Faraway Tables by Eric D. Goodman - Poetry Review

Poetry is a medium that really gets down to the bare bones of our world and our existence. Quoting from the poet's Afterword, "Poetry seems a perfect form for today's society--short, concise, and able to get a point or feeling or idea across succinctly." I could not agree more.

The poems in this collection touch on many subjects...life during and after the pandemic, world affairs, climate change, the ever changing and inevitable winding down of life. I was struck by the observations and how tuned in they are. As always, I feel like poetry "gets me." Most certainly, poetry always seems to understand life and the world. These poems are no different. 

A few quotes of verses/stanzas that were particularly striking to me...

from Toast to Friendship

These people in Kiev--people just like us--

no longer worried about 

when to go to the store for toothpaste,

but whether their sons and daughters

would live in an independent nation,

or live at all.

The war in Ukraine weighs heavily on our minds as it continues on and on. This poem captured the sorrow of what was, what is, and perhaps what could be again (we can only hope).

from Embracing Hermithood

No necessity to go out, no reason to drive,

hermit life made not only bearable--

embraceable.

The need to appear disappears.

The pandemic drives us into

our isolated caves. Gives us an excuse

to be what we want to be.

If the pandemic could be looked at in a more positive light, these stanzas demonstrate this. Perhaps the forced isolation made us slow down, as we were unable to go out as the social butterflies that many of us may be. Though the isolation was difficult at times, I also feel like it helped me to slow down and to be more centered, more focused on the now.

From Sassy

I see your collar on the table.

How I always wanted to sleep in

an extra ten minutes

when it was my turn to walk you.

How I long to walk with you--

at any hour--now.

The loss of a beloved pet. This one brought tears to my eyes. So often we take for granted their devoted companionship. Then they are gone and the memories of the joy they brought to our lives are a source of sorrow, and yet thoughts of them are cherished, happy memories. The loss of our four-legged family members is so difficult because they are with us for such a short time in the grand scheme of things. 

From Water Fall Blues

Driving a rented Skoda, you and I visit

the national park we remember from our last

visit to Croatia, and we find that our off-the-beaten-path

waterfall is nowhere to be found. Has it 

evaporated, or can we simply not find it?

A personal loss, worthy of your tears.

Climate change. Our vanishing waterways. A very real phenomena that is becoming more and more prevalent. A sad reality, and a harsh reality for people losing access to fresh water. Would that more world leaders and governments acknowledge it for the serious treat it is.

From Just Enough

But the mosh pits and energy,

vibration of the bass,

fist pumps and crowd surfing,

being there, part of the scene.

That was me. But not today.

This evening, I'd rather stay in.

He says "That was me." I say, this was me! Funny. So many of us can relate, I'm sure. As I listen to my 20-something sons speak of concerts they attend, despite the high cost of the tickets, I try to remind myself that this was once me. When life revolved around attending the next concert. But now, for me, home is where it's at.

From The Moment

So many perfect moments for scrapbook,

storybook memories.

You look up from your painting and smile,

the sound of the children's laughter

wafting up from the basement.

If I had to pick a perfect moment,

this moment

could very well be it.

So often we have photographs and mementos of the family trips, the big moments. But it's the little things, the fleeting memories of a tiny smile, a giggle, that really matter in the grand scheme of things.

From Submission to a Student Magazine

(from a writer who's burning out)

I shake your hand and want to cling to it,

to hold it until you understand,

until you feel what I feel

and know what it means to be one in

one hundred thousand writers.

Boy, I can relate to this one. As a writer, and aspiring to be a published author, it is often daunting thinking about how many writers, and books that are out in the world. That's when imposter syndrome kicks in, but I try to remember that it's the journey, not the destination, that really matters.

As you can see, I really related to this collection. I think you will too. An excellent debut collection. I hope to have the opportunity to read Goodman's future collections.

About the collection:

Faraway Tables is a mesmerizing collection of poetry that captures the monumental and the mundane with eloquent precision. Written largely during the COVID pandemic, these poems are imbued with a reflective depth that explores the essence of human experience—ranging from the personal to the geopolitical.

Goodman’s insightful observations of life’s transitions, especially in a world reshaped by pandemic isolation and technological shifts, reveal the courage it takes to love a life that’s continuously evolving.

Faraway Tables invites readers to savor the delicate flavors of experience, the tender beauty of other places and other times, and the enduring connections that define our shared humanity.

Advance praise:

“Faraway Tables carries its readers across boundaries–the personal, the political, and the geopolitical–and into those vital realms of memory and time that recall us to the comfort, the connections, and the love that see us home.” -Sherry Audette Morrow, Välittää

“Faraway Tables is a dazzling collection–a mixture of the mundane and the monumental that travels to marvelous times and places in the world and in the heart, with surprise detonated in many of the poems’ last lines. -Toby Devens, My Best Mid-Life Crisis (Yet)

“Eric D. Goodman writes with such a light hand. He sees endearing details in everyday happenstances–playful, erudite, perceptive. Norman Rockwell in words.” -Hezekiah Scretch, poetry editor, Fleas on the Dog Literary Journal

About the poet:

Eric D. Goodman lives and writes in Maryland. He’s the author of six previously published books of fiction. More than a hundred of his short stories, articles, and travel stories have been published in literary journals, magazines, and periodicals. Eric’s recent poetry has been featured in more than twenty publications, including Gargoyle Magazine and The Main Street Rag.

