O&S April 2009

O&S
VOLUME 2 ISSUE 2 APRIL 2009
Lane Timothy
Michelle McEwen
Panika M. C. Dillon
Beth Edwards
Kristy Gordon
Christopher Arigo
Jeff Danley
Chin-Cheng Hung
Alex Rodriguez
Eileen R. Tabios
Rachel Constantine
Karen Hollingsworth
Sean Patrick Hill
Jane Varley
CONTENTS 90 Miles to Nashville
oil on canvas 48” x 36”
Cover Artist
Lane Timothy
page 65 Alley Cat oil on canvas 60” x 48”
Poet
Michelle McEwen
page 58
POETS & ARTISTS
007 Panika M. C. Dillon
008 Beth Edwards
018 Kristy Gordon
038 Christopher Arigo
042 Jeff Danley
052 Chin-Cheng Hung

084 Alex Rodriguez
090 Eileen R. Tabios
093 Karen Hollingsworth
098 Sean Patrick Hill
104 Jane Varley

124 Rachel Constantine
Publisher / E.I.C.
interviews DIDI MENENDEZ
Creative Director
014 Claudia Emerson I. M. BESS
Poetry Editors
DAVID KRUMP
WILLIAM STOBB
art reviews
Interviewer
035 José Parra GRACE CAVALIERI
102 Wade Reynolds

Reviewers
STEVE HALLE
GRADY HARP
MELISSA McEWEN
MICHAEL PARKER
poetry reviews Columnists
DAVID CADDY
005 Sandra Simonds GRACE CAVALIERI
Short Story Contributor

081 Kristy Odelius KIRK CURNUTT
110 A Collection of Favorites, 2008
131 Rebecca Foust
short story
024 Heavenly Shades of Night Copyright reverts back to
contributors upon publication.
Are Falling O&S requests first publisher rights of
poems published in future reprints
of books, anthologies, website
publications, podcasts, radio, etc.
miporadio This issue is also available for a
limited time as a free download
from the O&S website:
www.poetsandartists.com.
048 Juliet Cook Print copies available at
www.amazon.com.
For submission guidelines and

further information on O & S, please
stop by www.poetsandartists.com
5 ORANGES & SARDINES
Wonderfully Wild Woman Writes Winsome Wisdom:

WARSAW BIKINI by Sandra Simonds Bloof Books, 2008
Review By GRADY HARP
Sandra Simonds explodes on the scene as a poet who has the brazen audacity to
describe the world as she really sees it! Not only are her topics drawn from her own
occasionally too private experiences/fantasies, but she also has the courage to delve into
areas most poets avoid – yelling secrets of others with one of the richest and most colorful
vocabularies imaginable. She seems to delight in poking fun at every available thought others
take too seriously, and the result of all this is poetry that not only sings, but also explodes like a
crackling sky of fireworks and bursting stars.
I AM SMALL
but my life is enormous. Huge

as angels. Huge as zookeeper’s
heart. Who knows

how large this zoo is
when you take into account all

the cages - arterial strings, penises
nipples, sweat glands, furs, aortas, pins.

Let’s get hitched in the roomy cage of
the latest newly extinct

species. He’s
gone. There’s room.

In this country they make lists (in
hieroglyphics) of all the unions

that will ever take place.
There’s no way out of this one, Sam.
That’s what they call a “nation.”

That’s what they ask the syringe
and turkey baster

holding zookeeper
to sedate
the African elephants
and artificially inseminate the black

and white, blasé pandas.
In other poems such as THE ACADEMY OF THE FUTURE: SCENARIOS AND MODELS she
ingeniously mixes satire and raw humor together with some center target criticisms of
education, the ‘Intelligentsia’, and wild fantasies. But beneath the brittle caustic veneer of this
young medicine man of words lies a tender streak she attempts to shadow with humor, making
the resultant poem more memorable.
TOMORROW’S BRIGHT BRACELETS
Winter lungs are white trees.

Winter lungs are bare white trees.
There are no ornaments because this isn’t Christmas.
Put a silver ribbon in your hair.

Put on all of your bright bracelets and walk out into the feathered snow.
My eyes are pale like a crust of ice over a long river.
What would the gift-givers say if they saw us now?

What will they tell the world?
And when you are home: Open

all of the windows in your small house - take off
all of your clothes, and then take off all of your underclothes
and watch your flushed cheek turn gray in a mirror.
Some of Simonds’ more powerful works are poems that address her childhood or her past
experiences or whatever that arena is that feeds her writer’s imagination. YOU SHOULD PUT A
NEIGHBORHOOD ON THAT recalls her school years including: ‘I’ve learned the way/ of the
crosswalk, and Fran/ (the guard) who/ held the DO NOT CROSS sign./ Her face went puce/ her
webbed/ feet never did finish/ her floral cross-stitch on which/ she sets the breakfast table/ to
the sound of hornets’ acoustics/ across from the plant pumps/ so much Chevron fuel/ that half
the town/ I fled, I fled, flowers/ in false cuttings.’
And with only this small taste of the feast Simonds produces page after page it is difficult to
communicate the marksmanship of her verbal jabs and the extent of her at times glossolalia
manner of writing. But communicate she does, and while it takes a poem or two to plug in to
her unique style of expression, once there the reader won’t want to leave!
Wonderfully Wild Woman Writes Winsome Wisdom

Panika
M.C.
Dillon
Panika M. C. Dillon hails from
Fairbanks, AK and Austin, TX. She
received her MFA in creative-writing
poetry from Sarah Lawrence College.
burn
that muffle, that fog burned off the roads into my lungs. depressed breathing, it’s
called. depressed breathing, it could be called. you’re sitting on my chest again,
you’re sitting on my chest & the words, the words don’t come, or don’t come
the way you want them to. you want them, too. I say, I can’t breath like this. I
say, I can’t breathe, like this will take the weight off. take the weight off, I have
no words. I for you, I have only the fog & roads of my lungs & that’s not enough.
that’s just not enough.
Beth
Edwardswww.bethedwards.com
“I wish to depict human situations without

being obligated to the logic and restrictions
of the human form. I am using vintage dolls
as stand-ins for people positioned in settings
meant to evoke pleasure and joy. At times,
these characters inhabit ideal interiors
appointed with mid-century furniture and
modernist art; in other pieces, they are
relishing nature.”
Beth Edwards was born in Decatur, Alabama in 1960. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tyler
School of Art and her Master of Fine Arts from Indiana University. She has exhibited at the Gallery NAGA in
Boston, the Clark Gallery in Lincoln, Massachusetts, the Leonard Tachmes Gallery in Miami, the Tory
Folliard Gallery in Milwaukee, the Plus One Plus Two Gallery in London and is represented by the David
Lusk Gallery in Memphis. Her work is in numerous public and private collections including the Howard and
Judith Tullman Collection in Chicago and the Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis. Her work appeared on the
cover of New American Paintings in 2001 and again in 2004. She has taught at the University of Dayton and
Q&A
currently teaches at the University of Memphis.
Which artist/photographer do you life which are largely invisible. I am learn from and enjoy on a daily
admire or has had the biggest interested in making paintings that basis.
influence on your work? are literally in pursuit of that
The artist who has had the emotion through the images How does your environment
greatest influence upon my work is themselves. The characters exude influence your work?
Edward Hopper. When I look at joy and are visibly taking pleasure It is impossible for one’s
Hopper, I know I am looking at in their surroundings. I wish for the environment not to affect one’s
someone who has guided me paintings to be pleasurable to work. Currently, I work in a studio
profoundly at various points in my make although there is obviously a that we built onto our home. It is a
work. I feel a deep debt to his lot of hard work required to make domestic setting and my work is
down to earth, American a painting. It is important for me to about domestic environments.
aesthetic. His iconic images are connect with the emotion in the There is a direct relationship
the result of hard work.Hopper is a making of the image – at least between the two. I have two walls
kindred spirit. But the artist that I sporadically. And I wish for the of windows in my studio – my yard
admire the most is definitely viewer to feel deeply happy is very lush in the summer. My work
Matisse. I came to his work much looking at the painting. is about finding pleasure in one’s
later and it continues to grow for circumstances. I live much more
me in waysthat are hard to even Whose work would you acquire modestly than my characters, but
describe. Matisse’s work is usually if you were a collector? I share their ability to appreciate
characterized as being about I do collect art. Collecting art is an their surroundings.
sensual beauty. The more deeply I addiction. My husband and I have
engage with Matisse, the more I collected the work of Chris Uphues If you knew your time was up
am struck by his work’s and Helen Beckman of New York, what would be the last image
unconventional power – its Jennifer Moses of Boston, Jean you would leave us with?
rawness. His work has been one of Koeller of Dayton, Ohio, Laurie I hope I am painting the kind of
the greatest revelations for me as Hogin of Chicago, and Adam paintings that I would be if my
an artist. Jaynes and Carlos Estrada-Vega time was up. I, like most artists, am
of Los Angeles. I also have a interested in the development of
How do you bring emotion across passion for Japanese prints of the artists’ work as they approach the
to a flat surface? Edo period and have collected end of their lives. Morandi’s last
Happiness is the emotion that I am several of those. I regularly collect paintings almost evaporate.
interested in conveying. Happiness the work of current and former Bonnard’s last painting, “The
is obviously fleeting, occurs from a students. If money was not a Almond Tree”is a quiet and very
myriad of factors and is not consideration, I would collect the humble final picture. I hope that I
credited with much significance. work of Amy Sillman, Stanley can retain some of my belief in the
In my work, I have always been Whitney, Will Cotton and Lisa importance of humor, goofiness
interested in the parts of life which Yuskavage. I take immense and sensual beauty at that point
are often overlooked, aspects of pleasure in living with art that I of soul searching and stock taking.
Hot Dog! oil on canvas 32” x 38”
Beth Edwards
Happy Day oil on canvas 32” x 38”
Beth Edwards
12 O R A N G E S & S A R D I N E S
Summer oil on canvas 42” x 60”
Beth Edwards
Lucky Lad oil on canvas 40” x 60”
Beth Edwards
Grace Notes:
GRACE CAVALIERI INTERVIEWS CLAUDIA EMERSON
CLAUDIA EMERSON
is a gifted and beloved teacher. She
writes poems that are unequalled in
American letters for their intricacies
and intensity. Each book is a cauldron
of power. She was awarded the 2006
Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for the book,
Late Wife: Poems (LSU Press, 2005,) the
most personal and intimate of her
works. Claudia is now appointed Poet
Laureate of Virginia. Her newest
collection, Figure Studies: Poems, was
published in 2008 (LSU Press). She is
also the author of the poetry
collections Pharaoh, Pharaoh, and
Pinion: An Elegy all volumes published
in Dave Smith’s “Southern Messenger
Poets” series. Her poems have
appeared in Poetry, Southern Review,
Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, New
England Review, and other journals.
Among honors,Emerson is the Claudia Emerson photo credit: Barry Fitzgerald
recipient of a Witter Bynner Fellowship
from the Library of Congress and fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. She
is professor of English and Arrington Distinguished Chair in Poetry at
Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
GC: How does the Poet Virginia is very rich in GC: Does each of your
Laureate of Virginia dust poetry, with some of the poems have a main
the state with poetry best writing programs in event?
consciousness? the country as well as CE: Not exactly. The
CE: As Poet Laureate, I several stellar literary poems can have a
have continued to do magazines and small controlling metaphor as
many of the things I did presses, Shenandoah the center of gravity,
before the and Virginia Quarterly but often the main
appointment—judge Review among them, event or the original
local poetry contests for and I have already put subject is off to the side,
the public library, for links to various programs or dealt with in another
example, and mentor and publications on the poem in a sequence,
emerging poets. Since website as a beginning. something I have been
the appointment, I drawn to for much of
have received many GC: When you start a my writing life.
more inviations to visit poem, what do you
schools, book clubs, expect to happen? GC: If you were to write
and writers’ groups. CE: I tend to think your memoir, what age
One of my favorite trips about a poem for a would you choose to
was to the Greenspring good long while before begin your journey?
retirement community I write it, and I try not to
in Northern Virginia. The CE: I’d probably begin
“expect” anything for not with memory but
audience may have fear I’ll jinx it. I have to
been retired—but they with my birth narative,
be ready and able to the story my mother tells
were not retiring; I lose the kind of
found them wonderfully me every year on my
intellectual worrythat birthday—how I was
engaged and expectation connotes
welcoming, very born in an ice storm so
to me. But if everything severe even the doctor
interested in hearing goes well, I can expect
poetry and talking couldn’t get to the
a kind of loss of self in hosptial, etc. She takes
about it. the writing, and I can great joy in the telling,
I have also begun a also expect to be very and while I know it’s the
website called Virginia compulsive about work of the imagination,
is for Poetry, and my working on it until it’s I see parts of the story
plan is to make it a right, or as good as I as though I am
gateway to poetry can make it! remembering, and for
resources in the state.
Grace Notes Claudia Emerson

some reason I see the were firmly in the money people can
scenes in black and landscape of southside make, but also in terms
white, probably Virginia. Growing up, I of how farming families
because all my saw plenty of people are regarded in
childhood photographs living lives defined by general.
are black and white. the land and the
weather. I leanred that GC: What is the
GC: While writing, what even when people live sweetest thing the writer
do you reject from the in prescribed surrenders?
poem? circumstances, defined
CE: At first, absolutely by class and gender, CE: When the writing is
nothing. I am an they try to live as best at its best, I surrender
obsessive brainstormer they can, finding the worries of the
and note-taker; my meaning in the land ordinary, the every day,
process is very messy and in family. (I have even though those very
involving pages of notes also been interested concerns are often at
handwritten, then more artistially with animal the core of the poem
notes typed, then those consciouness and that’s taking me away.
printed out and continue to be
scribbled over—all of fascinated by how we
interact with other GC: What is a
this before I begin to balanced poem?
commit to line and creatures, particularly in
form. As I continue to rural areas.) The rural life
I grew up around has CE: I suppose the
write my way through notion of balance
the ideas, I will of course changeda great deal,
though, and the small would mean for me
make choices— that the poem has all it
consider what to cut, family farm is no longer
central to the seems to need--and in
how to better work the the right measures.
form. agricultural economy of
southside Virginia. I
GC: How is your dignity hope that the changing GC: In the act of
of the rural world ways we think about writing, what is
carved from the farming will bring back reverence? What is
difficult/the hard the importance of local chaos?
lifestyle? agriculture there, and
that the value of such CE: Reverence in
CE: The early farming will rise not just writing lies in carefully
inspirations for my work in terms of how much measured language,

even when the to Rita Mae Brown: bookshop. The

triggering subject is Never hope more than combination of slow
chaotic, since poetry is you work. While Frost days in the shop with
for me the highest warned that we can’t plenty to read switched
ordering of langauge. worry a poem into up by long solitary days
Chaos would be to being, I do believe in driving through the tired
abandon meaning, or discipline and but beautiful landscape
efforts at meaning, and dedicating as much of Pittsylvania County
I find particualry time as I can to inspired the first poems I
chaotic poetry written writing—by giving wrote. I read a lot of
according to some myself time alone to poetry then that I had
theoretical fashion. think, journal, make the read as an
messy drafts I undergraduate at the
GC: Have you ever had mentioned earlier. University of Virginia, but
a poem burst into I came backto Frost,
existence in spite of GC: Is it true you were Roethke, Williams,
you? once a mail carrier in a Bishop, Whitman, and
rural world? What did Dickinson as an adult
CE: I can’t say that a maturing into a life not
poem has ever “burst” you think as you
traveled the roads? very fulfilling, so the
into being for me, but I resonances were both
have had insistent CE: I actually drove a fruitful and sobering. I
ideas, obsessions that rural route in a little red began to write with a
would not be ignored. and white Chevy S10 ferocity I haven’t known
with a sign strapped on in the same way since,
GC: What wisdom the back—Caution, often a poem a day,
traditions do you Frequent Stops US and within a year and
cherish? Mail—86 miles, two half, I had a portfolio
thirds of it dirt roads. that took me to the
CE: Life wisdoms? (The route was so rural Unversity of North
Forgive mistakes made in fact, that my stops Carolina at Greensboro
in love; don’t take weren’t really all that for an MFA I completed
offense when you know frequent, sometimes in 1991. I was 34 years
none was intended; two or three miles old, and the thesis I
don’t trust arrogance; between boxes!) I was wrote there became
never be bored. As for part time, though, so (after a lot of revision of
writing? I have a quote the rest of the week I course) my first book in
on my desk attributed worked in a small used 1997.

