Tune into, on to, in to Irving Toast, Poetry Ghost…

http://www.kruufm.com/station/archives/3238

“Crocus” was the 2005-2006 recipient of the Fordham University Press Poets Out Loud prize and was selected from more than 1,000 manuscripts by poets around the world.
Poets Out Loud is a community of poets established in 1992 by poets, faculty and students at Fordham University in New York.

Poet Mark Doty has praised “Crocus” and said, “Karin Gottshall’s debut is fresh and bracing as a new snow; she weds a tender regard for the world of things to just enough disenchantment to make that love feel real. These poems understand that the will to join ourselves to the world sits right beside the desire to fly above and away from it.” A reviewer for Publishers Weekly wrote, “‘Crocus’ turns the ordinary interior worlds created by myth, art and memory into the extraordinary.”

Gottshall has published her work in the New England Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review and Virginia Quarterly Review. Her work was nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, and former United States poet laureate Ted Kooser chose to include her poem “The Ashes” in his ongoing project, “American Life in Poetry,” which provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. She lives in Middlebury and works at Middlebury College.

The Ghost gives up a lyric/narrative sequence entitled “Pavement” for the next episode of Irving.  One quarter rock opera, one quarter literary jam session, and a good half of a long poem in progress, we’ll take fries with that, a swig of the oh-be-joyful, and worship our muses and literary goddesses at will, be there the frank fact of the winter moon shining over the shimmering snows or no.

Happy New Year, Charlie Brown!

The meter and shape

Of his lines were

Determined by the

Width of the notebook.

He’d drive around the

City for hours in a

Green 1964 Beetle

Looking for the ultimate

Glint of sun off the

Buildings. He

worshipped

Snow at dusk, the

Purple stripes crusting

The roadsides, the

Cawing of crows he

Couldn’t see. It was

Near the sculpture garden

He’d sit and he could

Barely make out the words,

But she, at least,

Was beautiful in

His mind, he knew

She always would be,

Guan Yin, the goddess

Of compassion, whom

He knew and whom

He would meet again,

The starlight gaining

Thirstily above him,

The celestial city of

Wonders thrown

Open coldly, but

With such pulsing beauty.

Listen to fine interviews and readings:

Craig Deininger, Glenn Freeman, Joseph Millar, Dorianne Laux, Joy Lyle, Susie Niedermeyer, Bill Graeser, Dan Troxell, Jim Autry,  Robert Long,  Michael Carrino,  Mark Cox,  J. P. Dancing Bear,  Patricia Fargnoli, Maureen Alsop and others.

‘Irving Toast, Poetry Ghost’

Mike Chasar • Poetic License • December 17, 2008

The recent announcement that Iowa Public Radio will no longer broadcast “Live from Prairie Lights” has given some people in Iowa City pause. So I went looking for other radio poetry shows to see how they’re faring as well.

Turns out I didn’t have to look far — just down the road in Fairfield where radio poetry appears to be doing fine on KRUU 100.1.

Every Monday [1:30pm] and Sunday [10:30am], KRUU airs “Irving Toast, Poetry Ghost” with host Rustin Larson, who features live readings and interviews with new and established poets. I had a chance to talk with Larson about radio, poetry, “Live at Prairie Lights,” and his mysterious KRUU muse:

[To read the whole piece, click on Mike's picture. press-citizen.com]

Mike Chasar is a visiting assistant professor of English at the University of Iowa.

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Submitted by Rustin Larson on Fri, 2008-11-28 19:12.

• ring around the poesy

Do you have the voice? Tune within and see.

The mysterious Chinese convenience store’s

second door

opens upon the darkened China

of the mind.

Its tea is some sort

of excursion

and temporarily deals

with the permanent.

A rider boards, wants to be left off

at the bridge.

The mask she wears:

watch parts, microscopes, radio antennae.

The earth’s odometer

clicks another digit.

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Available from amazon.com!

Rustin Larson is courageous in that he is not willing to take refuge in the ordinary. His poetry has been described as “stylistically diverse,” but as this comprehensive collection demonstrates, the style of his work is not applied as a matter of form; rather, it is derived from the nature of the poems themselves. So the reader’s experience is one of wholeness, of the seamless expression of style, idea, imagery, emotion, and message. I read a lot of poetry, and believe me, it has been pure pleasure to immerse myself in The Wine-Dark House.”
—James A. Autry

The Wine-Dark House is a triumph by Rustin Larson. The poems are evocative and fi nely wrought, brimming with detailed, sensual images and delicately crafted lines. The poet leads us gently, yet with a firm purpose, on a tour of shadowed memory, both distant and more recent, that explores memory’s hard truth. Yet, with patience, he leads us to the seductive comforts of memory. The poems entertain with an informed point of view. They always have that “click” close readers need to beckon them back for a second and third sampling of their writer’s careful and rigorous craft.
—Michael Carrino

With consummate skill, inspired wit, and a rare compassion, the poems of The Wine-Dark House observe, reflect, and startle, reminding us of the necessary human endeavor to both honor and challenge the occasions of our daily lives. At once courageously personal and generously universal, the compelling poetry of Rustin Larson embodies “. . . an accumulation of hungers/ as old as fire.”
—Walter Butts

Rustin Larson is a terrific, elegant, original poet whose voice rings so truly we become better people just by reading him.
—Naomi Shihab Nye

For an autographed copy, send $15.95 plus $4.05 postage/handing per copy, payable to “Rustin Larson,” PO Box 1721, Fairfield, Iowa 52556