Marly Youmans's Blog, page 92

Caring for culture

I've been thinking a lot about how we need to support our culture and help it grow into what we want it to be. We have let big business and government shape our culture for too long. Here are a few simple ways we can vote with our dollars and time.

Caring for Image Culture

A while back, I wrote an article about a solo show that a painter friend, Ashley Cooper, was having at the Earlville Opera

Another review for Pip--

Thanks to Curled Up With a Good Book for once again reviewing a book of mine. Here's the opener:


With “A savage laugh, a riddle and reply,” it is immediately apparent why Marly Youmans’ novel A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage won Mercer University’s Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction. Youman’s prose perfectly captures Southern culture, speech patterns, and the difficulties faced during the

War of art round-up

Phoenicia in April: a reminder
Phoenicia Publishing full-length poetry books are on sale to celebrate poetry month. And that includes my wild, mythic adventure in verse, Thaliad, decorated profusely by Clive Hicks-Jenkins, with lovely design work by Beth Adams. I notice that the press has added a quote from Nathan Ballingrud to the Thaliad page: "It is brutal and gorgeous, and like nothing else

Lady Word of Mouth

Up on Lady Word of Mouth:
Melanie McCabe and her new
poetry book, History of the Body.

Please take a look!

Dumbfoundery, and art--

It's time to tear myself away from a lively game of facebook table tennis over "Dan Brown's 20 worst sentences" (do read them--if, like me, you have not peeped into a Brown-book, they are illuminating and amusing in the worst possible way!) It's time for me to visit my blog--hello!--where people are busily passing by without so much as a new wave from me. In the course of batting about comments

Owl, egg, and Raine

Clive Hicks-Jenkins decoration for Thaliad

Alexander

I was so flooded with energy yesterday that I stayed up until precisely 3:19 writing an essay about masks and William Alexander's Goblin Secrets for the National Book Awards blog... I haven't done that in a while, though I did write one book that way when I was younger. Although I am naturally a night owl, my natural owlishness has been

Selling like hotcakes!

Elizabeth Adams of Phoenicia Publishing

In honor of National Poetry Month, paperback editions of all Phoenicia Publishing full-length poetry books are on sale for the price of $12.50 rather than the usual $13.95. Titles included are:




Thaliad - Marly Youmans

70 Faces: Torah Poems - Rachel Barenblat

Angels & Beasts - Claudia Serea

Ancient Lights - Dick Jones

Mercy Island - Ren Powell

"

Poetry news--

One of many Clive Hicks-Jenkins decorations for Thaliad.
Phoenicia Publishing, 2012.

So grateful for Jeff Sypeck and his insightful review of Thaliad, now included in the Prairie Schooner Poetry News in Review for April 2nd. In part, I"m grateful because I never knew such a thing existed, and it's handy and full of things I like. And I hope that some of the people who did know will read Jeff's

Morning after foolishness

Clive Hicks-Jenkins decoration for Thaliad

It's the day after April Fool's Day, and I am just the same size of fool as I was yesterday! I may even be a little bigger, given all those Easter basket chocolates. I find these things slightly disappointing but no surprise... Quite impossible to pack all one's foolishness into a single day, after all.

The foolishness of April 1st is compounded by

April Fool's Day

If you're a frequent visitor, you may know that I have a long sequence involving a king, a fool, and many minor characters. Many of the nigh-150 poems have appeared online, and they will eventually be a book called The Book of the Red King. Here's one from Mezzo Cammin:

 The Grail

 The Fool knows better. He knows all the things
 The world says. He knows every rippling field
 And every shower of