CavanKerry Press

Lives Brought to Life

Teresa Carson on Poetry: Attention to Summer

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This week’s poems and music:

“August,” by Naila Moreira

“Summertime” sung by Janis Joplin

“Love Poem at the Beginning of Summer,” by Jack Wiler (American, 1951-2009)

“Summer in the City” performed by the Lovin’ Spoonful

“Temporale Estivo/Summer Lightning Storm,” by Federigo Tozzi

Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto No. 2 ‘Summer’ in G Minor

I hope you and your loved ones are safe, healthy, and in good spirits.

This week I’m taking a break from the Iliad in order to pay some attention to summer. Honestly, my internal clock seems to be stuck in mid-March, which is right when the pandemic shifted life into a different temporal dimension. I hardly remember to turn the pages on our usually-filled-with-appointments-and-reminders desk calendar because it has been full of blank days for the past five months. 

What made me realize that the season is nearly over? Well, I received Naila Moreira’s, “scraps and oddments,” her recent newsletter in which she shared some poems, including one of her own, and lyrics about summer. 

Because I’ll be talking about place-specific soundscapes in these poems, I’ve paired them with music that creates, to my ear, a similar one. Again, I suggest that you read the poems out loud to experience the full force of their sonic effects. (And maybe dance around the room to experience the full force of the music.) 

After reading Naila’s poem, “August,” I started thinking about how the soundscapes of summer differ greatly from place to place. For example, in this poem a hush blankets the night world. Listen to how she builds a languid sonic environment with verbs: creep, exhale, rustle, sleep, and drowns. Listen to how the last two lines are a part of the hush and yet apart from it in that they move into a just-as-languid thought. Oddly enough, I feel that the hush, and therefore the poem, continues, maybe “spreads” a better word, into the white space after its final period. Because of the poem’s unhurried pace, I paired it with Joplin’s rendition of “Summertime.” Doesn’t the opening create a similar landscape? 

By the way, I highly recommend that you check out her website at http://www.nailamoreira.com, and/or subscribe to her email newsletter, https://tinyletter.com/naila. Her writings are always thought-filled, inspiring, wide-ranging and lyrical.

But in my decades of Hudson County life, summer nights were noisy: car radios blasting out of open windows, loud laughter on stoops, sirens near and far, basketballs thumping on backboards, barking dogs, raised voices spilling from bars. There would be short bursts of silence (not the same as a hush) but pretty much it was noisy until long after midnight. Thus, I’m very familiar with the “loud” soundscape in Jack Wiler’s “Love Poem at the Beginning of Summer.” Jack recreates the ebb and flow of a city street soundscape. Of course, being Jack, he doesn’t stop there: look at the intricate weaving of noise and quiet, of inside and outside, that follows how the speaker’s thoughts shift back and forth between the absence and the presence of his lover. I’ve read this poem dozens of times yet the last line always surprises me, always takes my breath away: “Everything in the world is asking about you.” 

...

Whew! Had to take a minute to recover from that line. Anyway, I paired Jack’s poem with the original version of “Summer in the City,” performed by the Lovin’ Spoonful. I can’t think of another song that better recreates the soundscape of a city, especially NYC, in the summer. 

I was hard pressed to come up with a poem that fit my current summer soundscape … until I found “Temporale Estivo/Summer Lightning Storm.” You see, here in Sarasota, most July/August afternoons feature thunderstorms. I happen to love the “thuds” and “rumbles” of thunder and the “pelting” rain on our roof and windows. This poem does a great job of building to the moment when “the thunder bursts.” Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto No. 2 ‘Summer’ in G Minor felt like the perfect match for this poem. 

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The Birth of a Press Part 6: CavanKerry’s Commitment to Community

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Birth of a Press
The Birth of a Press

Commitment to Community

Like the soft place in my heart reserved for First Books and LaurelBooks, I have another for our community outreach programs that bring poetry to new audiences. In fact, very early on, when someone asked me for a phrase,  (a possible tagline) that would describe CKP, I immediately answered, “a not-for-profit press that serves both art and community.” And that we do. In fact, our community programs are our lifeblood. As I mentioned earlier, I was raised in a community that took care of each other—be it building extensions on one another’s houses, minding the children, or organizing a beach patrol to fix up the beach so the kids could swim in safe, clean water. In addition to my concern for including the general reader in the poetry banquet, it’s natural for me to want to create that same spirit of connectedness and generosity in CKP.

One such program is GiftBooks, which brings fine literature to underserved populations. The idea came from a story I read sometime ago of a man who stood on a corner giving out free poetry books to passersby. This seemed like such a simple way to share poetry with people who might otherwise not be privy to it.  Though we don’t quite stand on street corners, we do give liberally; in our 20 years of service we’ve donated nearly 35,000 books to underserved communities in such places as geriatric centers, shelters, hospitals, correctional facilities, schools, and underfunded libraries. Operation “Support Our Troops” and the Widows and Children’s Fund of Police and Firefighters Lost on 9/11, as well as schools and libraries damaged by Katrina are three of our early recipient groups among countless others. Most recently, we’ve donated over 700 books to 15 hospitals to support our frontline healthcare workers during COVID-19. Requests from interested agencies are welcomed.

Another of our outreach programs is Presenting Poetry & Prose, which focuses on bringing literary art to people where they live—into their own homes and meeting places. The original “Presenting Poetry & Prose” was a program I founded and curated at the John Harms Center for the Arts in Englewood, New Jersey. Though the program was desired and highly successful to the writers who participated and the audience we were able to attract, it was unable to sustain itself because we could not maintain an audience. It occurred to me at that time that to ask people to come out of their homes to a theatre to listen to poetry on a weeknight, as nice as it was, would be somewhat unrealistic. People are inundated with time commitments to family, work and rest and have little time (and inclination, I believe) to break away to come to hear poetry being read. In addition, since most poetry and prose readings take place in libraries and bookstores, they tend to be attended only by those who visit these places, which excludes a large percentage of the reading population. As we pointed out earlier in this discussion, it was clear that we needed to bring the poetry to the audience rather than ask them to come to us. 

Thus, CavanKerry brings poetry into people’s neighborhoods and community centers through free readings at hospitals, community centers, churches, schools, synagogues, prisons etc. We do this in two ways. First, we accept requests for free readings from the general reading public/specific groups and work with the individual/social director/librarian to arrange these readings in which CK writers read their own work and the work of others, without any cost to the person or organization requesting it. Usually 2-3 CK writers participate in each reading/discussion. In addition, “Presenting Poetry & Prose” is an outgrowth of the GiftBooks program in that populations that receive free books are also offered free readings and workshops. These too are sponsored and organized by CK and conducted by CK poets.

In lieu of in-person appearances during the COVID-19 pandemic, we have made our two editions of The Waiting Room Reader free for download on our website and provided weekly excerpts from our books in our “Words to Keep You Company” series, as well as curating and collecting new writing from several of our authors in response to the state of the nation in our “Dispatches from 2020” series. Further, former Associate Publisher Teresa Carson, other guest writers, and I have made consistent new contributions to our blog. Each of these efforts serves to offer a window for our writers to connect with our readers during this time of isolation and desperation. 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, as part of their contractual agreement with CavanKerry, our writers are committed to three free outreach efforts each year while their book is in print; these are over and above any marketing or literary readings/workshops they do. Thus, our writers go out into their own communities and bring their poems and stories to listeners: offering workshops/readings, mentoring younger writers, visiting infirm writers et al. CavanKerry writers then become the spine of our community outreach: they participate in other CK activities as part of a communal or cooperative body. In addition to being excellent writers, each is an excellent teacher and reader. Writers who have published their first book have learned a great deal about the heroic making of poems: they thereby have a great deal to offer students of poetry. Writers are welcome visitors to ailing individuals and members of the writing community in need; they make themselves available to go out to read & conduct workshops to underserved communities in their geographical area. 

A Community of Writers

The twin to our community of readers is CKP’s commitment to creating a community of writers as a partial antidote to the isolation and loneliness that we writers often feel. Our goal was to create a community where writers could share their art and the process of making art. Towards that end, we instituted the CKP Writer’s Summit which once occurred annually at my home. The summit included 5 hours of poems, conversation, and good food and touched on topics of interest and concern to the writers and the press. Additionally, CKP or the writers themselves arrange for readings and events in which they can read together and introduce each other’s work; these are joyful occasions when the poets share their work to each other and a broader audience. 

CavanKerry writers also participate with CK where we need them—in reading new manuscripts, in recommending others, writing articles for the CKP newsletter, offering workshops, helping with fundraising, and organizing events. Throughout the ongoing quarantine, we have launched virtual programming and readings featuring 12 of our authors in collaboration with multiple institutions, including Caldwell University and the Poetry Society of NY to further connect with our authors during this period where in-person events are not possible. More and more, we resemble that community we set out to create.

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Why Publish with CavanKerry Press?

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Throughout our 20 years in publishing, CavanKerry Press has always stood true to our dual mission by producing quality books of fine art and servicing the community. Our books are always crafted with a general audience in mind where we are committed to expanding the reach of poetry by publishing works that explore the emotional and psychological landscapes of everyday life. 

This statement is more important than ever as we are looking to diversify our pool of authors and will be looking for stories like yours more than ever! In CavanKerry’s future we will continue to help foster emerging and established writers alike, with the aim of including more narratives from Trans, Queer, Black, Indigenous, and other Person of Color communities.

So Why Else Should You Publish with CavanKerry Press?

We’ve Published Over 75+ Authors & 100+ Books

Publishing isn’t new to us! We handle your collection from manuscript to book with the utmost care. Once selected, it goes through revisions and editing where appropriate, book design, typesetting, and printing.

We Offer Major Distribution

Aside from our website, our books are also sold through the Chicago Distribution Center which has countless connections with bookstores, libraries, and colleges across the globe. This means your book will be widely distributed and easily available.

We Perpetuate Stewardship & Community

When you sign a book contract with CavanKerry Press, you are also committing to do 3 community outreach events every year for the first 3 years of your book’s release. This can be a free reading, workshop, school visit, and more. This means that within 3 years, all 12 authors we publish per cycle participate in at least 36 public outreach events. This is our way of making sure we give back to the community while expanding our reach.

We Select Books for a Range of Different Reasons

Here are the 5 categories we look to highlight each publishing cycle:

  • Emerging Voices, works from early or mid-career poets
  • Notable Voices, works of established poets of merit and distinction
  • Memoir, memoirs of writers keeping with the theme Lives Brought to Life
  • LaurelBooks, collections of poetry and prose that explore the many poignant issues associated with confronting serious physical and/or psychological illness
  • Florenz Eisman Memorial Collection, work from a New Jersey writer in honor of CavanKerry’s first Managing Editor

Our Books Have Garnered Various Distinctions

Here are just some of the awards our authors have received with their CavanKerry books: 

  • AWP Small Press Publisher Award
  • LA Times Book Award Nomination
  • Florida Book Award
  • Tillie Olsen Award
  • ForeWord Book of the Year Award Finalist
  • Jackson Poetry Prize
  • Ruth Stone Poetry Prize Finalist 
  • Oklahoma Book Award Finalist
  • Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award 
  • Whirling Prize
  • Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist
  • Eric Hoffer Legacy Award Finalist

Small-But-Mighty

We operate the entire press with only 5 people and we all work in collaboration with one another. Therefore, upon accepting your manuscript, you can count on getting to know each one of us, from the Founder/ Publisher, Joan Cusack Handler, to Elena Neoh, our Marketing Assistant. You can view our entire team here.

