Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Way More Than Whitman: Beltway's "DC Places Issue"

From editor Kim Roberts: "The DC Places Issue of Beltway Poetry Quarterly, an on-line anthology of poems that celebrate Washington, DC, by naming specific sites in the city (streets, neighborhoods, parks, monuments, or buildings), is the first issue of the journal to go beyond the Mid-Atlantic region and include poets from all across the United States. And what a list of contributors! The issue includes former U.S. Poets Laureates Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, and William Carlos Williams, and former and current State Poets Laureates Joseph Awad (of Virginia), Fleda Brown (Delaware), Sterling A. Brown (DC), Linda Pastan (Maryland), and Baron Wormser (Maine).... The DC Places Issue was co-edited by Kim Roberts and Los Angeles poet Andrea Carter Brown. Brown writes in the issue’s introduction: “Every city has its history, but for no other American city is the struggle between local identity and national role so acute.” This presents both a burden and an opportunity for poets, who amply rose to the challenge to portray the city in its public and private aspects, in all its wild complexity. Subscribe for free! Go to the “About Beltway” page: http://www.washingtonart.com/beltway/about.html "
(Note: To read Kim's hilarious Book Expo guest blog post, click here. And for a "Gone to the Litblogs" post about Beltway's list of blogs, click here.)