Upcoming Event ; Feb. 13, 2010

A Performance in Two Voices with Cello
‘The Thinking Heart’

Listen to a radio spot on MPBN about this at Martin's profile and look under Programs.

"Poignant and stirring, The Thinking Heart leaves an indelible impression. The performers transform the essence of Etty's rich inner and outer world as a chronicler of life."
Robert Bernheim, Executive Director, Holocaust & Human Rights Center of Maine

Martin Steingesser & Judy Tierney

Robin Jellis - Cello

poems based on

Etty Hillesum An Interrupted Life & Letters from Westerbork


Portland Conservatory of Music
Concert Series
Woodford Congregational Church
202 Woodford Street • Portland, Maine
Admission $15 (Reduced Admission on Request)
Saturday, February 13, 2010 • 7:30 pm

Somewhere in Etty’s long journey into the Holocaust night, she discovers light
in herself that became visible, an incandescence, still glowing.
To open her journal, or hear these poems, is to see light, feel its heat.


For Additional Information Contact
Portland Conservatory of Music • 207-775-3356
Martin Steingesser, Author & Artistic Director "mailto:windspooning@yahoo.com" 207-828-9937


Thank you to the Maine Humanities Council & Maine Arts Commission for support to The Thinking Heart

Etty Hillesum
An Interrupted Life & Letters from Westerbork

Stepping Westward—Poetry as Cairns

Stepping Westward—Poetry as Cairns
Performance & Poetry Workshop
with Martin Steingesser & Judy Tierney
Living Water Spiritual Center
93 Halifax Street, Winslow, Maine
November  14, from 9:30  am  to 3:30  pm
Fee for performance and workshop is $45, including lunch.
Pre-registration,  with fee, requested.

The program is in two parts, the first a presentation of poems, viewing and treating them as cairns that mark a way along the road we call aging. Just as the traveler marks a trail by placing stones along the way, poems may serve as guides, or be used to pay tribute or celebrate another’s passing. The program explores ways some poems guide, some reassure that—if alone—others have traveled similar paths, understood something of the terrain and moved on.
“The program itself is meant to be a journey we might be nourished to take together,” Tierney says, “stopping to lift and touch some of the poems for what reassurance, light and joy we find in them.”
In the second part, participants will be encouraged and helped in identifying moments to write about that might serve as markers, or memorials, on their own life’s path.
“We will be looking for how wind soughing among spruce and hemlock, lap of waves, the migrating geese, conversation and weather ruffle the heart’s fur, reflect and carry our stories,” Steingesser says.
Steingesser is the author of a book of poems, "Brothers of Morning", and also a performer. Portland’s first Poet Laureate (2007-09), he was selected to receive the Maine Alliance for Art Education’s Bill Bonyun Award in 2006 “for exemplified talent and professionalism as an artist and for being an inspiration to students, teachers and the community.”
Judy Tierney has been presenting poems in Maine for several years and has been nourished in the garden of poetry over many life seasons. She was creator and host of a weekly radio program, “Walking in the Air,” celebrating poetry and its voices, on WRFR, Rockland’s community radio station.
Steingesser and Tierney also perform together with a cellist in an award-winning program, “The Thinking Heart,” an original ensemble work based on the writings of a Dutch woman who died in the Holocaust, which has been the recipient of several Arts and Humanities grants from the Maine Humanities Council and Maine Arts Commission.


For additional information go to title link; http://retreatinmaine.com/calendar.htm
Or Contact • Living Water Spiritual Center, 207-872-2370, or info@retreatmaine.com
Martin Steingesser & Tierney, Presenters, 207-828-9937, or windspooning@yahoo.com

13 POETS & A CHEMIST READING

13 POETS & A CHEMIST READING

for carbon reduction

in conjunction with

International Day of Climate Action

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24, 12-3 pm

Bangor Public Library
145 Harlow Street, Bangor
Maine

The world has only a very narrow window of opportunity to undertake a dramatic shift towards a low-carbon society and prevent the worst scenarios of scientists from coming true. In anticipation of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December, an International Day of Climate Action has been spearheaded by 350.org, the brainchild of environmental writer Bill McKibben. More than a number, 350 signifies the safe upper limit of CO2 in our atmosphere.

