LINDA RODRIGUEZ PUBLISHES DARK SISTER: POEMS

LINDA RODRIGUEZ, author of award-winning poetry and prose, publishes with Mammoth!

88 pages $16.00 ISBN Perfect-bound paper 978-1-939301-66-6  

Pre-order now for discount! $10.00 plus shipping PayPal or check. Kansas residents: Click this for tax. Others click here! Mail order: Mammoth Publications, 1916 Stratford Rd. Lawrence, KS 66044 $13 postpaid. Books available Feb. 1.

“I want to say so much about Rodriguez’s poetic gifts. What talent! The most accomplished poet of our generation. A poetic voice for our time.” ~Rudolfo Anaya, author of Bless Me, Ultima and Albuquerque

Click this link to Mammoth Publications website for further details.

Dark Sister: Poems gives voice to the living presence of Cherokee teachings and history, passed down through Linda Rodriguez’s family. Rodriguez, author of the exciting Cherokee detective series featuring  Skeet Bannion (St. Martin's/Minotaur Press), turns to family stories and memory for her third book of poetry. She testifies about the borderlands that still exist between Cherokee people and heirs of Andrew Jackson’s soldiers; between Americans and their British Isles forebears; and between the frontera of Mexico and southern plains states of the United States. She spares no quarter as she remembers history and its embodiment in the present. She tells compelling stories about the last Beloved Woman, Trickster, and other traditional figures with the sure hand of an oral storyteller and with the lyrical intensity of a skilled poet. In Dark Sister, the ageless Cherokee language and Spanish blend with English to explain the complexities of life as a mixed-blood woman in the 21^st century. This accessible book appeals to adults and young adult audiences with family stories, love stories, just-so stories, and more. 

 For her previous books of poetry, Skin Hunger (Scapegoat Press) and Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press), Linda Rodriguez has received numerous recognitions, including the Thorpe Menn Award for Literary Excellence, the Midwest Voices and Visions Award, the Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, the 2011 and 2014 ArtsKC Fund Inspiration Awards, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Rodriguez has edited four anthologies, most recently The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, co-edited with Diane Glancy. Her poetry has appeared in many national and regional journals and on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac, The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress, and New Letters on the Air. Her award-winning Skeet Bannion novels, all from St. Martin's/Minotaur, are: Every Broken Trust, Every Hidden Fear, and Every Last Secret, which won the 2011 St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition and was a Barnes & Noble mystery pick, featured by Las Comadres National Latino Book Club, and a finalist for the International Latino Book Award.

Linda Rodrigeuz shares exercises that help writers stay sharp

My favorite definition of a writer is: "A writer is a person who writes." Perhaps ten years is the average apprenticeship, as my mentor Carolyn Doty used to tell me. Master writer (and teacher) Linda Rodriguez has a blog about how writers are like pianists--they both need regular exercise in their genre. Here is the beginning of her essay and a link to the entire piece on the Writers Who Kill blog:

"Pianists know they must practice every day, playing scales and various exercises that stretch the fingers

and give them the flexibility and dexterity that they will need to play complicated compositions. Long ago, I read in one of Madeleine L'Engle's wonderful journals of life and writing about this need for writers.

'Nobody can teach creative writing–run like mad from anybody who thinks he can. But one can teach practices, like finger exercises on the piano; one can share the tools of the trade, and what one has gleaned from the great writers: it is the great writers themselves who do the teaching.' –A Circle of Quiet

For years now, I've created my own finger exercises, as well as borrowing from other writers who've written books about writing, and used them in my journals."  http://writerswhokill.blogspot.com/2016/10/scales-for-writers.html

Linda Rodriguez has published three novels in the Skeet Bannion mystery series, Every Hidden Fear (Minotaur

Books), Every Broken Trust (Minotaur Books), finalist for the International Latino Book Award and the Premio Aztlan Literary Award and a Las Comadres National Latino Book Club selection, and Every Last Secret (Minotaur Books), winner of the Malice Domestic First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition and finalist for the International Latino Book Award. She also has published two books of poetry, Heart's Migration (Tia Chucha Press) winner of the Thorpe Menn Award for Literary Excellence and finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and Skin Hunger (Potpourri Publications; Scapegoat Press). She edited Woven Voices: 3 Generations of Puertorriquena Poets Look at Their American Lives (Scapegoat Press), second place, International Latino Book Award. She is the 2015 Chair of the AWP Indigenous/Aboriginal American Writers Caucus, immediate past president of Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, a founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, Kansas City Cherokee Community, and International Thriller Writers. Learn more about her books and events at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com/

LINDA RODRIGUEZ EXPLAINS LISTMAKING AS A WRITING TECHNIQUE

 I could not wait to finish the second Skeet Bannion mystery by Linda Rodriguez. I recommend it highly for its entertainment value as well as explication of a Cherokee hero. I couldn't put it down.

