Thanksgiving, not just another

When holidays begin to look like commercial endgames, and the spirit of the season seems to lack best wishes, what can we do?

I usually pick up a book, either to read or draw in; or I return to the studio to get away from the glitz, in an attempt to return to my creative center and memories of times gone by when the spirit was with me and I shared with friends and lovers. Making things was and is one way to find spirit in the approaching image of dark December. I hope I can find time to continue being thankful, as is the spirit of Thanksgiving, and to make something like cards and ornaments.

This Thanksgiving, I found hope in a review of our recent title, Brushstrokes and glances, reviewed by Tom Holmes on The Line Break / redaction. He was nice enough to post a favorable look into the poems as well as the design of the book, which, in all, gave me something of a small reverie. In the true sense of Thanksgiving, when we are filled not only physically with celebratory cuisine, but also a sense of being part of the Earth and the seasons, our giving to others, as our giving thanks, can bring us hope. Some say that hope is over rated, but sometimes it seems as if we get what we believe.

So I am grateful for this review and the sense of renewed spirit that it brings.

Paul Elisha (right) interviews Djelloul Marbrook about Brushstrokes and glances, his second book of poems, for Bard's Eye View, a series originating at WAMC, Albany, for Northeastern Public Radio. The interview will be aired later this winter. The book will be published by Deerbrook Editions in December.

Autumn News

Deerbrook Editions has a new web site. you can buy books there now, and leave donations. It is a new format with a similar look to the old site, and will be upgraded periodically with new features. I have to spend some time attending to promoting and getting reviews for our new book Brushstrokes and glances by Djelloul Marbrook, the prize winning author. The title of this post links to our new site with most of the information about the book and author, with new things happening everyday, there will be more to come, if I can keep up with it all. Further down is the foreword to the book.

Two new poetry collections are in the works. One, Brushstrokes and glances by Djelloul Marbrook, is already in print and headed for market. The author is an exceptional writer from Germantown, NY, and has gotten attention for his first prize winning book, Far from Algiers.

More for Djelloul Marbrook.

“Djelloul Marbrook sounds like no one else.”
—Barbara Louise Ungar, Celaan

Djelloul Marbrook - poems and interview on From the Fishouse.

I know that Djelloul Marbrook is an exceptional writer, as anyone can see that visits his blog and web site. I cannot say anything better about the book than does Lucy Bowditch, author of the foreword to Brushstrokes and glances, which I will post here:

Djelloul Marbrook’s poems unflinchingly celebrate and chide. With his literary brushstrokes and glances, he insightfully considers artists, critics, curators, viewers, and the works themselves. Unlike the art historian who might analyze, dissect, and uncover meaning by deploying a legalistic claim, the poet surrenders to direct feeling uncovering experiential truths that parallel the truth of art itself. As Horace reminds us, ut pictura poesis.

The poems are kaleidoscopic: the narrator’s position constantly shifts, as does the time period considered. Sometimes we are looking at a painter’s process. Another moment, we are situated within a painting itself, a detail of the composition. Next, the style or the artist’s biography becomes a metaphor for a human condition or desire.

In Lucian Freud and my mother, Marbrook captures the opportunistic, ruthless quality of that particular bird of prey—the painter—for whom all is fair game. By contrast, Georges Seurat (Studies for A Sunday Afternoon on the Grande Jatte) is a gentle appreciation the artist’s fleeting Symbolist preparatory drawings for the large signature pointillist work now in the Art Institute of Chicago. Undersides of leaves, a poem evoking the late, photography-inspired work of Corot, describes the shimmering halation of moving leaves from the perspective of one of the leaves integrated in Corot’s largely monochromatic composition. In Shabtis (The Brooklyn Museum), Marbrook playfully identifies with an ancient Egyptian burial figurine that performs chores in the afterlife for Queen Nefertiti and escapes the burden of quotidian temporal existence.

Praise, admonishment, and acceptance inform Marbrook’s agile narrative voice. Making an unexpected analogy between an ineffectual government and Caravaggio’s force of character, Marbrook champions the artist in A government like Caravaggio. At times a poem takes on a reprimanding tone as in The critic speaks, which could refer to the poet’s view of the critic or the critic’s view of the world. A pale of words, a sweet description of a sixth century BCE grave stele representing a little girl and her youthful departed older brother, sadly reflects art’s limited but significant ability to withstand profound human loss.

