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Editors
Poetry Out Loud: 2008 Competition
Editors' Note: The 2008 National Recitation Contest, presented by the National Endowment of the Arts and The Poetry Foundation and their state partners culminated in the April 29 National Finals in Washington DC. We tracked events as they happened across the country on the road to the Nationals...
"We are taking the impulse of the electric popular culture and linking it to the masterpieces of poetry."
• Valerie Strauss reports on the culmination of this year's Poetry Out Loud competition, which saw 200,000 high school students from 1,500 schools participate. (The Washington Post)
• "Tone maps" help Poetry Out Loud competitors approach poems.
•
Valerie Strauss chats with
Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, about poetry and Poetry Out Loud. (The Washington Post)
• Current U.S. Poet Laureate, Charles Simic, and former Laureate, Billy Collins offer tips for writing and reciting poetry. (The Washington Post)
•
What are poetry readers like? A survey commissioned by The Poetry Foundation has some answers. (The Washington Post)
The 2008 National Champion: Shawntay A. Henry!
• The 10th grader from the U. S. Virgin Islands wins top honors from among 12 finalists and 52 state champions. (Press release from the National Endowment for the Arts)
• An airport welcome awaits as the new champ heads home.(Caribbean Net News)
• Listen to Shawntay Henry's final-round reading of "Frederick Douglass," by Robert E. Hayden. (Audio from NPR)
Oregon's Sophia Soberon is national first-runner-up!
The Brookings-Harbor High School senior earns scholarship and the applause of a packed house in Washington, D.C. (Curry Coastal Pilot)
MORE....
A Poetry Daily Prose Feature: "It's a clear fall day in mid-October, 1961. Outside, the leaves on the maple and gingko trees are fiery crimson, those of the oak bright yellow. Subtler shades also abound. Open windows give onto high school playing fields, from which the sounds of the marching a band, rehearsing for Friday's football game against our archrivals, float in. Eighteen of us—high school seniors bound mostly for Ivy League colleges and all biting our fingernails about applications whose outcomes we shall not know for another five months—are having the time of our lives. We are reading the Aeneid." —Willard Spiegelman, Unforced Marches: A Virgilian Memoir, essay/review of The Aeneid, translated by Robert Fagles.
Postcards from a poet:
Christopher Fletcjer describes postcards from Philip Larkin's correspondence to Monica Jones. (Times Online)
Tending to Yeats:
David Orr reviews Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form by Helen Vendler. (New York TImes)
Poet's Choice:
Mary Karr introduces a poem by Sarah Harwell. (The Washington Post)
Paperback pick:
Nicholas Lezard on the selected poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt, edited by Alice Oswald. (Guardian Unlimited)
Epic of "dulness":
John Mullan navigates Alexander Pope's "The Dunciad". (Guardian Unlimited)
30th Anniversary in Multimedia:
Bloodaxe Books celebrates its birthday with In Person: 30 Poets,
edited by Neil Astley, filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce, reviewed by Frances Leviston. (Guardian Unlimited)
Good King Ginsberg:
Darrell Jónsson looks back at Allen Ginsberg's 1965 visit to Prague. (The Prague Post)
American Life in Poetry:
Ted Kooser introduces a poem by
Max Mendelsohn. (American Life in Poetry)
"We are taking the impulse of the electric popular culture and linking it to the masterpieces of poetry."
• Valerie Strauss reports on the culmination of this year's Poetry Out Loud competition in the U.S., which saw 200,000 high school students from 1,500 schools participate. (The Washington Post)
•
Valerie Strauss chats with
Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, about poetry and Poetry Out Loud. (The Washington Post)
Frieda Hughes: Monday poem:
Frieda Hughes introduces a poem by Joan Margarit, translated by Anna Crowe. (The Times)
"There's always that mixed feeling of joy and guilt."
Terry Gross talks with Cornelius Eady about Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems and his transition to a life very different from his parents'. (Fresh Air)
Obama's muse?
Mike Chasar on the poet, journalist, and activist who haunts Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father. (Iowa City Press-Citizen)
"Style is not what they are about."
Frank Wilson on Selected Poems, by Frank O’Hara, edited by Mark Ford. (Entertainment News Review)
Recently Arrived Titles
These just in... Highlighted titles may be purchased from Poetry Daily / Amazon.com. A complete
list of all books and journals recently received at Poetry Daily is also available.
- Looking for Cover, Maria Famą (Bordighera Press)
- Inta's Poems III, Inta Ezergailis (Ulysses House)
- A Matinee in Plato's Cave, Rob Griffith (Water Press and Media)
- Opening Day, William Corbett (Hanging Loose Press)
- Making a Map of the River, Thorpe Moeckel (Iris Press)
- Narcissus, Cecilia Woloch (Tupelo Press)
- In the Mode of Disappearance, Jonathan Weinert (Nightboat Books)
Recent Anthologies, etc.
- Quote Poet Unquote: Contemporary Quotations on Poets and Poetry, ed. Dennis O'Driscoll (Copper Canyon Press)
- All That Mighty Heart: London Poems, ed. Lisa Russ Spaar (University of Virginia Press)
- River of Words: Young Poets and Artists on the Nature of Things, ed. Pamela Michael (Milkweed Editions)
- The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology, ed. Edward Hirsch and Eavan Boland (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.)
- The Art of the Poetic Line, James Longenbach (Graywolf Press)
- The Art of Attention: A Poet's Eye, Donald Revell (Graywolf Press)
- The Modern Element: Essays on Contemporary Poetry, Adam Kirsch (Norton)
- Poetry Daily Essentials 2007, Diane Boller, Don Selby, ed.s (Sourcebooks)
Past Features:
Original
articles, interviews, selections from special collections and journal issues, and more are available in the Archives.
