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

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

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

What was even neater was that the very next item on Frank”s blog was about Mike Snider, the sonnet blogger, who has prettied up his blog recently and given it a whole new face. Mike writes a new sonnet every week. Being a lover of poetry in form, I had to order his chapbook 44 Sonnets. He responded immediately and graciously and I had the lovely book in my hands within a week. And it is lovely – Snider”s sonnets are refreshingly modern – an example of what you can do with an old form in fresh language. Definitely a keeper.

Quickmuse is now up to 18 poets who have responded to the challenge of writing a poem in 15 minutes based on a piece of writing with which they are presented. New battles take place every two weeks. The next one is coming up on September 20, between Paul Muldoon and Andrew Motion.

You”ve got three weeks left to get in your entries to the Poetry Superhighway 2006 Contest. Remember, entry fee is $1 per poem. The collected entry fees will be shared among the top three poets – 50% to the winner, 30% for second place and 20% for third. The judges for the contest have been chosen, and short bios are on the site. The deadline for receipt of the poem and entry fee is October 7. Last word was over 250 paid entries as of August 26th.

Sonibyte, a producer of digital sound content for the web, launched it”s Poem of the Day podcast in June, and was featured in iTunes “New and Notable” section. To date, there have been over 100,000 downloads of the Poem of the Day. That”s not too shady for a series that features professional actors and academics reading works of literature and poetry. It certainly puts a kick in the teeth to the belief that poetry is dead.

Sonibyte”s Poem of the Day podcast features a new poem every day, downloadable to your iPod or other listening device – including your computer – via RSS or iTunes feed. The service is a free subscription – but the producers are currently offering commercial advertising sponsorships at auction on eBay. Yep, that”s right – they”re auctioning commercial airtime on the Poem A Day podcasts at eBay auction. It”ll be interesting to see what companies think that advertising to poetry lovers is worth, won”t it?

Meanwhile, if you”re interested in getting a new poem downloaded to your iPod each day, you can subscribe to the podcast at this page, or just add this http://www.sonibyte.com/rssfeed/4.xml into your favorite podcasting tool. You can also subscribe to it via .

Like to get a poem a day, but don”t do the pod thing yet? (BTW, stay tuned on that. I -did- attend PodCamp last weekend, and I”m excited about the chance to put some audio/video up here over the next few weeks. I”m just working out all the logistics now.) Drop by All Things Human, where Robert Huntington, an attorney, chess player and self-admitted former (bad) poet, posts a new poem every day. Just a very quick perusal of his latest entries turned up several of my all time favorites – poems that I”d tucked away and forgotten – Leigh Hunt”s Rondeau (better known as “Jenny Kissed Me), Santayana”s Cape Cod. He has a liking for the older British poets – Donne, Marvell, Thomas Hardy – and the poems are well-chosen. Drop by, leave a comment, enjoy.

Paul Mena is a self-acknowledged city boy – a fact that he openly admits makes his “nature poetry” a little more urban-focused than most traditional haiku. I “met” Paul through internet listservs and mailing groups in the early 1990s, and found myself delighted by his daily haiku posted to the lists. He had a gift for capturing those perfect snapshot moments and breathing life into them. Witness:

clinging
to her sundress
the wind

my favorite perfume
the wind
in her hair

outdoor concert:
a lonely pigeon
answers the oboe

In an interview with Simply Haiku, Paul said this about what inspired him to write haiku:

I picked up a copy of Cor van den Heuvel”s “Haiku Anthology” in 1991 in a book store and read about halfway through it before I realized that the proprietors were trying to close for the evening. I had been writing poetry for years, but the brevity and poignancy of haiku – the ability to say so much with so little – spoke to me in a profound way. I was hooked.

Paul blogs almost daily at Extra Special Bitter and haikupoet. The two are nearly identical – with the exception of the lists of links and related blogs.

First though, a little background. I am passionate about sharing poetry with kids. From the earliest nursery rhymes to encouraging children and teens to put their feelings and thoughts down on paper, I believe that sharing a love of poetry with a child is one of the most valuable educational experiences you can give. Considering how many of our Poets Laureate – national and at a state level – have developed programs aimed at sharing poetry with schools and other children, I”m not alone in believing that. Ewan”s Edu.Blog is a favorite of mine because he shares his passion for blogging as an educational strategy. I often follow his links to see how others in teaching are using today”s technology to transform learning, so his link to Sandaig Poets was one I had to check out. Sandaig Poets is a page at the blog of the Sandaig Primary School in Glasgow, Scotland.

At the moment, the Poet page features Diamond poems – this year”s first poetry project – by students in one of the classes. The poems are a delight to read, with the creativity and novelty that young poets bring to their work. Even more fun is peeking back at work from the past years, work that has been commented on and in some cases, evolved into collaborations between the students and commenters from other schools, the community and the teachers. If you want to see the future of poetry developing – and even take a hand in encouraging and shaping it, this is your chance. Drop by, read, encourage – you never know what seeds you might be feeding when you do.

That”s your first introduction to Adopt a Beard, Graham Jensen”s blog devoted to abstract poetry. He updates sporadically – generally several times a month, though his poetic rhythm was interrupted after a recent move to Alberta, and he”s just recently started to get back into the swing of things. Writing as Hamnet, he”s fun to read, quirky and enjoyable – but the centerpiece of Adopt a Beard is the poems. They”re listed in three categories – Nonsense with Occasional Subtle Meaning, Poems That Read Legibly and Poems Submitted by Viewers. In his usual self-deprecating way, Jensen directs attention not the the two categories of his own poetry, but to the third, 157 (and growing) pieces of poetry submitted by his readers. These poems are a literal smorgasboard of styles and voices that are best sampled by dipping your toe in a little at a time before plunging in completely.

Which is not to say that Jensen”s own poetry isn”t fun to read and puzzle through. The “occasional subtle meanings” of his abstract styling tend to sneak up on you when you”re not looking, suddenly blossoming underneath the words you just read as if it had just been awaiting fertile ground to take root.

But I think what I like best about Adopt a Beard is that it is a labor of love. You”ll find no google ads, no banners, no subtle links directing you to this or that product. Jensen is here to share poetry – not just his own, but that of his viewers as well – with you, and it comes through loud and clear in his musings. It”s not a large site – but every bit of it is lovingly crafted, right down to the link banner he offers for sharing the poetry around.

P.S. – Yes, he also posts works of abstract (and other) art submitted by readers and friends. It”s also quirky and delightful!