Welcome to the 151st Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

Also, sign up for the 2012 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please visit the stops on the 2012 National Poetry Month Blog Tour.

Today’s poem is from Osip Mandelstam’s Stolen Air:

Mandelstam Lane (Page 54)

What the hell sort of street is this?
Mandelstam Lane.
Diabolical name!
Twist and twist
And it all comes out the same:
More kinked than the kinks in a madman's brain.

Well, a ruler he was not.
I'll say, and his morals hardly lily.
And that's why this street,
Or rut, really,
Or pit pickaxed to the tune of Goddamn! --
Goes by the name of Mandelstam.

What do you think?

The Wonder of It All by Elizabeth P. Glixman is a very small volume of poetry, but has a large sense of humor that will at times have readers giggling to themselves about the absurdity of it all.  Many of the poems are very much in the here and now of the moment.  The collection can fit in your pocket and can be taken out on the subway ride in between stops.

One of the best in the collection is “The Man from TSA — Unrequited Love Did Not Stop Glenn Close,” in which the narrator opts not for the scanning machine, but the gloved hand of a TSA agent and falls in love — or is it obsession?  Pop culture references infuse these poems, grounding readers in their own lives to draw parallels, but oftentimes the situations are too surreal for readers to connect with.  In a way, this may be the point that Glixman is trying to get to — that life is a series of absurd moments that we categorize to make sense of them and their meaning.

Other poems, like “Avalanche Worry,” have a tongue-in-cheek humor to them, telling readers to always have a cell phone, a year’s supply of groceries on hand, and other supplies so they are prepared.  But many of these poems are narrations of moments, offering vignettes, but little else.  While these characters and stories are fun and humorous, they lack the poetic nuance many readers are looking for in terms of images and larger connections to the human condition.  However, there are gems in this collection that poke fun at pop culture and its pervasiveness, including “The Wonder of It All” in which Minnie Mouse is transformed into a flirtatious girl, like Brittany Spears.

The Wonder of It All by Elizabeth P. Glixman is a mixed bag of poems, but entertaining in fits and starts.  There are some poems that could have ended sooner and more powerfully, but there are others that are deftly crafted.

This is the 17th book for my 2012 Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

This is my 42nd book for the 2012 New Authors Challenge.

Stolen Air by Osip Mandelstam, translated by Christian Wiman is a selection of poems from Mandelstam’s entire career translated from his non-native Russian into English.  The introduction is rather long, but with good reason as it strives to capture a poet that was always evolving and striving to breath new life into the Russian language and to provide a voice to those seen as outsiders of the government.  Living through WWI and a Russian revolution, Mandelstam — a Poland born Jew who moved to Russia with his parents — became an exile and later died in a Siberian transit camp in 1938 after being arrested.

“From the inarticulate comes the new harmony.  The lyric poet wakes up the language:  the speech is revealed to us in a new unexpected syntax, in music, in ways of organizing the silences in the mouth.”  (Page XIX)

Mandelstam and Wiman approach poetry in much the same way, according to the introduction — not through word-for-word translation, but through the silences and the music of the lines.  The collection is broken into three sections beginning with his early poems between 1910 and 1925 and ending with the poems written between 1934 and 1937.  Mandelstam’s work is very musical and generally uses a great deal of rhyme and alliteration, but the ways in which these poems are translated, they are neither cutesy nor predictable.

Interrogation (page 21)

Official paper, officious jowls, unswallowable smells
Of vomit, vodka, cells, bowels,
And all these red-tape tapeworms gorging on reports.

Choir, stars, your highest, your holiest silences...
But first, sign here on the dotted line
That they may grant you permission to shine.

The poems are song-like, but ripe with derision for Stalin’s totalitarianism and the control over freedom, which provided many with the guise of free expression that was received at a high price. Mandelstam speaks of a life choreographed by others and punishments that are deeply harsh when spontaneity strikes. His words are like hammers on the chains attached to boulders in prisons of old, making sure the lack of freedom is felt most acutely. From the “legislated” freedoms to the starvation and lack of heat, it is all present in Mandelstam’s roving poetry. He moved from city to city, presumably fleeing the government, and this movement is in poems like “Night Piece” and “Prayer” but it also is in the other poems through their quick imagistic movements from one moment to the next — the narrator always in motion.

Stolen Air by Osip Mandelstam, translated by Christian Wiman is not only about the absence of freedom, but finding that freedom within that totalitarian regime — grabbing onto it, stealing the air to breathe creatively. The narrator has learned to grab onto that stolen air and run with it, traipsing through beauty and finding the music everywhere, even in the darkness.  The translation does not read as such with very few moments where the verse stumbles, and this is the best tribute to a poet — a translator who hears the same music even across time.  Well done and highly recommended.

About the Poet (from Poets.org):

Born in January, 1891, in Warsaw, Poland, Osip Emilievich Mandelstam was raised in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg, Russia. His father was a prominent leather merchant and his mother a teacher of music. Mandelstam attended the renowned Tenishev School and later studied at the Sorbonne, the University of Heidelberg, and the University of St. Petersburg, though he left off his studies to pursue writing. He published his first collection, Kamen, or Stone (1913), when Russian Symbolism was the dominant persuasion.

The Bolsheviks had begun to exert an ever increasing amount of control over Russian artists, and Mandelstam, though he had initially supported the Revolution, was absolutely unwilling to yield to the political doctrine of a regime that had executed Gumilev in 1921. The poet published three more books in 1928—Poems, a collection of criticism entitled On Poetry, and The Egyptian Stamp, a book of prose—as the state closed in on him. Mandelstam spent his later years in exile, serving sentences for counter-revolutionary activities in various work camps, until his death on December 27, 1938, in the Gulag Archipelago.

