(Photo from Freepik)
UPCOMING ON SNOWFLAKES IN A BLIZZARD, APRIL 30-MAY 6
“A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF DEATH,” BY SHAWN LEVY.
100 poems derived from a single year (2016) of reading the obituaries in the print edition of The New York Times: a selection of great and obscure lives, remarkable deeds, painful memories, jokes (hey: it’s death; you gotta laugh!), and ruminations on mortality, morality, and happenstance. Among the celebrated souls lost that year, all of whom appear in the book: David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Merle Haggard, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, Muhammad Ali, Arnold Palmer, Mary Tyler Moore, Nancy Reagan, the guy who put the ‘@’ in email addresses, the guys who invented the Big Mac and General Tso’s Chicken, and two cast members each from The Patty Duke Show and Barney Miller. The poems are a kind of cross between odes and puzzles: Each one ends with the headline from the Times, with the person’s name and age and accomplishment in brief, so reading them is a kind of unboxing.
“THE STATES,” BY NORAH WOODSEY.\
The States is a speculative reimagining of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, a story of love, obligation, and second chances.
Tildy Sullivan, our protagonist, is the middle child in an elite yet fading Manhattan family. Her quiet practicality hides her deep, profound longing for childhood summers in western Ireland. She also carries a secret regret. After her mother’s death 8 years ago, she was persuaded by her family to abandon Ireland and the love of a local boy. Now she believes happiness is lost to her.
When Tildy volunteers for a lucid dreaming experiment, it gives her all she wants – a life lived for her family during the day and a secret, perfect Ireland of her own at night. As she lives her nights in one place, and her days in another, she must decide – will she face reality, or succumb to the ease of her dreams?
“POOL PARTIES,” BY JENNIFER MACBAIN-STEPHENS,
Writes one reviewer: Like the mountain bike she rides, Jennifer MacBain Stephens’ poems have never been afraid to bump along darker terrains; when I read her work, I anticipate unpredictable treks that will brake somewhere both completely strange and strangely fascinating. Her new collection Pool Parties “pull[s] a classic cancer of being both on land and in the sea simultaneously” as the poems establish an enviable tension between opposites, tangling the prehistoric and the contemporary, the forest and the city, reality and fantasy, the familiar and the alien. Many of the poems are ekphrastic with subject matter ranging from art exhibits, to novels, to books on crystals, to The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, but I would argue that all of MacBain-Stephens’ work is ekphrastic in the sense of the original ancient Greek definition, “the skill of describing a thing with vivid details.” Whatever she takes on as her subject matter, even if it’s something you thought you knew, MacBain-Stephens can make it new. Like the Greek goddess Persephone, star of her poem “Gone Girl,” the speakers in Pool Parties dip into the darkness, whether it’s underground or underwater, and reemerge into the light. Come party with us. Just bring an inflatable serpent and make sure you can swim.” –Jessie Janeshek, author of No Place for Dames and Madca
“LET EVENING COME,” BY YVONNE OSBORNE.
After her mother is killed in a rogue Northern Michigan tornado, Sadie Wixom is left with only her father and grandfather to guide her through the pitfalls of young adulthood. Hundreds of miles away in western Saskatchewan, Stefan Montegrand and his Indigenous family are forced off their land by multinational energy companies and flawed treaties. They are taken in temporarily by Sadie’s aunt, a human rights activist who heads a cultural exchange program.
Their mutual attraction and struggle for equilibrium is stymied when Stefan’s older brother, Joachim, who stayed behind, becomes embroiled in the resistance, and Stefan is compelled to return to Canada. Sadie, concerned for his safety, impulsively follows on a trajectory doomed by cultural misunderstanding and oncoming winter.
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Snowflakes in a Blizzard 