1,
From the Wiseblood Books End-of-2022 newsletter:
Seren of the Wildwood, a long fantasy story in verse by Marly Youmans, forthcoming in March of 2023. Youmans is an award-winning author of over fifteen books, including, most recently, Charis in the World of Wonders. Appreciating the way in which Seren "whispers to our fractured souls," Makoto Fujimura calls the poem "an adventure that is at once psychologically potent and fantastical," and Amit Majmudar illumines that Youmans, by "hybridizing the 'bob and wheel' of medieval poetry with the iambic pentameter narratives of the Romantic and Victorian era, conjures a time-frame outside time, perfectly suited to the story. This book is itself a 'Wildwood' where fey, elusive, illusory phenomena draw the protagonist—and the reader—deeper and deeper into mystery.” Seren will contain cover and interior illustrations by the Welsh artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins, including these three here (click on the images):
To see the images and read the entire and very interesting newsletter, go HERE.
2.
Out-in-December poems
I've been forgetting to post poems on the blog, as more people tend to read them via links on twitter or facebook these days, but here are the out-in-December ones I can remember (alas, I've had to rush away from home and don't have access to all my records.)
New poem in First Things: The Mortal Longing After Loveliness This one not "about" but is oddly apt for the Christmas season. I wonder how many poems Xerxes has marched into...
New poem in Willows Wept: Summer's End (page 53) I'd forgotten this one; poets are moody, it seems!
And if you have a subscription to print-only journal Blue Unicorn (they're very rare, those lovely, melancholy blue ones), you'll find one in there this month as well, thanks to a bit of delay on an issue.
3.
A new page
is up for Seren of the Wildwood, so check it out! See tabs above. Blurbs-in-full plus more of those ever-delightful Hicks-Jenkins illuminations...
As editor of a handful of magazines (while I still worked) it behoved me to create a style-sheet for each. You know the sort of thing: pontificatory statements on words regularly misspelled, words misunderstood ("fulsome" being a classic), yea/nay on the use of capitals, a purge of dangling participles, and so on. More controversially, the format for referring to an interviewee once the writer is past the interviewee's initial introduction in an article. The Guardian is quite harsh about many matters of style (eg, hyphens put to the sword and the space closed up) yet continues with Mr and Mrs which, for me, looks old-fashioned. I preferred laconic detachment as applied in the above post where you become the genderless Youmans. Strange how, despite the ultimate power conferred on me as editor, I occasionally felt uneasy when applying this regulation to women.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of style I'd be rushing to big dictionary (if it wasn't so damn heavy) for guidance on what for me is a novelty: namely "illumines" and in that context. We already have "illuminates" but I take it that wouldn't have worked. As to "fey" it tends to be used pejoratively in the UK; was that the writer's intention?
Dashed this off before I left on a 10-day emergency run to western North Carolina (just home tonight!), so you might as well ask the moon! But Clive has long called his work with me "illumination." Who am I to argue? And "fey" as in the sense of denizens of Faërie...
ReplyDeleteI don't mind what title is applied (or not) to me, and as I have two last names (used in various appropriate circumstances), I really don't know that I have a consistent correct one.
Looking forward to "Seren"! (P.S. If there was supposed to be a link on the words "A new page," it's not working...)
ReplyDeleteHad just relied on "see tabs" but shall add link...
ReplyDeleteMe too--just saw the interior, all save copyright and frontispiece. Looking quite handsome.