Anders, Charis, Red King

Another "tiny" at North American Anglican: 

Anders, Young and Old

And if you go here on the NAA site, you can take a look at more tinies and a few poems.  Thanks so much to Clinton Collister for requesting poetry and tinies! 

* * *

Clips from new reviews of Charis in the World of Wonders:

Photo by Paul Digby

A charming literary work that envelops the reader in the chaotic frontier life of Puritan Massachusetts.

--Historical Novel Society Issue 93, August 2020

Youmans shrewdly presents the collective madness of witch trials as one of many destructive forces in the world — on a level with Indian massacres, concussions, and drowning. As such, the hysteria seems less alien, our modern complacencies less sure, leaving behind the uneasy suspicion that we may be as prone to collective madness as they are, and as blind to it, lulled by the tools we vainly depend upon, just as they depend on their brimstone preaching, to save us from destruction. This sojourn in Charis and the World of Wonders lets us experience reality bare of illusions: life can end at any moment, avoiding grief is folly, joys should be taken gratefully when they come, and creation is full of beauty, fear, mystery, and God.

--novelist H. S. Cross. "In the Liminal Zone," The Living Church (Anglican Communion), 30 July 2020

* * *

And here's a pandemic poem from The Book of the Red King...

The Cloud Like a Child

A Folk Story of the Red King’s Kingdom

A cloud no bigger than a child appeared

And hovered just above the castle spires.

Next the sickness came with evening sweats

That seemed to bleed all force away from those

Who ploughed or pounded hammers at the forge,

Strong souls who laughed at first but later wept.

At night the cloud became a rag of blood

That served to veil the brightness of the moon,

And people said, “The end of the world is near.”

The greater part of the Red Kingdom’s men

Died, and no child was born, for women all

Were barren. So the Red King in that time

Took pity on the sons and daughters who

Were not and seemed unlikely to become:

Three generations he raised them from stones

Until the demon rag was worn to shreds

And lost to every eye except the King’s.

So was preserved the kingdom of his love. 

You may see and hear a reading of the poem here.

Reviews and a thorn tree

A new poem just out at North American Anglican

Godric of Finchale as a Thorn Tree

Homage to Frederick Buechner

Fly HERE to read the poem.

Snitching a twitter-comment from poet Lisa McCabe @LAHMCCABE:
Replying to @NorthAmAnglican and @marlyyoumans - thank you for writing this beautiful poem. The dedication is perfect.

*  *  *

A new review of Glimmerglass at Brandywine Books

Glimmerglass the novel may be like Glimmerglass the lake. It’s beautiful from the shore, warm, inviting, even with hints of danger and mystery, and alien, if not weird, under the surface. When Cynthia falls into the icy lake, metaphorically speaking, she emerges among chain-smoking ghosts, feathered angels with parasols, minotaurs, and palace dance halls. Sure, it sounds trippy, but it works beautifully well.   --Phil Wade

Read the rest HERE.

*  *  *

New reviews of Charis in the World of Wonders

#pandemicbooklaunch

I'm hoping for more of those helpful Amazon reviews, as even indie bookstores and people who do not buy from Amazon check them out. But I'm happy to have long, thoughtful reviews there, many of them by writers. So please check them out HERE.  

Please scroll down the blog to recent posts about reviews from Wuthering Expectations and Melanie Bettinelli.

                                    *  *  *

And The Book of the Red King

Please scroll down to find novelist Eugene Garber's wonderful comments on The Book of the Red King.

