your august annogram

Happy August—the air is cooler, sun a touch more gold, sky a richer blue.  Or maybe it’s all the good happening.  For starters, my new web site attracted more than 11,100 hits in June alone!  Be sure to explore it, especially Toolkit, a section for poets.  You may have also received a postcard from me. If you haven’t, and would like to be on my snail-mail list, please contact me through my web site.

September 12 reading                     

Please come hear me read at the Go Cat Go Poetry Reading Series, hosted by the inimitable Peter Chelnik, at Gracie's Corner Diner, 352 East 86th Street, at 6:45 p.m. on September 12.  There is an open mic afterwards, so bring poems to read.   Hope to see you!

More good news

Editors Martin Elwell and Jenn Monroe have accepted my poem, “Running with Delilah,” for their upcoming anthology of running poems, Bearers of Distance (Eastern Point Lit House).  And UK editor Daniele Pantano of em review will publish my translation of “Victory” from Hélène Sanguinetti’s Le Héros (Flammarion, 2008). 

Anthology updates

Editor Larry Carr just sent me A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley (Codhill Press), and I am happy to see it features “Geechee Daughter” by the late Brenda Connor-Bey.  Buzz is also building around Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (Poets Wear Prada), as editor Joel Allegretti collects impressive cover reviews.

Jeanne Carbonetti and Crow Hill Gallery

Crow Hill Gallery

What a pleasure this month to explore Jeanne Carbonetti’s beautiful gallery deep on a wooded Vermont hillside!  The landscape, a feast of green, features an occasional Buddha or sculpture perfectly aligned in the natural setting.  When we visited, the award-winning artist generously critiqued the watercolors that my poetry pal Linda Simone had painted and then captured on a smartphone. 

Linda and Jeanne talk painting

Amazing to meet this creativity guru—whose Making Pearls (Watson-Guptill, 1998) and The Heart of Creativity (Eden Center Press, 2009) always inspire.  In Heart, she writes about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech—which connects to our next item. Thank you, Jeanne Carbonetti, for your gorgeous watercolors and open heart!

March on Washington

Dr. King at the 1963 March

Did you know this year is the 50^th anniversary of the March on Washington?  To commemorate this historic event, Stuart Marwell, CEO and President of Curtis Instruments, is sharing his collection of March memorabilia at Greenburgh Town Hall’s Madeline Gutman Gallery. As a young man, Marwell attended the March, where he heard Dr. King give his famous speech.  On display are a commemorative button Marwell wore that day; a portfolio of March reflections by Dr. King, Roy Wilkins and Whitney M. Young Jr. among others; and an evocative collage series by Louis Lo Monaco.  See this rare exhibit Monday through Friday, 9-5, before it closes September 4.

Back to school

Professor Al Filreis

If you’re a poet, you might be interested in the free online course, Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (ModPo) with University of Pennsylvania Professor Al Filreis (right).  Go to www.coursera.org to sign up for the next session starting September 7.  A walloping 36,000 people have taken the course!  For more intimate focus on your own work, consider Robert McDowell’s e-course on forms of poetry which starts August 21.

Raves for Quick Draw

Quick Draw cast

Feel like there’s nothing on TV?  Try Quick Draw on Hulu Monday nights.  The New York Daily News calls this comedy “hilarious” and TV Guide “funny and fresh.”  Follow Sheriff John Henry Hoyle and Deputy Eli as they apply forensics to hunt Wild West criminals. Congratulations to co-writers John Lehr and John McCray on their wickedly inspired series.

Doggone it

The Sopranos meets Marley and Me with a twist: That's how Louis Spirito describes Gimme Shelter, his memoir  chronicling how his efforts to rescue a timid pit bull helped him get a handle on his chronic anger.  To repay his canine therapist, Lou is donating 10% of book profits to rescue organizations and inviting them to his live events—including Malibu Pet Companions, Linda Blair Worldheart Foundation, St. Martin's Animal Foundation, Canine Adoption Rescue League (C.A.R.L.) and Animal Advocate Alliance. Learn more at louisspirito.com.

Rockabilly and Ira Munn Hedges

Finn and the Sharks

In the early 80s, John Mellencamp and Marty Stuart among others electrified rockabilly, a driving sound blending rock, blues and country traditions.  Leading that wave was Finn and the Sharks, who earned an MTV award, played CBGB’s frequently and enjoyed a huge following in their home county, appropriately named Rockland.  Billy (upper right) and Steve Roues (second left), my friend Cindy’s brothers, formed the band with guitarist/vocalist James Finnen (far left), drummer Ed Steinberg (center) and rhythm guitarist Ira Munn Hedges (lower right). 



