From Flavorwire: 10 Great Movies Based on Poems
Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category
Movies from poetry
Thursday, May 16th, 2013Always ask the story
Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
“Never ask the poet, always ask the poem. Never ask the painter, always ask the picture. Never ask the storyteller, always ask the story.”
— from The Last Storyteller by Frank Delaney
2013 Pulitzer Prizes
Tuesday, April 16th, 2013
From PBS:
The 2013 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced Monday at a ceremony at Columbia University.
Winners in the letters, drama and music categories:
Poetry: “Stag’s Leap” by Sharon Olds, a book about grieving and healing at the end of a marriage.
Fiction: “The Orphan Master’s Son” by Adam Johnson, a novel about a young man’s life in North Korea, one of the world’s most isolated and potentially dangerous countries.
Drama: “Disgraced” by Ayad Akhtar.
History: “Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam” by Fredrik Logevall.
Biography: “The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo” by Tom Reiss.
General Nonfiction: “Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America” by Gilbert King.
Music: “Partita for 8 Voices” by Caroline Shaw.
Poems
Tuesday, September 4th, 2012“The fascinating aspect about poems, as opposed to novels, is that one can read just a couple, and a few more later on, like a sort of continuous treat that one nibbles at.”
—from “The House I Loved” by Tatiana de Rosnay
‘Like a cloud on the wind’
Thursday, August 16th, 2012
“This life,
this insubstantial tissue of vanity,
floats like a cloud on the wind.”
— from “The Red Chamber” by Pauline A. Chen
Bill’s book suggestions
Wednesday, July 18th, 2012From the website of Moyers and Company: Bill Moyers’ summer reading list
Poetry quiz
Monday, June 18th, 2012
From The Guardian: How much poetry do you remember by heart? (Full disclosure: I did pretty well on this quiz!)
New Poet Laureate
Friday, June 8th, 2012From The New York Times: The new Poet Laureate of the United States is Natasha Trethewey. She is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of three poetry collections.
Forest Songs — Spring
Monday, May 7th, 2012
1
New leaves like yellow lace
filter late-day sunlight gently,
letting through a fragile glow.
This is no sacrifice for them.
As they drink in
the light becomes them.
Our serendipity!
We drink it, too.
2
Tiny tender new leaves shimmer
when the breeze comes by —
their first experience at ecstasy?
And then as one they sigh,
content.
Some trees bow, bare still —
jealous? or just waiting.
The bluebird will come.
— Mary Louise Ruehr
Copyright 2002 Mary L. Playfair; Copyright 2012 Mary Louise Ruehr
Celebrating poets in April
Thursday, April 19th, 2012
From Flavorwire: 10 of the “most badass contemporary American poets.” Shown: Nick Flynn
National Poetry Month
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
April is National Poetry Month. Check out what’s happening at Poets.org.
Favorite love poems
Friday, March 2nd, 2012
Len
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
for Tom and Leonard
Mostly we don’t think about our days together.
They flow along in sameness,
one by one.
But sometimes in spring
we walk through a field
and I think of blue flowers.
You hand me one,
as if you knew.
Some summer days
You tug at my heart
in the quietest ways.
I hurt you: you forgive me:
You open yet another door.
Some autumn days
My fingers touch the silver in my hair
and I grow uneasy at the thought of age.
You take my hand
And I no longer mind the years.
Some winter days
when the city looks barren,
the sky gray and cold above unending rain,
my eyes meet yours in windowed reflection
and I grow warm in your nurturing gaze.
The image of you stirs me.
The passion in you moves me.
You are so much my life
that my very breath whispers your name.
Then, once again in the stillness,
I believe in wonder.
— Mary Louise Ruehr
Copyright 2002 M.L. Playfair; Copyright 2012 Mary Louise Ruehr
The Red Wheelbarrow
Monday, February 20th, 2012
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
— William Carlos Williams
Moments
Thursday, December 29th, 2011From the Wick Poetry Center, a video of a remarkable poem by a fifth-grader.
(It may take a minute to load; hang in there.)
10 poems
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011From Flavorwire: 10 poems everyone needs to read
Literary India
Tuesday, October 18th, 2011
From The Guardian: Indian books and authors
Poetry for kids
Friday, October 14th, 2011From The Guardian: John Agard’s top 10 poetry books for children
Swedish poet wins Nobel Prize
Thursday, October 6th, 2011
Sudden Light
Thursday, September 29th, 2011
Sudden Light
I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow’s soar
Your neck turn’d so,
Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.
Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time’s eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death’s despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?
— Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–82)
Pondering Loss (an ode to 9/11)
Monday, September 12th, 2011
Forest Songs — Autumn:
Pondering Loss
There’s a dark silver sadness in the sky.
.
The weakened light more subtle now
on last wet leaves
………..left hanging
before their final,
……………………..quiet
……………………..drop
……………………..toward fate.
.
.Here,
……………a golden leaf dances
……..shortly,
.
…………………………..stopped
.
by a thorn in the barberry hedge
where it will spend its season.
.
And all is,
as after a single singer’s mournful song,
just quiet.
© 2001, 2002, 2011 Mary Louise Ruehr (Mary L. Playfair)
Written in remembrance of 9/11/2011.
Donaldson named poet laureate
Tuesday, June 7th, 2011From Publishers Weekly:
Julia Donaldson, author of more than 120 books and plays for children including the international bestseller The Gruffalo, has been appointed the Waterstone’s Children’s Laureate, for the term 2011-13. …
April is National Poetry Month
Friday, April 1st, 2011
National Poetry Month is recognized every April, according to Poets.org, and if you go there, you can order a free poster, like the one above. The link will take you to the past posters, too, my favorite of which was from 2006:
Twitter poetry?
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011
From The New York Times:
“… For much of Twitter’s life, the idea that its 140-character stricture could be a crucible for a new kind of ambitious writing has been, more than anything else, a punch line. The 2009 publication of “Twitterature” — a book in which 80 works of Western literature are boiled down into Twitter messages (“Laertes is unhappy that I killed his father and sister. What a drama queen! Oh well, fight this evening.”) — didn’t help matters. But there’s evidence that the literary flowering of Twitter may actually be taking place. The Twitter haiku movement — “twaiku” to its initiates — is well under way. Science fiction and mystery enthusiasts especially have gravitated to its communal immediacy. And even litterateurs, with a capital L, seem to be warming to it. … Calling all bards! Week in Review asked four poets each to write a poem within Twitter’s text limit of 140 characters — title and author name not included. Share your own verse on Twitter using the hash tag #poetweet.”
Wear the words
Tuesday, March 15th, 2011Still more literary tattoos.
Poesy
Tuesday, March 15th, 2011
At The Guardian, Jay Parini picks the 10 best American poems.
‘The wind stops on the page’
Monday, January 17th, 2011
You are watching the wind turn pages of a book
back and forth until the weight of them
stops it somewhere near the beginning.
Then, a breath moves some of what the wind had in its teeth
forward again and more again to beyond the place where you left off….
The wind stops on the page
you were reading before it came to turn the rest of everything…
—Excerpt from Michael Klein, “What He Was Reading” at The Awl.com. Please click the link to read the whole gorgeous thing.
Is American poetry dead?
Wednesday, September 15th, 2010That’s what HuffPo asked some leading American poets.
Guenveur Burnell wins
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
Kent storyteller Guenveur Burnell has won the grand prize in the WCLV Dog Days of August Pet Poetry Contest. (Click the cat photo to see all the winning poems.)
Here’s her grand-prize-winning poem, about her cat Dupree:
Dupree
We are old, he and I.
We walk more slowly
Than in our younger days.
But his tail is still held high
Like a plume on
The hat of a Victorian lady.
His topaz eyes still gleam.
Never a lap cat ’til now,
His old bones
Need our warmth
And my old bones find ease
In that soft, purring body.
Because we are old,
Dupree and I.
Poetry = Sculpture
Friday, July 16th, 2010
From Shelf Awareness:
Are e-books unpoetic? The Associated Press reported that while prose has found its place in the digital world, for poetry “the gap is especially large because publishers and e-book makers have not figured out how the integrity of a poem can be guaranteed. And a displaced word, even a comma, can alter a poem’s meaning as surely as skipping a note changes a song.”
“I found that even in a very small font that if the original line is beyond a certain length, they will take the extra word and have it flush left on the screen, so that instead of a three-line stanza you actually have a four-line stanza,” former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins observed. “The critical difference between prose and poetry is that prose is kind of like water and will become the shape of any vessel you pour it into to. Poetry is like a piece of sculpture and can easily break.”
My response: Use PDFs, JPGs, GIFs, etc., and treat the as pieces of art rather than text. There you go!