The Best American Poetry

Matthew Thorburn, Guest Blogger May 20-24

Matthew Thorburn is the author of three books of poems, most recently This Time Tomorrow, published in March by the Waywiser Press. His work has been recognized with a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, as well as fellowships from the Bronx Council on the Arts and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. He lives in New York City, where he works as a communications manager for an international law firm.

Welcome, Matt

-- sdh

Raymond Sokolov, Guest Blogger May 13-17

This week we welcome Raymond Sokolov as our guest blogger. Raymond was born in Detroit in 1941. He studied classics at Harvard, got his AB in 1963, and finished his Ph.D, also at Harvard and also in classics in 2005. He was a foreign correspondent and cultural writer for Newsweek, 1965-1971; food and restaurant editor for the New York Times, 1971-3; food columnist, Natural History Magazine, 1974-1994; editor, Leisure and Arts Page, Wall Street Journal, 1983-2002; restaurant columnist, Wall Street Journal, 2006-2010. His books include The Saucier's Apprentice, a guide to classic French sauces for the home, Native Intelligence (novel), Wayward Reporter (biography of A.J. Liebling) and, most recently, Steal the Menu: A Memoir of Forty Years in Food (Knopf, May 14, 2013).

Welcome, Raymond.

-- sdh

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Simon Barraclough, Guest Blogger May 6-10

This week we welcome Simon Barraclough as our guest blogger. Simon is the author of the Forward Prize-finalist debut, Los Alamos Mon Amour (Salt, 2008), Bonjour Tetris (Penned in the Margins, 2010) and Neptune Blue (Salt, 2011). He is the editor of Psycho Poetica (Sidekick Books, 2012) and co-deviser and author of The Debris Field (Sidekick Books, 2013). Simon Barraclough lives in London.

Welcome, Simon.

-- sdh

David Yezzi, Guest Blogger April 29-May 3

This week we welcome back David Yezzi as our guest blogger. David’s books of poems include Azores (2008), a Slate magazine best book of the year, and Birds of the Air (2013). His work has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry (2006 & 2012), The Paris Review Book, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Poetry Speaks Who I Am, and Bright Wings. He is editor of The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets (foreword by J. D. McClatchy) and executive editor of The New Criterion. He is currently writing a biography of the poet Anthony Hecht for St. Martin’s Press. Read the New York Times review of Birds of the Air here. Read the Publishers Weekly review here.
Welcome, David.

-- sdh

Bruce F. Kawin Guest Blogger April 22-26 (and contest!)

This week we welcome Bruce F. Kawin as our guest blogger. Although he published chapbooks in 1964 (Breakwater) and 1970 (Slides), Bruce did not publish a book of poems until 2012, when Thames River Press (London) brought out Love If We Can Stand It.  He has also published nine more or less scholarly books on literature and film, of which the most recent is Selected Film Essays and Interviews (Anthem Press, 2013), as well as the last seven editions of Gerald Mast's A Short History of the Movies.

In other news . . .

Book Giveaway:  The Collected Poems of Ai (Norton, February 2013).  Tell us about your earliest memory of poetry for a chance to win one of five copies of Ai's recent collection. You can write your story in the comment field.  Read Sharon Preiss's review of The Collected Poems of Ai here.

-- sdh

Quote of the Week: The 99-cent Slice

On Monday morning, April 15, with taxes on people's minds -- before the bombs went off in Boston -- commuters reading the Wall Street Journal got to ponder the implications of the ninety-nine cent slice of pizza, a new development in Manhattan. You see stands advertising dollar slices on Eighth Street and Second Avenue, for instance, and the competition and inferior product are leaving some proud pizza makers feeling pretty vulnerable. So let's hear from an expert, and obligingly one steps forth, and these deathless sentences emerge:

<<<
"The 99-cent slice is a giant step towards killing the classic New York pizza experience," said John Arena, who teaches a class on pizza history and culture at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "What's next, $1 lox and 10-cent bagels?"
>>>

Say, dear reader, what is the most remarkable element in this little graf? Though there's more than one candidate, my vote goes to "a class on pizza history and culture." -- DL

Reading for the Collected Poems of Joseph Ceravolo: Wednesday April 17, 8:00 @ The Poetry Project

St. Mark’s Church  | 131 E. 10th Street, New York, NY 10003 | 212-674-0910 |

We're celebrating Wesleyan University Press’s long-anticipated landmark edition of Ceravolo’s poems with an all-star reading:  David Lehman, Charles North, Ron Padgett, Anselm Berrigan, Peter Gizzi, David Shapiro, John Perreault, Eileen Myles, Susie Timmons, Timothy Donnelly, Jordan Davis, Ariana Reines, Corina Copp, Corrine Fitzpatrick, John Coletti, Thurston Moore, Anita Ceravolo and Parker Smathers.

Poetry on the Red Carpet - Tune In @bestampo

On Wednesday, April 17, 2013 at 6:30pm, the Academy of American Poets will present the 11th annual Poetry & the Creative Mind at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall  (1941 Broadway, New York, NY).

