Moon Pie Musings

Ruth and Ted Bookey

2006-09-24T07:27:00.000-07:00

Ruth and Ted at Augusta's lovely Senator Inn.
Ruth and Ted in the living room of their beautiful home on the lake (pictured with my partner, Harold Persing).

Ted and Ruth on their rightful throne as King and Queen of Central Maine's lively cultural scene.....

Ted reads at the Harlow Gallery in Hallowell.

Ted Bookey

2006-09-17T09:33:00.000-07:00

Moon Pie Press would like to congratulate Ted Bookey on his interview at the new website for Maine Writers, Writer’s Gambit:
http://www.writersgambit.net/TedBookeyInterview.htm

The website also features three poems with SOUNDFILES so you can listen to Ted read them online. This is a wonderful way to experience Ted’s poetry, which is fantastic on the page and even more superlative in his presentation:
http://www.writersgambit.net/poetry2.htm

Ted, as I have mentioned in an earlier entry, is someone I consider a mentor and role model as well as an indispensable friend. I am tempted to ascribe to Ted and Ruth the mantle of surrogate parenthood, but they are, in the most important sense, much too young for that role. When you meet Ted and Ruth, you immediately sense a profoundly deep, fiercely loving and unconditional partnership, passion, and shared vision—a marriage of the sort most of us dream about but few achieve. They are more than happy to share their riches and entertain sumptuously and often. I call the warm and hospitable home they built together my “Rivendell”; last homely house in Middle Earth and refuge of the elves—an enchanted place, like the one Tolkien described in his books : “a perfect house, whether you liked food or sleep or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all” (The Hobbit). When I visit this special place, crammed wall to wall with wonderful books and an astonishing collection of art of all kinds—much of it Ruth’s originals—I feel immediately that my soul has sat down at a well-laden table for a perfectly delicious and utterly nourishing meal. A poetry group has met in their home for many years, and the magic seems to rub off, as some of our fine Moon Pie Poets are among the past or current participants: Jay Franzel, David Moreau, Darcy Shargo, and Ellen Taylor; our accomplished poet Eva Miodownik Oppenheim is his cousin.

Ted moved to Maine in 1980 from New York, where he taught English in public schools and at Long Island University. He and his beautiful, talented wife Ruth teach in the Senior Education program at the University of Maine in Augusta http://www.uma.edu/SeniorCollege/UMASC_Current_Offerings.html where they are also on the Board of Directors.

Ted is the author of three books of poems: Mixty Motions, published by Nightshade Press http://www.keystone.edu/NightShadePress/Publications.asp ; a book of translations from the German of Erich Kästner for Red Dancefloor Press (in collaboration with his wife Ruth), and Language As A Second Language from Moon Pie Press http://www.moonpiepress.com/books.php?BookID=2
(read the title poem at the above link, as well).

Ted's poetry, criticism and reviews appear in many journals and anthologies, including these two book reviews available online at the excellent literary journal, Poetrybay: http://www.poetrybay.com/winter2003/index_winter2003.html
http://www.poetrybay.com/summer2003/hard.html

Ted’s plays have been produced in Maine and off Broadway in New York City.

Ted is involved with so many cultural happenings in Maine I am certain there are many more than collected here but a few in which he has a hand are:
-The Live Poet’s Society of Maine http://www.offthecoast.com/home.html
-The Belfast Poetry Festival http://www.offthecoast.com/BelfastPoetryFest/T
-The Terry Plunkett Maine Poetry Festival at UMA, an annual weekend event honoring the memory of UMA poet and Professor of English Terry Plunkett.

Ted’s books are in the collection of the Maine State Library and he is featured on the Maine Poet’s Website: http://www.mainepoetry.com/mainepoets-p3.html
Ted’s poem “About Laughter in Poetry” can also be found here.

Ted and Ruth are long-time organizers, with Baron Wormser, of the readings at the Harlow Gallery in Hallowell. http://www.harlowgallery.org/About%20KVAA.htm
and many of our best Maine poets can be heard at these readings, paired with poets of national renown from all over the country.

Ted’s work has received much critical acclaim, including the following accolades:

On Language As aSecond Language, Ted Bookey, Moon Pie Press, (2004):

Baron Wormser, Past Poet Laureate of Maine: Bookey's poetry is exactly what poetry should be - irrepressible. At turns meditative and playful, he has his astute finger on the mystery of the human pulse. His language is scintillating, wry and overflowing with brio. His humanity is always palpable.

Acclaimed Poet Tony Hoagland writes: Great to have your as usual, sparky, true, full of heart human, with flashes of brilliance, always insubordinate new poems—they have the life-force too much poetry lacks, plus they hold it up. And a great title!

George Wallace, Editor of Poetrybay: These are fearless poems that dance on a tightrope of surrealism, with and irrepressible energy. The tone ranges from scatological to sacred. Like the women in one poem who would ‘spank the air like wet fireworks’ or else eat a frong instead of kissing it into a prince, these poems laugh at convention and punish the night like so many roman candles. Ted Bookey offers us mayhem, madness—and then the unexpected tenderness and intimacy of ‘His Beautiful Woman’, or the sobering moral reflection of ‘Kein Warum’. Handle with care—there is dangerous fun inside this book.