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Kari O’Driscoll Writes a Love Letter to Gen Z

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Dear Gen Z,

This is a letter of acknowledgment and apology. I am in awe of you; your grace and intelligence and perseverance. You have swum in the waters of collective trauma in one way or another nearly every day of your lives and now your country is quite literally on fire. Throughout, you’ve managed to survive, and in many cases, thrive. You were born into a post-Columbine world where near-constant school shootings meant learning to hide under a desk, still your bodies and voices, and barricade classroom doors alongside learning “new math.” You were babies during 9/11, and US troops have been fighting in Afghanistan your entire lives. Most of you have never experienced a month without a school shooting until now, never flown without removing your shoes and jackets, never inhabited a world without political polarization and the hate that it engenders. 

Your lives have been shot through with massive changes – the legalization of same-sex marriage, the first Black president of the United States, Brexit, the #MeToo movement – but also with systems that perpetuate inequities and cause harm. You have been expected to learn the vocabulary of social justice, adapt to new technology at the speed of light, and bear witness to burgeoning movements borne of pain and inequity, all while keeping one foot in the world of your parents and their parents because we are the ones who wrote the rules. 

My generation wasn’t asked to do service hours to graduate from high school. We played sports seasonally instead of specializing by the time we were 12. We played for fun, not to add a line to our college applications. We spent a few thousand dollars on college instead of the tens of thousands you will spend for a degree, and our K-12 years weren’t peppered with standardized, high-stakes testing. We had our challenges, to be sure, but nothing like what you face at this time in history. 

You were young during the financial crash of 2008, and you likely watched your parents freak out, begin to lose faith in the economy, and then continue to tell you to do all the same things so you could have a secure future. We had no right to make the promises we did, if only because we were focused on the wrong things. We were worried about screen time and whether or not we were “helicopter parents,” instead of making the fundamental changes in our social fabric that would help you thrive as young adults. We should have been paying attention to the skyrocketing cost of college and our addiction to fossil fuels and the systemic inequities that made it harder for your peers to finish school, find enough to eat, and continue to live in the neighborhoods their families had inhabited for generations. Instead, we stubbornly adhered to the systems we created or inherited even as we increasingly understood that they were broken, that they didn’t serve everyone. 

We gave you streaming, and then called you lazy when you watched hours and hours of your favorite shows in one go. We invented e-cigarettes, let the companies market them to you against the backdrop of what we knew about cigarette marketing in our lifetime and watched in horror as many of you became addicted and some of you died. 

You took social media and used it to collaborate, organize, and come together.  We applauded you when you spoke out; after the discovery of lead in the water in Flint, after the Parkland shooting, when Trump was elected. We cheered for you, shared your tweets and petitions, and still didn’t vote out the people who chose guns over children, money over clean water and air, corporations over universal healthcare. Many of you aren’t old enough to serve in the military or vote, and you’ve inherited a country in disarray, full of broken promises, and you’re still putting one foot in front of the other and finding ways to support each other. You are showing up at peaceful protests, teaching your parents about anti-racism, finding ways to connect with each other while you’re sequestered at home and barred from your favorite public places.

We told you that if you checked all the boxes – went to school, studied hard, volunteered your time, excelled at a sport or mock trial, got accepted to college – it would be fine. We said that a bachelor’s degree would mean something, and we hoped that it would mean more than tens of thousands of dollars of debt and an entry level job that doesn’t pay a living wage. We told you that the world was your oyster in the face of increasing income inequality and catastrophic climate change. We kept consuming, ordering things from Amazon, buying trucks and SUVs, and turning the other cheek at fracking in our own communities. 

I am sorry that we shook our heads sadly as the pressure of standardized tests and year-round club sports weighed on you. We read articles about the alarming increase of anxiety and depression, substance use, and inequities in our school systems and still told you that checking all the boxes would pan out, get you where you needed to go, give you a happy ending. I am sorry that we continued to elect politicians who are not leaders, who don’t represent you and the world you want, and hoped it would all be fine. 

And now you are not only experiencing more collective trauma, but you’re doing it without the ability to come together and celebrate your victories. Some of you were set to graduate this year, from college or high school, but you get no culmination, no celebration, no collective acknowledgment of this rite of passage. That summer internship you worked so hard to get may not happen. Prom, and that final soccer game of high school on the team you’ve spent years bonding with exist only in dreams. Instead, you are emerging from stay-home orders to march in the streets, be tear-gassed by police officers, and fight the systems we propped up, systems that are cracking and crumbling and literally killing people. 

And yet, all I have to do is open TikTok or YouTube or Instagram to see something amazing you’ve created. You are funny and talented and still moving forward, albeit in a much smaller space. Some of you are organizing “socially distant” soccer games, continuing to run every day, taking classes online and completing assignments. Others are heavily involved in MutualAid efforts, getting food to community members who need it or creating apps to connect people to resources. Many of you are marching in solidarity with Black community members and sharing online resources, and some of you are barely hanging on. I see you, and I honor the losses you must be grieving right now. The resilience you have developed over a lifetime of collective trauma is nothing short of phenomenal and from here forward, I pledge to both listen to you and amplify your voices, letting you lead, and supporting the movements you create in ways that are meaningful and purposeful. 

I hope that you find the solidarity and support you need to create a world that allows you to soar. I hope that you all get do-over celebrations and more praise than you can imagine for thriving in the pressure-cooker you grew up in. I hope that you take a moment and recognize that the fact that you’re still here at all is a testament to your passion and strength and ability. You deserve better. You deserve to be celebrated for days on end, and I hope this is just the beginning of the accolades you receive, not for doing any one particular thing, but simply for being, for coming of age in a world, in a culture, that doesn’t always recognize you as fully human, and that piled unimaginable stress atop your shoulders and expected you to do it all. I see you. I’m amazed by you. May you be able to rest one day soon, and be held up by your elders. May you meet with miraculous success, whatever that means to each one of you. 

Sincerely,

A Gen X Mom

Read more of O’Driscoll’s writing here.

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Paola Corso Interviews Fred Shaw

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This interview was conducted on 6/18/20 @ 2:37pm

PAOLA CORSO                                                                                                                      

Your debut poetry collection about restaurant service workers, Scraping Away, couldn’t be more timely in the midst of COVID-19 lockdown and now the country opening up. How do you think dining out again will impact customers dining out and restaurant workers? 

FRED SHAW

I’m heading back to my restaurant gig this weekend with a hopeful yet guarded outlook on the situation.  Like many others, I yearn to find a sense of normalcy that dining out seems to convey, as well as being able to make some money.  But at the same time, I worry about exposure and further spreading.  It also feels like customers may not be ready just yet for all the rules that go along with this new paradigm—wearing masks, social distancing, etc.  I like to imagine that the guests that do come to dine will be generous and understanding of this new dynamic that restaurants are adapting to. I just hope it’s all worth it, in the end.

PAOLA CORSO       

So many poems in this collection convey in vivid detail the toll working in the food industry takes on one’s physical and mental health. Your opening poem, “Argot” does just that. Let’s post it here.

Argot

In the sweaty restaurant kitchen,

where I’ll learn to cuss in Mexican,

tattooed line cooks talk shit in voices

nicked as the bone-white

monkey bowls we stack and fill.

 

They call the boss and picky customers

chupacabra, “goat sucker,”

being the inside joke

for every pain in the ass.

 

Years ago, in a place once a mustard factory,

I was a boy touring Mom’s latest food-prep gig,

a windowless world where the clam chowder

paddled around in vats

deep enough for me to stand,

 

and I wore a paper hat,

same as the mustached men in bloody aprons

who cut up and kidded while they hacksawed

T-bones from beef sides.

 

Now, I’m digging twelve-hour grooves

of full trays in spaghetti joints

with family names. I’m keeping ice bins full

and counters clean, wondering, at times,

 

if the routine has replaced the oxygen

of my dreams with a working life

that takes what it wants, stealing my pen

and handing me

bad math on credit slips. 

 

On her days off,

Mom wants to play Scrabble,

but instead, we talk about our fingers,

how they’ve split into open-flowered nerves,

stinging our bodies to the bulk

 

of a weary self at the end of the day,

each of us searching

for the phrase that captures what it is

to feel at once,

both capable and small.

PAOLA CORSO

Tell us about your restaurant jobs, the effect they’ve had on your own physical and mental health and how you moved on from this line of work. 

FRED SHAW

Restaurant work is a whirlwind, a runaway train on busy nights where all you can do is hold on.  The pace can be brutal for hours at a time, and with so many moving parts and other people needing to do their jobs well, there can be moments of error, which turns into further stress and angst.  I recall a recent Mother’s Day where I was ashamed of the food we were putting out, on top of long check times and mistakes being made, so much so that I jokingly offered my table to wash their cars, as it felt like there was little else I could do. It was awful and soul-killing. All of this stress adds up and many in the service industry struggle with addiction, medicating with whatever’s available. 

There’s also a certain machismo about it all—partying hard and waking up to do it all over again feels like a deserved sense of escapism but it can also be a vicious cycle.  I’ve certainly had my moments, but I think having creative outlets and an eye toward the future were saving graces, in my case. But I’ve known my share of folks who’ve gone off the deep end, some no longer with us. Physically, I’ve held up pretty well, trying to eat healthy and exercise, but I’ve suffered my share of cuts, burns, and bruises.  Sore legs and back come with the territory, but the life has toughened me up and given me focus in ways I didn’t foresee 30+ years ago when I started.

PAOLA CORSO

That’s amazing you can say that. Good to hear the positive. Can you talk a little about how this collection evolved? Certainly as a service worker yourself, it’s easy to see why you chose the subject matter, but perhaps you could address some of your considerations for setting the tone, point of view, voice, form, and other choices you made in shaping the book. 

FRED SHAW

I studied with the poet Jan Beatty at the University of Pittsburgh and I always admired her restaurant poems, the attitude of her speaker and the voice that was knowing and authentic. I had a 5-year break before finishing my undergrad studies and when I returned, I struggled to find a focus for my writing, although I was starting to put the pieces together.  In grad school, studying for my MFA at Carlow University, I again struggled mightily to find my footing as I wanted to write narratively but so much came out abstracted and making sense only to me.  Studying with the poet Robert Gibb made me a proponent of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, “no ideas, but in things,” which grounded me in the real world and had me focusing on the tangible. 

Restaurants should be nothing but a treat for the senses for guests.  Being immersed in that world for so long, I took it for granted, but needing to write poems, I found the subject matter an easy reach. After a while, it felt like I had carved out a niche for myself and obsessions can be useful if channeled.  It’s difficult to write about food, but setting can play an important part in tone.  I also didn’t want the poems to be a list of anecdotes about customer interactions and found my speaker to be knowing but even-handed at his best.  I like using first-person, the collective “we,” but also try to remain as objective as possible through imagery, if that makes sense. I’m out to create a scene for my readers that feels authentic, while offering an inside look at a job that millions of people know well, as the service industry has been an economic force for a long time.

PAOLA CORSO

And you’ve done a remarkable job too! If you could pinpoint what meaning you came to discover in exploring food service work through poetry vs. living it– a poetic versus a working-class eye? Doing both at once? Please speak to the phrase in your poem, “Argot,” “a working life/that takes what it wants, stealing my pen/and handing me/bad math on credit slips.”

