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Any Dumb Animal by AE Hines

Source: Purchased
Paperback, 88 pgs.
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Any Dumb Animal by AE Hines, which toured with Poetic Book Tours, is a compact powerhouse of poems where the poet tackles his demons, the rejection of his father, becoming at father himself, turning 50, and so much more. Hines is brave in these poems where he lays bare his fears, heartbreaks, and deep regrets, but these poems also offer glimmers of light, love, and hope.

***Be aware that some of the poems can be triggering if you’ve suffered abuse, trauma, and hate because of your sexual orientation.***

“Phone Call” opens the collection with a harrowing experience of a father pinning his son to floor after dragging him from his bed and squeezing his hands in the hardware store, as if force could mold him into what his father wishes him to be. However, Hines’ torment doesn’t stop there as he finds himself with a marriage counselor and a spouse who diminishes him in the same way. This poem explores trauma and how that trauma lasts years and years unless it is addressed.

In “How We Learn,” we find Hines has some anxieties: “Having nearly drowned as a child,/having been terrified to leave/the confines of dry land, I already knew/a thing or two about avoiding/the obvious dangers./” (pg. 5) But here we see a father “tossing” him “into the deep end of pools”. This dynamic between father and son is the anchor of the collection and a trauma that infects all of the other relationships he speaks about until he has come to terms with his deep-seated pain.

I don’t want to go into too much detail about these poems because you should read these poems for yourself. Any Dumb Animal by AE Hines is devastating all the more so because these personal experiences will make your heart break.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Poet:

AE Hines (he/him) grew up in rural North Carolina and currently resides in Portland, Oregon. His poetry has been widely published in anthologies and literary journals including I-70 Review, Sycamore Review, Tar River Poetry, Potomac Review, Atlanta Review, Crosswinds Poetry Journal and Crab Creek Review. He is winner of the Red Wheelbarrow Prize and has been a finalist for the Montreal International Poetry Prize. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Writing at Pacific University. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

Poetry Activity: Cento (Patchwork) Poem

Check out Write Shop for more on Cento poems

The Cento is one of the easiest poems to create because it is a collage of poetic lines from other poets’ poems.

According to the Academy of American Poets, John Asbury’s “The Dong with the Luminous Nose” and Peter Gizzi’s “Ode: Salute to the New York School” are two of the most famous Cento poems.

Please feel free to check out other examples, here.

For our cento, I’d love for everyone to take a look at my starting line and add their own (please identify the poem and poet):

How dreary – to be – Somebody! (Emily Dickinson, “I’m Nobody! Who are you? – 260)

Add your lines in the comments and I’ll post the full cento at month’s end.

Virtual Poetry Circle: Naomi Shihab Nye

Hello everyone! It’s National Poetry Month and in honor of April as Stress Awareness Month, I wanted to share one of my favorite poems from Naomi Shihab Nye.

Sometimes There Is A Day

Sometimes there is a day you just want
to get far away from.
Feel it shrink inside you like an island,
as if you were on a boat.
I always wish to be on a boat.
Then, maybe, no more fighting
about land. I want that day to feel
as if it never happened, when Ahmad was burned,
when people were killed, when my cousin was shot.
The day someone went to jail
is not a day that shines. I want to have a clear mind
again, as a baby who stares at the light
wisping through the window and thinks,
That’s mine.

In this poem, I see that island. Maybe there’s a large erupting volcano, much like the stress we can face from war, pandemics, etc. Even little eruptions that strike fear and deep loss in us, like the bills piling up or the dead end job or family drama, can seem overwhelming. In this poem, we get to journey away from that island on a boat, watch that stress shrink until we are babies discovering the world anew.

What are some of your favorite poems that provide you stress in times of solace or just speak to you about stress/turmoil in general?

Poetry Events: Roundup of Weekend Poetry Events

I wanted to share some poetry events that are happening today and throughout the weekend. There’s a mix of online events and in-person events for your pleasure.

