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Thursday, March 31, 2022
Cat Thursday - Sign of the times
Friday, March 25, 2022
Winter at a Summer House: Poems by Mary Beth Hines - Review
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"We slip from the forest on charmed, slender legs.
Our eyes spark with starlight, we dip our sleek heads."
I recommend this collection to anyone who loves poetry and enjoys finding themselves among the lines.
In Winter at a Summer House, Mary Beth Hines’s poems speak to the sublime and risks in every middle-class home, small city neighborhood, seaside retreat, or suburban backyard. Vivid, tactile imagery suffuses the collection, which follows the arc of a life from birth/first words to death/last words. Together, these poems create a sometimes heartbreaking, but often humorous and joyous, narrative that speaks to all readers.
Advance Praise:
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Advance Praise:
“The poems in Mary Beth Hines’s first collection, Winter at a Summer House, strike a wonderful balance between narratives of everyday experience and a pristine, pure poetic imagination. Always rhythmically diverse, most of the time mellifluous, and often intense, Hines’s poetry vividly paints the life of a modern self-made woman, with her worries and obligations, her family, and her dreams. In response to the heroine’s world, this poetry, never static, vibrates with all sorts of emotions: love, friendship, youthful
infatuations, amorousness, jealousy, altruism. As a result, the book gives its reader all the pleasures of a novel – and of lyric novelty.” – Katia Kapovich, the author of Gogol in Rome and Cossacks and Bandits
“Mary Beth Hines sings to us out of the staircases, back yards, and swimming pools of a life sumptuously lived, a world rife with joys and enticements, with girlhood wish and adulthood tryst. Each song lifts on the updrafts of a language passionately breathed, The poems are arrayed with such stunning craft that the art dissolves into the narrative. One forgets that one is reading and imagines that one is reliving this life. Winter at a Summer House is, in the words of one of the poems, a “gift to spark remembrance,” as if the memories had become our own.” -Tom Daley, the author of House You Cannot Reach
“Hines grew up in Massachusetts, adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean, and the poems in this debut collection are filled with richly detailed imagery evoking the sea—of characters swimming, bathing, diving, as if time were an unpredictable element and living, a process of navigating unexpected currents. … A dynamic and colorful set of poems inspired by water and ocean imagery. ” – Kirkus Reviews
Available at Kelsay Books and Amazon.
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infatuations, amorousness, jealousy, altruism. As a result, the book gives its reader all the pleasures of a novel – and of lyric novelty.” – Katia Kapovich, the author of Gogol in Rome and Cossacks and Bandits
“Mary Beth Hines sings to us out of the staircases, back yards, and swimming pools of a life sumptuously lived, a world rife with joys and enticements, with girlhood wish and adulthood tryst. Each song lifts on the updrafts of a language passionately breathed, The poems are arrayed with such stunning craft that the art dissolves into the narrative. One forgets that one is reading and imagines that one is reliving this life. Winter at a Summer House is, in the words of one of the poems, a “gift to spark remembrance,” as if the memories had become our own.” -Tom Daley, the author of House You Cannot Reach
“Hines grew up in Massachusetts, adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean, and the poems in this debut collection are filled with richly detailed imagery evoking the sea—of characters swimming, bathing, diving, as if time were an unpredictable element and living, a process of navigating unexpected currents. … A dynamic and colorful set of poems inspired by water and ocean imagery. ” – Kirkus Reviews
Available at Kelsay Books and Amazon.
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About the author
Mary Beth Hines grew up in Massachusetts where she spent Saturday afternoons ditching ballet to pursue stories and poems deep in the stacks of the Waltham Public Library. She earned bachelor of arts in English from The College of the Holy Cross, and studied for a year at Durham University in England. She began a regular creative writing practice following a career in public service (Volpe Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts), leading award-winning national outreach, communications, and workforce programs. Her poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction appear in dozens of literary journals and anthologies both nationally and abroad. Winter at a Summer House is her first poetry collection. When not reading or writing, she swims, walks in the woods, plays with friends, travels with her husband, and enjoys life with their family, including their two beloved grandchildren. Visit her online.
I received this book free of charge from the author. Thank you to Poetic Book Tours for inviting me to participate.
Thursday, March 24, 2022
Cat Thursday - Here's Johnny!
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Tuesday, March 22, 2022
Classics Club Spin 29 - The lucky number is....
11
I've been wanting to read this one ever since reading about Paul Huson and subsequently buying the book. So, pretty happy with the result.
What did you get?
Saturday, March 19, 2022
Classics Club Spin 29
Can't believe I missed the last two spins. The last one I participated in was 26, and I didn't finish my spin selection. Hopefully, I will this time. I revised my Classics Club list back in September and altered my finish date. Details on the spin at the Classics Club website here.
