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Guest Post: Daydreaming Is the Thing by Mary Salisbury, author of Side Effects of Wanting

November 15, 2022 by

Today’s guest is Mary Salisbury, who has a new book out from Main Street Rag. Let’s learn about Side Effects of Wanting:

Side Effects, Mary Salisbury’s impressive debut collection, introduces a writer whose voice compels and enchants, its quiet and subtle vibrancy pitch perfect, story after story, and intensified by the quietness that surrounds each. Stories of love, longing, and loss, and behind each the writer’s charitable heart, and an observing eye that misses nothing. ~Jack Driscoll, author of The Goat Fish and the Lover’s Knot

Compelling and remarkably honest, Side Effects of Wanting investigates the sharper edges of our unique emotional landscapes in a series of exciting, accessible stories that explore both the strengths and frailties of the human condition in its varied aspects—personal identity, grief, fractured relationships, the ghosts of the past, transformation, and slowly mending hearts. Weaving together small-town stories filled with secrets, hardships, and that ever-present ache of almost becoming the person you want to be, Mary Salisbury tenderly renders heartbreaking narratives in which characters reach out to be loved, to be understood, and to finally feel safe. ~John Sibley Williams, author of As One Fire Consumes Another

Mary Salisbury’s stories are infused with the precision of a poet and the wisdom of a deep thinker, amounting to some of the best stories I’ve read about milestone matters of the heart, everyday regrets with life-altering outcomes, and the painful nuances of long-haul love. Side Effects of Wanting not only invites us in, it lets us laugh and cry while we watch on the edge of our seats as lovers, siblings, parents, and co-workers face private, universally relatable conundrums head-on. ~Katey Schultz, author of Still Come Home

Thank you, Mary, for stopping by today to share your thoughts on the creative process.

Daydreaming is part of writing to me. When I was young I climbed trees on our elm-lined street in Flint, Michigan, and hid so I could daydream in peace. My secret dream was to be a songwriter or a back-up singer.

Music was what captivated me, the music of the mid-60’s—Motown was the thing. In my Catholic school it was all plaid skirts and white shirts and daydreaming was not considered a prerequisite to good writing or to singing. But I knew in my heart that it was.

I read the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. I found the poetry of William Carlos Williams, and more, as I grew into my teens. I began to write poetry of my own, and I continued to write poems and stories as I got older and raised children and worked as a registered nurse.

No, I did not become a back-up singer, but I’d still like to be one. My love of music and my love of reading allowed me to enter the world of other worlds and I kept writing so that I could be there, in those other worlds.

As an adult I worked and lived in a small town in Southern Oregon and absorbed the life and natural world around me. I witnessed the act of quiet heroes—people who got out of bed every day and did what was necessary, despite their troubles. These are the people who populate my stories.

I wrote in the car, waiting for my children’s soccer, baseball, or basketball practice to end. I wrote in the library, or early in the morning before the day began. That’s the thing about writing—you only need a notebook and a pen.

I had my first book of short stories published two days before I turned seventy. Writing has sustained me through loss and love. If you love writing, if you need to write, keep writing, and always keep reading. They go together like lyrics and melody.

About the Author:

Mary Salisbury’s short fiction has been published in Cutthroat’s Truth to Power, The Whitefish Review, Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, and Flash Fiction Magazine. Salisbury’s essay on writing was featured in Fiction Southeast. Two of Salisbury’s chapbooks, Come What May, and Scarlet Rain Boots, were published by Finishing Line Press, and her poetry has appeared in Calyx. Salisbury is an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship recipient and a graduate of Pacific University’s MFA in writing program.

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Any Dumb Animal by AE Hines

April 13, 2022 by

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

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.

Filed Under: challenges, Events, national poetry month, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, purchased, Read in 2022, reviews Tagged With: , , ,

Mailbox Monday #659

November 29, 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 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:

The Drowning House by John Sibley Williams for review.