I hope you’ll check out some of these poets:

In Person Events near Washington, D.C.:

Busboys & Poets presents 9th Hour Poetry Slam hosted by Charity Blackwell at 2021 14th St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20009 (April 8 at 9 p.m.) Bring something to read.

DiVerse Gaithersburg presents Pamela Murray Winters and Rocky Jones at Java Junction 5 S Summit Ave, Gaithersburg, MD 20877 (April 9 at 1:30 p.m.) Bring something to read at the open mic.

Politics & Prose presents a Poetry Panel with Danielle Badra, Carol Jennings, Phil Goldstein and Angelo Nikolopoulos at 5015 Connecticut Ave NW Washington, D.C. 20008 (April 10 at 3 p.m.)

America Poetry Museum presents the Where We Stand: Book Launch (my review) at 716 Monroe St NE #25th, Washington, D.C. 20017 (April 10 at 3 p.m.)

Online:

Indelible Literary and Arts Journal presentsPoetry and the Diaspora with André Naffis-Sahely, Anthony Anaxagorou, Antonia Taylor, Maria Taylor, Omar Sabbagh, Roula-Maria Dib, Kostya Tsolakis via Zoom (April 8 at 11 a.m.)

If you know of any and would like me to share them, please email me the details and I can update this post.

I’d love to hear about what events are near you.

Surviving Home by Katerina Canyon

Source: Book Publicity Services
Paperback, 108 pgs.
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Surviving Home by Katerina Canyon is a collection of poems that reflect on how home is not always the haven many of us feel that it is or should be. “The vast dark but sunlight-speckled ocean/While knowing they have everywhere/And nowhere in the world to flee.//” (from “Involuntary Endurance,” pg. 13)

The opening poems of this collection explore the dark shadows of home, and the narrator often tells us that they wish for a “happy ending,” but these are not those kinds of poems. Canyon unflinchingly explores the scars of abuse, neglect, and the fear that propels the narrator to consider suicide. “I held the knife in my hand/I propped open the blade/I sharpened it against petrified wood/But I could not slice my flesh//” (from “I Wish I Could Tell You This Has a Happy Ending,” pg. 15) The poems also explore what it means to be a woman and a Black woman in a white world.

These poems make you weep. In “Thoracic Biology,” the narrator says, “For the most part I want to learn to let go,/to hurt a little less./My heart is what hurts the most.//Where did I learn to/breathe through the pain, to/cut off the sword piercing through//” I find that I do this; try to breathe through the pain of whatever moment I’m in. Where did we learn to do that? Why is it OK that we need to do this? My experiences are not the same as Canyon’s or any other Black person, but I empathize with those feelings of deep loss, fear, and emptiness. These poems make you want to take action; reach inside these lines and pull these young children out and protect them from harm.

At 13, I found a Bra

...
Along my Sierras grows an
    orchard of knowledge of good
    and evil. I take my beatings. I 
    bind myself in woman's hood.

I hook the clasps
along my curved spine.
Only the band knows
the stress of my heart.

I am told every woman 
pays her debt with pain.

    When the daffodil opens,
    the last breath of childhood releases.

Canyon asks the reader how can we survive home when it is at the root of so much trauma? Shall we keep on praying as the narrator suggests in “A Plea to the Inane”? Or do we “hold my brother’s hand./I clench my breath./His scream lowers to a bleat.//” (pg. 47, “All Day Long”)? How can so much pain not force us to go crazy, to lose our minds? Surviving Home by Katerina Canyon is a harsh look at abuse, racism, gender discrimination, and so much more; it is a testament to survival and what it means to hold hands and push through the pain and into the light.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Poet:

Katerina Canyon is a 2020 and 2019 Pushcart Prize Nominee. Her stories have been published in New York Times and Huffington Post. From 2000 to 2003, she served as the Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga. During that time, she started a poetry festival and ran several poetry readings.

She was featured in the Los Angeles Times and was awarded the Montesi Award from Saint Louis University in 2011, 2012, and 2013. She has published multiple chapbooks and an album.

