A few days away Posted By: Maryann Corbett on May 05, 2008, at 08:56 PM The staff and the Bakeoff crew have been alerted already, but this is to let the rest of you know I'll be off duty from Wednesday through next Monday. I'm headed for Manteo, NC, where my niece is getting married. Alex is holding the fort until then. Wish me luck dealing with airports. (Let's see, one of my recent trips produced a poem likening an airport to Dante's Inferno....) Maryann (Read More | 3 comments)

New moderator announcement Posted By: Alex Pepple on May 03, 2008, at 12:25 AM Dear Eratosphereans, I bring you delightful news of our brand new moderator -- who is no stranger to any Sphere regulars, and, has been with us since those distant early days: drum rolls ... yes, it's a big welcome to Jennifer Reeser into Erato staffdom! She will be co-moderating the Metrical Poetry -- Deep End, with John Beaton who has done an exceptional job with that forum even after he had to wing it solo. Jennifer is an eminently competent Eratospherean who has already contributed so much to the Sphere, and even, to Able Muse. She will continue to do so as our new moderator: Jennifer is the author of An Alabaster Flask, winner of the Word Press First Book Prize, and Winterproof. Her poems, essays, and translations of Russian and French literature appear internationally in such journals as POETRY, Botteghe Oscure, The National Review, Salt, The Formalist, Louisiana Literature, and The Dark Horse. Her work is gathered in numerous print and online anthologies, including Introduction to Poetry, edited by X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, and Phoenix Rising: The Next Generation of American Formal Poets, The Alsop Review (which also produces her CD as part of its Spoken Word series), and Famous Poets and Poems Online. She has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and received awards from the World Order of Narrative and Formalist Poets and The Lyric magazine. In 2006, she was a member of the West Chester seminar on Russian/English translation, and was a finalist for the 2008 Willis Barnstone Translation Prize awarded by the University of Evansville. She lives in southern Louisiana. Please join me in giving a hearty Eratosphere welcome to Jennifer! Cheers, ...Alex (Read More | 13 comments)

Your regularly scheduled Pruning Alert Posted By: Maryann Corbett on May 01, 2008, at 05:58 PM Oops. I should have warned you a couple of days ago. Since I didn't, I won't prune today. I'll wait until Saturday. I hope that's enough notice for all of you to make copies of threads you want to keep. Maryann (Read More | 0 comments)

Brand new moderator announcement Posted By: Alex Pepple on April 26, 2008, at 04:58 PM Dear Eratosphereans, I'm pleased to introduce our brand new co-moderator for the Non-Metrical forum, Janice D. Soderling! She's also displayed a critical presence second to none all around the Sphere and has done so with skill and commendable disposition. She will be co-moderating with Dee Cohen who has done and keeps doing an outstanding job at Non-Met. Janice replaces Katy Evans-Bush who has been away for a while and is no longer able to attend to Non-Met. Although Janice is new to the Sphere, she comes to us with boundless potential as a poet, Met and Non-Met and, even as a writer. She has already garnered substantial recognition for her work as can be seen from her bio: Janice D. Soderling is a self-employed copywriter/translator/editor for the business sector and academia. Her work in English and Swedish—fiction, poetry and literary translations—has appeared in such literary journals as Beloit Poetry Review, Glimmer Train, the Malahat Review, the Fiddlehead, Acumen, Anon, Other Poetry, Staple. She is represented in anthologies and at a number of online sites. Janice was born and raised in the US, but lives in Sweden in a smallish village in a largish house where roe deer play havoc with her crocuses and fruit trees. Her children are fledged and flown. Please join me in giving a hearty Erato welcome to Janice! Cheers, ...Alex (Read More | 13 comments)