THE DROWNING HOUSE by John Sibley Williams is the winner of the 2020 Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award. Contest judge, John A. Nieves, had this to say about it: “In the dark and shifting world of THE DROWNING HOUSE, Sibley Williams dives deep to try to understand the ghosts of our country and our historyóthe violence inherent in displacement, in wiping away. The poems that populate this doomed architecture reach out in every direction to try to find purchase on truths that often shift a quickly as tides. Whether music or fire or flesh, these poems find the worn seams of our nation and our world and lay them bare, or as Sibley Williams writes: ‘Skin can be its own broken republic.’ This collection explores the depths it engages and challenges us all not to look away.”

Your Words Your World by Louise Belanger for review.

Poetry For Your Soul – Stunning Photographs

Zoom to Heaven
The most beautiful love poem
Where God is not there
Promises…
A handful of cloud
Clowns…
During the night

These are some of the titles of the poetry you will read in this beautiful, inspiring collection complemented by captivating nature photographs.

Read poems about God and having a relationship with Him. Poems about trust, missing a loved one, childhood memories, Christmas, Heaven, Easter…

Other poems are lovely stories, the length of a page.

The poetry is easy to understand. It is for everyone whether poetry is your genre or not, you will enjoy it.

Ariadne Awakes, Instructions for the Labyrinth by Laura Costas for review.

Labyrinthian prose poems that question the Minotaur legend and who is the actual hero.

 

 

Useful Junk by Erika Meitner for review.

In her previous five collections of poetry, Erika Meitner has established herself as one of America’s most incisive observers, cherished for her remarkable ability to temper catastrophe with tenderness. In her newest collection Useful Junk, Meitner considers what it means to be a sexual being in a world that sees women as invisible—as mothers, customers, passengers, worshippers, wives. These poems render our changing bodies as real and alive, shaped by the sense memories of long-lost lovers and the still thrilling touch of a spouse after years of parenthood, affirming that we are made of every intimate moment we have ever had. Letter poems to a younger poet interspersed throughout the collection question desire itself and how new technologies—Uber, sexting, Instagram—are reframing self-image and shifting the ratios of risk and reward in erotic encounters.

With dauntless vulnerability, Meitner travels a world of strip malls, supermarkets, and subway platforms, remaining porous and open to the world, always returning to the intimacies rooted deep within the self as a shout against the dying earth. Boldly affirming that pleasure is a vital form of knowledge, Useful Junk reminds us that our selves are made real and beautiful by our embodied experiences and that our desire is what keeps us alive.

Each Tiny Spark by Pablo Cartaya, purchased for my daughter.

Emilia Torres has a wandering mind. It’s hard for her to follow along at school, and sometimes she forgets to do what her mom or abuela asks. But she remembers what matters: a time when her family was whole and home made sense. When Dad returns from deployment, Emilia expects that her life will get back to normal. Instead, it unravels.

Dad shuts himself in the back stall of their family’s auto shop to work on an old car. Emilia peeks in on him daily, mesmerized by his welder. One day, Dad calls Emilia over. Then, he teaches her how to weld. And over time, flickers of her old dad reappear.

But as Emilia finds a way to repair the relationship with her father at home, her community ruptures with some of her classmates, like her best friend, Gus, at the center of the conflict.

Small Spaces by Katherine Arden, purchased for my daughter.

After suffering a tragic loss, eleven-year-old Ollie who only finds solace in books discovers a chilling ghost story about a girl named Beth, the two brothers who loved her, and a peculiar deal made with “the smiling man”—a sinister specter who grants your most tightly held wish, but only for the ultimate price.
Captivated by the tale, Ollie begins to wonder if the smiling man might be real when she stumbles upon the graves of the very people she’s been reading about on a school trip to a nearby farm. Then, later, when her school bus breaks down on the ride home, the strange bus driver tells Ollie and her classmates: “Best get moving. At nightfall they’ll come for the rest of you.” Nightfall is, indeed, fast descending when Ollie’s previously broken digital wristwatch begins a startling countdown and delivers a terrifying message: RUN.
Only Ollie and two of her classmates heed these warnings. As the trio head out into the woods—bordered by a field of scarecrows that seem to be watching them—the bus driver has just one final piece of advice for Ollie and her friends: “Avoid large places. Keep to small.”
And with that, a deliciously creepy and hair-raising adventure begins.

