Stuff
from 2002, perhaps
in ascending order of chronology.
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Dewitt Clinton was a finalist for the Tampa Review Poetry Prize with "Reading the Tao at Auschwitz & Other New Poems." A manuscript by Robin Chapman was a finalist for the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry.
Alison Townsend's first full-length collection, The Blue Dress: Poems and Prose Poems, has been published by White Pine Press.
"The Blue Dress is filled with a capacious, multi-faceted, and above all, physical knowledge. That the life of the body is both our vulnerability and our salvation is a wisdom running through throughout these poems' hard-won, bravely-rendered record of losses and loves." —Jane Hirshfield
"The project of Alison Townsend's poetry is to chart a course through the deepest of losses -- to attempt some safe passage through a lifetime's erasures. Intimate, warm, observant, this book involves us in the inscription of a life." —Mark Doty
"Alison Townsend's articulation of sorrow has always cast an aura, of beauty and deepest instruction. I've always, instinctively, moved toward it, have always missed it when absent. Delicate pieces of memory, mood, and self—self examining itself—of hope and despair, or crystalline light shining through grief 'solid as rock," the seemingly unsayable grief of a mother's death... in The Blue Dress, Alison Townsend says it. —Sharon Doubiago
"Elegiac yet life-affirming, these poems offer personal losses and redemptions which, finally, become ours. One every page, the author transforms her experience into mesmerizing art. Townsend's graceful craft and breathtaking insight make The Blue Dress a chronology of the heart that stands as an essential contribution to the living tradition of lyric poetry." —Holly Prado Northup.
Yvonne Yahnke's new book is All the Colors of the World.
Margaret Benbow has won an $8,000 Artist Fellowship from the Wisconsin Arts Board for 2003.
F.J. Bergmann won the Mary Roberts Rinehart National Poetry award. She was also one of six finalists in the Spire Press chapbook contest.
Susan Elbe’s poem “Dog Days” won the inaugural Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry prize and will be printed in CALYX , A Journal of Art and Literature by Women.
Easter Cathay's poems "All Is Forgiven," "Pippa Passes Gas," and "Imperceptible Changes" online at www.asininepoetry.com/. Andrea Potos and Noelle Rydell have been nominated for 2003 Pushcart Prizes.
Richard
Roe has a new book of poetry, Knots of Sweet Longing, published
by Wolfsong Press.
John Lehman has a new collection of poems, Dogs Dream of Running,
published by Salmon Run Press, available for $12 at Canterbury.
Moon Journal Press in Arlington Heights, Illinois has released Shoshauna Shy's new chapbook, Slide Into Light: Poems of the Brighter Moments. Contact her directly at sschey@facstaff.wisc.edu if you would like a copy.
Cicatrix by Charles Cantrell, The Only Everglades in the World, by Robin Chapman, and How Dumb The Stars, by Francine Conley, were also published this year by Parallel Press, parallelpress.library.wisc.edu/, and are available from Avol's Bookstore, Canterbury Booksellers, Barnes & Noble, and A Room of One's Own for $10 each.
Dale Ritterbusch was a finalist in the WinningWriters.com War Poetry Contest, Read his poem "Daisy Carbine Mantra". Lynn Shoemaker and Judith Strasser were both finalists for the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry and have those poems published in Nimrod Awards 24. F.J. Bergmann had two poems, "Salutary" and "Libation", in the inaugural issue of Margie, the American Journal of Poetry.
Andrea Potos received an Honorable Mention in the 2002 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards and both Andrea and F.J. Bergmann received one of 50 International Merit Awards from the 2002 Atlanta Review poetry contest—for the third year in a row. Jeannie also had the poems "Gender Characteristics" and "Pictosyllabic Haiku" published in Pavement Saw.
"Keloid" by Erika Meitner of Madison, WI received and Honorable Mention in the 2002 Ed & Fay Phillips Prize competition, sponsored by the Hannah Kahn Poetry Foundation.
Art
Paul Schlosser
has published a chapbook, Lights of Insight, with poems he read
at his recent wedding to Robin Good,
illustrated with his paintings; it is available from him for $10.
MePoet's exciting first chapbook,
Me First Words, is available from him or at Avol's for $5.
james lee has an excellent collection
of poems, it's turtle all the way down. Get it from him.
Joey Dunscombe has a lovely chapbook
out, 14 people in an elevator and one's a poet… so which one gets
the pretty girl?, published by monkeybacon press. Buy it from him
for $5 at Genna's.
| This site has engaged in its customary celebrations. Click here for the April is National Poetry Month seasonal rituals. |
There is also a move afoot to name a crater on planet Mercury after the distinguished poet Pablo Neruda. The USGS Branch of Astrogeology and International Astronomical Union (IAU) have been petitioned and have given a positive response. Dialogue Among Civilizations Through Poetry is at http://www.dialoguepoetry.org.
