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Tanka Poetry: The Heart Of A Sailor By M. Kei

the poet — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:40:18 +0000

First, World Class Poetry offered “Twitter Haiku and Other Gems” by Gene Myers. Now, our second Twitter chapbook focusing on Japanese short forms is available for free through the World Class Poetry Toolbar.

“The Heart Of A Sailor” is a collection of 26 tanka poems by gay poet M. Kei, a volunteer skipjack crewman in the Chesapeake Bay area.

I think you’ll find these poems to be truly engaging in a pastoral as well as in a linguistic sort of way. M. Kei has a great way of conjuring an image that provokes an emotion in just five lines.

The Micropoetry Chapbook series from World Class Poetry was started to help poets who publish through Twitter and other microblogging services expand their audience. All chapbooks are published through the World Class Poetry Toolbar and remain there indefinitely.

The first such chapbook was “Twitter Poems”, written by yours truly. “Twitter Poems” was followed up by “Twitpoems” and most recently by “Irreverent Twits” featuring a photo on the cover by professional photographer Tyson Crosbie.

Micropoetry is flourishing on Twitter, with more new poets joining the ranks every day. Some poets prefer to publish their poems through aggregated Twitter streams such as @twihaiku while others publish through their own Twitter streams.

Download the World Class Poetry Toolbar and enjoy these chapbooks from some of Twitter’s best short form poets, the latest being “The Heart Of A Sailor” by M. Kei.

Meet "Irreverent Twits"

the poet — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:01:31 +0000

Just a quick note to say that the latest Twitter chapbook, Irreverent Twits, has been published. You can download it now with the World Class Poetry Toolbar. Free.

Twitter Haiku and Other Small Gems

the poet — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:49:59 +0000

Gene Myers is a poet and journalist in New Jersey. I am proud to announce that he now has a digital chapbook available under the imprint of World Class Poetry. It’s available for free with the WCP Poetry Toolbar.

I was so impressed with Gene’s poetry I wrote this in the introduction of the chapbook:

Gene Myers’ gift is the gift of seeing. His sharp wit and delicate sensitivity to the sound of words married to their visual appeal within the white space of the line is a testament to his poetic ability.

These poems are not edgy like my own. They are smooth. And cool. You’ll like them.

But if that isn’t enough, I’ve also added a widget to the toolbar that allows users to access their own Twitter accounts through the toolbar. If you are a Twittering poet then you can post tweets from the toolbar and read the tweets in your Twitter stream – right from the World Class Poetry Toolbar!

Down the World Class Poetry Toolbar now.

Twitpoem Chapbook Is Now Available For Free

the poet — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:57:03 +0000

For the last week I’ve been frustrated. I’ve tried to publish the May 2009 issue of my Twitter poems chapbook, but I’ve been running into some challenges that have held up the process.

For starters, I bought a new laptop, an Acer AspireOne. It’s a tiny little Ferrari of a laptop, but it really is a cool toy. But of course, Microsoft and Acer have teamed up to force me to purchase Microsoft Office or be relegated to using it the complimentary X number of times and be without. I downloaded OpenOffice instead, the committed cheap ass bastard that I am.

I spent three days trying to figure out how to convert from OpenOffice to .pdf. I couldn’t do it. My .pdf converter doesn’t recognize OpenOffice files and won’t convert text files properly. Nor would it work correctly with Microsoft Word 2007, which is the format I was saving my OpenOffice files in. I finally had to save it in MS Word 2003 then go to my desktop computer, which I gave to my six year old so he could play his games on, and open the document in Word to convert it to .pdf.

I thought that had solved all my problems. I didn’t.

It took me another two days to figure out why the .pdf converter was melding every document I’ve converted to date into one file. At first I didn’t recognize that was what was happening. The front cover of the .pdf document was the cover of HardSoftwood.

After scratching my head for a couple of days it finally dawned on me that I had used the combine documents feature of my .pdf converter on the HardSoftwood project and never turned it off. Duh! So besides being a cheap ass bastard I am now a dumb ass bastard. Two for one.

At any rate, long story short, I fixed that issue and now am ready to present to you the 13-page chapbook titled Twitpoems. You can download it for free with the World Class Poetry Toolbar.

Here, Two More Poetry Chapbooks Just For You

the poet — Thu, 07 May 2009 01:58:49 +0000

Yesterday I announced the addition of the second chapbook by Gary B. Fitzgerald to the World Class Poetry Toolbar. Today I’d like to offer you two free poetry chapbooks available for download.