Novelist Eugene Garber on The Book of the Red King

Illumination by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
Pb available via indies, Amazon etc.
Hc & pb available via  Phoenicia Publishing

I have read The Book of the Red King. It is an extraordinary work. It put me in mind of how much I enjoyed Yeats’s early fairyland poems. The poems remain steadfastly otherworldly. They transport the reader to an existence apart. I’m reminded of James’s definition of a romance vs. a novel. In the former the writer cuts the lines that tether the fiction to the earth. Seems to me you do, but there are occasional details that let us know that you know there’s a world below, one more familiar to us and one with real pain. I found this in pages 102-109 and liked the modulation of tone. The poems have their own rich mythology, but I appreciated the slant or even explicit references to Christianity—grail, baptismal basin, baptism by fire, phoenix and no doubt others. The language of the work is rich and often exotic. I especially, though, responded to the varied rhythms. I’m no good at prosody, but I think I found lots of variety—iambic regularity, heavy beats approaching Old English strong stress, and long liquid melodious lines and no doubt more. I especially admire your frequent use of enjambment and the way it moves us across lines. Also stanza forms and a great variety of line breaks.

Some more thematic things. I was often wondering, does the Fool have a self or is he just a pastiche of jester-like roles. On page 27, in an especially beautiful poem, is an image of wholeness in a face even as it’s broken by sunlight and water. This is reassuring. At the bottom of page 111 the matter is in doubt. In “The Silver Cord” an even deeper doubt arises—the specter of nothingness. “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” Which reminds me that your allusions—Shakespeare, Milton etc. are always apt. So if the book is really the King’s and not the Fool’s (P.127), a proposition not easily accepted given the space given the Fool, then the Fool’s ontological status is one of total dependency. On what? Some God-like presence, or something less? Meanwhile, eternity winks at us. On page 44 we learn that wentletrap can sing a song of endlessness and thus potentially liberate the world of the Fool from time and change. And in the wonderful “Great Work of Time” we have some assurance that our microcosmos is indeed a miniature of a greater cosmic reality. But at the End of “Fool’s Sacrifice,” in a rare moment of metapoetry, we must face the possibility that the whole book is just words and nothing more. Or an art critic might say the book is painterly, its brilliant surfaces defying a downward gaze. Thus, much is left in the balance, not to be resolved in this book or in life.

This is as far as I can go except to say that I think “Raven Castle” is a masterpiece.

* * *

Portion of a letter, 

shared by permission of Eugene Garber.

Interviews, videos, and more--

BRAND NEW INTERVIEW

There's a long new Charis in the World of Wonders interview, one with lots of pictures that Chris Rice Cooper has put together. Some are things she requested, some are things she quarried online. She asked lots of questions, and there's an excerpt as well.  If you're a nosey sort (who isn't curious?), you might like to take a look around, as there are glimpses of my bedroom, kitchen, dining room, writing room, etc. Hop here: http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2020/04/marly-youmans-charis-in-world-of.html.

CATHEDRAL ARTS BLOG 
WITH POETRY VIDEOS, etc.

Here's a piece by Brynna Carpenter-Nardone at the Cathedral of All Saints in Albany, New York... It's about my poetry, mostly, but I expect all visibility helps at the moment... The piece is on the cathedral blog and goes out to subscribers as well. Today was supposed to be The Hidden Cathedral Poetry Conference (Cathedral Arts series from The Cathedral of All Saints, Albany, New York, and I was to be keynote speaker), but it has been postponed a  year: https://cathedralofallsaints.org/cathedral-arts

BOOKSHOP.ORG

I've turned my blog post, "Books for young boys who read at a high level," into a list at Bookshop.org. Some books were not available at the site and are missing, but I've added new ones as well. And I've made several other lists--one of my in-print books (missing The Book of the Red King, alas), one of some (maybe more when I feel energetic!) favorite rereads, and one of books by friends and acquaintances. These are but works in progress, and may grow. Bookshop does not have every book I think to add, but I expect it, too, will be growing.

https://bookshop.org/shop/Marly_Youmans

RECENTLY NOTED: interview, poems, video

INTERVIEW

"Q and A with Marly Youmans, Author of Charis In The World Of Wonders" - interview at Women Writer, Women's Books  11 April 2020

EXCERPT

Excerpt (the first appearance of Hortus) from Charis in the World of Wonders at Women Writers, Women's Books  3 April 2020

POEMS, text and video

* "Mystic Journey," "Jane Eyre in the Red Room," "The Plum Oak Pot," and "The Hand" (audio and text) at Pete Candler's pandemic project, A New Decameron. The first and last poems are blank verse; the other two are part of a sequence of poems influenced by Hebrew parallelism and Yoruban praise traditions: art has always been a Silk Road. Thanks to Pete for a request.

