me and the RTD

“I never stop talking,” Shann Palmer said as she stood on the ragged wooden floor of art6, a gallery on East Broad Street. Palmer is passionate about so many things—the gallery, downtown Richmond, poetry, music, life in general—that her passion spills out in words.

Often, in fact, the words are written. Palmer is a poet known around Richmond for giving readings, organizing readings, volunteering at readings and encouraging other poets to read. She’s also a church organist and choir director.

Palmer is curator of “Women and Words,” an exhibit and series of readings that is art6’s contribution to
Minds Wide Open. She expects the exhibit will be “90 percent by women,” but she will include a few
works by men that pay tribute to women or are collaborations with a woman.

“It’s a marriage between spoken word and art,” she said. The visual art for the exhibit must include text
in some way, whether it’s a collage made from pages torn out of a book or words painted on the wall or even “a poem put in a frame and hung on the wall.”

Although art6 has had women-focused exhibits and literary events numerous times before, Minds Wide
Open is another opportunity for women to show their work and receive promotional assistance from
the statewide initiative.

“I’m certain there will be work created new for this exhibit,” Palmer said. “Some of us have trouble not
doing something new.”

“Women and Words” will run during April in honor of National Poetry Month.
beginning April 2 check www.art6.org for updates.

photo by Alexa Wekch Edlund for the RTD

article by Angela Lehman-Rios

The scary truth of too much poetry

The inevitable truth is here-

I know exactly how bookninja feels, at an event I attended the other night at least two people wrote something to read WHILE OTHER PEOPLE WERE READING. They were not participating in the experience, they were trying put some unfinished thoughts on paper so they could get up in front of everyone and share their mental drool. If I want raw, I'll eat my carrots uncooked.

That's not craft, that's not attention to words and the magic they hold. That's just masturbating in front of a microphone.

Yes, I host readings. Yes, I support my local poets. Jotting down your thoughts, journaling is not poetry. Writing while other people are reading is rude. Period.

(to be fair, I was not the host- who did an excellent job- and the event was an open mike, not a poetry reading. I'm still sick of it.)

Women and words exhibit coming to art6

Women writers and artists wanted for an exhibit during April celebrating women and words.

If you are a poet or novelist, readings will be held. If you are a visual artist, you may collaborate with a woman writer or exhibit your work that has text as part of the art.

Work due by March 28th at art 6, 6 East Broad St, Richmond, VA 23219

For more information or specific entry requirements email shannp (at) gmail (dot) com

Books for Sale, mostly poetry (MORE!!)

Books for sale cheap- make me an offer ($3-$5 each) for one or more- all are paperback unless otherwise noted, most are poetry (a fewcommentary) If you are in or around Richmond, email me and we'll meet somewhere. Sometime you just have to make room for stuff.

(revised list 2-16-2010)

LIST ONE

Adair, Virginia Hamilton Ants on the melon (hardback)
Aiken, Conrad Selected poems
Alvarez, Julia Homecoming (poems)
Amichai, Yehuda The Selected Poems of...
Ammons, A,R, The Really Short Poems of....
Ashbery, John April Galleons
Belieu, Erin Infanta
Bendall, Mollie Dark Summer
Bernstein, Charles Dark City
Berrigan, Ted Selected Poems
Berrigan, Daniel And the Risen Bread
Carroll, Jim Fear of Dreaming
Clark, Jeff Music and Suicide
Clifton, Lucille The Book of Light
Cohen, Leonard The Spice Box of Earth
collection SLAM
collection Ain’t I a Woman (Hardback)
collection Victorian Woman Poets 1830-1900
Crawford, Robert Talkies
DiPrima, Diane Pieces of a Song
Disch, Thomas The Castle of indukgence
Doran, Geri Resin
Dunn, Stephen The Insistence of beauty
Glazner, Gary Poetry Slam
Gluck, Louise meadowlands
Gray, Janet A Hundred Flowers
Hegley, John Love Cuts
Holstad, Scott C. Artifacts (chapbook)
Jewel A Night Without Armor (hardback)
Levertov, Denise Poems 1968-1972
Logan, William Macbeth in Venice
Lourde, Audre The Marvelous Mathematics of Distance
Mueller, Lisel The Private Life
Nisbet, Jim Small Apt
Plath, Sylvia Ariel
Reed, Lou Between Thoughts and Expressions collected lyrics
Rich, Adrienne What is Found There (plus 2 other books in one)
Talcott, William Benita’s Book
Turow, David The Torchbearer

