Tag: national poetry month

National Poetry Month Playlist: T.A. Noonan’s Picks

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, our Sundress editors are sharing some of their favorite poems, most influential poems, and poems that they are really digging right now. Put them all together, and you have the Sundress Poetry Playlist!

Today’s picks come from SAFTA’s Literary Arts Director and Sundress Publications Associate Editor T.A. Noonan!

“America,” Allen Ginsberg
Picture it: I’m a high-school freshman reading Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Frost. I flip through my textbook and find “America.” My mind was blown. (Seriously, I didn’t even know you were allowed use the word “fuck” in a poem before reading Ginsberg.) This poem was the first to make me realize that there was so much about poetry I didn’t know and needed to find out.
“Angels of the Love Affair,” Anne Sexton
Pure invocation, this is easily my favorite Sexton poem and one of the most influential poems of my life. I’d read “Her Kind” at eighteen or so and thought, Okay, she wrote about witches. Maybe I can do that, too. But it was “Angels of the Love Affair” that convinced me that the stories I wanted to tell with The Bone Folders were worthy.
“Fall,” Robert Hass
I was lucky to take an independent study in Contemporary Poetry as an undergraduate, and this was the very first poem we read there. It still resonates, reminding me simultaneously of childhood and marriage, fear and delight.
“To Judge Faolain, Dead Long Enough: A Summons,” Linda McCarriston
Another piece introduced to me in the aforementioned independent study, “To Judge Faolain, Dead Long Enough: A Summons” was the first poem addressing domestic abuse I’d ever read. To this day, the last few lines strike me as the most brutal curse ever committed to paper.
War Music, Christopher Logue
It almost feels like cheating to pick this, as it’s a multi-volume project. Still, Logue was the first to get me to rethink the nature of translation, and I really have a thing for book(s)-length projects.
Nox Anne Carson
Another cheat. Really, I could pick anything from Anne Carson. I’ve made no secret of my intense love affair with her work. That said, this book moved me to tears from the moment I saw it. No mass-market book I own will ever be as beautiful. No elegy will ever feel as real.
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T.A. Noonan is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently four sparks fall: a novella (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, 2013) and Dress the Stars (Dusie Kollektiv, 2013). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming inReunion: The Dallas Review, Hobart, Ninth Letter, specs, Delirious Hem, Phoebe, and more. A weightlifter, crafter, priestess, and all-around woman of action, she will be moving to Knoxville in January 2014 to serve as the Literary Arts Director for the Sundress Academy for the Arts.

National Poetry Month Playlist: Jennifer Jackson Berry’s Picks

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, our Sundress editors are sharing some of their favorite poems, most influential poems, and poems that they are really digging right now. Put them all together, and you have the Sundress Poetry Playlist!

Today’s picks come from author Jennifer Jackson Berry!

I’ll Write the Girl by Jan Beatty
Jan Beatty is a teacher, a mentor, and a friend.  She has been a strong supporter of my work.  I love so many of her poems, but this one is a favorite.  We need to write what we need to write, and this poem speaks to that.

Eating Together by Li-Young Lee
I had to choose a poem to memorize & recite from the collection The Rose by Li-Young Lee for an undergraduate workshop class I took at the University of Pittsburgh with Toi Derricotte.  I didn’t see the point, so I was going to skip.  I was having dinner with a friend before the evening class, and he (always the more conscientious student) forced me to do the assignment.  It helped that he memorized it with me over Sbarro slices.  It was the first time I paid such close attention to every word.  It was a worthwhile experience, and I can still recite the poem.

I Am Offering This Poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca
This was one of the readings at my wedding.  It will always hold a special place in my heart.

 

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Jennifer Jackson Berry lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and works as a claims adjuster for a mass transit bus line. She has taught high school English, as well creative writing and composition at the post-secondary level. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Harpur Palate, Stone Highway Review, 5AM, Main Street Rag, Jet Fuel Review, Amethyst Arsenic, and Mead, among others. She is the author of the chapbooks When I Was a Girl (Sundress Publications, forthcoming in 2013) and Nothing But Candy(Liquid Paper Press, 2003). She holds degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and Indiana University’s MFA program. She is an active member of the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange.

