My poetry archive: Winamop

The latest issue of Winamop is out. This is a quirky little British zine that "was conceived on a whim, is run on a shoestring, ignored by the many, loved by the few and has continued unabashed since 2003." Just the place to send light verse - and the editor took three of mine, plus a collaborative poem written by eight of my relatives in 1947. Great to find waiting for me first thing on April Fool's day.

National Poetry Writing Month 2012

April is National Poetry Writing Month, when we are challenged to write a poem every day for 30 days. I have decided to try it again, as I have every year since 2007.

I will be posting my daily efforts on the forum at Poets.org. The section "The Writing Life" has a folder "NaPoWriMo 2012"; my thread is "Esther's Exercises."

The Poets.org forums have had increased difficulty with spammers and hackers, and have toughened their access rules as a result. To view the NaPo threads (or any of the poetry workshop threads) you must join the forum with a recognizable first and last name, and wait to be approved.

Of course, if you join and would like to participate in NaPoWriMo yourself, you can create your own thread!

Publications update

Here's a brief rundown of poems I've posted since the last update in May:

The Fib Review (edited by Mary-Jane Grandinetti, who is also editor of Shot Glass Journal) is a zine devoted not to minor mendacities but to the fib, a form based on the Fibonacci sequence. I had 3 poems in issue #10: "The mailman cometh", "Gift of gab", and "Make your cooking colorful". (I can't the links to work; see "Index to published poems" at right.)

Curio Poetry is a fairly new zine, specializing in "poetry that explores the world at a micro-level: tiny spaces, instants, individual objects, scraps of dreams and memories, et cetera." Issue #3 contains 3 of mine: Summer libation; The sinister spoon; Floaters.

The December issue of Danse Macabre had my cranky holiday poem, "'Tis the season" - I'll post the link on the sidebar when the archive is available again. Two other poems, Literalness is the Devil's weapon; Visitation, were posted on the auxiliary site, Danse Macabre du Jour.

On New Verse News, see my double dactyl Laissez-faire (June 12, 2011) and Sonnenizio on a line by Edward Thomas (March 5, 2012).

The latter is the first poem I've written since last June; time to get in gear for National Poetry Writing Month in April!

Review and reading of UNGLOBED FRUIT

The March issue of Friends Journal contains a review of Unglobed Fruit by Catherine Wald, the former poetry editor. Here is the conclusion:

I enjoyed this book as an adventurous foray into language and form that is heavier on wit than emotional impact. For this reason, I suspect the book will be of more interest to poets than the general public. I was also surprised that someone so keen on form chose to order her poems alphabetically rather than in terms of thematic or narrative thrust. However there's much to admire and amuse here— so help yourself!

I laughed at her comment on the alphabetical order. I daresay the book would have come out a year earlier if I hadn't been hung up on the arrangement. I read and reread Ordering the Storm, a collection of essays on how to put together a book of poetry; each and every contributor recommended crawling around on the floor, which at my age I'm physically unable to do. So in the end I decided that what was good enough for W H Auden was good enough for me.

Coincidentally, I've been asked to do a book signing and reading at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting library next Sunday, Feb 26. (1515 Cherry St., Philadelphia, 12:30-2 PM. Meeting for worship starts at 11:00.)

Poetry update

After a pause of several months I am in the process of updating the links on this site. The following poetry zines have closed or suspended publication since I listed them, though their web pages are still available (see "Poetry sites" sidebar):

Shit Creek Review published an "End of Days" issue in December 2011, which they indicate will be the last. It was a first-class formal-friendly zine from the land of Oz with a wonderfully un-stodgy spirit.
Pemmican is on "indefinite hiatus," meaning the 2011 issue is the last, at least for now.
Puffin Circus, which started out to be a monthly, seems to have run out of steam after its April 11 "baseball" issue.
Danse Macabre is moving, and will resume once it is installed in its new home. Submissions are suspended until then; the archive is currently unavailable.

As for me, I've been on hiatus too; I've done some revising, but have written virtually no poetry since last June.

I'll be back anon with a list of recently published poems.

Update on "Jens Bjørneboe in English"

The Wayback Machine is in the process of reconstruction, so the link posted awhile ago no longer works. Try this:
Jens Bjørneboe in English You may have to wait a bit for it to redirect.

The site is way out of date; many of the books listed are out of print. According to Amazon, those currently in print are Amputation, Powderhouse and The Silence. I'm not sure about Moment of Freedom, but the whole trilogy is still listed in the catalog of Norvik Press in England.

Jens Bjørneboe: Ballad of Hiroshima Town

Jens Bjørneboe
Ballad of Hiroshima Town (From The Bird-Lovers)
Translated by Esther Greenleaf Mürer


It was a lovely morning
In Hiroshima town,
One summer morn in nineteen five and forty.
And the sun, how bright it shone
From a sky without a cloud,
One summer morn in nineteen five and forty.

The little girls they played
‘Neath the trees and on the grass,
And everything they did just like the big ones.
They dressed their dollies up
And they washed their dollies’ dresses
And the women sliced the bread back in the kitchen.

And there were many children
Yet lying in their beds,
For this was still an early morning hour,
And the dew lay on the meadow
In the lovely slanting sunlight
And the crowns had barely opened on the flowers.

It was a lovely morning
In Hiroshima town,
One summer morn in nineteen five and forty.
And the sun, how bright it shone
From a sky without a cloud,
That summer morn in nineteen five and forty.

--
Jens Bjørneboe, Samlede Dikt, 1995 ed, p 150f (Fugleelskerne, 1966)
©1977, 1995 by Gyldendal Norsk Forlag. English translation ©1997 by Esther Greenleaf Mürer