We Bury the Landscape news

This weekend, if you buy my book from Queen's Ferry Press, you will get a free ebook copy. Here are all the fine places where you can purchase my book, but please consider buying it directly from the publisher. I posted all the reviews for We Bury the Landscape here. There’s also a recent review and a giveaway of one copy of the book at Unabridged Chick.


Lake Effect reading

Robert Vaughan did an excellent reading of his story "The Upswing of Falling" and my story "Revenge of the Goldfish" (first published in The Brooklyner and included in my book We Bury the Landscape) for WUWM 89.7 FM - Milwaukee Public Radio's Lake Effect segment hosted by Stephanie Lecci and Robert Vaughan. Carol Wobig also read her work.


My Current Reads = HERE


Other Publication News

• In Mixer, the early version of “The Village of the Mermaids” is published. This piece is collected in We Bury the Landscape.
  
• I have recent acceptances to Punchnel's (which pays a few minutes after acceptance!), ESC, and Painted Bride Quarterly.
• Meg Tuite, fiction editor of Connotation Press and über-talented writer, nominated my mini-tale, "City of the Dead," for the storySouth  2012 Million Writers Award.
• Dave Bonta said some kind words about Night Fish in Via Negativa. In the recent issues of JMWW and Press 1, Gretchen Hodgin and Valerie Fox wrote incredibly well-thought reviews of Night Fish. 
• I also had a fun exchange here with Gretchen Hodgin about my chapbook, Insomnia.
• Rumjhum Biswas interviews me here. The behind-the-scene happenings of that interview involved recipes about curry. :D
• Two of my poems “The Invisible” (published in Unspoken Water) and “The Seventh Stranger” (published in Paper Crow) were listed in Ellen Datlow’s Honorable Mentions for The Best Horror of the Year Vol. 4. There were so many writers that were included, and only these venerable 18 made the cut. Kenneth Yu’s story was also listed among the HMs. 

As a final note, I leave you with a short block of powerful prose. This is an excerpt from Brendan Connell’s The Translation of Father Torturo. This is why the written word will never lose its allure. 

As a child he had been brutal, a kicker of cats, a resolute swatter of flies -- one who delighted in passing gas against lighted candles. As a young man, under the auspices of the church, he had grown hard, educated and inverted. He had studied the lives of the Saints, from those of universal fame down to others, who had as little reknown as pismires. He savoured their histories, their sufferings, lapping them up as a poisoned man would drafts of emetic. He strove to lighten the darkness within him, and for every match he struck, a gust of cold, midnight wind responded, leaving him strolling sightless through bleak, empty space. As a man he was deliberate and blunt, a devotee of the Crucifixion.

 
Have a good night!

From Colder Climates
Publisher: Folded Word Press
ASIN: B0071N86TQ
To buy from Amazon










This is definitely a must-buy. 

My initial reading of the powerful first poem “Confessional Hymns” reminded me of Frank Bidart’s “Curse.” That magically acerbic “empathy-curse” of Bidart is a suitable complement to the equally magical serenity-invocation (curse?) in “Confessional Hymns.”

And “Confessional Hymns” is only the first piece.

All of the poems in this book revolve around desolation and the occasional stirrings of hope by a narrator in the arctic region (Iceland is specified in many of the poems). Where I live there are no seasonal changes, only alternating sun and rain, so poems that talk about the seasons rarely give me pause. Seasonal poems never deeply appealed to me until now. Williams makes me see winter beyond what I observe in movies, television, and books.

Winter, in Williams terms, is more than just ice, more than just the monotonous and endless white of snow and snow-blanketed ground. In poem after poem, Williams rouses with new ways of looking at icy landscapes.

Here’s a truncated section from “Winter.”

Fish are captured by the inertia of ice. I watch in vain
for a glimpse of life, a flittering gill or darting eye.
I watch and find they even sleep like me,
under masses of covers, dreaming of movement.
And in the air I can only hear the birdless wind cry...
...By the time it finally reaches my ear,
I too feel birdless.

This passage from “Manners of Distortion” succinctly describes this lovely book.

