Juliet Cook's Blog, page 86

Fort Fremont Historical Park, Saint Helena Island, South Carolina - March 3, 2018

A hole with a tiny heart inside

                         

Happy March! New poems in the Ohio Poets Issue of Glass: A Journal of Poetry AND new poems in the March Issue of Rogue Agent

I am delighted to start off the month of March with two of my poems appearing in two different  wonderful literary magazines!

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"Out of my blood drenched trench where I'm not good enough at choosing between periods or question marks. I keep on trying to re-position myself into something new. "
inside my poem, "Not Settling Down" in Glass

read more here - http://www.glass-poetry.com/journal/2018/march/cook-not.html

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"White refrigerator filled with white needles. White bedding. White cage."

inside my poem, "White Is My Least Favorite Color" in Rogue Agent

read more here - http://www.rogueagentjournal.com/jcook

The New February flock of Thirteen Myna Birds!

The new February flock of Thirteen Myna Birds is HERE! - https://13myna.blogspot.com/Featuring three pieces of art AND two poems by Mish/Eileen Murphy! Three prose poems by Howie Good! Two poems by Kelly Gangeness! Three poems by Charles Cicirella! "Birds that hadn’t learned to fly yet were about to be hauled away in trucks - I woke up screaming like a Barbie with no head and whose Dreamhouse is under water - soaked through and through with debris and fish feces - a shortage of coffins - The Pope shakes in awe by the power of the chainsaw - I’m lost in the narcissistic membranes of brain synapses that pay me no mind - like the cave in your head - presiding over its own prolonged rebirth - Maybe I should ask for help. I just don't know. It’s all a bit of a blur - The only thing that has ever made one iota of sense to me is the art and the art never fails me even when I fail myself"

A NEW Review of a Vintage Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook ("Girl Gang" by Juliet Cook)

"There is a thread in the literary world that has always separated the artists from the writers, the authors from the illustrators, and those who paint a picture with our words from those that paint a picture with their brush. Every work that Juliet Cook does seems to blow this idea out of the water, and I must confess that I get a little giddy when another one of her works makes it into my hands. How, then, that 2007’s Girl Gang has evaded me for this long is beyond me.Bound in pink ribbon, the lavender cover immediately grabs one’s attention, as if to hearken back to the days of fairy tales and properly gendered toys. And while the silver-shimmer-glitter pages add an aesthetic all its own, one would be mistaken to think that this would be a leisurely stroll down the hallowed halls of feminine stereotypes.This book grabs your stereotypes by the balls and force-feeds them to you."These lines are the beginning of a vintage review by M. Earl Smith of my Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Girl Gang", which was published in 2007.The review was just published yesterday at Galatea Resurrects, but the reason it's vintage is because the chapbook is more than 10 years old. 

birds

A female cardinal in my front yard, February 2018.
A young robin in my front yard, February 2018.

"Lesson #3: Revisit the same themes over and over again (but also keep experimenting)"

"Lesson #3: Revisit the same themes over and over again (but also keep experimenting)"Sometimes I wonder if my poetry is a semi-repetitive, semi-pointless sort of plateau, because I seem to write different variations on the same thoughts/feelings/experiences/thematics again and again, for years.On one hand, I feel like if that's what I need to write about, then that's what I need to write about - but on the other hand, I wonder if I'm somehow unintentionally stuck and somehow unable to rise up - but on the other hand (yes I have at least three different hands), what does "rise up" even mean? It's not like I'm aiming towards heaven. I'm aiming towards always being me and growing closer to my own interpretation of my own mental reality.I've loved Louise Bourgeois' art for years and so reading this creative piece of writing about her/her thoughts/her art improved my state of mind about my own repetition.https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-artist-louise-bourgeois?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sm-editorial-evergreen&utm_content=fb-1-how-to-be-an-artist-according-to-louise-borgeois

A few more photos from the Words Made Visible Reception

Adding a few more photos from the Lit Youngstown Words Made Visible Reception (February 3, 2018).
These photos were taken by Melanie Rae Buonavolonta. Darryl and I looking at art inspired by poetry.
The piece of ceramic art, created by Sean Staser, inspired by my poem, "Every Hole is Broken".
me reading my poetry

Words Made Visible (A Lit Youngstown literary-visual art collaboration & exhibit at The Soap Gallery)

At Lit Youngstown Presents Words Made Visible, a literary-visual art collaboration & exhibit at The Soap Gallery, February 3, 2018

Ceramic art created by Sean Staser, inspired by my poem "Every Hole is Broken".

(The poem that inspired the art - Photos of the art - A photo of me reading my poetry - A photo of me and the art and the artist)
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EVERY HOLE IS BROKEN

You inserted small
bugs into my body
like it was just another
machine
until you lost
and I lost.

You just moved on
to the next slot
and didn't seem to care
that my slot had
stopped working.

Screaming on the other side
of a fallen down mirror.
Imprisoned inside my own
twisted cells. Gagging out
bloody coins until drained.

~Juliet Cook~ 
(previously published in Issue 2 of Rogue Agent)

A Zine and an Anthology and Me

My slightly freakish face with two recently acquired poetry collections beneath it.  Excited to have a poem in each of these books!Paper and Ink Literary Zine, Girls to the Front (sold out).Nasty Women & Bad Hombres, A Poetry Anthology (edited by Deena November & Nina Padolf, published by Lascaux Editions, and still available for purchase,here - https://www.amazon.com/dp/0989192253/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_awdo_t2_wcKaAbD6EXGZS)