New Moderator Announcement Posted By: Alex Pepple on April 26, 2008, at 02:14 AM Dear Eratosphereans, It's my great pleasure to introduce your new moderator for The Discerning Eye, and he's well known Spherean, also know to be a-roving moderator. Drum rolls please ... yes, it's our very own Sam Gwynn. Sam will be taking over from Richard Wakefield who's gave us excellent service in that forum but is no longer able to give it his attention. Sam's reputation and achievements are simply outstanding as you can see from his bio: R. S. (Sam) Gwynn was born in Eden, North Carolina, in 1948. He attended Davidson College, where he played football, twice won the Vereen Bell Award for creative writing, and served as a member of Davidson's championship team on the General Electric College Bowl. After receiving his B.A. in 1969, he did graduate work at the Breadloaf School of English and entered graduate school at the University of Arkansas, earning the M.A. in 1972 and the M.F.A. in 1973. While a student at Arkansas, he received the John Gould Fletcher Award for Poetry. He has also won the Breakthrough Award from the University of Missouri Press and, in 2004, the Michael Braude Award for Light Verse from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1973, Gwynn began his teaching career as an instructor of English at Southwest Texas State University. In 1976 he moved to Beaumont, Texas, to teach at Lamar University. In 1997 he was named University Professor, Lamar's highest academic rank, and he has also been recognized as an outstanding teacher by Phi Kappa Phi, the national academic honor society, and as an outstanding scholar by the College of Arts and Sciences. He was named Distinguished Faculty Lecturer at Lamar for the year 2001 and was named University Scholar in 2004. In 2007 he was named Distinguished Poet-in-Residence. Gwynn began publishing while an undergraduate, with poetry, fiction, and translations appearing in the New England Review and the Sewanee Review. His first collection of poetry, Bearing & Distance, appeared from Cedar Rock Press in 1977 and was followed by The Narcissiad, a satirical poem, in 1982. His book of poems The Drive-In won the Breakthrough Award from the University of Missouri Press in 1986. No Word of Farewell: Poems 1970-2000 appeared from Story Line Press in 2001. His poems appear in a number of anthologies and textbooks, including Twentieth-Century American Poetry (McGraw-Hill, 2004), The Made Thing: Contemporary Southern Poetry, Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, Sound and Sense, Western Wind, Rebel Angels: Twenty-five Poets of the New Formalism, The Book of Forms, Poetry 180 More. In 2001 his poems were featured online at Poetry Daily and PoetryNet, and his poems have been read four times by Garrison Keillor on NPR's The Writer's Almanac. Gwynn's criticism of contemporary poetry began to appear in little magazines in the mid-1970s. Since then he has been a regular contributor of reviews to the Sewanee Review and the Hudson Review. For five years beginning in 1987 he wrote "The Year in Poetry" for the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook, and he later edited two volumes of the DLB on contemporary American poetry. He is currently working on a volume of his selected criticism and serves as advisory editor for Review of Texas Books. Gwynn has also edited anthologies of literature and criticism, among them The Advocates of Poetry: A Reader of American Poet-Critics of the Modernist Era, New Expansive Poetry: Theory, Criticism, History, and The Longman Anthology of Short Fiction (with Dana Gioia), which appeared in 2000. Four anthologies from the Penguin Academics Pocket Anthology series--Poetry, Fiction, Drama, and Literature--were published in 2001, and new editions appeared in 2004; the Canadian editions of the series (co-edited with Wanda Campbell) also appeared in 2004. He has currently edited (with April Lindner) Contemporary American Poetry: A Pocket Anthology, which was published in 2005. Gwynn has lectured and given poetry readings at over one hundred universities. He has been a faculty member at the Antioch Writers Conference, the Teaching Poetry Institute, and, for many years, the West Chester University Poetry Conference, teaching classes in poetic meter and form, the sonnet, and the dramatic monologue. An avid outdoorsman, he lives in Beaumont, Texas, with his wife, Donna. They have three sons and three grandchildren. Please join me in giving an enthusiastic welcome to Sam Gwynn to Eratosphere Staffdom! I know with him at the helm, we'll witness wonderful things at the Discerning Eye forum. Cheers, ...Alex (Read More | 4 comments)