Best of the Book Blogs

Meditation on Woman by Aline Soules

Anaphora Literary Press

     Meditation on Woman is a collection of fifty-six prose poems to be read slowly, a few at a time, to fully appreciate their impact. Each, simply and economically written, begins with the two words, “A woman.”

In the opening work, “The Third Eye”, woman catches the cycles of her garden on video-winter cracks the lens, spring splinters it as the cycles continue. “In the end, the lens cracks again, into many parts, facing down, angling up, fractured.  New shoots.  The gardener’s boots. Ants.  Blooms.  All splinter, like a kaleidoscope.  Her eye captures fragments of brown, green, blue, pink, the blinding yellow-white of the summer sun.”

Making one’s own world is also reflected in “A Question of Balance” where a woman “owns the river, owns every bird that skims.” In the surprising poem about a woman being roasted on a fire: “And as she turns, her eyes shimmer in tune with the heat and see in every direction. The earth, all motion, spins with her and she with it.”

Readers can easily relate to: “A woman is good at guilt. Palpable and breathing, it lives in her house. It lies down and sleeps in her spare bed” and understand the mixed feelings the duality in relationships: “The woman looks at her sister. She loves her and hates her as much as ever.”

In each poem the poet is seeing herself and in the process, the universal-an activity so simple and yet complex, full of surprises and reflections of wonder. I’m looking forward to her next collection to savor, open my eyes, enjoy the company of a uniquely gifted poet

Carol Smallwood, www.smallpressreviews.wordpress.com

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Akron Beacon Journal

By reviewer Barbara McIntyre

Book talk: Wooster-like town is setting of mystery; book explains religious art symbols

Published: April 15, 2012 – 12:49 AM

Book talk: Wooster-like town is setting of mystery; book explains religious art symbols April 15, 2012 04:49 AM GMTBeacon Journal Publishing Co. Copyright � 2012 Beacon Journal         Publishing Co. Inc and Black Press. All Rights Reserved. Any copying, redistribution or retransmission of any of the contents of this service without the express written consent of the Akron Beacon Journal is expressly prohibited.

The tattoo on the murder victim’s arm in Eloquent Tattoo, Audrey Lavin’s new literary mystery, isn’t a real tattoo. It might be a clue, though, and Mary Beth Goldberg is determined to find out who killed her friend Austin the antique dealer, just the way she solved cases in Eloquent Blood and Eloquent Corpse, Lavin’s previous books in the series.

Mary Beth is a professor at fictional Midfield College, which is identical to Wooster in nearly every way. As usual, she relies on her beau, Tony, to help her, but she’s reticent this time because she hasn’t figured out how to tell him she’s been chatting online with another man.

Mary Beth is teaching a class called American Romantics, and it occurs to her that she can use the method Edgar Allan Poe’s fictional detective C. Auguste Dupin used to solve the case of The Purloined Letter. Unfortunately, some of the suspects also have read the works of the master, including a quartet of peculiar students who can’t seem to stay away from the crime scene.

Eloquent Tattoo (161 pages, softcover) costs $15 from Anaphora Literary Press. Lavin lives in Canton.

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Excerpted from a review of Eloquent Tattoo by Dr. Audrey Lavin

By: Angie Mangino

The reality that “Austin wasn’t going to wake up – ever” hit her. Thus begins a murder mystery that readers will become absorbed in until its conclusion.

A variety of personalities makes up the characters of this story, centered on Midfield Campus College in Midfield, Ohio, each with their own personality traits and story.  Abby McKenzie, a college M.D., is Mary Beth’s friend.  Celeste, Eleanor, Liz, and Robby are students, while Ted Ruppy is a Chemistry professor.  Seth Yoder is Sheriff, with Sylvester Morse his deputy.  Simone Westlake is Austin’s sister in Akron.  Tony Bartlett and Gabe James are Mary Beth’s two boyfriends.

Conversation is realistic, moving the story along, with a minor observation that Sheriff Seth Yoder’s identifying line of “Just call me Seth” may have been repeated a bit too often.

Readers will relate to Mary Beth, drawn into her conflicts, of her profession and of her personal relationships, trumped by her involvement in searching for the murderer of her friend.

This reviewer found this an interesting mystery to follow that led to resolutions of both the murder and her personal relationships.  Without lapsing into a spoiler of this mystery, suffice to say this reviewer was very satisfied with the conclusion to the murder mystery. Taken from the web site: Angie Mangino Looks at Books.

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Stevo’s Book Reviews

April List of Recommended Books: Pop Culture

By: Steve Brock

Interviews with Brooklyn Film Festival Winners: Pennsylvania Literary Journal: Volume III, Issue 2 by Anna Faktorovich (Anaphora, $40.00 – The Brooklyn Film Festival invites regional, national and international submissions. Faktorovich conducted interviews with the directors, producers, script writers and other creative people, who won awards at the BFF in various categories. This issue should be very helpful for those who hope to build a filmmaking career. Antonio Piazza talks about transitioning from being a working Italian writer to creating a short film that has been shown in nearly 100 film festivals. Stephan Wassmann relates the dangers and adventures of filming bomb metal scrappers during war-time on the Mexican border. Ivaylo Getov describes how one can turn their senior NYU Tisch film school project into an award-winning venture. Massimiliano Verdesca covers special effects on a low-budget and techniques to use when working with actors. Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas chat about the frustrations of youth and the film industry inCanada. Damian Harper touches on the causes and ways to prevent gang-violence inBrooklynand elsewhere. Joel Fendelman talks about theology and filming locations. Marina Mello boasts about filming inBrazil)

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Midwest Book Review

Small Press Bookwatch: May 2012

By: James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief

The Fiction Shelf

The House of ORder by John Paul Jaramillo

“The stories we see growing up only continue as we raise our own. ‘The House of Order’ is a collection of short stories from John Paul Jaramillo, associate professor English, as he reflects on family and childhood and growning up and striving to get something better for ourselves as well as our future, and reflections on his unique uncle ‘The House of Order’ is an enticing read that shouldn’t be overlooked for those looking for a down to earth short fiction collection.”

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Story Circle Book Reviews

Meditation on Woman
by Aline Soules

Anaphora Literary Press, 2011. ISBN 978-1-937-53613-8.

Reviewed by Doris Anne Roop-Benner

Posted on 06/01/2012

                        Poetry; Nonfiction: Faith/Spirituality/Inspiration

Meditation on Woman is filled with poetry that makes you think about the reality of being a woman. Soules writes about possessions and how we should clear them away; learn how to balance our days to clear a path for our lives; and turn off our brains so we can rest and lighten ourselves in the present.

Women also long to know their roots—she studies, explores, dives deep to find out where she comes from. She wants her descendants to know what she is all about. Her life is filled with memories from the past.

Soules tells about women who plant and nurture their gardens and dream of travelling in the future.

Women sacrifice for everyone—husbands, children, parents, friends—but most of all themselves. And then there’s the guilt. When women don’t feel that they’ve sacrificed enough, they feel guilty.

The topics in Meditation on Woman are varied, but the theme is clear—women are complex beings. Read them and see if you relate to any of them.

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Case Western Reserve University

Department of English Newsletter

Interview with Audrey Lavin (’84)

CWRU: You’re an academic, author of Aspects of the Novelist (1995) and numerous journal articles. How did you come to write mysteries as well?

Lavin: I was pleased with the reception of my book, and I enjoyed academic writing. I was good enough at it to have my work published in numerous journals in the U.S., plus in Spain, Chile, the Ukraine, and Russia, where my latest article was published in May of this year.

I have also been anthologized, plagiarized, and had my books stolen from the library. I had arrived.

So I did what many of us do, wondered: is this all? Can I break through the restrictions of academic writing and write something different? Other writers havehad the same thought and are willing to take the same risks. I heard John Grisham interviewed. Here’s an author whose work has been translated into thirty-nine languages. He wondered if he could write anything except legal thrillers. And he recently did.

Not many people compare me with Usher, but basically I’m following his philosophy of “evolve or evaporate.”

I’m also a life-long reader of murder mysteries. Nothing relaxes me at bedtime more than reading a puzzle about a little (preferably, a lot of) blood and gore. It guarantees a good eight hours of sleep. I’ve read so many mysteries that I decided, “I can write one of these, too.”  Surprise! It’s not so easy. But my mysteries have been very rewarding and well received. I continue to set the bar higher with each one. If you read my three novels, you will see that each one is more complex than the one preceding it. A good introduction to them can be found on my web page <audreylavin.com>.

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Wilderness House Literary Review July 2012

http://www.whlreview.com/no-7.2/reviews/CarolHawkins.pdf

(just nominated for the Pushcart)

By: Carol Hawkins

Compartments: Poems on Nature, Femininity and Other Realms by Carol Smallwood (Paper, $15, ISBN: 978-1-937-53600-8, LCCN: 2011912611, 146 pp, 6×9, August 2011, Anaphora Literary Press Anaphora Literary Press, 163 Lucas Rd., # I-2, Cochran, GA 31014)  http://www.amazon.com/Compartments-Poems-Nature-Femininity-Realms/dp/1937536009/ref=sr

Carol Smallwood’s poetry exposes the active inner life of a curious observer.  In her collection, “Compartments,” she reveals the mind and heart of a poet who knows how to unravel mysteries with sensory details and probing questions.  Structured forms, like the villanelle and the triolet, frame fluid topics.  Smallwood invites visitors to share her vision of her thoughts.  Elements of time and place ground the reader to a particular setting that allows access to the poems.  This poet likes to grasp at ordinary things, turning them around in her mind and then translating her ideas into strict lines that reveal truths about unknowable things.  This poet desires to know all, and to share her intimate vision with her readers.

