BIRTH OF A POET

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW was born on February 27, 1807, in Portland, Maine. He was a prolific  poet, who became the most popular American poet of his time. 

Longfellow was a precocious student, who started his schooling at the

age of three. His love for reading and learning was encouraged and nurtured by his mother. As time went on, he became obsessed with pursuing a career in literature. Ten years later, in 1820, he wrote and published his first poem.

 Longfellow  enrolled in Bowdoin College in 1822 , and in 1825, graduated with honors .  To wit, he finished fourth in his class, gave the student commencement address, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was offered a position as  professor of modern languages. He was all of eighteen years old.

From 1826 -1829, Longfellow traveled throughout Europe where he learned to speak, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German. Back in the states he assumed the professorship previously offered him  by his alma mater, where he taught as well as translated textbooks in the languages he learned while overseas.

In 1834, he was offered and accepted the position of the Smith Professorship of Modern Languages at Harvard College, with the stipulation to spend a year or so overseas, where he studied Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, and Icelandic. He returned to America in 1836, he took up his professorship, and three years later he was inspired to write poetry based on his life experiences. He was also inspired by the likes of fellow authors, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving, whom he met and admired. Once this inspiration set in, Longfellow eventually penned over 300 poems, one of which was the classic, "Paul Revere's Ride," set during the time of the American revolution.

His first poetry collection was published  in 1839, another volume followed in 1841.

Longfellow died in 1882.

To read his impressive bio Google-search his name

A POEM FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

American Life in Poetry: Column 510

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

 

Billy Collins, who lives in New York, is one of our country’s most admired poets, and this snapshot of a winter day is reminiscent of those great Chinese poems that on the virtue of their clarity and precision have survived for a couple of thousand years. His most recent book of poetry is Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems, (Random House, 2013). Winter  A little heat in the iron radiator, the dog breathing at the foot of the bed, and the windows shut tight, encrusted with hexagons of frost. I can barely hear the geese complaining in the vast sky, flying over the living and the dead, schools and prisons, and the whitened fields.

POETRY EVENTS - CHICAGO

READING Robert Adamson Thursday, March 12, 7:00 PM Poetry Foundation 61 West Superior Street Free Admission

Over the past five decades, Robert Adamson has produced 20 books of poetry and three books of prose. Adamson has won all the major Australian poetry awards, including the Christopher Brennan Prize for lifetime achievement, the Patrick White Award, and The Age Book of the Year Award for The Goldfinches of Baghdad. His most recent book isNet Needle (Flood Editions, 2015).
 

PERFORMANCE The Open Door Readings: March Tuesday, March 17 7:00 PM Poetry Foundation 61 West Superior Street Free Admission

The Open Door series presents work from Chicago’s new and emerging poets and highlights the area’s outstanding writing programs. March's Open Door Reading presents University of Illinois at Chicago's Andrea Witzke Slot and her student Eric McClure along with Columbia College's David Trinidad and his student Katherine Goldstein.
 

PERFORMANCE August Wilson: From Poet to Playwright Thursday, March 25 7:00 PM Poetry Foundation 61 West Superior Street Free Admission

Although best known for his “Century Cycle” of plays detailing the African American experience in each decade of the last century, Pulitzer Prize winner August Wilson began his writing career as a poet, creating pieces of uncommon beauty and energy. As part of Goodman Theatre’s six-week celebration of his life and career, the Poetry Foundation is pleased to present a special program of Wilson’s poetic writings.

READ THIS POEM OUT LOUD

The Dream   Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love, if I weep it will not matter,   And if you laugh I shall not care; Foolish am I to think about it,   But it is good to feel you there. Love, in my sleep I dreamed of waking, —   White and awful the moonlight reached Over the floor, and somewhere, somewhere,   There was a shutter loose, —it screeched! Swung in the wind, — and no wind blowing! —   I was afraid, and turned to you, Put out my hand to you for comfort, —   And you were gone!  Cold, cold as dew, Under my hand the moonlight lay!   Love, if you laugh I shall not care, But if I weep it will not matter, —   Ah, it is good to feel you there!

