Remembering Roy Eldridge

Roy Eldridge, born on this date (January 30) in 1911, established a reputation as one of the finest trumpeters in jazz during the 1930s and 1940s, when he played with some of the more notable swing bands of the World War II era, such as Gene Krupa’s Orchestra and the Artie Shaw Band, and he has often been noted as an influence on leading figures of the bebop period that followed, including Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.

Nevertheless, Eldridge’s importance and impact sometimes have seemed to be overlooked among the chronicles of twentieth-century jazz. As Ted Gioia observes in his book, The History of Jazz (Oxford University Press, 1997): “The genealogists of jazz often cite Eldridge as a linking figure, whose work represents a halfway point between the styles of Armstrong and Gillespie. This reputation as a ‘transitional’ player in the music’s history may ultimately prove to be more of a curse than a blessing for Eldridge, who soon found himself lost in the shuffle of shifting styles and changing tastes.”

When the modern music of Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane took control in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Roy Eldridge’s stature seemed to be diminished. Indeed, Nat Hentoff once noted in Jazz Is (Random House, 1976) that Eldridge “was so out of fashion” that he didn’t appear at all on the 1960 Down Beat Readers’ Poll, even though only fifteen votes were necessary to get a mention.

Gioia has labeled Eldridge “one of the enigmas of the Swing Era. Recognized by many of his peers as the greatest trumpeter of his generation, Eldridge never enjoyed much financial success as a leader, nor was he capable of staying very long as a star soloist with a major band.” Still, “Little Jazz” Eldridge—who had picked up his nickname because of his short, slight stature and his persistence in playing jazz anywhere anytime he could, and who determinedly continued to play swing jazz throughout his life—was recognized a decade later by Down Beat for his accomplishments with induction into the magazine’s Hall of Fame in 1971. Highly respected jazz producer and promoter, Norman Granz once responded to a journalist’s question: “It’s Roy Eldridge who embodies what jazz is all about.” Roy Eldridge died in 1989.

Listening to Eldridge’s playing, as in the video above, I am reminded of the opening stanzas of “In My Dream I’ve Become a Great Trumpeter,” a poem by Sebastian Matthews that appeared in his collection of poetry, We Generous, published in 2007 by Red Hen Press:

In my dream I’ve become a great trumpeter
with the embouchure of a young Miles
and all his cool insouciance, too.
I have a freight train in my fingers

like Little Roy Eldridge and,
without any training at all,
no real sense of the notes
beyond a schoolboy’s grammar,

I step up to the microphone
and enter into the stream
of my solo in a snake-
charmers trance, tight-roping

my way to the other side . . . .

[Readers are encouraged to read more poetry about jazz by Sebastian Matthews in a previous “One Poet’s Notes” article, “Bill Evans and Sebastian Matthews.”]

Poem of the Week: "Glasses" by Dave Smith

The VPR Poem of the Week is Dave Smith’s “Glasses,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2009-2010 issue (Volume XI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Dave Smith is the author of Little Boats, Unsalvaged (Louisiana State University Press, 2005), his 14th collection of poetry, The Wick of Memory, New and Selected Poems, 1970-2000 (Louisiana State University Press, 2000), Onliness (novel, Louisiana State University Press, 1981), Southern Delights (stories, Croissant & Co., Ltd., 1984), and two collections of essays: Local Assays: On Contemporary American Poetry (University of Illinois Press, 1985) and Hunting Men: Reflections on a Life in American Poetry (Louisiana State University Press, 2006).

He has edited The Essential Poe (Ecco, 1991), The William Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets (William Morrow and Co., 1985) and The Pure Clear Word: Essays on the Poetry of James Wright (University of Illinois Press, 1981). Smith has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Lyndhurst Fellowship, as well as the Virginia Prize in Poetry and an Award in Poetry from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Dave Smith is the Eliot Coleman Professor of Poetry at Johns Hopkins University.

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it. Please check the sidebar to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.

Macintosh, Apple's Tablet, and Transitions in Reading or Writing Literature

On this date (Jan. 24) in 1984 Steve Jobs introduced the first Macintosh. From that point forward, the way many of us write and our relationships with the printed page began to change. Indeed, I have a collection of Macintosh computers (going back nearly 25 years) that have influenced the process and product of my writing the past few decades. As evidenced by Valparaiso Poetry Review or other online publications, as well as this blog and all else available on the Internet, the transition from ink print to screen pixels has dramatically altered our world during the last quarter century.