* "Plague-spell" and "Death of a Singer" at The Living Church (Episcopal/Anglican Communion) 19 April 2020 issue. Thanks to editor Fr. Mark Michael for his request. I'm afraid you have to have access to a print issue on this one.

* "The Homunculus" from The Book of the Red King (video) at The Ballsians on youtube: here.

Quarantine Holy Week, with interviews, excerpts, poems, and Charis

Charis in the World of Wonders 

and poems: updatery!

Anak Krakatoa erupted on Good Friday, locusts afflict Africa, the pandemic rages everywhere, Etobicoke Creek ran as red as blood: maybe you had better get started on your quarantine reading of Charis in the World of Wonders...

"Q and A with Marly Youmans, Author of Charis In The World Of Wonders" - interview at Women Writer, Women's Books  11 April 2020

Excerpt (the first appearance of Hortus) from Charis in the World of Wonders at Women Writers, Women's Books  3 April 2020

"Mystic Journey," "Jane Eyre in the Red Room," "The Plum Oak Pot," and "The Hand" (audio and text) at Pete Candler's pandemic project, A New Decameron. The first and last poems are blank verse; the other two are part of a sequence of poems influenced by Hebrew parallelism and Yoruban praise traditions: art has always been a Silk Road. Thanks to Pete for a request.

"Plague-spell" and "Death of a Singer" at The Living Church (Episcopal/Anglican Communion) 19 April 2020 issue. Thanks to editor Fr. Mark Michael for his request.

Upcoming

* * *

"The Homunculus" from The Book of the Red King (video) 

at The Ballsians on youtube.

Update: It is up! Go here.

Poetry videos and text from The Book of the Red King 

at the Cathedral Arts blog from Albany, New York

"Night Blooming Cereus" at A New Decameron, read by Paul Digby

Excerpt (audio/text) of Charis in the World of Wonders at A New Decameron

Podcast at NAA

and more

A bold 19th century #GoodFriday depiction:
"As Seen from the Cross," James Tissot, c. 1886-94,
public domain via Wikipedia.

THIS NEW NOVEL is unlike anything I’ve ever read—
and the best novel I’ve read in ages. 
It’s set in Puritan New England In the late 17th century 
and uses gorgeous language to tell a gentle but riveting story. 
I stayed up until 3:30 this morning to finish it. 
If you’re tired of all the “The Girl Who—-“ novels 
floating out there, cleanse your palate with this.
--poet Jane Ullrich Greer, April 8

from A New Decameron

"Orcadian Painting (Good Friday)" by painter
and my occasional penpal/collaborator, Graham Ward. Acrylics, 2019.

Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century: In Siena, where more than half the inhabitants died of the plague, work was abandoned on the great cathedral, planned to be the largest in the world, and never resumed, owing to loss of workers and master masons and “the melancholy and grief” of the survivors. The cathedral’s truncated transept still stands in permanent witness to the sweep of death’s scythe. Agnolo di Tura, a chronicler of Siena, recorded the fear of contagion that froze every other instinct. 'Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another,' he wrote, 'for this plague seemed to strike through the breath and sight. And so they died. And no one could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship.… And I, Angolo di Tura, called the Fat, buried my five children with my own hands, and so did many others likewise.
[Siena Cathedral dome photograph by Livio Andronico 2013
Creative Commons license Wikipedia]

Palm Sunday in The Long Lent

About the Image

Pietro Lorenzetti, Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, 1320. Painted 27 years before the peak intensity of the Black Death began. 700 years after Lorenzetti painted this image, it is Palm Sunday in The Long Lent. The very Long Lent. Public domain image, Wikipedia.

