The news of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr’s death was the first thing I heard today.  It came somberly out of my alarm clock’s radio.  What a thing to wake up to, right?  But, he lived a long and fruitful life.

If you visited Google.com today, you may have noticed the spaced-out design that is decorating the Google logo.  This is in celebration of Yuri Gagarin’s trip into space on this day (April 12) forty-six years ago.  Gagarin was the first man in space.  Here’s a shameless plug for one of our new books, Into That Silent Sea: Trailblazers of the Space Era, 1961–1965, which offers a different perspective of pioneers in early space travel.  Francis French and Colin Burgess give us intimate looks into the lives of people involved in this era.  Gagarin’s story is included.

But onto all things April (rain showers or snow showers) and poems.  Today, I’m thinking about concrete (trying to stay out of the mud), so what about some concrete poetry links?

First up, the blog dbqp: visualizing poetics .  This blogger has some neat images of concrete poetry.  The Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry offers some images of their extensive collection online.  The website A Collective Effort of Visual Poets from Australia is just what it says it is, with examples of the work of each artists involved.  Electronic Poetry Center.  created and maintained by SUNY Buffalo’s Department of Media Study is a good resource on concrete poetry.  Finally, the blog A Tonalist Notes shares views and reviews on poetry by a group of bloggers.

Before I leave you for the rest of your Thursday, I feel compelled to ask this clichéd question: What is poetry?  I love concrete poetry and found it intriguing when I was first presented with it, but some may argue that it is not poetry at all.  And, while perusing the Internet looking for these wonderful links for you wonderful readers, I couldn’t help to think that some would be uncomfortable with this definition of poetry (is it art?  Is it poem?  Aren’t poems supposed to be lyrical?  How can image be lyric?)

Well, I’m no poet, so maybe I’m out of place asking these questions.  Tomorrow on our blog, we’ll have a guest poet, and she won’t be talking about visual poetry, but I look forward to reading what she has to say.

Take care.