Kristy Gordon
is an internationally
exhibiting fine artist.
Born in Nelson,
British Columbia, she
has earned numerous
prestigious awards,
including Third Prize
at the Portrait
Society of Canada
International Portrait
Competition; two
Awards of Excellence
from the Federation
of Canadian Artists;
Best of Show in the
National Art Premier,
Elmhurst, Illinois;
and a Juror’s Choice
Award from the
Orillia Museum of
Art and History.
Kristy Gordon’s
paintings hang in
more than 400
collections
worldwide,
including the
Kristy
Government of
Ontario Art
Collection.
Gordon
“I paint people in simple poses with strong,
psychological evocations. I resist the temptation to
idealize or romanticize. Instead I allow the pure truth
of the subject to take visual form on the canvas.”
Which artist/photographer do you

admire or has had the biggest
influence on your work?
Q&A
as I go, selecting the most appealing
position of things such as exact
placement of hands and hair. I find
Rembrandt. I can look at a that I normally call it “done” and then
Rembrandt painting again and again continue to look at it from a distance,
and each time see something new or using a mirror, and make a few
and inspiring. It could be the lighting final adjustments to it before it’s really
and the chiaroscuro or the textures finished. Sometimes, I’ll also put it
and paint quality. There are just so away for a week and then look at it
many things that I love about with fresh eyes and add some final
Rembrandt paintings. touches before calling it complete.
How do you feel about formal How do you bring emotion across to
training? a flat surface?
I think that getting the fundamentals First, I try to think about what I want to
in drawing and painting techniques is express with the painting, what I want
extremely important, and most often to capture or say about the sitter.
academies and ateliers are the best Perhaps an inner emotion or feeling,
place to get that kind of training. or it may be a more conceptual
Although I also think that accredited piece, then I select a pose, gesture
post-secondary art schooling can and expression that embodies that
provide many other benefits, so both theme. Then, when I’m doing the
are useful. painting, I’ll actually get into the
mood that I want to convey in the
piece. When we are in a certain
Do you have a ritual or specific mood, we naturally create
process you follow when brushstrokes and shapes that express
creating art? that feeling, so this helps the
Normally, I start with thumbnails or treatment of the painting “feel” like
quick drawings to get a basic idea the emotion that I want to express.
and composition, trying to think
about what mood or concept I want
to convey in the painting. Then I start Which three other artists would you
to block it in with oil paint on the consider to be your contemporaries?
canvas, establishing the larger overall Jeremy Lipking, Yuqi Wang and David
colour patterns. Generally I block in Kassan. I really enjoy the way each
the light side and shadow side of the of them include themes in their work.
main forms, then work gradually more It is that combined with a beautifully
and more into the details, often painted work that has areas of tight
finishing off with some glazes. Since I rendering mixed with painterly
work primarily from life, I will make expressive brushstrokes really
adjustments to the pose and details impresses me.
Easter
Sunday
oil on panel
20” x 16”
Kristy Gordon
Graciela
oil on panel
10” x 8”
Kristy Gordon
Woman and
Mannequin
oil on linen
28” x 22”
Kristy Gordon
Raven
oil on panel
10” x 8”
Kristy Gordon
Heavenly Shades of Night

Are Falling
SHORT STORY BY KIRK CURNUTT
(Part One)
All her life Sis had been told to father, “but I want her to have a
stop running around like a chicken with little innocence. A little girlishness. Just
its head off, and now she was going to indulge me. It won’t cost us any to wait
see for herself what that meant. until she’s twelve. That seems the
It was her mother’s fault that right age for a child to handle the
at seven she’d yet to learn. Sis was chopping block.”
old enough to work the teatcups in To Sis’s disappointment, her
her father’s milk barn. She’d helped father had agreed — though not,
birth a foal and had once driven the as he confided afterward to his
tractor when a calf carcass had to daughter, because he necessarily
be dragged through the pasture for shared Dorothea’s concern. “I just
disposal. She understood where know enough not to run contrary to
venison and sausage came from and Ma,” Clinton explained. “It’s only five
was never squeamish when she came years, Sis. That’s a flash of time you’ll
across a putrefying squirrel or raccoon be too busy to ever even feel.”
while playing at the creek. Yet even But five years was only two less
though Dorothea had grown up in the than her age, and Sis didn’t believe
country, she was still a woman, and anything was beyond her ken. Higher
she believed in the gentler arts of doll- authorities apparently agreed. They’d
making and appliqué and Theorem intervened in the form of a sideshow
painting. Of all the facts of death attraction that rendered five years
on a farm, poultry butchering was one a moot point. Tonight Mike the
thing to which she’d never quite Headless Chicken was coming to the
acclimated. Shelby County Fair, and nothing—
“I know it’s silly,” Sis had not even a steep twenty-five-cent
overheard Dorothea tell Clinton, her admission price—was going to stop Sis
from being there when he took to the first one be made of muslin, but
stage. Dorthea had said, No, no, you’ll have
to work your way up to that and then
In her father’s old bedroom in to a finer fabric. A feedsack for now
her grandmother’s house she toweled will do. So as Sis stepped into the
herself from a fresh bath. Once dry, handiwork her mother had helped her
she slipped into her underwear and guide straight between the feed dogs
sprinkled talcum on her chest. She was and the throat plate she pretended
rubbing the powder into her belly the material wasn’t scratchy osnaburg.
when the door unexpectedly opened. It was a pretty dress, anyway, with
The man she’d been told never to call blue-shaded morning glories and lilacs
Grandpa froze in the threshold, his for a pattern. There would be other
eyes goggling like a horse’s. girls at the fair whose dresses originally
“Here’s your shoes,” he said, arrived at their parents’ farms bagging
fixing his gaze to the ceiling. He set a a hundred pounds of chicken meal or
pair of white Mary Janes on the fertilizer. If anybody asked, Sis would
uncarpeted floor. “Your grandma was claim hers was from a sugar sack.
saving these for Christmas, but the Because I’m so sweet, she’d say.
ground’s dry enough you can break From outside she heard the
them in tonight. No time to dillydally, rumble of Horace’s twenty-year-old
though—I’m starting the car.” Ford coupe as he backed it from the
After the door closed, Sis could barn. She grabbed her shoes and a
hear Horace’s voice over the thump of hairbrush and raced through the
his heels. “You got to teach her to house to the porch where her
throw that bolt, Ethel. As much as my grandma waited. “You forgot your
guts been hated around here, the last socks,” the old woman sighed. “That
thing I need is her telling Clinton I chicken won’t have nothing on you,
caught her in nothing but her skivvies.” will he? There’s a pair in the laundry
Sis didn’t wait for the rubbed basket. You ain’t forgot your money,
powder to soften the pink speckles the too, have you?”
hot bath had given her skin. The dress She had, so when she ran back
was as new as her shoes, but she was to the bedroom Sis made sure to take
more excited about it. It was the first a breath and think if there was
one she’d sewn on her own—mostly on anything else she might not remember.
her own, anyway. As long as she could Once in the black coupe she slipped
remember she’d watched Dorothea her quarter into her right sock so she
work the treadle and bobbin on the wouldn’t lose it. Getting the Mary
Singer and now she was old enough to Janes over her heels wasn’t easy. She
do it herself. Sis would’ve preferred her was squeezed between her grandma
Heavenly Shades Of Night Are Falling

and the man who wasn’t her grandpa, some with no noggin.”
and whenever Horace shifted gears, “That doesn’t mean this Mike’s
his elbow inadvertently popped her hiding his head,” Sis sniffed. “Just
right above the breadbasket. He because he’s not the first one, that
didn’t seem to notice that; he was don’t mean he’s done with mirrors or
more concerned with how wide Sis nothin’.”
had to spread her knees for the Horace gave the impression of
gearstick to make it to fourth. Ethel preferring to listen to himself instead of
finally tucked the girl’s legs onto her her. “You know how this whole monkey
own lap, sitting Sis sidesaddle. Even business started? Charlie told me all
then, Horace’s bent arm whirled about it. One day a farmer in
wildly at her. Ethel had to cup her Colorado goes out to butcher a
free palm around the bend in Wyandott rooster for dinner. He gives
Horace’s shirtsleeve to protect her the critter an odd chop with the
grand-daughter. hatchet that takes off most of its bean.
“Don’t get too disappointed if I say ‘most of’ because the chop
this Mike business turns out to be a misses the jugular and the brain stem,
fraud,” Horace said as they puttered which is what controls a chicken’s
along Blue Ridge Road. “There’s a reflexes. So this Mike is able to strut
reason you can’t yank the beard on a around with his own head under his
bearded lady at these sideshows. wing, not even knowing his head is
They’ve yet to make the glue that’ll under his wing. As freeing as it might
hold a phony one in place.” seem not to be plagued by self-
Ethel answered for Sis: “I would consciousness—which is the fall of
think headlessness’d be far harder to man, if you ask me—it was a one in a
rig up than a fake beard.” million stroke what spared Mike from
“Oh, I’ve done my checking up knowing his peculiar condition. I’m sure
on this,” he insisted. “Charlie Hearns for however many dollars he made
who’s on the fair board was in the that Colorado farmer there’s been
other day for a trim. He didn’t want to plenty of men decapitating their flocks
spill any beans, but something about in hopes of recreating that miracle
another man rasping clippers across lop. Like I said, it’s a one in a million
your skull makes a fellow real chatty. stroke that not even the best surgeon
According to Charlie, this can’t even in France could’ve given Louis the
be the original Mike the Headless Sixteenth. It’ll take another million years
Chicken, because that one would for it to happen again.”
have to be thirteen years old, and it’s Sis didn’t understand a word of
a rare chicken that’s gonna live a this, but that wasn’t unusual when her
decade, much less a decade and notgrandpa gabbled.

“Horace,” Ethel finally inter- ignore them. They’re just yakking to

rupted. Her voice was low and give their jaws the workout. You’re here
humming, not unlike the rhythm of the to have a good time, and I’m here to
tires. “What you know about a chicken ensure you do.” He reached into his
could fit on a feather. And it’d be pocket and jangled a handful of loose
about as weighty, too.” coins as if he were throwing dice. “I’m
giving you every bit of spare change I
Nobody spoke the last few miles got today. You find the Hokey-Pokey
to the fairground. Sis watched the Man, and you get you some gum
cornfields peel by, the green and gold drops and some—”
blurring until stalks and ears seemed to He said the funny name he
lose shape and become more liquid always used for candy corn. It was a
than solid, hovering above the brown two-word name, only the second of
earth like dots of water hurled from the which Sis understood: teats. She knew
new Zimmatic irrigators the wealthier what those were because each
farmers let prowl their land. morning she helped her father attach
When they arrived at the dirt the teatcups to the cows’ udders in
lot a man with dark circles under his the milk barn.
shirt arms motioned them into a “C’mon now. Take them. I know
parking spot. Horace shut off the you’re not too snooty for some jingle-
engine but made no effort to open the jangle. As ragged as Clinton runs his
coupe’s door. “You planning to talk to operation, I ought to donate my spare
her, or you want me to?” he asked the dimes to him. I’ve no doubt your ma
grandmother. would appreciate my charity, but I’d
“I don’t have nothing particular rather you be the beneficiary. You at
to say. Not one way, not the other.” least act Christian toward me.”
Horace sighed. “Well, I would Her hesitation had nothing to do
ask you to step outside, Ethel, so this with the fact that Horace was the man
girl and me might talk in confidence, she wasn’t supposed to ever call
but as much as your children hate my Grandpa. It was hard enough to walk
guts the last thing I need is her telling on one quarter; to lug a piggy-bank in
Clinton we were in the car alone her socks seemed a monumental task.
together.” He put his arm on the back Nevertheless, she tucked the coins
of the seat and twisted to face Sis, a evenly at the sides of her ankles and
pain in his face. “You need to know hoped they didn’t slide under her heel.
that some of the folks preening this It took several strides along the lines of
midway like cocks of the walk may parked cars before the change didn’t
speak less than flatteringly of your pinch. But then the three of them
grandma and me. If they do, just reached the first tents that marked the

midway’s entry, and when Sis spotted for having no head.”

some girls she knew, the discomfort Sis didn’t speak. She was
gave way to excitement. She raced to listening to music, tinny and distant,
join her friends without asking but familiar. It took her a while to find
permission. Only vaguely was she the source. Several yards down the
aware of her grandmother calling out midway a photographer was selling
the evening’s ground rules. “Back right teenage boys the opportunity to have
here, eight-thirty! Don’t waste all that their pictures taken with a movie star.
money on candy! And keep them Exactly who the movie star was wasn’t
Mary Janes white as they are now!” clear; all Sis could see on the
The girls were her classmates. In signboard above the booth were the
a month and a half they would start words MOVIE STAR. The woman was
second grade together. Sis noticed brunette and pretty in the way that Sis
that, like hers, their dresses were assumed all movie stars were, though
adorned with bold floral patterns and she didn’t know for sure—Clinton and
electric colors, sure signs that the Dorothea had yet to take her to the
fabric came from a feedsack, not a Strand Theater. They kept promising
bolt. Nobody was quizzing anybody on that, someday, when she was old
what their clothes originally bagged, enough, they would. Sis wondered if
though. There were more important she’d have to wait to turn twelve
concerns to debate. before that happened. She wondered
“Mine says he’s gotta be a which she would see first: a movie or a
robot,” Margo Ropp was saying. chicken on the chopping block.
“Anybody goin’ to the trouble But it was the music that
of making a robot,” Phyllis Metcalf interested her most.
answered, “iddn’t gonna make a “My ma has this record,” she
robot chicken. They’re gonna make a told her friends. “I was with her when
robot person.” she bought it at Murphy’s. We have a
“I bet he’s not even living,” record player in our house. I saw her
Bobbie Kissling chimed in. “I bet he’s and Pa dance to it when they thought
stiff as a board from the taxidermist.” I was sleeping on the davenport.”
Everybody had an opinion to The other girls stopped talking
share. “I heard he keeps his head in a long enough to listen. The whirl of
pickle jar. Only it ain’t his head ’cause orchestral strings made Sis think of the
his got ate by a cat.” Ferris wheel. When she craned to see
“My dad says a headless the steel web above the tent tops, she
chicken can still lay eggs.” imagined it rotated in tempo to the
“Mike’s a rooster. If he’s laying music.
an egg he’d be famous for that, not

Deep in the dark your kiss will thrill move with any more urgency than a
me, like days of old glue dab. Somewhere among the
Lighting the spark of love that fills promenade of ring tosses and target
me, with dreams untold shooting, Sis was aware of passing the
Each day I pray for evening just to movie star’s booth. She heard a barker
be with you with a voice as sharp as a switch
Together at last at twilight time call out: “Star of The Magnificent
Ambersons, by Indiana’s own Booth
“Ick,” Gaye Caffee grimaced. “I Tarkington! Academy Award winner for
like syrup on my pancakes, not in my The Razor’s Edge! Most recently seen in
ears. Gimme Elvis Presley or gimme glorious VistaVision as the fetching
death.” Nefertari in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten
“This is colored music,” added Commandments!” Only when the
Margo. “My preacher says not to listen barker’s voice was too distant for his
to it. He says Elvis is bad, too. Because words to be understood did Sis realize
the devil likes him. The devil likes the what she hadn’t heard: the song she’d
coloreds’ music, too.” once spied her parents dancing from
Before anyone could plug their the davenport where she played
ears to save themselves from Lucifer’s possum.
tune, a boy from their class rushed up. Helicopter’s hands were still
“Little Pruitt just threw up by the Tilt-a- whirling as he stood next to the railing
Whirl! Come see!” that kept the line of children from
He was so eager he didn’t wait rushing the ride. A few yards away
to see if the girls followed, but they did. Little Pruitt sat elbows to knees on a
The whole time he ran the boy twirled folding chair, his face white and pasty.
his hands at his wrists. He always did it Even from a distance you could see his
when he got excited—once in first Adam’s apple going up and down,
grade it was so distracting the teacher like a shuttle on a sideways loom, as he
made him sit on his fingers. The boy’s furiously swallowed.
name was Walter, but nobody called “Where is it?” Phyllis asked
him that. Thanks to his spinning hands, Helicopter.
he was known as Helicopter. “Should be along here
The Tilt-a-Whirl was all the way somewhere. He didn’t no more n’ hop
down toward the other end of the off the platform than it jumped straight
midway, where the line of tents broke out his mouth. It was like lava!”
open to accommodate the rides. The Along with her classmates, Sis
girls were huffing for breath by the time lifted herself onto the railing and
they cut and darted around the clog scoured the path of grass that lay
of adults, none of whom seemed to between it and the rickety ride.

