Bethany’s Top Five Obama-looking People and Things
by Bethany on 13/05/13 at 10:42 am
Four years ago, I wrote a top five list of incidents in which President Obama was likened to a monkey or ape. Recently, there have been a spate of incidents in which an object, actor, or image of something is said to look like Obama, usually disparagingly. Let’s take a look. You can judge for yourself if the similarity was deliberate or not.
Full Story“This Place Was A Shelter” from Necktie Films
Filmmaker Judith Redding made this video for genero.tv’s competition to create the official music video for Ólafur Arnalds’s song “This Place Was a Shelter,” from his latest album, For Now I Am Winter. Icelander Arnalds has toured with band Sigur Rós, has written instrumental intros and outros for German metal band Heaven Shall Burn’s album Antigone, and has released two previous solo albums. His music also appeared in the film The Hunger Games. Judith Redding’s short film, shot entirely in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, uses urban blight to illustrate how we have neglected and abandoned our shelters, our homes and churches. Judith Redding’s award-winning short films have been screened at national and international film festivals and broadcast on American public television. She is the co-author of Film Fatales: Independent Women Directors, which profiles 33 of independent film’s finest. Judith studied at the London International Film School in London, England, and now lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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On Tuesday, April 16th, Marty Moss-Coane featured me as a guest on her live WHYY program Radio Times, syndicated nationally on NPR and available on XM and online. The radio ad for the program billed it as “from dishwasher to Oxford, Philadelphia poet talks about his new album and collection of poems.” I like that.
Full Story“Waking” by Henri Cole
There was a parade of humans, mostly naked: a bishop holding a crosier; a drinker with a protruding nose; a man fighting a bird, mounting it, pulling on its beard; a granny dragging a money bag; an adolescent boy with a snake coiling his neck. Their bodies were gaunt and under their feet yawned the [...]
Full StoryErnest Hilbert Reads in Philadelphia with James Arthur, hosted by James Mancinelli of Moveable Beats
Moveable Beats Reading Series Ernest Hilbert Reads with James Arthur, hosted by James Mancinelli Good Karma Café 928 Pine St Philadelphia, PA 19107 (267) 519-8860 Sunday April 21st, 6PM FREE James Arthur’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Poetry, Ploughshares, and The American Poetry Review. He has received the Amy Lowell [...]
Full StoryTop Five most surprising West Point Cadets
West Point, the elite military academy that has trained America’s political, military, and business leaders for over 200 years. It’s no surprise that Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Custer went there. But there are a few attendees that are about surprising. For instance . . .
Full Story“III Keepers, The Wife, September” from “Misericord” by Anna Evans
Anna M. Evans’ poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Harvard Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, American Arts Quarterly, and 32 Poems. She gained her MFA from Bennington College, and is the Editor of the Raintown Review. Recipient of Fellowships from the MacDowell Artists’ Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and winner of the 2012 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers’ Choice Award, she currently teaches at West Windsor Art Center and Richard Stockton College of NJ. Her fifth chapbook, Selected Poems of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, is forthcoming from Barefoot Muse Press. Visit her online at www.annamevans.com.
Full Story“Portrait, Bust” by Susan de Sola
Susan de Sola’s poems have appeared in The Hopkins Review, Measure, and Ambit. She is a David Reid Poetry Translation Prize winner.
Full Story“Koi Pond in Slow Motion” by Alexander Long
Alexander Long is a poet, teacher, book reviewer, essayist, and musician. VIGIL, his first book of poems, was released in 2006 from the New Issues Press Poetry Series. Co-editor of A Condition of the Spirit: the Life & Work of Larry Levis (Eastern Washington UP, 2004), Long is also the author of a memoir, Noise (RockWay Press, 2007), and a chapbook, Six Prose Poems (Brandenburg Press, 2004). His poems, essays, and book reviews have been published in American Writers (Charles Scribner’s Sons), Blackbird, QUARTERLY WEST, The Prose Poem: an International Journal, Third Coast, Rivendell, and elsewhere.
Full Story“Never Run Away” by Kurt Vile
Single version of “Never Run Away” from Kurt Vile’s album Wakin’ On A Pretty Daze.
Full Story“In Perpetual Spring” by By Amy Gerstler
Known for its wit and complexity, Amy Gerstler’s poetry deals with themes such as redemption, suffering, and survival. Author of over a dozen poetry collections, two works of fiction, and various articles, reviews, and collaborations with visual artists, Gerstler won the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for Bitter Angel (1990). Her early work, including White Marriage/Recovery (1984), was highly praised. Gerstler’s more recent works include Nerve Storm (1993), Medicine (2000), Ghost Girl (2004), and Dearest Creature (2009), which the New York Times named a Notable Book of the Year. – Poetry Foundation
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Here are some critters that just make me think “what the heck am I looking at” when I see them.
