Showing posts with label Robert Pinsky. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert Pinsky. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Poems Out Loud

A new website has been launched by Norton publishers, Poems Out Loud (www.poemsoutloud.net).  During the month of April, and in honor of National Poetry Month, Robert Pinsky has been invited to be the host.  

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Robert von Hallberg on poetry during wartime

Worth a read:  Robert von Hallberg, "Poets and the People: Reflections on solidarity during wartime," Boston Review (September/October 2008).  

In the essay, von Hallberg notes that Jorie Graham's Overlord suggests that soldiers in Normandy died, not for the Nation or the just cause, but simply for each other.  Soldiers die "...for no government, no ideology, only for paratroopers.  They die willingly because of the immediate conditions of military engagement.  Theirs is a morbid fraternity."

Monday, September 15, 2008

Guantanamo poems

Poetry, "a form that people turn to naturally in moments of crisis," as Andrew Motion explained in a Guardian audio (December 13, 2007), was written from within the Guantanamo prison.  An anthology of poems was collected and edited as Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak by Marc Falkoff (University of Iowa Press, 2007).  

You can listen to some of the poems here.
Listen to NPR features about Guantanamo here.
Robert Pinsky felt that the value of the poems came from their urgency, see link.

Reviews of the book include:
Yochi J. Dreazen, "The Prison Poets of Guantanamo Find a Publisher," the Wall Street Journal (June 20, 2007)
in the Independent (June 21, 2007)
Dan Chiasson, "Notes on Prison Camp" New York Times (August 19, 2007) also printed as "Poems from Guantanamo: the Detainees Speak," IHT (August 17, 2007)
John Lundberg, "Poems from Guantanamo Bay," Huffington Post (March 16, 2008)