Swiftly Moving Targets
 

Our invaluable Lance Levens is recruiting the great Turner Cassity for the sonnet bake-off. This year as in others, there will be no judging. Cathy will pick twelve sonnets, she and Turner and I will comment. Then the fan club will vote. Since Wystan Auden and Edgar Bowers died, Mr. Cassity is the senior gay poet in English, and I relish his arrival at our board.

In June, I shall host the Wilbur Fest. I shall be recruiting a number of Wilbur scholars to help with the heavy lifting. Richard will participate.

In July I hope that Jim Hayes and John Whitworth will host the second light verse bake-off.

In August, I am very pleased to announce that Chris Childers will screen and Clive Watkins will judge the second Translation Bake-off. We'll do this as Marion did it last year, original, prose crib, translation.

In September, Mary Meriam and I will host a symposium on gay and lesbian poetry. We are starting with Gilgamesh, 3200 BC, and working our way to the present. Suzanne Doyle will be helping Mary on the ladies' side of the church, and I have asked Nemo to help me. Some of our guests will astonish you.

In October Jehanne Dubrow and Quincy Lehr will host a symposium on younger poets, poets younger than 40. This is not a subject on which I have much to offer, so it's their tennis court. Well, ok, I know Clay Stockton, Chris Childers, our hosts, Pooch. But this is the future of our art folks, the conservators of whatever legacy we can bequeath. I know Quincy and Jehanne pretty well, and boy, do I look forward to turning this board over to that pair.

In November Juster and I will host a symposium on the radical emerging poetry from chimps in Africa and bald guys from Australia.

In December, back to Deck the Halls. I will screen, and I am going to be specifically soliciting poems from many of you. As always, Rhina will judge.

That about wraps it up for Distinguished Guest for this year, but bring on your proposal. This board is open to all.

are we saying no to both Haiku and Tanka? I'm quite sure that there are some on this board who could find suitable commentators/instructors for both...

Yes!

See, the squeaky wheel gets the oil.

Yay, Bald-power!

Oh no, of course not Father. Give me world enough and time. It will have to compete with the chimps and baldies from Oz in November, as it did last year, and yes, Rob, I shall ask David to get involved and expand our discussion from haiku to tanka.

I am pleased to announce that John Whitworth will judge the light verse bake-off.

Excellent!

Here's a thought: what about a DG mailing list, so we can be notified when something new starts?

Good! Haiku and Tanka are very different art forms...each will need its own space.

Perhaps we could have a week of each with the radically evolved chimps who migrated to Australia and mastered the art of bald guy poetry in the middle?

Fr.RP

Jim Hayes will help John Whitworth. My thanks to both. Bald guys. You'd know something about that, wouldn't you Father? I wrote to Collington, Gurga, and Anthony last night. Will post when I hear. One of the indispensable attributes of your old lariat is he never took no for an answer. Well, maybe from Michael the Archangel, but not from a poet.

Tim, although the sonnet bake-off and other TDG events test the participants' virtuosity to some degree, an event in which the entries must be poems of, say, eight lines or more which can be read as sensible, viable poems both backward and forward, word by word (though not letter by letter as in a palindrome) would really put us to the test. I've done it so I know it lies within the power of experienced versifiers of moderate skill. Call it the Reversible Verse Challenge.
Anybody care to second the motion?

G/W

Wiley--

Hey, your migraine. I have no objections, but won't participate.