Marly Youmans's Blog, page 164

Last night was battling snowstorms to and from Mohawk, where N, now 13, won two wrestling matches, 4-3 and 8-0. When we came out of the gym, huge flakes of snow were falling and the world had changed. Our eldest, Ben, was fetched home from the Albany airport after the meet, and now I must abandon him (snoozing happily) and head out to Annandale-on-Hudson to fetch home the middle child, who I do

Picture: Clive Hicks-Jenkins, "My Dream Farm," from a show of art created for children at MOMA Wales, 2010. This one seems so Christmas-like with its town and church that look like traditional German toys and its Nutcracker-like gumdrop trees.* * *Today I recommend a blog, only because the writer refuses to write a book! Alas, we have to be content with the kaleidoscope pieces that are his online

I have accepted an offer from Elizabeth Adams of Phoenicia Publishing in Montreal to publish Thaliad, my post-apocalyptic poem.In the context of the poetry that is written and praised in our day, Thaliad is a strange creature. It is long. It is narrative. It is written in blank verse. Focused on characters who begin their story as children, the poem is epic in nature. It was written by someone

Howard Bahr is a penpal of mine, my only friend with whom I exchange typed or handwritten notes, nonsense, and bits of writing; all the others are email or facebook friends. No doubt such old-fashioned epistolary friendships are part of being a Mississippi gentleman. A veteran of the Navy and Vietnam, Howard was once a railroad man, a yard clerk and brakeman; his five years on the rail are the

Twelve days, and then Christmas: as a lead-up to the day and as a kind of aerial gift, I'm going to post poems and excerpts from books that I read this year or am reading now or plan to read soon. (I have such a mighty stack of these that I may have to roll right on through the Twelve Days of Christmas.) I have many friends with new books, and some of these snips will be from their recent

Despite the weekend's grand waterfall that ran from an exploded radiator on the second floor into the guest bedroom (where all the Christmas presents were hiding), I have good news. My novel A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage has won The Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction, given to the "best book that speaks to the human condition in a Southern context. This category includes both novels and

I'm going to have to make a bloggish sort of resolution (be chattier? can the dratted thing entirely? be as assiduous as I was once upon a time, like a hardworking Cinderella picking lentils out of the ashes?) for New Year's because I have been industrious (frequently silly, more like it!) on facebook and lazy about my blog.But there are things I want to do--some little pieces about friends with

Summer Swaps and Gifts, no. 1Jeffery Beam is a poet worth knowing; I recommend this book and hope you will think about ordering it through your favorite bookshop. Poetry worth the reading needs the support of readers more than ever, and its faithful, dogged, heroic publishers need our dollars as well as our affection for poems.Jacket painting by Laura Frankstone.Hymn to the South(from "Italian

Once a colleague said, "What does the world need with another poem?" It stopped me cold for a year. But I had a burning need for beautiful uselessness.Tonight I start the "first pass" read of The Throne of Psyche.

Picture credit: One of two by Jamey Novick that I'll use for publicity purposes for The Throne of Psyche. This one's the more mischievous of the two.Meter is so very fascinating and cool: yesterday's poem has a line about metal flexing and returning to shape. The line has one trochaic foot, and it is at the point of flexing.Lions move wonderfully. No wonder it was "hep cat" and not "hep gerbil"