawn from across the Ransom Center’s collections, the exhibition will take visitors on a journey through the cities, landscapes and communities that fostered and shaped the most important works of the Beat Generation, from the early 1940s to the mid-1960s. The exhibition runs from Feb. 5 to Aug. 3 in the Ransom Center Galleries at The University of Texas at Austin.

   Jack Kerouac’s scroll manuscript of On the Road, on loan from the collection of Jim Irsay, will be on display from March 7 through June 1. The first 48 feet of this 120-foot “page” (aka “the roll”) will be visible in the gallery. This visually stunning first draft has no paragraph or chapter breaks, and the characters are referred to by their real names.

   

   
3. The results of an extensive exploration with shadows, the One Day Poem Pavilion demonstrates the poetic, transitory, site-sensitive and time-based nature of light and shadow. Using a complex array of perforations, the pavilion’s surface allows light to pass through creating shifting patterns, which–during specific times of the year–transform into the legible text of a poem. The specific arrangements of the perforations reveal different shadow-poems according to the solar calendar: a theme of new-life during the summer solstice, a reflection on the passing of time at the period of the winter solstice. The time-based nature of the poem–and the visitor’s time-based encounters with it–allow viewers to have different experiences either seeing a stanza of the poem or getting the whole poem. All of these possible experiences are equally valuable and have meanings unique to the individual. This technique has the potential for producing particular effects and meanings within an architectural environment. Without the use of a source of power other than the sun, this project uses light and shadow to push the boundaries of communication and experiential delight. [Watch the time lapse video here.] by Jiyeon Song | hat tip J-Walk

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Related posts:

1. 

   Radiohead /\ Remix /\ Reckoner

   10.01.2008

   592 Remixes and counting

   After the overwhelming response to the Nude Remix Project, Radiohead, iTunes and Garageband are teaming up again giving you the opportunity to remix "Reckoner", another track from the band's latest album "In Rainbows". To make remixing easy, the separate 'stems'* from the song are available to purchase from iTunes _here_. The 'stems' available are bass, lead vocals, backing vocals, guitar, piano/strings and drums. All six stems are available to buy for the price of a single track. You can mix them in any way you like, either by adding your own beats and instrumentation, or just remixing the original parts. If you purchase the 'stems' from iTunes during the two weeks they're available, you'll be sent an access code to a GarageBand file ready to open in GarageBand or Logic. However, you don't need GarageBand to do a remix, all the stems are in iTunes Plus format and compatible with several music software platforms. The GarageBand file will be emailed before October 8th. Finished mixes can be uploaded _here_ where the public will listen and vote for their favourite remix (submissions end October 23rd). You can also create a widget allowing votes from your own website, Facebook or MySpace page to be counted as 'mix votes' back on radioheadremix.com. Radiohead will listen to the best remixes. *'stems' are the component parts of the song. If you have any questions / need some help please click here. For full terms and conditions, click here.
2. Break Free from the Tyranny of the Clock

   Why should you change things? Because the clock is meaningless — we follow it without really realizing why. We follow it because we’ve been raised to believe we should, and because those who control us (bosses, corporations, schools, etc.) set schedules we must follow. The clock, then, is a means to control us — and that, in my book, is as good a reason to break free from it as any.

   For tens of thousands of years, human beings didn’t have clocks. They lived, amazingly, by the sun and the moon and seasons and the needs and rhythms of their bodies. The clock is a very very recent invention, and even more recent is our modern society’s slavish adherence to the dictatorship of the clock. Only very recently have we been forced to work from 8 to 5, and to go to school and follow a very rigid class schedule. Only very recently have we become obsessed with tracking and making use of every minute, so that we have things to do when we’re waiting for other things to happen. Only recently did we begin to lose our humanity, begin to lose the art of conversation and the art of listening to our bodies, begin to lose sight of what’s really important and begin to become robots. I’m as guilty as anyone else, but as I simply my life I begin to question the culture that surrounds me and wonder why it is that I feel so pressured to do things so quickly, by a timeline or schedule set by others, to be so productive when what I really want is to be happy. Have you ever felt that way? I know I’m not alone. I have a solution, and it’s not original I’m sure but it surely isn’t as common as it should be: break free from the clock. Get in touch with the rhythms of life, of your body and of nature. Be more relaxed and reject the notion that time rules us. The Benefits of Being Free of Clockhood Now, I’m not saying that we should throw our clocks and watches away (though I don’t own a watch) … I’m not saying we should all quit our jobs and go live in the woods. I know that my reality is different from most people, as I’m my own boss — but ask yourself, is it possible for you to be your own boss? And if not, is it possible at least to find a job where you can set your own schedule? For many people, it is possible. For others, you won’t be able to live all the tenets of this manifesto, but you can change smaller things, here and there. Article continues here. Reblog via Zen Habits | hat tip Jakob Lodwick
3. There's an underground economy of boosted books. These values are commonly understood and roundly agreed upon through word of mouth, and the values always seem to be true. Once, a scruffy, large man approached me, holding a folded-up piece of paper. "Do you have any Buck?" He paused and looked at the piece of paper. "Any books by Buckorsick?" I suspected that he meant Bukowski, but I played dumb, and asked to see the piece of paper he was holding. It was written in crisp handwriting that clearly didn't belong to him, and it read: 1. Charles Bukowski 2. Jim Thompson 3. Philip K. Dick 4. William S. Burroughs 5. Any Graphic Novel

   This is pretty much the authoritative top five, the New York Times best-seller list of stolen books. Its origins still mystify me..