While Ira’s aristocratic family practically founded New York State, Ira was unassuming.  Blond and lanky with an easy smile, he exuded goodwill.  Besides a gifted vocalist and guitarist, Ira was a natural athlete who loved tennis and golf.  He had the good judgment to marry Cindy, and together raise three strapping sons.   His natural charm also made him successful in business.

Ira Munn Hedges

In June, Finn and the Sharks performed a tribute to Ira, who passed away this year.  The extraordinary performance left attendees speechless.  Vocalists Lisa Best and Big Jim Wheeler joined the Sharks for poignant songs such as “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”  Thanks to the Sharks, we can celebrate Ira’s musical legacy and contribution in rock history:  Here’s Ira playing “Come On Everybody” in 2011.

 ‘Round the Net

Thanks to the following people who shared these fascinating links:

·     Photographer Carol Booth on this moving video about photography and healing

Poet Linda Nemec Foster

·     Poet Linda Nemec Foster (left) for her Poets & Writers blog in response to Detroit’s bankruptcy

·     Poet Gary Glauber for his poem “Look Before,” “First Semester,” three in Radical Dislocations and more in Otis Nebula 8

·     Art director Abby Raeder for her blog, “A Monument to Love,” about a cairn sculpture in Vermont (right)

 

·     ADA advocate Dave Schwartzkopf for The 60s Official Site



Ms. Black

·     Cellist Jay Shulman for this clip of Paul McCartney performing “Mr. Kite”, and this article on Paige Morton Black (left) who sang the Chock Full O’ Nuts jingle

·     Artist Angela Virsinger for this video on the work of Korean artist U-ram Choe

·     Westchester Amateur Astronomers for this sci-fi movie trailer “Europa Report” on space travel

Wishing you a ripe, rich and full end to summer!

Until next time,

Ann

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 Cin Hochman on her superb review of Jane Ormerod’s Welcome to the Museum of Cattle in First Literary Review East.

·       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 Robert McDowell on this piece by Daniel Westover (left) which looks at effective poetry via the requirements of a journal called The Reaper.

• ·       Congratulations to vintage classical producer Jay Shulman on his just-released CD, the Stuyvesant Quartet with Al Gallodoro (2013).

·       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”

 

your june moon annogram

New poetry website

I am thrilled to announce my new website, www.anncefola.com.   If you’re a new poet, interested in translation, or would like to read an essay on Whitman or Millay, take a peek under “Toolkit.”  You can also visit “What’s New” to find out my latest poetry forays. 

Thanks to novelist Terry Dugan, memoirist Sarah Bracey White and poet Linda Simone for brainstorming website strategies over raspberry pancakes one fine morning; web designers Dan Gregory and Linda Lee for creating the site; and Linda Simone and Michael Cefola for exquisitely artful photos.

Now in November

My new blog, Now in November, brings together all 30 of my poems from the Pulitzer Remix project, with Depression-era photographs.  The blog has been been viewed nearly 300 times and poet Deborah Hauser has highlighted it on her website.  I am still haunted by Now in November, a sleeper of a novel which should be required American lit in high school, college and beyond.

Big Bang Poetry

Thanks to poet Mary Ladd McCray for interviewing me on Big Bang Poetry.  Mary asked great questions, and I hope you’ll enjoy our conversation.  Mary has her own reasons to celebrate—her long-awaited poetry book, Why Photographers Commit Suicide (Trementina Books, 2012), is an Indie Excellence Award finalist.  And she also completed a breath-taking 30 poems in 30 days for the NaPoWriMo Project last month.  Congratulations, Mary!

Spotlight on Translators

Thanks also to Lisa Carter for interviewing me on her May 22, 2013 Intralingo blog.  Lisa, a translator, writer and editor, is owner of Intralingo Inc., winner of the Alicia Gordon Award for Word Artistry in Translation and an International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award nominee.  In the interview, I shamelessly ask—or dare—publishers to consider the poetry of the ever-adventuresome Hélène Sanguinetti (right) and thank Lisa for the chance to speak about translating Hélène’s work.  Look for a sample in the January 2014 online eleven eleven.