* * *

Marly-words

(or, what I've been working on lately)

The Lorenzetti is pilfered from my own facebook site. I'm finding it hard to keep up with current requests for writings, videos (yes, I have finally made some videos of poems from The Book of the Red King, and will make a Charis excerpt as well), and poems--people are finding more time to make extended projects and to ask for contributions, I imagine. Lots of requests for poems, and even a commission to write a pandemic poem, a thing I had promised myself not to make because I disliked so many 9-11 poems. However, dear reader, I did it because I am fond on the editor who asked. Aiee! There's a notable increase in requests from Christian venues, and I find that curious and interesting. Meanwhile, I've been keeping up with a couple of my social media sites better than the blog--mainly because that's where the most interaction with readers happens, these days--and am pleased by some good attentions to Charis in the World of Wonders. In addition, I'm doing some radio interviews for the book launch, something I've never done before, and hoping not to appear as a doofus on the airwaves!

https://twitter.com/marlyyoumans

https://www.facebook.com/marly.youmans

https://www.anewdecameron.com/

Paul Candler's pandemic project--

lovely to be on the home page,

and so far four of my poems are up.

Forthcoming--a long poem

and the opening of Charis.

Charis in the World of Wonders excerpt at

http://booksbywomen.org/charis-in-the-world-of-wonders-excerpt/

Clive Hicks-Jenkins on The Art of the Cover,

with a good bit about our collaborations

https://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/2020/01/18/the-art-of-the-cover/

* * *

ceccoop.net

The Word, and a Virtual Palm Sunday

Want to go to Palm Sunday services with me
in The Village of Cooperstown?
Christ Church Cooperstown
Easy to stay six feet apart...
Feel free to wear your pajamas!

ceccoop.net

And if you're bookish, which I assume you are (having landed here), you might like to know that novelist James Fenimore Cooper was warden of this church, and that it has had a remarkable number of writers as members--William Wilberforce Lord (the famous poet that Wordsworth praised but Poe derided, and with much vigor), Susan Fenimore Cooper (read Rural Hours! surely influenced Thoreau), Paul Fenimore Cooper, Fae Malania, Ralph Birdsall, and many more...There's also a memorial niche to Constance Fenimore Cooper, friend of Henry James and writer who has been getting a lot of attention lately. James Fenimore Cooper was the one responsible for turning a little village church into a Gothic bandbox after he returned home from Europe.

A sheep in green and flowering pasture for Palm Sunday.
Interior illumination by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
for Charis in the World of Wonders

Charis, Thalia, and the Red King on social media

Since most of the online responses to my books and even to blog-post commentary occur on social media, I thought I'd post a few of my favorite facebook posts and twitter tweets of the past days... Charis in the World of Wonders and The Book of the Red King are naturals to pop up now because one is out this week and the other is recent, but Thaliad has come in for some new love, as it deals with a sort of world-Kintsugi--world-rebuilding after disaster. It's not a pandemic that starts breakage, but the narrative does involve piecing together a broken world. You can click on "more" and see all of Clive's commentary, in which he talks about our books together and Thaliad, as well as The Book of the Red King. Thanks to the many tweeters (twits?) and facebookies who have been mentioning the shiny new book as well as the older ones.

Having had an early look at this, I can't stress enough how wondrous this latest novel is from @marlyyoumans .

Crisp, wild, dangerous, & good. The latest reason why Marly is fast becoming my favorite living writer.

I just bought my copy. Go get yours!https://t.co/lJ9QlwcDmA pic.twitter.com/e1Sn3V4Miu

— Paul J. Pastor (@pauljpastor) March 17, 2020

congrats to my fellow novelist-poet, @marlyyoumans, on the launch of her new novel — no one gets to leave quarantine unless and until they’ve ordered it! https://t.co/oiY06uU7ek

— Amit Majmudar (@AmitMajmudar) March 19, 2020

Y’all @marlyyoumans is an absolute star. I mean she’s a fantastic poet and novelist but she’s also a gem of a human. Order her new novel, “Charis in the World of Wonders.” It’s what we all need.https://t.co/opAMHsvGDC

— Pete Candler (@tweetcandler) March 18, 2020

If you aren’t reading @prufrocknews by @micahmattix start today. Best Mon-Fri culture round-up, eclectic + taste-expanding. TY Micah for pointer to @marlyyoumans CHARIS IN THE WORLD OF WONDERS out next week — can’t wait. Her CATHERWOOD was so beautiful and disconcerting.

