From TED: A Love Poem in Emoticons

A Story of Mixed Emoticons
BY Rives

About the Artist (via TED)
Flat pages can't contain Rives' storytelling, even when paper is his medium. The pop-up books he creates for children unfold with surprise: The Christmas Pop-Up Present expands to reveal moving parts, hidden areas and miniature booklets inside. On stage, his poems burst in many directions, too, exposing multiple layers and unexpected treats: childhood memories, grown-up humor, notions of love and lust, of what is lost forever and of what's still out there waiting to unfold.
On his Bravo special, Ironic Iconic America, he and costar Bar Rafaeli tour the United States looking for wonderfulness, on "A Roller Coaster Ride Through the Eye-Popping Panorama of American Pop Culture."
"This was great. He spoke like I imagine a good prophet would. Epic win!"
- Joshua Mullen on TED.com

I am a writer! Eat my Verbal dust!

Even I have to fight to surpress my inner literary elitist from time to time. It's not that I'm the most amazing poet ever or that I truly think I am. It's just that I sometimes get caught up in my own wit and literary magnitude...shouting, “I am a writer! Eat my Verbal dust!”

haha!

Enjoy Taylor Mali's hilarious poem about poets.

:)

I Could Be a Poet
BY Taylor Mali

I think I could be a poet because I like to wear a lot of black.
And I can think of incongruous images like a Marxist with a trust fund.
A Porsche pulling a U-Haul, a lobsterman in Birkenstocks sipping a cappuccino,
with his pinkie pointing toward the sky.
I have studied the poets who sing song out their lines
for no other reason than that’s how it’s done,
in love with the sound of their own voices,

Slow Dance Music

Loving the rhythm and flow of this poem. It's like eavesdropping on a conversation between friends. It's like taking a glimpse into the mind of a stranger. It is at once intimate and intrusive, arresting and free. Loving it!

Thanks to Not that Anyone Deserves Anything for sharing.

Slow Dance Music
BY Tom C. Hunley

I can't explain the rain's attraction to my head,
though I'm touched by its will to touch me,
and I don't understand how I got here any more
than a lobster understands how it ended up in a tank
next to a Please wait to be seated sign,
but both of us can read the faces of the cruelly beautiful
women pointing at us.

I always feel eyes on me so
I apologize to insects after I kill them
and to the salmon on my plate, caught being
nostalgic for home. Everything makes sense if
you squint just right, and at least once a day
I realize that whatever I've been saying
isn't the point at all.

Like yesterday, I heard myself
say "Nostalgia" comes from Greek roots meaning
"painful return," which is why your childhood
home is paved over, a bump in the commuter
path of your old classmates, the ones who have
never gone anywhere.

And so instead of leaning
in for a kiss, I give my beautiful wife the umpire's
signal for "safe." And when I say "I love you"
she becomes red-faced, hits me with the back
of her fists, and calls the cops,
because those words no longer mean what they once did.

::HEART::Write::Bloody::

This time last year, I got the most amazing surprise - a book of love poems. And it was no ordinary book of mushy poetry. NO! This book, The Last American Valentine, the self-proclimned collection of "illustrated poems to seduce and destroy," was an collection of off-beat poems and "flash poetry." It was also the start of my great love affair with Write Bloody Publishers.

So, of course you could only imagine my glee when my secret Santa, again, surprised me with a Write Bloody book. This time, Taylor Mali's The Last Time as We Are. They just keep rolling out with the hottness and, since I'm on a bit of a Taylor Mali kick right now, I wanted to put in my own little plug for this book. I just started reading it and absolutely cannot put it down...but I must...to eat. and shower. and work...but, you get the point.
I've included a quick snap of one of my fav - "Ars Poetica." Funny and clever. The best combination!



Check out these and other great poetry collections today at Write Bloody's online store . Full time poets gotta eat too:-)

More about Write Bloody from Write Bloody
We publish and promote great books of fiction, poetry and art every year. We are a small press with a snappy look dedicated to quality literature. We have offices in LA, NYC and Murfreesboro, TN. Our design team has been pulled from all over America. We are proud of our unique style by utilizing modern painters, photographers and rock album designers for all our book cover art. We publish and promote 8-12 tour savvy authors per year. We are grass roots, DIY, boot strap believers . Our employees are authors and artists so we call ourselves a family.