For example, in the poem, “By the Barb Wire Fence,” Smallwood takes on the villanelle to corral the passing of time.  Lily, the protagonist, seeks refuge among the birds and bees, but not in some silly romantic sense.  On the contrary, she hides her tears, weakened by some weight of memory and regret, perhaps a gripping need for something permanent, but the recognition that nature doesn’t hold still.  One dominant image in the poem, a stone foundation, reveals a mystery.  The poet writes:

Lily went where bees made blossoms fall,

near a stone foundation too old to recall.

Even the stone foundation shifts from an assumed place of permanence to a place unknown, an inner mystery, the awareness that nothing is fixed, not even our desires or intentions.  No one knows what the foundation once held up.   Yet, this place of decay holds life:   “bees make blossoms fall,” and “birds built nests without trepidation,” shifting scenes that allow the narrator to turn inward, to seek further refuge, near “the barbed wire fence.”

The triplets within the villanelle create a context from which to describe the natural world, while the reframe and conclusion in the closing quatrain leave the reader in a setting of peace.  The center line in each triplet begins to reveal a conflict:  the narrator’s need to break from “obligation” and seek out an old tree in a quiet spot to “linger as the sun sank.”

The rhythm of the poem echoes the rhythm of life, always moving but seeking pause.  “The Barbed Wire Fence” opens up a Pandora’s Box, a bundle of different meanings, each dependent on the reader’s own associations.  This reader sees a narrator, who appears trapped, yet the fence is down, she can run if she chooses, a breach in the enclosure allows her to leave, but she stays, and settles for a pause.  Why?  “Family obligations” that make her wonder how it all turned out this way?  Did she ever really have a choice?

The poet writes:

Lily wiped her tears as the kids still small

returned from a game of interrogation

Explicit tears for implicit reasons, except for her close reference to “kids” as they come back from a game of questions that must seem difficult to answer.  Lily’s mission, “to see the oldest tree of all,” opens and closes the poem, as she resonates with her surroundings:

Lily went where bees made blossoms fall

and birds built nests without trepidation

near a stone foundation too old to recall.

Another concrete scene, this time “A Vision Triolet,” contains a doctor, a stain, a reality check, and a photo.  Again, the impermanence of life, the passing of time, aging.  More lines of tight rhyme, eight lines per stanza, the repetition of entire lines, like the villanelle.  The length of lines matter, tetrameter, ABaAab, as in “quick, case, photographic; quick, Geographic, space,” followed by AB, “quick, case.”

A Vision Triolet

A digital fundus photo is quick,

recommended for anyone just in case–

each eye must stare till photographic;

a digital fundus photo is quick,

the results rival a National Geographic

glossy spectacular of outer space.

The digital fundus photo is quick

recommended for anyone just in case.

The optometrist pointed to murky stains

“Due to common aging,” he explained

fed by vessels deep in my brain.

The optometrist pointed to murky stains

foreign as a NASA Mars terrain–

the exposure, dull red, self-contained.

The optometrist pointed to murky stains

“due to common aging,” he explained.

Just in case of what?  Those questionable “murky stains” may “be due to common aging” but what does that say about life ahead . . . a red stain, a void, a “dull red, self-contained.”  The poet found the whole scene strange, although the image seemed quite familiar to the optometrist.  The poet’s confused.  Isn’t the poet’s job to make the strange . . . familiar?

This tricky triolet, a quirky form meant to grasp what is slipping away, the poet’s most valuable tool, sight. The repetition of “stains” in the second stanza work well to drive home the point of over exposure, in this case, to time, “the dull red” left behind.  A moment of vision, indeed, of the mystical kind, and the repetition of the line:  “the digital fundus photo is quick” liking the sound of these words and the image of National Geographic, the “result rival” a lyrical quality with tight rhyme—“glossy spectacular.”  The artist works here, in and among these forms, such as the villanelle and the triolet, to craft common themes, like aging and regret, in mirroring reframes.

Many poems, like the earliest triolets in English, were written as prayers.  This collection of Compartments could hold the same intention, like chants of extreme repetition, limited rhyme, limited lines that allow the structure to disappear, even though it dominates.  These qualities of form, combined with the simplicity of content, convey a shared understanding, to make Compartments a good read.  The personal becomes universal through images and sounds, and meaning moves closer, with each carefully constructed line.

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The Midwest Book Review

Small Press Bookwatch: July 2012

James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief

The Fiction Shelf

The Third Law of Motion by Meg Files

It isn’t so easy to run away from what’s bad for you. “The Third Law of Motion” is a novel set in 1960s Michigan, following the struggles of Dulcie White, who wants to avoid getting in trouble, suffering quietly under her boyfriend and possible husband. Touching on the tragic and the struggles to break free, “The Third Law of Motion” is a riveting and much recommended pick for general fiction collections focusing on the struggles of women and battered wives.

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The Midwest Book Review

MBR Bookwatch: July 2012

James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief

Klausner’s Bookshelf

By: Harriet Klausner, Senior Reviewer

The Seventh Messenger by Carol Costa

Naomi was born in the House of David religious community in Benton Harbor, Michigan. Now, as an adult, with her always emotionally distant mom dying, she has returned to learn whether the founder Benjamin Franklin Purnell was her father. She demands Benjamin’s widow Mary to tell her the truth with no omissions or deceptions.

Mary begins her story back five decades ago to the turn of the century when Benjamin said the Spirit of the Lord told him that he was the Seventh Messenger while their convicted leader of the Holy Rollers Michael Mills was false. He became King Benjamin and she Queen Mary of the House of David religious commune. In 1903 they moved to Benton Harbor where they created a place to live, an amusement park, an orchestra, a zoo, and a baseball team with a park, etc. Sex was prohibited even between married couples. The only exception to the rule was King David and his Inner Circle of girls under the age of sixteen who needed purification. One Inner Circle girl became pregnant and planned to destroy the reign of King Benjamin.

This is an exciting insightful novelization of the creation and twenty plus years (up to the trial and death of Benjamin) of the House of David. Mary is a terrific narrator who understood her late husband’s strengths as a charismatic leader who got people to believe and his serpent in Eden endeavors as she tells Naomi what happened to him and her mom hoping to bring some sunshine into the younger woman’s life. Character driven to include the commune, Carol Costa provides a deep twentieth century historical in which Mary’s salvation of the ruins of Eden and the City of David, still thrives.

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Verse Wisconsin: Online

Book Review

Aline Soules, Meditation on Woman, Anaphora Literary Press, 2012

by Carol Smallwood

Meditation on Woman is a collection of fifty-six prose poems to be read slowly, a few at a time, to fully appreciate their impact. Each, simply and economically written, begins with the two words, “A woman.” Some of the journals that have published a version of a few of these reflective poems by this California State University, East Bay faculty member are the Kenyon Review, The Binnacle, and Poetry Midwest.

A recent Poets & Writers featured six articles in a special section in the magazine from leading writers about inspiration: the importance of slowing down, making room for contemplation, and the possibilities for discovery for the creative writer. Meditation on Woman supplies readers with examples of this in abundance as this poetry collection turns the ordinary upside down, leaving the reader, man or woman, to look at things differently.

In the opening work, “The Third Eye”, woman catches the cycles of her garden:

A woman sets up her video camera, focusing it to chronicle the cycles of the garden.

A gardener turns over the winter ground.  The loosened clods glisten in the sun, the damp evaporates through the day, and the earth pales to medium brown.

Green shoots push up, jagged leaves unfold, and tight buds emerge.  Ants crawl over the green fists and chew their sweetness so that the peony flowers can erupt in white and pink and deeper pink, heads so heavy they drag on the ground.

“Nature” addresses the distance between pristine and artificial nature; and the suburban attitudes in “Weeds” drives a woman into the city.

“Evolution” recalls the magical-realism of Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende, the blending of what is real and unreal:

A woman grows a tail. At first, it’s just a nub at the end of her spine. Doctors think it’s a bone growth, nothing to worry about. They remove it, but it grows back. The more often they remove it, the faster it returns, so she decides to live with it.  When it’s a foot long, she tucks it between her legs to hide it. When it grows to four feet, she wraps it round her left leg and conceals it in wide-legged pants.

As she gets used to it, she stops hiding it.  People whisper and avoid her, but eventually come to accept it.  Strangers still stare or whisper, children jeer and point, but she ignores them.

A woman’s connection to the world recurs in “Far and Near.” One woman “gazes out a plane window at fields quilting the landscape thirty-five thousand feet below,” while the other “hikes a woodland trail and stares into the underbrush.”

The first sees the world at a distance: “The roads make squares and rectangles around the fields.  Lakes are thumbprints pressed into the land.  Rivers squiggle and canals angle in thin blue lines.  Tree patches are dark and fuzzy.  Little towns clump together; house roofs glint in the sun.”

