National Poetry Month kick-off!

What better way to jumpstart Poetmeister 4 Poets! after a longish hiatus than start off National Poetry Month with a shout out to all my favorite poetry sites & blogs, and then some! I've truly missed, over the past months, my usual blog-hopping forays; it looks like the dust is settling over our homestead at last which will allow me to resume my blogging

• I shall start things off by giving a high-five to Joe Felso, er, David Marshall, of Joe Felso: Ruminations, for his newest start-up blogs, Haiku Streak and Signals to Attend, which I'm just starting to "get to know." You may remember that Joe Felso/David Marshall is one of my favorite online educators and excellent writer of haiku! Welcome back to the blogging world, David! I'll be stopping in again soon to catch up with your comings and goings.
  
• You must go to Poets Who Blog and give some luv to Sara who puts in endless hours of superb writing on All Things Poetry - for a community of some of the most talented, unique, innovative poets in cyberworld. Poets Who Blog site has undergone a new look which really pops! Great job, Sara. Kudos to you for your tenacity and perseverance in providing the best information hub to the online poetry world!
• Don't forget to check in with these great blog sites, too; World Class Poetry, Billy the Blogging Poet, Blogsboro Poetry Club, Asphalt Sky , Glenn Buttkus' Feel Free to Read & Silliman's Blog!
  
• Rick Mobb of Mine Enemy Grows Older still continues to amaze me with his enormous talents and vision, and heart for social justice. Read Rick's newest poem, and now she's awake here. And Just Paisley continues to awe us with her poems & writings with their perfect complementary photo or artistic embellisment. Scot Young's Be Not Inhospitable to Strangers still rocks for me. Go give some luv - now!
  
• I'm totally taken by several new blogs I've discovered or been introduced to recently: Bryan Borland's SHAKE and David Rheins Blog.

These few highlighted sites ought to keep you busy kicking off April's National Poetry Month! At least until I return with more places to check out - and more poetry, of course.. ;>

Poetic Bytes

• If I handed you a 300-page epic poem about werewolves in modern-day Los Angeles, would you want to read it? William Weir of The Hartford Courant writes about Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow , a novel in free verse. Dare ya!
• Oh, oh. When is a poem a "poem?" The Queen's English Society in reference to contemporary poets has espoused that "too often strings of words are being labeled as poems despite the fact they have no rhyme or metre." (sniff, sniff) The QES believes The Sun Rising by John Donne is a poem, but not so for contemporary poet Michael Schmidt's poem entitled Pangur Ban, excerpt below. What say you?

Jerome has his enormous dozy lion.
Myself, I have a cat, my Pangur Ban.
What did Jerome feed up his lion with?
Always he's fat and fleecy, always sleeping
As if after a meal.
Perhaps a Christian?
Perhaps a lamb, or a fish, or a loaf of bread.
His lion's always smiling, chin on paw,
What looks like purring rippling his face
And there on Jerome's escritoire by the quill and ink pot
The long black thorn he drew from the lion's paw.

• From Richard K. Weems' drive-by poetry to Dave Johnson's charity poetry-on-the-spot, and the original Douglas Goetsch's poetry stand, we have the newest spin-off poetry-on-demand presented by Bainbridge Island West Sound Academy high school's celebration of National Poetry Month.
• The People's Poetry Gathering stretches a clothesline of poems from around the world across the streets of Lower Manhattan.
• WordFest 2008, a poetry showcase created by pioneers of Asheville's poetry movement, in Asheville, NC, starts Thursday - April 27 all over town. Featuring Pulitzer Prive-winning poet Galway Kinnell, four-time National Poetry Slam champion Patricia Smith, renowned translator of Sufi Poet Rumi, Coleman Barks, NC Poet Laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer, Jewish Arts Institute's Richard Chess, Cherokee poet MariJo Moore. Read WordFest highlights here.
• Dont Miss Out on This! LibraryThing, Favorite Poem Project, World Class Poetry, Poets Who Blog, or Blogsboro Poetry Club.
  
• New Hampshire poet Martha Carlson-Bradley reminds us to not overlook the wonders of nature - she uses them to tell us about ourselves - in her poetry book, Season We Can't Resist. Read article by Rebecca Rule of the Concord Monitor here.

Poetry On-line Community You Must Join - NOW

So, you've been writing poetry for a while. Your friends and family - even your dog - loves the written word. Yours, especially. Your poetry blog is deev and readership is growing like wild fire. Something tells you it's time to meet other poets on-line but you don't know where to start looking. Hey! That's what I'm here for [takes a bow]. Right off the top of my pin head I think of Poets Who Blog community and Blogsboro Poetry Club. How easy was that! Now get your awesome self over there and have some fun!