— H.S. Cross (@hscrossnyc) March 18, 2020

The Fool rejoices...

Art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins

"The Book of the Red King seems to me like a major work, 

if that is a term anyone still uses in the context of poetry."

--Amateur Reader at Wuthering Expectations

So pleased to have the marvelous, wide-ranging Amateur Reader (aka Tom) make a post about The Book of the Red King. (He also mentions a post from novelist Scott G. F. Bailey--always insightful--about the book, and some remarks from poet and novelist Fred Chappell.) I love how he does not insist on pinning down meaning but lets the book keep its strange freedoms.

And here it is. 

A teaser

Charis in the World of Wonders
(a novel from Ignatius)
now in pre-order
The Book of the Red King
(poetry fromPhoenicia Publishing)
is out!
Both with the stellar illumination
of Clive Hicks-Jenkins

Advance reader comments aka blurbs for Charis in the World of Wonders are in and looking great. Here's one for a teaser, from wonderful novelist Emily Barton...

“Youmans’ magnificent storyteller brings the early days of Europeans on the American continent vividly to life, in all their wonder and sorrow.”
—Emily Barton, Author of Brookland and The Book of Esther

Updatery: Red King news

Illumination by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
for The Book of the Red King, 172 pp.
(Montreal: Phoenicia Publishing, 2019)

Wee note to encourage the Fool, the Red King, and Precious Wentletrap: Writer Jessica Hooten Wilson (winner of the very big deal, tthe Hiett Prize in the Humanities) has published a review of The Book of the Red King in Fathom. I have updated the page for The Book of the Red King, which now contains an except from her article and helpful comments from: poet and novelist Fred Chappell; reviewer Dan Barnett; poet and novelist Kelly Cherry; longtime editor of Books and Culture, John Wilson; novelist Scott G. F. Bailey; poet and translator Michael Juster; poet and director of Poetry by the Sea, Kim Bridgford; poet Sally Thomas; poet Ray Oliver; poet and novelist Sebastian Doubinsky; and poet Jeffery Beam.

And that parade of names is bright and shiny, a good celebration for the Red King.

All posts about books are the little bottle in Alice's hand that says Drink Me. I hope you will. I promise that you, like Alice, can find that life is surprising and that you may, indeed, change in size, at least on the inside.

A few more images from Clive!

The book is available directly from Phoenicia Publishing 

in hardcover or paperback, and from (pb) Amazon, indies, etc. 

Event change

PLEASE NOTE NEW DATE                         

December 15 Sunday 3:00

Reading,  The Book of the Red King

Village of Cooperstown Library

22 Main Street

Downstairs meeting room 

Interior decoration at right by Clive Hicks-Jenkins.

John Wilson's Year of Reading 2019

The Book of the Red King is on John Wilson's booklist at First Things. Hurrah! There's a good bit of poetry on the list, including new books by Jennifer Reeser (a poet I met long ago at the Westchester poetry conference), Aaron Belz, the late Brett Foster, Diane Glancy, Laurance Wieder, and Jane Tyson Clement, who died in 2000. And more in other genres...

The Fool frolics at E-Verse Radio

"Definition of Fool" 

from The Book of the Red King

at E-Verse Radio
*
Art by
Clive Hicks-Jenkins

The Red King's Friends

Please drop by the page for The Book of the Red King, now with additional new and enticing comments from novelist Scott G. F. Bailey, poet Ray Oliver, much-laureled poet and novelist Fred Chappell, poet Sally Thomas, poet Jeffery Beam, and poet and novelist Sebastian Doubinsky. The last of these posted a review on my birthday yesterday: lovely gift!