Join an impressive gathering of Maine poets for readings that reflect their concerns for the environment. The afternoon will be hosted by Kathleen Ellis & will include live jazz, a closing reception, & book sales & signings.


Featuring:

CHRISTIAN BARTER * HENRY BRAUN

LINDA BUCKMASTER * CHERYL DAIGLE

KATHLEEN ELLIS with chemist FRANÇOIS AMAR

LEONORE HILDEBRANDT * GARY LAWLESS

KRISTEN LINDQUIST * CARL LITTLE

DAWN POTTER * CANDICE STOVER

ELIZABETH TIBBETTS * JEFFREY THOMSON

Carl Little, Dawn Potter, and Candice Stover all have books published by Deerbrook Editions. This should be a great event with so many excellent writers and for an important cause worthy of everyones attention.

Award for The Last Island

Deerbrook Editions is Pleased to Announce
The Last Island has received
The Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry

The Last Island
Poems by Mimi White
82 pages; 6 x 9 trade paper; price $14.00; ISBN 978-0-9712488-8-5
with cover photograph by Sharon Beals 



IN PRAISE OF THE LAST ISLAND

In these deft poems Mimi White traces with great sensitivity a landscape of intimacy. It is a place that is hazardous and rewarding, brimming with feeling that has been tried and retried.  One reads poetry to deepen one’s sense of what it is to be alive- these poems do that with admirable concision.
—Baron Wormser

Mimi White’s mesmerizing book, The Last Island, is a many-faceted love story and, like love, insists you look again in wonder at history, your own gardens, relationships, children, pets, your nearly unbearable losses, and your own mortality. Through the alchemy of these smart, strong poems, you come to realize just how lucky you are to be alive. In the book’s first poem, the narrator, while watching a house burn down, finds herself in a reverie concerning the gifts and grief that come from a passionate relationship. And it’s the burning house that stayed with me as I read this book. The body itself is a house, of sorts and living — a fire full of terror but also great beauty. Be prepared as you read for many unexpected transformations, for revelations that arise from the most common events: visiting an old poet in his garden, feeding your beloved dog although you know he will die soon, releasing a newly healed bird into the orchard.  And best of all, after you finish reading, these poems stay with you, their richness, their music, their sturdy love returning just when you need them most.
—Mekeel McBride

Praise for Mimi White- The Philbrick Poetry Award 2000
“These are poems of a deceptive quiet and simplicity, just that they make, together, a landscape of painful, almost surreal insistence.”
—Robert Creeley

Mimi White has been teaching creative writing for twenty-five years and is Co-Director of PicturePoets of AIR, a non-profit organization that provides enriching arts and cultural experiences to teenage girls. She has been a finalist and a recipient of a NH State Fellowship in Poetry. Her chapbook "The Singed Horizon" was selected by Robert Creeley as the recipient of the 2000 Philbrick Poetry Award. Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire 2005-2007, she is currently working to reduce the effects of global warming as a member of Rye, New Hampshire’s Energy Committee.

Published by Deerbrook Editions - P.O. Box 542 - Cumberland, ME 04021
Phone & FAX 207-829-5038

Available from; the publisher single title orders are $16.50 postage paid; Amazon.com; listed with Books In Print; Baker & Taylor . . .
Now distributed by Small Press Distribution http://www.spdbooks.org

Steingesser read on The Writer's Almanac

Martin Steingesser, author of the book "Brothers of Morning", had the poem, "This Longing", read on the air Augusy 18th. Congratulations Martin. This is the second poem from the book read on "The Writer's Almanac," if I am not mistaken. "Brothers of Morning" is the first book publihed by Deerbrook Editions, soon to go into a second printing.











This Longing

... awoke to rain
around 2:30 this morning
thinking of you, because I'd said
only a few days before, this

is what I wanted, to lie with you in the dark
listening how rain sounds
in the tree beside my window,
on the sill, against the glass, damp

cool air on my face. I am loving
fresh smells, light flashes in the
black window, love how you are here
when you're not, knowing we will

lie close, nothing between us; and maybe
it will be still, as now, the longing
that carries us
into each other's arms

asleep, neither speaking
least it all too soon turn to morning, which
it does. Rain softens, low thunder, a car
sloshes past.


Look up the show for Aug 18 2009 here

Thank you Garrison Keillor.