About the Translator:

Christian Wiman was born and raised in West Texas. He is the editor of Poetry and the author of three collections of poems, Every Riven Thing, Hard Night, and The Long Home, and one collection of prose, Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet.

This is the 16th book for my 2012 Fearless Poetry Exploration Reading Challenge.

This is my 41st book for the 2012 New Authors Challenge.

This is my 10th book for the WWI Reading Challenge.

Winner Kathy at Bermudaonion

Winner Beth Hoffman

Congrats to both winners!

In other news, I’ve been interviewed by poet and fiction writer Emma Eden Ramos on her blog. Check it out!

Wendy Wax‘s Ten Beach Road (my review) is out in mass-market paperback, so for those of you who have missed out on reading this book and have a book-buying budget, now is the time to grab a copy.

I absolutely adored this book and its characters, strong women –Madeline, Nicole, and Avery — who face a financial crisis and rub one another the wrong way but manage to pull it together to restore their only remaining, shared asset, a house.  I loved this book so much for its summer feel, humor, and strong characters that I just had to share it with my mother, who normally reads action thrillers.  She loved it.

I even loved this book so much that it was one of my picks when asked by Women’s World Magazine which summer, feel good books I’d recommend for mother’s day.  (My recommendation made it into their May 14th issue on page 45, if you’re curious).

Here’s an excerpt from Ten Beach Road:

An eternity later, they hobbled out to the backyard just as the sky was beginning to pinken. Bedraggled, they dropped into the beach chairs with a scrape of aluminum against concrete.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been this dirty in my entire life.” Madeline plopped a family-sized container of hummus and triangles of pita bread on the upside down packing box that their Sam’s purchases had been carried in.

“Me, neither.” Avery dropped a bag of Cheez Doodles beside it and swiped the back of her forearm across her forehead, managing to add another streak of dirt to her face.

Nicole set an unopened bottle of Chardonnay on the pool deck next to her bare feet and handed a plastic cup to each of them. “If there was an inch of water in this pool, I’d be in it.” Nicole slumped in her chair. “I think we should make it a top priority.”

“We barely have a working bathroom,” Avery pointed out. “It took me forever to clean the shower and tub up in the hall. There’s pretty much no water pressure. I’d rather have a shower than a swim in a pool.”

“I want both,” Nicole said, lifting the cup to her lips. “It’s not an either/or sort of thing.”

“Well, it is here.” Avery took a long sip of wine as the sun slipped farther toward the Gulf. “Everything’s not going to get done at once, but I will talk to Chase about the schedule and how things should be prioritized.”

Madeline looked ruefully down at herself. Together they could have posed for the illustration of “something the cat dragged in” – even Nicole in her high-end running clothes and her hair pulled back in a glittery clasp. This was only day one; she could hardly imagine what they’d look like after the long, hot summer that lay ahead.

Her arms were so tired that it took real effort to lift even the small plastic cup, but she nonetheless touched it to the others. “Cheers!” she said, and they nodded and repeated the toast. “Will you be able to run your business from here?” she asked Nicole as they contemplated the sinking sun.

Nicole’s cup stopped midway to her lips. In the pass, a boat planed off and gathered speed as it entered the Gulf. “Sure,” she finally said. “Have laptop and cell phone, will match make.” She turned her gaze from the boat that was now disappearing from view to focus on Madeline. “How about you?” Nicole asked. “Can you really leave home for the whole summer?”

Madeline finished the last drops of wine and set her glass on the makeshift cocktail table. “You make it sound like going to camp,” she said in what could only be described as a wistful tone. “I was hoping my husband, Steve, would come down and help for a while.”

“Oh, is he retired?” Avery asked.

Madeline felt her cheeks flush. Nicole raised an eyebrow and poured them all another glassful.

“Not exactly,” Madeline admitted. “He was a financial planner who made the mistake of putting all his clients’ money in Malcolm Dyer’s fund. Along with his family’s.”

Her teeth worried at her bottom lip. She hadn’t meant to say so much. Or sound quite so pathetic.

“He stole my father’s entire estate,” Avery said. “Everything he’d built over a lifetime of hard work went into that thief’s pocket.” She grimaced and shoved her sunglasses back up on top of her head. “I still can’t believe it. Anything short of being drawn and quartered would be far too good for him.”

Madeline saw Nicole shiver slightly. “Are you cold?” The sun had not yet set, but its warmth had diminished.

“No.” Nicole turned her attention to the boat traffic in the pass. A Jet Ski swooped close to the seawall, its plume of seawater peacocking behind it. The rider was big shouldered and solid with jet black hair and heavily muscled arms. Nicole watched idly at first, presumably because he was male and attractive, but straightened in surprise as the rider locked gazes and offered a mock salute before revving his engine and zooming away.

“Do you know that guy?” Madeline asked Nicole, surprised. “He waved at you.”

“No,” Nicole said. “I don’t think he was actually waving at me. He …”

“Yes, he was,” Madeline insisted. “He acted like he knew you.”

“That guy was definitely hunky,” Avery said. “And he was definitely eyeing Nicole.”

“He must have thought I was someone else,” Nicole took a sliver of pita and chewed it intently before changing the topic. “So, how many kids do you have?” she asked Madeline.

“Two,” Madeline said, unsure how much information to share. “My son’s struggling a bit at school; he’s in his freshman year at Vanderbilt,” she said. “And my daughter, well, right before I left she lost her job-she’s a filmmaker- and she came home unexpectedly to live.” She cleared her throat as if that might somehow stop this bad news dump. “That was right after my mother-in-law moved in.”

“Good Lord,” Nicole said. She lifted the bottle, eyed the little that was left, and poured the remaining drops into Madeline’s glass. “No wonder you want to go away to camp.” She smiled with what looked like real sympathy. “Drink up. Girl; I’d run away from home, too, if I had to deal with all that.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, sipping their wine, as the sun grew larger and brighter. A warm breeze blew gently off the Gulf, stirring the palms and riffling their hair.