   I asked the man whether he preferred Bukowski's Pulp to his Women, as I did, and whether his favorite Thompson book was The Getaway or The Killer Inside Me. First the book chatter made him nervous, but then it made him angry... Continue reading Flying Off the Shelves by Paul Constant | via The Stranger Any booksellers reading this?  I'm curious about the how the lists might compare from store to store, city to city... Not surprised Buk is at the top of this one, however.  But where is Hoffman?  Surprising omission.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Related posts:

1. "She had enormous energy and she was a really feisty person. And I think you see that in the way she made her poetry work, in very spare tight verse. And she not only found a readership for her verse novels, she found a very large readership," Malouf said.

   The Australian arts community is mourning the unexpected loss of one its true originals, the writer and poet Dorothy Porter, who died yesterday morning in Melbourne, aged 54, from complications from breast cancer. Porter is best known for her verse novels, among them The Monkey's Mask a thriller about a lesbian detective, published in 1994. It won the National Book Council's Poetry Prize in 1995 and was shortlisted for several other literary awards, before being published in the United States, Canada, Britain and Germany. A film version, directed by Samantha Lang and starring Susie Porter and Kelly McGillis, was released in Australia in 2001. Her verse novels What A Piece Work (1999), and Wild Surmise (2003) were shortlisted for Australia's most prestigious literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award. Porter's most recent publication was El Dorado, her fifth verse novel, about a serial child killer. It was nominated for several awards including the inaugural Prime Minister's Literary Award in 2007, and Best Fiction in the Ned Kelly Awards. "She had such a vitality and a grasp of life," said David Malouf, who remembers teaching Porter at Sydney University when she was a first-year student. "She had enormous energy and she was a really feisty person. And I think you see that in the way she made her poetry work, in very spare tight verse. And she not only found a readership for her verse novels, she found a very large readership," Malouf said. "It's just very sad, and I think there'll be a lot of people out there who admire her, and are fond of her and will miss her very much." Porter, whose talents as a writer found many outlets, including fiction for young adults and libretti for chamber opera, was collaborating on a rock opera called January with Tim Finn at the time of her passing. "I was extremely shocked and saddened," Finn said. "We heard this morning. We knew she was ill but we didn't how ill. She was a very real person, with no bullshit, and this raw honesty. You would want to meet her on that level. Her work was streetwise and sensuous. She could write with heightened language, and never be waffly or precious, and there was always the unexpected image. She was a really great writer." via The Sydney Morning Herald | Matthew Buchanan Dorothy Porter Porter at Poetry International Web Australian Humanities Review
   
2. The same people who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work are also arguing, singing, drinking, dancing, making love, holding the streets, picking up weapons and inventing a new poetry. ~ Raoul Vaneigem
3. With dimmed lights, lace, and masks, the Poetry Brothel is anything but a conventional poetry reading, and maybe that's why it seducing so many New Yorkers. NY1's Stephanie Simon filed the following report on a new kind of poetry party that is downright risqué. via NY1

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Dream of Life is a plunge into the philosophy and artistry of cult rocker Patti Smith.This portrait of the legendary singer, artist and poet explores themes of spirituality, history and self expression. Known as the godmother of punk, she emerged in the 1970s, galvanizing the music scene with her unique style of poetic rage, music and trademark swagger.

We follow this multitalented and private artist over 11 years of international travel, through her spoken words, performances, lyrics, interviews, paintings, and photographs.

via sphinxfilmswelike

Related posts:

1. Adaptable (lemon/turquoise) - 2006 - a flat structure can transform into a 3D sculpture. Artist: Gemma Smith. You can find more of her work at the Sarah Cottier Gallery. hat tip Today and Tomorrow
2. It’s a happy trend. Increasingly, we’re seeing museums launching dynamic online exhibitions to accompany their exhibitions on the ground. In the past, we highlighted the Tate Modern’s panoramic tour of Mark Rothko’s work. And now we point you to The Life and Work of William Butler Yeats, an online exhibition created by The National Library of Ireland. When you enter the tour, you can scan through 200 artifacts & manuscripts and “attend” three in-depth tutorials exploring the evolution of three major poems (‘Sailing to Byzantium’, ‘Leda and the Swan’ and ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’). You can also listen to Yeats, one of Ireland’s towering poets, reciting his famous poem ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree.’ To listen, click “Areas” on the bottom navigation, then click “Verse and Vision” on the center menu, and then the audio will begin to play. You can read the text of the poem here. Finally, you’ll find more Yeats poems in our Free Audio Book collection.
   1. ggratton says . . . | September 16, 2009 / 7:58 am:
      Thank you for highlighting the amazing Yeats site. I've been telling my colleagues that this site is the promise of the internet realized.
   Yeats painting by Barrie Maguire
   via openculture.com
   via @victorgodot
   Enter the tour here
3. Have you ever felt drawn to a particular painting, sculpture, or handmade thing but you weren't quite sure why? It could be that the item was made by an artist who infused his or her chi into the work. The spirit energy per say of the artist; focused emotional energy implanted in the piece while it was being made. The artist puts an impression of his spirit and mental energy into the work. Even with all the best technique in the world, a painting that lacks chi also lacks a certain vitality, that kind of ephemeral underlying energy that draws me to some work. via Modern Art Quotes