Thoughts from a Designer

In ordinary places you can find extraordinary things.

This sentence came to me one day while thinking about what to write about Deerbrook Editions. Then, a brook running through the woods, and then a deer drinking on the bank. The brook sound is a song. The deer is a spirit. I happen to live next to a brook called Deer Brook.

A friend of mine sent off a children's story through the brother of a friend that happened to work in the publishing business in New York. The brother liked the story, as did another editor friend of a friend. But the brother said that the publishing company probably wouldn't find interest in it because it wasn't commercial enough.

In opening the latest Consortium catalog for poetry and literature, consortiumacademic.com, I found a statement of dedication to the power of ideas, making independent thoughts available, and a promise that I would find stimulating books. The statement alone was inspiring. If I could write a paragraph like that . . .

Ideas are powerful. After viewing a recently aired show about the life and work of Garrison Keillor, which left me with a pleasing sense that there are remarkable folks out there creating beautiful music and literature, doing extraordinary things in ordinary places. It seems apparent to me that it is the people that make ideas powerful.

I believe that there are many more deserving writers and artists in the world than ever find a publisher or gallery that will present their work.
So far my catchy phrase that makes an introduction sound bite for Deerbook Editions is:

DESERVING AUTHORS • GOOD BOOKS

I think I might add:
In ordinary places you can find extraordinary things.

Deerbrook Editions books are beautiful books, well designed and in handsome covers. Though they are trade paper editions, my design background is in limited editions, so care is taken that text blocks and margins are balanced. We also use fine art on the cover whenever we can, often recommended by the author. I work with authors closely during the editorial process to ensure the content is in keeping with their intention of how the writing should appear.

Some of our authors have won prizes and fellowships, some do performance poetry, some write in other forms, or about art, and some play musical instruments. Most of them have taught or are teaching. My background is in visual art and design. There is a web site you can go to, idesignbooks, and view some of my work in book art. The site may be archaic, but I am taking steps to improve it with a new design and elements that make it more search engine friendly.

Thank you for buying Deerbrook Edition books, if you have, by doing so you are supporting writers and artists, not just a publisher. The more books we sell, the more authors we can publish, market, and promote. By buying our books you help us make a difference.

Book Publishing News

On July 16, the News Hour had a very interesting ANALYSIS spot on publishing. Readership seems to be up in libraries although many stores may be seeing fewer sales; even the big stores like Borders; the independent stores and publishers are important; and the "book" doesn't seem to be going away any time soon. The e-books are just another form of distribution, as with audio books, (note what Jonathan Karp and Raphael Sagalyn have to say,) that even new forms like the e-books attention can be good for book sales in general.

I can remember in library school during the early 1980's there was concern for the disappearance of the physical card catalog being replaced by computers, and even books being replaced, and I am glad to say so far the book has held strong. For me, there still isn't anything like holding and reading a book, and as pointed out in another News Hour report on newspapers, the ability to 'search' a paper, a catalog, or a book, by hand, is very user friendly .

Hyacinth for the Soul has another review

Hyacinth for the Soul, Joan I. Siegel,
Deerbrook Editions 2009, $16.95


“We knew who we were back then,” begins Joan I. Siegel’s Hyacinth for the Soul—and I found myself sitting beside her on the stoop, “snug” in my “square-toed socks.” Siegel, professor emeritus at SUNY/Orange, offers a collection of sensual, compassionate, and highly individual poems. “As though darkness were a hand, / a tactile memory / like playing the piano. You touch lost things.” These lost things include childish fears (“black holes that could vacuum us / up like a pair of socks.”), joys (“you and your sister… comfortable as animals in each other’s smell,”) and puzzles (“How the veins / of the lamb on your plate looked / just like the veins in your wrist.”)



The details of everyday life filtered through memory become mysterious. Her father, “dark as rain on black umbrellas” in a photo taken before her birth, will later ask his wife, “Who are you?” In these lovely poems, Siegel meditates on her experiences and thus allows us to see ourselves.

Lee Gould, The Chronogram.

See the link below in post "News from Blooming Grove".

Our books are availale on line from spdbooks, do an advanced search, type in Deerbrook Editions in the publisher line and titles come up.

