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

Help Luke Armstrong Help Others Start A Better Life

Thank you to all who have read the review of Luke Armstrong's latest work, How We Are Human, posted earlier this week.
Luke and I have been e-mailing back and forth about a project he has been working on: Helping Guatemalans start a savings account in addition to teaching them basic money skills. I, for one, am passionate about personal finance. I've been reading books like The Millionaire Next Door since I was 12 years old. The Rich Dad Poor Dad series is excellent, too. It really was a toss-up years ago whether to do a blog about poetry or a blog about helping others gain knowledge in personal finance. I now have the very rare opportunity to combine the two.

So I am asking all of you out there that are looking for charitable giving opportunities to check out the link below and learn how you can help others help themselves:

http://www.integralheartfoundation.org/Third.World.Savings.htm


If ever there was a way to really pay it forward, it would be helping others learn to help themselves. If you have more questions and want to contact Luke Armstrong, please e-mail me or message me on Facebook. Luke is hoping to raise an additional $150.00 by December 17th so please take a look and thanks always for clicking in!

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt0a7D5kyPs&feature=youtu.be
“Enough” by Andrea Gibson

http://www.blossombones.com/winter_spring2012/miller_ws2012.html
“Our Honeymoon In New York City, My Husband Turns Into Times Square” by Pamela Miller

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

How We Are Human by Luke Armstrong

Luke M. Armstrong has appeared on Poet Hound before on an interview: http://poethound.blogspot.com/search?q=armstrong

Now Mr. Armstrong is back with a heartfelt collection of poems about humanity in all its shapes, forms, phases, and tragedies in How We Are Human published by Create Space Independent Publishing Platform. The poems inside describe hungry children, pop culture, joyful celebrations, philosophical questions, death and more. If you have read his first collection, iPoems for the Dolphins to click Home About, you will enjoy this collection even more so. He also includes an equally hilarious introduction which makes the collection worth purchasing all by itself. Humor before tragedy, it’s the way to go. The poems in his collection are longer so I will only include a couple of them below:

WHEN THERE WILL BE LAUGHTER

One day our greatest grandchildren will
Remember the day everyone burst
Into a simultaneous song of laughter:
The priests and the pastors
Atheists and agnostics
Hippies and homosexuals all stopped
Mid-sentence and took a deep sigh before
Finishing each others’ sentences with a gong-grinding
Bout of gushing laughter.
The babies, who did not understand, put
Down their rattles and stopped dirtying their diapers to
Join the hilarity because they
Comprehended in a wild and unarticulated way.
Priests, politicians and pragmatists poeticized and promised
To stop finishing long dead people’s journeys and
Instead laugh and laugh to laugh and laugh.
Everyone felt like it was the first day of school
And despite reservations had been
Accepted wholly and cherished plainly by
New classmates who grabbed the palms of
Their humid hands and ran towards the tire swing
Where the world’s orbit shrank to the size
Of everyone’s ability to laugh and love it.

I love the idea of everyone coming together through humor. Isn’t that what most comedians aim for? To unite a potentially diverse audience? Perhaps someday a laugh will ignite unity and wouldn’t that be a beautiful day?


BODY LANGUAGE

When we were hungry we'd
wave our arms in the air
mimicking the mating dance
of a rare South American swallow
only ever sighted in tribal
legends of the Amazon.
We communicated in a complicated
dialect of body language.
Once she broke her shoulder
trying to tell me to pass the
I Can't Believe It's Not Butter,
since this was communicated by
doing a backflip off the side of the garage.
To pantomime an ape was to invite
me to the movies. To mime a heart attack
was to remind me to do the dishes. To gesture a
giraffe was into invite me into her arms.
We're still both fluent. But out of practice,
spending our time learning new languages.
But sometimes, without thinking, I'll do a cartwheel
followed by a somersault and fold my hands into a pistol
when all I needed to do was ask for the time
and wonder how it got away from our conveying hands.

This poem resonates with me—so much of how we communicate is by physical and facial expression. The words we say mean less than how we say it. If you have ever been in a foreign country where you do not know the language, pantomiming and mimicry become your main method of communication and I love the elaborate physical communication described in the poem above. It makes me smile and reminds me of growing up on the Texas/Mexican border making friends with children who spoke Spanish and how we got along just fine “aping” our intentions, opinions, and ideas.


