Post With No Name

PULITZER PRIZE WINNING POETS: 1998 - Charles Wright

After Reading Tu Fu, I Go Outside to the Dwarf Orchard
Charles Wright

East of me, west of me, full summer.
How deeper than elsewhere the dusk is in your own yard.
Birds fly back and forth across the lawn
--------------------------------------------looking for home
As night drifts up like a little boat.

Day after day, I become of less use to myself.
Like this mockingbird,
--------------------------------------------I flit from one thing to the next.
What do I have to look forward to at fifty-four?
Tomorrow is dark.
--------------------------------------------Day-after-tomorrow is darker still.

The sky dogs are whimpering.
Fireflies are dragging the hush of evening
--------------------------------------------up from the damp grass.
Into the world's tumult, into the chaos of every day,
Go quietly, quietly.


----------------------------------------------------

Two For Tuesday

PULITZER PRIZE WINNING POETS: 1972 - James Wright

The Journey

Anghiari is medieval, a sleeve sloping down
A steep hill, suddenly sweeping out
To the edge of a cliff, and dwindling.
But far up the mountain, behind the town,
We too were swept out, out by the wind,
Alone with the Tuscan grass.

Wind had been blowing across the hills
For days, and everything now was graying gold
With dust, everything we saw, even
Some small children scampering along a road,
Twittering Italian to a small caged bird.

We sat beside them to rest in some brushwood,
And I leaned down to rinse the dust from my face.

I found the spider web there, whose hinges
Reeled heavily and crazily with the dust,
Whole mounds and cemeteries of it, sagging
And scattering shadows among shells and wings.
And then she stepped into the center of air
Slender and fastidious, the golden hair
Of daylight along her shoulders, she poised there,
While ruins crumbled on even, side of her.
Free of the dust, as though a moment before
She had stepped inside the earth, to bathe herself.

I gazed, close to her, till at last she stepped
Away in her own good time.

Many men
Have searched all over Tuscany and never found
What I found there, the heart of the light
Itself shelled and leaved, balancing
On filaments themselves falling. The secret
Of this journey is to let the wind
Blow its dust all over your body,
To let it go on blowing, to step lightly, lightly
All the way through your ruins, and not to lose
Any sleep over the dead, who surely
Will bury their own, don't worry.

Some Poet Jokes - Because Poets Are Hysterically Funny - Don't You Think?

Here are a few poetry jokes guaranteed to make you a sensation at the next
open mic. Some are original. All are stolen from Allan Wolf. A couple are even funny.




Po-Joke #10
Question: How does a poet sneeze?
Answer: Haiku!!!




Po-Joke #12
Question: What do baby poets play with?
Answer: Tanka trucks.




Po-Joke #13
Question: What did William Wordsworth mean by “a spontaneous
overflow of emotion recollected in tranquility”?
Answer: Puberty.




Po-Joke #15
Question: How is a book of poetry like O.J. Simpson’s testimony.
Answer: Nobody buys either one of them.




Po-Joke #20
Question: What do you get when you combine Robert Frost and James
Bond?
Answer: The Road Not Shaken but Stirred.




Po-Joke #24
A nurse is giving a young medical intern a tour of the hospital.


The intern approaches one bedridden patient and asks, “Why are you here?” The
patient replies, “Wee sleket cowerin’ timrous beastie/O, what a panic is in thy breastie.”


The intern moves on to the next bed and asks the same question, “Why are you
here?” The patient answers, “O, my luv is like a red, red, rose that’s newly sprung in June.”


The intern moves on to a third bed and asks again, “Why are you here” to which
the third patient replies, “The best laid plans of mice and men, may often gang awry.”


At this the intern turns to the nurse and asks, “What ward is this anyway.” And
the nurse answers, “It’s the Burns Unit.”



------------------------------------------------------

For more poetic humor check out Allan Wolf's poetry site at
http://www.allanwolf.com/

Shocking Blue

Hear...Hear!

Read this over at Seth Abramson's :


"At present, one group of writers--poets with no first book, no money, and no high-level connections--are being essentially kept out of the process altogether, even as gurus in the poetry community are assuring us that there are too many poets out there, too many publishers, too much access to full-manuscript publication for those as yet unprepared for it. I beg to differ, and always have, and think that someone, someone, needs to stand up for what undoubtedly is a huge demographic in the very midst of the American poetry community."


----------------------------------------------
read the rest at: The Suburban Ecstasies - "2008 State of the Small Presses "

I Know...I Know It's Only Rock n' Roll But....

Marya Zaturenska, - Pulitzer Prize Winner in 1938.

