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Interview with Poet Teri Ellen Cross Davis, Author of a more perfect Union

May 21, 2021 by

I am excited to share with you my interview with local poet Teri Ellen Cross Davis, author of the poetry collection a more perfect Union and Poetry Coordinator for the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.

About the collection:

In the tender, sensual, and bracing poems of a more perfect Union, Teri Ellen Cross Davis reclaims the experience of living and mothering while Black in contemporary America, centering Black women’s pleasure by wresting it away from the relentless commodification of the White gaze. Cross Davis deploys stunning emotional range to uplift the mundane, interrogate the status quo, and ultimately create her own goddesses. Parenting, lust, household chores—all are fair game for Cross Davis’s gimlet eye. Whether honoring her grief for Prince’s passing while examining his role in midwifing her sexual awakening or contemplating travel and the gamble of being Black across this wide world, these poems tirelessly seek a path out of the labyrinth to hope.

Stay tuned for some video readings and more upcoming events with Teri (virtual and in person).

Please give Teri a warm welcome:

Savvy Verse & Wit: What is your earliest memory of poetry? Was it read to you? Did you write it? Did someone gift you a book of poems?

Teri Ellen Cross Davis: My earliest memory of poetry is less memory and more fact. My mother taught me to read to Nikki Giovanni’s work. She would read it to me – I was four. I remember the hard cover, tan and coarse, not the paper jacket, she’d taken that off and stashed it away somewhere probably like I do now with my children.

SVW: Can you recall the first poem you wrote and what it was about?

TCD: My first poem was in third grade. I was eight and it was about a squirrel. I sat in my living room and watched the squirrel from the safety of my house. The squirrel was running around the base of a wide oak tree in our backyard, right at the perimeter of a fence that separated our yard from the neighbor behind us. What I love about thinking about this is that my family just gave me that quiet time to sit there and watch that squirrel– no one demanded anything of me, I was just allowed that time and I discovered a poem.

SVW: Did you mimic someone else’s style? And how have you evolved in your poetic skills since then? Speak a little bit about your writing journey.

TCD: My writing journey is a long one. My mother gave me Maya Angelou I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings at 12 at the same time she gave me Carlos Castaneda The Teachings Of Don Juan. Both blew my mind. I also came across my mother’s college poetry books, so Dudley Randall’s The Black Poets and an Oxford Edition of Modern Verse, which led me to Edna St. Vincent Millay and Robert Frost.

In high school, my English teacher gave me Ntozake Shange’s For the Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf and by then I had also started a poetry club inspired by my love of Edna Saint Vincent Millay. I continued reading poetry on my own and by college I felt confident/bold/reckless enough to read my poems aloud to an audience.

But it was at Cave Canem in 1999, which was also the first year I had a poem accepted for publication, that I truly laid claim to being a poet. And I will say that running a poetry series for 16 years has definitely had an effect on my voice and ability. I have brought in so many poets who range in terms of their style and to see that this variety exists lets me know that I have a place somewhere within this whole cannon.

SVW: As the poetry coordinator for the Folger Shakespeare Library, what’s your role and how does that work fit into the poetic culture of the D.C. region?

TCD: I select the poets and themes for the reading and themes for the overall seasons. I write up most of the material for marketing and remain the primary contact for the poets. I love using themes and collaborating with different organizations as I see these actions as ways for me to open up poetry and poets to a new audience.

In terms of how it fits within the poetic culture of the D.C. region, we occupy a national profile but on a local level. I try to involve local poets in introducing and moderating conversations with the poets but I also involve local poets as readers too. Taylor Johnson and Michael Collier are examples from this past season and I often rely on local poets for “Not Just Another Day Off” the Martin Luther King programming that I do at the Folger. And the series has history! I am coordinating the 53 rd continual season and am excited to continue adding the Folger’s tradition of bringing emerging and established poets to the actual or virtual stage.

SVW: In your new collection, a more perfect Union, music (especially Prince) plays a large role in your poems, why was it important for you to include Prince and others in your collection, exalting them like gods and goddesses?

TCD: Mainly because the influence of Prince on my work and in my life is like that of a God. His voice is in my head, his lyrics are the ones that I’ve committed to memory, and his music- it just makes my body move and touches my spirit. I think music is an incredible way to communicate to others, whether it’s about social issues, breakups, falling in love, having a child, like poetry, music just occupies this aural space and I want to honor that. I honestly listen to music every day. I like to think that somewhere inside me lurks a singer/songwriter!

