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Read this question over on Sturgeon's Law.

Say someone asked me, "I kind of like poetry, but I don't know anything about contemporary poetry. Who should I read?"

My taste in "contemporary" poetry is fairly non-contemporary, but I consider anyone still writing in the 1960's to be contemporary, so with that in mind here is my list for today (in no particular order).

Robert Wrigley
Evan S. Connell
Robert Penn Warren
Larry Levis
Albert Goldbarth
William Matthews
Bob Hicok
James Wright
Ted Hughes
Galway Kinnell
James Dickey
Gary Snyder

poem

I have a poem up at Diagram.

The Victims

Poem

On the Persistence of the Letter as a Form


Dear murderous world, dear gawking heart,
I never wrote back to you, not one word

wrenched itself free of my fog-draped mind
to dab in ink the day's dull catalog

of ruin. Take back the ten-speed bike
which bent like a child's cheap toy

beneath me. Accept as your own
the guitar that was smashed over my brother,

who writes now from jail in Savannah,
who I cannot begin to answer. Here

is the beloved pet who died at my feet
and there, outside my window,

is where my mother buried it in a coffin
meant for a newborn. Upon

my family, raw and vigilant, visit numbness.
Of numbness I know enough.

And to you I've now written too much,
dear cloud of thalidomide,

dear spoon trembling at the mouth,
dear marble-eyed doll never answering back.

--Paul Guest

Meta-Free-Phor-All

tagged

from Sam of the Ten Thousand Things

Five poetry collections you may not have read but certainly must:

Galway Kinnell / The Book of Nightmares
Robert Penn Warren / Audubon: A Vision
Evan S. Connell / Notes From A Bottle Found On The Beach At Carmel
Robert Wrigley / Lives of the Animals
Larry Levis / The Widening Spell of the Leaves


The collections, for whatever reason, should be a bit off the beaten path. And need not have caused the earth to open and swallow you whole.

The Man Among Wolves

Check out the Wolf Man.

Go To Farmers Markets!

"According to latest data from US Department of Agriculture, home food production hit an all time low last year and was down a full 20% from the previous year. Meanwhile, despite recent trends, foods in the US have never traveled farther than they do now, over 1500 miles on average from field to fork, using up to 17 more fossil fuels than foods sourced locally."

This comes from Common Dreams.org . Check it out.

Music

I've been messing around with this music player from project playlist. It helps you find music on the internet and allows you to play it on your blog. I couldn't make it look any good, but it seems to be working for me. It should be down the page on the right. If anybody is reading this and has problems like slow loading or something could you tell me?

If it is working check out the song Together by The Raconteurs. I can't get enough of it!

Pay Dirt!

So, I thought I had been relegated to the Evanston Community Gardens' waiting list, but yesterday I got an email saying I could get a 400 sq. ft. plot in James Park. Finally!! a place to grow some vegetables! It really doesn't have anything to do with saving money, or even eating home-grown vegetables (well, that's a big part of it) it's more just getting to get out there and grow our own food. To plant and weed and watch. I love looking at a garden I've planted. I can just sit there staring for hours. So anyway, happy day!

The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader catch his own breath.
- Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart

Falcon Cam

Check out the Evanston Library's Falcon Cam. This is the fourth year in a row Peregrine Falcons have nested at the library.

Ireland looks nice

Baseball!!

I think this is the first time I've really been excited about the start of Major League Baseball since the late 80's early 90's. You know, when ALL my favorite players were so jacked up on steroids I was completely duped into believing they were Gods! Oh and there was a strike and free agency and all the luster just rubbed right off. But I'm back! Why? Well, the Cubs, Wrigley Field, and Fantasy Baseball. The first year we were in Chicago was the dreaded 2003 series. Well, even though the Cubs (and one of their fans) snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory, I had a good time watching a "home" team do well. But then there was a steady decline and last year was abysmal. I went to a few games and watched them lose each one. I watched Greg Maddux pitch a gem only to see Ryan Dempster give up a walk off home run to Mike Piazza! Uuugh. But as someone said, "spring hopes eternal." And this spring we have a new coach and two possible MVP candidates in Derrick Lee and Alfonso Soriano. I watched Soriano last year quite a bit. He is amazing! When the Cubs signed him I was elated. And even though I am a new Cubs fan I have eternal hopes for this team. And hopefully I'll get to see them actually win a game in person! If not I may be banned from Wrigley for the jinx that I am!

Thunderstorms on the High Plains!

Just snapped this pic off my computer. I miss those storms!

COOOOORMAAAAAAAAC MCCAAAAAAARRRTHYYYYYY!!!!

So, the world apparently is coming to an end. Cormac McCarthy's book The Road is now on Oprah's Book Club! My gut reaction was one of retching and nausea. One of my heroes was going to be on Oprah??? Huh?? Whaaaa??? This is a man who has done ONE print interview. A man who wouldn't give paid speaking engagements when he was living in a shack eating beans from a can. A man who says "let the work speak for itself." Oprah? Interview? So after the however many stages of grief I've quickly come to acceptance. This could be his second National Book Award (he's one of the five nominees) and he will now sell millions of books and be read by a whole new audience. I am a snob. Like one of those people who were in some seedy club in Seattle when Nirvana played to just me and a few others and when they made it big I yelled that "I was here first!!!" I think The Road is an important book; one that SHOULD be read by as many people as possible.

Quote o' the Day

"If the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action." -- Al Gore testifying in front of Congress today

Brown-headed Cowbirds

Cowbirds go 'mafia' to pawn off eggs

March 7, 2007
BY RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
WASHINGTON -- Raise my kids, or else!

People have long wondered how cowbirds can get away with leaving their eggs in the nests of other species, who then raise the baby cowbirds. Why don't the hosts just toss the strange eggs out?

Now researchers seem to have an answer -- if the host birds reject the strange eggs, the cowbirds come back and trash the place.

The so-called ''Mafia behavior,'' by brown-headed cowbirds is reported in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


Southern Illinois research
''It's the female cowbirds who are running the mafia racket at our study site,'' said Jeffrey P. Hoover, of the Florida Museum of Natural History and the Illinois Natural History Survey.
''Our study shows many of them returned and ransacked the nest when we removed the parasitic egg,'' he explained.

Hoover and Scott K. Robinson of the Florida museum studied cowbirds for four seasons in the Cache River watershed in southern Illinois.

When they removed the eggs cowbirds left in warbler nests, 56 percent of the time the nests were later ransacked.

AP