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1. Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

On Tuesday we continue our series of prose features with "Heavy Trash": A Conversation with Mark Halliday, from the winter-spring issue of Fugue:

"My poems have often been described as very self-conscious. This is sometimes given as a reason for disliking them. In most of my poems, the speaker is aware that he's trying to say something on an occasion, under pressure, and that the saying is difficult. In some cases, this self-awareness becomes explicitly the awareness that 'I'm trying to write a poem here.' Now, this note is struck in countless poems by some poets older than me, of course. It's in Koch and O'Hara; it's in Bidart's great poem 'Golden State'; it's in some poems by Robert Pinsky, and Billy Collins, and Albert Goldbarth, and Robert Hass (just to name a few). But I carry it pretty far. Pinsky once advised me not to overdo it with the poems about writing, poems about being a poet. And I try not to allow a given manuscript to be swamped with such poems. I understand that such poems are very off-putting to some readers. However, again, my own path to truth seems often to require this explicit self-consciousness."

Look for it on Tuesday on our news page.

We hope you enjoy this week's poems!

Warmest regards,

Don Selby & Diane Boller
Editors

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2. Sponsor Messages

"Rise Up and Hear: An Evening of Poetry Honoring Abraham Lincoln's Legacy"
2008 National Poetry Out Loud Champ Shawntay Henry will join poets Robert Pinsky, Kevin Young, and actors Joan Allen and Sam Waterson for "Rise Up and Hear: An Evening of Poetry Honoring Abraham Lincoln's Legacy," September 22 in Washington, DC. For more information and to reserve seats, visit the Lincoln Bicentennial Web site ....

Ellipsis: Submission deadline
Ellipsis is a literature and art journal published each April by the students of Westminster College in Salt Lake City (since 1967). Contributors are paid for their work and eligible for a prize judged this year by poet Kurt Brown. We publish well known writers, up-and-coming writers, and never-before-published writers. Submission deadline: November 1, 2008.

Kenyon Review Literary Festival
Join us at the 2008 Kenyon Review Literary Festival, November 7th and 8th, in Gambier, Ohio! Featuring fiction and poetry readings, panel presentations, workshops in poetry and book arts, the 2008 CLMP Midwest litmag fair, and a keynote address by Richard Ford. Details here ...

Academy of American Poets: 2008 Poets Forum
Join the Academy of American Poets in New York, Nov. 6–8, for the 2008 Poets Forum, a 3-day exploration of contemporary poetry in America. Events include discussion sessions with distinguished poets, readings, literary walking tours of New York City, and more. Participants include Frank Bidart,Victor Hernández Cruz, Louise Glück, Lyn Hejinian, Sharon Olds, Ron Padgett, Robert Pinsky, U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, Gary Snyder, and others. Purchase tickets online ....

Shenandoah 58/2, Fall, 2008
"Atlantic Flyway to Whirl is King: An Interview with Brendan Galvin" and six new Galvin poems plus poems by Thomas Reiter, Paula Brady, David Wagoner, James Arthur, Erika Meitner, Megan Ronan, Michael Jenkins, Stephen Gibson, William Aarnes, Jake Willard-Crist, Alice Friman, Cori Winrock, Mary Oliver, Jeff Hoffman and Jeanne Murray Walker. Visit Shenandoah ...

A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize contest
BOA Editions welcomes your submission to the eighth annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize contest. The winner of this first-book award will receive $1500 and publication in our New Poets of America Series. This year's judge is Thomas Lux. Entries are accepted between August 1 and November 30, 2008. Submit one copy of your manuscript, our entry form, and the $25 entry fee to BOA Editions, PO Box 30971, Rochester, NY 14603. The winner will be announced in March 2009. Order forms and additional information are available online ....

Tupelo Press $10,000 Dorset Prize
Tupelo Press $10,000 Dorset Prize: submissions accepted through December 15, 2008 (postmark)
Judge Ilya Kaminsky. Full guidelines online ....

