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! 

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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

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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.

The Charis-and-poems news...

Once again, I'm guilty of being lively on twitter and facebook but ignoring the blog! Hope all you passers-by have remained healthy and sane in the midst of topping chaos. A few new notables are below:

I've updated the Charis in the World of Wonders page with some new comments and review clips. A review from novelist H. S. Cross is forthcoming, and another from Robbi Nester, as well as an interview. And the book will be featured on writer Marjorie Hudson's Kitchen Table Writers, an interesting group to join if you're a budding writer. Though it has been sad to have a book come out mid-pandemic (my crazy history of launches timed at disasters!), I hope that Charis--being an indomitable sort--will find her way through the wilderness of this strange time.

Remember how you used to read as a child, stretched out in the grass or on the couch, lost in the magic of a book.... Be prepared to re-enter that world of magical reading, being so engrossed in the world of the book that you never really leave it, living in a dreamy haze of words and beloved characters. Marly Youmans' new novel, Charis in the World of Wonders (Ignatius, 2020) will put you there, into that trance of reading and joy, as though you had never left it.
               --The Hollins Critic, Fall 2020

This I can't skip mentioning; I have several poems in the new issue of Mezzo Cammin edited by the late Kim Bridgford--that's her picture above. It's a lovely, thoughtful image of a bright poet and professor who brought many interesting projects into being and added to the sum of beauty and truth and goodness in the world. Nine of the thirteen poets in this round (Maryann Corbett, Wendy Sloan, Myrna Stone, Jane Scharl, etc.) were chosen by her. As my poems have appeared there many times under her editorship, and I was once lucky enough to be her featured poet, I am glad to be in this issue.  It's not the end of Mezzo Cammin, but it is the close of Kim's actions in the world, though she leaves behind publications, editorial work, the Poetry by the Sea conference, and much more.

Taste of the poems, a title and two lines for each:

House at the Edge of Sleep

She dreamed this: in the field she built a house.
She lugged the stones from streams and built a house.

and

The Watering Place

We wished the stream to be alive, as rinsed
And quick as a twisting blue rill of thought.

Grateful thanks to Anna Evans for continuing Kim's work.

Here's a review of the anthology, The Slumbering Host, by poet Lisa McCabe in Front Porch Republic. I only had a couple of poems in it (reprinted from North American Anglican), but she talks about one of them.

If you missed our video...

If you were cast into woe by missing the Greer - Thomas - Youmans reading, here it is. I couldn't get youtube to accept an image of all three of us; we are too complex for youtube, it seems! So apologies that it's just my cover as thumbnail.

Jane Greer - Love like a Conflagration 

Sally Thomas - Motherland 

Marly Youmans - Charis in the World of Wonders

12 June 2020
via Zoom

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.