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Related posts:

1. With dimmed lights, lace, and masks, the Poetry Brothel is anything but a conventional poetry reading, and maybe that's why it seducing so many New Yorkers. NY1's Stephanie Simon filed the following report on a new kind of poetry party that is downright risqué. via NY1
2. "The British-based Poetry Archive has released statistics that visitors to its website are now viewing a total of more than one million pages a month. More than 125,000 individuals - or 'unique visitors' in web jargon - have visited the site, which hosts poems and audio readings by the poets themselves." via The Telegraph (UK)
3. $100,000 lifetime achievement award is one of largest to poets Published on Apr 30, 2008 - 9:09:15 AM By: Poetry Foundation

   The selection of Gary Snyder as this year's winner of the Lilly Prize does honor to the tradition of excellence and importance that the prize has stood for since it was established over 20 years ago," said John Barr, president of the Poetry Foundation.

   CHICAGO, April 29, 2008 -- Poet Gary Snyder is the winner of the 2008 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Established in 1986 and presented annually by the Poetry Foundation, the award is one of the most prestigious given to American poets, and at $100,000 it is one of the nation's largest literary awards. Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry magazine and chair of the selection committee, made the announcement today. The prize will be presented at an evening ceremony at the Arts Club of Chicago on Thursday, May 29. In announcing the award, Wiman said: "Gary Snyder is in essence a contemporary devotional poet, though he is not devoted to any one god or way of being so much as to Being itself. His poetry is a testament to the sacredness of the natural world and our relation to it, and a prophecy of what we stand to lose if we forget that relation." Raised in the Pacific Northwest, Snyder began writing in the 1950s as a member,with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, of the Beat movement. For most of the 1960s he lived in Japan and studied formally in a Zen monastery. Blending physical reality-precise observations of nature-with insight received primarily through the practice of Zen Buddhism, Snyder has explored a wide range of social and spiritual matters in both poetry and prose. The judges issued the following statement in making the selection: "Gary Snyder is a true nature poet: there's no sentimentalism to his work, and he never uses the natural world simply to celebrate his own sensibility. A deeply learned and meditative artist, an impassioned ecologist, and a poet of great scope as well as intense focus, Snyder has written poems that we will be reading for as long as we've been reading Robert Frost." Snyder is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, essays, and translations. His poetry collections include Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems, The Back Country, Regarding Wave, No Nature, Mountains and Rivers Without End, and Danger on Peaks. His essays are collected in Earth House Hold, The Real Work, A Place in Space, and Back on the Fire. A committed environmental activist who has received the John Hay Award for Nature Writing, Snyder has also been recognized for his contributions to the theory and practice of Buddhism. His many honors include the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for Turtle Island, an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Bollingen Prize, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, the Bess Hokin Prize and the Levinson Prize from Poetry, the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Times, and the Shelley Memorial Award. Snyder was born on May 8, 1930, in San Francisco. He is professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Davis, and lives in northern California.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The pressure of reality is indeed fierce, and yet poetry supplies a kind of counterpressure, pushing back against external forces that would overwhelm and obliterate the individual.

Reprinted from the Chronical Review

Related posts:

1. $100,000 lifetime achievement award is one of largest to poets Published on Apr 30, 2008 - 9:09:15 AM By: Poetry Foundation

   The selection of Gary Snyder as this year's winner of the Lilly Prize does honor to the tradition of excellence and importance that the prize has stood for since it was established over 20 years ago," said John Barr, president of the Poetry Foundation.

   CHICAGO, April 29, 2008 -- Poet Gary Snyder is the winner of the 2008 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Established in 1986 and presented annually by the Poetry Foundation, the award is one of the most prestigious given to American poets, and at $100,000 it is one of the nation's largest literary awards. Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry magazine and chair of the selection committee, made the announcement today. The prize will be presented at an evening ceremony at the Arts Club of Chicago on Thursday, May 29. In announcing the award, Wiman said: "Gary Snyder is in essence a contemporary devotional poet, though he is not devoted to any one god or way of being so much as to Being itself. His poetry is a testament to the sacredness of the natural world and our relation to it, and a prophecy of what we stand to lose if we forget that relation." Raised in the Pacific Northwest, Snyder began writing in the 1950s as a member,with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, of the Beat movement. For most of the 1960s he lived in Japan and studied formally in a Zen monastery. Blending physical reality-precise observations of nature-with insight received primarily through the practice of Zen Buddhism, Snyder has explored a wide range of social and spiritual matters in both poetry and prose. The judges issued the following statement in making the selection: "Gary Snyder is a true nature poet: there's no sentimentalism to his work, and he never uses the natural world simply to celebrate his own sensibility. A deeply learned and meditative artist, an impassioned ecologist, and a poet of great scope as well as intense focus, Snyder has written poems that we will be reading for as long as we've been reading Robert Frost." Snyder is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, essays, and translations. His poetry collections include Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems, The Back Country, Regarding Wave, No Nature, Mountains and Rivers Without End, and Danger on Peaks. His essays are collected in Earth House Hold, The Real Work, A Place in Space, and Back on the Fire. A committed environmental activist who has received the John Hay Award for Nature Writing, Snyder has also been recognized for his contributions to the theory and practice of Buddhism. His many honors include the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for Turtle Island, an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Bollingen Prize, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, the Bess Hokin Prize and the Levinson Prize from Poetry, the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Times, and the Shelley Memorial Award. Snyder was born on May 8, 1930, in San Francisco. He is professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Davis, and lives in northern California.

