Marly Youmans's Blog, page 34

Dolls are strange

Poem by, well, me.
From The Throne of Psyche. Mercer, 2011.
Video by Paul Digby.
What a quirky thing!

Another thing I liked--

a Pegasus for poetry

If you write poetry or love to read poetry, you might like to read this Paris Review interview with the late Peter Levi (1931-2000), poet and writer and classics scholar, a Jesuit priest for 29 years, and one of those lucky souls elected Oxford Professor of Poetry. I read it last night (hat tip to A. M. Juster) and then again this morning. It is long and crammed with

Maze of Blood - reader voting

Two of the unluckiest things that have happened in my life happened on a May 20th, so I'm hesitant to mention this, as it closes on that date. I tend to dive through that date on the calendar in hopes that nothing bad happens.

But if you are a fan of Maze of Blood, you have the chance to vote on the book for a new readers' award. The book is currently a finalist for the Foreword indie awards in

X, with squirrels

Yeats, Poems, 1899Design by Althea Gyles

A memory of a famous author just floated by. I'll call him "X." He had come to visit a poetry workshop of grad students and undergrads. I was there, and curious; I knew that X was sometimes mentioned as headed for a Nobel.

The first thing he did was to shred a poem by a freshman into something else entirely: burning fire slaw, perhaps, or poisonous

Dreaming back

Making Manuscripts from the Getty Museum.
Well worth watching...


I'm surprised by how many times the medieval world has crept into my books (perhaps most obviously in The Foliate Head, Val / Orson, and The Book of the Red King, but elsewhere as well) and into many of my blog posts. Perhaps I really am living in the wrong century, though I would not have lived long in the medieval world

Cakespeare

Happy birthday, Shakespeare.
Want to see more V and A cakes? Here.

Austen and transformation

Watercolor of Austen

Rohan Maitzen asks the question of whether Jane Austen is a romance novelist. I, not being in want of an opinion, answer....

Austen's landscape has always seemed to be far more treacherous and dangerous for a young woman than seems apt for a "romance novel" label. A young woman may fall very far, may plunge entirely out of her world. The stakes are far higher in Austen's

In Limerick Town

public domain, Wikipedia

Here are four after-dinner limericks, written while drinking a wee glass of Seven Kingdoms, part of the Game of Thrones series, product of one of our local breweries. Ommegang calls it a “hoppy wheat ale,” and it’s pretty good for an accompaniment to limericks. One would like a bit of hoppiness with a limerick.

I dare you to write a few of your own, with or without a

Elizabeth Adams on printmaking and more

Pulling a print for the Annunciation anthology



Elizabeth Adams, artist, writer, designer, singer, publisher at Phoenicia Publishing in Montreal: what an interesting woman she is! Here's an interesting, down-to-earth interview with her on the subject of printmaking and making art over time:


 
Part 1 



  Part 2 

and



  Beth's Etsy shop with prints and more 

and

Phoenicia Publishing,

Jeffery Beam, "Beyond the Green Door"

Jeffery Beam, reading and singing--listen up, world! In our culture, poets tend to be invisible, but here's a good look at Jeffery. Links below.







"This [3-part] reading offers a range of poetry, songs, and reflections from Jeffery Beam’s career – from the age of 17 to the present – as well as poems and songs from others, to illuminate his life-long conversation with the Divine in Nature. A