Djelloul Marbrook’s poems unexpectedly animate the visual arts due to the multiple fanciful perspectives and succinct identifications of art- related realities. In My mother dying, Marbrook, at high personal cost no doubt, recognizes the desire of an artist to, on one hand, remain childlike and thus have access to all that primary process material, and, on the other, marshal skills to transform experience into art allowing one to live for a thousand years. After all, life is short. Art is long.

Brushstrokes and Glances is as well a welcome companion to anyone interested in poetry and its role as a sister art to a broad history of visual art. Marbrook ranges from contemporary artists to anonymous ancient Egyptian sculptors. His vision invokes the delight of promiscuous wandering in New York’s best museums, the Metropolitan, the Frick or the Brooklyn Museum. Nothing remains static in this merry-go-round of the senses where, “The eye is best that distrusts the mind.”

Lucy L. Bowditch
Associate Professor of Art History
The College of Saint Rose

Praise for Dawn Potter

There is a new look to deerbrookeditions.blogspot.com as well as deerbrookeditions.com. If only I could figure out which merchant system by which to offer sales on line. I found one, MerchantWarehouse.com, that proudly flaunts its ratings, but the best thing might be to move to a new host that can offer the package deal with a comparable merchant account.

To all visitors, Dawn Potter's new book of poems How the Crimes Happened from CavanKerry Press is a remarkably good book, and you must read it, you won't be sorry. This book is moving and full of engaging poems, fresh language, and skillful images that build glimpses of the world almost cinematic in color.

The title link to this post takes you to Dawn's blog.

You may know that Deerbrook Editions published Dawn's first book Boy Land & Other Poems, in 2004, one of the first manuscripts to appear in my P.O. Box. Boy Land, which I suggested we make Boy Land & Other Poems, and Dawn agreed only with slight reluctance, was interesting and well crafted. How the Crimes Happened exhibits even more skill, nuance, and language, that carries the reader on a true symphony. I recommend this book, as on the cover Ellen Dudley puts it, "Fearless . . . these poems sing service to love, loss, pity, and hope. . . . her (poet's) authority clear."

News besides that I'd like to get a new keyboard

Deerbrook Editions has now become a member of the Council of Literary Magazines & Presses, or clmp. There logo with a link is now on our pages. The clmp web site has limited access to the public, but enough information is available to learn something about what they are all about.


I believe that there are many more talented, 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 Deerbrook Editions is:

DESERVING AUTHORS • GOOD BOOKS

This is not meant as a judgment of exclusion but as a dream to include, that by making good books, even beautiful books of little known or emerging authors of poetry and prose, we are making a difference in the lives of writers and in the experience of readers.

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

We want to expand our editorial scope and find innovative, experimental, as well as more traditional forms of literature. By providing books of works that seem relevant and stimulating, books that are often first books for the authors, we hope to enable and empower the authors to continue working and growing, by giving them a greater audience, and hopefully give readers a new experience through literature.

After operating for eight years publishing mostly poetry, and essentially at little or no profit, it seems apparent that growth is necessary, and making more books is part of that growth. My hope is that CLMP can help guide at least by being informational. Currently the plan is to apply for non-profit status to improve the opportunities of finding foundation grants or fellowships. With increased operating capital, more marketing and promotion can be done for a growing list of titles.

Increased earning power means being able to find qualified volunteers or staff and advisers to share the work load, find and implement new ideas and ways of being successful presenting the kind of books we do now, and expand into new areas such as limited editions of fine press books. Such help would allow us to include an educational outreach program. This program could include facilitating workshops in writing, book arts, the importance of libraries, as well as finding venues for authors to read and present their work and experience. I do some of this now, in a team effort with all authors, but this is the vision for growth beyond what one or even two individuals might be able to do. The work, more work, begins every day, now, and tomorrow. I really hope that clmp and their information and listserves will make it easier to focus and direct the press moving forward.

In some upcoming posts; new projects will be discussed, and hopefully some interesting articles about design and the internet.

The Last Island goes to San Francisco

Next week Mimi White will read from her book The Last Island, Deerbrook Editions 2008, in San Francisco, CA, May 28th, at Cover to Cover, a friendly community oriented bookstore, 1307 Castro Street.

The Last Island received the Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry from the New Hampshire Writers Project in 2009. Here are two favorite poems from the book.