2. Let there be no mistake: the fundamentals of our poetry are sound. The problem is not poetry but poems.

   From a statement read at an event marking the release of Best American Poetry 2008, held last night at The New School, in New York City. David Lehman is the series editor of Best American Poetry, and Robert Polito is the director of the writing program at The New School. Chairman Lehman, Secretary Polito, distinguished poets and readers—I regret having to interrupt the celebrations tonight with an important announcement. As you know, the glut of illiquid, insolvent, and troubled poems is clogging the literary arteries of the West. These debt-ridden poems threaten to infect other areas of the literary sector and ultimately to topple our culture industry. Cultural leaders have come together to announce a massive poetry buyout: leveraged and unsecured poems, poetry derivatives, delinquent poems, and subprime poems will be removed from circulation in the biggest poetry bailout since the Victorian era. We believe the plan is a comprehensive approach to relieving the stresses on our literary institutions and markets. Let there be no mistake: the fundamentals of our poetry are sound. The problem is not poetry but poems. The crisis has been precipitated by the escalation of poetry debt—poems that circulate in the market at an economic loss due to their difficulty, incompetence, or irrelevance. Illiquid poetry assets are choking off the flow of imagination that is so vital to our literature. When the literary system works as it should, poetry and poetry assets flow to and from readers and writers to create a productive part of the cultural field. As toxic poetry assets block the system, the poisoning of literary markets has the potential to damage our cultural institutions irreparably. As we know, lax composition practices since the advent of modernism led to irresponsible poets and irresponsible readers. Simply put, too many poets composed works they could not justify. We are seeing the impact on poetry, with a massive loss of confidence on the part of readers. What began as a subprime poetry problem on essentially unregulated poetry websites has spread to other, more stable, literary magazines and presses and contributed to excess poetry inventories that have pushed down the value of responsible poems. The risks poets have taken have been too great; the aesthetic negligence has been profound. The age of decadence must come to an end with the imposition of oversight and regulation on poetry composition and publishing practices. We are convinced that once we have removed these troubled and distressed poems from circulation, our cultural sector will stabilize and readers will regain confidence in American literature. We estimate that for the buyout to be successful, we will need to remove from circulation all poems written after 1904. This will be a fresh start, a new dawn of a new day. Without these illiquid poems threatening to overwhelm readers, we will be able to create a literary culture with a solid aesthetic foundation. I’m Charles Bernstein, and I approved this message. via Harper's Magazine
3. "Poetry is, I think, the highest medium that mankind has ever come up with," he asserted in a 1981 interview. "It's language itself, which is a miraculous medium which makes everything else that man has ever done possible." James Dickey | Poets.org

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

via NY1

Related posts:

1. Poetry Animations via YouTube
2. "The British-based Poetry Archive has released statistics that visitors to its website are now viewing a total of more than one million pages a month. More than 125,000 individuals - or 'unique visitors' in web jargon - have visited the site, which hosts poems and audio readings by the poets themselves." via The Telegraph (UK)
3. 

   The pressure of reality is indeed fierce, and yet poetry supplies a kind of counterpressure, pushing back against external forces that would overwhelm and obliterate the individual.

   Why Poetry Matters
   By JAY PARINI
   
   
   
   Poetry doesn't matter to most people. They go about their business as usual, rarely consulting their Shakespeare, Wordsworth, or Frost. One has to wonder if poetry has any place in the 21st century, when music videos and satellite television offer daunting competition for poems, which demand a good deal of attention and considerable analytic skills, as well as some knowledge of the traditions of poetry.
   
   
   
   In the 19th century, poets like Scott, Byron, and Longfellow had huge audiences around the world. Their works were best sellers, and they were cultural heroes as well. But readers had few choices in those days. One imagines, perhaps falsely, that people actually liked poetry. It provided them with narratives that entertained and inspired. It gave them words to attach to their feelings. They enjoyed folk ballads, too. In a sense, music and poetry joined hands.
   
   
   
   In the 20th century, something went amiss. Poetry became "difficult." That is, poets began to reflect the complexities of modern culture, its fierce disjunctions. The poems of Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, and Wallace Stevens asked a lot of the reader, including a range of cultural references to topics that even in the early 1900s had become little known. To read Pound and Eliot with ease, for instance, one needed some knowledge of Greek and Latin poetry. That kind of learning had been fairly common among educated readers in the past, when the classics were the bedrock of any upper-middle-class education. The same could not be said for most readers in the 20th century — or today, when education has become more democratized and the study of the classics has been relegated to a small number of enthusiasts. The poems of the canonical poets of high modernism require heavy footnotes.
   