Dead Voices by Katherine Arden, purchased for my daughter.

Having survived sinister scarecrows and the malevolent smiling man in Small Spaces, newly minted best friends Ollie, Coco, and Brian are ready to spend a relaxing winter break skiing together with their parents at Mount Hemlock Resort. But when a snowstorm sets in, causing the power to flicker out and the cold to creep closer and closer, the three are forced to settle for hot chocolate and board games by the fire.

Ollie, Coco, and Brian are determined to make the best of being snowed in, but odd things keep happening. Coco is convinced she has seen a ghost, and Ollie is having nightmares about frostbitten girls pleading for help. Then Mr. Voland, a mysterious ghost hunter, arrives in the midst of the storm to investigate the hauntings at Hemlock Lodge. Ollie, Coco, and Brian want to trust him, but Ollie’s watch, which once saved them from the smiling man, has a new cautionary message: BEWARE.

With Mr. Voland’s help, Ollie, Coco, and Brian reach out to the dead voices at Mount Hemlock. Maybe the ghosts need their help–or maybe not all ghosts can or should be trusted.

Spider-Ham: Great Power, No Responsibility by Steve Foxe and Shadia Amin, purchased for my daughter.

Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham (and breakout character from Into the Spider-Verse), arrives in this all-new, original graphic novel for younger readers!

Experience a laugh-out-loud day in the life of Spider-Ham! After long being derided by the citizens of New York, Spider-Ham has finally been recognized for his outsized contribution to the city’s safety, and receives the key to the city from none other than the mayor (and, being a cartoon universe, the key actually unlocks New York City’s political and financial institutions). Sure, it’s just a publicity stunt for the beleaguered mayor-and yeah, maybe every single other super hero was busy that day — but an award is an award!

Of course, Spider-Ham isn’t paying attention to the fine print telling him he didn’t actually get to keep the key, and he swings off without returning the highly coveted oversized object. The next day, when the mayor’s office finally gets in touch to ask for the key back, Spider-Ham realizes he must have dropped it sometime in the last 24 hours. YIKES.

Now, our notoriously empty-headed hero must retrace his steps from the past day, following his own trail to discover where he dropped the key before it falls into villainous hands. Did he lose it during a rooftop chase with the Black Catfish? Drop it in the middle of a tussle with the Green Gobbler? Leave it behind while visiting Croctor Strange’s magic mansion? Accidentally store it next to May Porker’s vacuum cleaner? Who knows? You’ll have to read to find out! But one thing’s for sure — Great Power, No Responsibility is an action-packed, hilarious adventure perfect for younger readers.

Any Dumb Animal by A.E. Hines, which I purchased as part of the pre-sale fundraiser for The Trevor Project, as it toured with Poetic Book Tours.

Any Dumb Animal (Main Street Rag, 2021), the debut poetry collection by AE Hines, presents a memoir-in-verse as told by a gay man raised in the rural South who comes of age during the AIDS crisis. Flashing back and forth in time, a cast of recurring characters and circumstances are woven into a rich tale of survival and redemption, exploring one man’s life as a queer son, father, and husband, over a span of more than thirty years. Editorial Reviews: “The poems in AE Hines’ debut collection, Any Dumb Animal, move deftly in time, like the best of memoirs, shuttling back and forth between past and present. I was amazed over and over at the bravery of these poems, never shying from the difficult moments in life, and all the while staying true to the clear-eyed, fearless vision of their author.” ~James Crews “AE Hines’s finely made memoir-in-verse explores the ways we inherit and overcome the lingering hurts of family, from a father grown “cold like the hood of his Pontiac,” to the isolation of a marriage in distress, to a “gay divorce,” in which the couple’s shared sock collection stands in for what cannot be neatly divided. With a strong gift for storytelling and an eye attuned to detail, Hines ultimately shows us the beauty and knowledge made of experience: “that’s how the light finally gets in / and the soul gets out.” ~Richie Hofmann “In riveting autobiographical poems, AE Hines tells of growing up gay in a homophobic, evangelical family that—in demanding conformity—can “only love a man / down on his knees.” And Hines “can never be that man.” No. Never. This compellingly candid work speaks the language of his courage, of breath-taking transcendence. Finely crafted, Any Dumb Animal is a remarkable debut collection. Take note, world: a powerful lyric poet has emerged. Take note and rejoice!” ~Paulann Petersen

