Holly Pettit's Blog
Posted by Holly Pettit
On CSPAN she is giving reading in NYC in support of her newest book of prose Virginity or Death! (And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time). Followed by Kevin McCullough reading in support of his book, Musclehead Revolution: Overturning Liberalism With Commonsense Thinking.
Interesting juxtaposition of liberal and conservative, each making basically the same accusations about the other side; however one was philosophical, one vitriolic. Can you guess which was which?
Posted by Holly Pettit
As a New Englander, I know that Donald Hall will show up to any ham-and-bean supper or 4th of July festival that might need a poet. He's not stingy with his time, and will read whenever, and wherever, asked.
Click herefor Rita dove, the last former Laureate discussed.
Soon we'll look at The One Day, Donald Hall's poem novel. Stay tuned!
Posted by Holly Pettit
Here's the list of American laureates, earliest to latest, as listed on the Library of Congress website.
Aside from Rita Dove, with how many are you familiar?
Joseph Auslander, 1937-1941
Allen Tate, 1943-1944
Robert Penn Warren, 1944-1945
Louise Bogan, 1945-1946
Karl Shapiro, 1946-1947
Robert Lowell, 1947-1948
Leonie Adams, 1948-1949
Elizabeth Bishop, 1949-1950
Conrad Aiken, 1950-1952 First to serve two terms
William Carlos Williams, (Appointed in 1952 but did not serve.)
Randall Jarrell, 1956-1958
Robert Frost, 1958-1959
Richard Eberhart, 1959-1961
Louis Untermeyer, 1961-1963
Howard Nemerov, 1963-1964
Reed Whittemore, 1964-1965
Stephen Spender, 1965-1966
James Dickey, 1966-1968
William Jay Smith, 1968-1970
William Stafford, 1970-1971
Josephine Jacobsen, 1971-1973
Daniel Hoffman, 1973-1974
Stanley Kunitz, 1974-1976
Robert Hayden, 1976-1978
William Meredith, 1978-1980
Maxine Kumin, 1981-1982
Anthony Hecht, 1982-1984
Robert Fitzgerald, 1984-1985
Reed Whittemore, 1984-1985
Gwendolyn Brooks, 1985-1986
Robert Penn Warren, 1986-1987
Richard Wilbur, 1987-1988
Howard Nemerov, 1988-1990
Mark Strand, 1990-1991
Joseph Brodsky, 1991-1992
Mona Van Duyn, 1992-1993
Rita Dove, 1993-1995
Robert Hass, 1995-1997
Robert Pinsky, 1997-2000
Stanley Kunitz, 2000-2001
Billy Collins, 2001-2003
Louise Glück, 2003-2004
Ted Kooser, 2004-2006
Here's the Library of Congress website where I got this info today: http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2006/06-131.html
Posted by Holly Pettit
Wenceslaus (1361-1419) was King of Germany and Bohemia, as well as the uncrowned Holy Roman Emperor. Czech reformer Jan Huss opposed church abuses and ticked off the Archbishop of Prague...Wenceslaus supported Hus, and that bad ball began to roll....
Hus, it turns out, had been influenced throughout his career -- from young priest to recluse writing in retirement -- by the writings of Englishman John Wyclif.
It's through Huss that Wyclif really got the reformation started in Europe...and only later it returned to England. That's how "Good King Wenceslaus" and an English Priest of a generation prior are linked.
For the article on Thom Satterlee's new Burning Wyclif, click here.
Posted by Holly Pettit
According to Tupelo's website, it's a "revolutionary and humanistic depiction of the Virgin Mary."
The May 24th edition of the Publisher's Weekly's column Religion Bookline, discussed it in relation to The Da Vinci Code and another new book on the Virgin Mary.
Posted by Holly Pettit
*
- The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius, Sextus Propertius, Vincent Katz, trans.
- In Praise of Krishna: Songs from the Bengali, Edward C. Dimock, Jr., trans., and Denise Levertov.
- Seal up the Thunder, Erin Noteboom.
- Mudra: Early Poems and Songs, Chogyam Trungpa.
- The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master, Daniel Ladinsky, Trans.
Posted by Holly Pettit
Here is an excerpt of Wolfe's writing entitled, "New Orleans -- River."
*
And he looked upon
The huge yellow snake of the river,
Dreaming of its distant shores,
The myriad estuaries
Lush with tropical growth that fed it,
All the romantic life
Of plantation and canefields that fringed it,
Of slow lights on the gilded river-boat,
And the perfumed flesh of black-haired women... (1)
*
1. Wolfe, Thomas. A Stone, A Leaf, A door: Poems. New York: Macmillan. 1945. 65.
Questions:
Does Wolfe's poem still speak to us about New Orleans -- how it was, and how it is now?
