One Poet's Notes

Photo Friday: “Footbridge over Thawing Lake”

2012-02-03T01:16:00.002-06:00

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“Margaret’s Heart” by Crystal Bacon

2012-01-31T00:15:00.001-06:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Crystal Bacon’s “Margaret’s Heart,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2008-2009 issue (Volume X, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Crystal Bacon’s first book of poems, Elegy with a Glass of Whiskey, won the 2005 A. Poulin New Poetry America Prize from BOA Editions and was published in 2004. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Antigonish Review, Cortland Review, Marlboro Review, Massachusetts Review, Ontario Review, and Tampa Review. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Community College of Philadelphia.

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 visit it.

Photo Friday: “Trees and Shadows”

2012-01-27T00:33:00.001-06:00

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“Autobiography of a Face” by Michael Blumenthal

2012-01-24T00:16:00.003-06:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Michael Blumenthal’s “Autobiography of a Face,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2010 issue (Volume XI, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Michael Blumenthal’s seventh collection of poems, And, was published by BOA Editions in 2009. He is also the author of a memoir, All My Mothers and Fathers (Harper Collins, 2002). His novel, Weinstock Among The Dying, won Hadassah Magazine's Harold U. Ribelow Prize for the best work of Jewish fiction, and his collection of essays from Central Europe, When History Enters the House, was published in 1998.

Photo Friday: “Stopping by Woods”

2012-01-20T00:17:00.000-06:00

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“War Work” by Pam Bernard

2012-01-17T00:12:00.004-06:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Pam Bernard’s “War Work,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2009 issue (Volume X, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Pam Bernard’s three collections of poetry include My Own Hundred Doors (Bright Hill Press), Across the Dark (Main Street Rag Press), and Blood Garden: an elegy for Raymond (Turning Point Books). She also has had poems published in various literary journals, such as Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Review, and TriQuarterly. Her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing, two Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowships in Poetry, and a MacDowell Fellowship. Bernard is an adjunct professor at the New Hampshire Institute for Art.

Photo Friday: “Gazebo Path”

2012-01-13T00:04:00.000-06:00

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Announcement: Fifth Anniversary Celebration

2012-01-11T00:06:00.001-06:00

Today represents the fifth anniversary of One Poet’s Notes, this editor’s blog for Valparaiso Poetry Review begun on January 11, 2007. Intended as a personal notebook of an editor or a poet’s journal that also presents commentary on contemporary poetry, this blog was created to complement content published in VPR and to help bring the fine works in the journal to the attention of a larger audience by announcing publication of new issues, as well as by consistently highlighting poems, essays, reviews, or interviews from the pages of VPR. In addition, the blog has often provided readers with news items and additional information relating to poetry, poetics, or various aspects of other related arts.

During the past five years, which have been eventful for VPR, this blog chronicled celebration of a tenth anniversary for Valparaiso Poetry Review with its special issue in the fall/winter 2009-2010 issue. Throughout last year, One Poet’s Notes also reported about publication of Poetry from Paradise Valley, an anthology of poems selected from the first decade of VPR, which was released at the very end of 2010 and remains available for purchase from Pecan Grove Press at its web page.

In addition, 2011 saw publication of my latest collection of poems, Tinted Distances, as well as an audio and print chapbook of my poetry, Dark Refuge. Moreover, I was pleased to note that Poetry from Paradise Valley and Seeded Light, my book of poems released in 2010, were both selected as finalists for the 2011 Best Books of Indiana award, offered annually by the Indiana Center for the Book at the Indiana State Library, which marked the first time two volumes written or edited by an individual were selected in the same year.

When I first wrote entries at One Poet’s Notes five years ago, I had no idea how many notes I might eventually add to the blog or how many individuals might be attracted to the web site. In fact, I honestly held a fair amount of uncertainty about how long I would maintain the habit of posting pieces to the blog or whether others might find the content in my offerings at all appealing.

As a result, I am amazed today to point out that there have been more than 800 posts to One Poet’s Notes over the past four years, and statistics indicate an incredible total of about 800,000 visits to the blog. Consequently, this has enhanced the number of people examining pages of Valparaiso Poetry Review, thus supplying a greater readership for the many superb poets published in the journal.

I have mentioned at various times that the popularity of One Poet’s Notes has been assisted by the beneficial recognition and respect demonstrated by others, especially the excellent authors whose works are represented in the pages of Valparaiso Poetry Review or those members of the online literary community, fellow editors or bloggers, who have frequently and generously exhibited their support for VPR, as well as by kind readers continually recommending to others that they ought to visit this site.

The blog has evolved over the five years of its existence, including more audio or videos of readings and interviews with poets. A weekly photo entry was introduced in 2011, which has led to the development of a new photography blog initiated this week for archiving the images, and I invite readers to visit it. Moreover, despite the title of this blog, content has expanded recently to include coverage of fiction alongside the poetry with appearance of the premiere issue of Valparaiso Fiction Review released in December of 2011. I urge everyone to examine the wonderful works of short fiction in this new literary journal.

I am delighted by this chance to again communicate a statement of thanks 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 express my appreciation for the time you have taken to view this blog and for the numerous comments of encouragement I have received from visitors during the past five years. Indeed, I offer a wholehearted note of gratitude to each of you.

William Aarnes “Kindly”

2012-01-10T00:11:00.000-06:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is William Aarnes’ “Kindly,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2007-2008 issue (Volume IX, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

William Aarnes has had two collections of poetry published, Learning to Dance and Predicaments. His work also has appeared in a number of literary journals, including American Scholar, Field, Poetry, and Southern Review. He teaches at Furman 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.

Photo Friday: “Hay Rolls in Late Light”

2012-01-06T00:13:00.000-06:00

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“Winner of $174 Million” by Norman Waksler

2012-01-04T16:07:00.002-06:00

As 2011 ended last week, so did the deadline for claiming a $77 million lottery ticket in Georgia. Someone bought the ticket during the summer, but the prize money went unclaimed for six months. Seeing this unusual item in the newspaper brought to mind Norman Waksler’s “Winner of $174 Million,” one of the fine short stories in the premiere issue (Volume 1, Issue 1: Winter 2011) of Valparaiso Fiction Review, which was released in the beginning of December. Here is the opening of Waksler’s story:

“Winner of $174 Million”

I began playing the lottery after my ex remarried. Like any man who’s been divorced because the very virtues his wife married him for became the reasons to leave him, I’d have hated to have to share possible winnings with her. This may seem small-minded, but we were married four years and I paid support four more, so I believe I fulfilled my obligations.
Not that I ever won anything substantial. Seven dollars a few times, three now and then. Once I thought I won $150, but I had read the sequence of numbers wrong. What I was hoping for was a twelve million dollar jackpot, which, taken in one lump and after taxes, would amount to about five million or so. Depending on interest rates at the time and along with my city pension, this would generate enough money to retire, buy a small house, live in comfort, subscribe to a number of concert series and travel now and then to different cities with great and small art museums, paying as well for my woman friend Margaret (don’t call me Maggie) Fisher.
Around the corner from my apartment was Calvin’s Convenient. Ostensibly a snack food, bread, milk and sudden need store, over time it had given more than half its space to a collection of inferior wines and a surprisingly decent selection of beers and ales. So every couple of weeks I bought a six-pack of Harp Lager, and twice a week a Quick Pick lottery ticket on my way to work as Assistant City Clerk in charge of birth certificates, death records, and marriage licenses for Carbury, Mass, one of the small, densely populated cities around Boston.
Not all petty bureaucrats like me are bitter, dissatisfied individuals whose only desire is to protect their fiefs and exploit to the fullest the little power they have. I considered my quiet, orderly job both necessary and useful, an essential contribution to civil society. My salary was decent, and once I had only myself to support, even comfortable, allowing me to save, then spend moderately during vacations, buy the odd book and CD, go out to dinner, join the Museum of Fine Arts. So playing the lottery was just a two dollar a week indulgence leading to pleasant fantasies and no expectation of actually winning.
Instead, I won.
As usual, I read the paper that morning with breakfast (orange juice, French Roast coffee, muesli, whole wheat toast and strawberry jam). From childhood habit I always started with the funnies, but then I went on to the editorial page, the front page, through the major U.S. and world news and on to the Metro section where the lottery numbers were in a box on the second page.
Ordinarily I’d compare the winning numbers with my pink and white Quick Pick slip, see one, perhaps two uselessly matched numbers, accept the expected with a nod or a shrug, once in a while with a sigh.
This morning the numbers matched. All six. And below, the words and numbers: Jackpot $174,000,000. One Winner....

I encourage all to read “Winner of $174 Million” by Norman Waksler, and I urge everyone to examine the other excellent works in this initial issue of Valparaiso Fiction Review.

Kim Bridgford: “Iceland”

2012-01-03T00:17:00.006-06:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Kim Bridgford’s “Iceland ,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2006 issue (Volume VII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Kim Bridgford directs the West University Poetry Center. She is the author of five books of poetry. Her works of poetry and fiction also have appeared in Christian Science Monitor, Iowa Review, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Redbook, Witness, and many other publications. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts.

Photo Friday: “Touch of Winter”

2011-12-30T00:11:00.000-06:00

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Poet of the Year: Kay Ryan

2011-12-29T00:06:00.000-06:00

As has been the case since the initial year of its appearance in 2007, each December One Poet’s Notes designates a “Poet of the Year.” At the close of each year, a poet whose notable work merited attention during the previous twelve months is selected for acknowledgment and appreciation.

As in the past, a number of outstanding poets have distinguished themselves during the calendar year to a degree that they deserved serious consideration for this annual recognition. However, one poet’s work garnered praise for the content and quality of poetry not only of the present, but also for poems throughout her career and for the promise of work to come. Therefore, Kay Ryan earns designation as the 2011 Poet of the Year.

Readers of One Poet’s Notes are aware of my appreciation for Kay Ryan’s poetry. In the opening of my 2007 review for Ryan’s collection The Niagara River, I wrote:

When I read Kay Ryan’s poetry, I am sometimes reminded of my first visit to a Jasper Johns retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum nearly three decades ago. I recall my initial reactions to all that artwork with images, symbols, and signs that seemed so ordinary upon a quick glance. The paintings of targets appeared merely as concentric circles on a square canvas, the different depictions of American flags or bronzed beer cans seemed nothing more than clever alterations of reality, and the stenciled letters spelling out “red” or “yellow” in colors at variance with their wording represented only an obvious attempt at irony. However, upon closer scrutiny the banal suddenly became a more complicated set of symbols or signs, each inviting viewers to see beyond an icon’s surface meanings and to seek deeper readings in its unconventional appearance. I concluded an additional aspect of wit made the experience linger and even more enjoyable. As John Ashbery has written of Jasper Johns, “One may puzzle over his pictures, but one does not escape them.”

Similarly, Kay Ryan’s work proves puzzling upon opening her new book, The Niagara River; nevertheless, the brief and spare style, familiar from her past collections, remains with the reader and seeps into one’s thoughts about poetry in much the same way Johns’s art has become a reliable part of contemporary consciousness. Ryan’s deceptively straightforward yet complex and smart poems arise from a seemingly simple pattern of slender, usually unbroken, stanzas written in a plain and accessible vocabulary. Despite line breaks that sometimes seem haphazard or normally might create jerkiness as one reads through the poem, this poet appears always in full control, and the lines display a surprising fluency aided by subtle alliteration or other lyrical devices, often including nearly-hidden internal rhymes or near-rhymes.

Like Jasper Johns, Ryan frequently focuses upon objects or language with which we are so familiar that we may have forgotten to pay much attention any longer, forcing a fresh look. Perhaps no other poet, except Ashbery, brings back to life dull and overused terms or platitudinous sayings as often and as well as Kay Ryan. In Ryan’s poetry, clichéd and hackneyed phrases become sources of inspiration. Poems in The Niagara River arise from reexamination of chickens coming home to roost, the elephant in the room, the other shoe dropping, one’s being green behind the ears, and other elements of well-known expressions. However, Ryan manages to infuse new blood into these dead idioms so that they exist with a sense of lively eloquence, clever wit, and original imagery within the lines of her poetry.

Following publication of The Niagara River, Kay Ryan was selected as the U.S. Poet Laureate, a position she held for two terms. Upon closing her service as Poet Laureate in 2010, she released The Best of It: New and Selected Poems (Grove Press), a volume that was widely praised by critics and was named a finalist for the 2011 National Book Critics Circle award in poetry, as well as the 2011 winner of the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. The citation for the Pulitzer Prize notes that her new book reveals a poet who has produced “a body of work spanning 45 years, witty, rebellious and yet tender, a treasure trove of an iconoclastic and joyful mind.”

In a New York Times review of the book, Dwight Garner described Ryan’s poetry: “Kay Ryan’s poems are as slim as runway models, so tiny you could almost tweet them. Their compact refinement, though, does not suggest ease or chic. Her voice is quizzical and impertinent, funny in uncomfortable ways, scuffed by failure and loss. Her mastery, like Emily Dickinson’s, has some awkwardness in it, some essential gawkiness that draws you close.” Adam Kirsch commented for The New Yorker: “Melancholy lucidity is Ryan’s greatest gift, and it can be heard in all her most successful poems. But her most startling discovery is that melancholy, with its tendency to brood and spread, is best contained in a form that is tight, witty, almost sprightly sounding. Her poems are often built on the logic of the pun, taking an ordinary word or dead cliché as a title and then jolting it to unexpected life.” In The Hudson Review David Mason contributed: “Kay Ryan is so disarming, so fresh and original, that she has earned her recent reputation as one of the very best poets among us.”