The White Dress
Marya Zaturenska (1902-1982)

Imperceptively the world became haunted by her white dress.
Walking in forest or garden, he would start to see,
Her flying form; sudden, swift, brief as a caress
The flash of her white dress against a darkening tree.

And with forced unconcern, withheld desire, and pain
He beheld her at night; and when sleepless in his bed,
Her light footfalls seemed loud as cymbals; deep as his disdain,
Her whiteness entered his heart, flowed through from feet to head.

Or it was her face at a window, her swift knock at the door,
Then she appeared in her white dress, her face white as her gown;
Like snow in midsummer she came and left the rich day poor;
And the sun chilled and grew higher, remote, and the moon slipped down.

So the years passed; more fierce in pursuit her image grew;
She became the dream abjured, the ill uncured, the deed undone,
The life one never lived, the answer one never knew,
Till the white shadow swayed the moon, stayed the expiring sun.

Until at his life's end, the shadow of the white face, the white dress
Became his inmost thought, his private wound, the word unspoken,
All that he cherished in failure, all that had failed his success;
She became the crystal orb, half-seen, untouched, unbroken.

There on his death bed, kneeling at the bed's foot, he trembling saw,
The image of the Mother-Goddess, enormous, archaic, cruel,
Overpowering the universe, creating her own inexorable law,
Molded of stone, but her fire and ice flooded the room like a pool.

And she was the shadow in the white dress, no longer slight and flying,
But solid as death. Her cold, firm, downward look,
Brought close to the dissolving mind the marvelous act of dying,
And on her lap, the clasped, closed, iron book.

Two For Tuesday on a Monday

Be There or Be Square

The Box invites you to an evening of short word, film, play and music by:

Stephanie Comilang
Kristyn Dunnion
Stacey May Fowles
Chris MacLean
John Martz
Mindbender
Parkdale Revolutionary Orchestra
Jaclyn Quar and Mallory Diaczun

+Â door treats galore. Thanks to the Toronto arts council.

The Box is a quarterly salon night of readings, performances, screenings, interventions and networking that aims to bring diverse communities and audiences into an environment of artistic and social intermingling.


8 pm
Wednesday, July 9
Rivoli, 332 Queen St W. (Back Room)
Toronto, Ontario


pwyc, $5 suggested donation

Host: Louise Bak

boxsalon@hotmail.com
416-929-1906
http://www.boxsalon.com/


Stephanie Comilang is a romantic and realist who lives and works in Toronto. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at the Ontario College of Art and Design and has since been in collaboration with a number of artists. On her completion of school, she started touring Europe and North America extensively with Final Fantasy accompanying Owen Pallett and his violin with live shadows and drawings on the overhead projector. Together they have played both garages with mattresses as seating and big Scandinavian concert halls. She most recently directed a meta-trilogy of music videos for Final Fantasy, which can be seen on TV and your computer. Stephanie has also collaborated with experimental theatre company Mammalian Diving Reflex on Diplomatic Immunities researching and presenting in Lahore, Pakistan for the World Performing Arts Festival last November. She is working out logistics for their next collaboration entitled Parkdale vs. Queen West. She is currently mapping out a puppet show about growing up with an Elvis impersonatorfather entitled Children of the King.

Kristyn Dunnion is a saucy tart. She is the author of Missing Matthew, a quirky mystery for 8-10 year olds, Mosh Pit, a queer punk novel for adult rebels, and BIG BIG SKY, a brand new speculative fiction. She has short stories in these collections: The Horrors: Terrifying Tales, With A Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn, Geeks, Misfits and Outlaws, and Periphery: Erotic Lesbian Futures. She is also the trash-talking hostess and macho-femme Miss Kitty Galore. Hear her roar! www.kristyndunnion.com

Stacey May Fowles' written work has been published in various online and print magazines, including Kiss Machine, The Absinthe Literary Review, and subTERRAIN. Her non-fiction has been anthologized in the widely acclaimed Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity and First Person Queer. Her first novel, Be Good, was published with Tightrope Books in November 2007, and in fall 2008 she will release an illustrated novel, Fear of Fighting, with Invisible Publishing. She currently lives in Toronto where she is the publisher of Shameless Magazine.

Residing in Toronto, Chris MacLean graduated from University of Toronto with a BA in Cinema Studies and from York University with a BFA in Film & Video Production. Sharing his time between his paid life in the local film/television industry and his filmmaking-related hobbies, he has written/directed/edited over two dozen films/videos. His work has been screened at festivals worldwide, including Cinematexas, Images, and International Film Festival of Rotterdam. He has also served a stint at the One Minute Film & Video Festival as a member of the Selection Committee and as its Technical Director.