Mimi white also received the Philbrick Poetry Award in 2000, and this is what Robert Creeley said about her winning chapbook, " These are poems of a deceptive quiet and simplicity, just that they make, together, a landscape of painful, almost surreal insistence."

Mimi will also be reading at the Ogunquit Art Museum, Ogunquit, Maine, July 27 @ 7 PM.





In the Mineral Dark


In the cold petals of sleep,
without fear or trepidation,
angels fly. Fastened to whiteness,
fugitive stars guide them
to my empty meadows.

They brush my eyes
with their heated bodies
and forests rise from stone,
the radiant flux of history
written in flecks and swirls.

They trace the mineral dark
with their soft wings
and leaf by leaf trees root
in the freshet of the night.
Blackbird by blackbird,

branches feather
the unfurnished dream.
A small stream rises,
ample, impossibly clear.








Schoodic Peninsula


When the moon hung its nail
at the end of the world
we turned off the lights
and let the stars
replace what we had been saying.
Then a deer (which was once
darkness) stepped
across the road
and became forest
again. If I practice
walking I am footsteps
on the lively fungus.
When I gaze at the white
lichen I am the moon.
When blackberries
print seeds on my lips
I am the sweet season
that houses summer,
fragrant, waiting to close.

Reprise & Overture

“Reprise & Overture,” a program of poems and music by Martin Steingesser and friends for the publication of the second edition of his book Brothers of Morning will be presented at Longfellow Books, One Monument Way, Portland, Maine, on Thursday, May 20, at 7 pm.

Poets, musicians and friends of Martin Steingesser will join to read poems from his book Brothers of Morning, followed by a presentation of new poems by the author. Readers include flutists Carl Dimow and Judy Cormier, singer, guitarist and composer Con Fullam, poet Bruce Spang, co-manager-owner of Longfellow Books Chris Bowe and performer Judy Tierney. The ensemble also will be joined by percussionist Rick Cormier.

Martin Steingesser “is a musician and acrobat, his book Brothers of Morning, ablaze with imagination," says poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar. “A burning, tender voice,” said former Maine Poet Laureate Baron Wormser. Individual poems have appeared in the national magazines The Sun, The Progressive and the Humanist, and in literary publications like American Poetry Review, Hanging Loose, Rattle, The Ohio Review, Nimrod International Journal, Inkwell Journal, The Beloit Poetry Journal and Poetry East (forthcoming). His poems have received a number of awards, including First Place in Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance 2008 Maine Literary Awards. They are represented in several anthologies, such as Four Seasons, edited by Wesley McNair (Downeast Books: 2010), The Maine Poets, edited by Wesley McNair (Down East Books: 2003); Motion: American Sports Poems (University of Iowa Press, 2001); Poetry Comes Up Where It Can: Poems from The Amicus Journal, 1900-2000 (University of Utah Press, 2000); Speaking of New England (North Country Press: Belfast, ME, 1993); Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust (Time Being Books, St. Louis, MO, 2007); and Naming the World (Heinemann Publishers: Portsmouth, NH, 2006).

He is Portland, Maine’s first Poet Laureate (2007-09).

Brothers of Morning was originally published by Deerbrook Editions, of Cumberland, Maine, in 2002. The second edition, with revisions by the author, was re-issued by Deerbrook this April.

Sometimes a Poem
Ripens in Me,

and I think I’ll split my
skin
if I don’t have a plate
on which to offer
it,
some altar from which to sing.
Interminable are the days, months,
years my poems wander
searching a page
you might turn to find them.
All morning
I’ve worked on and off on one,
stumbling over new gifts,
as if words,
phrases, images, were windfall apples,
this old heart among them
glad as a fawn
again.

—Martin Steingesser

For Additional Information Contact
Longfellow Books; One Monument Way, Portland; 207-772-4045;
Martin Steingesser, Author & Participating Poet; 207-828-9937;