Ed Pomerantz, playwright and screenwriter: Language As a Second Language is pure pleasure….Bookey is in top form, particularly, for one, in the title poem and especially in Torture, With Eggs, my favorite, which isn’t only a grat poem, but a terrific short story and one act play as well! In this time of paralysis and despair, thanks for reminding me that the act of language and poetry really counts.

Dennis Camire, poet and reviewer for Animus: With Ted’s poems it’s impossible not to share in the joy he has in playing with language: creating aphoristic phrases, inverting syntax, and, ans Vivaldi heeds, “making the form work toward the meaning”. A poem, for this writer, encompasses more than the mere telling of an interesting story…. Read this wonderful chapbook if you want to know the heights contemporary free verse can reach and if you, too, yearn to “find a whole world in a mouthful of words.”

On The Selected Poetry of Erich Kästner by Eric Kästner, Ruth Bookey, and Ted Bookey, Red Dancefloor Press:

Tony Hoagland: The poems of Erich Kästner, in this excellent imperialist century translation, are as frank and bitter as strong black coffee, with much the same effect on the reader. Informed by a deep knowledge of human nature and social reality, keen-minded, observant, unpretentious, very conversational, by turns mercilessly realistic and empathetic, these poems speak in the very real voice of a man worth listening to. Kästner is our contemporary, and these poems come across perfectly in American.

Riva Berleant: Erich Kastner, up there next to Heinrich Heine, would be pleased to know that, finally, the message is available to us Amerikaners of the 1990s, translated with verve and love into a voice and language we need. Ted and Ruth Bookey know Kastner in all his moods: angry, ironic, pessimistic and profoundly empathetic with ordinary people.
Sean Thomas Dougherty:Widely hailed in Germany, Kastner was a political poet, a populist poet, one who spoke for those who can only "mutter" amid the loneliness that comes at 5 AM, the voices that haunt our sleep in the dim time before dawn and work and the gray day, and the bit of humor which helps one "get along." Translators Ruth and Ted Bookey offer to the American reader these satiric voices-across language and time as if to say to the end of our, "There's no way it can keep up this way / -if it keeps up this way".

You can read all of the enthusiastic editorial reviews of these amazing translations here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/1881168077/ref=dp_proddesc_0/104-3845610-2628722?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

Read more about Erich Kästner here: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/kastner.htm

On Mixty Motions, Nightshade Press, 1995:

Tony Hoagland: What lifts the poems themselves above the level of story is the linguistic energy, the active meditative intelligence that recurs in their zany but controlled orbitings…Bookey’s style disdains neatness and formality and gives us an intensity of testimony to the human heart and mind, and after reading so much cultured, careful, well-modulated poetry, this work is enormously refreshing. It has a keen mind, honesty, gusto, full language, emotional responsiveness and appetite; it cherishes human experience, but insists on not fooling itself; it draws upon different parts of the mind and psyche.

Here are two of my very favorite Ted Bookey poems:

HIS Beautiful Woman

What life is there, what delight,
Without soft golden Aphrodite. — Mimnermus (c. 650—c. 550 BC.)

You mean the one with the narrow hips?

—No, with the broad ones.

The woman he says is always the same?

—Yes, always same: always new.

The one he calls a woman for all seasons?

—Her seasons are warm, soft, moist, kind, clear.

The tea rose scented Modigliani thighs woman?

—Yes, who plants a garden in his beard.

Whose beauty he says she wears like it is natural?

—No, more like something she has earned.

Perhaps more like flower that’s won some sort of prize?

—Prize is, well, obvious is not quite the word—but yes.

With hair of a fragrance only of hair?

—No, rosaceous, curls about her, spanks the air like wet fireworks.

The woman he stares at when she leans toward the mirror?

—Yes, at twin smiles of her female bottom plump as scent bottles.

Otherwise he never stops what he is doing to just gaze at her?

—He steals side glances, at the movies, when they drive.

The woman he said he didn’t want first time he saw her?

—No, wanted her then. wants her even more now.

But she’s the one he never shows his poems?

—No, it’s for her he writes them.

*************************************
Torture With Eggs

Every night they snore the house down in their separate rooms

Sans respite & as if for spite & every morning my mother

& my father at breakfast & every morning she’ll ask him

What he wants & every morning he’ll say You know what

I want I want the usual & she’ll say it’s every morning

The same thing with you with juice & oatmeal & your

Sanka & your two toasts with the grape jelly

For God’s sake! you smell like Quaker Oats

Why can’t you ever try anything new & he’ll say Because it agrees with me

& she’ll say Well I don’t agree with you you’re always highly constipated

Every morning ou’re in there grunting it’s like someone’s killing a pig

& he’ll say Your fault you always forget to add the bran to my cereal

& she’ll say Maybe if you tried something new you would like it

& he’ll say I am not trying & I am not liking leave me alone

& she’ll say Oh, go ahead I don’t care it’s your stomach

Do whatever you like. I’m making you eggs.