 

Rodriguez is a fine poet and prose writer, and she shares her secrets on her blog,

http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com/  

 

Also recommended is her guest post on the Guelph Writers Now blog, about how to use lists to keep plot, characters, and setting straight. Sounds simple, but it isn't! She writes,

 

"I wrote personality and appearance sketches for each character, but in addition, I made a list of each character as s/he appeared with a few words to note key characteristics. I did the same for places in my made-up town. This meant I could look up the full name of walk-on characters easily when I needed to much later in the book. It meant that I could easily look up the important details of the buildings on the campus and the shops on the town square as my protagonist, Skeet Bannion, walked past them or into them."

 

See all of this good craft essay: http://guelphwritenow.com/2013/06/05/using-lists-in-writing-a-novel/

AD ASTRA POETRY PROJECT # 35: LINDA LYNETTE RODRIGUEZ (1947 - )

Dear Poetry Friends,

First, please join the next poet laureate and myself at an Imagination & Place-sponsored event July 1, 7:30 pm, at the Lawrence Arts Center. We will celebrate the passing of the torch to Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, 3rd Kansas poet laureate. Both of us will speak briefly and read poetry. Also, we will celebrate the publication of the Imagination & Place anthology edited by Kelly Barth. Details are attached.

I have not gone through my list of significant Kansas poets—those who have published one book with an outside press and contributed to Kansas culture. So in the future I will continue with some further broadsides. If you would like your name removed from this list, please contact me at deniselow@gmail.com.

So here is another Ad Astra Poetry Project broadside celebrating Linda Rodriguez’s poetry. She has ties to the Latino writing community in Kansas City, as well as ties to central Kansas. She has a new book and upcoming readings: first tonight June 19 at Lenexa, Kansas, City Hall for with the Latino Writers Collective at 7:30 pm; and second, Thursday, June 25, she will read at The Raven Bookstore in Lawrence for the Big Tent Reading Series, with Peter Wright at 7:00 pm. I’ll see you there.

Text version
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LINDA LYNETTE RODRIGUEZ (1947 - )

Linda Rodriguez was born in Fowler, graduated from Manhattan High School, and attended Kansas State University before dropping out to hitch-hike to Haight Ashbury in the 60s. Since 1970, she has lived in Kansas City, where she was director of the University of Missouri-KC Women’s Center. Rodriguez is vice-president of the Latino Writers Collective, and she has published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Primera Página: Poetry from the Latino Heartland. Her new collection Heart’s Migration won the Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award. She is of Western Cherokee descent.

In “Coyote Invades Your Dreams,” Rodriguez reminds us of how close Kansans are to animal life. Coyotes stalk fringes of cities and pasturelands. The adaptation of these wily beasts is instructive—we humans also learn environments quickly and well. We share animal qualities of stalking, shifting identities, and forming attachments. A coyote lover is a trickster who both attracts and frightens, like change. The coyote encounter leaves its mark.

COYOTE INVADES YOUR DREAMS

You’re staying clear
of him. Just because
you noticed him once
or twice doesn’t mean you want
anything to do with him.
He’s beneath you—
and above you and inside you
in your dreams. His mouth
drinks you deep, and you come
up empty and gasping
for air and for him. That traitor,
your body, clings to him like a life
raft in this hurricane
you’re dreaming. His face
above yours loses its knowing
smile as he takes you. Again,
this night, you drown
in your own desire. Coyote
marks you as his.
You wake to the memory
of a growl.

Education: This poet has a B.A in English-Creative Writing/journalism (University of Missouri-Kansas City) and an M.A. in English (University of Missouri-Kansas City).
Career: Former Director of the UMKC Women’s Center; Personal achievement coach; Editor and freelance writer. Poetry books are Skin Hunger (Potpourri Publications, 1995, one of Writer’s Digest’s four top poetry chapbooks of the year) and Heart’s Migration, (Tia Chucha Press, 2009 Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award).
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© 2009 Denise Low, AAPP 35. © 2009 Linda Rodriguez “Coyote Invades Your Dreams” (Tia Chucha, 2009).

