Marly Youmans's Blog, page 57

Word frolics in Norfolk

In September I'll be doing an event at the SIBA trade show in Norfolk. And now I've added an open-to-the-public reading with Luisa Igloria. It'll be my first event for the new book--and I think for hers at well. We've planned to get together for years, and now an event is finally happening. We shall read and eat (and frolic and drink chipotle lime margaritas with our feet on Alice-in-Wonderland

Pushcart news

Thanks to Joseph Salemi, editor of the print-and-also-pdf magazine Trinacria, for nominating "The Nuba Christians" for a Pushcart Prize. The poem and another called "The Midden Cross" are in issue 11--first time I have sent there. Mr. Salemi is a highly opinionated poet and professor, but his strongest demand for poetry appears to be that it be formal and well-wrought.

As guest editor at The

Jot of glory + dewy-new interview--

from "Letter from the Editor," Books and Culture Magazine

Speaking of superb novels, let me recommend two others that will be appearing not too long after you receive this issue. In September, Knopf will publish Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, which imagines the aftermath of a global pandemic of unprecedented ferocity. We follow a wandering troupe as they make their circuit in the

War and words

Michael has been reading me excerpts from Ernie Pyle's Brave Men (campaigns in Sicily, Italy, and France in World War II), and as a way of remembering the Western journalists in captivity in Syria and Iraq, I'm posting a little homage to a war correspondent that I think interesting. Pyle loves to give little sketches of men faithfully doing the ordinary or extraordinary things that happen in

Glimmerglass coming near--

Glimmerglass, now in pre-orderOut in a week...Interior vignette by Clive Hicks-JenkinsMore comments, art, etc. here


Jot of praise


I know of no writer other than Marly Youmans who has the genius to combine the spine-tingling suspense of Gothic storytelling with the immense charm, grace, glamour, realism, and simplicity of Hawthorne. Youmans, one of the biggest secrets of contemporary

Yolanda Sharpe, new watercolors--

Peach Confections, 26" x 40"




Last week I enjoyed a visit to Yolanda Sharpe's house and SUNY to see artwork currently underway. Here's a peek at some new watercolors, not yet flattened and mounted. It is intriguing to see how her large pen and ink and encaustic works appear superficially very different from these, yet show innumerable connections through boldness of execution, color, shapes,

Nasrani

This is a blog about books and art and language,
and lately it occurs to me how pitiless a single letter can be.

Sweet

Chapter header--
interior vignette of a fat little bird
by Clive Hicks-Jenkins,
for Glimmerglass (Mercer)
now in pre-order, pub date September 1st








It's self-indulgent of me to link to this, but here's my favorite comment of the morning--second under the post. Who says writers don't need a bit of encouragement? Thanks to fellow poet Janice Soderling, thanks to the judgments of the

Adorabibbles

Chapter header--
interior vignette of a fat little bird
by Clive Hicks-Jenkins,
for Glimmerglass (Mercer)
now in pre-order, pub date September 1st

writer Nancy Richard on Thaliad

Clive Hicks-Jenkins

Fun to see little reviews by writers on Amazon... Here's one from Louisiana writer Nancy Richard:

Thaliad: Don't miss this one. March 2, 2013

Not since Fred Chappell's Midquest have I read a book-length poem so lovingly wrought, so luminous in language and engaging in its storytelling. As the children of Marly Youmans's Thaliad make their way in a post-apocalyptic land,