Charis, NCLR, and two poetry projects in Lent

CHARIS IN THE WORLD OF WONDERS 

I've been grateful for the many good reviews of the novel, and now for a interestingly "mixed" review from "Editors' Picks" at Plough Quarterly. If you're wondering how this writer reacts to a mixed review, well, it's to say that all thoughtful attention helps the book--and here also to run through her mind why the pattern of a human being going through trials before finally winning home isn't proper as an appropriate and compelling narrative shape. Old as Homer. Older. But I'm pleased to have the consideration of the book all the same. So many thanks to Joy Clarkson... 

Clip: ...to conjure this premodern and enchanted way of encountering the world, where babies born on the Sabbath are cursed and moose are near-mythic creatures. Reading historical fiction can sometimes feel like a one-sided game of Trivial Pursuit, in which the author inflicts upon you every fact he or she ever learned about the time period. Not so with this book. Charis’ world is one in which I thoroughly believed, full of people I couldn’t help but care about. The archaic language felt natural, and its premodern mindset, full of assumptions alien to the modern experience, was revitalizing to inhabit.

THE WOMAN IN THE WALLS

Pilfered just after it popped up on NCLR on facebook... "The Woman in the Walls."

And no, it's not autobiographical, though there's a wisp of truth--did watch a wall being built with children, and the maker gave a broken trilobite to my daughter. That's somewhat rare for me, as I like to make up almost everything. when I write... Many writers like to write out of their own lives, but I find that material rather boring compared to the frolic and fireworks possible when I invent.

WORDS IN LENT

In other word-news, approaching the end of a Lenten project of writing a formal poem every day. Almost there... Pentina, terza rima, otttava rima, sonnets, blank verse, and more. And a second Lenten project is almost complete--making videos of other people's poems for the Cathedral Arts program at The Cathedral of All Saints in Albany, New York. More on that later!

This snowy, icy week...

A few warm things... 

Charis in the World of Wonders

I've updated the Charis page, so please take a look--there is a great deal there now. This week I'm glad of a lovely long review of Charis in the World of Wonders by notable musician, teacher, and editor Lorraine Hale Robinson. And it's hosted at North Carolina Literary Review, edited by Margaret Bauer. To have four thoughtful pages in NCLR is something for which I am grateful! 

You may find the digital version of the magazine HERE, or you may leap directly to the review HERE.

     Charis in the World of Wonders offers diverse sources of enjoyment—an exciting adventure saga, for example. Or, readers interested in the philosophical concepts of time and place, tracing the path of Charis’s adventure offers attractions. For readers interested in history, the book presents a vivid and engaging picture of “a world lit by fire.” Or for those of a metaphysical bent, there is the fascination of the bewildering “forests” of contradictions that drive Every Woman Charis’s interior, psychological journeys. For readers who relish the mot juste, there is delicate and nuanced writing craft and a sparkling use of kennings. My own recommendation is to read the book for all of its many wonders. --Lorraine Hale Robinson, “Homage to Hawthorne: A (New) Wonder Book,” North Carolina Literary Review, pp. 124-127. 11 February 2021.

The Dreamer as Architect

And HERE is "The Dreamer as Architect" at the digital version of First Things...  The second of two poems chosen by poet A. M. Juster in his brief time as poetry editor there, so I thank him. This one has received loads of lovely comments on twitter and facebook, so if you have not already seen it, perhaps you might like to peregrinate over that way... It's dedicated to novelist Midori Snyder.

The start of  the poem, for a taste:

                                              Last night in dreams, she lived a thousand years

                                              And was the architect who made a house

                                              That wandered from the mountains to the sea.

Hope you had a wonderful Valentine's Day, passers-by! 

NCLR

A poem and two reviews by me,

plus an interview in the NCLROnline,

plus much more...

Click on this link, and then click 

on the image of the cover you see.
Or click individual links below.

"The Woman in the Walls" 

James Applewhite finalist

p. 55

A Virtual Road-Trip Interview:

Conversations with Five Expatriate

North Carolina Writers

by George Hovis p. 56

Dale Ray Phillips p. 57

Tara Powell p. 60

De'Shawn Charles Winslow p. 66

Marly Youmans p. 68

Robert Morgan p. 75
(There's also a long piece about George Hovis
and his new book, The Skin Artist, on p. 44.)

Images of Mystery

(reviews of two new Nieman books)

The start of "Rave"

I've mentioned that print journal North Carolina Literary Review is publishing four poems from a manuscript called Rave, originally inspired by the structure, technical features, and subjects of Yoruban praise chant. They are "Spring Tree Egg," "Alice," "Night Blooming Cereus," and "She-Who-Changed."

NCLR also has an online supplement, in which another of the Rave poems now appears. This one is the first one I wrote--and it was the only for a long time--written during a class of mine at the Antioch Writing Workshops in Yellow Springs a few summers back. "Anniversary Song" is closer than many in the manuscript to the original forms that inspired me. So it was the initial start, the seed that later grew.

All five poems were finalists for the James Applewhite Poetry Prize. Click on the Rave tag below for links to more poems from the manuscript.

The word-twister's news

"Tamlaine" by James Herbert MacNair, 1905

Thank you to Micah Mattix for including Maze of Blood in this morning's Prufrock News. It's a great arts and letters newsletter, and I'm glad to be in it.

Oh! I just found Midori Snyder's lovely, interesting post about my two new poems in The Journal of Mythic Arts. Here it is, in her blog, In the Labyrinth, which is well worth following. She also links to reviews she has written of some of my books.

Night Journey from Kingfisher at The Journal of Mythic Arts
This poem and "Prothalamion for Linnet" are from a new manuscript inspired by Yoruban chants. I'm starting to send them out now and will be thinking about a publisher in the coming year.

Print journal North Carolina Literary Review will be publishing four others from the series,
"Spring Tree Egg,"
"Alice,"
"Night Blooming Cereus,"
and "She-Who-Changed."

Prothalamion for Linnet at The Journal of Mythic Arts
And thanks to Midori Snyder for collecting these poems from me!

You can look at the entire archive of poems here.  Endicott Studio is a wonderful site, full of interesting nooks and crannies, put together over many years by those notable women, Midori Snyder and Terri Windling. So stay and look around. It's where I first encountered the art of my friend Clive Hicks-Jenkins, who has beautified so many of my books.

The Annunciation Carved in a Medieval Nut in Books and Culture
Now up online as well as in the print edition.

And if you go here, you can see links to a lot of other poems by me in the magazine, as well as to reviews and "year's best" mentions. The editor, John Wilson, is quite possibly the best-read person I've ever met (well, I've never met him, but you know what I mean!)