FRED SHAW

I once told my wife, “Work is an interruption of life,” which I suppose meant that it was merely a means to an end.  But as someone who grew up in a working-class environment, I came to realize that our jobs get tied up into our identity and that hard work may be a sucker’s game for some, but in my thinking, it embodies a personality trait that connects you with others who feel similarly.  Restaurant work is an exercise in teamwork, and the only servers I’ve ever had a real beef with are those who always looked for shortcuts or would try to “skate” out of doing their share.  Those ideas fell into my poetic worldview as I want to celebrate those I’ve toiled with, and to show readers the humanity of those who do the nameless, faceless work of keeping us fed.  Chuck Pahlahniuk does this nicely in moments of his novel, Fight Club, especially when his narrator speaks truth to power.  Imagine the chaos recently if those who work at the grocery store had decided to behave differently? 

As far as that line from “Argot,” it’s a personification of the double-shifts I worked for years that were brutal, leaving me without weekends, that in hindsight may not have been worth it, but when the rent was due, and to work many hours was the only honest way to get it.  The line is also a bit of an inside joke as guests will often do the math wrong when signing for a bill and it has led to much consternation among servers and management on how much gratuity was intended.

PAOLA CORSO

Your collection includes poems about your father such as “Iron City Sage” and “What Dad Brought Home.” I’d love to hear more about your family’s working-class background, growing up in Pittsburgh, and getting your college education there. How did this provide a larger context for your personal experience working in the food industry? Connections? Disconnects? 

FRED SHAW

My father was a tool and die maker, and very proud of that fact.  He grew up in Pittsburgh, and his father was a pipefitter in the mills. I looked up to both of them as exemplars as a child but looking back, they were both aloof and we had trouble connecting.  The poems about my Dad were therapeutic after his death at 63, much too young.  I think it was my Mom that was a better role model, as she worked all sorts of food type jobs, working in a coffee shop, a chocolate store, cooking solo at a retirement home.  She still had balance in her life that wasn’t tied up in just work; she had church and relationships to tend to as well as maintaining a household.  Going to school at Pitt was what I always wanted but had to attend Thiel College for a year as I didn’t get accepted.  Being in the sticks at a small school gave me confidence and grades that I could succeed at a university and transferred after a year. 

I didn’t realize how much the city meant to me until I was visiting a friend in Seattle.  We had gone to a ballgame and had many beers and were waiting to get into a place after when a man approached, asking if I was from Pittsburgh as he noticed my Pirates ballcap. I said I was, yet he then referred to it “Shittsburgh” after having studied at CMU, thinking all the locals were dipshits.  It’s the closest I’ve come to blows in many years and it surprised the hell out of me.  The working-class connection is always there for me as I recall the sadness of being a child during the steel industry’s downturn, still wanting to spit any time I see an image of Ronald Reagan.  I also saw myself as part of the bigger picture, realizing that service work was the industry of the future, for better or worse.

PAOLA CORSO

You’re hitting a personal chord with me. As a native Pittsburgher, I’ve lived through the steel industry decline too and will always feel solidarity with our city and its working-class roots. That’s why I’ve taken a real shine to your book, Fred. Can’t thank you enough for being a fellow poet of witness. 

I’m always interested in knowing how poets choose a title for their collection. How did you decide on Scraping Away? Let’s post your title poem here. 

Scraping Away

Once, when we were new, a plate of seafood

crashed to the kitchen tiles and became the first scallops

some of us had ever tried, scraping away

the broken to save the unscathed,

we chewed briny mouthfuls

of gritty sweet meat swimming

in a sniff of garlic and white wine, thinking

nothing ever tasted so good,

as that moment passed into sounds of clinking silverware

and carrying-on, while Perry Como sang overhead,

imploring us to learn the mambo’s to and fro,

a lesson we’ll soon take to humming

in a heaping world that needs us to believe

we can be oceans, pushing waves

toward a shoreline we can’t see,

the worn down, far-off places of ourselves.

PAOLA CORSO

What metaphorical significance does scraping away food off a plate have beyond the literal action itself?   

FRED SHAW

That poem was selected to be a part of the PA Public Poetry Project in 2017 so it felt like it was one of the strongest I had in my manuscript.  Also, the act of eating food that’s fallen to the floor strikes me as desperate now but not so much at 16 and hungry.  The impetus to write that came from my MFA defense when I mentioned the incident and Jan Beatty remarked that it sounded like a poem needing to be written.  The phrase also feels a bit archaeological in the sense of unearthing, bit by bit, the motivations and cost of doing this job, which until March, paid me better than teaching 30 college credits a year.  What is the cost we pay for our labor?  Marge Piercy touches on it in a more politicized way in her poem “Market Economy.”  The PA Center for the Book turned that poem into 1,000 posters and I gave away every one of them, so it’s gotten some mileage.  It’s also one of the first things I see in the morning as it’s hanging on my wall.

PAOLA CORSO

Have your friends and former co-workers in the food industry seen and read your book? What are some reactions?

FRED SHAW

Reactions have been positive although some poems hit close to home for some—it’s tricky to include others in your work, especially if they disagree with their portrayal.  As Joan Didion says, “writers work with what’s at hand.”  For some, my work is the sum total of what they read, so I’m glad it remains accessible to a wide range of readers, which is my intention.  Maybe it will get some others interested in other poetry but I’m just happy that folks can see themselves in the work and feel it’s honestly written.

PAOLA CORSO

Tell us about your current writing projects. Are you shifting from a working-class world to academia since you now teach writing and literature to college students?

FRED SHAW

I’ve been more interested in the personal essay and other creative nonfiction writing, which I think relates to my narrative style.  Unfortunately, due to economic factors my critical writing of local writers has been mostly put on hold.  There’s only 2 of us who write about local poetry in Pittsburgh these days, which is a shame. I don’t see my focus of writing about the service industry, family and music going away any time soon as I still have much to explore.  Restaurant work is all about the relationships needed to make things run smoothly, and to attend to the humanity behind each person I work with, some more than others.  I like having people in my poems and restaurants are nothing without people.  

I don’t have many relationships, let alone close ones, with my colleagues at the two schools where I teach.  Being an adjunct means never having a real place on campus to call home, and unintentionally I suspect, makes me feel a bit like a second-class citizen.  Aside from the classroom, which I love, teaching feels solitary, even though there’s plenty of support offered.  It’s the students who I like to make connections with, but usually those fall by the wayside once a new semester begins. The classroom has been a place to test out my ideas on writing and the students who dive in with both feet do some writing I’m very impressed with and keeps me coming back for more. I like the role of teaching in my life but it doesn’t feed me creatively.

PAOLA CORSO

How has your restaurant work informed your approach to teaching college students?

FRED SHAW

Everything I’ve learned about the act of teaching comes back to the training I received as a server at TGI Fridays or how I’ve handled tricky situations with tables or management.  As new servers, we trained for weeks with a focus on guest satisfaction and paying attention to details. I try to make sure each of my students leaves the classroom as happy as I can make them. Teaching online for the last part of the Spring semester left me with a feeling of malaise. My role as a teacher is to be a manager of experiences, and I’ve found that sharing some of myself allows me to be vulnerable, breaking down the metaphorical wall between us and allows us to connect better. I get lots of good evaluations and some great pieces of writing so something must be working.

PAOLA CORSO

I should say so! Thanks for sharing your wisdom and insights, Fred. Your poetry shines a light on the human condition and you do so with compassion and dignity. Let’s close the interview with the last poem in your collection, “The Communicants.”

The Communicants

 

Here, Tuesday stumbling

toward midnight, we’re stuck

with that lone couple lingering

over a last swallow of Pinot,

their plates cleared, water glasses

emptied, check unsettled.

They don’t care

that the closing cook has swept

and mopped his now-dark kitchen

where the dish machine cools

among bottles of bleach,

or that last call was given long ago.

Instead, they lean in and whisper

while we sip water

and try not to stare, soaking up

the flicker of a muted TV,

feeling forgotten

like those doggie bags we pack

that get left behind. And if work

can be worship, it finds us

supplicant and waiting

for the chirp of chairs pushing

back from their table, followed

by heels clicking on hardwood,

a recessional marking

the end of service, the front door

closing like a prayer,

quiet on its hinges.

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The Birth of a Press Part 5: CavanKerry’s Commitment to the Art of Fine Literature

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Birth of a Press
The Birth of a Press

Literary Art

       Not surprisingly, the publishing of First Books/ New Voices has always been at the forefront of CavanKerry’s concerns. New, talented writers are abundant, yet the doors remain mostly shut to them! We decided to focus on this very worthy group with the hope that more publishers would join us in the cause; perhaps, others would start presses as well! This concern included a commitment to an embargo on competitions and reading fees. In their emphasis on winners and losers, competitions seem to subliminally pit writers against one another and exacerbate the envy and insecurity that often already exists. While fiction writers and poets of considerable reputation are often free from the burden of contest entries and reading fees, unpublished poets as well as those with short publishing histories face prohibitive and costly expenses just for the chance to get noticed.  This breeds resentment and can be fatal to prospects of brilliant-yet- unpublished works of fine literature.  We reasoned that these works deserved the same rights to be seen and read by all.

          As a result, we made a commitment to publish 2-3 First Books/New Voices every year; manuscripts would come from open submissions and recommendations as well as from the considerable array of worthy poets I already knew. Due to the fact that publishing (like so many other industries/arts) seems to venerate the young, particular notice is given to older poets. That said, no generation has been neglected—our writers range in age from late twenties to early eighties.

     Of the 100+ books we have published, we can proudly say that many of our writers have gone onto flourishing careers. Beginning in September of 2000 with our own first book, A Day this Lit by Howard Levy, we have since published reputable names, such as Karen Chase, Peggy Penn, Sherry Fairchok, Sondra Gash, Liz Hutner, Christopher Matthews, Eloise Bruce, Celia Bland, Catherine Doty, Giorgianna Orsini, Joan Seliger Sidney, Laurie Lamon, Chris Barter, Andrea Carter Brown, Robert Seder, Richard Jeffrey Newman, Ross Gay, Joseph Legaspi, Christine Korfhage and Teresa Carson just to name a few.

       On the other side of the publishing spectrum, out-of-print books also concerned us. The plethora of exquisite work allowed to go out-of-print due to slow/limited sales is staggering. We added these to our list and committed ourselves to publishing reprints of fine books that we believe deserve permanence while doing all we could to not allow any of our own books from going out of print.  Martin Mooney’s Grub was our first reprint.  I was drawn to him first as a gifted writer and that interest deepened once I heard that his publisher had ‘pulped’ the 600 copies of Grub that remained in storage without informing Martin. Nor did they invite him to purchase or simply remove them. Worst of all, he discovered the fate of his books when he contacted his publisher and was unable to purchase books for a reading. Grub along with Moyra Donaldson’s Snakeskin Stilettos were our first reprints.

       CavanKerry’s interest in writers who are “under-recognized” or “rejected by the literary mainstream” came to include a scope broader than merely poets who were previously unpublished. Many seasoned, mid-career poets are forced to solicit a new publisher for each new book. CavanKerry has provided a home for many of these Notable Voices, including Robert Cording, Mary Ruefle, Kenneth Rosen, Jack Wiler, Karen Chase, Baron Wormser, Sam Cornish and more. 

       Another interest of ours are intelligent, insightful works that focus on the creative process and the making of art; these are CK Critical Collections. Our Carolyn Kizer (introduction by Maxine Kumin) and John Haines (introduction by Dana Gioia) books collect the essays and poems of reputable poets and essayists across the country who have studied the works of these two brilliant writers and write in depth about it.

