Denise Low Interviews Kenneth Irby: Podcast

Photo by Denise Low, 2011

Here is a link to my March, 2015 interview with Kenneth Irby, winner of the Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America. Although he was never at Black Mountain, he is closely associated with BM experimental poets and numbered several among his friends. William J. Harris writes about Irby for Jacket2, "Ken Irby should be ranked with such contemporary figures as Amiri Baraka, Robert Creeley, Lyn Hejinian, Ed Dorn, Robert Duncan, and Rae Armantrout." See  Jacket2 for a collection of poems, letters, essays about his work, and miscellany.  This is one of the few online podcasts of Irby, and it will only be available for two weeks. After that, purchase it through the newletters.org website. Many thanks to Angela Elam for editing the 1 1/2 hour interview into a program. http://www.newletters.org/on-the-air/irby-2015

Denise Low Reviews Richard Siken and Amy Gerstler for the KC Star

Richard Siken's War of the Foxes (Copper Canyon) and Amy Gerstler's Scattered at Sea (Penguin) are both intense, well written books. The latter begins: "What to do with gazillions of factoids accumulating in the Age of the Internet? A Shakespearean sonnet cannot present Facebook news feed in a mere 14 lines. Or can it? Poet Amy Gerstler, winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry, has found a way to celebrate the infinite branching of knowledge. She collages it in exuberant, endless scrapbooks interspersed with her own life story. She makes rich poetry. Divisions in the book are “Kissing,” “Womanish,” “Dust of Heirs, Dust of Ancestors,” “What I Did With Your Ashes” and “Only at Certain Sacred Locations.” The last considers reincarnation and the journeys of “A Terribly Sentimental Fork,” among other surprises. Each of Gerstler’s poems has a personal voice, overlaid with a Babel of images."

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/books/article25366783.html#storylink=cpy

See more of my reviews at:

http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/books/article25366783.html

Denise Low reviews Jo McDougall's Collected Poems for the KC Star

The Kansas City Star generously supports area writers. This week they published my review of Jo McDougall's new collected poems, which begins:

""Jo McDougall has inspired readers with her work for more than 30 years. Her collected poems, In the Home of the Famous Dead, presents all her books, from 1983 through 2010. McDougall, a 20-year resident of the Kansas City area, now resides in Arkansas. Both places recur in the writings. Each poem is an essential lesson about how to find joy in this beautiful but blemished existence.

"McDougall teaches readers how to view landscapes. She presents stark panoramas, then adds a human dimension. In “Driving Alone,” the briefly sketched setting evokes enormity: “Sunset takes the light, the sound.” The title sets up the drama of loneliness as the poem develops a story: “She reaches for the radio, / already on.” This woman is adrift in a car. The solitary journey is familiar, a shared metaphor for life itself, and also a very real emotion. . . ." 

See more of my review online http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/books/article24675628.html#storylink=cpy

 

Purchase online or through the University of Arkansas Press:

In the Home of the Famous Dead: Collected Poems, by Jo McDougall (250 pages; University of Arkansas Press; $24.95, $49.95 cloth)

Mammoth Publishes SUSAN RIEKE, IRELAND’S WEATHER

 

Susan Rieke’s Ireland’sWeather mixes all the mythic beauty of Ireland with clear-eyed observations. Contemporary sights mingle with ageless natural wonders. Even a commonplace experience like dawn becomes extraordinary as  the poet notices how “the sun tilts with a side grin.”  Travel with this writerly companion to a landscape populated with robins, crows, bees, and “old demons.” The journey will change everything.

Cover art, Thomas F. Weso, art:, “Blue Storm,” private collection, Washington D.C. 2 illustrations by Thomas F. Weso. Published by Mammoth Publications. ISBN 978-1-939301-77-2

 

 

 

A Moon Slice

A moon slice opens evening’s gate, waning

into clouds. It cannot blaze like the sun,

but quiet night counts on her cold.

Velia, witch of the wood, weaves magic.

The moon creates again a light waltz

whose steps never fail.                                

A land of few sunrises and sunsets shouts

for attention when the moon mounts the sky.

Crows form a front team.

