Maze of Blood in Baton Rouge

Title: "Maze of Blood combines romance, adventure, mysticism."

Greg Langley, for many years the wise and wide-reading Books Editor at The Baton Rouge Advocate, has written a review of Maze of Blood. Find it HERE.

Clip: So “Maze of Blood” is a love story. It’s an adventure story. It’s mystic in places. It’s literary and poetic. It’s a Texas Gothic tale. All that is wonderful, but the book does have one hurdle for readers to overcome: The end is at the beginning. Caradog has died. Maybelline is no longer Conall’s best girl. And Conall, hero of the tale, has taken a fatal step almost before the plot finds its first complication. Then Youmans writes the story forward from a past point. It is told in first-person in the rich and sometimes fantastic voice of Conall. This may sound confusing, and in the hands of a lesser writer, it would be. But with Youmans, you can count on the entree being just as sweet as the dessert — no matter which one is served first.

Review, The Foliate Head and more

Books editor Greg Langley of The Baton Rouge Advocate reviews three recent poetry books:

Thomas Lynch's The Sin Eater,
Kay Stripling Byer's Descent,
and my The Foliate Head.
Here.

Clip: "A rarity among poets today, Youmans writes in metered verse, sometimes rhyme. Her skill at mastering the forms is impressive."

When I was a high school girl in Cullowhee, Kay worked with my mother at the Western Carolina University's Hunter Library, and we often talked about poetry and writing. So it is interesting to be bracketed with her this way...

Thank you for a stardust-sprinkled review...

Greg Langley, longtime books editor at The Baton Rouge Review and much admired in that increasingly rare role by my various publishers, has written the most marvelous review of The Throne of Psyche.  I would be a sad creature indeed if such judgment did not make me happy and give me wings to fly over the moon a time or two.

He has stayed with my books for many years, writing them about them in reviews with care and insight.  His reviews have affirmed a faith in my abilities throughout this time, and that has been a gift that has meant much to me--that has encouraged me when I felt that my books were invisible.  I am more grateful to him than can be said in a mere blog.

Thank you to the wonderful Mr. Langley!

***

Clips from the review:

The first portion of this collection, the part about Psyche, is just one of several that comprise 60 poems. All deal with perceptions that move into and out of reality. Youmans is a traditionalist in her use of forms, and her work will delight those who enjoy classical poetry with direction and structure, yet her strong and inventive metaphors and similes evoke an otherness that only Coleridge attained.

* * *


There is more, much more. Some are wry and a bit sweet, but there is a fierce tone that is apparent throughout these poems, and her “Rue for A.E. Housman,” referring to the English poet who wrote of his unrequited homosexual love of another man who died young, is at once sad and cautionary and slightly bitter.


To have one love for all your life
And as dear as breath;
To lose the shape of what you loved
In distance, then in death;

Yes, what a funny world it is,
Where this is not the worst
That can happen — and daily does.
The mouth that did not thirst

For yours is dust, and you are not.
Yet heedless of all doom
The children shout immortal joys;
Again the roses bloom.

Sad, cautionary and slightly bitter, but wholly beautiful and brilliant. Youmans is a writer of rare ability whose works will one day be studied by serious students of poetry.

***

Ah, I enjoyed that lovely golden sensation!  And now I must go back to fussing with the final version of Thaliad because it plus page proofs of A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage (they arrived a day ago) are both due in two weeks...