Poetry

Artist Jon Cotner thinks that poetry shouldn’t just be studied, but rather should be looked at as ”a way of life, a mode of knowing.”

With this in mind, the artist created ”Poem Forest,” a work created for the New York Botanical Garden that brings poetry back to nature–having visitors read lines from different poems while walking through the park.

eBookNewser has more: ”Cotner’s installation takes classic lines from poetry and imposes them on a 20 minute walk through the park. He explained on the BMW Guggenheim blog: ‘Poetry can wake us, and in the process we create a shared world or ‘the commons.’ But what characterizes this common world? How can we describe it? With such questions in mind, I shaped Poem Forest.’”

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How can indie bookstores can survive Amazon’s dominance? In an article by poet and publisher of Black Ocean Janaka Stucky published at Poetry Foundation, the publisher suggested they think about poetry readers: “People who read poetry are the unsung customer base for independent bookstores.”

Instead of competing, Stucky recommends that indie book stores take advantage of their status as local businesses within their communities: “the service a bookstore provides isn’t just book-selling; it’s being the cultural center that book lovers need in their communities. Unless bookstores can not only acknowledge their role as beacons of culture, but really embrace that role and market themselves as such—as long as they try in vain to compete with one of the world’s largest retailers at its own game—they will slowly lose ground as they steadily morph into increasingly bizarre hybrids of book-music stores, bookstore-cafes, and bookstore–tapas restaurants.”

Stucky’s piece is a response to an op-ed in The New York Times that condemns Amazon for paying customers $5 not to shop in stores and a piece in Slate that justified the practice.

Do you love the mix of Edwardian drama and World War I scenes of the second season of Downton Abbey on PBS? Below, we’ve collected links to four free digital poetry books  from the period that you can download right now.

Over at the New York Times, reporter Julie Bosman covered how publishers are taking advantage of this popular show to promote historical fiction and biography.

One reader added this comment: “The poets who wrote of the horrors of World War I represent some of the greatest poets of all time. I’m not referring to Rupert Brooke, who romanticized the war, but to Siegfried Sassoon, Edward Thomas, and particularly to Wilfred Owen [pictured], who died a week before the armistice and whose poems are truly heartbreaking. Owen’s ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ is one of the best.”

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Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich once again quoted Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” after being sentenced to 14 years in prison for corruption.

In 2008, he read a Rudyard Kipling poem at a press conference. Follow this link to read the complete poem he quoted. The disgraced politician published The Governor with Phoenix Books in 2009.

Following his impeachment by the Illinois House of Representatives in 2009, Blagojevich concluded his political career with ‘Ulysses’ by Lord Alfred Tennyson. Here’s a link to the full poem.

The New York City Department of Transportation has posted 216 “Curbside Haiku” signs around New York City.

Here’s more from The Gothamist: “[Each haiku expresses] a different safety message by focusing on one transportation mode. For example, our favorite one spreads this message: ‘Cyclist writes screenplay / Plot features bike lane drama / How pedestrian.’”

Follow this link to see all the locations where the signs can be found. Poet John Morse wrote the haikus, creating 12 different poems for the signs. The project was funded by Driving-While-Intoxicated (DWI) fines.

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Last night poet Nikky Finney rocked the National Book Awards with her acceptance speech for the poetry award. You can watch her speech in the video embedded above–simply scroll ahead to 16:10-mark.

Follow this link to read a free sample of her award winning book, Head Off & Split. When she finished, host John Lithgow remarked: “That was the best acceptance speech for anything I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s also the loudest I’ve ever heard anyone cheer for an award for poetry.”

Here are a few excerpts from the speech: “We begin with history, the slave codes of South Carolina,” she reads. “We shiver together … To be in your company is to brightly burn … Black people were the only people in the United States who were ever officially not allowed to become literate. I am now officially speechless.”

The Occupy Wall Street Library has just created a massive 400-page PDF version of their Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology. Until today, the anthology had lived in binders floating around the Occupy Wall Street camp.

Here’s more about the book: “For the past 6 weeks poets from around the world have been sending poems to the People’s Library in an effort to create a living/breathing poetry anthology in solidarity with the Occupy Wall St. movement. All poems are accepted into the anthology. The anthology is updated on a weekly basis. If you’d like a poem added to the anthology email stephenjboyer[at]gmail[dot]com and please include ‘occupy poetry’ in the subject.”

Author and rock star Patti Smith sent the Occupy Wall Street librarians a note after reading about the eviction: “what you are doing is only a beginning. / if it gets too tough in the winter / get healthy regroup and come back. / don’t be sorry about anything.“

The Occupy Wall Street library has produced the first Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology. The founders seek poetry in all the languages of the world, building a “massive text of dissidence, a testament to the infinite beauty of the human spirit.”

Poet, author and rock star Patti Smith visited the protest site over the weekend, donating ten copies of Just Kids to the library and reading the anthology. The Wall Street Journal even took notice of poetry scene at the park, writing an article about the poetry anthology.

Here’s more about poetry at the protest site: “Every Friday night around 9:30pm poets of all walks of life and ages come in and read/perform their poetry. Folks that have been around the NYC poetry scene for a long time have been saying the poetry assembly is one of the greatest open mic reading series NYC has ever fostered and NYC has a great legacy of poetry. With that validation, I highly suggest you join us. Poetry illuminates the soul of Occupy Wall St. A lot of people are asking, “What are the demands” and the poets voices show just how nuanced the human spirit and impossible a set of demands truly is. This occupation is about transforming consciousness and the poetry community is a major part of that process. So please join us!”

Poet Matthew Chase Whittemore hopes to raise $1,500 on Kickstarter for his “News Made Poetry” project. Above, we’ve embedded a video about the project.

Here’s more about the project: “Over the next year I’m going to read the New York Times, pick one article and then, by sampling words, ideas and phrases from that text, write a poem. Five days a week, I’m going to post this poem, along with the heavily noted newspaper clipping, to NewsMadePoetry.com. News Made Poetry is a poetry project for those who love poetry and for those who ask, ‘but whats the point?’  My goal is to build a bridge that connects poetry with everyday life, so that all can find the poems accessible. It is also a project aimed at helping people read the news.”

Welcome to our Kickstarter Publishing Project of the Week, a feature exploring how authors and publishers are using the fundraising site to raise money for book projects. If you want to start your own project, check out How To Use Kickstarter to Fund Your Publishing Project.

Poet Samuel Menashe has died. He was a World War II veteran and the first writer to receive the Neglected Masters Award from the Poetry Foundation.

The Library of America published his New and Selected Poems. Their online tribute to the poet included this brief and powerful poem (which Menashe wrote in the sand in the photo above): “Pity us / by the sea / on the sands / so briefly.”

At the NEA blog, Menashe recounted the experience of receiving the Neglected Masters award: “In the middle of the summer I get a telephone call in which they tell me they’re giving me an award, I thought well I’ll get well $1500 it’s very nice and the award they gave me was they created it for me, the Neglected Masters Award.  So when I was about 80, suddenly this Cinderellesque transformation of my life.  I might have died at a mere 78 and it never would have happened.”