Afghan Women's Writing Project

Next time you think you have writer's block, go browse The Afghan Women's Writing Project, http://www.awwproject.org/.  Then sit down and be glad for the luxury of being able to write, and ... just do it.

Lehman Brothers - poetry even in the dark corners...

Musing over the recent financial meltdown and its trail of soggy breadcrumbs, I found an article in the NY Times about Lehman Brothers, and was struck by the odd intimacy of coffee spills and smears on the 'found' memo in question.  Could there be art in even this unlikely (unsavory) spot?  Here are some of the marks and blobs, fashioned into a verse of sorts...

Loosely Identified reads at Duff's again! May 17

Don't forget to come hear us!  Monday night.... Readers will include Helen Eisen, Rebecca Ellis, Martha Ficklen, Gaye Gambell-Peterson, Mary Ann deGrandpre Kelly, Colleen McKee, Karen Smead Mondale, Niki Nymark, Marilyn Probe, Catherine Rankovic, Myra South, Jennifer Tappenden, and LaVelle Wilkins-Chinn. The mistress of ceremonies will be Mary Ruth Donnelly.

Mothers Day: Mothers in hard places - Patty Prewitt

News in from a local poet who sends information about "a prisoner (get ready - there's a lot of alliteration here), named Patty Prewitt. Who is a poet. She's around 55 or 60 year old woman who's been in prison 20 years for the murder of her husband. She's maintained that she's innocent and seems to have had an unfair trial process. Her poems are interesting and paint a vivid picture of the person she is and her experience in prison. I wonder what you think of them and if you have recommendations on how they might reach a wider audience. They are not necessarily technically polished, but her gut instincts are good and she's also clearly read a lot of poetry too."

And Patty Prewitt's poems are worth a read, here on Mother's Day.  You can hear her reading two of them on this web site -- go to section 3B for a video/audio.  (Turn your volume way up; the audio is very soft.)  http://www.commutepatty.blogspot.com/

92nd Street Y

As the New York 92nd Street Y has just announced, "In a renewed effort to share with a wider contemporary audience some of the great literary moments which the Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this page (to be regularly updated) features archival recordings by some of the best writers of our time." 

If you can tear yourself away from the lovely spring weather, their website is a nice place to bowse for wonderful poetry, and much more.

Amy King does "the count"

There are, of course, many ways other than male/female that recognized authorship can be tallied. Still, fodder for spring meditation....http://willaweb.org/thecount.shtml
5/8/2010 - Apologies, but it looks like this web site is down - temporarily I hope.  I'll keep an eye out and re-post when it's available again.

Fresh, for Spring -- Marie Ponsot

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer recently featured Marie Ponsot.  She says 70 is good, but 80 is better--for a dose of good spring energy and some samples of her tight, bright poems, go here:  http://knopf.knopfdoubleday.com/2009/12/01/marie-ponsot-on-the-newshour-with-jim-lehrer/.

This sample was distributed by Knopf as part of their Poetry Month 'Poem-A-Day' emails. Delightful. To sign up for that, go here:  http://poem-a-day.knopfdoubleday.com/?ref=poemaday_poetrynl.

Ai

Ai Ogawa, a poet who understood power and pain more than most, has died.  See the NY Times obituary, which includes some poems, here.  There is also a tribute by one of her students, Jerry Williams, here, with a growing list of comments and appreciations.  And a page from Oklahoma State University, with another of her wonderful poems.

Ai was undiluted.  Strong stuff at a time it was not common to be so. I was fortunate enough to end my stay at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MFA program with a poetry workshop she taught as a visiting professor. At that time she used 'Ai' as her publishing name and had transformed (it was all about transformation, for her) her given name, Florence, to one that she pronounced the same but that grew out of a unique and tortured phonetic construction of her own -- Pelorhanke, or something close to that.  She wasn't one to accept any of her history, or any piece of the world at all, without tearing it apart and reconstructing it. Her poetry and the workshop freed me for the first time to write in the voice of some one utterly unlike myself.  The first real poem, in one sense.

She was full of contradictions.  She wrote about salted open wounds and overt brutality; married at the time of those workshops, she frequently spent the hours passively leaning on her husband's arm, complaining of a headache while he taught the workshop.  She collected old purses.  I have some evening bags from my grandmother -- one of them a hand-size purse of delicately knitted cord, strung all over with jet-black bugle beads.  I think of Ai every time I pull it out of the box to look at it again. I can't imagine my grandmother carrying it, but I can imagine Ai finding it in an antique store and just having to have it.  She spoke about her heritage - Choctaw, Irish, Japanese, and so on - but refused to categorize herself as any of these.  They were part of her, but not categories, and not defining.  As she did with everything else, she disassembled her past and built it up again.  A thing of her own making.

