Marly Youmans's Blog, page 115

St. Louis dreaming...

This morning I received a lovely letter about A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage and many other things from Deborah Bohlmann, who I met through my now-receding-into-the-past national working group at Yale Divinity School. (I still hear from people in the Faith as a Way of Life group from time to time, especially Makoto Fujimura--he and I were the official artists in the group, though a great

Corbett, "Sacred Harp Convention"

Progeny shenanigans are underway. My husband, having gone to Mt. Katahdin with a load of Scouts, turned around and zipped to North Carolina to fetch no. 1. And today I am washing for no. 3's departure... (No. 2 must stay home and work.)

So here's a poem not mine, as my "free" time has been devoted to award reading and housecleaning this weekend. It's by Maryann Corbett, from Breath Control (

Thickets

As the day is yet another of reading many books for an award, plus cleaning up for the arrival of child no. 1 from North Carolina, I leave you with an introduction and poem borrowed from Phoenicia Publishing and Ancient Lights. The book is available in paper or hardcover direct from the publisher (ordering direct is, of course, beneficial to a small press) or by order through your favorite indie

Twitterian: on book jackets

https://twitter.com/marlyyoumans

Twitter. It's an enjoyable fritter, especially when one has a huge mountain of an assignment to do (as I do), and much house-drudgery ahead (as I also do.) It's a great deal of fun to talk to poets in Wales and Britain, a favorite editor in the midwest, a friend in California, and so on...

I'm still thinking about last night's back-and-forth conversation with

Husband home from Mt. Katahdin is off to North Carolina m...

Husband home from Mt. Katahdin is off to North Carolina mountains. Mozambique next. Exhausting, all this waving.

Surprises for "Thaliad"

Clive Hicks-Jenkins

Many of the images for Thaliad (Phoenicia Publishing of Montreal) are to be kept under wraps until November 1, but the ones I have seen are wondrous and fit together with the text in a way I like--not straightforward illustrations but a running accompaniment of vignettes suggestive of handwork and needlework and tradition, as if the events of the poem have been memorialized

No. 1 Tyger

College friend Mary Bullington won 1st place in the Bath County art show "mixed media" category for "Dancing around the Big Red Tyger." ("Tyger, Tyger," frolicking in the forests of Mary's quick and colorful mind.) The award was judged by Steve Cushner of The Corcoran Gallery's art school.

Mary is a marvelous collagist and painter, and I have a silly little hope that somebody who is

Magnificent review

Thanks to About.com Contemporary Literature for a review of A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage that makes great claims for the book. The full review by John M. Formy-Duval is here.

Some clips:

It is seldom that a novel from a small university press can compete with the offerings from the big houses in New York. A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage may be the best novel this reviewer has

New interview link

In answer to a request for another link: the WSKG interview has now shifted into archives and on-demand play. You may find it here, accompanied by an article by Bill Jaker, or else you may go to the full list of "Off the Page" shows with Mr. Jaker here. It's an hour-long show, so we had time to discuss and read from A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, answer a couple of emailed and called-in

Sunday afternoon with Armide

Today I went to see Lully's Armide at Glimmerglass Opera with painter and singer (Aida chorus) Yolanda Sharpe and was better pleased overall than I was the last time around, when I was pleased in part only. It was interesting to see a Baroque French opera with a good deal of dancing (although the elderly lady sitting next to me slipped sideways into sleep during the dancing, she dozed gently and