& he’ll say You know some people might just call it being independent

Besides I know what I like & she’ll holler I am not some people

Maybe you are some people & no you do not know what you like

Supposing your oatmeal people went out on strike then what

& he’ll say Save your voice you win & she’ll say O please

Just don’t do me any favors & now he’s conciliatory

You said something about eggs make me an egg

& she’ll say But you don’t like eggs.

& he’ll say Yes I hate eggs eggs taste funny to me & she’ll say

Eggs taste funny to you? So can you chuckle while you eat

How would you like your eggs & he’ll say you’re the cook

You decideI can’t decide & she’ll yell it’s your belly

You want fried you want boiled you want poached

You want scrambled or maybe you would prefer it

Cracked over your head just tell me how!!

I can’t damnit stand it!!

& he’ll say OK you can fry me & she’ll scream

You want fried! O my God all that grease

Again the whole night you’ll be in there

Squealing like it’s someone murdering

& nothing to show for it after

I’m making you oatmeal

The same as I do

Every morning.

JOHN AMEN and THE PEDESTAL MAGAZINE

2006-08-20T06:26:00.000-07:00

This is my fabulously talented friend John. John publishes the gorgeous and exciting online literary magazine Pedestal Magazine http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/, which includes poetry, fiction, interviews, reviews, audio/video, an art gallery, a bookstore, classifieds, and a forum in which readers can share their thoughts.This is one of the most beautiful and well-organized literary websites I’ve ever encountered. I can’t begin to imagine the time and skill it takes to develop and constantly update such an ever-changing collection of fine literature and visual art. In addition, he did the work associated with becoming a non-profit, which means readers can now support this important work with tax-deductible donations, and he’s also applied for and received grants for the site, as well.

I asked John to say a few words about The Pedestal Magazine—what got him started on this path and what keeps him going. He replied: Regarding The Pedestal Magazine, I had always wanted to launch a literary review. I didn’t know about online literary magazines, though, until I began to encounter them in late 1999. I was immediately struck by the novelty of online publishing, the adventurousness of it, that it involved a kind of pioneering energy, and I was quickly seduced, if you will, to go in that direction. The first issue of Pedestal came out in December 2000. Not long after that, we went non-profit, enabling us to accept donations and apply for grants. We’ve published some wonderful poetry and fiction in 5+ years. The endeavor continues to be exciting and fresh…and challenging. In December, we’ll release our 6-year anniversary. I feel that the magazine has gone through several incarnations. My hope is that there are many more to come.

Did I mention that The Pedestal Magazine is one of the very few literary publications that PAYS its writers? More on The Pedestal Magazine from the excellent online publication The Drunken Boat:http://www.thedrunkenboat.com/pedestal.html

John has an article in Poet’s Market 2007. Since most of you certainly have purchased your latest Poet’s Market by now (or is it “just me”?), you will encounter this worthwhile piece.

Utne Magazine, one of my favorite magazines, reviewed The Pedestal Magazine. The review is posted on the website, and I’ve reproduced it here:

The Pedestal Magazine, Web site review--By Leif Utne, Utne MagazineDecember 18, 2002 Issue

Looking for a little literary respite from our usual diet of media and political news, we recently happened across ThePedestalMagazine.com. Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, this handsomely designed e-zine just completed its second year in publication, an impressive feat in itself for a free (and ad-free) professional web zine in the post dot-bomb era. Updated bimonthly, the Pedestal offers a rich array of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and visual art. The current issue (October 21-December 21, 2002) features a penetrating interview with Pulitzer prize-winning poet Maxine Kumin along with five previously unpublished poems from her forthcoming book Bringing Together: Uncollected Early Poems 1958-1988, due out from Norton in June 2003. Writers will enjoy the Pedestal's discussion forum, which has attracted an impressive community of scribes.--Leif Utne

John Amen is a poetic force to be reckoned with even apart from his magazine. His bio from his own website, www.johnamen.com:

John Amen is a writer, musician, and artist. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Christening the Dancer (Uccelli Press 2003) and More of Me Disappears (Cross-Cultural Communications 2005). His work has been nominated for various awards, including the Kate Tufts Award, the Lenore Marshall Award, the Oscar Arnold Young Award, and the Brockman-Campbell Prize. In addition, he was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in various journals and magazines, and he is featured in The 2007 Poets Market. His first solo music CD, All I'll Never Need, was released by Cool Midget in 2004. Amen travels widely giving readings, doing musical performances, and conducting workshops. He founded and continues to edit the award-winning literary bimonthly, The Pedestal Magazine.