The latest in marketing practices

We have not gotten to this point, yet. Still sending out post cards and fliers, sometimes email, though not sure if that practice gets any response. In fact, there was a time when we sponsored a jazz show on MPBN that had 9 second credit lines before and after the show. It was a good show and felt like it must be finding some ears. We had to stop though as our budget couldn't allow us to continue, and for the dollar amount of underwriting, we could not measure what the return was. Kind of like keeping horses, lots of work with not much return. Well that sounds cold (mostly in winter) because the rewards of having a horse or two if you can, is measured in beauty and their special kind of interaction, especially if you ride.
We are currently working to develop to further market and promote our authors beyond the blogs we try to keep up with, mailings, etc., and to keep up with the distributor. Many think that having a distributor solves all the problems, and there is great opportunity in having one, but it requires increased sales and marketing to try to reach readers and buyers nation wide to keep up with distributor fees. That is why we decided to offer subscriptions. Members receive all books at a 40% discount. Details are on our printable order from at the Deerbrook web page (basically about $90.00 for all books currently in print). And now there is a new feature, the url www.deerbrookeditions.com, if typed into a browser leads directly to Deerbrook Editions web page, small steps with hopes for more exposure. The next step is to have purchasing capability added to the web page so that visitors will be able to buy books right there, through a merchant link perhaps, but better for us as much as we like amazon, right.
We are also developing toward becoming a non profit press to allow for the possibility of applying for grants and fellowships and there by afford to do more of everything.
Cartoon from Funny Times: credit www.leeKinginc.com.

The angelic confidences of Joan Siegel, by Djelloul Marbrook

Many of Joan Siegel’s poems sound like the whispered confidences of angels, sound being the operative word. Most poems “read” one way or another, but only the rare poem engages eye and ear simultaneously.

There is from poem to poem a sense of angels coming and going, ghosting through memories, like zephyrs in curtains. Reflections dehisce from the memories.

In Buchenwald
his sister turned into a bird
and flew out the chimney stack.
In America/he found a wife,
then lost her.
An old man with sooty eyes
and sooty pants, he steers
a baby carriage brimming
with rags.

—"Rag Man of Middletown"

For silence some poets rely on caesurae—a device Siegel uses frugally—or placement on the page—but such is Siegel’s authorial hush that silences become moving parts of the poems’ creatureliness.

In your family
everyone left
without saying
a word.

Your father
took a bus
to the VA hospital
& died quietly
on the front steps.

— "To My Husband"

Thoughts of being the first to walk on new-fallen snow arrested me as I read a number of these poems—there is that pristine sense of beginnings being imparted. The work doesn’t clamor for attention, but when you look back you see how you have come here and you reflect that a footfall doesn’t have to be cast in cement to be memorable. Surely the music of Satie and Debussy, if not the poets, has taught us that.

Later, in the street, you lifted
your face to the snow and
loved the lamp post, the sky,
your life.

—"Piano Lesson"

Where is the music
when the dark piano lid is shut?

— "Burial"

That an informed reader might on occasion argue with a poet’s choice of word or meter doesn’t necessarily call into question the poet’s achievement, but nonetheless it’s remarkable that Siegel almost never invites such an issue. I was watching the Winter Olympics when I read Hyacinth for the Soul the first time, and I thought that if these poems were figure skaters and I a judge I would forget to score them for the sheer pleasure of their presence.

Toward the end
I carried him like a baby
through my dreams. I worried
I’d lose him in the crowds.
Now he visits my sleep.
Dying was the easy thing,
he says, then drives off
in his 1940 Studebaker.

—"How we look after each other"

I admire the sure-footedness of this poem and Siegel’s many poems like it, as if there were no other possible way to say this, as if this is the perfect line length, the perfect break: an inarguability of poetics, rare and deft.

Siegel’s poems are often like herons that know just where to stand by a pond so that the fish won’t see their shadow. Every step, every movement is choreographed in perfect attunement to the sensibility of the sentiment, to the recognition at hand.

These are youthful poems that could not have been made by a youth, because they have that becoming, tempered interiority that eludes all but the rarest youth (Keats comes to mind). There is a youthfulness that comes to some in old age because the luggage of pretense has been shed or lost in the terminals of experience. Sometimes a lightness, redolent of Voltaire’s smile, characterizes the work of older artists. In Siegel’s case it’s manifested by the exquisite footfalls of each poem upon the page, a reassuring inevitability about the path taken. We’re never tempted to ask, Are you sure this is the way? It is the only way. That is not characteristic of youth, however exciting the path.

Joan Siegel is professor emeritus at SUNY Orange and lives in Blooming Grove, New York.

The cover of her book, whose production values are superb, is a story by itself. It's a photograph of a quilt made by her sister as record of their father's struggle with Alzheimer's Disease. This story suggests how much we lose in a marketer's society obsessed with youth and its potential buying power. We lose not only our respect for the elderly but the hard-won wisdom they have eked out of their experiences. This advertising mentality leads us to think new experiences are more unique than they are and we have little to learn from the past. Hyacinth for the Soul is powerful contrary testament.

