TMR Editors’ Prize
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Current Issue: 35.1 (Spring 2012)
Poem of the Week- David Kirby: “If Any Man Have an Ear, Let Him Listen”
- Larry Levis: “Labyrinth as the Erasure of Cries Heard Once Within It or: (Mr. Bones I Succeeded. . .’ Later)”
- Amy Newman: “The Day After The Dean of Michigan State College Admits Him To Lansing Sparrow Hospital For Rest, A Naked Theodore Roethke Barricades Himself Behind A Hospital Mattress”
Tag Archives: poetry
Craig Arnold Blog
For those of you following the ongoing search for Craig Arnold, the American poet who disappeared earlier this week while researching volcanoes in Japan, you may find his blog, The Volcano Pilgrim, of interest. Last updated April 26, just before he went missing, he describes his surroundings with a poet’s eye and clearly capture’s the feel of the remote Japanese island.
Hayden Carruth (1921-2008)
The American poet Hayden Carruth passed away several weeks ago at the age of 87. He seemed to pass away as quietly as his poetry took root and grew around us: 30 books. I don’t recall hearing any announcements of his death on the news. The news of his death reached me by way of a small newspaper clipping sent down from family in Chicago.
I first encountered Hayden Carruth in high school when we were using his comprehensive anthology of American Poetry The Voice That Is Great Within Us. That anthology seems ground breaking that in included many poets who stood outside the canon, or the established schools of poetry, or the university poets. It was in this anthology that I first encountered the work of Cid Corman. Cid’s work struck me immediately and would have a large influence on my life as I would eventually come to know him in Japan and learn from him. In Japan, I would learn from Cid that he never allowed his work to be anthologized. In this one case, with Hayden, he made an exception. When Hayden asked Cid to contribute something to the anthology, Cid refused, initially – and this despite their friendship. The way I understand the story, Cid would not contribute unless Hayden was willing to take a collection of poems, something like four or five poems, a group of poems that would be representative of his work. Corman had an additional request as well. He asked that several other poets be included – poets that he felt were doing significant work. Fortunately, Hayden accommodated Corman’s requests. If Hayden had not, I probably would have never encountered Corman’s work as Cid lived in far away in Japan and did not publish much in established literary magazines in the United States. In thinking of this today, I feel a desire to acknowledge my gratitude toward Hayden Carruth, not only for the poetry he gave us, but for his work as anthologist – for the poetry he introduced us to.
Video Feature: Reading and Responding to Manuscripts
The Missouri Review’s poetry editor, Jessica Garratt, gives a tour of the office and offers insight into the process of reading and responding to manuscripts. Jessica, Katy Didden, and Marc McKee discuss the reading process and the things that make a poem successful. This is a two-part feature.
Part I:
Part 2:
TMR Podcast: Audio Winners Series: Voice-Only Poetry Runners-Up
In this Missouri Review podcast, we are pleased to present the wonderfully varied range of the second, third, and fourth runners-up from the Voice-Only poetry category of our 2007 Audio Competition. These are “The Golden Lesson” by Susan Somers-Willet, “Taking Tickets” by Eric Torgersen, and “Women in Strange Trousers” by Josh McDonald.
With “The Golden Lesson,” second runner-up Susan Somers-Willet gives an engaging performance of a poem rich in painterly image and metaphor, a poem both complex in its ideas, and visceral in its textures. Her poems have appeared in a number of periodicals including the Virginia Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Indiana Review, Gulf Coast, Verse Daily, and Painted Bride Quarterly. Somers-Willet is the author of a book of poetry, Roam, published as part of the Crab Orchard Award Series Open Competition in 2006, as well as a second forthcoming collection of poetry, Quiver.
The third runner-up of the Voice-Only Poetry category is Eric Torgersen with “Taking Tickets.” The poem defies easy classification-but we’re sure you’ll find this voice-driven poem, with its quirky character, entertaining. Torgersen is Professor of English at Central Michigan University. He has published two chapbooks and three full-length books of poetry, a novella, and the biographical/critical study Dear Friend: Rainer Maria Rilke and Paula Modersohn-Becker (Northwestern University Press).
And we conclude with the fourth runner-up, Josh McDonald’s “Women in Strange Trousers,” a prose poem about females attired in an assortment of odd apparel. McDonald is a writer, musician, and storyteller, currently writing his third novel.
You can listen to this podcast directly here.
TMR Podcast: Audio Winners Series: Voice-Only Poetry: Todd Boss
In this installment of The Missouri Review podcast, we feature the first place and first runner-up entries to the Voice-Only Literature (Poetry) category of our 2007 Audio Competition. Both of these awards go to poems by Todd Boss: “To Wind a Mechanical Toy” (1st place) and “Yellowrocket” (1st runner-up). Both poems are sonically resonant, without being heavy-handed in their music. They are lyrically complex, weaving narrative with a more roving, philosophical strain, so that listening to the poems is a varied experience, with lulls, pauses, crescendos, decrescendos, while also being unified enough to follow aurally.
Todd Boss is the director of External Affairs at The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis. His work appears in Poetry, The New Yorker, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. His first collection, Yellowrocket, will be published this year by W.W. Norton and Company.
You can listen to the podcast directly here.
Why Poetry Doesn’t Sell
I know why books of poetry don’t sell. I witnessed part of the problem last month when I attended a conference put on by Missouri’s Center for the Book. Several of the local poets who were invited to read had also signed up to have tables at the book fair to sell their collections. Yet, none of them had set up displays or even sat down at their table for five minutes to talk to conference attendees. Most of the poets swooped in, gave their reading, and then slipped out a side door. Those who did stick around and were a little more social kept their books in their satchels.
The concept of poets as divas seems oxymoronic and exotic and yet they exist. Do poets really lack an audience or do they refuse to do the work necessary to create one? Instead of work, they show practiced indifference. Perhaps they believe it is too crass to sell their books. They wrote it, maybe they believe it’s someone else’s problem to sell it. Or do they suffer from a defeatist attitude? No one reads poetry, why bother?
I used to host a book club at a local bookstore and had little difficulty finding readers. Fiction and nonfiction writers would contact me and ask to if they could add my book club to their “do-it-yourself” reading tours. They seemed willing to sell books out of their trunk if they had to. The publishing industry has always struggled and now with the recession it’s going to struggle even more. Promoting books has increasingly become the responsibility of the writers. Someone forgot to tell the poets.