An interesting interview of John can be found here:
http://www.radiocad.karoo.net/wah2/JohnAmen/JohnFeature.htm

His books have received the fine reviews they deserve, for instance, this review by C.E. Laine in Verse Libre Quarterly:
“In these poems, it is as though the reader holds hands with the poet, exploring observations, insights, and a deeply personal history together. Amen makes clear how one can study the same pattern or object in different lighting; he shows us how the shadows tend to shift. He puts on the coat of a storyteller, giving us narrative that doesn’t leave its imagery behind. In poems like “Verboten”, we glimpse something of Amen’s history, intertwined with events that marked the world forever, as we see the effects of the Holocaust in the unique cast of Amen’s light.” Read the complete review here:
http://celaine.com/content/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=124&Itemid=44

Read other reviews of this book here:
http://mainstreetrag.com/Reviews_2006.html
http://www.ravenchronicles.org/Reviews/reviewgailey5amen.html
http://poetrybay.com/Winter2006/review-o'donnell.htm
http://www.subtletea.com/collinkelleyjohnamenreview.htm

John’s first book, Christening the Dancer, from Uccelli Press http://www.uccellipress.com/ was a book I was avid to read as soon as it was published, since I had begun looking John’s poems up on the web and reading all I could find. His book was published to enthusiastic reviews, to which I add my heartfelt “amen” (uh, sorry, but it’s my blog).

"John Amen is...unflinching as he propels us into a visceral exploration of life, death, and what falls between...The best poetry tears through the toughest defenses to find its target, and Amen delivers with verse that resonates long after the book is closed." --Kimbra Martin, Small Spiral Notebook

Many more reviews of this book are linked to from here: http://www.johnamen.com/reviews.asp

John’s poems can be found online in dozens and dozens of online publications including the following:
http://www.albany.edu/offcourse/fall04/j_amen.html
http://www.thundersandwich.com/ts16/amen.html
http://www.poetrybay.com/winter2005/amen.htm
http://www.sidereality.com/volume1issue4/poemsv1n4/manicsummer.htm
http://www.2river.org/2RView/6_3/poems/amen01.html
http://www.2river.org/2RView/5_4/poems/amen01.html
http://www.threecandles.org/archive/jamen.html
http://www.thedrunkenboat.com/amen.html
http://www.niederngasse.com/magazine/poetry/amen_editor_issue.html
http://www.melicreview.com/archive/iss19/po_john_amen.htm

John’s books are available for purchase from his own website:
http://www.johnamen.com/books_writings.asp as well as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

John is also a songwriter and you can find out more about his music, hear clips, and order his CD here: http://www.johnamen.com/music.asp or here: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/johnamen

Did I mention he paints, too? See his vibrant paintings here: http://www.johnamen.com/art_gallery.asp You can see why this polymath megatalent is an artist after my own heart.

Baron Wormser

2006-07-30T05:25:00.000-07:00

Baron with Dawn Potter at MWPA event "Books and Blooms"

Baron and Jay Franzel at Geno's.

Baron enjoying a pre-reading beer at Flatbread's with Moon Pie Poets David Moreau and Jay Franzel.

Baron Wormser is such a friend to Maine Poets, to Moon Pie Press, Stonecoast MFA Program, and to students of poetry everywhere. At Moon Pie Press, we consider Baron one of our "patron saints". I've collected some links to help you read more about Baron and sample some of his poems, but I hope you will buy his books and attend his readings.

Barons' bio:

Baron Wormser is the author of seven collections of poetry: The White Words; Good Trembling; Atoms, Soul Music and Other Poems; When; Mulroney and Others; and Subject Matter (Sarabande Books, 2004), and a chapbook, Carthage. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of journals, including The Paris Review, Sewanee Review, The New Republic, Harper’s, and Poetry. He has also published, with David Cappella, two guides for writing teachers: Teaching the Art of Poetry: The Moves and A Surge of Language: Teaching Poetry Day by Day. He co-directs the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching http://www.frostplace.org/html/conference-teaching.html and directs the Frost Place Seminar in addition to being on the faculty of the Stonecoast MFA program. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and was the winner of the 1996 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry. He served as poet laureate of Maine from 2000 to 2006. He lives with his wife Janet (a fine artist and absolutely delightful, brilliant, and lovely woman!) in Hallowell, Maine.

Here is Baron’s Stonecoast profile, which includes a statement of his teaching philosophy:
http://www.usm.maine.edu/stonecoastmfa/faculty/wormser.html

Here’s a nice interview with Baron, from the BUSINESS section of the Portland Press Herald (poets are not often found in the Business Section; more’s the pity):
http://business.mainetoday.com/shoptalk/060427wormser.shtml

Another good interview, “We Don’t Know Where a Poem Comes From”, can be found here:
http://www.interpoezia.net/magazine.php?author=50

Several of Baron’s poems can be found here, along with information about his books, and some good photos:
http://www.mtphiloinn.com/gallery/baron/indexold.html

CARTHAGE:

Four poems from Baron’s amazing book, Carthage, are here:
http://www.nthposition.com/carthageandairplanes.php
and two more can be found here:
http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_5.1/poetry.htm

Stephen Dunn writes of “Carthage”: From the outset we recognize "Carthage," Baron Wormser’s replica of a president befuddled by events he’s helped create, yet cognizant enough to know that he can exercise enormous power….Through his droll and deft mediation and orchestration of effects, Wormser has imagined for us a man who’s a frightening mix of power and banality.
You can order “Carthage” here:
http://www.janestreet.com/press/

LISTEN to Garrison Keillor read Barons poem “January”, from “Mulroney and Others”, here, if you scroll down to January 14th:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2006/01/09/index.html

“Mulroney and Others” is available here:
http://www.booksite.com/texis/scripts/oop/click_ord/showdetail.html?sid=5325&isbn=1889330396

And, of course, Baron’s books are available from Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=br_ss_hs/103-8891309-5527825?platform=gurupa&url=index%3Dblended&keywords=Baron+Wormser

Better yet, buy or order them from a local independent bookstore such as Longfellow Books in Portland or Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick.