Later this week, Steve Jobs and Apple appear poised to introduce a new product, a tablet format that might again create great changes in publication and the relationship readers have to the printed or digital word, perhaps the way the iPod and iPhone have had a tremendous impact on aspects of society today, according to an opinion piece, “Apple’s Tablet and the Future of Literature,” in the Los Angeles Times. Certainly, the consequences of the changes we have seen or that may be looming ahead will be much discussed, even heatedly debated, by writers, readers, and publishers. I look forward to the conversation.

James Franco as Allen Ginsberg reading "Howl" in new movie

In the video below, readers will find a sneak peek at one of the clips from the new movie, Howl, starring James Franco portraying Allen Ginsberg (pictured above). The film premieres this week at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. As I mentioned in a previous post at “One Poet’s Notes” about this project, the movie includes a number of well-known Hollywood figures in supporting roles, such as Mary-Louise Parker, Jeff Daniels, Alan Alda, and Treat Williams. The previous “One Poet’s Notes” article also displays a link to audio of Ginsberg reading his famous poem.

Poem of the Week: "Sasturgi: Wind-Sculpted Snow" by Gray Jacobik

The VPR Poem of the Week is Gray Jacobik’s “Sasturgi: Wind-Sculpted Snow,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2004 issue (Volume V, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Gray Jacobik’s poetry has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, American Literary Review, Kenyon Review, North American Review, Ontario Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Southern Humanities Review, Sycamore Review, and many other journals, as well as in two editions of the annual Best American Poetry anthologies. Her first book, The Double Task (University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), received the Juniper Prize. The Surface of Last Scattering (Texas Review Press, 1999) was a winner of the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize. A third collection, Brave Disguises (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002), won the AWP Poetry Series Award.

She edited Fullest Tide: Poems of Ann Silsbee (Custom Words, 2006), a posthumous collection. Jacobik also contributed a review of Ann Silsbee’s Orioling in the Spring/Summer 2004 issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review. She has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing. Gray Jacobik is Professor Emeritus of the English department at Eastern Connecticut State University.

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it. Please check the sidebar to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.

SEEDED LIGHT and Other New Poetry Releases

Seven recent releases of poetry books from the catalogs of WordTech imprints—which include Turning Point Books, under which Seeded Light is published—are introduced in the latest entry of publisher Kevin Walzer’s blog, Public Poetry. I am pleased to see my work alongside the fine new volumes accompanying Seeded Light, including books by Rane Arroyo, Julia Wendell, H. Palmer Hall, Berwyn Moore, Melanie Dusseau, and Sheila Black.

“Anniversary Visit” (reproduced below, click image to enlarge) has been chosen as the sample poem from Seeded Light. In addition, I am proud to note that “Ghost Lights,” the sample poem selected from Palmer Hall’s excellent collection of poems, Foreign and Domestic (another volume from Turning Point Books), first appeared in the Spring/Summer 2000 issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review (Volume I, Number 2).

Supporting Independent Bookstores with SEEDED LIGHT

When my new book of poems, Seeded Light, was released a couple weeks ago, I was happy to be able to point readers to links for Amazon or Barnes and Noble initiated by my publisher for convenient purchase of the book. A great benefit of the Internet has been the easy access to online stores for all sorts of products by customers anywhere they may live. Although readers of literature have been conflicted by the apparent detrimental impact on independently owned community bookshops, they have especially enjoyed the availability of volumes from large publishing houses or small presses at online outlets.

In addition to the huge Internet locations, Amazon or Barnes and Noble, a few individual brick-and-mortar bookstores, like Powell’s Books of Portland, Oregon, have survived by creating their own impressive web sites for sales of new, used, or out-of-print books. Readers will also locate a link for purchasing Seeded Light there as well. However, establishing such a notable online presence would seem impossible for most local bookstores. Therefore, as a supporter of community bookshops, I was pleased to discover that a national organization of independent booksellers, IndieBound, has been established to centralize searches for books and link customers to web sites of neighborhood bookstores nearest to them.

IndieBound is described on its web site as “a community-oriented movement begun by the independent bookseller members of the American Booksellers Association.” Readers are encouraged to search for books, including Seeded Light, on the central IndieBound site. Buyers are then directed to a local bookstore’s website where a purchase can be made. Curious users also may seek out directions for a number of nearby independent bookstores to visit.

