http://www.kansastopblogs.com

http://www.kansastopblogs.com/

Kansas Book Festival Sept. 24 Features Lana Myers, Cheryl Unruh, Eric McHenry, Denise Low

Lana Myers, author of May Williams Ward biography Prairie Rhythms and Denise Low, author of Ghost Stories of the New West (Woodley 2010). Kansas awards 15 Notable awards to all genres of books published in Kansas or by Kansas authors. The Ks. Center for the Book and Ks. State Library gave the awards at the Ks. Bk. Festival.

 

Eric McHenry (Topeka), Denise Low (Lawrence), Cheryl Unruh (Emporia), and Lana Myers (Newton) participate in a panel at the Ks. Bk. Festival at Topeka. Cheryl Unruh also won a Notable Book recognition for her book of short essays Flyover Country.

Link to poems and info on Joy Harjo!

World Poetry Portfolio Editor Sudeep Sen has a lengthy bio note plus a portfolio of Joy Harjo poems: http://www.molossus.co/worldpoetryportfolio/world-poetry-portfolio-36-joy-harjo/

New works by Joy Harjo are forthcoming: Soul Talk, Song Language, a book of essays, columns, interviews and photographs from Wesleyan University Press; Crazy Brave, a memoir from W.W. Norton; a one-woman show  at the Public Theater in New York and her next play, a musical hybrid: I Think I Love You, An All Night Round Dance is being commissioned by the Public Theater.

MARY SWANDER: Video of her short story "How I Got My Dog"

Mary Swander is Poet Laureate of Iowa, and she has a dog. Don't mis her reading of this intercultural exchange between her (or someone who could be like her) and Amish neighbors. I first learned about Swander's work when I reviewed her classic long poem Driving the Body Back (Alfred Knopf) in the Kansas City Star when it was published in the 1980s.It was a compelling family drama in verse about taking a body back to the home farm for burial. She continues to reflect on the universal and particular experiences of rural people.  I met her through Thomas Fox Averill, a fiction writer from nearby Topeka. They attended the Iowa Wrtiers Workshop together. Swander's  memoirs are Desert Pilgrim (Viking) and Out of This World (Viking). Her awards are: Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts grant for the Literary Arts, the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, and the Nation-Discovery Award.Her recent books of poetry and prose are from Ice Cube Press and Turning Point. She is a radio commentator and teaches at Iowa State. I was lucky to meet up with her during summer travels recently, and here is a photo and link to the reading. Enjoy!

WILLIALM KLOEFKORN,1932-2011

Bill Kloefkorn was one of the great storytellers of the poets from my home state. He attended Emporia State University for both his BA and MA in English; Emporia is my hometown, and I saw him at several events. I listened spellbound as he told stories and kept the audience of English teachers and librarians laughing. He was a great entertainer. Most of his career was in Nebraska, but the humor is about the same north of the border.He was a solid guy, generous, and fun. Born in 1932, he had one foot in the 19^th century and another in the 21^st. His writing memorializes the rural life, which is changing as city folk buy country houses for retreats and as family farms are sold to corporations. He references values connected to natural laws, and he critiques the pettiness of human frailties in the face of the larger truths, as in this 2004 poem, where he still remembers the awe of his father’s authority: 

I Stand Alone at the Foot 

I Stand alone at the foot

Of my father’s grave
Trembling to tell:
The door to the granary is open,
Sir,
And someone lost the bucket
To the well.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Here are some links:

http://deniselow.blogspot.com/2007/11/william-c-kloefkorn-1932.html

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/50ec1ca074094d259a6537640d133715/NE--Obit-Nebraska-Poet/

An April 9, 2011 feature in the Lincoln paper
http://journalstar.com/entertainment/arts-and-culture/books/article_c6444e65-1a16-5a76-88d8-6e3e67dbed61.html
A school was just named for him: http://www.nebrwesleyan.edu/press-and-media/news/16316  
Some poems:
http://rinabeana.com/poemoftheday/index.php/category/william-kloefkorn/  
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2009/11/18

Marilyn L. Taylor reads from state poet laureates anthology for Milwaukee Public Radio

