Read A Good Book: Hank & Jules by Jason Fisk

Jason Fisk’s collection of short stories, Hank & Jules, is published by killthemiddlemanpress.com. It is a haunting collection of stories about the couple described above and how they fell in love, endured hardships, and are slated to part through sickness rather than health. I found myself feeling uplifted and redeemed in “Chemical Reaction” where Henry’s father learns that love is not just a “chemical reaction” and I found myself cringing in anticipation in the story “Harmonious.” “Harmonious” is the story of Henry’s car accident and the secret that could be exposed about his true intentions for being found at the zoo at the time of the car accident with his wife worried and anxious at his side. Many of the stories leave you wondering what the end really is and leaves the reader to anticipate the ultimate conclusion for each short story. However, the ultimate concluding story will break your heart even as it leaves you with questions. It is a page-turning read and is the perfect book for a rainy day spent indoors.

If you enjoyed this review of Hank & Jules by Jason Fisk you may purchase a copy for $5.50 by going to:
http://www.amazon.com/Hank-Jules-Jason-Fisk/dp/0615722490

To learn more about Jason Fisk, who writes poetry and fiction, please visit his blog at:
http://jasonfisk.blogspot.com/


Thanks always for reading, please drop in again next week…

The Lit Garden Open Submissions

Seeking poetry (among other types of writing) with a limit of 500 words for upcoming issues: The Resurrection issue (deadline Feb. 28) and The Plunder Issue (deadline March 30th). You may submit via e-mail to: joanne@thelitgarden.com

Be sure to check out their website for further details, etc. at:
http://www.thelitgarden.com/p/calls-for-submissions.html

Good luck to all who submit, please drop in tomorrow for Read A Good Book…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

https://sites.google.com/site/rhpissue60/angele-ellis
“Waning” by Angele Ellis

https://sites.google.com/site/rhpissue60/worthy-evans
“Southern” by Worthy Evans

http://www.unf.edu/mudlark/flashes/darling_guess.html
Katrina Marie Darling’s and Carol Guess’s collaborative poems/prose, all of them

Thanks for clicking in, please stop by tomorrow for more Open Submissions…

The Navigation of Loss by Jane Rosenberg LaForge

Jane Rosenberg LaForge has been featured on Poet Hound before and I am pleased to feature her today with her chapbook The Navigation of Loss published by Red Ochre Press in 2012. While the title lets us know that the contents are about loss the poems themselves are composed of real and imagined scenes with emotions ranging from nostalgia to heartbreak. At the end of the collection is an interview between the editor Mimi Ferebee and the poet about her work which is enlightening and wonderful. I wish all poetry collections had this feature, even just a few short questions and the responses from the writer would be a grand thing for all readers. All of us are curious to a writer’s inspirations and motivations and the interview at the end provides us that crucial information. The collection is whimsical and stark all at the same time. Below I am happy to share a couple of poems:

Sanctuary

If I could live in that place
that photographs not in sepia
but in burnt umber, so there
is enough of a reminder of blood,
of what was not carried out,
and left with wounds to open;
where trees do not endure,
but merely assemble, as if
they have been called for
that one final round, to collect
their retirement and meaningless
medals; there my feet would
not upbraid the dirt, and my eyes
would not tear at the cold;
my breath could be as thick
as the clay below and the warmth
of it would not matter. I might
wear a garment of earth, restore
the autumn to my hair, and I
would belong. I would be invisible,
I would be both bark and hollow.
I am so old now that I can only
be disappointed in my humanness,
my vanity and jealousness, and
I am left with only the option
Of waiting, neither for sunset nor
Twilight but for the stain to breach
Clean of all taste, and all of color.

This poem feels earthy and sensual in a way I did not expect. The poet speaks of older photographs where most, but not all, the color is drained out and how she wants to inhabit that space where everything is arranged just so and that nothing in the scene would or could be disturbed. I think we all feel that way at times, the desperate need for order in our lives, to inhabit some perfect scene that we find in magazines and TV shows and films instead of the imperfect and chaotic space of our real lives. She describes her reality at the end and so many of can relate to feeling “disappointed in my humanness.” There is no perfection, only humanity, it is a beautiful poem.