What did you receive?

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Narrow Bridge by Robbi Nester

March 14, 2019 by

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

Narrow Bridge by Robbi Nester explores the degrees of fear we face throughout our lives as things change. The first section of the collection sets the tone for the whole, as each poem focuses on change — a desire to be something you’re not in “Mermaid to Woman” and a re-imagining of Beethoven as a whale in “The Making.” There is a certain fear in change, but Nester calls on the reader to see the beauty in being something different, something that evolves.

 From "The Making" (pg. 3)

If Beethoven were a whale, he would
groan a song as monumental as his bulk,
one the waves would write -- always
in suspension. They would take an hour
to break along a shore so distant
none of us could fathom where it was.

Nester explores the changes that happen during childhood, traveling miles and moving to a new home, and how scary those moments can be. But there are times where the reader still sees the wonder of change as the narrator plays “capture the moon” with a compact mirror. Imagination takes center stage in the second section, and my daughter really enjoyed these poems when I read them aloud to her. She was reminded of the tents we made in our old house’s living room, and she began thinking up her own games to play in the car.

Section three explores the darkest reaches of fear, including a poem for the Sandy Hook school shooting. There’s also a lament for what America has become.

Sandy Hook (pg. 33)

...The teacher tries
to hide us, but bullets fly
so fast. Now she won't 
wake up, no matter how
I shake her. No crayon
could ever be that red.

In the final sections, Nester explores the fears of the past and places them into context. She broadens the scope beyond the fears of a younger self about her unruly hair and the wiser self who sees those imperfections as par for the course of life. “My past/quivers beneath the lens of memory,” she says in “Picture of a Life.”

Narrow Bridge by Robbi Nester is an exploration of life — its bumps and moments of joy — to find the light. She reminds us to push through and “recognize the stranger” in ourselves. She calls on us to reach beyond our fears and ourselves into the unknown to find beauty in the vacillation and uncertainty of change.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Poet:

Robbi Nester is the author of three other books of poetry: a chapbook, Balance (White Violet, 2012), and two collections—A Likely Story (Moon Tide, 2014) and Other-Wise (Kelsay, 2017). She has also edited two anthologies: The Liberal Media Made Me Do It! (Nine Toes, 2014) and an Ekphrastic e-book, Over the Moon: Birds, Beasts, and Trees—celebrating the photography of Beth Moon, published as an issue of Poemeleon Poetry Journal.

Filed Under: challenges, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, Read in 2019, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , , ,

A Compass for My Bones by Diana Smith Bolton

February 27, 2019 by

Source: Purchased
Paperback, 39 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

A Compass for My Bones by Diana Smith Bolton, who read at the DiVerse Poetry Gaithersburg Reading, is a chapbook of poetry that examines identity by digging below the surface of the skin. The first part of her collection focuses deeply on faith and how it applies to our actions in childhood — begging us to turn away from curiosities that call us into temptation.

Communion

We might be sisters, she whispered.
The lines of our bodies were as empty

as the priest's gesture, wiping
the chalice's lip with white linen.
from "Three Scenes from Biloxi Beach"

I've seen black-and-white movies about sexy.
Like Lana Turner! she adds. I trot to the frothy water,
forbidden to touch it, and stare into the murky dark
as I stare at my life from four feet up.