   
   
   Yet poetry can make a difference in the lives of readers. I've always known that myself, having read and written poems for at least four decades. Every morning I begin the day with a book of poems open at the breakfast table. I read a poem, perhaps two. I think about the poetry. I often make notes in my journal. The reading of the poem informs my day, adds brightness to my step, creates shades of feeling that formerly had been unavailable to me. In many cases, I remember lines, whole passages, that float in my head all day — snatches of song, as it were. I firmly believe my life would be infinitely poorer without poetry, its music, its deep wisdom.
   
   
   
   One tends to forget that poetry is wisdom. I was in Morocco recently, and a devout Muslim mentioned to me that the Prophet Muhammad, in his book of sayings, the Hadith, had said as much. But the Koran also teaches, I was told, that poets are dangerous, and that decent people should avoid them. That reminded me of Plato, who wished to ban all poets from his ideal republic because he thought they were liars. Reality, for Plato, was an intense, perfect world of ideas. The material world represents reflections of that ideal, always imperfect. Artistic representations of nature were thus at several removes from the ideal, hence suspicious. But Plato also had other worries about poets. In the Republic, he complained that they tend to whip up the emotions of readers in unhelpful ways. They stir feelings of "lust and anger and all the other affections, of desire and pain and pleasure." Poetry "feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up," he said, while only the "hymns of the gods and praises of famous men" are worthy of readers. The law and reason are far better.
   
   
   
   Although Plato didn't quite sink the art of poetry, he cast suspicion on the craft, and poets since then have rarely been comfortable with their place in society. Even the popular Romantic poets — Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, and others — lived on the edge of the social whirl, not quite respectable. More recently figures like Allen Ginsberg have derided their country. Poets have an unruly streak in them, and have not been the most welcome guests at the table of society.
   
   
   
   Teachers and professors have long considered poetry a useful part of the curriculum, and one of the last places where poetry remains a central part of the culture is the classroom. To a degree, poets have been "domesticated" by the academic village, welcomed into its grove. Frost was among the first poets to get a big welcome on the campus, and he taught at Amherst College for much of his life, with stints elsewhere. He spent his last decades crisscrossing the country, appearing at colleges, reading and lecturing to large audiences. He believed firmly in poetry as a means of shaping minds in important ways.
   
   
   
   In "Education by Poetry," one of his finest essays, Frost argued that an understanding of how poetry works is essential to the developing intellect. He went so far as to suggest that unless you are at home in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere. Because you are not at ease with figurative values, "you don't know how far you may expect to ride it and when it may break down with you." Those are very large claims. Poets do make large claims, and they are usually a bit exaggerated. In his "Defense of Poetry," Shelley famously wrote: "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." I prefer the twist on that offered by a later poet, George Oppen, who wrote: "Poets are the legislators of the unacknowledged world."
   
   
   
   I don't especially want poets to make laws or rule the world. For the most part, they would perform very badly in those public ways. The world of the poet is largely an interior world of the intellect and the emotions — where we mostly live, in fact. And poetry bolsters that interior realm. In a talk at Princeton University in 1942, when the world was aflame, Stevens reflected on the fact that the 20th century had become "so violent," both physically and spiritually. He succinctly defined poetry as "a violence from within that protects us from a violence without. It is the imagination pushing back against the pressure of reality. It seems, in the last analysis, to have something to do with our self-preservation; and that, no doubt, is why the expression of poetry, the sound of its words, helps us to live our lives."
   
   
   
   The pressure of reality is indeed fierce, and yet poetry supplies a kind of counterpressure, pushing back against external forces that would overwhelm and obliterate the individual. Poets give a voice to the world in ways previously unacknowledged. We listen to the still, small voice of poetry when we read a poem, and that voice stands in ferocious contrast to the clamor in the culture at large and, often, to the sound of society's explosions.
   
   
   
   I always define poetry for my students as a language adequate to our experience — to our full experience, taking into account the interior valleys, the peaks, the broad plains. It gives voice to tiny thoughts, to what the Scottish poet and scholar Alastair Reid, in a lovely poem, calls "Oddments Inklings Omens Moments." One does not hope for poetry to change the world. Auden noted when he wrote in his elegy for Yeats that "poetry makes nothing happen." That is, it doesn't shift the stock market or persuade dictators to stand down. It doesn't usually send masses into the streets to protest a war or petition for economic justice. It works in quieter ways, shaping the interior space of readers, adding a range of subtlety to their thoughts, complicating the world for them.
   
   
   
   Language defines us as human beings. We speak, therefore we exist. We have the miraculous ability to gesture in words, to make statements and requests, to express our feelings, to construct arguments, to draw conclusions. Poetic language matters because it is precise and concrete, and draws us closer to the material world. In Nature, Emerson argues that the sheer physicality of words points us in directions that might be called "spiritual." He puts forward three principles worth considering:
   
   
   
   "Words are signs of natural facts."
   
   
   
   "Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts."
   
   
   
   "Nature is the symbol of the spirit."
   
