susanstinson

This is a poem I've just written, which I plan to read at the open poetry reading at the Yellow Sofa in Northampton Tuesday, 1/20/09. The reading starts at 6:30 pm.

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Poet Hayden Carruth died September 30. He was eighty-seven.

In 1970, he edited an anthology, The Voice That Is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth Century, which was my introduction to reading poetry for pleasure when it was assigned in the first poetry workshop I ever took, my first semester in college, fall of 1979.

Here's a picture of my copy, and some poems.( Read more... )

Here are two more Jonathan Edwards poems by Robert Lowell (here writing letters to Elizabeth Bishop).

"Mr. Edwards and the Spider" and "Jonathan Edwards in Western Massachusetts" (scroll down.)

Thank you for your sympathies about Black Kitty's death. It's been meditative and helpful to read them. I do, I miss him.

Here's a link to an article in the New York Times about the late Ed Dorn with a picture I kind of love. I guess that there's a new collection of his work out. The older sister of my best friend in high school was a poet, and raved about her teacher Ed Dorn with such over the top admiration that he became one of the reasons that I decided to go to college at the University of Colorado. We all lived in a suburb of Denver, and one of her big selling points for Ed Dorn was that he knew The Ramones. Wikipedia says he was an early supporter of Devo, but The Ramones were the rock connection I heard about.

I took a bunch of classes from him, and found him to be kind of a mess, but also serious and oddly generous in his frequently absent way. His class on the Literature of the West changed the way I thought of that subject forever, and I almost fainted with pleasure when he read my paper on Carry A. Nation (the saloon smasher who later had a cameo in my novel Martha Moody) aloud to the class as an example of how such things should be written.

I agree with the reviewer -- my favorite of his poems are short, elegant love poems -- some of them are in my life for good, entwined with everything that happened for me in Boulder in the early eighties, but I don't see any online. Here's an excerpt from his long poem, From Gloucester Out. ("Man" as universal is all over it. Ed Dorn was like that.)

And, with that, I'm in a work crunch before heading out to Budapest, so may not be posting much for a while. Or I might, because I sometimes find lj hard to resist. And there are things to say about Budapest, and the beautiful support I've gotten around that trip, but, for now, it's just a clear, heartfelt thank you to those who have been so generous. And to everyone who reads here with an interest in my work.

I'm loving this poem posted by brownstargirl.

Praise for the fat old ladies.
Praise our bristles.
Praise our groaning in the morning
as we negotiate our nightgowns,
appliances and pills.

Praise the unquenchable carnality
of our coughs, full of moist depths,
and the way our mouths hang open
and our faces converge in gatherings
of ineffectual concentration
as we give another round of dominoes
our (impure? because, after all,
competititive and human) best thoughts.

We lose, of course, but play again.
The nightgown tears on the seam above the breast,
but we wear it, still, unmended,
while young women make big curls
in their hair with juice cans,
the results glossy and time-consuming,
as if the war were never over and
victory gardens were all lucky girls might sow.



Lake Buchanan, TX 2006

The new zine came today, it's exquisite. There is such a feeling of courage and tenderness about it, from the beautiful, glossy paper and visual excitement to the amazingly dense, varied and -- what? -- full content, there's so much to this zine, so much in it, it's a gorgeous, rare and precious thing.

I'm about to order four more copies. Money is tight around here, but gifts like this don't come along everyday, and I've been watering the tomato plants that my lover gave me for my porch every day because I want those ripe tomatoes falling off into my hands. Same principle applies here. Plus, I keep thinking of people who I need to have read it so I can talk to them about it.

I haven't read the whole zine yet -- no way I could have! So much abundance! -- but here are a few of the things I already love:
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Her poem, "The Fifth Fact," has won the People Before Profits Poetry Prize from Burning Bush Publications. It will be posted on their web site by the end of June. Sarah rocks.

It's an interesting site, and I noticed that they had a lot of calls for submissions listed that I hadn't seen elsewhere, so writers might want to scroll down the list of links on the left of the home page and take a look at that section.

Another wonderful poet, new to me:


Consider at the outset:
to be thin for thought
or thick cream blossomy

Many things are better
flavored with bacon

Sweet Life, My love:
didn't you ever try
this delicacy--the marrow
in the bone?

And don't be afraid
to pour wine over cabbage