The Navigation of Loss

In the apartment I bought
with my inheritance, I can
sit at one end and feel as though
my grandmother’s grand bathroom
is just down the long hall; with the
sunken tub beside the clouded window
that smeared the landscape outside of it.
This is supposed to be about loss, how
it is quantified and navigated in cardinal
directions according to our infernal
compasses. It does not matter if ironweed
and cattails grew too high outside the
bathroom for the fire department, only
that my grandmother’s rooms had to be
sequestered far and away from everyone
else; she was so ill and delicate. In the
kitchen, there was an intercom, and my
uncle typed up a legend for its buttons,
on the old typewriter that left tears in the
consonants, and shadows in the vowels.
For the last button, he had typed “Mother’s
Room,” and when I was old enough to read
it I realized just who this man was, living
with my grandparents. My uncle hung his
antique maps throughout the rest of the house,
instruments devised before satellites and
contemporary battles. Continents distended,
oceans shrunk; there were fewer borders than
I remembered, and there were no rivers or
mountains. Just after my uncle died, his wife
tried to give me those maps, but I said it was too
soon for that. She told me he had confided he had
always been afraid of women because his mother
was always on the verge of death. That’s why he
became a doctor, though he would have rather been
anything else.

The poem’s ending catches my heart strings. The poet looks back on her family’s life as she was growing up and learns that her uncle chose his profession out of a fear of the unknown. So many of us pursue life either avoiding our fears or trying to learn more about them in order to overcome. What we don’t know is whether her uncle ever found the answers he was looking for and so there is another layer of loss for the reader to contemplate on. The antique maps are a visual cue and reminder of the poets’ uncle and his ways and I wonder if she ever decides to receive the maps and hang them in her own home?


If you enjoyed this review you may read more sample poems and purchase a copy of The Navigation of Loss by Jane Rosenberg LaForge for $11.00 at:
http://www.redochrelit.com/janerosenberglaforge.html

To learn more about Jane Rosenberg LaForge and find more of her poetry and writing, visit her website at:
http://jane-rosenberg-laforge.com/

Thanks always for reading, please click in tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…

Syntax is a Second Skin Blog

Writer, poet, and professor, check out her blog filled with fabulous writerly things, links, and more at:
http://www.carolguess.blogspot.com/

Thanks for clicking in, please stop by tomorrow for Jane Rosenberg LaForge’s collection…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

https://sites.google.com/site/bradroserhpchapbook/honey-gets-her-wish
“Honey Gets Her Wish” by Brad Rose

https://sites.google.com/site/bradroserhpchapbook/no-tip
“No Tip” by Brad Rose

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David S. Pointer's Sundrenched Nanosilver

Mr. Pointer has been featured on Poet Hound before. His latest collection, Sundrenched Nanosilver, is published in Canada by Brian Wrixon Books. Mr. Pointer is no-holds-barred when it comes to his poems about politics, the armed forces, world relations and his own private life. Below I am happy to share a sample:

The Scrapper

He used to fight under antler chandeliers
sharp in his trotting razors, the attack

rooster now roams through discarded
nail kegs, egg crates, and cream cans,

unadorned claws, rescued and retired fire
atop a wood pile big as an Amish wagon.

This poem has an illustration of a rooster standing tall and reflects the stature of the former prize fighting rooster. I can picture the rooster fighting under the antler chandeliers and making out well enough against his opponent that somebody takes him to a safe place and retires him to what looks like a junkyard. Once a rooster that stood tall for battle it now roams in what I picture to be a spare and desolate landscape. The ending stanza leads me to imagine he is being thrown into a built-up fire to put an end to his misery of all the injuries of fighting in the ring. The poem is as stark and unadorned as its creature.



First Will and Word Testament

As curator for the
preservation of poetry
in my own home, I
hereby leave my little
girls everything—the
inner spirit’s porcelain
spy glass for special
investigations into any
hard or loving heart,
the inlaid dowry chest
for their choicest poems,
the rock crystal candle-
sticks for display on
the cedar tilt-top
tea table, the mahogany
bow-backed armchair
for after-hours reading.
and tonight, I leave
them with my wishful
words to help thread
their dreams with pink
party lanterns and
frosted glass fairy
lights for illuminating
blue river pebbles
floating through razor
rock rapids of REM
sleep where white
slipper shells slide
towards new aquamarine
avenues just one soft
wake up away.

I love this sweet poem about the poet and his daughters. I can picture the poet quietly peeking into his daughters’ room to look at their sleeping forms and thinking up this poem. It speaks for itself and I enjoy it very much.



Envy?