I’ve learned the instruments of winter
and that ice distorts reflection
             bluer, harder
while those elegant ripples signaling rebirth
distort in a different manner.

Imagine a man who is lost and allows himself to remain lost. Imagine a man who screams in the middle of an icy wasteland -- wailing not to be rescued but to point out the marvelous spectacle of what’s beneath the cold. From Colder Climates seeks warmth, and how it finds it...

The Ultimate PerVERSEities 
Publisher: Naked Snake Press
ISBN-10: 1456367315
ISBN-13: 978-1456367312 
To buy from Amazon








Kurt Newton's The Ultimate perVERSEities is a collection of short poems intended to tax our inhibitions and biases over which themes are supposed to be left unwritten and unsaid. The book lives up to its title. Ranging from toilet humor to overt body horror, the poems require a strong stomach. Tabloid eye-candy titles like "circus trainwreck massacre" and "slaughterhouse girls" (who were naturally "born the daughters of butcher men") hint on Newton's twisted black  humor. There's a piece entitled "mad cow patty" which showcases Newton's playful and original reference to "cactus burgers" -- the thought of which is ridiculously perverse.

From the evocative and unsettling "The Birdcatcher"

You don't know why the creature has
let you live while killing all the rest,
but it has made a bed of bones and
matted feathers. Now and then it
drops wet meat into your open mouth. 

From my favorite piece, "Letterhead"

The letters she sends are special, bound with
skin, a chip embedded in the folds, the latest
in bio-sensory pleasure-grams. Each word a
titillating prompt.

Another notable piece is the highly disturbing "the balloon clown."

Torture porn in "to the dogs"

...ignore the smell
it is just our skins
crumpled loose about our ankles...

Blasphemy, atrocity, and bestiality abound. Populated with freaks and brooding outcasts, the undead and the soon-to-be dead, The Ultimate PerVERSEities gives so much in terms of imaginatively rehashing genre elements . Donna Taylor Burgess of Naked Snake Press is to be commended for taking a leap in publishing this tome.

Here’s another post for  Upper Rubber Boot Books' Couplets: a multi-author poetry blog tour from Lynn Domina, the author of two collections of poetry, Corporal Works and Framed in Silence, and the editor of a collection of essays, Poets on the Psalms. She lives in the western Catskill region of New York. 

I love making lists. Lists make me feel organized and accomplished—at least until they get so long that I’m overwhelmed. And I also like list poems—they’re so full, so abundant. Except when they’re not—there are times, after all, when a list is just a list no matter how dogmatically we insist it’s literature. The first poet who comes to my mind when I want to provide an example of an effective catalog is Walt Whitman (some of whose catalogs can also be, let’s face it, tedious).

I taught several poems by Whitman in my Introduction to Poetry course a couple of weeks ago. My students responded to his work with some enthusiasm and a whole lot of resistance. My own responses to his work are similar—the sections I love I really love, but there are other sections when I want to say, ok, got it. When I think of Whitman, the first line that comes to mind is “the beautiful uncut hair of graves.” Like many readers, I find section six of Song of Myself absolutely stunning.

Whitman puts the question that prompts the poem into the mouth of a child: “What is the grass?” Then he answers the question with progressively moving possibilities.  Aside from “the beautiful uncut hair of graves,” my favorite lines are

it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
         may see and remark, and say Whose?

and
 
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
                               at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
                               luckier.

You can read the whole thing here.

Part of the reason I so admire this poem is that I know I would never have come up with such memorable answers. But I can try. Here are some other questions that might call forth a long catalog of answers: 


If your child asks for a fish, will you give a snake instead? Or if your child asks for an egg, will you give a scorpion?

Where have you come from, and where are you going?

What’s love got to do with it?
 
When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

What's in a name?


If you’re a poet, you can answer in all the ways we’d least expect.

Upper Rubber Boot Books Couplets: a multi-author poetry blog tour is still underway. I guested on Peg Duthie's blog. There, I blabbed about an Arlene Ang poem that I loved, loved, loved.

My stories and poems recently found home in these gorgeous publications.