There is so much more than I can possibly share with you, the book consists of 114 pages and is worth exploring. If you enjoyed this sample, you may purchase a copy of Luke Maguire Armstrong’s How We Are Human for $9.99 here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1480055867

Thanks always for reading, please drop by again tomorrow…

Laura Madeline Wiseman's Site

Laura Madeline Wisemen is a writer and shares interviews and insights at her fabulous site, check it out below:
http://www.lauramadelinewiseman.com/

Thanks for clicking in, please drop by again tomorrow…

Alice Blue Review Open Submissions

Do you have innovative poetry to share? Are you able to submit on-line? For further details go to:
http://www.alicebluereview.org/main.html

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

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.alicebluereview.org/main.html
“Common Breach” by Shannon Hanks-Mackey

http://www.coconutpoetry.org/bezanson1.html
“From American Eclogues” by Graeme Bezanson

Thanks for clicking in, please stop by tomorrow…

Give the Gift of Poetry for Christmas

It’s that time of year again! We all scramble to come up with gifts for loved ones and I would like to gently remind you that there is a poet for every reader imaginable out there. Please look to the links at the side of the screen and keep in mind that plenty of small presses are offering discounts and specials this holiday season!
Just some suggestions:


Blood Pudding Press’ Store:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/BloodPuddingPress?ref=exp_listing


Alternating Current’s Store:
http://alt-current.com/pp/pp_catalog.html


Dancing Girl Press’ Store:
http://www.dancinggirlpress.com/index2.html


Press Press Press Blog:
http://presspresspress.blogspot.com/


For art prints, t-shirts, and more by poet, writer, and painter Hosho McCreesh check out:
http://society6.com/HoshoMcCreesh/Miles-Sna_Print


Slipstream Press’ Chapbooks:
http://www.slipstreampress.org/chaps.html


So don’t be shy, explore the links on the side, explore the links above, and find that perfect collection for your parent, cousin, sibling, significant other, partner in crime, colleague, friend, and provide something truly unique and wonderful this year!

A Woodland Rose's Blog

Poems by the blogger, whose name I did not find while perusing, can be found here:
http://awoodlandrose.wordpress.com/

Thanks for dropping in, please click in tomorrow...

Arsenic Lobster Open Submissions

Please explore their website to get a feel for the kinds of poems they publish before submitting poems. Below I have copy-and-pasted the main portion of their guidelines:

All submissions must conform to the following guidelines,
Poems should be timeless, rich in imagery, and edgy. That is, no political rants or Hallmark poetry.
Must be submitted electronically in the body of an email. Please, no attachments.
All works must be previously unpublished.
Each email may include 3-5 poems, any length. Please keep all poems in one email.
Simultaneous submissions are OK, but please let us know if work is accepted elsewhere.
Include a short, lively bio.
Please write your first initial, last name, date and what you are submitting in the SUBJECT LINE.
Example: D. Carson 3/06/07 Poetry.
Please limit your submissions to one per issue.
Send your email to lobster@magere.com .
We will take submissions from September 1 through April 30.

For further details on submission, go to:
http://arseniclobster.magere.com/1submission.html

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

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://arseniclobster.magere.com/290501.html
Jessi Lee Gaylord’s “Icarus in Recession”

http://birdfeastmagazine.com/issuetwo/
Sarah Sloat’s “Lines Written In A Japanese Noodle Shop Watching A Building Be Demolished”

Thanks for clicking in, please stop by again tomorrow…

Kristina Marie Darling's Melancholia (An Essay)

Kristina Marie Darling is back in full force with another surreal and romantic collection titled Melancholia (An Essay) in which dreamy unaddressed, fractured letters and whimsical footnotes spin through the pages into a journey that makes you wish you could fall asleep and dream about the unnamed characters within its pages so you might finally see their faces and know their magic at closer range. Published by Ravenna Press, Darling’s work allows the reader to “fill in the blanks” and create their own imagery and interact with the poet in a way that is not often presented in the collections of poems by other writers. It would be like opening a scientific essay only to find some of the words and parts of definitions inexplicably missing, letters to other scientists with the names “whited-out” and forcing us to come up with our own answers. Below I am happy to share some samples:

noctuary,definition (verb)

1. To keep a record of what passes in the night. 2. To wake from a dream—to begin a series of portraits instead. 3. To depict the beloved and discover cracks in his perfectly white teeth. 4. To experience a heightened awareness of one’s senses. 5. To ask, to consider, to be led away from. 6. To examine a familiar painting—to imagine a blank canvas in its place. 7. To select and omit, as a poet would.