Can Poetry Matter? YES.IT.CAN

Poetry, like all things, must evolve and adapt in order to remain relevant and to guarantee its on-going survival. Yesterday, Dana Gioia told us why. Today, she tells us how.

Enjoy!


How Poets Can Be Heard
Excerpt from Dana Gioia's Can Poetry Matter? Essays on Poetry and American Culture.

All it would require is that poets and poetry teachers take more responsibility for bringing their art to the public. I will close with six modest proposals for how this dream might come true.

1. When poets give public readings, they should spend part of every program reciting other people's work—preferably poems they admire by writers they do not know personally. Readings should be celebrations of poetry in general, not merely of the featured author's work.

2. When arts administrators plan public readings, they should avoid the standard subculture format of poetry only. Mix poetry with the other arts, especially music. Plan evenings honoring dead or foreign writers. Combine short critical lectures with poetry performances. Such combinations would attract an audience from beyond the poetry world without compromising quality.

3. Poets need to write prose about poetry more often, more candidly, and more effectively. Poets must recapture the attention of the broader intellectual community by writing for nonspecialist publications.

They must also avoid the jargon of contemporary academic criticism and write in a public idiom. Finally, poets must regain the reader's trust by candidly admitting what they don't like as well as promoting what they like. Professional courtesy has no place in literary journalism.

4. Poets who compile anthologies—or even reading lists—should be scrupulously honest in including only poems they genuinely admire. Anthologies are poetry's gateway to the general culture. They should not be used as pork barrels for the creative-writing trade. An art expands its audience by presenting masterpieces, not mediocrity. Anthologies should be compiled to move, delight, and instruct readers, not to flatter the writing teachers who assign books. Poet-anthologists must never trade the Muse's property for professional favors.

5. Poetry teachers especially at the high school and undergraduate levels, should spend less time on analysis and more on performance. Poetry needs to be liberated from literary criticism. Poems should be memorized, recited, and performed. The sheer joy of the art must be emphasized. The pleasure of performance is what first attracts children to poetry, the sensual excitement of speaking and hearing the words of the poem. Performance was also the teaching technique that kept poetry vital for centuries. Maybe it also holds the key to poetry's future.

It is time to experiment, time to leave the well-ordered but stuffy classroom, time to restore a vulgar vitality to poetry and unleash the energy now trapped in the subculture. There is nothing to lose. Society has already told us that poetry is dead. Let's build a funeral pyre out of the desiccated conventions piled around us and watch the ancient, spangle-feathered, unkillable phoenix rise from the ashes.

I ::HEART:: Africa AND #Work/Life Crossover

I'm very corporate. As much as I deny it, my 9-5 seeps into my normal life on the daily. So, in proper corporate drone fashion, I have decided to write a "recap" of our African Poets Week:-)

Its been a bit of a challenge to find new and interesting poems to share with you all, but it's been a fantastic adventure. I've learned so much about the diversity of African poetry and have fallen even more in love with my beloved Motherland. It's been real, but like all good things, this must come to an end. Maybe this can become an annual project?? We'll see. Anyway...thanks so much for humoring me on this trip through the famous and obscure poetry of Momma Africa:-) I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have!

In case you missed these awesome works, here are the highlights. If you read something you like, be sure to pass it on. Poetry is meant to be shared.

Day 1
Nigerian Poet Bassey Ikpi
Sometimes silence is the loudest kind of noise

Like sometimes it was best when
Girls were girls and boys were boys.
Like back when freeze tag was a mating dance.
Like back when "Do Over" meant you got another chance.
Like back when anxiety was worrying if Wonder Woman would make it out alive.
Like back when freedom was sliding backwards on a slide.

Day 2
Cameroonean and Senegalese Poet David Diop
Africa

Africa, tell me Africa
Is this your back that is bent
This back that breaks under the weight of humiliation
This back trembling with red scars
And saying no to the whip under the midday sun.

