Poem in Didi Menendez's Portrait Project

A poem I wrote inspired by the above image of the poets John Ashbery and David Lehman is now up at Didi Menendez's Portrait Project.

The Portrait Project allows poets as well as visual artists the opportunity to render a portrait study from photographs. The "best" poems and visual entries will be featured in a future issue of PoetsArtists.

Please check out my poem HERE.

Thank you, Didi Menendez.

G

Monday Roundup of Stuff

1) Issue 2 of Branch Magazine (run by the very talented duo, Gillian Sze and Roberutsu) is now online. Please check it out here.

If you haven't read it yet, please check out my poem "My Beloved" from the inaugural issue of Branch here.

2) Speaking of Gillian Sze, she has been named one of the "Top Five Emerging Writers Under 40" by the Austin, Texas based, Black Heart Magazine. Congrats, Gillian!

3) Ben Mirov is interviewed by Luke Degnan and reads ten poems from Ghost Machine for BOMB Magazine's Phoned-In series here.

4) Ben has kindly posted some poems that never made the final cut for Ghost Machine on his blog.

5) David Lehman wrote a poem ("The Road to Help") which consisted mostly of lines lifted from other sources but with letters changed in each lifted line, coming up with verses like "A thong of beauty is a joy forever." I came up with "I saw the best rinds of my generation destroyed by badness." (Thank you, Ginsberg.) Can you take up Lehman's challenge and write your own?

Ok,

G

Lehman on O'Hara and Mad Men

The third season of Mad Men isn't set to return until sometime this summer and I'm going through some serious withdrawl here! But recently the fine folks at the Mad Men blog spoke to David Lehman (leading Frank O'Hara scholar, poet, and editor of The Best American Poetry) about the integral role Frank O'Hara and his poetry have played throughout season 2 of the TV series:

Don spends much of this season meditating on his own "emergency," namely the dissolution of his idyllic home life. As Lehman puts it: "Don is the quintessentially American male, a loner, something of a maverick, who might just take the afternoon off to see a French movie." When asked if Don's "soulful loner" behavior is is ultimately just a way of escape, Lehman counters, "I like Don's forays into bohemia. They seem genuine to me, but 'ways of escape' are OK, too...John Ashbery [an O'Hara contemporary] once observed that 'We need all the escapism we can get, and even that isn't going to be enough.'"

Check out the whole piece here. Poetry and pop culture. Swoon!

A. R. Ammons' Birthday

Yesterday February 18th was A. R. Ammons' birthday and I completely forgot.

Not too long ago I discovered Ammons' first book Ommateum: With Doxology and it was a revelation to me. It was unlike anything I had ever read before yet the language was still so simple, uncluttered, and mysterious. At the time I was trying out a bunch of new things with my writing but I wasn't sure where it all fit and had no idea how to proceed but reading Ommateum got me unstuck. Now there are a few books I always turn to when I have writer's block: pretty much anything by Dean Young and Ommateum by A. R. Ammons. Happy belated birthday, Archie.

On The Best American Poetry blog, they've posted a poem that David Lehman wrote in 1982 to celebrate Ammons' birthday. Read "A Toast for Archie's Birthday" here.

Obama Picks His Poet!

The much-anticipated decision is over: Obama chooses Elizabeth Alexander to be his inaugural poet. Congrats to Alexander who becomes the fourth poet in American history to read at a swearing-in.

On a completely different note, Alexander is currently a professor of African American studies at Yale University. Nice to hear about someone in the neighborhood getting the nod!

Read more from The Washington Post.

Also, you can hear my prof, David Lehman, being interviewed by the BBC on the importance and significance of the inaugural poet. Listen to the complete interview (3:53) here: Download Poetry Lehman interview.

Best American Poetry 2006

I found this shaky, amateur video of David Lehman's introduction to the Best American Poetry 2006 event that I attended on September 21, 2006.

In it he mentions the controversy surrounding the publication, as well as his decision to select Billy Collins to be the 2006 guest editor.

The quality of the vid isn't great but it's interesting nonetheless. I'll also post Billy Collins' intro soon.

I've updated my Blooger account to be part of the new Blogger Beta and I'm having problems posting YouTube videos on this blog so in the meantime, I'll have just have to provide the links.

View David Lehman's introduction to the Best American Poetry book launch 2006.