Add to GoodReads:

Available on Amazon, Bookshop.org, and Yorkshire Publishing.

Never miss a post!

* indicates required

Email Address *

Knowing by Mark Cox - Review

This is a long review, I know. But I felt this one so deeply, I could not in good faith make it short.

I can't quite put my finger on it. Perhaps it is just what poetry does. But it never fails, when I'm reading poetry, for a poem to hone in on exactly what I've been experiencing in my own life. It's uncanny. The poem is Gasoline. I'll share parts of it, the parts that resonate with my own recent experience, below.

Even after all these years after the divorce, I still sometimes dream we are together. She and I will be rushing hand in hand, late for a movie....In the dream, I actually know what is ahead...but there is something hopeful about the way she touches me, even still. I think there will always be a bond...The children will always be our children...

I am not a idiot. :) I know better than to pine for all that has vanished behind me. In fact, I am faced forward, usually; a striking picture of good health, braced headlong against the wind!...Still, I'm surprised to be here. I thought my life would turn out differently. I expected better from and for myself. And so, though reconciliation isn't something I want to happen in real life, in my dreams, it's ok...In those dreams, it's that fresh and untouched. It is a pleasure to feel that fully again, to have the family under one roof...That's all I wanted, was for life to be easy, right, fluid. It didn't seem like a lot to ask at the time.

Let me just say that I was in tears after reading this poem. I guess it helps to know that I'm not alone in this experience. I think this is why poetry is so special to those who love it. It seems we always find pieces of ourselves in the words.

Case in point...here's another from this collection that hits home for me...straight to my heart. Some parts of this poem, Storm Front, I share below...

...I miss my sons and daughter, but then I have always missed them, even when I held them. I was always reminding myself to be present, to demarcate significance. I was always a little lost within my own home. A form of Narcissism, I suppose, never feeling able to take in enough. Honestly, I fear now, as I become old, both remembering too little and too much. Either pitfall bears challenges.

 Yesterday, watching a video of my youngest at two or three, listening to my young, robust voice read his storybook, I found I couldn't breathe. I would never be that father again; those years were lost to me. I understood then how such panic takes one to the edge of living. There is a violence enmeshed in memory I do not fully comprehend, ends are implicit in it....

I know I'm sharing a lot from these poems, but I just can't help it. As a mother of sons, I loved this one...

Mortal Currents

Side against side ~ lain face-up in sleep ~ two lone clouds ~

one a stuffed bear ~ one my young son ~ across the ridge they

are passing ~ shorn apart ~ thinned to wings ~

Little sleeper, dear child ~ so far from me now ~ there are

but these few miles of peace ~ these brief wondrous nights ~

then we wake diminished ~ awash in mortal currents ~

My son, sweet boy ~ this is such a precious time ~ sleep long ~

churn deeper ~ dream ~ while you still own your face ~ while

you are still near to home ~ before the angel of forgetting ~

puts its cool lips to your eyelids ~ and you become a man

Just when I thought I was safe, the final poem, Wonder Bread, hit me and I was down for the count. Here are the final several lines at the end...

...Give me the simple life. If I do get Alzheimer's, let me get stuck reliving those mornings making lunches. the same thing over and over again. Everybody late, rushing around, cramming stuff into bookbags, and scurrying out to the car. Then piling in together. Just being there, buckled in next to each other, sitting in line, waiting to drop off at the front doors. I could wait like that. I could wait like that for as long as it takes.

That's it. I'm wrecked. It's hard to be sad, but it would be even harder not to have these memories. This collection is so wonderful. I can't even put it in the proper words. I will just say that if you love poetry, and you love families and relationships and memories and yes, some poignancy, then this is the collection to read. I know these poems will stay with me.

About the collection:

Mark Cox pulls no punches in these poems about loving, drinking, traveling, and screwing up his relationships and parts of his life. “Looking back for a low point marking the worst of my insobriety, it might be that signal moment I put out my cigarette in the holy water font of St. Paul’s Catholic church, right in front of the priest. . .” Sometimes sobering, oftentimes funny, but always honest, the poems in Knowing aim for the heart and soul of us all.

Praise for Previous Collections:

On Readiness

Thrilling prose poems from a cherished writer . . . . Cox gives lie to the common notion that prose poetry is too formless to count as real verse . . . . [He] is as careful with diction, rhythm, and even rhyme as one might be if they were writing strict alexandrines-and yet, his poems are as fluid and readable as Jack Kerouac’s novels. -Kirkus Reviews

On Sorrow Bread

Tony Hoagland has said Mark Cox is “a veteran of the deep water; there’s no one like him,” and Thomas Lux identified him as “one of the finest poets of his generation.” No one speaks more effectively of the vital and enduring syntaxes of common, even communal, life. -Richard Simpson

On Natural Causes

One of the best books I’ve read in years. In a style that’s brash, offbeat, tough-minded and big-hearted, these poems explore the fundamental mysteries of love between parent and child, self and other, self and world. Beyond the inventive language and formal range, what makes this work so memorable is Cox’s refusal to look away from even the hardest facts of “unadulterated sorrow.” -Alan Shapiro

About the poet:

Mark Cox has authored six other volumes of poetry, the most recent being Readiness (2018) and Sorrow Bread: Poems 1984-2015 (2017). He has a forty-year history of publication in prominent magazines and his honors include a Whiting Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Oklahoma Book Award, and The Society of Midland Authors Poetry Prize. He chairs the Department of Creative Writing at UNC Wilmington and teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA Program.

