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Read more: Issue #13, Spring • Summer 2017
And this has been coming together and coming up fast! If you are in NEPA, why not join us for the launch of the next Word Fountain issue? Next Friday in Wilkes-Barre!
Word Fountain, the Literary Magazine of the Osterhout Free Library launches its next issue, Spring/Summer 2017, on May 19th from 6:00 to 7:30 PM in our library’s reading room at 71 South Franklin Street in Wilkes-Barre.
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An old favorite of the whole crew, poets on the ends, guitar players in the middle.
My youngest boy had a lovely idea for Poetry Month; we would agree on a poet for each week of April and each of us would record a poem or more by that poet. It was fun, and I even found a few poems by these favorites that I hadn’t heard before. You can follow back through this blog and his, or to skip the commentary and just go for the audio experience, we’ve put together the whole playlist. As the young man says, it only takes about 9.5 minutes to listen through.
Main house at Steepletop Farm, home of Edna St. Vincent Millay (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I conclude this Poetry Month’s readings with a sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay. You can hear Micah’s Millay reading over on his blog. We’ll try to put together some sort of playlist from these too, and who knows, maybe we’ll add a bonus track or post as well.
There is something about reading a sonnet. It only takes about a minute, and in just a couple of practice reads, one gets the feel for how the lines should turn, whether there should be stress at the end or at the beginning of a line, any internal rhymes or pauses within them.
Of course, the form is usually set, though some poets enjoy playing with the rules. Here Millay keeps the conventions, the meter, and rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet, right down to the turn of thought at line nine (the Volta) and the concluding “twist,” or epigram of the final couplet.
As titles go, I like to think of this Continue reading
Photograph of Edna St. Vincent Millay
This is the project my son and I are doing: We picked four poets for this Poetry Month and for each week we both record a different poem or poems by the chosen poet of the week. Micah has recorded his Edna St. Vincent Millay poem and has hinted to me that since it’s early in the week, there may be more coming.
It’s no wonder we picked Vincent, as she liked to be called, for our final poet. Looking back, I’ve written about her and recorded her works quite frequently, in over a half a dozen posts, in fact. And she keeps showing up in our Thursday Love Poem feature as well since it is based on her little piece called “Thursday.”
My recording for this week will be coming up in the next day or three, so for now, here’s a flashback to exactly five years ago today, while I was doing my infamous “30 Poets, 30 Days” project, video recording, and writing about a different poet and poem each day that April.
From Day 25:
The lady at the counter looked at me over her glasses when I handed her the book.
She said, “I don’t like her.” I wanted to respond, “I don’t care.”
Read the rest and view the one minute video by clicking on the following: Day 25 – 30 Days, 30 Readings: Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Portrait by a Neighbor”
Unfortunately, that headline is not followed by a photo of Richard Blanco and me draped in bath towels, side-by-side in the mirror and shaving. I’m sorry to disappoint (myself). No, this is supposed to be a more family friendly post for Global/National Poetry Month.
The Monkey and I are doing a project in which we choose the same poet each week, and then each record a different piece by said poet. You can go back and listen to the results on both of our pages. In fact, we’d truly love it if you did that. We put a lot of brain power into selecting two living and two dead poets for this project. The dead poets wouldn’t get back to us, and we’re hoping that the two living poets don’t mind.
The chosen poet this week is a favorite who we both got to meet a few years back in State College, Pennsylvania. Continue reading
