A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Poetry

“Spring”

By R.B. Morris

April 12, 2012 R.B. Morris is a Knoxville poet and songwriter, solo performer and band leader, and a sometimes-playwright and actor. His books include Early Ires and Keeping the Bees Employed. His albums include Spies Lies and Burning Eyes and his most recent solo project, Rich Mountain Bound. He wrote and acted in The Man Who Lives Here is Loony, a one-man play taken from the life and work of James Agee. Morris served as the Jack E. Reese Writer-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee from 2004 to 2008 and was inducted into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame in 2009. He will give a reading and a musical performance at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on April 12 at 6 p.m.

Searching for the Poet Laureate of Music Row

By Pablo Tanguay

March 19, 2012 From the time of Homer to the Renaissance, poetry and song were inexorably linked. According to The Poetics of American Song Lyrics, a collection of essays edited by Knoxvillian Charlotte Pence, it’s this shared history that explains why much of the poetic tradition remains embedded in popular songs. To demonstrate, Pence herself, in an essay titled “The Sonnet Within the Song: Country Lyrics and the Shakespearean Sonnet,” compares the structure of several hit country songs to that of the traditional sonnet.

Billy Collins, Honorary Tennessean?

By Margaret Renkl

March 15, 2012 Billy Collins came to Tennessee in November 2010 to accept the Nashville Public Library Literary Award and apparently became entranced with Tennessee: since then, he’s returned to the state two more times—for a reading at the University of the South in Sewanee, and a residency at Vanderbilt University in Nashville—and he’ll be appearing in Middle Tennessee again this week when he reads on March 16 on the campus of Austin Peay State University in Clarksville.

A "Major New Talent"

By Margaret Renkl

February 22, 2012 Charlotte Pence, a Knoxville poet and Chapter 16 contributing writer, has been shortlisted for the prestigious Crashaw Prize, an international award for debut poetry collections written in English. The award, offered by the British house Salt Publishing, is designed to seek out and publish “debut collections of poetry from major new talents.” Pence, a recent Ph.D. graduate of the University of Tennessee’s creative-writing program, is one of thirteen finalists.

The Twang and Flavor of Speech

By Jeff Hardin

February 15, 2012 Novelist Ron Rash notes that for “twenty-five years Jeff Daniel Marion has eschewed poetic fashion and poetic posturing, going his own way, making poems that are confident enough to speak quietly to us, even gently,” and former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser calls Marion a “master of guileless simplicity.” Marion will read from his work on February 20 at 7 p.m. in the Hodges Library Auditorium at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

The Twang and Flavor of Speech

What a Poem Leaves Out

By Pablo Tanguay

February 15, 2012 Marvin Bell has written twenty-three books of poems and taught for more than forty years at The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, but he is hardly slowing down. In 2011 alone, he published a new book of poems (Vertigo: The Living Dead Man Poems), a children’s book (A Primer about the Flag), and a collaboration with the photographer Nathan Lyons (Whiteout). He also frequently performs his poems with musicians, including jazz bassist Glen Moore and his own son, the Tennessee-based singer/songwriter Nathan Bell. Marvin Bell will read from his work on February 20 at 4:30 p.m. in the Tom Jackson Building on the campus of Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. The event is free and open to the public.

What a Poem Leaves Out

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