“You’re too late,” somebody He liked to say that if any greaseball

said. It was Little Pruitt’s brother, Eddie, with a D. A. sock-hopped into his
waltzing a cup of water to his queasy barber shop, the young man could be
sibling. Eddie pointed to a man on the sure he’d quadrille out with a crew cut.
far side of the rail. Looking about as Sis walked over to where Little
thin as a quivering cattail, the man Pruitt sat. He was actually a year older
stood over a small mound swinging a than her but everybody called him
coffee can in one hand while lighting Little anyway because he was so
a cigarette with the other. much younger than his brother. “You
“We didn’t beat the sawdust,” have some left in you?” she asked.
Sis said, disappointed. As they Little pressed his stomach with his
watched, the man dug his hand into fingertips and cleared his throat.
the can and sprinkled another fistful of “Empty as a gas tank,” he groaned. “I
shavings over the pile. “Hey, maybe just got dizzy is all.”
Little Pruitt’s not done!” Eddie was still staring down the
Before anyone could check a pig-faced worker with the pipe. “I’ll
vibration shot through the rail. It felt like meet you back here in an hour,” he
an electrical shock. “Get off there!” a finally told Little Pruitt. “I gotta go see a
voice growled, and another jolt girl about a gash in her coon-skin
burned through the metal. Only when cap.”
Sis hopped down did she realize where “Can’t she just sew it up?” Phyllis
the pulse came from: the carnival Metcalf asked.
worker running the Tilt-a-Whirl’s controls Eddie smiled at Sis and her
was hitting the rail with a thick metal friends. “Sure,” he smirked. “That’s why
pipe. “The line’s over here,”the worker she needs my help. I’m a master
snapped. He was a fat-faced man seamster. I’ve helped a lotta girls with
who reminded Sis of a storybook their coon-skin caps. Just don’t go
illustration she’d seen of the Three Little blabbing I said ‘gash,’ you hear?” He
Pigs. He pointed to the children waiting turned back to Little: “Eight o’clock, on
their turn with one of his black hoof- the dot, Chief. I don’t need dear old
fingers. “If you’re not riding, keep dad boxing my ears because you
walking.” were the first munchkin ever to get lost
“Don’t have a heart attack, at the fair.”
Jack,” Eddie shot back. He could do Little Pruitt finished the water. “I
that—he was a teenager already, and ain’t sitting here for an hour,” he told
thanks to his D. A. he looked a little like nobody in particular. “I still got fifty
Elvis. Other than a hairstyle, Sis didn’t cents to my name.”
know what a D. A. was—she’d just “Let’s get you a corn fritter and
heard Horace mention it on occasion. another ride,” Helicopter suggested.

“Maybe you can get sick again.” “Aw,” he snorted, reopening his
“What we better get is to the hand. “I’m just playing with you. Go
show tent,” Bobbie Kissling cut in. on, take it. Spend it with all the
“I don’t want to miss Headless Mike. benevolence Mr. Tipton would. All us
I want a seat on an up-close bleacher carnies got families to feed.”
so I can see down his neck with mine Sis didn’t take the dime, though.
own eyes.” She was distracted by a blue design
“I heard they feed him with on the man’s forearm. At first she
an eyedropper,” Helicopter offered, thought it was a messy scribble of
instantly forgetting his previous veins, but then the form resolved into a
suggestion. “C’mon on, let’s go.” familiar shape. It was a naked woman.
The group started walking off. Sis knew what those looked like
Sis waited for Little Pruitt to get up. She because she’d been in her parents’
wasn’t sure he could. He still seemed bedroom before when Dorothea
dizzy. But once upright he found his dressed.
feet. They started to follow their friends The man’s grin broke when he
when they heard a “Hey!” It wasn’t the realized Sis was looking at his tattoo,
pig-faced man. This time it was the not the dime. He quickly yanked his
cattail-quiverer, the one with the can shirt cuff over the image.
of sawdust. He was squatting at the “You didn’t see that, okay?
rung on the rail where Sis had stood. Bossman done repped me twice
“You dropped something, chickadee.” already for letting it out to air. One
Pinched between the same two more and I’ll be scraping a griddle
fingers as his lit cigarette was a somewhere. Now I could’a kept your
sparkling dime. Sis could still feel the money, but I didn’t, so you owe me.”
coins in her socks, so she wasn’t sure When Sis still didn’t take the
this one was hers. She wasn’t taking dime, the cattail man took her by the
any chances, though. wrist and himself pressed the money
“You lose this,” the cattail man into the center of her palm. Again, the
said, flipping the dime into his palm, lit cigarette barely missed her.
“you’re out one whole ride, ain’t you?” “Don’t lose it again,” he told
His features were so sharp his her. “Not everybody in this operation’s
face looked like it’d been whittled as honest a man as yours sincerely.”
from a woodblock. The man grinned Sis pushed the dime deep in her
as Sis returned to the rail to claim her sock. When she turned around, she
money. Only when she went to take discovered the other girls had kept on
the dime, he clapped his fist shut, walking. Only Little Pruitt had waited to
barely missing catching her fingers. The make sure she was safe from cattail
lit cigarette barely missed her, too. man.

“You ever seen a chicken Little Pruitt pulled three cups

butchered?” she asked as they made from the tray. Sis propped a hand to
their way between the rides to the his shoulder for balance to dig money
show tent. from her sock. She started to hand the
“Sure. T’aint nothing. I done it man the coins, but he shook his head
myself. Plenty.” and pointed instead to a little platter
Sis was doubtful. “How’d you of nickels and dimes among the
do it?” candies. “You’ll get me in trouble
Little Pruitt shrugged. “I just passing it over straightaway,” he told
wrestle them down and go to work her, shaking a long black finger. “The
sawing.” Hokey-Pokey man got enough
She was about to tell him he problems, little miss.”
was a liar, but then she saw a familiar Under his supervision, Sis laid two
figure stationed by the haunted house, dimes on the platter. “Fifteen cents out
and her mind went elsewhere. “There’s of twenty means you get a nickel
the Hokey-Pokey man!” she said. “Let’s back,” he said. His voice was louder
get some—” than before, and he kept looking at
She used Horace’s word for the fair-goers walking past them, not
candy corn, the one she didn’t Sis and Little Pruitt. “Here’s you a
understand. Little Pruitt stopped in his nickel.” He pushed one from a pile of
tracks. “You can’t say that to him. He’s them to the edge of his platter.
likely to pop you.” “Remember the Hokey-Pokey man
Sis didn’t understand what he always makes fair change,” he told
meant, but the truth was the Hokey- her. Now his voice was back to normal.
Pokey man scared her a bit, so as they As they left the concessionaire,
approached, she didn’t say anything. Little Pruitt was trying to figure out how
She just looked over the tray that hung to dig candy corn from one cup
from his neck by a V-shaped strap. In while carrying another of coconut
the tray were little cups of gum drops, haystacks. “I can tell you ain’t been
licorice bites, and fudge. She caught around many coloreds,” he said as he
Little Pruitt staring at her, waiting for her ate. “A bunch of them live not but a
to order. “You do it,” she said under her block from here. We got a couple who
breath. come out to milk for us.”
“It’s all good,” the Hokey-Pokey “We do our own milking,” she
man insisted, shooing a fly from one of answered quickly and defensively. “I
the cups. “But it ain’t gonna gain any help my pa. I do a lot of the milking
flavor just from you two staring at it. myself.” Then she thought of the song
Nothing in life ought to be so difficult to that had played at the movie star’s
choose.” booth, and what Margo Ropp said

about it. “My ma listens to colored witness what will rightly go down in
music. My pa lets her. He even likes history as the eighth wonder of the
some of it.” world! And I will tell you here and now I
Little Pruitt’s cheeks plumped as personally think tonight’s spectacle
he chewed his second coconut should rank higher than either the
haystack. “So does Eddie. Only he says Great Pyramid of Giza or the Taj Mahal
it’s not always colored music just on any such list! Because no man ever
because coloreds sing it. He’s always made a night’s dinner out of those
teaching me about his music. He got in marvels! But after the soul of tonight’s
trouble for driving all the way to special guest passes into the azure
Chicago to buy his records.” coop of sky, you can bet his mortal
“My ma just buys them at remains will fill a belly or two—hopefully
Murphy’s.” mine!
“Then she don’t really listen to All that overripe oratory was
colored music. Because Eddie says followed by decidedly less grandiose
Murphy’s don’t stock none.” directions about keeping the line
What Sis had wanted was civilized, having correct change, and
candy corn, but Little Pruitt had kept not stomping other folks’ hands while
that cup for himself. Instead, she’d propping feet on the bleacher backs.
been relegated to jelly-beans, which As the barker prattled on, Sis threw a
weren’t sweet enough for her. She’d hand to Bobbie Kissling’s shoulder and
only eaten three by the time they dug into her sock for her quarter. She’d
reached the show tent, and one of just about retrieved it when Bobbie
those, a green one, not by choice—it was suddenly jerked out from under
had melted into the side of a red one. her, leaving Sis to nearly topple onto
Helicopter and the girls were all the ground.
in line waiting for the show tent to “You’re Ethel Brandywine’s
open. Phyllis Metcalf waved Sis and granddaughter, ain’t you?”
Little Pruitt forward, despite grumblings A man in brown trousers had
from the folks they cut in front of. Bobbie by the wrist. When Sis said,
“We’ve been holding their places,” “Yes, sir,” he nodded his head. “I
Phyllis told one woman in a cherry red thought I recognized you. C’mon,
dress dotted with the white silhouettes Bobbie. Your ma’s pork sandwich ain’t
of tulips. Sis let herself believe that dress sitting well. We need to go home.”
had originally sacked potatoes. “But Mike’s about to happen—”
Ladies and gentlemen! a barker “I said your ma’s not feeling
in a candy-stripe coat declared well. Apparently, a lot of things I say to
through a megaphone as he flipped you don’t sink in.”
open the tent flap. You’re about to The man jerked Bobbie so hard

Sis thought she might fly out of her landed.

shoes. She and her friends watched “My stomach hurts,” he
the man drag his daughter off. As she groaned after a while.
stumbled to keep up with his pace, The lights went out, crudely
Bobbie stared back bitterly at the line. snapping off instead of dimming. A
“I saw her ma eating a squeal went through the crowd. Sis
hamburger,” Sis overheard Margo pushed her elbows into her knees,
whisper to Phyllis. “Not pork.” leaning forward. Every one else did,
Sis thought of what Horace had too. The tent swelled with such
said in the coupe. This wasn’t the first eagerness that the excitement was
time it’d happened and it probably almost claustrophobic.
wouldn’t be the last. She rubbed a “Just so you know,” she heard
wrinkle from her dress and stood Little Pete whisper, “I ain’t scared of no
straight. She liked it that even though chicken.”
Little Pruitt was older than her, she was “Me neither.”
taller. But a second later when a
The barker took her quarter with spotlight erupted at the front of the
a smile and patted her head, just as he tent, she was spooked. A fat man in a
did the head of every child who plain suit hoisted a cage covered by
entered the tent. He obviously hadn’t an apron onto a table. Before he
heard of Ethel Brandywine. could unveil his marvel, Sis felt a
“Little Pruitt, it’s been so long second startle. Something brushed her
since I called you anything but Little I right hand. Fancy got the better of her
can’t even remember your Christian and she wondered what kinds of
name.” deformities crawled under bleachers in
“Peter,” he told her indifferently. the dark of a carnival. Then she
They sat together one row realized what had really given her the
behind their friends. Sis chose the seats scare. Little Pruitt was curling his fingers
because she didn’t want any other among hers.
friends dragged away simply for sitting Whether he held her hand to
in her proximity. It took a long time for soothe his own anticipation or to
the crowd to file in. So long that Little comfort hers didn’t really matter. Sis just
Pruitt not only finished the last of his felt good knowing that, no matter
coconut haystacks but the candy corn what happened next, hers wasn’t the
and Sis’s jellybeans, too. He dropped only imagination whirling with wonder
each cup under the footwells of the at the possibilities of what a chicken
bleachers and then stuck his head running around without its head might
down among the row of shoes to see mean.
exactly where and how they might’ve (To Be Continued)

The Fragile Thread Between Dream and Reality:

Encountering the World Of José Parra
The Queen’s Caravan
José Parra is a young artist with costumes and props, yet peopled
an old soul. Ever a dreamer, he has by those actors who surround him in
managed to bridge that chasm real life.
between the old and the new in a Early influences, outside of
language that is ecstatically of his own introspection and dreams as a child,
creation. His subject ideas about power include working in his father’s
versus fear, tradition versus novelty, Tlaquepaque, Mexico gallery
royalty versus common, and reality as surrounded by paintings and statuary
interpreted or transfigured by the deeply influenced by Spanish baroque
glorious excesses of Baroque all decoration and reproductions. His
contribute to his grand and complex fertile, inquisitive mind embraced that
paintings that mark the world as a stage precursor school of Mannerism (1520 –
waiting to be illuminated by grand 1580) that responded to the harmonious
ideals and restrained

naturalism associated
with artists such as da
Vinci, Raphael and
early Michelangelo. It
is this journey from the
intellectual
sophistication of
Mannerism to the
subsequent artificial
excesses of the
following Baroque
period that brought
Parra to his mature
style.
The young José
Parra combines his
technical facility with
drawing, brush,
The Last Great Voyage
pigment and canvas
with an infectious
hunger for philosophy
and the circles that at
times fail to define a
beginning and an end
– the tangent
between real and
spiritual, seen and
imagined, beginning
and future or past. His
paintings are rich in
detail as though he
painted them from life
despite the very
obvious fantasy of his
floating ships,
signature harlequins,
and melting worlds.
Yet the vivid colorful
The Royal Fleet costumes and
creative fantasy. And this

is his goal: his paintings are
not complete until we, the
fortunate viewers,
participate and at least
temporarily fulfill those
seemingly thwarted
expectations. Here is a
young and gifted artist to
watch, an artist whose
talent goes beyond the
expected surface and
invites us to dream.
The Queen Of
Harlequin Monkeys
The False Clothing Of Cleonte
accoutrements of his tableaux don’t

completely disguise the tinge of sadness
or disappointment of unfulfilled
expectations. He is at his strongest in his
panoramic paintings such as The
Queen’s Caravan, The Last Great
Voyage, and The Royal Fleet, yet he is
also able to paint dramas of touching
intimacy as in The False Clothing of
Cleonte and the Frida Kahloesque The
Queen of Harlequin Monkeys.
One of the aspects of José
Parra’s paintings that makes his work so
poignant in our contemporary world is
his ability to take the viewer into another
space, a place where we, the players in
a mundane and chaotic world, can find
at least momentary solace in
transporting ourselves into his spaces of
Christopher
Arigo
Christopher Arigo’s
first poetry collection
Lit interim won the 2001-2002
Transcontinental Poetry
Prize (selected by David
Bromige) and was published
by Pavement Saw Press
(2003). His second collection
In the archives (2007) was
published by Omnidawn
Publishing. Additionally, he
co-edits the literary
magazine Interim with poet
Claudia Keelan and is
currently working on a book-
length hybrid scholarly/
creative nonfiction project
on the intersections of
ecopoetics, ethnopoetics,
hunter-gatherer culture,
language extinction, and
anticivilization theory. He is
an Assistant Professor of
English at Washington State
University.
from Desert revised