Available on Amazon and Bookshop.

Never miss a post!

* indicates required

Email Address *

It Will Have Been So Beautiful by Amanda Shaw - Review

I'm thoroughly impressed with Shaw's debut collection. She touches on so many subjects. Her thoughts on home, love and loss, and what is going on in our world are eye-opening. She shows such insight when writing about human relationships. One underlying vibration that came through for me throughout the collection was the yearning for how things used to be. A hearkening to better times, before our world became so busy and jaded. 

I would be remiss not to mention the poem about the cat. "Felis Felix" is just an exact portrait of a cat. The final four lines, "Though not gifted with a range of sound / she lets us know with her clean tongue / You'll never own your lives as I do mine / however well you open doors." Truth...we may go out into the world, joining its hustle and bustle, but we will never be as free as a cat. 

I loved the poem touching on the waggle dance of bees (a form of animal language that honey bees use to communicate the location of food sources to other bees in their colony). "Dance, Dance, Evolution" says in its seventh stanza, "So it's a comfort / to hear there's a dance out there / to save a race from doom." A comfort indeed since bees are part of the biodiversity that humans depend on for survival. 

The title of this collection comes from a quote from Diane Arbus:

"While we regret that the past is not like the present and despair of its ever becoming the future, its innumerable, inscrutable habits lie in wait for their meaning. I want to gather them, like somebody's grandmother putting up preserves, because they will have been so beautiful."

What a quote. I'm definitely keeping it around for inspiration. 

It Will Have Been So Beautiful...indeed. An appropriate title for this stunning debut.

About the collection:

With urgency and compassion, humor and wonder, Amanda Shaw’s It Will Have Been So Beautiful examines the many dimensions of what it means to call anything “home,” including the earth as we know it. In a manner reminiscent of Eugène Atget, who wrote “will disappear” on his photographs of turn-of-the-century Paris, Shaw captures the unique melancholy of living in a time of unknowable change.

As she explores the line between love and loss, Shaw implores us to find a more profound commitment to life in all its forms. At times playful and ironic, the poems celebrate language’s sonic capacities, probing art’s potential to move us from mourning to joy.

About the Poet:

From the time she learned to read her first word — “Boom!” — Amanda Shaw has been in love with literature and language. She earned a BA in English from Smith College and has advanced degrees in education and writing. Equally at ease in a high school classroom and a World Bank boardroom, she is an expert teacher who continues to share her belief in the power of words with students of all ages.

Amanda began her career at a public high school in Brooklyn, where she was committed to student-centered curriculum and staff development as part of NYC’s small schools movement. After nine years in the city, she moved on to teaching ESL internationally and domestically, first in Rome and now in Washington DC. Witnessing poetry’s unique impact on students’ intellectual and emotional development galvanized her own writing. In 2020, she received her MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers.

In addition to actively participating in local and online writing communities, Amanda is the book review editor for Lily Poetry Review Books, where she supports emerging writers. Lily Poetry Review Books will publish her debut collection, It Will Have Been So Beautiful, in March 2024. The poems, written over 15 years, explore love and loss in personal and global contexts. For the past four years, Amanda has divided her time between New Hampshire, where she was born, and Washington, DC. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

Add to GoodReads:

Available on Amazon, Lily Poetry Review, and Bookshop.org.

Never miss a post!

* indicates required

Email Address *

Rebecca Hazell's The War Queens - Review

I always find funny the adage that women are the weaker sex. Women in history had a hand in so much of what went on politically, and yet few are remembered, or as well-known in history as their male counterparts. Once again, I credit historical fiction for bringing such a figure to my attention. Even as a history major in college, I had never heard of Queen Brunhilda of Austrasia. 

As I was reading The War Queens, I did some side reading on Brunhilda and much that is said about her is that she was power-hungry and driven. This would ultimately lead to her demise. On the other hand, Fredegunda, the rival queen is remembered as being behind many assassinations and political intrigues and yet she escaped the demise dealt to Brunhilda. Had she lived as long as Brunhilda did, I can't help but wonder if she might have met a similar fate. Though she seemed to always be triumphant in her schemes. 

Brunhilda of Austrasia (c. 547 - 613)
Antoni Zürcher, c. 1830

I have read the first book in Rebecca Hazell's The Tiger and the Dove series, The Grip of God (review here). She has a real talent for telling historical stories. The amount of research conducted is always astounding, leaving no doubt of historical accuracy. That being said, the stories are never dry. Queen Brunhilda is a complex character. She is driven, though I never feel she is power-hungry. She cares about her family, and the people of Austrasia...that is her motivation. Even her rivalry with Fredegunda never comes off as solely fueled by revenge over her sister. Fredegunda is a true narcissist who cares only about herself, something that shows even with the mothering of her children. History has not told us much about these two women so I'm sure there is more to the story. But I can't help thinking that Hazell got it exactly right. 

