Poets’ Roundtable
Welcome
Today is National Grain-free day and National Sticky Bun Day. I suggest we make it also National Old Poets Day although I'm about to speak of one poet who is Nicaraguan and one who is American so maybe International Old Poets Day.
Gerard will not be with us today.
Gerard will not be with us today.
News and Jabber
The Current Assignment
In an effort to prompt myself a couple of mornings ago I decided to take the last line of the last poem in Wallace Stevens's The Palm at the End of the Mind. It didn't work but I found the next-to-last poem interesting. Unfortunately I could not find it online and so photographed the book page.
Now, after reading Wesley McNair, who I mentioned last time and whose book I continue to read, and after working on the assignment to the tune of ten or more journal entries, I begin to understand the meaning of place for the poet. At the Frost Place one year I sat through what was certainly a good and important lecture on place in the poetry of Robert Frost. It was a big snooze. Today I'd pay attention to it. What I discovered is that in a fundamental way, more fundamentally than the obvious, our poems originate in the formative experiences of us long before we became poets. They continue to be the pit from which we extract the histories, the mythologies, that are the bricks in the
foundations of our poems.
IN THE NEWS
Poet Ernesto Cardenal is out of the hospital. Pope Francis has lifted the sanction against religious activities imposed upon Ernesto Cardenal (and his brother, also a priest) in 1984 for his political activism in Nicaragua. This coincides with his release from the hospital for a kidney infection. Cardenal has been nominated for a Nobel Prize four times. He has been controversial, outspoken and a pretty good poet. Here is a link to his Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernesto_Cardenal
I have a book of his, signed. It's worth reading.
(Read "A Prayer for Marilyn Monroe."
Also, Lawrence Ferlenghetti: https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/books/birthday-party-of-the-century-city-lights-to-celebrate-ferlinghettis-100-years. This link will take you to an article about his upcoming 100th birthday celebration at his City Lights Book Store. I had the good fortune to meet him while he was a poet in residence at Trinity College in Hartford; he lectured in the creative writing class I was taking at the time. I can't say I remember much other than going outside with him to lie in the grass and ponder the koan "I alone walk on the red heavens." He is most remembered, I think, for his "A Coney Islnad of the Mind." Noteworthy is that he was Alan Ginsberg's first publisher.
foundations of our poems.
IN THE NEWS
Poet Ernesto Cardenal is out of the hospital. Pope Francis has lifted the sanction against religious activities imposed upon Ernesto Cardenal (and his brother, also a priest) in 1984 for his political activism in Nicaragua. This coincides with his release from the hospital for a kidney infection. Cardenal has been nominated for a Nobel Prize four times. He has been controversial, outspoken and a pretty good poet. Here is a link to his Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernesto_Cardenal
I have a book of his, signed. It's worth reading.
(Read "A Prayer for Marilyn Monroe."
Also, Lawrence Ferlenghetti: https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/books/birthday-party-of-the-century-city-lights-to-celebrate-ferlinghettis-100-years. This link will take you to an article about his upcoming 100th birthday celebration at his City Lights Book Store. I had the good fortune to meet him while he was a poet in residence at Trinity College in Hartford; he lectured in the creative writing class I was taking at the time. I can't say I remember much other than going outside with him to lie in the grass and ponder the koan "I alone walk on the red heavens." He is most remembered, I think, for his "A Coney Islnad of the Mind." Noteworthy is that he was Alan Ginsberg's first publisher.
The Next Assignment
Write a poem that deals with lipstick.
The Next Meeting
The next meeting will be on Thursday, March 7, 2019.
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