Genre: Poetry

Cooking With the Muse

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“A cook marries ingredients much the way a poet marries words. This is a human experience.” In Cooking With the Muse: A Sumptuous Gathering of Seasonal Recipes, Culinary Poetry, and Literary Fare (Tupelo Press, 2016), poet Stephen Massimilla and chef Myra Kornfeld collaborate on an anthology of culinary poems and recipes. The book explores the connection between cooking and writing, and includes works by luminaries such as Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, Zora Neale Hurston, Seamus Heaney, and Jane Hirshfield.

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Poetry
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book trailer
Tupelo Press
2016
Stephen Massimilla
Myra Kornfeld
Cooking With the Muse

Ocean Vuong

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"Outside, a soldier spits out / his cigarette as footsteps fill the square like stones / fallen from the sky. May / all your Christmases be white / as the traffic guard unstraps his holster." Ocean Vuong shares poems from his debut collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), and speaks about the oral tradition of his family and his personal ties to the Vietnam War for a series on PBS NewsHour.

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Poetry
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PBS NewsHour
Copper Canyon Press
2016
Ocean Vuong
Night Sky With Exit Wounds
January/February 2017
Debut Poets 2016

Deadline Approaches for BOMB’s Poetry Contest

G&A: The Contest Blog
5.3.16

Submissions are currently open for the BOMB magazine poetry prize, which is given biennially for a group of poems. The winner will receive $1,000 and publication in BOMB magazine. Bhanu Kapil will judge.

Using the online submission manager, submit up to five poems totaling no more than 10 pages and a $20 reading fee, which includes a one-year subscription to BOMB, by May 15. Simultaneous submissions are accepted. The winner will be announced on July 31. For questions, e-mail firstproof@bombsite.com.

Bhanu Kapil is the author of five full-length hybrid works of poetry and prose, including Schizophrene (2011) and Ban en Banlieue (2015). She teaches writing at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and at Goddard College’s low-residency MFA program.

Founded in 1981, BOMB is an independent nonprofit magazine that publishes conversations between artists of various disciplines; original works of fiction and poetry; novel excerpts; and first-time translations into English. The magazine also sponsors a fiction prize, which is given in alternating years. Previous winners of BOMB’s poetry contest include Daniel Poppick, Steve Dickison, Amanda Auchter, J. R. Thelin and Matthew Reeck. 

Feeling Music

The Time Is Now
5.3.16

For a period of eighteen months in the late 1970s, an unexpected pairing of communities took place: the building that housed the San Francisco Club for the Deaf, a social club for the deaf community, became the venue for notable punk rock shows and album recordings. In an article about a Deaf Club event in T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Opal Gordon, a deaf performer, said, “Music is strong, [deaf people] can feel the vibrations. Punk is perfect because it’s loud, it’s heavy, it’s in your face.” Write a poem in which you imagine experiencing a musical performance—whether punk, classical, country, or jazz—that you can see and feel, but not hear. Think about the ways in which music can transcend sound, focusing on the visual or literal attitude of the performance.

Blank on Blank: Patti Smith

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"To me, poetry is one of the highest, most abstract, most fulfilling forms of communication. We've always needed poets." In this recording from 1976, Patti Smith talks to journalist Mick Gold about censorship, her creative habits and inspirations, and recounts her first exposure to the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud. Animated by Patrick Smith, the video is part of PBS Digital Studios' Blank on Blank series.

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Poetry
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Patti Smith
animation
PBS
Blank on Blank
Arthur Rimbuad
Illuminations
1976

Even Though the Whole World Is Burning

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"Poetry begins with hearing...begins with hearing the sounds of passion." In this first feature documentary of poet laureate W. S. Merwin, the poet and environmental activist shares his work and life. The film, directed by Stefan Schaefer, is available on VOD or DVD with a portion of the proceeds supporting the Merwin Conservancy.

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Poetry
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United States Poet Laureate
documentary
Even Though the Whole World Is Burning
W. S. Merwin

Amit Majmudar

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"What it means / is, what it's showing is, there's this unseen / eye, on the inside. And she's marking it." Listen to Amit Majmudar, a radiologist and Ohio's first poet laureate, read the title poem from his new collection, Dothead (Knopf, 2016). This reading took place at the 2015 Neustadt Festival of International Literature and Culture hosted by the University of Oklahoma.

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Poetry
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Knopf
reading
2016
Dothead
Amit Majmudar

Aphorisms

The Time Is Now
4.26.16

In During (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), the new collection by National Book Award finalist James Richardson, there are, in addition to many wonderful poems, dozens and dozens of aphorisms (a poetic specialty of his), including gems like, “Maybe what interests me in the mirror is not myself but that person who looks so interested in me.” Try your hand at writing a handful of aphorisms, focusing on the way they use brevity and clarity to find their way into an idea. For inspiration, read more of Richardson’s aphorisms, and some from his favorite aphorist Antonio Porchia.

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