A concern I share with many readers, particularly since the list of independent bookstores throughout the country has diminished in recent years, regards the lack of brick-and-mortar bookstores in their region. The wonderful independent bookshop in Valparaiso closed its doors about five years ago. Asking about this, I have been assured by Rob Dougherty of the Clinton Book Shop—a fine local bookseller in Clinton, New Jersey, the past four decades and a member store in IndieBound—that mail order services from the sellers using book distributors are available through the independent stores: “For instance, anyone who orders Seeded Light from our site can have it delivered direct to them by Ingram,” Dougherty comments.

According to information provided at IndieBound, there are a number of advantages to shopping at independent booksellers, including the following economic effects: “When you shop at an independently-owned business, your entire community benefits.
 Spend $100 at a local and $68 of that stays in your community. Spend the same $100 at a national chain, and your community only sees $43.
 Local businesses create higher-paying jobs for our neighbors.
 More of your taxes are reinvested in your community—where they belong.
”

Consequently, I am pleased visitors to “One Poet’s Notes” will find a link to IndieBound as another option in the blog sidebar for obtaining copies of Seeded Light. Additionally, in an effort to further support independent booksellers, I urge all readers to consider this source in the future when searching for books.

"30 Awesome Poetry Blogs"

I am pleased to announce another recognition for “One Poet’s Notes,” the editor’s blog for Valparaiso Poetry Review. Online Colleges and Universities, a web site designed to offer “the most up-to-date and complete information about online schooling available,” has named “One Poet’s Notes” among its “30 awesome poetry blogs,” locations that are considered “great sources of innovation and poetry.”

As mentioned in previous posts when “One Poet’s Notes” has received similar positive attention, such rankings admittedly can be subjective and incomplete. Indeed, I am continually delighted by the many fine blogs devoted to poetry that I have discovered across the Internet. Nevertheless, I am pleased and honored by the good company on this new list of interesting blogs that I regularly visit for enjoyment and enlightenment about poetry or other topics concerning poetics, including “American Life in Poetry,” “Amy King,” “Blogalicious,” “Chicks Dig Poetry,” “Here, Where I Am,” “Mark Doty,” “Poet Hound,” “Poetry Foundation,” “Read Write Poem,” “Robert Peake,” “They Shoot Poets, Don’t They?” and “World Class Poetry,” among others. Readers are urged to explore the thirty blogs cited by Online Colleges and Universities.

Additionally, I thank visitors to “One Poet’s Notes” once more for their continued support of Valparaiso Poetry Review and this editor’s blog.

Poem of the Week: "Airport Security" by Sherod Santos

The VPR Poem of the Week is Sherod Santos’s “Airport Security,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2003-2004 issue (Volume V, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Sherod Santos is the author of six books of poetry, including The Perishing (W.W. Norton, 2004) and The Intricated Soul: New and Selected Poems, forthcoming from W.W. Norton in March, 2010. The Pilot Star Elegies (W.W. Norton, 1999) was a finalist for both the National Book Award and The New Yorker Book Award. His other honors include an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the B.F. Connors Long Poem Prize from Paris Review, the Poetry Society of America's Lyric Poetry Prize, and the Theodore Roethke Prize. His book of essays on poetry and poetics, A Poetry of Two Minds (University of Georgia Press, 2000), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. Sherod Santos lives in Chicago.

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it. Please check the sidebar to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.

Celebrating Three Years: An Anniversary Note

. . . a note of gratitude to each of you.

Today I draw attention to the third anniversary for “One Poet’s Notes,” this venue that has served as the editor’s blog for Valparaiso Poetry Review. Begun on January 11, 2007, as an author’s personal notebook or writer’s journal that also presents commentary on contemporary poetry, complementing content published in VPR, the blog has been intended as a source of news and additional information relating to poetry, poetics, or various aspects of other arts.

The format of the blog has permitted me to present readers ongoing access to numerous notable sources for poetry or background about poets, especially with links to various media, including recordings of poetry readings and interviews, as well as selected videos relating to poetry and poetics. At the same time, a number of the entries have allowed me to personalize my role as editor, offering more informal opinion and analysis that might assist authors wishing to contribute to Valparaiso Poetry Review by giving a glimpse into my approach when examining poetry books or considering submissions for the journal.