5. this is a further story
a furthering of impulse
of water pulsing through maiden-hair ferns

into an undrying spring:
a dog swims in the water
you say the dog—a shepherd
(—this is no pastoral)—
is happy
the cool drip is the sound of undying
the air drifts in thermals
and there are no jets

only the sound of your own blood traveling
unpanicked
the occasional imagined sound from vultures drifting on thermals you

confuse with breeze or the stirring of rabbitbrush or single-leaf ash a
desert marigold’s almost blinding wave its leaves drawing fine traceries
around its base
you say
there is plenty written about panic
and not enough about origins
Christopher Arigo
from Desert revised

9. the light is minor
everyday you erode a bit
everyday you get to know the light better and better until you predict
when the shadow from your eaves falls across the yard between two
boulders of granite shipped from who knows where
all that remains

and remains
you
gone
your remains sufficient to replace you
what erases you is not wind-blown sand

or freezing and thawing and cracking
you are ecstatic in the desert
your insistent grip on my arm
there is an ecotone between us—-the dust between you and the desert
Christopher Arigo
from Desert revised

10. mountains take rain
and leave virga
trailing off above the land
you live in the rainshadow
rain has afterthoughts
called smell of sage—several different species whose names you can

never remember: which is silver which is dusty green which has purple
flowers which is which is reduced which is tridentata
called cooled off from the intense heat that preceded it
rain calls with steam
what is home and why
vapors trail also

across the near-blue air—algorhythmic lines bisecting
ad infinitum
the jets have not traveled overhead

near enough
for you
to erase
Christopher Arigo
Jeff
Danley
“ I have always been interested in the

language of the body – what is being
expressed by posture and movement, as
well as the marks of time on the body itself.
In response to my own physical
malformation, I am acutely aware of such
ideals as beauty, perfection and symmetry
in relation to the human figure.
Through intense observation of the
model, I slowly build up many layers of
paint to create a material form, giving the
inert pigment the illusion of a flesh and
blood presence.”
[email protected]
Jeff Danley
grew up in
Which artist/photographer
do you admire or has had
the biggest influence on
paint, paint, paint, and
paint some more. In my
opinion, that’s the most
Q&A
did to get rid of them. It
was like seeing a shape in
the clouds, once you see it,
Georgia, your work? valuable type of training it’s there. After much
Florida and I’ve been influenced by available. frustration, I realized—
artists from Rembrandt to “PAINT THE FIGURE.” When I
California. He Rothko and beyond. The How do you bring emotion finally let it happen, people
now lives in influence can be more across to a flat surface? immediately started
Nashville than any obvious style or I think just by having the connecting to my work in a
subject matter. I try to human figure as my primary way that had never
where he has search out anyone painting subject brings emotion to happened before. And
worked as a the human figure, but I’ve my work. I almost never surprisingly to me, so did I.
drummer and also found much in works of paint faces. Most of my
non-figurative painters, as models are posed or The “mistake” was in trying
as art director well as artists working in cropped so that you never to control my work into
for television other mediums. There have see the face, because I what I thought it should be
been just as many don’t want the work to be as opposed to letting it
commercials develop into what it was
“unknowns”as there have about a specific identity.
and music been well-recognized ones We usually think of emotion meant to be.
videos. that have had an influence as coming from the face,
on me. but I think a lot of Must there be a statement
expression can come from with each creation?
A self taught If I had to pick one, it would
the pose, the gesture, the I think there is too much
be Caravaggio. Several
artist, he has body language of the emphasis placed on every
years ago I spent several
model. I try to use all of the work having a statement,
been painting weeks in Italy for an
components, including so much so that there is
full-time independent study. Once I
color, lighting, space, and much more concern with
saw the Caravaggios in
since 1991. even the size and writing about the work
Rome, I would start every
proportions of the canvas instead of making the work
He has been day by going to the S. Luigi
to assist in conveying itself.
in numerous dei Francesi to look at his St.
Matthew triad—and many emotion. The psychology of In what I do, the focus is on
juried, times I would also end the a piece can change a body of work, with each
invitational, day there. I could not get dramatically just by the piece contributing to an
enough of those paintings. amount of space affirmation of the whole.
and gallery Seeing them in person surrounding the figure, by Sometimes there are
shows across solidified my desire to be a what fills that space, by paintings that become
the country, figurative painter. how it’s lit. more important to me
personally because
and his work How do you feel about Have any of your mistakes something may develop in
has been formal training? become a success? them to push me to
featured in I have no formal training as When I first started painting another level in thought or
a painter, and have seriously, I wasn’t sure what technique.
many regional regretted this at times. But I was going to do. I only I hope that the viewer
and national I’ve found that formal knew that I wanted to take experiences something
publications training is no guarantee of a non-objective approach different each time they
success. With or without to painting. But as I would encounter the work, that
including training, you have to do work, things would emerge, their experience grows and
New American your work. The most like a shoulder, a back, or continues to engage them
Paintings and important thing as a painter maybe a thigh. I would in some way. That to me is
is to pick up your brush and scrape them away, try to the greatest statement that
The Oxford paint. You might make a lot paint them out. And they someone could give about
American. of messes—you have to just would come back, try as I my painting.
Medusa
oil on canvas
57 1/2 x 37 1/2
Jeff Danley
Gabriel oil on canvas 42” x 42”

Jeff Danley
Leda oil on canvas 31 1/4” x 48”
Jeff Danley
Submerged No.1
oil on canvas
13” x 9”
Happy Day oil on canvas 32” x 38”
Jeff Danley
SHWA 20: Juliet Cook’s Horrific Confection

BY DAVID CADDY
I would like to say a few words about Juliet Cook’s Horrific Confection originally
published as an e book and now published in hard copy by BlazeVox Books
(www.blazevox.org) of New York.
Juliet Cook’s Horrific Confection combines elements of magical realism and dark
horror in a poetic exploration of the domestic, especially food, and the artificial. It is set
deeply within the meaning of confection as a noun ‘the making or preparation by
mixture of ingredients’ (OED 1), ‘a preparation made by mixing; a composition, mixture,
compound’ (OED 5) and as a verb ‘to make into a confection; to mix, make up as a
seasoned delicacy’ (OED 1). More than that, Cook reaches back to older meanings of
confection such as ‘a medicinal preparation compounded of various drugs’ (OED 5b)
and ‘a prepared poison, a deadly potion’ (OED 5c).
The book is divided into four sections, ‘heat me up’, ‘cool me down’, ‘consume me’
and ‘choke on me’, which provide both a narrative and analytical structure. The
opening poem, ‘Morning Fragment’, introduces two recurring motifs, the egg and the
knife, within a breakfast image of bloodshot eggs, glistening marmalade, glowing hot
wire ribs and crumb cake crawling out of the narrator’s throat. The egg registers as
nutrition, embryo, ovulation, fertility and eyes and the knife as implement and weapon,
showing the domestic to be both constructive and destructive.
The first section, ‘heat me up’, inhabits a domestic world that is both sensuously tactile
and swerves between the kitchen as a site of sanitised violence and food as
nourishment and poison. The raw seems to permeate and resist the cooked. Here the
narrator attempts to resist the artificial and sinister world of her mother’s domestic
regime:
A black line blurs

into bristling trellis. Throbbing. Little sister ensanguined,
straining twisted limbs. Furry bodies wriggle in sockets. Honey
bees burst out her eyes. Leave behind
tiny stingers pumping venom into trespassed flesh. (page 15)
Note how the stressed ‘b’ produces a savage intensity. ‘She Warns Me’ continues:
Mother’s burgeoning tongue. Cyanosis-blue and serrated

abduction. I can’t hide. I surrender to the toxic spill,
the swarm. Excruciating swell and thrall
Words sprawl disembodied. A husky hum
from the filthy darkness underneath a rusty engine.
Tendons slashed. Ripped open dress. Knivey licks
and public restroom reek of chloroform. (page 15)
Cook’s feminism is indirect and subtle. Domestic violence lurks and hovers in all manner
of unexpected places and weapons, from the mother figure, to Barbie dolls, to
confectionery and the male gaze.
The artificial is seen most graphically in the poem, ‘Dollophile’, which concerns male
fascination with blow-up and other dolls, and occasions some blistering and comic
language:
He wants to smooth pancake makeup

onto already poreless ‘flesh’
He wants her preprogrammed ‘voicebox’
to ‘acquiesce’, ‘deliquesce’, ‘luminesce’,
and release a steaming shitload
of dirty words. He wants made-to-order, interchangeable

crotch panels, blinking lights, a bottomless spit valve.
He wants a barely legal doll who can fit a small octopus
inside like some kind of mutant nesting doll rape. (page 17)
In the second ‘cool me down’ section, the poem ‘Grotesque Intimacy’ features a
narrator that yearns for the artificial and transgressive desire. Here the self and her
partner seek invasion: ‘We’re being drained, smeared, / dragged into the lush desire for
even darker disguises.’ The language is suitably double-edged and shifting into a
multilayered universe of possibility. ‘Beady-eyed sweetie. Zombie lips. / Feel the baby
earwigs tickle your spine. / They know how you want to be a book.’
David Caddy SHWA 20: Juliet Cook’s Horrific Confection

The textual solidity of the poems forces through to a world that is less make believe and
more credible horror through its constant reminder of the self as consumer and its
proximity to the raw. ‘Swathes of mucus always ooze / from slugs nestled inside her
pastel cupcake papers.’ and later from the same poem, ‘Horrific Confection’, ‘A shiny
knife winks at her. It wants her -- / a frosted slice. Gaping and glazed with coagulum.’
The third section begins with ‘Self Portrait as Gingerbread Girl’ and takes the reader
into the heart of this culinary dystopia. Here the narrator longs ‘for a dress that flaps
open’ and to ‘escape this edible mess / of shams.’ in order to avoid decapitation and
gives voice to the Gingerbread Girl that ‘didn’t ask to be cut in the shape of a girl.’ This
is an attack on the artificial as she would prefer to be ‘abstract’, ‘unable to be
construed’ and ‘spicy misdeeds’. It is a wonderfully idiosyncratic elegy. The section as a
whole gives voice to confections that insinuate and fester against the matronly
domestic goddess and her opposite the domestic witch. These poems show the ways in
which the artificial penetrate other parts of a woman’s life and culminate in ‘Costume
Party Afterbirth’ where:
You’re more like a pin-

striped service provider, holding down the tongue depressor gag.
You experiment with cup sizes, but have nothing real
to fill them. Sample 1. Fake Secretary Sample 2. Fake Pig

Suspended in Silicon Sample 3. Besmirched Cryptozoology.
You have anthropomorphized yourself, you have felt yourself up
for suspicious lumps. You have frisked your hollow panda bear head
until at least one piece of candy fell out
your eye socket. Your gaping piebald maw. (page 42)
The final, choke on me, section gives voice to more mutant confections, fake cakes,
horror cakes and gaping holes oozing slime leading to ‘Self Portrait as Semi-Amorphous
Entity’ where ‘she’s beating / her own head against a doll house / door’ and the
narrator’s head ends up in the cake pan. Choke on me shows the impact of the artificial
on the young girl that veers away from the domestic goddess to the domestic witch in a
blistering series of dramatic and satirical poems. Poems such as ‘Oh Those Mercurial
Wrists’, ‘Spilled Milk’, ‘little death scenes’, ‘Pink Bird’ and ‘The Angel of Death’ bring this
energised collection to a climax full of invective and humour. Here’s the beginning of

‘Oh Those Mercurial Wrists’:
The way she froths at the mouth then explodes

into sexy blasphemy.
The way her lips sizzle then ignite –

Bananas Flambé.
Painted flames drizzle down to

scintillating nipple ring gleams.
This leads to
The way she makes up her own eyes with a languorous,

over-the-top glamour
she calls ‘Tarred & Feathered’.
The way today’s look is called ‘Little Bo Peep the Whore’

as she wields a tiny riding crop, exclaiming, ‘Faster Lambchop!
We must escape the damned rapscallions!’ (page 54)
This, however, is a mere warm-up for the full violence of ‘The Angel of Death’ that links
its sustained attack on the artificial to a Catholic upbringing and explodes in visceral
anger.
My womb is a real muckraker

and half the congregation’s dirty fingers are stuck inside.
Some of them are trying to get me off;
some of them are trying to turn me off,
but my motorized blades are still whirring furiously.
You see, in MY visceral guide to uterine occupation,
the vagina dententa myth is true.
I’ve cued the seizure-inducing lights
and the spew of slashed babymakers.
Bang your head to the strains of this heretic cunt. (page 63)

“My interest, as a Chinese artist,
is to create art that reflects the
changing times while maintaining the
conventional tools and influences of my
culture. I expressed the sentimental
human sense with a powerful visual
effect through the huge, detailed faces,
as well as abstract figures that involve
motion and minimal atmosphere.”
Chin-Cheng
Hung
www.chinchenghung.com
Q&A
Which artist/photographer do you admire or
has had the biggest influence on your work?
I admire photographer George Platt Lynes (1907-
1955) deeply like a lot of photographers although
I am a painter. I like the way he portraits his
models and demonstrates such poetic and
romantic disposition with an artistic and classical
atmosphere. His innovative style and mastery
of lighting has had a great deal of influence on
my work.
How do you feel about formal training?

As a classically trained painter and art educator,
I firmly believe that formal training is important for
every artist. A good art education can prepare
an artist with not only good skills, but also a more
thoughtful process of creativity. One can reform
the rules easily when they have learned them.
If you knew your time was up what would be

the last image you would leave us with?
I would definitely leave my self-portrait with the
world as my last image if I knew my time was up.
Chin-Cheng Hung is a professor of To me, a self-portrait is a true representation of an
foundation studies at Savannah College of Art artist; or rather, a reflection/mirror of an artist.
and Design - Atlanta. He is a member of
several prestigious organizations including the Whose work would you acquire if you were
Pastel Society of America, the Southeastern a collector?
Pastel Society, and served as a member and If I were a collector and if it is possible, I would
former President of the Chinese-American collect paintings of Jacques-Louis David (1748-
Academic and Professional Association in 1825), Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704-1788),
Southeastern United States. Hung has and Odd Nerdrum (1944~). Besides, I would
received numerous awards from different
collect any good figurative work.
juried competitions and has been featured in
International Artist, New American Paintings, and
Must there be a statement with each creation?
most recently the cover of The Pastel Journal
magazine in June 2008. His biography was A good artist must be a good thinker. I personally
selected to be listed in the newest editions of admire arts that have intense narrative content
Marqus Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in and can speak by themselves. An artwork with
America, Who’s Who in American Art, and Who’s no rich visual content and clear message won’t
Who among American Teachers and Educators. His be able to impress viewers to keep coming back
works hang in many private and corporate to visit it again and again. A powerful and
collections in Taiwan and the United States. meaningful artwork can last forever.
Chin-Cheng Hung
Besiege pastel 28” x 72”

Animosity pastel 36” x 63”

Chin-Cheng Hung
Infatuation
pastel
52” x 24”
Chin-Cheng Hung
Michelle
McEwen Michelle McEwen – a writer living
in Bloomfield, Connecticut – always
has her head bent down in some
book. When she isn’t reading,
she’s scribbling or doing
something poetry related on
http://theblacktelephone.blogspot.com/
Sucker

Gwendolyn Lee was the first Coffeyville girl
to pay daddy any real attention. Any weekend
you could find them on some corner downtown—
holding hands. The Thomasville boys, his bunch,
made fun of him for this. Real Coffeyville girls didn’t
hold hands—they started at the good stuff. No one
ever really intended to make a Coffeyville girl
their main girl—except maybe Coffeyville boys
who were no match for the boys of Thomasville. Even
on the football field, the Thomasville boys
outshined them and their girls took notice— would do
anything to be able to jump down from the bleachers, lean
against the fence and holler out the name
of a Thomasville athlete, but
they’d never be a main girl— they’d get taken
to the prom, they’d get shoved in the river and
not complain, but they’d never be able to say they made it
out of Coffeyville on account of a Thomasville
boy. Daddy says he was one of the first
in Thomasville to fall hard for a Coffeyville girl. Sucker,
they called him, but he didn’t mind because
to him Gwendolyn Lee was just the sort you hung on to— maybe
married. What did he want, he said, with a girl
whose mind was always on crossed legs
& Sundays? Those were Thomasville girls for you
and Thomasville girls did not impress him— they were
made to impress mothers and fathers and aunts. Gwendolyn Lee,
he said, didn’t care how she looked eating a peach.
Michelle McEwen
Jelly
My cousin Darren is determined
to tell me about who my mother really is—
who she was before the twins took

over her belly, rushed her
into marriage. The wedding:

Sunday clothes, court house & a witness.
Darren thinks my mother should have been

a Soul Train dancer— bets
the camera would’ve zoomed in

the most on her. Even the light-
skinned, long-haired women would

have been jealous, he says. He has
a video tape, which I have yet to see,

of my mother in little yellow shorts
and white boots knee-high— claims

at one point my mother drops
to the ground, then hops right back up

as if her body was jelly. I wish
I could have known her like this— loose

as jelly and not all-the-time-worrying
Michelle McEwen
about whether James will like the meatloaf

she put in his lunchbox for work. Uncle James
got the tame Sarah, my cousin says and he

means it— knows and holds on to what he saw
that afternoon when a sweet-talking-old-flame came

bursting through the door— high or drunk or
both. Darren will never forget, he says, the butcher

knife my mother pressed up against that man’s throat.
Michelle McEwen Jelly

July
The baby came
home in July—
right in the middle
of summertime;
just in time
for kitchen flies &
butterflies & wild
blueberries for
the pies that never
get made because it is
too hot to bake, too hot
to be messing around
with some oven. Look how
everything’s ripening, how
everything’s melting—
just like the butter
left out all day
on the counter. Da
says we can’t afford
to let butter melt. Ma says
it’s just butter—
and the falling out
begins, will last
all summer. Da always loses
his cool in July; gets hot-
blooded when he can’t sleep off
the heat. Makes like
he’s smoking no more; says
Michelle McEwen
it’s a breeze
being cigarette-less
and a father now
of four girls. But
there is never a breeze,
it seems like, in July—
and there is never ever enough
shade. Ma could use a maid,
but we don’t have
it made, so she keeps
a tight hold
on the four of us
because
the boys on our street
can’t wait for us to get older.
Michelle McEwen July

Even on Sunday
The Thomasville girls, on Monday,
were already planning what they’d wear
on Sunday. The Coffeyville girls, even
on Sunday, just threw on any old
thing. They leaped into creeks
and waterholes with the boys— didn’t mind it
when their hair drew up from the water.
Gloria-Jean was one of these
girls out of Coffeyville, father says,
who’d let you. For change for a soda,
you could un-tuck, unbutton, unzip, feel up
on all the Coffeyville girls and for that,
on prom night, the Thomasville gym
would be filled with them. Thomasville folks
joked, said who needed city women
when you had Coffeyville— where
the girls didn’t think twice before climbing
up trees and into backseats. Those girls
were something else: part-boy
the way they slung rocks and ducked
just in time, but all girl when it counted—
when it mattered most who’s boy
and who’s girl.
Michelle McEwen
O& S
P O R T F O L I O
LANE TIMOTHY
Lane
Timothy
www.lanetimothy.com
www.lanetimothyprints.com
Lane Timothy grew up in Missoula,
MT, and is a self taught artist. At the
age of 11 he sold his first painting
and at the age of 21 he had his first
sold out show. Lane’s nostalgic work
is acquired by many well known
collectors, and he finds one of his
biggest challenges is keeping up
with demand. His work has been
featured in numerous magazines,
and his paintings have graced the
covers of American Traveler, Skywest
Airlines and American Art Collector
Magazine among others. Lane
Timothy’s art is represented by
Waterhouse Gallery in Santa
Barbara, CA, Bonner David Galleries
in Scottsdale, AZ and Peterson Cody
Gallery in Santa Fe, NM.
“I spend most of my time researching and
daydreaming of stories I can tell through my
work. My vintage figures are reminiscent of
an earlier more innocent time, while my
composition and color pallettes are very
modern and contemporary. I love the
challenge of trying to marry both styles.”
American Dreamer oil on canvas 48” x 60”
Cadillac Blues
oil on canvas
60” x 40”
The Bare
Necessities
oil on canvas
60” x 48”
Departure
oil on canvas
60” x 48”
Eye Of The
Beholder
oil on canvas
48” x 36”
Solitude
oil on canvas
48” x 36”
Boys And Their Toys oil on canvas 48” x 60”
Learning The Links oil on canvas 48” x 60”
Eye Catching oil on canvas 36” x 48”
My Girl oil on canvas 30” x 40”
Patiently Waiting
oil on canvas
36” x 24”
Will She Say Yes
oil on canvas
48” x 36”
STRANGE TRADES by Kristy Odelius

REVIEW BY STEVE HALLE
Shearsman Books, 2008, 92 pages, ISBN-10:

1905700849, ISBN-13: 978-1905700844
Recently viewing David Lynch’s film “Blue Velvet,” I found myself

caught up in thinking about the famous scene Roger Ebert took offense to, in
which Isabella Rossellini’s character Dorothy Vallens is dumped naked on
Detective Williams’s lawn. Even though Ebert objects to Lynch’s alleged
mishandling of Rossellini, his female lead, this scene is crucial to the film
because it brings together the disparate worlds the main character, Jeffrey
Beaumont, straddles—the normal world of suburban Lumberton and the
seedy underworld of gangsters, kidnappings, and sadomasochism. In a way,
Kristy Odelius’s first full-length collection of poems, Strange Trades, finds itself
examining its terrain by straddling two worlds a la Lynch’s Beaumont in “Blue
Velvet,” and this Tiresian situation/situating fuels many of the resonant poems
in Odelius’s collection.
Looking firstly at the poem from which the collection draws its title “We
Make Strange Trades,” from the book’s second of three sections, readers
discover the title’s “we” is a stand-in for poets or makers, as we find out who
might trade “Stomach for knuckle” or “‘L’ for ‘P’”. Later in the poem, the
collective “we” is traded for the first-person “I,” and readers get a taste of
what the poet-speaker has given up and received in return:
I trade my fear of death for fear

of breath and puzzled, I end up with both—
some morning in a classroom
whisper, we’ll find out what we got.
Having fear of both death and breath situates the poet-speaker

between life and death, an irremediable betweenness. Only another’s
“classroom whisper” knows the trade’s outcome.

In the first part of the book, “It’s curtains, ars poetica,” the speaker has
set us up for the fulcrum poem “We Make Strange Trades” by showing us a
courting of death: “Is this why I stand at my oeil-de-boeuf, / blowing sugar
bubbles at that guy / in the snazzy black hood?” Again, death and life are
straddled, mixing bubble blowing (breath) with the black-hooded man
(death). The title’s curtain, too, separates or prevents the bubbles’ attempt to
connect life and death via the oval window or eye. The “oeil-de-boeuf” of
an apartment above a cityscape precedes “window winks [of] a sea-
drowned cabin” later in the poem. The final stanza, then, brings readers a
sea of allusion: “On the dock, faded gray paint / suggests “submerged rock”.
// Underwater, you there, you hear?” Odelius offers a connection to Wallace
Stevens, who she incessantly echoes and reinterprets, by reinventing the end
of “Crude Foyer” (“At last, there, when it turns out to be here”), setting
speaker on the dock to connect with aforementioned location of speaker at
window. The “faded gray paint” failing to prevent the ship, with its cabin
window, from sinking, leaving the speaker to call after the separated self or
selves, simultaneously there submerged and “here” on the dock. “It’s
curtains, ars poetica” also echoes the situation of Robert Frost’s “Neither Out
Far Nor in Deep”and Lucille Clifton’s use of the homophonic “hear” and
“here” at the conclusion of her poem “at the cemetery, walnut grove
plantation, south carolina, 1989,” both allusions further complicating what’s
being done in this poem.
The “faded gray paint” from “It’s curtains” also presents an important
connection to betweenness running throughout Strange Trades. The color
gray reappears in “The Virgins of Chicago (3),” a five-poem series all sharing
that title, which presents the mythical virgins as tradespeople who “work
nights at ‘Federal Screw / Products.’ They like welding, / sweating and
wearing / gray aprons.”Again the speaker is not exactly of the virgins, rising
above them in an elevator only to later fly in a helicopter “an octave / below
the shareholders.” This situation again puts the speaker between, only this
time its between Chicago’s wealthy, the shareholders and businessmen (its
STRANGE TRADES BY KRISTY ODELIUS

mercantile traders), and its Sandburg-echoing, big-shouldered, blue-collar

workers.
Color finally gets the reader somewhere, or does it? In the final poem of
the book “Ineffable Green Thing, Loved by All” the reader gets more Stevens
(see “The Man on the Dump,” see “Dutch Graves in Bucks County”) as the
imagination and truth, or singularly “What we see we think we see” get
characterized in this poem and “wakes up and climbs the dunes” and
“cloud-gazing” then “become[s] entranced by glare and a proper saint
sighting.” The past, which Stevens denies being part of the present, affects
Odelius’s poem differently as “The past pages the horizon, a world of real
weather.” Odelius infuses Strange Trades with the color red (her virgins are
redheads, for example), only to arrive at an idea of green, “the nostalgic
green toy in the window,” among the “dunes,” the “Mojave landfill.” Yet the
weather is real, not red as in Stevens’s “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock,” and
the suggestion is that we be “very predictable, very translatable, / meaner,
past due.” And the imagination and truth, the “real” and “inevitable,” get
eschewed for the struggle of betweenness, the thought that any or all of us
can be “meaner, past due” to stave off inevitability.
Odelius presents us with an eminently readable collection of poems.
Strange Trades both surprises and pleases with its melopoeia, wordplay, odd
juxtapositions, and prettiness, in the best sense of that word, upon first
reading. Influenced heavily by Stevens, Rosmarie Waldrop, and Robert
Desnos, Odelius entrenches herself in the lineage of poets that mingle
attention to image and language with philosophy, which offers resonant
possibility through multiple readings. In Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” the mystery of
the opposing worlds is rectified, and Jeffrey Beaumont, intimate with both,
finds a resolution in the normal, real world. In Strange Trades, however, Kristy
Odelius does not provide readers an easy resolution, and her poems preserve
mystery rather than offer ready-made answers, giving readers a both instead
of an either/or. Trades can be made, sure, but outcomes remain unsettled,
unresolved.
STRANGE TRADES BY KRISTY ODELIUS

Alex
Rodriguez
www.itsajackal.com
Q&A
Alex Which artist/photographer do you coffee shop, sit down with my

admire or has had the biggest iPod, quad mocca and sketch
Rodriguez influence on your work? book and draw. I can’t draw at
There are 2 famous artists that home, too many distractions. I
is a pizza slinger influence my art every time I don’t have a tv, but the computer
draw. Andrew Wyeth, “the helga is a vortex of time. Warcraft is my
with delusions of pictures” is my bible, and patrick art’s biggest enemy.
nagel, he’s the foundation of my
grandeur. He’s a portraits. it’s all about the lines. it’s
Which three other artists would
amazing how nagel can convae
freelance artist, you consider to be your
shadows with lines. the thing i love
contemporaries?
about wyeth is how a body of
doing portraits of Tony roman, brian christopher,
work can be centered on one
and mike marsh. Three guys I went
subject. artists have “muses” but i
to high school with. Two of them
friends and have yet to see an artist that has
are best friends. I’d be full of it if I
done such an intimate portrait of
said anyone famous. although i
clients. Born in a single subject like “the helga
think those three guys do some
pictures”.
stuff that can go toe to toe with
Cuba and raised some of the poeple out there.
How do you feel about formal
in Miami, Alex training?
I think formal training is great. I How does your environment
currently resides wish I had it. I’d be alot better. I influence your work?
honestly feel like such a joke Well, I moved from Miamia’cause I
in Seattle with his without it. I’m always jealous when was drawing less and less, and it
I look at one of my best friends’ was driving me insane. When I
faithful flying work,a’cause I think “if i actually moved to Seattle it was like a
stayed and worked hard in flood gate. My art also became
squirrel Zoe. college, i’d be doing work as more organic. Then when I lived in
good as him,” and if another best California, for a bit, i started
Like Zoe, he’s friend went to art school he’d be thinking more abstract, but I think
off the charts. I’m hoping to go that was more to do with the
constantly flying back to school in the near future. friend I was living with. But not that
i’ve gone away from Miami, when
from one place to Do you have a ritual or specific I go back it’s become more of a
process you follow when place I get some of my ideas, but
another. creating art? that again is due to another
My biggest ritual is going to a friend.
apnea
pencil,
watercolor,
photoshop
9” x 12”
Alex Rodriguez
kayden
pencil,
watercolor,
photoshop
9” x 12”
Alex Rodriguez
Alex Rodriguez kelly mechanical pencil, photoshop 6” x 7”

Alex Rodriguez jaz sneakerpimps pencil, watercolor, photoshop 14” x 14”

Eileen R. Tabios’
publications includes
16 poetry
collections, an art
essay collection, a
poetry essay/
interview anthology,
and a short story
book. Nota Bene
Eiswein (Ahadada,
2009), her most
recent poetry
collection, extends
a unique body of
work for melding
ekphrasis with
transcolonialism.
Recipient of the
Philippines’ National
Book Award for
Poetry, Ms. Tabios
also edited or
co-edited five books
of poetry, fiction and
essays released in the
United States. She
writes the poetics
blog, “The Blind
Eileen R. Chatelaine’s Keys”