“Maybe you should get your daughter to come down and shoot some ‘before’ video for us,” Avery suggested. “That’s actually what led to Hammer and Nail.” She furrowed her brow. “I had no idea what was coming down the pike when I shot that first ten minutes.”

Madeline considered the small blonde. “My mother-in-law seemed to think it was your husband’s show, that he got you on it.”

“A lot of people came to believe that,” Avery said, her tone wry. “Including my ex-husband. But the idea was mine. I’m the one who sold it, and us, to the network.”

They fell silent as the sun burned with a new intensity, shimmering almost white, then turning golden red that tinged the Gulf as it sank smoothly beneath it.

“God, that was beautiful,” Madeline breathed as they all continued to stare out over the Gulf, unable to tear their gazes from the sky and the last painted remnants of daylight. “It makes me feel like anything is possible.”

No one responded, and she supposed she should be grateful that no one trampled on her flight of fancy. The show was over, but Madeline could still feel its power. It moved her in a way her fear and even her resolution and Little Red Henness had not. She raised her now-empty glass to Avery and Nicole. “I propose that we all make a sunset toast. That we each name one good thing that happened today.”

“Good grief,” Nicole said. “Look around you.” She motioned with her empty plastic glass at the neglected house that hunkered behind them, the cracked and empty pool, the detached garage with its broken windows and listing door. “Is your middle name Pollyanna?”

Madeline flushed at the comment, but she didn’t retract her suggestion. “I’m not saying we should pretend everything’s perfect,” she said. “I’m just saying that no matter how bad it is it would be better to dwell on the even slightly positive than the overwhelming negative.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Avery asked. They all still held their empty glasses aloft. “How good a thing does it have to be?”

“That’s up to you.” Madeline said. “I’m not interested in judging; there will be no ‘good enough’ police.”

“Well, that’s a good thing,” Nicole snorted.

“All right, hold on a sec,” Madeline said. She went into the kitchen and retrieved a second bottle of wine from the fridge, grateful that John Franklin had had the power turned on. As she refilled their glasses, she searched for a positive. Nicole was right, it wasn’t an easy task.

“Okay.” She raised her now-full glass and waited for the others to do the same. “I think it’s good that three complete strangers were able to reach an agreement and commit to a course of action.”

They touched glasses and took a sip. Madeline nodded at Avery. “Your turn.”

“Hmmmm, let me think.” She looked out over the seawall at the gathering darkness as the three of them sat in a spill of light from the loggia. A few moments later she raised her glass. “I think it’s good that this house is not going to be torn down. It deserves a facelift and a new life.”

They clinked and drank and turned their gazes to Nicole. Madeline could hardly wait to hear what she would say.

Nicole looked back at the house, then at them. A small smile played around her lips, and Madeline wondered if she was going to tell them to stuff the happy crap or simply refuse to participate. But she raised her glass in their directions and with only a small sigh of resignation said, “It’s a good thing no one saw me in that minivan. I can’t imagine how I’d ever live it down.”

The mass-market paperback release of Ten Beach Road is in advance of the June 26 release of the sequel, Ocean Beach, in which the three lead women — Madeline, Nicole, and Avery — from the previous book are back.  I just knew Wendy Wax was not finished with these characters!

About Ocean Beach:

Unlikely friends Madeline, Avery and Nicole have hit some speed bumps in their lives, but when they arrive in Miami’s South Beach neighborhood, they are all hoping for a do-over. Literally. They’ve been hired to bring a once-grand historic house back to its former glory on a new television show called Do-Over. If they can just get this show off the ground, Nikki would get back on her feet financially, Avery could restart her ruined career, and Maddie would have a shot at keeping her family together.

At least, that’s the plan – until the women realize that having their work broadcast is one thing, having their personal lives play out on TV is another thing entirely. Soon they are struggling to hold themselves, and the project, together. With a decades-old mystery—and the hurricane season—looming, the women are forced to figure out just how they’ll weather life’s storms…

Yes, you’ll want both books.  Don’t forget to follow Wendy on Twitter and Facebook.

To enter to win 1 copy of Ten Beach Road by Wendy Wax you must be a U.S. or Canadian resident.  Leave a comment below by June 1, 2012, at 11:59PM EST to be entered.

If you’ve already read Ten Beach Road, leave a comment telling me why you want to read Ocean Beach to be entered by June 1, 2012 at 11:59PM EST.

The Cottage at Glass Beach by Heather Barbieri is about mothers and daughters and sisters and their tension and love filled relationships.  Nora Cunningham returns to Burke’s Island to get away from her scandalous political life in Boston with Malcolm and clear her head in upper Maine. Irish-American immigrant ancestors infuse her memories, memories she barely remembers from her younger childhood of her mother, Maeve, and their life together on the island before her mother’s disappearance. Nora reconnects with her aunt Maire as she begins to find her self — the person she is without Malcolm and the person she’s been deep inside.

“Her mother laughs.  Her voice is as sparkling as light on water.  The folds of her skirt cling to her legs.  She’d dived in fully clothed.  She isn’t like the other mothers with their rules and careful ways.”  (Page 1 ARC)

Nora’s daughters, Annie and Ella — ages seven and twelve — are like Maire and her sister Maeve used to be — one always cautious and one who lives in the moment.  Barbieri’s weaves in Irish folklore about selkies, seals that shed their skin to become humans on land.  These seals play a protective role in the story as they are always just off shore, watching carefully.  Soon, a man, Owen Kavanagh, washes up on shore near Nora’s cottage in the middle of a rainstorm.  But he’s not the only mysterious male on the island; there’s also a young boy named Ronan who befriends Annie.