In addition to the praise for her recent book and the critical recognition for her accumulation of remarkable poetry over the years, Kay Ryan also received a MacArthur Fellowship this year, an honor that indicates continuing support for her future writing as well, as Ryan notes in the video above. The MacArthur Fellowship cited Kay Ryan as “an accomplished poet whose immediately distinctive and tightly woven verse is grounded in incisive explorations of seemingly familiar language, ideas, and experiences. Independent from schools of poetry and literary fashion, her mode of expression is a disarmingly clear and accessible style, characterized by concision, rhyme, wordplay, and wit.” Speaking to the future, the citation goes on to remark: “Drawing from the puns and implications of everyday speech to achieve a wide range of effects, Ryan conveys emotional intensity and intellectual heft in poems that are rarely longer than a page. This inventive poet has already created a distinguished body of work and will continue to compose deceptively simple verse of wisdom and elegance, surprising us with the possibilities of the medium.”

Kay Ryan published her first major book of poetry in 1985 at the age of forty. In the past 25 years she has released a half dozen other books. Over the past quarter century, readers and critics have discovered her delightfully disarming poetry. In addition to this year’s honors, Ryan has received a number of commendations in the past decade, including a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Maurice English Poetry Award. She was also elected as a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets in 2006, where she continues to serve.

Upon her recent completion of two terms as U.S. Poet Laureate, publication of a volume of new and selected poetry, nomination as a finalist for the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award, selection as the winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, and designation as a 2011 MacArthur Fellow, Kay Ryan has achieved a greater and greatly deserved level of critical acclaim as well as a wider, more appreciative readership, with a promise—as stated in the accompanying video above—of more wonderful work in the future for readers to anticipate.

[Readers are invited to visit posts at One Poet’s Notes in the past that have announced the “Poet of the Year”: “Poet of the Year: John Ashbery” (2007), “Poet of the Year: Mark Doty” (2008), and “Poet of the Year: W.S. Merwin” (2009), “Poet of the Year: Rae Armantrout” (2010).]

Helen Frankenthaler 1928-2011

2011-12-28T00:07:00.000-06:00

Upon learning the news about Helen Frankenthaler’s death yesterday at the age of 83, I thought I would remind readers that her woodcut triptych, Madame Butterfly, served as the cover artwork for the Fall/Winter 2001-2002 issue (Volume III, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review. Since this issue of VPR was released only a few weeks after the 9/11 events, I believed a light and promising image was ideal for the cover as a contrast to the daily scenes seen on television and in newspapers at that time.

As always, Gregg Hertzlieb, the Director of the Brauer Museum of Art, kindly provided a commentary complementing the artwork, the opening of which I include below:

Helen Frankenthaler (born 1928) is a world-renowned abstract artist whose work heralded in painting’s next significant phase after abstract expressionism in the 1940’s. Rather than apply paint in a thick, gestural manner, Frankenthaler chose to stain her canvases with broad expanses of veil-like color that give her finished works a transcendent, mystical glow. Her work is seldom about a distinct figure-ground relationship; instead, the expanses of color immerse the viewer in a space where each passage is of equal weight in a shimmering, decentered field. Frankenthaler’s early efforts would eventually inspire more austere approaches in the 1960’s and 1970’s, where painters would suppress painterly gesture even further to focus solely on color relationships.
Frankenthaler’s Madame Butterfly, a woodcut triptych printed in 2000, is a large work (41 3/4 x 79 1/2 inches) of remarkable complexity. . . .

I encourage visitors to remember Helen Frankenthaler by viewing her works of art, and I urge everyone to read the rest of Gregg Hertzlieb’s commentary.

Michael Lavers: “One Version of a Dream”

2011-12-27T00:13:00.004-06:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Michael Lavers’ “One Version of a Dream,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2010-2011 issue (Volume XII, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Michael Lavers completed an MFA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and he has poems published in various literary journals, including Tar River Poetry, River Styx, and Birmingham Poetry Review.

Remembering Vachel Lindsay at Christmas

2011-12-24T10:20:00.000-06:00

I will light the candles now.

Vachel Lindsay—a Midwesterner from Springfield, Illinois, who was born in a home once belonging to an in-law of Abraham Lincoln and where the just elected president received his farewell party before departing for Washington—lived a life that could provide Hollywood with an interesting script chronicling an engaging character. Throughout most of his adult years, Lindsay sought to present poetry in an entertaining fashion. Perhaps a predecessor to today’s performance poets, Lindsay traveled all across the country for long stretches of time, journeying mostly on foot in stints throughout the Midwest and along the West Coast, as well as hiking through Glacier National Park—an experience that resulted in a thematic book of nature poetry (Going-to-the-Sun, 1923).

He usually survived by singing or chanting his poems, written with characteristically strong rhythms, sonorous sounds, and distinctly incantatory language. As he traveled from town to town, he also traded printed copies of his pieces for food or a place to sleep. Indeed, he has been linked to Langston Hughes in their popularizing of musical lyricism based upon the rhythms of blues or riffs of jazz, and readers will find on the University of Pennsylvania’s PennSound site (located at the Center for Programs in Creative Writing) a treasure of audio recordings in which Lindsay can be heard performing his poetry.

This populist poet, often compared with fellow Midwesterner Carl Sandburg, viewed himself as a critic of contemporary society. In fact, Vachel Lindsay’s most famous and most infamous poem, “The Congo” (1914), represented his attempt to promote awareness of African Americans. In other poems he exposed the poverty and the plight African Americans faced under the social conditions they endured in the early twentieth century throughout the United States. Unfortunately, stereotypical depictions and racially offensive language (especially by today’s standards) included in the poem caused Lindsay to receive much harsh criticism, particularly from some in the black community.

However, Lindsay saw himself as an advocate for civil rights and would champion African Americans in other poems as well. He sent a letter to the chairman of the board of directors of the NAACP defending his poetry: “The third section of ‘The Congo’ is certainly as hopeful as any human being dare to be in regard to any race.” In fact, considering the work and the author’s intentions more favorably, Langston Hughes (whom it is said may have been discovered and promoted by Vachel Lindsay) later chose to anthologize the controversial piece. (Lindsay’s rendering of “The Congo” is one of those preserved among the samples at the PennSound website.)

After beginning college with a desire to follow his father’s footsteps as a doctor, Lindsay found more pleasure and personal satisfaction in painting. Therefore, like William Blake, he then turned to a career as an artist, studying at the Chicago Institute of Art and the New York School of Art, and as Blake had done, Lindsay sometimes claimed to have mystical visions he attempted to transform to images in his drawings.

Throughout his life, Vachel Lindsay exhibited eccentric behavior and held to idealistic thinking, hoping his work would eventually be well received and exert a powerful influence over many, leading toward social and cultural changes benefiting the weak and the forgotten. In 1913, Harriet Monroe published in Poetry magazine perhaps his most successful poem, “General William Booth Enters Heaven,” in which he elegizes the founder of the Salvation Army who had died in 1912. Composer Charles Ives made the poem even more famous when he set the it to music in 1914. (This poem also can be heard at the PennSound website.)

However, later in life when finally faced with intense pain of personal adversity and the prospect of professional failure because of an inability to attract great popular or critical attention for his newer poetry, Lindsay’s story came to a tragic end. In December of 1931, at the age of 52 and having returned to live in the same Springfield home where he had been born, suffering poor health and depression, he committed suicide by drinking a bottle of poison. Lindsay’s stature at the time was such that Edgar Lee Masters wrote a biography of him in 1935, but Lindsay’s importance as a poet has declined over the decades since then.

Nevertheless, in this December 80 years after his death, I invite readers to take the opportunity to recall Vachel Lindsay’s life with one of his works offering a more cheerful and festive spirit:

THIS SECTION IS A CHRISTMAS TREE

This section is a Christmas tree:
Loaded with pretty toys for you.
Behold the blocks, the Noah's arks,
The popguns painted red and blue.
No solemn pine-cone forest-fruit,
But silver horns and candy sacks
And many little tinsel hearts
And cherubs pink, and jumping-jacks.
For every child a gift, I hope.
The doll upon the topmost bough
Is mine. But all the rest are yours.
And I will light the candles now.

. . . . . —Vachel Lindsay

Photo Friday: “Late Autumn at Twilight”

2011-12-23T00:06:00.000-06:00

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“Winter Pentimento” from TINTED DISTANCES

2011-12-21T00:04:00.003-06:00

With the official arrival of winter overnight tonight, I offer a wintry poem from Tinted Distances (Turning Point Books, 2011), my current collection of poetry:

WINTER PENTIMENTO

The black clot of an empty nest rests
. . . . . in one fork of this winter tree, all its

thin branches now white and bending
. . . . . under the weight of a new snowfall.

Spots of cloud cover still fill the ridge
. . . . . line, their lengthening shadows drawn

across a hill’s little drifts or flat patches

. . . . . of brown lawn that had been exposed

by this morning’s wind like vivid traces

. . . . . of an earlier layer of stain. Before long,

the vague sunshine finally fails to filter

. . . . . through even these few remaining knots

of cumulus and gives way to gradually

. . . . . changing shades of gray, as if the faded

landscape has been painted over once

. . . . . more, the stripe of horizon taken away

by feathered edges brushed under soft

. . . . . strokes in pigments granting a darker tint.

I invite readers to discover more about the poetry in Tinted Distances, and I remind everyone that the volume is available for purchase.

E.G. Burrows: “The Beach at Moon’s Resort”

2011-12-20T00:11:00.004-06:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is E.G. Burrows’ “The Beach at Moon’s Resort,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2006-2007 issue (Volume VIII, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

E.G. Burrows was the author of various poetry collections, including The Arctic Tern and Other Poems, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. In addition, he wrote a verse play and five chapbooks. His poetry also appeared in many literary journals, including Asheville Review, Comstock Review, Grove Review, Pebble Lake Review, River Oak Review, South Carolina Review, South Dakota Review, and Sulphur River Review. Edwin G. Burrows passed away last month at the age of 94.

Photo Friday: “December Pond”

2011-12-16T00:21:00.000-06:00

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Athena Kildegaard: “In the Kirkegaard, December”

2011-12-13T00:13:00.006-06:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Athena Kildegaard’s “In the Kirkegaard, December ,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2011 issue (Volume XII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Athena Kildegaard has had work appear in Faultline, Drunken Boat, Poetry East, Puerto del Sol, Cream City Review, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere. Her first book, Rare Momentum, was published by Red Dragonfly Press, as will the forthcoming collection, Bodies of Light.

Photo Friday: “Chapel Façade”

2011-12-09T00:07:00.000-06:00

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W.F. Lantry: “Requiem”

2011-12-06T00:18:00.002-06:00

Usually on Tuesday readers find here a Poem of the Week from the archives of Valparaiso Poetry Review. However, as a celebration of the new literary journal, Valparaiso Fiction Review, which was launched this week, today’s highlighted piece is W.F. Lantry’s “Requiem,” a short story that exists as a brief work of poetic prose from the contents of VFR’s inaugural Winter 2011 issue, where the story is also available as a pdf download file.

W.F. Lantry, a native of San Diego, is the recipient of the Paris/Atlantic Young Writers Award, and in 2010 won the Lindberg Foundation International Poetry for Peace Prize, the Crucible Editors’ Poetry Prize and the CutBank Patricia Goedicke Prize. His work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Anemone Sidecar, Literal Latté, Istanbul Literary Review, Blip, and Aesthetica. He currently works in Washington, DC and is a contributing editor of Umbrella: A Journal of Poetry and Kindred Prose.

I invite everyone to examine this introduction of Valparaiso Fiction Review to read the fine stories in its initial issue.

VALPARAISO FICTION REVIEW: Inaugural Issue

2011-12-05T11:34:00.002-06:00

I am delighted to announce release of the Winter 2011 issue of Valparaiso Fiction Review, published by the Department of English and Christopher Center for Library and Information at Valparaiso University. This inaugural issue of the journal contains compositions of short fiction by Andrea Dupree, Clifford Garstang, W.F. Lantry, Meg Tuite, Norman Waksler, and Dallas Woodburn. I encourage everyone to examine this introduction of VFR and read these fine stories.

I want to thank co-editor Jonathan Bull for his wonderful work that made appearance of this literary journal possible. I am also grateful for the tremendous efforts by our assistant editors: Emily Bahr, Ethan Grant, Rob Onofrey, Ellen Orner, and Jeremy Reed.

Valparaiso Fiction Review (VFR) is now accepting submissions of original short fiction by new, emerging, or established writers for the Spring and Winter 2012 issues. Authors are encouraged to visit VFR and follow the guidelines for submission.

Poem Today at VERSE DAILY and Other Sites

2011-12-03T15:23:00.005-06:00

I am pleased to note that “Midnight Winds,” a poem from my most recent collection of poems, Tinted Distances, is featured today at Verse Daily. In addition, there is a bio and bibliography page at the site that contains a number of links to nearly 20 other poems of mine available for viewing at various locations online. I invite everyone to browse the poetry, and I extend my thanks to the editors at Verse Daily.

