Thursday, March 29, 2012

Poem by Chris Olson

The City

A society, one with great poise
Fills the earth with elegant noise.
Cutting through the air, leaving behind trails
With the words in our minds leaving a vast amount of detail!
Capture the words before it’s too late,
For the words will settle and desecrate.
Everyone around young and old
Will listen to noise and let them u  n   f   o   l    d
Through thick, thin, smooth, or rough
The noise turns to words sure enough
A once elegant noise has transformed
Covering everything like a bee’s swarm
Words to sentences the noise becomes
As steady as a beat from a snare drum
Sloshing around in our brains
The words of wisdom will remain
Society’s blindfold has been lifted away
Power of noise will sustain
This noise should ascertain
Ensuring all the people refrain
From always playing the same, old, damn game.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

discontinuous. poem by Cola Hines

just call me on the phone
I’m sitting here at home
I like to be alone
but I want to know you’re there
liquid pink fringe 
(poly
valences) 
     your hands, your belly : tilt back 
against the table —
happy sometimes — a sunny night —
I don’t think you’re 
ever finished;
you end up where you once began
pick book up & start again
crackling 
slender form
you taunt me
from the shelf —
truncated coyote howl
saying step aside I need a coffee

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Joanna Solfrian reading tomorrow


  6:30-7:30 at the Lower Gym Friday March 23rd 2012
          Featuring
JOANNA SOLFRIAN author of Visible Heavens (Kent State University Press), winner of the 2009 Wick Poetry Prize and a MacDowell fellowship; nominated for a Pushcart Prize        
PLEASE JOIN
 ADVANCED CREATIVE WRITING....& Other Special Guests
artwork by Chris Olson

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

To Zakynthos. Sonnet by Ugo Foscolo

Never will I touch your sacred shore again
where my young form reclined at rest,
Zakynthos, regarding yourself in waves 
of the Greek sea, where Venus was
virgin born, and made those islands bloom
with her first smile; nor did he bypass
your lacy clouds and leafy fronds
in glorious verse, the one who sang
of fatal seas, and of the broad exile
after which, exalted by fame and by adventure,
Ulysses kissed his rocky native Ithaca.
You will have nothing of your son but his song,
motherland of mine: and our fate already 
written, the unmourned grave.
translation by Nick Benson of Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827), Sonnet IX, "A Zacinto" written 1802-1803

Saturday, March 3, 2012

On Tommaso Landolfi

There is often the greatest pleasure in reading those authors whose stories defy our attempts at definition or description...
[Click here for notes on Tommaso Landolfi by Nick Benson, from NER Digital.]