Marly Youmans's Blog, page 75

Pigs and pearls

I'm still thinking about Flannery O'Connor's prayer journal, published in time for Christmas gift-giving, and why that publication might have been a fairly bad idea. R. T. aka Tim brought it up on his new blog, A Commonplace from Eastrod, and there I simply said that the book was part of that unclean effort to trawl through a writer's remains and find something, anything publishable.

Long ago

Rocking in the ship of trees--

All dressed in snow and holly and berries for the season...


Here's a poem for the nigh-endless falling feathers and stars and cold of the past three days. I wrote it for my youngest child one night when the winter winds were toying with the corners of our federal-era house. It was originally published in Angle. Last year it was reprinted in The Foliate Head (UK: Stanza Press, 2012), where it

Out-of-fashion characters, creation, one writer's mind--

Image by Clive Hicks-Jenkins from Thaliad
(Phoenicia Publishing, 2012)
www.phoeniciapublishing.com

Certain subtleties of character creation are seldom seen in the novel these days. And they are hard to catch. They are difficult to portray in our time, being rejected by the various gatekeepers of the novel, those who know best or feel that they do.

I'm thinking about someone I know, someone I

Ferrywoman says

Up at 5:30 to meet the varsity bus in light snow... Take care out there, world! Me too. Going to a wrestling tournament in snowsnowsnow.

Lady Word of Mouth, culture-weaver--

Yesterday I thought quite a bit about the work of Lady Word of Mouth. I was forced to ponder how it does little good to be told that one's book was a "close runner-up" for a prize, as it proved yesterday, and to consider what else I can do for three recent books that flew into the world in close succession. Later I spent some hours talking with the newly-made Episcopal deacon, singer-songwriter,

Advice to would-be writers (for R. T.)

Another 2013 book tour picture--
in Cullowhee, NC with Paul and Lynn Digby--
Lynn behind the camera on this one...

 I've been trying to visit and support A Commonplace from Eastrod, the infant blog of R. T., but what a lot of events there are in Advent and before the school Christmas break! Tonight was the high school concert, where I immediately noticed that my youngest wasn't wearing his

Poems in the scales, 2013: two contests

www.kelsaybooks.com


While my 2013 bouts of judging were not so arduous as the prior year's National Book Award stint (316 books plus rereads), they were illuminating. This time it was poetry in the scales.  For the Alrich Award I read a winnowed group and chose a winner and two finalists. I found all five to be interesting reads, and that's an encouraging thing for poetry!


Winner 2013

Waterborne

Here's a bit of youtube snow and Frost from Eric Whitacre

for friends with unexpected snow and ice...

Thanks to critic and reviewer Micah Mattix for including a link to my sonnet "Waterborne" in his Prufrock newsletter (sign up!) yesterday. Here's the poem in Alexander Pepple's Able Muse. The poem is also forthcoming in an anthology edited by poet Mary Meriam.

Please note that today there

Friends with Etsy shops and new books, 2

Thanks to pre-Christmas events (last night meant four very interesting hours given over to practicing and then singing for an ordination, and the calendar of events is packed, it seems), I'm falling a bit behind on promises to share some of my facebook friends who have new books and Etsy shops, so I'm just going to pop a few selections from facebook lists in here... I'll take out the more private

Melanie at Antiphon

There's a poem of mine up in the current issue of Antiphon (UK)...

I did not begin this poem thinking of anyone in particular, but was musing about that time in life when people you love begin to vanish into death. But by the end I was dreaming of my friend Melanie Hook Rice, who died at 33 from that terrible enemy, breast cancer, and the image in my mind was, in part, a girl with an urn.