at http://chatelaine-
poet.blogspot.com,
Tabios
edits the popular
poetry review
journal “Galatea
Resurrects” at
http://
galatearesurrects.
blogspot.com and
steers Meritage Press
(http://
meritagepress.com)
from St. Helena, CA.
Roman Synopsis #5
I could be happy in Alphabet City, buildings crumbling around my
notepad. [Auden said you can’t write a poem about dropping a bomb.]
She shows him the run on her stocking, and fails to see how his eyes linger.
[In the rose bush, a yellow bud opens.] The fat dog is shedding hair on the
sidewalk and observers are buffeted by the choice between focusing on
its fur or its distended stomach. [He wears a hat emblazoned with a yellow
happy face, the symbol for Local Government Official aka Tour Guide In
Search Of Tips.] Now I understand why some barkers call Oliver Stone
un-American. [When you reach the edge of the Black Forest the glade
moves away and, once more, behind every leaf a stinger lurks.] With an
impassive face, I reply before walking towards an open window framing a
nude moon with an absolutely stunning belly, That’s why Billy serves hors
d’ouevres. [I ripped a page in a beloved book of poetry and wondered
whether the act was truly inadvertent.] When I stepped on pine cones,
the soles on my feet recoiled but my smile never slipped. [They long had
wished to arrive in the same bed, but it was unexpected when it
occurred.] I heard the beat of wings during a migration. [He said he tore
up a skyscraper.] Dangling from his chest, the baby plays with his beard. [It
will be a familiar gesture, judging by the scuffs.] Once, she summoned
sufficient energy to fix him a martini as they stood in a stranger’s
penthouse, an entire city blazing its lights through tall, wide windows. [The
kids have painted their noses yellow to mirror, they say, “kittens with flue.”]
I confess to being unable to empathize with Shakespeare’s appreciation
of Titus Maccius Plautus: perhaps “greatest comic” is like “giant shrimp”?
Eileen R. Tabios
Roman Synopsis #7
I could be happy with your hand on my waist as you try to identify the
scent hollowing my throat. [The tears huddle around a bonfire.] Her lapis
lazuli blouse evokes a Mediterranean summer and I think, How nice. [A
poet finally looks up, another birth concluded.] He looks at me as if I had
spoken my question. [The bicyclists steal because they have
transportation, a Mr. Something nearby adds as he gropes himself for
additional emphasis.] Someone is insisting, “But, that’s a far cry, Mother
Jones, from calling Oliver Stone ‘commercial’.” [On every path a branch
waits for your step.] Billy is deaf but insists on serving hors d’ouevres. [Have
you noticed how stuffed animals often look wise?] Roy, my twin, ignored
me—to this day his indifference leaves me breathless, stunned. [He has
never placed his lips on my forehead, even most momentarily.] It
transcends the feminine gesture. [Consolation defined as the bat never
reappeared]. She totters on ice despite thick ankles. [By his face, one can
tell he’s about to deliver the boot.] He has a gaze like a mirror. [There is
nothing like an infant tugging on a daddy’s white whiskers.] “Sulpicia, a
Roman woman writer, wrote elegies in Latin that had been attributed to
Tibullus.” [Whatever. True love is never chaste.]
Eileen R. Tabios
Karen
Hollingsworth
karenhollingsworth.com
“I love to create paintings
that evoke a sense of the
familiar. To blend the
common objects of
everyday life, placed
within the interior of a
room, with a glimpse of
the ocean or mountains,
through an open window.
My ‘windowscapes’ are
intended to provide the
viewer with a sense of
solitude, and well being.
A comfortable world
bathed in sunlight and
cool breezes from the sea.
For me, a painting is
successful if I wish
I were there.”
Karen Hollingsworth knew from a young age that she wanted to be an artist. But it
wasn’t till her mid thirties that she could devote herself fully to studying art. For many years
she focused on portraiture and has several portrait awards to her credit. Later, while
concentrating on painting still life’s, she suddenly decided to add a chair into the composition
and from that day on, she has been intrigued with painting room interiors and windowscapes.
The combination of painting rooms, including the view of oceans and mountains from the
windows, has allowed her to combine her love of painting interiors, still life’s, landscapes and
sometime’s even birds into one painting. That way every painting stays interesting and
exciting. Her work can now be found in galleries across the US .
Q&A
How do you feel about formal training?
When I graduated highschool in 1973 and wanted
If you knew your time was up what would be the
last image you would leave us with?
Probably, a portrait of my husband and my cats.
Selfishly, so the last image I had in my head were
to study art, it was a difficult time for artists all the details of their beautiful faces.
interested in pursuing realism. Most formal art
programs discouraged realism in favor of other How does your environment influence your work?
more contemporary styles. I was disappointed with The biggest environmental influence on me is
the focus of the art schools I had access to, and sunlight. When I walk through my house, and I see
decided to change my field of study completely. how the sunlight lands here and there, and
I ended up in science, and then to be practical, a transforms ordinary things into the most beautiful
degree in Nursing. I didn’t go back to art school till things, my toaster, a pair of jeans on the floor.
I was in my thirties, and realism had started to make And of course chairs and tables. I’m mostly a
a comeback. I always loved to draw faces, and homebody, and really have to force myself to
decided to focus on studying Portraiture, which I travel, but as you can tell the ocean affects me
did. With a well known Atlanta Portrait artist, Nancy greatly, as do all animals, the sky and land. So I
Honea, and that training made a huge impact on have to travel to the ocean at least twice a year.
my portrait work, as well as overall composition and I have a beautiful park near my home, and I try to
technique. But at some point, I had to turn my back walk there every day weather permitting. I get
on any training and let my heart choose what and inspired watching the clouds, or the way the
how to paint. I say, learn how to handle the treetops flow in the breeze. I also try to spend
medium of your choice, with any instruction you some time each day meditating. I find the most
can find, then quick as you can, follow your own incredible inspirations can happen during
style and passion. meditation.
How do you bring emotion across to a flat surface? Must there be a statement with each creation?
I think most of the power from a painting happens Maybe, not necessarily a statement that you can
in the composition. For me that is a combination of put in words. But a strong image can impact your
the story, or narrative, played out in beautiful lines whole being, and make you change the way you
and colors. see the world in just a moment.
Karen Hollingsworth Deep Breathing oil on canvas 36” x 48”
Karen Hollingsworth Overcast oil on canvas 40” x 40”
Karen Hollingsworth Symmetrical oil on canvas 40” x 40”
Karen Hollingsworth Annie’s Place oil on canvas 36” x 60”

Sean
Patrick
Hill
Sean Patrick Hill is a
freelance writer in
Portland, Oregon, where
he earned his MA in
Writing from Portland
State University. His
poems appear or are
forthcoming in Exquisite
Corpse, diode, In Posse
Review, Willow Springs,
RealPoetik, New York
Quarterly, Copper Nickel,
Taiga, Weave, Juked, and
Quarter After Eight. He
is a regular blogger for
Fringe Magazine.
theimaginedfield.blogspot.com.
When This Rose Parade Burns

maybe then you’ll stumble on an undying understanding
of why the Panhandle hung on
to its cherry trees. To its mortgaged plows. To rusted floats.
To sock puppets stuffed with dirt. To horses blind as Homer.

To hymns written on sandpaper. One afternoon is enough
to know why black widows prefer outhouses.
Break a widow’s web, it tinkles like glass. The bombers had sights
with crosshairs strung with such vicious gossamer.
Ask the pilots and they’ll tell you, We had no idea
that kid was in the barn, carrying so much spoiled milk.
Sean Patrick Hilll

When This Drift Fence Burns

no need to hold the weather to its lines.
Snow allowed to scatter allows everyone to sleep
in the barn at night, the doors unhinged.
Without roads or open range. What is significant

enough to tie the map in place. To desire
to map at all. What drove cartographers to the rotten bottle.
Spindle and lathe, fulcrum and task. Survey markers

nailed to crucifixes. You are right, I’m sure—
the self tires of itself, the way a drift fence
can only view the world askance.
Sean Patrick Hilll

A Different Vantage:
Wade Reynolds and The Figure As Landscape
‘Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another’s universe
which is not the same as ours and see landscapes which otherwise have
remained unknown to us like the landscapes of the moon. Thanks to art, instead
of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as
many worlds as there are original artists.’ Marcel Proust (1871 – 1922)
Wade Reynolds has been painting

from life for over a half century, and while
other elder artists have settled to
concentrate on successful subject matter as
their careers advance, Reynolds seems
determined to visually inspect the world until
even the most microscopic elements of
what his eyes encounter are described in
light and color, meticulously recreated with
his deft sense of structure, composition and
the effects that light absorbed or reflected
define.
Long respected for his portraiture of
famous and ordinary people, his dramatic
figurative art as well as his subtly glowing still
lifes and his images from intimate gardens to Figure as Landscape 1
vistas of water in nature, Wade Reynolds
elected to devote a period of time during the figure that invite the viewer into the
this century to wed his experiences of personality of the model –eyes, faces,
observation in a series of ten paintings expressions, interaction with props - and
collectively called The Figure as Landscape. instead discovered a manner of plinth or
Henri Matisse said ‘What interests me support for the figure that suspends the
most is neither still life nor landscape, but the need for focusing on any surface except
human figure. It is through it that I best the molded configuration of the body as a
succeed in expressing the almost religious receptor and reflector or absorber of light.
feeling I have towards life.’ For Reynolds, In Figure as Landscape 1 the male
his familiarity with the human figure, so rich model is viewed from behind, the upper
in specific details, and his view of the natural portion of the flank and the buttocks
world offered the opportunity to redefine resemble those glimpses of mountaintops as
how we look at the nude figure. Selecting the sun rises. Similarly in No. 2 only half the
ten models, both male and female, he female form reflects the light source while
succeeded in subtracting those elements of the remainder of the ‘body’becomes the
incidental features of the doorways returning to the
surrounding landscape. In figure as figure. The body is
No. 3 Reynolds has included becoming a mirror of the
glimpses of the personal landscape as the light and
aspects of the male model shadows define it.
but only in the sheer curtain of Though Wade
shadow as a passing cloud Reynolds is not the first artist
might obscure. Similar uses of to repeatedly paint a subject
body form in Nos. 4 and 5 until the possibilities of
allow Reynolds to spread light variation seem exhausted
and shadow as on a range of (think Monet’s water lilies,
hills, while in Nos. 6 and 7 he Thiebaud’s San Francisco
pulls our attention to the streets), but there are few
Figure as Landscape 2 ground surface, finding artists who at the peak of
perspective and incidental their careers celebrate the
configurations of more simple basics of their craft –
complexity – still defined light and dark and the spatial
solely by light and shade. We relations they create –with
do not see these models as the skill and sense of
individuals: we see them as discovery as we see in this
‘bodyscapes’ or landscapes. series The Figure as
The final three Landscape.
paintings in this luminous ‘Only in men’s
series, Nos. 8, 9, and 10, seem imagination does every truth
to be pulling Reynolds’ find an effective and
attention back to the figure undeniable existence.
as a figure, or more acutely Imagination, not invention, is
involving the viewer’s eye as the supreme master of art as
a return to the reality of the of life.’ Joseph Conrad (1857
model while still projecting the – 1924)
Figure as Landscape 3
quality of
incorporating
the nude figure
as being at one
with the
landscape: we
begin to see
folds in the
covering of the
plinths as well
as back
reflections onto
corporal details
such as the
breast, the ear,
the axilla –now
Figure as Landscape 6 Figure as Landscape 9
Jane
Varley
Jane Varley has published
poems and reviews in
literary magazines, and
she is the author of a
memoir, Flood Stage and
Rising, published by the
University of Nebraska
Press. She has a Ph.D. in
poetry and creative
writing from the
University of North
Dakota, and she is an
associate professor and
coordinator of creative
writing at Muskingum
College in Ohio.
Her travels to Iceland
have inspired her to write
poetry again after a few
years’ hiatus. “I find that
northern climates give me
clear thinking and acute
perceptions of what it
feels like to be alive on
this earth.”
International Travel
In the night before, fear comes, that old bed visitor.
You sweat through insomnia—you can feel movement
of blood inside your body, and your parts feel out of place.
Is that your heart beating in your throat?
There is the suitcase you worked on.

Clothes that can be layered, imagined in weather and culture.
You have the essential pair of carefully selected shoes.
The shoes. Pressure point of body against earth,

sturdy, long-range. Black is the color,
black volcanic rocks, black as the imagined place you go
when you think you can disappear.
Jane Varley
The Ice Fishermen

I love the fish houses,
plywood and particle board,
tarp-draped and hammered,
bobhouses wheeled across the lake.
Some are expensive, made from
good wood or metal,
like that one that fell through,
a palace of the deep.
You hinge your doors

on wooden floors
and auger holes into the ice-ceiling.
Fix your hooks with smelt and minnow,
and feed the lines into darkness
with no fear of what happens
in the underworld.
Silvery shapes flash at the bottom
like the sharp sudden lightning
of a dream.
Oh Fishermen, invite me in!

At twenty below I see you
snow tracking over the frosty road
to a private city of shanties.
I can picture the interior.
I’d like to try this business
of dropping hope into the shiny waters
to see what comes back
through the perfect circle.
Jane Varley
Beautiful Arrangements
One misty afternoon in November
in a basement office on campus,
I recited Stevens to no dramatic effect,
all the poetry lost in my rote repetition, no poetry
in my voice but a wishful thought for the poetry
of sitting alone, in front of the window at home
where I cried for beauty and the freezing wind
cut through the aged window pane.
Line by line I pronounced “The Idea of Order
at Key West,” words I had filed like exact
and obedient soldiers of fortune. That winter
I chewed sunflower seeds and worked a jigsaw puzzle
of a landscape scene, all those dusky pieces
that seemed alike. I searched for the ones with
the gold and white, the easy ones,
to make the dogwood tree and mustard-
colored weeds. Winter deepened and we hung
plastic over the windows to keep the outside out
and inside in, thick plastic with a bit of luster,
stretched and blurring, making abstract
and interesting the looks of the world.
Jane Varley
Greed
I want to play
basketball and golf,
ride my bike in the mountains,
hard on the uphill,
fast going down.
I want to cut grass
and weed the garden.
Sweat. Walk the dog.
Be with the dog
in the bright field by the river.
Be the dog. Eat grass
and lie in the sun.
Run to my companion.
Frolic. Paw the tiled floor.
Stretch and strip to my bare
human flesh and become
unmuscled, lax.
Do you know,
lover, partner of
my body, all that I crave?
My greed.
To find evidence
of love in us, bone to bone
and flesh, flesh and
bone, I live inside
this body, with you.
Jane Varley
The Bells of Akureyri

No one will find me here, standing still
with a whole world of young mountains,
the sea not broken into shape or song,
arctic terns angling the sky.
As the bells of Akureyri close down the afternoon,

we drive on, even further, crossing the shallow fjord
to the village where a furnace takes in
damp rectangles of peat.
Why do the gods in our hearts do this?

Bring us out and turn us free?
Rattling around, mismatching our lives.
I can hear them inside laughing, urging me on.
The river. I will go and sit by the river,

inspect the gray-white layering
of water, mountain, snow, and sky.
It is a daguerreotype of the mind.
Jane Varley
A Collection Of Favorites, 2008

Reviews By MICHAEL PARKER
MATCHING SKIN by Shirlette Ammons

(Carolina Wren Press, 2008)
Matching Skin, one of this year’s most fascinating book titles, is also Shirlette
Ammons sophomore book of poems. I had never heard of Ammons until receiving it
from Carolina Wren Press. I immediately realized what a pity it all was -- that I missed
out on the vibrant voice and the intriguing stories surely present in that debut.
Matching Skin is an absorbing collection patched together in four parts.
Introducing Matching Skin is the gloriously written preface “The High Un-Lonesome of
Shirlette Ammons,”written by the poet Nikky Finney. And it is this preface that acts like
a grand soliloquy – it sets the stage for us to know her past, her qualities as a human
being, and her skill as a poet. More significantly, it establishes a measurement for what
we can expect when Finney closes her remarks, exits, and the stage is given up to
Ammons to carry us through to the end.
What is the “high un-lonesome,” you ask?
Well, Finney first describes the “high lonesome,” which is a back-country
“twanging guttural octave” type song. Specifically, it is a “sorrow song that sizzles out
of the tops of long leaf and yellow pine; a sound that celebrates hard times; good-
bad love, and the razor-sharp edge between the old ways of living and the new....[it
is] sad, depressed, maudlin, reclusive, sequestered, estranged, forsaken, forlorn,
[etc.]”
Ammons is not the “high lonesome,” Finney unabashedly explains. Rather,
Ammons’ poetry is the “high un-lonesome,” which consists of impressions such as
secure, emotionally-trenched, and tethered.”
And perhaps at its core, Finney seems to explain, exist the still fresh footprints of
history – “you hear the smooth slide of African feet, walking, dancing, and sometimes
running for their lives, without shoe the first. You hear harmonica solos and the irregular
meter of holiness praise houses.”
Finney is accurate. We are entreated with narrative and song, spoken and
sung, with the vibrancy of today and the echoes of her heritage.
In the section “Ain’t No Shame,” Ammons speaks to themes familiar to her
back-country upbringing –the community, the family. She takes on the wealthy and
the bourgeois. Her language is the type you might hear in the streets, homes,
churches, and back-country fields and forests of the middle-class, the poor, and the
simple country folk, singing in the melody of reality and veins of hope needed to
make it to the end of hard times.
I wrote earlier about Finney setting the stage for us, especially in regards to
describing characteristics. Adjectives that came to mind as I experienced Ammons’
poetry: self-assured, spunky, speak-it-how-it-is, don’t-ya-pity me, street-smarts, wise,
prophetess, rap-star, bra-burning feminist, witty, clever, powerhouse, and
commanding. In fact, I felt an empowerment in her narrative voice as powerful as a
hurricane and a self-assuredness the width of the Bible Belt States.
Also within Matching Skin are poems penned to many of the greats we sense
have been mentors to Ammons: Gwendolyn Brooks, Amiri Baraka, Grace Palley, and
even an astoundingly witty “Do the Funny”for Dave Chappelle.
Matching Skin ends with the section “John Anonymous.” It’s a title rich with
meaning and could be the theme of an extraordinary, fully fleshed-out, article. It also
is the title to the accompanying CD included with the book; and the concluding song
on that CD.
Long before I placed the CD “John Anonymous” in the CD player, I read the
poetry section of the same title with the greatest passion. Reading the poems “Ain’t it
(A Shame),” “Juju Man,” “Looking Glass,” “Tattooed Smile,” and “John Anonymous,”
were joyful experiences. They are full of various rhythms with beats and soaring
melodies. But for someone like me, who has never yet had the opportunity to see or
listen to Shirlette Ammons perform her work, I joyed in her vocal abilities, singing and
rapping with such soul poured into the music enraptured me. The male bass vocalist
for “Ain’t it (A Shame)” transforms Ammons poem into a classic black spiritual. It’s the
heart of the entire CD. In all, the messages woven throughout this John Anonymous
(both on page on in music) resonate with me profoundly. I cannot stop listening. I
cannot stop hearing them and aching for them when that need to touch that inner-
soul strikes.
There is yet another accolade paid by Finney to Shirlette Ammons that I not
only echo but I magnify it to the level of celebration: “[Ammons is] a young poet
intent on rolling hard on the back roads until the road ends or something new begins
or the hurricane hits.” In other words, Ammons is going to be a driving force in the
weave of American poetry, interpreting the stories and visions she experiences on the
“back roads” and “hurricanes”of life until there are no roads or hurricanes left to
interpret.
It’s a pleasure to introduce my favorite list of 2008 with Matching Skin