The past year has been a remarkable one that has seen celebration of a tenth anniversary for Valparaiso Poetry Review with the current special issue. Even as VPR entered its eleventh year and has continued to witness a greatly increased readership, partially due to the presence of “One Poet’s Notes,” I further recognized an obligation to reintroduce readers—through retrospective articles and the Poem of the Week feature—to works that were published in previous years and are still available in the periodical’s archives.

When I first posted entries at “One Poet’s Notes” three years ago, I had no idea how many individuals might find their way to the blog. Indeed, I remember being delighted that as many as 500 readers visited in the blog’s first month. I am even more amazed that the statistics now show an average of about 15,000 visits to articles at “One Poet’s Notes” each month. Consequently, this as well has enhanced the number of visits to pages of Valparaiso Poetry Review’s twenty-one issues published thus far to a total of more than 450,000 for just the past three years of stats kept during the blog’s existence.

As I have noted in the past, this increase in readership has been assisted by recognition and respect generously demonstrated by others, including the excellent authors whose works are represented in the pages of VPR and the many friendly fellow bloggers who have pointed their readers in this direction with recommendations of the content found here. Therefore, I especially would like to take this opportunity to thank those throughout the literary community for their support of “One Poet’s Notes.” In a time when the print sources for commentary on literature, especially poetry, have diminished significantly, as evidenced lately in the abandonment of book review sections by some newspapers and the demise of some print magazines, the literary blog has become a welcome addition to further discussions of literature and the writing process.

I have been honored and very happy to recognize specific works from Valparaiso Poetry Review’s recent issues by nominating them publicly on “One Poet’s Notes” for selection to various “Best of” collections (Best of the Net, Best of the Web, and the Pushcart Prize anthologies) and to see some of them chosen for inclusion. As I have said a few times in this blog, I am pleased when an opportunity arises to share the work of VPR’s poets with a larger audience and enable their poems to receive the greater recognition they deserve.

When “One Poet’s Notes” began in 2007, I encouraged readers to subscribe for RSS feeds through Google Reader or elsewhere. In 2008, I started the Valparaiso Poetry Review Facebook group page, global and open to all who wish to receive regular reports on news about Valparaiso Poetry Review, as well as instant notification when new issues of VPR are released. This past year, the addition of Twitter updates has enhanced notification possibilities and increased readership even more. Again, I urge readers to take advantage of the convenience these various features offer.

Deciding to experiment with an editor’s blog and writing my first few casual comments in “One Poet’s Notes” three years ago, submitting those less formal words for public viewing, I could not anticipate what would occur in the future. I certainly could not foresee that direction the blog would take to where it is today, now approaching its 500th post.

Thank you, once more, to all who repeatedly have been readers of “One Poet’s Notes.” I hope you will continue to return regularly to discover entertaining and enlightening entries. I again express my appreciation, and I offer a note of gratitude to each of you.

Charles Burchfield's LUMINOUS TREE: Cover Art for SEEDED LIGHT

In the past week since the official release of Seeded Light, I have received a number of comments from readers with questions and compliments on the cover art work, Charles Burchfield’s Luminous Tree (1917), one of the artist’s magnificent watercolor paintings of nature that are sometimes described as transcendental landscapes. Therefore, I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce readers to Charles Burchfield and his art, as well as to indicate my appreciation for Burchfield’s paintings.

As I have mentioned in a previous post at “One Poet’s Notes,” a recurrent theme within the words, phrases, and images of the poems in Seeded Light “continues visual elements located in the volume’s cover art.” Luminous Tree can be found among the many fine pieces in the permanent collection of the Brauer Museum of Art at Valparaiso University, from which the wonderful cover images for issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review are routinely chosen.

Charles Burchfield (1893-1967) attempted to provide viewers of his art with works that interpreted not only the visual elements of an image, but also the sounds and sensory details suggested by a particular scene. Often his compositions seem to contain touches that imply an additional dimension to the static plane of the canvas: sometimes contributing shimmering surges of color to offer a hint of heat rising from a summer field under bright sunlight; flowing rows of white signaling the cold of snowfall weighting down winter’s drooping tree limbs; squiggles like sonic waves echoing the call of birds and buzz of insects among spring flowers; or curling brush strokes imitating the whirling of winds where autumn leaves drift.

