Bud the Teacher

    Kevin’s poetry — and frankly, his ability to consistently crank out such creatively elegant stuff — impresses me.  Here’s my favorite bit of his most recent poem:

So here I am, now, turning her into a poem
and then pushing her out the door of my mind on a raft of words
into your ear, dear reader, dear listener,
hoping only that she finds anchor in some friendly port
on the other side of the world.

Good poems make me want to try to write good poems.  And that’s how it’s supposed to be.

    As National Poetry Month draws to a close, I wanted to share this most excellent three-voiced poem by Kevin.  It’s called "The Creator: a poem for three voices and one person", and is an excellent piece about the layers of creativity that can compete — and cooperate — all within one person.  The best part is that he’s recorded a reading of the piece using Audacity.  Head over and check it out. 
    Great stuff.

April is National Poetry Month.  (It’s also Workplace Conflict Awareness Month — but that’s a different blog.)  Some of you might be interested in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day e-mails.  The first two selections have been quite good.  Others of you might be interested in other poetry resources from the group.
    Me, I’m interested in a month of good poems.  Hope you are, too.

    I was catching up on some poetry reading tonight.  Glad I did .  Here’s an excerpt:

an image of a moment in time so singular
that only words will serve
to etch it forever
on the patterns of my memory
to provide some comfort
when I am old
to give testimony to the painful beauty
that was my life
that is the experience of being human

I love Megan’s poetry.  You’ve got to read the whole thing to get it, though. 

.  .  .  this world is a very, very complex, difficult place where great joy and
great pain live side by side. And that the only way we can make it
better is to not turn away.

Well said, Will. 

    Mary Lee offers this chunk of Robert Frost today:

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Oh, yeah.  I needed those lines.  Here’s a link to the rest of the poem. 

    If you want to see an artist at work, check out Quickmuse, an interesting little site where poets compete against the clock and we see all their stumbles, edits and revisions in realtime.  All of the poems and the writing sessions are archived.  Pretty cool.

    Cool.

By HILLEL ITALIE
AP National Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — The National Endowment for the Arts and the publisher of Poetry Magazine have organized a national poetry reading competition for high school students, with the winner receiving a $20,000 college scholarship.
“There’s a twofold importance in a program like this,” Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
“One half is education; students come into contact with great poetry and language and learn it by heart. There’s also an equal, and often overlooked practical importance. It will improve the student’s command of language, and will provide much needed training for speaking in public. A student speaking well will do better in the job market and better in life.”
The program, co-sponsored by the NEA and the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation, was officially announced Thursday in Pittsburgh at the annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English.