Cheryl Caesar's Blog, page 3
September 29, 2020
"Usquequo"
Thanks to Breathe! for publishing my protest sonnet, "Usquequo"! https://www.breatheeveryone.net/oct-p...
Join us for Three Poets Reading!
Please join me, Mary Anna Kruch, Author
and Lansing Poet Laureate
Laura Apol for Three Poets Reading!
Hosted by the Serendipity Bookstore!
https://www.facebook.com/events/32655...
and Lansing Poet Laureate
Laura Apol for Three Poets Reading!
Hosted by the Serendipity Bookstore!
https://www.facebook.com/events/32655...
Join us at MCEA!
Still two days left to send a proposal!
https://michigancea.org/
https://michigancea.org/
Poetry in the Bar
Gavin Broom featured on Poetry in the Bar, interviewed by his own wife Helen! In the open mic, I give a tribute to RBG. https://podcasts.apple.com/.../poetry......
September 14, 2020
I Don't Expect You to Believe Me
Cheryl Caesar builds an intriguing mash-up of fiction and non-fiction in this flash fantasy fiction piece! Read below to see her creative interview about the heroine she admires: Greta Thunberg.
https://pondersavant.com/2020/09/14/i...
https://pondersavant.com/2020/09/14/i...
September 12, 2020
Review at Whale Road by Mary Anna Scenga Kruch!
50 Ways to Leave Your President
Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era by Cheryl Caesar
Independent, 2020
Is it possible for a writer to articulate the disgust and detestation of a nation stirred by the unfortunate missteps taken by a narcissist who holds the position that was once referred to as leader of the free world? Cheryl Caesar utilizes what some may call the art of personal putdown, but with an elevated infusion of literary devices and varied forms, beginning with the very first piece in her new poetry collection, Flatman.
Like the White House resident who blasts tweets fraught with denigration, Caesar dismisses any human aspect of her subject as he disregards humanity: separating children from their parents at the border then imprisoning them, dismissing women as anything more than play things, firing whomever disagrees with him in his “demented playground,” as noted in “Press Conference in the Rose Garden.” Still, his claque is expected to applaud among the noisy decrees about which he knows nearly nothing. In “An Elegy for Music and Silence,” Caesar notes that “even music is corrupted.” Pandemonium prevails—the flatman has “robbed us of our rest.”
My personal favorite is “A Short History of Mirrors,” which mixes historical and literary references, including and especially Narcissus, who, in attempting to get the “unattainable image” of himself in a pool, leaned so far forward that he fell in and drowned. Like Narcissus, the image for the flatman is elusive, yet he continues to lean even as he “keeps receding.” Just when one feels he has gone too shamefully far, he somehow, sadly, outdoes himself then hangs on, propped up by the very claque his policies crush. No doubt, many readers wonder when he will finally be gone. But readers will not be disappointed with this collection, in which Caesar’s eloquence is truth, not merely jibe.
–
Mary Anna Kruch is a career educator and writer whose recent poetry appears in Wayne Literary Review, Trinity Review, and many others, along with three anthologies. Her first poetry collection, We Draw Breath from the Same Sky, inspired by connection with her family in Italy, was published in 2019.
http://www.whaleroadreview.com/cheryl...
Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era by Cheryl Caesar
Independent, 2020
Is it possible for a writer to articulate the disgust and detestation of a nation stirred by the unfortunate missteps taken by a narcissist who holds the position that was once referred to as leader of the free world? Cheryl Caesar utilizes what some may call the art of personal putdown, but with an elevated infusion of literary devices and varied forms, beginning with the very first piece in her new poetry collection, Flatman.
Like the White House resident who blasts tweets fraught with denigration, Caesar dismisses any human aspect of her subject as he disregards humanity: separating children from their parents at the border then imprisoning them, dismissing women as anything more than play things, firing whomever disagrees with him in his “demented playground,” as noted in “Press Conference in the Rose Garden.” Still, his claque is expected to applaud among the noisy decrees about which he knows nearly nothing. In “An Elegy for Music and Silence,” Caesar notes that “even music is corrupted.” Pandemonium prevails—the flatman has “robbed us of our rest.”
My personal favorite is “A Short History of Mirrors,” which mixes historical and literary references, including and especially Narcissus, who, in attempting to get the “unattainable image” of himself in a pool, leaned so far forward that he fell in and drowned. Like Narcissus, the image for the flatman is elusive, yet he continues to lean even as he “keeps receding.” Just when one feels he has gone too shamefully far, he somehow, sadly, outdoes himself then hangs on, propped up by the very claque his policies crush. No doubt, many readers wonder when he will finally be gone. But readers will not be disappointed with this collection, in which Caesar’s eloquence is truth, not merely jibe.
–
Mary Anna Kruch is a career educator and writer whose recent poetry appears in Wayne Literary Review, Trinity Review, and many others, along with three anthologies. Her first poetry collection, We Draw Breath from the Same Sky, inspired by connection with her family in Italy, was published in 2019.
http://www.whaleroadreview.com/cheryl...