As an aside, I return to the whole "weaker sex" implication. Who is more weak than a king who allows himself to be persuaded by feminine wiles and sex? Oh, it's obvious that King Chilperic is the weakest of the four brother kings. This is why I question why so many faulted Brunhilda as being power-driven when she always only wanted to work as a partner to her husband, and subsequently to her son (and grandsons) as regent. Yet here we have Fredegunda influencing a known weak king, but nothing is said by others of her being driven and power-hungry. In this, I circle back to Hazell's deft storytelling. Fredegunda is very good at disguising her motives and making it look like it was all the king's idea in the first place. Brunhilda wears her heart and convictions on her sleeve, and ends up paying for it. 

As is probably obvious, I really loved this book. There is truly nothing better than historical fiction that makes us think, and spurs us to look beyond the story. This book is perfect for anyone who loves history, and for anyone who loves a great story.

About the book:
By the sixth century, the Roman Empire is already lost to tribal invasions, brutal Merovingian Franks have seized Gaul from the civilized Romanized Visigoths, and a dark age has descended across Europe. Now a deadly rivalry arises between two Merovingian queens. Brunhilda and Fredegunda are equals in beauty and intelligence, but opposite in vision and temperament. When the Franks demand a royal bride, Visigoth Brunhilda marries into a world that despises women. Suddenly thrust into power and repeatedly facing loss and grief, she seeks to revive a new Rome based on justice and prosperity. Her implacable foe, Fredegunda, is a former slave concubine who lives only for personal power. Insanely jealous of high-born Brunhilda, she uses seduction, assassination, war, and even witchcraft in her campaign to destroy her. Can Brunhilda survive this onslaught of evil? Can her vision survive?

About the Author:
Rebecca Hazell is a writer and artist whose nonfiction books for children garnered awards and critical praise, and were optioned for a television series. Her historical trilogy—The Grip of God, Solomon's Bride, and Consolamentum—is still in print after more than a decade. Before entering the world of books, she created educational materials for high schools that were used across the United States. She lives on Vancouver Island with her husband; her grown children and sister live nearby.

Find out more by visiting www.rebeccahazell.com or follow Rebecca on Instagram @RebeccaHazellbooks

Add to GoodReads:

Available on Amazon.

Never miss a post!

* indicates required

Email Address *

Night of the Hawk: Poems by Lauren Martin - Review

This is my favorite kind of poetry. Poems that speak of the woman's experience, of family, of everything that makes us happy, or sad, in our lives. Moments that are sometimes tragic, sometimes joyful...and often somewhere in between. 

The poem below really spoke to me. I had to share it in its entirety. As a postmenopausal woman myself, I can certainly relate to it. Women beyond that "expiration date" are often forgotten, or our opinions seem at times to not matter, as they mattered once. Still, there are those who know that we came before and that our voices do still matter.

MY EXPERIENCE AS A POSTMENOPAUSAL WOMAN

Is we are ignored
     Everywhere - even in poetry

Somehow not romantic or feminist
enough
Our wisdom excluded as undignified
As undignified as women running into the cold night with hot 

flashes peeling layers

"We're not helping men into the
conversation by making them feel
emasculated"   I say

And experience a new version of "blame the victim."

One in which there is no respect for the 

elder authority of the endocrine system 

and years of misogyny with no
conversation. Where we screamed into 

the Grand Canyon that blew dust back 

into our faces on the hot wind

I am told that I lack some insight that is 

honored and reflected in youth     rather
     must reflect my inability as an 

"old feminist" to differentiate between my 

"internalized misogyny" and what is
unbalanced

To be told that you have no idea when 

We paved the way
When I am standing on the shoulders 

of my own mother

You don't see me

And maybe that's because you're 

Not looking down
To the foundation of     my shoulders
To the years of my sleeves rolled up 

And boots tied high
At rallies and secret activist meetings 

Countless abuses of power 

Soul changing assaults

I can see the context of our culture
Then and now
And am happy you are bashing
The door open
Breaking the
Glass ceiling
But it's not because     we didn't try
Of course we did
Our height lets you touch
                                 the glass with
your hammer

Another poem that struck me, "OF TIMES TRAVELLED" because of this verse...

So the choice is

Lonely alone

or Lonely with

And how many women

Feel this

Or are discounted for their substance

Since my divorce 10 years ago, I have chosen to remain alone. Going along with what the verse says, I'd rather be lonely alone than lonely when I'm with someone. And you know what...I'm not really lonely.

This book of poems is an excellent volume to add to anyone's poetry collection. It is certainly going to be added to mine.

About the collection:

When I have wandered
long enough
what am I still beholden to?

Ifá. Nature. Illness. Love. Loss. Misogyny. Aging. Africa. Our wounded planet. In this sweeping yet intensely personal collection, Lauren Martin tells the untold stories of the marginalized, the abused, the ill, the disabled—the different. Inspired by her life’s experiences, including the isolation she has suffered as a result both of living with chronic illness and having devoted herself to a religion outside the mainstream, these poems explore with raw vulnerability and unflinching honesty what it is to live apart—even as one yearns for connection.

But Night of the Hawk is no lament; it is powerful, reverential, sometimes humorous, often defiant—“ Oh heat me and fill me / I rise above lines ”—and full of wisdom. Visceral and stirring, the poems in this collection touch on vastly disparate subjects but are ultimately unified in a singular to inspire those who read them toward kindness, compassion, and questioning.