National Poetry Month Playlist: Chris Petruccelli’s Picks

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, our Sundress editors are sharing some of their favorite poems, most influential poems, and poems that they are really digging right now. Put them all together, and you have the Sundress Poetry Playlist!

Today’s picks come from Stirring editor, Chris Petruccelli!

Carroll-Hackett’s poem is a reminder of what I want out of place–a familiarity that runs deep enough to be knowledgeable with something called spikenard. The poem also reminds me of issues I’ve been dealing with lately (i.e. desire of place, creating a sense of place in people and the danger therein).

Among the Things He Does Not Deserve by Dan Albergotti

I discovered the Albergotti piece around when my partner and I broke up. I saw myself as the he who doesn’t deserve anything and that was particularly harrowing. At the time, it was what I needed to read and I like to think the poem spurred me into some much needed critical self-assessment.
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Chris Petruccelli is a graduate student at the University of Missouri. He earned his BA in geography at UT and claims eastern Tennessee as home. He likes to drink whiskey, smoke cigarettes and study forest dynamics. His poetry has appeared in Josephine Quarterly, Connotation Press, and Gingerbread House Literary Magazine.

National Poetry Month Playlist: Donna Vorreyer’s Picks!

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, our Sundress editors are sharing some of their favorite poems, most influential poems, and poems that they are really digging right now. Put them all together, and you have the Sundress Poetry Playlist!

Today’s picks come from author of A House of Many Windows (Sundress Publications 2013), Donna Vorreyer!

Jack Gilbert’s “Michiko Dead”
Jack Gilbert’s “The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart”

Until I was introduced to “The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart” in a class I was taking with poet Katie Ford, I had appreciated poems but never really been stunned by one. You know, the take off the top of your head kind of stunned, as Dickinson says. It taught me that image, even if it isn’t perfectly clear or explained, has a power that exposition will never have. That a poem can speak to both the heart and the head. And it has become a sort of ars poetica for me- what better explanation of poetry is there than “How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite.”

After being introduced to Jack Gilbert by Katie, I immediately went and bought The Great Fires, which has become the book I read over and over to keep trying to unlock its beauty. “Michiko Dead” is both heartbreaking and ordinary, just like loss is in life. It explains the ongoing and uncomfortable nature of grief as something we never truly put down or away. It’s also one of the best teaching examples of metaphor. The simple language in the complex extension of the metaphor make it ideal for the teenagers I teach.

 

 

Donna Vorreyer is the author of three chapbooks:Womb/Seed/Fruit (Finishing Line Press), Come Out, Virginia (Naked Mannekin Press), and Ordering the Hours (Maverick Duck Press). She is a poetry editor forMixed Fruit, and her work has appeared in many journals, recently in Sweet, Linebreak, Rhino, Cider Press Review, Stirring, and Wicked Alice. Donna lives in the Chicago area where she teaches middle school and therefore often acts like she is twelve years old. Her first full-length collection, A House of Many Windows, was published by Sundress Publications in 2013.

National Poetry Month Book Giveaway!

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That’s right, friends! Sundress Publications is giving away two books for FREE in celebration of National Poetry Writing Month!

As you may have heard, the month of April is National Poetry Writing Month! What better way to celebrate NaPoWriMo than by giving away some free inspiration in the form of some of our most-loved books of poems?

Our blog, along with many other blogs across the web, is partnering with The Book of Kells and giving away our books in celebration of this special month! The goal is to share our favorite poets with each other as well as encourage you all to visit different poetry-loving blogs and see who other people are reading (and enter ALL THE GIVEAWAYS for more chances to win!).

Here at Sundress, we are giving away David Cazden’s The Lost Animals and a copy of our beloved boss lady Erin Elizabeth Smith’s most recent collection, The Naming of Strays.

To enter the giveaway, all you have to do is leave a comment below with your name, e-mail, and your favorite poem/poet, and you’ll be in the running for one of these books!

You have the rest of the month to comment and enter, and on May 1st we will randomly select 2 winners!

Happy NaPoWriMo!

Now, shouldn’t you be writing something?

National Poetry Month Playlist: Chris Barton’s Picks!

