Quantcast

1932 by Karen M. Cox (audio)

March 10, 2022 by

Source: Purchased
Audiobook, 7+ hrs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

1932 by Karen M. Cox, narrated by Elizabeth Grace, is set during the Great Depression when economic turmoil upended so many lives and many lost their fortunes. The Bennets are not immune, as Mr. Bennet loses his professorship, forcing the family to leave their comforts of Chicago for Meryton, Kentucky, and Mrs. Bennet’s family farm. The family farm is quite an adjustment, with no bathroom indoors and a farm that hasn’t been very productive.

The Bennets set to work about getting the house in working order. William Darcy, owner of Pemberley, the largest farm in the county, however, has a rich and charmed life where everything is just as he likes it, until the new neighbors force him to take a harder look at his well-ordered life. When he meets Elizabeth Bennet, he is swept up in feelings he is unready for, but he’s unable to express himself in a clear way.

Cox clearly knows these characters well, and she develops them in believable ways for this time period and given the economic circumstances. Darcy is still the caring and somewhat prideful man we all expect him to be, but he’s definitely still a gentleman. Elizabeth is still a willful and spirited woman who wants to help all she loves. The more modern times do lend itself to a little more liberal storyline, especially where Georgiana is concerned.

1932 by Karen M. Cox, narrated by Elizabeth Grace, is a delight and Wickham is even more trying in this modernized story. I loved the dynamic between Elizabeth and Darcy in Cox’s story. I loved that they had to navigate their marriage without understanding that they are “in love.” Don’t miss this Depression-era story.

About the Author:

Karen M Cox is an award-winning author of five full-length novels: 1932, Find Wonder in All Things, I Could Write a Book, Undeceived, and Son of a Preacher Man. She also contributed short stories to several anthologies, including The Darcy Monologues, Dangerous to Know: Jane Austen’s Rakes and Gentlemen Rogues, Rational Creatures, and Elizabeth: Obstinate, Headstrong Girl.

Karen was born in Everett WA, which was the result of coming into the world as the daughter of a United States Air Force Officer. She had a nomadic childhood, with stints in North Dakota, Tennessee, and New York State before finally settling in her family’s home state of Kentucky at the age of eleven. She lives in a quiet town with her husband, where she works as a pediatric speech pathologist, encourages her children, and spoils her granddaughter.

Channeling Jane Austen’s Emma, Karen has let a plethora of interests lead her to begin many hobbies and projects she doesn’t quite finish, but she aspires to be a great reader and an excellent walker—like Elizabeth Bennet.

Filed Under: audiobooks, fiction, historical fiction, purchased, Read in 2022, reviews Tagged With: , , ,

So Much of Everything by Jenn Koiter

March 9, 2022 by

Source: GBF
Paperback, 80 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

So Much of Everything by Jenn Koiter, which won the DC Poet Project award in 2021, explores the broken pieces we become to find the whole. Through persona poems, particularly those with the “messy girl” and “candy girl,” Koiter explores what it means to be broken and keep going. The title itself speaks to the overwhelm that many of us have felt at one time or another in our lives, with many of us having that sense during the pandemic. Dealing with grief and sudden loss, Koiter takes us on a roller coaster of emotions, but her words resonate no matter the readers’ experiences.

Her opening poem, “Easter Night,” establishes the atmosphere of hope even in the darkness where there is the chill of services and the heels sinking into grass: “Since yesterday, the earth has tilted./The day’s last light curves/differently over my arm/on its habitual armrest, then dims/and dims to night.//What will I do with darkness in this new life?//” (pg. 1)

Koiter’s poems are otherworldly, like we’re swimming in her thoughts and trying to make sense of things like she is.

In “The Messy Girl Drives Eastward, with Impending Migraine,” her lines call to the beautiful topsy-turvy nature she’s experiencing: “Lines of birds shift in the air like words that cannot stay still/on the page, latecomers looking for a place/in an already crowded field.” Or the young girl pushing her way onto the swing set “as if/I had never left, as if I could insist/there be no world without me” in “Samsara.” (pg. 42)

As readers move through the collection, grief surfaces and falls beneath the surface. In “After Thanksgiving,” the narrator is eating brandied cranberries in yogurt, but not because she loves these leftovers particularly. It is because they make her feel closer to her mother.