Photo Friday: “November Leaves”

2011-12-02T00:12:00.000-06:00

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“Fall Walk at Forest Park” from Autism: A Poem

2011-12-01T00:33:00.004-06:00

As mentioned previously, I have created a separate and temporary blog site as an open experiment of poetry composition, perhaps a glimpse at an emerging manuscript as it matures. The contents represent portions of an ongoing personal project with a particularly narrow focus intended to develop toward a book-length sequence of poetry with the tentative working title of Autism.

The sequence has grown as sections have been added. The individual pieces are designed so that they may be viewed as independent items; however, I have consciously carried themes, images, and language through the extended sequence with the hope that connectivity and continuity will be preserved among numerous sections.

I have now posted a new section, “Fall Walk at Forest Park.”

Readers are asked to regard Autism as a work in progress, a partial or rough draft rather than a finished product (even if some selected segments previously may have appeared in print), and I request everyone realize various edits, emendations, or expansion may be made to the individual posts at any time in the future. Moreover, at some point the entire sequence will be removed to undergo a complete revision.

In addition, I would like to remind readers that a portion of this poetry series in progress was released in March as Dark Refuge, an audio chapbook by Whale Sound. The dozen poems in that chapbook represent a narrative designed as a poetic sequence, part of this overall project of poetry I have been composing about particular observations or impressions concerning the characteristics and consequences associated with autism through a poetic chronicling of personal experiences with Alex.

Dark Refuge is available for readers to experience in differing formats: as online audio, online text, free downloadable mp3, pdf, e-book, print edition, and cd. Therefore, I also urge readers to visit the main page for Dark Refuge.

Laura Lee Washburn: “Cheyenne Valley, Autumn”

2011-11-29T00:13:00.001-06:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Laura Lee Washburn’s “Cheyenne Valley, Autumn,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2011 issue (Volume XII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University, an editorial board member of the Woodley Memorial Press, and the author of This Good Warm Place (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Carolina Quarterly, Quarterly West, The Sun, The Journal, and Clackamas Review.

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.

Photo Friday: “Black (& White) Friday”

2011-11-25T00:11:00.001-06:00

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Thanksgiving Notes and a Poem

2011-11-23T00:09:00.002-06:00

On this eve of Thanksgiving, I pause to offer my gratitude for all of the good fortune that has occurred in the past year, and I once again express my appreciation to each reader of Valparaiso Poetry Review who has happened upon the valuable works included in the current issue of VPR, the twenty-fifth, as well as the marvelous materials accumulated in the journal’s pages of archived issues throughout its publication.

Additionally, I am thankful to the large number of individuals who have visited this site in the last year and examined the articles at One Poet’s Notes, the editor’s blog for Valparaiso Poetry Review. I am amazed and honored by the tremendous growth in readership for this blog since its initiation in 2007, as the accumulated number of visits to the pages of One Poet’s Notes surpassed 500,000 this year, with monthly statistics now averaging more than 20,000.

I am especially thankful to the many readers over the years that have sent messages containing complimentary comments and continually constructive statements about the content or form of both Valparaiso Poetry Review and the VPR blog. Consequently, I would like to acknowledge again the fine contributions by the hundreds of authors who have had their works appear in VPR since its initial publication in 1999. I wish all those writers, as well as each reader who generously decided to spend some time considering posts at One Poet’s Notes or browsing the poetry and prose among the thousands of pages of Valparaiso Poetry Review, best wishes for an enjoyable holiday season.

In addition, I would like to express appreciation to my co-editor at Valparaiso Fiction Review, Jonathan Bull, as well as the assistant editors (Emily Bahr, Ethan Grant, Rob Onofrey, Ellen Orner, and Jeremy Reed) who have worked diligently to initiate this new literary review for quality short fiction. Now that Valparaiso Poetry Review has published twenty-five issues, appearance of a new sister publication devoted to fiction seems overdue. I am pleased to note that the debut issue of Valparaiso Fiction Review is scheduled for publication on December 1, and I will include on this blog an announcement of its availability at that time.

As always, I am thankful for the kindness and consideration often offered by friends or family, and I am especially grateful for the love of my wife Pam and my son Alex. I wish everyone a happy holiday weekend, and I hope all will continue to visit in the future to find interesting and informative writings. Finally, on this special occasion I offer a Thanksgiving poem of my own:

THANKSGIVING: BEFORE LEAVING FOR HOME

. . . . . I

At first, one row of clouds fell below that nearby
. . . . . mountain ridge and we could feel the swift wind

of winter’s initial cold front suddenly sweeping
. . . . . across a gray field, still darkened by their stain,

or throwing about those leaves blowing like snow
. . . . . into drifts along the ground all around our rented

house; even today, we know there is no way this
. . . . . day will ever recede very far from our memories.

. . . . . II

Not much more than a few hours earlier, you
. . . . . and I had again awakened long before morning’s

sunrise, though our windows were then whitened
. . . . . by moonlight, to the sound of our young son’s

cries for someone to come to him. As if those
. . . . . roaming shadows that had emerged were thieves,

he’d felt loss move through his room from dresser
. . . . . to desk to chest; an absence had already taken place.

. . . . . III

Who knew the hospital would be so far away?
. . . . . Beneath black branches, wind-thinned and arching

overhead, almost as dark as those cavern walls
. . . . . we’d visited earlier in our vacation, a stark road

wound around the edge of town, coiling toward
. . . . . some distant hint of morning light just beginning

to glint up ahead; at last, with each shallow swallow
. . . . . he’d breathe, we now could see how close we were.

[“Thanksgiving: Before Leaving for Home” is among the poems included in my collection, Seeded Light, published by Turning Point Books.]

Jeff Knorr: “Winter Turkeys”

2011-11-22T00:12:00.001-06:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is “Winter Turkeys” by Jeff Knorr, which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2003-2004 issue (Volume V, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Jeff Knorr is the author of two books of poetry, Standing Up to the Day (Pecan Grove Press, 1999) and The Third Body (Cherry Grove Collections, 2007), as well as a collection of essays and poems, Keeper (Mammoth Books, 2004). His other works include: Mooring Against the Tide: Writing Poetry and Fiction (Prentice Hall, 2000), which he co-authored with Tim Schell; an anthology he edited titled A Writer's Country (Prentice Hall, 2000); and The River Sings: An Introduction to Poetry (Prentice Hall, 2003). He is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Sacramento City College.

Tuesday of each week One Poet’s Notes highlights an exceptional work by a poet selected from the archives of Valparaiso Poetry Review with the recommendation that readers revisit it.

VPR Pushcart Prize Nominations: 2011

2011-11-20T14:25:00.000-06:00

Since 1976, editor Bill Henderson has brought added recognition to the many fine small presses and literary journals publishing quality material with his annual anthology, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. In recent years, the nomination process for the Pushcart Prize has been opened to online journals and their editors. I have been pleased to see this acknowledgment of the quality of writing found in many electronic publications. Therefore, I am honored to offer the half-dozen works listed below as the 2011 nominees from Valparaiso Poetry Review for the Pushcart Prize. I hope readers will again view this action as an expression of VPR’s endorsement for the inclusion of literature from online magazines in the long-standing tradition of this fine anthology.

As I have continually mentioned when nominating works from Valparaiso Poetry Review for the additional recognition of an award or further publication in any “best of” anthology, I value all the poems and depend on all the poets in VPR; therefore, such decisions are not easy. Yet, I welcome the admirable efforts of the Pushcart Press and Bill Henderson to bring attention to the excellent literary works found in small presses and journals, in print and online. Moreover, I am grateful when an opportunity arises for a few of VPR’s splendid poets to reach an even larger audience and find the greater recognition they deserve through possible inclusion in such an anthology.

I am proud to announce the six following poems represent the 2011 nominations from Valparaiso Poetry Review to be considered for inclusion in the next volume by the Pushcart Press, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses XXXVII, which is scheduled to be published in 2012:

PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEES FROM VALPARAISO POETRY REVIEW

Walter Bargen: “Prague Flood, 2002”

Deborah Bogen: “Dakota Schism”

Jared Carter: “War”

Carol V. Davis: “Singer and His Sewing Machine”

Patricia Fargnoli: “The Weight”

Mary Makofske: “In the Braille Garden”

I congratulate each of these poets, and I wish to express my appreciation to all the contributors whose works have appeared in VPR.

Photo Friday: “Waterfall Under Sunlight”

2011-11-18T00:06:00.000-06:00

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National Endowment for the Arts and National Book Award Winners

2011-11-17T15:28:00.010-06:00

Today, the National Endowment for the Arts announced this year’s creative writing fellowships granted to the following 40 fiction writers:

Bergstraesser, Paul
Bernard, Sean
Biss, Eula
Boggs, Belle
Chambers, Veronica
Clement, Jennifer
Czepiel, Katherine Leonard
De Robertis, Carolina
Dermont, Amber
Fisher, Karen
Haigh, Jennifer
Harper, Jean
Heathcock, Alan
Hendrickson, Paul
Holeton, Richard
Hoque, Abeer
Jones, Nalini
Jones, Tayari
Kalman, Nadia
Khakpour, Porochista
La Farge, Paul
Lancelotta, Victoria
Lychack, William
Manseau, Peter
Matson, Suzanne
McCallum-Smith, Susan
Murray, Sabina
O'Neill, Joseph
Percy, Benjamin
Percy, Jennifer
Ponce, Pedro
Ray, Shann
Sanders, Ted
Sheffield, Elisabeth
Soileau, Stephanie
Spatz, Gregory
Strickley, Sarah A.
Tel, Jonathan Vasicek
Vasicek, René Georg,
Wieland, Mitch

Last night, the National Book Award winners for fiction and poetry were announced with the following results: Jesmyn Ward won in the fiction category for her novel, Salvage the Bones, and Nikky Finney won in the poetry category for her collection of poems, Head Off & Split. The finalists in fiction were Andrew Krivak for The Sojourn, Téa Obreht for The Tiger’s Wife, Julie Otsuka for The Buddha in the Attic, and Edith Pearlman for Binocular Vision. The finalists in poetry were Yusef Komunyakaa for The Chameleon Couch, Carl Phillips for Double Shadow, Adrienne Rich for Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010, and Bruce Smith for Devotions.

The editors of Valparaiso Fiction Review and Valparaiso Poetry Review congratulate all these deserving writers. In addition, I would like to add a personal note of appreciation to my former teacher, John Ashbery, who also received an award last night from the National Book Foundation for his lifetime achievement in poetry.

Poem of the Week: “Singer and His Sewing Machine” by Carol V. Davis

2011-11-15T00:05:00.000-06:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Carol V. Davis’s “Singer and His Sewing Machine,” which appears in the Fall/Winter 2011-2012 issue (Volume XIII, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review—the 25th issue of the journal—that was recently released.

Carol V. Davis won the 2007 T.S. Eliot Prize for Into the Arms of Pushkin: Poems of St. Petersburg (Truman State University Press, 2007). Twice a Fulbright scholar in Russia, (1996-7, 2005), she was the 2008 poet-in-residence at Olivet College, MI and teaches at Santa Monica College, CA. Her poetry has been read on NPR radio and on Radio Russia and has appeared in such journals as Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, Natural Bridge, Crab Orchard Review, Mid-American Review, etc. She read at the Library of Congress in Nov. 2010. Her new book, Between Storms, will be published by Truman State University Press in 2012.

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.

“November Morning: Two Crows” from Autism: A Poem

2011-11-14T00:06:00.001-06:00

As I have mentioned previously, I have created a separate blog site as an open experiment of poetry composition, perhaps a glimpse at an emerging manuscript as it matures. The contents represent portions of an ongoing personal project with a particularly narrow focus intended to eventually develop toward a book-length poem tentatively and simply titled Autism.

The poem will grow as sections are added. The individual pieces are designed so that they may be viewed as independent items; however, I have consciously carried themes, images, and language through the extended sequence with the hope that connectivity and continuity will be preserved among numerous sections of the long poem.

I have now posted a new section, “November Morning: Two Crows.”

Readers are asked to regard Autism as a work in progress, a partial draft rather than a finished product (even if some selected segments previously may have appeared in print), and I request everyone realize various revisions—edits, emendations, or expansion—may be made to the posts at any time in the future.

In addition, I would like to remind readers that a portion of this poetry series in progress was released in March as Dark Refuge, an audio chapbook by Whale Sound. The dozen poems in that chapbook represent a narrative designed as a poetic sequence, part of this overall project of poetry I have been composing about particular observations or impressions concerning the characteristics and consequences associated with autism through a poetic chronicling of personal experiences with Alex.

Dark Refuge is available for readers to experience in differing formats: as online audio, online text, free downloadable mp3, pdf, e-book, print edition, and cd. Therefore, I also urge readers to visit the main page for Dark Refuge.

Photo Friday: “Autumn Sun”

2011-11-11T00:09:00.000-06:00

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Poem of the Week: “Through Ends of Autumn” by John A. Nieves

2011-11-08T00:09:00.000-06:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is John A. Nieves’ “Through Ends of Autumn,” which appears in the Fall/Winter 2011-2012 issue (Volume XIII, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review—the 25th issue of the journal—that was recently released.