The second sees it in close detail.  “She picks a Queen Anne’s lace to take home.  It’s umbel is so perfect, the white lace fans out in a curve that fits in her cupped hand, and the tiny black floret draws the gaze of her eye to the center of its lacy snow, like a single jet against a sky full of clouds.”

Making one’s own world is also reflected in “A Question of Balance” where a woman “owns the river, owns every bird that skims.” In the surprising poem about a woman being roasted on a fire: “And as she turns, her eyes shimmer in tune with the heat and see in every direction. The earth, all motion, spins with her and she with it.”

Readers can easily relate to: “A woman is good at guilt. Palpable and breathing, it lives in her house. It lies down and sleeps in her spare bed” and understand the mixed feelings in relationships: “The woman looks at her sister. She loves her and hates her as much as ever.”

The familiar scene of waiting for an x-ray, the description of hospital gowns, the gowns spilling over in bins, the closed doors marked with signs, makes the 134 words in “Horizon” especially memorable:

A woman sits on a wooden bench, waiting to be called for an x-ray. There is no window, only walls of lockers, changing cubicles, and benches where she can wait.

She hangs her clothes in a locker and puts on a hospital gown. Sprinkled with pale blue cornflowers faded from washing, it is too short and too narrow to cover her naked body.  Discarded gowns spill over the top of a bin onto the floor, waiting for someone to take them to the laundry.

The room is warm, like a sauna. Even in her naked state, she grows hotter and hotter.  She leans against the wall, her skull hard against wooden slats.

She sees three closed doors, each marked by a sign:

Staff only

Wait until called

Door to the outside world

In each poem the poet is seeing herself and in the process, the universal: an activity so simple and yet complex, full of surprises and reflections of wonder. I’m looking forward to her next collection to savor, open my eyes, enjoy the company of a uniquely gifted poet. She clearly is familiar with Doris Lessing’s advice: “Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write?” Women will especially relate to this contemplative collection by Aline Soules, but they are so universal that men will appreciate them and be awed as well.

Carol Smallwood co-edited Women on Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets (McFarland, 2012). Her poetry received a 2011 Pushcart nomination. Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing, is from Key Publishing House, 2012.

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Canton Repository

About Books

‘Eloquent Tattoo’: Audrey Lavin’s latest ‘whodunit’ hits stores

by Gary Brown

July, 2012

“Eloquent is the title, elegant and murderously amusing is this academic mystery,” writes Rhys Bowen, an Agatha prize winning author in review of “Eloquent Tattoo,” a murder mystery by Canton author Audrey Lavin.

The book is the third in Lavin’s “Eloquent” mystery series. The other mysteries in the series are “Eloquent Blood,” published in 2004, and “Eloquent Corpse,” published in 2007.

The “Eloquent Blood” title for her first book was derived from brainstorming done by the Wednesday Writers Workshop, she said in an interview published online by Case Western Reserve University in its Alumni News.

“When I wrote the second novel, I wanted to make an instant connection to the first,” she said in that interview. That “Eloquent” title has continued.

Long a writer of scholarly articles and academic manuscripts, the educator’s literary journey into fiction was an outgrowth of her own interest in reading murder mysteries. But, the scholar in her continues to emerge in her books, notes her publisher, Anaphora Literary Press,

“She has taught in 17 countries and brings some of her international adventures to her whodunits,” said the publisher, noting that she serves up “witty dissections of U.S. college life in her humorous series of eloquent murder mysteries.”

Another writer, Akiko Busch, author of “Nine Ways to Cross a River” and “Patience: Taking Time in an Age of Acceleration,” said Lavin combines the ordinary with uncommon creativity.

“Lap swimming, the work of Edgar Allan Poe, and a simmering romance are amateur sleuth Mary Beth Goldberg’s unlikely but invaluable tools as she confronts her latest mystery in ‘Eloquent Tattoo,’” Busch reviews. “Her native ingenuity figures in as well, and when author Audrey Lavin throws in a few slices of pizza and a handful of eccentric college students, these all add up to become the ingredients for irresistible storytelling!”

The book, set on Midfield Campus College in Midfield, Ohio, centers on students and professors from the school. Midfield is “a complete invention or rather combination of many campuses and many small towns,” the author notes.

“Readers will relate to Mary Beth, drawn into her conflicts, of her profession and of her personal relationships,” writes online book reviewer Angie Mangino, “trumped by her involvement in searching for the murderer of her friend.”

The softcover book is 161 pages and lists at $15.  It is available online at Amazon.com and the websites of Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble. It also can be purchased through those chains’ bookstores. It is carried in Canton at the gift shops at Lazar’s Art Gallery & Creative Framing, Cyrus Framers, and Tony’s Hair Design. The other two books in the series also remain available.

Other books by Lavin include “Made in Ohio” and “Aspects of the Novelist: E.M. Forster’s Pattern and Rhythm.”

She maintains an online blog on writing mysteries at http://bit.ly/OhAudrey. More information on Lavin and her books can be obtained at audreylavin.com.

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The Midwest Book Review

By: James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief

The Literary Studies Shelf

Michael Connelly by Stan Schatt

Building a considerable fanbase, the mysteries and novels of Michael Connelly may seem a bit daunting to a first time reader. “Michael Connelly: A Reader’s Guide” is an introduction to the man’s works as Stan Schatt covers his work and presents a comprehensive introduction to the common themes throughout Connelly’s work to help first time readers gain a more complete appreciation of it all. “Michael Connelly” is a must for those just starting out his work.

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The Record: North Jersey

Vernon poet brings Civil War to life in new book

S. Thomas Summers presented a poetic reading of his new book “Private Hercules McGraw: Poems of the American Civil War” at the Vernon Senior Center on Sunday afternoon, Aug. 26. The program was sponsored by the Vernon Historical Society.

 

S. Thomas Summers reads his Civil War book of poetry during a presentation given by the Vernon Historical Society.

 

PHOTOS/JANET REDYKE

 

Nancy Adam gets her copy of ‘Private Hercules McGraw: Poems of the American Civil War’ autographed by the author.

 

Published by Anaphora Literary Press, the collection of original free verse poems chronicled the life of a fictitious southern youth who joins the Confederate army along with his boyhood friends Willie and Nate.

Summers, who spent a year writing the book, shared with a small group, how each poem combines together to reveal the story of Hercules McGraw, who joins the army to simply impress his girlfriend Martha by hopefully purchasing a slave.

A teacher at Wayne Hills High School and an adjunct professor at Passaic Community College, Summers informed the group that S. Thomas Summers is his pen name. He shares his actual name Scott Summers with a comic book hero.

“So when you Google that name, I don’t show up,” he chuckled. “S. Thomas Summers reminds me of F. Scott Fitzgerald, it makes me sound smart,” the poet joked.

With school in summer recess, Summers was able to devote his time off traveling from Massachusetts to Baltimore, reading and discussing his thought provoking, vivid poems.

Collectively the poems form a story and according to Summers describe things that could have occurred. One poem entitled “A Note Nailed to the Door” is how Hercules informed his parents of joining the army. The reader then vividly experiences Hercules’ first battle in the poem called “Shiloh Church.”

Guns barking and both sides screaming for Jesus or their mothers, Hercules kills his first enemy and begins to have a change in attitude or a maturing. Coming to realize the horrors of the war, another poem titled “A Bowl of Spillt Soup” explains and equates the death of friend Nate, as his eyes were eerily fixed on something in the air.

A line from the poem states, “Death ain’t something one shakes off soon,” follows Hercules as he makes his way north to destination Gettysburg.

The poems are haunting and extremely descriptive and reflective and must be personally experienced.

“Private Hercules McGraw: Poems of the American Civil War” is available on Amazon.com. Summers is currently working on another collection of poems that also form a story titled “The Journals of Lt. Arthur Kendall Everly.” This new book will cite the Civil War life of a fictitious teacher who joins the Union army as an officer.

The second book when completed and Summers’ already completed book of poems seem to superbly celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Battles of Gettysburg beginning in 2013.

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Tucson Weekly

A Tale of Abuse

Meg Files’ domestic-violence novel examines the push and pull of a bad marriage

by Jarret Keene

                     

The Third Law of Motion

By Meg Files

Anaphora Literary Press

200 pages, $20

Good literary novels tend to work in one of two ways: Either they push into emotionally unfamiliar territory that causes the reader to shake his or her head with wonder, or they pull the reader into such deeply familiar and highly dysfunctional scenarios that the reader can’t help but nod.

Even as kids, we easily identify a relationship forged in hell. Some of us may have experienced unhealthy bonds ourselves. So when we read a novel that perfectly captures the evil essence of something like domestic abuse, we cringe in recognition as we turn to the next page. And then the next, eager to see how the protagonist will extricate himself or herself, if at all.

Meg Files’ The Third Law of Motion is a cringe-worthy fictional account of a couple doomed to fail. Set in ’60s Michigan, the novel focuses on the inner lives of two characters—Dulcie White, a bright college student with a love of Tchaikovsky, a knack for writing and a bright future; and Lonnie Saxbe, a deranged yet handsome athlete with nothing but a shoe-selling job on his dim horizon.