Teri Ellen Cross Davis reads The Goddess of Cleaning:

SVW: Why is it important for poets to explore the new and old gods and goddesses? Your poems are infused with pop culture and the old world. How does this blending help readers see that the “more perfect union” is possible?

TCD: I’ve often chafed at the idea of fitting into any one category. I recognize that who I am is a layering of the old and the new, the high and the low, the avant guard and the mainstream and there’s nothing wrong with that. I try not to hold anyone element of that in higher esteem than the other.

I love letting my diction soar like a kid on the swings who then jumps off and hits the dirt. It’s so much fun to mix it all up and I think once we can let go of these ideas that we have to remain rigidly fixed into any one category and that we can’t respect the others, once we let that go, we can become fully realized people who can honor, respect, and acknowledge all of it. I loved my time with my great aunts and my grandparents and I loved my time in college hanging out and going to Freaknik.

I can be both of those people. Why can’t we all see the beauty in the old world- recognize the traditions and knowledge in those old gods- but also take in with fresh eyes and open hearts the new gods as they pop up? In such openness we stay fresh, we stay absorbent, and we continue to learn.

SVW: The book cover is as sensual as the poems inside. Is this collection a love letter and to whom?

TCD: Thank you for that! In many ways this collection is a love letter to the idea of America; an America that we haven’t seen rise to its full potential in terms of equality and freedom for everyone.

But it’s also a love letter to the American citizen, to the human being, who sees something greater in this country and knows how deeply it is flawed in its failings to live up to the ideals it presents to the rest of the world.

I just want to tell people “I see you and I feel the same way you do”- the frustration, the rage, the sadness, the disappointment and that perhaps together we can enact the change that we want to see and not wait on others to do it but at the same time I recognize that there are those in power who need to understand that so many of us have a righteous rage regarding this country and it needs to be acknowledged and we need to be heard. So this book is my barbaric yawp.

Thank you, Teri, for your candid answers, and I cannot wait to hear you read live in person.

Here’s a treat for my readers, a YouTube readings, and a list of upcoming readings on her schedule:

Poets in conversation feature on Politics and Prose Live! With Teri Ellen Cross Davis and Sandra Beasley:

About the Poet:

Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of a more perfect Union, 2019 winner of The Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize and Haint  winner of the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. She’s a Cave Canem fellow, member of the Black Ladies Brunch Collective, and lives in Maryland.

If you are in the areas or online, check out her upcoming events:

Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With: ,

Made to Explode by Sandra Beasley

May 20, 2021 by

Source: Purchased
Hardcover, 88 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Made to Explode by Sandra Beasley begins its exploration of American life with the poem, “Heirloom,” which conjures all kinds of sentiments in American thinking. It sets the stage for Beasley’s unraveling of culture taken for granted — the past passed down from one generation to the next (sometimes, it is scrubbed a little cleaner and the dark truth of it requires some digging). In these early poems, Beasley is uncovering the roots of her heritage, a father who was deployed and tries to connect with her but fails to see how she’s grown into a young woman in “Elephant.” He collects things from American icons in places of war, like Hard Rock t-shirts, while she strives to connect with him buying things at a Ranger Surplus store. Despite being family, there is a disconnect between them, they are blindly bumbling through the motions of connection. Isn’t this how many of us feel about our parents — those who have lived longer, different lives from us but have not spoken candidly of that life? A mystery to solve?

"The Conversation" (pg.10-2)
....

                 This
is how history claims us:
not in the gesture of one but
in the conversation of many,
the talk that gets the job done.
....

Without these interactions between ourselves and others that lead to action, aren’t we all forgotten as the present moves on without us? Our moments are so fleeting in the grander scheme of time and history. Beasley is picking through history and uncovering things she didn’t know, like a band in “Nostalgia” that had a name to honor Emmett Till, but spelled the name wrong. In her memory, she recalls the joy of their music, but they kept spelling the boy’s name wrong — this does not sit well.

Beasley’s examination of the past and culture expands to include monuments and figures from history, including Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. She speaks to his “benevolence” regarding his slaves but it is clear that “kindness” extended only so far. Each poem in the collection builds onto the next in a crescendo of unraveling histories, culture lost to a country burying it’s own truth, until a reckoning is all that can be left. She reminds us in “Einstein, Midnight” that “Anything, in the right hands, can be made to explode.”