The mind is always churning, it is worrying like the narrator who “worries scab after scab” in “The Messy Girl Carries a Torch for the Boy Who Could Not Stop Washing.” And in “Live Portrait” where the painter is getting the model’s image on the canvas and only “The portrait can bear/the weight of all that/looking”.

So Much of Everything by Jenn Koiter a ball of our anxieties unraveled until we can do little more than see them for what they are — weights we place squarely on our own shoulders and those that we don’t. The trick is to discern which anxieties we can handle because they are our own perceptions (which we can change) and those that are heavy with loss and grief and must be accepted. “meaning today I am at my most/human, meaning I am not okay and/I’m okay” (pg.76) And it is okay to be on that precipice of everything.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Poet:

Jenn Koiter is a writer, marketer, entrepreneur and breathworker. The winner of the 2021 DC Poet Project, Jenn’s debut poetry collection, “So Much of Everything,” was published in 2021 by Day Eight. Her poems and essays have appeared in Barrelhouse, Smartish Pace, Bateau, Ruminate, Copper Nickel and other journals. She lives in Washington, D.C., with three gerbils named Sputnik, Cosmo and Unit. Visit her on Twitter.

Filed Under: ARC, challenges, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, Read in 2021, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,

None Shall Sleep by Ellie Marney (audio)

March 8, 2022 by

Source: Purchased
Audiobook, 11+ hours
I am an Amazon Affiliate

None Shall Sleep by Ellie Marney, narrated by Christine Lakin, Maxwell Hamilton, Zach Villa, and Jake Abel, was a recommendation from LittleMissStar and it was a thrilling ride. Emma Lewis and Travis Bell are recruited by the FBI to conduct interviews of convicted juvenile killers and provide insight and advice on cold cases.

What these teens are initially unaware of is an active case that has the FBI chasing their tails. A serial killer is on the loose and targeting teenagers. Lewis has to face her fears as a survivor of a serial killer herself, but to do that, she’ll have to face teenage sociopath Simon Gutmunsson, the man who killed Bell’s father, and learn what he knows about this new killer. Her demons, however, are the greatest allies she has.

Marney has taken the twisted connection between Dr. Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs and created a teenage version of that relationship, complete with the defiance and angst that teens carry when they are still trying to find their way in the world — serial killer or not.

None Shall Sleep by Ellie Marney is a wild story with FBI analysis, detective work, interviewing of serial killers, and interplay between teens and killers. Marney is deft in her world building and her character development. The pacing is on target, even if I figured out the killer before we got to the final scenes. The narrators are fantastic.

RATING: Quatrain

About the Author:

Ellie Marney is a NYT and internationally bestselling author of crime fiction. Her titles include the Aurealis-winning None Shall Sleep, White Night, the Every series – starting with Every Breath – and the companion novel No Limits, White Night, and the Circus Hearts series, starting with Circus Hearts 1. Her next book, The Killing Code, an intense mystery about female codebreakers hunting a serial killer against a backdrop of 1940s wartime Washington D.C., will be released in September 2022.

Ellie’s books are published in ten countries, and have been optioned for television. She’s spent a lifetime researching in mortuaries, talking to autopsy specialists, and asking former spies about how to make explosives from household items, and now she lives quite sedately in south-eastern Australia with her family.

Filed Under: audiobooks, challenges, fiction, New Authors Challenge, purchased, Read in 2022, reviews Tagged With: , ,

Character Interview & Giveaway: The Grail: The Saving of Elizabeth Darcy by Don Jacobson

March 7, 2022 by

Don Jacobson has been a featured author on the blog before for the Bennet Wardrobe series, and today, we have the final installment in the series: The Grail: The Saving of Elizabeth Darcy

Read more about this book:

“You must throw away notions of what you want. Only then will you be free to accept what you need.” —The Brown Guide to Fitzwilliam Darcy, 1840

Long has the amazing Bennet Wardrobe involved itself in the affairs of Longbourn. Where before its actions have been cloaked in mystery, its purpose now becomes clear. The fey cabinet has molded the universes to strike a balance that can be achieved only by saving the greatest love story ever told.

Follow the paths taken by Pemberley’s master and mistress after their children are grown. See Elizabeth Darcy struggle to rekindle the love glow that has dimmed after a quarter century.