Hyacinth for the Soul is collected into four unnamed sections and dedicated to the poet’s family. The title poem, which appears in the middle of the second section, is explained in the first quatrain:

Bake two loaves of bread, my mother used to say.
Give one away and plant a hyacinth for the soul.
I never understood and she did not explain.
It was one of those sayings from the old country.

The hyacinth is ubiquitous in Victorian homes and Persian poetry as a symbol of love whose fragrance is redolent of the soul’s eternal nature. It provides the very scent of eternity. Here the 13th Century Persian poet Musharish Ud Din Sadi writes:

If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,
And from thy slender store
Two loaves alone to thee are left,
Sell one, and with the dole,
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

Hyacinth for the Soul’s internal organization is worth noting because of publishers' pervasive bias against books lacking overt themes. Deerbrook Editions, to its considerable credit, correctly discerned that thematic threads may be so subtle and unobtrusive that they elude all but the most sensitive editor. This book is a record of a recollective, integrative life: Not a box of verbal snapshots, but a navigational rutter, denoting landmarks, landfalls, troubled straits, hard passages, warnings, premonitions and precognitions.

The marketer’s bias for strong thematic books of poetry precludes much good poetry and often compels poets to impose themes. Much good poetry is squeezed out of the market by this predeterminant.

Siegel’s work addresses a situation in poetics that I notice from time to time the way you might notice a soup stain on someone’s tie or blouse. There is a vogue for plain speech which, while welcome in its own right, often lapses into a kind of soap opera plastered like icing into line breaks characteristic of prosody but in effect having none. Her work is intrinsically lyrical and cadenced, so much so that one is tempted to think her ordinary thought process—the way she thinks things through—must resemble her finished poems.

The deeply moving collection reminds us that without the gracious wisdom of the elderly, without respect for their experiences, we are half a society. —Djelloul Marbrook



Djelloul Marbrook is the author of Far from Algiers, a superb book of poems that won the 2007 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize published by The Kent State University Press.

Busy Weekend in Portland, Maine

Events often land on the same day. These readings are timed for the possibility to attend both. The workshop requires registration and a fee.
























"Prayers & Run-on Sentences" by Stuart Kestenbaum, cover art by Susan Webster, will be available at the USM Book Store, around the corner from the Glickman Family Library in the Student Center.

Kate Cheney Chappell '83 Center for Book Arts at USM

Paper and Poetry: Collaborative Works of Art from Maine Artists and Poets
An exhibtion of limited edition books, artists' books, prints, and broadsides
MARCH 1 - APRIL 30, 2010 UNUM Great Reading Room, 7th floor, Glickman Family Library
This exhibition was made possible in part by the generous curatorial assistance of Nancy Leavitt, Jan Owen, Steve Luttrell, Catherine Fisher, and Gary Lawless.

Featuring

Lecture and Poetry Reading
by Susan Webster and Stuart Kestenbaum
Friday, April 23, 4pm

then

Saturday, April 24, 9am -4:30pm
Words and Images: a dialogue in poetry and prints
Workshop at the Wishcamper Center
Team taught by Stuart Kestenbaum and Susan Webster
$135, call 780-5900 to register


also on Friday


In celebration of National Poetry Month
Mayo Street Arts
starts getting

Lit

first up:

Beatify
Channeling a generation’s best minds.

An evening of
Beat verse • eros • live jazz • participatory exaltations

featuring the work of
Burroughs~Corso~Creeley~di Prima~Ferlinghetti~Ginsberg~Kandel~Kerouac

with classics performed by
Nate Amadon • Dennis Camire • Paul Haley
Nancy Henry • Steve Luttrell
Michael Macklin • April Singley • Kevin Sweeney

and open readings by
local writers and (if you so choose) you.

Friday, April 23 at 8 pm

Hosted by Megan Grumbling
The first in a monthly series of literary happenings at
10 Mayo Street

Joan Siegel at Woodstock, NY in June

Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival (www.woodstockpoetry.com) as part of the Woodstock Arts Consortium is sponsoring the following poetry event as part of the Woodstock "Second Saturdays" Art Events. For a full listing of "Second Saturday" events, see: www.woodstockartsconsortium.org

Poets Joan I. Siegel and Mary Makofske will be the featured readers when the Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival meets at the Woodstock Town Hall, 76 Tinker Street, on Saturday, June 12th at 2pm. Note: WPS&F meetings are held the 2nd Saturday of every month at the Woodstock Town Hall.