They command respect for this white goddess

who obliterates gray

and dark recesses of memory.

Order online  $10.00   www.mammothpublications.net, the Susan Rieke author tab. To order multiple copies or for inquires, contact mammothpubs [at] gmail.com  Order by mail: 1916 Stratford Road, Lawrence, KS 66044.  

JEFF TIGCHELAAR PUBLISHES DEBUT COLLECTION

The book launch for Jeff Tigchelaar’s first book, Certain Streets at an Uncertain Hour, will be June 19, 2015, 7 p.m.at The Raven Book Store, 6 E 7th St, Lawrence, Kansas. Do not miss this fine poet if you are in the area!

I first met Jeff Tigchelaar when he won the prestigious Langston Hughes literary award for poetry in 2010. As a judge, I saw a good sampling of his writings. At the presentation, I asked about his name, which I could not spell worth a darn—it is Dutch for “tile-layer.” This demystified the name even if it created more questions about Dutch triplings of consonants and doublings of the same vowel. Tigchelaar, born and raised in Michigan, is a former newspaper reporter, editor, and stay-at-home dad. After residing in Lawrence, Kansas, he is moving with his family to West Virginia (2015).

 

His writing is deceptively simple with sophisticated line breaks that tilt his ideas one way and then another. He can begin with ordinary moments, like take-off on a runway, and subvert the normalcy into surreal images. “Fly Frontier,” below, reframes flight and creates further drama, as though the passenger carrier were a space “capsule.” Then he shifts to the bizarre image of a “yawping wolf,” an ordinary logo, perhaps, but seen in context of a death-defying flight, it adds a sinister tone. Tigchelaar keeps pushing the nightmarish quality of the experience as the plane is “drastically tilting” and the “slide” wing could lead straight to disaster. The narrator sidesteps the drop into an abyss at the end with an adroit shift to the conditional, the what-if. He finds “light” at the end of “darkness.” For another day, the poet and the reader both escape mortality. The title, the “New Frontier” of John F. Kennedy as well as the “Final Frontier” of Star Trek, resonates with layers of cultural suggestions.

Fly Frontier

I’m in a manmade capsule hurtling through the sky

so if I die I probably deserve it.

It’s early

and still dark, but Kansas City

is all lit up. There’s a yawping

wolf outside my window

painted on the wingtip,

eyes closed, muzzle up, how whimsical.

No, how foreboding. And why is it so

choppy? God, we’ve only

just taken off. Now we’re drastically tilting

and the plane wing looks like a slide.

If this were a dream, I’d step out

and plunge into the darkness of a Monday

and fall until everything was light.

                                                © 2015 Jeff Tigchelaar, reprinted with permission

Full disclosure—I blurbed this book, and I’m happy Eric McHenry, Jim Daniels, and Wyatt Townley joined me in support of this fine writer. My comments were: “Jeff Tigchelaar speaks directly to his readers about politics, moral choices, and the beauty he finds in an imperfect world. This debut collection shows a poet ready to suggest solutions. Join him as he makes a difference.” Yes, Tigchelaar is a poet with lots of layers working at once. Woodley Press of Topeka published Certain Streets at an Uncertain Hour, available online for $12.00 and at the Raven Bookstore in Lawrence.

Tigchelaar blogs for XYZ Topeka Magazine and publishes poetry widely. His poems have been published in Kansas, Canada, Germany, and Wales, as well as on bar coasters. Journal publications include Pleiades, Coal City Review, Flint Hills Review, Flyway, Fugue, Rhino, North American Review and The Laurel Review, and anthologies such as Best New Poets 2011, Verse Daily, A Ritual to Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford, and New Poetry from the Midwest. His work received a fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council. His poem “One Way of Looking at Thirteen Blackbirds” was reviewed at   www.cellpoems.org.  More information is at his website, http://jefftigchelaar.weebly.com/ and http://www.kansaspoets.com/ks_poets/tigchelaar_jeff.htm

His blog Stay-at-Home Pop Culture, is published by XYZ Magazine in Topeka http://xyztopeka.com/xyz-blogs/stay-at-home-pop-culture-up-and-away/

Library of Congress Announces Juan Felipe Herrera as U.S. Poet Laureate

From the Library of Congress website:

Juan Felipe Herrera was born in Fowler, California in 1948. He is the author of 28 books of poetry, novels for young adults, and collections for children, including “Half the World in Light: New and Selected Poems" (2008), winner of National Book Critics Circle Award and the International Latino Book Award. His other honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, two Latino Hall of Fame Poetry Awards, and a PEN / Beyond Margins Award. Elected a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets in 2011, Herrera served as the Poet Laureate of California from 2012-2015.

