Book Review by Joy Leftow: The Weight of Wings by April Bulmer

Book Review: The Weight of Wings by April Bulmer

Reviewed by Joy Leftow

I first saw April Bulmer’s poem, “Mai Po,” on another poet’s website while browsing online looking through websites of other writers who had other commented on my work or glanced through my blog. The poem, “Mai Po,” touched me and brought together universal qualities of longing, sadness, the passing of time and personal search. I immediately googled April Bulmer, located her and told her I wanted to review her book, The Weight of Wings.  Ms. Bulmer kindly forwarded a copy of this small but packed-with-valuables collection to editor Brad Eubanks and myself since he too was enthralled with her writing. The Weight of Wings is a mixture between a novel and a spiritual journey, written in poetic verse. First I read the book to myself, stopping and browsing along the journey. I paused to engage with the spiritual theme and read the small-but mighty book through to its end. To absorb more of the work and to examine how it sounded when read aloud I read it to a poetry co-conspirator. After reading several pages, I asked if he was bored. “No,” he said, he appreciated my reading and would I continue. Thus I completed my second reading.

Later I sat and examined the fine papyrus paper purposely frayed and roughened at the edges of this sixty-page manuscript, running my fingers across it. The feel and look of the paper made it feel sacred. I opened the book. I measured it as though its measurements would reveal its meaning. The frayed cover measured 5 ¼ x 5 ¾ inches and the pages within were 5 x 5 inches. It was typeset with Cochin, “a font named for a family of 17^th and 18^th century Parisian engravers.” [1] This made me feel the weight of time while experiencing a journey of verse.

Lulled into the rhythm and pace of the words I discovered a range of characters. I decided to list and outline each character to define where they fit in the text.  Next, I realized there are over twenty characters and some reappear. The voices follow themselves or a member of their community.

It was there I stopped counting. I began concentrating on the threads that run through the prose. What connects all the characters is a personal relationship to their savior, “Most blessed of Women is Rosie, earthen vessel in whom Jesus now grows.”[2] Each character struggles to maintain their faith and purity while simultaneously trying to survive in a sometimes harsh, unforgiving environment where loss, pain and loneliness intertwine with passions and desires. They are either residents of a convent or live in a nearby religious center. Thus they are connected through their faith as well as their losses.

The first poem throws us right into the battle.

Mr. F. Johnson

I laid down by the little plot, my heart tethered to the stone.

And God fell upon me like a warm blanket, though I still

shivered in the cold.

I prayed early that evening. God my horsepower. For Him my

faith cantered, unreined. But your death, daughter, was a saddle

a dark weight; your body folded untidy as a map in the rumble

of the black coupe. Heart a compass, the needle spinning dizzy

till it stiffened north.

It is noteworthy that much of Bulmer’s poetry appears in theological reviews such as The Anglican Theological Review, as well as in feminist publications and anthologies. Some of her other works are, Spring Rain, Oh My Goddess, Holy Land, The Goddess Psalms, and A Salve for Every Sore, all published by the well-known Serengeti Press. Bulmer utilizes simple language that becomes complex and has layers of meanings hauntingly presented.

In an email Bulmer explains, “The mention of ‘bruised bone’ and ‘oracle’ in ‘Mai Po’ are references to ancient Chinese divination practice. These early people heated bones and tortoise shells to read the cracks and lines that appeared.” Bulmer visited the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto years ago and toured an exhibit of these inspiring spiritual relics.

Bulmer’s works encompass every man’s struggle between good and evil; she brings us back to basics. In a world where every bad deed is counted and dividends for rewards run steep, stakes are high. Brimstone and fire tactics often help the populace behave and survive. Putting your best foot forward is what’s expected although humanity has always struggled with issues such as greed or lust. These desires coincide with our desire to be good and do right.

Bulmer brings profound new meaning to our inner struggles and brings to light the uncertainty that the only reward we receive in this life is the confirmation that if we are good enough, we will enter the kingdom of God after death. Sometimes reaching for the light at the end of the tunnel seems useless when suffering and loss are all we know. Here may be the point. All of Bulmer’s works dance with the desire for the universal search for truth and righteousness while trying to survive the day in a human body with desires and needs. It gives the word guilt more power.

As I spread my wings though the poems, I was carried through a dream-like sequence of events, mixing eroticism and religion with hints of sexual behavior. In addition the characters always attempt to make sense of themselves and their struggles in a way they can understand.

           

I thought God so loved the Virgin, he himself stepped out of his

  work pants, hung his belt on a nail. I wedded him in a bridal gown…

But God so loved me he sent Diamond. …

I trip on my way to chapel …  The thorns

break my skin, my ankles and calves bleed. Diamond takes me

to his shed where he stores his tools and bags of loam, lays me

down on a burlap sack: a leak in the roof,  a hymn gentle from

the chapel….A hot drink, eggs scrambled

over fire, crusty bread Diamond hacks from a loaf. When the

cinders die, shadows sweep the ashes.

When I got to “Annie,” I wondered if I was misunderstanding. I worried so that I finally wrote Bulmer and asked her if I was on point, raising several issues.

My new dog liked the smell of my yellow soap, thanked me

with kisses to the elbow, wrist and knee. He growled a little

when I clipped his nails and when I snipped at his dewclaw

he broke the skin on my left thigh. I bled.

He didn’t like it among the brooms and buckets, whined for hours.

He was asleep on the rag bag when I opened the door. I carried

him to the bedroom, his body warm against the sleeves of my

cotton night dress. We slept cheek by jowl.