Ad Astra Poetry Contest Winners: Ks. Gardens

My Mother's Garden
by
Jeanie Wilson

Wander down
her garden paths—
smell of lavender
and rosemary,
sound of easy laughter
riding on sunlit air.
It is as if she
is running just ahead—
as if her skirt
has just flicked
out of sight around the corner.
#
The Environmentalists Burn the Prairie
by
Linda Rodriguez

I abandon,
like Aeneas, fleeing their set fire,
as if from Dido
and chaos, passionate
and fertile as the void was fertile
enough in Genesis to spawn life
down to the last
caterpillar-chewed leaf.

I surrender
when the burning grass falls around me
as the hot winds surge and fail.
Wrapped in a tangle
of pea-vines and walled in
by man-high grass, I welcome
the roar and the smoke and the flame
too much, I fear.

I circle
behind the fireline
and walk on steaming cinders
where a world had been.
Because of the flames, they tell me,
in spring the gayfeather will shoot up
and a thousand tiny orchids will hide
among the roots of renewed grasses.

I escape
to plant my Roman garden in the spring
in measured, lawful rows.
In classic tradition, I limit creation
to that scrap
I control.
#
My garden
by
Judith Roitman

Columbine.
Chiggers. Poison ivy.
Thank God, worms.

Tulips & daffodils.
Pray for mountain rue.

Sticky weed. Burrs.
Thornystem weed (horse nettle?)
Dandelions.

Vinca smothered by euonymus along the sidewalk —
Root out the euonymus! Turn it into lawn! Yes!

Vinca carpet along the creek
slowly taking over all empty space.

Lamium almost smothered by vinca along the creek:
only two left.

Coreopsis = moon flower holding off vinca encroachment.

Daffodils in shade.
Hosta in sun.

Oops, backwards. Do-over.

Bunches & bunches & bunches of lilacs.
Rose of Sharon — my childhood home.

Red.
Buds.

Phlox — alternate purple and pink.
Two rose bushes, a gift.
(Now we have to feed them.)

For Sythia, always for Sythia.
What about Alice? Mary? Don’t they deserve something?

Moneywort in two shades intertwined.
Sedum (2 kinds) & maiden pink & chrysanthemummummums.

White pine. Silver birch. Pin oak. Maple. Chinese elm.
Juniper bushes in front, 4 box hedges in back.

Lots of pine trees, 2 of them spindly & not going to last long.
Weed trees along the creek & the east side of the property.

Snow-in-summer (say it fast 10 times).

“If grass won’t grow there
nothing else will.”

But the peonies oh the peonies
the peonies always do all right.
#
Pickling
by
Angela Hine

I. Morning
We pick pans and pans of cucumbers,
their spines pricking the skin
on the insides of our arms,

drops of sweet water budding
at the point where fruit left vine.

Bees as eager as we
to harvest from the blooms
buzz in and around the shaded leaves,

the shadow of my hand
crossing their paths.

II. Afternoon
We pull plastic sheeting off
the old window unit and coax it
to blow its musty, dusty air.

We wash and slice, vinegar and salt,
add mustard, orange-gold turmeric, dill,
pull clean, blue-green Ball jars
from the oven, and pickle
in the weight of the heated kitchen.

Bronze lids pop and seal
in long rows across the counter.

III. Evening
We water the plants, winding
the long hose out from the leaky
faucet behind the garage,

past the onions and strawberries,
through cabbages and past
the row of clustered peppers,
next to the budding okra, planted late.

The earth opens up and drinks
our water, and I drink from the hose,

fresh summer water that tastes like metal
and rubber, sweet dirt and sweat.

IV. Night
We come inside when the sun
has its late setting and june bugs
fly blind into window screens.

We wash our feet in the bathtub,
watch the dirt and dust break loose
and flow down the drain,

dry our feet on towels
dried rough on the clothesline,
wipe our sunburned necks of sweat.

Some nights, the washing is too much;
in the heat, the long day, we go to sleep
and take the dirt to bed with us.
#
Vacant Lot - Colony, KS
by
Max Yoho

Hollyhocks grew here,
fibrous and pungent.

Jonquils, pushy as teenagers,
rushed up through the snow.

Here! The yellow rosebush.
Grandma called it “Nebuchadnezzar.”

Here was the garden,
where her gold wedding band
slipped from her slender finger
and was planted among peas or radishes.

Here, I secretly watched, each spring,
for the first green shoots
of a Wedding Band Bush.

Alone now,
at the yellow rosebush,
I say our magic words:
“Your old slippers, my old shoes,
Nebuchadnezzar, the King of the Jews.”
#