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REVIEWS Pudding House Books & Chapbooks that have received significant attention |
| Reviews are listed alphabetically by author. Multiple reviews for a single title would be arranged most recent listed first. This page updated November 10, 2003. |
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Jennifer Bosveld, editor, Elastic Ekphrastic: Poetry on Art / Poets on Tour through Galleries, 69pp, $14, perfect bound, full color cover, ISBN 1-58998-166-9 What’s an Ekphrastic, you might ask? Jennifer Bosveld seeks to explain and illustrate this responsive, interpretative way of looking at Art, in this invaluable and highly readable anthology. In short, Ekphrastic Poetry is writing in response to any specific work of Art, be it painting, drawing, dance, sculpture, music, movie, whatever creative turns you on. Her anthology is set up like a tour through a museum or a gallery. The editor is a knowledgeable guide offering the how, the why, the history, and tips for responding to the Art that could be applied to any written work. The opening essay offers a brief introduction on the nature and how-tos with a comprehensive bibliography for future reference. Following these remarks, the tour begins. Along the way we see photographs, paintings, crude sketches, more formal sketches, poetic acrostics, work spanning the forms from the rude to the avant garde to the highly sophisticated. To further illustrate the nature of the tour and the Ekphrastic process, poems written by fellow travelers on the tour are offered. Here is an example by Kathleen Burgess to a projection described as “a rawhide, steel, and audio-video projection”: “How the city is saved. . . .damned, diplomacy a skin stitched for Yalta, displayed for Stalin, a target, a cover for atrocity—for each two citizens a bomb. Thousands of bombs.” Responses are as varied as the artwork that inspires. Ekphrastic Poetry is a trip well worth taking by any creative writer and Bosveld is the right kind of guide to share the tour with. Alan Catlin, Chiron Review Jennifer Bosveld, editor, Elastic Ekphrastic: Poetry on Art / Poets on Tour through Galleries, 69pp, $14, perfect bound, full color cover, ISBN 1-58998-166-9 This is the second book of ekphrastic poetry I’ve read recently and the concept is beginning to grow on me. Ekphrasis is writing poetry in response to visual art. In this insightful presentation, poets from every level of experience used all five of their physical senses to create their poetry. I will not single out any particular poems or poets in this intriguing anthology. As with all Pudding House anthologies, this one is distinct and well worth reading. The objective of Elastic Ekphrastic is to encourage poets, writers, and the general public to explore and interpret the arts through poetry. The point is that if we can write about pictures in frames, we can write about the scenarios in our lives. This exercise and the resulting poetry occurred in Columbus OH when writers and poets toured the city’s many fine art museums. Editor Jennifer Bosveld then pulled it all together. The end result is Elastic Ekphrastic. The editor and poets involved have every right to be proud of their labors. Laurel Johnson, Midwest Book Review Jennifer Bosveld, editor, Glass Works: Art Glass, Windows, Bottles, Marbles, and Jars: An Anthology of Poems and Stories, 67pp, $16, perfect bound, full color cover, ISBN 1-58998-142-1 I tend to struggle with anthologies and capturing the essence without singling out any particular contributor. Glass Works features a compilation of short stories and poems by talented wordsmiths. This anthology focusing on the subject of glass is exceptional. Why glass? Editor Bosveld succinctly captures the content of this fine anthology better than I could. "Glass holds and pours, it heats and cools, it soothes and frightens, it clarifies and blocks, it invites us in and keeps us divided, it flows and stays put, it is more still than a pool of water and cracks louder than a rim shot on a snare drum. What else does so much and exhibits itself so diversely?" The poems are elegantly written as befitting the subject. The short stories in Glass Works have the ring and clarity of fine crystal. This anthology speaks to passion, art, and creation, liquid in stasis. To add a bit of fun to the mix, the editor has included a back cover exercise and invites readers to submit their own poems about glass. All in all, I think you'll find this anthology to be a satisfying experience. Highly recommended. Laurel Johnson, Midwest Book Review Jennifer Bosveld, editor, The Magic Fish: Poems on an Edward Boccia Sketchbook, 133pp, $18, perfect bound, full color cover, ISBN 1-58998-083-2 The author states that The Magic Fish is ekphrastic poetry, where the poet views a picture and creates a poetic response. For this well-presented book, she wrote poems based on the art of Edward Boccia. Ms. Bosveld is an award-winning poet. Mr. Boccia is Professor Emeritus in Fine Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. His paintings and drawings are part of important galleries around the world. Images, relationships, form, color, and light pass from the artist's hand to the poet's eye with amazing clarity in The Magic Fish, leaving readers with a sense of wonder. For Boccia's drawing, The Arrival of God, the poet writes: |
