Delisa's Sang

La oss alle sammen synge

vaar Delisas egen sang.

La den lyde, gamle, unge,

kjekt og fritt og uten tvang.

La den til de gamle minne

tid som svant i ungdomslag.

Fra det gangne vi skal vinne

arbeidshug til fremtids dag.

Vaar Delisa er vaar norne,

nu vi synger hennes sang.

Nutid, fremtid og det forne,

folge skal vi hennes gang.

Carlsson, K.A. (1951).Delisas Blaa Bok. Chicago, IL: Dalkullan publishing and importing company.

Photo Credit: Google Images. 

Poetry Magazine turns 100!

Excerpt borrowed from poetryfoundation.org:


Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry magazine began with the “Open Door”:

May the great poet we are looking for never find it shut, or half-shut, against his ample genius! To this end the editors hope to keep free of entangling alliances with any single class or school. They desire to print the best English verse which is being written today, regardless of where, by whom, or under what theory of art it is written.

In its first year Poetry published William Carlos Williams and William Butler Yeats; Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees” and Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro”; and introduced Rabindranath Tagore to the English-speaking world just before he was awarded the Nobel Prize.
The magazine has since published a new issue every month for one hundred years. Perhaps most famous for having been the first to publish T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (and, later, John Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”), Poetry also championed the early works of H.D., Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Marianne Moore. It was first to recognize many poems that are now widely anthologized: “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks, Briggflatts by Basil Bunting, “anyone lived in a pretty how town” by E.E. Cummings, “Chez Jane” by Frank O’Hara, “Fever 103°” by Sylvia Plath, “Chicago” by Carl Sandburg, “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens, and many others. Poetry’s pages have also seen Elizabeth Bishop, Charles Bukowski, Raymond Carver, Allen Ginsberg, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and Tennessee Williams, to name just a few.
Today, Poetry regularly presents new work by the most recognized poets, but its primary commitment is still to discover new voices. In recent years, over a third of the poets published have been new to the magazine. Annual translation issues deepen readers’ engagement with foreign-language poetry, and regular Q&A features present conversations with poets about their work. Poetry is also known for its enlivening “Comment” section, featuring book reviews, essays, notebooks, and “The View from Here” column, which highlights artists and professionals from outside the poetry world writing about their experience of poetry. Recent installments have included pieces by actor Lili Taylor, web guru Xeni Jardin, the late columnist Christopher Hitchens, novelist William T. Vollmann, musician Neko Case, cartoonist Lynda Barry, and the author of the “Lemony Snicket” children’s series, Daniel Handler.
The entire one-hundred-year run of the magazine is available free online, as are related audio, video, and monthly podcasts in which editors Christian Wiman and Don Share discuss the current issue, talk to poets and critics, and share their poem selections with listeners. In 2011Poetry was awarded two National Magazine Awards: for Best Podcast and for General Excellence in Print. As critic Adam Kirsch says, “Poetry has done what long seemed impossible . . . it has become indispensable reading for anyone who cares about American literature.”

Click the link to poetryfoundation.org for more information about the history of Poetry Magazine: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/history
Images  borrowed from static.tumblr.com and poetryfoundation.org

April is National Poetry Month!

The Academy of American Poets website suggest the following ways to celebrate National Poetry Month! How will you celebrate?

 http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/613

	Poem In Your Pocket Day: Thousands of individuals across the U.S. will carry a poem in their pockets on April 26, 2012.
	Poetry & the Creative Mind: Each April, The Academy of American Poets presents a star-studded celebration of American poetry.
	30 Poets, 30 Days: Throughout each day during National Poetry Month, a selected poet will have 24 hours to post on Tumblr an array of ephemera—in the form of text, images, audio, and video—before passing the baton.
	Poem-A-Day: Great poems from new books emailed each day of National Poetry Month. Sign up for your daily dose of new poems from new spring poetry titles.
	Spring Book List: Check out the new books of poetry available each spring.
	Poem Flow for iPhones: Available through the iTunes store, this innovative mobile app features daily poems presented as both fixed and animated text.
	National Poetry Map: Find out what is happening in your state by visiting our redesigned and updated National Poetry Map. Photo Credit: Borrowed from Google images.