John A. Nieves has poems published or forthcoming in journals such as Redivider, Fugue, Minnesota Review, Cortland Review, Adirondack Review, New Mexico Poetry Review, California Quarterly, and Florida Review. He is currently in the Creative Writing Ph.D. Program at the University of Missouri.

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.

Review of David Orr’s BEAUTIFUL & POINTLESS

2011-11-06T15:10:00.004-06:00

The new issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review, released a few weeks ago, includes my review of David Orr’s critical commentary on poetry, Beautiful & Pointless.

A LABOR OF LOVE: DAVID ORR’S BEAUTIFUL & POINTLESS: A GUIDE TO MODERN POETRY

Regularly, during the past quarter century, a number of books have been published announcing or debating “the death of poetry” in contemporary culture. The reports and arguments concerning this issue seem to have sparked energetic conversations or engendered a degree of conflict among many poets and academics, particularly since the discussion has coincided with a steep rise in the number of graduate creative writing programs at American universities and the enormous growth of membership in AWP (The Association of Writers & Writing Programs). Indeed, on the surface, some might suggest the greater enrollments in our nation’s MFA creative writing programs—whose merits also always appear to be subjects of an ongoing controversy—and the evidence of overflowing crowds at annual AWP conferences in recent years would seem to contradict any claims about a downward spiral in attention to literature and writing, particularly poetry.

In addition, occasionally observers in the literary community offer further indicators they say speak to the health of interest in poetry, such as the sudden and tremendous presence of poetry in online journals or other Internet venues during this century’s initial decade. Others point to the popularity of spoken word poetry in live performances or on cable television specials, as well as in thousands of YouTube video presentations readily available to all. Opposing voices may acknowledge, and even welcome, these developments, but they recommend such activities at best represent evidence of a transition away from printed volumes of poetry and a migration from what might be perceived as serious art prevalent in the tradition of the poetry canon. They would accept every attention poetry receives, but would also compare most of the products in these new forms of delivery to an ordinary kind of pop poetry that, like pop music, has more in common with current fads than classical works.

As I began reading David Orr’s Beautiful & Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry, I wondered how his commentary would contribute to the present perceptions of poetry among readers, poets, critics, and academics. Immediately in the volume’s introduction, Orr acknowledges recent concerns with the state of American poetry and its readership: “For decades now, one of the poetry world’s favorite activities has been bemoaning its lost audience, then bemoaning the bemoaning, then bemoaning that bemoaning, until finally everyone shrugs and applies for a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.” I must confess I was heartened to notice the tone taken by Orr in the book’s opening pages—and his hint that the debate over “the death of poetry” had reached a certain level of tediousness—as well as his belief that “such arguments are interesting only to (some) poets.”

The book’s introductory comments also reveal that its subtitle, A Guide to Modern Poetry, might be a misnomer, since Orr’s intentions do not include the sort of survey and study of modern poetry one might expect from a textbook or critical treatise. Indeed, Orr’s use of the term “modern poetry” is not limited to those poets of the modern era, such as Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Williams, etc. Instead, the author usually speaks of more contemporary poets whom he freely groups under the “modern” label. He also advises readers: “this book will try to give you a sense of what modern poets think about, how those poets talk about what they’re thinking about, and most important, how an individual poetry reader relates to the art he usually likes, always loves, and is frequently annoyed by.” Orr confesses to an avoidance of strict critical or academic standards in his explorations and explanations of poetry....

I invite visitors to examine my entire review of David Orr’s book, as well as to read the rest of Valparaiso Poetry Review’s Fall/Winter 2011-2012 issue, the journal’s 25th issue.

Beginning of Basketball Season

2011-11-05T00:07:00.006-05:00

A number of times I have written posts for this blog that discuss basketball, usually in relation to poems about the subject. I have repeatedly expressed my fondness for the sport, particularly on the college level. Indeed, for decades I have had season tickets to Valparaiso University basketball games, and I have always looked forward to attending exhibition games at the end of October, as well as the official beginning of the season at the start of November. In addition, I have described how basketball has remained an activity I enjoy with my son.

As anyone who has viewed the film Hoosiers understands, basketball in Indiana exists on all levels as more than a sport. The game is an element in the state’s history and culture, part of the profile defined by numerous basketball nets in driveways and backboards nailed to garages or barns, as well as the busy courts in playgrounds or schoolyards in all of the 92 counties. As I have mentioned in one of my posts about literature and basketball: “for many in Indiana the winter months are more closely associated with basketball than any literary conference. With its location in Indiana, Valparaiso University’s identity in sports naturally focuses on basketball. After all, throughout the state, communities have long regarded winter as the season when news of high school basketball games dominates not only the sports sections of local papers, but sometimes also front page headlines. Although most often attached to high school basketball, especially before the state made its misguided shift to class categories, Hoosier Hysteria and the legend of the underdog team additionally extends to Indiana college basketball, particularly those smaller programs in Division I that are called the mid-majors,” such as Valparaiso—known for the dramatic Bryce Drew game-winning shot replayed on television again and again during every NCAA tournament—or Butler—the surprising runner-up team in the NCAA championship game each of the past two years.

Notably, due to the ongoing labor dispute leading to a lockout in the NBA, which has closed out the first two months of professional play and threatens to derail an entire season, the college game will likely receive added attention this year from the television networks and all basketball fans. Therefore, now that the exhibition games are over and the official schedule begins this Monday with opening contests that include a very tough visit to 16th-ranked Arizona by Valparaiso, I thought I would celebrate the new season by reminding readers of a few past blog posts, some with video of action effectively evoking the exciting atmosphere of college basketball: “AWP Conference, Basketball in Indiana: Metaphors and Made Shots,” “Memories of March Madness and the AWP, Basketball and Poetry,” “Basketball with Alex,” “March Madness and B.H. Fairchild’s ‘Old Men Playing Basketball,’” and “Indiana Basketball, Homer Drew, and ‘Jumpshots in the Dark.’”

Photo Friday: “Walden Pond: Valparaiso, IN”

2011-11-04T00:11:00.000-05:00

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“Snow Squalls” from TINTED DISTANCES

2011-11-03T01:10:00.004-05:00

Last weekend as I watched television reports about the unusual early snowstorm moving up the East Coast and barreling through New England, I was reminded of the weather transitions I have witnessed in northern Indiana each year during autumn months. Following comments on social media by friends and relatives caught in the path of the storm or observing news stories about how the late-October combination of wind and snow toppled trees still heavy with leaves, causing extensive electrical outages, I thought of similar scenes I have seen here in the past. Although this fall has been mild by normal standards for the region, there have been a number of times when snowstorms arrived in northern Indiana during the end of October or beginning of November. One memorable Halloween storm caused a terrible airplane disaster when a passenger jet plummeted into a soybean field whitened by sleet and snow at a nearby farm in 1994. All 68 on board died in the crash.

Nevertheless, more than anything else, the first half of November often seems simply a reminder of the continual need to adjust for change, whether that merely be trading the lawn mower for the snow blower in the storage shed or more grandly involve recognizing the temporal yet cyclical nature of life itself through the shift in seasons and the returning images of bare trees or empty gardens in an increasingly wintry looking landscape. Though I often imagine living in a tropical climate where the days are always warm and sunny, I must acknowledge the enduring fascination I hold for the four seasons and the characteristics they display in my part of the world every year, an interest frequently reflected in my poetry. Despite the frigid snowbound January mornings when I confess to an envy of those I know inhabiting more temperate regions of the country, I confide a certain pleasure derived from the variety of climate conditions exhibited during the course of a quartet of distinctly different seasons.

When I lived among the western mountains for four years, I looked forward to and valued the cold dry snow that often powdered trees and covered ski slopes on late autumn mornings, but the adhesiveness of heavy wet snow accompanying November squalls with winds whipping off Lake Michigan offers another sort of beauty, which also can be appreciated and present a lesson concerning transformation or acclimation. Consequently, as November begins again and I anticipate the first snowfall that surely will occur sometime this month, signaling another notable change in seasons, I offer the following timely poem from my recently released collection, Tinted Distances:

SNOW SQUALLS

Early November and just a few fitful leaves
. . . . . still linger on thin fruit trees leaning beside

our back fence, though lifting in that wind
. . . . . drift bringing shifting rows of snow squalls

over an empty stretch of meadow. Already,
. . . . . all across this landscape seems bleached out.

Each of these features now appears changed
. . . . . to a paler shade of gray the way deck wood

weathers in winter or rich colors of printed
. . . . . images often will blanch under summer sun.

By tomorrow morning, this short storm also
. . . . . may fade away, the skeletal shapes of bared

branches will be the only things that remain
. . . . . to frame those frozen fields yet whitening

beneath brightening skies and the far scarves
. . . . . of clouds darkening the line of the horizon.

I invite readers to discover more about the poetry in Tinted Distances, and I remind everyone that the volume is available for purchase.

Poem of the Week: “China Poem” by Liz Robbins

2011-11-01T00:07:00.000-05:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Liz Robbins’ “China Poem,” which appears in the Fall/Winter 2011-2012 issue (Volume XIII, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review—the 25th issue of the journal—that was recently released.

Liz Robbins’ new manuscript, Play Button, won the 2010 Cider Press Review Book Award, judged by Patricia Smith. Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Greensboro Review, MARGIE, New Ohio Review, Puerto del Sol, and Rattle, and are forthcoming in Barn Owl Review, Bayou, Gargoyle, and Poet Lore. Poems from her first book, Hope, As the World Is a Scorpion Fish (Backwaters Press), were featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac and Verse Daily. She’s an assistant professor of creative writing at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida, and presented her poems this past April at a New York Institute of Technology conference in Nanjing, China.

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 visit it.

Alison Stine Reviewed by Nick Ripatrazone

2011-10-30T12:53:00.003-05:00

The new issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review, released this month, includes a review by Nick Ripatrazone of Alison Stine’s second collection of poetry, Wait.

ALISON STINE: WAIT

We know that charged whispers can be louder than screams, and the same goes for poetry. Wait, Alison Stine’s second collection of poems, is not a muted book; rather, a carefully calculated arrangement from a poet well aware of the need for the pacing of pitch. Several of the 38 poems in this book span two pages, and Stine’s talent for architecture is clear: her attention to threading sentences across lines feels more careful than deliberate. The result is authentic narrative poems, and a wholly singular, hauntingly pastoral vision.

The title poem is written in the collective voice, and is a useful introduction to the book: Wait feels like a text composed of different perspectives, and yet they all reside within a similar tone. There is a clear dialogue between the sexes, a place where “men / called but could not find us.” Stine’s play with “wait” is rich. A curious verb, it at once represents the current action of anticipation yet requires the future condition of expectation. What is the point of waiting if one is not found?

Wait chronicles the year leading to a woman’s marriage, though that through-line is fleshed with the eccentric characters and narratives of the setting....

I invite visitors to examine the entire review of Alison Stine’s book, as well as to read the rest of Valparaiso Poetry Review’s Fall/Winter 2011-2012 issue, the journal’s 25th issue.

Photo Friday: “The End of Baseball Season”

2011-10-28T00:11:00.000-05:00

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Poem of the Week: “Trick” by Stephen Lackaye

2011-10-25T00:04:00.001-05:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Stephen Lackaye’s “Trick,” which appears in the Fall/Winter 2011-2012 issue (Volume XIII, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review—the 25th issue of the journal—that was released last week.

Stephen Lackaye’s manuscript, Claims, has been a finalist or semi-finalist for awards including the Elixir Press Open Competition, Brittingham/Pollak Prizes, and the Patricia Bibby First Book Award. His poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in The Normal School, Los Angeles Review, Cave Wall, Pinch, Poet Lore, Sow’s Ear, Dos Passos Review, and other literary journals. He holds an MSc from the University of Edinburgh and an MFA from Johns Hopkins University, where he teaches in The Writing Seminars.

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 visit it.

Martha Silano Reviewed by Barbara Crooker

2011-10-23T17:55:00.003-05:00

The new issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review, released last week, includes a review by Barbara Crooker of a recent poetry volume, The Little Offices of the Immaculate Conception, written by Martha Silano.

OUT OF THIS WORLD: MARTHA SILANO’S THE LITTLE OFFICES OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

Martha Silano’s third full-length collection, The Little Offices of the Immaculate Conception, contains poems that are simply out of this world. That’s not hyperbole; almost two-thirds of the poems in this book deal with some aspect of the extraterrestrial. But these aren’t poems with their head in the stars; rather, they’re firmly grounded in crumbs, crickets, and the stuff of daily life with two small children, a blend of what Campbell McGrath calls the “quotidian and celestial.” These poems veer from the galactic (“I Live on Milk Street,” ie, the Milky Way) to the down and dirty (slugs attacking pole beans). Silano shuffles poems about the cosmos and the existence of God with poems about the everyday (“This Parenting Thing”), and she does this with panache, humor and wit. Reading Martha Silano is like ripping open a bag of pop rocks; words explode in the mouth with juice, jive, and fizz. Some of the ways she makes this happen are via diction and word choice, syntax, strategy, rhythm, and humor. But always, she keeps in mind her larger themes: the strange and the alien, the earthly and the terrestrial, family and parenting.