| God arrives head first between the legs of the crescent moon and Venus trailing a sailor's sunset..... |
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Bosveld's reaction to Boccia's whimsical Manfred and Alma, is a poem titled Common Couple. Amidst the whimsy she captures the sublime. All of our love is half given to ourselves. All love received was only half a gift. The pen and ink sketch titled A Man Making Love becomes philosophy at Ms. Bosveld's hand. Men die when they lose their heads stuck in their last act some bodypart sitting there-- evidence and messy a man making love seldom gets it quite made Boccia's He Has Been Called becomes a poem titled Medical Chart, once the poet has viewed it. I read this one aloud several times, enthralled. He's on his way out and all mouth about it like a crow mad with want for the kill. Like a priest always meant to make love on the screen who never believed in the character he was given. The Magic Fish is more than a book. It's an experience enriched by the gifts of Ms. Bosveld and Mr. Boccia. This one is a collectible gem, well worth the price. Laurel Johnson, Midwest Book Review Larsen Bowker, Something Higher, 32pp, $8.95, stapled, ISBN 1-58998-170-7. Larsen Bowker took a long dead relative's journal and transformed it into poetry. He states in the preface to his chapbook, "Eva May's journal offered me the opportunity to explore faith that was as much a part of her life as the wind that blew even when there was no wind, faith buried in her bones." What follows is a tribute, nostalgic verses of the highest order. I am Eva May Spaulding and often feel the dead coming to my aid...... My timid demeanor disguises a wild desire for a language clear as nature's speech, so I can say exactly what I see on these endless prairies, so vast words disappear if they are not true as stone. Eva May and Larsen Bowker speak of simple things with an uncommon eloquence. Mama sweeps the dirt floor smooth every morning with a straw and thistle broom, as if her soul's progress depended on it. Eva May's elder brother did not have the same love of books and reading, and yet his voice is also clear and strong through the poet's skill. But I have done no lantern reading, nor midnight thinking in summer perfumed air..... .....for there is no melody in books sweeter than a meadowlark's September song, or the spider's airy spin across open space, no taste more pure than wild plums and mulberries with a drink of artesian water from the willow springs..... Eva May dreamed of doing something higher with her life, something that would make her worthy of her death. In her estimation, she failed. Day by day my dream of doing something higher dies a little, as though my touch were no longer enough to keep it breathing..... I wish that somehow Eva May could know she didn't fail. A couple generations down the line came Larsen Bowker. He took her fragile, lovely dreams and breathed new life into them. His words and hers are true as stone. This book is one to cherish. Laurel Johnson, Midwest Book Review Barbara Crooker, Barbara Crooker Greatest Hits 1980-2002, 27pp, $8.95, stapled, ISBN 1-58998-195-2 I marvel at Barbara Crooker's Greatest Hits 1980-2002. My first thought as I read is that she is a master of the conclusion; that is, the wrap-up, so to speak. And, that is my last thought at the wonderful way she has completed her small edition with a poem about the ancient, almost timeless city of Paris. But there is more; much more is to be found in these compact, carefully crafted poems. She brings music alive as a punctuation of our lives: Elvis, highlighting Barbara's menopause and Springsteen, highlighting her daughter's trip off to college. Generations and places: "Pittsburgh...in the rearview mirror," and the "Paris...of l'heure blue" give structure to the volume as she brings time's passage alive with it's last words: "the world that will end." Mother of a still born child and later an autistic son, as well as 2 other perfectly normal children - she finds inspiration in her pain and her pleasure, loss as well as gain. "In the Late Summer Garden" she characterizes her friend's death from breast cancer, describing "the sky, blue as radium" and her friend "learning how to let go,/ to stop making plans." Asked if she is the I in her poems, Barbara says, "I want to stand with Charlie Parker: 'If you ain't lived it, it won't come out your horn...' " She says her poems are "written in blood." These are very personal poems. Therein is the wonder of this work. Mary Barnet, poetrymagazine.com © All Copyright, Mary Barnet. All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission. Michael Paul Ladanyi, Spelling Crows of Winter, 35pp, $8.95, stapled, ISBN 