Lilliput Review in Your Pocket Day

Art by the incomparable Wayne Hogan

Poets. org, from the Academy of American Poets, has some interesting ideas, actually 30 of them, for celebrating National Poetry month. Two are of particular interest, I think. The first is something that Lillie has been promoting, by its very nature, since its inception: Poem in Your Pocket Day. And so AAP is advocating for April 17th to be Poem in Your Pocket Day and, if your at a loss of which poem to choose (there is a nice selection at the Poem in Your Pocket page that you can actually print out to fit in your pocket), why not choose an issue of Lilliput Review, which fits neatly in the pocket and, on average, has around 25 to 30 poems per issue.


Shameless self-promotion or national celebration? You decide.

It's always a pleasure to pass along new information concerning the work of Albert Huffstickler and there are two bits. First, at her librarian blog Speed of Light, Keddy Ann Outlaw has published a lovely collage entitled Retablo of Huff, along with the beautiful Huff poem entitled "Nostrum." This Huff post is a beauty, folded in as it is into an ongoing library project dealing with things Web 2.0.

In addition, on the Lillie homepage there are two new mp3 related Huff items. One is to a link at indieonestop.com to Huff reading "Intimacy", the other of Huff reading a poem entitled "Education". Hope you enjoy them.

There are two fine short poems worth a peak in the April 14th issue of the New Yorker : Michael Longley's powerfully ambivalent "In the New York Public Library" and Emily Moore's raucous "Auld Lang Syne." Great work if you can get it ... where to send can be found here.

This week's Lilliput poems come from issue #98, July 1998, pictured above. Let's start out with one of M. Kettner's always fresh and startling highkus:

#739

high
toenails with yellow polish
only buoy on the lake.

M. Kettner

What is Silence that I Fear It

When sound darkens into silence
I am drawn inward,
until trapped
as if between two mirrors.

Bruce Miller

Silence
is the haunting
voice of father,

what he didn't say,
how I keep hearing it.

Louis McKee

And this little nugget of wisdom, which perhaps might just as soon have seen its subjects switch places; though that most certainly would have been a different poem, different, too, is good:

Apologies to Mr. Shelton

Meditation will get you through
times of no bebop
better than bebop
will get you through
times of no meditation

W. T. Ranney

Until next week,
Don

National Poetry Month and the Nature of Argument

As part of the celebration known as National Poetry Month, I think it's time to let the poems speak for themselves. So here are a few of my favorite poets, in no particular order. Reading a poem or two by each of them should help combat the persistent rumor that poetry is dead. Or will it? Of course, not many people know who Bruce Wexler is, but if Martin Amis says it's dead, who can argue? Or, really, who would want to?

William Wordsworth

Louise Glück

Issa

Mary Oliver

Gerald Stern

Amy Lowell

Allen Ginsberg

Audre Lorde

e.e. cummings

Langston Hughes

Sharon Olds

Yehuda Amichai

Emily Dickinson

Walt Whitman

Han-shan

James Wright

Charles Baudelaire - in sidebar

Li Po

Anne Sexton

D. H. Lawrence

Franz Wright

Cover by Bob Zark

Since starting a Lilliput blog back in July 2007, samples of most issues from #100 through #150 have been posted, with the exception of some broadside issues it would be a disservice to excerpt. Beginning with this posting, we're going to step into the way back machine and begin posting poems from #99 (October 1998) down. Here's a couple of tiny gems from #99:




I'm getting old now
I think I'll marry
the rain
and settle down

Albert Huffstickler

poetry
the flowering morning
broken away.

John J. McDonald

An Imitation of Hsü Kan (171-218 A.D.)
4.
Since you, sir, went away,
my tiny trellis shakes with grief.
Red Chinese poppies you planted last fall
grow like tears --- immeasurable.

Linda Joan Zeiser

Before the ride ends she wants to go again

Patrick Sweeney

Have I ever mentioned how much I love the one line poem? Till next week,

Don