How differently would Wolfe's work be executed if he were writing today?
If you are unfamiliar with Mona Lisa Saloy and her work, please click To embed a link to a URL:
for an article on her prize-winning book Red Beans and Ricely Yours.
Posted by Holly Pettit
The Song of Percival Peacock by Russell Edson is a novel-in-verse roughly comparable to the comic-prose "Jeeves" series. Some hate it, some love it. I enter open-minded.
For those who may have read it already, let me know what you think!
Posted by Holly Pettit
Whew, the to-be-read pile is getting exciting! (and really, really tall).
Posted by Holly Pettit
Listed as a novel, it is math, science, visual art, media studies, sociology...melt down a college freshman's book pack and this must be what you'd get. 367 pages I can't wait to crack the spine on.
Posted by Holly Pettit
...in which Magic Night at the Green Street Grill is mentioned. It's a real place, at 280 Green Street in Cambridge, MA, USA.
Drop in for Magic Night, if you like, or stroll around the rest of Central Square, my old neighborhood, only a few blocks from the Charles River, a few blocks from Back Bay, smack dab between Harvard and M.I.T., on the T's red line. It's covered up in good restaurants, bars, clubs, and shops...a great place to investigate if you're in the Boston area.
Click here for more on Sugartown.
Posted by Holly Pettit
As swashbuckling as Lord Byron (11.11%)
As wry as Emily Dickinson (66.67%)
As sincere as John Keats (0.00%)
As devout as Rabindranath Tagore (11.11%)
As drunk as Dylan Thomas (11.11%)
Tisk, tisk. Not even one wants to be as sincere as John Keats?
Posted by Holly Pettit
Born and raised in the U.S. great plains state of Iowa, Erin now lives and writes in Ontario, Canada.
She was Winner of the CBC Canadian Literary Award for Poetry, a Works in Progress Award from the Ontario Arts Council, and was featured on the CBC Program Between the Covers.
Aside from being the author of Ghost Maps, and Seal Up the Thunder, she is also Editor of The New Quarterly: New Directions in Canadian Writing.
Posted by Holly Pettit
Mona Lisa Saloy did not make it up herself, although her selection of title for her book New Orleans-based poetry enriches her reader's experience.
Red Beans and Ricely Yours is, in fact, how Jazz Trumpeter and New Orleans native Louis Armstrong signed his letters.
Armstrong's early years in a poor and dangerous section of New Orleans serves as a kind of prehistory to Saloy's poems about the city in mid- to late-20th century.
Although not blood kin, Armstrong serves as yet another of the ancestors who floats, omipresent, behind the action in Saloy's verse.
Posted by Holly Pettit
At first I used a photo of the family pet guinea pig to illustrate the article. How many caught it before I substituted the actual cover art?
Click here for the article.
Posted by Holly Pettit
I'll be writing more about L.A. Trip when I've read it. I can't wait!
Posted by Holly Pettit
- The Lost Lunar Baedeker (21.43%) by Mina Loy
- To Repel Ghosts (28.57%) by Kevin Young
- Nights of Fire, Nights of Rain (35.71%) by Amy Uyematsu
- The Flute Ship Castricum (14.29%) by Amy England
- The Book of Orgasms (0.00%) by Nin Andrews
Poor Nin Andrews. I recall The Book of Orgasms as funny and far, far better that I feared it might be. The title doesn't seem as silly to me now, after having read the book.
Posted by Holly Pettit
Ghost Maps, her first book, is a little-known but important (and gorgeous) addition to the emerging linked collections movement. We will discuss it in coming days. Please check back here soon for more information!
Posted by Holly Pettit
Hector's the winner by more than a nose.
0% - Zeus. I like stirring things up, then watching everyone fight.
20% - Helen of Troy. Trouble follows me like a puppy.
60% - Hector. I'm just cleaning up other people's messes.
0% - Patroclus. I'm too young & dumb for the job I've taken on.
20% - Achilles. I'm dead sexy, but gosh I love my mommy!
I suspect there are more Patrocluses and Zeuses out there than admit it. And kudos to the brave souls who own up to being (this!) Achilles.
For more classical gas, check out this article on Anne Carson, Geryon and Herakles.
Posted by Holly Pettit
Having received an advance copy today, I am still trying to decide whether to use it in an article.
Having flipped briefly through the book, at the moment I think I may have to use it, seduced as I am by the mix of collage, old photos, diary entries, e-mail, and the background (well hidden) of the original Lucile. This trick has been pulled before but I fall for it, willingly, again!
The all-important question is: Will the text hold up to all this operatic get-up? I hope so. The results might be amazing, especially given the high production values, to include 200-odd heavy weigh glossy pages printed in full color and a padded faux gilded leather journal-style cover (thank you, $imon and $chuster).