Grasp the unaccountable pain her departure levels upon the entire Derbyshire family. Watch Fitzwilliam Darcy learn that which he must in order to become the best version of himself: worthy of his Elizabeth.

The Grail: The Saving of Elizabeth Darcy closes out the Bennet Wardrobe series. The disparate threads spun by the remarkable women born to a Hertfordshire couple of insignificant fortune are woven together. These lives have become the tapestry that records the destiny of Jane Austen’s lovers, immortal in any here/now or where/when.

Without further ado, please welcome Don Jacobson with today’s character interview:

An Interview with Rachael Weisz, Elizabeth Darcy in The Grail:

A Cambridge graduate, Rachael Weisz quickly stepped from university to television and onto the stage. Cinematic roles followed where her dark eyes, arresting style, and deep authenticity led to a plethora of awards. Her role in “The Constant Gardener” brought her an Academy Award. Her portrayal of Sarah Churchill in “The Favourite” led to a Best Actress BAFTA. On stage, her immersion in the character of Blanche DuBois in Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” led to her carrying home the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress from The Society of London Theater.

Weisz took time from her busy schedule at the Cannes Film Festival to discuss with the View From Here her most recent outing — The Grail: The Saving of Elizabeth Darcy.

The View From Here: Thank you, Ms Weisz, for joining us to speak about your role as Elizabeth Darcy in the biopic The Grail: The Saving of Elizabeth Darcy. While her earlier life has been the subject of multiple productions since 1940, this is the first which focuses on a mature Elizabeth Bennet Darcy. I imagine that the obvious question is what attracted you to the character?

Weisz: And there is an equally obvious answer. Elizabeth Bennet Darcy is one half of history’s greatest love story. The world, though, has been captivated by the early months of her relationship with Darcy. That would sideline every single actor over the age of twenty-five. When the chance came along to play Mrs. Darcy as a woman in her forties, I jumped at it. Of course, Daniel, my own Mr. Darcy, was jealous that he could not play opposite me.

TVFH: You are referring to Daniel Craig, of course. I wonder if Pride and Prejudice aficionados would be willing to include Mr. Bond in their Firth/MacFayden debate.

W: Yes, there was some good-naturing twigging going on in our household about just that. But Daniel was occupied with shooting No Time To Die and, even though he was age perfect for this Darcy, he could not contemplate the part. He did strut around the house grimly glowering while muttering ‘My good opinion once lost…’

TVFH: But his lack of availability led to the casting of Ewan McGregor.

W: Ah, dearest Ewan: I so enjoyed being opposite him once again (2005 Red and Black). Of course, he was the right Darcy for me. His eyes smolder and he gets the Darcy growl and grumble just right: probably the Scot in him.

TVFH: The producers sent me some of the rushes. I was astonished at the new depth you found in Elizabeth Darcy. Did you study Ehle and Knightley?

W: We all go to school on our fellow actors. I looked for a through line between their portrayals of an unmarried twenty-year-old woman to my character in her mid-forties. After more than a few cups of coffee and walks in the park, I realized that I could only use their Elizabeths as a starting point. Their films cut off just as the Darcys’ married life was beginning. As a result, the events that would have informed my backstory were not there.

However, I was fortunate in that the Bennet Family Trust had begun opening their archives by the time I was studying for the part. I was able to spend time in a reading room below Lincoln’s Inn reading Jane Bennet Bingley’s journals. Her memories of Elizabeth Bennet and the wedded Mrs. Darcy — both before and after her time in the Wardrobe — laid bare the complexities of this accomplished woman.

Between Mrs. Bingley’s diaries and Lydia Fitzwilliam’s papers, I learned that Elizabeth, like so many of us who have married well, still had to navigate the rocks and shoals of aging. For her it was living with a man who thought too much, worried too deeply, and too often tried to control every event to protect those he loved. If he would have remembered that one part of his life was built on bedrock, he might have been spared eighteen years in the wilderness. His wife was one of our species who loved but once in her life, and it was a fierce kind of love. Although Elizabeth was quick to judge, she was equally quick to forgive if not to forget.

The classic example was the famous insult casually tossed at her by Darcy the night they met. Jane found decades of amusement when her Lizzy would unsheathe that weapon at precisely the correct moment to puncture Darcy’s pretensions.

