Flame and Shadow: A Live Tweetspeak Poetry Party with Sara Teasdale, Part 1

In her lifetime, poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) was popular with the public and critics alike. Her third poetry collection, Rivers to the Sea (1915) was a bestseller; her fourth, Love Songs (1917), won what eventually was named the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her final collection, Strange Victory (1933), was published after her death and was well-received by critics. 

Her poetry gradually fell out of critical favor. I read her poems in English literature textbooks in high school and college, but her work was fast disappearing by the 1980s. (Critics and scholars often get suspicious if something is popular with the public.) Recently, her work has begun to make something of a comeback, and rightfully so. 

And just in time for a live Tweetspeak Twitter party, but without Twitter. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Tweetspeak Twitter Party: The Odyssey and The Wooded Isle, Part 2

Over the centuries, the epic poems The Odyssey and The Iliad by Homer have been translated scores of times. The English translators have included George Chapman, Thomas Hobbes, Alexander Pope, William Cowper, William Cullen Bryant, William Morris, Samuel Butler, Padraic Colum, T.E. Lawrence, W.H.D. Rouse, Robert Fitzgerald, Richmond Lattimore (the translation I first read), and Allen Mandelbaum, among many others. The most recent English translation was published by Oxford University Press in 2014.

In other words, Homer has lasted. And with good reason. The story of the siege and fall of the pf the city Troy and the (mostly) seagoing wanderings of Odysseus still captivates and enchants. And amid the sounds of battle before Troy and encounters with witches, sirens, and various monsters are several very different love stories, including Menelaus and Helen and Odysseus (or the Roman Ulysses) and Penelope.

Top continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Illustration: Odysseus and Calypso, from The Odyssey.

Tweetspeak Twitter Party: The Odyssey and The Wooded Isle, Part 1

The Odyssey by Homer is the second oldest book in the Western literary canon; Homer’s The Iliad wins the prize for the oldest. The works are believed to have been written sometime about the end of the 8^th century B.C. (or B.C.E., if you prefer). They describe the fall of the great city of Troy and its aftermath, which occurred about 400 years earlier. (Two scholarly camps argue about the identity of Homer; one says he is a single individual and the other says he is actually a group of individuals.)

The two works give us innumerable images and metaphors. The face that launched a thousand ships. The Trojan horse. Achilles’ heel. The judgment of Paris. The sirens’ song. The Cyclops. Circe the witch. Scylla and Charybdis.

The Odyssey (Robert Fitzgerald translation)was the source for the prompts for Tweetspeak Poetry’s most recent poetry party on Twitter, held Dec. 10, where 10 would-be Homers wrote their own epic poem.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: A Hellenized version of what Homer may have looked like.

Twitter Party: Slivers of Plum at Midnight

It’s been a while since we last hosted a poetry party on Twitter, but it finally happened. Nine Twitter poets participated, responding to prompts by @tspoetry taken from Dave Malone’s (that’s @dzmalone in the vernacular of Twitter) most recent poetry collection, O: Love Songs from the Ozarks. Our review of the collection was posted here at Tweetspeak Poetry back in February.

Tweetspeak Poetry was born as a result of series of poetry parties on Twitter. For a while we posted the resulting poems on my personal blog, but finally created a site just for that purpose. Over time, the site grew, additional additional features like Poetry at Work Day and Bring Your Poet to Work Day, literary tours, poetry reviews, poetry prompts and more.

Like every previous poetry party, the lines for poems developed on a number of different levels, some people following the prompt and others responding to each other; while some kept closely to the timing of prompt as others were more considered in their responses. It’s great fun, but it takes some detective work on the part of the editor (me) to identify which lines belong with which poem. But I think you’ll like the resulting poems.

To continue reading (and to see the poems), please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Illustration by jks Lola via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.