The All Blacks by Robert J Pope

Tenth Annual Celebration of Literary Journals May 19

              

Join 12 literary journals and their editors for the free tenth annual POETRY FESTIVAL: A CELEBRATION OF LITERARY JOURNALS in New Jersey. This annual event, organized by poet Diane Lockward, includes readings throughout the afternoon by poets featured in the journals.

Books by the poets will be available for sale and for signing and the 12 journals will be displayed and available for purchase. This is a great opportunity for poets to talk with the editors about their publications. Each journal will be represented by two poets who have published in that journal.

Sunday, May 19, 2013
1:00 PM - 5:00 PM
West Caldwell Public Library (30 Clinton Road, West Caldwell, New Jersey, 973-226-5441)

The journals that will be represented:

1. Adanna
2. Edison Literary Review
3. Exit 13
4. Journal of New Jersey Poets
5. Lips
6. Painted Bride Quarterly
7. Paterson Literary Review
8. Raintown Review
9. Schuylkill Valley Journal
10. Stillwater Review
11. Tiferet
12. US 1 Worksheets

Scheduled poets reading throughout the afternoon:
ROBERT CARNEVALE
MIKE COHEN
LORRAINE DORAN
JUDITHA DOWD
SANDRA DUGUID
MARTIN FARAWELL
ANDREW �INK� FEINDT
JIM GWYN
MIRIAM HAIER
ERIC HELLER
ERNEST HILBERT
LINDA HILLRINGHOUSE
JANET KIRCHHEIMER
DAVID KOZINSKI
FRANCESCA MAXIME
KATHY NELSON
KATHE PALKA
WANDA PRAISNER
ED ROMOND
LINDA STERN
CHUCK TRIPI
EMILY VOGEL
JOE WEIL
EDYTTA WOJNAR

Ample Parking; Refreshments Available; #33 NJT Bus Stop Within Short Walking Distance; Many Area Restaurants

Directions to Event

Festival Information

Figurative Language

These days, many people associate formal poetry with "old poetry."  Forms, like sonnets, and rhyme schemes are often seen as those things we had to study in school.

When many readers see lines like

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?

their eyes get cloudy - and they stop reading.

Diane Lockward is the author of three poetry books, most recently, Temptation by Water.  Her free monthly poetry newsletter (subscribe here) has reviews, writing tips and a poetry prompt. She is collecting some of those prompts and model poems in a new book, The Crafty Poet, due out later this year.

In one issue, I was struck by Diane's suggestion that literal language is not always enough for a poem.

The just-right use of the figurative�moving beyond the dictionary meaning of words�can open a poem to both broader interpretation and greater exactness. Metaphor and simile are what we first think of when we consider figurative language, but there are enough other rhetorical figures to boggle the mind. 

Five of the figurative tools that she suggests (beyond the familiar metaphor and simile) are apostrophe, personification, hyperbole, metonymy, and synecdoche. They are all good tools that poets should know and use.

To use apostrophe, as John Donne does, for example, in his sonnet �Death, be not proud,� is to bring to the subject an immediacy not otherwise possible. Direct address achieves this feeling of being up-close and personal.

Personification creates a similar effect of immediacy. It can enliven a poem and heighten its emotion, as Philip Levine does in �Animals Are Passing from Our Lives,� a poem in which the pig speaking is given human qualities: It's wonderful how I jog / on four honed-down ivory toes. Personification can be tricky; the key is knowing when to use it and how much is enough in a poem.

Frost, in �After Apple-Picking,� finds a surprisingly convincing way to get across the idea �I have had too much / Of apple picking� with the hyperbole �There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch.�

Metonymy, with its substitution of an associated word for the intended one, shortwires the way we think of the substituted term and thereby offers an efficiency of language. In �How She Described Her Ex-Husband When the Police Called,� poet Martha Clarkson ends with, "He�s the joker pinned in bicycle spokes / vanishing down the street." Because it�s common knowledge that a joker is a playing card, the substitution works.

Synecdoche, with its substitution of a part for the whole, is a type of metonymy, providing that same efficiency. T. S. Eliot uses synecdoche in �The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock� in the lines "I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas."  In doing so, he gives us claws as an intentional disembodiment.

Learning Poems by Heart

Caroline Kennedy writes that, �If we learn poems by heart, we will always have their wisdom to draw on, and we gain an understanding that no one can take away.�

For the Poems to Learn by Heart collection, Kennedy chose more than 100 poems that can speak to all of us.

The Poetry Foundation has collected a few poems from the book and offers a Poems to Learn Teacher Guide which includes activities aligned to Common Core Standards for grades K-12.

Sample Poems

Grades K-3�Don't Worry if your Job is Small� by Anonymous
�Some Words Inside of Words� by Richard Wilbur

Grades 4-6
�Invitation to Love� by Paul Laurence Dunbar
�A Blessing� by James Wright

Grades 7-12
�Theme for English B� by Langston Hughes
�Bilingual/Biling�e� by Rhina Espaillat
�If�� by Rudyard Kipling
�Ballad of Birmingham� by Dudley Randall

3rd Birthday Communal �Jazz� Poem: Scratch

1.
When looking back
choose your mirror well

2.
This memory, I know, is less like a recording
and more like Chinese whispers
but still I replay it

3.
Who scratched, who scratched,
who scratched this surface?
Shud-shudder-shuddering
lined rep-rep
repetition

4.
Is it you, Lily, hiding again
behind white linen corners of the laundry line?
Your oboe voice criss-crossing time

The 4 Days in Nature Writing Prompt

How about this as a way to get out of a writer's block, a creative rut, or poetic funk: unplug and get out into the natural world..

A study published in the journal PLOS One found that spending four days in nature - away from electronic devices - is linked with 50 percent higher score on a test for creativity.

I am one of those people who spends too much time in front of a screen (computer or otherwise) but who also loves to take a hike.  The study looked at people who did electronics-free wilderness hiking trips for four to six days. (The hikes were organized by the Outward Bound expedition school.) 

They gave creativity tests to some the morning they started their trip and others on the fourth day of their trip and found the day 4 group scored higher. (I'm not sure why they didn't test all of them before and on day 4.)

Maybe it was being in nature, or maybe it was being unplugged. Maybe its both things. 

Another study was also cited that found that just seeing the color green before being given a creative prompt yielded more imaginative answers than seeing the color white before the prompt. 

Anyone willing to experiment and report back to us?

Today Is Poem in Your Pocket Day

As part of National Poetry Month, you should celebrate national Poem in Your Pocket Day today, April 18, 2013.

All you need to do is select a poem, carry it with you, and share it with others throughout the day. You can also share your poem selection on Twitter by using the hashtag #pocketpoem.

Poems from pockets will be unfolded throughout the day with events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores.

For more information, scheck all the National Poetry Month information at www.poets.org