“Indeed, a shiny head bobbed in the eddies that curled toward the shore, indigo depths between.  The creature met Nora’s gaze directly, its dark eyes wide and oddly human, before the children’s laughter drew its attention once more.”  (Page 18 ARC)

In many ways Ella and Annie act older than they are, but readers will see the toll that potential divorce can have on kids as their father makes a surprise visit to the island.  The island’s oasis atmosphere can be easily disturbed by outsiders, even if the inhabitants are eager to remain in between the past and the future like Nora.  However, how the characters react to those disturbances is a sign of strength and the support of their ancestors.  Barbieri blurs the lines between folklore and reality well here, and readers will be swept up in a cadence of storytelling that is reminiscent of Irish stories.

The Cottage at Glass Beach by Heather Barbieri is an oasis and a safe harbor in which Nora comes to reassess her life and decide how to move on after being deeply hurt by the one man she thought she could trust.  But she also must take into account the feelings and needs of her daughters, which is tough when harboring so much anguish.  A perfect summer read about mother-daughter bonds, bonds between sisters, and redemption.

Check out my review of The Lace Makers of Glenmara.

About the Author:

The author of two previous novels, The Lace Makers of Glenmara, and Snow in July, Heather Barbieri has won international prizes for her short fiction. She lives in Seattle with her family.  Please visit here on her Website and Facebook.

This is my 3rd book for the 2012 Ireland Reading Challenge.

Mailbox Mondays (click the icon to check out the new blog) has gone on tour since Marcia at A Girl and Her Books, formerly The Printed Page passed the torch. This month’s host is Martha’s Bookshelf.

Both of these memes allow bloggers to share what books they receive in the mail or through other means over the past week.

Just be warned that these posts can increase your TBR piles and wish lists.

Here’s what I received last week:

1.  The Subject Tonight Is Love by Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky from last week’s library sale.

To Persians, the fourteenth-century poems of Hafiz are not classical literature from a remote past, but cherished love, wisdom, and humor from a dear and intimate friend. Perhaps, more than any other Persian poet, it is Hafiz who most fully accesses the mystical, healing dimensions of poetry. Daniel Ladinsky has made it his life’s work to create modern, inspired translations of the world’s most profound spiritual poetry. Through Ladinsky’s translations, Hafiz’s voice comes alive across the centuries singing his message of love.

2.  The Hot Flash Club by Nancy Thayer, which was also from the library sale for my mother.

From the bestselling author of Between Husbands and Friends and An Act of Love comes a wise, wonderful, and delightfully witty “coming of age” novel about four intrepid women who discover themselves as they were truly meant to be: passionate, alive, and ready to face the best years of their lives.

Meet Faye, Marilyn, Alice, and Shirley. Four women with skills, smarts, and secrets—all feeling over the hill and out of the race. But in a moment of delicious serendipity, they meet and realize they share more than raging hormones and lost dreams. Now as the Hot Flash Club, where the topics of motherhood, sex, and men are discussed with double servings of chocolate cake, they vow to help each other . . . and themselves.

3.  The Wonder of It All by Elizabeth P. Glixman from the poet for review.

4.  Sea Change by Karen White for review in June from the publisher.

For as long as she can remember, Ava Whalen has struggled with a sense of not belonging, and now, at thirty-five, she still feels stymied by her family. Then she meets child psychologist Matthew Frazier, and thinks her days of loneliness are behind her. After a whirlwind romance, they impulsively elope, and Ava moves to Matthew’s ancestral home on St. Simons Island off the coast of Georgia.

But after the initial excitement, Ava is surprised to discover that true happiness continues to elude her. There is much she doesn’t know about Matthew, including the mysterious circumstances surrounding his first wife’s death. And her new home seems to hold as many mysteries and secrets as her new husband. Feeling adrift, Ava throws herself into uncovering Matthew’s family history and that of the island, not realizing that she has a connection of her own to this place—or that her obsession with the past could very well destroy her future.

5. The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian for review from Random House.

The Sandcastle Girls is a sweeping historical love story steeped in Chris Bohjalian’s Armenian heritage.

When Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Aleppo, Syria she has a diploma from Mount Holyoke, a crash course in nursing, and only the most basic grasp of the Armenian language. The year is 1915 and she has volunteered on behalf of the Boston-based Friends of Armenia to help deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the Armenian genocide. There Elizabeth becomes friendly with Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and infant daughter. When Armen leaves Aleppo and travels south into Egypt to join the British army, he begins to write Elizabeth letters, and comes to realize that he has fallen in love with the wealthy, young American woman who is so different from the wife he lost.

Fast forward to the present day, where we meet Laura Petrosian, a novelist living in suburban New York. Although her grandparents’ ornate Pelham home was affectionately nicknamed “The Ottoman Annex,” Laura has never really given her Armenian heritage much thought. But when an old friend calls, claiming to have seen a newspaper photo of Laura’s grandmother promoting an exhibit at a Boston museum, Laura embarks on a journey back through her family’s history that reveals love, loss – and a wrenching secret that has been buried for generations.

6. Skipping a Beat by Sarah Pekkanen from the publisher/author for review.

High-school sweethearts Julia and Michael have left their humble West Virginia roots far behind for a glamorous life in Washington, D.C. As they achieve more in their careers—she as a high-end events planner, he as the CEO of his own sports-drink company—they lose themselves as a couple. After Michael has a near-death experience, he decides to give away all their wealth and focus on his relationship with Julia. But she’s not ready to forgive him for choosing his work over her when she needed him most. Pekkanen’s novel traces the couple’s attempts to make amends for allowing success to replace love.

7. These Girls by Sarah Pekkanen from the publisher/author for review.

Cate, Renee, and Abby have come to New York for very different reasons, and in a bustling city of millions, they are linked together through circumstance and chance.

Cate has just been named the features editor of Gloss, a high-end lifestyle magazine. It’s a professional coup, but her new job comes with more complications than Cate ever anticipated.