       Our initial aesthetic commitment goes hand-in hand with our community focus which revolves around our interest in special projects. CavanKerry has published two collections to benefit another arts organization. The Breath of Parted Lips: Voices from the Robert Frost Place, Volumes 1 and 2 were published to honor the great work of The Robert Frost Place Center for Poetry and the Arts in Franconia, New Hampshire under the protective mantle of former executive director, Donald Sheehan, where many notable and fledgling artists, including myself, have made and shared poems.

BEAR by Karen Chase
An Apron Full of Beans: New and Selected Poems by Sam Cornish
Life With Sam by Elizabeth Hall Hutner
Elegy for the Floater by Teresa Carson
Sweet World. Poems by Maureen Seaton

LaurelBooks

       But we were not finished. Like any excited home or business builder we kept finding new rooms to add to our structure. During our second season, we found yet another category of book that we wanted to support: specifically, those that dealt openly and honestly with the profound psychological, emotional, and physical issues connected to illness. This came to us in the form of Life with Sam by Elizabeth Hutner, a book sent to us by Molly Peacock which recounted the deeply moving story in poems and photos of a woman who lost her 5 year old son to leukemia. 

       Having spent most of my adult life with serious (though not life threatening) orthopedic problems (two spinal fusions and one ankle fusion, among several other surgeries), I struggled as a writer with a need to confront the effects of these in my writing and a need to escape them. When I suffered a very serious fall that resulted in a trimalleolar fracture of my left ankle, I avoided the pain in my writing until Molly insisted I confront it. I balked. I didn’t want to appear self-pitying, nor did I want to write about what I was convinced no one wanted to hear. Yet, as a psychologist, I knew how important it was that I do so.  

          So much work about illness, including my own, seemed to tackle the problems either glibly or stoically; all seemed to avoid the emotional pain that, by necessity, accompanies serious illness. This is important and powerful work and very necessary for writers and readers alike. Readers need poems to help them live with and through their illnesses. Poems name things for us. Sometimes they name what we feel—what we cannot express on our own. They tell us that we are not alone. The incredibly courageous story of Sam brought to mind the whole array of important works that are a necessity to read for the families, caregivers, physicians, and those living with their illnesses.  I wanted CavanKerry to claim this work as a major part of our mission. We approached the Arnold P. Gold Foundation for the Advancement of Humanism in Medicine requesting that they partner with us in CavanKerry’s imprint, LaurelBooks, The Literature of Illness and Disability. The name stems from my mad love affair with trees and a line from one of my poems:

Have you noticed

how the laurel dips down

crawls along the ground

to find the sun

like any life or body 

that’s known love?

       The Gold Foundation agreed and with them we have brought Life with Sam, in the form of both books and readings/discussions, to medical communities across the country. 

       Our second LaurelBook, Body of Diminishing Motion, by Joan Seliger Sidney, tells the story in poems and a memoir of a woman who has battled with Multiple Sclerosis for over 40 years. Body of Diminishing Motion was also distributed and read to the medical community as well as to a general readership. The third, fourth, and fifth LaurelBooks also deserve notice: Robert Seders’ To the Marrow is a memoir written by a man who underwent a bone marrow transplant for lymphoma; Mark Nepo’s Surviving Has Made Me Crazy is yet another powerful story in poems and memoir of a man who survived lymphoma; and Teresa Caron’s, Elegy for the Floater recounts in poems the life of an extremely dysfunctional family that focuses on the youngest sibling who committed suicide. Our 2009 LaurelBook, We Mad Climb Steep Ladders by Pam Wagner, tells the story in poems of a woman’s inevitable plunge into the madness of schizophrenia and her eventual but very slow return to a tempered sanity. 

       Since then, as of January 2020, we’ve had the pleasure of publishing LaurelBooks like Little Boy Blue (Grey Jacobik— a mother and her emotionally challenged son), Letters from a Distant Shore (Marie Lawson Fiala— a mother whose son suffers a cerebral hemorrhage), Motherhood Exaggerated (Judith Hannan— a mother’s story of a daughter’s Ewing’s Sarcoma), My Crooked House (Teresa Carson— experience with obsessive-compulsive disorder), Sweet World (Maureen Seaton— a woman’s recreation of life as a survivor of Breast Cancer), Cracked Piano (Margo Taft Stever— recalling a life through letters of a relative who was a victim of psychiatric incarceration in the 19th century), and The Body at a Loss (Cati Porter— a woman’s articulation of the complexities regarding diagnosis, treatment, and recovery of Cancer). LaurelBook readings have taken place at Columbia University’s Medical Schools, UMDNJ, cancer support groups, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, and many others.  I’ll go into greater detail in the next section of the Community blog in this series.

       I am very proud of this work and the positive impact it has had both within the writing community and among a more general audience.  CavanKerry’s tagline is “lives brought to life,” with a simple but powerful mission to explore what it means to be human.  Each of the 100+ books we have published in the last two decades has furthered that mission and worked to bring fine literature to an ever-growing audience.

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Teresa Carson on Poetry: Holly Smith & NJ Poetry Out Loud

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New Jersey Poetry Out Loud is the New Jersey chapter of a national poetry recitation program public, charter, parochial, and home school students from grades 9-12 across America. Every year, CavanKerry Press is proud to be involved with the enrichment of poetry education through the NJPOL. Each year, several of our authors assist with the competition as judges, we donate 500 books to over 100 participating schools in New Jersey and to the state finalists, and we grant scholarships to further the education of poetry instruction for the NJPOL teacher from the winning school.

CavanKerry author Teresa Carson, who will be supplying us with thoughts on poetry every month based off her weekly la poesia della settimana emails, was once our Associate Editor and was responsible for establishing the collaboration between us and NJPOL. We’re forever grateful for what that has grown into.  

I hope you and your loved ones are healthy and safe.

This week my series on “seeing in a dark time” is interrupted by a great delight: Holly Smith, poet and teacher extraordinaire, “thinking out loud about poetry recitation.” Seven or so years ago, I met Holly through Poetry Out Loud, a national poetry recitation competition for high school students. Year after year, her students own the New Jersey state competition. Holly’s deep connection to poetry and her rare level of commitment to her students are the foundation of their POL success. I always jump at the chance to visit her classroom not only because I enjoy working with her students, but also because I like watching her in her “natural habitat.” Don’t tell her, but I’m more than a little intimidated by her powerful intelligence, which is on full display in this note. 

Yes, today’s note is a bit longer than usual. Trust me: it’s worth reading every word, because Ms. Smith (as her students call her) is THE teacher we all wish we had had at any level of our education. The attachment contains the poems mentioned in her note. Now I’ll step out of the way and let Holly speak.

Dear Poetry Explorers:

 In late February I had the opportunity to spend some time with Teresa in Sarasota. She told me about the genesis of this weekly email discussion on poetry, and then lovingly “voluntold” me to be a guest contributor.

I am 18 years into my career as a high school literature teacher in Jersey City, NJ at a public college-prep magnet school, Dr. Ronald E. McNair Academic High School. 

This week I will be thinking aloud about poetic recitation (was that a pun?).

McNair (my school) got active with Poetry Out Loud in 2011, and we started getting good in 2013. Very good. Every year since 2013, we have either taken 2nd place in NJ, or won NJ and went to Nationals in D.C. to compete against students from the 54 states and territories. My students were NJ State champs the last 3 out of 4 competition years. (This year’s NJ and National competition was cancelled due to COVID). So through coaching these students I have had to focus on issues in recitation.

For the average person, recitation isn’t about delivering a memorized piece. It is reading a poem aloud from a page, either approaching it cold having never read it prior, or using the page as a sort of script. In those cases, you need to rely quite heavily on the guidance the poet has (hopefully) so helpfully left for you. Punctuation. Line breaks. Stanzas. Forms. (We know how to read a limerick when we see one. If it is a sonnet, we are looking for turns, or perhaps shift into a punchline of a couplet.) Perhaps transitional words are traffic signals (for, and, not, but, or, yet, so…, or conditionals such as “if”), or other choices at the word level demand our tongue perform specific acrobatics (rhyme, sibilance, echoed sounds, etc.).

The voice becomes a font. The ear becomes an eye. 

I think what we are doing when we transfer the poem into the air is looking for the weight in the poem. Sometimes our brain unconsciously “edits” the poem as we read, changing articles, adding plurals, or stumbling over words or sounds that feel awkward because they don’t usually appear so consciously in regular speech. For me, the moments of stumbling and error in the reading aloud is where it gets interesting. Where the poem asks us to slow down and be careful to read the words as they have been composed, not how our brains (so used to scanning and rushing) want to gloss them.  

If it isn’t your practice of voicing a poem, even to yourself alone as you read, give it a try. At the very least it will slow you down. And hopefully it will also act as an oral highlighter, allowing you to notice some of the patterns and choices in the piece.

I am sure my Advanced Placement Literature students (forced by cruel me to memorize a poem over the summer), and the students who willingly enter the school contest for Poetry Out Loud each December would love to have the paper in front of them to recite. But they must memorize. I also memorize a piece each year to keep myself rooted in beginner’s mind. (This year I will be memorizing “Mi Historia” by David Dominguez.) 

For the National Poetry Out Loud competition, students select three poems from a (rather excellent) database of published recognized poets (www.poetryoutloud.org). One poem must be 25 lines or fewer (short), one must be pre-20thCentury (old) and the other is of their choosing. They can choose the order of poems, usually their signature or strongest piece first, as the early rounds are elimination rounds. The philosophy of the competition is to celebrate the ancient art of poetic recitation, where the student is the vessel of the poem. They are the text and must deliver and interpret the piece for an audience who may or may not have a strong grounding in poetry. The judges see the poems ahead of time and can prep as they wish.

I tell my students: the audience is giving you the gift of their attention, honor that. Be conscious of the experience you

  1. can credibly produce through the natural timbre of your voice
  2. want to share with them. 

This might be warmth and charm, a sharing of cultural knowledge, anger, a moment to let the audience be in their own thoughts and memories, a bit of verbal cinema via imagery, humor and playfulness, a spiritual meditation, etc. 

The students sit with the piece for months (and with a signature poem, often years), memorizing, building their vocal, facial and physical rhythms, and practicing with a microphone. It is a recitation, not a dramatic monologue, which means a natural vocal delivery is preferred over stylization. In the competition they are judged on the following: Physical Presence, Voice & Articulation, Dramatic Appropriateness, Evidence of Understanding, Overall Performance and Accuracy.

Some of the work the students do with the poem is obvious. Looking up vocabulary, perhaps some context on the poem or poet. Reading some critical analysis of the poem. In other words, having a rough sense of what the poem might mean. But this will shift as they actually memorize the piece, and this will even shift during each individual recitation of it.

The recitation is all about suspension.

My role is not to tell them what the poem means. It is to listen with my best guess as to how the recitation is creating (or destroying) suspense in the audience. How time is controlled and develops. And then asking the student if that is the effect they want or what they intended.   

How do sounds hang in the air and should they be allowed to fade, or overlap to the next? How does the sentence populate our mind with the intended idea? Sometimes that might not be clear until we reach the line’s end. How does a title, or an element of the poem get revealed? How do images take shape in the air? Which might need support from a gesture or pantomime to be better understood? Which lines or words need a moment to digest? Maybe to allow us to appreciate a crisp turn of phrase, to laugh, or to process a complex idea. 

I ask them to move the poem around on the page to match how it will be spooled out in the air. Tear apart the form and “re-line” the poem as they will be revealing it. This helps in the memorization and making “the mind’s eye” remember a more accurate script of the poem. So, for example, an enjambed (mid-stopped) line might now be an unbroken sentence again. A series of repeated phrases (anaphora) might get pauses where there is no punctuation on the page. A stanza break might get a longer pause, or no real pause if the idea is connected. 