Advance praise:

“The poems gathered here address themes of survival, chronic illness, shamanism, and feminism against the backdrop of daily life. . . . The diversity of experience examined makes for a collection that is both full and human. A whole life in one volume.” —Kirkus Reviews “Night of the Hawk is a luminous and numinous collection about women and men, about betrayal and forbearance, about endurance, death, and art, and, most essentially, about the search for a sacred path through life. There is so much love in these poems” –Michael Laurence, award-winning playwright “Lauren’s poems drop into your psyche and ripple outward, echoing in the moments of life. Their beauty haunts.” –Sallie Ann Glassman, Head Manbo Asogwe of La Source Ancienne Ounfo

About the Poet:

Lauren Martin is a psychotherapist, poet, and a devoted Ìyânífá. She lives in Oakland, California. Lauren studied poetry at Sarah Lawrence College. She spent years writing without submitting her work due to a long shamanic journey, which led her to both Ifá, and to the writing of this collection of poems. Learn more at: www.laurenmartin.net

Add to GoodReads:

Available on Amazon, Bookshop.org, and Barnes & Noble.

Never miss a post!

* indicates required

Email Address *

Poet Anique Sara Taylor discusses Inspiration in Poetry

Welcoming today Anique Sara Taylor, the poet behind the new collection, Civil Twilight.

From Inspiration to Exploration

Inspiration, from the Latin “to breathe into.” The subject of inspiration has followed many concepts through many centuries.

• The Greeks believed it came from the Muse.
• The Nordic peoples considered it the voice of the Gods.
• Israelites deemed it an overwhelming need to share God’s voice.
• Christians thought it was a communication from the Holy Spirit.

     The Romantics considered the poet a willing receiver of inspiration because of developed inner sensitivities.

     More recently inspiration has included ideas of courting visions, mystical winds, the inner psyche, a divine fury. Endless discussions continue about connecting with inspiration as a form of ecstasy and fervor. Even frenzy and madness. Or being transported, as if this were something the writer hadn’t asked for and couldn’t resist or control.

     In searching for an open connection to creativity, writers have utilized Ouija Boards, meditation, automatic writing, various substances, all in the pursuit of open access to inspiration, and therefore genius. This has inspired philosophers, theologians, psychologists to write many books, with a variety of viewpoints.

     Growing up, I remember teachers referring to creatives as having inspiration, as if this was a magical gift given to only the lucky (or perhaps insane) few.

     I used to wait for the thrilling rush of inspiration, the burning trigger to tell my story. I loved riding the crest of that wave. But in my studies, classes, reading and friendship with other poets, I’ve observed that inspiration doesn’t always swoop down reliably, in full and complete usable form. Working on craft that deepens over time, is a less romantic version that’s often ignored.

     Many serious writers come to learn a more sober, and perhaps more deeply fulfilling mode of working: Read. Study. Research. Have a daily writing practice. Ask questions. Follow threads of completely new and unfamiliar resources. Delve deep into various crafts, professions, and sciences. Write down what comes to you in dreams and meditation. Make friends with phrases. Compose and refine phrases. Explore with curiosity to discover what can be built. Thoughtfully combine materials that have been gathered.

     Welcome the uncut, the wild and the unvarnished parts. Let in what’s unsettling and what’s on fire. Take your time. Sort it out in the rewrite. Then rewrite again. And again.

     Below I’m sharing ways phrases can begin. These are both the tiny lighting strikes and the nuts-and-bolts of inspiration. I hope these will give you insight into the endless ways you can shift from inspiration to curiosity and exploration.

How a Poem Can Begin

• A poem can begin in confusion or passion. A wild inspiration that pulls you away from everything that needs to be done that day.

• Phrases can begin with lines in disarray that you’ve gathered in notebooks where nothing connects. You don’t know what to do with them, or where they’ll go.

• Words come to you while you’re driving or cooking, taking a shower, answering the phone, or stirring the oatmeal.

• A poem begins with the way morning light glitters off the telephone wires.

• Writing begins when someone tells you they have Lyme Disease and you research lists of symptoms and causes, and then you wonder what it’s like to be a spirochete.

• Memories topple in when a phone call comes from a childhood friend. You flash back to a rock ’n roll party in her driveway. Records. 45s spinning on her portable record player, a B-side slow-dance, and the sweet boy who swayed you to the music on a June evening.

• A poem begins when you finally have time to write, and you can’t think of a thing to say. And you feel everything you write is wrong. But you write anyway. On the day you finally had time to write.

• Phrases come when you’re walking the unpaved circular mile around the town pond in early morning, when everyone else is still asleep.

• Words tumble in quickly with a workshop prompt, in the class you were afraid to sign up for. You don’t know where it’s going, and you feel exposed because you’re afraid they’ll ask you to read it out loud.

• Phrases come to you when someone on TV has obsessive-compulsive disorder, and you search websites, and then your life, for a vocabulary of obsessive-compulsive traits.

• Strange dream-words flood in from blurred clouds on first waking up. You feel they’re trying to tell you something, even though you don’t understand. But you write them down anyway.

• Images rush in when you’re stopped at the red light, and you have less than a minute to capture words for the scene at the intersection.

• A poem begins with your journal when you’re sad and alone, and there’s no one to call.

• Phrases pour out over a collection of seashells. A list of first times, last times and turning points. A history of places where you’ve lived. Shoes you’ve worn. Cars. Jobs. Past loves.