HESITANT COMMITMENTS
by Pris Campbell
(Lummox Press, 2008)
INTERCHANGEABLE GODDESSES,
by Pris Campbell and Tammy F. Tremble
(Rose of Sharon Press, 2006)
In his poem “Beyond Pleasure,” from his National Book Critics Circle Award-
winning collection of poetry, Refusing Heaven, Jack Gilbert describes the worth of
good poetry: “Poetry fishes us to find a world part by part.../to give us time to see
each thing separate and enough./ The poem chooses part of our endless flowing
forward/to know its merit with attention.”
Undoubtedly, when I read Jack Gilbert’s poetry and his thoughts here on the
raw intentions of poetry, I always turn to the poetry of Pris Campbell. In Campbell’s
poetry exist narratives that embody these raw intentions. What is it to “see each thing
separate and enough”? Simple. To have within one’s skill the thoughtful, gentle
awareness of the minute “parts” of the vast whole. Campbell has an amazing insight
when it comes to seeing the “whole” of the human experience – the aptitude she has
for interpreting the human, whether it be physically reading their movements, their
expressions (intentionally displayed or not intentionally), or their simple (sexual) and
complicated (conjoining of hearts) relationships.
In Hesitant Commitments, Campbell courageously turns inward to interpret for
us the images of the lost lovers and meaningful affairs of yesteryear (and the affairs
not so meaningful but needed in order to soothe the ache of loneliness, or, as
Campbell describes them, “black holes”).
Campbell takes us on journey’s to the romantic Greek Isles, where her loves are
Odysseus and she is Cleopatra; Rome; Paris; the European continent; London; and
New Zealand. And in all of these moments of significant connection, Campbell
reveals her heart – that she was always searching for “paradise,” “redemption”, being
at the “last blink of innocence”, the sadness to be drawn out of the shadows, and to
“see the face/ of her true love reflected in the one panting/ above.
Hesitant Commitments is a significant work. Some might considerthis brave.
Because Campbell suffers from the debilitating disorder CFIDS, Campbell’s poetry

could easily wallow in the more maudlin, romantic notions of aging with grace. But
Campbell gives us amazing stories and images seemingly right out of the mind of Mrs.
Robinson, a soul whose passion, longing, and sex-drive is at its peak and not willing to
let the reins of time pull or control her. Because she is the one in control! And neither
does Hesitant Commitments feel like an elegy or funeral pyre. Campbell writes these
in the tone of celebration.
The joint chapbook “Interchangeable Goddesses”by Pris Cambell and Tammy
Trendle also became a beloved collection after listening to The Jane Crow Show
interview in June (2008). In this collection, both poets poignantly address themes of
womanhood, love, marriage, motherhood, and life. But if I might focus on Campbell
again, I stress how adept her skill at depicting the human condition so keenly and
thoughtfully. Her work really shines and warms. Whether she is writing about her visit
with Eleanor Roosevelt, the ghosts of her dead soldier brother, the memories of lovers
of year’s past, the ravaging effect of CFIDS, or the old woman across the street
dancing alone in the night, Campbell’s insights hint toward a wise and humane soul
who’s forever opening doors for us to walk through.
Again, Campbell is engrossing – how she masterfully develops a fully-breathing
depiction of a person, dynamic enough to enrapture me, capture my attention, and
also my heartstrings. For Campbell, this skill comes easy because she knows the
intricacies of life and the important lasting impressions of connecting.
Echoing Gilbert again, Campbell has the gift of sentience and the
understanding of human behavior that equates with knowing the “endless flowing
forward” of life. We are very fortunate to have her beautiful narrative voice and
poetics becoming recognized.
TIME & MATERIALS by Robert Hass

(HarperCollins, 2007)
Robert Hass is a noted translator and teacher at the University of California at

Berkeley. He served as poet laureate for two years in the mid-’90s. His latest work, Time
& Materials is winner of the National Book Award of 2007 and the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry
2008.
It is not an uncommon trait for editors and publishers to seek out poetry and
voices that challenge them, structurally, thematically, or otherwise – work that has the
feeling of now written all over it.
With this in mind, I introduce to you Time & Materials, the first collection from the

esteemed Robert Hass in nearly a decade.

Hass’ narrative poetics can appear at first glance so nondescript and un-
challenging that the unseasoned or impatient reader may not venture in. After all,
some of Hass’objects for his poems are of the I-see-them-daily variety: the dawn, a
tree, a field mouse, the interior of a house, the eating of cucumbers, birds, and the
color red. Hardly enchanting, you are thinking.
In “The Problem of Describing Trees,” Hass hints about enchantment in poetry:
“It is good sometimes for poetry to disenchant us.”
What does he mean by this? Is he speaking of subject matter or structure? And
what about the art of “enchanting” or being challenging? Does poetry have to
enchant us to be relevant? It is not my intent to answer these questions in this review,
though I’ve been thinking about them for weeks. But I will say that the need to be
enchanted seems to come from the mind of an amateur. I say this holding as
evidence Hass’ collection, where, it is true, the desire to enchant is his furthest intent.
For this astutely, masterful Time & Materials, his penchant to take the seemingly
mundane conversation, event, or scene and treat it with such poetic skill is,
undoubtedly, nothing more than enchanting to experience. It’s like sitting in tutelage
of a master at work at his most brilliant.
But let me expound, if you would allow me, on Hass’ masterful skill at writing
about anything, even a tree. Because possibly it sheds light on the nature of the poet.
Consider Hass’interview with PBS.org after receiving the Pulitzer Prize, in which Hass
defended the importance of writing about “anything”:
JEFFREY BROWN: By implication, there are limits to say anything.
ROBERT HASS: Yes. I mean, there are two ways of saying this -- or there
are a million ways of saying this. One way is to say what Wittgenstein
said, language philosophy in the early 20th century, “The limits of my
language are the limits of my world,” which I don’t think is quite true.
And the other is to say what Ed Wilson, the environmentalist and

entomologist, biogeographer said, which is that every species lives in its
own sensory world and, at some point, it dawns on you that you just --
we don’t have a language for what would be the experience of a tree
or, for that matter, a fox or a robin. So...
JEFFREY BROWN: So much of your work is about trying to examine or

describe things like that. And I think I can understand the problem of
finding the right words or any words.
But what I am not sure I understand -- and maybe this is what

distinguishes poets from the rest of us -- is, why the need to describe
trees? What is the burden on you that you must come up with a way to
describe the world?
ROBERT HASS: My mind goes straight to my dear friend and mentor,
Czeslaw Milosz, who...
JEFFREY BROWN: Great poet.
ROBERT HASS: ... great poet, and he was born in Lithuania in 1911. And
he lived through much of the worst violence of the 20th century in
Europe. He lost so much that I know -- I came to understand about him.
One of his poems begins, “Reality, what is it in words?” I came to

understand about him that he’d lost so much that he felt like everything
he didn’t get down -- if he didn’t get it down, nothingness won, you
know?
JEFFREY BROWN: If he didn’t get it down into a poem...
ROBERT HASS: Yes, nothingness won. He had this sense that, if art doesn’t
somehow preserve our memory of the gift of life on Earth we’ve lost, so
something like that.
So there you have the purpose of writing about the mundane and un-
enchanting – “to preserve our memory of the gift of life.”
If anyone dare look upon Hass’ work and call it droll narrative or “nothingness,”
well that is their prerogative. But I can attest that within Time & Materials are
ruminations on various images and themes that are fleshed out concisely, expressively
and with language that is a treasure. Specifically, Hass introduces us to expansive
landscapes or solitary landmarks or object (familiar and unfamiliar) in locations as far
away as Berlin, the border of North & South Korea, Mexico, and Thailand, and as close
as the forests of the High Sierras and the California coast line. And in these locations,
he raises themes that analyze art, war, man’s inhumanity, nature, life, and

relationships.
As a final note, the sleeve to this timeless collection adds an exemplary quote
from the New York Times Book Review that evokes my exact sentiments: “It has always
been Mr. Hass’aim to get the whole man, head and heart and hands and everything
else, into his poetry.”
This mission statement hardly could be considered by a poet not in full
understanding of his craft and the importance of the art.
* PBS interview can be read in its entirety at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june08/
poetry_04-30.html
PLEASE by Jericho Brown

(Western Michigan University, 2008)
The word “please” is employed to enhance or soften the sincerest of requests.

“Please”, when spoken, is called forth with a cold-cocked and drawn out desperation
for assistance, for consideration, or for understanding; heart and reputation is seen
weighing down its back. In truth, “please,” is an expression offered with emotional
gravity –that the hearer will understand the offering, consider it, and in some regard,
reply with allowance or acceptance. It’s upon these thoughts that I introduce Jericho
Brown’s stunning and passionate collection “Please,”a work of poetry that at its core
are pieces of Brown’s life narrative that he offers to the reader on the outreached
palms of his hands.
To Brown, life has been a long song full of dichotomy: abuse, empowerment,
love, violence, longing, fulfillment, lust, relationship, confusion, clarity and self-
acceptance. It’s the song of a not-so-easy family life and the realization of his sexual
orientation.
In the sections Repeat and Pause, there are images of abuses and the inner-
battle for self-acceptance: “father’s leather belt;” “the braided belt;” the
grandmother rubbing his sister’s neck so hard with a washcloth that she draws blood;
the narrator feeling as vulnerable as an “open field;” to name a few.
From the poem “Pause,” we get a sense of Brown, as the narrator, trying to
escape:
If they ever heard of slavery,

the work song – the best music

is made of substraction,
the singer seeks an exit from the scarred body
and opens his mouth
trying to get out.
His desire to transcend this past is most apparent in “Prayer of the

Backhanded.”
Not the palm, not the pear tree

Switch, not the broomstick,
Nor the closest extension
Cord, not his braided belt, but God,
Bless the back of my daddy’s hand
Which, holding nothing tightly
Against me and not wrapped
In leather, eliminated the air
Between itself and my cheek.
Make full this dimpled cheek
Unworthy of its unfisted print
And forgive my forgetting
The love of a hand
Hungry for reflex, a hand that took
No thought of its target
Like hail from a blind sky,
Involuntary, fast, but brutal
In its bruising. Father, I bear the bridge
Of what might have been
A broken nose. I lift to you
What was a busted lip. Bless
The boy who believes
His best beatings lack
Intention, the mark of the beast.
Bring back to life the son
Who glories in the sin
Of immediacy, calling it love.
God, save the man whose arm
Like an angel’s invisible wing

May fly backward in fury

Whether or not his son stands near.
Help me hold in place my blazing jaw
As I think to say excuse me.
In the last section of the book, Power, Brown’s poetry is written with songs,
vocalists, and musicals of yesteryear making up oxygen of their atmosphere.
Experiences are enhanced with the sounds of Minnie Ripperton, Diana Ross, the
Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, Janis Joplin, Luther Vandross, Natalie Cole, and
Danny Hathaway. But these are not so much tributes as they are realizations that
Brown and his lovers are the representations of these singers as they grope and
spread and climb and join and “give in to [the] mouth/tongue and not bite.”
It’s in these poems in which Brown’s poems are most powerful and passionate.
In closing, two last points: 1) Brown’s poetics throughout “Please”are as fine-
tuned as a professional. And 2) I appreciate poetry that crosses the border of surface
emotions and gives us poetry that exhibits emotional depth, integrity, and sincerity,
despite the effects. “Please”is a very courageous work, probably one of the most
courageous in my memory.
KEY BRIDGE by Ken Rumble

(Carolina Wren Press, 2007)
Susan Sontag, in “The Art of Fiction” interview published in The Paris Review
(Issue 137, 1995), explained that the writer is “someone who pays attention to the
world.”
Sontag’s remark comes to mind when I consider my review of Ken Rumble’s
Key Bridge. Rumble uses the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Washington, D.C. as the
backdrop and symbol around a collection of date-titled poems that address themes
of race, street-life, sex, drugs, death, family-life, and growing up in Washington, D.C.,
the city of contrasts: houses the federal government, welcomes millions of tourists, and
yet has continually through the years struggled with high poverty rates.
Key Bridge captures, with the eye of an insider, all of beauty and ugliness of his
experience with the city. But not only do I love Key Bridge for its poetics, but for
Rumble’s unique repetition of phrases and his syntax, which helps accentuate the
narrator’s internal conflict with the subject matter at hand.

HITLER’S MUSTACHE by Peter Davis

When I first saw Peter Davis’ book Hitler’s Mustache, two disparate thoughts
came to mind: the audacity and how ingenious. And I determined that Davis’ work
would have to meet two criteria: 1) the content within these poems could not in any
manner deflect, ridicule, or lesson the severe gravity of the horrors, brutality,
inhumanity, atrocities, and genocide of Jews during the dominance of Nazi Germany.
Nor 2) could the collection, in any manner, be an apologist of Hitler’s nature and
actions.
Upon opening the book, I quickly noticed Davis’ callout to Elie Wiesel’s quote:
“But when later we evoke the 20th century, among the first names that will surge to
mind will be that of a fanatic with a mustache.” And I immediately gloried that Davis
chose a quote in which the name Hitler wasn’t even used, as if it were an intentional
choice to never mention the name again.
And Hitler’s Mustache never failed the criteria I set forth. In fact, the contrary
was the case. Davis’work is every much a hilarious fixation on the square mustache in
general as it is social commentary on the utter absurdity of everything Hitler/Nazi and
everyone Nazi/Hitler. And Davis clearly spotlights this in the very opening poem:
“Hitler’s Mustache: The List of Facts.”
“Hitler’s mustache is a cancer....

Hitler’s mustache does not believe in peace, has contempt for the law, does
not respect university professors, ....turns up its nose.”
Any student of this historical period would catch the correlation of these
characteristics with the early days of the Nazi Party in pre-holocaust Germany. Davis
continues:
“Hitler’s mustache begins something, loses track of it, starts something else but
forgets what, moves on to something else. All the while, killing Jews....
Hitler’s mustache pulls strings for certain elevators, levers for certain pulleys, ,
cables for certain women, triggers for certain bullets, ripcords for certain threads,
latches for certain trapdoors, zippers for certain ovens.”
In all, there are 76+ poems that all begin with the phrase “Hitler’s Mustache:”. A
sampling of titles looks like this:
Hitler’s Mustache: The Mustache is a riddle, except it can’t be answered

Hitler’s Mustache: The Punk Band

Hitler’s Mustache:Of All the Possible Face Fur
Hitler’s Mustache: The Short Story
Hitler’s Mustache: The Basic Situation of the Clandestine Mustache
And to prove my point that Davis ingeniously uses this form of satire to scrutinize
Hitler, I”m leaving you with these sections of poems.
1
“You are aware of the fur trade
and the killing of animals. You know
things you wouldn’t tell the police.”
(From “Hitler’s Mustache: The Basic Situation of the Clandestine Mustache”)
2
In the Mustache Museum of untrue truth,
I think of dead soldiers tying neckties with pinky fingers,
and the shriveled faces in mass graves that are not discovered,
and the fecal-impacted colons of German mystics,
all dreaming of super-humans.
All the clawed Fascists are ashamed to seek medical attention.

Their wounds swell with infection,
pussing to be healed.
Therefore,
in the middle years of the twentieth century,
one dome of flesh grows, and one upper lip tussles wildly
with the fur latch on this small, black trapdoor.
(From “Hitler’s Mustache: Mustache Begins in Martin’s Ferry, Mustachio”)
3
....
[A] mustache says to the bartender, “I’m bored, can I have a drink made of
something other than boredom?” The bartender gives him a drink made of mustache.
The...mustache says “What’s this? I’m not a cannibal!” And the bartender says, “Well,
you look like a mustache to me.”