Every poem has a different logic and has different weights built into the original text. Some poems are harder to “get” on just one reading, requiring more work on the part of the reciter to communicate meaning. Every student brings their own natural cadence to the piece. And at some point, the question becomes, “Who is the speaker of this poem?” and “What is the situation of this poem for that speaker?” This can become a huge interpretive move on the part of the student and where the magic of the recitation happens. The speaker doesn’t have to be what is suggested by an on-the-nose read of the poem itself. It can become a friend speaking to another friend, a teacher-like lecture, a young protestor trying to wake up the adults in the room, a moment to walk in the shoes of a parent, or a person visiting the photo album in their mind.  

Once the student reaches that point in their work with the poem, the choices all need to flow from that understanding of the poem. Even if the listener doesn’t know the exact speaker the student is drawing from, they will still see the intentionality and unified tone that comes from the student having their own grounding in the poem.

Unfortunately, I don’t have access to every recitation that my students have done, so these are not necessarily “signature pieces,” but quite a few were available on Youtube to share. I invite you to watch the recitation before reading the text of the poem. Sometimes it is also interesting to listen to the audio along with the text. (This year, I recorded audio during practice sessions and had my reciter fine-tune based on sound alone). I give a bit of commentary on some of the choices the students made in the recitations. 

Meet Cameron Clarke who came in 2nd Place in NJ in 2013. (He’s taken the loss well. He became a Rhodes Scholar in 2017.) He recites “And Yet Do I Marvel” by Countee Cullen:

The challenge of the poem was to communicate this beast of a complex sonnet to the audience, sound natural, and clarify meaning for them. The sonnet itself lacks some of the verbal cues for turns that would provide natural “rests” for the listener, until the “yet” in the final couplet. It is essentially a series of questions with no question marks. It is revealed in “chunks” of images. Cameron’s rich vocal register allowed him to preserve the philosophical weight of the poem without feeling like he was trying on clothes too large for him.

His recitation plays with sound (particularly the sensuousness of “flesh” and the two reads of “awe-ful” and “awful” towards the close). He builds some beautiful momentum in the middle that echoes the movement and struggle of Sisyphus and Tantalus, and then backs up to coolly note the “inscrutable” ways of the divine). He clearly makes some choices in the poem and is polished and controlled, especially turning the comment into question at the poem’s close. We later learned that more movement was the standard in the competition, although on paper it was discouraged. He was being old school in his recitation style of arms down. 

Current senior Samantha Paradero wasn’t able to compete at the NJ State competition due to the COVID cancellation. She will be attending New Jersey Institute of Technology in the fall to study machine learning and artificial intelligence. She recorded this recitation of “Snow Day” by Billy Collins:

This poem could go horribly wrong and just melt into a cutesy fluff of a recitation. It is narrative and accessible to the audience (up here we do get snow). But Samantha avoids the schmaltz by being cinematic in revealing the various settings as they shift (the white town, the walk with the dog, the kitchen, the playground). She was also sensitive to the playfulness with sound in the piece. The obvious example is that fabulous list of day care centers, which clearly Collins delights in revealing (just keeping the order straight in your head is a feat). But there is some subtle internal sound work happening (“libraries buried”, repetition of “closed”, “Toadstool School,” “darting and climbing and sliding,” “grandiose silence of the snow,” and “riot is afoot”) that Samantha showcases through her articulation. She gives us time to enjoy the charm of the moment and the humor that Collins is famous for.

Samantha transformed once she began practicing on the microphone. She started her work with POL with a strong spoken word cadence (that “vocal fry” quality). It is part of her style, so I didn’t want to tamper with it. As she found her way into the poem it naturally reduced because the style wasn’t serving meaning anymore. It gave her a way into recitation, which was valuable. She began to play with letting sounds hang and resolve in the air. And enjoying the textures of sounds. 

As she practiced and recited the poem more often, the first two stanzas started to feel weird in context with the rest of the poem. Particularly the image of the train:

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,   

its white flag waving over everything,

the landscape vanished,

not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,   

and beyond these windows

 

the government buildings smothered,

schools and libraries buried, the post office lost   

under the noiseless drift,

the paths of trains softly blocked,

the world fallen under this falling.

 

Why does Collins mention the train? “Fallen under this falling.” What? Falling snow, ok. But what does he mean by “fallen”? And then the war imagery of the opening (“revolution,” “white flag” of surrender, perhaps a train blockade) became clearer. On paper the stanza breaks also feel arbitrary in places (let’s go with five line stanzas, sure), but Samantha breaks that up into the logical narrative “movements” between settings. 

Meet Celeste Sena, NJ State Champ in 2016, went to Nationals. She just graduated New School as a drama student. Here she is reciting T.S. Eliot’s “La Figlia Che Piange”:

In the recitation, the title is important as it is the kick-off of the piece, and it also gives the audience a second to mentally calibrate the reciter’s visual presence to the voice. Both Celeste and Cameron have these beautiful rich voices unusual for teenagers, so there is a moment of just letting the audience react to their instrument. This clip cut off the title, but she achieves the same effect with the epigram. I coach my kids to be in the vessel of the poem even for the title. Some students read the title as themselves, take a beat, and then start the poem as the vessel with the first line. To me that is disruptive to the flow of information in the poem. 

Celeste, as you can see, is just a cool kid in general. Here we have a modernist piece where, yes, there is a sense of narrative to trace, but it jumps in time and there is a bit of ambiguity about who is the he and she, who is the speaker (or more accurately, when is the speaker?). For Celeste, this piece was navigating the segments of the poem as if she were a director, which is apparent in the explanatory mode she takes in the middle of the poem. So she’s a bit outside of the poem until the second half. She uses variety, playing with volume, facial expressions, etc. to isolate moments and phrases. Her voice has color and tone. The stretching of “lean” coupled with her gesture, the growl of “resentment” with that natural head shake, the crisp consonance of “light and deft” for example. Here her gestures are absolutely imperative to keep us moving through the poem. They don’t replace meaning, but they orchestrate our mental attention. 

I still have no definitive answer to what Eliot means by “I should have lost a gesture and a pose,” but I believe that Celeste does. She keeps the language of Eliot pristine (I am obsessed with the word “cogitations”). She treats the subject seriously but with a bit of playfulness. This poem could become overly dramatized or shallowly glide over the sounds, but she keeps herself rooted in the language and tonal shifts.     

Meet Breana Sena, NJ runner up 2017, NJ Champ in 2018, went on to Nationals. She is currently a law student at NYU. Yes, Celeste’s sister. Breana recites Nikki Giovanni’s “Mothers”:

Breana had just lost her grandmother that summer, so this poem spoke to her as a memorial piece. Breana wanted to keep the warmth and not just march through it. The conversational tone was important to her, as was the magic of the tonal shift in the middle of the piece “The room was bathed in moonlight…”.  This poem is also deceptively simple. It is structured as a retelling, and there are many digressions and small personal details that could just turn it into a rambling mess. 

Breana is radiant and charming. She brings us credibly into these family memories, speaking to us as if we are friends. And her timing creates the impression of receiving these memories as she speaks, but also gives us time to receive the images. Breana highlights sections of the poem for us, the images of the mother, the shift to inhabiting the child’s recollections, and nesting the recitation of the poem that becomes a family legacy into her recitation. But she keeps that bit of mystery in her voice about the evening backdrop of the poem and the child’s inability to fully understand the family dynamics at the time. This is a recitation about being present together, speaker and audience. And inviting the audience to reflect on their own family relationships. 

And finally, meet Joseph G. Kim Sexton, 2019 NJ Champion, went on to Nationals. Joe took a gap year to study in Bolivia. He will be starting in the fall as a philosophy and film student at Princeton.  He recites Frank O’Hara’s “The Day Lady Died”:

We later learned the correct pronunciation of Brendan Behan(Bee-en)! Which was frustrating because we had researched so much the context and allusions in the poem. Ah well. 

This poem shows up pretty often in NJ Poetry Out Loud competitions. Why not? O’Hara is cool. New York is cool. But it often feels like a little kid in the closet trying on an adult’s jacket. Again, as a narrative poem, it is deceptively simple. It is a huge list from the eyes of a bohemian observer set loose in Midtown New York on some errands before a dinner party. This poem creates a little world, a world accessible to people familiar with the city, but it is also very coded in terms of the specific titles, time period, and brands O’Hara references. 

I just asked Joseph tons of questions about this poem. Mostly about the speaker’s tone towards his actions. Like why the distinction of the cigarette brands. Why O’Hara was buying smokes from a movie theater. If there was a logic to the gifts he was selecting for the hosts. For this recitation, establishing who the speaker was for Joseph was key, especially to Joseph’s own identity as a playwright and filmmaker himself. 

O’Hara is playing a bit of a game here to impress and move in the world of publishing. But his self-recriminations, humor, and reflection at the end upon getting the news of Billie Holiday’s death show us the heart of his poetic self. Joseph leaned into his instincts as a stage person, inhabiting character while not forgetting he is delivering lines and imagery.

All of this is to say, I appreciate how Poetry Out Loud creates an opportunity for students to explore humanity within a sandbox that is poetry. Their selections and interpretations allow me to stand aside as a teacher and engage as a listener, being open to discovery and being in time with the student and the verse. In turn, students even surprise themselves by coming into a true ownership of an other’s words by inhabiting them so closely in mind and body. 

“As a literary institution and publisher, CavanKerry Press sees the uniqueness and importance of such programs as Poetry Out Loud. NJPOL is a testament for the need of poetry and the skills it provides in literacy while boosting confidence but most importantly aids in our youth’s self-discovery. Literary arts equip young adults with the skills to communicate effectively and help them find and define their place in the world. We honor students, teachers like Holly, and NJPOL for their continuing commitment to poetry and the art of recitation.” – CavanKerry Press

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Kevin Carey on “Night Swimming – Assumption College – 1979”

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I went to Assumption College in Worcester, Mass (class of 1980). There’s a duck pond in the front of the campus as you drive in. At least I think it’s still there. Kids would end up in there from time to time, either on purpose or by getting tossed in by older kids. Usually there was drinking involved but not always. One night in 1979 a group of boys ran down to the pond in their underwear and jumped in, then ran back up to the dorms where they came from. After a short while, they noticed that one of the group hadn’t returned. By the time they ran back down, the boy was dead.

I remember it being unclear just how he had died. There was a lot of speculation, maybe he hit his head, or had a stroke. I don’t think I ever really knew for sure. It was hard to drive by that pond after that without thinking of him floating in there, even all these years later. I visited a few years ago and it was the first thought I had driving in.

I’ve written a few poems about my time at Assumption, the people I hung out with, some of the college madness of the day. I was surprised when I wrote this one to be honest. It must have haunted me all these years later. I think maybe because I was so reckless in those days; it could have happened to me on more than one occasion. All the silly pranks I was part of could have easily gone wrong. This kid was pretty low key, responsible in a way I wasn’t. When I wrote the poem, I wanted to try to imagine what he might have been thinking in that fateful moment, not to blame anybody for leaving him there, but to just be in that moment with all its unfortunate drama.  

– Kevin Carey

Purchase Set in Stone to read more of Carey’s work.

