The University of Arkansas Press Celebrates National Poetry Month

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – April is national poetry month, and the University of Arkansas Press is celebrating, along with poetry lovers nationwide, by including a poetry sale on its Web site. Customers are invited to visit http://www.uapress.com to take advantage of the offer.
The history of poetry at the press is an illustrious one, said Tom Lavoie, marketing director for the press, who is himself a reader and writer of poetry and a board member of the local Ozark Poets and Writer’s Collective.
“As most people in Arkansas know, the press was co-founded in 1980 by poet Miller Williams,” Lavoie said. “Williams’s own poetry has won many awards, and he is probably best-known for reading at Bill Clinton’s 1997 inauguration,” Lavoie said. “He began the press with a strong focus on poetry, and he discovered several poets who have gone on to successful careers, including two-time United States poet laureate Billy Collins, who published his first book with Williams in 1988. That book, The Apple That Astonished Paris, is still our best-selling poetry title.”
The press publishes four poetry books a year through its Poetry Series, edited by poet Enid Shomer. Recent poets in the series include Elizabeth Hadaway, winner of the Library of Virginia poetry prize; Christopher Bursk, winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize; and Patrick Phillips, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, among several other critically recognized contemporary poets.
In September 2007, the press held a benefit to initiate the Miller Williams Poetry Prize. The benefit was held at the Walton Arts Center and featured Grammy award-winner Lucinda Williams, who is the daughter of Miller Williams. “This prize is a major development for the press,” Lavoie said. “It places us more solidly among nationally recognized poetry prizes and will help us attract even more outstanding manuscripts.”
The home page of the University of Arkansas Press Web site will include a page of poetry titles available in a “two for one” promotion through the month of April, along with additional information about poetry in Arkansas. Visit http://www.uapress.com to find out more.
Below is a poem from The Apple that Astonished Paris, by Billy Collins, his first book, published in 1988 by the University of Arkansas Press. “Introduction to Poetry” remains the press’s most frequently reprinted and anthologized poem. The poem is followed by a list of upcoming local events during National Poetry Month.

Introduction to Poetry
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin by beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Poetry Happenings in Northwest Arkansas

The Ozark Poets and Writer’s Collective meets the last Tuesday of every month at Nightbird Books for a featured guest and open mic. Visit http://www.uark.edu/ua/mmasull/opwc/ for more information.

Nightbird Books is featuring Beth Ann Fennelly on April 11. The store also hosts HOWL, a woman’s open mic that meets every third Sunday at 6 p.m. Call (479) 443-2080 to find out more.

The Fayetteville Public Library is hosting a poetry contest and slam for students from 3rd to 12th grade at 6 p.m. April 17 at Arsaga’s Café in the library. Call (479) 571-2222 to find out more.

The University of Arkansas Master of Fine Arts program is holding its annual Arkansas Festival of Writers April 9 and 10 on the University of Arkansas campus. The festival will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Creative Writing and Translation Program and showcase a number alumni fromthe program, including poet Leon Stokesbury.

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CONTACT:
Melissa King, assistant marketing manager
University Press
(479) 575-7715, mak001@uark.edu

Comments from University of Arkansas Press Employees on Naitonal Poetry Month

Brian King, Editorial and Production
Ron Koertge is among Press’s poets whose works I have liked and respected the most. He has published three books of poetry with us: Geography of the Forehead, Making Love to Roget’s Wife, and Life on the Edge.
I’ve been told that Koertge’s use of humor has caused him to be taken less seriously than he should be. But humor, like irony, both compresses and illuminates meaning. His poems are definitely not light verse—no purple cows here (at least not that I remember). In “Truth & Beauty” Koertge starts us down a path we’re happy to follow—thumbing our noses at Keats the holy Romantic poet. But in the second stanza, things start to get complicated. Not only are Truth and Beauty splitting, but they’ve walked to a seedy bus station to head their separate ways. By the third, we’re into serious territory, still funny, but serious. Maybe Keats neglected to emphasize in his “Ode on a Grecian Urn” that there is an elemental contradiction inherent in the two’s relationship. I tend to side with Ron. If you really want to know about truth and beauty, you should perhaps put the urn aside for a minute and deal with the chill in the air and the fat guy in the bus.

Carolyn Brt, Accounts Payable
Well, I believe we’ve been sitting on a gem for years. It’s Anne and Alpheus. It’s the most amazing little poetry book. It’s 1800s life. A young married couple on the plains. On each page Annie is talking about Alpheus, or he’s talking about her, and in those interactions you see their whole lives in technicolor! The writer, Joe Survant, is so talented.

Kathy Willis, Customer Service
I’m fascinated with The Apple that Astonished Paris (it sat on the shelf so long and then took off and soared), and then to have met the author and hear him read was awesome. It’d be great and we'd appreciate poetry more if we could get that insight from the authors. However, I do like My Father Says Grace by Donald Platt. After seeing the advance copy, and reading some of the poetry, I had to comment to the author when he called me for more books. It’s clean, refreshing, down to earth, and many people will enjoy it as a look at life from a spiritual side.

Tom Lavoie, Marketing
It’s hard to pick just one of our authors, but I could go with Christopher Bursk.
First Inhabitants of Arcadia is witty, creative, surprising, filled with emotion, and wears its learning lightly.

Melissa King, Marketing
I was looking over some work that had to do with permissions, and I discovered the poem “Story Hour,” from Sara Henderson Hay’s book with the same name. Short, direct, and utterly unpretentious… yet so smart, subversive and rich. How does a writer do that with fairy tales? The book has a foreword by Miller Williams: “These sonnets come across as so natural, so relaxed, simply so very good that the poet seems almost to have thought in the form.” High praise, I’d say!

Mike Bieker, Business Manger
As business manager, my favorite might be The Apple that Astonished Paris, with 11,000 copies sold! I very much like Here and Hereafter, by Elton Glaser, with its poems about changing seasons as we bust into spring. I really like “Twenty First of June.”

Sam Ridge, Inventory Manager
These are folk songs and folklore rather than poetry exactly, but Roll Me in Your Arms and Blow The Candle Out are my favorites. I constantly catch myself laughing out loud at almost every turn of the page.