Mike Sublette at Frog Creek Books, Capitol Market, Charleston, W.Va., says he won’t be open after next week, that he’s closing Frog Creek. Vacation? No, he said, he’s closing permanently on March 20. Books on West Virginia are marked down. He’s not sure what his next step will be. Maybe he’ll do something else, he said, something online. Watch for him on Facebook and elsewhere. Mike, MANY of us love Frog Creek Books, just so ya know. I was there Friday to buy a copy of Rick Steelhammer’s new book, but it was sold out there. Maybe Taylor Books still has copies. Frog Creek carried some books you just couldn’t always find in the big commercial book stores — Frank Walker’s poetry, for example. In fairness, though, Borders offered some of Frank’s books for sale last fall during the W.Va. Book Festival.

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According to the Williamson Daily News, Albert Browning of Delbarton, W.Va., and near Holden Beach, N.C., has published a new book of poems. Read all about it.

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The Area Agency on Aging District 7 in Ohio is having its 28th Annual Senior Citizens Art Show and Essay/Poetry Contest, June 7-11. Read about it in the Ironton Tribune.
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Read about Colleen Anderson’s upcoming writing workshops at W.Va. Writers blog
or at Mother Wit online. Colleen was recently a judge at Poetry Out Loud, W.Va. Finals, at the Culture Center in Charleston.

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Here are two great writers with poetic sensibility, both very different, but with ties to West Virginia.

Read Wil Haygood’s “Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson.” Reviewer Gerald Early calls it “one of the best biographies of a boxer ever written.”

Wil used to work at the Gazette. After leaving here, he embarked on an amazing career. He wrote a string of award-winning books and worked at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Boston Globe, and now at The Washington Post. Listen to an interview with Wil, on the Research Channel.

My wife Nancy went to Columbus last year to be a guest as Wil was honored and visited by friends virtually from all over the world.

Yesterday morning, I was playing around with a new app on my iPhone called Press Reader. I beamed up a March 8, 2010, Washington Post, and on Page One, there was a story by Wil Haygood in New York about problem politics centered on Rep. Rangel and New York Gov. Paterson.  Wil’s writing has a poetic flair, a gentle touch; it entertains and sticks with you long after you put the book down, or the news story.

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Pinckney Benedict, native of Greenbrier County, W.Va., is the featured author in the Winter 2010 issue of Appalachian Heritage, and in celebration of that, he will read at Berea College, Loyal Jones Appalachian Center Gallery, Berea, Ky., 8 p.m., Friday, March 12. Come at 7:30 p.m. for refreshments. For more information, call 859-985-3559.

He teaches creative writing at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Ill.

Why Pinckney on a poetry blog? Well, his work is fed, by turns, with the fiction writer’s poetic sense of beauty, the strange and the dangerous.

Try out “Town Smokes,” a collection of nine stories.

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This just in, verbatim, from Ted Webb of Morgantown Poets:

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Author, educator and poetry editor Elizabeth Savage will be featured with Morgantown Poets at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 18, 2010, at Monongalia Arts Center (MAC).

The event is free and open to the public. The MAC is at 107 High Street, downtown Morgantown (beside Hotel Morgan).

Savage is an associate professor of English and co-director of women’s studies at Fairmont State University where she has been on the faculty since 2001. She is also the poetry editor for Kestrel: A Journal of Literature & Art.

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Get ready now for National Poem In Your Pocket Day coming up Thursday, April 29, 2010. Click here to read about it at poets.org.

Pick out a few poems you love, poems that would fit in your pocket, poems short enough to readily remember and share. Here’s one just about everyone knows.:

Fog

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

–Carl Sandburg

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What are some of your favorite poems? Please add your comment.

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POETRY OUT LOUD: 2 p.m., Saturday, March 6, 2010. Students from around the state will participate in the poetry recitation contest. Chris Sarandon will emcee the event and Nikki Giovanni will serve as guest speaker.
Norman L. Fagan Theater of the Culture Center, State Capitol Complex. Call Jeff Pierson at 304-558-0240 for more information. Read Sara Busse’s preview story in The Charleston Gazette.

Please write a short poem or post a comment below. Share an event, a book title, a worthwhile web link…. Thanks.

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“We write because we can’t not write. We want to make music out of our breath; we want to be under the power of an art that toys with us and could destroy us, but which allows us to get a glimpse of what’s real.” — poet Gary Young

Click here to find out more about Gary Young, recently named the first poet laureate of Santa Cruz County, California.

WVU’s Department of English and the Eberly College of Arts & Sciences present a reading by Mary Ann Samyn, author of “Beauty Breaks In,” 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 9, at 130 Colson Hall. Reception and book signing to follow.

Samyn has four other collections of poetry: “Purr,” “Rooms by the Sea,” “Captivity Narrative,” and “Inside the Yellow Dress.” She has won a Pushcart Prize and numerous other awards, including Outstanding Teacher at WVU.

Click here to sample her poems at Verse Daily.

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David Bottoms, poet laureate of Georgia, will read at Huntington Museum at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 11. Bottoms has published eight books of poetry, including “Waltzing Through the Endtime” and “Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump.”

He holds the Amos Distinguished Chair in English Letters at Georgia State University.

Also, Mark Brazaitis and Mary Ann Samyn will read from their work at Marshall’s Memorial Student Center at 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 21.

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Frank X Walker will be in Morgantown on Monday, Feb. 15. He is scheduled to speak in the Rhododendron Room of WVU’s Mountainlair at 6 p.m. Free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. The program is co-sponsored by WVU’s Center for Black Culture and Research and the Appalachian Culture Committee-Office of Multicultural Programs.

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Lucille Clifton, award-winning poet, dies at 73

BALTIMORE (AP) — Lucille Clifton, a National Book Award-winning poet and Pulitzer finalist, has died. She was 73.
Clifton’s sister, Elaine Philip of Buffalo, N.Y., said the former poet laureate of Maryland passed away Saturday morning at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore.
Philip said the cause of death was unclear but Clifton was hospitalized for an infection last week at a hospital in Columbia, Md., before being transferred to Baltimore.
The native of Depew, N.Y., won the National Book Award in 2000 for “Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000.” She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1988.
Survivors include three daughters, a son and three grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are pending.

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