Silano often uses titles to announce these themes, beginning with the other-worldly: “They know all about us on Andromeda,” “Crickets, God, Phan Ku, Pickles, Synergy, a Wayside Church, Anaxagoras, Anaximander, More Crickets, the Cosmos,” “What I Will Tell the Aliens,” “My Place in the Universe,” and the aforementioned “I Live on Milk Street.” She might set up a poem like this, anchoring an image in one spot, then letting the poem open outward, finally ending up someplace else, reversing expectations: “Because I knew you’d understand this—you, me our sibling // earthlings, our sibling citizens of this swirly world, / which only grows bluer the farther away from it we get.” (“Because I Knew”) “Sibling/earthlings” echoes nicely, while the image of Earth as a “swirly world,” again with an ear to sound, follows the motion of the poem as it telescopes outward. Having the earth grow bluer as seen from space moves the emphasis from the earthbound to the ether, giving the poem an interesting shift in perspective that purposefully keeps the reader slightly off-kilter.

The poems in this book slip back and forth from the cosmological to the liturgical. Barbara Hamby says that “Martha Silano is jitterbugging with the gods,” and that is an apt summation. Her engagement with the ineffable is not via orthodoxy, but rather, the wonderfully irreverent. . . .

I invite visitors to examine the entire review of Martha Silano’s book, as well as to read the rest of Valparaiso Poetry Review’s Fall/Winter 2011-2012 issue, the journal’s 25th issue.

Photo Friday: “Late Bloomers”

2011-10-21T00:06:00.000-05:00

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Ned Balbo Reviewed by Angela Alaimo O'Donnell

2011-10-20T12:16:00.005-05:00

The new issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review, released earlier this week, includes Ned Balbo as the featured poet, and it contains a review by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell of his recent poetry volume, The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems.

NED BALBO: THE TRIALS OF EDGAR POE AND OTHER POEMS

Ned Balbo’s new book, The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems, is a brave foray into the sometimes terrifying world of childhood. The collection, which won the Donald Justice Prize in 2010, consists of 25 well-wrought formal poems, each one substantial and some (such as, “Hart Island,” a powerful blank-verse narrative at the heart of the book) qualifying as tour-de-force in terms of their deeply imaginative engagement of the subject and the deftness of the poet’s craft. In fact, this combination of grave content and lively formal wit characterizes the book as a whole, creating for the fortunate reader a world that is simultaneously haunting and high-spirited, woeful and playful.

Childhood is common ground every one of us shares—our center of origin, a landscape of intense, relentless, and rapid change wherein our hopes and fears, loves and antipathies, talents and weaknesses have their genesis and generation. Within its precincts, for better or for worse, we become who we are. This shared terrain, and our seemingly inexhaustible interest in exploring it, is one reason for the enormous appeal of Balbo’s work, past and present. Readers familiar with his previous work, particularly his first book, Galileo’s Banquet (1998), will recognize this as territory the poet knows well and has probed with characteristic sensitivity and nuance. (It is worth noting that Balbo’s first book won the Towson University Prize for Literature and his second, Lives of the Sleepers, won the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry in 2005, thus establishing The Trials of Edgar Poe as the third in a trifecta of prize-winning collections.) In his new book, Balbo approaches his theme from a fresh perspective—or, rather, a series of fresh perspectives—as he narrates the circumstances of his own difficult childhood intermingling them with the stories of others who have endured loss, insecurity, and disillusionment at a young age.

Most prominent among the book’s afflicted children is Edgar Poe, a figure Balbo identifies with as a fellow-poet whose artistic disposition is related to the sense of abandonment he experienced as a child. In addition, the poet is drawn to a host of motherless, fatherless, and otherwise vulnerable creatures, including the actual, the historical, the fictional, and the mythic. From Frankenstein’s “son” to Batman’s orphaned apprentice, Robin; from James Whale’s hunted “Invisible Man” to Jules Verne’s hapless young Harry; from Fanny Allan (Poe’s foster mother and caretaker, herself an orphan) to Don O- (Balbo’s fatherless birth father)—and embracing even “the nameless dead” children buried by the thousands at Hart Island, New York City’s potter’s field—Balbo’s book gathers together a company of rejected, forgotten, and misbegotten souls whose identities and lives have been (de)formed and (mis)shaped by childhood circumstance. In the course of the book, childhood becomes a land of unlikeness that is also eerily familiar; thus, it should not surprise us when we find ourselves in these pages. . .

I invite visitors to examine the entire review of The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems, as well as to read the rest of Valparaiso Poetry Review’s Fall/Winter 2011-2012 issue, the journal’s 25th issue.

Poem of the Week: “October Snow” by Doug Rampseck

2011-10-18T00:06:00.000-05:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Doug Ramspeck’s “October Snow,” which appears in the Fall/Winter 2011-2012 issue (Volume XIII, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review—the 25th issue of the journal—that has just been released.

Doug Ramspeck's poetry collection, Black Tupelo Country, was awarded the 2007 John Ciardi Prize for Poetry and was published in 2008 by BkMk. His poems have appeared in West Branch, Rattle, Confrontation Magazine, Connecticut Review, Nimrod, Hunger Mountain, and Hayden's Ferry Review. He directs the Writing Center and teaches creative writing and composition at The Ohio State University at Lima.

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 visit it.

Publication Announcement: 25th Issue of VPR

2011-10-17T00:04:00.003-05:00

I am pleased to announce publication of the 25th issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review. The Fall/Winter 2011-2012 issue (Volume XIII, Number 1) of VPR includes Ned Balbo as the featured poet. Readers will find in the contents a trio of new poems by Balbo, as well as a review of his latest book, The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems.

In addition to Balbo, 35 other poets are represented in this new release of VPR. The issue also includes reviews of recent books by David Orr, Martha Silano, Alison Stine, and Larry D. Thomas. Gregg Hertzlieb contributes commentary on the cover artwork by Jim Dine.

VALPARAISO POETRY REVIEW

Volume XIII, Number 1
Fall/Winter 2011-20112

Contents:

Featured Poet: Ned Balbo

Additional Poets: David B. Axelrod, Lisa Barnett, Michael Bazzett, Philip Belcher, Deborah Bogen, Karina Borowicz, Sarah Busse, Jared Carter, Joanne M. Clarkson, Carol V. Davis, Susan Donnelly, William Ford, Rebecca Foust, Ron Houchin, Bethany Schultz Hurst, Marci Rae Johnson, Greg Keeler, Stephen Lackaye, Sandy Longhorn, Sheryl Luna, Mary Makofske, John A. Nieves, Edward Nudelman, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, William Page, Rita Signorelli-Pappas, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, Allan Peterson, Doug Ramspeck, Liz Robbins, Brian Simoneau, Joannie Stangeland, Jeanine Stevens, Robin Tung, Shari Wagner

Reviews: Ned Balbo Reviewed by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell; Martha Silano Reviewed by Barbara Crooker; Alison Stine Reviewed by Nick Ripatrazone; Larry D. Thomas Reviewed by Jeffrey Alfier; David Orr Reviewed by Edward Byrne

Cover Art Commentary: Gregg Hertzlieb on Jim Dine’s Rancho Woodcut Art

Recently Received and Recommended Books

I continue to be grateful for all the ongoing support Valparaiso Poetry Review has received from contributors and readers. I invite visitors to examine the Fall/Winter 2011-2012 issue, and I urge everyone to revisit the numerous entertaining, engaging, and enlightening works published in the previous twenty-four issues of VPR that continue to be available through the archives sections of the journal.

—Edward Byrne, Editor

Photo Friday: “Entering Autumn”

2011-10-14T00:06:00.000-05:00

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Susan Elbe’s “Constellations”

2011-10-12T00:08:00.002-05:00

I was pleased to learn Monday that Susan Elbe’s poem, “Constellations,” from the Spring/Summer 2011 issue (Volume XII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review has been chosen as Verse Daily’s Web Weekly feature this week. I am also delighted to note that a number of poets from previous issues of VPR have had their works acknowledged as past selections by Verse Daily, including David Baker, Annette Basalyga, J.P. Dancing Bear, Sheila Black, R.G. Evans, Paul Hostovsky, Robin Kemp, Muriel Nelson, Allen Peterson, and Margot Schilpp. I congratulate each of these poets, and I am grateful whenever such recognition arises for the high quality of poems evident in every issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Poem of the Week: “Aphasia” by Jennifer MacPherson

2011-10-11T00:15:00.000-05:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Jennifer MacPherson’s “Aphasia,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2008 issue (Volume IX, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Jennifer MacPherson is a founding editor of Comstock Review, and she currently serves as Senior Editor. Her work has been published widely in such journals as Calyx, Connecticut Review, Louisiana Literature, The MacGuffin, Poet Lore, Poetry International, Sulphur River Literary Review, and South Carolina Review. She is the author Stuck in Time (2002) and Greatest Hits (2001), both from Pudding House Press. Her other collections include A Nickel Tour of the Soul (FootHills Press, 2004), and In the Mixed Gender of the Sea (Spire Press, 2004) which won the Spire Press Poetry Book Award. Her latest book is Rosary of Bones (Cherry Grove Collections, 2007). A school psychologist for over twenty-five years, MacPherson lives in Syracuse, NY.

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.

Photo Friday: “Storm Front”

2011-10-07T00:10:00.001-05:00

[Click Image to Enlarge]

“New Construction” from Autism: A Poem

2011-10-06T00:12:00.002-05:00

As I have mentioned previously, I have created a separate blog site as an open experiment of poetry composition, perhaps a glimpse at an emerging manuscript as it matures. The contents represent portions of an ongoing personal project with a particularly narrow focus intended to eventually develop toward a book-length poem tentatively and simply titled Autism.

The poem will grow as sections are added. The individual pieces are designed so that they may be viewed as independent items; however, I have consciously carried themes, images, and language through the extended sequence with the hope that connectivity and continuity will be preserved among numerous sections of the long poem.

I have now posted a new section, “New Construction.”

Readers are asked to regard Autism as a work in progress, a partial draft rather than a finished product (even if some selected segments previously may have appeared in print), and I request everyone realize various revisions—edits, emendations, or expansion—may be made to the posts at any time in the future.

In addition, I would like to remind readers that a portion of this poetry series in progress was released in March as Dark Refuge, an audio chapbook by Whale Sound. The dozen poems in that chapbook represent a narrative designed as a poetic sequence, part of this overall project of poetry I have been composing about particular observations or impressions concerning the characteristics and consequences associated with autism through a poetic chronicling of personal experiences with Alex.

Dark Refuge is available for readers to experience in differing formats: as online audio, online text, free downloadable mp3, pdf, e-book, print edition, and cd. Therefore, I also urge readers to visit the main page for Dark Refuge.

Poem of the Week: “Blue Crow and Shadow” by Judith Montgomery

2011-10-04T00:10:00.001-05:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Judith Montgomery’s “Blue Crow and Shadow,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2010-2011 issue (Volume XII, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Judith Montgomery's poems have appeared in Bellingham Review, Gulf Coast, Northwest Review, and Southern Review, among other journals. Her poetry has also been published in several anthologies, including Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer's Disease. Montgomery's poetry collections include a full-length book, Red Jess (2006), as well as two chapbooks, Passion (2000) and Pulse & Constellation (2007).

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.

VPR “Best of the Net” 2011 Nominations

2011-10-02T18:09:00.004-05:00

Sundress Publications is again accepting nominations of poems published in online journals (between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011) for its annual “Best of the Net” anthology. As I have observed in the past, the editors of Sundress deserve praise for continuing to draw greater recognition to the presence of quality writing in online publications.

In previous posts to One Poet’s Notes, I have expressed my high regard for every poem among those listed in the table of contents for each issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review. I value all the poems and depend on all the poets in VPR, many of whom I have come to know well and have admired over the years. Determining the “best” poetry may be as hard to clearly define as the image of the poet in the accompanying painting by Miro. Nevertheless, I must acknowledge and accept occasions that allow some of VPR’s deserving poets an opportunity to reach a larger audience through special recognition or possible inclusion in an anthology.

Therefore, I have decided once more to adhere to the process I followed when making past nominations, which includes noting the numerous comments (concerning poems appearing in VPR’s pair of recent issues) that I have received in correspondence from readers or submitting poets throughout the past twelve months. In this manner, I obtained a sense of readers’ response to the poetry in the two issues of Volume XII (Fall/Winter 20010-20011 and Spring/Summer 2011), which are eligible for the upcoming 2011 edition of the Sundress “Best of the Net” anthology.

Aided by those observations from VPR’s readers, I offer the editors of Sundress six poems for consideration selected from the two issues in Volume XII of Valparaiso Poetry Review, and I am pleased to announce the following nominations:

T. Alan Broughton: “Acceleration”
Barbara Crooker: “Oriental Poppies”
Kate Fox: “No More”
Travis Mossotti: “My Brother's House”
Alison Pelegrin: “Bestiary of the Bayou State”
A.E. Stallings: “The Eldest Sister of Psyche”

I offer my congratulations to the nominated poets. At the same time I express my appreciation to all the contributors whose works have appeared in VPR this past year, as well as in previous years. I also hope this post encourages readers to continue communicating their feedback on writings in the journal, commentary I always enjoy receiving. Indeed, I am grateful for all the ongoing support Valparaiso Poetry Review has received from contributors and readers.

