I know it’s short notice, but Morgantown Poets, in collaboration with Monongalia Arts Center, will be hosting a local writers event at Barnes & Noble in Morgantown this weekend. Click here  for the whole nine yards from the Monongalia Arts Center. Ted Webb told me about this via Facebook. Thanks!

Sal Buttaci of Princeton, W.Va., has an e-book called “Haiku Encounters,” 186 haiku.

Sal said:
“Haiku has emerged as one of the most popular poetic forms of the 20th & 21st centuries. The form, with its brevity and pinpoint illumination of the spiritual, appeals to a contemporary audience that yearns for meaning in a chaotic and rushed world.”

and

“If you are interesting in downloading a copy of this E-book for only $3.00, click here. If I may say so myself, it is well worth the three bucks!”

His online home, by the way, is The Poem Factory.

As a touchstone for discussion and practice, and in light of all the sloppiness of thought, opinions hanging on absolutely nothing but raw emotion in these health-care town halls and sometimes in poetry gatherings too, I’m shining a light on Ezra Pound’s poetics, what William Carlos Williams called “no ideas but in things”….

Ezra Pound (1884–1972)

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

***

Click here for “A Sort of Song” »

Sitting down to look at the blog, my stream of consciousness is flooded with fears of distracted drivers, medical costs, ambulance invoices and the health-care mess generally more than the specifics of poetry. I like Brandt Ayers the other day calling health care not a right, not a privilege, but a necessity…. This Roethke poem, now read and re-read in midday August, abides — at last a peaceful rumination to share today.

The Reckoning

All profits disappear: the gain
Of ease, the hoarded, secret sum;
And now grim digits of old pain
Return to litter up our home.
We hunt the cause of ruin, add,
Subtract, and put ourselves in pawn;
For all our scratching on the pad,
We cannot trace the error down.
What we are seeking is a fare
One way, a chance to be secure:
The lack that keeps us what we are,
The penny that usurps the poor.

–Theodore Roethke (1908 – 1963)

What West Virginia poet served more than 40 years as state poet laureate?

Hint: He founded the W.Va. Poetry Society, was a member of the House of Delegates for 12 years and when he retired from newspapering was city editor of The Raleigh Register.

Click here for the answer »