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New Poet Laureate

Congrats to Amy King, who has just been elected the 2007 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere!  Amy does a lot to create community in the poetry world, and I admire her.

Thanks, also, to Billy Jones for organizing the election. 

Rex Ray

This wows me.  Visit Rex Ray's website to see more of his art.

Election Year by Donald Revell

A jet of mere phantom
Is a brook, as the land around
Turns rocky and hollow.
Those airplane sounds
Are the drowning of bicyclists.
Leaping, a bridesmaid leaps.
You asked for my autobiography.
Imagine the greeny clicking sound
Of hummingbirds in a dry wood,
And there you’d have it. Other birds
Pour over the walls now.
I'd never suspected: every day,
Although the nation is done for,
I find new flowers.

by Donald Revell
From A Thief of Strings (Alice James Books)

Megatron by Nam June Paik

See more  work from Nam June Paik's career here.

Gone Before by Dobby Gibson

Sadness, though your beard may be fake,
your anonymity is quite real,
whispered the dying man to his nurse,
raising his arms for his last sponge bath.
Early renderings had no vanishing point.
Painters dream in oil.
Dreams, like canaries,
are sent down into our mineshafts
to discover how long we might survive,
the dreamers, like secretaries,
are sent home in sneakers,
carrying their pumps.
Sadness, you are so Japanese: snow
on just one side of the leaf
that has not yet dropped.
Snow of all snow
and of every lost chance,
last insects walking in fear across glass,
zeppelin beacons pulsing through the fog.
Snow as illegible as the cardboard
held by the man who can’t spell
how hungry he is,
kneeling frozen at the fountain
to sail a small boat
folded from his last dollar.
Seen from deep orbit, hearts
wink white with loneliness.
A mother pulls her daughter by her arm.
A little girl pulls her doll by its hair.
Inside the space capsule after splashdown:
nothing. Not even a note.
The hospitals they have built
just for people like us to die in
are built entirely of corridors,
which they keep empty,
except for a grinding light.
Outside, the snow falls without making a sound.
And still the dogs scatter.

by Dobby Gibson

published in Octopus 5

Hey, it's Scarygirl

Scarygirl is a character created by Nathan Jurevicius.  You know Scarygirl, the abandoned baby who was raised by the octopus that found her. This baby girl is groomed into a happy little pirate who heads off on adventures with Blister the octopus and her Toycat and other jazzy friends, like Bunniguru, the traveling oracle.  (via Art MoCo)

Not in the Mood

Check out some quirky out-of-context discoveries  at Found Magazine.  This note taped to a school locker reads:  Sorry,  but I'm not in the mood to rp today.

Porvenir (future, fortune) by Farid Matuk

Montezuma meets Cortes
Pizarro greets Atahualpa
each says I can't imagine
what will come their interpreters
say neither can we

arm in arm
they walk the coast
the mountain ridge saying
man alive for now
I've a husband I've a wife

I've the freshest kids
learning the newest
dances everyone
is dying and most everyone dying
is happy for spring

Farid Matuk
Lungfull Magazine

Listen

"Listen" is a photography by Hans de Loof.  You can see more of his brilliant work at his photoblog, Anything But Work.

Make It New by Rae Armantrout

Shaking the parts of speech

like fluff
in a snow globe —

the way sleep scrambles
life's detritus.

Each poem says,
"I'm desperate"

then, "Everything
must go!"

(To hear something familiar here
leads to careful laughter.)

"Go" where?

The steady pressure
on the accelerator
can be stipulated
in advance

as can the stubby bushes
blurred by peripheral vision.

And someone will have set down
a diner or a gas station
at a desolate crossroads

and tried naming it
to evoke

the whole human situation

while
satirizing
the impulse to do so.

What that name will be
is the one thing we don't know

by Rae Armantrout

from Next Life (Wesleyan University Press)

Sculpted

Here's a gorgeous photo of a work of public art by Josef Stuefer (via flickr).

NaPo Check In

Are you still in?  NaPoWriMo is almost 2/3 gone.  I'm batting about 50/50 so far in the challenge of writing a poem a day in April.  Here are the titles I've got so far. 

April 1 -- The Jar (She and I)

April 2 -- Dreck

April 3 -- Spell on Me

April 4 -- With Salt

April 5 -- Talk Bubbles

April 6 -- Hangnail

April 8 -- You Construct Reality (a sound poem)

April 9 -- Anywhere Anyone (a message)

April 10 -- Oracle Bone

April 11 -- A Me

April 12 -- Give Against It

April 16 -- Charlie is Lucky

April 17 -- Fathers and Nails

April 18 -- A Few Lines for the Locals

April 19 -- Buffalo Speedway

Actually it looks like I've only missed 4 of 19 days so far.  I received a finalist rejection letter from a book contest on April 13.  That's why I stopped in the middle of the month.  I know that I should probably be encouraged because I was a finalist, but it's about the 17th time this finalist thing has happened to me.   I'm frustrated about the publishing part of writing.