....
What’s the difference between a mustache and a black hole? A black hole
isn’t attached to your face and growing from your face pores.
....
(From “Hitler’s Mustache: The Jokes”)
Davis employs a wide range of poetic structures to build this truly incredible
narrative about the most controversial mustache in the history of the world. The poet
Nin Andrews called Hitler’s Mustache “refreshing,” “surprising,” and “innovative.” I
might add: “undeniably memorable,” “poignant,” “amazing,” “historically relevant,”
and “furiously good fun.”
UNRAVELING THE BED by Mia Leonin

(Ahinga Press, 2008)
Reviewed by Michael Parker in the Cuban-American issue of MiPoesias, March 2008.
In the poems, stories, and even the spoken word of Unraveling the Bed, the first
collection from the Cuban-American poet, Mia Leonin tackles the highly arduous task
of interpreting love.
Under the auspices of love, Leonin specifically highlights desire, longing, and
the sexual connection. She also stunningly analyzes sub-themes such as love as
service; love as the religious experience; and love as the brilliant chameleon set
against the fierce play of love – the joy and peace; the hunger and longing; the
sacred act and the shared meal; and the magic and the miracle.
Poetry can read like a great river. This collection, on the other hand, is more
intimate and vital: it is like a heartbeat. Here is a joyous collection! And here is an
impressive poet whose star just may be rising into a more prominent space of sky.
FEAR, SOME by Douglas Kearney

(Red Hen Press, 2006)
Reviewed by Michael Parket in the first issue of Oranges & Sardines, July 2008.
Douglas Kearney’s writing is an explosively energetic and hypnotic style that

mixes moments of self-examination and societal analysis in a flight of words, screams,

and apparent songs. Yes, linger awhile in these poems and you sense you aren’t
reading Kearney as much as sensing he’s performing a full-cast play somewhere
behind the text.
Kearney’s poetry depicts a society always at diverging tides, in flux, not ever
comfortable with who it is or what it wants to be. His references to and reflection of
the past, idea of the now, and vision of the future never crosses emotional or
sentimental lines. It’s straight-forward – this is how it was and what it is, and how it will
be –based off of a predictable causal framework. Yet, his voice doesn’t preach.
Discovering Kearney at this time seemed fate, as many of his themes,
especially those speaking to race-related issues - the strokes of the heart beating
behind his words - are the same themes beating in Senator Barak Obama’s
magnificent speech on race relations in America in February 2008.
One can never divorce themself from their personal, familial, societal, or
heritage past. Like Peter Pan’s shadow being stitched to the sole of his foot, our past is
stitched into our soul. Kearney walks with his past as if he’s walking with a wise mentor,
gleaning what needs to be gleaned, then interpreting it for us, for our time.
Near the middle of Kearney’s extraordinary poem “The Poet Writes the poem
that will certainly make him famous,” a extraneous work that addresses his muses, the
slave trade, the multifarious abuses on the black man, and the sheer idiocy of how
the black performer was treated, Kearney interrupts his work with a seeming plea to
break down the walls of hatred and racism. It’s part call-down-heaven’s-power
Sunday sermon and part shake-the-foundations-of-the-earth gospel hymn.
Fear, Some is a collection of vibrant verse that is as much performance art (a
one-man play) as it is a work of immense historical significance on the past and upon
the time we breathe in. At its backbone are the dreams of the courageous, the
dreamers, and the activists that are ever prescient, timeless, and that reverberate in
any human with a heart. Kearney’s work is a storm of reckoning and awakening. In
this, we see the brutal ugliness of our treatment of others. But underlying this are the
echoes of the dreams of the greats of past and present. And they resonate in me –
knocking wildly around the rafters of this heart!
GOD’S SILENCE by Franz Wright

(Knopf, 2008)
The last Franz Wright collection, Walking to Martha’s Vineyard, won him the

Pulitzer Prize. That was in 2003. God’s Silence is his first publication since that award.
One of the primary conflicts in literature and poetry is loneliness, a singular
sense that we are absolutely alone - no man knows my story, my sorrow. So we write
for understanding. We search for and write about the strings that connect us - that
universal connection that means that no matter my experience and no matter your
experience, I understand you. You’ve reached me. You’ve captured me.
God’s Silence is a collection that tackles this very internal conflict of having
connection, but analyzes it on the spiritual plane of the human soul connecting with
God. And this conflict of believing arises in part to the estrangement that we feel from
God, because of the silence. This is the core of Franz Wright’s work and it breathes
with mystical manifestations of faith and adoration at one moment, being self-
deprecating another moment, and then being courageous to even express his own
struggle with doubt, despair, and addiction at other moments.
Rising from the pages of God’s Silence are the refrains of a haunted soul trying
to come to terms with all of the contradictions of his faith, personal trials, and more
poignantly, the seemingly loud silence from the God he seems so intent on hearing.
This theme is most evident in the jarring reality behind his own revelation: “I have
heard God’s silence like the sun.”
Though Wright wrestles with the demons of doubt and physical trials, he
counteracts this with poems and insights full of hope. In all, the themes, the continual
search for meaning, faith, and even redemption – structured under Wright’s
compassionate perspective – transcends the tide of genre-like religious poetry.
To me, Franz Wright steps onto the same plane as R.M. Rilke and shows he is the
voice that can circle around the concept of God and do it convincingly, sincerely,
and realistically, as proved in the line: “Proved faithless, still I wait.”
I adore poetry that resonates in me long after I shut the book and walk away;
that haunts me while falling into dreams. This is effect many of the works on this list
had on me, but Wright’s poetry followed me into my dreams and rattled around in the
back of my head in my days.
I have selected God’s Silence by Franz Wright as my favorite poetry work of the
year.
* If you released a collection/chapbook last year and your publisher didn’t send me a copy, get in
contact with me either through O&S or personally.

Rachel
Constantine www.rachelconstantine.com
“I seek qualities of repose, balance and visual harmony in my

compositions. These delicate and elusive traits could never be
achieved without a dedication to depicting each situation’s
unique and distinctive quality of light.”
Rachel Constantine was born
in Philadelphia in 1973. She
discovered her passion for portraiture
early on, and the desire for academic
figurative training would lead her on
an adventure that would culminate
in 2003 with a certificate in Painting
from the Pennsylvania Academy of
the Fine Arts, where she graduated
with honors. Since then, she has
participated in 20 exhibitions, won
three awards from the Woodmere Art
Museum in Pennsylvania and another
from Allied Artists of America in
New York City.
In 2006, Rachel was invited to exhibit

in Artworks Gallery at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art as the
local compliment to the Museum’s
blockbuster exhibition: ‘Andrew
Wyeth: Memory and Magic’. Her
work can be found in The Vivian O.
and Meyer P. Potamkin Collection in
the Pennsylvania Academy of the
Fine Arts, and is featured in the new
hard-cover illustrated book Alla
Prima: A Contemporary Guide to
Traditional Direct Painting, written
by Al Gury, the chairman of the
Pennsyvania Academy’s painting
department.
Photography by Denise Guerin

the biggest influence on your work?
126
Which artist/photographer do you admire or has had
The painters whose works have inspired me most are

ORANGES & SARDINES
Q&A
own work that a piece’s success often rises and falls
according to the accuracy of it’s depiction. An
instructor of mine once said that in learning to paint
light, one learns to capture emotion, and I think that’s
undeniably John Singer Sargent and Cecilia Beaux.
Books of their paintings are always strewn about my true. So it’s through the subtleties of the way light
studio, ready for me to pick up and study whenever falls that essential things like tone and mood are
I get stumped in a piece. I’ve also always been a conveyed. And, on a more pratical level, I’d mention
great admirer of the early French Impressionists and that this is why I rarely use artificial light sources;
their influences on late 19th century American art. there’s a limitlessness about the color and range of
I’m fascinated by their economy of brushstroke, the natural light that artificial light just can’t reproduce.
attempt to say more with less.
As a painter who doesn’t subscribe so
How do you feel about formal training? wholeheartedly to the concepts espoused by
I happen to be of the mind that there are some modernism and postmodernism—or at least, I should
fundamental “rules” in painting, and that a say, isn’t particularly affected by them—I’d also
foundation in anatomy, color theory, perspective, art argue that the foundation of any solid painting is
history, etc., is very important. This might not be solid drawing. To my thinking, color in and of itself
entirely the case for artists who are either inherent does not make art. There’s form, function and
genuises or who paint more abstractly. But as a foundation there. It’s one thing to say something’s
classical representational painter, I’ve found formal beautiful—because there’s beauty in almost
training to be pretty inescapable. I’ve seen many everything, if you take the time to stop and really
young painters who eskew formal training and whose look hard enough—but it’s another to call it a work of
foundational mistakes—some easily correctable early art. So I tend to admire painters who are strong
on—become deeply entrenched. But there’s always draftsmen first.
a balance. I’m also not one to endorse endless
training. At some point one has to jump in and pick How does your environment influence your work?
up a paintbrush. To me, this is among the more interesting questions
to think about. Environment, of course, can be
Do you have a ritual or specific process you follow physical—as in locale, the place where you’re
when creating art? physically working—or emotional, that is the place
Like most artists, my projects are typically sparked by you’re painting from internally. The latter, as you
a particular quality I observe in someone (and less might expect, permeates every aspect of my art.
often, but occassionally, in some thing or some As I look back over my body of work, among the
place) that I feel compelled to try to capture and emotions that seem to stand out most is longing.
translate visually. I almost always paint people I And by that I don’t mean to imply depressiveness
know—even if it’s just casually—because I prefer to per se. It’s more so the human instinct to connect—
have that emotional connection going in. At the connection between the subject and the artist, the
same time, my paintings don’t necessarily aim to be subject and the viewer, but also between the subject
“about” the person I’m working with; it’s the and something larger, something metaphysical,
characteristic of the individual that I try to use as a I suppose.
vehicle to express larger concepts. Typically, I’ll bring In terms of physical environment, I’m frequently torn
a subject into my studio, try my best to get them to between my own instinct to flee for newness and
relax and not “model,”and then photograph them in what I’ve come to appreciate as an advantage to
an attempt to achieve a specific pose that speaks to “soaking in” one’s surroundings over a longer term.
me. I try to have as few preconceptions as possible Having lived—and painted—in Philadelphia for the
at this point, because my whole goal is to capture a better part of my life, I’m always surprised by the
“found moment.”Once the pose is set, I bring the constant possibility for new subjects. And I’m
model back for sittings, as needed. humbled by the legacy of a painter like Andrew
Wyeth, who spent all of his 91 years in nearby Chester
How do you bring emotion across to a flat surface? County, and whose paintings betray a profound
For me, classical painting is all about light; I find in my sense of physical and emotional place.
Rachel Constantine
Rachel Constantine Dove oil on canvas 40” x 36”
Rachel Constantine Michaela charcoal and graphitie 22” x 30”

Rachel Constantine Pause oil on canvas 30” x 30”

Rachel Constantine The Sculptor oil on canvas 30” x 30”

MOM’S CANOE by Rebecca Foust

REVIEW BY MELISSA MCEWEN
Texas Review Press, 2008. 30 pages.
Go ahead…aspire to transcend
your...roots.../escape the small-minded tyranny
of your small-minded Midwestern
coalmining town./But when you’ve left it behind you
may find it still there, in your dreams
your syntax, the smell of your hair...
— from “Altoona to Anywhere”

And in your poems!

In Rebecca Foust’s Mom’s Canoe, from the first poem to the last, the
reader is “back home” in the Allegheny Mountains of western Pennsylvania as if
he were born there, too, and going back home for a visit — that is how vivid
Foust’s poems are in this chapbook. Rebecca Foust was born in Altoona,
Pennsylvania and grew up in a small town made up of coal mines and
farmland; she now lives in Northern California, but it is as though she never left
western Pennsylvania. Sometimes one has to leave to appreciate “back home”
and understand that “back home” shapes you and makes you who you are and
if you are a poet, it will find its way into your poems, eventually, even if you
“aspired to transcend...[and] escape...[it].”
In Mom’s Canoe, Foust falls back comfortably into her native town, even
though, sometimes, times were hard. And she does not explain things that may
be unique to her town, as if you are an outsider, stopping over to pay her a visit,
instead she expects you to know; she is reliving with you, as if you were an
inhabitant. And after reading Mom’s Canoe, you will feel as if you were. You will
know of:

[the]...thick smoke from the papermill
all day and night...
— from “Things Burn Down”

...the men…[and how]/their coats
exhale wet wool and wood smoke,/their feet
beat a work boot tattoo; laid off,/laid off, laid off...
— from “Allegheny Mountain Bowl”
[the]...beer/served on an unfolded Altoona Mirror. Not damask...

— from “Things Burn Down”

[the]...cottage down in the Cove
—mildew and wild roses,
thick vines choking/everything...
— from “Once was a River”

“And if you understand, you won’t have to ask” about Mom’s canoe;
you’ll listen as if you’ve heard the story before, but not how Foust tells it, and
you’ll nod in remembrance:

Do you remember your old canoe?
Wooden wide-bellied, tapered ends
made to slip through tight river bends
swiftly, like shadow…/Remember how it glowed like honey in summer...
— from “Mom’s Canoe”

You’d go back to him...
your swaggering.../second husband.../How could you
after he blackened/your eye,
dumb-bitched you
and wrecked your canoe?
— from “Backwoods”

Overall, Rebecca Foust’s chapbook, from page one to page thirty, is
a strong compilation. The poems in here can hold their own in any literary
journal or anthology. Mom’s Canoe, to me, is the epitome of what a chapbook
should be.
MOM’S CANOE BY REBECCA FOUST

poetsandartists.com
Front & Back
Cover Art by
Lane Timotny
www.poetsandartists.com

O&S April 2009

Written by

Copyright:

Available Formats

O&S April 2009

Written by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

O&S April 2009

Written by

Copyright:

Available Formats

O&S

VOLUME 2 ISSUE 2 APRIL 2009

008 Beth Edwards

018 Kristy Gordon

038 Christopher Arigo

042 Jeff Danley

052 Chin-Cheng Hung

090 Eileen R. Tabios

093 Karen Hollingsworth

098 Sean Patrick Hill

104 Jane Varley

102 Wade Reynolds

Short Story Contributor

110 A Collection of Favorites, 2008

131 Rebecca Foust

For submission guidelines and

Wonderfully Wild Woman Writes Winsome Wisdom:

Review By GRADY HARP

but my life is enormous. Huge

heart. Who knows

when you take into account all

nipples, sweat glands, furs, aortas, pins.

the latest newly extinct

gone. There’s room.

hieroglyphics) of all the unions

There’s no way out of this one, Sam.

That’s what they call a “nation.”

and turkey baster

and artificially inseminate the black

TOMORROW’S BRIGHT BRACELETS

Winter lungs are white trees.

Put a silver ribbon in your hair.

What would the gift-givers say if they saw us now?

And when you are home: Open

Wonderfully Wild Woman Writes Winsome Wisdom

“I wish to depict human situations without

Hot Dog! oil on canvas 32” x 38”

Happy Day oil on canvas 32” x 38”

Summer oil on canvas 42” x 60”

Lucky Lad oil on canvas 40” x 60”

Grace Notes Claudia Emerson

Grace Notes Claudia Emerson

even when the to Rita Mae Brown: bookshop. The

Grace Notes Claudia Emerson

Which artist/photographer do you

Heavenly Shades of Night

Heavenly Shades Of Night Are Falling

Heavenly Shades Of Night Are Falling

“Horace,” Ethel finally inter- ignore them. They’re just yakking to

Heavenly Shades Of Night Are Falling

midway’s entry, and when Sis spotted for having no head.”

Heavenly Shades Of Night Are Falling

Heavenly Shades Of Night Are Falling

“You’re too late,” somebody He liked to say that if any greaseball

Heavenly Shades Of Night Are Falling

Heavenly Shades Of Night Are Falling

“You ever seen a chicken Little Pruitt pulled three cups

Heavenly Shades Of Night Are Falling

Heavenly Shades Of Night Are Falling

Sis thought she might fly out of her landed.