As the year ends, many list are published of "the best" books in all categories. Though no list is definitive or fits all tastes, one list to look at for good titles published during the year is the National Book Awards.
Here are the 2015 poetry titles selected.
WINNER
Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus: and Other Poems (Alfred A. Knopf)
FINALISTS
Ross Gay, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Terrance Hayes, How to Be Drawn (Penguin/Penguin Random House)
Ada Lim�n, Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions)
Patrick Phillips, Elegy for a Broken Machine (Alfred A. Knopf)
ON THE AWARD LONG LIST
Scattered at Sea by Amy Gerstler
A Stranger's Mirror by Marilyn Hacker
The Beauty by Jane Hirshfield
Heaven by Rowan Ricardo Phillips
Mistaking Each Other for Ghosts by Lawrence Raab
About the best poets who were never discoverd......!!!! All new poets are welcomed to join us.
Featured Post
Your Life Is a Poem
In the new episode of ON BEING, " Your Life Is a Poem ," poet Naomi Shihab Nye talks about growing up in Ferguson, Missouri and o...
Monday, November 30, 2015
Ring of Fire by Mary Eliza Crane
At the wane of a long season
of heat filled yellow sky,
fire consumes mountain forests
infested, decimated by bark beetles
feasting in their own changing world.
I swim deliciously in a warmer river
without current, cringing at banks
so barren I could walk across.
The water is too hot for salmon
to return upstream and spawn.
Earth degrades to dirt, crumbles in my hand.
Early spring bloomed in a
Monday, November 23, 2015
Ngawhatu by Maggie Rainey-Smith
On
the Richmond bus to Nelson passing Polstead Road
you
only had to say it, and everyone knew, unspoken
we
almost dared not look, it stirred such potent thoughts
caused
laughter, mocking, and a deeply seated superstition
innuendo
out the window, the road that leads to there
To
where? You ask? But
we all knew, we knew for sure
that�s
where the loonies go and you�ll go there for sure
Sunday, November 22, 2015
"Sunday Morning" at 100
"Wallace Stevens�s �Sunday Morning� (1915) is a lofty poetic meditation�almost a philosophical discourse�rooted in a few basic questions: what happens to us when we die? Can we believe seriously in an afterlife? If we can�t, what comfort can we take in the only life we get? As World War I intensified and Stevens neared middle age, he broached these subjects with quiet urgency in a poem as beautiful as it is difficult.
Although �Sunday Morning� is considered Stevens�s breakthrough poem, it wasn�t published until he was 36. It debuted in Poetry magazine during a year that brought several other Modernist milestones, including T.S. Eliot�s �The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,� Marianne Moore�s first professionally published poems, and a major Imagist anthology coedited by the poets Richard Aldington and H.D. Compared with these experiments by younger writers�and with many of the poems later collected in Stevens�s first book, Harmonium (1923)��Sunday Morning� innovates in a mellower and statelier mode. "read the full article
read "Sunday Morning"
The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
Monday, November 16, 2015
Abdullah, The Servant of God � by Wade Bishop
He was not a handsome man
not even in possession of a face that was easy to look into
it was journey twisted and wrinkled like a baby at birth
........
Monday, November 9, 2015
That girl, by Heidi North-Bailey
She rides side-saddle
into her own clich�
her heart is pumping smoke
boots heavy with things unsaid
sunset flecked with mud
she�s breathing fire
flames curl from her lips
slow-dancing lovers
with cigarette smiles
slink and hips
turn on the clock
and still
after all this time
after so many battered
leather jackets
crumpled sleeps
on strangers� couches
cups of tea
from chipped mugs
into her own clich�
her heart is pumping smoke
boots heavy with things unsaid
sunset flecked with mud
she�s breathing fire
flames curl from her lips
slow-dancing lovers
with cigarette smiles
slink and hips
turn on the clock
and still
after all this time
after so many battered
leather jackets
crumpled sleeps
on strangers� couches
cups of tea
from chipped mugs
Monday, November 2, 2015
Like a Reed Boat by William S. Rea
Like a reed boat
that slipped its mooring
Set drifting on
the current
Or the heaping up
of ripened grain
In the time of
harvest
He was farewelled
Gone, in the
fullness of his time
But that final
slipping away
Still came like
something unexpected
Like an empty
pier or a barren field
Which once
brimmed with purpose
Bustled with life
and vigour
Now there was
silence
Except
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Prompt: The Ode and the Body
For National Poetry Month last year, poets who serve on the Academy of American Poets Board of Chancellors participated in Poet-to-Poet, a multimedia educational project. Through videos, they invited young people in grades three to twelve to write poems in response to those shared by the poets. Here is one of those poems.