Set in Stone, by Kevin Carey book Cover
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Kevin Carey
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CavanKerry Press @ AWP

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Visit our booth & authors! Exhibit Space T2260

 

Mark your calendars and join us for the following book signings:

Kari L. O’Driscoll – Thursday, March 5th – 12:00pm to 1:00pm

Gray Jacobik – Thursday, March 5th – 1:30pm to 3:00pm

Brent Newsom – Friday, March 6th – 2:00pm to 3:00pm

Cindy Veach – Friday, March 6th – 11:00am to 12:00pm

Sarah Bracey White – Friday, March 6th – 12:30pm to 2:30pm

Judith Sornberger – Saturday, March 7th – 11:00am to 12:00pm

Harriet Levin Millan – Saturday, March 7th – 12:00pm to 2:00pm

Gray Jacobik – Saturday, March 7th – 2:00pm to 3:30pm

Kari L. O’Driscoll and Sarah Bracey White – Saturday, March 7th – 3:30pm to 5:00pm

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Tina Kelley TedX Maplewood

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Tina is a journalist, poet, and author who received the Maplewood Literary Award in 2018. A 10-year veteran of The New York Times, and 17 year Maplewood resident, Kelley shared a staff Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for its “Portraits of Grief” feature profiles of victims of the attacks on September 11, 2001. The co-author of “Almost Home: Helping Kids Move from Homelessness to Hope,” Kelley published her fourth book of poetry, “Rise Wildly,” in October.

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Cati Porter reads at the Poetic Voices Series at Loma Linda University School of Humanities

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Cati Porter reads at the Poetic Voices Series at Loma Linda University School of Humanitiesporter

Cati Porter reads at the Poetic Voices Series at Loma Linda University School of HumanitiesCati Porter reads at the Poetic Voices Series at Loma Linda University School of HumanitiesportporterCati Porter reads at the Poetic Voices Series at Loma Linda University School of Humanitiesporter

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Temple University Library Midday Arts Series: Readings by Andrew Mossin and Harriet Levin

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Register through Eventbrite

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/midday-arts-series-readings-by-andrew-mossin-and-harriet-levin-tickets-85245219747

Presented in collaboration with the Intellectual Heritage program

 

Programs offered by Temple University Libraries are accessible to people with disabilities. Please contact Richie Holland, Director of Library Administration, at richieh@temple.edu or 215-204-3455 for more information, to request an accommodation, or with questions/concerns.

 

 

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Pen + Brush Presents Joan Cusack Handler, Ali, Raffel

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Pen and Brush Presents… is a reading series founded by Kate Angus and hosted by Pen and Brush. The series supports the work small press editors do in identifying excellent writing, as well as supporting the writing itself, by featuring exciting new work by established and emerging authors. Each month, “Pen and Brush Presents…” features readings by three writers, each one selected by editors at a press, journal, or organization with a strong female editorial presence.

Join us in December to hear from:

Joan Cusack Handler, reading on behalf of CavanKerry Press. Joan, the founder and publisher of CavanKerry Press, is a poet and memoirist, a psychologist in clinical practice, and a blogger for PsychologyToday.com (“Of Art and Science”). Her poems have been widely published and have received awards from The Boston Review and five Pushcart nominations. She has four published collections: three poetry–GlOrious, The Red Canoe: Love in Its Making, and Orphans, and one prose memoir, Confessions of Joan the Tall. A Bronx native who lives now in Brooklyn, NY and East Hampton, NY, Joan is married to a great man and fellow psychologist, has a loving son and daughter-in-law, and two amazing granddaughters.

Ashna Ali, reading on behalf of Bone Bouquet. Ashna is a Brooklyn-based poet, researcher, and educator. Their poetry has appeared in Bone Bouquet, HeART Online, femmescapes, and The Felt, and they have academic work published or forthcoming in Gender Sexuality Italia, Global South, Journal of Narrative Theory, and MAI Feminism and Visual Culture. They are a doctoral candidate of Comparative Literature at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and they teach Literature at Queens College and Food and Film at The New School.

Dawn Raffel, reading on behalf Dzanc Books. Dawn’s most recent book, The Strange Case of Dr. Couney, was chosen as one of NPR’s best books of 2018 and awarded a 2019 Christopher Award for books that affirm the highest values of the human spirit. Previous books include a memoir, The Secret Life of Objects; a novel, Carrying the Body; and two story collections, Further Adventures in the Restless Universe and In the Year of Long Division. Her writing has been published in O, The Oprah Magazine, BOMB, New Philosopher, The San Francisco Chronicle, Conjunctions, Black Book, Open City, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, Arts & Letters, The Quarterly, NOON, and numerous other periodicals and anthologies. She was a fiction editor for many years, helped launch O, The Oprah Magazine, where she served as Executive Articles Editor for seven years, and subsequently held senior-level “at-large” positions at More magazine and Reader’s Digest. In addition, she served as editor of The Literarian, the literary journal of the Center for Fiction in New York. She currently works as an independent editor for individuals and creative organizations. She has taught at Columbia University, the Center for Fiction, and Summer Literary Seminars (St. Petersburg, Vilnius, Tblisi, Montreal), and continues to lead creative writing workshops, some of which incorporate yoga and yoga nidra.

RSVPs to <rsvp@penandbrush.org> are welcome but not required.

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Cati Porter reads at The Friends of the Murrieta Library

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Cati Porter is a poet, editor, essayist, arts administrator, wife, mother, daughter, friend.

She is the author of eight books and chapbooks, most recently, “My Skies of Small Horses” and “The Body at a Loss.”

She is founder and editor of Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry, established in 2005. She lives in Riverside, California, with her family where she directs the Inlandia Institute, a literary nonprofit.

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Joan Cusack Handler Interview | CKP Board Meeting 2019

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CavanKerry Press' Annual Board Retreat was a Great Success!

This year’s annual board retreat brought together the CavanKerry Press staff plus it’s entire group of board members to meet and discuss where CKP has been and where it’s going as we move ever-so closer to our 20th anniversary. The weekend was filled with conversations that involved publishing, branding, community outreach, and literary appreciation. Most importantly, the weekend was spent developing solid relationships among this newly established cohort. This was to ensure that CavanKerry Press would maintain it’s integrity through our continued commitment of expanding the reach of poetry to a general readership by publishing works that explore the emotional and psychological landscapes of everyday life.

The Future Looks Bright for CavanKerry Press!

We have many things in the works! From publishing beautiful books, to festivals, launches, conferences, advocacy, collaborations, and celebrations, there are just so many ways to connect with our press.

To get more insight on who we are and where we’re going, we’ll take you back to the first evening of our 2019 Annual Board Retreat. The retreat began Saturday evening with a meet & greet that included introductions and a dinner that ended with our Senior Editor, Joan Cusack Handler being interviewed by CavanKerry Press author, Tina Kelley.

Read More About Kelley, Cusack Handler, and Our Other Authors

Tina Kelley Author Abloom & Awry
Tina Kelley Collection
Browse Our Shop
Joan Cusack Handler Collection
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Danny Shot and Tina Kelley Reads at The Newark Arts Festival

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Curated by: Dimitri Reyes

Featured Artist(s): Tina Kelley, Danny Shot, paulA neves, Dimitri Reyes

Poet #1 will begin by reading a poem, where poet #2 will have to recite a poem based on one of the themes from Poet #1. Poet #3 will have to recite a poem based on a theme from poet #2 and so on.

Audience participation will also be encouraged!

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CavanKerry Press @ Newark Arts Festival Grand Opening & Street Fair

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See CavanKerry Press vending at the Newark Arts Festival!

Join us for opening night of NEWARK ARTS FESTIVAL 2019!

Thursday, October 10th, 4PM – 8PM

1180 Raymond Boulevard, Newark 07102

There is rain in the forecast which means no street fair! But do come by the Headquarters for our Official Grand Opening and Ribbon-Cutting!

Enjoy:

Groovy music

Snap some pics

Pick up your map

Visit the food trucks

Afro Taco Food Truck

Mayor Ras J. Baraka

and

Steve Lovell! and more!

Then head out to all the galleries, pop-ups and events around town!

For more information and a complete listing of Newark Arts Festival events, please visit newarkartsfestival.com.

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CavanKerry Press Chosen as a Top 5 Literary Organization that Promotes Community by ezvid

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To be included with the likes of Split this Rock, The Poetry Foundation, Hocopolitso, and Inside Out Literary Arts Project is an honor. With public service being so much of what poetry has always been, it is a joy to be recognized for something that we care about so much. Thank you, ezvid, for spreading CavanKerry Press’ message to your 500,000 subscribers.

Can’t view the video on YouTube?

Click here, to watch the video on their website!

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Cati Porter at Mind & Mill Poetry Night

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Practice your finger snaps! We are excited to work with RivCo Rocks on a County wide poetry night during Riverside Arts Walk on October 3rd. We are assembling an incredible lineup of poets to perform spoken word and share about poetry events and groups in every region of the County. We will close the night with a special performance by Hunter Lavender. Stay tuned for more details!

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Robert Cording’s new book, Without My Asking, is Here!

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Publication Date: October 1, 2019

(as of October 1, 2019 the cost of Cording's Without My Asking will be regularly priced unless noted in the shop.)

“Cording’s poetry is fearless in his choice of subject. Rather than write quiet, domestic works, he expands each poem to effortlessly encompass themes of death, grief, God, and love.” – ForeWord Review

Listen to a Poem from His Collection

About the Book

"Without My Asking" Poems by Robert Cording

Without My Asking takes its cue from Psalms 90’s petition– “teach us to number our days.” That biblical sense of limits– of what we can and cannot know– and the mystery of before and after that encloses our existence is the center around which these poems turn. In poems that attend to the events of our lives– from the deaths of patients to hummingbirds at a bird feeder– these poems work to utter “Yes” to all that happens, that “peculiar affirmative” that recognizes, as Elizabeth Bishop says, “Life’s like that… also death.”

About Robert Cording

Robert Cording has published eight collections of poems, most recently, Walking with Ruskin and Only So Far. He taught for 38 years at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, and is a poetry mentor in Seattle Pacific University’s MFA program. He has received two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in poetry and his poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Orion, and many others.

Robert Cording
Purchase Your Copy
Other Books by Cording
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Without My Asking – Pre-Order Now!

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Friends, Family, and Colleagues: Pre-Order Robert Cording's Latest, Without My Asking, and receive a 20% Discount!

Publication Date: October 2019

Save money by pre-ordering today!

(as of October 1, 2019 the cost of Cording's Without My Asking will be regularly priced unless noted in the shop.)

“Cording’s poetry is fearless in his choice of subject. Rather than write quiet, domestic works, he expands each poem to effortlessly encompass themes of death, grief, God, and love.” – ForeWord Review

About Robert Cording

Robert Cording has published eight collections of poems, most recently, Walking with Ruskin and Only So Far. He taught for 38 years at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, and is a poetry mentor in Seattle Pacific University’s MFA program. He has received two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in poetry and his poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Orion, and many others.

Robert Cording

About the Book

"Without My Asking" Poems by Robert Cording

Without My Asking takes its cue from Psalms 90’s petition– “teach us to number our days.” That biblical sense of limits– of what we can and cannot know– and the mystery of before and after that encloses our existence is the center around which these poems turn. In poems that attend to the events of our lives– from the deaths of patients to hummingbirds at a bird feeder– these poems work to utter “Yes” to all that happens, that “peculiar affirmative” that recognizes, as Elizabeth Bishop says, “Life’s like that… also death.”

Purchase Your Copy
Other Books by Cording
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The Birth of a Press Part 3: “Strokes of Fortune”

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Birth of a Press
The Birth of a Press

Part 3: Strokes of Good Fortune

Hallelujah!