What brings them together? The social mores of pre-feminist Midwestern America, when getting pregnant left no option. Of course, in the view of today’s hard-right shitheads like Missouri Rep. Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin, getting knocked up by a violent ex-track-star head-case like Saxbe is what God prescribes for women. Some ideas—and people—never evolve.

But what’s truly indelible and incredible about Files’ novel is how much empathy she generates on behalf of Dulcie’s abuser. In many ways, Motion is about the infinite despair of untreated mental illness. Saxbe suffers the kind of paranoia and suspicion that we’ve all briefly known, but hopefully have never allowed to consume us. Here, for instance, is Saxbe discovering his now-wife’s makeup bag:

He uncapped the red pencil. The lead was soft brown. He wrote Dulcie on the mirror. He put a brown heart around it. With the lipstick he wrote Lonnie inside the brown heart, too. He dumped the mess of her makeup back into the bag and zipped it up. He dropped the bag on the bathroom floor and stepped on it. He heard something plastic go. He put a sock on, and his right cordovan and stomped on the dirty bag until it was flat and pink goop was coming out of the zipper.

As much as I loathed the character and his vicious insanities, I still wished he would find help, or that Dulcie might seek treatment on his behalf. More important, I urged Dulcie, sometimes out loud and much to my wife’s concern, to escape and never look back. Indeed, the way Files ratchets up the tension in each chapter, even while oscillating between points of view (those of Dulcie and Lonnie), is worthy of any thriller, and at least an appearance on Oprah’s book club. The tension derives from the way Files eloquently depicts the mindset of a person who refuses to acknowledge abuse. For example, this passage, in which Dulcie examines herself in the mirror after being slugged, stabbed me in the heart:

In the mirror I saw my red cheeks and my split lip and dried blood at the corner of my mouth. I was glad it showed, for an instant righteous the way I was as a child when the handprints showed after a spanking, and then glad for the evidence of our change and our intimacy.

“You know what, let’s do something,” he said. “Go get something to eat and go see a movie. Comb your hair and get your coat. I’ll get the car warmed up for you.”

The color purple as a badge of marital closeness? Ugh. I won’t give away the end of the novel, except to say that this is a harrowing yet absorbing account of abuse, and how it is in some cases, sadly, made possible by two people. Files suggests that Saxbe’s aggression requires Dulcie’s passivity. It is a horrible thing to come to terms with, and only a novelist of Files’ caliber could extend such symbolism in fictional form.

Files, who directs the Pima Writers’ Workshop and is a creative writing prof at Pima Community College, has written a taught, disturbing novel. It’s a book that deserves an audience, and given its easygoing yet haunting prose, it should have no problem securing one.

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The Record (NJ)

Vernon poet S. Thomas Summers to read at the Ringwood Public Library on Oct. 20

Thursday, October 18, 2012

BY STEVE JANOSKI

STAFF WRITER

Suburban Trends

RINGWOOD — Of the thousands upon thousands of books written about the Civil War, there are but a few that, instead of relying on battle maps, lists of dates, and casualty rolls to tell a black-and-white history, seek to illustrate the conflict’s sanguine horrors by peering through the eyes of those who fought — and fewer still that abandon flowery prose and adapt the terse, sheer style of poetry in order to do it.

PHOTO COURTESY OF S. THOMAS SUMMERS

 

Poet S. Thomas Summers will be reading excerpts of his new book, ‘Private Hercules McGraw: Poems of the American Civil War,’ at 1 p.m. at the Ringwood Public Library on Oct. 20.

 

But that’s exactly what Vernon poet S. Thomas Summers has done in his new book, entitled “Private Hercules McGraw: Poems of the American Civil War,” which he will be reading from at the Ringwood Public Library on Oct. 20.

The book, published by Anaphora Literary Press and written from the perspective of a southern everyman named Hercules McGraw, uses poetry to follow this “uneducated, rural, pig-farmer kinda guy” through America’s greatest tragedy as he fights for the South only to learn that “the cause” was not quite what he thought it to be.

Summers, 43, teaches English literature at Wayne Hills High School and at Passaic County Community College, and said that his character’s motivation stems from a hope to one day have enough money to purchase a slave (which he considers the ultimate status symbol) in order to impress his girl, Martha Lane. Should slavery be abolished, he reasons, that will never happen.

But as so often happens, the horrors of war bring out both the best and worst in men — and although McGraw is himself an active participant in creating some of those horrors, he also witnesses the bravery of the former slaves who have put on the blue uniform to fight against their oppressors.

In the end, said Summers, he realizes that they are no different than he.

“He gains a huge respect for them because of what they’ve been through as a persecuted race, and he sees that they’ve fought as hard he has,” he said.

The epiphany leads McGraw to lose interest in both Lane and the southern cause, and his metamorphosis is completed when, upon returning home, he helps a slave escape on the underground railroad. Although Summers acknowledges that at first glance, he appears to have little in common with his simple farmer, writing through McGraw’s eyes gave him a deep understanding of what the man might have gone through, especially as he explores the parts of history that “fall into the cracks, that the historians can’t see.”

“As I wrote, I kind of became my character… in the back of my head I was bleeding, I was scared, I was crying, I was doing everything that he was,” he said. “It’s why at readings, when I read certain poems I sometimes tear up because it’s become so personal to me.”

There’s also the larger narrative, Summers said, in which McGraw could be any man, in any war, that gazes into the Medusa-like eye of combat and suffers the consequences of witnessing that which is “not for humans to see” — even the juxtaposition of “Hercules” and “McGraw,” with its demigod lead followed by a routine Irish surname, reflects the God-like power of giving and taking life the common man possesses during battle.

“The things that these guys see and experience… it messes (soldiers) up, because they’re not supposed to see this, they’re not supposed to decide who lives and who dies,” he said. “I thought that was meant for the gods.”

But, Summers said, much of the writing process was not so dark, and he enjoyed experimenting with the unfamiliar southern dialect to create phrases that his character might actually have uttered.

“I liked the way they talked, I liked the metaphors they used, it was fun for me as someone who has grown up in the North, who doesn’t talk like that, to make that voice authentic was the fun part,” he said.

He’s now  in the process of writing a sister book, which will speak on the Civil War from the point of view of an educated northern English teacher who, although he is a pacifist, enlists due to a feeling of being obligated to protect his students, many of whom had signed up to fight. But that story may not have such an upbeat ending, the writer said, as the former pacifist discovers a darkness within him that he never knew existed and finds out that he is indeed quite good at killing. The projects are certainly keeping Summers, who has been writing poetry since college, busy; although his first works weren’t quite up to par, he joked, he has honed his craft over the past 20 years, and has since had works published in The Atlantic, Loch Raven Review, and Literary Bohemian. His interest in the Civil War has been more recent, however, and stems from his first reading of the famous novel-turned-movie “Cold Mountain.” Initially, he said, he picked it up because its construction mirrors the Greek epic “The Odyssey,” which he often teaches to high school students, but he was soon enveloped in the drama.

“I thought it would be interesting to read the book…but that reflection stirred my passion; it was no longer just dates and battles, it was people and blood and heartache and victory,” he said. After a few visits the fields where the violent fights took place, there’s been no turning back.

“It’s been pretty much all I’ve written about since,” he said.

Summers will be reading at 1 p.m. at the library, which is located at 30 Cannici Drive, along with poet David Vincenti, who will offer a “view of the life of astronomer Galileo Galilei.” Vincenti’s poems have appeared in the Paterson Literary Review, the Edison Literary Review, and The Journal of New Jersey Poets, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.  For more information, call the library at 973-962-6256.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

***

Boston Literary Magazine

December 4, 2012

    Anna Faktorovich

Welcome, Anna!

Thank you for inviting me to interview with you in the Spotlight.

Congratulations on the release of your new poetry collection, Battle for Athens, let’s start there… does everyone ask you what made you come up with the idea for poems about subject?

I perform meticulous research not only for my academic books, but also for creative projects. In this case, I was doing a final edit on my Rebellion as Genre in the Novels of Scott, Dickens and Stevenson book that’s forthcoming this Spring 2013 with McFarland, when I had a sudden urge to attempt writing in the rebellion genre to put my theories to a practical test. I knew I had a quick prose-poetry writing speed from the Improvisational Arguments collection that I published in 2011 with Fomite, so I decided to experiment with a short poetry book, rather than trying a novel, which would have been a full-time job for many months. Thus, I knew I wanted to write a poetry book, and one that centers on the plot of a specific historical rebellion. To follow Scott’s structural rules, I chose a rebellion that occurred around 60 years ago, and in my home country, United States. When I looked over the history of rebellions from 1940-1955, there was really only one significant rebellion that happened in the US and this was the Battle of Athens (TN) shortly after the end of WWII. Since I was thinking about the upcoming presidential election, and was personally concerned with the growth of corruption in US politics, and judiciary, this was the perfect historical event for the book. I found several online sources that recounted the events—since the plot was all there, I finished the book very quickly and had a lot of great materials to dramatize and turn into interesting poems.

I was especially concerned about corruption in the US because I’ve filed numerous complaints with various police departments across the US and have faced unbelievable corruption in the officers’ unwillingness to fight crime in their neighborhoods. I’ve also seen corruption from regional judges, police chiefs, and local and even state and national officials. It’s possible that I’ve never met a US politician, police officer etc. that was not corrupt. I speak from various perspectives, as I’ve also done half-a-dozen internships with national and local politicians.