Dadaoism (An Anthology)

edited by Justin Isis and Quentin S. Crisp 
Chômu Press, May 2012
order from Amazon
story title: "Nowhere Room" 

"Nowhere Room" is a short tale about a kid who grows up while being perpetually wedged in the floor of his room. Yup, he can't get out because his mother wants to keep him safe. "Nowhere Room" appears in ta da! We Bury the Landscape. 

Here is the Contents page of Dadaoism (An Anthology). Three of the writers here are my early "role models." To be included in this lineup means a lot to me.

1 ‘Portrait of a Chair’, by Reggie Oliver
2 ‘Autumn Jewel’, by Katherine Khorey
3 ‘Visiting Maze’, by Michael Cisco
4 ‘The Houses Among the Trees’, by Colin Insole
5 ‘Affection 45′, by Brendan Connell
6 ‘M-Funk Vs. Tha Futuregions of Inverse Funkativity’, by Justin Isis
7 ‘Spirit and Corpus‘, by Yarrow Paisley
8 ‘Timelines’, by Nina Allan
9 ‘Jimmy Breaks up with His Imaginary Girlfriend’, by Jimmy Grist
10 ‘Body Poem’, by Peter Gilbert
11 ‘Testing Spark’, by Daniel Mills
12 ‘Noises’, by Joe Simpson Walker
13 ‘Romance, with Mice’, by Sonia Orin Lyris
14 ‘Grief (The Autobiography of a Tarantula)’, by Jesse Kennedy
15 ‘Orange Cuts’, by Paul Jessup
16 ‘Instance’, by John Cairns
17 ‘Kago Ai’, by Ralph Doege
18 ‘Fighting Back’, by Rhys Hughes
19 ‘Nowhere Room’, by Kristine Ong Muslim
20 ‘Koda Kumi’, a Justin Isis re-mix of ‘Italiannetto’ by Quentin S. Crisp
21 ‘The Lobster Kaleidoscope’, by Julie Sokolow
22 ‘The Eaten Boy’, by Nick Jackson
23 ‘Poppies’, by Megan Lee Beals
24 ‘Abra Raven’, by D.F. Lewis
25 ‘Pissing in Barbican Lake’, by Jeremy Reed
26 ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicides’, by Jeremy Reed 

The Moment of Change
An Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry
 
edited by Rose Lemberg
cover art by Terri Windling
Aqueduct Press, May 2012
poem title: "Resurrection of a Pin Doll" 