September 8, 2020
Ship of Foolishness
It was peacetime, but the ship had strayed into the waters of an unfriendly nation and was seized. The captain and crew were released without harm, but the ship was kept for two months. On its return, it was a stupendous sight. It looked like Disneyland. No battleship grey, only primary colors. No structural steel, only plastic. Stairs and ladders had been replaced by fun chutes leading who knew where. Passages had become funhouse corridors, mazes and blind alleys. Floors tilted, rolled, fell away or turned rubbery and soft. No room, however small, retained its right angles; no rectangles, only crazy trapezoids. Every wall was a distorting mirror – when you could see it, for every source of light had been removed. It is our ship of state, which we have inhabited for almost four years.
The Daily Drunk, 9.8.20
https://thedailydrunk.com/f/ship-of-f...
The Daily Drunk, 9.8.20
https://thedailydrunk.com/f/ship-of-f...
September 4, 2020
The Thin Line Between Satire & Anxiety
Guest Post by Chana Kraus-Friedberg
The current political climate is difficult to write about because so much of it seems to be its own satire. Imagine the most child-like, ludicrous system of logic possible, apply it to world events, and you have government policy in the US. Yet real damage is being done to the United States and the world, and that is certainly not funny. In her recent chapbook, Flatman: and Other Poems of Protest in the Trump Era, Cheryl Caesar brilliantly negotiates the line between satire and anxiety or grief, painting a sinister picture of how childish tendencies become destructive when combined with very adult power.
In the title poem, Caesar starts by imagining the president as a truly flat man in a way that reminds me of the popular kids’ character, Flat Stanley. She describes the physical consequences of this flatness the way a picture book might. The president’s hair, we are told, is “rolled out in weird shapes, like a child’s / misshapen gingerbread man.” His head is square: “He could set his Diet Coke on it.” Later in the book, a spoof on Kipling’s If describes what happens if one can “fake a 4-F due to “bone spurs,”[ . . . ] /And never go to war and win your own spurs, /But boast of dodging STDs instead[.]” It’s witty and easy to laugh at, but the laughter is uncomfortable. You read in the way that I think a lot of us are currently living, carrying the knowledge that the underlying joke is dark and uncontrolled and future-consuming. In a real world context, even fantastical flatness has consequences, Caesar reminds us: “[The president] can never cross the dimensional border. / And so he hates us (hate being / the flattening emotion), hates us all. Hates the round world.”
Flatman: and Other Poems of Protest in the Trump Era by Cheryl Caesar. Thurston Howl Publications, 2020.
Reviewer’s Bio: Chana Kraus-Friedberg is the winner of the 2020 Ritzenhein Award for Emerging Poets. Her first chapbook, Grammars of Hope, will be published in February 2021 (Finishing Line Press). Instagram: @chanakf2020
https://newpagesblog.com/2020/09/03/t...
The current political climate is difficult to write about because so much of it seems to be its own satire. Imagine the most child-like, ludicrous system of logic possible, apply it to world events, and you have government policy in the US. Yet real damage is being done to the United States and the world, and that is certainly not funny. In her recent chapbook, Flatman: and Other Poems of Protest in the Trump Era, Cheryl Caesar brilliantly negotiates the line between satire and anxiety or grief, painting a sinister picture of how childish tendencies become destructive when combined with very adult power.
In the title poem, Caesar starts by imagining the president as a truly flat man in a way that reminds me of the popular kids’ character, Flat Stanley. She describes the physical consequences of this flatness the way a picture book might. The president’s hair, we are told, is “rolled out in weird shapes, like a child’s / misshapen gingerbread man.” His head is square: “He could set his Diet Coke on it.” Later in the book, a spoof on Kipling’s If describes what happens if one can “fake a 4-F due to “bone spurs,”[ . . . ] /And never go to war and win your own spurs, /But boast of dodging STDs instead[.]” It’s witty and easy to laugh at, but the laughter is uncomfortable. You read in the way that I think a lot of us are currently living, carrying the knowledge that the underlying joke is dark and uncontrolled and future-consuming. In a real world context, even fantastical flatness has consequences, Caesar reminds us: “[The president] can never cross the dimensional border. / And so he hates us (hate being / the flattening emotion), hates us all. Hates the round world.”
Flatman: and Other Poems of Protest in the Trump Era by Cheryl Caesar. Thurston Howl Publications, 2020.
Reviewer’s Bio: Chana Kraus-Friedberg is the winner of the 2020 Ritzenhein Award for Emerging Poets. Her first chapbook, Grammars of Hope, will be published in February 2021 (Finishing Line Press). Instagram: @chanakf2020
https://newpagesblog.com/2020/09/03/t...
September 1, 2020
Online reading at Serendipity Bookstore!
Three Poets Reading
Laura Apol, Mary Anna Kruch and Cheryl Caesar
October 29,2020 from 7-8 PM
Get tickets here from Eventbrite
https://mailchi.mp/75859afdf354/may-g...
Laura Apol, Mary Anna Kruch and Cheryl Caesar
October 29,2020 from 7-8 PM
Get tickets here from Eventbrite
https://mailchi.mp/75859afdf354/may-g...
August 31, 2020
"Rewind"
Thanks to Michael H. Duryea at Misery Tourism for publishing my flash fiction "Rewind." A fun publication that asks you to create your own ink illustrations for your piece and your author pic. https://www.miserytourism.com/rewind/