Finding Father

“Finding Father”—Join four poets in a journey beyond Hallmark holiday tributes to fatherhood for an engaging presentation of poems celebrating and suffering the fathers in our lives, at Longfellow Books, One Monument Way, Portland, on Thursday, June 18, at 7 pm. Local poets Michael Macklin, Betsy Sholl, Martin Steingesser and Judy Tierney will read and present poems about fathers from their own writings and those of other poets. Admission is free.

“This will be a more nourishing bowl of soup than the usual holiday fare for Father’s Day,” says Martin Steingesser, coordinator and participating poet in the program. Each poet will read one or two poems of their own and one poem by another poet about fathers or some aspect of fatherhood.

News from Blooming Grove

Joan at her piano.

Joan Siegel has also been active reading and promoting her book in her area of the Hudson Valley / Blooming Grove, NY. Here is a list of events and reviews out or to come. We believe her book, "Hyacinth for the Soul," to be noteworthy, as Joan is an accomplished writer and has gotten good endorsements from some notable people. Mary Makofske's review is archived on this blog (03/15-03/22) as well as on "The Renaissance Reader" web site PDF (link below) which also has a sample poem from the book.

Some endorsements from the cover:

These passionate, caring poems range seamlessly from personal lyric to public outcry, from a pair of well-turned pantoums of childhood memories to a poem that rewrites the liturgy of a responsive reading from the Passover service. Siegel knows how to go for the small specific details that illuminate even the darkest subjects.
—Maxine Kumin


Reading this extraordinary collection, I’m reminded of John Crowe Ransom’s statement that death “is the great subject of poetry, the most serious subject.” Within its persistent shadow, Siegel writes of love, both domestic and romantic, of the burden of human suffering, and of the regenerative powers of nature and the human spirit. And she does so with the impeccable ear of a musician and the craftsmanship of a master jeweler. This is an important book. 
—William Trowbridge

All the endorsements can be found in the earlier post in the archive for 03/08-03/15.

This new title, and all of our recent books, can be found at spdbooks by doing an advanced search and filling in only the publisher name, Deerbrook Editions, which should bring up all the titles.


"Hyacinth for the Soul" Reviews:

1) Mary Makofske review, see earlier post (3/15-3/22).

2) James Cotter review to be published in Home Planet News (#63 Fall 2009)

3) Nina Shengold review to be published in The Chronogram (July 2009)

4) Amy Berkowitz, Times Herald Record (May 17, 2009) . . . more of an interview, you can access it on-line at recordonline.

5)Lee Gould, June 29, 2009,The Chronogram

READINGS:

4/2/09 Mt. Saint Mary's College (Newburgh, NY)

4/3/09 SUNY/Orange (Middletown, NY)

4/18/09 Baby Grand Books (Warwisk, NY)

6/9/09 Moffat Library (Washingtonville, NY)

Date pending...Fall 2009...Thrall Library (Middletown, NY)

Date pending...Woodstock Poetry Society (Philip Levine, Director)...awaiting a reading date

Date Pending...(August 21) Joey's Cafe (Washingtonville, NY)

Reading at River Arts

Sunday May 24, Dawn Potter and Martin Steingesser read at River Arts in Damariscotta, Maine. River Arts is doing good things for the arts and can be found by clicking on the title of this post.

Martin is Portland, Maine's first Poet Laureate, 2007 - 2009. Author of "Brothers of Morning" published by Deerbrook Editions in 2002, is usually active teaching writing workshops in Maine schools, Martin is also performing his new work "The Thinking Heart," an ensemble performance work in two voices, with cello, based on the writings of a Dutch woman, Etty Hillesum, who died in the Holocaust.
"The Thinking Heart" CD is being released by Old Port Records. Listen to a short feature, with excerpts from "The Thinking Heart" here.


Dawn Potter, author of "Boy Land & Other Poems" published by Deerbrook Editions in 2004, recently received a writing fellowship, and has a Milton memoir "Tracing Paradise: Two Years in Harmony with John Milton" out from the University of Massachusetts Press. Dawn is also active as associate director of the "Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching" in Franconia, New Hampshire, as a free lance book editor, and teacher of creative writing. Scroll down to post 4/7/09 for more, or go through the archive above. Dawn was interviewed by Sewanee Review. This is the link from the Sewanne site map but it doesn't seem to be working now, and tags cannot contain tags (to the interview) on the blog. Sorry. We will investigate.