|
POSTAL SERVICE TO HONOR TWO POETS IN '02
Two
commemorative stamps honoring poets will be issued in 2002. On February 1,
a 34¢ commemorative honoring Langston Hughes. On August 19, 34¢
(or possibly 37¢ given the rate hike July 1–
how many vote for postage amounts divisible by 10?) honoring Ogden
Nash. In 2001 the Academy of American Poets conducted a poll through its website
at the request of the Postal Service to help determine which US poet should
be honored. Over 10,000 people participated in the poll; 205 poets received
votes. Langston Hughes was the clear favorite, with over 2,500 votes. Hughes
and Nash will be the 28th and 29th poets honored with US commemoratives. The
others have been Louisa May Alcott (1940, 5¢), Dante Alighieri (1965,
5¢),
Stephen Vincent Benet (1998, 32¢), Emily Dickinson (1971, 8¢), Paul
Lawrence Dunbar (1975, 10¢), T. S. Eliot (1986, 22¢), Ralph Waldo
Emerson (1940, 3¢), Robert Frost (1974, 10¢), Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1968, 15¢), Robinson Jeffers (1973, 8¢), James Weldon Johnson (1988,
22¢), Sidney Lanier (1972, 8¢), Henry W. Longfellow (1940, 1¢),
James Russell Lowell (1940, 3¢), Edgar Lee Masters (1970, 6¢), Herman
Melville (1970, 6¢ envelope, and 1984, 20¢), Edna St. Vincent Millay
(1981, 18¢), Marianne Moore (1990, 25¢), Dorothy Parker (1992, 29¢),
Edgar Allan Poe (1949, 3¢), James Whitcomb Riley (1940, 10¢), Carl
Sandburg (1978, 13¢), William Shakespeare (1964, 5¢), Henry David
Thoreau (1967, 5¢), Walt Whitman (1940, 5¢), John Greenleaf Whittier
(1940, 2¢), and Tennessee Williams (1995, 32¢). Poets were first
honored with US commemoratives in 1940, when seven were honored: Alcott, Emerson,
Longfellow, Lowell, Riley, Whitman and Whittier. 1970, for Masters and Melville,
was the only other prior year in which more than one poet was honored.
© 2002 Bill Scanlon
| Elise Rose's poem about the Irish goddess of winter was the featured poem for the December '01 issue of Irish-American Post. |
F.J. Bergmann was a finalist in the Quentin Howard chapbook competition and a semi-finalist (150 out of 1400) in the last New Millennium Writings competition, and has two poems forthcoming in Pavement Saw #7.
| Jeri McCormick won the second place award of £2000 in the 2001 Davoren Hanna poetry competition in Ireland for her poem A Girl Running, 1847. |
F.J. Bergmann and Andrea Potos (both for the second year in a row!) have received International Merit Awards from the Atlanta Review 2001 International Poetry Competition. Gwen Ebert also received one in 2000; since only 55 of these awards (non-monetary, alas) are given, this argues for an unusually high concentration of poetickness in the Madison area.
| Marilyn Annucci's poem Tidy House won Honorable Mention (24 out of 535 submssions) in the Explorations 2001 contest, and her poem Poland won Honorable Mention (50 out of 1250 submissions) in the 11th New Millenium Writings Contest. Also, Poetry Daily published "Wreaked World," (which originally appeared in Arts & Letters) on July 14, now in their Archive. |
| Art
that focuses on healing and recovery from gender violence:
Healing Works, an exhibit to commemorate survivors and celebrate
healing, and to publicly acknowledge survivorship and the everyday existence
of gender violence. Paintings, photos, poetry, prose, small sculpture,
or others. Songs or spoken word will be part of the opening event. |
"They said, 'You know, this issue doesn't seem to resignate with the people.' And I said, you know something? Whether it resignates or not doesn't matter to me, because I stand for doing what's the right thing, and what the right thing is is hearing the voices of people"
– George W. Bush (verbatim), Portland, Oregon 10-31-00
| The U.S. has a new Poet Laureate: poet Billy Collins. His books include Picnic, Lightning (University of Pittsburgh Press), The Art of Drowning, (University of Pittsburgh Press), and Questions about Angels (William Morrow & Co.), a 1990 winner of the National Poetry Series Competition. Billy Collins, who teaches at Lehman College of the City University of New York, is the successor to Stanley Kunitz. His web site is http://www.bigsnap.com/billy.html. |
The little rainbow thingy at the bottom of the menu is a sitemeter, a free service that tracks visits and sends us weekly reports. Not only have we been made aware that recent visitors have surfed here from as far away as France, Australia, and Malaysia, but the words they used in search engines are also displayed! MadPoetry fans will be gratified to learn that the following keyword combinations led to this site; cross my heart and hope to die.
actress + pussy
ho + stop + taking + drugs
wisconsin
Taste + of + Madison
fuck + with + condoms
girls
Chicago
S.O.B. + skateboarding
barbie + house + plans
for + strangers
henko + tulsa
poetree + ChicagoOh, yes – there was also a lone search for madison + poetry. We should hope so.
| FLASH! This site, which has long been interested in Flash and hypertext poetry, wishes to announce that it will host Flash poetry by local contributors, and will devote a section of the site to hypertext projects. Click to view the Flash poem Cartomancy and Lace by F.J. Bergmann. Please feedback to arachne@madpoetry.org with viewing problems and assistance. |