• An elegy begins when you write about one loss as if it was a reflection of every other loss.

• A poem begins when you research snakes or frogs, or how you learned to walk. Or how the rocks below you were formed billions of years ago.

• Imagery begins when you catalogue all you see around you. Or hear, smell, taste, feel, touch.

• A poem begins when you’re reading someone else’s poem, and it sparks an idea in you that continues on your own tangent.

• A new thought opens up when your cousin calls to say she’s taken the kids to Arizona’s Saguoro National Park. And although you only know New England forests, you read about the cactus that take 50-75 years to grow their first arms.

• A project can start when you make a date to meet a friend at the mall for tea. You sit and write together quietly.

• Poems begin when you enter your daily writing practice and continue the work you'd left unfinished and breathing from the day before.

• Writing begins with a wild body-surfing wave, or on thin ice. With too much time, or not enough time. With what is disconnected, broken, messy and uncertain, But begin in any way you can.

A Poem Begins With Possibility

     With these possibilities, I bring you back into the little world of my own beginnings and disconnected phrases. These lines are from unwritten poems, slips of paper and old computer files. Maybe someday, some will grow up to become poems.

Lines:

Bass sax threads a warm perfume around the slow dancers.

*

Another Lucky Strike between her red lips,

she inhales with a magnet of breath until embers glow scarlet.

*

Thistles, nettles and thorns of night where owl shadows

and hawks gather, where no one has ever been so alone.

*

It was the year of seven monkeys and the structure of dragon kites.

*

As shimmering fish intersperse with ruins and castles,

soaking up the sadness of shipwrecks.

*

White noise ripples in my ears, I can no longer hear the angels.

Spirochetes dive into my tissues, I ask for grace.

*

Even with theories of atonement, the deeper difficulty remains.

*

Among the sand and mud of protected bays,

submerged lilies sway with pond grass.

*

a similarity of corresponding mouth parts

*

its nature smoother than glass, rounder than pearl

*

Just before the roses bloomed, just before you left me

*

memories of ten thousand cigarettes

beside discarded J&B Scotch bottles

*

Birds swoop past unaware, their music first urgent, then tender

*

The silver planets of my thoughts

*

How a Poem Grows

     Early writers often try to tell their personal story. But magic can happen when they loosen their personal grip on the story and consider the limitless possibilities of the universe. If we open our senses to the cornucopia of material ceaselessly seething all around us, we might find that all we’d wanted to say would still follow us.

     When you gather phrases of possibility, when you combine them, you might discover something you’d always wished for, but didn’t know how to find.

*

What are the silver planets of your thoughts?

*

Anique Sara Taylor’s book Civil Twilight is Blue Light Poetry Prize 2022. Where Space Bends was published by Finishing Line Press 2020. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her chapbooks chosen Finalist in 2023 are: When Black Opalescent Birds Still Circled the Globe (Harbor Review’s Inaugural 2023 Jewish Women’s Prize); Feathered Strips of Prayer Before Morning (Minerva Rising); Cobblestone Mist (Long-listed Finalist by Harbor Editions’ Marginalia Series). Earlier Chapbook Finalists: Where Space Bends (In earlier chapbook form 2014 by both Minerva Rising & Blue Light Press.) and Under the Ice Moon (2015 Blue Light Press). She holds a Poetry MFA (Drew), Diplôme (Sorbonne, Paris), a Drawing MFA & Painting BFA (With Highest Honors / Pratt) and a Master of Divinity degree. Follow her on Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and her blog. Sign up for her newsletter.

Add to GoodReads:

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

About the book:

Anique Sara Taylor’s chapbook Civil Twilight is the winner of the 2022 Blue Light Poetry Prize.

As the sun sinks 6 ̊ below the horizon at dawn or dusk, it’s 5:30am/pm someplace in the world. In thirty shimmering poems (30 words/5 lines each), Civil Twilight probes borders of risk across a landscape of thunderstorms, quill-shaped mist, falcons that soar, the hope of regeneration, a compass to the center. Tightly hewn poems ring with rhythm and sound, follow ghosts who relentlessly weave through a journey of grief toward ecstasy. Spinning words seek to unhinge inner wounds among sea shells and hostile mirrors, eagles and cardinals––to enter “the infinity between atoms,” hear the invisible waltz. Even the regrets. The search for an inner silhouette becomes a quest for shards of truth, as she asks the simple question, “What will you take with you?”

Advance Praise:

“Taylor’s award-winning collection is mesmerizing. 30 poems, 30 words each shimmer with a refined intensity at once both taut and expansive … her emotional richness is as lyric as it is restrained.” ––Leslie T. Sharpe, Author of The Quarry Fox and Other Critters of the Wild Catskills

“Experience each poem, woven [with] great intimacy and rare musicality … Read all 30 poems aloud in sequence and feel yourself transformed.” ––Sharon Israel, Host of Planet Poet, Words in Space Radio Show and Podcast

“Civil Twilight is a stunningly crafted sequence of small poems … keenly attuned to the language of the natural world and all the mysteries that come with it.” —Sean Nevin, Author of Oblivio Gate

Never miss a post!