TVFH: What was the most difficult part of Elizabeth Darcy to capture? After all, she died nearly forty years ago. There are few alive who could reminisce about her.

W: That is not true. One contemporary remained. Although the information is not widely known, one of Mrs. Darcy’s sisters lived until 2019. This film has been in development since before Mrs. Benton’s death. She was gracious enough to sit with me on more than one occasion.

TVFH: And?

W: I will never forget our last meeting. Mary Benton clearly was feeling the effects of age. At that time, she was an objective seventy-three years old. But she had spent the bulk of her life in a pre-antibiotic, heavily-polluted era. She was paying the price the Industrial Revolution exacted, although as Britain’s Conscience would have noted, the toll was heavier on the poor who could not escape the cities. There was a spark, a fire, that burned brightly even in a weary body. Her mind was sharp, and her memories of her times at Kympton Parsonage were crystalline. All of those added texture to my understanding of Elizabeth Darcy and her relationship with her husband, a man who began nine years older than her and ended up almost thirty years her senior.

As I was leaving her rooms, Mrs. Benton grabbed my arm and speared me with those incredible caramel eyes. She distilled Elizabeth Darcy for me. “Lizzy was the best of us because she embodied each of us: Jane’s belief that each person owned inner goodness that could be revealed: my iron jawed determination—some would say outright stubbornness: Lydia’s ability to survey the field as if she were a general: and Kitty’s willingness to sacrifice herself for the good of all. Oh, she also captured our parents, too: Papa’s studied impertinence and Mama’s ability to well love her family.

“The Old One picked the right woman—and the right man—as the epitome of his grand design.”

TVFH: The Old One . . .?

W: Oh dear, look at the time! I fear I must leave you with that.

Weisz hurried off reminding this reporter of his earlier conversation with Charlotte Rampling, who played the older Kitty Bennet in “The Exile: The Countess Visits Longbourn.”

About the Author:

Don Jacobson has written professionally for forty years, from news and features to advertising, television, and radio. His work has been nominated for Emmys and other awards. He has previously published five books, all nonfiction. In 2016, he published the first volume of The Bennet Wardrobe Series, The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey.

Since then, Meryton Press has re-edited and republished Keeper and the subsequent six volumes in the series. The Grail: The Saving of Elizabeth Darcy is the eighth and concluding volume. Other Meryton Press books by Jacobson include Lessers and Betters, In Plain Sight, and The Longbourn Quarantine. All his works are also available as audiobooks (Audible).

Jacobson holds an advanced degree in history with a specialty in American foreign relations. As a college instructor, he taught United States history, world history, the history of western civilization, and research writing. He is currently in his third career as an author and is a member of JASNA and the Regency Fiction Writers.

Besides thoroughly immersing himself in the Austenesque world, Jacobson also enjoys cooking, dining out, fine wine, and well-aged scotch whiskey. His other passion is cycling. Most days will find him “putting in the miles.” He has ridden several “centuries” (hundred-mile days). He is especially proud of having completed the AIDS Ride–Midwest (five hundred miles from Minneapolis to Chicago) and the Make-a-Wish Miracle Ride (three hundred miles from Traverse City to Brooklyn, both in Michigan). When not traveling, Jacobson lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with his wife and co-author, Pam—a woman Miss Austen would have been hard-pressed to categorize. Follow him on Amazon, GoodReads, and Twitter. Subscribe to the Newsletter.

GIVEAWAY:

Meryton Press is giving away 6 eBooks of The Grail: The Saving of Elizabeth Darcy.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Filed Under: giveaway, guest post Tagged With: , ,

Mailbox Monday #673

March 6, 2022 by

Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.

It now has its own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.

Velvet, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.

This is what we received:

Floating On Air (Struck By Love Book 1) by Syrie James, which I purchased.

On a hot summer’s day in 1986, Southern California radio deejay Desiree Germain is hosting a contest on the air when she’s entranced by the deeply masculine voice of caller number twelve.

Voices never matched faces. Desiree knows that better than anyone. As KICK’s hottest radio host, she has a sultry voice that leads people to expect a tall, voluptuous bombshell. Petite in every sense of the word, she hardly lives up to that image.

