The phone ringing stops everything and the cold voice
draws a body in white chalk—
says your son has been at the precinct since last night.

Before you leave the house, you've smoked four cigarettes
and as you drive, smoke
drifts into your eyes.
The house lights were already on and his bedroom door

a sliver of light that crossed you
when
your foot pushed it open. His absence was a question:
the Newports left unopened in your purse for years. For a moment

you almost expected to find him,
his voice barely above a whisper. The television
hummed;
it made the door an invite—but he is gone,

and you see yesterday's clothes on the floor,
books, video games and sneakers
on the bed, under the bed. He is not on the bed,

phone to his ear as usual—the door is still open.
It's Sunday and there's
no reason for his absence. Against the shadows,
hints of your laughter:

his first word was "no,"
a picture with Orioles cap on big enough
for his father,
and his face etched with red tracings of Kool-Aid.

He needs to know
you expected him home, and why smoke from a Newport
leaves the taste of metal
in your mouth.

How To Write Sad Love Poems To Get Your Ex Bac: Almost every woman is a hopeless romantic at heart and if you write the love letters and poems these will be kept in a special place and cherished for years. Books
on romance and love are chiefly purchased by women more than men and every woman that reads them wishes she could also have a fairytale love life and happy relationship with her knight in shining amour. Many relationship counselors will not tell you that if you have broken up a very effective way to get her back is to compose sad love poems. Now most men will not have a clue on how to write sad love poems; never mind to write sad poems to get your ex back. Even on the internet real guides on how to write sad poems to get your ex back are extremely hard to find. Sad Love poems have been written by famous people like Napoleon, Oscar Wilde, and Charles dickens. Love poems can truly melt anyone’s heart or make you think deeply about life.

Read the complete story

In Halifax this week, rhymers, rappers and writers of verse are attending the first national gathering of the country's poets laureate. There are 17 poets laureate in Canada, appointed by municipal, provincial and federal governments to promote literature and the arts.

The position dates back some 400 years, to the English court of King James the First. A poet laureate was hired to write poems for royal occasions. But Canada's current day bards bring a decidedly modern perspective to their work.

Roland Pemberton, Canada's youngest poet laureate at 24, is better known as hip-hop artist Cadence Weapon. Pemberton said his role as Edmonton poet laureate is to promote art in all its forms. "I've been doing some work with the train station in Edmonton, the LRT, putting some poems into the architectural design," he told CBC News.

Read the complete story

Sometimes she blames her favorite doctor-Dr. Seuss, that is. When that Cat came with that crazy top hat, so did Andrea Perry's love of rhyme.

Hailing from Upper St. Clair, the author-poet is celebrating the release of her third picture book, "The Bickelbys' Birdbath," a whimsical, fun, summer romp that all starts with a mailman. There's a goose and a moose in this story that is built backwards in the "This is the House that Jack Built" tradition. Perry explained, "The idea for this story came first with the title.

I wanted something goofy sounding and something alliterative and for some reason I wanted to write about a birdbath. I made up the name Bickelby to go with my birdbath. Oh, and I knew the birdbath was cracked and the mailman was bringing a new one."

This story is different from her two previous books--"Here's What You Do When You Can't Find Your Shoe" followed by "The Snack Smasher." Both of those books are collections of wacky (and somewhat weird) silly, fun poems. All three books have been published by Atheneum.

Read the complete story

His name will sit alongside not just the great Russian poets, but also the likes of Lowell or Ginsberg. His poetry belongs to that future about which he thought and for which he wrote, and many will speak of him. However, only his peers remember the living Voznesensky, and it is their duty to acknowledge that he embodied the moral traditions of Russian literature with a rare purity and fullness; that the human component of his gift was no less than the poetic; that, simply speaking, he was a very good man.

In his work, he managed to rejoice and do good, to teach and not to stifle, and to stoically endure the many torments that were his lot. These torments were not only Khrushchev’s bitter abuse, which he suffered simply for his brilliance, but also his departure from this world, which was long and difficult. He was ill for five years, surviving stroke after stroke, and lost his voice. His vitality and success seemed for a time to offer him a special resistance to persecution and illness.

Read the complete story

The former Altra Biofuels plant has a new owner, who says it will invest more than $30 million in upgrades to the existing facility, while creating new jobs in Putnam County and helping the local agriculture business community.

POET Biorefining announced it purchased the 147-acre facility, located on US 231 north of Cloverdale, last week after it went up for sheriff's sale for $107 million. "We have been looking at potential acquisitions for some time," said POET's chief executive officer Jeff Broin. "This plant, in this community, will be a perfect fit for what we do at POET."

The ethanol plant has been sitting in cold shutdown since Altra officially closed its doors in December 2008. Although Altra did not disclose a reason for the shutdown at the time, low ethanol prices and the continued financial squeezes were likely to have been key factors.

Read the complete story

"Safety poems" a poetry collection composed by Mostafa Rahmandoost has been recently marketed for children which has been a bestseller in the past weeks. IBNA: "Safety poems" has been published in 3 volumes and Rahmandoost has composed it about the danger of some tools for children.

The book has been published by Ofogh which says that the collection has been among the bestsellers during the past weeks. In the collection Rahmandoost talks about dangerous tools as knifes, scissors, saws, needles and etc…

"The prayer poems" another poetry collection by Rahmandoost has been recently published. He told IBNA that that his opinion has changed for publishing the books as a collection and has decided to create more collections.

Read the complete story

There aren't many verse forms that are named after their originators; poetry doesn't seem to work much like biology in that respect.

There's the Clerihew, the Horatian Ode and Sapphics. I'm tempted to say that's that, but I'm sure there are more I'm forgetting and that I can depend on you to remind me of.

This month, the challenge is to write a poem in Sapphics – the form favoured, unsurprisingly enough, by Sappho. Rather than tying ourselves up with longwinded explanations involving trochees and dactyls, let's look at a Sapphic stanza in schematic form using "-" for long (in English, stressed) syllables, "u" for short (unstressed) syllables and "x" for an anceps (a syllable that can be either stressed or unstressed):

Read the complete story

It’s a testament to the pliancy of contemporary poetry and the talent of poet Malaika King Albrecht that her first book, “Lessons in Forgetting” (Main Street Rag Publishing Company. 47 pages. $7), can grapple so powerfully with an affliction that in recent years seems almost an epidemic — Alzheimer’s.

In choosing this most tragic of diseases, Albrecht traces the terrible affliction’s progression — in this case Alzheimer’s has chosen the poet’s mother — from its onset to its sad conclusion, sprinkling images and insights throughout.

Read the complete story

Forty five men died in a gas explosion at the Six Bells pit on 28 June 1960.Gillian Clarke said she remembered how the disaster had resonated with those living in Welsh mining communities.

"I remember this terrible thing had happened and yet great horrible accidents like that didn't happen any more," she said.She told Roy Noble of BBC Radio Wales that she thought about the human aspect, the people going about their everyday lives when the tragedy happened.

"I thought about the town ... probably a lovely day, probably with the sun shining, probably it was lovely ... and suddenly a change."How would they hear it - some sort of deep down thump before the news came to the top of the pit?"

Read the complete story