• View Web Guide on Juan Felipe Herrara
• Public Reading Schedule for Juan Felipe Herrera (coming soon)
• Read News Release on Juan Felipe Herrera's Appoinment (06/10/2015)

Herrera, the 21st Poet Laureate, will take up his duties in the fall, opening Hispanic Heritage Month at the Library with a reading of his work at the Coolidge Auditorium on Tuesday, September 15th.

Spaces Are Available for a Day-long Writing Workshop with Denise Low 6/27/15 Sat. Lawrence

Because of interest in my upcoming workshop in Santa Fe, July 11, people in the Lawrence/KC area

have asked me to offer the same opportunity June 27, Saturday, 10-4. We meet at 9:30 for coffee, work til 4, then end with a social hour (optional). Poetry or short prose are both fine. My professional workshop students have had good success with my coaching, especially revision insights. Here's a link for full information:
http://deniselow.net/workshops-editing-services/mammoth-publications-workshop-27-june-2015/    

Maryfrances Wagner launches DIORAMAS, 7 pm May 28, Raven Bookstore

See Maryfrances Wagner read from her new Mammoth book DIORAMAS, at Big Tent, 7 pm May 28, 7 East 7th St. (Raven Bookstore) in Lawrence! In an upcoming review, Charlotte Mandel writes, "These poems gift us with vibrant vignettes." Here's a sample:

RED-EYED CICADAS

Flutter and sputter, they motored in spurts.
They wobbled, tottered, popped from shrubs.
In their climb they lumbered one leaf at a time.
Shells clung to fences, bark, flower stems.
Mud tombs funneled the earth, life
in reverse. For days they spiraled up,
lopsided as choppers carrying heavy loads;
their voices were engines trying to turn.
Within a week, the full throttle of clack
and whine trilled from the highest limbs,
a bacchanal we couldn’t unplug. On every
walk one spun like a toppled windup toy
or reflected its iridescence from gutter
or lawn until one day the last sputter
fizzled out, and they were gone.

(c. 2015 Maryfrances Wagner. Used with permission)

About DIORAMAS: Maryfrances Wagner reinvents the process of memory as she guides readers through living tableaux of her past. Her views of Italian American life in the heartland annotates a rich cultural heritage. This award-winning poet shares a rich store of vivid imagery and passion, whimsy and reflection. Maryfrances Wagner lives in Kansas City, where she is a literary advocate and community builder. Wagner's writings about Italian American life have been anthologized by Pearson/Longman and others. Her work appears in New Letters, Laurel Review, Birmingham Review, Nebraska Review, Midwest Quarterly, and others. Her previous books of poetry include Salvatore's Daughter (BkMk), Red Silk (Mid-America), winner of the Thorpe Menn Book Award for Literary Excellence), and Light Subtracts Itself (Mid-American). She co-edits I-70 Review. William Trowbridge, Poet Laureate of Missouri, writes, "The poems in Dioramas focus mainly on moments lost to the sneak-thief Time, moments sometimes observed with an apt touch of humor. Whether she's writing about her Italian brother's blip of fame dancing past a lower corner of the TV picture in an Arthur Murray Party broadcast or about a good friend dying of AIDS or about the evanescent beauty of cicadas, Maryfrances Wagner does so with passion and craftsmanship, showing what a gifted poet with a generous heart can do."

It's Eric McHenry! Congratulations to the 5th Kansas Poet Laureate.

Denise Low, Eric McHenry, Wyatt Townley, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg--Poets Laureate of Kansas. Jonathan Holden (not pictured), was the first Kansas Poet Laureate. The installation of McHenry was May 21, 2015 at the Cider Gallery of Lawrence, KS. The Poet Laureate program is sponsored by the Ks. Humanities Council.