To Desiree’s surprise, caller number twelve turns out to be Kyle Harrison, a handsome, wealthy businessman from Seattle. Kyle has come to claim his prize—and her heart.

They are soon involved in a whirlwind love affair that makes Desiree’s heart sing. Is it worth the risk? All the rules say that long-distance romance and radio don’t mix.

But a man who is answering a siren’s call doesn’t care about rules.

What did you receive?

Filed Under: mailbox monday, meme Tagged With: ,

The Damage Done by Susana H. Case

March 3, 2022 by

Source: GBF
Paperback, 100 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

The Damage Done by Susana H. Case (on sale as of March 1 at Broadstone – click the image to save) is a poetic narrative that explores the covert, illegal projects of the FBI, including its counter intelligence program, COINTELPRO, which was used to infiltrate domestic political organizations like the Black Panthers, feminist groups, communist organizations, and others. Janey, a fashion model in the 1960s, and her fictional murder serve as a vehicle through which Case weaves her poetic narrative.

"Woman Identified" (pg. 12)

...Janey looks untroubled
and is running in a bold-patterned

dress past a bridge, debris in soft
focus piled off by the side.
The detective laughs about it later
with his buddies, a strange photo
to sell clothes you can't even

clearly see. Surrounded by rubble.
Painted-on eyelashes - as if
she's a child's doll - 
she looks as if she could blow
away. Part of her did.

Case’s voice reads like crime thriller and a noir detective tale in which a young lady is tired of her modeling life, falls into gun running and pill popping, even as her husband strives to place his heavy boot on her and rein her in. The collection opens with a dead girl in a car – Janey – and the detective on the case continues to face roadblocks to solving her murder. Is it easier to go along with the FBI’s theories or investigate a murder of a young woman. And how the decision weighs on the detective and pushes him further to drink and unravel himself.

The paranoid atmosphere infuses her lines in “The Psychiatric Institute”: “Janey thought the Feds were after her,/She was right. The cops/all agree she was a wacko.” Case has a cast of believable characters in her collection, and while it is poetry; it’s hard not to turn the pages to see what happens next, much like reading a thriller. It’s an examination of psychological motivations, an illegal FBI program that may still be operating, and the lives that it destroyed in the name of justice.

I could not put down The Damage Done by Susana H. Case once I picked it up. This is one poetry collection that will have you on the edge of your seat.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Poet:

Susana H. Case, Ph. D., is the author of eight books of poetry. The Damage Done, from Broadstone Books (2022) is her newest. Dead Shark on the N Train, from Broadstone Books (2020), won a Pinnacle Book Award for Best Poetry Book, a NYC Big Book Awards Distinguished Favorite, and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Drugstore Blue, from Five Oaks Press, won an Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY). She is also the author of five chapbooks, two of which won poetry prizes. Her poems appear widely in magazines and anthologies. Recent poems can be found in: Calyx, The Cortland Review, Fourteen Hills, Portland Review, Potomac Review, Rattle, and RHINO, among others. She has been published via translation into Polish, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. Case is co-editor, with Margo Taft Stever, of I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe, Milk and Cake Press (2022).

Case is a co-editor of Slapering Hol Press and co-curates, with Lynn McGee (series founder), Sandy Yannone, and Carolyne Wright, the W-E (West-East) Bicoastal Poets of the Pandemic and Beyond series which features writers from both coasts and many other regions. She recently retired as Professor from the New York Institute of Technology in New York City, where she taught for thirty-eight years.

Filed Under: challenges, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, Read in 2022, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,

For Her Name’s Sake by Monica Leak

March 2, 2022 by

Source: GBF
Paperback, 116 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

For Her Name’s Sake by Monica Leak is a cry for not just equal justice but JUSTICE for women of color. Leak embodies these women’s stories to share them with her readers and explore the injustices faced by these women who were abandoned by the systems meant to protect society as a whole. Some of these women were taken too soon, but Leak invokes their spirit to help us see — without turning away — and encourage us to rise up for those who can no longer do so for themselves.

In “Handle With Care,” Leak tells speaks to the outward pressures society places on financially-strapped families and those in need of care, not arrest in her poem for Tanisha Anderson. This mother “Amid an escort struggle, the body becomes limp/The cops applied excessive use of force/To restrain another life lost in death” (pg. 10-11) A mother having a mental health crisis in need of assistance, she’s assisted right into the grave.