This definition includes items that would make sense in a dictionary and also includes images and experiences that relate to the poet and in turn relate to us, the reader. We wonder who the beloved is and picture cracks in perfectly white teeth, we think of paintings going blank. We wonder who she is talking about and what it means. It is a whimsical definition of night and the senses in the night. We are left to find our own answers to the definition provided.



A HISTORY OF MELANCHOLIA: GLOSSARY OF TERMS:

beloved. The raison d’etre of the melancholic’s affliction. Consider the graceful line of his wool coat, its fabric dark against the towering snowdrifts.
courtship. A set of social conventions that gave rise to their exchanging of love tokens. These antique pendants, which held locks of tangled hair, were inevitably lost in the great avalanche.

locket. An object onto which her memories were inscribed. When she thought of their evening soirees, its clasp seemed smaller, more intricate.

As in Darling’s previous collections of work (which have been featured here on PH) there are unusual glossary terms, definitions, etc. that the reader is led to discover. Throughout the collection Darling makes mention of the locket, always empty, and of the beloved and their courtship. The glossary leaves further images of the beloved and his interactions with the poet and we are left with the emotions and the fragments of memories in the most lovely of ways. It’s as though we are reading a great love story’s footnotes and glossary terms instead of the story itself and it is up to us as readers to create the story itself using just these small details.



FOOTNOTES TO A HISTORY OF THE BELOVED

1 Two of the darkest flowers, which were pressed in a book and displayed on a mahogany nightstand.

2 Only then did she describe the recurring dream, in which luminous cufflinks gave rise to a series of house fires.


3 “I had wanted to preserve the cold white light that shone that evening. But beneath every door, a little wisp of smoke. The hallway smolders and now my armoire burning in a locked room.”

As I said earlier, it is as though you are reading the footnotes and glossary to a romantic novel and are left to build that story or novel on your own. I think it is an enchanting way to engage the reader and a wonderful form of writing that Darling is exploring. I love the images of the flowers pressed in a book and dreaming of cufflinks that somehow cause house fires in the poet’s dreams. The armoire, I’m guessing, contains all the trinkets and odds and ends from the relationship and I imagine the poet setting it on fire and locking the door behind her when she leaves the room. Another powerful image of a relationship “up in smoke.”


If you enjoyed this brief sample of Melancholia (An Essay) by Kristina Marie Darling, you may purchase a copy for $10.00 from Ravenna Press at:
http://www.ravennapress.com/books/title.php?tid=20036


To learn more about Kristina Marie Darling, whose work includes Night Songs published by Gold Wake Press, The Body is a Little Gilded Cage: A Story in Fragments and Letters published by Gold Wake Press and The Moon & Other Inventions: Poems After Joseph Cornell published by BlazeVox Books, visit her website at:
http://kristinamariedarling.com/

Thanks always for reading, please drop in again tomorrow…

Birds in Snow Blog

I have loved Dorothea Lasky’s blog since the moment she started up “The Tiny Tour” of her collection of poems years ago and allowed her poetry readings to be filmed in different parts of her small home for people like myself to see. She continues writing and posting and I urge you to check out her blog and to click “earlier posts” for further enlightenments:
http://www.birdinsnow.com/

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

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.corpse.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=739&Itemid=32
All of the poems by Lidija Dimkovska Translated from the Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and Peggy Reid

http://juked.com/2012/11/nandini-dhar-clandestine.asp
“Clandestine” by Nandini Dhar

Thanks for clicking in and Happy Thanksgiving to all, please drop in again next week…

