Robert Sward's Blog
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Jul.09.2009
July 8-15, Santa Cruz Weekly runs "Love Poem - Ode to Santa Cruz," inspired by Garrison Keillor's recent visit and challenge to locals to come up with a poem that does justice to this amazing place. Here's my little offering...Santa Cruz poet Robert Sward pens an homage to his adopted...
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Jul.06.2009
A first of its kind, PawsWay is a Purina PetCare Legacy Project located at Harbourfront in downtown Toronto, I learn through my friend Bruce Meyer. With his own fine book of poetry about dogs, Dog Days, just out from Black Moss Press, Bruce is considering a book launch at PawsWay, which includes...
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Jun.30.2009
Our friend Bruce Damer drops by and find myself reaching for pen and paper. Still something of a journalist, I know I’m going to want to recall—accurately!-- some of the stories Bruce tells and references he makes to Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, chaos theory mathematican Ralph Abraham, Rupert...
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Jun.28.2009
Former feature writer and reviewer for the Toronto Star and Globe & Mail, I’m still engaged, still fascinated by “papers…”
Subscribe to Sunday NY Times and today I vow to spend no more than 40 minutes to reading what is still a hefty bundle of... what? And, somehow, the allotted 40 minutes...
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Jun.27.2009
As follow up to previous blog entry re: LITERATURE: CRAFT & VOICE, here's a review of "God is in the Cracks":
THE FIDDLEHEAD, issue #231, SPRING 2007 University of New Brunswick, Fredericton NB, Canada
Review by Robert Priest
GOD IS IN THE CRACKS - Black Moss Press (Canada) - ...
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Jun.24.2009
Birthday. FedEx delivers gift: Hot off the press contributor copy. McGraw Hill’s Literature: Craft and Voice, anthology / text edited by Nicholas Delbanco and Alan Cheuse. Volume includes my poem, God is in the Cracks, title poem for the 2006 Black Moss Press book. God is in the Cracks will also...
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Jun.22.2009
Fathers' Day visit to UCSC Arboretum, a few minutes drive from downtown Santa Cruz. You can't see it in the photograph, but the ocean is in the background. A few facts resonate...
- Ansel Adams photographed the UCSC campus / arboretum before construction started 40 or so years ago. Samples on the...
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Jun.19.2009
My birthday and Father’s Day coinciding. Five children, five grandchildren…
Reflecting on the "if only" moments in my life. No regrets, but journeys I made, some of them without exactly knowing why I was making them, leaving a thoroughly advantageous position (teaching in the Writing...
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Jun.13.2009
Santa Cruz. Meet today with my friend Jim Aschbacher to discuss a collaboration, i.e., Jim’s art work in association with my work in progress, The Dogs in My Life. Sample attached, “Chance Encounter.”
Discuss possibilities of cover art. No inbred dogs need apply! My “Uncle Dog: The Poet at 9”...
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Jun.11.2009
Some connections never die. David Lee Rubin was a brilliant 18-year-old editor at the Chicago Review in 1957 when I submitted a poem titled Uncle Dog: The Poet at 9. I was an “ancient” twenty-four-year old Navy vet studying at the University of Iowa. David championed my work and I’ve always...
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Jun.09.2009
What makes a book of poems go into a second printing? A small first printing? A couple good reviews? The question keeps coming up as do requests to reprint one or more poems mentioned in the Globe & Mail (Toronto) review, "The Kite," for example. Robyn Sarah, bless her, reviewed The...
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Jun.08.2009
Reading Louis Menand’s feature, “Show or Tell, Should Creative Writing be taught?” in The New Yorker, June 8 – 15.
What’s surprising, speaking personally, is the intensity of this longing I have to teach. Working as a (part-time) editor-consultant-coach to a few selected writers, but it’s the...
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Jun.07.2009
Now reading Catharine Clark-Sayles’ new book, “One Breath,” published by Tebot Bach. Catharine’s a much-admired physician in the Bay Area and I agree with Margaret Kaufman who comments, “As carefully arranged as a tray of surgical instruments, Clark-Sayles’ poems in "One Breath" lead us...
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May.30.2009
He calls it "the poetry wars." The little world of poetry. The pie, i.e., the poetry pie... there's never enough to go around. Awards, publications, readings, honors, "A" and "B" list parties... a slice of this, a slice of that. My distinguished friend tells me of a...
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May.26.2009
Esalen sends invite for proposal to teach "A Weekend Workshop: Autobiography for Poets, Fiction and Non-Fiction Writers." Now retired, completing new book of poems, working off and on as consultant, editing mainly… find I’m eager again to teach, it’s a passion… Analogy? It’s a little like...
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These are such, sad, generous poems--peopled with characters it's impossible not to love, especially Robert's podiatrist-Jewish-Rosicrucian father with his wisdom that bridges dualities expounding on the feet and the soul, sex and death, the broken and the whole. In one poem, Robert asserts, In a world of 'No, dogs are a Yes.' And in the world of poetry, this book is a resounding Yes. Read it when you're happy, but especially read it when you're depressed. You'll find yourself joining in with the many dogs in these poems, saying, 'Woof, woof f----in' woof!”
—Poet Ellen Bass
About Robert
Guggenheim Fellow, chosen by Lucille Clifton for a Villa Montalvo Literary Arts Award, author of more than 20 books, including Four Incarnations (Coffee House Press), Heavenly Sex, God is in the Cracks and The Collected Poems (now in its 2nd printing),...
Connections
Causes Robert Sward Supports
Audubon Society, National Geographic, "Green," the Environment, SPCA...
Robert’s Favorite Books
Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Saul Bellow's Adventures of Augie March, Ezra Pound's Make It New, T.S. Eliot's Collected Poems, The Autobiography of Benjamin...
Robert is a fan of