The final poem echoes C.P. Cavafy’s “Ithaka,” in that Beasley’s journey will be and has been taken through the past, into the present but this journey is not over. Like life and its various moments, we are Made to Explode. Poke into the past and what you thought you knew about yourself and others will definitely be altered, but to blithely live one’s life without examining actions, reactions, past, and present is to have lived a hollow existence without growth, love, loss, and understanding. We cannot build conversation and change without it.

RATING: Cinquain

Check out her panel discussion with Kim Addonizio, Katherine E. Young, and moderator Reuben Jackson at the virtual Gaithersburg Book Festival 2021:

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

Woman Drinking Absinthe by Katherine E. Young

May 19, 2021 by

Source: Purchased
Paperback, 72 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Woman Drinking Absinthe by Katherine E. Young is a visceral collection that explores female sexuality through fantastical elements and realistic situations from a woman chained to a bear to a woman dealing with the phantom limb of heartbreak. Young has crafted an emotional roller coaster that is both visually unsettling in places and emotionally scathing. Readers will become voyeurs as the musician plays his muse in “Interval,” imagining the notes one body can play. But at other times, readers will be thrust into the comfort and pleasure of a balanced relationship and a oneness in “Euclidean Geometry.”

If There Is a Hell (pg. 27)

it resembles this street in shadow, this street
and this streetlamp, where you and I cling
Soul Food (pg. 44-45)

That first time when you hit me,
I marveled at the crack

your hand made as it struck
flat against my face.

I should have known right then:
we were headed straight

Young doesn’t just plunge readers into relationships in motion, but those that are over, on the side, breaking apart, and being observed from the outside (like “Calculus”). Nothing is taboo in this collection. In “Place of Peace,” Young reminds us “All my life’s been lived in shadow, pattern/pieced by someone else: daughter, mother//lover. Whore. …” and “So many battles are accidental.” (pg.49-55)

Woman Drinking Absinthe by Katherine E. Young leaves us with the question of what do you do when the wildness is within us? How do we let it free to feel the wholeness of ourselves without causing deep grief and a sense of loss? Is it all just illusory? Young leaves us with a bunch of existential questions, but her language will haunt us, causing us to return to her poems again and again.

RATING: Cinquain

Check out her panel discussion with Kim Addonizio, Sandra Beasley, and moderator Reuben Jackson at the virtual Gaithersburg Book Festival 2021:

Filed Under: challenges, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, purchased, Read in 2021, reviews Tagged With: , , ,

The Break-Up Book Club by Wendy Wax

May 18, 2021 by

Source: Publisher
Paperback, 384 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

The Break-Up Book Club by Wendy Wax explores the unexpected friendships of a local book club in Atlanta at Between the Covers bookstore. This is an unusual book club where the members have a wide-range of backgrounds and experiences. Former tennis star Jazmine, empty-nester Judith, young assistant Erin, and bookstore assistant Sara are just four members of this eclectic book club that also has an EMT named Chaz, bookstore owner Annell, a budding fashion designer named Carlotta, and Meena, Judith’s best friend.

“It’s enough to make me wonder whether any of the things we think we know about each other are true.”

At the heart of the book is friendship, especially unexpected friendship, but this novel has a more solemn tone to it than some of Wax’s other, more light-hearted books. These women have experienced significant losses and hard times, and many of their secrets are kept close to the vest. While these women meet for book club to unwind and discuss books, the book club itself isn’t the main focus of the book, so much as the development of the characters. Jazmine is a single mother and a sports agent at a local boutique firm, but she’s haunted by the past, which keeps her closed off, ambitious, and focused on protecting her daughter. Judith is an older married woman whose husband seems even more distant, leaving her wondering what’s the next chapter for them until something tragic happens. Sara is the most blindsided of the four women when she discovers a heavy secret her husband has been hiding. Erin, on the other hand, is a young engaged woman who’s loss is for the best in many ways and allows her to blossom into a stronger version of herself.

“It’s strange how you can know people for so long yet only uncover slivers of who they really are and what they’ve been through.”

Wax explores the boundaries of friendship within this book club. Many readers have joined book clubs and have found friendship, fun, and wine, but would you call of the people in your book club a friend? Do you share personal experiences, talk about your heartaches, and delve deeper than the pages of the book to create lasting relationships outside of the book club? These are the questions that Wax explores in her novel, and while I love her lighter, beach reads, it is clear to me that these characters have depth — more so than her other characters — and that the sorrow in these pages is born of real experience.

