*Please Note: our new address is www.betterthanstarbucks.org
December 2016 Vol. I No. VI
Not your ordinary poetry magazine!
If good coffee (or just the concept of coffee), great books, sharp wit, and great authors excite you, we are for you!
Now with Four Full Pages of Poetry!
General Poetry with Suzanne Robinson
Haiku with Kevin McLaughlin
Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch
Translations with S. Ye Laird
Featured Poem of the Month
Meditation with a drink
Chestnut tree,
an empty yard,
cheerful music
echoes
far away with laugh . . .
Melancholic dusk
wrapped in clouds
whispers secretly.
Momchil Atanasoff is a musician from Bulgaria, as well as an occasional poet.
"Logo" image for ModPo
The BTS Interview with ModPo, in a Manner of Speaking
ModPo is short for Modern Poetry, a free online class offered by the Ivy League Institution, University of Pennsylvania.
ModPo is the brainchild of Al Filreis, who is not only a master at understanding poetry, even the most complicated experimental poetry, but is also a champion of the unconventional “non-lecture” lecture. If you have $63,000 per year to send yourself or your child to Philadelphia, and you land a seat in one of his courses, you will find that you are responsible for your own learning. Al set ModPo up in class as a discussion, not a lecture. Of course the students have access to his brilliance and his education, formal and through his continuing studies. Al believes we all learn better when we learn from each other.
This is as good thing, but an amazing thing is that ModPo has been offered, for free on line for the past 5 years through Coursera. Even more amazing is that the over 200,000 students who have taken the course are able to enjoy much of the “in class” experience through a very active discussion forum and intimate round table “close reads” through professionally produced videos. The class is a 10 week course every fall, but it actually is a year round on line community of 10,000s of lovers of poetry.
To help celebrate the 5th anniversary, as well, frankly, to cross promote Better than Starbucks and ModPo, we are opening up our pages to create a special “ModPo Anthology Edition.”
You will find most of your favorite regular features, and as many poems by ModPo students as we receive (the beauty of electronic publishing is the zero cost of digital “paper.”)
Please follow the link below to enjoy a diverse collection of poetry from the ModPo student body.
The BTS Interview will return next month with a major Formalist poet, interviewed by our own Vera Ignatowitsch
If you know a literary sort, a poet, an author, a teacher of literature, or just a truly all around interesting character, and you think it might be fun to get their thoughts down on "paper". Let us know, if you have contact info, all the better, but we have our ways....