The rich grab up all the money
like a Mexican land grant, and
the bottom end poor are left
pondering early burial by
bottle,
crack pipe, or tiny paycheck,

Mitt Romney’s cross-border
bank roll
safe, secure, and insured as
his corporate raider retreats

This poem makes me smile because I, too, feel the squeeze of finances and I’m tired of seeing wealthy people in power make more money while the rest of us continue to be squeezed. Thanks for the righteousness, Mr. Pointer!


If you enjoyed this review, you may purchase a copy of David S. Pointer’s Sundrenched Nanosilver for $10.00 at:
http://www.blurb.com/b/3728190-sundrenched-nanosilver

Thanks always for reading, please drop in again tomorrow…

Strange Girl Press

Andrea Kiss has created this press and has alerted me that she will soon be posting for Open Submissions o in the meantime please check it out at:
http://www.strangegirlpress.com/

Thanks for dropping in, please stop by tomorrow for another featured poet…

Never Ending Story Open Submissions

If you enjoy writing and/or reading haiku and tanka poems, this is the place to go. This is a bilingual Chinese-English blog, so please check out the website to see what kinds of poems are published:
http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.com/


The guidelines are as follows:

Send your best, preferably published tanka (please provide publication credits) or new work and a bio sketch (75 words max.) with the subject heading "Published or Unpublished Tanka, Your Name, Submitted Date" to Chen-ou Liu, Blog Editor and Translator via email at neverendingstory_tanka@yahoo.ca

No more than 20 tanka per submission and no simultaneous submissions. And Please wait for at least four months for another new submission.

Please note that only those whose tanka are selected for publication will be notified within two months, and that no other notification will be sent out, so your works are automatically freed up after two months to submit elsewhere.

The accepted tanka will be translated into Chinese and posted on NeverEnding Story and Twitter (You are welcome to follow me on NeverEnding Story or on Twitter at @storyhaikutanka). Of them, the best 66 tanka will be included in the anthology, which is scheduled to be published in April of 2014, and the best of the best tanka of 2013 will be rewarded $CAD 50 and the poet will be given a 3-page space to feature the best tanka of his/her choice. For those whose tanka are included in the anthology, each will receive a copy of its e-book edition.

A tanka is snowflakes drifting through the ink dark moon. -- Chen-ou Liu


Good luck to all who submit, please drop by again next week…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.corpse.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=757&Itemid=32
“March Hares” by Nanos Valaoritis

http://www.poolpoetry.com/poettwelve.html
“Trip Advisor” by Nicholas Wong

Thanks for clicking in, please drop by tomorrow for more Open Submissions…

Bill Friday's Blog

Find some poetry and some hilarious self-deprecation by clicking here:
http://billfriday.com/

Thanks for clicking in, please drop in again on Wednesday…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

Poems Found by Poet Hound
https://sites.google.com/site/59rhpissue/timothy-mclafferty
“Karushii” by Timothy McLafferty

https://sites.google.com/site/59rhpissue/john-riley
“On High” and “Then the Cattle” by John Riley

https://sites.google.com/site/59rhpissue/michael-kriesel
“Moving to the Future” by Michael Kriesel

Thanks for clicking in, please drop by again next week…

With Apologies To Mick Jagger, Other Gods, And All Women by Jane Rosenberg LaForge

Jane Rosenberg LaForge’s poems in her full length collection With Apologies to Mick Jagger, Other Gods, And All Women, are published by Aldrick Press and are layered with meaning. Reading through her poems I was able to appreciate more nuances with a second look and her poems are beautiful, cynical at times, and contemplative. If you enjoy dark, rich words, soil, and/or chocolate, this is the collection for you. Below I am happy to share a sample:


Comparing Mythologies in Paris

At Notre Dame, my husband says
the devil is always more interesting
than the acolytes and their enthusiasms
assembled to receive the disbelievers
in reason and fate. My husband is here
with his beats and falsehoods but I
prefer to imagine you instead, suited
in the garb of the other side’s religion.
I wonder if you would still be recognizable
as that fey creation, too gentle at the
shins and forearms, bleached copper
on your eyebrows and on your chest.
Your body should never have been
the object of such humbling; your
mouth never so open for song should
it be mistaken for the call of death.
You should have a Cheshire
expression, sans teeth and their cruelty,
of course, for there are neither stages
nor stations before gospel is written.
Lastly, I should have liked to have
known you in retirement,
an emeritus position, to act as a sage
for your replacement. Sage burns, but
rarely do wishes; they are our most
enduring belief: in what might be made
possible but cannot exist, like the reign
of pumice your skin has become, and
the stars I wish I could pierce through it.