UP COMING APPEARANCES for Dawn Potter

Book signing, MWPA's Books & Blooms, Boothbay, ME, July 11 MWPA

Poetry workshop, MWPA fall retreat, Haystack, Deer Isle, ME, Sept. 11-13

"Poets Writing Memoir," reading with Elizabeth Garber, Belfast Free Library, Belfast, ME, Sept. 29

Reading with Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Community Bookstore, 143 7th Ave, Park Slope, Brooklyn, October 13

Visiting writer, Stonecoast MFA program, January

Reading at the Blue Hill Public Library

POETS KESTENBAUM, LITTLE & STEINGESSER

LIVE AT THE BLUE HILL LIBRARY

BLUE HILL—To celebrate National Poetry Month, the Blue Hill Library is hosting poets Stuart Kestenbaum, Carl Little and Martin Steingesser. Their reading will take place in the library’s Howard Room on Thursday, April 23, at 7:00 p.m. Books will be available for purchase and signing, with part of the proceeds supporting the library.



Kestenbaum is the author of three books of poems, most recently "Prayers & Run-on Sentences." His poems have been read on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac and featured in former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s nationally syndicated American Life in Poetry column. As director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Kestenbaum has integrated poetry into the craft curriculum.


Little’s poems have appeared in Down East, Puckerbrush Review, Narramissic Notebook, Wolf Moon Journal and other publications. His collection "Ocean Drinker: New & Selected Poems" appeared in 2006. He is director of communications and marketing at the Maine Community Foundation where he oversees the Dibner Writing Fellowship.




The first poet laureate of Portland, Steingesser has performed his poetry across Maine and beyond. He recently completed a series of poems based on the journal and letters of Etty Hillesum, a Dutch woman who died in the Holocaust. Steingesser is the author of "Brothers of Morning." His poems have appeared in numerous publications, including the American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal and Café Review.

All three poets are featured in "The Maine Poets: An Anthology of Verse," edited by Wesley McNair.

Poets House Showcase

Last weekend Deerbrook Editions was represented by Joan Siegel visiting the Poets House Showcase in the beautiful Jefferson Market Branch Library in New York. Her book "Hyacinth for the Soul" and Mimi White's "The Last Island" are the books in the showcase. All of our books are in the collection, and it is a good feeling knowing one or two are in the spring showcase. We look forward to Poets House settling into their new location. You can visit their website here.






See archive 03/08 - 03/15 (1) for more on Joan's book.









Through Saturday, April 11 
The 17th Annual Poets House Showcase
Don't miss the final days of this exciting display of all the new poetry and poetry-related books published in the United States in the last year. Over 2,000 titles—including chapbooks, DVDs, CDs, anthologies, translations and more—have been gathered together in the landmark Jefferson Market Branch Library.
New York Public Library 
Jefferson Market Branch 
425 Sixth Avenue (at West 10th Street ) 
For library hours, call (212) 243-4334

Dawn Potter Receives Fellowship

Attention should be given to the work of Dawn Potter. Dawn recently received a poetry grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation of Langley, Washington, a private foundation that supports writers.

Dawn is also associate director of the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching in Franconia, New Hampshire, where she works alongside former Maine poet laureate Baron Wormser.

Living in Harmony, Maine, Dawn makes her living as a free-lance book editor, and teaches creative writing. She can be found at the mainearts.maine.gov Arts Commission Directory of Maine Artists.

Recent writing includes a Milton memoir, "Tracing Paradise: Two Years in Harmony with John Milton" due out from the University of Massachusetts Press in May 2009.

Also of note, a series of essays about books that she has reread many times. So far they deal with Tolstoy's "War and Peace," Austen's "Mansfield Park," Bronte's "Shirley," Dickens's "David Copperfield," as well as some related essays and reviews that deal with storytelling, character, the sonnet form, etc. Several have or will appear in Sewanee and Threepenny, and a British journal called The Reader has also expressed interest.

Her first book, "Boy Land & Other Poems," is available at local bookstores in Maine, such as Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick and Longfellow Books in Portland.

