Tuesday, July 02, 2013

your independence day annogram


Thanks for the hundreds of visits to my new poetry website and Now in November Pulitzer Remix blog.  More news:  Asymptote Journal will excerpt my translation of The Hero by Hélène Sanguinetti; and my poem, “Sugaring,” will appear in Sundress Publications’ anthology, Not Somewhere Else But Here: A Contemporary Anthology of Women and Place.  Another anthology featuring my work, Journey to Crone (Chuffed Buff Books, 2013), is now available as e-book.

A Slant of Light

I am thrilled to be in A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley (Codhill Press, 2013), edited by Laurence Carr and Jan Zlotnick Schmidt.  A Slant of Light is divided into Mythos, Body & Gender; Identity; and Woman in the World.   The divine Brenda Connor-Bey suggested I submit my work—thank you Brenda wherever you are! 

Night of Rock

The Offbeats reunited to play the seventh Night of Rock, benefiting The Scarsdale Teen Center.  More than 140 people enjoyed 60s classics such as “Gloria” performed by lead singer Jay Shulman (left), guitarist John Moses, singer and mean harp-player Thom Pernice (bottom left), bass Andy Kreeger, drummer Ted Spencer and my personal favorite, rhythm guitarist Michael Cefola (bottom right).  Jimmy Fink of 107.1 The Peak hosted the event at Rudy’s in Hartsdale.


Fresh Take on Arthur Miller

600 HIGHWAYMEN will re-spin Death of a Salesman in This Great Country at the South Street Seaport Theatre during the River to River Festival, July 10-13. Seventeen actors will join with audience members using 600 HIGHWAYMEN’s unique theatrics and highly charged performance style.  Look for my friend, the talented Wayne Joseph, who will portray the next-door neighbor Charlie in this iconic American drama. Click here for tickets.

Randy Briggs gets ARTiculated

Randy's watercolor, Ocean Street, Cape May, will be on display at the Summer ARTiculated Juried Show at Concordia College's OSilas Gallery.  Opening reception will be Thursday, July 11, at 7 p.m. The exhibit will run one month, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 10 a.m. - 3 p.m.; Thursdays, 12 noon - 9 p.m.; and Saturdays /Sundays, 2 p.m. - 5 p.m.  Congratulations, Randy!




Bookstock Literary Festival in Woodstock, VT

Nothing like escaping the hot pavement of New York for Vermont’s cool Green Mountains!  If you’re heading north, take advantage of the Bookstock Literary Festival  in Woodstock July 26 -28.  All events are free and open to the public.  Hear poets like Donald Hall, Richard Blanco, and Galway Kinnell alone.  If you go, save room for pancakes at Sugar n’ Spice in nearby Mendon.

Meetinghouse Readings in Canaan, NH

The Meetinghouse Readings is an annual summer series at the 1793 Meetinghouse in Canaan, New Hampshire:  July 11: Cleopatra Mathis and Joyce Carol Oates; July 18: Jay Parini and Nicholas Delbanco; July 25: Megan Marshall and Chris Bohjalian; August 1: Joe Citro and Ivy Pochoda.

Not more poetry newsletters!

Mr. Yeats
It’s bad enough that Big Bang Poetry’s Newsletter blows the top of my head off, to paraphrase Miss Dickinson, then along comes Robert McDowell’s Newletter #126 on Mr. Yeats (right).  In it, he shares this amazing quote on the imagination from Keith Johnstone’s IMPRO: Improvisation and the Theatre (Routledge, 1987):

Students need a “guru” who “gives permission” to allow forbidden thoughts into their consciousness. A “guru” doesn’t necessarily teach at all. Some remain speechless for years, others communicate very cryptically. All reassure by example… It’s no good telling the student that he isn’t to be held responsible for the context of his imagination, he needs a teacher who is living proof that the monsters are not real, and that the imagination will not destroy you.

‘Round the Net

Thanks to everyone who sent me these wonderful links and/or news:

Collage by Deborah Coulter
·       Artist Deborah Coulter for her fabulous “visual blogs” which feature highly original collages.

·       Congratulations to Terry Dugan on winning the Christopher Hewitt Award in Nonfiction and a Finalist in Poetry from A&U Magazine, which praised her writing’s’ “unique perspective and beautifully considered language.”  Go Terry!

·       Terry also shared this incredible software to assess a poem.

·       Congratulations to Pulitzer Remixer Gary Glauber on the publication of his poem, “Play,” in The Kitchen Poet.
 
Jane Ormerod

·       Poet and publisher Janet Kaplan for announcing E. J. Antonio’s new chapbook, Solstice, available at Red Glass Books.

·       Iyengar yoga teacher Nancy Kardon for suggesting the closing poem below.

·       Actor Tony LoBianco for reminding us of the timeless appeal of The French Connection, a five-time Academy Award winner, which recently aired on HBO.
Daniel Westover

·       Poet Linda Simone for novelist Chimamanda Adichie’s talk on “The Danger of a Single Story” and this glimpse of Afghan life through poetry.

Thanks to Galway Kinnell’s reminder:  Everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing.
 
Until next time,

Ann
 
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath
them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Galway Kinnell, “St. Francis and the Sow”