Hear 2009-2010 Wisconsin Poet Laureate read from the anthology An Endless Skyway (Ice Cube Press 2011) and her own work at this site. Marily's website is : http://www.mlt-poet.com . Her book of poetry is GOING WRONG: Poems (Parallel Press, 2009) available at www.Amazon.com An Endless Skyway is available at www.icecubepress.com, and Ted Kooser, former US poet laureate, says this: “Each poet adds a unique style to the anthology and a unique slant on what it means to write … this book is made for everyone to roam and ramble within. Open these pages and enjoy the journey.” An Endless Skyway: Poetry from the State Poets Laureate is an exciting anthology that brings together the poetry of thirty-eight State Poets Laureate from across the United States. It is a collection that explores the poetry of places, but at the same time offers a glimpse into the poetry of our whole land. Edited by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Marilyn L. Taylor, Walter Bargen, and Denise Low. Thanks to Steve Sempken, indepdendent publisher of Ice Cube Press! Thanks to photographer Jerry Sipe.
http://www.wuwm.com/programs/lake_effect/le_sgmt.php?segmentid=7492

National Book Critics Circle link for calendar

Chicago begins its Publishers Row book events next week, then June 8 see the Future of the Book NBCC panel in Kansas City--Johnson County Resource Library. June 22 is another NBCC panel at NYU bookstore: With: Literary agents Julie Just & Betsy Lerner; O Magazine book editor Sara Nelson; Brooklyn Rail editor John Reed ; NY Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus; author David Goodwillie & Scribner’s editor Paul Whitlach. Moderated by Susan Shapiro.  http://bookcritics.org/calendar/

National Book Critics Circle Event in KC June 8, 7 pm

Join 4 members of the NBCC for a lively discussion of the future of the book in American Culture. by 2020, will the printed version still be going strong? Or will it have largely succumbed to electronic texts, audiobook downloads, and videos downloads? The event takes place at the Johnson County Central Resource Library 9875 West 87th Street
Overland Park, KS 66212.

Panelists include Denise Low, Mark Luce and Steve Weinberg, with moderator John Mark Eberhart. For information contact John Mark Eberhart at 913-826-4408

Kathryn Kysar, St. Paul poet, will read at Big Tent, Lawrence 7pm May 19

Kathryn Kysar will be reading in Kansas this week--Thurs. May 19, 7 pm the Raven Bookstore, 7th & Mass. in Lawrence, and Fri. May 20, 7 pm at the East Douglas Watermark Bookstore in Wichita. Her new book Pretend the World is from Holy Cow!Press in Minnesota. For more information, contact Jim Perlman
http://www.holycowpress.org/ Kysar's work augments reality with plausible voices from the intangible world. The interplay between real and unreal creates the tension, as in this poem from before incarnation:
Dream Poem



Mother, Father,
I have everything at bedtime:
a net of flowers,
a clock, a full little belly,
bed clothes made of candy wrappers,
petal wet darkness.
I am sleeping in the spirit gardens,
in these waters, quick and hot.
Will you wake me?

Wm. J. Harris publishes Domande Personali/Personal Questions

Leconte Editions has published an Italian bilingual edition of Billy Joe Harris's chapbook of poetry, translated by Nicola Manuppelli. The poems, as I read them in English, are koans--brief mind twisters that stay with me for days. The poet creates knife-sharp images with no extraneous verbage. The poem "No Delicate Flowers or Wild Geese" goes like this:
Our parting was not
Like a Chinese poem.
There were no
Delicate flowers or wild geese.
No chestnut horses.
No brush painted mountains.
No grace.

This shows the homage to Asian forms as well as the adaptation to American experience. With minimal words, Harris evokes the genres of early Chinese poetry-and-painting. He also evokes the contrast between the real and the ideal. The carefully chosen emblems of flowers, geese, and "chestnut horses" suggests the range of romantic passions--the sweetness as well as vigor. The last line is the oblique reversal--also a negation, but also a generalization about human qualities that carries with it the connotation of insult: "No grace." This is a lover having the last word. This is a definitive negation of the lovers' previous joys. 
  The entire book is without inhibition. He writes of bestiality, racism, poignant romance, procrastination. He covers a lot of ground in nine brief poems. The title poem is oblique and ironic and smart. Personal questions --and sometimes questions can be but thinly veiled aggressions--are answered here by the poet with his own edge. This sampling of poems whets my appetite for more. A new-and-collected poems volume is in the works. For a video of Harris's poem "Practical Concerns," see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBhBVO-f_G4. the book is available at the Raven Bookstore, 7th and Mass., Lawrence KS 66044. Harris teaches English and creative writing at the University of Kansas. he has published Hey Fella Would You Mind Holding This Piano a Moment (Ithaca House 1974), In My Own Dark Way (Ithaca House 1977) and The Poetry and Poetics of Amiri Baraka: The Jazz Aesthetic (University of Missouri Press 1985).