Cadillac Men by Rebecca Schumejda

Rebecca Schumejda’s most recent collection of poems, Cadillac Men, has been published by NYQ Books in 2012. Her other works include Falling Forward from sunnoutside in 2009, and From Seed to Sin by Bottle of Smoke Press in 2011 as well as others, she has received her MA in Poetics and Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and her BA in English and Creative Writing from SUNY New Paltz. She currently resides in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family. Rebecca Schumejda’s collection of poems about the trials and tribulations of the pool players in her and her husband’s pool hall are dead pan and gut-wrenching at times. Mrs. Schumejda also includes quotes from the pool players themselves and keeps the momentum of these personable players humming throughout the pages. With cover art by the multi-talented Hosho McCreesh, this book is a must read on a gray and/or rainy day. That’s how I read it, anyway, and it was perfect for the mood. Below I am happy to share a few sample poems:

Rosary Beads and Pool Balls

When the army
couldn’t salvage
Shake’s soul,
his mother’s fingers
kept track of Hail Marys
and Our Fathers
recited over decades
for her wayward son.

But no wooden beads
could save him
from the old ivories,
so she stayed awake
waiting for him,
sometimes for days.
When he came in,
she’d fix him a meal,
ask him when
he was going to find
a good woman
and settle down.

He’d kiss her forehead
and tell her he could
never find a woman
as good as her.
This made everything alright,
until she was waiting again.

After she passed,
Shakes started going
to church religiously.
He hung her rosary beads
from the rearview mirror
of his Cadillac.
Whenever the beads tap
Against the windshield,
it sounds like pool balls
in the distance
calling him home.

This poem paints a sentimental and woeful picture for me. I can picture this man who should have settled down years ago kissing his mother’s forehead, content with life, and then his mother is gone and he must turn somewhere else for comfort: church. The sound of the beads is audible in my mind and I thank the poet for using straightforward imagery to bring such a vivid picture to her poem.



The Pool Table, a Shallow Pond

One night, after hours at the bar
down the road, No That Pocket George
stumbles in to tell me about how
his brother drowned in a shallow pond
when they were playing hide and seek.

His mother never forgave him, so now
he hits the balls harder than he should
and thinks of his mother’s apron,
the one she always wore
even on the day her son
was buried behind the old barn;

the apron she wore
when she screamed
I hate you
into a callous sky because George was hiding
under the porch.

He whacks the cue ball, a white apron,
as hard as he can because
sometimes after he plays too long,
the cloth on the table is algae
masking a shallow pond.
And sometimes he drinks too much
beer foam looks like that film
sitting on a shallow pond.
And when there’s a full apron in the night sky,
he is that little boy hiding under the porch.

This is a tragic story captured in the brevity of a poem and it is gut-wrenching. I wonder if the poet feels a longing to reach out and reassure No That Pocket George while feeling helpless to do so as that is the feeling I am left with. This is when poetry is at its best, striking you in the chest and leaving you with all the emotions to ponder on.



The Table Swallows Wally the Whale

The table swallows Wally like poetry does to me,
Takes us away from the day’s drudgery:
paying the bills, worrying about what will break next,
and where we’ll get the money to fix it.

Fifteen object balls
Spread out across the felt;
twenty-six letter
in the alphabet;
we both dream
of possibilities, combinations, perfect breaks.

He spends afternoons
Practicing how to miss a shot;
while I pick apart words to resurrect.
We both have our own language:
underappreciated
and misunderstood.

We both struggle with rules.
I hold my pen with the same intensity
he does his cue.
Felt and paper
obstacles
we navigate.

It’s when writing swallows me that I understand
his Captain Ahab-ish obsession:
how he sacrificed his wife and children
how the world, so invasive, disappears
when he leans over
to line up a shot.

I like that the poet relates to the player through her writing. I enjoy seeing writers talk about how they feel about their craft because I relate to it, too. For anyone who has a passion they sacrifice many things for it and often family, friends, and outsiders have a hard time understanding. Poems like this validate people’s passions and I appreciate that.


If you enjoyed this brief sample you may purchase a copy of Cadillac Men, length of 156 pages, for $16.95 at:
http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Men-Rebecca-Schumejda/dp/1935520687/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&keywords=9781935520689&linkCode=ur2&qid=1350461689&sr=8-1&tag=poetscraftcom-20

If you would like to learn more about Rebecca Schumejda whose work has appeared in sunnyoutside and Bottle of Smoke Press, among others, please visit her web-site at:
http://www.rebeccaschumejda.com/
and
http://www.nyqbooks.org/author/rebeccaschumejda


Thanks always for reading and please click in tomorrow…