We are busy at Scarriet—publishing new posts on an almost a daily basis: original essays, poems, epigrams, Scarriet March Madness Poetry contests—in its 8th year, going on right now, Scarriet Poetry Hot 100’s, you tubes of poem readings, and even song compositions. And one day we would like to repeat our successful Scarriet Poetry Baseball League—in 2010 (when I was teaching English Composition as an adjunct professor and working full time at my real job) Blog Scarriet ran an entire season with 16 teams of all-time poets with entire lineups, pitching staffs, trading deadlines, statistics, pennant races, and a world series—Philadelphia Poe defeated Rapallo Pound.
Scarriet Poetry Hot 100 allows us to bring attention to poets who are not famous yet, but who have written wonderful things: Daipayan Nair, Stephen Cole, Sushmita Gupta, Payal Sharma, Mary Angela Douglas, Nalini Priyadarshni, Philip Nikolayev, Paige Lewis, Valerie Macon, George Bilgere, Kushal Poddar, Joe Green, Cristina Sanchez Lopez, Merryn Juliete, Chumki Sharma, Stephen Sturgeon, Simon Seamount, Lori Desrosiers, and Noah Cicero.
This is a personal note to just say THANK YOU to all our readers—as we head towards a million views since our founding in 2009. “The One Hundred Greatest Hippies Songs Of All Time” (published in February 2014) still gets over 2,000 views a week. “The Top One Hundred Song Lyrics That Work As Poetry” (published in 2013) still gets 1,000 views a week. And posts like “Yeats Hates Keats: Why Do The Moderns Despise The Romantics?” (published in 2010) are constantly re-visited.
A poet (who I’ve never met) on Facebook, Linda Ashok, originally from Kolkata, today requested her FB Friends share “what’s happening to your poetry” and, without thinking, I quickly wrote a post—and realized your friendly Scarriet Editor has been up to quite a lot, lately, and Scarriet readers might as well hear about it:
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Shohreh Laici who lives in Tehran and I are working on a Persian/Iranian poetry anthology—in English. (See Laici’s translations of Hessamedin Sheikhi in Scarriet 11/26/16)
My critical study of the poet Ben Mazer will be published by Pen & Anvil Press.
My review of Dan Sociu’s book of poems Mouths Dry With Hatred is in SpoKe issue 4
Also in SpoKe issue 4: is my review of the Romanian poetry scene (after attending Festival de Literatura, Arad, 9-12 June 2016, Discutia Secreta)
Thanks to poet and professor Joie Bose, I participated in Kolkata’s Poetry Paradigm Coffee for a Poem on World Poetry Day, March 21, in Cambridge MA.
Charles River Journal will be publishing chapters of my Mazer book.
Facebook and Scarriet is where it all happens: so I’m actually not that busy—the literary world comes to me!
Below: the new family dog. If I don’t walk her, she pees in my bed. Seems fair.