My only complaint would be that the online dating mystery is wrapped up rather quickly and is too simplified, making it seem like an afterthought or something that was added to make it the book more relevant to today’s dating world. However, The Break-Up Book Club by Wendy Wax is an excellent read that explores friendship and how it can evolve over time as long as you are willing to open yourself up and be vulnerable. Definitely a read you won’t forget.

RATING: Quatrain

About the Author:

Wendy Wax, a former broadcaster, is the author of sixteen novels and two novellas, including My Ex–Best Friend’s Wedding, Best Beach Ever, One Good Thing, Sunshine Beach, A Week at the Lake, While We Were Watching Downton Abbey, The House on Mermaid Point, Ocean Beach, and Ten Beach Road. The mother of two grown sons, she has left the suburbs of Atlanta for an in-town high-rise, that is eerily similar to the fictional high-rise she created in her 2013 release, While We Were Watching Downton Abbey.

Filed Under: ARC, chicklit, fiction, Read in 2021, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,

Mailbox Monday #631

May 17, 2021 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 it’s 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.

Leslie, 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.

ALERT: We’re looking for a new host to help us with MM — if you have experience with WordPress or Mr. Linky, feel free to apply.

Here’s what we received:

These are the books I won on Instagram from Capitol Hill Books and The Literary Hill BookFest:

Blue Laws edited by Kevin Young

Blue Laws gathers poems written over the past two decades, drawing from all nine of Kevin Young’s previously published books of poetry and including a number of uncollected, often unpublished, poems. From his stunning lyric debut (Most Way Home, 1995) and the amazing “double album” life of Jean-Michel Basquiat (2001;”remixed” for Knopf in 2005), through his brokenhearted Jelly Roll: A Blues (2003) and his recent forays into adult grief and the joys of birth in Dear Darkness (2008) and Book of Hours (2014), this collection provides a grand tour of a poet whose personal poems and political poems are equally riveting. Together with wonderful outtakes and previously unseen blues, the profoundly felt poems here of family, Southern food, and loss are of a piece with the depth of personal sensibility and humanity found in his Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels or bold sequences such as “The Ballad of Jim Crow” and a new “Homage to Phillis Wheatley.”

How We Became Human by Joy Harjo

Over a quarter-century’s work from the 2003 winner of the Arrell Gibson Award for Lifetime Achievement.

This collection gathers poems from throughout Joy Harjo’s twenty-eight-year career, beginning in 1973 in the age marked by the takeover at Wounded Knee and the rejuvenation of indigenous cultures in the world through poetry and music. How We Became Human explores its title question in poems of sustaining grace.

Renascence & Other Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The Break-Up Book Club by Wendy Wax for review.

On paper, Jazmine, Judith, Erin and Sara have little in common – they’re very different people leading very different lives. And yet at book club meetings in an historic carriage house turned bookstore, they bond over a shared love of reading (and more than a little wine) as well as the growing realization that their lives are not turning out like they expected.

Former tennis star Jazmine is a top sports agent balancing a career and single motherhood. Judith is an empty nester questioning her marriage and the supporting role she chose. Erin’s high school sweetheart and fiancé develops a bad case of cold feet, and Sara’s husband takes a job out of town saddling Sara with a difficult mother-in-law who believes her son could have done better – not exactly the roommate most women dream of.

With the help of books, laughter, and the joy of ever evolving friendships, Jazmine, Judith, Erin and Sara find the courage to navigate new and surprising chapters of their lives as they seek their own versions of happily-ever-after.

What did you receive?

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

Now We’re Getting Somewhere by Kim Addonizio

May 13, 2021 by

Source: GBF
Paperback, 96 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Now We’re Getting Somewhere by Kim Addonizio is a collection that you can hold close in your shelter-in-place during the pandemic and know that anything that happens behind closed doors is just kalsarikdnnit, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t shut the world out and ignore our problems. Opening with “Night in the Castle,” the narrator has already given up on mercy long ago. The poet infuses this poem with injustice, privilege, and anger, recalling the clashing armies of history and the bleakness of regicide.

The poet is calling our attention to the darkness of humanity, from our clashes among ourselves and the destruction that results to the changing climate we’ve had a hand in expediting. “The earth is about used up/like a sodden tampon & no place to throw it away/” (pg. 14) and “Even the ocean is gasping for air/” (pg. 15), but these are things we already know, yet we are too complacent, too privileged to see that action is required. However, many of us feel as the narrator does in “In bed” that it is all to enormous to tackle head on or deal with daily, we’d rather just put our heads under the covers and ignore it all. We want a hibernation from the ugliness of the world.