At noon he stood at the window like a little man, wiped the dew

from the window pane and cried. It was the sheriff and a vigil of

town folk at the front door. They kicked at me with their hob-nailed

boots, struck me with shovels and frying pans. The sheriff shot my

dog--a weight he slung into a burlap bag and carried to the river.

Sunday, and no heaving and crying at church. All cheeks were dry.

But as the choir rose, I heard a high-pitched howl, a soulful baying

that swelled my heart to a full moon.

“Did they really kill the dog and beat the woman because the two had sex and they had to be punished?” I wrote her. Bulmer replied, “My fantasy worlds are a little bit eccentric (as you gathered in reading about the woman who slept with her dog). I have a low-key life. I don’t think anyone would be interested in reading about it. You highlighted the major themes of the book.  Thank you for your keen reading.”

And my heart swelled to meet the moon and I too heard the cries of a dog dying for doing the forbidden when obviously a dog wouldn’t know better. I wondered too at the charity of letting Annie live. I figure they released her so she might repent her sins. I wondered how the townspeople knew what she and the dog had done.

I recommend all of Bulmer’s work heartily. It is not for the feint of heart--neither is it for prudes. I love the lilt of Bulmer’s words and how they continue to sing in my head, resonating long after the reading is done.

April Bulmer was born and raised in Toronto, but now lives in the small city of Cambridge, Ontario.  She has published six books of poetry.  Many of her poems deal with women and spirituality.  She holds three Masters Degrees in Creative Writing, Religious Studies and Theological Studies.  The prose poems that appear here are excerpts from her second book The Weight of Wings (Trout Lily Press, Stratford, 1997).  Each piece in the collection deals with the spiritual life of a character in fictional Sweet Grass, Saskatchewan.  April's newest manuscript is entitled "Women of the Cloth."  To contact her and order books:  aprilb@golden.net 

Article first published as Book Review: The Weight of Wings by April Bulmer on Blogcritics.

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[1] Final page, text

[2] Mrs. Gross, page 11

Randall Radac aka John Lee Brook has a new book!

Posting below by editor Joy Leftow, is a short interview with Randall Radac who has had poetry and art published in The Cartier Street Review.

http://www.headpress.com/ShowProduct.aspx?ID=96

Available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble is the best price. Amazon wants more than the price of the book to ship it.


JL: How did you came to write this book?


RR: After meeting some members of the Aryan Brotherhood in jail, I observed they are fascinatingly violent people with almost magnetic personalities. I decided to write a book about them after doing some research and discovering very little had been published about them.

JL: Radac, how bout some spice on this latest publication?

RR: The book is written under my pen name, John Lee Brook and it takes a close look at a White Supremacist Gang. The FBI has says, “In for life and out by death”, the Aryan Brotherhood known as “The most ferocious and notorious of any of the prison groups.”

As an ex-convict in close contact with the Aryan Brotherhood I've written a devastating exposé, revealing how the notorious white supremacist prison gang has become perhaps the most powerful criminal organization in America, an achievement much more remarkable considering that the majority of its members remain behind bars, and its infamous Commission—the folkloric threesome, Thomas ‘Terrible Tom’ Silverstein, Tyler ‘the Hulk’ Bingham and Barry ‘the Baron’ Mills—are kept in maximum-security solitary confinement, as the US government makes an open effort to subdue the organization by any means necessary.doctorradic@msn.com

JL: Any other little blurb, RR?

Yes, despite government efforts to curtail them, the Aryan Brotherhood continues to thrive. My book Blood In, Blood Out demonstrates how a combination of Machiavelli, Nietzsche, meditation, secret codes, brutal violence and sheer will enable its buried puppet masters to continue to tug at the strings of an organization at the forefront of the black market trade in drugs, arms and money laundering. In Blood In, Blood Out, John Lee Brook provides both an extensive overview of the Aryan Brotherhood and a thrilling look at its untold recent history.

About the Author:
John Lee Brook’s study of the white supremacy movement has led him to strange places, where he met hard men with strange beliefs. Blood In, Blood Out: The Violent Empire of the Aryan Brotherhood (Headpress Publishing/June 2011) is his first book about white supremacy.


Publisher: Headpress, June 2011
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1900486776
ISBN-13: 978-1900486774


To contact RR, write: johnleebrook@hotmail.com or doctorradic@msn.comjohnleebrook@hotmail.com

Book Review - 39 Poems by Charles Butler

Article first published as Book Review: 39 Poems by Charles Butler on Blogcritics.org

39 POEMS by Charles J. Butler

ISBN 978-0-9772718-8-7

Publication date 2010

74 pages

No Shirt Press, Brooklyn, NY

Reading through the 39 Poems brought to mind Hitchcock’s movie, The 39 Steps because each poem stretches the reader and the page towards the next poem and set of steps without explaining where he is going. Also the poems on the pages of the book are laid out in emulation of climbing up and down steps so that while reading I felt like I was skipping steps. Each poem relates to life’s struggles; the various ways love affects us and how meaningful respect is. He writes about everyday things moving us up and down steps lyrically and emotionally.

Butler describes how one can be oblivious to a murder and walk across bloodstains on our big city streets without recognizing them in the book’s first poem, Crimson Stroll. Suddenly while stepping over the red brown stains, the author recognizes it for what it is, seeing a stark vivid beauty of someone’s life bled out on the streets.

