Marly Youmans's Blog, page 25

Summer sampler, part two

Named as one of their Favorite Books of 2015 at Books and Culture Magazine, Maze of Blood 
(Mercer University Press, 2015), is a visceral shot to the senses and a fine filament tugging at the imagination that examines the results of thwarted dreams and desires in the life of a young writer. Set in rural Texas in the 1930’s, Marly Youmans uses language as both scalpel and wand to conjure a place

Summer sampler, part one

"Its themes and the power of its language, the forceful flow of its storyline and its characters have earned the right to a broad national audience."30 July 2012 John M. Formy-Duval.About.com Contemporary Literature

excerpt mid-way in Chapter 10, A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage. Pip runs away again, and this time he thinks to take Clemmie and her baby.

* * *

Stillness had come over

Conundrums of art

In between graduation parties and company and weeding the riot of summer and cleaning the hovel and hanging out with the godly (the ones we now call Puritans), I've noticed a few art discussions that seem good for those attracted by the arts.
Creative economy podcast

A lot of this tends toward the usual depressing stuff about the inability of the arts in our day to feed and clothe 99% of its

Poems: new online

I've just arrived back from more than a week at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts. As but an Alternate Fellow, I was pleased and grateful to be invited.



Meanwhile, some print magazines with my poems arrived, and a few poems popped up in online magazines. Here are links to the online poems at John Wilson's Education and Culture and Karen Kelsay and Jeff Holt's

To make or not to make--

This post is especially for Tim Davis, a retired professor who often visits here, and who just wrote a post about why writers write. He also linked to a Huffington Post article about the same. I started to answer him on his post and then realized my response was not a comment but a post itself and probably could be a book, though luckily I have no desire to write a book about the subject. Out

Distractible me

Clive Hicks-Jenkins, My Dream Farm

When I could have been doing research or cleaning the house or writing something more sensible, I have been seized by the possibly-silly impulse to quorate. And as both my current forays into Quora deal with collaborator Clive Hicks-Jenkins, I shall post links to my answers.

Who is your favorite illustrator?

and

If you had to live inside a painting forever

Rollipokin'

The Rollipoke News no. 3 is now out! If you're a subscriber to my newsletter, please check your spam if you do not see a copy.... (And if you wish to subscribe, leave your email address in the Rollipoke subscription slot in the right-hand column.)

Tabago!

Novelist and poet Seb Doubinsky (he writes in both French and English) has a new project he calls "The Tabago Page." Interviews with writers will not focus on marketing and promotion but try to dig a little deeper into the work and the novelist or poet (or the poet-novelist or novelist-poet. Not sure what I am!)


Here is my interview.



And thanks to those who have already shared on social

Clive Hicks-Jenkins and Sarah Raphael-Balme at Lotte Inch, York

CLIVE HICKS-JENKINS & SARAH RAPHAEL-BALME

THE MIND'S EYE

12th May 2017 - 17th June 2017

"Featuring the weird and wonderful, the imagined and the exaggerated, with prints and original paintings by artist, illustrator and designer Clive Hicks-Jenkins and York based painter Sarah Raphael-Balme."

As you can see, original art from Maze of Blood is among the offerings. (The book was Finalist,

Spirit-fall

"Spirit-fall," a poem influenced by Yoruban chant and ancient Hebrew poetry. Originally published by editor Jonathan Farmer in "At Length." Part of a longer sequence. I made the recording using Audacity, and Paul Digby tinkered with the sound afterward.



Illuvia dorado
Photo courtesy of Ignacio Leonardi and sxc.hu