We always think of how the Civil War divided the country, but “Two Faced Dealings” describes how a single county was divided: twelve units to the Union and eight to the Confederate army… such a haunting thing to think about, and the last line really nailed the horror.

“Two-Faced Dealings”
A few decades later, the Civil War Descended on McMinn County And split it in two ideological halves. It sent twelve units to the Union And eight to the Confederate army. When they talk about brother Fighting brother in that war, They probably have McMinn in mind. There must’ve been several brothers Firing handguns and rifles, And throwing grenades at each other. Imagine if you’d killed your brother With a grenade and then had to come home To tell your ol’ ma and pa about it…This poem sets up the atmosphere and history of McMinn County where the Battle took place. The polarization that was there before the Civil War remained until after WWII and in-part caused the events. If there weren’t too campus—rich and poor, black and white, veterans and non-veterans —there would not have been enough ammunition to kindle a fire that exploded in the Battle of Athens. This historical reality would have been a bit too cliché for my taste without a specific example in the ending. Yes, the example is grotesque and horrifying, and it wouldn’t be appropriate for the occasion if it wasn’t.

Tell us about Vestal, who stars in so many of these poems.

Vestal is the real name of one of the main veterans that fought in the Battle of Athens. His name is frequently mentioned in historical records, and most of the information I provide about him is factual. In “Thirty Months in WWII” we learn that Vestal went to WWII:

Because he was eighteen and drafted For a term up to six months after the date when The long war ended or he turned thirty-eight. He joined in the hot August of forty-three, Two years after Pearl Harbor. After a brief stint in a training camp, He joined the invasion of French North Africa, Winning it for the Allied Forces. The rest of his time in the marines was split In battles between Japan and the Philippines. It was five months after Hitler’s suicide That he witnessed the signing of Japan’s surrender On his USS Missouri battleship in September of forty-five. Then, he joined the liberating troops and worked to Reconstruct fallen European cities for six months, Helping to identify and bury the dead, Clearly their bones from under the crumbled stones. Despite his mostly engineering duties, he was shot twice. This was the man who returned to Athens in March of forty-six.Later in the story, Vestal became offended when his mother was kicked out and barred from observing the voting when she objected to a black man being shot for voting. Vestal and a couple of his veteran friends complained and attempted to observe the vote themselves, but were also escorted out, and as they were leaving with the deputies’ guns pointing at their backs, the crowd outside became enraged and the events that led to the later violence started to unravel.

What I felt was so powerful about this concept was that “The Veterans Return” is about soldiers coming home from WWII and finding no jobs could have been written about America’s current situation.

Three thousand veterans returned to the county In nineteen forty-six, when their contracts ran out. In the first three months after their return, They grouped together and celebrated their victory. When their glasses ran empty, they looked around for work. Local mills were full, and with few other jobs in the county, Getting by on their pensions was about as tough as welfare. So, having no employment, they socialized some more, Remembering old friends who didn’t return, Talking about what they fought for, And drinking to make up for the sobering years at war.Yes, without a description of the type of uniforms and clothing the veterans are wearing or the type of weapons they were using, the situation is nearly identical to the current crisis of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to a continuing recession and a growing debt-crisis. Many of them are struggling to find civilian work just like the veterans did after WWII. While US as a whole eventually recovered and became a world super-power, those individual veterans didn’t feel this change, and instead faced numerous problems with adjusting. They might have obtained a high military rank at war, but suddenly they were being told that military skills were not of practical use in peace-time employment. When this was coupled with incompetence and corruption among the local law enforcement officers and politicians, the veterans’ anger spilled out. But, there haven’t been any similar unified outbursts of violence among the veterans today.

There are some comical moments too, as in “The Night Before the Ballot,” but overall, it’s pretty grim… was this a fun project?

Weeks earlier, Cantrell met with Mansfield. “I handed over the Sheriff ’s seat to you for two terms, “What are you going to do now to help me win?” “All fifty of my deputies are fully committed.” “Fifty? That’s not enough. We’ll need two hundred.” “They would still be outnumbered against the vets.” “This is not a war; it’s politics. We just need to intimidate.” After that talk, Mansfield rallied his deputies, “Go out there, arrest and give fines to anything that moves. “If somebody looks like they can’t afford it, “Offer to deputize them instead.” The fifty deputies spread across the county And set traps along the roads, or went into pubs And made arrests, deputizing over a hundred. One of these was Fred West, who was handed a gun Instead of a speeding ticket, to his surprise and delight.The above details are historically accurate. I just made up the details of what exactly the various characters said, and specifically what they did. These details like the rest of the poems in this book are a dark satire that occasionally gives up on humor and just recounts the horror of the events. I could have exaggerated the events, stretching the truth, to make the book more comical, but I preferred to depict the events honestly because I believe that this type of election fraud and intimidation must be stopped. Yes, I’ll admit that I laughed a lot while I was writing this book, and I did not put in many of the things I was thinking as I was laughing, as I was recalling incidents that I witnessed myself, and they didn’t fit with the story. It’s likely that some readers will see the humor in these poems, while others will be frightened into realizing some of the types of corruption they probably see on a daily basis but haven’t understood what they were seeing before. My goal was to satisfy both of these groups of readers, while also thinking through the serious political details of the events and laughing at their ridiculous nature myself.

How do you feel about the election that just took place, and is there some relevance to the Battle of Athens that took place in 1946?

I’m writing these replies from Shantou University in China, where I’m working as an Associate Professor. I’ll be teaching at Pima College in AZ in the Spring, when I will shortly return to the US. I didn’t vote in this election, and if I was in the US, I still wouldn’t have voted. The election results for the last 4 or so elections have been identical—always at around 52-48% splits. It is statistically impossible that the American people are split down the middle on all issues. Most people in the US are poor, especially with the ongoing recession, in theory they want more social benefits that democrats offer (even if they fail to meet these offers once they are in office). If the numbers showed this obviously in the middle of the elective cycle, republicans wouldn’t spend hundreds of millions on advertising. I worked for major US banks before, and the pattern I’m seeing in US elections, over the last couple of decades, looks like cooked books to me. We’ll stay in a recession, and will continue to see unprecedented crime, and multiplying bankruptcies in the US until somebody fires the book cookers. Things might be bad here in China, and things might have been bad in the USSR where I grew up, but I might have to migrate elsewhere if things in the US keep getting steadily worst for two more decades.

The Battle of Athens happened at the point when the US suddenly emerged as an economic and political world leader. The veterans didn’t know this at the time, as they just knew they couldn’t find work. The vets also knew from personal experience that their local deputies and officials were corrupt, and took actions to resolve this local problem. What we are all watching today is the beginning of the end of the US as a world leader unless electoral corruption stops. Because corruption has steadily spread since WWII, it is not something a few veterans could solve with equivalent means today.

Here’s the link to purchase The Battles of Athens at Amazon.

Okay, let’s talk some more about the other Anna Faktorovich… tell us about Anaphora Literary Press.

I started Anaphora when I started my Ph.D. in English studies back in 2009, and it has been steadily growing out of a scholarly journal, Pennsylvania Literary Journal (tri-annual, available on EBSCO, ProQuest, and in print), to over 50 books in print, including textbooks, poetry books, fiction, and reference books. Many of the writers have received glowing reviews, have been featured in local newspapers, have done readings and signings, and otherwise are successfully published. I have had over a dozen interns per semester working with me over the last year. One of these interns, Catherine Griffin, has an MS in journalism from Columbia University, and is currently doing an interview with Cinda Williams Chima, a New York Times best-selling YA fantasy author of the Heir chronicles, for my PLJ journal. The editorial board of this journal includes Davis Bunn, a novelist that has sold over 7 million copies.

I hope to grow Anaphora over the upcoming decades until it also has some best-sellers under its belt. For now, I’m working on at least three different jobs simultaneously to feed this goal. I teach college English full-time, publish critical and creative books and do freelance writing and editing, and work as the Director of Anaphora. These jobs sponsor my regular conference trips to the MLA, Tucson Festival of Books, etc. and mean that I focus on finding the best works in the market rather than solely looking out for profits with Anaphora. Many potential employers ask me why I feel compelled to do all three jobs simultaneously—well, it’s a tough market out there and the way to stay ahead of the competition is to have many safety nets. All of these three projects feed each other—to become a better writer I obtained a Ph.D., and to become a better professor I have to publish, and to become a better publisher I have to understand the business from a writer’s point of view. I have fun when I’m busy working. Those who are interested in starting an independent press should take a look at my Book Production Guide.

Here’s a link to the website: Anaphora Literary

Can you tell us about your other book projects?

As I mentioned earlier, McFarland is about to release my Rebellion as Genre in the Novels of Scott, Dickens and Stevenson academic book, www.mcfarlandpub.com. I’ve done several public workshops and lectures with the two editions of my Book Production Guide, which I initially wrote to explain my editing policies to my interns. In August 2011, I published my first poetry collection, Improvisational Arguments (Fomite Press), audiences were rolling with laughter when I read from it during my book tour in LA and Atlanta last year. I’ve also written the introductions and conducted interviews for around 10 issues of my Pennsylvania Literary Journal.