Her roommate Renee will do anything to nab the plum job of beauty editor at Gloss. But snide comments about Renee’s weight send her into an emotional tailspin. Soon she is taking black market diet pills—despite the racing heartbeat and trembling hands that signal she’s heading for real danger.

Then there’s Abby, whom they take in as a third roommate. Once a joyful graduate student working as a nanny part time, she abruptly fled a seemingly happy life in the D.C. suburbs. No one knows what shattered Abby—or why she left everything she once loved behind.

8. The Queen’s Vow by C.W. Gortner from the publisher for review.

So begins Isabella’s story, in this evocative, vividly imagined novel about one of history’s most famous and controversial queens—the warrior who united a fractured country, the champion of the faith whose reign gave rise to the Inquisition, and the visionary who sent Columbus to discover a New World. Acclaimed author C. W. Gortner envisages the turbulent early years of a woman whose mythic rise to power would go on to transform a monarchy, a nation, and the world.

Young Isabella is barely a teenager when she and her brother are taken from their mother’s home to live under the watchful eye of their half-brother, King Enrique, and his sultry, conniving queen. There, Isabella is thrust into danger when she becomes an unwitting pawn in a plot to dethrone Enrique. Suspected of treason and held captive, she treads a perilous path, torn between loyalties, until at age seventeen she suddenly finds herself heiress of Castile, the largest kingdom in Spain. Plunged into a deadly conflict to secure her crown, she is determined to wed the one man she loves yet who is forbidden to her—Fernando, prince of Aragon.

As they unite their two realms under “one crown, one country, one faith,” Isabella and Fernando face an impoverished Spain beset by enemies. With the future of her throne at stake, Isabella resists the zealous demands of the inquisitor Torquemada even as she is seduced by the dreams of an enigmatic navigator named Columbus. But when the Moors of the southern domain of Granada declare war, a violent, treacherous battle against an ancient adversary erupts, one that will test all of Isabella’s resolve, her courage, and her tenacious belief in her destiny.

From the glorious palaces of Segovia to the battlefields of Granada and the intrigue-laden gardens of Seville, The Queen’s Vow sweeps us into the tumultuous forging of a nation and the complex, fascinating heart of the woman who overcame all odds to become Isabella of Castile.

9. The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico by Sarah McCoy, which I bought at the Gaithersburg Book Festival and had her sign!

It is 1961 and Puerto Rico is trapped in a tug-of-war between those who want to stay connected to the United States and those who are fighting for independence. For eleven-year-old Verdita Ortiz-Santiago, the struggle for independence is a battle fought much closer to home.

Verdita has always been safe and secure in her sleepy mountain town, far from the excitement of the capital city of San Juan or the glittering shores of the United States, where her older cousin lives. She will be a señorita soon, which, as her mother reminds her, means that she will be expected to cook and clean, go to Mass every day, choose arroz con pollo over hamburguesas, and give up her love for Elvis. And yet, as much as Verdita longs to escape this seemingly inevitable future and become a blond American bombshell, she is still a young girl who is scared by late-night stories of the chupacabra, who wishes her mother would still rub her back and sing her a lullaby, and who is both ashamed and exhilarated by her changing body.

Told in luminous prose spanning two years in Verdita’s life, The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico is much more than a story about getting older. In the tradition of The House on Mango Street and Annie John, it is about the struggle to break free from the people who have raised us, and about the difficulties of leaving behind one’s homeland for places unknown. At times joyous and at times heartbreaking, Verdita’s story is of a young girl discovering her power and finding the strength to decide what sort of woman she’ll become.

10. Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith from BookCrossing at the Gaithersburg Book Festival.

In Morality for Beautiful Girls, Precious Ramotswe, founder and owner of the only detective agency for the concerns of both ladies and others, investigates the alleged poisoning of the brother of an important “Government Man,” and the moral character of the four finalists of the Miss Beauty and Integrity Contest, the winner of which will almost certainly be a contestant for the title of Miss Botswana. Yet her business is having money problems, and when other difficulties arise at her fianc?’s Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, she discovers the reliable Mr J.L.B. Matekoni is more complicated then he seems.

11. Break No Bones by Kathy Reichs from BookCrossing at the Gaithersburg Book Festival.

Among the ancient remains in a Native American burial ground, Tempe discovers a fresh skeleton — and what began as an ordinary teaching stint at an archeology field school in Charleston, South Carolina, fast becomes a heated investigation into an alarming pattern of homicides. The clues hidden in the bones lead to a street clinic where a monstrous discovery awaits, and Tempe — whose personal life is in upheaval, with two men competing for her — can’t afford any distractions as she pieces together a shattering and terrifying puzzle.

What did you receive?

Welcome to the 150th Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s books suggested. Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

Also, sign up for the 2012 Fearless Poetry Reading Challenge because its simple; you only need to read 1 book of poetry. Please visit the stops on the 2012 National Poetry Month Blog Tour.

Today’s poem is from John Ashbery:

Daffy Duck in Hollywood

Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy
Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile
Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue rams the 2300 block of Highland
Fling Terrace. He promised he'd get me out of this one,
That mean old cartoonist, but just look what he's
Done to me now! I scarce dare approach me mug's attenuated
Reflection in yon hubcap, so jaundiced, so déconfit
Are its lineaments--fun, no doubt, for some quack phrenologist's
Fern-clogged waiting room, but hardly what you'd call
Companionable. But everything is getting choked to the point of
Silence. Just now a magnetic storm hung in the swatch of sky
Over the Fudds' garage, reducing it--drastically--
To the aura of a plumbago-blue log cabin on
A Gadsden Purchase commemorative cover. Suddenly all is
Loathing. I don't want to go back inside any more. You meet
Enough vague people on this emerald traffic-island--no,
Not people, comings and goings, more: mutterings, splatterings,
The bizarrely but effectively equipped infantries of
   happy-go-nutty
Vegetal jacqueries, plumed, pointed at the little
White cardboard castle over the mill run. "Up
The lazy river, how happy we could be?"
How will it end? That geranium glow
Over Anaheim's had the riot act read to it by the
Etna-size firecracker that exploded last minute into
A carte du Tendre in whose lower right-hand corner
(Hard by the jock-itch sand-trap that skirts
The asparagus patch of algolagnic nuits blanches) Amadis
Is cozening the Princesse de Cleves into a midnight
   micturition spree
On the Tamigi with the Wallets (Walt, Blossom, and little
Sleezix) on a lamé barge "borrowed" from Ollie
Of the Movies' dread mistress of the robes. Wait!
I have an announcement! This wide, tepidly meandering,
Civilized Lethe (one can barely make out the maypoles
And châlets de nécessitê on its sedgy shore)
   leads to Tophet, that
Landfill-haunted, not-so-residential resort from which
Some travellers return! This whole moment is the groin
Of a borborygmic giant who even now
Is rolling over on us in his sleep. Farewell bocages,
Tanneries, water-meadows. The allegory comes unsnarled
Too soon; a shower of pecky acajou harpoons is
About all there is to be noted between tornadoes. I have
Only my intermittent life in your thoughts to live
Which is like thinking in another language. Everything
Depends on whether somebody reminds you of me.
That this is a fabulation, and that those "other times"
Are in fact the silences of the soul, picked out in
Diamonds on stygian velvet, matters less than it should.
Prodigies of timing may be arranged to convince them
We live in one dimension, they in ours. While I
Abroad through all the coasts of dark destruction seek
Deliverance for us all, think in that language: its
Grammar, though tortured, offers pavillions
At each new parting of the ways. Pastel
Ambulances scoop up the quick and hie them to hospitals.
"It's all bits and pieces, spangles, patches, really; nothing
Stands alone. What happened to creative evolution?"
Sighed Aglavaine. Then to her Sélysette: "If his
Achievement is only to end up less boring than the others,
What's keeping us here? Why not leave at once?
I have to stay here while they sit in there,
Laugh, drink, have fine time. In my day
One lay under the tough green leaves,
Pretending not to notice how they bled into
The sky's aqua, the wafted-away no-color of regions supposed
Not to concern us. And so we too
Came where the others came: nights of physical endurance,
Or if, by day, our behavior was anarchically
Correct, at least by New Brutalism standards, all then
Grew taciturn by previous agreement. We were spirited
Away en bateau, under cover of fudge dark.
It's not the incomplete importunes, but the spookiness
Of the finished product. True, to ask less were folly, yet
If he is the result of himself, how much the better
For him we ought to be! And how little, finally,
We take this into account! Is the puckered garance satin
Of a case that once held a brace of dueling pistols our
Only acknowledging of that color? I like not this,
Methinks, yet this disappointing sequel to ourselves
Has been applauded in London and St. Petersburg. Somewhere
Ravens pray for us." The storm finished brewing. And thus
She questioned all who came in at the great gate, but none
She found who ever heard of Amadis,
Nor of stern Aureng-Zebe, his first love. Some
They were to whom this mattered not a jot: since all
By definition is completeness (so
In utter darkness they reasoned), why not
Accept it as it pleases to reveal itself? As when
Low skyscrapers from lower-hanging clouds reveal
A turret there, an art-deco escarpment here, and last perhaps
The pattern that may carry the sense, but
Stays hidden in the mysteries of pagination.
Not what we see but how we see it matters; all's
Alike, the same, and we greet him who announces
The change as we would greet the change itself.
All life is but a figment; conversely, the tiny
Tome that slips from your hand is not perhaps the
Missing link in this invisible picnic whose leverage
Shrouds our sense of it. Therefore bivouac we
On this great, blond highway, unimpeded by
Veiled scruples, worn conundrums. Morning is
Impermanent. Grab sex things, swing up
Over the horizon like a boy
On a fishing expedition. No one really knows
Or cares whether this is the whole of which parts
Were vouchsafed--once--but to be ambling on's
The tradition more than the safekeeping of it. This mulch for
Play keeps them interested and busy while the big,
Vaguer stuff can decide what it wants--what maps, what
Model cities, how much waste space. Life, our
Life anyway, is between. We don't mind
Or notice any more that the sky is green, a parrot
One, but have our earnest where it chances on us,
Disingenuous, intrigued, inviting more,
Always invoking the echo, a summer's day.

What do you think?

As many of you know, I love a good literary and book festival, and living in the Washington, D.C., area has given me a great number of opportunities to meet some great local and best-selling authors.  I’ve only attended the Gaithersburg Book Festival once, last year, and it is now in its third year, which is promising to be bigger and even better than last year’s festival.

This year, there are some great literary and local powerhouse authors and poets, as well as musicians, including beloved Sarah Pekkanen and Sarah McCoy.  As a D.C. Literature Examiner, I’ve been posting reviews, interviewing authors, and generally talking about all the goodies that will be present at the festival this year — including an interview with Stuart O’Nan by Ron Charles (Also check out my review of The Odds).

Today, I want to share with you my interview with Gaithersburg Book Festival Chair and City Council member Jud Ashman.  Please give him a warm welcome.

1. The Washington, D.C./Baltimore area has a multitude of literary festivals from the National Book Festival and Baltimore Book Festival to the lesser know literary festival in Bethesda and the City Lit festival. What makes the Gaithersburg Book Festival a must for all readers and what about it is unique compared to the other events in the area?

I like to think that we combine the best of all of these events into one spectacular day of literary awesomeness! We have the high-caliber authors of the National Book Festival, the up-and-comers you might find at City Lit or Baltimore, and the more local authors you might find at some of the Bethesda venues. It’s a place where you can see and meet your favorite authors and discover some fabulous new ones.

