I am currently running Poetry Madness 2008 over at my classroom blog.  If anyone is interested in participating, shoot me a line through the comment feature below and I’ll set you up with an ID.  My forums have been a little low on discussion, as my students prefer to chase me down in the hall, but I’d love some input from the outside world.

Technorati Tags: poetry, poetry madness 2008, Gregory Orr, Howard Nemerov, Ishmael Reed, Ellen Bass, poet, poem

I got the following in my e-mail.  Since next month is National Poetry Month, I decided to pass it along.  It came from Dee Rimbaud, author of some of the books above.  Let me know if anyone sends something in.

The Melted Rubber Humans are looking for mp3 files of spoken word/ poetry readings (either live or studio) to be incorporated in a series of albums of ambient/ experimental music. 

They are looking for poetry which deals with the following topics:

1. God/ the Goddess/ spirituality;

2. sex/ gender/ sexuality;

3. power/ politics/ corruption;

4. love/ want/ need;

5. fear/ despair/ greed.

They are looking for poetry with a rich, interesting and/or experimental approach to the use of language and especially those read with voices that reflect the feeling of the poem.

The plan is to select lines or verses from poems and to blend them into a sound-collage; a musical equivalent to the art of the Dadaists.  The finished albums will be posted at http://www.virb.com/melted_rubber_humans and will, like their previous three albums, be available for free download.

Poems can either be submitted by email or snail mail.

Email submissions are limited to one mp3 file with a 2Mb maximum file size and should be sent to shooglemail@googlemail.com with “FAO: Captain Melted” in the subject line.

There are no file size limitations for snail mail submissions.  These should be sent on CD to Dee Sunshine, 35 Falkland Street (0/1), Glasgow, G12 9QZ, United Kingdom.

There is no deadline as this will be an ongoing project.

Further information about The Melted Rubber Humans can be found at www.myspace.com/captainmelted.

Technorati Tags: Melted Rubber Humans, poetry contest, experimental music, Dee Rimbaud

I am running Poetry Madness again this year, but I am hosting it on my classroom website.  You will need to create a user account through Edublogs to participate.  I’d love to have some outside opinions of the sixty-four poems to use with my students.

Technorati Tags: poetry, Poetry Madness, Marth Collins, Ted Kooser, Alfred Corn, Chase Twichell, Gary J. Whitehead, Heather McHugh

• Timothy Egan’s response to Steve Jobs, who said, “the fact is that people don’t read anymore.”
• The shortlist for the Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the year.
• Will Ashford’s book art.
• Lee Kottner’s two part post on copyright.
• William Skidelsky on book reviewing in this month’s Prospect.

Technorati Tags: Tim Egan, Steve Jobs, Diagram Prize, Prospect, William Skidelsky

“I’m hip about time.” - Captain America (Peter Fonda) in Easy Rider 

We are anything but timely here at Cup O’ Books.  We do try though. 

I mean, come on dude.  I gots a blog, right!?

Speaking of time, racial politics is always a sticky subject, and I am uniquely unqualified to address it.  But hey, that never stopped me before.  Yesterday, while using my powers for evil and surfing some You Tube, I was introduced to Bomani Armah, a self described “poet with a hip-hop style, not a rapper.”  The introduction was made via the following vid which caused a bit of a stir last fall. 

You thought I forgot about the whole time thing, eh? 

A quick warning that many people have found this song and video funny and satirical, which means others find it offensive and racist.  Our position at Cup O’ Books is that speech is free and you are free to take your own position on speech.  Hope that is sufficiently clear enough to confuse in a Thomas-More-keep-my-head kind of way.

The following is a video of Armah and others on CNN discussing the video and song.

I think I really became a fan when Armah responded to the idea that children cannot understand satire with his adolescent love of Mad Magazine.  Awesome comeback!

Technorati Tags: Read A Book, Bomani Armah, D’Mite, notarapper, Mad Magazine