And what’s next for you? Got the next thing in mind yet?

Your Bostonian readers can meet me in person during a “Chat with an Editor” session I’m doing on Saturday, January 5, at 11am, at the MLA at the Sheraton in downtown Boston. This will be a session when I’ll give advice to writers and editors about different policies, guidelines etc. that are a part of my job as the Editor-in-Chief of Anaphora. If anybody plans to attend the Tucson Book Festival in March, 2013, I will be presenting in a panel on publishing, editing and writing.

I have a few publications that I’m working on this year. I’m under contract to publish a new book on current popular fiction with them, Formulaic Writing within Genres, next year; it covers genres like fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and romance. I have had some interest from Focus Publishing in my proposal, Creative Composition, a unique textbook for introductory composition classes.

I have written many novels, screenplays and other creative projects before that haven’t yet found a publisher. But, they are a bit dusty by now, so I plan on writing a new novel for a popular audience in the coming years; I might start it later this semester, if I have a moment between my other obligations. I hope to find a tenure-track academic job for next year that would allow me more time to focus on fun projects like this Battle for Athens poetry book.

Thanks so much for taking time out of what looks like a very busy schedule to talk to us!!

It has been a pleasure. I hope to speak with you again when my next creative project is released.

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Small Press Bookwatch: December 2012

Midwest Book Review

The Poetry Shelf

By: James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief

Battle for Athens by Anna Faktorovich

“What we left behind is not always what we return to. ‘Battle for Athens’ is a collection of poetry from Anna Faktorovich, who uses her poetry to tell the story of World War II veterans returning to Athens, Tennessee, to a city run by a corrupted government. Telling of the veterans rising up politically, then arming themselves violently, ‘Battle for Athens’ is a riveting twist of poetry with an enticing premise, much recommended…”

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Writer Advice

On “Battle for Athens” by Anna Faktorovich

Review by: Aline Soules

In the long tradition of narrative poetry, this work will stand out as a worthy addition.  The story is clear:  In Athens, Tennessee, in 1946, having fought long and hard in World War II, American GIs found themselves once again in battle, this time at home, fighting against political corruption and election fraud.  The triumphant part of this story is that in Athens, the veterans succeeded in establishing a fair election.  In other cities across the nation, this was not the case.

Writing historical narrative poetry requires a challenging combination of dispassion in the story telling and passion in the stance that the story takes.  Faktorovich achieves both.  Each poem can be read as a unique element; together, they create the full story and indict the power that corrupts.  Further, Faktorovich implies a strong analogy to the processes in
which we engage today, questioning our country’s motives and encouraging the reader to think.

Poetically, this work is dense, telling in carefully crafted and pithy sentences the story and its implications.  Historical black and white photographs enhance the poetry with images of the time, but the most memorable are those with close-ups of people where the reader can see the intensity in their faces.  The combination of poetry and image presents a stark
and unvarnished view of this story and forces the reader to think long and hard about where we have been and where we are going.
+++

Aline Soules’ work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Poems from Evening Sun have appeared in Kaleidowhirl, Reed, and Houston Literary Review. Prose poems from Meditation on Woman have appeared in Poetry Midwest, Newport Review, and Kenyon Review.

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Nostrovia

Interview author of Elvis Presley’s Hips & Mick Jagger’s Lips, poet Susana H. Case

Susana H. Case is the rock n roll poet behind a good number of poetry collections, including Salem In Seance, The Cost of Heat, and the upcoming Elvis Presley’s Hips & Mick Jagger’s Lips.  Her poetry has been published through Nostrovia! Poetry and Anaphora Literary Press, along with a variety of journals.  You can read Nano Elvis, a Nano Poem Collection, online, free.

Here’s a poem, and an interview I recently had with her.  [Poem at bottom]

1) What are you currently up to?

I’m well into two projects. One series of poems is a continuation of my interest in poetry related in some way to, or inspired by, rock n roll, a sort of second volume to the forthcoming Elvis Presley’s Hips & Mick Jagger’s Lips. The other series is a continuation of my interest in using history in poetry. I’m working on a series related to labor history and copper mining. Most of what I currently write falls into one or another of these bins, though there are exceptions.

2) Salem In Séance looks pretty unique. What attracted you to writing about witchcraft and witch trials?

The Salem witchcraft trials is one of those subjects that is always going to be fodder for poetry, novels, plays, nonfiction. It’s easy to find a connection between events then and events now.

It’s like when Arthur Miller wrote his play, The Crucible, in the nineteen-fifties. The United States was in the middle of McCarthyism. Miller could see a connection between the past and the nineteen-fifties in the misuse of political power. So could I when I began working on Salem in Séance. The political extremism of this country’s right wing, the religious fundamentalism, the targeting of women all caused me to draw parallels between then and now.

3) You’re the poet behind Nostrovia! Poetry’s 2nd Nano Poem Collection, Nano Elvis. Among your poems, you have quite a collection regarding music and rock n roll (like Things Called Love). What inspired you to start writing about music?

Because rock n roll (and rhythm and blues also to some extent) is the music I grew up with, every significant experience in my life is somehow connected to a song or a collection of rock songs.  When I remember events from my biography, there’s a soundtrack attached.

So, in a way, rock  music is always on my mind and I wanted to do something with that. I enjoyed—and continue to enjoy—the process of using the music in the songs to inform the music I strive to hear in my poems. It’s just fun, thinking about rock in this way too, as a device, not solely as a part of my history.

4) When you begin a collection, do you have a theme in your head before you start writing, or does the premise slowly evolve over time?

Sometimes when I start writing, I do variations on the theme, and if I do enough variations, I begin to think about a collection. Usually, whatever I do starts as an individual poem. Several different things can then happen; I’m done, I’ve got more I want to play with, I’ve got A LOT more I want to do.

With historical poetry, I generally know there will be a series because I can see how much note- taking I’m doing in my research. With the rock n roll poems, there isn’t the same kind of research because I lived it. I wrote some rock poems here and there, and after a while, I realized I had a large number of them. There wasn’t the same conscious creation of a narrative trajectory to begin with. That came later when I organized the poems into a book.

5) What’s your writing process like?

It’s fairly structured.

I can be completely in outer space before I have a basic framework down. Once I have that, then I can go work with my students, go out to a movie, do other things, and come back to flesh out the poem, but I like to have something in my head to start hanging my thoughts on.

The rewriting process is more brutal. Sometimes, there’s little to preserve from the early drafts. I think of it as Revision Hell because that’s what it feels like. Sometimes it feels good to physically tear a poem file up and put the file into the trash bin on my desktop–a total obliteration.

6) Preferred writing tool? Pen, pencil, or computer?

This varies.

If I have really good notes–usually done by pen–of where I want to go, I can sit down at a keyboard and see the poem begin to take form. Otherwise, I start with a pen and when the page gets so marked up that I’m afraid I won’t be able to read my own line and word rearrangements and other changes, I keyboard it in and then start marking the page up by pen again. I don’t think I own a pencil.

7) Who are your favorite writers? Who would be considered your main source of inspiration?

This varies weekly. I admire the way Sharon Olds writes about her personal life, in particular an older poem of hers, “I Go Back to May 1937.” I enjoy David Kirby for his hyper-drive narrative style. Philip Levine too.

But the writer who convinced me in high school that I wanted to write was Langston Hughes. Now he’s someone who was skilled at incorporating a sense of music into his poems!

Other early favorites were Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg. I wanted to be a beatnik, but I was born too late. There were hardly any left.

8) I’m a fan of the Beat generation myself.  Ginsberg’s Kaddish was especially moving.  What exactly spurred you into writing?

I wrote poetry in college, and before that. My father had been a writer before he became an English teacher. I thought this was what everybody did, although I don’t understand how I thought that when no other teenager I knew was doing it.

It’s one of the reasons I’m intrigued by Nostrovia! Poetry because it seems to offer a community to young writers. I could have used that; I probably would have felt less alienated.

I stopped writing poetry for a time because I needed to write academic works to help develop my career, but when my academic writing ceased to be satisfying, I returned to poetry. By then, it was easier to find other poets.

That’s Alright Mama 2 by Susana H. Case

When Elvis first recorded, radio stations didn’t want to play the song. He sounded too black for country, too hillbilly for R & B, a portmanteau style: rockabilly. DJ Dewey Phillips finally played “That’s All Right” on his show, Red, Hot and Blue. He played it fourteen times that day. Rolling Stone called it the beginning of rock and roll. In segregated America, blues married country, black finally married white.

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Interview: Susana H. Case author of ‘Elvis Presley’s Hips & Mick Jagger’s Lips’ (Video)

• EXAMINER
• rock ‘n’ roll
• March 25, 2013
• By: Jennifer Lafferty
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Elvis Presley: Baby, Let’s Play House (LIVE)Elvis Presley: Baby, Let’s Play House (LIVE)

Rock music can inspire many things: dreams, adoration and very often creativity. In my interview with author Susana H. Case on March 24, 2013, we discussed her new book of poetry that pays homage to rock music and its artists, Elvis Presley‘s Hips & Mick Jagger‘s Lips, released by Anaphora Literary Press on April 1, 2013.

Q: What gave you the idea to do a book of poems about rock music?