From "Who'll Be a Witness?" (pg. 49)

Who'll be a witness?
A witness who can say what they saw
A witness who can tell what they heard
A witness who can describe the scene and circumstances

Leak is that witness. Each poem focuses on a life shortened or a life altered by institutional injustice, from people killed for having fake weapons to welfare checks gone wrong. Leaks poems are filled with anger, tension, and will leave readers uneasy as they should. These are lives she wants us to remember, the circumstances they found themselves in that were beyond their control, and how justice was not served by those charged with serving it.

"No Charges" (pg. 77)

It's like daily walking on pins and needles, living on 
guard
To constantly violate the rights of people of color and
there never is a charge

#Rosann Miller

For Her Name’s Sake by Monica Leak is a poignant collection in a time when it is sorely needed, even as we wish it were unnecessary. These are women who lost their lives and their ways of life — many had families, lost loved ones, and so much promise.

RATING: Tercet

About the Poet:

Monica Leak uses the power of information to reach others through creative content. Monica’s works include contributions to six Lent devotionals, one women’s empowerment anthology and two self-published collections of social justice-themed poetry. You can learn more about Monica by following MLeakPoetry on all social media platforms (Facebook/Instagram/Twitter) and visiting monicaspeaks.org.

Filed Under: challenges, New Authors Challenge, Poetry Reading Challenge Tagged With: , ,

Ashes to Justice by R.E.I.L.

March 1, 2022 by

Source: GBF
Paperback, 46 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

(**note that this collection could be triggering for child abuse survivors)

Ashes to Justice by R.E.I.L. is a deeply personal collection of poetic resilience and strength. The opening poem, “Piece for PEACE” is a tribute to her grandmother and the strength she showed the young girl every day and the devastation of loss the young woman feels due to her grandmother’s passing. It’s a poem of learning to live without a loved one, but also an homage to the strength a grandmother instilled in a granddaughter: “my mind was dedicated/To being the strongest woman I could ever be/You are my hero, and I miss you/” (pg. 1)

It is clear that this poet has suffered, but she has chosen to strive for strength and resilience. Her poetry explores her efforts and her setbacks, but it is clear she will not let the abuse rule her life and take her down. From “Her Testimony,” “A little girl sad/Her life had no glory//And she wanted me to tell her story/She wants you to know that it feels good to be alive//This young girl died four times/Then was brought back to life!//” (pg. 3) It is through this spoken-word style that the narrator of the poem unpacks the sexual abuse story and brings forth the concept of “Reborn Early In Life” (R.E.I.L.). It becomes a moniker that sets the redemptive tone for the entire collection.

She strives to explore what “sexy” means and how it should be defined by not only society but ourselves. These poems are a sussing out of the past and the narrative present to determine how she should be viewed by herself, her lovers, and ultimately, what love and affection should be and how it should feel. The poet also tackles familial love and how it should be. In “A Real Man,” she implores a father to console her and the understand that not everything is about him.

Ashes to Justice by R.E.I.L. is a cathartic journey for a survivor of abuse, but it also is a lesson in how to learn what love is and not just what you’ve been given. It’s a soul-searching collection in which “where I come from” shouldn’t and doesn’t dictate who you are and what you deserve out of life. “Realizing that no one person is the problem/But we’re all part of the solution/And somewhere between here now and then/We need a resolution//” (pg. 29-31; “Fighting Temptations”)

RATING: Quatrain

About the Poet:

R.E.I.L. started her poetry career at open mics in the D.C. area and at 16 competed in the Brave New Voices slam in New York City. A poetic performer, visual artist, and arts educator teaching in D.C. schools, R.E.I.L. seeks inspiration from past and present life experiences to help the lives of other unsung souls.

Filed Under: challenges, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, Read in 2022, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,

Mailbox Monday #672

February 28, 2022 by

Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.

It now has its own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.

Velvet, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.

This is what we received:

None Shall Sleep by Ellie Marney, I purchased on a recommendation from LittleMissStar.