     Then as if all my collective saints, angels, and muses had heard my pleas and harangues and either concurred or together conspired to silence me, my dream became a possibility! The product of both an enormous stroke of good luck that took the form of an inheritance my husband, Alan received quite unexpectedly and most of all, his enormous generosity to me, I now had the start up capital to start my press. I was delirious. The first thing I did was call Molly and the second was to call my friends Karen Chase, Howard Levy, and Peggy Penn to tell them that I would be honored to publish their books. We were all elated.

     I hit the ground running. I had to learn everything. Immediately! I decided to do it in tandem with the most capable person I knew who miraculously was looking for part-time work. Florenz Eisman (then Greenberg) was a former creative writing student of mine who, in addition to having a great gift for writing, had worked for several years as a vice president for a public relations firm. She, in the course of her career had done just about everything—from secretarial work, to research, to writing. She knew her way around people, business, and most importantly, books. Even computers! 

Purchase Chase's Book
Purchase Levy's Book
My Painted Warriors by Peggy Penn
Purchase Penn's Book

Our Press Needed a Name

     This was the first of many not-so-simple decisions we had to make.  Surprisingly, in all of my dreaming, I had never come up with a name. That took considerable thought.

     Remarkably at major points in my life—when life seemed to be clearing a path for me and success was in the wings, a woman in my life died. Or so it seemed. When I was given my husband, son, and Ph.D, it was my good friend Janice; when I was given my press, it was my mother. My love for Janice however was pure; my love for my mother was anything but. A driven and possessive woman, my mother was far more interested in my intellectual and social successes rather than my writing success. Her great pride was in the fact that I was a psychologist and a professional woman. It was “nice” that I wrote poems. During her illness, however, she developed a marked and seemingly earnest interest in my writing.

     During her last visit to my home in East Hampton, she (and my father!) read my poems. In our family room I had a basket where I kept all of the journals that my published work was published in. I cautioned both of my parents that my work was brimming with profanity and what they’d consider obscenity, and that they violated all of Mom’s prescriptions about voicing personal family matters in public. They were undeterred as they handed poems back and forth to each other. Mom, did you read this one? Dad, look at this one.

     My mother who could hardly see twisted the pages high into the light to read every poem. Remarkably, no one died. Not them. Not me. Rather than be horrified, they were interested in what the poems had to say. My father reminded me that he’d been a laborer all his life so he’d heard those words before. Nor was he surprised by all the raging that went on in the poems. They asked me questions, particularly about events recorded in the poems. They did not argue; they did not chastise; most importantly they did not judge. 

It Was a Miracle of Sorts

    These poems had been there in the same spot during scores of previous visits and they showed no interest in reading them, but this time they were ready. I don’t know what prompted that openness, but I know the three of us were grateful. This was an intimacy that we had never known. For years, I had kept much of myself from their view. They knew only facts about my life; I kept what mattered safe inside; I had strayed from their version of good and wholesome and I long since saw any value in exposing either them or me to the worlds that separated us. They did not need to know; I did not need to confess. Yet on this weekend, this Saturday afternoon in November— I like to think it was even Thanksgiving weekend, as we always spent it together—we were ready. The gift of that closeness served us well during my mother’s illness. 

     My parents have always amazed me in their ability to grow as human beings as they aged. My father’s steps were always steady and involved with virtually no regression. He held fast to what was important to him, namely his Catholicism and the Church as supreme authority, but he was open to influence about everything else. All his life, he loved to learn. The world of people and nature were magical places for him and he reveled in each story or creation.

     My mother was more complicated. Her growth did not come until her cancer. Prior to that she was of one mind about most things and that mind was always hers. You couldn’t convince her of anything and she was unpredictable—completely open one day and then refusing to talk the next. If she let you in, perhaps revealing some confidence, she would quickly shut you out. After revealing a devastating account of her mother’s death when she was a very young child, she was furious when I referred to it later on. She was enraged that I had taken this secret wound from her. I had violated her. She refused to speak to me. I stayed away from her for long stretches of time. 

     Miraculously, however, when she got sick, she shut the door on all that anger and resentment; it was simply over. She had other places to go. Kinder, happier places in which to live. It was as if she were reborn, but this time without the darkness. With her own mother seemingly close and whole, she began forming the bedrock of love that we all count on to carry us into adulthood, trusting that the world will care for and love us. She finally knew she was blessed. She finally believed she was loved. She was grateful and said so for every kindness or attention. Being close to her was effortless. She invited it; we all accepted.

     And she lost no time. She wanted to know everything about each of us. In my case, my writing—what was I writing? Was I writing? I should be writing. I should tell my story. She gave me Reader’s Digest large print books that included autobiographies of strong women. Write your story, she said. People will read it; you tell the truth. Her support was palpable and unwavering. I told her that I had been writing the memoir of my young self as a 12 year old girl. She wanted to read it; I read it to her during hospital visits; I sat by her bed for hours everyday writing while she slept.

Our Name

     There was no greater gift I could have received than to be close to my mother when she was dying. It had always saddened me that such distance was necessary, but my sanity required it. Though she longed for closeness on one level, she destroyed it on every other. To face a parent’s death with coldness between you is a barren, painfully lonely land. To be able to go with her and face it together was a blessing. She talked to me of cooking for Dad, teaching him to cook, her concerns for the grandchildren, what she felt, what she wanted, what she worried about. I was able to give to her for the first time since I was a child. 

     Shortly after she died, the money miraculously arrived for the birth of the press. A friend suggested I name it for her. I liked the tribute and was relieved and very pleased that rather than cut her out as I had in the past, I now wanted to include her in this major event in my life. But to name it after her alone would be incomplete. There was more I wanted to say with that name and I didn’t want to exclude my father. I settled on CavanKerry—the two counties in Ireland where they were born—my father, Cavan; my mother, Kerry. Though CavanKerry would not be an “Irish” press, it was from that land—those two lands—that my own writing grew.

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CavanKerry Press Authors Around the Internet!

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Care to cool off by the pool, in front of the fan, or in an air conditioned library? Consider seeing everything the authors of CavanKerry Press have been doing despite the summer heat.

Book Review for The Body at a Loss– Cati Porter- Mom Egg Review

Book Review for Sweet World– Maureen Seaton- Mom Egg Review

Book Review for Cracked Piano– Margo Taft Stever- Mom Egg Review

Book Review for The Cracked Piano– Margo Taft Stever- The Dressing

 
rhinopoetry.org

Book Review for The Body at a Loss– Cati Porter- Rhino Poetry

Book Review for Sweet World– Maureen Seaton- Rhino Poetry

6 Poems- Shira Dentz- Big Other

Cati Porter- The Body at a Loss

Congratulations to Harriet Millan and her book, Green Fox Fur for being a finalist for the 2019 Ruth Stone Poetry Prize from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Congratulations to Danny Shot and January Gill O’ Neil who were both finalists for the 2019 Paterson Poetry Prize

Congratulations to January Gill O’ Neil’s Rewilding which received honorable mention for the Mass Book Awards

cover of book

 

 

We are proud to state that, for the third year in a row and the sixth year overall, CavanKerry Press was issued a Citation of Excellence by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts for the year of 2019. 

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The Birth of a Press Part 2: “Starting Your Own Press; The Challenge”

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Birth of a Press
The Birth of a Press

Part 2: Start Your Own Press

For years, I dreamed of starting my own press that would bring out the work of all these gifted writers along with my own and get our shows on the road. Despite my initial success in contests, interest in my work diminished as my fascination with the poem as a visual life in space increased. Once I abandoned the more traditional long line that started and returned to the left margin for a form that flowed from the emotional logic of the voice and used the whole page as canvas to bring this voice to life on the page, I was ‘out there’ on my own. Clearly, the more inventive I became, the more I reduced my already slim chances of winning a competition. I had stepped over the line. Journal editors remarked on the interesting form that would be a ‘typesetting nightmare’ to publish. Others found it too distracting. With each submission I offered to have the poem typeset myself if it interested the journal editors. (Those who accepted my poems did not ask me to do that.)  Clearly, if I was ever to see my poems collected in a book, I would have to publish my own.

       Other friends were coming to the same conclusion about their own books. Either bite the bullet and risk castigation by the literary elite for self-publishing or abandon the work to the bottom of a dusty file cabinet. Neither solution was attractive: inviting public criticism or disappearing. Of the two, I chose the first; the latter was unthinkable. I would give myself one more year to find a way to start my own press, but if unsuccessful, I’d publish my book myself despite the fact that my preference was always to publish other work beside my own.  The dilemma was more than personal; it was and still is universal.  

I had no training or experience with publishing but that seemed very surmountable. I knew the books I wanted to print. I had a clear vision of what books should look like. I had ideas. Lots of ideas. Which I shared freely with anyone who would listen– Alan, my husband, Molly Peacock, my mentor, my friends, other poets, other mentors. I talked and talked…and talked. Interestingly enough, especially given my complete lack of confidence during the first three-quarters of my writing life, I had full confidence that I could create this dream press of mine. I had come through a Ph.D. program with a concentration in research, and those skills taught me a bit about how to explore more than human behavior. I would follow the same logic to learn about publishing.  What I didn’t have was money. More than a minor problem.

I continued to talk. I continued to dream.

My mission became all the more urgent as I heard more and more stories about friends without publishers—in some cases after three or four books (maybe all with different presses). It had always been my assumption that once you found a publisher for your first book, your problems were solved—you could count on them to publish subsequent work (provided of course that the art remained at the highest level.) Discovering that one cannot assume one has a home with a publisher at least until one has published several books and developed a significant name in the literary community, was devastating. Publishers for the most part only supported poets whose careers were already made.

My concerns were broadening, crystallizing. Given the paucity of publishing venues for poetry, the absence of opportunities for first book publication (other than those supported by fee for entry competitions), an apparent bias against older writers, as well as one against psychological and emotionally daring work, I dreamed of a press established, first, to provide publishing opportunities for gifted writers under-recognized or rejected by the literary mainstream, and secondly, to create a community of and for writers: a home where writers could share their art and the products of that art with each other and with the greater community of readers. My childhood living in a small blue-collar community which took on each other’s burdens as their own as well as my early years at The Frost Place Center for Poetry and Arts in Franconia, New Hampshire formed the bedrock of my commitment to a community of writers. A community of writers and a community or readers: I wanted to do my part to make that happen.

                                                            The Challenge

          Along the way it became clear that to sell poetry, publishers needed to expand its audience. Since marketing and selling books will only be as successful as is the product/literature desirable, the way to sell poetry is to increase both its availability and relevance to general audiences.  But poetry isn’t discovered in book stores. One doesn’t happen on a great book of contemporary poetry displayed on front tables; these are reserved for Stephen King, John Grisham and self-help. Poetry tends to be hidden on back shelves and must be searched out. But only by those who know it’s there—poetry enthusiasts, not the general reader.

        Poetry can often overwhelm and intimidate the general reader; in fact, many believe they aren’t smart enough to understand it, that it’s more intelligent and more important than they are.  It stands apart from them—several steps above them. It makes them feel small.  

        I knew first- hand how intimidating poetry can be based on the way it was taught to me in college (it was never part of my grade or high school curriculum)—day after day dissecting word after word after word of The Wasteland. Alas, that experience was a wasteland for me and turned me away from poetry for many years.  Not surprisingly, readers like me, diminished by the arcane ways that poetry was presented would not turn to it for pleasure or solace as those who love it do.  It follows that to sell books of poetry, publishing’s challenge would be to create a readership that cares about it and believes it cares about them. Fortunately for me, many years later, having experienced the endless bliss one finds in the simple but profound brilliance of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Walt Whitman, I returned to poetry and fell very deeply in love.