The readings will be hosted by Woodstock area poet Phillip Levine. All meetings are free, open to the public, and include an open mike.

Bios:

Joan I. Siegel - Joan I. Siegel is the author of two poetry collections. The first, published jointly with her husband, J. R. Solonche, is titled PEACH GIRL: POEMS FOR A CHINESE DAUGHTER (Grayson Books, 2001). Her first solo collection, HYACINTH FOR THE SOUL, was issued by Deerbrook Editions in Spring 2009.

Regarding HYACINTH…, former US Poet Laureate Maxine Kumin commented:

“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.”

Her poems published in The Atlantic Monthly, The Gettysburg Review, Prairie Schooner, Commonweal, Raritan, among numerous journals and anthologies, Ms. Siegel is also recipient of the New Letters Poetry Prize and the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award.

Professor Emerita of English at SUNY/Orange in Middletown, New York, she previously co-edited Wordsmith: a Journal of Poetry and Art, which featured the work of SUNY and CUNY faculty poets and artists.
 
Joan lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and daughter and assorted cats.

*

Mary Makofske - Mary Makofske lives with her husband in a solar house in Warwick, NY, where they enjoy a view of a mountain and a large vegetable, fruit, and flower garden. She’s taught at Ramapo College of New Jersey and SUNY Orange, from which she retired in 2006.

Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Zone 3, Poetry East,  Mississippi Review, Modern Haiku, Amoskeag, Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women, and other literary magazines and in the anthologies In a Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare (Iowa); Hunger and Thirst (City Works); Tangled Vines (HBJ); and Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge and Essential Love (Grayson).

She is the author of The Disappearance of Gargoyles (Thorntree) and Eating Nasturtiums, winner of a Flume Press chapbook competition. Individual poems have received the Robert Penn Warren Poetry Prize (Cumberland Poetry Review), the Lullwater Review Prize, the Spoon River Poetry Review Prize, and the Iowa Woman Prize.

*

Here's our 2010 schedule of featured readers:

January 9th, 2010 – Bruce Weber; Laurie Byro (at Woodstock Community Center)
February 13th, 2010 – Richard Boes Memorial (at Woodstock Community Center)
March 13th, 2010 – Philip Memmer; Roger Mitchell (at Woodstock Community Center)
April 10th, 2010 – Jacqueline Ahl; Joann Deiudicibus
May 8th, 2010 – Alison Koffler; Barry Wallenstein
June 12th, 2010 – Joan I. Siegel; Mary Makofske
July 10th, 2010 – Carl Rosenstock; Richard Levine
August 14th, 2010 – Bert Shaw; Lee Gould
September 11th, 2010 – Dennis Doherty; James Sherwood (at Woodstock Community Center)
October 9th, 2010 – Amy Ouzoonian; Tyler Wilhelm
November 13th, 2010 – Lea Graham; Reagan Upshaw
December 11th, 2010 – Open Mike & Annual Business & Planning Meeting

Also, why not become a 2010 Member of the Woodstock Poetry Society & Festival?

Membership is a nominal $15 a year. (To join, send your check to the Woodstock Poetry Society, P.O. Box 531, Woodstock, NY 12498. Include your email address as well as your mailing address and phone number.)  Your membership helps pay for hall rental, post-office-box rental, the WPS website, and costs associated with publicizing the monthly events. One benefit of membership is the opportunity to have a brief biography and several of your poems appear on this website.

Carl Little joins others in Bangor

April at Poets House

Friday, April 16, 7:00pm

Texts to Argue Through: 
A Conversation with John D'Agata, 
Thalia Field & Jena Osman
Essayist John D'Agata, cross-genre writer Thalia Field and experimental poet Jena Osman trace how research-based projects can evolve into book-length lyric essays and serial poems.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

Poetry for Children
Saturday, April 17, 11:00am–3:00pm

Grand Opening of the Constance Laibe Hays Children's Room at Poets House
(Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment)
Join us for a celebration of our new children's room! Festivities begin at 11:00am with U.S. Children's Poet Laureate Mary Ann Hoberman and teacher Linda Winston sharing poems from their anthology, The Tree That Time Built: A Celebration of Nature, Science, and Imagination. The revelry continues with giveaways, creative writing exercises and other surprises.
Admission free