Even if the book does manage to live up to its cover, still the question remains...should a fiction written on top of a classic novel-in-verse, qualify for its own article in a series called, "Novels-in-Verse?"
Check out the article here.
Posted by Holly Pettit
Craig Raine's History: The Home Movie reads like War and Peace, and Anna Karenina even more so. Like Tolstoy, Raine is influenced by his own family history, and uses family members as models for his characters. A family tree is provided in the front material -- sound familiar? Yet Raine uses his family's real names, and one gets the feeling he sticks closer to actual events than did Tolstoy.
Interestingly, Craig Raine's uncle Eliot married poet and novelist Boris Pasternak's youngest sister Lydia. How much was the young Raine influenced by this Russian literary connection? You tell me!
(Seriously, check it out. I'd like to know what you think!)
Click here to read my (first?) article on History: The Home Movie.
Posted by Holly Pettit
Should I write another article about this, or not?
My Creative Nonfiction teacher was fond of saying this, and it made it all so simple: "one lie makes it fiction."
The rules of poetry aren't the same, though. Bruce Weigl, in the interview noted discussed how the events of his poems sometimes didn't happen. Heartbreaking, given his subject matter.
Weigl mentioned, Richard Hugo's The Triggering Town, in which Hugo says that once the imagination is triggered, it must be followed, and that it may lead us away from what's "true."
Most poets I know say that a determination to record events as they happened will kill poetry deader than dead. Okay, I can accept that.
But my question is this: In a genre in which even "biographic" material can be fudged, where is the line between non-fictional poetry, and the fictional?
I want to have the distinction as clear cut as it is with prose. Only then, I feel, that poetry can regain the stature it used to enjoy.
Posted by Holly Pettit
Here are a few we'll be discussing soon:
History: The Home Movie by Craig Raine
The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth
The Criminal Life of Effie O by Sam Savage
The Raine and Seth are classics. The Sam Savage offering is farther out on the edge. Check out this website where you can read excerpts or the whole book: http://www.artrebel.info/
Posted by Holly Pettit
Have you run across a copy of Lucile at a junk shop or antiquarian book fair? If so, which of the many versions was it? Was it workingman plain or wildly illustrated with stamped leather and gold leaf?
Check out the Lucile Project for the history and gossip on the text.
Posted by Holly Pettit
Click here to see the photo and article.
The photo is a detail from a statue in the Citadel park of Suceava, Romania. It's the head of Stephen the Great's horse, as its rider was moving out to defend the city from Moorish attack. The Princely Citadel, around which the park stands, is actually in ruins now, just as the Ottoman army left it.
Here's a map of Suceava.
The Romanians we talked to on my "Visiting Poet" trip said they feel that Western Europe has forgotten it was they who stopped the Moslem armies from overtaking the rest of the continent, and that they were left with destruction and suffering for their trouble.
Here's the wikipedia article on
Posted by Holly Pettit
Three insignificant points about Anne Carson:
- After reading her translation of Sappho I wrote Sapphics for a year.
- Glass, Irony and God accompanied me to my second assignment to Germany. One memorable rereading was in the marble bathtub of my unairconditioned apartment on a weird, global-warming-style 99 degree F. day.
- Anne Carson always makes me want to write when I read her. I've heard others say the same thing. There's something about how she strings words together that sings in the brain.
Click here for article.
Posted by Holly Pettit
In the article Beginnings we discussed how Ruth Whitman pulls the reader into her novel-in-verse Tamsen Donner: A Woman's Journey without sacrificing the beauty or sophistication of each poem.
Whitman is a master of the lyric narrative, so please investigate her other book-length works: Hatshepsut, Speak to Me; The Testing of Hanna Senesh; Passion of Lizzie Borden Poems; and anything else you can find. Enjoy!
Click here for article.
Posted by Holly Pettit
Poetry is a conversation among writers. Those who don't pick up a lit mag whenever they're in a library or bookstore don't know what the conversation's about.
I always hear from editors as they comb through their in-boxes, "wow, X is skilled enough, but they just don't read much contemporary poetry." The submitter will receive a rejection slip and never understand why.
They're like that guy at the bar who's not listening to the chatter around him. When he talks it's always out of turn, doesn't make sense or doesn't matter.
This all sounds occult, I guess, like poetry's a closed society of hidden handshakes and nods. Hmm. Well, that interpretation's far too sinister.
Simply put, editors can tell if you're part of the poetic conversation around you, or if you're nose-down on the bar. So if it's been a while since you checked out a book or magazine, go down and get yourself a stack. It will only do your poetry, and your submissions, good.