CONTENTS

Rose Lemberg. Introduction.
Ursula K. Le Guin, Werewomen
Nicole Kornher-Stace, Harvest Season
Eliza Victoria, Prayer
Shweta Narayan, Cave-smell
Theodora Goss, The Witch
Amal El-Mohtar, On the Division of Labour
J.C. Runolfson, The Birth of Science Fiction
Kristine Ong Muslim, Resurrection of a Pin Doll
Lawrence Schimel, Kristallnacht
Cassandra Phillips-Sears, The Last Yangtze River Dolphin
Peg Duthie, The Stepsister
Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl with Two Skins
Theodora Goss, Binnorie
Nandini Dhar, Learning to Locate Colors in Grey: Kiran Talks About Her Brothers
Rachel Manija Brown, River of Silk
JoSelle Vanderhooft, The King’s Daughters
Lisa Bradley, The Haunted Girl
Mary Alexandra Agner, Tertiary
Sara Amis, Owling
Athena Andreadis, Spacetime Geodesics
Lisa Bradley, In Defiance Of Sleek-Armed androids
Sofía Rhei, Cinderella
Alex Dally MacFarlane, Beautifully Mutilated, Instantly Antiquated
Shweta Narayan, Epiphyte
Elizabeth R. McClellan, Down Cycles
H.E.L Gurney, She Was
Kelly Pflug-Back, My Bones’ Cracked Abacus
Kat Dixon, Nucleometry
N. A’Yara Stein, It’s All In The Translation
Sally Rosen Kindred, Sabrina, Borne
Adrienne J. Odasso, The Hyacinth Girl
Delia Sherman, Snow White to the Prince
Phyllis Gotlieb, The Robot’s Daughter
Vandana Singh, Syllables of Old Lore
Greer Gilman, She Undoes
Emily Jiang, Self-Portrait
Ki Russel, The Antlered Woman Responds
Catherynne M. Valente, The Oracle at Miami
Athena Andreadis, Night Patrol
Koel Mukherjee, Sita Reflects
Lorraine Schoen, Hypatia/Divided
Sharon Mock, Machine Dancer
C.W. Johnson, Towards a Feminist Algebra
Jo Walton, Blood Poem IV
Meena Kandasamy, Six Hours of Chastity
Samantha Henderson, Berry Cobbler
Sofía Rhei, Bluebeard Possibilities
Sheree Renee Thomas, Old Scratch poem featuring River
Elizabeth R. McClellan, The Sea Witch Talks Show Business
Ranjani Murali, Chants for Type: Skull-Cap Donner at Center-One Mall
Sonya Taaffe, Madonna of the Cave
Jeannelle Ferreira, Anniversaries 
Rebecca Korvo, Handwork 
Patricia Monaghan, Journey To The Mountains Of The Hag
Ari Berk, Pazerik Burial on the Ukok Plateau
Neile Graham, Dsonoqua Daughters
Sonya Taaffe, Matlacihuatl’s Gift
Ellen Wehle, Once I No Longer Lived Here
Yoon Ha Lee, Art Lessons
JT Stewart, Say My Name
Amal El-Mohtar, Pieces
Sofia Samatar, The Year of Disasters
C. S. E. Cooney, The Last Crone on the Moon 
Minal Hajratwala, Archaeology of the Present
Jennifer McGowan, Mara Speaks
JT Stewart, Ceremony
April Grant, Trenchcoat
Tara Barnett, Star Reservation
Mary Alexandra Agner, Old Enough
Nisi Shawl, Transbluency: An Antiprojection Chant

This loveliness is the 48th volume of Ellipsis, the annual literary journal published by the students of Westminster College.

My ultra-short tale called "Artificial Life" appears here. "Artificial Life" is one of my favorites. The pithy, nonnegotiable story is about a girl who attempts again and again to resuscitate a doll, a doll that is, by all means, dead dead dead. So yes, I believe in the impossible. I believe in waiting. I believe in hard work. I am old-fashioned. I plant tomatoes, and one of them died today! Coherence is not a virtue. Oh god, I'm so sleepy right now. 

And this beautiful anthology is called Lauriat.

Lauriat: An Anthology 
of Filipino-Chinese Speculative Fiction

edited by Charles Tan  
Lethe Press, August 2012
order from Amazon
story title: "The Chinese Zodiac"

CONTENTS

Introduction, Charles Tan
Two Women Worth Watching, Andrew Drilon
Ho-We, Erin Chupeco
The Chinese Zodiac, Kristine Ong Muslim
Pure, Isabel Yap
Dimsum, Christine V. Lao
August Moon, Gabriela Lee
The Captain’s Nephew, Paolo Chikiamco
The Stranger at my Grandmother’s Wake, Fidelis Tan
Chopsticks, Marc Gregory Yu
Fold Up Boy, Yvette Tan
The Tiger Lady, Margaret Kawsek
The Perpetual Day, Crystal Koo
Cricket, Kenneth Yu
The Way of Those Who Stayed Behind, Douglas Candano


I also have a poem on Inkscrawl. This wonderful issue is edited by Samantha Henderson. Another poem at Thunderclap Press' Poem of the Day. And my good friend, Jack, mentioned my book in Jack's Hideout!

Our final pictures have nothing to do with writing. I had a fun day on April 4, my niece's birthday. I handed out balloons, goodies, inflatable dolphins. That's me with all the balloons. The girl who holds a white balloon is my sister. This carnage of trampled plants and kiddie chaos happened in our garage.

Conditions of Sentient Life
Publisher: Gothic Press
ISBN-10: 0913045055
ISBN-13: 978-0913045053
To buy from Amazon

Conditions of Sentient Life is a one-of-a-kind collection of 44 poems and flash fictions on dark red text against gorgeous cream-colored acid-free paper. The intricate illustrations are by Marge Simon. I only wished that the stunning illustration on page 35 was selected as the cover art. 