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, our Sundress editors, interns, and SAFTA staff are sharing some of their favorite poems, most influential poems, and poems that they are really digging right now. Put them all together, and you have the Sundress Poetry Playlist!

Today’s picks come from Sundress/SAFTA intern, Chris Barton!

 

“A Supermarket in California”  Allen Ginsberg
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/supermarket.html

I enjoy this poem because of the different levels of place. On one hand this is a poem about the desire to be a writer, “shopping for images,” a historical place. But there is also a complex loneliness in Ginsberg’s wandering around a supermarket full of people that blossoms through a series of tensions: individual/community, nature/commodity, and mainstream/alternative lifestyles. What is on one level a melancholic poem about seeking inspiration within a consumer space, a ‘reconnection with art or nature’, becomes a self-aware meditation on this act, a sort of ‘poem in spite of’ that reconceptualizes the focus of American poetry, and adds a sense of freedom to its future direction.

 

Poem [The eager note on my door said, ‘Call me’]  Frank O’Hara
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/supermarket.html

I came to appreciate this poem after reading a lot of O’Hara. What I enjoy is the inaccessibility of the events inside a narrative that’s very casual and inviting. Again, setting is important to the function of the poem. We can assume the action takes place from one apartment to the other, but this is never plainly stated. The poem functions more as an emotional space. What begins, like most O’hara poems as a beautiful, light-hearted narrative evolves into a jarring image of death. The poem moves from one emotional extreme to another in an abrupt, almost violent way. The only meaning that is derivable is from this juxtaposition of images, which ultimately doesn’t allow for a logical understanding. What is allowed for is a comment on meaning as contextual, and often through a construction of difference—dead “leaves brighter than grass”.

 

“Ryan Gosliing” Mira Gonzalez

http://jsykes.tumblr.com/post/71022818006/ryan-gosling-i-am-becoming-increasingly

I put this poem on here because I read it recently and really liked it. It is a kind of pop art poem that title deals with class and extreme levels of individualism—stardom, celebrity idealization, and our tendency to define ourselves by larger abstract interests like fan clubs. What I like is how flat the language of the poem reads, and how sharply this flatness contrasts with the title. There is a long history of celebrating the self in an ecstatic egocentric way in poetry that this poem resists. The narrator has a very average view of their self that is refreshing, and deals with feels of anxiety and isolation in a direct way that seems very human to me, and still provides a sense of companionship.

 

 

Chris Barton is a 2013 graduate from the University of Tennessee. His work has appeared in Still and Polaris. Books he has enjoyed recently are Begging for It by Alex Dimitrov, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy by Tao Lin, and Selected Poems, Frank O’hara. He currently lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.

National Poetry Month Playlist: Karen Skolfield’s Picks

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, our Sundress editors are sharing some of their favorite poems, most influential poems, and poems that they are really digging right now. Put them all together, and you have the Sundress Poetry Playlist!

Today’s picks come from Stirring Poetry Editor, Karen Skolfield.

 

Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish”
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22238



 

Jack Gilbert’s “The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart”

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-forgotten-dialect-of-the-heart/




Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Streets”

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15680

 

Philip Levine’s “They Feed They Lion”

http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/levine/they_feed_they_lion.php

 

 

Karen Skolfield‘s book Frost in the Low Areas (2013) won the 2014 PEN New England Award in poetry and the First Book Award from Zone 3 Press. She is a 2014 Massachusetts Cultural Council fellow and winner of the 2014 Split This Rock poetry prize and the 2012 Oboh Prize from Boxcar Poetry Review. Skolfield is the poetry editor for Amherst Live, a twice-yearly production of poetry, politics, and more, and she’s a contributing editor at Tupelo Quarterly. She teaches writing to engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she earned her Master of Fine Arts.

 

The Big Poetry Giveaway 2013!

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, Sundress Publications will be participating in The Big Poetry Giveaway, by offering copies of Marcel Brouwers’ The Old Cities and T.A. Noonan’s The Bone Folders for free to our winners!  

To enter for a chance to win, simply include your name and email address in the comment section of this blog post!  A winner will be chosen at random at the end of April, that cruelest of months.

Thanks to Susan Rich for curating this year’s giveaway!