Information about his forthcoming NEW RELEASE from University Press of New England, the beautiful memoir “The Road Washes Out in Spring” is here:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~upne/1-58465-607-7.html

Baron will be the feature of one of the excellent Portland Public Library Brown Bag Lunch presentations in November, speaking about and reading from “The Road Washes Out in The Spring” :
Wednesday, November 01, 200612:00 pmBaron WormserThe Road Washes Out in SpringPortland Public Library Brown Bag Lunch SeriesPortland, ME207-871-1748

A nice discussion of Mulroney & Others here:
http://www.brucebawer.com/ordinary.htm

An excerpt from the gorgeous essay “The Woods: A Meditation”, published in Agni.

http://www.bu.edu/agni/essays-reviews/print/2005/61-wormser.html

More of Baron’s poetry, reviews, and discussions about Baron’s work can be found on the following websites:

http://washingtonart.com/beltway/wormser.html
http://www.poeticvoices.com/Reviews/0012Wormser.htm
http://www.sewanee.edu/sreview/Wormser104.3.369.html
http://www.versedaily.org/journeytotheeast.shtml
http://boards.multicity.com/servlet/BoardServePage?action=7&expand=1&boardid=953357435&pg=1&sessionlanguage=EN&msgid=6

Baron, we at Moon Pie Press salute you! We thank you, and we love you.

Keep on doing that wonderful work, writing, teaching, speaking out against governmental idiocy, and opening hearts everywhere.

ROBIN MERRILL

2006-07-15T06:28:00.000-07:00

Meet Robin, a HUGE favorite in the spoken word scene of Maine and a radiant, multi-talented woman who lives to make the world a better place and have fun doing it!

Robin's life has been and continues to be full of adventure. When I met her, she was a pilot on the Great Lakes, and spent the months when everything was iced over writing and performing her poems. Somehow she managed to start a poetry journal (with her good friend Heidi) AND to obtain her MFA degree from Stonecoast.

Robin once did a midwinter reading tour of the East Coast, sleeping in the back of her trusty purple pick-up truck. Thanks to Robin, many wild young poets have named their notebooks Jolene.

ME & JOLENE

gonna buy me a notebook
nothin' fancy
no psychedelic reflective covers
or wolves dancing on moons
not even the kind with pockets
just a notebook from walleyworld
(was $1.78, now 98¢)
I'm gonna call her Jolene
and I'm gonna take her everywhere
fill her every line
with wise and clever verse
me and Jolene are gonna
change the world
and when she's full
I'm gonna send her
to those pretentious academic assholes
who say there's no room in the world of poetry
for us barnyard imbeciles
and somehow
somehow
Jolene's gonna prove 'em wrong

--Robin Merrill

Robin's feet are now planted on terra firma full-time. She is a newlywed, teacher, publisher, still a consummate performer, and great friend.

Several of Robin's poems have been selected by Garrison Keillor for Writer's Almanac, including this amazing poem:

Out Here

I know why he killed himself.
You know, the old man
who spent thirty years
trying to break out of prison
and his last two
aching to get back in.
I know him, how he missed
that cold comfort of gray.
I too, have seen colors be scary.
I know why he carved his name
in the headboard at the boarding house
before he swallowed the stolen pills.
For thirty years they barked his name.
He hasn't heard it since.
After living the same day over and over,
regimen and routine,
now he wakes without schedule.
There are no friends here.T
here is no family.
He left all of that behind.
Though he didn't know it then,
prison gave him purpose.
It's lonely out here.

You can hear the poem read by Keillor here: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2005/11/21/index.html
and read how it was used as a sermon illustration here: http://unitytemple.org/services/sermons/2005/HavingFaithinPrison.htm

Later the same week, Garrison featured TWO more of her poems from her Moon Pie Press chapbook, Laundry and Stories.

My Dead Daughter

Every spring
my dead daughter spraypaints
PLEASE DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE
on the road where she died.

My dead daughter has a flute
at the grammar school
for kids who's parents can't afford
a flute of their own.

My dead daughter
sends fifth graders
to art camp
every year.

This year
instead of marching with them
my dead daughter is helping
send her classmates to college.

My dead daughter's
changing the world.
************

I always turn the radio

off
when I stop at the
stop
sign
by the white cross
where you died

I always turn the radio
off
some sort of ceremonial
moment of silence

today
I forgot
for the first time
to turn the radio
off

I was talking
to a new friend

can you forgive me
for forgetting
to turn the radio
off
and also
for living

Praise for Robin's Moon Pie Press chap "Laundry and Stories": Shara McCallum: Laundry and Stories is filled with elegies and laments, as well as poems of praise and survival. There is no posturing and pretense in this book; the voice of this poet is searching and genuine. In this collection, Merrill offers us a vision of the world that is gritty and tender, honest and real.