At right: a precious wentletrap by Clive Hicks-Jenkins... The Fool's beloved is the lunar lady, Precious Wentletrap.

The Book of the Red King as Board Game?

Image pilfered from Paul Pastor's twitter page
 @pauljpastor

A month back, writer Fred Chappell wrote me a long, curious letter about The Book of the Red King, and he suggested a way of looking at the book that I found interesting and enlightening. He talked about puns, sound play, musical language, and many other things, but it's his thoughts about board game and the book that I'm sharing here. I'll back up slightly so I don't miss what he says about the illuminatory accompaniment of Clive Hicks-Jenkins. Such lovely work deserves its accolades!

...the production is handsome, elegant and surprising. Mr. Hicks-Jenkins has done a grand job; his images and designs are in classy harmony with the spirit of the poems--as best as I can read them, anyhow.

I am content that he and [writer] Kelly [Cherry] have made better readings than I. She notes "a difficult and dangerous journey." I was not able to follow the progress of a journey--except through or over time, maybe. I read the volume as a nonsequential sequence and after some fanciful meditation thought of it as a sort of mystical, metaphysical board game with icon pieces: King, Fool, ideal Wentletrap, Alchemist, Flowers, Castle, Garden, and etc. as occasion required or suggested.

The game would be a little like chess and backgammon combined. Each poem is set in a new situation, the positioning of the pieces, their relationship to one another, determined by some shift of inner or outer circumstance. Each new situation requires on the part of Fool or King, a different new mode of perception--rather in the way that any movement of a piece on a chessboard generates and is contained by a new configuration of possible future moves. The Mere Fool sees things differently than does the Twelfth-night Fool; the Mere Fool is in quest of enlightenment; the Twelfth-night Fool experiences an epiphany which is not the result of his quest but which would be unavailable to him without that experience. The King of "Raptures" is very different indeed from the figure in "The Turret Stairs." And of course there are a number of poems in which both King and Fool appear and their perceptions / conceptions of the world are contrasted, though even in these the contrasts are not complete; often, in slant ways, they are complementary. King and Fool undertake very different ways of looking at the world and come (if they do) to very different conclusions, but these are not mutually exclusive--different but complementary, a little like logic and mathematics, perhaps. Although neither of them would be confused with a logician. 

Nor will I, if you have been trying to comprehend this letter.

I have from line to line enjoyed and admired it unflaggingly. For it is as if I traversed a long gallery of separate dramatic moments: stately, antic, thoughtful, gay, gravid, artful, decorative, spontaneous, ritualized, reverent, satiric, learned and almost always to some degree playful. At times I thought, This book is the product of a metaphysician writing a series of comedy sketches. At other times, This is what happens when Pierrot philosophizes as a culture critic.

When I say "decorative" I mean no disrespect. For me Wallace Stevens is a decorative poet but supremely serious also and I might say the same of the paintings of Paul Klee. A lightsome approach can be most revealing--when it is rendered by a deft and practiced hand.

...maybe you can gather some estimate of my admiration and towering respect. This many-colored Paean to Imagination is unmatchable.

I didn't need to put in a bit from the close, but I just love it, naturally enough!

Though I'm not sure where the Red King and the Fool came from, I have to admit that I was deeply influenced as a child by the Alice books. (Two slip-cased volumes were given to me in Louisiana when I was four. The Louisiana of my memory fits neatly with Wonderland.) And they certainly unite a board game and a Red King, and they introduce us to strange gardens, odd courtly figures, puns, and musical language. So Carroll and his strangeness may well (so to speak) be at the very bottom of the book, somehow, and at the bottom of my being. And surely an Alice-child is a sort of Fool, entering another world and trying to decipher it, directed by insufficient knowledge that yet grows as she goes. As a little girl who was made to move every few years all through childhood, I probably had some special affinity with the sensation of tumbling into another world and needing to navigate, and feeling quite, quite foolish.

