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Internet Archive: Details: Sonnets to Duse, and other poems: Aug 11, 4:20pm 0 review poetry, theatre, actors
http://www.archive.org/stream/sonnetstoduseoth00teasrich

UniVerse :: A United Nations of Poetry: Aug 9, 9:53pm 1 review poetry
http://www.universeofpoetry.org/palestine_p3.shtml; A Sonnet by Mahmoud Darwish*

From the page:

"Mahmoud Darwish is one of the most admired Arab poets of today. He was born in Birwe, a village in upper Galilee, in 1942. In 1948, he fled with his family to Lebanon when the Israeli Army destroyed his village. A former member of the PLO's Executive Council, and the Poet Laureate of Palestine, he wrote the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence.

Darwish has published more than thirty books of poetry and prose, which have been translated into 35 languages, influencing and innovating modern poetic forms. He received international recognition as a French Knight of Belle Arts and Letters, and in 2002, he was awarded the Lannan Cultural Freedom prize. In 2005, he received the prestigious Prins Claus award for poetic achievement from Holland.

He now splits his residence between Ramallah, where he continues to edit the internationally acclaimed literary review, Al-karmel, and Amman, Jordan. More information can be found at: www.mahmouddarwish.com.

The following poems are reprinted from Mahmoud Darwish's most recent book in English, The Butterfly's Burden, from Copper Canyon Press, translated by Fady Joudah. The Butterfly's Burden presents three recent books in a single volume, each translated into English for the first time: The Stranger's Bed (1998), Darwish's first collection of love poems; State of Siege (2002), a terse, politically charged sequence written in Ramallah; and Don't Apologize For What You've Done (2003), a song "green like the phoenix" after the daily horrors in Ramallah. These poems provide continual contrasts, balancing old literary traditions with new, highlighting lyrical, loving reflections alongside a bitter longing for the Palestine that he lost. Darwish seeks conversation across national borders while continuing to expand the borders of poetry."

* English version of the sonnet in Arabic (above):

Sonnet

I touch you as a lonely violin touches the suburbs of the faraway place
patiently the river asks for its share of the drizzle
and, bit by bit, a tomorrow passing in poems approaches
so I carry faraway's land and it carries me on the road

On a mare made of your virtues, my soul weaves
a natural sky made of your shadows, one chrysalis at a time.
I am the son of what you do in the earth, son of my wounds
that have lit up the pomegranate blossoms in your closed-up gardens

Out of jasmine the night's blood streams white. Your perfume,
my weakness and your secret, follows me like a snakebite. And your hair
is a tent of wind autumn in color. I walk along with speech
to the last of the words a bedouin told a pair of doves

I palpate you as a violin palpates the silk of the faraway time
and around me and you sprouts the grass of an ancient place -- anew

--Mahmoud Darwish
--Translated by Fady Joudah. Reprinted with permission from the author and translator from The Butterfly's Burden, Copper Canyon Press, 2007.
Here is a link to Mahmoud Darwish's official website in Arabic with an English version as well: http://www.mahmouddarwish.com

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/02XN2gn9993RQ/610x.jpg: Aug 9, 9:40pm 1 review poetry, obituary
http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/02XN2gn9993RQ/610x.jpg; Palestinian Poet Mahmoud Darwish Is Dead at 67
Palestinian Poet Mahmoud Darwish Is Dead at 67By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: August 9, 2008 Filed at 10:23 p.m. ET
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Mahmoud Darwish, a Palestinian cultural icon whose poetry eloquently told of his people's experiences of exile, occupation and infighting, died Saturday in Houston. He was 67.
The predominant Palestinian poet, whose work has been translated into more than 20 languages and won numerous international awards, died following open heart surgery at a Houston hospital, said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Born to a large Muslim family in historical Palestine -- now modern-day Israel -- he described his people's struggle for independence while also criticizing both the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian leadership. He gave voice to the Palestinian dreams of statehood, crafted their declaration of independence and helped forge a Palestinian national identity.
''He felt the pulse of Palestinians in beautiful poetry. He was a mirror of the Palestinian society,'' said Ali Qleibo, a Palestinian anthropologist and lecturer in cultural studies at Al Quds University in Jerusalem.
Darwish first gained prominence in the 1960s with the publication of his first poetry collection, ''Bird without Wings.'' It included the poem ''Identity Card'' that defiantly spoke in the first person of an Arab man giving his identity number -- a common practice among Palestinians when dealing with Israeli authorities and Arab governments -- and vowing to return to his land.
Many of his poems have been put into music -- most notably ''Rita,'' ''Birds of Galilee'' and ''I yearn for my mother's bread'' -- and have become anthems for at least two generations of Arabs.
He wrote another 21 collections, the last, ''The Impression of Butterflies,'' in 2008.
Qleibo described Darwish's poetry as ''the easy impossible,'' for Darwish's ability to condense the Palestinian narrative into simple, evocative language -- breaking away from the more traditional heavy, emotive and rhythmic verse of other Arab poets.
Darwish wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, read by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat when he unilaterally declared statehood. The declaration was symbolic and had no concrete significance.
Darwish's influence was keenly felt among Palestinians, serving as a powerful voice for many.
''He started out as a poet of resistance and then he became a poet of conscience,'' said Palestinian lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi. ''He embodied the best in Palestinians ... even though he became iconic he never lost his sense of humanity. We have lost part of our essence, the essence of the Palestinian being.''
Last year, Darwish recited a poem damning the deadly infighting between rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah, describing it as ''a public attempt at suicide in the streets.''
Darwish was born in the Palestinian village of Birweh near Haifa, which was destroyed in the 1948 Mideast war that led to Israel's independence. He joined the Israeli Communist Party after high school and began writing poems for leftist newspapers.
''When we think of Darwish ... he is our heart, and our tongue,'' said Issam Makhoul, an Arab lawmaker and veteran member of the Israeli Communist Party.
Darwish left Israel in the early 1970s to study in the former Soviet Union, and from there he traveled to Egypt and Lebanon. He joined the Palestine Liberation Organization, but resigned in 1993 in protest over the interim peace accords that the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat signed with Israel. Darwish moved to the West Bank city of Ramallah in 1996.
His work is widely admired on the Arab and Palestinian street. In Israel, it evokes different feelings.
In 2000, Israel's education minister, Yossi Sarid, suggested including some of Darwish's poems in the Israeli high school curriculum. But Prime Minister Ehud Barak overruled him, saying Israel was not ready yet for his ideas in the school system.
For the remainder of the click on this link: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Obit-Darwish.html