In my subsequent fantasies of my dream press, I vowed that it would increase poetry’s relevance to a general readership by publishing fine art that centered on real people living real lives and written in fine but accessible language.  Ours would be a poetry of heart and emotion rather than exclusively intellect and ideas.  Our challenge (and that of the broader literary/publishing community), would also include bringing that poetry to its readers rather than waiting for the audience to come to it. That would require an outreach program that brought the poems and poets to people where they live— in their homes, community centers, offices, hospitals, prisons, schools, geriatric centers, shelters.  I was dreaming. I was planning. I was ready. Where would the money come from?       

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The Birth of a Press Part 1: “No Room at the Inn”

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Birth of a Press
The Birth of a Press

Part 1: No Room at The Inn

            I’ve often thought of poetry as the orphan child of publishing. Commercial publishers have all but abandoned it.  Other than the most visible and prestigious poetry virtuosos whose connection to a particular press give it a kind of pedigree— an aesthetic imprimatur— commercial presses do not publish poetry. There are reasons for this rather depressing state of affairs. Publishers cannot publish what they cannot sell. The audience for poetry is extremely small and is comprised mostly of writers, academics, and/or what might be considered an artistic elite.  It would follow then that, since the audience is so limited, so also are the opportunities for writers of poetry seeking publishers.

           To make matters worse, despite the fact that a writer may have as many as 30 or 4O poems published in literary journals, until you’ve published your first book, you are regarded as unpublished and are therefore ineligible for further awards, virtually stuck professionally. Without a book, you cannot teach. In some cases, you cannot even read your work since readings often take place in universities and book stores. Universities pay honoraria, but only to writers with published books; book stores tend to invite only published writers to read because they will sell books.  Some poets turn to self-publishing for a solution, only to find it’s frowned on by the literary community.  This, despite the fact that Virginia Wolfe and Walt Whitman, among many others like them, self-published. Sadly, the publishing community cannot help these new voices and rejects them when they try to help themselves.

           The very noble task of keeping poetry alive then has been assumed by small independent presses. Bless them!  Fortunately for all of us who write it, there are more and more cropping up every year. But alas, there are still too few to resolve the dilemma of the rudderless poet. The number of books that can be published by these underfunded small presses in a given year is a small fraction of the talent waiting in the wings for a vehicle to bring their work to their potential readers. Not surprisingly, the few available opportunities are offered to the more experienced, more widely published poets. The unfortunate result is that, other than a few occasional bows in the direction of a new talent, the majority of small presses do not print first books. Certainly not first books of poetry. They can’t afford to.

Except through contests.

           Contests have become small press publishing’s very welcome resolution to the isolation of new poets. But the situation remains critical. Other than self-publishing, virtually the only way to get a book published as a new poet is to win a competition. But this means you have to be the one in a possible 2000 entrants to win one of a maximum of 15-20 first book competitions, so most new talent goes undiscovered. New poets are on their own, and the overwhelming proportion remain unpublished.

          Regrettably but predictably, like their commercial older, bigger siblings, small presses too are constricted by the lack of funds, even more so since small presses that focus on poetry and literary prose do not have the popular best seller that their larger brethren count on to pay the bills. They must rely on other sources of income beyond sales. Most, therefore, are established as not–for-profit organizations that qualify for public support, such as grants and tax-deductible donations.  But there too they encounter ceilings.

           Small presses must live frugally.  Most are founded, organized and managed by volunteers who work endless hours for little or no money. They love poetry and want to do their share to bring more of it—particularly contemporary poetry—into the world.  Beyond grants and donations, most independent small presses help defray the enormous costs of giving birth to books by conducting the annual competitions mentioned above, which bring in substantial funds, making many more books possible and provide wonderful opportunities for the gifted, ‘unpublished’ writer who is the winner.

           But contests have their downsides. Besides fueling the envy/competition (one winner versus hundreds, perhaps thousands of losers) that so many of us writers and artists battle with, contests require entry fees—many quite substantial. Since they are the only viable route to publication, more and more ‘unpublished’ writers spend countless dollars they often do not have entering multiple contests annually. For a fortunate few, there are letters announcing that they’ve been chosen as finalists; in the end, however, the likelihood of winning is miniscule.

           The problem is even greater for an older writer. Readers for these contests are often young graduate students in creative writing programs. Their preferences in subject matter and writing style are often very different from that of their older sibs. As a result, publishing joins many other arts/professions which shy away from middle aged and senior writers—particularly those producing daring, unconventional work.

          Along the way, this became my story too. I had started writing poetry when I was already 42 years old, but was now approaching 60 with no book. Sure, I’d received lots of encouraging letters from enthusiastic small press editors and contest judges telling me my book was in the running, a finalist even!  Like so many others, I’d wait several months before the letter would finally come from the Academy or from Pitt… Each time, no shout of Congratulations! Instead, reaffirmations of how publishable my work is, how fine… but….

           In the beginning you can’t believe it; you got here, all the way to this amazingly delicious place that says, yes! You belong here…in fact you’re right up there at the top with the best of them…. Unquestionably your book will be scooped up by another publisher, the editor reassures you; they see it time and time again; your book will find a home. And you tell everyone you know…

            But then it happens again. And again… And all you want is to get your first book out there where people will read it—you imagine it beautifully placed in an artful collection. There’ll be a picture and ‘blurbs’ from people saying congratulations and calls for readings and getting to work on the second one. And you’re ready. The work is ready. But “We’re sorry…”

            Too many of my friends, friends I got my MA with, friends I workshopped poems with, taught with, read with… all the same story, all this talent, all this art, all this disappointment/rejection. It was becoming increasingly clear that the likelihood of any of us winning became smaller with each year. Publishers seemed to pass over former finalists for the newest talent. Eventually we stopped entering… Some set manuscripts aside; others like me just continued to write more poems and finished second and sometimes third books and dreamed of finding them a home. 

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Harriet Levin elaborates…

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My Water Bottle
Croix de Bouquet, Haiti

The real thing he pulled was greater than the water bottle
turned toy—bottle cap wheels attached to a string—
as it followed behind him across the cracked cement.

In it had been rivers and rain. The strong force of a waterfall.
A stream winding through certain bodies. Another child came running out
the door asking to play with it. I watched the string exchange hands,

loop a finger as the children outran it and their creation rolled,
wobbled, tipped forward on its neck.
The speckled wings fluttered and rose, even as I hid somewhere

in my childhood basement, my mother shouting from the kitchen
to pick up all my toys scattered from their boxes,
toys I held in the darkness of night, clutched close in whispers.

The child without any stood beside me, followed me around,
stayed near, waited until my last sip and my bottle was empty.
He tapped it lightly and my heart burst. It took time

for me to understand. What did I not offer?
The water bottle my fingers gripped in heat so extreme
each knuckle swelled, my breath grew slow, my head pounded,

walking was difficult, thinking, how far can I make it
with nothing to pull along? I’ve nothing,
nothing behind me. No bottle turned toy,

no container empty enough to transform
into a caterpillar’s sixteen bouncing legs,
waiting to grow the wings to support it in air.

In a matter of moments, I could shed my old skin,
pupating my greediness over what I did not offer,
though the boy did not consider me greedy. He waited

so patiently for me to hold the bottle to my lips
and drink the very last drop, having waited under rubble,
himself a survivor, overwintering in ash.

He sat next to me on the cracked cement steps,
leading to the collapsed second floor.
Water could not sustain him. He required nectar

sweet between leaves. It was all over the news.
The water was contaminated. Peacekeepers defecated in water,
bringing cholera to the Artibonite River.

The world’s carelessness now set afloat.
I know. I was ready to discard my bottle,
set it on its journey of decomposition,

strip it of its corporeal form. My bottle,
held in the hands of so many people who will never
drink from it, those who delivered it from earth,

mined it, heated it, spun it a long while to become the axis
on which the day moves, wholly imaginary.
A boy waiting with a string in his hand.

Commentary:

Apart from the 2010 Haiti earthquake which caused an unprecedented natural disaster, the population suffered a man-made disaster when waste from a UN base leaked into the rivers and introduced a cholera epidemic. When I wrote “My Water Bottle” I wanted to depict the resilience of the people I’d met in Haiti. While Haiti is a victim of poverty and corruption, (according to a July 17, 2018 Miami Herald article, 80 percent of the people live on less than $2 a day), it is a place of beauty where everyday people engage in great acts of courage.

Since 2013, I’ve been traveling to Haiti as the leader of a Drexel University creative writing study abroad trip. On the trip we attend workshops at PEN Haiti and meet with renown Haitian writers, poets, artists and musician activists whose life and work cannot avoid representing change. Haitian literature has been compared to Russian literature before the Revolution, because it is that gorgeous, that rich, that filled with foment and despair. One great example is Marie Vieux Chauvet’s masterpiece Love Anger Madness. The early pages depict one of the main characters touching herself in her bed while she hears through her open window the screams of political prisoners who are being tortured in the nearby jail. These two actions are juxtaposed in a way that is uniquely Haitian and characterizes much of Haitian life and consequently its literature. Forrest Gander’s words in his new book, Be With, “the political begins in intimacy,” resonate here.

Besides meeting Haitian artists, our study abroad group fundraises for Love Orphanage, where we engage with the children for days at a time. Love Orphanage’s director Gabriel Fedelus is a father to eighteen children who were orphaned after the earthquake. Unlike the US, Haiti’s governmental agencies do not fund its orphanages. All assistance is received from overseas. The children lack basic needs such as soap and toothpaste not to mention medicine and meat. Needless to say, the children don’t own toys or games. Every penny that the orphanage receives goes toward sustaining the children’s basic needs. I was particularly awakened to this fact when I returned to the orphanage the following morning after one of the children, a six-year-old boy named Olson, asked me for my water bottle, to see he had constructed a pull-toy out of it. I could not help comparing his childhood to mine with its many toys. Are toys a kind of armor or shield against the imagination or do they give root to imaginative impulses? I think of Rilke’s idea of how necessary it is to be bored for the real imagination to grow.

Love Orphanage accepts donations at http://www.loveorphanage.org
No donation is too small.

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January Gill O’Neil elaborates…

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THE CATHEDRAL

—After Rodin’s The Cathedral

I watch my daughter imitate

the pose of Rodin’s Cathedral.

Her arms curved in slow gyration.

It is her way of understating

the dark bronze, how two arms

can captivate the imagination

in their dizzying swirl,

find balance between

light and shadows. In truth,

the hands are both right hands

turning in on themselves, an architecture

almost sacred, serpentine, yet protective

of the space within, of what the

bronze cannot hold. My daughter bends

uncomfortably away from me, resistant, as if

her whole body is questioning

what it means to be a girl.

She sees—maybe

for the first time—what is there

and what is not from the hollow

her hands make, all the empty angles

that never touch,

the almost-grasp of the intimate.

Her wrists slight and glistening

 

with summer’s patina,

her fingertips conjure her being

and becoming,

body and soul

closing and opening

at the same time.

 

A few years ago, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem hosted an expansive exhibit of sculptor Auguste Rodin. My daughter and I fell in love with his sculpture, The Cathedral. We were enthralled. And while she moved on, there was something intimate about two hands almost-grasping. It seemed to be the perfect metaphor for us as she enters her teenage years and we enter a new phase of our relationship.

 

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