A: I grew up with rock music, so when I think about significant events in my life, there’s frequently a soundtrack attached, and it’s always a soundtrack of rock songs. Rock songs tell so many stories, not only my own. I’ve been writing music-inspired poems since about 2007 and at one point, I realized I had enough of them to be thinking about a cohesive series.

Q: As a poet, do you often hear pop song lyrics that you think could compare with the world’s finest poetry?

A: Maybe not the world’s finest poetry, because the structure is different, but poetic—yes, definitely. Song lyrics tend to be simpler. The repetitions are also simpler. But I don’t want to over-generalize. Both poets and lyricists are interested in some of the same things: meter, sound, condensed meaning. And some rock songs do have rather complex lyrics. Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black,” for example is a pretty complex song.

Q: Why do you think people become so emotionally attached to rock stars?

A: That I can’t answer. The whole cult of celebrity confuses me. Maybe we all want to actually be rock stars. I address the theme of fandom only in one poem, “The Crowd That Was Sedated,” and that poem, about the Ramones, who went to the same high school as I did, is really more about my attempt to align my own life’s trajectory to the symbols of success in front of me. But maybe that’s all the emotional attachment is about anyway.

Q: Do you think rock music can be a good source of inspiration for writers in general? If so is there a particular artist you would recommend?

A: I think Leonard Cohen is one of the more poetic song writers. Bob Dylan as well. In my collection, there’s a poem about Dylan’s switching from a strictly folk sound to electric and the way it paralleled the break up of my first marriage. I haven’t written a Leonard Cohen poem yet. But really, he writes his own.

Q: Do you think it’s a struggle for artists to create songs that have both the potential for commercial success and artistic merit?

A: I think it’s a struggle to create either, therefore, it’s a bigger struggle to create both at the same time. But there are more opportunities now than there were historically. In the early history of rock music, songs recorded by rhythm and blues groups were “covered” by white groups. The original recordings were almost always artistically superior, but the white groups got more airplay. This changed once music began to cross over socially-constructed racial boundaries.

Q: What are your future writing plans?

A: I’m working on two series: one is a continuation of my rock and roll poems. I have too many to fit into one book, and I continue to write them, so there will be a second collection. The other project that I’m working on is labor history-based. I’m interested in using history to inform my poetry and I’ve been working on a series about copper mining and the early history of attempts to unionize the copper miners, a history fraught with much drama and tragedy. Two very different projects, but there is drama and tragedy in both!

Suggested by the author:

• Elvis Presley: a history in books
• Mick Jagger, Keith Richards on Sunday Times Rich List of U.K. music millionaires
• Classic Rock: Just what is it?
• Rock Music 101 – Classic Rock Bands: Boston
• Poetry:  an important part of language development

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Interview with Susana H. Case, author of Elvis Presley’s Hips & Mick Jagger’s Lips

GoodReads

Author Susana H. Case found inspiration in classic rock music for her new book of poetry, “Elvis Presley’s Hips & Mick Jagger’s Lips” due out April 1, 2013 from Anaphora Literary Press.
In my interview with Case, we discussed her book and her writing process.
Q: Would you say that you’re a fan of all the artists who inspired Elvis Presley’s Hips & Mick Jagger’s Lips?
A: Some more than others. And there’s music I love very much which never ended up being a source of inspiration for the poems in the book. For example, Blondie and Queen didn’t make it into this collection, yet they are both inspirational to me in my work. They will be in my next volume of rock poems, I’m pretty sure.
Q: Which part of Elvis Presley’s Hips & Mick Jagger’s Lips did you enjoy working on the most?
A: That’s a hard question. I’m not sure. The book is divided into three sections. I didn’t want to call the sections “Sex,” “Drugs,” and “Rock and Roll,” because those labels are trite by now. But they mirror those themes to some degree. I decided instead on “The Honey Thing,” “Mood Alteration,” and “Do a Song About It.” “Mood Alteration” also incorporates emotional shifts and “Do a Song About It” contains a lot of thematic content about the music business. Some of my favorites are in each section. But I wanted to write about musicians and the business, and not just write about myself. So I enjoyed going back and forth between poems with the pronoun, “I,” and those that were constructed differently.
Q: What was the most challenging thing about writing Elvis Presley’s Hips & Mick Jagger’s Lips?
A: The challenge is always to whip disparate poems into a narrative that tells a story of some sort. When I was growing up, I wanted for a period of time to be a songwriter. It was important for me to remind myself while I was organizing the book that I was not that songwriter, but—someone entirely different—a poet. I also had to get past the notion that every favorite musician of mine had to be in the book. I had to go with what worked for the narrative. There will be other books.
Q: Who do you see as your audience for Elvis Presley’s Hips & Mick Jagger’s Lips?
A: The audience for poetry is usually other poets, but I’m always looking for ways to expand my audience and I think that those interested in rock and roll would also be interested in this book. I think it can be instructive also, as a sort of ekphrastic work, to see the way in which the music becomes the muse, if not always what is directly addressed as the subject of the poem.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from this book?
A: I hope they are entertained by the funny parts, that they think about the other parts, and that it stimulates more poetry based upon music—all kinds of music—which I’m a big fan of. I think there’s also a lot of information embedded in the poems, about what life was like in the seventies, as well as other decades, about the trajectories of various musical careers, about the way in which early rock music emerged from rhythm and blues, for example.
Q: Do you think there is a real difference between a poet and a lyricist or do you see them working at essentially the same craft?
A: The requirements are different, though both work at condensing. But the ways line and sound and rhythm are used are different in both, though there is overlap in what is paid attention to. I think some of my lines could be parts of songs. And I think there are lines of songs that could easily be poems. Pink Floyd comes to mind here. Think about the lines of “Brain Damage,” for example. Those lines contain more rhyme than most contemporary poetry, but “Brain Damage” is a very poetic song.

Susana H. Case

Published on March 25, 2013 08:14

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Susana H. Case participated in the Next Big Thing Blog Hop to discuss her new Anaphora Literary Press book, Elvis Presley’s Hips & Mick Jagger’s Lips. March, 2013.

What is the working title of your book?

My second book of poems will be officially released on April 1^st by Anaphora Literary Press. It’s called Elvis Presley’s Hips & Mick Jagger’s Lips. Can you guess the subject matter of the poems?

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I grew up with rock and roll as background music to every significant event of my life. There’s a running soundtrack to my memories, though I don’t think I ever thought to use rock music in a poem until about 2007. Rock songs for me are like writing prompts. I can think about one or listen to one and there will be some associative action in my brain that will lead to a poem. Maybe the poem will be explicitly inspired by the song, or maybe it’s just a series of hypertext links in my thoughts that lead to a seemingly unrelated idea. When I get stuck, I just pull out some music.

What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry. There are several prose poems in this book as well.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

They would have to be actors that could sing, preferably actors that had also been rockers. Of course, there’s Elvis, but he’s dead now and the dying wasn’t pretty. I definitely would choose actors more glam. Maybe Courtney Love, not for the glam, but because she surprised people in “The People Vs. Larry Flynt” by being able to act and for her ability to survive. Maybe Deborah Harry, but she played a sadomasochistic psychiatrist the last time I saw her in a film and well, that’s just not me. Mick Jagger’s in the book and he can be in my movie rendition any time he wants.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll, mixed in with a little psychological and social unraveling, but that’s a little too trite for my taste, so I don’t call it any of those things.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Neither. My book was published by a small literary press whose director is Anna Faktorovich. They publish poetry, novels and short stories, plus a few other categories.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Though I’d been writing rock and roll poems since 2007, I didn’t think about a manuscript until 2011. So I could say it took about a year. I could also say it took decades of experience. Between the time I wrote the first rock and roll poem and the time I had a draft, I published chapbooks and also a full-length poetry book on completely different subjects. I also put together another manuscript, which got slated for a later publication date (in 2014 by Mayapple Press). So the sequence was not a linear one.

What other books would you compare this book to within your genre?

Well, I’m not sure it’s for me to say, but when I started to realize a manuscript was going to cohere, the first thing I did was to re-read Cornelius Eady’s The Autobiography of a Jukebox and Victims of the Latest Dance Craze to re-familiarize myself with what he had done.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My poems were screaming to be included in a book. And I have enough rock and roll poems that aren’t in the book for another book, which is my next project. So it was getting noisy in my file cabinet and also in my head. It’s a way of writing about my experience, but also getting away from myself and writing about musicians. I don’t always like to write poems with the pronoun “I” in them, so this book enabled me to do both.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Well, if the reader gets bored (heaven forbid) with the poems, he or she can always play the game of trying to identify all the images on the front and back of the cover. It’s seriously difficult and I am still not sure who that is in the marijuana-leaf-design stole over near the right-hand border of the front of the cover, so if anyone reading this does know, please email me, okay?

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Galatea Resurrects #20 (A Poetry Engagement)

Friday, May 10, 2013

ELVIS PRESLEY’S HIPS & MICK JAGGER’S LIPS

MELISSA FRY BEASLEY Reviews

Elvis Presley’s Hips & Mick Jagger’s Lips by Susana H. Case

(Anaphora Literary Press, Shantou, China 2013)

I have to admit I jumped at the opportunity to review Elvis Presley’s Lips & Mick Jagger’s Hips when I learned it was the latest by prolific author Susana H. Case. Such a unique and diverse writer, her eccentricity manages to remain grounded in the earthy and mundane while often touching the archaic and divine. Her work never fails to lift one up and out of themselves, offering an interesting co-mingling of the past with the present.