In 1982, two teenagers – serial killer survivor Emma Lewis and US Marshal candidate Travis Bell – are recruited by the FBI to interview convicted juvenile killers and provide insight and advice on cold cases. From the start, Emma and Travis develop a quick friendship, gaining information from juvenile murderers that even the FBI can’t crack. But when the team is called in to give advice on an active case – a serial killer who exclusively hunts teenagers – things begin to unravel. Working against the clock, they must turn to one of the country’s most notorious incarcerated murderers for help: teenage sociopath Simon Gutmunsson.

Despite Travis’ objections, Emma becomes the conduit between Simon and the FBI team. But while Simon seems to be giving them the information they need to save lives, he’s an expert manipulator playing a very long game…and he has his sights set on Emma.

Captivating, harrowing, and chilling, None Shall Sleep is an all-too-timely exploration of not only the monsters that live among us, but also the monsters that live inside us.

What did you receive?

Filed Under: mailbox monday, meme Tagged With: , ,

Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience edited by Melanie Henderson, Enzo Silon Surin, and Truth Thomas

February 24, 2022 by

Source: Purchased
Paperback, 140 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience edited by Melanie Henderson, Enzo Silon Surin, and Truth Thomas is a gorgeous magazine quality anthology of poignant poems about Black Americans’ experiences, joys, passions, and frustrations. But it is more than that. It is a look at where we are as a culture and nation today. The opening poem, “Fear of Dogs and Other Animals” by Shauna Morgan, explores the fear Black Americans carry every day as they go to work, to school, for a walk. White America is the dog snarling. In the poem, the brother warns his sister that she should not run from the dog, but stand her ground and bear her own teeth and growl. It also is a tragic story of what a brother knew and tried to explain to his sister. But not all of these poems are dark. There is joy and passion.

From "This Crooked Day Dance" by Alan King (pg. 114)

...The empty passenger seat aches
like a hole in my gums. My heart if a bag
of stones...

Alan King, Teri Cross Davis, Reuben Jackson, and many others in this collection have appeared on this blog before, and their poems in this anthology are exceptional as always. But I was so enamored with the voices I am unfamiliar with. So many talented poets! I absolutely loved “Practice” by Brandon Johnson. A father talking to his children about his hopes for how they will use their voice to protest bigger injustices than just being told to clean their rooms or do their homework.

From "Practice" (pg. 76-77)

...
When you're called to pick up arms against anything
Not physically endangering you, or yours
I want to hear you let loose.
In the same manner as when I tell you to pick up your room
...

Make governments, and men, answer
The same questions you ask your parents.
Why?
....

I cannot praise the quality of this collection enough. From the heavy weight paper to the gorgeous cover and photographs inside, this collection is a tribute to the Black experience in a way that will leave a lasting impression. Harsh realities are in these pages, and I hope that wider audiences (looking at all of you) pick this up. I cannot express how emotional each poem is and how much these poems spoke to American reality. We need more of these stories to be told, held close, and used to inform a better future for all of America.

Do not pass up this opportunity. Get yourself a copy of Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience edited by Melanie Henderson, Enzo Silon Surin, and Truth Thomas.

RATING: Cinquain

Filed Under: poetry, purchased, Read in 2022, reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant by Indran Amirthanayagam

February 23, 2022 by

Source: GBF
Paperback, 90 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant by Indran Amirthanayagam opens with the “Migrant Song,” part plea, part love song to those who have fled homes to make new ones. “We write/poems for our tribes, making one tribe of/every beating heart sending blood through/the veins of one earth.” (pg. 3) This poem sets the tone for the collection. While many of these poems tackle tough issues of racism, institutional racism, a presidential election that threw a country into crisis, and so much more, Amirthanayagam bears witness to it all, but unlike the journalist observing, he’s participating in change. He’s calling voters in conservative locations, speaking to them one-on-one, writing letters, trying to express a different view but always with an open hand and heart.

One of the most beautiful lines in this collection comes in “Soul Rising”: (pg. 25)

I miss you something fierce;
I have to tell my bones to
stop shaking, to calm
down, that there is something
called work, poetry, cleaning
the room, getting food
together, attending to mother,
reading fine print in polling,
picking up the phone, cold-
calling a Texan in the name of
participatory democracy, the
nation's and the earth's soul...