Robin's official bio:

Robin Merrill has her MFA from Stonecoast and her BS from Maine Maritime Academy. A former Merchant Mariner and Great Lakes Pilot, she abandoned seafaring to marry a deckhand and to teach Physical Science at a home for at-risk teens. Her poems have recently been featured on The Writer's Almanac and are forthcoming in issues of Margie, Radix and Flint Hills Review. She is the editor and publisher of the poetry journal Monkey's Fist and serves as the President of the Maine Poets Society. You can visit her at http://www.robinmerrill.com/.

More of Robin's work can be read online here:
http://www.shelteringpinespress.com/animus/archives/featured/justthought.html
http://robinmerrill.tripod.com/
http://www.kotapress.com/journal/Archive/Journal_V3_Issue8(Aug02)/journal12.htm
http://www.mainstreetrag.com/MSRW_01.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~lospoesy/merrill3.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~lospoesy/merrill1.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~lospoesy/merrill2.html
http://www.poetshaven.com/gallery/singlepage.php?html=bookcontents.php&footer=1§ion=16&page=500
http://www.poetshaven.com/gallery/singlepage.php?html=bookcontents.php&footer=1§ion=16&page=501

Robin has the following readings coming up in 2006:

Friday, August 11, 7:30 p.m. Cary Memorial Library, Wayne, ME.

Tuesday, Nov. 28, 7 p.m. Belfast Free Library, 106 High St., Belfast, ME.

George Wallace

2006-06-30T07:27:00.000-07:00

This is my extraordinarily gifted poet-friend, George Wallace. I read a "George poem" every morning, and these poems are WONDERFUL poems; hard to imagine how he keeps this stream of creativity flowing strong, but trust me, he does. I've received a poem-a-day from George for 5 years. It's part of how I incorporate art into my day, and honor inspiration.

George gave me permission to post "today's poem" here:

THE THIRD HORIZON

a bird beat its wings against the sea.
a white horse was locked up in a cloud.
on the beach below apollo's ruined temple
a boy in bare feet saw a foreigner's sail
disturb the horizon. he ran across a mile
and a quarter of hot sand and through
a grove of tall pines to tell the men
in the village. it was no use! all night
there were torches in the olive trees
and at daybreak his mother had
disappeared. afterwards there was
pine tar on the boy's heels. dolphins
returned to the harbor. cactus flowers
blossomed everywhere. plenty of feral
cats in the morning fish market, too.
but no women! and the candles were all
gone. everything he had ever known
had rolled off the surface of the world.
everything he had ever known had
landed on the surface of the moon.

About George’s book “Burn My Heart in Wet Sand”, pictured above:

"...simple but eloquent, rich with meaning and easily understood. Anyone who ever loved or needed love should read these poems." Laurel Johnson, Review Editor New Works Review

"His poetry is neither conventional nor even 'conventionally' atypical... this volume is filled with poetic ghosts who, doglike, seem to chase their own poetic tails: Bukowski is an echo in this volume, and Kerouac, and Ginsberg, though Whitman’s in here, too..." The Pedestal Magazine

Literature in the right sense, ‘news that stay news.’ The structure of the verses holds because it lies on a fertile terrain, rich in local culture and in social and spiritual hints...the blind and deaf will be able to see by following the antennas of such poetry. Mary de Rachewiltz, Castle Brunnenberg, Italy

If I could remember all of the details of dreams, the delights and confusions and terrors of dreams, then I would have written this book. With his typical skill at creating evocative and surprising images and lyrical music, George Wallace has given this reader dream after tantalizing dream, each bathed in human recognition and often sprinkled with political edginess. Carol Hamilton, Former Poet Laureate, Oklahoma

George has a book of poems in Italian and English, "swimming through water" (Italian translations by Anny Ballardini), and the deluxe edition comes with a CD of George reading the poems, accompanied by the incomparable David Amram. The Drunken Boat features one of the poems from this book here: http://www.thedrunkenboat.com/wallace.html
More information about this incredible book here: http://www.poetrydoctor.org/george.htm

George is a poet who gives back to the muse in more ways than I can recount here. He is the publisher of a terrific online journal, Poetrybay http://www.poetrybay.com/poempub.htm
and you can read "official bio-type info" about him here:
http://www.poetrybay.com/poempub.htm

More of George’s work may be found online here:

http://www.cortlandreview.com/issue/30/wallace.html
http://jacketmagazine.com/12/wallace-george.html
http://jacketmagazine.com/30/wallace.html
http://poetswearprada.home.att.net/GeorgeWallace.html
http://poetry.about.com/library/weekly/aa021103d.htm
http://www.poetz.com/2004/gwallace.html
http://www.litkicks.com/24pp/wallace.html
http://www.2river.org/2RView/5_4/poems/wallace01.html
http://www.solopublications.com/jurn0012.htm
http://www.alsopreview.com/columns/foley/jfWallace.html
http://www.entelechyjournal.com/panama.htm
http://www.webdelsol.com/Perihelion/wallacepoetry.html
http://www.poetrybay.com/swimming.html
http://www.poetz.com/2003/gwallace.htm

A great video clip of George reading:
http://www.vimeo.com/clip:74821/context/tag:poetry

George reads in Maine from time to time. He's a great favorite of the folks at The Cafe Review http://www.thecafereview.com/Index.html , and also, when in Maine, visits his friend Gary Lawless at Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick http://www.gulfofmainebooks.blogspot.com/

Readers, I hope you will explore these links and enjoy some more work from this amazing poet.