Someone’s life bled out

At your feet

              Think on it

                             Times you bled

Times you made others bleed

            Look on it

            Big dark path on 8^th ave

            Brooklyn side

                                    in your way

look on it

the fuel that moves us all

dried out on a dirty sidewalk

who bled …

are they dead

                        look at it

a dark stain

                        it’s almost…

beautiful

            a bit of Canada                         flashes up your neck

and ears

back in the world you move around it

and move on

                        wishing for cold rain

to wash away the stain   human sin

most of all

                           your own

We’re all here – all human and suffering –  and this is the grist for this author to describe how we’re all the same and different at the same time, but he wants to show us that we have the capacity to be and do more that drives us and of course this is what drives this poet to create poetry. The stains our lives create must contain beauty otherwise why do we exist? Butler’s struggle is to align himself with the humanity in all of us, despite the murder the chaos, the beauty the differences between rich and poor, black and white, and he struggles with it all, climbing up and down, retreating and coming to terms with wrongs and rights and even the grays and imperfections.

The problem is that our climbing stretching and reaching is never done. You go up you descend and then you begin all over again because that’s the way life is, it’s never done until you’re done - or dead and gone - is more like it - or if you’re a quitter. Butler is no quitter and no matter how far down he’s gone – he bounces back to reexamine his roots and the course of his life, fighting to stay in touch with his spiritual side. This spiritual side is at the root of Butler’s talent, as he controls his anger hurt and humiliation when he’s experienced racism. For any of you who have never experienced racism, normal is a good place to start to understand what it’s about when you get stopped on the street because of the color of your skin.

                                    nature of the beast

now

            I’m not gonna say I’ve lost

count o’the many times I’ve been blackstopped

but

            it’s more than a few

remember

                        I’m 16

walkin’ on a bed-stuy street

goin’ noplace fast

            blue n’ white rolls up on me

unis pile out …

            nicely they ask me if I’m carryin’

a gun

            nicely I say no

nicely

            they  ask if I would submit

to a search

                        mind you             they don’t have

to ask me

                        a goddamn thing

and they know it

I know it

                        An’ the brother

watchin’ this

                                    who wishes right now

he was            

            someplace else

knows

            it

nicely

            I say

                        go ahead

I can relate to this struggle and suffering. All my life as a Jew and especially in my childhood I was called a Christ killer. The recent advent of the Mel Gibson movie and his ensuing drunk arrest and slurred comment about Jews brought it home to me again. But this is a tactic of the upper echelon. They want to keep us all at each other’s throats so we will keep our busy bee status and keep making the rich richer. It’s a means of control and humiliation and it makes us hurt. Mr. Butler knows this hurt intimately and writes about it poignantly.

           

39 Poems cover a range of experiences; awareness of the haves and have-nots, racism, love, hurt, abandonment and loss, and more importantly the urge to understand and come to terms with it and explain what it’s all about. After all this everyday stuff is the mesh of our lives. The ability to sublimate sets humans apart from other species, to take our hurts and pain and transcend them for the greater good – to create beauty in ugliness is the work Mr. Butler attends to.

In DMV rag, Butler speaks for all of us who have ever been to the DMV.

We’re in the dmv now

                        Hundreds of black

And brown faces

                        some whites

all of them wanna be someplace else

but here we are …

                                    it’s all mad

gotta be

            half the world is on fire            an’

the other is on line waiting for their number to be called

lookin’ for a place t’ sit

an empty seat

is like

            fool’s gold

Don’t we all feel like this when we visit official offices, public school registration, social security, Medicaid, even the closed down US passport passport bureaus, and welfare’s the worst. I have a poem about it called, “Welfare’s Still A Bitch!”

The searching and questioning never stop just like in the movie The 39 Steps, there is always another side to examine to analyze understand and conquer. His poems speak to maturity and growth and show how youth and mistakes although unavoidable are only part of climbing and descending those steps, a poem for each step.

In word one baby, Butler explains why a writer writes.

why 

write?

writing                         since he was eleven

thru                        good days

                                                and dark times

the pain of living

                                                the come hither call

of death

            and madness inbetween

even hung                        ‘em up for a time

didn’t last

why write?

he’s free

Is the author describing himself here or is he speaking for everyone? We all know writers write about what they know and well, … if they write about what they don’t know … everyone knows that doesn’t work. Artists from time immemorial have been known to describe angst which often spurs their creative urges. Does every writer experience angst? I can’t speak for every artist. Many writers have spoken and written about their angst yet angst alone doesn’t make a man an artist. There is some other indistinguishable indefinable something that inspires a writer to create, that makes his writings stand out among others, something that prods him to spend his time writing while others commune, have sex, watch tv or do other things while writing remains a lonely task which takes time.

Words don’t miraculously appear on the page. Writing is what gives Butler the freedom he speaks of above. His words create a freedom that exists nowhere else around in our world and he helps the reader to feel it too. Through that freedom we see what he sees; a stark world filled with fertility and barrenness that provides us not only with a place to survive but a place to grow and thrive. The growth in Butler’s poetry and words inspires me too. I recommend 39 Poems sincerely and without any reservation.

Mammoth Bones & Contemporary Beef - Bernard Alain - reviewed by Joy Leftow

Mammoth Bones & Contemporary Beef, a witty new chap that may be small but wallops a strong punch that will knock you silly and leave you begging for more.

The editor in me kept looking for that one line that needed help. I finally gave in to his sparse economy of language that flows with an unconscious rhythm and wry dry humor. So dry it made me thirst for more, and I read the entire 36-page chap in one setting that went more quickly than I liked because I couldn't stop reading and laughing. I chewed as much meat from those mammoth bones as I dared!

Congrats Alain, you made a big hit with me - and … what? You thought I’d leave it at that because we used to edit the same mag? Gimme a break. I laughed so hard my eyes teared up and I cried.  Not once but several times over a couple of hours. The honesty is over the top handed to us on a pedestal. The chapbook's cover with its mammoth creatures mimic the poems. They are bigger than life and than all of us together. Thank his mom, Anatholie Alain for that, for keeping the organic life form emerging from Alain’s third eye blind.

