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Welcome to 2010. I haven’t posted for a while…. difficulties I won’t spell out right now. Secrets.

Correspondent Jeffrey Brown recently talked with poet Philip Levine, and the conversation airs this evening on PBS NewsHour (check local listings). My favorite book of Levine’s, “The Simple Truth,” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995.

If you have time later on, you could probably watch the show on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/pbsnewshour.

Meanwhile, listen to Levine read a poem at this PBS link: http://ow.ly/16jyV1.
Really fine poetry. Good, especially, for West Virginians to hear some poems that spring from elsewhere, far from here, not just California, where Levine has lived for so long, but haunting poems from crumbling Detroit, where Levine was born in 1928.

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Apropos of nothing in particular, I asked my buddy Rob on city desk: “You have this thing all figured out?”

He said, “It’s gonna take at least another 45 minutes.”

Sure, my question was small talk, and his mind was on the day at hand and his story budget for the next day’s newspaper.

I immediatately thought of a poem I read many years ago:

Limited

I AM riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains
of the nation.
Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air
go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.
(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men
and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall
pass to ashes.)
I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he
answers: “Omaha.”

– Carl Sandburg

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A Carl Sandburg bibliography
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Dust of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

– Robert Frost (1923)

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A Robert Frost bibliography
_________________

What is your favorite winter poem?

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Sal Buttaci and Jeff Travers — poetry reading, followed by open mic (public invited to read one or two poems) — Princeton Public Library, 205 Center Street, Princeton, WV 24740, Thursday, Dec. 3, 2009, 6 p.m. Phone: (304) 487-5045. Free and open to the public.

Doug Van Gundy — poetry reading, Monongalia Arts Center, 107 High Street, downtown Morgantown, W.Va. 26507 (beside Hotel Morgan), Thursday, Dec. 17, 2009, 7 p.m. Phone: (304) 292-3325. Free and open to the public.

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Intercepted message from from Art Stringer:
Ron Houchin (”Museum Crows”) and I (”Human Costume”) will be reading our work this Thursday, Dec. 3, 2009, at 8 p.m. in Room 2W16 of the Marshall University Memorial Student Center, located on Fifth Avenue, Huntington, W.Va., on the south side of campus We’re celebrating 20 years of the Visiting Writers Series at Marshall and our own good fortune. Yours, too, if you feel like coming out. Hope to see you there. All the best, Art Stringer

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What triggers a poem is a pretty big topic, so I’ll take it in bits and return to it from time to time. Sometimes what triggers a poem might be a story about some social issue I care deeply about. It’ll start me ruminating, dreaming. Sometimes, it’ll start me doing something concrete or just noticing where I am in the now.

One story today struck my attention.

U.S. Hunger on the Rise

See if you can make a poem out of that. Add it here on the comments, send it to me by e-mail, or if you have video capability send a short video clip to me at
http://www.tokbox.com/Vic798

The toxbox address is case sensitive with no period or / at the end.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Read about Nov. 18 Morgantown event »

Courtesy photo

Mountainline Poetry in Motion deadline Nov. 13 (announcement courtesy Jeff Fisher)

Mountain Line Transit is interested in setting up Poetry in Motion. Poetry in Motion will be an on going project where local poets’ poems will be displayed on our buses. This is a great opportunity for the West Virginia community to display their talent. Ideally the poems we are looking to display would represent West Virginia, the Morgantown area, or transportation in the area but all pieces will be accepted.

Read more about sending poems »

Ensō. Some artists draw an Ensō every day.

Zenclay Gallery, 2862 University Ave., Morgantown, W.Va., often has poetry events, and yesterday I missed a good one. The 10th was my birthday, and I was so busy having a good time that I missed an important announcement about a Morgantown event that has now passed. My apologies. I am certain the event came off beautifully without me, but I do wish I had been there. The information Lori Wilson put together about the poets is important enough for me to post the announcement anyway, just to have these two people on the MountainWord record. Some of you might want to read some of the work of these two writers: Michael Wurster and Judith R. Robinson.

Here’s the way it was… I just didn’t notice it until last night about 10 p.m.:

Reminder: Pittsburgh poets reading (announcement courtesy of Lori Wilson via Ted Webb)

When: 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 10

Where: Zenclay Gallery, 2862 University Ave.

Michael Wurster will read from The British Detective (Main Street Rag, 2009) and Judith R. Robinson will read from Dinner Date (Finishing Line Press, 2009).

The reading is free and open to the public.

Great food, coffees and teas avaiable before and after the reading.

Continue reading about these extraordinary poets »