Day 3
Nigerian Poet Chinua Achebe
knowing robs us

knowing robs us of wonder.
Had it not ripped apart
the fearful robes of primordial Night
to steal the force that crafted horns
on doghead and sowed insurrection
overnight in the homely beak
of a hen; had reason not given us
assurance that day will daily break
and the sun's array return to disarm
night's fantastic figurations--

Day 4
South African Poet Ewok
That's Joberg

a call to all colors like spiritual acrylics
paints a picture of possibility
for all the world watchers to see
to see how forgiveness arouses a peoples pride

Day 5
From a Movie about Africa:-)
Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

Day 6
Sudanese Poet Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi
Dream

Poetry - may you be a green body.
May you be a language
in which I wander
with my wings and my self.

Day 7
Ghanaian Poet Kofi Anyidoho
My Song

Some had some splendid things
What was mine?
I sing. They laugh.
Still I sell My Song
for those with ears to buy
My cloth is torn, I know
But I shall learn to wear it well

So Far. But So Much Farther to Go

I decided to go back to the continent for the Fourth installment of our African Poets Week feature. Today, I want to celebrate rapper, poet, and spoken word artist Ian Gregory Robinson. He goes by the stage name of Ewok hails from beautiful South Africa. According to the Poetry Africa 2009 Festival website, Ewok has "spat Shakespeare for school kids, slammed poetry for students, kicked lyrics for teachers, performed for politicians and poor people, jammed with jazz bands, traveled to other lands with nothing but a pen and pad and a can in his hands, and when he's alone he generally talks to his damn self." He is also a two-time Poetry Africa SlamJam champion and a top-five placer at the World Slampionship in Rotterdam in 2005. What's not to love?!?!

I found this video of him performing his poem "That's Joburg" at this year's poesiefestival in Berlin, organized by Literaturwerkstatt .


In this piece, Ewok draws on the history and present day realities of Johannesburg to paint a picture of how far we still have to go in the fight for equality. It's pretty gritty and raw, but has a hip-hop type of rhythm that really keeps you on your toes. This is a long one, but very worth it. Be sure to listen carefully.

Enjoy!

I've included a bit of text below.

That's Joberg
BY Ewok

"Backs cracking for a few rands
lacking the privilege of a future plan
with this day to day
pay to pay
way to stay significant
continue feeding the system
while locked deep inside it
people will never settle
while they keep the labor migrant


back back and forth and forth
and back back and forth and forth
that's Joberg

1996
110 years
decades of dedicated struggling
nation bombing to nation building
hatred calming
raising children
stand together
one hope
one home
every poem
every speech
every song
every lyric
a call to all colors like spiritual acrylics
paints a picture of possibility
for all the world watchers to see
to see how forgiveness arouses a peoples pride"

How to Write a Political Poem - Oldie But Goodie

Taylor Mali has so many great poems, but this is my absolute favorite.

It's one of those "funny because it's true" pieces that truthfully and comedically tells it like it really is. It seems like there's almost an un-spoken formula on how to write and speak a political poem that performance poets learn at birth. I know that I've committed my fair share of the things he describes in this piece...especially the last bit. Ouch! Guilty as charged:-)

Because all you have to do to end a political poem is
close your eyes,
lower your voice, and end by saying:

the same line three times,
the same line three times,
the same line three times.

hilarity!!

What's Genocide? And Why I Love Poets!

I love poets. That's not a shocker. But there was one poet that originated this obsession - Carlos Andrés Gómez. 2006. ::Sigh:: He was my very first poet crush and was literally the man who opened the floodgates for the many crazy, sexy, cool relationships I've had since then.
This was the poem that did me in:-) Gotta love a man who can still look adorable while talking about neocolonialism and oppression. Not my favorite version of it (its way faster than he has it on the cd and cuts out some pretty epic lines) but you get the point.

And please don't be fooled by my school-girl-crush description above. This poem is serious!

Enjoy!


