Tag: The Poetry Break

The Poetry Break: William Bronk

West Virginia’s poet laureate Marc Harshman highlights here work of the late William Bronk.

Bronk won the National Book Award for poetry in 1981 long before his death in 1999.

Do not look to Bronk for metaphor or imagery, but instead – masterful use of syntax to evoke nuances of life. Harshman pulls some of the spare poetry of the New York native William Bronk in this month’s Poetry Break.

"Bronks' spare language achieves a spectacularly heart-breaking beauty," Harshman said.

Found here: 

  • Our Helpless Wonder
  • Hypotheses
  • The Aria
  • The Tell

The Poetry Break: George Ella Lyon

Host Marc Harshman calls her, “the most ‘can-do-anything’ poet in America.” George Ella Lyon is a novelist, essayist, teacher, activist, musician, lyricist, children’s author, playwright, and poet. She was named poet laureate of Kentucky in 2015.

"This is the room that made us who we were:/ book lovers, scholars, people of the word,/ who found a safe place between hard covers." -George Ella Lyon

Lyon says she has always loved songs, poems, and stories. “Since I was a shy kid,” Lyon wrote, “it was natural for me to use writing to express feelings and thoughts I couldn’t just say. Gradually I discovered that not only did writing help me express myself, it could be exciting, joyful, and comforting in itself. I realized I loved making things out of words. That’s why I became a writer.”

Found here:

  • On Those Shelves
  • It Got Us This Time
  • Interior Design

This selection was pulled from Lyon’s most recent publications Many Storied House, used with permission by George Ella Lyon and the University Press of Kentucky.

The Poetry Break: Believe What You Can

Marc Harshman, poet laureate of West Virginia has just seen his second full length collection of poetry published by the Vandalia Press at West Virginia University called Believe What You Can. 

"To enter this work is to remain open to the haphazard, the lopsided, the fragile, and the bracing details that tell our times as we both know and fear them," said Maggie Anderson of Harshman's publication.

 
Found here: 

  • Grandmother at the Dressmaker
  • And Fly
  • With No Questions

The Poetry Break: Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan has had a prolific career during the course of which she won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and twice was named a finalist for the National Book Award. She is, as well, past poet laureate of Maryland.

"I adore the way Pastan offers in her poems a voice at once familiar and commanding and always pointing toward the mystery of being a human being born to imagine," said Harshman.

Heard here: 

  • Rachel
  • Time Travel
  • Somewhere in the World
  • Notes From the Delivery Room
  • The Happiest Day

Selections were pulled from Carnival Evening by Linda Pastan, Published by W.W. Norton & Company. Copyright 2011, 1998 by Linda Pastan. Used by permission of Linda Pastan in care of the Jean V. Naggar Literacy Agency, Inc. (permissions@jvnla.com)  

The Poetry Break: Richard Hague

Richard Hague was raised in that northern outpost of Appalachia, Steubenville, Ohio, and has lived his adult life in another Appalachian city of Ohio, Cincinnati.  The author of over eight books of poetry, and numerous chapbooks, his collected volume, During the Recent Extinctions, won the prestigious Weatherford Award as the finest book of poetry published in Appalachia in 2013.  

"Much as I'd like to claim it," Harshman said, "Hague is, for my money, the truest heir of James Wright I know."

Dick is the kind of poet easy to admire.  He simply gets it done, going about his work as a masterful high school English teacher for decades while quietly turning out wonderful poems day after day, year after year.

Found here with permission from Dos Madres Press, selections from Hague’s book of poetry: During the Recent Extinctions.

  • Giant Catfish, 1955
  • “Measuring the Energy” [207] from a longer sequence titled Outerbelt Elegies
  • Reading Him To Sleep
  • My Grandfather’s Mandolin
  • “Carried Up” from 2 Poems Over 50 Years
  • Slugs

The Poetry Break: Nikki Giovanni

She was born in Knoxville and raised in Cincinnati. The poems of Nikki Giovanni reflect her pride as both a black American woman, and an author with deep roots in Appalachia.  She is revered not only for her poetry but for her work as essayist, children’s author, activist, and teacher. The recipient of 7 NAACP Image Awards, the Langston Hughes medal, a Grammy nominee, National Book Award finalist – her achievements are unique and impressive.

"Nikki simply writes poems filled with incredible delights and ecstatic joys, poems which exhibit a fierce hunger for honesty and justice," Harshman said.

Found here from The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998: 

  • Knoxville, Tennessee 
  • Winter Poem
  • I Wrote A Good Omelet
  • We
  • Poetry

And from Giovanni’s audio CD recording of Harpers Collins Press:

  • The Life I Led
  • For 2 Pac Shakur
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