BIRTH OF A POET

EDNA ST VINCENT MILLAY  was born on February 22, 1892, in Rockland, Maine.  Millay was a poet and playwright, who began to discover her literary talents while still in high school.

At the age of 15, she published her first poem in a popular children's magazine in Camden, Maine. 

She attended Vassar College from 1913-1917. After graduation she moved to New York City, where she established her career as a poet.

In 1923 she won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her collection, "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver." She was the third woman to win this coveted award.

In 1943, Millay was awarded the Frost Award  for her lifetime contribution to American poetry.

She died in 1950 at the age of 58.

To read her bio Google-search her name.

IN MEMORY OF...

PHILIP LEVINE  was an award-winning poet who was born and bred in Detroit, Michigan, in 1928.

After graduating from Detroit Central High School in 1946, he went on to Wayne (State) University where he began to write poetry. He earned his B.A  in 1950. 

In 1954 he attended the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, where he studied with the poets, Robert Lowell and John Berryman. He eventually received a "mail order" master's degree from the university in 1954, and his MFA in 1957

Levine taught in the English department at California State University, Fresno, for over three decades, as well as holding teaching positions at various other universities throughout the United States, including Columbia, Princeton, and NYU.

He has published numerous volumes of poetry. 

In 1995 he received the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his collection entitled, "The Simple Truth."  He was named the U.S. Poet Laureate for 2011.

Philip Levine died on February 14, 2015. He was 87 years old.

To read some highlights of his career and sample his poetry Google-search his name

A POEM FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

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American Life in Poetry: Column 509

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

 

We are never without our insect companions, even in winter, and here’s one who has the run of the house. Roger Pfingston lives in Indiana. December  Lodged tight for days in a corner of the wall, ladybug can’t resist the tree, crawling now over cold light, ceramic fruits, tinsel lamb and sleigh. Flies out of the tree to try rum cake on a plate of caroling cherubs. Ends up on her back, wings flared, silly girl spinning over the kitchen floor. Later, between the blinds, tiny bump of silhouette: a stillness against the falling snow.

