So I missed the Dodge Poetry Festival this weekend, but I”m hoping for next year. In the meantime, I”ve kept up with some of the excitement by following along with what”s coming out of there in a few blogs. Here”s a taste of what you would have seen and heard if you”d made it to Stanhope, NJ, this weekend for the 2006 Dodge Poetry Festival.

This evening, in the main tent, we were treated to 21 poets reading over the course of 3 hours, loosely organized around a theme of “How is the truth to be said.” LJ Cohen, who maintains the blog Once in a Blue Muse at blogspot, and her own website at Blue Muse Poetry, blogged morning and evening, and added in snippets of poems heard and poems written at Dodge. The meditative, appreciative voice took me back to North Carolina, a dozen years ago. There is an energy in the air when poets gather that you”ll never feel anywhere else. LJ Cohen”s blog entries capture it well.

Also, we”ll be hearing from Rus Bowden, I”m sure, if not at BudBloom Poetry, then at Poetry and Poets in Rags. He was there – amazing how this world of poetry can be so deliciously small. When Lisa Cohen talks about the lovely conversation, I”m reminded all over again of my own lovely conversations with Rus about poetry, and my excitement to see that he has indeed taken to podcasting and audioblogging with a vengeance.

January O”Neill blogged all three days as well, and filled a page of pictures that make you lonesome for the place even if you”ve never been there. She wrote at Poet Mom, 1. Dodge is AWESOME! I know that doesn”t tell you much but for a poet this is nirvana. Everyone comes with open minds and hearts. Nowhere else can I hear 19 poets read in 10 minute intervals. Nowhere else can I hear Billy Collins and Anne Waldman read on the same stage.. Her insightful comments on poets, both emerging and nationally known voices, are refreshing to read. She”s going on my regular blog list after this!

Steve Sherlock”s posted more pictures at his blog, and short bites about the festival that were just enough to whet my appetite. He warned on Thursday that his blogging would be light, and it was – but I think he got the best pic of the Festival. Check out the empty chair at the Poets Only stage.

Finally, Anthony Buccino posted a wonderful 5-part series at his Uncletonoose blog. Buccino is a writer and editor from the noozpapah world, and it shows. His posts are more factual – less personal, and a lot of fun to read. Me, personally? I applaud the high school girl who waved a $50 in her principal”s face to try to pull together a field trip to Dodge.

Technorati Tags: poetry, poets, poetry blogs, Dodge poetry festival

My new discovery this week – Poetry Thursday, a thoroughly delightful blog written in tandem by Liz Elayne and Lynn. Every Sunday night, Liz or Lynn post a new poetry prompt and invite other bloggers to write about it. The prompts are filed as “this week”s (completely and totally optional) idea”, because, in Liz Elayne”s words, “You have a lot more freedom than that around here”. Each week”s prompt is added to the complete list of (completely and totally optional ideas).

The writing prompts are valuable by themselves – nothing is quite so good at breaking writers” block as having a subject to write about – but it”s not what puts Poetry Thursday in my check it every week category. It”s because these two ladies have managed to do what most bloggers set out to do – engage their readers and encourage them to participate. Liz and Lynn make participation so simple even my mother could do it – post about poetry (or post your poetry) on your blog, and then leave a comment on this week”s post to tell people to check it out. That”s it. And it”s wildly successful. The blog has been up since April, going by the archives section – and within 24 hours of the last post, there have been 75 comments, each of them containing a link to a blog with poetry posted in response to the prompt. If you follow the traditional bloggers” wisdom that less than 10% of readers actually respond, then Lynn and Liz have built up quite a readership in a very short time.

They”ve also got the beginnings of an audio poetry project going and are soliciting audio from readers. If you blog about poetry, or blog your poems, take a peek at Poetry Thursday – and post a link to your blog. There can never be enough sharing of poetry.

Technorati Tags: poetry. poetry blogs, audio poetry, PoetryThursday, poetry sharing

I was drawn into the Scoplaw blog by a conversation on the values of poetry, and the need for a common vocabulary with which to discuss and criticize poetry, and then drawn further and further along to read about the esthetics of poetry, what is needed to encourage quality poetry, the writer”s adventures as a poet on the internet – and eventually to other poets carrying on serious discussions about contemporary American poetry. Make that Contemporary American Poetry. R.J. McCaffery is the mind behind Scoplaw – and a number of other sites that really belong on your must read list. Why?

Because poetry is about more than scribbling down your feelings. It”s about more than rhyming and counting meter. There”s an artistry to it, and that artistry is often dismissed as unimportant and outmoded in today”s poetry. At the same time, there is a place for those who write poetry to please themselves and their audiences – but the poetic snobs among us would dismiss their attempts at writing as pathetic and misguided. Scoplaw and Ron Silliman and Seth Abramson – just to name a few of the conversationalists – are important to read because they open intelligent, if sometimes contentious and overblown, discourse about Poetry with a capital P. They are worth reading because they point do more than talk about poetry – they read it, they review it, they publicize it. They introduce their readers – most of them have more daily readers than most literary journals – to poets and poetry that they believe set a standard of excellence in poetry.

And they write poetry – poetry that is highly regarded enough to have garnered awards, appointments, editorships, publications. That means they have the chops to discuss poetry and what makes it good, and how to judge what is good and what is not, and why it is a crime that popular American poetry is not always GOOD American poetry.

What makes all of this especially interesting to me is that this discourse – which places itself outside the academy, but is certainly academic – mirrors a great deal of the conversation going on in the bastard child of poetry – the spoken word and slam poetry communities. In those communities, there”s a great deal of talk about concentration on the mechanics of poetry, and learning the craft of writing poetry from the ground level up. There”s discussion of how to quantify the aspects of performance and poetry, how to sort one out from the other, how to rate what is good poetry and what is simply popular performance.

There are – or should be – other parts to this conversation as well. Why is one form of poetry more valid than another? Isn”t there room for excellence in variuos genres of poetry? Why is there not consideration for the artistry of a HipHop artist as a word stylist, or the slam poet who works with words and performance or the cowboy poet who”s work is possibly closer to nature than that of most poets writing today when we speak of “contemporary American poetry”? These are questions that I”d be interested in seeing discussed.

Technorati Tags: poetry, poetry blogs, Scoplaw, poetry discussion, performance poetry