So Much Poetry News that My Head is Spinning, Swirling, Levitating...Including Poems from Keetje Kuipers & Paul Scot August Today (9/11) at 2 PM

1. Keetje Kuipers new book of poetry from BOA Editions, Beautiful in the Mouth is out, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. It's beautiful, but dirty beautiful, which is like describing April Johnston's punky baby doll resort outfit that won Project Runway this week.

Kuipers is reading at Boswell today (9/11) at 2 PM, along with local fave Paul Scot August. I know there's a lot to do, but that rain has clearly eliminated 2/3 of your options. So this seems like a good alternative.

2. I don't write poetry. But maybe you do. And that's why I should remind you that Onmilwaukee.com is having a poetry contest. Poems can be any length of form, and must have something to do with Milwaukee. The three winners will receive gift cards from Boswell, Woodland Pattern, and People's Books. More details here. They will also read their poems as part of our event with UWM poet Rebecca Dunham. That date is still to be finalized.

3. Speaking of Dunham, if you can't make our event, she's also reading at Woodland Pattern on September 22nd, for the release of her collection, The Flight Cage. And one of the judges, Derrick Harriell, will be reading at Woodland Pattern on October 20th, for the release of his new book. We are carrying both titles, and hope to host Harriell at Boswell (he read here in 2009) sometime after his Woodland Pattern event. (Here's how this works--you go to the Woodland Pattern Event and it's so great that you tell some friends, who come to his Boswell event. That's the theory, at least.) More on their website.

4. Another poet we've had the honor of hosting is John Koethe, author of Ninety-Fifth Street and other fine collections. * Koethe has just been awarded the Lenore Marshall Prize for the year's most outstanding book of poetry. Here's what John Yau said about Koethe:

"John Koethe's candidness is unique among contemporary poets. In remarkably direct and transparent language, he writes about familiar things and ordinary moments that the reader will almost certainly have no trouble recognizing. 'For that's what poetry is—a way to live through time / And sometimes, just for a while, to bring it back.' In Ninety-fifth Street, his eighth book, the poet visits his childhood, being a student at Princeton, his friendships with fellow and elder poets, living in Berlin, as well as contemplates 'randomness and age.' Any sense of nostalgia suffusing through the poems is sharply tempered by Koethe's acute awareness of time's constant pressure, its relentless tug: 'Meanwhile life regresses / Towards the future, death by death.' Borne along by time, and knowing what ultimately awaits him, 'the aging child of sixty-two' doesn't try to seek sanctuary from what he knows to be true, which is that time shapes him, as it does us all. Instead, he ruminates on this understanding of reality with an unparalleled thoroughness. He interrogates what it means to be alive."

Read more here. Congrats to Mr. Koethe. If you would like to send your congrats, feel free to let me know and I will tell him when he next comes in the store!

5. And don't forget, we're hosting Wisconsin's poet laureate Marilyn Taylor on October 19th, along with the rest of her writing group. Slightly early to be talking it up, but it's never too soon to mark your calendars. More on this later.