In this poem, about a third of the way through, it is clear that democracy matters and it should matter to all of us. We should be taking the time to speak to one another — face-to-face, phone-to-phone, video-to-video — anything to keep the democratic dialogue going. Like I said, more than poems of witness. These are poems of action.

From "Artist's Role" (pg. 47)

...Can we continue
to make light and gladden hearts while the virus kills
and one gang leader tries to steal the democracy, unmasked?

Despite the darkness we face in America — the something “too rotten in the fridge” and the “blackening hole” and the “spilling of blood” — Amirthanayagam is still hopeful. There is light in the ship that carries democracy in the hold and the crossing of John Lewis bridge, and the dermatologist who is able to freeze the blackening hole and removing it before cancer takes over. “Writing a poem is/the easiest option, the only one I can/imagine and control. Although war is/everywhere, and it is time to raise/our hands and say no, not past this line.//” (“Not Beyond This Line, pg. 58)

It may take 10,000 steps, but freedom and peace are worth every stone stuck in your shoe, every bead of sweat that falls, and every emotional emptying it takes. Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant by Indran Amirthanayagam explores the freedom of an open heart that allows us to “embrace the darkness and accept each other’s/absolute freedom to fly to the other end of the earth.” (“The Candle (Migratory Bird), pg. 87)

RATING: Cinquain

About the Poet:

Indran Amirthanayagam writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. He has published over twenty books of poetry, including Blue Window (translated by Jennifer Rathbun), The Migrant States, Coconuts on Mars, The Elephants of Reckoning (winner 1994 Paterson Poetry Prize), Uncivil War, and The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems. In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He edits the Beltway Poetry Quarterly (www.beltwaypoetry.com); curates www.ablucionistas.com; writes https://indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com; co-directs Poets & Writers Studio International; writes a weekly poem for Haiti en Marche and El Acento; and hosts The Poetry Channel (https://youtube.com/user/indranam). He has received fellowships from the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, The US/Mexico Fund for Culture, and the Macdowell Colony. He is a 2021 Emergent Seed grant winner. Forthcoming new books include Powèt nan po la (Poet of the Port) and Isleño.

Filed Under: challenges, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, Read in 2022, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,

Water Shedding by Beth Konkoski

February 22, 2022 by

Source: GBF
Paperback, 26 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Water Shedding by Beth Konkoski is a chapbook of stunning images that illustrate the shedding of an old self to make way for the emergence of another. In the opening poem, “Linger,” the narrator recalls how they needed to fit into a mold of another. “Burning any fringe/or edge you don’t like,/I beg to fit in your chosen/mold, to slide like a wedge/of orange between your teeth./” But the poem unravels this past to show readers that even as it hurts to break this mold, the narrator must relearn to use muscles that haven’t done much lifting.

From "Fragile, Do Not Drop" (pg. 2)

On a good day, I sense I'm breathing through glass
not shards cutting deep, just a dome of fine glass

I can almost press my hand to the edges,
but then fall, an insect captured beneath glass.

In each of these poems there is an energy that is contained, and while the narrator laments the lack of freedom to just be who they are, they also are afraid of what’s outside the safety of their carefully crafted world. But in “When I Was Eleven,” we see a brief moment of that freedom as the children head out into the night to catch fireflies or ride off on their bikes in summer. Later in “Sleep-Away Camp,” Konkoski explores the tight grip of fear with the story of Hansel and Gretel. She illustrates how fear is limiting, leaving the children without knowledge of the truffles in the forest or the beauty of the creek because the fear of the witch is ever prominent in their lives. “…we cage them with safety/and wonder when they do not flourish.” (pg. 6)

Water Shedding by Beth Konkoski takes readers on a journey through motherhood, being a daughter and a wife. She discovers the beauty in the cages, while slowly breaking free from the fear that creates those confinements. Her poems evoke nature in a way that calls readers to take a breath in their own lives and really consider the beauty in it. We do not need to completely shed ourselves to be free, but we can bend like the river and flow like the water beneath the obstacles and around them.

RATING: Quatrain

About the Poet:

Beth Konkoski is a writer and high school English teacher who lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and two children. She has published poetry, fiction, and non-fiction in more than fifty literary journals. Her first chapbook of poems, “Noticing the Splash,” was published in 2010 by BoneWorld Press.

Filed Under: challenges, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, Read in 2022, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,