POETRY EVENTS - NEW YORK CITY

Trouble viewing this message? Click here February Poetry Events WINTER SIX-WEEK OPEN ENROLLMENT WORKSHOPS These poetry workshops give special focus to the relationship between reading and writing poetry. Open to all levels, six-week courses are offered on a wide variety of topics. Register early – first come, first served; Fee:$325 Brainlingo: Writing the Voice of the Body with Edwin Torres  6 Wednesdays, February 18 to March 25, 6:00-8:30pm  Edwin Torres We create our own communication. How we listen affects how we speak. How we see our language affects how our voice is heard. Where the senses meet each other is where poetry can begin. Is it possible to allow the body its place in writing? Using exercises of space, sound, performance, theater, collage, and page as a guide, this workshop will be a creative laboratory that explores how we communicate by exercising the languages inside us. Over six weeks, work will be created, discarded, and renewed in an active writing workshop where movement ignites the process. Click here to register Poems from Late Empire with Scott Hightower  6 Thursdays, February 19 to March 26, 6:00-8:30pm  Scott Hightower This is a workshop about writing poems from the post September 11th, post Madrid train bombing, post Charlie Hebdo world. The Muse and the Banshee are both welcomed. We will be looking at both historical and contemporary poems—like those of Andy Young, Cynthia Hogue, Gregory Pardlo, Peter Covino, and Steve Fellner—and considering notions of Gaston Bachelard's "The Poetics of Space" and the poem as a place for the imagination to dwell. Click here to register A Pattern of Behavior: Serial Poems with Krystal Languell  6 Saturdays, February 21 to April 4 (skipping March 14), 11:30am-2:00pm  Krystal Languell How can we create momentum across a series of poems while holding onto the original big idea? A linked sequence creates its own terms for existence, and those terms may be formal, rhetorical, metrical, emotional, or a combination—or something else! This workshop will engage in exercises designed to develop and sustain a serial poem. Possible course texts include readings from Alice Notley, Dawn Lundy Martin, Roland Barthes, and Rickey Laurentiis. Students will emerge from this workshop with a draft of a six-poem sequence. Click here to register  FEBRUARY PROGRAMS The Red Balloon Saturday February 14, 11:00am Floating Valentines: A Screening of The Red Balloon In celebration of Valentine’s Day, Poets House presents Albert Lamorisse’s timeless children’s film classic The Red Balloon. Afterward, children will make their own floating valentines in the form of hot-air balloon mobiles.  Location: Poets House, 10 River Terrace  Admission: Suggested donation $5 John Berryman (1914-1972) Thursday February 26, 3:00-8:15pm John Berryman at 100: A Day-long celebration at Columbia University Distinguished contemporary poets and scholars including April Bernard, Henri Cole,Cornelius Eady, Rachel Hadas, Saskia Hamilton, Cathy Park Hong, A. Van Jordan, Robin Coste Lewis, Edward Mendelson, Patrick Rosal, Evie Shockley,Daniel Swift, Kevin Young, and Rachel Zucker will commemorate John Berryman's life and work in a day-long celebration featuring afternoon panels and an evening reading, in honor of the poet's centenary.  Click here for full schedule and more details  Location: Barnard Hall, Barnard College, Columbia University  (Barnard Hall is located just inside Barnard College's 117th Street and Broadway entrance) Admission: Free Cosponsored by The Poetry Society of America; School of the Arts, Columbia University; Barnard Women Poets; Heyman Center for the Humanities; and Poets House For more information call (212)431-7920 or visit www.poetshouse.org. Join us onFacebook and Twitter.

POETRY EVENTS - WASHINGTON, D.C.

Tuesday, February 17, 6:30 PM
BOBBITT PRIZE READING

Patricia Smith, winner of the 13th Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, will read selections from her poetry collection Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah. This event is free and open to the public. Book sales and a signing will follow.

Location: Montpelier Room, sixth floor, James Madison Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Thursday, February 19, 7:00 PM
THE LIFE OF A POET: FRANK BIDART

National Book Critics Circle Award winner Frank Bidart will discuss his poetry with Ron Charles, editor of The Washington Post's Book World. This event is free and open to the public. Reservations are required--to reserve, call (202) 549-4172 or visit http://hillcenterdc.org/home/programs/2164. Co-sponsored by the Hill Center and the Washington Post.

Location: Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital (921 Pennsylvania Ave. SE)
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Top

March 2015

Tuesday, March 3, 9:00 AM-5:00 PM
POETRY AND LITERACY SYMPOSIUM

 The Poetry and Literature Center will present a series of panels exploring the connections between poetry and literacy. Panel topics will include Poetry and Literacy in Schools and Poetry and Literacy for At-Risk Populations. The event is free and open to the public. Co-sponsored by the Library of Congress Literacy Awards.

Location: LJ-119, first floor, Thomas Jefferson Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

Thursday, March 12, 6:30 PM
WITTER BYNNER FELLOWSHIP READING

 Poet Laureate Charles Wright will introduce the 2015 Witter Bynner Fellows, Emily Fragos and Bobby C. Rogers, and they will read selections from their work. The event is free and open to the public. Book sales and a signing will follow.