LIST TWO (even more)

List 2


Bain & Beatty Norton Intro to Lit 6th ed HC
Barratt, Michele ed Virginia Woolf on Woman and Writing
Bryan, edited Where We Stand Women Poets on Literary Tradition
Budbill, David Why I Came in Judeville
Clark, Tom Like Real People
Fenza, D.W. The Interlude
Gallassi, Jonathan North Street
Gluck, Louise Vita Nova
Graham, Jorie The Dream of the Unified Field
Graves, Robert Poems About War
Heany, Seamus Opened Ground Selected poems 66-96
Heyen, William Diana, Charles, and the Queen
Kennedy & Gioia An Intro to Fiction 2nd ed.
Kirchway, Karl The Engrafted Word
Lattimore, Richmond The Odyssey of Homer
Levin, Phillis The Penguin Book of the Sonnet (signed)
Lowell, Robert Selected Poems
Lux, Thomas new & Selected Poems
Matthews, William Selected poems & Translations 1969-91
McCartney, Paul Blackbird Singing
McGrath, Campbell Pax Atomica
Merwin, W.S. The Vixen
Moss, Thyllias Small Congregations
Nemcosky, K.B. Drift
Olds, Sharon The Wellspring
Percham, Robert Mythic Instinct Afternoon
Pinsky, Robert Jersey Rain HB
Pinsky, Robert The Figured Wheel
Rivard, David Wise Poem
Roethke, Theodore The Collected poems of...
Sappho A garland trans Jim Powell HB
Schmidt, Michael Lives of the Poet
Seaton, translation The Wine of Endless Song from the Yuan Dynasty
Shapiro, Alan Covenant
Simic, Charles The World doesn’t end
Smith, Patti Auguries of Innocense
St. John, David The Red leaves of Night
St. John, David The Face
Stevens, Wallace The Collected Poems of ... HB
Suziki, Shunyru Zen Mind, beginner’s Mind
Swenson, Cole Goest
Tost, Tony Invisible bride
Tweedy, Jeff Adult Head
Wakoski, Diane Jason the Sailor
Wakoski, Diane Medea
Walcott, Derek Collected poems 1948-84
Waldman, Anne Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble
Wat, Phyllis The Fish Soup Bowl Expedition
Watts, Alan The Spirit of Zen
Watts, Alan The Book
Whitman, Walt Everyman’s poetry edition
Wiese, Anne Pierson Floating City
Williams, W.C. Paterson
Wright, Charles Appalachia
Wright, Charles Black Zodiac HB
Wright, Charles Chickamauga
Yeats, W.B. Great Irish Poets HB
Yeats, W.B. The Collected Poems of .....

write shannp (at) gmail (dot) com

Tony Hoagland's new poetry book is here!!!

Waiting for my copies of Tony Hoagland's new book
Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty

It's on the way from Fountain Books (my favorite local independent bookseller). I finally had to call and say "mail it". I don't know when we will have spring/no snow-

Here's a tiny bit for you to savor:

_______________________________________________
 Dialectical Materialism




My god there is so much sorrow in the grocery store!

You would have to be high

on the fumes of the piped-in pan flutes

of commodified Peruvian folk music



not to be driven practically crazy

with awe and shame,

not to weep at the scale of subjected matter:



the ripped-up etymologies of kiwi fruit and bratwurst,

the roads paved with dead languages,

the jungles digested by foreign money.