"What's genocide?
Maureene's mother gave her skin lightening cream the day before she started the sixth grade.
What's genocide?
She carved straight lines into her beautiful brown thighs so she could remember what it feels like to heal."

What's genocide?
BY Carlos Andrés Gómez

Write a Poem About Monsters

Just stumbled upon Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz's hilarious poem about what she does when poetic inspiration comes at inopportune times. She emails notes to herself...which don't always make sense in the morning.

Enjoy:-)

Write a Poem About Monsters
BY Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

and this midnight note
"poem about monsters"
was written in the hope
that when morning broke across my desk
and coffee shook the rumpled bed of my brain,
I would find something profound in this obsession
but instead, I just found more nothing
another ghost of a poem
to throw into the grave with "neck-face"
another pen I swore I could move with only my brain
but couldn't

Can you Really Adopt a Poet? You Betchya!!

If you're like me, your love affair with the written word has probably made you do some nutty things...from going back to your on again off again poet boyfriend to driving for hours in a thunderstorm to catch your favorite spoken word artist spit for just one night. So, what better way to support your addiction than by "adopting a poet!??!?! Technically, the money doesn't go to the poets (most of these cats have been chilling with their maker for years and years), but it does help with the upkeep of the Poets.org website. And, while the techies that are in charge of the upkeep are probably not "struggling artists," in the purest form of the word, they are helping to keep the written word alive in this digital word and personify everything that the Evolution of Paper means to me.

I've included a bit more info below. Check out the site here

Why?
Based on the popular "Adopt-a-Highway" programs that provide for the care and maintenance of our nation's roads, the Academy of American Poets has created an "Adopt-a-Poet" program to support the care and maintenance of this website.

By giving a special gift to adopt one of the poets on Poets.org, you can help us make critically needed upgrades and improvements to the site—and help us make sure that, in the coming year and beyond, we can continue to offer students, teachers, poetry enthusiasts and all Americans the most educational, entertaining, and comprehensive poetry resource available anywhere.

To adopt one of the poets on Poets.org, simply give a contribution of $30 or more and let us know which poet you want to adopt. Or, if it's possible for you to send a larger gift, you can adopt two poets for a contribution of $50, three for a gift of $70, or five poets if your contribution is in the amount of $100 or more.

For the Love of Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz has a new book out and you need to pick it up...stat! Honestly...this is on my Amazon wish list and will probably be a present from me to me as soon as the pay check rolls in this week. Check out the description below-

The first definitive history of one of the 21st century's most explosive art movements, Words In Your Face explores the birth, growing pains and continuing development of the Poetry Slam -- a raucous poetry event that has been called "a pop culture phenomenon" (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times), "the death of art" (Harold Bloom, Paris Review) and has been blamed for making "poetry sexy again in a way it hasn't been since the heyday of the Beats" (Stephen Holden, The New York Times).

Spoken word icons such as Saul Williams, Maggie Estep, Bob Holman and John S. Hall join scores of other poets, organizers, filmmakers, scholars and critics in bringing the story of the New York City Poetry Slam movement to life. From its origins in the roofless, unheated Nuyorican Poets Cafe and its mid-90s rise in the pop culture ranks thanks to MTV and Lollapalooza, to its fresh successes on stage and small screen thanks to Russell Simmon's Def Poetry projects and its devoted following among youth poets, queer poets and poets of color, the Poetry Slam is analyzed, idealized and criticized, all from a uniquely New York perspective.

One thing I must say - this woman knows how the heck to name a book! Beside Words In Your Face , Cristin has three other titles with equally spectacular names.

Dear Future Boyfriend
Hot Teen Slut
Working Class Represent
Oh Terrible Youth

ps...If you haven't checked out her website, you're missing out on...life. Yes...life!! She's awesome. Nuf Said:-)

http://www.aptowicz.com/NEW!

Rock Stars of the Contemporary Poetry World

To steal a page from the Intel playbook - "Your rock stars aren't like our rock stars" :-) Ours are of the nerdy, thoughtful, intellectual kind who have a way with words and energy that jumps off the page!

