Our friend Michael Rothenberg is involved in an interesting journey this fall: Rockpile, a collaboration with David Meltzer “in the tradition of the troubadour and with the spirit of improvisation and collaboration,”—the two poets have been travelling across the U.S. performing poetry composed on the road “in a spontaneous fusion with local musicians.” They started the tour last month in Los Angeles & Albuquerque, and this week they’ve made it all the way across to Washington, D.C. and New York City—if you can’t make it to any of the cities where they are performing, you can follow the tour on the Rockpile blog, which has the poets’ road musings, performance videos, and more. The whole thing is meant to conclude with “a final grand performance” in San Francisco. Keep on truckin’, poets!
More postings on poetry/music collaborations:
Poetry and Music, Sister Arts Allied (2007)
Listen to the woodlark’s song: “Lullula” (2006)
Jazz & poetry on the road together in Copenhagen, Amsterdam & London (2005)
Are songs poetry? (2004)
Poetry + music, an inspired collaboration (2004)
Caught in the Act, The making of a live poetry + music CD, by Whitman McGowan (2004)
Ngoma: Entering the Dreamtime with Music and Poetry (2002)
IBPC judge Majid Naficy recently announced his choices in the October competition—once again, none from our Poetry Forum, but as always, interesting reading:
- In first place, he selected “Rain” by Anna Yin, a poem that infuses elemental natural forces with life, chosen by Naficy because “That’s how beauty prevails itself.”
- In second place, he chose “a smooth satirical poem about a ‘forbidden’ love, “Forbidden Lullaby” by Walter Schwim.
- In third place, Majicy put “Without Salt” by Mandy Pannett, a poem that “rests on memory.”
- He also awarded an honorable mention without commentary to one poem: “Bills and Yet More Bills,” a light piece of word-play by Christopher T. George.
And for the November competition, we’re proud to announce three very fine poems entered representing our Poetry Forum:
- “On Preparing to Play Bach Again” by Guy Kettelhack (GuyBlakeKett), a poem that captures the musician’s experience of great music with both subtlety and energy.
- “Johnny Two Bows” by Abigail Weatherspoon (mapovia), an elegiac tale of a man destroyed by the experience of war that sounds like a country western song but has nothing in it of cliche.
- S. Radhamani’s “A Long Wait,” a poem that leaps from the momentary sensations and observations at a bus stop to a symbolic analysis of its society.
Kudos and luck in the judging to all three poets! Please remember to keep your nominations coming in. Any time you see a poem on the Forum that you think would be a worthy envoy to the IBPC, go right to the InterBoard Poetry Competition folder and post it. Address your post to the poet whose work you are nominating—this ensures that the poet will be notified of your nomination, and can post the required permission and information before it’s time for Poetry Guide Margy Snyder to choose the next month’s three entries.
More on the IBPC:
General information
Requirements for IBPC nominees
Anthology of the monthly IBPC winning poems
Archive of poems entered in the IBPC from our Poetry Forum
Background information and reading links for October - December IBPC judge Majid Naficy
I’ve spent the last month in St. Andrews, Scotland—a much more northerly latitude than my home in San Francisco—and the turning of the season has been that much sharper. The days are hours shorter now than a month ago, and especially since Britain set the clocks back with the end of summer time last weekend (the US doesn’t go off daylight savings time until next weekend), I’m experiencing the carpe diem impulse every afternoon. Grab hold of every single daylight hour, because it will all too soon pass into darkness! So I’ve gathered a collection of classic poems on the theme of time’s passage and the impulse to seize the day, intensify your living as the days shorten into winter:
On October 3, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe was found near death in a public house in Baltimore and several days later succumbed to “congestion of the brain.” There is no definitive record of his movements in the several days before he died, and there are many theories as to the cause of his death. Some say it was alcohol poisoning, some say it was some other illness or heart disease that killed him. Because it was election day in Baltimore and he was not wearing his own clothes when he died, others suspect that he was a victim of “cooping,” having been taken prisoner by a political gang, beaten and forced to vote repeatedly. He was attended by Dr. John Joseph Moran at Washington College Hospital, where he was kept a virtual prisoner and allowed no visitors, for several days slipping between consciousness and delirium. Moran reported that his final words were “Lord, help my poor soul!,” just before he expired on October 7.
Poe’s funeral was the next day, a hasty 3-minute ceremony in the damp chill, so sparsely attended that the minister declined to give a sermon. He was buried without a headstone, because the monument his cousin had ordered was accidentally destroyed by a derailed train. He was exhumed and reburied, with a new tomb monument, in 1875, at a ceremony to which several leading poets were invited, but only Walt Whitman attended.
Now, 160 years after his death, Edgar Allan Poe has been given a proper send-off in Baltimore—a “viewing” of his recreated dead body in the casket, a funeral procession accompanied by bagpipes, and a memorial service with eulogies delivered by actors in the roles of his contemporaries and colleagues, attended by more than 700 admirers and mourners. The “master of the macabre” has at last been laid properly to rest.
from The Baltimore Sun:
“A Proper Reburial,” by Robert Little (with video of the viewing and funeral)
“Edgar A. Poe, local author and poet of much renown, was laid to rest at Westminster Hall yesterday inside a simple redwood coffin, after a grand theatrical and oratorical send-off to usher him, as he once wrote, ‘into the region of shadows.’ Of course the true Poe remained buried beneath the monument on the northwest corner of the church grounds in Southwest Baltimore, near where his body was placed hastily in a family plot soon after his death on October 7, 1849. But yesterday the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe’s death was revived, so that the great poet could receive the eulogy that eluded him in the days following his demise.”
More on Edgar Allan Poe:
Our biographical profile of E.A. Poe, American Romantic
Library: Poems by E.A. Poe
Celebrating Edgar Allan Poe’s 200th Birthday (2008)
A new wrinkle in the mystery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death (2007)
The Mysterious Poe Toaster Revealed? (2007)
Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe! The Empty House Tour, by Tom Devaney
A new Poe(try) film: The Death of Poe (2006)