NaPo, though, valorizes process over product, and I have been enjoying that.  Here are some other poets who are sprinting in this mad poetry dash:

Maureen Thorson (@ a special blog) & friends
Shanna Compton
Ivy Alvarez (who offers these cute blog buttons)
Ada Limon & Jennifer L. Knox
Reb Livingston
Jennifer Bartlett
Elisa Gabbert & Kathy Rooney
Jen Tynes
Michelle Detorie
Sharon Mesmer
Kirsten Kaschock
& a buncha LiveJournalers here, including Tiffany Noonan & Josh Hanson, among others!
Kasey Mohammad
Anne Boyer (not at her usual place)
Mel Nichols (ditto)
Laurel Snyder
Suzanne Frischkorn
Jessica Rowan
Nate Logan
Ian Keenan
Kaya Oakes
Janet Holmes
Mike Young
Anne Haines
Vicky, a.k.a. vmh
Julie Carter
Sandra Beasley
Sarah Bartlett & Chris Tonelli
Ginger Heatter
Michael Gushue
Steve Roberts
Harry Rutherford
Deborah Ager
Michael Schiavo
Nathan Austin
Michelle Fierro
Dax Bayard-Murray
Shafer Hall & John Cotter
Susana Gardner
Elizabeth Hildreth
Cathy Eisenhower
Josh Keiter

Thanks to Shanna for this list! 
 

Stairway to Heaven

Photo by Markus Naarttijärvi from his photoblog Anyday Sweden

Of Bird, String, & Fables by Joshua Marie Wilkinson

            ***

Couldn’t you see the ending before it unraveled you?
        Would you mind lying down first?
        Did you come by foot over the new bridge?            

            ***

Here where the poem becomes
                                               ladders again,
        the little girl returned with candy
        & a nearly on her lips.

click here to read this poem at Tarpaulin Sky

ThinkBox

Today I "discovered" the website of Mark Laliberte.  I can't wait to spend more time here. 

Elephant Art

I love abstract elephant paintings.  An elephant named Lucky made this one.  Lucky is 8 years old.  She was found orphaned, wandering the brush near Mornambrae, Cambodia. She was brought to the Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center near Phnom Penh in 1999.  For more about the elephant artists, click here.

Walnut Avenue

Here's a photo by Sam Javanrouh.  See more of  his work at [daily dose of imagery].

The Art of Cardboard

This month at The Menil Collection in Houston, you can see an exhibit of art by Robert Rauschenberg.  Much of the work is made of cardboard or paper. This one is called "Reynolds Wrap."

Signage by Anthony Robinson

"This bathroom is being clean by a lady janitor"
What this mean (s)            anyone's       guess          conjecture
      
often leads
to fresh perception, but it may not
always be useful                                the horse/water tale
could apply         my guess                   that she's pristine,
like porcelain         and your problem is the       pronoun-
      
which makes you              tense.          In      the primordial heat
and mess of last week-language                       was grunts,
      
gestures used to convey desire:    hunger, lust,
extreme unction      /       and we continue       to dwell
      
in inhospitable zones          /                 so very hot in here,
the lady janitor wears a glass slipper and confounds
      
even the most princely of          expectations                you want
a last page, a period /
                                                  the wind is your       nemesis

by Anthony Robinson

published by Exquisite Corpse

A Bomb in the Family by David B.

Check out graphic novelist David B. at Words Without Borders.  A Bomb in the Family is translated from the French by Edward Gauvin.

Nonlinear

If you're a visual poet or simply curious, check out Dan Waber's VisPo group and message board.  This month they are sponsoring a weekly contest.   Never tried it before?  It's NaPoWriMo so why not  now?  Here's the winner from the third week of March.  I love love love this visual poem by Jukka-Pekka Kervinen.

System of Symbols by Jennifer K. Dick

Check out an amazing poem called  System of Symbols by Jennifer K. Dick.  It appears in a recent issue of Diagram. 

On NaPo (Day 6)

I can't say I've enjoyed writing a poem a day.  It's been a struggle and an exercise in humility.  But I do like clicking the link to my LiveJournal page and seeing six poems there.  They may be bad, but at least they're mine.

UST by Andy Bell

From one of my very very favorite photoblogs.  Check out Deceptive Media by Andy Bell

A Time of General Turmoil by Max Winter

Things hit me all the time
I don't know what they are
They keep my shape in constant flux
Or as you said when you rose from the lake
The place of song was beside my foot
I touched it once and it wriggled away
Here we are in the open air it is not so  bad
Despite the words that came from under the beards
Gathered at the end of the year
Which you doubtless heard—it shows
In the color of your face white man
And in the rhythm of your shaking hands
I am more gathered and collected than I seem
I complete the sentences I do not say
The ones I say I entitle
They are beautiful in their imperfection
They will last
An hour is as good as a wave of symbols
Organic or not the legacy continues
We grow fathers under our eyelids
The legislation is soaked in ice
Leave it in the sink and the world will change
As if all never happened you appear singing
But on tape the melody is a series of taps
I am a mouth harp left in the rain
The bombardment ceases only when the head bows
As if in mourning

by Max Winter
published in Caffeine Destiny

Yellowish/Reddish

Yellowish/Reddish is an art installation Kay Rosen. Want more more more?  Visit her website. 

The Little Guys

Celebrate National Poetry month with the kid-poets of America. Check out the WITS blog for a poem a day, today and throughout April.

Greeny Day

Cool graphics courtesy of veer.com.  Cool greetings to you, dear reader: happy pesach.