The first poem, “Stars May Rise to Hell and Back,” tells the reader again and again that: 

…hunger has no mouth to sing… 

The piece’s musicality is a paean to the apocalypse which comes in various forms in the ensuing pages of the book. From the hopelessness of “Future Past: An Exercise in Horror” which starts off with: 

Assume tomorrow has already come and gone 
and you now inhabit no more than a string of 
damaged yesterdays… 

to the emergence of technology in “Human/Technological Dimensions on the Eve of the Bimillennium,” which scars us to the point when we end up asking ourselves: 

When did we 
become so small 
we can no longer 
touch the moon? 

The flash fiction, “Dream of the Burmese Gardener,” is a surreal account of how galaxies are created. Mr. Saketa, one of the lascivious inhabitants of a certain manor house, carefully fashions “the first planet in the universe to be composed entirely of dead aphids.” 

“Refugee” is a tight, meditative piece about the subjectivity of reality. Oh, and it doesn’t fail to entertain with juxtapositions like: “the mayor’s beautiful daughter…or is it the chimp?” 

Conditions of Sentient Life is beautifully capped by “Gravity Drives the Blood and Bends the Light” which declares that 

…when we reach up it calls us down…

These lines ring in the mind, and they ring hard.  

Surrealities
Publisher: Dark Regions Press
ISBN 9781037128

In the first issue of Kaleidotrope Magazine in a review of a bizzaro book, the critic Martin Earl offered what for me was the best take on surrealism in literature: “surrealism is confusing but ultimately understandable.” 

This is true for Bruce Boston’s Surrealities, a 64-page book of poems and illustrations (Boston’s rendition of Rorschach inkblots) lending stunning insight on the human condition: the violence (Two Nightstands Attacking a Cello), the humdrum (A Life in the Day Of), the obsessive-compulsiveness (Surreal Wish List), and the exquisite madness (Before the Vilification of Hypnagogic Birth). 

Surrealities is replete with ekphrastic references. In “Portrait of My Dead Brother with Burning Wing” 

An immature boy in a sailor suit 
refuses to leave 

the beaches of Port Ligat. 
The great masturbator 

considers the obscene history 
of the Third Reich. 

From “Revealing Their Eyes” 

reveal sunflower 
burning giraffe 
eyes. 

Music -- possibly because its form is amorphous, its influence is intuitive, and thus the most powerful representation of the surreal -- is a common element in this collection. This music comes in many forms: from static to the cacophony of fear and panic. 

The foreboding “Lizard and Wind,” the best piece in the book, tells of: 

The lizards were everywhere 
and so was the wind. 
There was no way you could 
keep either of them out 
that hard spring. 

All in all, Surrealities is a very important contribution to the literature of the surreal. 

The Lesions of Genetic Sin
Publisher: Miniature Sun Press
ISBN 0967666600 

An evocative broadside-length piece about mutation. Mutations of men, the dead, and probably the ones in between. “The Lesions of Genetic Sin” is a breathtaking long poem that has all the makings of a snow globe: deceptively lightweight, and once shaken violently, it reveals its beauty. Not to mention that it includes the most original of wordplays: “bodysalt,” “vile-urchin-argot graffiti,” and the sensual “corolla’s velvet violet insistence…” 

Eucalyptus
Publisher: Otoliths Books 
ISBN-13: 9780980878592

Deviled Ham and a Picture of Jesus: Twenty Grubb Tales
Publisher: Finishing Line Press
ISBN-10: 1599247410
ISBN-13: 978-1599247410
To buy from Amazon

Eros & (Fill in the Blank)
Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] 
ISBN-10: 1935402730
ISBN-13: 978-1935402732
To buy from Amazon

Through the Funeral Mountains on a Burro
Publisher: Otoliths Books
ISBN-10: 0980602521
ISBN-13: 978-0980602524
To buy from Amazon