But don’t assume that the collection is all doom and gloom, though the humor is a bit dark. My father would definitely appreciate her humor in Résumé:

Résumé 

Families shame you;
Rehab's a scam;
Lovers drain you
And don't give a damn.
Friends are distracted;
Aging stinks;
You'll soon be subtracted;
You might as well drink.

As a writer, I absolutely appreciated the third section of this collection – “Confessional Poetry” — in which writing is compared to “firing a nail gun into the center of a vanity mirror” (pg. 41) or “like sewing rhinestones on your traumas” and “wearing them” at a “pain festival” (pg. 42)

I really like feeling something when I stagger into a poem
& having a place to lie down & cry

Now We’re Getting Somewhere by Kim Addonizio is as much of an introspective emotional and existential journey as it is a confession that we are no where near perfect human beings. We all have a lot of work to do emotionally, spiritually, and philosophically, but as we struggle with these internal paradigms, we’re also watching the world suffer around us and degrade. How do we break through the malaise and paralysis to make progress with ourselves and the world? Perhaps by being less serious about everything, allowing ourselves to fall apart, and taking action that makes actual progress as opposed to the actions that people deem as “making progress.”

RATING: Cinquain

Check out her panel discussion with Sandra Beasley, Katherine E. Young, and moderator Reuben Jackson at the 2021 Gaithersburg Book Festival:

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

How To Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi (audio)

May 12, 2021 by

Source: Purchased
Audible, 10+ hrs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, read by the author, is a phenomenal listen. I want to read the book as well in print. Kendi has the perfect voice for this book, and it makes the personal stories far more relateable. Much of this resonated with me because I grew up in the 1990s and I saw many of these phenomena that Kendi talks about. The idea that “color” is no longer seen is obviously ridiculous, but the sentiment is even more trying when systemic processes and socialization force us to “see” color as thug or criminal or worthy of the benefit of the doubt or forgiveness, etc.

“The hate that hate produced. … More hatred makes them more powerful,” Kendi says. He himself is a victim of this, enabling the racist policies and power to continue and gain strength. Hating white people becomes hating black people and vice versa, he adds. His arguments can be convoluted and circular in his narration, which is another reason, I’d like to read the text because I tend to absorb these kinds of concepts better in print than audio. I was particularly fascinated by his conclusion that white supremacy is actually a nuclear ideology that is anti-human because many of the policies it opposes actually would have helped their poor white brethren, so the question is which white people are supreme? Those with more money, at least so it seems from the examples provided by Kendi.

Kendi also reminds us that we often look for theories and evidence that validates our points of view or biases. None of us are immune to it, but we can be watchful for data that caters to those biases and learn how to see through the fog. The story of Kendi in college coming to a conclusion that white people are aliens and that’s why they hate blacks is an illustrate of this point. What we need to understand is that racism is the lumping of one group of people into a group to be looked down upon or turned into the “enemy” or “evil” other. We all have the power to protest racist policies, no matter where in the power structure we are.

The only drawback for me was that Kendi tends to get sidetracked and the narrative becomes convoluted, which muddles the message in some ways. His narrative also is far from linear. I do like how he personalized his examples to demonstrate that all people are capable of racism. This is a message we all need to hear and understand, so that we can be prepared to move away from racism as the human race.

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi reminds us not to fall under the mind control of white supremacy that we have no power — if they control your thinking, they control you. These are wise words. Now, if you are looking for a practical guide on how to accomplish real change in policy and processes, this is not the book for you. What you need is to take the lessons in this book about identifying racism and resisting those policies, affecting change, and standing up to the oppression of yourself and others.

RATING: Quatrain

Filed Under: audiobooks, challenges, New Authors Challenge, nonfiction, purchased, Read in 2021, Reference, reviews Tagged With: , ,

Little Wars by W. Luther Jett

May 11, 2021 by

Source: Purchased
Paperback, 32 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Little Wars by W. Luther Jett (full disclosure: we are in a poetry work-shopping group together) begins with “Recessional” a poem-like hymn in which a poet realizes that he works on a poem in night as many men before him have done and that they are all connected to one another in infinite time and space and that all of these poets are these poems. This poem sets up the rest of the collection’s theme of universality and how the little wars we wage with ourselves and others have come before and likely will continue, but for the hope that we can change and be more peaceful. The slivers of light, the blue of the sky, all of these images provide us the glimpse of hope on a distant horizon.

