Monday, June 30, 2014

About Publishers Marketplace


Publishing professionals should know about Publishers Marketplace. This helps you find critical information and unique databases, find each other, and to do business better electronically.

You will especially enjoy the Publishers Lunch daily newsletter. Publishers Lunch is the industry's "daily essential read," now shared with more than 40,000 publishing people every day. Each report gathers together stories from all over the web and print of interest to the professional trade book community, along with original reporting, plus a little perspective and the occasional wisecrack added in.

The full version, Publishers Lunch Deluxe, is e-mailed every business day to members of PublishersMarketplace.com. It contains 5 to 10 stories a links a day (or more), plus different standing weekly features (Bestseller Radar and The Most Reviewed).

Members can search a multi-year archive of previous Lunch newsletters, receive an optional nightly e-mail reporting 10 to 50 deal transactions a day, and use our proprietary databases, scripts, and posting privileges. Use our Registration page to sign up for a Marketplace account.





Tuesday, June 24, 2014

30 British Poets


Here you may listen to 30 British poets reading their own work! The majority of the recordings are taken from BBC broadcasts and are published here for the first time.

From Alfred, Lord Tennyson to Ted Hughes, this three CD compilation offers a survey of some of the greatest British poets of a century and more. The selection includes historic recordings by Tennyson and Robert Browning; poet laureates John Masefield, Cecil Day Lewis, John Betjeman and Ted Hughes; unforgettable voices, such as Edith Sitwell and Dylan Thomas; and rare recordings by Philip Larkin and Edwin Morgan.


Monday, June 23, 2014

Ed Pacht on Poetry as a Calling


Ed Pacht, a frequent contributor to this blog, has written:

Poetry is a calling. As a Christian, I consider it a sacred calling, an expression of something other than earthly. I consider this true even when, as is the case in most of these poems, the subject matter is not religious at all.

A poem represents a stepping aside from ordinariness, a suspension of the usual way of thinking, an entrance into a realm of words that point to what is beyond words. I find this to be true even in the most trivial of my poems. Even when I am making a bad pun, I find that I am not seeing as I usually see, nor thinking as I usually think. And then there are poems that speak of deep things I can barely imagine, and these too arise from extraordinary ways of thinking.



Ed Pacht's poems

Go Ye Into the City
Fire Screaming in the Sky
Pain Like Broken Bones
A Really Big Party
Mass of the Visitation
Lament for the Hills
Reflections on Screaming Fire
The Rose
Spoiled Milk
Why Do I Write?
Acrostic for Hannah Mulliken
Leah's Burden
Love-Soaked Road
Ed Pacht Captures Mickey Blue Eyes
Novum Ordo
From Random to Reason
Jesus and the Concrete Jungle
Thumbs Migthier Than Fear

Friday, June 20, 2014

Each in his own Tongue


by William Herbert Carruth (1859-1924)
 Each in his own Tongue A fire-mist and a planet, 
 A crystal and a cell, 
 A jelly-fish and a saurian, 
 And caves where the cave-men dwell; 
 Then a sense of law and beauty 
 And a face turned from the clod, -- Some call it Evolution, 
 And others call it God.

A haze on the far horizon, 
The infinite, tender sky, 
The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields, 
And the wild geese sailing high; 
And all over upland and lowland 
The charm of the golden-rod, -- Some of us call it Autumn, 
And others call it God.

Like tides on a crescent sea-beach, 
When the moon is new and thin, 
Into our hearts high yearnings 
Come welling and surging in: 
Come from the mystic ocean, 
Whose rim no foot has trod, -- Some of us call it Longing, 
And others call it God.

A picket frozen on duty, 
A mother starved for her brood, 
Socrates drinking the hemlock, 
And Jesus on the rood; 
And millions who, humble and nameless, 
The straight, hard pathway plod, -- Some call it Consecration, 
And others call it God.


From The Little Book of American Poets. Ed. Jessie B. Rittenhouse. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1915.


Thursday, June 19, 2014

A Tale of Fallen Cities


Two Cities
By Peter Mullen


The ruins of Athens are cast up by the Thames;
These fallen cities the graveyards of their gods.
Similar in hubris, whether to blaspheme the oracle
Or second-guess the futures in commodities.

A yellow light arpeggio in the stream
Reflecting haunted buildings
Given over to Cronus and Aphrodite
It is past lunchtime so
The priests sleep and the traders carouse;
Only the ferryman still exacts his fare.

