Poetry Rules

I have just finished reading Penelope Fitzgerald's "The Blue Flower". Since Jack suggested me to read it--while he was in Rome just a few weeks ago--I felt the desire to buy myself a copy. And, it has been such an astonishing read. This book on the impetuous student of philosophy and future Romantic poet Georg Friederich von Hardenberg, better known as Novalis, is a precious little jewel. It is a wonderful and lively portrait of an age, of Novalis' family and of his adamantine love for 12-year-old Sophie von Kuhn, his "true Philosophy". But, really, it much more than this: the novel is an interrogation on life, love, courage, purpose, desire, Poetry and, the metaphysical striving for the infinite symbolized by the blue flower.

I am very grateful to editor Kathryn Rantala for including this poem in the latest chapter of The Anemone Sidecar . It deals with madness, a theme which has become always more manifest in some of my latest works. Women’s Only Asylum (starring Miss Plath, Miss Frame and Miss Dickinson) A mansion that is more like a condo, inhabited by the kindred souls of those who have lost their sanity. You will find them all gathered here in participating disruption wearing their candid straitjackets, playing cards with their mouths, acting scenes like Tomfools. There is the crazy stare of Sylvia writing wailing lines, on sheets tossed around her body. The new so-called schizophrenia in the lucid ravings of Janet. So many different forms of lunacy, but you will end up loving them all. Even Emily in her room, blowing glass panels to smithereens at last. http://www.ravennapress.com/anemonesidecar/pdf/chapter_16.pdf

It's National Poetry Day in UK today. Let's celebrate wherever we are around the world. So, pass on a poem. Buy a book of poems. Write a poem. Read a poem. Listen to a poem. Bookcross a book of poems. Host a poetry reading. Be a street poet. Let's all wax poetic. It's Poetry Day!

Yesterday, October 4th, was Anne Sexton's suicide anniversary. She had long searched for her Mercy Street but could not find it so she chose to gas herself to death in her garage at the age of 45. I have always admired her strong, painful, masterfully written poems but, I had never yet read more about her life than what I had studied on my anthology books at University. Until, just a few days ago, when I decided to buy a memoir book written by Linda Gray Sexton, her daughter, and I am finally catching up on her tormented and highly dramatic life. I will confess that I have asked two famous poems what they thought about her poetry and, I was kind of surprised to learn that they dismissed her work as highly narcissistic. But, knowing their mindset, I can well understand their reaction. Sexton is certainly no poet for the weak of heart. She explores personal themes in an unprecedented manner and in such a stark, brutally honest way that people may end up failing to notice the be...