“The bullet of happiness hits me; I memorize how happy feels. My blindfold’s on to deflect any defects.”

From the poem “Political Homicide”

With the passage from innocence to experience, we are often carried firsthand into the primal nature of mankind. In bold strokes of honesty, sexuality, violence and playfulness we are delivered beyond the limits of the usual, breaking boundaries and norms, pushing and challenging readers to see everything in a new light and different perspective.

“Which do I prefer— you as my pill, you as my pillar? One day, love is my Dexedrine, It helps me focus on one thing, you.  Next day, you give me a Valium, and I curl up and sleep by you.  With both, I neglect work, and lose life for pill–‐tranquility. Passing out on the Valium, I find your pillar, and scratch my elbow on the concrete and plaster. What’s left is that delectable discretion of the skin, to sing: And I want you. And I want you.”

From the poem “My Love Ain’t No Stranger and He Ain’t Got No Car”

From the beginning this read is a smooth trip upon the light fantastic. Somewhere between beatnik and hippie, somewhere between personal history and confessional, one immediately has the sense of being there and going through these times and events. (The good, the bad, and the ugly)

“Because rock n roll (and rhythm and blues also to some extent) is the music I grew up with, every significant experience in my life is somehow connected to a song or a collection of rock songs. When I remember events from my biography, there’s a soundtrack attached.”

Having lived these rock and roll poems gives an especially strong voice to the book. This really is a fresh way to look at days gone by, more than reminiscent the writing here is so alive, exciting and tactile.

“I lie in bed for hours, my hand rubbing my breasts, as I rehearse Randall taking off my cat–‐eye glasses to tongue–‐kiss me after he tells me he never realized how beautiful I am: a page from True Romance. The need to remove the glasses to be beautiful is essential, a fast path to fabulousness. What’s best, he lives right here in what my local paper calls the City of Aspiration. I aspire to overwhelm him with my authentic sexual self, though I’m still vague about the details.”

From the poem “Motown Marvelous”

Not a new writer Susana, has honed and perfected her craft while keeping it edgy and fun. Her use of rhyme and meter is unparalleled, while being especially adept at free verse. (These poems are nothing short of feistiness left tingling on the lips) She commands a profound use of metaphor, slipping in only the smallest scattering of simile. Hers is poetry of sound as well as pictures, very textured and layered with meaning. (yet beautiful in its simplicity)

“trying to work out the logistics—him–‐her him–‐me her–‐me him–‐him, but I’ve detached from my body, became pure mind, one with the glass–‐grazed sky, so who cares if I’m with Rain Dance or Flower, because our bodies are mirage and there’s enough love along this edge of the Arabian Sea to encase a very large whale.”

From the poem “There’s Someone In My Head But It’s Not Me”

Elvis Presley’s Hips & Mick Jagger’s Lips is far from mild and is one exciting ride to read! It seems to be a journey from the 1960’s through the 1980’s and right into today. I intentionally didn’t choose anywhere near the best quotations so as not to ruin any of the surprise. This is definitely a MUST READ and well worth it. This collection is a true classic and a treasure for those who love and live rock and roll!

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Newton Citizen

Poetry book inspired by people, places encountered in travel

Oxford professor publishes book of poetry inspired by travels abroad

Oxford College professor Lucas Carpenter recently published, “The Way Things Go and Other Poems.” (Special Photo)

                            

“The Way Things Go”

Oxford College English professor Lucas Carpenter has written in many forms, from short story to biography, but poetry is unique in that it forces him to process the human condition through both his imagination and reality.

“I really find poetry to be the most challenging genre to work with. I started writing poetry while I was in college and I’ve been publishing poetry steadily through,” Carpenter, 66, said from his Newton County home. “I just really feel that is the appropriate means by which I can address those things of genuine concern to me.”

In April, Carpenter published “The Way Things Go and Other Poems,” through Anaphora Literary Press, a set of 56 poems that he’s written over the last decade.

A third of the book, titled “Unholy Land,” is devoted to poems inspired by a recent trip he took to Israel. Carpenter said that section is the “centerpiece” of the book.

One of his favorite poems in that section is the “Jerusalem Syndrome,” named after a psychosis developed by some people who visit the Holy Land. They wrap themselves in sheets from their hotel and walk through the streets as they imagine themselves as a biblical character, like John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary and even Jesus.

“Both the Israeli and the Palestinian police know about it and know how to respond to it,” said Carpenter, who added that the disturbed people are sent to a hospital, provided with medication and typically calm down.

Poems such as “Checkpoint” and “At the Assassination Spot” highlight the violence can erupt in the Holy Land and commentaries on the commercialization of the Holy Land come through in poems like, “Stations of the Cross.”

“The poems are very ambivalent about the whole nature of Israel but they are also reflections on the places that figure so prominently in Western history and Judaism and Christianity and Islam,” Carpenter said.

Another favorite of Carpenter’s is “The Way Things Go,” a portrait of a man who plans to shoot his neighbor’s dog for killing his cat. The poem won an honorable mention from the W.B. Yeats Society of New York in its 2011 poetry competition.

Other poems include observations of trips he took to the Ukraine, presenting visions of stark poverty, violence and Communist rule.

The poem “Babi Yar” discusses the slaughter of men, women and children gunned down and thrown into a pit by Nazi soldiers during WWII. About 34,000 died over a period of two days, shot in groups of 10, the poem says. Carpenter said they kept the soldiers drunk to do the job, but that only worked for so long.

“They could spend about 30 minutes shooting the machine guns, before they cracked up,” Carpenter said.

Another poem references Amsterdam, where he stayed in a hotel room in which Adolf Hitler had stayed, inspiring the poem, “Rooming with Adolf.”

“As soon as I’m in the room, I’m thinking ‘Good God, I’m sharing the same space as Hitler did during the war,’” said Carpenter, whose poem talks about the nightmare he has while sleeping in the room.

Other poems touch on the Vietnam War, in which he fought from 1969 to 1970, and the Holocaust.

“It still frightens me … that it doesn’t take much to get people to do this,” Carpenter said of the Holocaust.

“A native of Elberton and a professor at Oxford since 1985, Carpenter holds a bachelor’s degree from the College of Charleston, a master’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

“He is the author of “John Gould Fletcher and Southern Modernism,” and general editor of a seven-volume series devoted to Fletcher. He’s also written books of poetry, “A Year for the Spider,” about his experiences in Vietnam, and “Perils of the Affect.”

“Carpenter, who has lived in Newton County for 29 years, teaches English and creative writing at Oxford College of Emory University. He plans on donating the proceeds from “The Way Things Go” to a scholarship fund for students at the college. The book sells for $15 and can be purchased through Amazon.

“He said poetry is a distillation of all of his experiences in life and he is enlightened by the process and the final product every time.

“Each time you create a work of art, you learn something about yourself,” Carpenter said.

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OnlineBookClub.org

Official Review: The Journals of Lt. Kendall Everly

14 August 2013, 10:28

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of “The Journals of Lt. Kendall Everly: A Story of the American Civil War” by S. Thomas Summers.]

Wow.  This compelling book follows Lt. Kendall Everly from his classroom to the Civil War battle lines.  Since this book is written as a series of free-verse poetry journal entries, we get a first person view of Everly’s physical and mental journey from a classroom teacher to a Lieutenant in the Union Army.  The Journals of Lt. Kendall Everly: A Story of the American Civil War by S. Thomas Summers is an amazing read for everyone.  I rate this book 4 out of 4 stars.
I have never read a Civil War tale that moved me the way that this one did.  I have never read a Civil War tale that was written as a series of free-verse poetry journal entries.  The journal is broken into five sections.  A letter is included at the end.  This structure gets the reader emotionally involved with Everly’s external and internal struggles.
The journal begins on April 1, 1861.  This section is called “The Pacifist”.  Kendal Everly and his students are safe in his classroom.  His students are excited about the war, but they have no idea exactly what this war is going to give and take away from them.  Then he decides to enlist in the Union army.  His decision makes him think of the innocent way his children mimic the soldiers they admire.
As he dons his Union uniform, the reader enters the “In the Blue Suit” section of his journal.  His first journal entry, after he enters the army, is dated May 25, 1861.  Summers brings in allusions to adventurers and Greek gods.  The sword he carries on his hip becomes Zeus’ lightning bolt and the gold buttons on his suit are the eyes of Ares.  On their down time, the students ask Everly to tell them tales of Robin Hood and The Musketeers.  He hopes that they will be as victorious as the heroes in stories he tells.
This book would be a wonderful addition to a Civil War collection or on the shelves of a classroom.  So much knowledge can be farmed from this work of literature.  Besides the knowledge, the emotional conversation you can have this text is one worth having. I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars.
Review by: Valeria A.

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Washington Independent Review of Books

NOVEMBER’s issue as “BEST BUY”

By: Grace Cavalieri

Earth And Below by Susana H. Case. Anaphora Literary Press. 103 pgs.

This is an incredibly important book about organizing labor and copper workers. Its illustrations could make up a history course. Its writing could change a world view of inequities.

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