We are alike in our demise,
Cynics cursing the polis;
Sophisticates despising civic pride
When a people forgets its manners, it has died.



Wednesday, June 18, 2014

The Blind Men and the Elephant


by John Godfrey Saxe

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl: God bless me!
but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
I see, quoth he, the Elephant
Is very like a snake!

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain, quoth he;
'Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: Even the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can
This marvel of an
Elephant Is very like a fan!?

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
I see, quoth he, the Elephant
Is very like a rope!

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

Moral: So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Thumbs Mightier Than Fear


I attend have an annual Teen reading with multiple students from local high schools, and there is some really good writing being brought forward. I’m attaching a piece I wrote at one of those events that should be encouraging to kids with stage fright. (I was one for sure – so very long ago – terrified to stand up before my peers – so I ended up as a preacher and performance poet. Go figure.) Anyhow, all the scheduled readers had read and the moderator was just about to close the meeting when one lad, urged by his girlfriend, raised his hand and asked to read. He’d been thumbing madly into his phone all during the evening, and bravely stood up to read a compelling piece about being afraid to read, but yet wanting to write and be heard. That grabbed me and I had to write as soon as I got home. I think you’ll like this one.

ed pacht


Thumbs Mightier Than Fear

Afraid,
afraid of speaking out,
afraid of what they’ll think,
afraid of what I’ll say,
just afraid –
I don’t trust myself,
not my thoughts, not my words,
and I don’t trust those others here,
afraid to be called a fool,
afraid to be a fool;
and I don’t want to speak,
but yes, I do,
I want to be up there,
but I cannot.
will not,
but …
I can write:
I do have thoughts inside;
I do have words inside;
my thoughts and words are pressing hard,
and must come out, must be said,
and so I write.
From my head,
through my thumbs,
on this screen,
I write,
and write,
and write –
and there they are:
my thoughts,
my words,
the things I need to say,
and I will say them,
up there,
to you,
afraid, yet brave,
my demons left behind,
denied,
defeated,
and I speak!

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Mount Athos


Athos Tabernacle
by Alice C. Linsley


Gaunt man in black monkish garb
beside his hermit house sits
in contemplation of the headstone moon
streaming light on his bearded face.

From gnarled fingers flow whispered prayers,
waterfall beads on a black cord.
At prayer often distracted, though not hearing impaired.
In sunlit stillness, he is a semi-transparent icon.

He watches high soaring hawks and lithe lizards,
Breathes pollen of black pine and salt of the sea.
He too is a visible sign of Heaven’s peace offering,
His soul a tinderbox for the Divine Fire.


Monday, June 9, 2014

E.E. Cummings on Spring


[in Just-]

BY E. E. CUMMINGS
in Just-
spring          when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles          far          and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far          and             wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and

         the

                  goat-footed

balloonMan          whistles
far
and
wee

Saturday, June 7, 2014

Swift's Meditation Upon a Broomstick


ACCORDING TO THE STYLE AND MANNER OF THE HONOURABLE ROBERT BOYLE'S MEDITATIONS


This single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest; it was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs; but now, in vain does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk; 'tis now at best but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside down, the branches on the earth, and the root in the air; 'tis now handled by every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery, and, by a capricious kind of fate, destined to make other things clean, and be nasty itself: at length, worn to the stumps in the service of the maids, 'tis either thrown out of doors, or condemned to its last use, of kindling a fire. When I beheld this I sighed, and said within myself, Surely mortal man is a Broomstick! Nature sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition, wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this reasoning vegetable, till the axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs, and left him a withered trunk: he then flies to art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that never grew on his head; but now should this our broomstick pretend to enter the scene, proud of those birchen spoils it never bore, and all covered with dust, though the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we should be apt to ridicule and despise its vanity. Partial judges that we are of our own excellencies, and other man's defaults!

But the broomstick, perhaps you will say, is an emblem of a tree standing on its head; and pray what is man, but a topsyturvy creature, his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational, his head where his heels should be, grovelling on the earth! And yet with all his faults, he sets up to be an universal reformer and corrector of abuses, a remover of grievances, rakes into every slut's corner of Nature, bringing hidden corruptions to the light, and raises a mighty dust where there was none before; sharing deeply all the while in the very same pollutions he pretends to sweep away. His last days are spent in slavery to women, and generally the least deserving, till, worn out to the stumps, like his brother besom, he is either kicked out of doors, or made use of to kindle flames for others to warm themselves by.

Jonathan Swift, 1701