YouTube - The Best Cigarette: Jul 13, 7:58pm 4 reviews poetry, video
http://video.stumbleupon.com/?p=oj7dzq2151

Kerouacs Belief and Technique for Modern Prose: Jul 11, 9:48am 11 reviews poetry
http://languageisavirus.com/articles/articles.php?subaction=showcomments&id=1...

Slow Dance | Fairfieldsbooks.com: Jun 14, 10:56am 11 reviews poetry
http://fairfieldsbooks.com/2007/12/22/slow-dance/

Wislawa Szymborska - Poetry: The Three Oddest Words: Jun 14, 10:05am 33 reviews poetry
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1996/szymborska-poems...

Google Image Result for http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/image_full/international/…: Jun 8, 1:59pm 1 review literature, poetry, fiction, authors, atwood
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/image_fu...; Margaret Atwood

        In The Secular Night

        In the secular night you wander around
        alone in your house. It's two-thirty.
        Everyone has deserted you,
        or this is your story;
        you remember it from being sixteen,
        when the others were out somewhere, having a good time,
        or so you suspected,
        and you had to baby-sit.
        You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream
        and filled up the glass with grapejuice
        and ginger ale, and put on Glenn Miller
        with his big-band sound,
        and lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up the chimney,
        and cried for a while because you were not dancing,
        and then danced, by yourself, your mouth circled with purple.
        Now, forty years later, things have changed,
        and it's baby lima beans.
        It's necessary to reserve a secret vice.
        This is what comes from forgetting to eat
        at the stated mealtimes. You simmer them carefully,
        drain, add cream and pepper,
        and amble up and down the stairs,
        scooping them up with your fingers right out of the bowl,
        talking to yourself out loud.
        You'd be surprised if you got an answer,
        but that part will come later.

        There is so much silence between the words,
        you say. You say, The sensed absence
        of God and the sensed presence
        amount to much the same thing,
        only in reverse.
        You say, I have too much white clothing.
        You start to hum.
        Several hundred years ago
        this could have been mysticism
        or heresy. It isn't now.
        Outside there are sirens.
        Someone's been run over.
        The century grinds on.

        --Margaret Atwood

Automatic Poetry Generator: Jun 3, 2:52pm 12 reviews poetry
http://www.languageisavirus.com/automatic_poetry_generator.html; My friend Linda sent to me this link for the "Automatic Poetry Generator" :), which is a funny program allowing someone who needs something to do, to do something, well, to click at least, and watch the new "generation".

I like to be silly at times and this sort of silliness I often find addictive. Reading some of the poems generated makes we wonder about the art of poetry itself and what happens when a poet acts upon some inspiration, some idea, some response to a sensation or epiphany, or existential moment to "generate" a poem. The following was generated by this impish digital bard. It's very bad (I think), awkward and I don't think it is a poem, but what do I know anyway? Maybe it is a poem! Please visit my witty friend Linda, and browse her interesting, thoughtful and beautiful posts. Here's the link: http://just-linda.stumbleupon.com

And now here is the untitled work in blank verse.

"Strangely arid beside the sea
So green on the grave
We excrete transparent flames behind the mud
Word! The day is good
So glittering beside the flowers
You excrete entrancing lights over the earth
Ahhh! The Fool felt good
Strangely arid beside the sea
We stroke evil eruptions within the dreamscape
Alack! The King will be born
wary seeking
where the light comes from
a trace of sadness
With what hopes
our neighbour
ask his way
before help could come"

--Automatic Poetry Generator