Eucalyptus
Publisher: Otoliths Books 
ISBN-13: 9780980878592 

I am enamored of Charles Freeland's unique body of work. There's an air of erudition prevalent in his prose poems, most evident in Furiant, Not Polka (Moria Books, 2008). His chapbooks available online, Eulalie & Squid (Chippens), Chilean Sea Bass is Really Just Patagonian Toothfish (Differentia Press), and The Case of the Danish King Halfdene read as if he was talking about his own made-up world replete with characters which may or may not be misconstrued as metamorphic, and he does not care whether the reader gets it or not. Most days, I only NOT get it; I am also overwhelmed by his blatant disregard for his readers. 

Charles Freeland has this uniquely irreverent voice, and he invents his own textures, hand-paints his own landscapes just to satisfy his craving (or curiosity or whatever it is that he writes for). I do not see any effort to entertain, to convince, or to horrify. And for that, he has my utmost respect and admiration. 

Every book is always an experience. But Eucalyptus (a themed book-length prose-poem/flash-fiction collection forthcoming from Otoliths Books) is a different ballgame altogether. It is an immersion, like being indoctrinated into a weird mythology which surprisingly, amidst the chaotic and mostly absurd turn of events, makes sense. 

I cannot even summarize it. I tried. I started off by breaking it down chronologically, but there’s no time element, no point of reference. Then I looked at the characters: the narrator, Immanuel (who is lost, in all sense of the word), Eulalie, etc., but I cannot quite flesh them out enough to say anything conclusive. The tragic ending does not make sense to me. Even the title of the book confuses me. There’s only one thing that keeps me reading: Eucalyptus is a strong narrative about loneliness. It tells the story of abandonment, of disenchantment, and it is told in a convoluted fashion which forces everything to shine right through. This is probably what Charles Baudelaire was referring to as "the miracle of poetic prose." 

It says with certainty: 

These original stories contained no moral. They simply revolved around a creature so loathsome, it decided finally to drown itself. 

It is invasive: 

For who wants a soul when the protection of it means you can not give pleasure to others? You can not find your way inside them, except with the hands which are clumsy and too public. They lack the intimacy of the hidden.

I do not pretend to understand Eucalytus. It’s not meant to be deciphered. I’m just here for the long haul, the unforgettable ride, the frequent rereading. 

The Case of the Danish King Halfdene
Publisher: Mudlark

The Case of the Danish King Halfdene is a journey to a magical nowhere, where the road signs, the danger, and the will to continue are all in the mind. The assertion that: "Navigational skills are not required. Where you are going is the least of your concerns..." sums up the theme of this amazing collection of prose poems. Like a dedication, Freeland writes at the end of the titular piece: 

For those afraid they may have stumbled, by accident, into the wrong existence. And will have to stay here...

The tone of The Case of the Danish King Halfdene, like most of Freeland's work, contains an underlying assumption that the reader is familiar with the complex backdrop of the mythical elements he drops along the way. 

In "Very Bad Poetry," one gets a glimpse of Freeland's writing ethos or lack thereof: 

If we aren’t sure, though, why something behaves the way it does—why the garbage smells like pine trees in the morning, and vice versa, why the giraffe has to bend that way to drink—it’s proper policy to pretend like we understand anyway. 

In "Not Yet the Sounds of Speech," dark humor shines through: 

Sometimes it’s better to meditate in the afternoon than whisper to some deity you can’t even be sure wears any clothes...

The marvelous "A Disturbance in the Magnetic Field," which is the strongest piece in this collection, "infers" something which the author presupposes would have been obvious to everybody: 

Every claustrophobic knows, for instance, that walls are, in fact, a wonderful invention. The kind of thing that keeps people from inferring your motives.

References to ekphrastic motives in "Twilight of the Big Finish." The piece entitled "Getting Through the Last Pages" is a treatise on hopelessness. "Spring Cleaning in the Labyrinth of the Continuum" is set in a Borges-like wasteland. The last piece, "Why Light Was Invented," questions our interpretations of reality. 