The hallucinations
have started
The pain more severe
disturbances of the
heart
…
sitting in a dory
out east
not giving a rat’s ass

Only a poet (and sometime even poets don’t) know how to lay out the work so true to form that it remains poetically true to its sparseness and economic wording. He references other poets to let us know he wonders if he matches up, makes the cut or has he been circumcised like most of us. He experiments with sounds and placements of vowels instinctually letting the poem find its own roots and meaning. He lets the poem decide where it needs to go,

The slow process of submission
The eventuality
Arriving at some maniacal correction
For the s’s

So obsessed he
Was possessed
…
who was he kidding

even Blake thought he might’ve liked the
devil

The words evolve to take us on a journey – a rampage inside ourselves where we explore to learn more about why we are who we are. Who else but writers would care where we are spiritually talent wise in life, and who but a writer would mix the two. The book sold out on Amazon but is available here.

Steig Larrson and me

Steig Larrson, the man behind the stories that gave him his name fame glory posthumously led a fascinating life. Larrson could be one of the characters he became famous for writing about in his millennium series. Fighting to right Nazi wrongs in Sweden, he was a well known journalist who founded Expo, an antifascist magazine. Here in the states people don't usually think much about the Nazis but in Europe people give more importance to World War II and the havoc it created in history. In Sweden, its importance is even more meaningful. According to Lev Grossman in Time Magazine, "Fascism is a live issue in Sweden, and fascist groups have been known to attack reporters who investigate them." Larrson was a known target as the founder of Expo, the antifascist magazine he published. Larrson had built himself quite a reputation as a dragon slayer and his daily life and that of his life-long companion, Eva Gabrielsson, were affected by the backlash. Now there's an inheritance issue because Gabrielsson and Larrson never married in spite of being together over thirty years, so his family controls all. What deepens the suspense is Eva has a copy of the number 4 book on his computer in her possession. I watched her speak about this in a recorded television interview. Apparently they worked together and she edited most of his work.
I first felt compelled to read the girl with the dragon tattoo because of the colorful cover plus all I'd heard and read about it, but when I sat down and read through it, I became enthralled. He's gone and passed on but I love his shit!
Larrson wrote fiction to relax and he loved detective stories. I guess it gave him a break from the harsh reality he faced daily. Strangely even the aftermath of his life reminds us how life is often as strange as fiction.
Larrson proves that writers can create anything. Like my friend Anthony Whyte recently said over coffee, you can take a usual situation where people are sitting at a table drinking coffee and all you need to do is put a gun on the table and boom - the center of attention changes drastically and you can do what you want with your characters. All one has to do is let things fall into place and put things where they should be to add a little drama and spice.
Hooked on Lisbeth, the heroine whose intelligence and resourcefulness never fails her, I sped read the entire book submerged in the characters and events. Little Lisbeth, my heroine, is barely 4 feet two and 94 pounds soaking wet, is an exceptionally skilled computer hacker who survives impossible circumstances. She is lithe, super strong and can kick karate ass as well as Sarah Michelle Geller plus can defeat any enemy intellectually as well. I also love "Kalle fucking Blomkvist" another main character in the trilogy who could be Larrson's alter ego. Together he and Lisbeth could solve any mystery.
The wording is sometimes a bit dry but according to Grossman, that may be due to the translators facility with subtleties but it didn't damage my attention span or interfere with the excitement. This fast paced thriller kept me spellbound like a movie playing in my head.
After this I was compelled to read number two of the Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire, the perfect mix of action and expository to drive its thrust. Now I'm going to read number three next.
It is writers like Mr. Larrson who excite me to write. His characters are so finely tuned and defined that we know them as intimately as our closest friends. For those who don't know the series, I wasn't surprised to see Lisbeth buried alive in the end of part two of the trilogy. Lucky for me the first chapter of part three is included at the end of part two. I can't wait. I'll keep you updated!

something new

As most of you folk know, it's hard to drag ass and do things when it means you got to go away from de big screen- my computer's like a tv it's so big- so mostly we do a lot of indoor activities. And yes DubbleX is even worse than me about isolating and staying in. You know he gets into his garageband and chess and it's hard to move him anywhere. I do make it out about 2 times a month though and am trying to stick to that and it's easier since I am trying hard to support neighborhood events in Washington Heights. The last time I went someplace else and was supposed to read I forgot my papers and even when i know something real good, I still need my papers.

I read this morning on Wikipedia that now my Washington Heights, where I was born and have lived my entire life is now called Hudson Heights - this is what they're trying to call my neighborhood folks!-

Hudson Heights is some creation from realtors trying to boost up the monied connection in Washington Heights where now you can also spend a million for a co-op or a condo. Washington Heights is my hood...

I digress Sherlock... read on

Well some months ago some dude wrote me a note asking me to go to his blog - and I did because I usually try to do that when someone writes me and asks me too. You know, it's really hard too when only a handful reciprocate. See I'm not talking about the people who come to see the crazy white lady, and I admit I'm crazy. I come by it naturally. They locked my Dad up in Bellevue's psyche ward. My mom was totally drained and bereft; sick on a daily basis and all she did was try to raise her four children. Actually neither one was ever well during my lifetime.

What does this have to do with the bigger picture? Well nothing except that some dude wrote me some time ago and asked me to look and read his stuff about his travel ails - and continued to send me updates. Now this same dude sent me this fantastic musical he wrote and directed. Damo Bullen didn't pay me to say this but I think if you want to be entertained - harmonica hip hop and standard sounds mix in an updated musical for a new generation, just check this.