1. Negotiating with the Dead, Margaret Atwood
2. The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
3. The Witch of Ravensworth, George Brewer
4. The Vein of Gold, Julia Cameron
5. Murder in the Cathedral, T.S. Eliot
6. The Collector, John Fowles
7. Writing Past Dark, Bonnie Friedman
8. Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg
9. The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Robert Graves
10. The House on the Borderland, William Hope Hodgson
11. Mastering Witchcraft: A Practical Guide for Witches, Warlocks, and Covens, Paul Huson
12. The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
13. Some Dogmas of Religion, J.M.E. McTaggart
14. The Faith of a Writer, Joyce Carol Oates
15. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
16. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
17. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
18. A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf
19. Take Joy, Jane Yolen
20. The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales, Chris Baldick (Editor)
Thursday, March 17, 2022
Cat Thursday - Just plain funny
Friday, March 11, 2022
the dust of hope: rune poems by Judy Croome - Review
The Dust of Hope is a beautiful collection of poems inspired by the runes of the Elder Futhark. Two themes stood out for me: the pandemic and the loss of someone beloved. Almost right off the bat, emotions were evoked, and I could feel unshed tears at the back of my eyes.
"...a memory of infinity reminding me that--even as I sit in the darkness alone, isolated by the pandemic, your ashes scattered on the paths those eland walked--having once been wrapped in your love, I am still rich beyond compare." ('eland by the door')
Touching on the truth of this world and the realities of the pandemic. Our greed and inattentiveness (brains engulfed by cyberspace). The pack mentality (and those of us not part of the pack).
"...all those who clung together, once gaining strength and cruelty from their unity are kept apart, weakening with terror while we--the alienated, the outsiders--we're still alone with out strength and our souls that speak true, for we possess the gift of solitude and lock down is our home." ('speak true')
'when life returns to normal' being the "motto" of the pandemic. Yes!
"why would we want to...when normal was so skewed with unkindness and greed and corruption of power? if the bleak months of lockdown have taught us anything it would be: we must let go of the old normal and find undreamt of freedom in the fertile ground of fallow fields."
This collection is both thought provoking and soul stirring. Does it call us out? Yes, but humanity needs to hear it.
"...feeling like gods . will love turn to fear when we feel the first flick of tyranny, at that moment we first realise we've sold our souls to science" ('need-fire')
Highly recommended.
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Judy Croome’s latest collection of poetry returns to the ancient ways of the Nordic runes, shining a light of hope and healing as we navigate through the wilderness of anxiety permeating these early years of the twenty-first century.
The simple verses console the reader with a calm acceptance that, even during a global pandemic, everyday life ebbs and flows with the natural rhythms of the timeless oceans.
Here are poems that invite us to stop, to breathe, and to see the world around us from a new perspective birthed within the centre of our souls.
About the Author:
Judy Croome lives and writes in Johannesburg, South Africa. Shortlisted in the African Writing Flash Fiction 2011 competition, Judy’s short stories, poems and articles have appeared in various magazines,
Her fiction and poetry books ‘the dust of hope: rune poems” (2021); “Drop by Drop: poems of loss” (2020); “a stranger in a strange land” (2015),”The Weight of a Feather & Other Stories” (2013), “a Lamp at Midday” (2012) and “Dancing in the Shadows of Love” (2011) are available from Aztar Press.
“Street Smart Taxpayers: A practical guide to your rights in South Africa” (Juta Law, 2017) was co-authored with her late husband Dr. Beric Croome (1960 – 2019). Follow her on GoodReads, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
I received this book free of charge from the author. Thank you to Poetic Book Tours for inviting me to participate.
Thursday, March 10, 2022
Cat Thursday: Authors and Cats (109) Mark Z. Danielewski
The second Cat Thursday of each month is Authors and Cats Thursday. Each time I will feature an author (with a birthday during the month), pictured with their/a cat(s), or guest posts by cat loving authors who also (sometimes) write about cats.
This image, and the image below, are of the author with his beloved cat, Carl, who passed away in 2013 (RIP). He is still a lover of cats. You can see pictures of them on his Facebook page here.
Danielewski studied English Literature at Yale. He then decided to move to Berkeley, California, where he took a summer program in Latin at the University of California, Berkeley. He also spent time in Paris, preoccupied mostly with writing.
In the early 1990s, he pursued graduate studies at the USC School of Cinema-Television. He later served as an assistant editor and worked on sound for Derrida, a documentary based on the life of the Algerian-born French literary critic and philosopher Jacques Derrida.
His second novel, Only Revolutions, was released in 2006. The novel was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award.
His novel The Fifty Year Sword was released in the Netherlands in 2005. A new version with stitched illustrations was released in the United States 2012 (including a limited-edition release featuring a latched box that held the book). On Halloween 2010-2012, Danielewski "conducted" staged readings of the book at the REDCAT Theater inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Each year was different and included features such as large-scale shadows, music, and performances from actors such as Betsy Brandt (Breaking Bad).
On May 12, 2015, he released the first volume, The Familiar (Volume 1): One Rainy Day in May in his announced 27-volume series The Familiar. The story "concerns a 12-year-old girl who finds a kitten..." The second volume, The Familiar (Volume 2): Into the Forest was released on Oct. 27, 2015, The Familiar (Volume 3): Honeysuckle & Pain came out June 14, 2016, and The Familiar (Volume 4): Hades arrived in bookstores on Feb. 7, 2017, and The Familiar (Volume 5): Redwood was released on Halloween 2017.
His latest release, The Little Blue Kite, is out now. (Goodreads)
Thursday, March 3, 2022
Cat Thursday - Black cats
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