Howard Levy had this to say about "Boy Land & Other Poems." "One of the most difficult things in poetry is to control the "I," to let it stay innocent, to let it act and be acted upon freshly in the poem. Dawn Potter manages this difficult trick with ease. In her poems, no matter where she is, the consciousness is always fresh, the perceptions always immediate and the human connections always moving, moving us, as we are by the moments of life coming into focus, newly seen and absolutely clear."

In 2010 Dawn will have a collection published by CavanKerry Press.

The Poetry of Living into Nonviolence

L.R. Berger recently visited Camden, New Jersey for an event with a Peace Community there. L.R. does many good things for peace and she gives wonderful readings. "The Unexpected Aviary" was well received. Thank you Cassie MacDonald. Thank you LR.

"Remembering Who We Are: The Poetry of Living into Nonviolence." This gathering (will be) was an opportunity to taste and see. If violence is, as John Dear has said, “forgetting who we are,” nonviolence is a means for “re-membering” who and whose we are. We’ll deploy poems and stories and gesture to ground ourselves in the power and grace at the heart of creative, active, spirit-centered nonviolent being and doing. LR Berger works as NE Associate of Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service as educator, poet, and counselor working with victims and perpetrators of violence through Restorative Practices. She is an advocate for the arts as means for social and personal transformation. Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service works around the world offering nonviolence education and information programs. The Peace Community in Camden is part of this church community.

L.R. Berger, author of "The Unexpected Aviary," won the 2003 Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry. Her book has been reviewed in Field and Pleiades. L. R. Berger's work has been supported by The National Endowment for the Arts, The New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, The PEN New England Discovery Award, The American Academy in Rome, The MacDowell Colony, The Appalachia Poetry Prize, The Blue Mountain Center and Hedgebrook.

Berger writes of her poems, "The world dares us to love it: that poignant, sturdy brand of love that can sometimes be wrestled out of the condition of our lives. These poems are driven by an ongoing necessity to take up this dare. They are both the means by which I wrestle and the hard-won outcome: a record of how I persisted, faltered or came to arrive at something approaching this love. "

Below, L.R. pictured in Camden's Sacred Heart. L.R. Berger is the New England Associate of Pace e Bene.

The Last Island goes to NC

Mimi White has read in Asheville, North Carolina, and had an interview on the radio last Sunday, (3/29) I believe, and you can listen or download the stream for that show here, at http://wpvm.org/nav/archives, click on this post title, then go to the bottom of the page and find the Wordplay stream. (wordstream.m3u)

Mimi White as been teaching creative writing for twenty-five years as a member of the faculty at the University of New Hampshire, Northern Essex Community College, and Lesley University. She was Co-Director of PicturePoets of AIR, a non-profit organization that provides enriching arts and cultural experiences to teenage girls. She has been a finalist and a recipient of a NH State Fellowship in Poetry. Her chapbook "The Singed Horizon" was selected by Robert Creeley as the recipient of the 2000 Philbrick Poetry Award. Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire 2005-2007, she is currently working to reduce the effects of global warming as a member of Rye, New Hampshire’s Energy Committee.

Mimi's book, 'The Last Island," was reviewed here last summer.

April Prayer by Stuart Kestenbaum to be Read on The Writer's Almanac, April 5, 2009

News for this Monday • April Prayer by Stuart Kestenbaum to be Read on The Writer's Almanac, April 5, 2009

"April Prayer," a poem from "Prayers and Run-on Sentences" by Stuart Kestenbaum (Deerbrook Editions 2007), will be read on The Writer's Almanac, April 5th, 2009. That is a Sunday, so I am not sure when that will air here in Maine, but it is good news just the same.








April Prayer
by Stuart Kestenbaum

Just before the green begins there is the hint of green
a blush of color, and the red buds thicken
the ends of the maple’s branches and everything
is poised before the start of a new world,
which is really the same world
just moving forward from bud
to flower to blossom to fruit
to harvest to sweet sleep, and the roots
await the next signal, every signal
every call a miracle and the switchboard
is lighting up and the operators are
standing by in the pledge drive we’ve
all been listening to: Go make the call.



And it is that time, the buds are swelling, thank you Garrison Keillor.

I am reminded of a song sung Ry Cooder, "Jesus is on that Main Line."

