Tacoma's New Poet Laureate to Read

Tammy Robacker, Tacoma's new Poet Laureate, will give her first official reading in June:

More info

Carter Monroe Reads a Poem

Here is a link to a reading by Carter Monroe of one of his poems, good one--nice details, and a wonderful "turn" at the end:

Carter Monroe

Rank Stranger Press

Here is a link to Rank Stranger Press, presided over by Carter Monroe and Jim Chandler; the press publishes a wide variety of poetry and short fiction in both chapbook and "big" book formats. And here is a link to a performance of the song that gave the press its name:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_vtOd_d40o

Bob Dylan recorded it, too, in his inimitable style:

http://s0.ilike.com/play#Bob+Dylan:Rank+Strangers+To+Me:166494:m652663

Carter Monroe's THE NEW LOST BLUES

I just finished reading Carter Monroe's The New Lost Blues: Selected Poems 1999-2005, and it's splendid. It's a book well known in the small-press community but should be even more widely known and, one hopes, headed for a second printing. The influence of the Beats and the Black Mountain School is here, but that's not saying much as Monroe has obviously absorbed that influence and moved on to forge his own style. Many poems in the early part of the book are narrative in different ways, personal but never insular, and all guided by a firm but flexible, funny but also often coldly incisive voice.

These poems represent much from the author's world in North Carolina and elsewhere but just as much about the U.S. in the early 21st century. Other poems are more palpably jazz-influenced, and Monroe clearly knows the music and musicians there, and is no dabbler. A third kind of poem is shorter, more experimental, such as the Ra Postcards. Through it all runs a disciplined but highly inventive maturity, always a strong voice, a keen eye for detail, falsehood, self-deception, absurdity, and despair, and always a fine sense of form and line. This really is a substantial achievement, a book for readers of poetry to savor, and a book for poets to learn from and, if they're not careful, envy.

The New Lost Blues Selected Poems 1999-2005

Jim Chandler, Poet, Fiction-Writer, Essayist

I'm waiting for Jim Chandler's book of poems, Smoke and Thunder, to arrive from amazon.com, but I've already read several of his narrative poems, and they're terrific. Jim lives in Tennessee and has collaborated on many literary projects with the inimitable Carter Monroe. A link to Jim's site:

Jim Chandler

Smoke and Thunder

Bad-Boyfriend Poem Redux

Last year sometime I posted a video of Thadra Sheridan's reading her poem, "Bad Boyfriend," and apparently the post was popular. To be clear this is not a bad "boyfriend poem"; it is a good poem, and a good reading of it, about a bad boyfriend.

Link to Sheridan

Anyone out there know of any good "bad-girlfriend" poems--that aren't reflexively and predictably misogynist? Gotta be a good poem.

Purple

Short piece on purple:

Purple

Kikugirl

Please check out a new blog from a friend and colleague of mine:

kikugirl

Book of Poems by Tim Peeler

A link to Checking Out, a book of poems by Tim Peeler:

Checking Out

An Interview With Carter Monroe

Tim Peeler's interview with Carter Monroe, about poetry, of course:

interview

Carter Monroe's Spicer Series

Thanks to a blog called 9th Street Laboratories, I recently read Carter Monroe's "Spicer Series," a group of poems for and, in multiple ways, inspired by Jack Spicer, who was affiliated with the Beat Movement. For more on Spicer (1925-1965), please see . . .

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1656

Carter Monroe is a poet, essayist, and editor who lives in eastern North Carolina. His knowledge of 20th and 21st century American poetry is vast and incisive, the product of inquisitive, disciplined eclecticism. I think the Spicer series is terrific, a deft fusion of lyricism, imagery, and philosophy. I hope you like it, too; here is a link to it as well as to a photo of Mr. Monroe:

Spicer Series by Carter Monroe

Writers on the Storm: Stories, Observations, and Essays

The New Lost Blues Selected Poems 1999-2005

Jellyfish (poem)

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Jellyfish, Commencement Bay

(for K.W.)

At an edge of Commencement Bay,
an array of jellyfish has patterned
its position near charcoal stumps
of old pilings. We could look at
sailboats, tankers, a para-glider,
a volcano, an island, two mountain-
ranges, or each other—no:

jellyfish transfix. At first they
look like ladled dollops of brown
butter floating atop bay-soup.

Then they suggest small veils
cast off by tiny mermaid brides
now on honeymoons. We lean
over a deck-railing, large mammals
with heavy heads that pretend
to know; who mumble things
about jellyfish-stings. Fascination
defeats knowledge easily.

They’re neither fish nor jelly. Do
they swim or float? Yes. Strings
that originate inside them orient
languidly toward land as if to tune
in to a broadcast from sand. Do
jellyfish communicate? Doubtful—
probably too evolved for that.
Everything’s composed of water,
light, oxygen, and byproducts:
what else is there to know?

Simple and surreal, jellyfish are
beautiful mucous, buoyant
membrane. Comatosely alert
and illumined, their shifting
forms respond to smallest
liquid undulations at an edge
of Commencement Bay.


Copyright 2010 Hans Ostrom

Poetry Book By Chris Mansel

A person whose judgment I trust, Carter Monroe, highly recommends a book of poems by Chris Mansel that I intend to read. It is The Ashes of Thoreau, and it is available for free download . . . here.