As Burchfield mentions during the audio of the interview in the background of the lovely video above, his early instincts included an appreciation for illustrative language; so much so that he once thought a priority in his future would possibly be as an author. Indeed, readers of Burchfield’s writings, included in his collection of daily journals titled The Poetry of Place, have been impressed by his gift with description and intimate reporting of specific locales in nature. Consequently, a combination of the artist’s paintings and poems focusing on nature seems most fitting.

In fact, my initial awareness and interest in Charles Burchfield’s art traces back to 1996. At the time, a retrospective exhibition of Burchfield’s artworks was scheduled at the Valparaiso University Museum of Art, which appeared appropriate since Burchfield’s daughter, Mary Alice, had once attended Valparaiso University. This show would be the final major display of an artist’s work in the university museum before being renamed the Brauer Museum of Art after its longtime director, Richard Brauer. (Readers may view a brief video of the museum at the following “One Poet’s Notes” entry, “Poetry Writing and Poetry Reading.”)

Dick Brauer and I developed a friendship based upon our mutual respect and admiration for one another’s disciplines (a relationship I am pleased to say has been repeated with his successor as museum director, Gregg Hertzlieb, a poet and painter who regularly contributes insightful art commentary for Valparaiso Poetry Review). Therefore, I was honored when Dick requested that I organize poetic responses to Charles Burchfield’s artworks by poets associated with Valparaiso University—faculty, students, or alumni. Each poem produced in advance of the opening of the exhibition on April 16, 1996, was placed upon a plaque alongside the painting that had inspired it. A number of the poets also presented epigraphs from favorite excerpts located in the journals of Charles Burchfield, and a poetry reading was held as part of the ceremonies at the premiere of the exhibition.

Afterwards, due to enthusiastic reactions to the linking of the poems and the paintings, I was asked to edit an anthology booklet of the art and poetry. That anthology, which positions the poems on pages facing prints of the paintings they address, was later released as A Poetic Vision: Poets’ Responses to the Artwork of Charles Burchfield. Ever since, I have maintained a great fondness for the poetic perceptions demonstrated in Burchfield’s paintings and prose.

I include below the back cover for the anthology. Readers may click on the image to magnify the artwork and text.

Kenneth Noland (1924-2010)

When I read yesterday about Kenneth Noland’s death at the age of 85, I recalled the influence his paintings had on my early awareness of contemporary art. As I have previously written in an essay titled “Jasper Johns: Poetry, Painting, and a Sense of Life,” I believe “my true introduction to compelling contemporary art occurred when I attended the extensive ‘Jasper Johns Retrospective’ at the Whitney Museum in the end of 1977.” However, I have always regarded Noland as a fitting complementary figure, whose symmetrical and often-minimalist images frequently gave an effective impression of movement on the canvas (itself occasionally oddly shaped or with various sharp-angles) due to their edginess—especially the circles with uneven edges, appearing as if frozen only for a moment, perhaps like photographed spinning rings or fireworks pinwheels blurred when stilled in a frame of film.

The juxtaposition of vivid colors within fields in the images—whether in parallel lines or crisscross plaid patterns or concentric circles—usually creates an interesting emphasis on contrast that enhances the painting’s visual drama. Consequently, though the artwork’s geometric abstraction may seem coldly constructed, the response for viewers would contain more warmth since the colors seem to radiate from the painting’s surface, and the colors in the circles at times seem to shimmer the way heat or light might from a halo of fire.

In his book, American Visions (Knopf, 1997), art critic Robert Hughes described some of Noland’s compositions: “Noland’s circle paintings, in particular, seemed to expel everything ‘inessential’ to painting. No representation—it mattered that they weren’t targets, like Jasper Johns’s, but abstract circles. No drawing. A blazing sensuousness of color carried them, intensified by the circular format; since the circles were centered in square canvases, their form seemed gravity-free, not to be read as solid substance. The color seemed to come out of the weave of the canvas, as though dyed onto it; Noland used Magna, a synthetic pigment which gave a more even and intense wash than dilute oils. ‘I wanted color to be the origin of the painting,’ Noland said in 1969.”

