Category: poetic voice

  • Posing Aemilia Lanyer (as Shakespeare; as his Dark Lady; and as she posed)

    ______     ______   Aemilia Lanyer (1569-1645), was born in London to Baptista Bassano and his possibly common-law wife Margaret Johnson. At age 23, the then Aemilia Bassano married her cousin Alphonso Lanyer, supposedly after becoming pregnant by Henry Carey, Lord Hudson. She had two children, a son Henry and a daughter Odillya, who…

  • Life and Death from Beijing: a Poetry Sequence by Luisetta Mudie and Dreamer Fei

    ~~~~~     Editor’s note: The title of this post derives from one of the most important memoirs of the last century, Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng, which came out in 1987.   She recounts in that book her imprisonment by the Red Guard during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Politically speaking,…

  • Alley War Poetry

        _____     Marvelous Marvin Hagler vs. Thomas “The Hit Man” Hearns Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, April 15, 1985 Announcers: Al Bernstein and Al Michaels     Alley War Poetry     The pugilists are in the desert, somewhere far from most of humanity and society. They are at a resort, however, a…

  • Taslima Nasreen: Women’s Rights vs the Holy Hell

    _____ Taslima Nasreen, International Women’s Day, March 8, 2007, Women’s Rights, the Veil and Islamic and Religious Laws _____ Taslima Nasreen or Nasrin was born in Mymensingh in what then was known as East Pakistan. Read more about this poet, writer, physician, radical feminist, human rights activist, and secular humanist here: Family Security Matters: Taslima…

  • Nikki Giovanni’s “We Are Virginia Tech”

    _____ Click on Nikki Giovanni‘s picture to be taken to the CNN article from which you can watch and listen as she stirs the crowd with her poem “We Are Virginia Tech.” _____ by Nikki Giovanni We Are Virginia Tech We are Virginia Tech. We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite…

  • Gill Dennis on Johnny Cash & voice in poetry

            I thought this was very good: Poetry Northwest: Unchained (by Gill Dennis): In which a screenwriter listens to Johnny Cash and considers the origins of a sound and in so doing sheds light on the subject of voice in poetry Here’s an excerpt from the beginning: In a second, he was…

  • Mark Doty Physically: "Heaven for Paul"

    _____     a Margaretta Mitchell photograph     by Mark Doty             Heaven for Paul     The flight attendant said: We have a mechanical problem with the plane, and we have contacted the FAA for advice, and then: We will be making an emergency landing in Detroit, and…