Location: Mumford Room, sixth floor, James Madison Building <view map>
Contact: (202) 707-5394

A POEM FOR YOU THOUGHTS

******************************

American Life in Poetry: Column 508

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

 

It seems we’re born with a need for stories, for hearing them and telling them. Here’s an account of just one story, made remarkable in part by the teller’s aversion to telling it. Poet Mary Avidano lives in Nebraska. City Lights  My father, rather a quiet man, told a story only the one time, if even then—he had so little need, it seemed, of being understood. Intervals of years, his silences! Late in his life he recalled for us that when he was sixteen, his papa entrusted to him a wagonload of hogs, which he was to deliver to the train depot, a half-day’s ride from home, over a hilly dirt road. Lightly he held the reins, light his heart, the old horses, as ever, willing. In town at noon he heard the station- master say the train had been delayed, would not arrive until that evening. The boy could only wait. At home they’d wait for him and worry and would place the kerosene lamp in the window. Thus the day had turned to dusk before he turned about the empty wagon, took his weary horses through the cloud of fireflies that was the little town. In all his years he’d never seen those lights—he thought of this, he said, until he and his milk-white horses came down the last moonlit hill to home, drawn as from a distance toward a single flame.

READ THIS POEM OUT LOUD

Amy Lowell, 1874 - 1925

I will mix me a drink of stars,—
Large stars with polychrome needles,
Small stars jetting maroon and crimson,
Cool, quiet, green stars.
I will tear them out of the sky,
And squeeze them over an old silver cup,
And I will pour the cold scorn of my Beloved into it,
So that my drink shall be bubbled with ice.

It will lap and scratch
As I swallow it down;
And I shall feel it as a serpent of fire,
Coiling and twisting in my belly.
His snortings will rise to my head,
And I shall be hot, and laugh,
Forgetting that I have ever known a woman.

BIRTH OF A POET

Amy Lowell was born on this day in 1874 in Brookline, Massachusetts. She was born into a family that was considered one of the most accomplished families in America. Her brother Percival was an Astronomer, and her other brother, Abbott, was president of Harvard University.

Lowell was a poet of the imagist school.

Imagism was a movement of  early 20th century Anglo-American poetry. It was invented by poet Ezra Pound around 1909.  Imagist poems were short, written in "free verse,"  and presented images without comment or explanation. It favored precision of imagery and clear sharp language.

Lowell, who started writing poetry in 1902, later led the movement which, expired near the end of World War 1.

Her first published poetry was in 1910, followed two years later by the publication of her first collection of poems. Lowell lived the affluent life of a socialite, and traveled  extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe. As such, she published her own work, as well as that of other writers.

Her own writings included criticisms of French literature, poetical re-workings of literal translations of Ancient Chinese poets, and biographical manuscripts. She was a promoter of both contemporary and historical poets.

Lowell died of a brain hemorrhage in 1916 at the age of 51.

A year later she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection, "What's O'Clock."

To read the bio of her storied career Google-search her name

*****SPECIAL NOTE*****

CANCELLED  Transgenres with Vijay Seshadri Scheduled for Saturday, February 7, this program must be resceduled due to a death in Mr. Seshadri's family. For more information call (212)431-7920 or visit www.poetshouse.org. Join us onFacebook and Twitter.

POETRY EVENTS - AMHERST, MASS

Jane Crostthwaite Poetry discussion group meets Friday, Feb. 20    The next meeting of the Emily Dickinson Museum's poetry discussion group will be held on Friday, February 20, at noon at the Amherst College Alumni House, located at 75 Churchill Street. Mount Holyoke College Professor of Religion Jane Crosthwaite will be the discussion leader in February. She is one of the founding members of Mount Holyoke's women's studies program, and her academic interests focus on the roles of women in American religious history and Shaker history and art.  To see the full 2014-2015 season schedule, visit our poetry discussion web page. For more information, please email Program Coordinator Lucy Abbott at labbott@emilydickinsonmuseum.org or call 413.542.2034.

Museum opens for 2015 on Wednesday, March 4 The Emily Dickinson Museum opens for the 2015 season on March 4. We hope to see you here for a tour or as a participant at our many exciting offerings. Those include: April 13: Tell It Slant Award ceremony May 16: Poetry Walk/Member Day June 5-8: Garden Days July 18: 19th-Century Children's Circus Museum hours are 11 am to 4 pm, Wednesday through Sunday. Find out more about visiting here.

