The Mad Poets Blog

… it’s a little late in the afternoon… but it’s still Monday, so that means there’s still time to be shameless.

What’re you doin’ this week? Next? Where can we find your poem? Story? Book? CD?

C’mon yous guys, lay it on us.

…was it ever gone? you ask.

Well, from this site it has been. Because I’ve totally fallen down on my job of kicking the shamelessness into action each Monday.

But no more. Fire away kids. Got a reading coming up? New series starting off in the fall? A workshop or class? A book or CD? Tell the blogosphere about it.

And don’t forget, be as shameless as you need to be.

I’m SO happy to report that the Mad Poets Series at the Barnes & Noble in Bryn Mawr has found a new home at Milkboy Acoustic Cafe in Bryn Mawr.

Although we had a good deal of notice that B&N was closing its doors at the beginning of this month, we had a hard time finding a new venue that could take it on for the same day & time — so the series was still on the verge of homelessness.  Thankfully, Jaime & the other good folks at Milkboy have welcomed us with open arms.  We’ll be keeping the schedule & line up of readers — 1st Thursdays at 7pm.  In fact, in addition to our regular gig (which starts tonight!), they’ve also asked the Mad Poets to provide some poetry tomorrow night for Ardmore first Friday.  Yay for poetry-friendly venues!!!

Tonight we settle into our new home with poets John Timpane & Alison Hicks.  More about them after the jump…

–>John Timpane is the Associate Editor of the Editorial Board of the Philadelphia Inquirer and a publishing poet. His work has appeared in Sequoia, 5_Trope, Wild River Review, Bucks County Writer, Eight Millennial Voices, Live Oak, the Kelsey Review, and elsewhere. He is author of four books, including (with Nancy H. Packer) Writing Worth Reading (NY: St. Martin, 1994); It Could Be Verse (Berkeley: Ten Speed, 1995); (with Maureen Watts and the Poetry Center at San Francisco State) Poetry for Dummies (NY: Hungry Minds, 2000); and (with Roland Reisely) Usonia, NY: Building a Community with Frank Lloyd Wright (NY: Princeton Architectural Press). Last year he was honored to edit and write the forward for

It’s that time again.  Tell us what you’re doing, where you’re reading, or where we can find you, your poems, your books, etc.

Don’t hold back.

After a few missed weeks, I say we bring this back.  And not JUST because I have something to promote.  But because I want to know what everyone else is doing.

So bring it on:  What are you doing? Where are you reading?  When’s your book coming out?  Where are your pome’s being published?

Be as shameless as you need to be.  We really truly want to know.

As I was reading G Emil’s most excellent interview with Samantha Barrow, I noticed the events calendar in my periphery and that it erroneously reads “No Events.”   This is my fault.  A few weeks ago I started a really exciting new job, and the pace has been pretty nutty.   I’m almost settled in.  I’d like to promise that I’ll update the events calendar this weekend, but in case I don’t, rest assured there are events.  Just check out the Mad Poets’ main page.  Pick a series, any series (right there in the left hand menu), and you’re likely to find a Mad Poets event coming up in a matter of days.

Thanks for your patience.

i lead a regular poetry workshop and a topic that keeps coming up is that of copyright/intellectual property/fair use… specifically around the use the epigraphs and or writing poems that come “after” another work, such as painting, song, or even a poem by another artist.

i found this thread from the wom-po listserv, but its pretty inconclusive — at least for me.  so i’m wondering about any of your experiences out there in the world.  do you need to get permissions for epigraphs taken from poems? how about song lyrics? is it based on the number of lines? could a poet/artist sue another poet for taking a few lines for an epigraph?

and where does allusion fit into this whole mix?  In Major Jackson’s recent book Hoops, there’s a long letter poem to Gwendolyn Brooks that is just riddled with allusion, in places he’s even weaving his own lines with the lines of other poets and writers, but in a very subtle, unannounced sort of way.  Does anyone out there have any ideas on how this works?

And do epigraphs turn off publishers?  Say, I’ve entered a poem or manuscript into a contest & its got a few well-chosen (or so I’d like to think) epigraphs… do the editors/publishers see trouble when they see epigraphs?

oh the list of questions goes on & on.

Bloggers like to play games. Bloggers also like attention. So do poets. Come to think of it, I guess all people like a little attention every once in a while. So, in that spirit, I’d like to introduce a new, weekly feature of the Mad Poets Blog — Shameless Self-Promotion Day.

Every Monday, I (or one of the other MPS bloggers) will start a Shameless Self-Promotion post, shamelessly plugging some event or other in which we’re participating, be it as featured reader, host, or even excited audience member. In response, you dear readers, are invited to add comments shamelessly plugging something that you’ve got going on. A reading. A book. A new website or blog. Whatever it is, we want to know. Did I mention that this is your opportunity to be totally shameless??

And if you don’t have anything, checking the thread will probably give you some good leads to help you plan your week in poetry.

Let the games begin.

Fiction writers: for some poets, like me, they are alien creatures who don’t break their lines into jaggedy bits, who are obsessed with making sure all their nouns and verbs go together in a certain order, and who abide by the nasty little narrative arc. *shudder*shudder*

Some writers are agile enough to not just walk the genre balance beam, but to do cartwheels and back-walkovers and flips on it. We’re lucky enough to have several such genre-gymnasts among the Mad Poets members. And Peter Baroth is one of them.

This week, the Guild of Outsider Writers posted a review of Peter’s novel Long Green, deeming it a “well-crafted, absorbing read.”

I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t read the novel yet, but Peter is an engaging poet, whose work be-bops through space and time, travelling social, political, cultural and geographical distances. So, I trust the commenter who said that Long Green “is also a story that authentically depicts the angst of a generation” because that resonates with the tenor of his poetry, which I’ve come to know and admire. I look forward to reading the novel soon.

If you’re interested, you can get Peter’s novel in paperback or Adobe eBook at iUniverse. You can also read some of his poetry online, from Off the Record: An Anthology of Poetry by Lawyers.

I still need to catch up on Ashraf’s & Anna’s posts below… but I came across this article today, via Poetry Hut Blog, and it really made my blood boil. Although it doesn’t particularly relate to the previous discussion, its somewhat tangentially related considering both Ashraf & Anna talked about the nature of criticism and the quality of the writing in the articles they discussed — and those are my main bones of contention with the article in question.

In this “Poetry Browser,” the writer suggests that “Major presses still publish poetry… But much of the poetry is incredibly simple…” then goes on to “illustrate” this point with 3 examples, with the mention of the “major presses” is relegated to the article’s sidebar. From my vantage point, this saves the writer from actually having to point fingers at the publishing houses and, instead, allows him to take pot shots at the poets themselves.  (Continued)