Mindbender is a ever-rising star in Toronto hip hop, who has performed with EL-P, Pharoahe Monch, Del, MF DOOM, Aceyalone, Brother Ali, Cage, Aesop Rock and many others. He has also played countless shows across North America, received local and international press from Pound to Now Magazine to URB, inked distribution deals with Urbnet and Sonic Imprint (UK), and completed a record-breaking fifth year organizing Toronto's best open mic, 'In Divine Style'. He released 2 albums in March 2008, 'Better Late Than Never Made' and 'Invisible Rhythm Showcase', and is constantly creating the future sound of Canadian/international hip hop, for you to enjoy. Stay tuned to Mindbender Supreme...

Through her multi-disciplinary practice, Jaclyn Quaresma focuses on the moment of subtlety in a relationship when attraction turns into negligence. While maintaining a strong involvement she slowly distances herself from the object of her affection, eventually abandoning it without remorse. Hence, her work captures the paradox when both attraction and negligence coexist with same force, and the viewer lingers for a moment on the brink between intense intimacy and imminent separation (Braid). The same logic extends and incorporates her relationship with objects exemplified in Televison: a poem, He Was Different Without His Glasses. Jaclyn is also interested in the play between documentary and fiction, which she then investigates through a dialogue of the private vs. public.

Mallory Diaczun is a Toronto-based artist whose interests focus on sex, with a particular emphasis on glamourized examinations of pornography, black youth culture, and the hyperbolic world of (in)famous basketball players. Diaczun explores the relationship and interaction between human intimacies through a highly sexualized manner. By attempting to expose the space between sexualized relationships, previous bodies of work have derived: a Barbie-esque pornographic colouring book entitled Jenna; an investigation of power through Suck My Dick, Bitch; and an ongoing suite of performances such as Braid, with Jaclyn Quaresma. Both Quaresma and Diaczun are currently obtaining their Bachelor of Arts in Art and Art History at the University of Toronto/Sheridan College.

John Martz is an illustrator and cartoonist living in Toronto whose clients include Hallmark Cards, CTV, Yahoo!, and chicaDEE Magazine. His website, robotjohnny.com, is home to a menagerie of cartoons, typefaces, and other creations. John's love of wordplay can be seen his comics, movie reviews in verse, and in his popular recreation of the TTC subway map as a series of anagrams. He is also the editor of the illustration and cartooning blog Drawn! (www.drawn.ca)


Switching from premiering a piano concerto with American piano virtuoso Thollem McDonas one month to stunning Wavelength hipsters at Sneaky Dee's the next without needing to change gears, the Parkdale Revolutionary Orchestra transcends genre and erases the artificial distinction between high and low forms of art. Sweeping vocal and sax lines interweave between layers of aggressive minimalist string patterns punctuated by driving percussion and bass drones; the result being structures both concrete and unquestionably human. Their music has been described as "the meeting point between Philip Glass, Billie Holiday, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor". In addition to their repertoire of original songs, the Parkdale Revolutionary Orchestra is known for their reinterpretations of songs by Brian Eno, Kurt Weill, New Order, and Wire. The Parkdale Revolutionary Orchestra is: Kristin Mueller-Heaslip (voice), Jennifer Wardle (saxophone), Alex Cheung (violin), Adriana Pera (cello), Michael Kaler (bass), and Michael Rosenthal (drums), and Benjamin Mueller-Heaslip (pencil/paper)

George Carlin: 1937 - 2008

Warning: Contains words which may be offensive to some

Two For Tuesday

Reflections

Desperately Seeking Poet to Swap Chapbook Manuscript With:

Thanks to Justin I believe that my chapbook manuscript is getting closer to being ready for the next round of submissions. After reading my MS he's given me valuable advice on the narrative arc of my MS. After reading his blog and the trials and tribulations his MS has undergone I kinda feel pedantic in underlining the minimal adversity that I have faced in my subbing odyssey. (So go on over and wish him well as he sends his own MS out. Go ahead you've got my permission. )

But what I really need right now, and I'm serious about this, is some close scrutiny. No I don't mean me ...I mean my chapbook! (I'm under enough scrutiny as it is...Sheesh!)

So if you are on the same journey as yours truly: i.e. looking for a publisher for your chapbook but wanting to put your best MS foot forward go on and try this challenge on for size.


---------------------------------------------------

Silence is Golden...But my Eyes Still See.

Feeling Mellow?

Poetry in Vitro - Vol 3, No. 10

And so it goes...

Quotes & Quotables

"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education."

-------------------------------------------------Albert Einstein

The Two For Tuesday Which I Should Have Posted Yesterday