Influential poet Adrienne Rich dies at 82

By Laura Sydell
March 29, 2012

The Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry described Adrienne Rich as "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century." Rich died Tuesday at her home in Santa Cruz, California, at the age of 82. She suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and macular degeneration.

Listen to the story: http://www.npr.org/2012/03/29/149591069/influential-poet-adrienne-rich-dies-at-82

Copyright © 2012 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only.


RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

And I'm David Greene.

Yesterday, there were two significant losses in the world of American arts. In a moment we'll remember bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs. But let's begin with the passing of poet Adrienne Rich. She was a poetry prodigy in her youth and went on to become a fierce literary voice against war and for feminism. Rich's poetry often challenged what she saw as old literary cliches about women. NPR's Laura Sydell has this remembrance.

LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: Adrienne Rich grew up in a house full of books in Baltimore. She steeped herself in the works of great poets in her father's library. W.H. Auden chose Rich's first collection, "A Change of World," for publication while she was still an undergraduate. At the time, Rich was praised for her mastery of form. Poet and personal friend Jean Valentine says you always felt her command of language.

JEAN VALENTINE: Because you felt as if she was able to do anything she wanted. That's what you felt. That's one thing you feel about great poets, I think. Don't you? That they can just do whatever they want.

SYDELL: And in Adrienne Rich's third book of poetry, she broke old formulas. "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" came out in 1963, the same year as Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique." Rich began her lifelong exploration of turning the struggles and details of women's lives into poetry. But in doing so, as Rich told WHYY's FRESH AIR in 1989, she didn't want to create new boxes for women.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ADRIENNE RICH: Essentially, poetry, if it is poetry, does not lend itself to simple readings, to oversimplifications, although people may try to read it that way. The essential nature of a poem is that there is ambivalence and ambiguity quivering underneath.

SYDELL: In that interview, Rich read some of her poem, "Solfeggietto," about a mother teaching a piano piece to her daughter. The poem contemplates the woman's thwarted professional musical career, given up for motherhood.

RICH: Shelving ambition, beating time to On the Ice at Sweet Brier or The Sunken Cathedral for a child counting the minutes and the scales to freedom.

SYDELL: Though Rich married and had three sons, she drifted apart from her husband. In 1976 she came out as a lesbian and her love of women wove its way into her work with the publication of her "Twenty-One Love Poems." Jean Valentine says Rich was never afraid to write about topics others avoided.

VALENTINE: She was a very brave voice. And she was really unlike any other. I remember people coming along and wanting to follow in her footsteps as poets, and nobody could. She was completely unique. She had a way of being very strong and very intense and very true.

SYDELL: Rich took on issues of class, race, war, and at times explored her Jewish identity. She is taught in countless university writing and women's studies classes. And Valentine says Rich had a way of reaching even those who were not poetry fans.

VALENTINE: I think the important thing of her teaching for perhaps most people was consciousness. Not poetry per se, but the consciousness that she brought to it.

SYDELL: That consciousness earned her many honors, including a National Book Award and a MacArthur Genius grant. It also led her to decline some others. President Clinton wanted to give her the National Medal of Arts in 1997, but in a letter she wrote she was distressed by the, quote, "increasingly brutal impact of racial and economic injustice," and she added that the award means nothing, quote, "if it simply decorates the dinner table of power, which holds it hostage."

Adrienne Rich also battled for many years with her own body. She had rheumatoid arthritis. Complications of that disease finally ended Rich's life. She was 82 years old.

Laura Sydell, NPR News.

Copyright © 2012 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary.

Photo Credit: Borrowed from carynmirriamgoldberg.com

The Blue House

Words by Tomas Transtromer

Performed by Louise Korthals & Tom Jonsthovel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yabRC5EQpdQ#!

Performance of "The Blue House", a prose poem by Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. Reading performance by
Louise Korthals, music by Tom Jönsthövel in Amsterdam, Netherlands, December 2011. From The Lion
Publishing Group's Official Tomas Tranströmer website: http://tomastranstromer.net/