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Anis Shivani is a fiction writer, poet, and critic, based in Houston, Texas. He is the author of the short story collection, Anatolia and Other Stories, published by Black Lawrence Press. Booklist describes the collection as “extraordinary” and “caustically funny.” The collection was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award and one of the stories–”Dubai”–was awarded Special Mention for the Pushcart Prize.
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“Concerning Plunder” by James Brookes
“For its energy of expression, fearlessness and sheer verbal beauty, Sins of the Leopard is a magnificent debut.” – David Morley
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Mark Rice performing on the radio show Stay Tuned on February 12, 2010.
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“Monster Party,” a Short Film Written and Directed by Louis Mansfield
Written & Directed by Louis Mansfield. A Federal Film Reserve Production. Music by Dan Dilemma Thomas. Produced by Christine McDermott
Full Story“Rasmus Nielsen” by Nicholas Friedman
Nicholas Friedman is the recipient of a 2012 Ruth Lilly Fellowship. His newer work appears in The Dark Horse, The New Criterion, The New York Times, POETRY, Southwest Review, and other publications. Friedman currently works as a lecturer for Cornell University.
Full Story“Women’s Poetry” by Daisy Fried
Daisy Fried is the author of three books of poems, Women’s Poetry: Poems and Advice (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), My Brother is Getting Arrested Again (Pitt, 2006), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and She Didn’t Mean to Do It (Pitt, 2000), which won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. Her poems have appeared recently in the London Review of Books, Nation, New Republic, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Threepenny Review and elsewhere; one of her poems has been selected for inclusion in Best American Poetry 2013.
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Original concept by Cam Magee. Design by Caitlin S. Griffin.
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One of many stunners from Auden’s book Shield of Achilles.
Full StoryTop Five links between President Obama and Star Trek
There are more connections than you might expect . . .
Full Story“At Dawn: Eurydice” by Daniel Evans Pritchard
Daniel Evans Pritchard is a poet and essayist living in Boston. He is marketing and publicity director of Boston Review, publisher of The Critical Flame, and organizer of the bimonthly U35 Reading Series. His work has appeared in Little Star, The Quarterly Conversation, The Good Men Project, Idiom, and elsewhere.
Full Story“Faux King in the Parking Lot” by Lynn Levin
Lynn Levin’s newest collection of poems is Miss Plastique (Ragged Sky Press, 2013).
A poet, writer, and translator, Lynn Levin is also the author of three previous collections of poems: Fair Creatures of an Hour (Loonfeather Press, 2009), a Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in poetry; Imaginarium (Loonfeather Press, 2005), a finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Award; and A Few Questions about Paradise (Loonfeather Press, 2000). She is, with Valerie Fox, the author of the craft-of-poetry book, Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets (Texture Press, 2013). Lynn Levin’s poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Boulevard, Washington Square Review, Verse Daily, and on Garrison Keillor’s radio show The Writer’s Almanac. She is currently involved in translating the work of Odi Gonzales, a Peruvian Andean poet. Lynn Levin teaches at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania.
“Prelude: Dusk in the Ruins” by Ernest Hilbert
“‘Genes clarify the genius and the freak / And prove we descend from a feral band,’ Ernest Hilbert writes in ‘Outsider Art,’ and there is no mistaking the ‘feral’ appetite and intensity of these poems, or the bitter depths of experience they sometimes explore. What makes All of You on the Good Earth such a rare collection, however, is the way Hilbert unites that raw energy with elegant and original language, creating a style that sounds like no one else’s.” – Adam Kirsch
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Cynthia Waxes Nostalgic on Vintage Board Games
In honor of the new monopoly update, I’d like to wax nostalgic about a game that I had as a kid.
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Here are Bethany’s top five roles that were written for men, and then rewritten for a woman to play, often resulting in awesomeness.
Full Story“Sailing the Mullica River (Great Bay Estuary) 1978″ by Ernest Hilbert
“Hilbert is one of our best rhymers since Robert Frost, and his poems have been compared by superb poets to those of John Berryman and Robert Lowell. We haven’t had a poetry like his—both seriously tough-minded and wryly self-chiding—to enjoy and mull over for a long time.” – Alice Quinn
Full Story“Shanghai Cigarettes” by Caitlin Rose
Directed, shot and edited by Seth Graves. Studio footage shot by Kevin Doyle.
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