Thank you, George, for your friendship and inspiration!

Alice

2006-06-29T11:17:00.000-07:00

Alice Persons OUR FOUNDER and official cat-woman! Her poem about her cat, Nomar (who can be viewed in all his splendor on our website) was featured on The Writer's Almanac!

Poem: "To My Cat with an Eating Disorder" by Alice N. Persons from Never Say Never © Moon Pie Press. Reprinted with permission.

To My Cat with an Eating Disorder

You were thrown out of a moving vehicle
on a dirt road
in chilly winter downeast Maine,
little fur scrap, and I hope you don't
carry that memory with you,
but the hunger, the deep fear
that you'll never see food again
is still there five years later
when you are huge and sleek,
a sumo Buddha of a cat.

I've seen you, after a big meal,
heave yourself from a sound sleep,
pad into the kitchen, launch your bulk
onto the counter, and check the food supply,
then crouch there chewing and chewing,
green eyes empty, concentrating
on your burden, your compulsion,
doggedly eating, whether you want to or not.

There are stories about Holocaust or
Depression survivors whose refrigerators
and pantries are always full, just in case,
how some of them still wake in the night
and check their abundant supplies,
run their hands over the packages,
or eat without hunger, just because they can.

Cat, I stand in the dark kitchen
stroking your broad back,
wishing I could banish the fears
of one small, common creature,
those bad dreams that awaken you,
that hollow place in your memory
which can never be filled.

You can hear Garrison read this poem if you go to the WA archives here: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2005/05/16/index.html#friday

After the broadcast of this poem Alice was, naturally, deluged with fanmail from poetry fans and cat fans everywhere, and sold lots of copies of her wonderful chap, Never Say Never, pictured above.

The book received great reviews, including the following from Ibbetson Street Press reviewer Jennifer Matthews:

"Never Say Never" is an achievement that carries the reader through a window-eye into roomfuls of lilacs, mud and onyx...then to portraits of moments freeze-framed by the art of lyrical perception. In her poem titled: "Letter Perfect," Alice Persons delivers a perfect litany to the world of "O." Very clever.Ms. Persons is an enjoyable poet to read. She writes owl sharp cantatas of life's snapshots captured in beautiful well-crafted collages of words.Not pretentious, but real...something to soak your feet into while gazing inward...her chapbook displays moments of contemplation that lingers in your thoughts, well after you have read her and digested.

Jennifer Matthews / Ibbetson Update

More of Alice's poetry is available online here:

http://web4.cc.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/lsf/28/persons.html

http://www.mainepoetry.com/mainepoets-p2.html
http://pages.prodigy.net/lilliankennedyesq/lilliankennedyesq.poetry2.htmmlFrame1Source1.htm

Alice has some readings coming up this summer!

Thursday, July 27, 2006; 7 PM The Press Room in Portsmouth, NH - Spoken Word

This venue is really cool, and there will be a band. Featured readers will be Nancy Henry, Michelle Lewis, Marcia Brown and Alice Persons. 77 Daniel St, historic downtown.

Sunday, July 30, 2006; 4 PM Skidompha Library Poetry Series, Damariscotta

Poetry series on Sunday afternoons this summer. Alice Persons will be reading, with other poets. 4-7 PM.

My two MPP Chaps

2006-06-28T17:16:00.000-07:00

Here are my two Moon Pie Press chapbooks!

They are available for $8 from our website: www.moonpiepress.com

Europe on Five Dollars a Day

In our rented Fiat,
we drove the perimeter of Rome seven times
as the ancient dream grew darker with each tense circling,
gathering indigo dusk around its stone and music.
My unilingual father cursed in English only,
looking for any street that ran both ways.
“All roads lead to fucking Rome,
but they won’t letyou in” he snarled,
and then we laughed in our exhaustion,
our crazy joyto be circumnavigating this place
that sang and glowed in all our separate dreams:
my father, Michelin phrase book useless in his lap,
my mother wrapped in her big hound’s-tooth coat,
lighting another cigarette,
me, slightly carsick in the back seat,
wearing the smart wool suit my mother sewed
for this occasion.
Chill November was off-season, everything a bargain then.
It was midnight before we got to the pensione,
struggled up the stairs with our mammoth avocado suitcases,
our sensible walking shoes tracking the threadbare path
worn in the musty aubergine carpet.
And who needed the warmth and light of the costly summer season?
I had Italy, opening all my doors:
first coffee, bittersweet and dark,
first glass ofwine, humming with woody mysteries,
first kiss on those shabby stairs--from the Tuscan porter--
eyes as blue as the water we viewed from donkeys
gingerly edging along the cliffs of Naples,
as blue as the Virgin’s robe in all those crumbling frescoes.
And oh the taste of his firm tongue--olives and chianti--
while my parents napped
in the yellowish smoggy light of the late Rome afternoon.
Who could notice we were eating mostly bread and cheese,
washing our underpants and stockings
in the chipped communal sinks?
I was thirteen, and all that naked marble made me burn.
I longed to press my just-awakened lips
against the David’s smoothly muscled thigh,
cup the milky breasts of headless nymphs in my warm, aching palms.
My diary records: “Italy is very interesting, we are having fun,
it is cold; we have looked at many churches.”
I did not dare to say more,
but I remember.