I love the spiritual and contemplative nature of this poem. While the poet’s husband “is here/with his beats and falsehoods” Ms. LaForge imagines the religious figure (who I assume to be Jesus) being in “an emeritus position,” which would make his teachings take on a different gravity and outlet with a different group of students. I picture the religious figure here standing in a lecture hall instead of a mountain top, how different might that be to receive such wisdom? Lovely poem.


Doctor Appleman’s Rest

Just after my parents told me Doctor
and Mrs. Appleman would be getting
a divorce, I saw the doctor sleeping
in his bed. It was at the day’s pool
party in his backyard, and one of his
careless offspring had left open the
sliding glass door separating him
from the froth and corruption of one
thousand idiot children. The doctor’s
mouth was open too, his skin like
the chlorinated foam we children
drank like ignoramuses. It would
clean out our systems, sure, and
it tasted like the dead part of sleep
that we tried to deprive ourselves.
The sheets puckered under him as
if they were sour candy wrappers
and some of us might have thought
he looked like a retard, someone who
rightfully belonged chained to the
bed post and yet still too loose with
his grooming and neglect. The doctor
wore the same striped pajamas my father
sometimes spent all day in, although
the doctor was said to be consumed
by something different, his own brilliance;
it separated him permanently from
his own wife and children. My mother
explained this with a certain resignation,
just as she had begun to use words like
aver and damage, demur and unconscious.
Everyone appears as if they are children
when sleeping, she must have told me,
not in the denouement of the dreams
they are watching, but in their destinations.
As I watched the doctor sleep I wondered
how could he sleep through this divorce,
if through sleep it was possible to stop it,
before his middle daughter would be left
to marry a biker; his youngest booted from
the Hebrew school we were shipped off to,
together, and his oldest, the one who was
my age, into a mentally ill draft dodger
moonlighting as a mathematical genius.

I love the children’s perspective of this poem. A child watching the Doctor, a name that connotes a large degree of importance, sleeping in such a way as to make him look much more human. I also grin when she describes the scene as “one/thousand idiot children” and that she and the others are “ignoramuses” drinking the pool water in their play. It’s her perspective of what the Doctor would think of them, and in turn, she as a child is looking at him as a “retard” because of the way he looks when he’s asleep and therefore has no control of his posture, demeanor, etc. that reflect his importance. I also wonder if the doctor’s children truly end up the way they are described at the end of the poem or if that is what the poet and her family assume will happen as a result of the impending divorce. The poem is a wonderful child’s perspective, free of politically correct language just like that of a child.


Jane Rosenberg LaForge lives in New York City with her family. Among her works there are also two chapbooks, After Voices (Burning River Press) and Half Life (Big Table Publishing). Her newest chapbook, The Navigation of Loss, is published by Red Ochre Press. She also writes short fiction and critical and personal essays. To learn more about Ms. LaForge and her work please visit her website at:
http://jane-rosenberg-laforge.com/

If you enjoyed this review, you may pick up a copy of With Apologies to Mick Jagger, Other Gods, And All Women by Jane Rosenberg LaForge for $14.00 at:
http://www.amazon.com/With-Apologies-Jagger-Other-Women/dp/0615677002%3FSubscriptionId%3D0ENGV10E9K9QDNSJ5C82%26tag%3Dflatwave-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0615677002

Thanks always for reading, please click in tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…

Nostrovia! Site

Mr. Walton introduced me to his site and I’m happy to share it with all of you:

Nostrovia! Poetry is a small press that began in 2011 as a tiny online publisher, that has bloomed into a flourishing website for poets and writers to be promoted through various publishing medians, including contests, anthologies, blogs, and zines. Nostrovia! Poetry's goal is to rid the youth of their preconceived concepts regarding poetry as "the squawking of heartbroken old men". It is managed by youth poet Jeremiah Walton, author of LSD Giggles and Nostrovia!, who lives in New England where he attends High School.

Thanks for clicking in, please stop by tomorrow for another featured poet!

Happy Holiday Break!

I would like to wish everyone Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! My husband and I are closing on our first home this week and then we'll be moving right before Christmas Day. Christmas will be at my parents' house and so I will be very busy these next 2-3 weeks and unable to create any posts for Poet Hound.

Until we meet again, I wish you all good health, good fortune, and good cheer! I will see you in the New Year!

Sincerely,
Paula Cary