THE BOOK: Fried Goldfinch
PUBLISHED IN: 2021
THE AUTHOR: Sarah Wyman
THE EDITOR: David Appelbaum
THE PUBLISHER: David Appelbaum, Codhill Press
Cover Artist: William Bland, Autumn (2018), William Bland Art
SUMMARY: After a section on animals and other myth-makers, the poet returns to her ekphrastic fascination with 20th/ 21st century visual art. One chapter retells her life story and another collects impressions of immediate perception.
THE BACK STORY: See below. Most of these poems were written over the past two years.
WHY THIS TITLE?: During this time of global coronavirus pandemic and international movements for social justice sparked by racial violence in the U.S. during the summer of 2020, there has been too much intentional or passive destruction of beauty.
WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? Those who like to wed wit to humor, although this book is a bit darker and more self-revealing than intended.
REVIEW COMMENTS:
“Sarah Wyman’s beautiful poems inhabit the rich shared ground between thoughtful, intimate conversation and a precise, rich lyricism. They interrogate experience, and artworks, and artworks-as-experience. They offer perceptive character studies…. They show us how colors seep and how knowledge of the world can generate deeper knowing. Their sonic music will catch your ear; their self-interrogating wisdom will bring you back to read them again, again. ” — Jeanne Larsen, author of In Search of Terra Incognita, Why We Make Gardens [& Other Poems] and What Penelope Chooses
AUTHOR PROFILE: Sarah Wyman writes on verbal / visual intersections and lives in the Hudson Valley where climbing feet kick dust down to a river-sea. She teaches Comparative Literature at SUNY New Paltz, directs the Faculty Center, and co-facilitates the Sustainability Learning Community. Her poetry has appeared in Aaduna, Mudfish, Ekphrasis, San Pedro River Review, Potomac Review, Petrichor Review, Lightwood, Heron Clan VII, Chronogram, Shawangunk Review, A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Poets of the Hudson Valley, and other venues. She published books as well: Sighted Stones (FLP 2018) and Fried Goldfinch (Codhill 2021).
AUTHOR COMMENTS: Art is an arbiter of culture – never drop the pen for more than a few strokes of freedom.
SAMPLE:
A rough-sketched line, a tin’s sharp edge
delineates the domain
of a lonely sardine who misses her erstwhile mates.
As oil soothes the rounded corners,
she awaits the cracker or cat’s crunch.
LOCAL OUTLETS: Inquiring Minds, New Paltz, New York
WHERE ELSE TO BUY IT: Inquiring Minds; Codhill Press; Amazon, Barnes & noble, etc.
PRICE: $16.00
CONTACT THE AUTHOR:
Email: wymans@newpaltz.edu
Website: https://faculty.newpaltz.edu/sarahwyman/
Poetry reading for April 27 at York College.
https://www.york.cuny.edu/events/poetry-reading-by-sarah-wyman
Snowflakes in a Blizzard 