There’s an ebb and flow in these beginning poems — a magnetic pull on the narrator leading them toward something and away from the child self s/he knew. When the section ends with “The Deer by the Lake,” the reader knows that the narrative has entered into an uncharted territory. Bolton uses the remainder of the collection to explore life through the eyes of characters and historical figures from Ophelia to Emily Dickinson, who had journeys into the dark and led to sadness.

A Compass for My Bones by Diana Smith Bolton is an exploration of the self and identity — the stumbles we take on life’s journey and how we handle them. Our internal compass is our guide after our parents have guided us through childhood. What of those who never made it through childhood or were never born alive? How do they find that compass. Bolton’s images are stunning.

Rating: Quatrain

About the Poet:

Diana Smith Bolton is a writer and editor in the Washington DC metro area. Born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, Bolton studied literature at the University of Southern Mississippi and creative writing at the University of Florida, where she earned an MFA. She writes poetry and prose, and her work has appeared in numerous literary journals and collections. As founding editor of District Lit, a journal of writing and art, she is passionate about publishing meaningful work and collaborating with other writers.

Filed Under: challenges, New Authors Challenge, poetry, Poetry Reading Challenge, purchased, Read in 2019, reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Mailbox Monday #517

February 4, 2019 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.

Here’s what I received:

National Geographic Kids: Make This! by Ella Schwartz and Shah Selbe for review.

This book is designed to inspire the next generation of engineers and supports all kinds of kid creators: those who prefer guided instruction, those who prefer to dream up and design objects on their own, and everyone in between. With thoughtful text and bright illustrations, kids get the tools and the know-how to tackle all kinds of exciting projects: building a kaleidoscope, designing a fidget spinner, planting a rain forest, creating a musical instrument, and more. Unconventional scenarios inspired by real National Geographic explorers give kids a chance to think outside the box and apply their maker skills to real life. Chapters are divided up by scientific principle, such as simple machines, energy, and forces. In each chapter, kids can start by following step-by-step activities, or get creative by tackling an open-ended challenge. Helpful sidebars explain the science behind what’s happening every step of the way.

Make This! is perfect for curious and STEM-loving kids, families looking for a fun way to play together, and anyone else who’s ready to get creative and start tinkering!

Narrow Bridge by Robbi Nester from the poet for review.

Carefully crafted, beautifully written, these poems are a bridge indeed between this world and the one that shimmers just beyond us. In one poem, the narrator is a small child trying to capture the moon in her mirror; when that fails, she catches it in a net of words, and that is what Nester does throughout this book in poem after gorgeous heart-breaking poem. These are poems that “sing for the joy of being heard.” ~Barbara Crooker, author of Les Fauves and Barbara Crooker: Selected Poems

In Robbi Nester’s Narrow Bridge, we are urged to be more open and fearless— Consider how a mirror tipped toward the sky captures the moon, if fleetingly; how “The voice of the bird/ in the maple/ is bigger than his body.” There are still passageways we can widen, if only we allowed wonder to make a bridge between our sense of fixity, and that refuge and home we could make again in each other. ~Luisa A. Igloria, author of The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis and Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser

What did you receive?

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

101st Virtual Poetry Circle

June 11, 2011 by

Welcome to the 101st Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

Also, sign up for the 2011 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry.  Please contribute to the growing list of 2011 Indie Lit Award Poetry Suggestions, visit the stops on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour from April.

Today’s poem is from The Decadent Lovely by Amy Pence, which I reviewed earlier this month:

Life’s Dry Crushed Scorpion (page 25)

Had been there for some time, flattened
among the dust and fur, the cast-off
little girl toys under my daughter’s bed.
Had once reddened its claws to polish,
once wandered fractious and solitary —
red to signal the foxes, a trail
of bright delicious strawberries,
the red a slicked on waxy lipstick.
Stained red for every month
it will bleed its silent rust, will needle
her slender spine, will catch
her unawares in the hood she’s wandering
in. If she’d known it was there, she said,
she would have been afraid.

Let me know your thoughts, ideas, feelings, impressions. Let’s have a great discussion…pick a line, pick an image, pick a sentence.