Enjoy the Poetry Foundations latest list of poetry best sellers.


Contemporary Best Sellers: Week of August 2, 2009

1 Evidence by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)
2 Slamming Open the Door by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno (Alice James Books)
3 Red Bird (paperback) by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)
4 The Shadow of Sirius by W. S. Merwin (Copper Canyon Press)
5 New and Selected Poems: Volume Two (paperback) by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)
6 Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)
7 Thirst (paperback) by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)
8 Endpoint and Other Poems by John Updike (Knopf)
9 The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems (paperback) by Billy Collins (Random House)
10 Ballistics by Billy Collins (Random House)

Check out the full list

Get to Know the Greats - Donald Hall

Donald Hall is one of those great contemporary poets that chose to make his living by the pen far before it was cool. He's a former poet laureate, a Guggenheim fellow, twice over, and one of those god father's of the written word who doesn't get as much credit as he should.

Enjoy!

Gold
By Donald Hall

Pale gold of the walls, gold
of the centers of daisies, yellow roses
pressing from a clear bowl. All day
we lay on the bed, my hand
stroking the deep
gold of your thighs and your back.
We slept and woke
entering the golden room together,
lay down in it breathing
quickly, then
slowly again,
caressing and dozing, your hand sleepily
touching my hair now.

We made in those days
tiny identical rooms inside our bodies
which the men who uncover our graves
will find in a thousand years,
shining and whole.

Listen to him read it here

The Piano Speaks

If you're a fan of great metaphor, check out this poem by Sandra Beasley, Poetry Magazine's Featured Poet. Talk about words literally dancing on the page. Lovely!

The Piano Speaks
By Sandra Beasley

For an hour I forgot my fat self,
my neurotic innards, my addiction to alignment.

For an hour I forgot my fear of rain.

For an hour I was a salamander
shimmying through the kelp in search of shore,
and under his fingers the notes slid loose
from my belly in a long jellyrope of eggs
that took root in the mud. And what

would hatch, I did not know—
a lie. A waltz. An apostle of glass.

For an hour I stood on two legs
and ran. For an hour I panted and galloped.

For an hour I was a maple tree,
and under the summer of his fingers
the notes seeded and winged away

in the clutch of small, elegant helicopters.

Info about Sandra Beasley

Brooklyn's Coming - An Open Letter to Sarah Palin

You know I can't resist a great Sarah Palin jab:-) Check out this poem by Jeananne Verlee. I've also included a bit of her bio from her myspace page below.

Enjoy!

JEANANN VERLEE is a poet, prose writer, actor, activist, and former punk rocker who collects tattoos and winks at boys. Her work has appeared in various journals, magazines and anthologies, including The New York Quarterly, Spindle, "His Rib" and others. Member of the 2008 louderARTS National Poetry Slam team, ranked 2nd in the nation at the 2008 National Poetry Slam, Jeanann also proudly serves as Co-SlamMaster for New York City’s Urbana Poetry Slam at Bowery Poetry Club. She was member of Urbana’s 2006 team, coach for the 2007 team and in 2008, qualified for two New York City National Poetry Slam teams. Jeanann shares an apartment with her best pal, Callisto, an 11 year old Border Collie-mix and can be found hugging a barstool in an Irish pub on the Lower East Side. She believes in you.

Looking for Representation?

I ::heart:: those brave enough to make art their careers and so does Layman Lyric Productions. This agency specialzes in musical acts, including acoustic singer songwriters and live bands, and (hells yeah!!) slam poetry.

We also operate as a full-service agency for National Touring Artists including today's most noted and popular musicians in every genre. Our energetic staff prides itself in professionalism and kindness and is dedicated to providing quality entertainment for Colleges, Universities and Schools across the U.S. and abroad.

If you're looking for representation, you might want to check them out.

According to their site, their "artists include some of the hottest Up and Coming and Nationally Recognized Touring Musicians on the College Market and World Renown HBO Def Poets, and National Poetry Slam Champions. View bios, watch demos, download EPK's, Pics and contract Riders, and contact our agents with booking requests all here at laymanlyric.com."