Deerbrook Editions • A New Publisher to SPD

Recently Deerbrook Editions has had a boost by becoming a part of Small Press Distribution. Their hard work means our books are getting much more exposure by having some titles in this year's spring catalog, and hopefully in upcoming events and festivals. Deerbrook Editions will be represented at the LA Book Festival April 25 & 26 with Small Press Distribution, along with a large number of their many independent press books and literary titles. A non-profit organization, Small Press Distribution carries poetry, fiction, and cultural writing from over 400 presses and can be found on line here.



We are currently doing a mailing of post cards directing folks at stores around the country to the SPD catalog and web site where they can find our titles.

The web site will eventually have all back list books still in print, as well as the titles below currently listed in the catalog.
"The Last Island," poems by Mimi White
"Prayers and Run-on Sentences," poems by Stuart Kestenbaum
"Poems from the Pond," poems by Candice Stover
"Marlowe The Great Detective," by Katharine Whild, a full color children's fiction in hard cover .

Hyacinth for the Soul • Reviewed by Mary Makofske

Hyacinth for the Soul                    by Joan I. Siegel                         Deerbrook Editions, 2009

 
            Like Chinese ink paintings, the poems of "Hyacinth for the Soul" are spare, creating with a few evocative strokes a landscape of loss and beauty.

These are poems of family: childhood memories, the aging and death of parents, the love and tensions between husband and wife, mother and daughter, sisters. But the collection also spirals out to those torn by war or hardship and to characters of myth or history. Siegel speaks in her own voice, but also is comfortable taking on the persona of others (as in “Mary Cassatt: The Letter (1890-1)” and “Eurydice in the Underworld”). The empathy she brings to these subjects shows that she considers these, too, her extended family.

 The poet’s eye for detail can bring a scene alive, as when she recalls herself and her sister as children:

You with your pink cat’s eyes
sunglasses, rhinestone-studded.
Me with a candy cigarette hanging
 
from my lower lip . . . just like the real
 
mothers on our block.     “The Bronx”
 
Siegel and her husband (J.R. Solonche) wrote a previous book of poems, "Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter." Emily also appears in this volume, as when Siegel recalls her daughter’s “First Words” with a stunning metaphor:
 
The way each word pushes through your lips
sometimes makes me think of the birth of a foal
who squeezes through the dark
a little misshapen and folded
trying to stand on wobbly legs and shake
himself open.                     
 
And later, in “Washing My Daughter’s Hair,” she paints a warm domestic scene:
 
Supple as willow curved above a stream,
she perches on a bench, rounds her shoulders,
tosses silken hair over the kitchen sink.
 
I lather the black heft in my hands.
Warm water runs through our laughter
and the soapy fragrance of the morning.
 
Even here, however, a shadow falls across the end of the poem as she sees her daughter’s vulnerability: “already. . . here in abeyance—/ loneliness, / hollow bones.”

Though not a performer, Siegel is a pianist, and her passion for music runs through the book. In “Chopin Prelude in E-Minor” she recalls this piece she knows by heart, and the music she and her father shared:
 
This page missing from the book of preludes
with their spiraling descents and
breaks of sudden weather
this quiet page missing ten years
folded in my father’s hand
to take along on the journey
as if the dead really need what we give them. . . .
 
Playing the piano stirs a childhood memory of falling asleep while her mother played:
 
I saw the watery moon and breathlessly
I reached along its twisting current home,
 
swam up the moonlight she began to play:
that shaft of music from the living room.
 
                                                              “Playing Claire de Lune on My Mother’s Birthday”
 
Though many of the poems use simple language and syntax, this one, a sonnet, exemplifies the musical lushness Siegel can create.

Art also comes under Siegel’s keen gaze. In “The Great Masters,” after describing in exquisite detail examples of “a woman. . . usually naked” in famous paintings, Siegel observes:
                                                                         She doesn’t hear
that other woman screaming in the next gallery—
the one thrown to the ground,
hair trussed by the roots,
clothes ripped from her body. . . .
 
And you wonder how you never noticed the connection before.
Re-imaging myths, history, and contemporary news can be tricky, but Siegel knows how to tie the past to the present. Ceres, for example, becomes any mother searching for her lost daughter, in these days of so many lost and disappeared. In “War Photo” Siegel gives context to the image of a marine holding a dead girl by reminding us that “Nearby flows Euphrates, / the fourth river that went out of Eden / to water the garden.”