* indicates required

Email Address *

Author Elizabeth Bruce discusses the characters in her new collection, Universally Adored & Other One Dollar Stories

I grew up in a small town on the Gulf coast of Texas, though I haven't lived there for over 50 years. I left a week after I graduated from high school and went off to college in Colorado. I’ve spent my entire adult life either in the urban centers on the front range of Colorado or in NE Washington, DC, with a one-year layover in New York City.

However, most of my characters are regular, “analog” folks who live in small communities.

People ask me why I don’t write more about my own urban adult life. And my answer is that I kind of do. I couch my insights into the human condition in my forthright, plain-spoken characters who embody a resilience I’ve found everywhere—in the people who shaped me growing up, who have befriended me in adulthood, with whom I’ve worked or collaborated—

individuals with whom I have found such a profound community.

So many people I know—be they friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, fellow artists, etc.—have faced real hardships in life.

Indeed, I’ve tended to live and work in places where people are “strivers.” They’re survivors. They’ve gone through hard times of sorrow, of affliction, deprivation, war, or violence. Maybe they’ve come here from somewhere else—another country, another region of the U.S.—or maybe they’re trying to get away, but mostly they’re striving for a better material reality, a better inner reality, some measure of equilibrium. They’re the models for my characters. While my characters don’t always succeed, mostly they soldier on. And I find that heroic. My fiction is an homage to their grit.

The reality is, I'm not an academic. I don’t have an advanced degree. While I have a sweet little BA in English from a great liberal arts college, and a ton of lifelong learning, I don’t belong to, nor do I write about “the academy.”

There’s a very insightful analysis that emerged in recent years by British author David Goodhart about “anywhere” people and “somewhere” people.” “Anywhere” people have skill sets and social capital that enable them to live anywhere and make a good living. “Somewhere” people, on the other hand, have livelihoods that are not so transportable and for whom place is a palpable and essential ingredient of their lives. For whom family, friends, community institutions, and the land itself weave together the meaningful tapestry of their lives. They live local lives.

There’s a fabulous museum in Baltimore, the American Visionary Art Museum, that describes itself as “America’s official national museum, education center, and repository for self-taught and intuitive artistry.” One of its first goals is “to expand the definition of a worthwhile life.”

I love that—expanding the definition of a worthwhile life.

Those are the lives I write about. My characters are not particularly hip or prosperous. They’re not the cerebral, “logocentric,” often alienated or cynical “anywhere” characters of much of contemporary Western literary fiction.

But I love them all. I relate to them all.

I read a beautiful commentary 30+ years ago by a woman writer in a series of interviews in the Washington Post. This writer wrote about how, once she’s conjured her characters into existence, she feels a deep commitment to finish telling their stories. It’s like a moral obligation, and I completely agree.

There’s this thing that happens when a reader is totally immersed in a story. They call it “narrative transportation.” This happens at a very deep level for writers themselves. It’s a magical, sometimes painful, but always deeply empathetic experience, even with unsympathetic characters. As a former character actor, I find it so much like the actor’s process of embodying a character.

In fact, speaking of theatre, there’s a great play your readers might know by the early 20th century Italian playwright, Luigi Pirandello, entitled “Six Characters in Search of an Author,” in which characters whose authors had not finished telling their stories, barge into a rehearsal with a bunch of actors and demand that they finish acting out their narratives. I completely understand their urgency!

So that’s who I dedicate my writing to—my own characters in search of an author. They’re who’s in my new collection, Universally Adored & Other One Dollar Stories, in which every story begins with the words “one dollar” and pivots in some way around the meaning of a dollar.

There’s a ladies’ room attendant escaping an abusive husband, a stable owner and her alcoholic father, an urban street vendor of ice-cold water and a laid off ammo factory worker. There’s a street jazz musician, a color-obsessed artist, a germaphobe bartender, a migrant farmworker girl, and an odd-job bibliophile. There’s a jaded humanitarian doctor, an older brother in charge of his neurodivergent younger brother, a vagabond healer, and some middle schoolers, single mothers, and more. And there’s a subset of characters embroiled—voluntarily or not—in the underground economy: a drug mule, a soon-to-be conscripted-into-prostitution young girl, an ex-con, and a wrongfully convicted lifer.

The collection was just released by Vine Leaves Press. Your readers can find out about it or purchase a copy here or learn more about me or my other work at https://elizabethbrucedc.com.

Thanks so much for this opportunity to share a bit about my work.

Elizabeth Bruce’s debut story collection, Universally Adored & Other One Dollar Stories, is forthcoming in January 2024 from the Athens, Greece-based Vine Leaves Press. Her debut novel, And Silent Left the Place, won Washington Writers’ Publishing House’s Fiction Award, ForeWord Magazine’s Bronze Fiction Prize, and was one of two finalists for the Texas Institute of Letters’ Steven Turner Award for Best Work of First Fiction. Bruce has published prose in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Sweden, Romania, India, South Korea, Malawi, Yemen, and The Philippines, including in FireWords Quarterly, Pure Slush, takahē magazine, The Ilanot Review, Spadina Literary Review, Inklette, Lines & Stars, and others, as well as in such anthologies from Paycock Press’ Gargoyle series, Weasel Press’ How Well You Walk through Madness: An Anthology of Beat, Vine Leaves Literary Journal: A Collection of Vignettes from Across the Globe; Madville Publishing’s Muddy Backroads, Two Thirds North, multiple Gargoyle anthologies, and Washington Writers’ Publishing House’s This Is What America Looks Like. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Add to GoodReads:

Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Vine Leaves Press.