Useful Junk by Erika Meitner

Source: GBF
Paperback, 104 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Useful Junk by Erika Meitner is a poetic exploration of memory and desire, but also a collection of perspectives on the body and how it is seen and what it sees. The collection opens with the poem, “I would like to be the you in someone’s poem.” Here, Meitner’s narrator expresses a desire to be seen in all her glory and quirkiness, even if it is just a fiction.

When you enter this collection, you’re in a surreal world where the poet explores what the junk mail knows about us and our finances, but also what junk mail fails to know about our feral nature and our desires to be wanted and seen with all of our flaws. Meitner’s poems offer vignettes of “multitudinous and wild pasts” and our many futures. “don’t you worry about how/scattered memory gets (pick-up-sticks, a box//of buttons, shards of plastic beached across/an entire coastline) and how we’re just trying//to find the origin,” (from “All the Past and Futures” pg. 18-9)

She tells us in “Medium Adam 25”: “I am not an abstracted/self in the wet night. I am not a static/enterprise either, and as I move through//time and space, many things are vanishing/in exchange for a wanting with no end…” Isn’t it the truth of each of us. We are not this abstract perception that others have of us; we are fluid and changing even if it isn’t as obvious by our physical selves — though those change too.

Useful Junk by Erika Meitner is intimate and existential all at once, and readers will swim in the morass and indulge in memory and perception imparted with quick wit and contemplative angst. Meitner provides us with a bridge between our memories and their changing patterns and our desires to be seen coupled with the anxiety of how we are perceived by others and ourselves.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Poet:

Erika Meitner was born and raised in Queens and Long Island, New York. She attended Dartmouth College (for a BA in Creative Writing and Literature), Hebrew University on a Reynolds Scholarship, and the University of Virginia, where she received her MFA in Creative Writing as a Henry Hoyns Fellow, and her MA in Religious Studies as a Morgenstern Fellow in Jewish Studies.

Poetry Activity: Texting Poems

I love to share fun and inspiring poetry creation activities, and one of my favorites is still to come. But as I was checking around for new activities, I came across one for students that I think writers might enjoy trying.

We all know how to text each other on our phones at this point, so how about we create a text poem in the form of couplets.

  • Couplets: two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme, that form a unit

For this writing exercise, you can choose something conversational you would have with a friend and write just 2 lines with the same meter (usually we speak in Iambic pentameter) and a rhyme.

There’s also this Rhyming Couplet Generator, though it is a bit more formal.

We can start a conversation in the comments if you’re up for it.

Here’s my attempt:

I walked at dawn in the orange glow.
My boots crunched on icy snow.

Something very simple for your Tuesday!

Local D.C. Event: Gallery Opening of Photopoetry by Gordana Gerskovic, Serena Agusto-Cox, and More

What: Opening Reception of Photopoetry
When: Sunday, April 3 at 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Where: Foundry Gallery at 2118 8th Street NW, Washington, D.C.

Two of my poems have been paired with Gordana Gerskovic‘s wonderful art. I hope that if you are in the area, you’ll drop by the opening reception on April 3.

Also featured:

We will host a reading later in the month.

Virtual Poetry Circle: Nikki Giovanni

 

Hello everyone! It’s National Poetry Month and in honor of Women’s History Month in March, I wanted to share one of my favorite Nikki Giovanni poems.




Legacies

her grandmother called her from the playground   
       “yes, ma’am”
       “i want chu to learn how to make rolls” said the old   
woman proudly
but the little girl didn’t want
to learn how because she knew
even if she couldn’t say it that
that would mean when the old one died she would be less   
dependent on her spirit so
she said
       “i don’t want to know how to make no rolls”
with her lips poked out
and the old woman wiped her hands on
her apron saying “lord
       these children”
and neither of them ever
said what they meant
and i guess nobody ever does

I love how the exchange here between the older woman and the girl is simple. It is a normal conversation between an elder looking to teach a child and a child’s response, but there is that undercurrent of fear and connection that I love so much about this poem.