Kinereth Gensler Awards 2008
Alice James Books welcomes submissions for the Kinereth Gensler Awards. Poetry manuscripts of 50–70 pages will be accepted with a $25 entry fee. The award is open to poets living in New England, New York or New Jersey (starting no later than December 1 2008). Postmark deadline is October 1 2008. Winners receive $2000, publication and serve a 3 year term on the Alice James Books Editorial Board. For detailed submission guidelines and more information about Alice James Books, please visit us online ....

Perugia Press Prize
A prize of $1000 and publication by Perugia Press is given annually for a first or second unpublished poetry collection by a woman. Submit manuscripts with a $22 entry fee between August 1 and November 15. Send an
e-mail, SASE, or visit us online for complete guidelines.
 
The 2008 winner, Two Minutes of Light, by Nancy K. Pearson, is now available from our web site.
 
Perugia Press Prize
P.O. Box 60364
Florence, MA  01062
info@perugiapress.com

Conduit
Conduit is a biannual literary journal that is at once direct, playful, inventive, irreverent, and darkly beautiful. Really, it is. Conduit publishes work that demonstrates originality, intelligence, courage, and humanity. If that isn't enough, Conduit reaches beyond the literary by interviewing astronomers, ethno-botanists, artists, musicians, and historians, et cetera, believing a vigorous imagination is one that is cross-pollinated by diverse areas of human inquiry.

The Bennington Graduate Writing Seminars
Founded in 1994 by poet Liam Rector, building on the long-standing literary tradition of Bennington College (Bernard Malamud, Robert Frost, W.H. Auden, and Theodore Roethke all taught there at one time) the Bennington Writing Seminars was named "one of the top 5 low-residency MFA programs in the country" in 2007 by The Atlantic Monthly. Students work closely with four Core Faculty instructors over as many terms and attend five 10-day residencies, held on Bennington College’s Vermont campus, in January and June. A reading-intensive program that confers an MFA degree in Writing and Literature, our informal motto is: "Read one hundred books. Write one."

Palm Beach Poetry Festival: Workshop Signup
Palm Beach Poetry Festival, January 19-24, 2009, Old School Square, Delray Beach, FL. Advanced Workshops ($725): Martin Espada, Kimiko Hahn, Laura Kasischke, Thomas Lux, Anne Marie Macari, Gregory Orr and Gerald Stern; Intermediate Workshops: ($525) Denise Duhamel and Victoria Redel. Workshops, limited to 12 poets, include conference, readings and gala party. Visit us online for application and guidelines or phone Call (561) 868-2063. Application deadline: October 31, 2008.

Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference
For Poets With a Book-Length Manuscript: first conference to provide the faculty, connections, and method necessary to set poets with a completed or in-process manuscript on a path towards publication.
 
Faculty includes editors and publishers Jeffrey Levine (Tupelo Press), Martha Rhodes (Four Way Books), Jeffrey Shotts (Graywolf Press), Susan Kan (Perugia Press), Peter Conners (BOA) and others; workshop leaders include Joan Houlihan (Concord Poetry Center); Frederick Marchant (Suffolk University), Ellen Doré Watson (Smith College), Steven Cramer (Lesley University), Daniel Tobin (Emerson College) and others.

Sanibel Island Writers Conference 2008
November 6-9, 2008, Sanibel Island, FL. Workshops & panels in fiction, memoir, poetry, creative nonfiction, screenwriting, songwriting, and children's lit ($350).  Lynne Barrett, Eve Bridburg, Jim Brock, Ron Carlson, Camille Cline, John Dufresne, Beth Ann Fennelly, William Giraldi, Stephanie Griest, Jeanne Leiby, John McNally, Leonard Nash, Sena Jeter Naslund, Neal Pollack, John K. Samson, Christopher Schelling, Michael Steinberg, Ian Vasquez. Visit us online for registration info, or call (239) 590-7421.