From "Storm Bear" (pg. 14)

...With great claws,
it scattered sand, wiped away the line
we'd drawn between desire
and circumstance. Roaring,
the storm fell upon us, ...

Wars can begin just like that; a tipping point of rage that wipes it all away, moving into the unchecked desire (for more power, for revenge, etc.). The trembling of these battles whether in the past or far from us still can be heard, if we listen close, like the narrator of “Poppies” — the reverberations remain — the consequences spiral out and are an influence on today, this moment. “We didn’t know there are no/little wars–no distance/we cannot reduce to nothing.//” (“Vanishing Point/Ach Du” pg. 17)

And “A War Story” explains just how we, ourselves, can be reduced to nothing by war — the war itself may seem large and incomprehensible, but the impact is very real, very personal. “Epitaph,” which follows it, is equally devastating in its truth about praising the dead as heroes when they would more than likely prefer to be alive and left unpraised for doing simple things you’d do normally without war at your doorstep.

Little Wars by W. Luther Jett reminds us of all the costs of war and that “we choose” to make them. What would happen if we chose another path? Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

RATING: Cinquain

Other Reviews:

Filed Under: challenges, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, purchased, Read in 2021, reviews Tagged With: , ,

Mailbox Monday #630

May 10, 2021 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 it’s 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.

Leslie, 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.

ALERT: We’re looking for a new host to help us with MM — if you have experience with WordPress or Mr. Linky, feel free to apply.

Here’s what we received:

Little Wars by W. Luther Jett, which I purchased from Kelsay Books.

You have in your hands poems of a mournful witness-nearly all evoke a tone of bitterness over the devastation and trauma of endless wars. The book’s ironic title is a purposeful oxymoron: “there are no / little wars-no distance / we cannot reduce to nothing.” Luther Jett’s poetry voices itself in precise diction and nuanced rhythms that grab hold of your attention and do not let go.

-Merrill Leffler, Author of Mark the Music

Compassion-both its presence and its absence-interests W. Luther Jett. His previous collections Not Quite: Poems Written in Search of My Father and Our Situation explored trauma and healing. Little Wars digs for the roots of pain in the twentieth century’s geopolitical conflicts, from World War II to Bosnia. The people in these poems go about their daily lives as the bombs fall, trying-and too often failing-to retain their human connection, deepening “the wound we make of breathing.” Jett’s sorrow pours out in the tones of an Old Testament prophet or catches, choking, in his throat. In this raw-edged, lyrical collection, Jett absolves no one: the fault is ” . . . ours, ours, and ours alone, our making / because we refuse to make stars / out of the coals / that burn in our hearts.”

-Katherine E. Young, Author of Woman Drinking Absinthe and Day of the Border Guards , Poet Laureate Emerita, Arlington, VA

Little Wars is a moving and deeply disturbing series of poems. From the poppies symbolizing the dead soldiers of World War I to the destruction of the Mostar Bridge in the Bosnian War, Jett recounts “the cities leveled and the fields / upchurned” in war’s path. The ubiquity of current combat, ever rumbling, is in these poignant pages too, and the survivors always left “waiting / for the siren’s blast, the tramp / of boots along the stairs.”

-Kim Roberts, Author of A Literary Guide to Washington, DC

My Audible Downloads:


What did you receive?

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

Advanced Lift-the-Flap: How Your Body Works by Rosie Dickins

May 6, 2021 by

Source: Purchased
Hardcover, 16 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

How Your Body Works by Rosie Dickins from Usborne is full of information in easily digestible chunks for young kids. From the organs to growth and eating, this book covers a lot. Some of the book covers nutrition and the importance of exercise, but there is a lot about immunity, germs (good and bad), and about different levels of maturing the body goes through.

My daughter could read most of this on her own as an elementary school student, which is great because it provides her with interesting facts, real microscopic images of the tongue and other things, and engaged her. She was eager to lift the flaps to learn more, and she was excited to share what she learned with the rest of the family.

The book is visually engaging with full-color images of the body and germs and other things. How Your Body Works by Rosie Dickins is a book that children can read over and over. It’s definitely a fun way to introduce important topics like eating healthy and exercising as well as puberty to young kids. My daughter enjoys science, and this book really held her attention, even when she knew some of the facts already from school.

RATING: Cinquain

Filed Under: nonfiction, purchased, Read in 2021, Reference, reviews Tagged With: , ,