Stumbled upon the Marais Mona Lisait this afternoon. It’s the Paris equivalent of a remainders bookshop (e.g., Afterwords or Daedalus), which is the Peg equivalent of a crack den, especially given that the second floor has a stash of bilingual poetry editions for 1.5 EUR each, though I managed to limit myself to three volumes: miscellaneous poems by Dante (Italian/French), Louis Macneice (English/French), and Robert Herrick (English/French).
seen earlier today in Paris
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| From Europe 2009 – set 9 |
big rubber clown gloves
- Some interesting discussion of feminist poetry here, by Mark Wallace (via) including a list of feminist poets.
- Brain research and poetry at the Ploughshares blog.
- I’m curious what people think of Scribd, which was mentioned to me by a friend last night, and is also featured in the New York Times. I’m generally against self-publishing, except in certain limited situations (niche non-fiction, or small runs of chapbooks to sell at readings), because I think it’s not a good deal for the writer, but this looks interesting for reprints of out-of-print books as ebooks.
- ETA: Harcourt Houghton Mifflin in anti-trust suit (via)
like ink bleeding through paper
Read Write Poem is doing hyperlinked poems (my favourite posted there so far is this haiku, from which the title of this entry comes), which reminded me of centos – I’ll have to write (find?) more of those. I’m posting it here to remind me, when things settle down (my husband just graduated, and we’re moving in two weeks).
dobry vecer (good evening)
Greetings from the Czech Republic. I’m here with a chorus that will be performing Verdi’s Requiem at Terezin tomorrow. (For a history of Rafael Schaechter’s stubborn insistence on teaching and performing the Requiem in the ghetto, see Murry Sidlin’s webpage. The gist is that until he was finally murdered at Auchswitz, Schaecter taught several hundred other Jews the Requiem from a single score.)
Our hotel is located in the Smichov district, which is in southeast Prague. A few blocks away, there is an edifice that my bus’s guide pointed out as “the poetry building”:
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| From Europe 2009 – set 4 |
According to various online references, the architect was Jean Nouvel and the words are by Rilke.
NaPoWriMo postmortem and other news
I think I probably got a good 15 poems out of NPWM, once all the dust settles and I’ve edited the heck out of them. Thanks, Mary, for suggesting we do it.
In other, perhaps more exciting, news, my poem “Deaths on Other Planets” — which appeared in the April/May 2008 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction — has won their Readers’ Awards for Best Poem of 2008. (You can read it here.)
* * *
A new (to me, anyway) wrinkle on the classic writing contest scam has appeared on the Poets & Writers Speakeasy, Absolute Write and craigslist (the craigslist ad was removed by craigslist):
It’s called ‘The Great Publication Contest’ for poems and short stories. By entering the contest you have a 1 in 8 chance of having your poem or short story published in a national publication in a book coming out in the summer of 2010 called ‘A Great Collection of Short Stories and Moving Poetry.
According to posters who visited greatpublicationcontest.siteusa.biz before it disappeared, the “contest” especially targets young people and has a $35 entry fee. In case you’re wondering, it’s not a good idea to enter this contest. For a guide to writing contests, read this, which I wrote when I worked for the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia.
the rudeness of honey
Progress: Using the fake-translation exercise I mentioned in my last progress update, I wrote a short, weird poem about rhyme. Today I wrote a short, not so weird poem about integrity. And that’s 30. Just under the wire. Phew!
Mirrored at joannemerriam.com.
And finally, for the finale…
Running on very little sleep, so I went into epigraph mode when I saw that today’s prompt was farewell:
Nay, I Have Done, You Get No More Of Me
[pace Drayton]
Why yes, I have been spanked by the doors of rooms
I tried to depart from in a queenly huff:
it happens if you live long enough,
just as ancient dust outstays the newest brooms.
– pld
My thanks to all of you who’ve read my posts this month, and especially to those of you who have taken the time to comment and encourage! It’s back to a more sedate (~ twice-monthly) posting rate for me, but do please stop by from time to time — I’ve some poems-by-other-people to quote and other tidbits to be shared…
eyelashes like sharpened tines
NaPoWriMo Inspiration: “Adolescence-II” by Rita Dove
sprinting on an empty stomach
Today’s PAD Challenge: make “Never ____” the title of a poem and then write it.
Never Tell a Witch You Haven’t Had Breakfast
For she will not believe you
when you later try to insist
you aren’t hungry at all
while your eyes keep straying
toward the bowl of hot broth
and the glass of sweet tea
and the plate of perfect morsels
all waiting for you to surrender
to the invitation you stumbled into.
– pld