Eric McHenry is the 2015-2017 Poet Laureate of Kansas. I wrote about his poetry on this blog in 2011, Denise Low Postings-Eric McHenry, about my discovery of his work in a Washington D.C. bookstore. His formal verse continues to inspire me, even though it is different from my own aesthetic. His connection to history, place, and zen-direct moments involve readers in each of his poems.

 McHenry’s poems connect to the British literary tradition, reframed for a contemporary Mid-Plains context. He told Miranda Ericsson of the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library, “As to meter and rhyme, I just adore Frost and Auden and Gwendolyn Brooks and I want their chops. I want to make the kind of music they made with language, and I want to make it seem as effortless as they did, and that’s going to take a lot of effort.” He often writes about his family and neighborhood from multiple perspectives at once, as in this poem where glass reflections evoke the repetitions of human generations. The plainspoken Midwestern dialect of American English seems “effortless,” as it conveys images with multiple dimensions.
 

Apparent

       Memory of Evan, four or five years old

 

If it has been an open

window you would’ve kept
walking, but because
it was sun-puzzled glass
you saw me through, you stopped
halfway across the yard,
and squinted through the glare,
and waved, and seemed to wait
for something else to happen,

and finally it became

apparent that it had
already, and that you
were being kept from what
you’d been about to do
by nothing, and you gave
me one more gentle wave—
I’m here, you’re there—
and left me in my frame.

 (© Eric McHenry  “Apparent” was first published in Seattle Review. Used with permission.)

 

Eric McHenry attended Beloit College and earned his MA in creative writing at Boston University. His two books of poetry are Potscrubber Lullabies (Kate Tufts Discovery Award, The Waywiser Press, 2006) and Mommy Daddy Evan Sage (The Waywiser Press, 2011). McHenry's poems have been featured in The Harvard Review, Seattle Review, The New Republic, Agni, Orion, and Slate. Editors of Poetry Northwest named McHenry winner of the annual Theodore Roethke Prize for best poems in the 2010 magazine. His criticism appears in The New York Times Book Review, Salon, and Poetry Daily. He is a winner of the Academy of American Poets Prize. He currently lives in Lawrence and teaches creative writing at Washburn University of Topeka. He is a fifth-generation Topekan and graduate of Topeka High School.

Kansas Humanities Council Poet Laureate Program http://kansashumanities.org/programs/poet-laureate-of-kansas-2/ 

Map of Kansas Literature: http://www.washburn.edu/reference/cks/mapping/mchenry/index.html

Kansas Poets, http://www.kansaspoets.com/ks_poets/mchenry_eric.htm
Slate poems, essays, and reviews: http://www.slate.com/search.html?id=115900#search=%22Eric%20McHenry%22

 

RONDA MILLER PUBLISHES _MOON STAIN_

MoonStain is predominately a compilation of narrative memoir poetry that transitions the reader through different stages of Miller's life. The book opens with a “Blood Moon” sequence. Use of the blood moon image, the full orange moon at full lunar eclipse, shows the stain on Miller's childhood due to the loss of her mother by suicide at age three. MoonStain is divided into additional categories: “New Moon,” “Moon Shadows,” “Moonbeams” and “Full Moon.” David Romtvedt, former Wyoming Poet Laureate, explains Moonstain: "The key to the book [is] the narrator's longing for connection - to the earth, to lover's and friends, to herself.”

 "In MoonStain, verses change as the moon; they sometimes reflect turbulent light, other times small rays of harmonic, poetic rhythms. Ronda Miller becomes one with the moon, channeling and celebrating what is feminine, dark, passion, shadows, desire, and love. Miller channels and celebrates the here and now, every day themes, memories. And within her poetry, sacred word for eternity, she heals herself and is reborn." Xánath Caraza – Award winning author of the International Latino Book Awards and author of Syllables of Wind / Sílabas de Viento

Link for purchasing: www.meadowlark-books.com/2015/03/meadowlark-to-publish-moonstain-poetry.html?m=0