Photo Friday: “Faux Postcard”

2011-09-30T00:12:00.000-05:00

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Autism in Poetry and Prose

2011-09-28T00:07:00.002-05:00

As noted here a number of times, I have been composing an extended sequence of poetry, a work-in-progress titled Autism, which I share on a separate blog. The work presents lyrical illustrations reflecting experiences and observations involving my son Alex.

At the same time, I have previously mentioned that my wife maintains another blog, One Autism Mom’s Notes, which she describes as “reflections on raising a child with autism.” In her posts, Pam regularly displays another perspective through her prose, insightful journal entries that chronicle and comment upon the daily involvement of family members dealing with autism. She also offers a glimpse at the various efforts made over the years in attempting to assist our son as he copes with difficult challenges or tries to overcome some of the obstacles associated with autism. As in the past, I once again encourage readers to visit Pam’s blog.

However, today I also especially urge everyone to consider a new book, Wit and Wisdom from the Parents of Special Needs Kids. Released this week, the anthology—written by members of the blogging community who routinely examine, exhibit, explore, and explain issues confronted by families including children with special needs—presents readers with an array of concise narrative essays that express a vast range of various and honest emotions, from heartening to heartbreaking or amusement to anger.

The volume’s back cover declares: “More than forty essays are included in this unique compilation, covering topics such as sensory issues, the difficulties of social interaction, the impact on marriage and typical siblings, and the world of special education and therapies.”

I confess, my opinions about this book are not impartial ones, since I am proud to report that Pam contributes an essay, “Expecting the Unexpected,” in which she confides one of the approaches we have discovered necessary in order to perceive Alex’s complex schedule of personal growth—the stops and starts, slips and successes—something we have both hoped to capture in some of our writings about our son:

Through the years we have learned that Alex must always do things on his own terms when he’s good and ready. Progress for him isn’t always linear, and it certainly doesn’t follow the pattern outlined in child development books; however, progress always eventually comes, often when we least expect it. For us, life with autism has meant learning to wait patiently and celebrating successes when they arrive—essentially a matter of always expecting the unexpected.

The brief stories provided in this book by mothers or fathers of children on the autism spectrum are authentic and authoritative. These evocative vignettes are often enlightening, encouraging, engaging, enjoyable, and entertaining. For those interested in reading succinct, straightforward, informal, and intimate accounts of families’ experiences with autism, I recommend this collection.

Poem of the Week: “At the Annual Thresherman’s Show” by David Bond

2011-09-27T00:06:00.002-05:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is David Bond’s “At the Annual Thresherman’s Show,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2001-2002 issue (Volume III, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

David Bond has been a reader and taught classes at the Nimrod/Hardman Awards Conference at the University of Tulsa, the Binghamton University Poetry Conference, and the Around the Coyote Fall Arts Festival in Chicago, among other venues. His poems have appeared in a number of journals, including Black Dirt, Cape Rock, Farmer’s Market, Karamu, Mobius, National Forum, Rhino, Sou’Wester, Spoon River Poetry Review, and The Windless Orchard. His honors and prizes include the Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry in 2001 and 2005.

Tuesday of each week One Poet’s Notes highlights an exceptional work by a poet selected from the archives of Valparaiso Poetry Review with the recommendation that readers revisit it.

Poetry Stamps for 2012 Revealed

2011-09-24T08:52:00.004-05:00

Although Valparaiso Poetry Review stopped accepting postal submissions earlier this year, I was curious to see which literary figures would be included in the series of stamps dedicated to poets that will be issued by the U.S. Post Office in 2012. Above are images of the stamps that have been announced (click image to enlarge). The 10 poets featured: Joseph Brodsky (1940 - 1996); Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 - 2000); William Carlos Williams (1883 - 1963); Robert Hayden (1913 - 1980); Sylvia Plath (1932 - 1963); Elizabeth Bishop (1911 - 1979); Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955); Denise Levertov (1923 - 1997); e. e. cummings (1894 - 1962); and Theodore Roethke (1908 - 1963).

Photo Friday: “September Blossoms”

2011-09-23T00:08:00.000-05:00

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A.E. Stallings and Kay Ryan: MacArthur Fellows

2011-09-21T00:05:00.001-05:00

When the MacArthur Fellowships were reported this week, I was pleased to see two poets, A.E. Stallings and Kay Ryan, included among the 22 recipients. The MacArthur Fellowship supplies an award with a stipend of $500,000 to the recipient, paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years.

The announcement provided an additional delight, since Alicia Stallings was the Valparaiso Poetry Review featured poet for the Fall/Winter 2010-2011 issue, which included a group of her poems, an interview I conducted with the poet, and an essay by Angela Taraskiewicz about the poetry of Stallings. I urge everyone to revisit the issue.

Furthermore, I invite readers to examine my book review of Kay Ryan’s The Niagara River, which appeared in February of 2007 on One Poet’s Notes.

Poem of the Week: “Two Salesmen (Sunday Night, Fall 1961)” by Jeff Friedman

2011-09-20T00:14:00.002-05:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Jeff Friedman’s “Two Salesmen (Sunday Night, Fall 1961),” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2003 issue (Volume IV, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Jeff Friedman’s collection of poetry, Black Threads (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2007), was reviewed by Celia Bland in the Fall/Winter 2007-2008 issue (Volume IX, Number 1) of VPR. A previous book of poetry, Taking Down the Angel (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2003), was reviewed by William Doreski in the Spring/Summer 2004 issue (Volume V, Number 2) of VPR. Other poetry books by Friedman include Scattering the Ashes (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1998), and The Record-Breaking Heat Wave (BkMk Press — University of Missouri-Kansas City, 1986). Friedman’s work also has appeared widely in literary magazines, such as American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Manoa, New England Review, New Republic, Pleiades, and Poetry.

Tuesday of each week One Poet’s Notes highlights an exceptional work by a poet selected from the archives of Valparaiso Poetry Review 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.

Photo Friday: “Natural Solitude”

2011-09-16T00:10:00.002-05:00

[Click Image to Enlarge]

VALPARAISO FICTION REVIEW: Call for Submissions

2011-09-14T00:08:00.002-05:00

In May, I announced the launch of a new literary journal, Valparaiso Fiction Review, for which I am serving as a co-editor alongside Jonathan Bull. This semi-annual online magazine has been established to feature works of short fiction by new, emerging, and established authors, and it might be seen as a sister publication to Valparaiso Poetry Review. Once again, I am honored to state that Valparaiso Fiction Review, like VPR, will be published in association with Valparaiso University and its Department of English.

At the time of my announcement last spring, I presented a call for submissions to be considered for the debut issue of Valparaiso Fiction Review, which is scheduled for release in the beginning of December. I am delighted to report the response during the summer months since that message was posted has exceeded expectations, and I can offer my belief that contents in the initial issue of Valparaiso Fiction Review will be outstanding contributions to anyone's reading list of contemporary short stories. Indeed, I feel readers will also discover the premiere of VFR to be a valuable addition to the community of literary journals.

Consequently, I am pleased to note that Valparaiso Fiction Review is now reading manuscripts of short fiction for its spring issue, which is scheduled for publication in May of 2012. All pending manuscripts currently on hand will be considered for the spring issue. In addition, I invite readers of this blog to submit work for the upcoming issue, and I urge everyone to spread the word about this new venue for the publication of short stories. Guidelines for submission to Valparaiso Fiction Review are located at the following:

http://scholar.valpo.edu/vfr/

I also remind all that Valparaiso Fiction Review has its own address on Facebook. I invite everyone to visit the VFR Facebook page and click on the “like” icon to express support for this new literary journal:
http://www.facebook.com/valparaisofictionreview

Poem of the Week: “In the Late Summer Garden” by Barbara Crooker

2011-09-13T00:06:00.001-05:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Barbara Crooker’s “In the Late Summer Garden,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2001 issue (Volume II, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Barbara Crooker’s Radiance won the 2005 Word Press First Book Award and was a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize. Diane Lockward’s review of Radiance appeared in the Spring/Summer 2006 issue (volume VII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review. Crooker’s second full-length collection of poems, Line Dance, was also released by Word Press. In addition, she is the author of ten chapbooks, two of which won prizes in national competitions: Ordinary Life won the ByLine Chapbook competition in 2001 and Impressionism won the Grayson Books Chapbook competition in 2004. Barbara Crooker’s poems also have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Beloit Poetry Journal, Christian Century, Christian Science Monitor, Cream City Review, Denver Quarterly, Nimrod, Poetry International, Smartish Pace, and Tampa Review.

Tuesday of each week One Poet’s Notes highlights an exceptional work by a poet selected from the archives of Valparaiso Poetry Review 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.

Sharon Bryan at Valparaiso University: Sept. 14

2011-09-12T08:53:00.004-05:00

I am pleased to invite everyone in the region around Valparaiso University to a poetry presentation by Sharon Bryan this Wednesday, September 14, at 6:30 p.m. The reading will take place in the Community Commons Area of Mueller Hall. The poetry reading is free to the public, and all interested in poetry are welcome.

Sharon Bryan’s recent collection of poems, Sharp Stars (BOA Editions, 2009), received the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award. She has published three other books of poetry: Salt Air and Objects of Affection, both released by Wesleyan University Press, and Flying Blind (Sarabande Books). Bryan is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Discovery Prize awarded by The Nation, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as other literary prizes. She has also served as the co-editor of Planet on the Table: Poets on the Reading Life (Sarabande Books) and the editor of Where We Stand: Women Poets on Literary Tradition (W.W. Norton). She has been a poet-in-residence at The Frost Place, and she has been a faculty member as visiting writer at various universities, including Dartmouth and the University of Houston.

Photo Friday: “Yellow Rose”

2011-09-09T00:22:00.000-05:00

[Click Image to Enlarge]

Best Books of Indiana 2011 Finalists: Judges' Citations

2011-09-08T16:15:00.004-05:00

Poet Edward Byrne became the first entrant to have multiple finalist selections in a single year. —Drew Griffis, Director, Indiana Center for the Book

Poetry from Paradise Valley, edited by Edward Byrne

"Poetry from Paradise Valley is an excellent anthology that features world-class poetry, including the work of many artists from the Midwest, such as Jared Carter, Annie Finch, David Baker, and Allison Joseph. It’s an eclectic and always interesting collection where poems on similar themes flow into each other. It showcases the highest caliber of U. S. poetry."

Seeded Light, poems by Edward Byrne

"As the title implies, [Seeded Light] includes many poems where nature plays an important part. An emphasis on human relationships intertwines with natural description to give these poems philosophical and emotional depths. Byrne brings to life an old family farm gone fallow, a visit to an inn where the speaker spent his honeymoon, and Lester Young playing tenor sax."

—Indiana Center for the Book, Indiana State Library

“Disappearances” from Autism: A Poem

2011-09-07T00:12:00.002-05:00

As I have mentioned previously, I have created a separate blog site as an open experiment of poetry composition, perhaps a glimpse at an emerging manuscript as it matures. The contents represent portions of an ongoing personal project with a particularly narrow focus intended to eventually develop toward a book-length poem tentatively and simply titled Autism.

The poem will grow as sections are added. The individual pieces are designed so that they may be viewed as independent items; however, I have consciously carried themes, images, and language through the extended sequence with the hope that connectivity and continuity will be preserved among numerous sections of the long poem.

I have now posted a new section, “Disappearances.”

Readers are asked to regard Autism as a work in progress, a partial draft rather than a finished product (even if some selected segments previously may have appeared in print), and I request everyone realize various revisions—edits, emendations, or expansion—may be made to the posts at any time in the future.

In addition, I would like to remind readers that a portion of this poetry series in progress was released in March as Dark Refuge, an audio chapbook by Whale Sound. The dozen poems in that chapbook represent a narrative designed as a poetic sequence, part of this overall project of poetry I have been composing about particular observations or impressions concerning the characteristics and consequences associated with autism through a poetic chronicling of personal experiences with Alex.

Dark Refuge is available for readers to experience in differing formats: as online audio, online text, free downloadable mp3, pdf, e-book, print edition, and cd. Therefore, I also urge readers to visit the main page for Dark Refuge.

Poem of the Week: “‘The Morning America Changed’” by Stanley Plumly

2011-09-06T00:08:00.000-05:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Stanley Plumly’s “‘The Morning America Changed,’” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2002-2003 issue (Volume IV, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review. “‘The Morning America Changed,’” also was published in Poetry from Paradise Valley (Pecan Grove Press, 2010), an anthology of poems from the first decade of VPR recently selected as a finalist in poetry for the Best Books of Indiana competition sponsored by the Indiana Center for the Book, supported by the Indiana State Library

Stanley Plumly is the author of various books of poetry, essays, and criticism, including Now That My Father Lies Down Beside Me: New and Selected Poems 1970-2000. His recent publication is Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography. Plumly’s work has been honored with the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, the Ingram-Merrill Foundation Award, the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and nominations for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Plumly is Distinguished University Professor of English at the University of Maryland.

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.