The child wants to stay connected to this woman, but knows that death is nearing for her and she hopes that by rejecting the teaching, she can stave off that inevitable moment and disconnection.

What are some of your favorite poems celebrating women?

National Poetry Month 2022

This is the 2022 winner of The Academy of American Poets poster contest. Lara L. is an eleventh grader from Saunders Trades and Technical High School in Yonkers, New York.

As always, poetry is coming this month on the blog. I am eager to share poetic events and some poetry with everyone.

I’ll be at the Foundry Gallery on April 3 for an opening reception for photographs from Gordana Geršković and poems created by myself and other local poets. Our poetry reading will be on April 24.

On April 23, I’ll be participating in a National Poetry Month celebration through an online virtual reading. More details to come.

On May 1, I’ll be at Tunnicliff’s Tavern reading with other Poets on the Patio for Literary Hill BookFest.

I’d love to hear what you have planned to celebrate poetry this month.
Add your links or comments below:

Final Thoughts: National Poetry Month 2021

Each poetry month, I tend to take up the write a poem a day challenge, but I didn’t. I knew that I would be super busy with work and with the Gaithersburg Book Festival, which starts May 1 online at the YouTube channel.

But I sorely missed writing every day this month. I don’t write every day normally, but I missed it in April because I do try to do it every year. I have written a few things and revised a couple things, but I have one giant revision/reworking that I’ve been avoiding. I really need to talk it out with Anna since she knows how the poem germinated in the first place.

Poem in Your Pocket day (April 29) saw Alan Squire Publishing get creative with their own 7 Upbeat Poems from their authors. Printable and shareable.

I saw this poem on Button Poetry; I just love their posts — (be prepared this has some harsh language and triggering moments for bisexuals and others) — they are always powerful readings:

How did your National Poetry Month go? Did you read any great poems? Poets? Find any collections you loved? Share in the comments.

Interview with Karen Lyon, columnist at Hill Rag and founder of The Literary Hill BookFest

When: May 2, 2021,  at 11:00 a.m. Where: Online

The Literary Hill BookFest is going to be virtual again this year on Sunday, May 2, at 11:00 a.m.

Since you won’t have to travel to Washington D.C., why not begin your day with some fiction writers, poets, and children’s authors.

I’m very excited to be part of this event for the first time as part of Poets on the Patio. View my recording here and stay tuned on May 2 at 1:45 p.m. for my appearance.

Today’s guest is Karen Lyon who writes the column Literary Hill at Hill Rag.

We’ll be talking with her about her love of books and the festival. Please give Karen a warm welcome.

Savvy Verse & Wit: After writing your column in The Hill Rag for a decade, what prompted you to consider transporting that content into a live event for the D.C. area given the number of festivals already available, including the Maryland-based Gaithersburg Book Festival, Fall for the Book at George Mason University in Virginia, and the National Book Festival in D.C.?

Photo Credit: Bruce Guthrie; Literary Hill BookFest 2016

Karen Lyon: Actually, I got talked into it by some friends who thought that Capitol Hill needed its own book festival. There are so many writers who live on the Hill, whether drawn here to do research at the Library of Congress or just because they find it a rich and beautiful neighborhood. Evidence the fact that, in the 20 years I’ve been doing my column, which now features 2-4 reviews per month, I’ve never been in danger of running out of authors.

And it’s really nice to bring them together once a year so they can meet each other, as well as attracting potential readers. Many of the writers have told me how much they enjoy the live event and how special it is that it’s a neighborhood affair. They’re all very eager to get back to meeting in person.

Photo Credit: Bruce Guthrie from Literary Hill BookFest 2017

SVW: Tell us about your favorite childhood book and/or when you met your favorite author for the first time. What were your feelings? What do you remember the most about that and did you have those memories in mind when drafting plans for the first BookFest?