   
   
   Those statements formed a platform of sorts for the Transcendental movement, which studied nature closely for signs of spiritual life. The principles remain worthy of reflection. At some level, words suggest natural facts: "rock," "river," "bird," "cloud." The leap comes in the second statement, which posits a spiritual world. One can, I think, leap beyond conventional notions of spirituality here and acknowledge a deep interior world wherein each of us lives, no matter what our religious persuasion. I think of a line from Gerard Manley Hopkins: "O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall/Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed." The mind has those heights and depths, and few have not sensed them, stood in awe of their terrifying majesty. That is the spiritual realm, which one can extend in any direction. Nature becomes, at last, Emerson's "symbol of the spirit," and poetry itself embodies that nature. It is part of it. It mirrors the vast interior world, populates it with images and phrases, provides a basis for the reality of individual lives.
   
   
   
   I could not live without poetry, which has helped me to live my existence more concretely, more deeply. It has shaped my thinking. It has enlivened my spirit. It has offered me ways to endure my life (I'm rephrasing Dr. Johnson here), even to enjoy it.
   
   
   
   Jay Parini is a novelist, poet, and professor of English at Middlebury College. His latest book, Why Poetry Matters, was published in April by Yale University Press.
   
   
   Reprinted from the Chronical Review
   Chronicle.com
   
   
   
   From the issue dated June 27, 2008
   
   
   
   Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 54, Issue 42, Page B16
   
   
   
   via Denise Low
   
   
   
   Photo:  Tacks Collage
   
   
   
   

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

We seem to be able to do so little against the loss and fear and panic. Yet poetry’s realm is precisely here — in the emotional center, where desire and terror and hope and dread converge without easy answers.

Continue Reading | via Poets.org

Related posts:

1. To celebrate National Poetry Day, BBC News website readers have been sending in their poems on the credit crunch. via BBC

2. Let there be no mistake: the fundamentals of our poetry are sound. The problem is not poetry but poems.

   From a statement read at an event marking the release of Best American Poetry 2008, held last night at The New School, in New York City. David Lehman is the series editor of Best American Poetry, and Robert Polito is the director of the writing program at The New School. Chairman Lehman, Secretary Polito, distinguished poets and readers—I regret having to interrupt the celebrations tonight with an important announcement. As you know, the glut of illiquid, insolvent, and troubled poems is clogging the literary arteries of the West. These debt-ridden poems threaten to infect other areas of the literary sector and ultimately to topple our culture industry. Cultural leaders have come together to announce a massive poetry buyout: leveraged and unsecured poems, poetry derivatives, delinquent poems, and subprime poems will be removed from circulation in the biggest poetry bailout since the Victorian era. We believe the plan is a comprehensive approach to relieving the stresses on our literary institutions and markets. Let there be no mistake: the fundamentals of our poetry are sound. The problem is not poetry but poems. The crisis has been precipitated by the escalation of poetry debt—poems that circulate in the market at an economic loss due to their difficulty, incompetence, or irrelevance. Illiquid poetry assets are choking off the flow of imagination that is so vital to our literature. When the literary system works as it should, poetry and poetry assets flow to and from readers and writers to create a productive part of the cultural field. As toxic poetry assets block the system, the poisoning of literary markets has the potential to damage our cultural institutions irreparably. As we know, lax composition practices since the advent of modernism led to irresponsible poets and irresponsible readers. Simply put, too many poets composed works they could not justify. We are seeing the impact on poetry, with a massive loss of confidence on the part of readers. What began as a subprime poetry problem on essentially unregulated poetry websites has spread to other, more stable, literary magazines and presses and contributed to excess poetry inventories that have pushed down the value of responsible poems. The risks poets have taken have been too great; the aesthetic negligence has been profound. The age of decadence must come to an end with the imposition of oversight and regulation on poetry composition and publishing practices. We are convinced that once we have removed these troubled and distressed poems from circulation, our cultural sector will stabilize and readers will regain confidence in American literature. We estimate that for the buyout to be successful, we will need to remove from circulation all poems written after 1904. This will be a fresh start, a new dawn of a new day. Without these illiquid poems threatening to overwhelm readers, we will be able to create a literary culture with a solid aesthetic foundation. I’m Charles Bernstein, and I approved this message. via Harper's Magazine
3. Guthrie Martin agrees. "So many poets I know are so concerned with MFAs and prizes and getting published, making their mark," she said. "For me, having who you are as a poet live on isn't about any particular poem you write or your body of work. It's about how you inspire other people to be interested in poetry. It's just lovely to see people engaged in open, honest, friendly, generous, brilliant discussions of poetry just because they love it that much."  (via UW News)

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

via Times Online

Related posts:

1. He pioneered the cult of youth and turned himself into a brand. No wonder Oscar Wilde is still seen as ‘one of us’

   From The London Times

   by Gyles Brandreth Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death by Gyles Brandreth will be published by John Murray on May 1

   Last Sunday I made a pilgrimage to the Père Lachaise cemetery, in the northeast of Paris, to pay my respects to the shade of Oscar Wilde. I found I was not alone. The great man’s grave was surrounded by quite a crowd, including a party of Japanese students, a family of Germans (the father was wearing lederhosen) and an assortment of young people in their twenties: French, Italian, British and American.

   In his own time, he was an outsider and an exotic. Now he’s one of us. We understand his craving for celebrity. We share his obsession with youth. (“Youth is the one thing worth having,” he wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray.)