Photo Friday: “Auto Focus”

2011-09-02T00:07:00.000-05:00

[Click Image to Enlarge]

Remembering Susan Fromberg Schaeffer (1940-2011)

2011-08-31T00:44:00.008-05:00

Over this past weekend I was saddened when I learned about the death of Susan Fromberg Schaeffer. Reports indicate that she died on Friday of a stroke. She was 71. Susan had already been in very poor health due to a previous stroke she had suffered a few years ago that greatly affected her mobility and deprived her of speech.

I am honored to state that Susan had been a teacher and strong supporter of my writing when I was discovering my way as an undergraduate student as well as during graduate years obtaining an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Brooklyn College. Indeed, when I changed my major to English in the middle of my sophomore year, Susan provided valuable and encouraging advice. I admired the novels—Falling and Anya, still one of my favorites—and the poetry collection, Granite Lady, she was producing while I was her student, and I regarded her as a mentor whose opinion mattered to me very much.

During my senior year, as Susan was putting together plans for the M.F.A. program in creative writing she co-founded at Brooklyn College, she approached me with an offer to be among the members of its first class. At the time, openings in creative writing graduate studies were rare since the number of such programs nationally only amounted to about a dozen. Today, hundreds of universities contain graduate creative writing programs. Susan knew I had been considering a recommendation from another teacher, Mark Strand, to join the Writers’ Workshop of his alma mater at the University of Iowa; however, I had family, a job, social connections, and personal obligations in New York I felt I could not leave at that time. Also, I wasn’t completely sure yet that a graduate degree in creative writing was the right route for me to follow.

I remember Susan generously inviting me to her home not far from the college campus and explaining I could maintain all my ties in New York while furthering my study of writing, which she felt was important. Moreover, her main point of persuasion included the fact that she wanted me to take courses from a prominent new faculty member who was being brought in to help introduce the program, John Ashbery. Despite all she had taught me, she believed I would benefit more from his guidance. Thankfully, Susan’s argument was compelling, and I agreed to enroll in that initial graduate class in creative writing at Brooklyn College. This decision set in motion a shift in direction that has determined the path I have followed ever since.

Furthermore, as I was completing my M.F.A., Susan suggested to editor Al Poulin the poetry manuscript I was writing as my thesis, declaring it would be ideal for publication by his press, BOA Editions. Poulin also received a second recommendation from John Ashbery. When Poulin solicited and accepted the manuscript, he asked Ashbery to write a foreword for the book. Susan had modestly agreed that John was the right person to contribute the preface for my work. Eventually, the publication of that first collection and its selection as a finalist for a distinguished book award assured my place for a fellowship in a competitive Ph.D. program at Utah, which led to my career as an English professor at Valparaiso University.

More than a decade later, when Valparaiso University hosted a series of visits by authors who had written novels concerning the Vietnam War, I was pleased to invite Susan to campus as a participant on a panel discussing literature about war and as a speaker to offer a reading from her book, Buffalo Afternoon, as well as to explain the extensive research she had done interviewing Vietnam veterans. Throughout her discussions about her work and her process of writing, Susan demonstrated the deliberate approach to detail evidenced in her publications, and she charmed all with her self-effacing humor.

Although she delighted my students and me with her presence and the wonderful talk she delivered, Susan kindly confided to me that upon receiving my invitation, she had been more interested in witnessing the point at which I had arrived in my journey since those early days when I was a student just starting to explore the possibilities of language in her introductory creative writing class. We reminisced quite a bit during the days of her visit. Indeed, I remember fondly our conversations during the four hours of driving in my car to and from Indianapolis. I thanked her a number of times for the wise advice and heartening encouragement she had given me when I needed such counsel and support as a beginning writer.

Susan Fromberg Schaeffer authored fourteen novels, a half dozen poetry collections, a couple of children’s books, and numerous short stories. She was among the rare writers successful at both fiction and poetry. Her volume of poems, Granite Lady, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her short stories won a few O’Henry Awards. Her novels were critically acclaimed and achieved significant readership. Her books deserve even more readers, and I would recommend them to everyone.

Nevertheless, I will always remember Susan for more than those fine accomplishments as an author. Today, as I reflect, I recall the care she displayed toward her students, the warmth she showed toward me as a novice writer, the particular consideration she gave my work, her thoughtfulness expressed in her actions on my behalf, the friendliness exhibited in those long-ago conversations, and again I am thankful. Once more, I feel honored.

Poem of the Week: “Labor Day Party” by Floyd Skloot

2011-08-30T00:58:00.003-05:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Floyd Skloot’s “Labor Day Party,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2002 issue (Volume III, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review. “Labor Day Party” also was published in Poetry from Paradise Valley (Pecan Grove Press, 2010), an anthology of poems from the first decade of VPR recently selected as a finalist in poetry for the Best Books of Indiana competition sponsored by the Indiana Center for the Book, supported by the Indiana State Library.

Floyd Skloot is a nonfiction writer, poet, and novelist whose work has been published widely in periodicals such as American Scholar, Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, New York Times, Poetry, Sewanee Review, Southern Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review. His fifteen books include Selected Poems: 1970-2005 (Tupelo Press, 2008), which won a 2009 Pacific NW Booksellers Association Book Award. His sixth collection of new poems, The Snow’s Music, appeared from LSU Press in 2008. He received the 2004 PEN USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction for his memoir, In the Shadow of Memory (University of Nebraska Press, 2003). His recent memoir, The Wink of the Zenith: The Shaping of a Writer’s Life, was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2008.

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.

Photo Friday: “Day-Tripper”

2011-08-26T00:12:00.000-05:00

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Poem of the Week: “Midwest: Georgics” by David Baker

2011-08-23T00:16:00.004-05:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is David Baker’s “Midwest: Georgics,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2002 issue (Volume III, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review. “Midwest Georgics” also was published in Poetry from Paradise Valley (Pecan Grove Press, 2010), an anthology of poems from the first decade of VPR recently selected as a finalist in poetry for the Best Books of Indiana competition sponsored by the Indiana Center for the Book, supported by the Indiana State Library.

David Baker is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Never-Ending Birds (W.W. Norton, 2009), for which he was named the winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, a triennial award offered for a superior poetry volume published within the previous three years. Baker’s other awards include fellowships and prizes from the National Endowment for the Arts, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Ohio Arts Council, Society of Midland Authors, Poetry Society of America, and the Pushcart Foundation. He has also published two books of literary criticism. His poems and essays appear in such magazines as Atlantic Monthly, Nation, New Republic, New Yorker, Paris Review, Poetry, and many others. Baker teaches at Denison University, and he is the poetry editor of Kenyon Review.

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 visit it.

Photo Friday: “Hanging Out”

2011-08-19T00:18:00.000-05:00

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Poem of the Week: “Mine Own Phil Levine” by Dorianne Laux

2011-08-16T00:05:00.002-05:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Dorianne Laux’s “Mine Own Phil Levine,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2009-2010 issue (Volume XI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review. Last week, the Library of Congress named Philip Levine the new Poet Laureate of the United States.

“Mine Own Phil Levine” was also published in Poetry from Paradise Valley (Pecan Grove Press, 2010), an anthology of poems from the first decade of VPR , which has been selected as a finalist in poetry for the Best Books of Indiana competition sponsored by the Indiana Center for the Book, supported by the Indiana State Library.

Dorianne Laux is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently The Book of Men (W.W. Norton, 2011). She is also the coauthor, with Kim Addonizio, of The Poet’s Companion. Among her awards are a Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim fellowship. What We Carry (BOA Editions, 1994) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her fourth book of poems, Facts about the Moon (W.W. Norton, 2007), reviewed in One Poet’s Notes, was the recipient of the Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux teaches at North Carolina State University and lives in Raleigh with her husband, the poet Joseph Millar.

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 visit it.

Photo Friday: “Contemplation Rose”

2011-08-12T00:17:00.000-05:00

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Philip Levine New U.S. Poet Laureate

2011-08-10T00:28:00.003-05:00

The New York Times is reporting that the Library of Congress will name Philip Levine the new Poet Laureate of the United States today. James Billington, the librarian of Congress, is quoted in a description of Levine: “He’s the laureate, if you like, of the industrial heartland. It’s a very, very American voice.”

As I wrote in an article at One Poet’s Notes marking Levine’s 80th birthday in January of 2008, Philip Levine “was born in Detroit, Michigan. His upbringing among working-class immigrants and African Americans living under the rule of continuing racism forever shaped Levine’s view of the world. The family figures he knew as a boy in the urban landscape of Detroit and the young men he met as a worker in its automobile factories have been ever-present as personages in his poetry. Even today, his poems often read as elegant yet plain-spoken elegies giving tribute to those who were battered and scarred, who felt chronic pain suffered during everyday battles, or those outcasts and artists (particularly writers and jazz musicians) who lived on the edges of society, men and women he once knew and to whom he now has given voice, again and again.”

For more extensive and detailed commentary I have presented on Philip Levine and his poetry, I recommend readers visit the following: “Reading Philip Levine at Mother’s Day,” “Edgar Degas and Philip Levine,” “Philip Levine on His 80th Birthday,” "Philip Levine’s ‘What Work Is’ on Labor Day,” and “Philip Levine: Breath.”

Poem of the Week: “Miracle Day” by Sebastian Matthews

2011-08-09T00:13:00.002-05:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Sebastian Matthews’s “Miracle Day,” which appeared in the Fall/Winter 2009-2010 issue (Volume XI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review. “Miracle Day” was also published in Poetry from Paradise Valley (Pecan Grove Press, 2010), an anthology of poems from the first decade of VPR recently selected as a finalist in poetry for the Best Books of Indiana competition sponsored by the Indiana Center for the Book, supported by the Indiana State Library.

Sebastian Matthews is the author of two poetry collections, including We Generous (Red Hen Press, 2007), and a memoir, In My Father’s Footsteps (W. W. Norton, 2004). He co-edited, with Stanley Plumly, Search Party: Collected Poems of William Matthews (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004). Matthews teaches at Warren Wilson College. His poetry or prose has appeared in American Poetry Review, Atlantic Monthly, Georgia Review, New England, Review, Poetry Daily, Poets & Writers, Seneca Review, The Sun, Tin House, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, and The Writer’s Almanac, among others. Matthews is an editor of Rivendell.

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.

Photo Friday: “Natural Abstract”

2011-08-05T00:02:00.001-05:00

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Best Books of Indiana Finalists

2011-08-02T00:09:00.000-05:00

I am pleased to report that on August 1st the State of Indiana announced finalists for the annual “Best Books of Indiana” competition sponsored by the Indiana Center for the Book, supported by the Indiana State Library, and the three finalists in the poetry category are as follows:

Poetry from Paradise Valley edited by Edward Byrne (Pecan Grove Press)
Seeded Light by Edward Byrne (Turning Point Books)
Shadows Set in Concrete by J.L. Kato (Restoration Press)

I am grateful that two of my volumes have been chosen, and I am particularly pleased Pecan Grove Press and Turning Point Books are included in the recognition. I wish to express my appreciation to the editors for both of those presses. In addition, I salute all the authors whose works were included in the anthology of poems selected from Valparaiso Poetry Review. I am also delighted to have my books named alongside J.L. Kato’s fine poetry.

A description at the government web page revealing the finalists for “Best Books of Indiana”—which are separated into four categories: Children/Young Adult, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry— declares that “the Best Books of Indiana contest was created to honor Indiana's long and illustrious literary heritage and recognize Hoosier authors.” I am elated to have my work considered.

Readers are invited to visit the “Best Books of Indiana” page of the Center for the Book at the Indiana State Library web site, which notes: “Winners in all four categories will be announced by August 31.” I also urge everyone to visit the publishers’ web pages for Poetry from Paradise Valley and Seeded Light.

Photo Friday: “Mellow Yellow”

2011-07-29T00:13:00.000-05:00

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Weekend Thoughts on Transitions in Publication

2011-07-28T00:50:00.004-05:00

A number of times I have written in One Poet’s Notes about the changes happening in composition and publication of various forms of literature as the dominant medium transitions from print to digital. I have related the steady shift of literary periodicals from paper to online during the last decade (“Online Literary Journals: A Status Report”). I have also narrated my experience with release of a poetry chapbook, Dark Refuge, in numerous formats, most popularly online and as an e-book (“Dark Refuge: Process and Publication”). In addition, a couple of months ago I reported the policy change, after a dozen years, to accepting only e-mail submissions for Valparaiso Poetry Review (“VPR Submission Guidelines: A Policy Change”), as well as the process of submitting work through an electronic submission manager to the newly established Valparaiso Fiction Review.

Ever since Valparaiso Poetry Review was initiated as an online journal in 1999, I have emphasized that electronic literary venues were not meant to supplant print publications, but they were intended to supplement and be complementary. Although I still believe this to be true, I am convinced the balance of influence is tilting even more quickly toward digital publication. I was reminded of this movement and its consequences in a few experiences during the past weekend.

On Friday, at the request of my university’s librarian in charge of rare books and archives, I examined four storage boxes of material written by a nineteenth-century author who had graduated from Valparaiso University. The gathered works included books of poetry, typed manuscripts, hand-written journals, personal letters, and all sorts of other pieces. I was pleased to see the books, published in the 1890s, were still in excellent condition. The content of the journals and letters fascinated me. Especially since I had first learned to value authorship as a boy when I wrote in cursive with my treasured fountain pen and ink bottle, I could imagine the writer’s hand creating those elegant loops and sharp slashes more than one hundred years ago.

