Monday Muse Asks Did You Know?

This post is another in my occasional series offering something you might not know about poets, poems, or poetry and publishing.

Did You Know. . .

✦ Flannery O'Connor wrote poetry, some of which ("Effervescence", 1943), was published in The Corinthian, Georgia College's literary magazine. O'Connor's poems are among the memorabilia and other manuscripts in the Flannery O'Connor Collection housed at Georgia College. 

✦ Pushcart Prize winning poet R.T. Smith, writer-in-residence at Washington and Lee University and editor of its literary magazine Shenandoah, evokes the voice of O'Connor in his recently released collection The Red Wolf: A Dream of Flannery O'Connor: Poems (Louisiana Literature Press, 2013). Smith composed the poems in 10-syllable lines.

✦ Known for discovering talented poets and fiction writers, the North American Review is the oldest literary magazine in the United States. It was founded in Boston in 1815 and currently is published at the University of Northern Iowa at Cedar Falls. In print since 1842, The Nassau Literary Review is the oldest student publication at Princeton University and the second oldest undergraduate literary magazine in the U.S. Poet Galway Kinnell first published his work in the periodical.

✦ What is thought to be the oldest love poem in the world is inscribed on a 4,000-year-old Sumerian tablet.

✦ The first edition of The Norton Anthology of Poetry was published in 1970. Edited by Arthur M. Eastman, it contained 49 poems. (Anthologies of British Poetry: Critical Perspectives from Literary and Cultural Studies, Rodopi Bv Editions, 2000) The full fifth edition, published in 2004 and running to 2,256 pages, contains 1,828 poems by 334 poets.

✦ There is a Web-based companion to the fifth edition of The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Though intended for students, those of us who no longer are engaged in the classroom will find much of interest on the site, including a section called Poems in Dialogue, which links poems that address similar subjects; a glossary that explains all those terms instructors talk about; and a feature called Poetry Workshop, which uses text and other resources to enrich our understanding of poetry.

✦ Poetry is part of this year's celebration of the 150th anniversary of the London Underground. Selections posted in tube stations include poems by Ghanaian Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Jamaican Lorna Goodison, Jo Shapcott, Connie Bensley, and William Butler Yeats and William Wordsworth. (Judith Chernaik, "Poems on the Underground: Time to Celebrate 150 Years of London Life", The Guardian, February 8, 2013)

Poems on the Underground

✦ The International Nonino Prize (Premio Nonino), established by the Nonino family of Italy in 1977, originally was conceived as a way to recognize Friuli growers' achievements in reviving and safeguarding indigenous grape varieties (background here). In 2012 Chinese poet-in-exile Yang Lian received the prestigious literary award. V.S. Naipaul, who presented the prize to Yang, was himself awarded the prize in 1993 (list of award recipients). Poet Jorie Graham is the 2013 International Nonino Prize winner.