   As I arrived, one of the young women (an English student from St Andrews) was planting a kiss on the huge Jacob Epstein effigy that surmounts the poet’s grave. She was kissing the marble deliberately, to leave the lipstick impression of her mouth on the monument. “Why did you do that?” I asked. “Because I love him,” she replied. “We all do,” added another of the girls. “He’s one of us.” Wilde, it seems, is our contemporary. He died in Paris 108 years ago, a near-friendless exile, impoverished, shunned, disgraced. Today, he is world-famous and universally admired. There are 1,000 lipstick impressions on his tomb. He would not have quarrelled with the attention: he was a pioneer of celebrity culture. “If you wish for reputation and fame in the world,” he advised, “take every opportunity of advertising yourself. Remember the Latin saying, ‘Fame springs from one’s own house.’ ” At theatrical first nights, as a matter of policy, during the 10 minutes before the curtain was due to rise, he would make a series of brief appearances around the auditorium - in the dress circle, in the stalls, in the boxes on either side of the stage. He wore outlandish clothes; he said outrageous things. He set out to get himself noticed. He was. And he is. I am writing a series of Victorian murder mysteries, traditional who-dunnits featuring Wilde as my detective, and, as my publishers cart me about the world, I am discovering that my hero’s fan base extends way beyond Europe and North America. He has a substantial following in South America, the Middle East, India and - wait for it - Korea. Other Victorian writers may be more widely read (Dickens and Conan Doyle, for example), but I reckon that no other individual Victorian, however eminent (no, not Queen Victoria herself), lives on as a personality in quite the way that Wilde does. [Continue reading the Times article here]
2. Not many books begin with a word of warning. Through the Clock's Workings does. This anthology of literature is not some textual tome, frozen in time and space. It is alive, evolving organically in a constant state of flux.  This is a world first: a remixed and remixable short fiction anthology. (remix my lit)
3. There's an underground economy of boosted books. These values are commonly understood and roundly agreed upon through word of mouth, and the values always seem to be true. Once, a scruffy, large man approached me, holding a folded-up piece of paper. "Do you have any Buck?" He paused and looked at the piece of paper. "Any books by Buckorsick?" I suspected that he meant Bukowski, but I played dumb, and asked to see the piece of paper he was holding. It was written in crisp handwriting that clearly didn't belong to him, and it read: 1. Charles Bukowski 2. Jim Thompson 3. Philip K. Dick 4. William S. Burroughs 5. Any Graphic Novel

   This is pretty much the authoritative top five, the New York Times best-seller list of stolen books. Its origins still mystify me..

   I asked the man whether he preferred Bukowski's Pulp to his Women, as I did, and whether his favorite Thompson book was The Getaway or The Killer Inside Me. First the book chatter made him nervous, but then it made him angry... Continue reading Flying Off the Shelves by Paul Constant | via The Stranger Any booksellers reading this?  I'm curious about the how the lists might compare from store to store, city to city... Not surprised Buk is at the top of this one, however.  But where is Hoffman?  Surprising omission.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

via Internet Archive:  Naropa Poetics Audio Archive

Related posts:

1. "The British-based Poetry Archive has released statistics that visitors to its website are now viewing a total of more than one million pages a month. More than 125,000 individuals - or 'unique visitors' in web jargon - have visited the site, which hosts poems and audio readings by the poets themselves." via The Telegraph (UK)
2. "That he was a visionary is beyond question. Countless commentators have mentioned his acute insight into the psychopathology of our time and place: the world of mass media, celebrity, instant communications, electronic iconography, narcissism on a spectacular scale; the world of airport lounges, shopping malls and motorways, of pampered Western communities and endless suburbia; and the underlying horror that one day, very soon, this world will be swept away by atavistic forces that lie so close to the surface."
   "JG Ballard and the lost English avant garde" by Ken Edwards
   via bright stupid confetti
3. It's easy to be avant garde when you don't know what you are doing. via @kirkmitchell on twitter

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Using a complex array of perforations, the pavilion’s surface allows light to pass through creating shifting patterns, which–during specific times of the year–transform into the legible text of a poem. The specific arrangements of the perforations reveal different shadow-poems according to the solar calendar: a theme of new-life during the summer solstice, a reflection on the passing of time at the period of the winter solstice.

The time-based nature of the poem–and the visitor’s time-based encounters with it–allow viewers to have different experiences either seeing a stanza of the poem or getting the whole poem. All of these possible experiences are equally valuable and have meanings unique to the individual. This technique has the potential for producing particular effects and meanings within an architectural environment. Without the use of a source of power other than the sun, this project uses light and shadow to push the boundaries of communication and experiential delight. [Watch the time lapse video here.]

by Jiyeon Song | hat tip J-Walk

Related posts:

1. It’s a happy trend. Increasingly, we’re seeing museums launching dynamic online exhibitions to accompany their exhibitions on the ground. In the past, we highlighted the Tate Modern’s panoramic tour of Mark Rothko’s work. And now we point you to The Life and Work of William Butler Yeats, an online exhibition created by The National Library of Ireland. When you enter the tour, you can scan through 200 artifacts & manuscripts and “attend” three in-depth tutorials exploring the evolution of three major poems (‘Sailing to Byzantium’, ‘Leda and the Swan’ and ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’). You can also listen to Yeats, one of Ireland’s towering poets, reciting his famous poem ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree.’ To listen, click “Areas” on the bottom navigation, then click “Verse and Vision” on the center menu, and then the audio will begin to play. You can read the text of the poem here. Finally, you’ll find more Yeats poems in our Free Audio Book collection.
   1. ggratton says . . . | September 16, 2009 / 7:58 am:
      Thank you for highlighting the amazing Yeats site. I've been telling my colleagues that this site is the promise of the internet realized.
   Yeats painting by Barrie Maguire
   via openculture.com
   via @victorgodot
   Enter the tour here