I guess what this has to do with the rant above is that sometimes we all need distraction and entertainment. It's a radical evolution.

It's called Alibi - The Musical

Be entertained and get happy.

There are several different versions or parts and it's not clear what that is either, nor is the cast clear which it should be. My only complaint except for needing subtitles in part 8 because I couldn't understand hear the dialogue because I can't understand english spoken in some parts of england. An englishman told me it's because english is spoken properly there. That's a joke - a joke. We got some heavily accented folk here too and if you heard me speak before you know I'm all new york jewish style all in your face and funny.

Good show folks! Thanks for looking out...

Kate Evan interviews Joy Leftow

I like Joy Leftow's iconoclastic ways and writing so much that I wanted to feature an interview with her on this blog. Enjoy!

Please tell us about the genesis of your book.
Spot of Bleach is an organic mix of sensibility and growth up until the time book was printed in 2006, dating back to poetry first written in 1980 when I wrote the sestina “Twisted, A Sestina of Love” at a writing class at Columbia University. As I put the book together, it seemed to choose its own subjects from which I named chapters.

The placement of the chapters took some time to figure out. I took the book apart and put it together several times before being sure the fit was right. Finally it made sense that the very risqué love story should go at the end. I wrote that story in 2001 when I attended the creative writing program at CCNY, where I earned my second masters.

From the very beginning, my creative writings caused a riff in every writing class. Other members became angry about my style and very often argued about my characters complaining that the characters didn’t make them feel empathy. Most professors pointed out that the very thing that the other students didn’t like about my characters, are the things that make the characters alive and real.

What's the one thing you most want people to know about your book?
The book evolved out life experience, creativity, and my powers of observation. There are many stories to tell and within this volume I tell many. You may hate what I write about or how I write, but I promise this book won’t bore you.

I need writing like air and this book is what I breathed out. I call my poems “my offspring” because I have given them life. In that regard, the book is a parallel expression of the years from which the works are collected, an assortment of articles, stories, philosophical meanderings or what may now be called flash fiction along with narrative poetry.

Please tell us a little about the photographs that are included in your collection and how you see them as complementing the poems.
Years ago after I purchased my first digital, people said I had a good eye for showing things in a different perspective. Since the book is very personal, the photos add to this view by showing more about how I see things. For example, the cover section Philosophy has a photo I took while in Thailand visiting the Golden Buddha. The cover for the chapter forms is a famous rock form in Los Cabos. The cover pic came to me in a dream, and although the pic was ten years old, it was an urban pic of me in Central Park with my favorite statue, the Lewis Carroll Statue of Alice in Wonderland.

A Barbara Walters question: If you were a poem by any writer, which poem would you be and why?
I would be “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer. Since childhood, I have loved that poem and trees have always appealed to me. I watch the moon and stars through stark branches. I watch the trees change season-to-season and sometimes fall into ill health or get blown over in a storm. Living in a big city as I do, trees are my opportunity to commune with nature. I’m lucky my building is in the northern tip of Manhattan Island where there are many parks. My apartment overlooks an extended spot of nature near the highway. I have several poems inspired by nature and trees.

Why do you write poetry?
I write because I have to; I don’t have a choice. Writing is my first love. I need writing to survive. My poetry has evolved along with me to do more than only share stories. Sometimes there’s a story within, but it will only be one facet of the entire poem which has taken on existential and surreal elements, especially in my newer bluetry series and other writing which can be seen on my blog.

Do you think the Internet is a good complement to writing—or does it just get in the way?
The internet is made for networking and research or maybe just made for me. I can surf all day and network endlessly and it seems to fit my style. It works for me. Look at all the things I’ve done on Facebook alone; first I made a fan club for someone else then for myself, then for a magazine which published my work. Then I promoted several other groups and people. Afterwards I became an editor for The Cartier Street Review and another editor took note of all this activity and asked me to edit an anthology with her. The internet helps move things along.

The only problem I see with this is for a solitary person like me, it encourages me to stay in the house and remain solitary. Why go out when I can accomplish so much sitting in front of a computer?

Do you believe all poetry is political—or just some poems?
I think all poetry is political to the extent that life is political. Every time we make a statement or write a sentence it has wider implications, unless all you say is pass the butter, and even something like that can be made political. Why not get up and get the butter yourself? So much is a mechanism of social behavior we learn. And why must we follow norms? Who is it who decides what norms to follow?

I have always rebelled against norms. For example, I love to eat with my hands instead of a fork, I love to bring up subjects that could be embarrassing. I often write about relationships based on power structures. Work relationships and the structure of work are also political so if you write about work then, in essence, it’s political. Some poetry is blatantly political, concerning the presidency or human rights. More subtle poetry is about relationships or written from a woman’s or man’s view. Sometimes people don’t consider my work political in spite of the fact that I often address social issues in my writing.

Please share with us one poem from the collection, and then riff a little about the journey the poem takes the reader on.

LISTEN TO TUPELO HONEY BY CLICKING HERE, THEN ON THE GCAST PLAYER.

I’m close with this nurse who works at Presbyterian Hospital. One day she told me this story about this baby who’d been born at the hospital and was so tiny because he’d been born addicted to crack. This woman could not have her own children and had considered adoption but finally gave up on the idea. You know how couples are sometimes, they have so much for each other and there’s no more to go around, and her husband thrived under all her attention. This newborn called out to her in a way that made her move like she’d never moved before. As if suddenly without learning she’d gotten up and could tango. She told me a story and we both had tears in our eyes because I felt her pain and the pain of this infant.

Professional caregivers often suffer and burn out because of our pain. It’s a difficult job to keep giving with no payback in sight except to know you’ve done right by someone, so I related. That night, I said I’m going to write a poem about this baby and JoAnne said, Please do, it would help me to deal with it.