If you aren't familiar with her poetry, search the Internet and find it now.  Some of the poems are almost too brutal (for me) to read.  They always have a direct voice -- usually a monologue from a tangible (but not her own) personality that is compelling, and violent, and wholly imagined into reality. Her poems come with a guaranteed chill, right up the back of your neck.

Mary Ruth Donnelly to read in Observables Reading Series

Mary Ruth Donnelly, author of Weaving the Light, will read poems on April 8 with Seido Ray Ronci and James Arthur as part of the Observables Readings, sponsored by St. Louis Poetry Center.  Details here.

Riehlife.com

Another appearance by the unstoppable gaye gambell-peterson, this one on Janet Riehl's richly textured website http://www.riehlife.com/category/art/.  Riehl's site is a wonderful place to browse. http://www.riehlife.com/

On hold...

Regretfully, I'm putting Cherry Pie "on hold" for a few months while I put together a more useful website.  I will not be accepting submissions for review until that's complete.  Please watch for progress...

Antiques and Jewels: A Winning Poem!

Here is a jewel of a poem submitted for the 'Antiques and Jewels' writing challenge on January 9. Congratulations gaye gambell-peterson! She comments, with her submission, "Who knew this photo would inspire a love song, ... this tiny wedge of a poem?" Indeed.

We approach our wedding anniversary

a matched pair

replendent and oh-so golden. We

are reflective, proud and tall. We

dare expose our incandescence

to scrutiny's glare, our dazzle

undimmed even as

our glaze crackles, peels.

We're trying to cope

by envisioning smooth,

by ignoring

any unpluggedness.

So, side by side, we

are sitting pretty,

as always-

here together.

And there,

waiting :

a door,

open.

by gaye gambell-peterson

Thanks again to AAA Antiques (Peoria, Ill.) for the great photos.

Passport Photos of Poets and Writers

http://www.flickr.com/photos/puzzlemaster/sets/72157604715063804/

Writer's Desk #1

Antiques and jewels for your writing pleasure

Looking for a writing prompt? Here is a treasure chest of objects and jewels. Pick a photo at random and suddenly you are in a room of fascinating nouns.

Take a trip to AAA Antiques and open a room. Send me your poem (email address here) by the end of January and I will blog-publish two or three of the most irresistable ones.

No Free Lunch

Free Lunch is no more. Ron Offen's unique and noteworthy poetry journal quietly retired with the Fall issue (#42), due to the editor's health issues. Free Lunch was one of the small bright stars here in the midwest sky, and I was lucky enough to get a sampling of Ron Offen's very detailed feeback on some of my (rejected!) submissions over the last few issues. His comments were fair, detailed, and insightful, and it is a rare and encouraging thing to find an editor who has the time and grace to commit to such feedback. Best wishes to Ron Offen for better health, and thanks for his many gifts to writers.

Read more here: http://www.poetsfreelunch.org/index.htm
and here: http://chicagopoetry.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1304&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

test entry

test calendar setup here:  events vertical view

2011 Calendar with Holidays

month view

Printable Calendar

subscribe to this calendar as an icalendar feed: 
http://www.keepandshare.com/calendar/subscribe.php?i=1471651

Poetry Bingo

New Year's Eve here in the midwest usually ends up being an ice-bedecked beautiful wonder that is dangerous to travel through. So I spend it at home. If you are looking forward to some quiet hours during the year-change, here's a poetry game you can use to wind down the hours.

This spreadsheet is a good tool for cracking open a writer's block, or a new year, whichever comes first. It's virus-free, but if you share with anyone please rescan to make sure you haven't added a virus to it, and please leave the attribution information on it. This is modified, only slightly, from John Walkenbach's MeetingBingo, a spreadsheet to generate ideas for business meetings. I think poetry is a better use for it, but the original MeetingBingo spreadsheet gets credit for the idea, design and function.

Get your copy here: http://www.box.net/shared/67hh748ux1
The directions are on the 'Sheet1' tab, where you can change any and all of the words in the first column to create your own list of inspirations. My intent is that you use each row of the bingo card as 'word seeds' to create a stanza of a poem. You can do whatever you darn well please with it, though.

Countdown to . . . Ho Ho Ho!

I'm busy watching Santa's progress tonight courtesy of the NORAD system (http://www.noradsanta.org/en/video.html). Your tax dollars at work, and for a good cause.

He's about an hour and a half away from Cherry Pie Press right now, and according to the videos and the Google Earth tracking efforts, he seems to be taking regular stops for . . . poetry readings?

Dream on, it's just cookies and milk as usual.

Pushcart Prize nomination!

Cherry Pie is honored and delighted to announce a nominee this year for the esteemed Pushcart Prize --“Women at Sunrise” by Mary Ruth Donnelly, from her chapbook collection Weaving the Light.