Our Festival is a big scale event, but it feels intimate and the fans tend to get excellent face time with the authors. We try to include a wide array of genres, from literary fiction to history, humor to cooking, current affairs to mystery, sports to children’s books, young adult to women’s lit – there’s something for everyone.

Our other programming sets us apart as well. For aspiring and hobby writers, we have writing workshops. We host what’s called a “Children’s Village” which is full of literary-themed activities for the kids. And you can sit back and relax at our Coffee House while you enjoy a day’s worth of poetry readings and music.

Oh, and by the way, parking and admission are free!

2a. You were one of the primary forces behind creating the festival. What was your motivation?

Two things you need to know about me… 1) I love great books; and 2) I tend to share my passions with everyone within earshot!

Since I’ve always been a big reader, when Laura Bush and the Library of Congress founded the National Book Festival back in 2001, it immediately became my favorite area event. Every year, I’d go and just lose myself in the rapture and inspiration of great stories, great storytellers, and the wit, wisdom, and joy that pervades the atmosphere there.

Flash forward to 2008 when we all knew that this would be the last year of the Bush Administration (including festival co-founder Laura Bush), but we didn’t know who would be taking their place, nor whether the new folks would opt to continue the National Book Festival. I distinctly remember Dr. James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, coming to the stage and urging the attendees to contact the new administration and ask that they continue this wonderful event.

I was in that audience that day. At the time, I’d been in office (Gaithersburg City Council) for about a year, and I remember thinking to myself, ‘Why leave it up to chance? We can do our own book event. I’m in this public position, maybe I can help make it happen.’ An idea began to gestate, and it made sense on a number of levels:

- There are a ton of nationally known authors and journalists in the DC area. Most are within an hour’s drive of Gaithersburg.

- There are a ton of readers in the DC area. In fact, it’s the most literate metro area in the country, as measured in an annual study.

- The City of Gaithersburg has long supported the arts and produced and hosted some outstanding performances and events. But it could still benefit from an enhanced cultural identity.

So, I pitched it, informally, to the Mayor and my colleagues on the City Council. They probably didn’t fully understand the scale of what I was proposing, but they all liked the idea and encouraged me to run with it.

2b. How did you get started wooing authors and publishers to the event?

It started with ‘friends of friends.’ One of the advantages of being in a public position is that I come into contact with a lot of people – and those people come into contact with a lot of people, and so on.

When I started asking around, it turned out that a good friend of mine works with Alice McDermott’s husband, who was willing to pass along an invite to his great author/wife, which she (thank goodness!) accepted. Likewise, another friend knew sportswriter and best-selling author John Feinstein and was able to help get him on board. We worked our contacts very hard in that first year, and were able to put together an excellent lineup that included 56 authors, a Pulitzer winner, a National Book Award winner, a Newbery Medal winner, and about a dozen best-sellers. Last year, we had more of everything.

Over time, we’ve developed effective working relationships with a number of publicists at some of the big publishing houses, who assist us with all sorts of high-profile authors. This year, for example, we have authors coming in from San Francisco, El Paso, Martha’s Vineyard, San Diego, New York City and all sorts of other places.

3. In 2011, there were a great many fiction and nonfiction authors present, but not too many, if any poets. How will the festival be improved or expanded in 2012? Will poetry be included in this year’s festival? If so, how?

Actually, we had some terrific poets! They included current Maryland Poet Laureate Stanley Plumly, former laureate Linda Pastan, Richard Peabody, Michele Wolf, and a few others who are of more local renown.

We dedicate about half of our programming at the Coffee House to poetry readings and it’s an aspect of the Festival we’re really proud of. Any interested poets should fill out and submit and application to present, which can be found on our Website.

4. One of the most eye-catching moments of the 2011 festival was the activities for children, including magicians, a unicyclist, and Dr. Seuss reading tent. What are some of the activities parents can look forward to this year? Will there be some specific children’s authors that parents should consider seeing?

We put all of our children’s programming into an area we call the “Children’s Village.” There will be authors and readings and arts & crafts activities, writing workshops, musical performances, and, I should mention, that one of our authors, Leah Taylor, will be bringing a pony!

We will have some fantastic authors this year – and we’re still recruiting others. The ones we have so far include:

Picture Book Authors – Kate Feiffer, Katy Kelly, Leah Taylor

Chapter Book Authors – Andrew Clements, Fred Bowen (from Kid’s Post), Sheela Chari (Edgar Award finalist), Michael Buckley (The Sisters Grimm)

We also have a couple superb authors in the Teen/Young Adult category: Laura McNeal (finalist for the National Book Award), and Matthew Quick, whose book “Boy21” to be released this Spring, is going to be big!

5. The festival hosts a short story contest for high school students. Are there plans in the works to expand the contest to other genres, such as poetry and essay? And to include an adult category?

Thanks for bringing up our High School Short Story Contest. This is just our second year doing it, and we’ve been blown away by the results, both in the number of participants and in the quality of the work.

We’d certainly like to expand the contest and hope to see it blossom into a multi-category, multi-genre endeavor, but the challenge, for now, is manpower, including people qualified to read and judge the entries. Much of the current contest is run by volunteers. They promote it, administer it, they help find sponsorships for the winners, read the initial entries and narrow down to finalists, and plan the awards ceremony. It’s a big undertaking.

So, our capacity to expand the contest will depend on the manpower we’re able to drum up.

6. Also, are there future plans to include additional publishing industry topics among the panels, such as the influence of book bloggers and other online reviewers outside of the mainstream media?

Absolutely. Last year, we had a “State of the Book” panel, which featured a publisher, an editor, an agent, and a bookseller. It was a terrific conversation about the evolution of the industry. Actually, you can still see the video on C-SPAN online here.