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

via Bookslut’s Plathophilia: Rereading Sylvia

Related posts:

1. So why not consider a revolutionary if not long-forgotten information concept: a book; a book whose pages have texture that can be felt; a book whose letters make a slight indentation in the paper yet jump off the page; a book with hand-stitched binding. "I'm trying to get people to see a book as an aesthetic artifact, not as a generic container," says Dave Wofford, who operates the one-man letterpress Horse and Buggy Press. "I like the concept of attention to detail, tactileness, intimacy. To me books can't be beat for those things. via The Durham News Horse and Buggy Press
2. The end of July closes out Ovation TV's American Revolutionaries event.  If you haven't checked it out yet I highly recommend doing so if you get a chance. They're onto something there, and have moved mountains since relaunching in June. After all, they're the only national television network dedicated to the arts and personal creativity.  They've built a multimedia community around a mission to inspire and connect, and have made that community accessible to amateur and professional alike. Here are just a few of the artists featured this week: Monet Matisse Picasso Martha Graham Sylvia Plath Margot Fonteyn John Cale and many more To view the programming schedule and witness the unwavering evolution visit OvationTV.com.
3. Guthrie Martin agrees. "So many poets I know are so concerned with MFAs and prizes and getting published, making their mark," she said. "For me, having who you are as a poet live on isn't about any particular poem you write or your body of work. It's about how you inspire other people to be interested in poetry. It's just lovely to see people engaged in open, honest, friendly, generous, brilliant discussions of poetry just because they love it that much."  (via UW News)

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

via Eye Level

Related posts:

1. Guthrie Martin agrees. "So many poets I know are so concerned with MFAs and prizes and getting published, making their mark," she said. "For me, having who you are as a poet live on isn't about any particular poem you write or your body of work. It's about how you inspire other people to be interested in poetry. It's just lovely to see people engaged in open, honest, friendly, generous, brilliant discussions of poetry just because they love it that much."  (via UW News)
2. What does poetry have to do with the serious financial havoc the world has been enduring? Does anyone have time to consider a confection of art — spun from the imagination — while we face the chilling reality of lost homes, tattered businesses, or a compromised future? "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." We seem to be able to do so little against the loss and fear and panic. Yet poetry’s realm is precisely here — in the emotional center, where desire and terror and hope and dread converge without easy answers. Continue Reading | via Poets.org
3. $100,000 lifetime achievement award is one of largest to poets Published on Apr 30, 2008 - 9:09:15 AM By: Poetry Foundation

   The selection of Gary Snyder as this year's winner of the Lilly Prize does honor to the tradition of excellence and importance that the prize has stood for since it was established over 20 years ago," said John Barr, president of the Poetry Foundation.

   CHICAGO, April 29, 2008 -- Poet Gary Snyder is the winner of the 2008 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Established in 1986 and presented annually by the Poetry Foundation, the award is one of the most prestigious given to American poets, and at $100,000 it is one of the nation's largest literary awards. Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry magazine and chair of the selection committee, made the announcement today. The prize will be presented at an evening ceremony at the Arts Club of Chicago on Thursday, May 29. In announcing the award, Wiman said: "Gary Snyder is in essence a contemporary devotional poet, though he is not devoted to any one god or way of being so much as to Being itself. His poetry is a testament to the sacredness of the natural world and our relation to it, and a prophecy of what we stand to lose if we forget that relation." Raised in the Pacific Northwest, Snyder began writing in the 1950s as a member,with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, of the Beat movement. For most of the 1960s he lived in Japan and studied formally in a Zen monastery. Blending physical reality-precise observations of nature-with insight received primarily through the practice of Zen Buddhism, Snyder has explored a wide range of social and spiritual matters in both poetry and prose. The judges issued the following statement in making the selection: "Gary Snyder is a true nature poet: there's no sentimentalism to his work, and he never uses the natural world simply to celebrate his own sensibility. A deeply learned and meditative artist, an impassioned ecologist, and a poet of great scope as well as intense focus, Snyder has written poems that we will be reading for as long as we've been reading Robert Frost." Snyder is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, essays, and translations. His poetry collections include Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems, The Back Country, Regarding Wave, No Nature, Mountains and Rivers Without End, and Danger on Peaks. His essays are collected in Earth House Hold, The Real Work, A Place in Space, and Back on the Fire. A committed environmental activist who has received the John Hay Award for Nature Writing, Snyder has also been recognized for his contributions to the theory and practice of Buddhism. His many honors include the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for Turtle Island, an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Bollingen Prize, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, the Bess Hokin Prize and the Levinson Prize from Poetry, the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Times, and the Shelley Memorial Award. Snyder was born on May 8, 1930, in San Francisco. He is professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Davis, and lives in northern California.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.