Going Dutch – Going Dutch is actually a couple of years old, but I’m making it available for free for the first time. These are poems I wrote while on R&R leave from Iraq in 2005 when I met my wife in Germany and we toured the country by train. A nice little poetic-pictorial journey just for you.
Twitter Poems – Twitter Poems is the outgrowth of my Twitter poem experiment, which I conducted in April. I posted one poem a day on Twitter. Each poem was limited to 140 characters or less, a stricture placed by Twitter itself. These are the poems in a chapbook, free and available for download.

In addition to adding these two chapbooks to the toolbar, I’ve reorganized the blogs that are accessible from the toolbar as well. This was long overdue and finally I made the time to get it done. The blogs are alphabetized now for easier reference. There are 29 blogs in addition to the WCP blog and website. The latest addition is PoemShape.

Feel free to download the World Class Poetry Toolbar and enjoy your free chapbooks. There is also a call for submissions at the end of Twitter Poems.

Hardwood Poetry Chapbook Is Now Available

the poet — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:57:23 +0000

Hardwood, Gary B. Fitzgerald’s chapbook, is now available through the World Class Poetry Toolbar. Download the toolbar for free and enjoy Gary’s poetic verses.

Two Free Poetry Broadsides – All Yours With The WCP Toolbar

the poet — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 01:57:43 +0000

I’m feeling generous. I decided to add a new feature to the World Class Poetry Toolbar. If you are a regular user then you can refresh your toolbar (I’ve sent a message through the toolbar to remind users how to do that). Directly to the right of the radio bar you will see the Adobe .pdf symbol and the letters B & E. That drop-down menu will be used for sharing free poetry broadsides and e-books with toolbar users. You can share them, pass them around, print them out and frame them, whatever you want to do with them. I don’t care. They are yours. Free. The only thing you can’t do is claim them as your own creations (they do have my name on them, after all).

I may in the future (likely) publish the works of others through the toolbar in the same manner. For now, however, I have uploaded two .pdf broadsides for your pleasure. The first, subscribers of my newsletter Hyperbole will already have. It’s titled “Tattoo.” The second broadside, however, is a published poem that I’ve decided to share in this manner as a broadside. “Battlefield Confession” is a poem that will be included in Rumsfeld’s Sandbox should I ever get it finished and out to a publisher. It’s not my best poem, but I’ve added a photo that I took while in Iraq to accompany the broadside. It’s yours for the taking, but you have to download my toolbar. It is only available to toolbar users.

If you have not downloaded the Word Class Poetry Toolbar then you can do that now. It’s free. Just click on the link at the end of this post and you’ll be taken to my download page and you can download the toolbar and enjoy its other features as well. I take pride in having developed the most useful and poetic toolbar online. It’s free and totally safe to download. Everyone should have it.

Download the World Class Poetry Toolbar Now

And now I’m off to work on the long post regarding 21st century epic poetry (coming soon).

My Book Review Reading List

the poet — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 02:41:24 +0000

Thanks to Diane Lockward for her list of poetry journals that read submissions during the summer. It’s a three-part list here, here, and here.

The newest member of the World Class Poetry Toolbar family is Mannequin Envy.

Books waiting in the cue for my review:

Lassoed With A Decorative Tongue
Watch The Watering Can
Graffiti Verite (DVD)
The World Of Richard Dadd
History’s Twists: The Armenians
What Feeds Us
Sonata For Rain
Fumbling In The Light
100 Sonnets
Blue Mist White Rain
See What I See

The reading list expands. These are in addition to my own list of books, which I purchase for my own reading. Read how to get your book reviewed, which will add to my list.

What Do Ron Silliman And Slate Magazine Have In Common?

the poet — Mon, 26 May 2008 01:06:24 +0000

Tomorrow is Memorial Day here in the U.S. and I’ll be taking the day off. So no blog post.

Meanwhile, a review of Sam Hamill’s Measured By Stone.

Speaking of which, what do Rattle reviews, Belinda Subraman, WGLT Poetry Radio, American Blues Network, Ron Silliman, Chekhov’s Mistress, Virginia Quarterly Review Blog, Dark Matter, Poetry Hound, The Kenyon Review Online, The Truth About Lies, and Slate Magazine have in common?

The answer: They can all be accessed from the World Class Poetry Toolbar.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are 26 blogs, 20 radio stations, and 6 podcasts (5 of them are poetry podcasts) that can be accessed through the toolbar, which is free to all. And we are adding new features all the time.

If you have a blog, an online journal, or a poetry or literary podcast that you’d like to have included in the WCP toolbar then send me a message through my contact form or download the toolbar and send a message through the message feature.