I wrote this poem back in 1994 and it’s as apt today as it was then because the problem still exists. I have friends on the scene who tell me each time they hear the poem they hear different things. People cry when I read this poem. They get it! Sometimes people get angry and tell me my poetry isn’t real poetry. There’s been a lot of controversy around that. I actually have a piece on my blog about this which got a great many responses.

Others who have heard me read this before will request it at readings. I'm actually quite bad at attending readings which is kind of strange because there's this dichotomy; I'm very friendly and outgoing while simultaneously reclusive and shy. The other thing to remember is that when blues first emerged, they said it wasn’t “real” music and the same with jazz. Dare to be different, I’ve lived my life by that code.

What are you working on now?
I am currently working on a series of bluetry poems. I labeled them bluetry (yes I made it up) because this series concerns the common themes of blues. This year has been a year for the blues for me. I was compelled to write these. The first bluetry I wrote invokes Billie Holiday—one of my all-time favorites—and is called “I sing the blues for you today.” This poem took me three months before I knew where I was.

I threw Billie’s lines in the bluetry and they took off. I also have a bluetry poem about a dog rescue and canned hunts, another passion of mine. What I see happening in my poetry and writing is that I mix more elements together and take risks. I take a pinch of surreal, mix with equal parts enthusiasm and passion, add existentialism and observations, throw in some reality and voilà!

Here is the link for the first bluetry.

Anything else you'd like to add?
The most frequent comment about my work usually concerns its honesty and openness or something about my passion. Absolutely, I write with passion, the way I live. People often write me about my poetry and comment on my life being so sad. I don’t know what to do about that really but passion is evoked from intensity. That is the way I am and the way I was born. Perhaps artists become artists because they do feel things more intensely.

From way back I always have a pen in my hand. Now I mostly sit in front of the computer but if I'm forced to go out, I've always got pen and paper at hand and most often use it. Now, I have very little time, being totally involved with two current projects, editor at The Cartier Street Review, and also for The Smoking Book, an anthology concerning smoke, fire, fog, or anything that concerns smoke. I also write interviews for Street Literature Review, the paper mag. It’s also time to return to that unfinished 186 page novel and just spit it out! I love writing and love reading. Being busy with passion is what I live for.

Precious, a novel by Sandra Novack, book review by Joy Leftow

Ms. Novack advertised her full-length debut novel on Facebook , Precious, from Random House. Curious to read it I promptly wrote her a letter explaining I wanted to review her novel and she sent me one. Thus began my journey through her smooth agile verse. Precise and elegantly elegiac, like the movements they describe, Ms. Novack’s tale begs the question of what possibly could go wrong in a pleasant nuclear middle class family in a burb of Pennsylvania not far from New Jersey. Ah, my - my, what could not go wrong in Novack’s scenario?
Novack jumps in and out of each of her characters magically, like Sissy jumps in and out of the pool in the back yard and Eva jumps into wayward trouble without her mother around to set her straight. As easily as an able person can enter and leave a shower, she follows their watery moody depths from one situation to the next. Like the stick of a pinprick, punctiliously moving from one character to the next, she reveals the most hidden thoughts of each character.
Natalia wants more than what she has with her introverted reserved husband, Frank, who spends all has spare time beneath his car. Nostalgic for her gypsy roots, and romance, Natalia decides to leave. When her teenage daughter, Eva, tries to convince Natalia to stay, her mom replies, “A person’s heart doesn’t shed itself like a tree in winter, it doesn’t bare itself just because you want it to.” Natalia, bored with her life, her husband, and her children, idealizing her freedom and seeking new experiences, leaves on a trip to Europe with the doctor she works for. Natalia’s fantasies don’t play out how she imagined. Once in Europe and alone with the doctor, Natalia discovers she’s more bored with him than she ever was with her husband. Since her early childhood, Natalia had yearned to return to her gypsy family, a desire nourished by faint distant memories mixed with tales she heard from her adopted family.
Surprised, Natalia finds herself desperately pining away for her children and Frank, reminiscing longingly. This, combined with her sadness about her feelings of loss is what drives Natalia back home. Novack is inside her character’s heads, she knows them intimately.
“Didn’t he suddenly want to give Eva what a girl like her so desperately wants – to see herself through another’s eyes and to find that she is precisely as she wishes but never quite believes – beautiful and full of possibility.” Seeing ourselves through the eyes of others is what we all think we want - until we do it and are often caught off guard in what we see. We often wish to see the world through the other’s eyes. Novack has hit the nail direct.
Eva is filled with anger and wanting more, yet stuck with her kid sister, Sissy and her Dad when Mom abandons them. Eva searches for love and finds separation and sorrow in the middle of nowhere as do all teenage girls in trouble. Eva keeps herself alive and vibrant through her interactions with Sissy, her pivot. Eva is guilty for being a young girl who goes out to hang out with boys and have an affair with an older married man while she is responsible for taking care of her younger sibling. Eva sustains herself by feeding stories to Sissy. Eva’s stories are fed on exasperation mixed with myth and her anguished insights into adult behavior. Disillusioned by love, her family, her mom’s return home instead of righting things in the family, sends Eva over the edge into a place she cannot come back from.
The title of the book, Precious, and the placing of the title in the story raised a childhood memory for me. As a youngster from a poverty stricken Jewish family in New York City, filled with illness and sorrow, I watched my sister pamper her dolls. I was not permitted to touch my sister’s dolls because although she was eleven and I was six, she held on to her dolls for dear life. She had very little too and was miserable. I respected her belongings because I feared her temper. She’d hit me before. I only got my first new doll (not hand me downs or throwaways) the Christmas after this ensuing event. I had another sister eight years older than me too. One day after we’d all arrived home from school almost simultaneously at about three-ten; my sister discovered her beloved porcelain doll with its head broken off.
Because my sister could see no other possible culprit, she accused me of breaking the doll and proceeded to beat living daylights out of me with no interference from anyone in my family. Later, I was surprised to learn my mother had kept silent and let me take a beating for something she knew I hadn’t done. That made no sense. Several days later, mom divulged she’d had a guest that day who had brought her small child with her when she visited and mom had not paid attention to the child. I surmise my mom was afraid of my sister’s temper too and that was why she let me take that beating. I had no clue back then. I was six years old.
The doll in Novack’s tale is also ruined when Sissy and her best friend Vicki fight about who can play with the doll at a sleepover. During their struggle when the doll is literally ripped in two, Vicki becomes Sissy’s ex best friend. I wondered why a half page description about a doll named Precious becomes the title. Maybe because relationships and people mean more than we imagine and when we give them up we discover their preciosity and maybe because of the evocative tone of Novack’s descriptions. After all, Novack’s words brought my memory back to me from my six-year old self.
It is Vicki, Sissy’s ex best friend, who broke Sissy’s favorite doll Precious, who goes missing, never to be seen alive again. Vicki’s disappearance drives the story forth, revolving around every character’s angles. The townspeople come together to try to help Ginny deal with the loss of her child. Natalia is conflicted with survivor guilt and grateful her children are safe even if she had nothing to do with keeping them safe. She cannot confront Eva’s behavior and accusations. Eva and Frank are unforgiving and relentless in their judgments. Natalia rehearses speeches she cannot say while struggling to regain her footing in a lost life.
After reading Precious, I ask, what possibly couldn’t and won’t go wrong? Isn’t that the way of the world, after all? Everything in the world goes amiss, changes in lives occur in a finger snap. Novack’s lyrical and haunting prose maintains a rhythm; she doesn’t skip a beat.
It reminds me of a Woody Allen character who announces, dead-pan, earnestness exuding from his pores, “It’s the Second Law of Thermodynamics: sooner or later everything turns to shit.” And in this small town turned topsy-turvy through a whirlwind of unconnected events, that is exactly what occurs inside Novack’s elegant poetic prose.
When we read others writings and feel inspired by what we read, plus the author provokes memories, this is where we explore the connections. It is in this vein I write, to reach the person who reads and responds with their guts, with passion.
Novack reminds us that every day we make choices in our losses. Each moment begins with new choices. Each choice provides new possibilities. We live with daily decision-making processes that influence us as we plunder through our lives. Novack exposes our most primal fears concerning approval and loss. She makes us wonder if anything new will ever take the place of what we lose or if there’s even the slightest chance to begin to fill all the empty spaces from all our losses put together. Wounds hurt. At funerals divorces and such, people always try to assuage sadness by saying things like, “Oh, it gets better as time goes on,” but that’s absolutely untrue. Some hurts last a lifetime. Trust me, I’ve had a few.