2006-06-28T09:02:00.000-07:00

Poet Ted Bookey, author of MPP chap "Language as a Second Language" http://www.moonpiepress.com/books.php?BookID=2 and also the wonderful chap "Mixty Motions". Teacher, mentor, venue host, translator, inspiration!
My co-editor Alice and me at the launch of our anthology, "A Moxie and a Moon Pie, The Best of Moon Pie Press Volume One". http://www.moonpiepress.com/books.php?BookID=16

Alice's chapbooks are "Never Say Never"
http://www.moonpiepress.com/books.php?BookID=6
and "Be Careful What You Wish For" http://www.moonpiepress.com/books.php?BookID=3
Darcy Shargo, Author of Moon Pie Press chap
"The Flame and the Fiction" http://www.moonpiepress.com/books.php?BookID=9
David Moreau, author of Moon Pie Press chapbook "Sex, Death, and Baseball"
http://www.moonpiepress.com/books.php?BookID=7

2006-06-28T08:59:00.000-07:00

Poets Duff Plunkett and Marita O'Neill, to be wed on July 15, 2006. Congratulations you two! Marita's MPP chapbook is "Evidence of Light"
http://www.moonpiepress.com/books.php?BookID=20

Poet Annie Farnsworth (on left), of Sheltering Pines Press http://www.shelteringpinespress.com/
and poet Caroline Padula.

Jay Davis, MPP author of "Whispers, Cries, and Tantrums" http://www.moonpiepress.com/books.php?BookID=5; Marita O'Neill, Peter Manuel, and Annie Farnsworth, editor of Animus and Sheltering Pines Press, with a Moon Pie Press chap forthcoming.

Ellen Taylor, professor at University of Maine Augusta, and author of Moon Pie Press chapbook "Humming to Snails". http://www.moonpiepress.com/books.php?BookID=8

Some poet friends

2006-06-28T08:52:00.000-07:00

Martin Steingesser, an amazing poet and performer, full of heart and radiance! His website is great, check it out! http://www.martinsteingesser.com/

Ted and Ruth Bookey, poets, musicians, translators. Ted's a Moon Pie Press poet, his MPP book is "Language as a Second Language" http://www.moonpiepress.com/books.php?BookID=2

From left: Peter Manuel, Dennis Camire, Jay Davis. Dennis ("Unidentified Flying Odes" http://www.moonpiepress.com/books.php?BookID=18) and Jay ("Whispers, Cries, and Tantrums" http://www.moonpiepress.com/books.php?BookID=5) have Moon Pie Press Chaps. Peter Manuel's wonderful chapbook from Sheltering Pines Press is "Exclamations" http://www.shelteringpinespress.com/publications/petermanuel.html

Pilgrim, soulful poet of the common man and most faithful tribal regular.

Some of my work online

2006-06-28T08:44:00.000-07:00

Some of my poems appearing in online journals
Let me know what you think! Thank you to the editors who have published these. I highly recommend their journals for readings and contributions!
Poems from threecandles
Poems from Plum Ruby Review
Poem from forpoetry.com
Poem from Poetry Repair Shop
Poem 2 Poetry Repair Shop
Poems from Rock Salt Plum
Poems from "Off the Record"
Poem from Sidereality
Poem 2 from Sidereality
Poem from Neiderngasse
Poem from Pedestal Magazine
Poems from Poetrybay
Poems 2 from Poetrybay
Poem from The Fairfield Review
Poem from Tryst
Poems 2 from Tryst
Poem from Branches Quarterly
Poem 2 Branches Quarterly
Poem 3 Branches Quarterly

Poem from WordRiot
Poem from Kota Press Journal
Poem from The Aurora Review
Poem from Sometimes City
Poem from Rattle
Poem from Epicenter
Poems from Megaera
Poems from Melic Review
Revies of my chap "Hard" in Poetrybay
Poem from Carnelian
Poem 2 from Carnelian
Poem from "Hearsay"

Poem 1 from Obsessed with Pipework
Poem 2 Obsessed with Pipework
Poem 3 Obsessed with Pipework
Poem 4 Obsessed with Pipework
Poem 5 Obsessed with Pipework

Welcome Friends of Poetry

2006-06-28T08:28:00.000-07:00

Hi, I'm Nancy Henry, co-editor and publisher of Moon Pie Press, a small press publishing chapbooks by poets from Maine and beyond.
Why not check us out?

http://www.moonpiepress.com