Welcome Pulitzer Remixers

A bonus of the Pulitzer Remix experience has been getting to know the many talented participants.  Congratulations to Peter Cole Friedman for work in Petrichor Machine and forthcoming in Emerge Literary Journal in June; Gary Glauber on his poem in Emerge Literary Journal; Deborah Hauser on her recent reading at Bluestockings in New York;  Reiser Perkins, editor of Otis Nebula, on the journal’s first poetry book prize (below); Sheila Sondik for her gorgeous prints and paintings; Neal Whitman for poems in The MacGuffin and Poems Found in March, a chapbook of his Pulitzer Remix work.  Hello to Seth Crook, Vicki Hudson, S.E. Ingraham, Margo Roby, Scott Stoller, and Kara Synhorst.

Otis Nebula Poetry Prize

Otis Nebula announces its first poetry book contest.  Donald Revell (right) will judge the winning entry and one runner up. The winning volume will be published in a 100-copy print run and as an ebook; runner-up as an e-book. Winner will receive $250 and 10 copies of her book/ebook; runner-up, $50 and 10 e-book copies. Submit typed 40-100 page manuscripts before June 15, 2013 with $15. For complete guidelines and to submit online, go here.

Learning to See Pot Luck and Poetry Party

Come to this fun event sponsored by the Greenburgh Arts and Culture Committee on Wednesday, June 26, from 5:30 – 8 p.m., at the Greenburgh Public Library.  Learning to See is the late Brenda Connor Bey’s legacy project, and this party will in part commemorate Brenda (left).  Participants in former Learning to See Workshops may bring a poem or two and read them—e-mail bracey0114@aol.com if you’d like to do that prior to the event.

Meg Lindsay Poetry and Paintings
Poet and artist Meg Lindsay will exhibit both her poetry and paintings at the Gregory James Gallery, 93 Park Lane Road, New Milford, CT, from June 22-July 21.  The opening reception will take place Saturday, June 22, from 5 p.m. – 7 p.m.  Congratulations, Meg!

Sarah Lawrence 48-Hour Donation Blitz
I just saw my best friend from my undergraduate days at Sarah Lawrence last weekend.  What a fantastic education we enjoyed—one-on-one studies with our professors, small classes, incredibly mind-stretching conversations—truly like a graduate-level experience.  If you believe in progressive education and/or liberal arts, make a donation by tomorrow, Thursday, June 6.  If 41 more people donate, a trustee will donate $75,000!   Give here.  You can track the results on Facebook.

'Round the Net

Thanks to the following for sending great links and/or books:

· Novelist Terry Dugan for this article on Good Writing vs. Talented Writing

· Lakota Advocate Cindy Dunne for letting me know that Lakota Children’s Enrichment is reaching young Pine Ridge writers.

· Poet Eric Greinke for Listen to the Landscape (Erdmans, 2006), haiku by Linda Nemec Foster and images by Dianne Carroll Burdick--the kind of book that made me slow down and appreciate the superb marriage of poetry and art.

· Linda Nemec Foster for her recent interview about her new CD on Michigan Public Radio

· Eric again for his upcoming volume of new and selected works, For the Living Dead (Presa Press, 2013), which I love for its French influences found deep in the Michigan woods.

· Iyengar yoga teacher Nancy Kardon for this interview with Thich Nhat Hanh.

· Poet Amy King for a call for 1-3 ecopoems from Poets for Living Waters.

· Screenwriters John McCray and John Lehr for this hilarious trailer for their Hulu comedy series.

· Oxford American for this visit to Tiny Town.

· Poet Kevin Pilkington for letting me know about his new and informative website.

· Poets & Writers for this timely and moving 2005 graduation speech and video of same by David Foster Wallace.

· The Shelter Reform Action Committee for this petition to reform New York City’s notoriously deadly animal shelters.

· Arts lecturer Jay Shulman for recommending Too Bright to Hear, Too Loud to See by Julian Garey (Soho, 2013) and recalling the WMCA Radio Good Guys.

· Memoirist Lou Spirito and his pit-bull mix Tanner on their book Gimme Shelter hitting no. 2 on The Malibu Times nonfiction best-seller list.

· Sarah Bracey White for advance notice that her memoir, Primary Lessons (CavanKerry, 2013) is now available for pre-order from Amazon.

· Pultizer Remixer Neal Whitman for sending me his new chapbook, Poems Found In March, a collection of his poems based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning March (Penguin, 2006) by Geraldine Brooks.

Have a wonderful summer!

Ann