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3. Poetry News Links

News and reviews from around the web, updated daily:

• John Ashbery's debuts his collages at Tibor de Nagy Gallery. (The New York Times)
• Mary Karr introduces a poem by Anna Kamienska. (The Washington Post)
• Derwent May explores the religious works of John Betjeman. (Times Online)
• Chairman Dana Gioia to leave NEA at the new year. (Guardian)
• NEA announces construction of a $1.3 billion, 14-line lyric poem. (The Onion)
• Ted Kooser introduces a poem by Stuart Kestenbaum. (American Life in Poetry)
• The Complete Works of W. H. Auden: Prose Volume Three, 1949–1955, edited by
  Edward Mendelson, reviewed by Sean O’Brien. (The Times Literary Supplement)
• Carol Rumens introduces a poem by Bernard O'Donoghue. (Guardian)
• And more....

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4. Selected New Arrivals

These and other new arrivals are available for purchase via Poetry Daily/Amazon.com.

• John Ashbery: Collected Poems 1956-1987, John Ashbery (Library of America)
• James Agee: Selected Poems, James Agee (Library of America)
• Second Nature, John Witte (University of Washington Press)
• Radical Vernacular: Lorine Niedecker and the Poetics of Place, ed. Elizabeth Willis (University of Iowa Press)
• Ins and Outs of the Forest Rivers, Nathaniel Tarn (New Directions)
• Words by the Water, William Jay Smith (Johns Hopkins University Press)
• The Red Window, Marianne Aweagon Broyles (West End Press)
• A Stranger Here Myself, Niki Nymark (Cherry Pie Press)
• Rescue Conditions, Carrie Shipers (Slipstream)
• Honorary Astronaut, Nate Pritts (Ghost Road Press)
• Myself Painting, Clarence Major (Louisiana State University Press)
• And more...

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5. This Week’s Featured Poets

Monday - John Kinsella
Tuesday - W. S. Merwin
Wednesday - Clive James
Thursday - Anne Marie Macari
Friday - Oni Buchanan
Saturday - David Huerta / tr. Mark Schafer
Sunday - Ta-hui / tr. Stephen Berg

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6. Featured Poets September 8 - September 14, 2008

These and other past featured poets may be found in our archive:

Monday - Philip Levine
Tuesday - William Logan
Wednesday - Simon Armitage
Thursday - Susan Stewart
Friday - Eleanor Wilner
Saturday - Robyn Schiff
Sunday - Debora Greger

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7. Last Year’s Featured Poets

These poems will be retired from our archive during the coming week.

Brendan Galvin - "A Reliquary"
Bernadette Mayer - "Summer Solstice"
Danielle Chapman - "In Order"
Sandra McPherson - "I Was Young and Working by the Ship Locks"
János Pilinszky / tr. Ted Hughes - "The French Prisoner"
Adrienne Rich - "Wallpaper"
Maxine Kumin - "Still We Take Joy"

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8. Poem From Last Year

A Reliquary

Soaking and tilting the woods, a storm
too late in the year to be named
drew offshore for the Maritimes, and I went out
walking the wrack line for whatever
rarity might have churned up—

a boat handpump once, workable after
I knocked the dried sand from it,
and once an albatross
driven broken-winged over the dunes,
which I found in the white mat of itself days later
and verified by its four-inch tubenose.

Where the river has shifted its bed
like a whipcrack in an eon of slow motion
between two high dunes, I came on
a patch of ground that water and wind
had cleared as smoothly as a glove
sweeps snow off a windshield.

It looked like wet asphalt on forty feet
of road lightly sanded. I dared not walk on it,
but stood to its side, seeing it was
a stretch of peat with horseshoe patterns
among wheel tracks, and larger hooves,
probably of oxen, then a few boot prints:

whoever had driven those wagonloads of fish
pitchforked off the trapboats in the river,
and the carts piled with salt hay,
would have ridden, mostly, adding weight
to impressions the peat took and kept.

Orlando Shaw or Phil Ryder, I might have
guessed, names on an old map, though few are
remembered by name here, more by their
back-and-forth traffic on cart roads
from cellar hole to cellar hole,
paths to the kettle ponds, a hillside midden
of sea-clam shells, and in layers the next
anonymous wind tucks back into the berm.

Brendan Galvin
Ocean Effects
Louisiana State University Press

Copyright ©2007 by Brendan Galvin.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.