Thinking about some of my fiction, I remember that I wrote a story about a Red King sleeping... And one of my early stories ends with a child in Collins, Georgia, reaching out her hand to a pier glass, still trusting that the mirror might dissolve under her touch. So: I am clearly guilty of Carroll influence!

As for Fred Chappell's view of a constant new positioning on a kind of metaphysical board, I have no trouble finding that view to be helpful: I always thought of the Red King as a being who was unpinned in meaning. I thought of the Fool as someone who is changing, changing--the book is punctuated by and structured to some degree by the alchemical colors that mark his transformation. And yes, I always felt that the book would be playful, sometimes even when it dealt with terrible things--and surely that links up with the board game idea, the metaphysician comedy, the Pierrot philosophy, and lightsome decoration.

While I can't say that I was pondering board games during the writing, on this very evening I have a date with my three children to play Arkham Horror, a board game set in H.P Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. The game has been spread down the length of the dining room table since the last Monday night, when we four (Michael being in India) left our heroes and heroines in a highly dangerous situation. Will we survive? Will we defeat the Ancient Ones? I, you may wish to know, am a man with a long and admirable beard, a seeker who gathers clues and a mystic who wards against evil. Wish me luck in helping to save the world, and be sure and consult The Book of the Red King for a metaphysician's comedy or a Pierrot's philosophy!

[Quotes used by permission.]

November 5th postscript for the curious and lovers of board games: It was a hard struggle, but the Ancient Ones destroyed the world last night.

Writer-readers on The Book of the Red King

Illumination by Clive Hicks-Jenkins of Wales
Phoenicia Publishing, 2019

I continue to be grateful to novelist Scott G. F. Bailey for his ongoing and perceptive treatment of my work. As a reader, he always enters into a work with a free mind and writes engagingly of what he finds. Now he has written a long blog post about The Book of the Red King; you may read the whole thing HERE, at Six Words for a Hat. I include a few quotes below to entice you to visit.

* * *

"the coming night with its dying-deep 

but dazzling darkness"at Six Words for a Hat

...it is an explication of the life and work of the artist (and possibly in this sense, Yeats' spirit also hovers over the book). Youmans is always powerful when she writes about art and artists, and The Book of the Red King strikes me as her most forceful (and possibly most personal) statement about art (and the artist's purpose) yet. Creativity, rebirth and transfiguration are the threads that stitch The Book of the Red King together...many of its pleasures are easily enjoyed just through the inventiveness of Youmans' characters and the angular, beautiful chemistry of her language.

. . .

He also creates beauty, points to beauty, loves and points to love, grieves and points to grief, is angry and points to anger, etc, all of this being the work of the artist. The Fool, I am telling you, is Marly Youmans (and Yeats and Shakespeare and Milton and let's say Matthew as well, why not). That's my theory; see the first paragraph of this increasingly-staggering little essay. You'll have to draw your own conclusions about the identity of the Red King. Youmans has said of him, "He is all the things he is at once, it seems."

. . .

Because Youmans always writes on a number of levels at once, this essay can only seem to diminish Youmans' artistry by so poorly describing it. I know that poetry has, even at the best of times, a limited audience, but The Book of the Red King deserves readers, and plucky Phoenicia Publishing deserves a reward for being brave enough to market collections that require thoughtful readers. A good deal of current American poetry is merely angry, woke, political, and shallow; or else it's merely pretty, saccharine, and shallow. And while Youmans' book could serve as a text for a contemporary course on the uses of beauty and empathy, she writes for the ages, which I think is in the long run a better idea. I don't know why Marly Youmans isn't much better known, for both her poetry and her novels. She always taps into the substrata of art and life.

* * *

"Marly - salutations" at Tone Deaf

Likewise, I need to thank writer Roderick Robinson for a post about the book at Tone Deaf, in which he offers some favorite quotes and says:

However in my sere, yellow and almost-dropping-off years I write verse. Marly’s good at that except hers is poetry. Red King may emerge as a narrative but in the interim I’m treating her poems as separate entities. Looking for what races my motor. Plenty does. It’s not exactly news but Marly loves words...