Reading writing ... equals literacy

The recent article I wrote on my blog, Our Educational System, spurred me on to re-examine how this system affects our young students and their skills. As a social worker who worked in our system in public high schools with teens from 13 to 21 years old for 16 years and then worked with pre-k children for another 5 years, I’d like to share what I learned about our children and their skills. This necessitates a comparison.
Back when I was in school we had five classes per grade, beginning with the number 1 class and proceeding to the number 5 class. Thus, there was 1-1, 2-1 etc. Logically speaking one would have thought that the 5 class would have been the slowest and the number 1 would have been the fast learners, however in my school, the 1 class was the “quick learners” and the number 2 class was the "health education class," which included wheelchair bound children and very slow learners. What really was strange was that everyone knew how to read albeit some read more slowly than others. Also everyone eventually learned to write as well. The slower learners weren’t as good with grammar and spelling and for many of the slower learners, spelling and grammar problems remained. I was always in the number 1 class as I was very precocious and generally learned anything to do with reading or writing very fast. My deficits were about where things are, so maps and map memorization was a problem for me. There were always more than 30 children in each class. In those days, my neighborhood, Washington Heights, (now called Hudson Heights by all the realtors) had many foreigners.
The difference is that they were from many places, not like now when there are a handful of Russians and mostly Dominicans. There was a great influx of Puerto Ricans and Greeks to my area, and people from Russia and other Slavic nations (the nations now have since changed names). From the time when I was very young, all my teachers complained that I couldn’t keep quiet. Any foreigner was seated next to me and usually learned English quickly as I would share my notes and help them. This situation also seems unique now.
The first 5 years I worked with pregnant teens in high schools, I learned that over half of our students could not write a proper sentence. About half could write within two years of their grade level. About another quarter could write with many spelling and grammatical errors but the words would make sense. And the last quarter or 20% could not logically string one sentence to the next to write a cohesive paragraph on any given subject matter – even on one they know about. For example, if they were asked to write a paragraph on who is their favorite rapper and why, only half of them could do this successfully.
I was dismayed to observe how poor their writing, reading and comprehension skills were. Teenagers 15 years old were writing at what I judged to be a second or third grade level. At this time, some of the high schools I worked at tried to get around this issue by teaching their youngsters to think and to argue out a point verbally. The principals applied for waivers from the state so the children could do a series of oral defenses and speeches instead of taking regents, where they learned to argue a thesis from beginning to end. I was impressed by what I saw but still, again, there was at least 40% who could not keep up to the regiment or structure and this was in spite of the judges trying hard to be very lenient. I wondered why our society had changed this much from the time I was a teen to now and I still don’t have an answer.
I have met writers too who are good writers, and they cannot spell and don’t know proper grammar. Professional agents and book companies have told me, that they feel basic academic writing skill is unnecessary and unimportant. They say, what is important is that the person write well or rhyme well. I can round this out by adding that they will further say that's why they hire someone like me to do the editing and clean it up. And the weird thing here is that I know how to make street lit sound street lit enough and put in enough modernisms to make it a go on both sides too. White people and everyone else in the public schools now write Ebonics if they write at all. Proper writing is a dying skill today.
A few years back, a young man was sent to me from 9th grade. I was told to find out how he had gotten to this grade and couldn’t read or write at all. I did as I was told and apparently, he was such a sweet personality, that no one had paid attention to the fact that he couldn’t read an entire sentence. Even when given a children’s book for 5 to 7 year olds, he could barely read any of the words. OK, I admit this is unusual, but not as unusual as it seems. I have also met special education students who could barely write, but who could spout beautiful rhymes instantaneously apparently effortlessly as well.
I grew up without a television. Our radio broke when I was about 6 and wasn’t replaced for a few years. Books was my only entertainment, without which, I would have suffered even more than I did. As I tell everyone, my childhood was fraught with anxiety and despair. My mother was diagnosed with cancer when I was a few months old and the first year of my life welfare sent a series of caregivers to care for us so my dad could go to work. My mom was in hospital for about 6 months. We were have-nots in every way. I had two dolls which I had been given after I’d turned 6. I washed my own clothes and ironed them at 7 years old. Sorry, I wish I knew what childhood meant. One sister liked to play teacher and I learned to read and write to please her originally. I was reading and writing at 4 years old. I read and wrote for love.
Obviously I have no idea where this dilemma of our literacy is headed but one place it is headed is to put the entire onus for literacy on the teachers in the way of statistics like I described in the previous article. I also think that perhaps our society is going to return to a previous age when letter writers got paid and people got paid to read to others too. In the middle ages there was a particular class of people that were paid to perform this service for the general populace. Hey if I live long enough I can be one of those people. I urge you to talk to our teachers about this, talk to each other – you’ll see I’m not exaggerating.