Noland, who had lived on a farm once owned by Robert Frost, repeatedly displayed what I discerned as poetic notions in his energetic paintings. I have regularly written about similarities I perceive between various formal approaches to art and some poetic techniques, perhaps among the reasons contributing to my enjoyment of ekphrastic poetry that seems to combine elements of the two disciplines. Indeed, in the past, when comparing Kenneth Noland’s circles and Jasper Johns’s targets, I sometimes considered Noland’s works as exhibiting characteristics closer to what I was attempting in designing my own poetry.

Although I greatly admired Johns’s artwork and how his depictions of targets, flags, or other objects were persuasive and proposed to me ways poetic language equally can establish everyday images filled with ambiguity or allusion that are just as suggestive for readers, I often found Noland’s pictures to be a bit more expressive—less static, instead circles hinting at motion and grids in a linear arrangement apparently aiming toward a dimension beyond the flat plane within the picture’s frame.

Likewise, in an attempt to arrive at an effect even a little like that Noland accomplishes so well in his paintings, I hope my poems—including those seemingly simpler pieces that appear more narrative or straightforward—achieve the goal of maintaining a dynamic and ongoing sense of surprise or uncertainty in their composition that implies further development beyond the last line of the final stanza, extending one’s interest with the continuing feeling of wonder I felt when first witnessing Noland’s deceptively minimalist works decades ago, a pleasant response I still experience today.

Poem of the Week: "Congo School" by Susan Donnelly

The VPR Poem of the Week is Susan Donnelly’s “Congo School,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2009-2010 issue (Volume XI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Susan Donnelly is the author of Morse Prize-winner Eve Names the Animals (Northeastern University Press), Transit (Iris Press), and three chapbooks. A third full-length collection, Capture the Flag, is also forthcoming from Iris Press. Donnelly’s publications include Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, The Sun, and many other journals, textbooks, or anthologies. Featured twice on Garrison Keillor’s Poets Almanac, her poems recently won a prize from the journal Persimmon Tree. Susan Donnelly teaches poetry in classes and individual consultations from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it. Please check the sidebar to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.

SEEDED LIGHT: Official Publication, January 2010

I am pleased to note, as the first full week of the new year begins, that the release of my latest collection of poems, Seeded Light (Turning Point Books, 2010), also officially occurs. To mark the publication of this new book, I offer a sample work from the volume. I have selected “Nocturnal: Fayette County, West Virginia” as a brief piece representing a number of poems throughout the collection that contribute to a pattern of imagery relating to one of the book’s various central motifs—in this case, alluding to the title phrase of “seeded light,” which also echoes a Pablo Neruda quote (The immense deserted night set up its formation / of colossal figures that seeded light far and wide.) serving as an epigraph to open the book.

This theme continues visual elements located in the volume’s cover art work, Luminous Tree, a painting by Charles Burchfield and part of the permanent collection in the Brauer Museum of Art, from which the wonderful cover images for issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review are routinely chosen and accompanied by astute commentary from Gregg Hertzlieb, the museum’s director and curator. Those cover images can be seen through links at the Valparaiso Poetry Review list of back issues.

Readers are encouraged to click on the poem to view a magnification of the text. Seeded Light is available from online book suppliers, Amazon or Barnes and Noble. As well, information for ordering special signed and numbered copies at a discount price can be found in the blog sidebar.

"New Year's Day"

“I will begin again . . .”

As we celebrate the start of a new year, and we witness some momentous events around the world that may significantly shape the future, one of the most notable being the ongoing dissident uprising in Iran, perhaps the accompanying video of U2 performing “New Year’s Day” is a befitting way to begin 2010.

The song’s lyrics combine a message of love and possibility in contrast with feelings of frustration and disillusion. Included on the 1983 album, War, this song’s composition was partially inspired by the Polish Solidarity movement—initiated in the shipyards of Gdansk during 1980 and headed by a relatively unknown worker named Lech Walesa, who had organized resistance throughout the 1970s and been fired from his job.

Formed in opposition to Communist control of the country and the influence of the Soviet Union, which responded by instituting martial law and engaging in an era of repression, the Solidarity movement saw its profile and impact grow internationally during the early 1980s, and Walesa was imprisoned. However, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and after a decade of contention and conflict, the dissenters ultimately achieved victory with formation of a coalition government in which Lech Walesa was elected as Poland’s president in the end of 1990.

Best wishes to all in 2010.
May love and possibility of better times always prevail.

Happy New Year!