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"There's nothing I can tell you that you don't already know." Leah Browning's meditative poem "There's Nothing" is portrayed in this clip from Poetry Storehouse. Browning's third chapbook, In the Chair Museum, was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2013.
In this clip, poet Bianca Stone combines poetry, music, and art, telling a story through the deconstruction of her own drawings. Stone is the author of Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (Tin House/Octopus Books, 2014).
In Contre Sainte Beuve, Marcel Proust writes: "In reality, as soon as each hour of one's life has died, it embodies itself in some material object, as do the souls of the dead in certain folk-stories, and hides there. There it remains captive, captive forever unless we should happen on the object, recognize what lies within, call it by its name, and so set it free." This week, practice being a "namer." Recognize what lies deep within the objects you come in contact with, and try to conjure up a name that fits. Write a poem about a name you came up with that you find particularly inspiring.
"I thought we were going to get / the end of the story this afternoon. / I was mistaken." Based on the poem "Some Small Room for Surprise" by Jen Karetnick, with music by Elan Hickler, this video was filmed for the Poetry Storehouse.
In this clip, from the satellite-radio show Theme Time Radio Hour, Bob Dylan reads Walt Whitman's poem "I Hear America Singing." Here's to a happy, healthy, creative, and inspired Independence Day!
Avant-garde artist, performer, and writer Barbara Rosenthal superimposes curious text on 35mm slides to create a series of three postcards. Paired with melancholy music, the piece captures a glimpse of a much larger story brewing just beneath the surface. Rosenthal has kept a lifelong journal since age eleven—the subject of several international exhibitions.
The Library of Congress’s Poetry and Literature Center is accepting nominations for the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry. The biennial prize is given for a poetry collection written by a U.S. citizen and published in the previous two years, or for lifetime achievement in poetry. The winner will receive $10,000 and will give a public reading in the fall.
Publishers may submit four copies of a book published in 2012 or 2013, along with the required entry form and a suggested $50 contribution to the Library of Congress by postal mail to Bobbitt Prize, Poetry and Literature Center, Library of Congress, 101 Independence Avenue, S.E., Washington, D.C. 20540. The postmark deadline is July 31. Books published in a standard edition of at least 1,000 copies are eligible. A collected or selected work is eligible only if it contains at least 30 poems previously unpublished in a book. A three-person jury and the Librarian of Congress, James Billington, will judge.
Established in 1990, the Bobbitt prize is given by the family of Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt (1910-1978). Bobbitt, who worked at the Library of Congress in the 1930s, was the late President Lyndon B. Johnson’s sister.
Gerald Stern won the 2012 Bobbitt Prize for Early Collected Poems: 1965-1992 (Norton, 2010). Other winners of the prize include James Merrill, Louise Glück, A. R. Ammons, Kenneth Koch, Frank Bidart, W. S. Merwin, and Lucia Perillo.
"Words are the heart of humanity and I live with that in mind." Joe Esselin, son of Yiddish poet Alter Esselin, tells the story of his father's journey to America in the early 1900s. Living through poverty, finding work as a carpenter, and cherishing memories of his homeland all became inspirations for his poetry.
"The city's old, / but new to me, and therefore / strange, and therefore fresh," Margaret Atwood muses in her poem "Europe on $5 a Day." Today write about being a visitor in a strange new city, walking the streets, and observing the locals going about their daily tasks. Describe in detail the smells in the air, the sounds clouding around you, and the unique images that meet your eyes. The goal is to make your reader feel like they are also seeing this place for the first time, even if they have been there before.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 3 Sections speaks with PBS NewsHour's Jeffrey Brown about how his experience as an immigrant influences the way he writes his poems. "If you're an immigrant, you're sort of on the fringe of society, you see society as a whole, you see panoramas...you can embrace all of it."