Also check out this fascinating stuff:
John Taylor Gatto and his official website


"It is our goal to appreciate and improve our talents, to share our own work and to communicate the joys of poetry with others. Everyone's poetry is valued."
River Junction Poets Mission Statement

I love to read mysteries... by Joy Leftow

I just finished two of Carl Hiaasen's books, Nature Girl & Sick Puppy. Hiaasen is a quirky writer and truly understands gifted crazy type people that he writes about. As a professional clinical social worker & a writer, it is very important that the characters have substance and their traits are well developed. His humor is ironic, biting, like the bite of a Labrador puppy. I'm ready to read the rest of his books now. That's usually the way for me; being a completist once I find an author I like. Hiaasen's timing is exquisite as his comic relief. If you want to be entertained & laugh read him. The story follows an independently wealthy guy, Twilly, who happens to drive by a schmuck who is throwing garbage out the window of his huge van. The schmuck is Palmer Stoat, who is a lobbyist. Twilly sets out to teach Palmer a lesson on littering. Whether or not he succeeds is the mystery. The characters are completely believeable - I think I've met a few...

Another author who I highly recommend is Jasper Fforde, Lost In A Good Book & The Well of Lost Plots. The characters escape from books - his humor reminds me of Catch 22. The heroine, Thursday Next, hops from book to book literally, becoming part of the plot of each story she gets into. Thursday is part of an undercover task force aimed at preventing escaped characters from committing crimes. I've already covered too much ground discussing two authors.

The deal is these are two mystery authors who will make you laugh and both have excellent literary skills.


"I love to write when the muse strikes and if it doesn't strike, I write anyway and then, invariably, my muse joins me." - Joy Leftow

check Joy's Poetry Blog

Joy Leftow AKA VioletWrites

Joy Leftow

The following post was written by Joy Leftow and posted originally at her blog. You can get to her original post by clicking on the title below.

thinking reading & writing

My characters come alive when I write them and very often I am acting entire scenes out while writing ... or so it would seem to anyone watching me. This is great for writing dialogue because when you speak your characters' lines you know when they ring true. DD says he never did this before but by watching me he observes how it helps me. I do this with my narrative poetry as well. I love friends with keen ears too. I like to read to people from my book or new poetry. Either. Somehow either way - I'm not exactly what you expect me to be. I've been compared to post modernist and confessional style poets but the truth is, at the time I was being accused of following or imitating them, I had never read Ginsberg or Sylvia Plath. I was too busy writing 10 to 30 page term papers a several times each term so I didn't have time for much else besides being a part time mom. Back then, I do a lot of creative writing except for my journals. I went to Columbia for 8 straight years. Before that I had my GED.

It's kind of amazing when you consider that drop out Joy became the ivy league drop in and now has two masters degrees. Colombia is tough and competitive - I kid you not. To maintain a 3.3 average is a full time job. After I graduated finally and settled into a J. O. B. I began writing again. It's hard out here for us poets and writers.
The point is that sometimes it's a deterrent when you really are difficult to pigeonhole. When you sound truly like you and no one else it's harder to fit in anyplace. People say they want creative and unique because that is what we're all trained to say. The truth is uncomfortable can be ok too and has its own power. Not everyone can love me or you or anyone else's work. Some people are naturally more controversial and colorful. It's the way life goes. "Explore ... Search for more, no more prisoners of war..."
Celebrating page 123 on my grind plus maintaining this blog and writing poetry too...
Oh and I forgot and working on the magazine and two anthologies!