Elizabeth Haight

Every once in a while I come across a poet whose work is barely known at all but who shows the kind of promise that I think will bring her wider recognition eventually.  The term we use is “emerging poet,” which sounds to me a bit like a chicken pecking its way out an egg, but really means someone who doesn’t yet have a book out or perhaps only one or two books, not enough to be called an “established poet.” Continue reading POETRY MONDAY: September 6, 2010: Elizabeth Haight

POETRY MONDAY:  July 5, 2010

Jim Haba

I’m proud to be able to introduce someone that many of you will recognize in this photo. Jim Haba was the tireless person everywhere at once at the famous Dodge Poetry Festival — behind the microphone introducing world-famous poets to cheering crowds and organizing talks and workshops all over a sylvan campus every two years. There was much more, as you will read below, but what many of you may not know is that he is, and has been for many years, a fine poet himself. Continue reading Poetry Monday July: Jim Haba

 (Photo by Steven Haas)

Our June poet, Laurel Blossom, has published widely, in such journals and anthologies as The Paris Review, Harper’s, and Billy Collins’ 180 More: Exraordinary Poems for Every Day. Since her first published collection, a chapbook, Any Minute (Greenhouse Review Press, 1979), she has published four books, the most recent of which are a book-length narrative poem, Degrees of  Latitude (Four Way Books, 2007) and Wednesday: New and Selected Poems (Ridgeway Press, 2004).  Her poetry has been nominated for both a Pushcart Prize and the Elliston Prize.

Blossom has also edited two anthologies: Splash! Great Writing about Swimming (Ecco Press, 1996) and Many Lights in Many Windows: Twenty Years of Great Fiction and Poetry from The Writers Community (Milkweed Editions, 1997).  She also serves on the editorial board of Heliotrope: a Journal of Poetry.  Continue reading June Poetry Monday: Laurel Blossom

Jay Rubin

I’m pleased this month to introduce Jay Rubin, whose poems have appeared widely in the past few years, in such publications as Blue Earth Review, Rosebud, Prague Review, Poetry South, and The Poetry of Relationships.  He teaches writing at The College of Alameda in the San Francisco Bay area and lives in San Francisco with his wife and son.  He is also the founder, editor and publisher of the all-poetry literary journal, Alehouse (www.alehousepress.com), an enterprise about which  his  comments in a recent interview might be of special interest to our readers.  “Serving as an editor, after years of writing poetry, is like a long-term psychoanalysis patient becoming the psychiatrist.  It’s a whole different game when you sit on the chair across from the couch.  The  whole world opens up, and it changes you – and your poetry.”

Continue reading POETRY MONDAY: May 3, 2010: Jay Rubin

Click Here to Read: Smith College Professor Justin Cammy remembers Abraham Sutzkever, the most important Yiddish poet of the Holocaust By Anne-Gerard Flynn in The Republican on April 09, 2010.

Justin D. Cammy, assistant professor of Jewish Studies at Smith College in Northampton, poses with some of the works of the legendary Yiddish poet and Holocaust survivor Abraham Sutzkever, who died on Jan 20, at the age of 96 in Tel Aviv.

Click Here to Read:  The  Poem “To My Child” by Abraham Sutzkever was used in Anna Ornstein’s Plenary at the American Psychoanalytic Association.

Click Here to Read:  Abraham Sutzkever: In Memoriam By Ruth R. Wisse The Jewish Ideas Dialy on January 22, 2010 on this website.

A Tribute to Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

 Although homage to this great poet would seem fitting at any time, it seems especially fitting for this column to offer it during National Poetry Month. I’m delighted, for strongly personal reasons, to have this opportunity. I remember how I felt as a teenager, sitting in my high-school English classroom and opening a literature anthology to her poem, “Renascence,” the way it spread thrillingly across the page, lifting me up and out of it.

Other women have reported a similar experience with that poem, which catapulted Millay into fame when she was only nineteen years old.  She became wildly popular, in a way that few poets are today, went on to publish many poetry collections, plays, and short-stories, and in 1923 was the first woman awarded the Pulitzer Prize.  Dismissed by some critics because of the feminist tone of her work, by others because of what they considered her anti-modernism and sentimentality, and later for her political activism, Millay began to be re-assessed and now is firmly established as a member of the canon.  In most anthologies of American poetry, her name is back in the index, with multiple pages listed.  She is fully recognized now for her technical virtuosity and dazzling range and is regarded as one of the most important American poets.  Continue reading POETRY MONDAY: Edna St. Vincent Millay