E-Verse Radio

2010 Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

Novelists, biographers, historians, poets, critics, politicians, soldiers, public servants, scientists, and medics will be joined by artists, philosophers, theologians, architects, engineers, botanists, environmentalists and children’s writers.

Change We Can Really Believe In: Domo!

Thanks to E-Verser Bill, famous lawman, for sending this in.

“It’s a Horror Poem”: Comment on “While You Were Out”

Over at his blog, Noise for Its Own Sake, Justin Hamm commented on my poem “While You Were Out“:
There’s so much quality poetry out there these days that it’s impossible to keep up with everything, but I’d like to link to a handful of poems that’ve really resonated for me lately.
The first, “While You Were [...]

Tell and Show: An Exhibition of Philadelphia Area Comic Artists

Curated by Pete Stathis in conjunction with The Free Library of Philadelphia’s One Book One Philadelphia 2010 series of events.
“In recent years, the once sidelined subculture of comics has rocketed to a center-stage position in our bookstores, movie theaters, and popular consciousness. Come explore the power of this immediate and entertaining art form as some [...]

Ernest Hilbert’s Top Two Hundred Best Songs of the Decade, Number 10

“99 Problems” by Jay-Z mashed with the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” by Danger Mouse: The original Jay-Z version is cool enough, of course, but Danger Mouse led the mashup revolution with the infamous Grey Album, an amalgam of Jay-Z’s Black Album and the legendary White Album by the Beatles. The results are decidedly mixed, but this [...]

Jersey Shore Before MTV’s “Jersey Shore”, or, Before Snooki There Was Ernie

I have developed the unshakable habit of calling the impish, overnight-star of “Jersey Shore” something like “Smoochi” or “Snoopy” when compelled to discuss the show in polite company. It seems I can only devote so much of my brain to information about people who haven’t actually done anything. E-Verse assistant producer Kara, one of the [...]

“Anecdote of the Jar” by Wallace Stevens

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.
It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or [...]

Upcoming Readings for Ernest Hilbert

What follows is merely a thumbnail sketch of my readings for the first half of the year. More may be added, and you should certainly double-check the details (time, for instance, and lineup) closer to the dates to be sure of what you’ll be getting yourself into. I hope to see you at one of [...]

“Bees in the Attic” by Erica Dawson

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past
– William Shakespeare
As if I’d move enough to make a noise
As loud as theirs, those bees, I circled around
My whirring bedroom, hurdling children’s toys.
I thought my lungs would buzz the attic’s sound,
Crescendo, shh and hum; went round until
I lost my breath, lay [...]

E-Verse Top 100 Cool Novels #80: A Fan’s Notes, Frederick Exley, 1968

E-Verse Top 100 Cool Novels #80: A Fan’s Notes, Frederick Exley, 1968.
This fictional memoir is as breathless and manic as its author surely was when couch-surfing his way across Eisenhower’s America, steadfastly refusing to grow up, always lurking in the shadow of his beloved local sports-hero father, who died at 40. Fred, Ex, Exley, [...]

Learn How to Make and Publish Your Own Comics with Pat Aulisio

Philadelphia comic artist Pat Aulisio is teaching a class  at Pterodactyl on publishing comics and art zines. Click on the logo below to sign up for the class or learn more. You can also visit his blog here.

In this course students will learn how to write, draw, and self publish their own mini comic. Students [...]

Ernest Hilbert’s Poem “While You Were Out” Read by X.J. Kennedy in the New Issue of LineBreak Magazine

Click here to head over to Ashley Anna McHugh’s indispensable online audio poetry magazine LineBreak to hear elder statesman Mr. X.J. Kennedy deliver a reading of my poem “While You Were Out,” from my forthcoming collection All of You on the Good Earth. You may stream directly from the site. This recording will also turn [...]

Poetry & Popular Culture Features Ernest Hilbert at the Joyce Kilmer Rest Stop (Sounds Illegal, I Know)

Mike Chasar’s excellent poetry blog “Poetry & Popular Culture” has a great article about all of the many things named for popular Catholic poet Joyce Kilmer. Head over now to read (you should go there weekly to see what Mike’s been up to, always fun and enlightening stuff).

E-Verse Picks Another Top 25 Interesting Wikipedia Pages

For those who enjoyed the first round of “top 25 interesting Wikipedia articles,” we’re back with 25 more ways to stretch your brain and waste time.
25. Animal sexual behavior (“Sexual cannibalism,” for instance)
24. The Cave of Lascaux
23. Alan Greenspan
22. Robert R.
21. Kevin Trudeau
20. Iran-Contra Scandal
19. Dog (seriously! What you didn’t [...]

