Strafford Notes 26 March, 2013 (news) with Chip Bergeron on AuthorsDen

Follow Me

· Contact Me
· Sponsor Me!
· Articles
· Poetry
· News
· Stories
· Blog

· 115 Titles
· 526 Reviews
· Share with Friends!
· Member Since: Aug, 2010

Chip Bergeron, click here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.


	Share Save

Strafford Notes 26 March, 2013
Tuesday, March 26, 2013 10:01:00 AM

by Chip Bergeron

Poetry

I especially like the Noel Coward poem Skip chose. We tend to think of Coward as a bit of a lightweight, but in those dark days of World War II there was no such animal in Britain.

March 26
Events:
March 26 Washington Lib of Congress Whittall Pavillion, Thomas Jefferson Building
Poets Dana Gioia and Eric Pankey will celebrate the birthday of American poet Robert Frost by reading selections from his work and discussing his influence on their own writing.12Noon This event is free and open to the public, and will feature a display from the Library’s collections.. Contact: (202) 707-5394
March 26th Portland . Bull Feeney’sFeaturing Desireé Dallagiacomo, a New Orleans based performance poet 375 Fore Street, 7:30pm (weekly workshop at 6:30pm), $3 or 2 for $5, 18+ (unless accompanied by adult)
Born:
0326
Louise Otto-Peters, (1819-March 13,1895) ; German author and feminist
http://femwriters.blogspot.com/2009/05/louise-otto-peters.html
http://www.ohio.edu/chastain/ip/ottopetr.htm
Edward Bellamy (1850-1897) US author
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Bellamy%2C%20Edward%2C%201850-1898
A[lfred] E[dward] Housman, (1859 - 30 April 1936) English poet/ scholar
http://www.amazon.com/A.E.-Housman/e/B001IXMM18/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1364219348&sr=8-1
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~martinh/poems/housman.html
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/a-e-housman
XXXII
From far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither: here am I.

Now -- for a breath I tarry
Nor yet disperse apart --
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your
heart.

Speak now, and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind's twelve quarters
I take my endless way.
Robert [Lee] Frost (1874-01/29/1963) New England chicken farmer, poet and school teacher
Spring Pools
These pools that, though, in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods -
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.
http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Frost/e/B000APH06C/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_3?qid=1364219460&sr=8-3
Condé Nast 1874- , US publisher -Collier’s, Vogue, House and Garden, Vanity Fair. Each publication explored current trends in fashion, the arts, politics, and entertainment.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/mar26.html
Viktor Frankl (1905 – 09/02/1997) Austrian psychiatrist
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/frankl.html
Joseph Campbell (1906-10/30/1987)) American writer on mythology and comparative religion
http://kirjasto.sci.fi/campb.htm
http://www.jcf.org/new/index.php?categoryid=11
[Thomas Lanier] Tennesee Williams (1911-02/25/1983) US writer
http://www.amazon.com/Tennessee-Williams/e/B000AP8Q3S/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1364219408&sr=8-1
General William Westmoreland (1914 – 07/18/2005) US military
http://www.legacy.com/ns/obituary.aspx?n=william-westmoreland&pid=14591630
Rufus Thomas, (1917- Dec15, 2001). US singer, (1963 ‘Walking The Dog’ and 1970 ‘Do The Funky Chicken’).
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/rufus-thomas-mn0000303050
Bob Elliott (1923- ), Comic who, with his comedy partner Ray Goulding, got his start on radio station WHDH in Boston, improvising sketches on their program Matinee with Bob and Ray (1946-51). Then they moved to New York's WNBC where they had a live two-and-a-half hour show each morning, doing bumbling interviewer Wally Ballou, cooking hostess Mary McGoon, and soap opera star Linda Lovely.
http://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Bob+%26+Ray%22
Gregory Corso (1930-01/17/2001)) US writer -beat poet
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/409
http://terebess.hu/english/corso.html
Erica Jong (1942- ). US poet and novelist Fear of Flying (1973).
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/erica-jong
The Poetry Suit
I put on my poetry suit.
The prose falls away
like a dream I cannot remember,
the images unraveling like threads
in a cheap dress, sewn in Hong Kong
to feed the hungry mouths
of sweet-faced Chinese children.
Now I am in my poetry suit.
I zip myself into it,
pink as flesh, tight as the suit
I was born it, & looking
seamless as a perfect poem,
gleaming as the golden fleece,
slim as a stripper at the Crazy Horse Saloon,
transparent as silk stockings,
& smelling of jasmine & tea rose.
But what was that old perfume
I left in the pocket,
that cotton ball soaked
in Bal a Versailles,
that yellowing glace glove
that lacks a mate,
that fine cambric handkerchief
brown with dried blood
from an old nosebleed?
Even poetry, pure as nothing
but snow or music,
drags life along
in its hidden pockets.
Oh for an art
that is not made of words
with all their odors
& indiscretions.
© Erica Mann Jong