After reading the poem, Jane talks in the video about the poem and tells us it is an ode. �Ode� is from the Greek aeidein, meaning to sing or chant. It is an old form of lyric poetry which would have originally been accompanied by music and dance.
The Romantic poets used it as a way to formally address an event, a person, or a thing not present.
There are three typical types of odes: the Pindaric, Horatian, and Irregular. You can check into the more formal aspects of each, but we're being more general in our approach this month.
William Wordsworth's poem �Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood� is an example of an English language Pindaric ode.
The Horatian ode (named for the Roman poet Horace) is more contemplative, less formal, less ceremonious, and less theatrical. Look at the Allen Tate poem �Ode to the Confederate Dead.
The Irregular ode is just that. �Ode on a Grecian Urn� by John Keats was actually written based on his experiments with the sonnet.
Others: Shelley�s �Ode to the West Wind," Robert Creeley�s �America," Bernadette Mayer�s �Ode on Periods," and Robert Lowell�s �Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket.�
For this month, we ask you to write an ode that focuses on the body. Jane Hirshfield's poem opens with her direct address to the skeleton.
One ode I heard read aloud by the poet several times is "Homage to My Hips" by Lucille Clifton. It is a short poem that probably would not count as an ode by Horatio's standards, but I'm fine with it as an ode.
Homage To My Hips
these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top
"My Skeleton" by Jane Hirshfield
After reading the poem, Jane talks in the video about the poem and tells us it is an ode. �Ode� is from the Greek aeidein, meaning to sing or chant. It is an old form of lyric poetry which would have originally been accompanied by music and dance.
The Romantic poets used it as a way to formally address an event, a person, or a thing not present.
There are three typical types of odes: the Pindaric, Horatian, and Irregular. You can check into the more formal aspects of each, but we're being more general in our approach this month.
William Wordsworth's poem �Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood� is an example of an English language Pindaric ode.
The Horatian ode (named for the Roman poet Horace) is more contemplative, less formal, less ceremonious, and less theatrical. Look at the Allen Tate poem �Ode to the Confederate Dead.
The Irregular ode is just that. �Ode on a Grecian Urn� by John Keats was actually written based on his experiments with the sonnet.
Others: Shelley�s �Ode to the West Wind," Robert Creeley�s �America," Bernadette Mayer�s �Ode on Periods," and Robert Lowell�s �Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket.�
For this month, we ask you to write an ode that focuses on the body. Jane Hirshfield's poem opens with her direct address to the skeleton.
My skeleton,She follows chronologically, following the skeleton as it ages.
you who once ached
with your own growing larger
each yearGenerally, the aging of the body is not a kind thing.
imperceptibly smaller,
lighter,
absorbed by your own
concentration.
Angular wristbone's arthritis,And finally, she concludes with this beautiful image of its life work.
cracked harp of ribcage
You who held me all my lifeOur November prompt is an ode about a part of the body. I suppose the skeleton is a part of the body, although it is made up of many smaller parts. That is true of the ear, the hand and the brain, so you might want to choose a specific part. You might choose the nose, a breast, the mouth, lips, tongue or a thumb. So many options. You don't need to get down to an anatomical level (although that might be interesting) and you could easily be like those Romantic poets in your approach.
inside your hands
as a new mother holds
her own unblanketed child,
not thinking at all.
One ode I heard read aloud by the poet several times is "Homage to My Hips" by Lucille Clifton. It is a short poem that probably would not count as an ode by Horatio's standards, but I'm fine with it as an ode.
Homage To My Hips
these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)