Paradise Tossed

Entries in poetry (50)

Tuesday

Jul132010

The Poetry Genome Project? New Poetry App Suggests It Might Be Possible

13 July 2010 at 12:12 EDT |

John Robert Ladd

A random spin lands on Joy & Youth, note 'There Was an Old Man with a Beard'By Hazel Jennings

Ah yes, another poetry iPhone app review. These are my most favorite assignments! This week John sent me the app Poetry from The Poetry Foundation. The free program is focused on poetry discovery, instead of either poetry study, receiving a poem a day, or poetry writing.

Remember that scene in High Fidelity when Rob reorganizes his record collection? His friend Dick comes in and surveys the project-in-process saying,

Dick: I guess it looks as if you're reorganizing your records. What is it though? Chronological?
Rob: No...
Dick: Not alphabetical..
Rob: Nope
Dick: What?
Rob: Autobiographical
Dick: No f*cking way.

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Poem-a-Day and the Publishing Barrier

01 June 2010 at 17:28 EDT |

John Robert Ladd

By John Robert Ladd

I've been enjoying the Poem-a-Day emails from the Academy of American Poets since I first subscribed at the start of National Poetry Month. It's been a delight to spend a moment each day contemplating the work of a new poet, one that I may or may not have already discovered. And it's even more of a delight that they've been able to extend the program far beyond the month of April alone and make it a year-round project.

However, there's a steady, creeping problem with these e-mails that I can no longer ignore. To the left of each e-mail, there's a little paragraph explaining who the author is, what book the poem was published in, and the copyright information for the poem. Usually there's also a link to more information about the author and his or her work. Now, it's nice to have the extra information right there, instead of having to find it on our own, but this tiny paragraph represents a major problem with the way the good people at the AAP approach this project.

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John Robert Ladd

Friday

May212010

Hashtag Hullabaloo: Literary Twitter Games

21 May 2010 at 15:34 EDT |

John Robert Ladd

By John Robert Ladd

Anyone who’s on Twitter, which at this point is almost everyone, has at least a tacit understanding of what hashtags are: search terms denoted with a # mark that make finding tweets on similar topics easy. Here at PT, we commonly use and follow the #poetry and #tech hashtags, for obvious reasons. And if you know my podcast cohost Cameron at all, you know he is the master of ridiculously long, often nonsensical hashtags.

But beyond just denoting the topic of a tweet, hashtags are often used to organize Twitter-based games. These games usually begin with some sort of writing prompt, and then a steady stream of tweets come in that respond to that prompt in some way. Twitter being a fairly literary platform to begin with, oftentimes these games revolve around poetry- or book-related topics. Here are a few that we enjoy:

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iPhone App 'Poem Flow' Combines Poetry and Power Point, Not in a Good Way

13 April 2010 at 8:43 EDT |

John Robert Ladd

By Hazel Jennings

So, if you haven't heard--I have an iPhone. It's true! I've joined the Great Pretention! It feels fabulous; it really does. And, because John Ladd truly is a lovely man, I have been asked to evaluate an iphone app.

Poem Flow is a free iphone application made through a partnership between the Academy of American Poets (poets.org) and Text Flows (textflows.com).

According to the Poem Flow website, their goal is this:

Poem Flow is a poem-of-the day application on the Apple app platform.
Each day a new poem flows to thousands of screens around the world. Everyone receives the same poem on the same day creating an instant, invisible community of simultaneous readers. The poems are from a mix of the greatest poems in English. Turned in your hand, each poem dissolves in a gentle reading animation. Turned back, the original poem returns.

The entire application is quite simple. Upon opening, a poem appears in full format. You turn your phone horizontally, and each line starts to appear in an artistic rhythm with a few PowerPoint-esque plays as words come in and rearrange themselves into the correct order once on the screen. By clicking “Home” you can see a list of free poems and wait expectantly for the next day's verse.

In short, I hated it.

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5 Comments |

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Hazel Jennings

Thursday

Apr082010

'Blogging Is About Giving Back': Thoughts from Saeed Jones

08 April 2010 at 9:17 EDT |

John Robert Ladd

As part of our ongoing guest series, poet and blogger Saeed Jones shares some of his thoughts on the difference between writing poems and posting to blogs, as well as how his blog fits into his identity and mission as a poet. Be sure to check out Saeed's work on his site, For Southern Boys Who Consider Poetry, and while you're at it, follow him on Twitter.

Because the act of writing a poem feels very different from writing a blog post, I'm not sure if the internet has had a direct impact on my poetry. Both are thrilling and difficult, but in their own way.

Writing a poem is difficult because I'm always trying to work through the dissonance between the poetry in my head and the poetry on the page. It's a struggle to make things 'come out right' so to speak, or at least to get as close as possible to writing a poem similar to the idea that sparked the poem in the first place. Blogging, on the other hand, is somewhat difficult because I want to make sure I'm saying something worthwhile without being self-aggrandizing or repetitive.

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