I’ve you missed the other Virtual Poetry Circles. It’s never too late to join the discussion.

Filed Under: virtual poetry circle Tagged With: , ,

Interview With Poet Amy Pence, Part 2 & Giveaway

June 7, 2011 by

The Decadent Lovely, which I reviewed and is published by Main Street Rag, is a collection that strives to uncover the love beneath the grime, and Amy Pence‘s style ranges from the straight narrative to the more abstract.  If you missed part one of my interview with her, please head on over to learn more about her, the collection, and her obsessions.

Without further ado, we’ll take a look at her thoughts on writing, poetry’s accessibility, and more.

Do you see spoken word, performance, or written poetry as more powerful or powerful in different ways and why? Also, do you believe that writing can be an equalizer to help humanity become more tolerant or collaborative? Why or why not?

Poetry is powerful in various ways and there’s a flavor for everyone, thankfully. For me, it’s the difference between poetry as a public performance with a strong social message and poetry as a private experience with the page about the interior event. I am personally most moved by the poem as artifact, as an involution of word, form, and sound. That was my first experience with poetry and the kind of poetry I am moved to write. I like familiarizing my students with poets and performance artists like Daniel Beaty and Patricia Smith to show and celebrate their successes, but the challenge as a teacher these days is to show that an Emily Dickinson poem (for instance) is not precious or flowery—it is a complex sonic creation that briefly but deeply can show us what it is to be human.

Poetry is often considered elitist or inaccessible by mainstream readers. Do poets have an obligation to dispel that myth and how do you think it could be accomplished?

I don’t think we have an obligation to dispel it (and it’s not always a myth). As I said, I like to bring my younger students into the world of poetry’s richness that they may have thought of as stuffy or inaccessible. Last night in class we lingered over Wallace Stevens’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Blackbird,” putting meaning aside to revel in the language and the modernist disjunctions. I don’t know if I inspired much rigorous thinking, but I try to do my small part in encouraging art appreciation as a value. It’s unfortunate that the word “elitist” has obscured what art can enact in the human.

Most writers will read inspirational/how-to manuals, take workshops, or belong to writing groups. Did you subscribe to any of these aids and if so which did you find most helpful? Please feel free to name any “writing” books you enjoyed most (i.e. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott).

I mentioned leading a workshop, and beginning about a decade ago, I’ve met with a small group off and on in Atlanta (hats off to Kiki, Gelia, Marianne, Sam, Sandi & Sunny). I like to set up themes and then we read relevant texts, write in-class, and workshop their poems. They know that they are teaching me as much as I “teach” them, yet they have the grace and generosity to pay me (hardly seems right). Two stellar writing books I return to again and again: Jane Hirshfield’s Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry and Writing Poetry: Creative and Critical Approaches by Chad Davidson and Gregory Fraser (amazing poets and generous friends who teach here in Carrollton at the University of West Georgia).

In terms of friendships, have your friendships changed since you began focusing on writing? Are there more writers among your friends or have your relationships remained the same?

I have two very close friends from graduate school (fiction writer Sue Stauffacher and poet Val Martinez) who are writers and I know—even with our ups and downs—we will always be friends. And I’ve met so many wonderful writers at conferences, writing residencies and here in Carrollton. But it’s not a prerequisite, and the writers that I know typically don’t “talk” writing. I have to say I like Facebook for the way I’ve reconnected with friends from my MFA program in graduate school (University of Arizona) and to see what a vast network of poets are posting (but then, it’s very distracting). Their little obsessions and conundrums sometimes crop up, and I find that interesting. I admire so many writers and enjoyed interviewing Barbara Kingsolver, Li-Young Lee, and Paul Guest (published in past issues of Poets & Writers). I hope to do more because I learn so much from the process.

Please describe your writing space and how it would differ from your ideal writing space.

