May Poetry News Roundup

General News

• Poetry plagiarism story from Harriet blog: I always wonder why people bother to plagiarize poetry (unless it happens by accident–like confused notes in a notebook or something: Was that my thought? Or did I read that somewhere?). There's so little to gain. But apparently Brits have been plagiarizing US poets lately and winning awards! Criminy!
     
• Poetry Magazine has joined the eBook revolution. Thank God. There have been some technical issues with publishing poetry in eBooks, problems with hanging indents and controlling the look of heavily formatted poems. I explored these issues when I formatted my book for eBook last year.  Most of the formatting issues have been resolved by some scrappy html hack/poets. I knew if I searched around, html workarounds would be available. And so they were for almost all devices except a Kindle published through Smashwords' Meatgrinder formatter (which isn't too big of a problem considering you can publish an acceptable Kindle version directly via Amazon and Smashwords is working to allow direct ePub uploads).
      
• Publishers Weekly posts and feature about "6 Authors Who Never Quit Their Day Job." In my 2013 poverty, I'm beginning to see the benefits of this.

Allen Ginsberg News

• The Huffington Post features and article about the new exhibit of Allen Ginsberg's photography at San Francisco's contemporary Jewish Museum.
    
• Daniel Radcliffe talks about playing Allen Ginsberg in the movie Kill Your Darlings which premiered at Sundance this year.

Lord of the Rings Poetry News
So Monsieur Big Bang and I have just given up our DirectTV not being able to afford the $70 a month we pay to not even get all the basic channels. We're switching over to Hulu which is less than $10 a month for unlimited streaming. We can then watch the new Hulu original comedy Quick Draw coming out in June. It stars John Lehr, famous for playing the Geico Caveman and starring in the TBS show 10 Items or Less. John Lehr and Monsieur Big Bang are longtime friends and Monsieur Big Bang did consulting and research for this show. So check it out. It's "a comedic half-hour western set in
1875 that centers on a Harvard-educated sheriff and his quest to
introduce the emerging science of forensics to an unruly Kansas town."

Anywho, Mr. Big Bang and I spent our first cable-less week watching the uncut version of The Lord of the Rings. I have two related poetry items that seem appropriate to mention now:

• LOTR character Boromir was played by Sean Bean. Here he is performing (very sexily) a World War I Wilfred Owen poem.
     
• The Los Angeles Times reports that J.R.R. Tolkien's poem, "Fall of Authur," has finally been finished by his son Christopher and it provides insight into his work.