Special guest readers for 2013 are Jad Abumrad, Glen Hansard, Mario Batali, Student Poet Claire Lee, Dick Cavett, Stew, Patricia Clarkson, Rose Styron, Tyne Daly, Amber Tamblyn, and Kathleen Turner. This year’s master of ceremonies is Calvin Trillin. Each will read a favorite poem.

If you can't attend you can follow along with poet Leah Umansky who will live tweet for us throughout the evening (@bestampo). Umansky also tweets as @lady_bronte.

Tickets are: $45-$75 and can be purchased at (www.lincolncenter.org).For more information, visit the Academy's website here.

Sarah Suzor, Guest Blogger April 15-19

This week we welcome Sarah Suzor as our guest blogger. Sarah's full-length collection of poetry, The Principle Agent, won the 2010 Hudson Prize and was published by Black Lawrence Press in 2011. Her collaboration with Travis Cebula After the Fox is forthcoming in 2014 from Black Lawrence Press. Her reviews and interviews can be found in Tarpaulin Sky and Rain Taxi. Suzor’s poetry has been published widely. anthologized, and translated. She lives in Venice, California, where she is a founding editor of Highway 101 Press, a correspondent for Omnidawn’s online magazine OmniVerse, and a guest lecturer for the Left Bank Writers Retreat in Paris. 

Welcome, Sarah.

-- sdh

"He's got flow!" Do you? Donate a Book to the Parachute Library

(Ed note:  On March 13, we posted about an ambitious project to build a poetry library for teens.  Here's what happened. sdh)

Maya and Amanda open a box of books

Dear poets, 

My students and I want to thank all of you who have contributed to our growing poetry library for at-risk teens in Coney Island. Thanks to your generosity, our shelves are filling with a wonderful variety of poetry books. I hope our story will inspire others to contribute as well. We now have over fifty books! 

I lead a poetry workshop for teenagers in Coney Island’s YWCA teen empowerment program through Parachute: the Coney Island Performance Festival, a literary nonprofit I founded. We meet at the Coney Island YWCA after-school program housed in the Rachel Carson High School in Brooklyn, NY. Parachute and the YWCA have been collaborating for over a year in order to offer the poetry workshop.  

A few weeks ago, I initiated a grass-roots project to  create a poetry section for the high school’s library, which, at the time had one poetry book. (One book!) My plan was to contact other poets, local presses, and those who had performed at Parachute’s annual festival and invite them to contribute books for a shelf at the YWCA and the school’s library.

I posted an announcement on my facebook page, sent  an email to all the wonderful poets who had read at Parachute in recent years, including poet, Matthea Harvey, who reposted my message which got picked up by the Best American Poetry blog, tweeted by them, retweeted by the Poetry Foundation. Within a few weeks books started pouring in from all over the nation and even from as far away as Canada and Spain! They are still arriving. Each day my mailbox is overflowing with books.

A sampling of donated volumes of poetry (photo (c) Amanda Deutch)

 

One of my goals in the writing workshop at the YWCA is to expose teenagers to poets whose voices the teenagers can identify with and perhaps shake up teenage notions of what poetry is and can be. They think all poetry has to rhyme and we are working on letting go of that idea.  We have read Frank O’Hara, Tracie Morris, Muriel Rukeyser, Diane DiPrima, Jennifer L. Knox and Matthea Harvey. “How did he do that? He’s got flow!” said student Maya upon reading Frank O’Hara’s “Steps.” On their own, the girls are reading Tupac Shakur and Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café.  In class, we have been writing “celebrity poems” based on chosen pop stars, such as Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj or Lil Wayne. You can read some of these on our virtual magazine, Teenage Fever Magazine  (www.teenagefevermag.tumblr.com)

The Poetry Lending Library project serves at least two distinct purposes: The teenagers get to read books by authors they would not otherwise encounter, and the poets get their books into the hands of new readers they might not otherwise reach. It’s really quite simple: symbiotic activism. The teenagers love the books; real actual “hold-in-your-hand” books. This couldn’t delight me more in an age of kindle, ipad, and nook. The students find the covers of each book we receive to be different and intriguing, and love that all the poems reveal a unique personality and life. While I may or may not be encouraging teenagers to become poets, I’m hopeful that I am fostering a love of poetry, language, and books that will empower them and serve them their entire lives. 

Won’t you take a few minutes to send a copy of your book to us? Would you like to have your books read by at-risk teens in NYC? If so, please send one (or two if you want them to go to the school's permanent collection as well as the after-school's) copy of any or all books you have authored. Feel free to sign it or leave a note for a teen. These books will really be appreciated by the teenagers. And if, through the magic of social media, this reaches you in a far-off place where your books are in a language other than English, send them along anyway. Thank you!

Please send your poetry books to:

Rachel Carson High School
YWCA Room 346
521 West Ave
Brooklyn NY 11224

Truly,

Amanda Deutch
Artistic Director
Parachute: The Coney Island Performance Festival

http://parachutepoetry.tumblr.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ParachuteFestival
http://parachuteconeyislandfestival.blogspot.com/

Parachute: the Coney Island Performance Festival is a non-profit, volunteer run organization. We invite you to make financial contributions, which help us keep doing what we are doing.  Every dollar helps us continue to offer free writing workshops for at-risk populations, an annual free literary festival, and projects such as this lending library. You can contribute here.