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Speak, Memory
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Judith Waller Carroll, whose poem “Lemon Bread” appeared (along with a yummy recipe) in Joys, recently shared some really exciting news: her first full-length collection, What You Saw and Still Remember, will be released in January by the Main Street Rag Publishing Company. As reviewer Andrea Hollander says of Carroll’s poems, “Her precise images take hold and settle until the poem’s close, when they stab and sizzle. … Carroll’s finely wrought poems seize our own hearts and do not let go.”
I couldn’t agree more. Here’s a moving piece from the book, which is available for pre-order:
My Father’s Blue Sweater
By Judith Waller Carroll
He hasn’t been alive for over twenty years
but suddenly, here he is in this room,
smelling of Marlboros and mints,
wearing that blue cardigan,
faded and soft, slightly frayed at the cuffs,
the one I brought home after his funeral
and wore for weeks without washing,
not wanting to lose the scent.
He is reeled back on his heels
reciting Emerson by heart,
dark eyes wide, unruly eyebrows raised,
long fingers outstretched, smoothing the air.
Theory of Omission
By Sally Zakariya
A sparrow rests on the rusted
fencepost, its red-brown feathers
echoing the rust
Omit the sparrow and the thought
of bird remains, mental excavation
discovering what is no longer there
So it is with loss
That which is removed, remains
that which never was, hovers
on the edge of existence
You who are now gone
you who never were
my archaeology creates you –
sparrows that do not rest
o on any fencepost
Avocado Secret
By Jacqueline Jules
When the widow wrote
how her husband
once said she was like
a perfectly ripe avocado,
I wanted to rush right out
and buy one. Examine
its tough exterior,
creamy innards,
solid core.
Learn its secret.
At your bedside, I was
best described as a banana.
A fruit turning brown
and mushy too quickly.
Just like an avocado
when sliced too late.
Except I had no pit
deep inside, stopping
the knife.
Hoarder, with Orchids
He collected newspapers and magazines
years of them
bright spines of National Geographics
stacked high like a yellow brick road
to the sky
piles and piles of publications carefully
curated wall by paper wall
narrow pathways between the walls
a tantalizing maze to me at six
He was my parents’ friend
and later they said he’d gotten worse
but he seemed fine to me
a builder, an excavator creating
his own topography there in his
living room
an archaeologist who could find
history at the bottom of each mound
even if he couldn’t find a clear space
for mother to sit
But he made room for his orchids
lavish flourishes of blossom
pink to lavender to blue arrayed
in graceful sprays
lovingly tended in a big bay window
row by row, a sort of orchard
with a generosity of empty space
between the plants
Starstruck
In the darkened theater, the tall
actor with his Yiddish tongue
beguiled my mother. During my
stark childhood days, her fantasy
of him, this star of stars
brought before me a glimmer of
what might exist beyond my loneliness.
On Sunday afternoons she took me
with her to the playhouse on Walnut Street
to see an unlikely miracle, Yiddish
drama presented by actors, rags
upon their bodies, passion in their
eyes, swords in their scabbards.
Above all, my mother loved this
prince of actors, Maurice Schwartz.
His dark good looks, his widow’s
peak, his stride across the stage.
He commanded it all, surmounted
obstacles, averted disaster.
I saw him in her eyes when she looked
at me, when she smiled.
What did she think that day, arriving
early, finding him there in the small
box office. Where were the dark eyelashes?
The eyebrows, the high-colored cheeks?
The man before her, dull gray
not a shining beam of light in God’s universe.
He glance up, saw our sadness, turned away.
We sat through the play. Suffered
with the sufferers on stage. Surely
my mother felt disillusioned, but I
could not agree. In that dark space
light and life remained.
Illusion and imagination.
A dream of dreamers.
An opening in my mind.
Trouble is, we’re often taught to approach a poem by analyzing metaphor, understanding allusion, and probing for deeper meaning. Instead, Zapruder advises, start with the words themselves. “One of the greatest pleasures of reading poetry is to feel words mean what they usually do in everyday life, and also start to move into a more charged, activated realm,” he writes.
“Somewhere, in every poem, there are words that shine forth, light up, almost as if plugged in,” says r. “This is what poetry can do for language, and for us.”
Read Zapruder’s “Critic’s Take” here. .................................................................................................................................... Root, Trunk, Bark, Bough I used to climb them, but that was long ago. Now I write about them, and sometimes I’m lucky enough to have my tree poems published. One of them, “Paperbark Maple,” is in a beautiful new book called These Trees. Photographer Ruthie Rosauer has gathered more than 130 of her photographs and paired them with poems. The collection, handsomely designed and printed, would make a great gift for anyone who loves trees.
Paperbark Maple
Wind animates the three-lobed leaves
curled to cup the summer air
A folio of bark peels off in shaggy sheets
scribbled with imagined verses
These paperbarks are artist trees
self-portraits en plein air
They tell their stories leaf
by silent leaf
for us to read their changes
Fall brings a fiery palette, then winter
twigs write letters on the sky
In spring winged double seeds hang-
glide on wind in artful acrobatics
Where they take hold another year
will bring its own new poetry
“Take the time to visit the individual sites of lit mags that you are interested in,” says Becky Tuch, founding editor of The Review Review, a useful newsletter of views on publishing. “Read their guidelines,” she continues. “For some reason, people often consider themselves exempt from rules. You're not. You must play by the rules like everyone else. It doesn't make you boring. It makes your writing accessible.”
This is just one of Tuch’s tips for getting published in literary journals. Read seven more in From Pen to Print. My favorite? “Approach your writing with fierce determination.
.....................................................................................................................................
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Charan Sue Wollard
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