The collection includes two pantoums, which use a repeating line pattern. One is a charming memory of her fascination with a peddler’s horse she’s been warned against. Seen through the lens of her fear, the horse becomes a comic monster. The other pantoum , the title poem of the book, weaves a mysterious saying from her mother (“Bake two loaves of bread. Give one away and plant a hyacinth for the soul.”) with questions about family photographs and her love of the natural world. There is no answer to the poet’s questions, and the pattern of repetitions in the poem mirrors the cycling of memory, time, and artistic creation:
 
I sit out the bruised hours wondering
who are the faces in the photographs
until words rise through the dead leaves. Flower.
I kneel in the dirt, plant hyacinths for my mother.
 
Who are the faces in the photographs?
I never understood and she did not explain.
so I kneel in the dirt, plant hyacinths for my mother,
bake two loaves of bread as she used to say.
 
In "Hyacinth for the Soul," Joan I. Siegel finds joy even in darkness, music even in death, and always a flower rising toward light.




Mary Makofske is a prize-winning poet, author of two books of poetry: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF GARGOYLES (Thorntree Press) and EATING NASTURTIUMS (Flume Press).

New Book for Spring

Deerbrook Editions is Pleased to Announce
Hyacinth for the Soul
Poems by Joan I. Siegel
87 pages; 6 x 9 trade paper; price $16.95; ISBN 978-09712488-9-2
Available this spring

IN PRAISE OF HYACINTH FOR THE SOUL

These passionate, caring poems range seamlessly from personal lyric to public outcry, from a pair of well-turned pantoums of childhood memories to a poem that rewrites the liturgy of a responsive reading from the Passover service. Siegel knows how to go for the small specific details that illuminate even the darkest subjects.
—Maxine Kumin


Reading this extraordinary collection, I’m reminded of John Crowe Ransom’s statement that death “is the great subject of poetry, the most serious subject.” Within its persistent shadow, Siegel writes of love, both domestic and romantic, of the burden of human suffering, and of the regenerative powers of nature and the human spirit. And she does so with the impeccable ear of a musician and the craftsmanship of a master jeweler. This is an important book.
—William Trowbridge


The tactile, the visible and even the invisible become like avatars in Joan Siegel's poems. She writes of the voyeur's sensuous experience of everything surrounding her. These poems give you all her senses, transforming even the painful ones into lush realization.
—Diane Wakoski


An expert weaver at her loom, Joan Siegel threads death in and out of Hyacinth for the Soul. Written with a lyrical but unsentimental voice, there is not a poem in this impressive collection that is not an uncompromising encounter with reality. Binding us to her world with sensual detail, Joan Siegel refuses to let moments of communion be swallowed as her poems “tap in the dark, call to each other.” Ultimately, providing a “map out of darkness,” Hyacinth for the Soul teaches us how to ignite a candle that the heart can follow.
—Vivian Shipley


Hyacinth for the Soul is a beautifully well-worked piece of imagination: ironic, lyrical, and elegant. Siegel’s poems so often begin in daily living, poems that value the very simple or modest: what “abides” or “suffices.” Sometimes somber, and sometimes happy, her poems shoot out into the cosmos and let us look at our living from that vantage. There are the pleasures of metaphor, where the parts of an idea suddenly condense or burst into a completely new structure that we recognize immediately: the "shape turning in the flame."
—Rosemary Deen
Poetry Editor, Commonweal


Joan Siegel's new collection, Hyacinth For The Soul, "pushes the door open on memory," determined to resurrect the "forgotten things," and to preserve all that will be lost, from her daughter's first words, to the "blue that smells of rain and colors the wild lupine." Siegel does not hesitate to "lift the heaviness left at her door" and transform it through the details of human experience and a love for the natural world into finely crafted lyrical poems of witness. Remembering becomes a legacy for her daughter and a generous gift to her readers.
—Frances Richey

Co-author of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books/2002), Joan I. Siegel is recipient of the1999 New Letters Poetry Prize and the 1998 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award. Professor Emeritus of English at SUNY/Orange, she lives in New York's Hudson River Valley.



Publication date April 2009
Published by Deerbrook Editions - P.O. Box 542 - Cumberland, ME 04021
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