I’m extremely lucky to have my ideal writing space that I couldn’t have dreamed of a decade ago. But I dreamed it, and my husband sacrificed some beloved trees so we could add my writing space to his house when we married. I write in front of a large window that overlooks a hard wood forest of thousands of acres of rolling hills and creeks. I have a courtyard planted with my favorite flora (the fauna are the 2 dogs, 3 cats, and a dwarf bunny) in all seasons. My writing studio has windows on all four walls. Needless to say, I’d just sit here and write or just gaze into the distance if I could. But there’s that thing called a paycheck to pay for this fine mess.

What current projects are you working on and would you like to share some details with the readers?

That Emily Dickinson novel, as mentioned earlier. It may take a lifetime. I’m not sure whose.

Thanks, Amy, for answering my questions.

For the giveaway, I have 1 copy for a US/Canada reader:

To Enter, comment on this post with either a question for Amy or something you enjoyed about the interview.

For a second entry, spread the word about the interview on Twitter, your blog, and Facebook, and leave a link in the comments.

For a third chance to win, enter on yesterday’s interview.

Deadline June 22, 2011, at 11:59PM EST

Filed Under: giveaway, Interviews Tagged With: , ,

The Decadent Lovely by Amy Pence

June 2, 2011 by

The Decadent Lovely by Amy Pence, published by Main Street Rag, is a collection lush in mystery as it is in setting and pulsating with dramatic domesticity.  Broken into seven parts, Pence begins the collection with the “ugly and the ordinary” and moves to the end of the collection with the infinitesimal.  Her images call attention to the darkness of the narrator’s family as they witness the drunken stupors, like in “Landing Space, 1970” (page 5-6), “Cutting too:/the eyes of the sunflowers/the swell of them, pulpy,/like my stepfather’s,/roused too soon//from an alcoholic stupor/for the graveyard shift.  Was it too much/what they saw or not enough? . . . ”

Like the pleasant and the darker aspects of the family, Pence juxtaposes the landscape of New Orleans to that of Las Vegas, with the darker elements of family life up in neon lights.  But there is darkness in New Orleans, a past that cannot be escaped and a past that can be touched only through the voodoo of memory and self-assessment.  In “The Waiting Room” (page 40), “Maybe/she’ll talk of a version of her self/decades before the cancer:  the Rose Bowl court in the 50s/or her years in New Orleans, to relate, she’d say/to the woman waiting.  In that/hazy B&W film, my mother/was one of the Golddust Twins,/the flashier one, running headlong out of Ohio, constantly/misunderstood by husbands, children, lovers./Maybe the black woman would begin/to resent my mother as most did, would/see her as merely another shipwreck in Vegas,/unmade by her own addictions.  . . . ”  Readers will find the new perspective on these mundane scenes fresh and captivating, as the narrator reveals the truth behind the surface interactions of women in a waiting room.  Pence has a number of these moments in her poems.  However, there are poems that will require more time, reading them several times and greater reflection for each image and line — a process that could bog down some new readers of poetry.  That being said, the collection is worth the effort.

Put Muse Here (page 22)

Dalí renders Dante’s Beatrice with
his beloved’s form, face obscured. Uses

grisaille, a netting & rivulet to dress her
ginger-crisp: a locust shell split. Then

there’s me: putting another face where the Dark
should be, like dreaming (an Emma Bovary),

of punctuation. The colon: two face one-upon-
one, the lock in the door, a figment well-oiled.

In the slash / my avarice: cut (an Emily Brontë)
window across which I rub my wrist.

Then there’s the period — the body’s
rush to an ending. The Thee (an Emily Dickinson)

through which the self moves —
finds the mouth, fills the face, enters in.

Sometimes cryptic, sometimes plain spoken, Pence crafts an inside look at family (those are her parents on the cover) and the happy dysfunction that can occur and often does.  Beyond that, she draws parallels between that dysfunction and the human condition, which we often attempt to control and fail to control.  The Decadent Lovely is a self indulgence worth wallowing in, if not to examine one’s own life but to understand that humans tend to be self-indulgent even though they espouse the shedding of ego.

 

This is my 15th book for the Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

 

This is my 23rd book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

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