The Fever Almanac
Publisher: Ghost Road Press
ISBN-10: 097780349X
ISBN-13: 978-0977803491
To buy from Amazon 

The Fever Almanac is a book of wants hoarded during a period of bad weather and recklessness. In this volume, Kristy Bowen’s poems are like fairy tales that espouse no morals. They read like dark secrets. The pale girls end up in the backseats of the boys in brown trucks. They brush their hair “until it hurts.” The houses are never filled because they all burn down or drought

…settles in its bones,
rattles the windows.

There is a recurring theme of rural lives being ruined by lust and discontent.

From “scarlet fever,”

….The gas station,
Tucson, where you bent me
over the sink. Later told me
your mom never touched
you unless it was a beating.

From “navigation,”

All the roads have lost their signs.

The climactic second to the last poem, “a dialogue in blue,” is my favorite piece in this collection. The seasickness is palpable. The hopelessness is forever here:

The boats have failed us.

How To Say Goodbye
Publisher: Aortic Books
ISBN-10: 0978798333
ISBN-13: 978-0978798338
To buy from Amazon

How to Say Goodbye, James Valvis’ first collection of poetry, nourishes the reader without the use of stylized language calisthenics. These poems are told in a voice that’s sincere, darkly humorous, and graceful. 

His poems will hit a nerve. Take for example this enchanting piece entitled “City Kid.” It is worth quoting in full: 

Late one fall 
as we pass 
a small field 
with decaying 
pumpkins lying 
in the dirt 

my daughter 
wants to know 
why everyone 
suddenly left 
their basketballs 
outside to rot 


What I love best about this book is not the recurring themes of alienation and hope, but the candor, the down-to-earth-yet-ethereal vibe. For me, the poems are refreshingly beautiful because I don’t feel that they have been tweaked to perfection to impress via wordplay. The poems are cut out, dried, and splayed with their muddied and muscular faces intact. I recoiled after reading “Revolution,” a bizarre case of domestic abuse. I smiled at the candid portrayal of a military funeral in “Burial Detachment.” The titular piece, “How to Say Goodbye,” introduces us to “a husband about to help his wife flee her lover.” 

And here is my favorite which I bookmarked for rereading: from “Crossing the Street, My Daughter Reaches for My Hand” 

The hand you now want, daughter, 
the hand you reach for as we come 
to the curbside is not clean. 
.... 
It has stolen things, shoving want 
deep into pockets so that later 
all that could be withdrawn was shame. 

Fall
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN-10: 0819567094
ISBN-13: 978-0819567093
To buy from Amazon 

Order, or Disorder
Publisher: Cleveland State University Press
ISBN-10: 1880834170
ISBN-13: 978-1880834176
To buy from Amazon


On Amy Newman's "Fall"

Here are Amy Newman’s superb iterations of the word “fall.” I’ve never read anything like it. I’m a long-time fan of Newman’s poetry, and it’s difficult to condense into words how I sometimes flinch while I marvel at the beauty of her writing: 

a shedding of the eye level of things --
tinny cascade of objects...

For me, this book defines how contemporary poetry must rear its rebellious, unkillable head -- with finesse, with daring in its exploitation of language, with unparalleled richness. 


On Amy Newman's "Order, or Disorder" 

Order, Or Disorder is replete with themes that touch on mortality and spirituality. What I love about Amy Newman’s brand of poetry is the earthy and impenetrable-but-there air. Even her dose of honesty is delivered in a devious way.

Excerpted from “Parallax,” the poem that contained the titular line:

.... Scrape off the shavings
like the allowance of sin.

This one is from “River,” my favorite piece in the book. It is the very antithesis of sappy and inspiring nature poetry.

Winter froze the first half-foot of river straight down
solid, gray-green, encasing
what rushed beneath it. There are underneaths, enclosures,
contents. Frames, windows, houses, channels,
conduits, arteries, riverbanks. I’m afraid the snow
will press on coming summer’s grasses.
The river hangs names like bodies in the cold trees.

Order, Or Disorder is an incredibly varied and complex masterpiece. Each poem is well-thought. Each line break is contrived to quicken the breathing a little. Each blow is delivered subtly, lovingly.