Also in April
Wednesday, April 21, 12:30pm

Nordic Voices: A Reading & Conversation 
with Jörgen Gassilewski, Anna Hallberg 
& Jonas J. Magnusson
Young Swedish poets Jörgen Gassilewski and Anna Hallberg read their work and talk with conceptual artist and translator Jonas J. Magnusson.
Admission free

Wednesday, April 21, 7:00pm

A Civil Feast of Jazz & Poetry 
with Poet Afaa Michael Weaver & Jazz Musicians Harold Anderson, Bill Lowe & Stan Strickland
Poet Afaa Michael Weaver and acclaimed musicians perform jazz pieces and recitals of Weaver's poems, followed by conversation about music and verse.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

Thursday, April 22, 7:00pm

The Opening of the Field: A Conversation 
with Nalini Nadkarni & Leonard Schwartz
(Part of Ecopoetic Futures, a series of events that examine poetry and the environment)
Rainforest ecologist Nalini Nadkarni and poet Leonard Schwartz examine how poetic and scientific understandings of nature might be combined to inspire ecological stewardship.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members
Tuesday, April 27, 7:00pm
The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry 
with Maria Isabel Alfonso, Lourdes Gil, 
James Irby, Mark Weiss & Christopher Winks
On the occasion of the publication of The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry, editor Mark Weiss, contributors and translators explore major trends in Cuban poetry, both on and off the island.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

Thursday, April 29, 7:00pm

Nox: From Box to Book with Anne Carson & Currie
With artistic collaborator Currie, poet Anne Carson discusses and reads from Nox, her illustrated "book in a box" that elegizes the loss of her brother with photos, collages, sketches and poetry written through the lens of her translation of Catullus.
$10, $7 for students and seniors, free to Poets House Members

All programs take place at Poets House, 10 River Terrace (at Murray St) in Lower Manhattan, unless otherwise noted. For more information, call (212) 431-7920 or visit www.poetshouse.org.
Poets House Hours
Poets House Reading Room 
& The Reed Foundation Library
Tuesday–Friday, 11:00am–7:00pm
Saturday, 11:00am–6:00pm
The Constance Laibe Hays 
Children's Room at Poets House
Through Saturday, April 17: 
Saturday, 11:00am–5:00pm
Starting Thursday, April 22: 
Tiny Poets Time (for Toddlers): Thursday, 10:00am
Open hours: Thursday & Friday, 12:00–5:00pm, Saturday, 11:00am–5:00pm

All correspondence should be addressed to:
Poets House
10 River Terrace
New York, NY 10282
For more information, 
call (212) 431-7920.
Spring 2010 Classes 
at Poets House
Please visit our website for details on these classes and for other upcoming spring programs.
• Master Classes
• Marie Howe – May 22–23
• Robert Hass – May 30
• Quincy Troupe – June 5–6
• Ecopoetic Futures: Open-Enrollment Seminars & Workshops on Poetry & the Environment
• The Opening of the Field with Leonard Schwartz & Nalini Nadkarni – April 23–24
• Ecopoetics After Copenhagen with Jonathan Skinner – May 12, 14, 15
• An Ethics Occurs at the Edge of What We Know with Brenda Hillman – May 2

Directions
The new Poets House is located at
10 River Terrace at the corner of Murray Street in Lower Manhattan's Battery Park City.
Take the 1, 2, 3, A or C subway to Chambers Street. Walk west on Chambers Street (past West Street) all the way to River Terrace. Turn left and walk two blocks south to 10 River Terrace at Murray Street. The M22 bus runs along Chambers between North End Ave and the Lower East Side. The M20 bus travels from the Upper West Side and the southern tip of Battery Park City to North End Ave. The Downtown Connection, a free Lower Manhattan shuttle bus, travels to North End Ave from South Street Seaport and from Broadway along Murray Street; for more information, visit: www.downtownny.com
Find Out What's Happening At Poets House Now!