1-58998-229-0 As a reader, I am drawn to poetry that is simultaneously unsettling and beautiful and capable of connecting the dots on our maps of both joy and grief. When I finish a book, I like to feel I know the rooms of darkness that make a poet’s heartbeat race. Michael Paul Ladanyi’s second collection of poetry, Spelling Crows of Winter, rises to this occasion and leaves us with line after line well worth reading again and again. In his poem “Amid Hopeful Silence,” Ladanyi aptly ties the rattling season of autumn to disturbing memories of 9/11 and our ensuing wars: “September has fallen off the dusty shoulders of summer, bringing with it a stranger cloak of admonished rain, rumors of war, ghosts standing over their bloody and colluded ruins outside coughing synagogues.” Later in this stunning piece, he relates the “walls of this grieving room” to “small children peering from dim doorways of long halls.” One constant thread in his work is that nature and ordinary facts of life have beating hearts to listen to. In short, Ladanyi’s physical landscape and choice of imagery and metaphor blend effortlessly with the human condition. Jon Katz once wrote: “I got my Ph.D. in fate.” It strikes me that is the case for more than a few of our most powerful poetic voices today. Ladanyi is no exception to this rule. Much of his poetry revolves around the shaky limbs of family trees and the wisdom of suffering itself. It’s a rough way to grow compassion, but when it blooms on the page, you know the garden is real. Ladanyi is an expert at delivering the truths of a haunting past or the details of an abused childhood—yet he follows the purging of grief with the breath of hope often coming in the form of the presence of love and relationships. In “Humming Riddles,” he calls words “purple bruises walking empty rooms”—then adroitly turns to the vague but poignant comforts of amour: “You, my love, are white light sparkling in my glass, a wet aching that comforts me.” Closeness itself is the antidote for vacancy, though he’s wise enough to admit that existence is still defined by the presence of riddle and despair. When Ladanyi explores the grief of those he loves, he reminds me of Donald Hall, who so expertly wrote of the loss of his wife, Jane Kenyon, in that recent masterpiece The Painted Bed. When you close their books, you know and feel the pain of another’s plight. He never simplifies the horror: “What was unclear, surrendered, fallow, this morning when you woke with the thick taste of cheap brandy and menthol cigarettes in your mouth? The sidewalk shifts beneath your feet in staggering patterns of blurry gray honeycombs. The thin sky hangs as blue as you’ve ever seen it, the tomato sun seeming more of a trespasser than master of this house.” This poem, titled “Hollow,” captures the pit and landscape of another’s grief. As a poet, Ladanyi sees admission as a road to sanity and an avenue of renaissance. He watches the emotional weather of those around him with a keen eye for the gist of the storm. The honeycomb sidewalk is a beautiful image that captures both the natural weavings of sadness and the sting of avid memory. As a witness, he gives license to the grieving process itself. In “Cold and Thick,” the poet admits his rage upon hearing about scandals involving Catholic priests and the abused bodies of young boys. “The inside of me is dancing crooked above this paper, sickly raging, as I remember that my mother named me after the first Michael.” The natural urge for accusation is tempered by the ownership of what such despicable acts will do in staining childhood innocence. What appeals to me most about Spelling Crows of Winter is the fact that the poet is unafraid of subjects marked by controversy and horror. The terrible times in which we live are laid bare and explored; resolution is not in the guise of simple answers; denial is not in the poet’s vocabulary. Such candor reminds me of the poetry of Sharon Olds; remarkably, Ladanyi’s delivery is never marked by bitterness and he still sees shades of blue when he looks at the morning sky. Janet I. Buck, author of Calamity’s Quilt and the recent release, Tickets to a Closing Play. Michael Paul Ladanyi, Spelling Crows of Winter, 35pp, $8.95, stapled, ISBN 1-58998-229-0 Michael Paul Ladanyi is a relentless poet! And I mean this in the most positive sense. Within each poem are wonderful images of constant color and mood that come at you time and time again with their persistent counterpoint. From the title poem, “Spelling Crows of Winter,” we see these birds “settled here on slim legs of squawking sorrows,” and “hear them sighing thinly like old mothers of dead children.” And from “Silently Gathering,” we have this remarkable presentation of “Winter’s walnut-etched mouth”… “opening and closing like murmurs from gray stones, distinct behind November’s damp ears like a drunk poet whose work is no longer read.” Michael Paul Ladanyi, with Spelling Crows of Winter, has put together a selection of finely tuned and meticulously “chiseled” poems. It