My Man in Pakistan, Ernest Dempsey (aka Karim Khan)—a Man of Letters who is an author, editor, freelance writer, and book reviewer—responded to May Garsson’s challenge to write a poem in the experimental Tuanortsa form. Ernest Dempsey is a moving force with World Audience. He is President of World Audience, a publishing consortium, and editor-in-chief […]

Spain’s King Juan Carlos gave Gelman a medal symbolizing the Cervantes Prize at a ceremony in Alcala De Henares, the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, the author of “Don Quixote.”

Read entire article in International Herald Tribune (Culture section) by clicking here….Argentine poet Juan Gelman receives Spanish-speaking world’s highest literary honor
To read Gelman’s work in […]

Riehlife National Poetry Month Editor Stephanie Farrow writes:
Dear Friends,
It has been such a treat to share poetry during this past month. Thank you all for participating! Because today is the last day, I’d thought initially that the final poem should be deep and meaningful, inscrutable perhaps and profound—something along the lines of what the New […]

Barry D. Yelton, author of Scarecrow in Gray, (September 2006, Universe) based roughly on the Civil War experiences of his great-grandfather is currently at work on the sequel.

Barry says:
As to my work, I am a bit of a poet, a bit of a novelist, and a whole lot of Southern. I come from the hill […]

ALABANZA: IN PRAISE OF LOCAL 100
Martín Espada
Alabanza[excellent video!]
(for the 43 members of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees
Local 100 working at the Window on the World restaurant,
who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center)
Alabanza.Praise the cook with a shaven head
and a tattoo on his shoulder that said Oye,
a blue-eyed Puerto Rican with […]

Blackberries “en bushed”
Sign of the times: Google “blackberry” and what comes up is a mechanical device, not a fruit. To find the fruit on Google, you must type in “blackberry fruit.” Vis: more people have likely held Blackberry devices in their hands these days than have gone berrying and experienced the pleasures Kinnell describes in […]

The Hidden Singer
by Wendell Berry
from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry (Copyright © 1998)
The gods are less for their love of praise.
Above and below them all is a spirit that needs nothing
but its own wholeness, its health and ours.
It has made all things by dividing itself.
It will be whole again.
To its joy we come together—
the […]

Wow! Go over the Bill Moyers Journal for links to poetry videos and transcripts of your favorite poets.
Hey, Hal Manogue! Here’s a video of Coleman Barks reciting Rumi that will set you up for several days!

As a candidate for my masters degree in English literature at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville in the early 1970s, I co-edited the literary journal there, “Sou’Wester.” One of my poems that appeared there (juried of course by my co-editor) was “Under Mama’s Yew Tree.” Somehow it came to William Stafford’s attention across the country […]

If you are going out
Beware of mangoes
And all such beautiful
sweet things.
—Victor Hernandez Cruz

Mango on Tree (USDA)
Click here to read an EXCELLENT interview with Victor Hernandeze Cruz on The Poetry Foundation site. Here are some excerpts of questions to whet your appetite:
You don’t write what many would call autobiographical lyric poems. Was this a conscious decision?
Well, […]