Passed:
0326
Ludwig van Beethoven (12/16/1770 –1827) German composer
http://www.jcf.org/new/index.php?categoryid=11
Walt Whitman (05/31/1819 –1892) US poet, journalist and essayist
http://www.todayinliterature.com/today.asp?Search_Date=03/26/2013
http://www.online-literature.com/walt-whitman/
http://www.whitmanarchive.org/
Cecil Rhodes (07/05/1853 –1902) English statesman
http://www.amazon.com/The-Founder-Cecil-Rhodes-Pursuit/dp/0195049683
http://archive.org/stream/cecilrhodes00will/cecilrhodes00will_djvu.txt
Sarah Bernhardt (10/22/1844 –1923) French actor
http://histclo.com/bio/b/bio-bern.html
Carolyn Wells (06/18/1869 –1942) US writer
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23972/23972-h/23972-h.htm
Raymond Chandler (07/23/1888 –1959) US writer The Quest
http://kirjasto.sci.fi/rchandle.htm
Noël Coward (12/16/1899 – 1973) American/ English writer composer, lyricist, actor, singer, director, novelist, painter
LIE IN THE DARK AND LISTEN

Lie in the dark and listen,
It's clear tonight so they're flying high
Hundreds of them, thousands perhaps,
Riding the icy, moonlight sky.
Men, materials, bombs and maps
Altimeters and guns and charts
Coffee, sandwiches, fleece-lined boots
Bones and muscles and minds and hearts
English saplings with English roots
Deep in the earth they've left below
Lie in the dark and let them go
Lie in the dark and listen.
Lie in the dark and listen

They're going over in waves and waves
High above villages, hills and streams
Country churches and little graves
And little citizen's worried dreams.
Very soon they'll have reached the sea
And far below them will lie the bays
And coves and sands where they used to be
Taken for summer holidays.
Lie in the dark and let them go
Lie in the dark and listen.

Lie in the dark and listen
City magnates and steel contractors,
Factory workers and politicians
Soft hysterical little actors Ballet dancers,
'reserved' musicians,
Safe in your warm civilian beds
Count your profits and count your sheep
Life is flying above your heads
Just turn over and try to sleep.
Lie in the dark and let them go
Theirs is a world you'll never know
Lie in the dark and listen.

http://monologues.co.uk/Military/Lie_in_the_Dark.htm

Sites:
http://artsfest.us/theatre_and_dance
http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/
http://www.uidaho.edu/
http://www.rattle.com/poetry/
http://www.usmint.gov/kids/coinnews/atb/2013/whiteMt.cfm
History:
0326
1985, Radio stations in South Africa banned all of Stevie Wonder's records after he dedicated the Oscar he had won the night before at The Academy Awards to Nelson Mandela.
http://aaspeechesdb.oscars.org/link/057-16/
Bonus Poem:
From Vietnam War Memorial
What we see first seems a shadow
or a retaining wall in the park,
like half a giant pool or half
an exposed foundation. The names
start a few to the column at
the shallow ends and grow panel
by deeper panel as though month
by month to the point of opposing
planes. From that pit you can't see much
official Washington, just sky
and trees and names and people on
the Mall and the Capitol like
a fancy urn. For this is a wedge
into the earth, a ramp of names
driven into the nation's green,
a black mirror of names many
as the text of a book published
in stone, beginning almost
imperceptibly in the lawn
on one side and growing on black
pages bigger than any reader
(as you look for your own name in
each chapter) and then thin away
like a ledger into turf again,
with no beginning, no end. As though
the black wall uncovered here a few
rods for sunlight and recognition
runs on and on through the ground in
both directions, with all our names
on the hidden panels, while
these names shine in the open noon.
Robert Morgan
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/southern_cultures/v009/9.3morgan.html
http://www.robert-morgan.com/poems

More News about Chip Bergeron

Free Book Review Program
Select a book to read and review today!

Kind A SLOw In The Kootenays v2.2 by RickthePoetWarrior

Has-beens and coffee get together to recreate a same old new tourist trap in a land even the First Nations don't want.

Member BookAds

The Closet Clandestine: a queer steps out by Edward Patterson

An anthology of 7 poetry books arcing the soul as it stretches toward the horizon.

Member BookAds

You Look FatCalgary by RickthePoetWarrior

Using Calgary as a backdrop the author satirizes the self-serving nature of the public as it continues to fatten itself, not only physically, but egotistically as well.

Member BookAds