* * *

My gratitude, my delight

I'm especially grateful to both Roderick Robinson and Scott Bailey because they have said what they have to say. I've been happy to receive letters of praise for this book from older, better-known writers, but I am deeply grateful to people who talk about my books in public. Because I care deeply about the good of my book, the life of my book in the world. Word of mouth and reviews are precious to a book of poems--and to the Fool.

The Red King dancing with Charis

Preparatory sketch 
by 
Clive Hicks-Jenkins

Clive Hicks-Jenkins, from facebook: "A tiny and rough-ish drawing from my current project-book for Marly Youmans’ new novel ‘Charis in the World of Wonders’. The project-book contains several suggestions to the editorial board for the cover, one of which has now been selected and signed-off on, plus a stitchwork-inspired bestiary as a starting point for the planned fifteen chapter headings, tailpieces and vignettes, among which is this owl."

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Now is the time of the King and the Fool, and to celebrate Clive's gorgeous art for that collection of poetry, but I could not resist sharing this little bit of next year's novel... A future vignette for a chapter heading. Below, a bit of the current book from Phoenicia Publishing. 

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Sampler, The Book of the Red King

I'm offering a sampler of poems from the new book for anyone who sends me his or her email address. The collection is 150+ pages, so it'll be just a taste of an awfully big sequence. 

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Most requests have come in via social media messaging, but if you would like a sampler, you can request in any of these ways: a twitter private message; a facebook private message; an email; and even a request left here. I can see your address and then not approve it to be posted, so that you remain private, or else you can use the sneaky anti-bot mode of  You [at] your site [dot] com.

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The sampler is also available as part of the current newsletter. You may sign up for The Rollipoke in the right-hand column.

The Fool and the Red King beyond pre-orders

Interior and hardcover jacket or paperback cover art
by Clive Hicks-Jenkins of Wales
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Marly Youmans
The Book of the Red King
Montreal, Canada: Phoenicia Publishing (20 July 2019)
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155 pages

Phoenicia Publishing hardcover and paperback pre-orders are officially over, though discount links are still up (love, frolics, and thank you to all who ordered!), and the poetry collection is now available via Amazon, bookstores, etc. Please think about supporting my poems and Phoenicia, a stellar small press, brainchild of Elizabeth Adams. We are properly and ecstatically grateful when you do... (And who wouldn't want a piece of Clivean illumination, too?)

Montreal: Phoenicia Publishing
155 pages

"Youmans (@marlyyoumans), who lives in upstate New York, has just published a stunning collection of poems that comprise “The Book Of The Red King" --"The Book Of The Red King’ a stunning collection of poems" | via Biblio File, from Dan Barnett, Book Columnist, Chico Enterprise-Record, 18 July 2019

"Marly Youmans is brilliant, perhaps a genius. Her poems tell a story, offering us a vision of, well, I would say the Trinity, but that is only one possible interpretation. After a difficult and sometimes dangerous journey, a Red King, a Fool, and Precious Wentletrap converge into one, a resurrection that is heavenly. Is it true, or is it fable or fairytale? "When I want to write a new book," she has said, "I run across the land and leap off the edge of the known world." Her formal poems are impeccable and include sestinas, villanelles, rondels, rhyming schemes she may have invented, and perfect metrical patterns. Every poet can learn from this poet, and the reader—the reader will be spellbound." --Kelly Cherry, poet, novelist, and former Poet Laureate of Virginia

First pre-pub review!

"Youmans (@marlyyoumans), who lives in upstate New York, has just published a stunning collection of poems that comprise “The Book Of The Red King” ($15.95 in paperback from Phoenicia Publishing, phoeniciapublishing.com/book-of-the-red-king.html), illustrated by Clive Hicks-Jenkins." --Dan Barnett, Book Columnist, Chico Enterprise-Record

Read the whole review HERE.

Also picked up by World News: wn.com HERE.

Pre-order discounts at Phoenicia Publishing end after tomorrow....

And The Rollipoke Newsletter, no. 12, is now O-U-T!