Ernest Hilbert’s Top Two Hundred Best Songs of the Decade, Number 11

“The World is Full of Crashing Bores” by Morrissey: He came to prominence in the eighties, enjoyed a fruitful solo career through the nineties, and is still tickling us with his arch, prickly, mournful songs today. He still pulls his shirt off on stage and flings it to the audience, but I notice lately he [...]

“Skinhead” by Patricia Smith

They call me skinhead, and I got my own beauty.
It is knife-scrawled across my back in sore, jagged letters,
it’s in the way my eyes snap away from the obvious.
I sit in my dim matchbox,
on the edge of a bed tousled with my ragged smell,
slide razors across my hair,
count how many ways
I can bring blood closer [...]

“S’More Pie Please” and “Instant Ocean”

E-Verser Cynthia sent in two items of interest.
First is a “healthy” comment sent in to a newspaper by a woman who makes s’mores. Emphasis added.
Pamela W.
Hometown: Florida
Sometimes I make a s’mores pie. I made one for my boyfriend and I a few weeks ago and it was so good and really easy to make. I [...]

Top Five Real People Changed to See What They’d Look Like if They Became Na’vi, the Blue People from Avatar

5. Mr. Bean

4. Tom Cruise

3. The Beatles

2. Michael Jackson

1. Palestinian protesters

“Times Literary Supplement” by Ernest Hilbert

Poem published recently in The Oxonian Review.

Top Five Novels (or Poems) about People Bent on Revenge

It’s a strong impulse, the will avenge oneself, and it’s driven the plot of many a story. Let’s have a look at the top five books defined by revenge.

Polar Bear Club, Jersey Shore Style!

E-Verse’s own Kara joined the ever growing ranks of the Polar Bear Club. For those not familiar with this elite group, allow me to explain. Fully grown adults, of sound mind and body, deliberately plunge themselves into the ocean in the middle of the winter. Yes, I know, it sounds insane, and I’m told that [...]

Sea Slugs . . . and Other Slimy Stuff

You may think slugs are repellent. My wife contended with foot-long ones that would slither into her house in San Francisco on damp days (every day) and attempt to absorb the cat food by the door. When I was a boy, I actually found slugs beautiful in a strange way, and I’d sit and stare [...]

Conversating and Closing, Always! “Submit if You Can’t Quit”

Any of these encounters with fatuous, sub-literate office dwellers sound familiar to you? If so, then share! Head over to “Please Fire Me,” a hilarious blog that logs the daily complaints of disenchanted workers just like you.

“The Crossroads” by Joshua Mehigan

This is the place it happened. It was here.
You might not know it was unless you knew.
All day the cars blow past and disappear.
This is the place it happened. It was here.
Look at the sparkling dust, the oily smear.
Look at the highway marker, still askew.
This is the place it happened. It was here.
You might not [...]

“miss rosie” by Lucille Clifton

when I watch you
wrapped up like garbage
sitting, surrounded by the smell
of too old potato peels
or
when I watch you
in your old man’s shoes
with the little toe cut out
sitting, waiting for your mind
like next week’s grocery
I say
when I watch you
you wet brown bag of a woman
who used to be the best looking gal in Georgia
used to be [...]

“Some, too fragile for winter winds” by Emily Dickinson

Some, too fragile for winter winds
The thoughtful grave encloses—
Tenderly tucking them in from frost
Before their feet are cold.
Never the treasures in her nest
The cautious grave exposes,
Building where schoolboy dare not look,
And sportsman is not bold.
This covert have all the children
Early aged, and often cold,
Sparrow, unnoticed by the Father—
Lambs for whom time had not a fold.

Bethany Brings Us Top Five Media Retail Businesses that are Dying Fast!

We miss music stores! And it’s hard to replace the experience of a bookstore. Whither the media of yesteryear? Yesteryear in this case being 2003 . . . . Check out Bethany’s top five!

Bethany Gives Us More Top Five Barbies!

5. Catwoman Barbie

4. Athena Barbie

3. Barbra Streisand Barbie!

2. Hot Wizard of Oz Dorothy

1. Computer Engineer Barbie, Yay!

Plus one WTF?

Plus another WTF? It’s Palm Beach Barbie, in case girls want to pretend they’re an elderly woman wearing a caftan on her way to grab an Early Bird special.

Ernest Hilbert Reads “Coil” from Sixty Sonnets

Click To Play

Recorded at Widget Studios, Philadelphia, PA, engineered and produced by Dave Young for Pub Can Records. ©2009

Top Five Movies that Take Place Mostly in Malls

5. Scenes from a Mall (1991)

(Fun factoid: those are not Bette Midler and Woody Allen’s bodies on the poster. In the days before Photoshop, someone went to the trouble of cutting and pasting those heads onto those bodies. Is being Woody Allen’s body-double a career low or a lifetime low?) [Yeah, one of the worst [...]