POETRY EVENTS - NEW YORK CITY

Saturday February 7, 3:00pm
Transgenres with Vijay Seshadri

Why do so many poets also write prose nonfiction? What transformations occur between poem and essay? Pulitzer Prizewinner Vijay Seshadri, whose newest book is 3 Sections, discusses notions of identity, form, and fulfillment for contemporary writers.

Part of Other Impulses: Poets Writing Across Genres. 

Admission: $10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House members
Location: Poets House
10 River Terrace 

Get to know Vijay Seshadri in this recent New York Times profile

The Red Balloon

Saturday February 14, 11:00am
Floating Valentines: A Screening of The Red Balloon

In celebration of Valentine’s Day, Poets House presents Albert Lamorisse’s timeless children’s film classic The Red Balloon. Afterward, children will make their own floating valentines in the form of hot-air balloon mobiles. 

Admission: Suggested donation $5

WINTER SIX-WEEK OPEN ENROLLMENT WORKSHOPS

These poetry workshops give special focus to the relationship between reading and writing poetry. Open to all levels, six-week courses are offered on a wide variety of topics. Register early – first come, first served; Fee:$325

Brainlingo: Writing the Voice of the Body with Edwin Torres 
6 Wednesdays, February 18 to March 25, 6:00-8:30pm 

We create our own communication. How we listen affects how we speak. How we see our language affects how our voice is heard. Where the senses meet each other is where poetry can begin. Is it possible to allow the body its place in writing? Using exercises of space, sound, performance, theater, collage, and page, as a guide, this workshop will be a creative laboratory that explores how we communicate by exercising the languages inside us. Over six weeks, work will be created, discarded, and renewed in an active writing workshop where movement ignites the process.

Click here to register

Poems from Late Empire with Scott Hightower 
6 Thursdays, February 19 to March 26, 6:00-8:30pm 

This is a workshop about writing poems from the post September 11th, post Madrid train bombing, post Charlie Hebdo world. The Muse and the Banshee are both welcomed. We will be looking at both historical and contemporary poems—like those of Andy Young, Cynthia Hogue, Gregory Pardlo, Peter Covino, and Steve Fellner—and considering notions of Gaston Bachelard's "The Poetics of Space" and poem as a place for the imagination to dwell.

Click here to register

A Pattern of Behavior: Serial Poems with Krystal Languell 
6 Saturdays, February 21 to April 4 (skipping March 14), 11:30am-2:00pm 

How can we create momentum across a series of poems while holding onto the original big idea? A linked sequence creates its own terms for existence, and those terms may be formal, rhetorical, metrical, emotional, or a combination—or something else! This workshop will engage in exercises designed to develop and sustain a serial poem. Possible course texts include readings from Alice Notley, Dawn Lundy Martin, Roland Barthes, and Rickey Laurentiis. Students will emerge from this workshop with a draft of a six-poem sequence.

Click here to register



For more information call (212)431-7920 or visit www.poetshouse.org. Join us on

POETRY EVENTS - CHICAGO

POETRY OUT LOUD Chicago Regionals Friday, February 13 10:30 AM Poetry Foundation 61 West Superior Street Free admission

Champions from Chicago high schools recite classic and contemporary poems for the chance to represent Illinois at the Poetry Out Loud National Finals in Washington, DC, in April. 
 

PERFORMANCE Love, What Language Do You Speak? Saturday, February 14 5:00 PM Poetry Foundation 61 West Superior Street Free admission

Please join an international gathering of cultural organizations for a multimedia, multilingual evening of poetry, music, film, and theater in celebration of Valentine’s Day.
 

READINGS The Open Door Readings: February Tuesday, February 17 7:00 PM Poetry Foundation 61 West Superior Street Free admission

The Open Door series presents work from Chicago’s new and emerging poets and highlights the area’s outstanding writing programs. In February, School of the Art Institute's Rosellen Brown and her student Judith Valente read with Columbia College's Joshua Young and his student Harlee Logan Kelly.