The journals contained everyday entries about current events and a chronological record, complete with commentary or analysis, of all books read by the author, as well as details of submissions to magazines along with dates of rejections or acceptances. I was intrigued by the informal notations and hand-written corrections to multiple drafts of typed poems or essays. At the same time, I lamented to the librarian that much preserved in these collected papers would not exist among holdings of a contemporary author because today’s writer most likely would have composed upon a computer and deleted many of the unwanted drafts. Indeed, the letters might also have been lost by an individual writing now if sent by e-mail.

After examining and evaluating the books or papers to be sorted and catalogued, I was offered a tour of the archives. A couple of magnificent books I noticed, beautifully printed and adorned with illustrations, had been published in the mid-1560s, and I was impressed by the fine condition in which they still exist nearly 450 years later. These volumes appealed to my great appreciation for books as objects of art. I immediately contrasted their magnificent presence with the lack of physical substance when reading an e-book.

Nevertheless, I have a fondness for the ease of use and practical economic advantages of electronic publications. As much as I maintain affection for print books—the quality of paper, the choice of font, the design of text, and the artful cover—and continue to add volumes to the thousands in my home library, I also confess to delighting in the ability to obtain any novel instantly or to possibly hold an extended collection of books on the Kindle I can regularly carry in my sport jacket pocket. In addition, though I view magazine covers as artworks, and as attractive as text set in print magazines may be, I appreciate the vastly greater potential of a worldwide audience for literary journals available online.

At a meeting on Friday with Jon Bull, my co-editor at Valparaiso Fiction Review who also is a librarian and has a great attraction to books as tactile objects or physical works of art, we discussed the desire to someday produce a book including an anthology of works from Valparaiso Fiction Review, similar to Poetry from Paradise Valley, the print publication of selected poems from the first decade of Valparaiso Poetry Review that has recently been released. During our conversation, Jon remarked that he expected print books would always be an option to complement electronic publications, though he envisioned a future in which print publications might have a specialty position similar to vinyl records that many collectors still seek despite the digitization of music in other formats. Similarly, I thought of how I enjoy very much my digital camera and the ease of editing or displaying photos online; however, I still prefer viewing the finest photos as prints within a frame mounted upon a wall.

Over the weekend, newspapers included articles concerning the closing of Borders bookstores across the country and bloggers contemplated whether this event represented more evidence of transformation in the literary world. In addition, I received word that Quarterly West, the literary journal with which I gained valuable experience as the poetry editor during a few years of graduate school, would be joining a number of other notable literary journals, such as Shenandoah and TriQuarterly, by making a switch in its next issue from print publication to online only.

On Monday, my weekend thoughts about the contemporary process or product of publication seemed complete when I accepted an e-mail invitation by a literary group to give a poetry reading in the upcoming year, and I responded to a request to deliver a talk about a topic of my choice. I informed the reading series organizer I would present poems from a few of my newest publications, both print and electronic, and for my lecture I felt I had chosen an apt title: “Transitions in Publication.” Indeed, I noted that I believe the subject I selected might reflect various perspectives about one of the most significant developments to shape the literary community during the past decade, while addressing concerns and questions about format that will continue to influence how literature is put forward by authors or perceived by readers in the decade ahead, perhaps even evolving in ways we have not yet determined.

Poem of the Week: “Beachwalkers” by Kathryn Stripling Byer

2011-07-26T00:25:00.000-05:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Kathryn Stripling Byer’s “Beachwalkers,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2010 issue (Volume XI, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Kathryn Stripling Byer has published five books of poetry, including Wildwood Flower (LSU Press, 1992), the Lamont Selection of the Academy of American Poets, Catching Light (LSU Press, 2001), and Coming to Rest (LSU Press, 2006). She is the 2007 recipient of the Hanes Award in Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her poetry and essays have appeared in numerous journals. In 2010, she completed her term as Poet Laureate of North Carolina.

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.

Photo Friday: “Lush”

2011-07-22T00:07:00.000-05:00

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Poem of the Week: “No More” by Kate Fox

2011-07-19T00:53:00.002-05:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Kate Fox’s “No More,” which is included in the Spring/Summer 2011 issue (Volume XII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Kate Fox's poems have appeared in New Virginia Review, West Branch, Windsor Review, and Green Mountains Review, among others. Her chapbook, The Lazarus Method, was published by Kent State University Press as part of the Wick Poetry Chapbook Series.

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.

“Learning Sign Language: ‘Yes’” from Autism: A Poem

2011-07-18T00:11:00.001-05:00

The poem will grow as sections are added. The individual pieces are designed so that they may be viewed as independent items; however, I have consciously carried themes, images, and language through the extended sequence with the hope that connectivity and continuity will be preserved among numerous sections of the long poem.

I have now posted a new section, “Learning Sign Language: ‘Yes.’”

Readers are asked to regard Autism as a work in progress, a partial draft rather than a finished product (even if some selected segments previously may have appeared in print), and I request everyone realize various revisions—edits, emendations, or expansion—may be made to the posts at any time in the future.

In addition, I would like to remind readers that a portion of this poetry series in progress was released in March as Dark Refuge, an audio chapbook by Whale Sound. The dozen poems in that chapbook represent a narrative designed as a poetic sequence, part of this overall project of poetry I have been composing about particular observations or impressions concerning the characteristics and consequences associated with autism through a poetic chronicling of personal experiences with Alex.

Dark Refuge is available for readers to experience in differing formats: as online audio, online text, free downloadable mp3, pdf, e-book, print edition, and cd. Therefore, I also urge readers to visit the main page for Dark Refuge.

Photo Friday: “Twice as Nice”

2011-07-15T01:45:00.000-05:00

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"Seeking a Center for Ecopoetics" by John Linstrom

2011-07-13T21:14:00.004-05:00

During this summer season, I remind readers of the Spring/Summer 2011 issue (Volume XII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review, which includes a lengthy essay on ecopoetics by John Linstrom:

SEEKING A CENTER FOR ECOPOETICS

—John Linstrom

A discomforting contradiction quickly crops up in the efforts of any nature writer who begins to consider the difference between nature and culture—it seems that writing, as a cultural act, could very easily be dismissed as superfluous to natural life. Particularly with the evolution of ecocriticism as a major field of literary study, we are reminded that no experience, no subject, no external object or pure thought, can be communicated with true immediacy. Language is, at best, mediating. So, if an ecocentric sense of primacy is granted to nonhuman nature or even to the sensually mediated experience of it, it would be best for us all to give up books for long walks in the woods. We could possibly attempt to give up on Jean Baudrillard’s non-referential map, that reality marked by detached signifiers, and get back to the territory, to the reality signified, but not through such an irrepressibly cultural and sign-dependent institution as language.[1]

Similarly, the concept of nature as a focalizing device could very easily be dismissed as superfluous to human culture. No amount of natural study will bring humans into a position of true nonhuman understanding—as a linguistic species we are intrinsically separate from an unspeaking and untranslatable universe. Why bother to attempt communication with this utterly nonhuman otherness when there is work to do and life to live in society? Recent scholarship provocatively asserts that “nature” is an entirely human construction anyway, so in that sense to attempt to place primacy of value in “nature” would seem to be simply another angle from which to approach a humanistic ethics.[2] Anthropocentrism rules—perhaps it must.

Ecocentrism as a concept has been emerging within ecocritical literary discourse as a confusing amalgam of conflicting values. Anthropocentrism seems straight-forward enough from a humanistic approach, but what kind of center is “eco"? Who are the ecopoets, if it is possible to distinguish them, and were they possible before the evolution of contemporary environmentalist dialogue? Most pressingly for current writers, where does the human fit within ecocentrism, if at all? Should the ecopoet observe an aesthetic of self-effacement, erasing her “brushstrokes” to highlight the landscape beyond the page and thus assert nonhuman primacy, or an aesthetic of unchecked artistic manipulation, admitting the inherent violence of representation against the thing represented and reveling in that admittance, celebrating the mess of paint in spite of its inadequacy? There is value in both of these perspectives, but, if they cannot be reconciled, the ecopoet is left displaced and paralyzed....

Visitors are invited to read the rest of the essay.

Poem of the Week: “Simple Pleasures” by Vincent Wixon

2011-07-12T00:13:00.001-05:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Vincent Wixon’s “Simple Pleasures,” which appears in the Spring/Summer 2008 issue (Volume IX, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Vincent Wixon is the author of two books of poems, The Square Grove (2006) and Seed (1993), and over the years he has published in various magazines and journals, as well as in three anthologies. Garrison Keillor read his poem “Tornado Weather” on The Writer’s Almanac. Wixon has produced videos on Oregon poets Lawson Inada and William Stafford, and has edited three Stafford books. He lives in Ashland, Oregon.

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 visit it.

Photo Friday: “Downtown Reflected in Corvette Hood”

2011-07-08T00:12:00.001-05:00

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Poem of the Week: “All There Is of Light” by Jean Nordhaus

2011-07-05T00:16:00.001-05:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Jean Nordhaus’s “All There Is of Light,” which appears in the Spring/Summer 2011 issue (Volume XII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Jean Nordhaus has published a number of books, including My Life in Hiding, A Bracelet of Lies, and The Porcelain Apes of Moses Mendelssohn. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, New Republic, Poetry, Best American Poetry 2000, and The Other Side of the Hill: 1975-1995, an anthology of poems by the Capitol Hill Poetry Group. Nordhaus has served as Coordinator of the Folger Shakespeare Library's poetry programs and as President of Washington Writers' Publishing House. She lives in Washington, DC.

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 visit it.

Photo Friday: “Daylily at Night”

2011-07-01T00:06:00.002-05:00

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Fiction Suggestions for Summer Reading

2011-06-29T00:05:00.007-05:00

Last week I posted an article to One Poet’s Notes with a list of titles in the current issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review on its “Recent and Recommended Books” page, which includes various new volumes of poetry and poetics. At the time, I suggested the roster might assist those seeking current published collections of poems or essays about poetry for their summer reading.

As I suspect is the case with most readers of VPR, although I regularly pore through numerous books of poetry or volumes about poetic issues, I do not limit my reading to these items. Especially during the summer months, my materials for reading always include books of fiction, averaging at least one novel or short story collection each week, more during vacation time. In fact, since I am now a co-editor of the new online literary journal, Valparaiso Fiction Review, I have also received requests recently from some readers for recommendations of fiction books that might provide valuable selections for summer reading.

My habit has been to consciously alternate between contemporary works, usually published within the last year or so, and classic books of fiction that I have not yet gotten around to reading, as Marilyn Monroe seems to be doing with James Joyce’s Ulysses in the accompanying photo. I also sneak into the mix volumes of historical nonfiction on a number of topics, biographies or memoirs, and collections of critical commentary on poetry, art, film, music, etc.

However, since the older books of fiction I have been encountering lately are meant merely as a way for me to catch up and to fill gaps in my past experiences as a reader, openings which would be singular to each individual, I thought I would share today, in time for the Independence Day to Labor Day season, only the recently published books of fiction that I have read in the last few months. These books represent part of my early summer reading (between the close of spring semester and the July 4th weekend), and I mention them with the intention of recommending these new works as possible additions to others’ reading lists during the remaining months of summer.

I am not aware of any particular theme or type of writing prevalent in the books included below, since there was no deliberate pattern concerning content or style during the selection process. Nevertheless, some might note that eleven of the sixteen books are authored by females—purely a coincidence, but one that nicely balances the alternating list of classic books I have been reading, a majority of which happen to be written by males.

Although I have enjoyed some of these books more than others, and I regard a few of them as excellent, all have proven to be rewarding to read. In addition, I realize any person’s choice is idiosyncratic and subject to personal taste. Therefore, as with the poetry recommendations last week, I will not add any commentary or rank the selections in this post. Indeed, I do not have any desire at this time to offer critical reviews of the books; instead, the titles of these personal suggestions are merely listed alphabetically by author:

Sunset Park, Paul Auster
Once Upon a River, Bonnie Jo Campbell
All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost, Lan Samantha Chang
Room, Emma Donoghue
The Collected Stories, Deborah Eisenberg
The Adults, Alison Espach
Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
Lord of Misrule, Jaimy Gordon
Great House, Nichole Kraus
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
The Paris Wife, Paula McLain
A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore
The Wilding, Benjamin Percy
The Help, Kathryn Stockett
Brooklyn, Colm Toibin

I hope everyone enjoys the summer ahead and all find lots of leisure time that might allow for further reading.

Poem of the Week: “Prague Floods, 2002” by Walter Bargen

2011-06-28T00:07:00.001-05:00

The VPR Poem of the Week is Walter Bargen’s “Prague Floods, 2002,” which appears in the Spring/Summer 2011 issue (Volume XII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Walter Bargen has published thirteen collections of poetry. His recent books are Theban Traffic (2008) and Days Like This Are Necessary: New & Selected Poems (2009). He is the winner of the Chester H. Jones Foundation prize in 1997, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1991, and the William Rockhill Nelson Award in 2005. He was appointed the first Poet Laureate of Missouri (2008-2009).

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 visit it.