About the book:

In Universally Adored and Other One Dollar Stories, Elizabeth Bruce gives readers 33 ways of looking at a dollar. Her empathetic, humorous, and disarming embrace of plain-spoken people searching for a way out, charms and provokes. These are bittersweet stories of resilience and defiance.

In “Universally Adored,” a color-obsessed artist draws a facsimile of a dollar—a masterpiece universally adored—to win her girlfriend back. While checking for spare change in the laundry, in “Bald Tires” a Tennessee housewife with a malcontent husband finds an unused condom in his Sunday trousers. In “The Forgiveness Man,” a runaway teen with a newborn follows a vagabond healer absolving the bedraggled godless through hugs of forgiveness. And in “Magic Fingers, a ladies’ room attendant tracked down by her abusive ex finds refuge in a cheap motel with a 1970s era bed massager.

Riffing on the intimate object of a dollar, Bruce’s humane short fictions—from a great mashed potato war to the grass Jesus walked on—ring with the exquisite voices of characters in analog worlds.

Advance Praise:

“Elizabeth Bruce’s stories have that rare quality of feeling as though they have always existed, the way the best stories always do. In a lesser writer’s hands, the conceit of beginning each story with ‘one dollar’ might seem like a gimmick, but here they echo Wallace Stevens’ ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,’ and I found myself eager for what came next, curious to see how each new story amplifies the previous story while also diverging from it, often in dramatically different points of view and styles. These are exquisite short stories that give me hope.” –John McNally, author of The Book of Ralph and The Fear of Everything (USA)

“This collection contains inventiveness, voice, and vivid characters grappling with life and love, pouring forth on each new page. Together the stories weave a remarkable tapestry around a theme with a shockingly familiar starting point. By the end, we see in how the author guides our attention, new ways of seeing ourselves and the constellations of our closest relationships. It’s breathtaking.” –David A. Taylor, author of Success: Stories and Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America (USA)

“I’ve been eagerly awaiting this collection of one of a kind short-shorts from the author of And Silent Left the Place. Keen-eyed and with a great gift for stand-out narratives at whose heart is a profound appreciation of the particular, Bruce takes us on a magical realist journey through the lives of ordinary people whose lives turn on a dollar. A gifted storyteller, Bruce is at her best here. The stories sing with ingenuity and keep us in her spell. Just how far can one dollar take a person? You’d be amazed.” –Naomi Ayala, author of Calling Home: Praise Songs & Incantations (USA) Winner, Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy of Environmental Justice Award

“Elizabeth Bruce’s stories shine a light on the conflicts–big and small–that we face in life and our struggles to resolve them. She writes thoughtfully and elegantly about the pain and beauty of being alive.” –Eric Stover, author of The Witnesses: War Crimes and the Promise of Justice in The Hague (USA)

Never miss a post!

* indicates required

Email Address *

Arranging Words: Poems by Fran Abrams - Review

What a clever little collection! Abrams knows how to use words precisely to bring out a chuckle, or even to make that light bulb come on in your head..."Hey, I've always thought/wondered that myself." As in, On the Tip of my Tongue, she talks about how when you talk to someone with a pierced tongue, you really have to work at not looking at it the entire time. And then there's this one, which touches on something I've always wondered myself. Why do we have names for some things and then just don't for others? From We Have No Name for Them...

When a parent loses a child, 

we have no name for that. 

When a boy loses his sister, 

there is not word to label him. 

Whether his sister died a victim

of car crash, shooting, or illness, 

we have no vocabulary 

for those who remain.

The poem Three Little Words showcases how powerful just three little words can be. A stanza from the poem:

Knowledge is power

Just do it

Nothing is impossible

And the hilariously funny All Ears. Seriously, the image in my head on this one. It also reminded me of a Shel Siverstein poem. 

This is such a fun collection. Things are so serious in the world right now. Sometimes it's nice to read something lighthearted to take us away from it all. This collection does just that.

About the collection:

Arranging Words is Abrams’ second chapbook collection. It is a series of light-hearted poems that asks the reader to look at words from a new perspective. These poems approach letters, words, and everyday phrases in a way that pokes fun at the eccentricities of the English language.

For example, her poem titled “K Knows How to Hide and Seek” begins with the line “Kknocks twice, but we only hear him once,” reminding us how often “k” is a silent letter.

The poem “Poetry Exercise” plays on the meaning of the word “exercise” with the line “Brain cells stretch, lift your arms, reach for words.” Phrases are deconstructed into literal meanings, such as in the poem “Beside Myself” that asks, “Am I myself or the one beside myself?”

This collection illuminates the quirks of the English language in a lively, humorous way while demonstrating a love for words themselves.

About the Author:

Fran Abrams lives in Rockville, MD. Her poems have been published in literary magazines online and in print and appear in more than a dozen anthologies. In July 2022, the title poem of this book, “Arranging Words,” was a finalist in the 2022 Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry. Her two previous books are: I Rode the Second Wave: A Feminist Memoir (2022) and The Poet Who Loves Pythagoras (2023). Learn more at www.franabramspoetry.com and Connect on Facebook at Fran Abrams, Poet.

Add to Goodreads:

Available on Amazon, Bookshop, and Barnes & Noble.

Never miss a post!

* indicates required

Email Address *