Thanks, Jud, for answering my questions.  If you haven’t come to the DC area yet, here’s just another incentive.

If you haven’t checked out my latest articles on D.C. Literature Examiner, you’ll want to check out my interview with Sarah Pekkanen, Eric Goodman, and my reviews of their books, plus a review of Richard Peabody’s poetry book and more information about the upcoming panelists, workshops, and activities at the festival on Saturday, May 19.

When you fiercely believe in a poet’s talent and their collection, you want to do everything you can to promote it and him/her to a wider audience.  You stick their book into strangers’ and friends’ hands and say, “Read this.”  Sometimes, that works and sometimes it doesn’t, but if you truly believe in a collection, you press onward.

Today, I’ve got a deeply moving guest post from poet Erica Goss, who I featured during the 2012 National Poetry Month Blog Tour with a review of her book, Wild Place.  She will talk about the joy of publishing her collection, but also the deep sadness that came with it when her father’s body was discovered in the wilderness.

Following the guest post, I hope that you will enter for 1 of 2 copies I am going to giveaway to 2 lucky readers anywhere in the world.  Without further ado, please welcome Erica Goss.

On March 29, 2011, I checked my email late in the afternoon. The subject line “Chapbook Acceptance: Wild Place” caught my eye immediately. I opened the message and read, “Thank you for submitting to us. Your manuscript has been accepted for publication.” Blue capitals announced the sender as Finishing Line Press in Kentucky.

Finishing Line. I loved that name and its connotations: making it to the end and winning. But on March 29, 2011, “finishing line” meant something else. Three weeks earlier, some teenagers out hiking had discovered my father’s body in a remote part of Western Washington State. That was his finishing line: death from exposure, hunger, and thirst, brought on by dementia.

Over the following months, I struggled with grief and depression. Some days were simply too hard to bear. My friends congratulated me about the book, but I felt compelled to qualify their enthusiasm with reminders that I was grieving my father. As much as I wanted to shout with joy over the book’s imminent publication, I was unable to feel much happiness at such a time.

The book did give me some welcome distraction from dealing with my father’s death and trying to put his affairs in order. Choosing cover art, formatting the book, deciding which poems to keep and which to delete, absorbed many hours. At the back of my preparations, however, my father’s death lurked, a persistent ache in the pit of my stomach.

It took me some time to realize that I was living in one of those ironic situations that make good poems. The best poetry is tinged with its opposite emotion; to quote Chase Twitchell, “remember death.” As Linda Pastan writes in her poem “The Death of a Parent,”

Move to the front
of the line
a voice says, and suddenly
there is nobody
left standing between you
and the world, to take
the first blows
on their shoulders.

How often I wanted to share the news of my book’s publication with my father. In phone conversations, I’d told him about sending the book to various contests and small presses. The dementia that had been taking his brain away would lift for a little while, and he seemed genuinely interested. Then, abruptly, he would say, “Well, thank you for calling!” and hang up. When he did that, I knew that he had probably forgotten who I was, and ended the conversation to cover his embarrassment.

My father was never more attentive than when I read poetry to him. A former professor of German, he would fix his hazel eyes on me with the look he must have given his students when they mispronounced something, and listen intently. At the end, he would usually say, “Huh! Too bad he was such an ass,” or some other insulting remark about the poet. That’s when I knew my real father was back, at least for a moment. “Even jerks can write good poetry,” I would respond, hoping for his sudden laugh or the way he would smack the table, making us all jump. But more and more often, he would just look at me, puzzled, and turn back to the television.

My father loved run-down, decaying, decrepit places. This explains why he spent the last few years of his life, before his dementia worsened and he moved to Washington to live with his sister, in a tiny village in Northern California called Locke. Locke sits in the San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta, where two of California’s largest rivers meet. Eleven hundred miles of poorly maintained levees protect Locke, the other small towns of the Delta, and its surrounding orchards and farmland.

The Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, unruly by nature, seep under the levees, giving Locke and the whole area a lumpy, moldering appearance. Artists love Locke’s tilted buildings and its atmosphere of benign neglect (Locke is the setting for “My Father at Seventy,” one of the poems in Wild Place). The first few years my father spent in Locke were happy ones; he loved the small town vibe, the artists and writers who lived in ramshackle houses where the river bubbled up through the basements, and being so close to Nature. That was before he stopped calling, stopped paying his bills, stopped cleaning his house.

Wild Place’s cover photograph, taken by San Jose artist and architect Howard Partridge, shows a view of the Sutro Baths on the coast of San Francisco. It’s clear from the photograph that the Pacific Ocean is reclaiming that piece of land, wearing down the seawall and the surrounding cliffs. Here’s another place that water will eventually take back, just like in the Delta a few miles east.

Is this a metaphor for death? Maybe. But I’d rather think of it as a demonstration of Nature’s obdurate personality. As the French poet Saint-John Perse (Alexis Leger) writes: “In vain the surrounding land traces for us its narrow confines. One same wave throughout the world, one same wave since Troy rolls its haunch toward us.”

One same wave. “The Death of a Parent” gives us this image:

The slate is wiped
not clean but like a canvas
painted over in white
so that a whole new landscape
must be started,
bits of the old
still showing through.

It’s been over a year since that bipolar month of March, 2011. I’m learning what it means to grieve. Some days I feel my father’s loss as an acute pain; other times it’s heavy and dull, like an overcast, humid day. I have gotten better at allowing myself to feel unqualified joy at the publication of Wild Place. And I look for those places where the old bits show through.

Thanks, Erica, for sharing your story with us. I know that your father would be proud of you, no matter what. Also, please check out this poem she wrote in response to a prompt about what she would tell her 16-year-old self.

For those of you interested in this stunning collection, please leave a comment here about your own father. Deadline to enter will be May 31, 2012.