is indeed an honor for me to review a book of poems written by a poet of such obvious insight and talent! Dale Edmands, Kookamonga Square Louis McKee, Louis McKee Greatest Hits 1971–2001, 24pp, $8.95, stapled, ISBN 1-58998-070-0 This little collection from Pudding House contains 12 poems. Nine of these are fantastic. The remaining three are not far behind. This is Louis McKee’s work in a nutshell, a fine sampler for anyone who hasn’t had a taste before. It is also a fine addition to the collections of McKee fanatics. Here is a taste from “To My Son,” McKee’s lament for the son he never had to teach about the important things in life: I could talk about hunger, and the pain, thank God, we have never had to know. I could point to the birds, plain as everything in Pennsylvania, but happy enough with their song. The collection also features an interesting essay by McKee on the history and background of the poems. I took minor exception to his discussion of “Starting Over.” McKee fails to mention the poem’s appearance in the Axe Factory Review, which, like Cynic Book Review, is produced by the Cynic Press. Pearl gets credit for publishing “Starting Over,” but the poem also appeared in Axe Factory in one of its incarnations. Sample lines from the poem are seen featured in the blurb about Axe Factory that appears in The Poet’s Market as an illustration of the type of work the editor hopes to receive. Having finished my snit-fit, I can return to the book itself. Buy it. Read it. Treasure it. Joseph Farley, Cynic Book Review James Penha, James Penha Greatest Hits 1975–2000, 28pp, $8.95, stapled, ISBN 1-930755-32-5 “When his nose was gone After his eyes had popped out, They pushed his puttied skin From the bone With their shoes And pissed the blaze out Before it spread far enough To kill him. That’s When they took the picture I saw silently And heard his scream” —From the poem, “La Secuela” by James Penha It’s easy to shy away from reality. It is even easier to not write about it. It is unbelievably easy to just write about the mist outside your door and how it cuddles around the pepper plant outside your window. But even the pepper plant could be sinister. The mist? Should I even begin? This is the second in the series of Greatest Hits books I have reviewed from Pudding House Publications. The first by Sheila E. Murphy was brilliant. This edition by James Penha is just as startling. Anyone can say a book is a greatest hits. To prove yourself worthy is quite special. Before the poem “September 1, 1914 The Last Passenger Pigeon Receives A Guest,” Penha quotes W. H. Auden. The quote is as follows, “Ironic points of light flash out wherever the Just exchange their messages.” In this book points of light spray their essence about wherever the just could read these messages. These messages are indeed the greatest hits. august highland, www.muse-apprentice-guild.com A.D. Winans, A.D. Winans Greatest Hits 1995–2003, 32pp, $8.95, stapled, ISBN 1-58998-219-3 Hey, you reach a certain stage or age (in Winans’ case it’s 67), you deserve a Greatest Hits Collection. The folks at Pudding House Publications write: “Music lovers have purchased Greatest Hits from the music industry for decades and now Pudding House brings you hits from some of the hottest poets across the contemporary American literary landscape. The poems most often requested for reprint or performance, pieces remembered by fans and groupies. Yes, poets have groupies, too!” I suppose A.D. Winans has groupies, considering he has had 35 books and chapbooks published, and he has appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and anthologies. A son of San Francisco, he has known and worked with the likes of Spicer, Micheline, and Bukowski. He started his own notable small press SECOND COMING. He served three times on the board of directors for COSMEP, a seminal small press organization. Having established his credentials, Pudding House presents the man’s poetry. Winans describes himself as a “people’s poet.” He writes: “My poems and my life are one and the same. They simply can’t be separated.” In this collection, the signature Winans themes are represented: San Francisco streets, his family, his memories of his armed service years in Panama, his love of Jazz, the blue collar man, the prison, the system, etc… In the poem “San Francisco Street” Winans displays a gimlet reporter’s eye for the city he loves: “I’ve walked these San Francisco streets/ like a crime photographer walks his beat/ my eyes taking in every movement/ my brain recording images real and imagined/ In sixty years her changes have not eluded me…” In “Poem for the Workingman and the Yuppie” Winans sticks it to the posturing, navel-gazing professional poet, in favor of the working-stiff. He reminds the reader to remember: “…that every meat packer and fisherman/ knows more about life than/ your average poet/ the blind man rattling an empty cup/ makes more noise than/ a Yuppie gunning/ his BMW/ on his way to the/ Graveyard./” I hear you, A.D. Doug Holder, Ibbetson Update |