KL: I loved mystery novels as a kid—still do—so when I first approached Melissa Ashabranner about doing something for the Hill Rag and, in the course of our talk, she told me that the great Martha Grimes lived on the Hill, I was absolutely beside myself.

At that point, of course, I was far too intimidated to interview her in person, so I faxed her questions (back in the low-tech days) and she graciously faxed her answers back to me.

My first in-person interview was with the also great Louis Bayard, who, in addition to being a fabulous writer, is one of the kindest, funniest, and most generous guys you’ll ever meet. He gave me the confidence to keep at it—and eventually I did meet and interview Ms. Grimes, as well as many other well-known writers who lived here at the time.

Now I confine myself to book reviews rather than the labor-intensive interviews. Alas, Martha Grimes no longer lives on Capitol Hill (and, hooray, Lou Bayard now serves on the BookFest board!).

Photo Credit: Bruce Guthrie; Literary Hill BookFest 2019 (Jona Colson)

SVW: What have been some of your favorite memories from the live, in-person Literary Hill BookFests?

KL: It’s not exactly a favorite, but I think one of my most vivid memories is from the first year, which, as you can imagine, was fraught. None of us knew what we were doing and it made for many sleepness nights (and the occasional “good cry”). My husband Ed and I were both working full time then and trying to fit “BookFest” in here and there—just as Liz and her husband Dan are doing this year, so we appreciate the enormous effort it takes.

I lost almost eight pounds, both from the physical labor as well as the stress. I remember as we were closing down the event that day, I was stumbling around like a zombie looking for trash to pick up when one of the writers came up to me, all perky and enthusiastic, and said, “This was great! You’re going to do it again next year, right?” Uh…

Nevertheless we persisted—and over time, we figured more things out and got more people to help us, so we were able to relax (sort of, not really) and enjoy many rewarding moments.

Getting to meet the authors whom I feel I already know through their books–and seeing their faces light up when I introduce myself–has to be one of the most gratifying things ever. Being able to give local writers a venue and help publicize their work is what keeps me going.

SVW: As many other festivals were forced to do, Literary Hill BookFest went virtual in 2020, what do you think made the festival stand out from other festivals that went virtual that year? What were some lessons learned from that experience that you’re applying to this year’s festival?

KL: I have to confess that I didn’t check out the competition, but I thought Liz and Dan did an absolutely superb job of showcasing our Hill authors.

Photo Credit: Bruce Guthrie; Literary Hill BookFest 2018 (Ethelbert Miller)

The panel discussion, poetry reading, and everything else about the event—including the ukulele interlude—just blew me away.

My technical skills are pretty much limited to word processing, so I never in a million years could have done it. In fact, even once we do get back to an in-person event, I see their amazing website as being a continuing and very important component of the BookFest.

It allows for more intimate presentations by the authors as well as a much broader scope of visitors, who can access it from wherever they are and well beyond a three-hour window in May.

SVW: What are you most looking forward to at this year’s virtual Literary Hill BookFest?

KL: I think our discussion topics this year are particularly ripe for some interesting commentary. I can’t wait to hear what our authors have to say about how children’s literature can dismantle divisions, how they find literary inspiration in D.C., and how nonfiction can tackle social issues. Those alone should make for some fascinating discussions, but we’ve also got a nature writing workshop and one on what makes a great opening line, as well as the always popular live poetry reading.

It’s going to be another great day for books and authors on Capitol Hill—and, thanks to technology, everywhere else as well. It’s wonderful to be able to invite friends and family from around the country to tune it.

We may even get a woman from my Zoom exercise class who lives in Croatia!

Photo Credit: Bruce Guthrie; Literary Hill BookFest 2014

Thank you, Karen, for agreeing to an interview. I can’t wait to see everyone there (online)!

About the Columnist and Founder:

Karen Lyon writes the Literary Hill column for the Hill Rag and served as president of the Literary Hill BookFest in its initial years. She formerly worked at the Folger Shakespeare Library as assistant to the director and as a writer for Folger Magazine specializing in articles about everyday life in Shakespeare’s time.