Poets House invites you to follow us on Twitter and Facebook. We'll be posting updates about upcoming events, photos of our new home in Battery Park City and more.
Become a Poets House Member
To become a Poets House Member or to give the gift of Membership to a family member or friend, visit www.poetshouse.org/join.htm. We look forward to welcoming you as a new member of our growing community of writers, readers, teachers, parents and poetry-lovers from around the nation and worldwide.
If you would like more information about the Capital Campaign for Poets House and how you can participate, please contact Krista Manrique at krista@poetshouse.org or (212) 431-7920, ext. 2830.

| 10 River Terrace, New York, NY 10282 | | (212) 431-7920
www.poetshouse.org


 

Keeping Up With Things

All publishers big and small are shifting and resizing, independent stores are closing in some places, like here in Maine, unfortunately. We can only hope for things to get better for everyone everywhere across the States. Things have been quiet for the most part here at Deerbrook, as far as the weather goes, that is welcome, and one never knows whether to speak of it or not, at least until next week. It helps to focus on the work of art and literature when we don't have to shovel and get the tractor out to move mounds of snow, even after our dependable plow guy.

There are a number of books in the works as prospective new titles by authors from around the region from places like Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, and Maine. We are trying to develop and keep up with the demands of marketing, and the wonderful opportunity for us being part of Small Press Distribution and all the good work they are doing. SPD will offer/display some titles at the AWP Conference in Denver this year, staring today. SPD has lots of interesting information on there web site and blog about books and literature.

We are always grateful to stores that keep ordering our titles, and the authors that keep getting out there reading and giving Deerbrook some exposure. And it is nice to see we have a few followers here, which makes it seem worth while. I am sorry if there isn't more news to spread but there are so many directions I personally get pulled in it can be a challenge to keep up with general news. Hopefully goals will be met and a few more collections of poetry will be coming out in the not to distant future. One new thing is that now we have a link that sends anyone typing in this address; deerbrookeditions.com directly to the web page. The hope is to have a dedicated site for Deerbrook Editions books allowing sales online, or perhaps sales directly from the existing page. As ever we are happy to fill orders made directly to us by phone, US mail (a printable order form link is on the web page), or email if all information is provided, we ship promptly and will invoice on trust. It came to our attention that some times folks don't get through to us, and I am sorry for the sometime message or order slipping through the cracks, we try to provide contact information everywhere and respond asap. If it is any help for those sending emails, and I do get queries about MS getting through because of subject lines that have words like books, titles, or something that makes it easier to find in the flood of junk mails we still get. So, please don't give up, and thank you for ordering however you are doing so, orders direct through us are greatly appreciated.

Another Kind of Tea Party

In case you haven't heard; Coming Up: The annual Poets' Tea held each year at Blaine House, the governor's mansion in Augusta, Thursday, April 15, 2:30-4 p.m.

Maine's poet laureate Betsy Sholl is organizing the event, and First Lady Karen Baldacci will be hosting it. Dawn Potter will be one of three poets reading that afternoon.

Everyone is welcome, but please let them know if you are planning to attend with an entourage.

Blaine House
192 State Street
Augusta, ME 04330-6406
(207) 287-2121

Travel Directions

On February 24th Garrison Keillor will read a poem from Joan Siegel's book "Hyacinth for the Soul," Deerbrook Editions 2009. The poem he requested to read is "Travel Directions." I hope you'll be listening because Joan is an accomplished writer from Blooming Grove, NY, and has many fine poems in this book. We are pleased Mr. Keillor has chosen to read from Joan's book, as we are always pleased when he chooses to read from one of our books, giving us information about writers, and reading, bringing poetry to the air, as ever, thank you Garrison Keillor for all that you are doing.

Garrison Keillor Reading Dawn Potter

Another poem by Dawn, "Nostalgia," was read on February 13th on "The Writer's Almanac." Dawn said this is one of her favorite poems in the book, and it is fine. I happen to think there are several very good poems in Dawn's book, and this is one of them. Thank you Garrison Keillor.

Dawn Potter previously had two poems read on "The Writer's Almanac.

Garrison Keillor read "Wednesday" on Jan 29, and "Lullaby" on Jan. 31.

These poems appear in "Boy Land & Other Poems," Deerbrook Editions, 2004. The book is still available from us directly, we ship promptly, so write or call the contact information, and we hope you'll do so. You also can order the book through amazon.com

When the archive listing is available on "The Writer's Almanac" web site we will post the link here.



Dawn has a new poetry book coming out this year from CavanKerry Press, and has a book out from University of Massachusetts Press "Tracing Paradise, Two Years in Harmony with John Milton; A Reader's Memoir." You can see more about Dawn and what she is doing here.