What's New?
Columbia College Library Presents A Reading of
The Call: An Anthology of Women's Writing — March 26, 2010
Columbia College Library presents a reading of The Call: An Anthology of Women's Writing, published by Dragonfly Press to be held on March 26th at the Columbia College Library's Tamarck Hall. Featured readers include: Anne Gelhaus, Lara Gularte, Parthenia M. Hicks, Kathie Isaac-Luke, and Calder Lowe. We look forward to seeing you all
then! …
The Call: An Anthology of Women's Writing — Edited by Calder Lowe
Dragonfly Press ©2009, 138 pgs
A Review by Caroline Malone — February, 2010
“In the dedication to The Call: An Anthology of Women’s Writing, writer and reader are met with a passionate plea to honor the memory of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a 17-year-old who represents the countless marginalized women in our world, women who even in the 21st century, a time when it seems humankind must have progressed further beyond its animal origins, are still suffocated by the greed and power of patriarchy. When one woman’s life is devalued, all women’s lives are devalued, and the poems and short stories in The Call give voice to women who are compelled to establish identity with humor, pain, regret, and sensuality through the word.”…
Judah's Lion by Anne Caston
Toad Hall Press, © 2009, 94pgs.
A Review by Cheryl A. Townsend — February, 2010
In an unassuming, almost Zen revelation, Caston prefaces this collection with the poem “What Seems to Be” reflecting that Sometimes the life I am living/resembles the life I seem to be living… and shares the natural beginning of mornings that “rise, shrouded/in mist” Such an allegory, as these poems seem to be misted with an uncertainty, a queue of conflicted confessions and exhumed emotions exquisitely juxtaposed in poetic explanations. Labyrinths leading to the soul of a mother raising an autistic child while working as a nurse, constantly giving care, knowing its boundaries, her limitations, the yin and yang. The medical field is one of vast juxtapositions. The saving or taking of lives. The terrifying realization that you can…unassumingly…play God. …
Difficult Beauty: Selected Poems (1987-2006) by Luis Alberto Ambroggio
Edited by Yvette Neisser Moreno
Cross-Cultural Communications ©2009
A Review by Cherie Walsh — February, 2010
Editor and translator Yvette Niesser Moreno, in her introduction, and Oscar Hijuelos, in his foreword, place this collection as a strong introduction of American readers to Ambroggio’s work and Ambroggio himself as a poet who stands among writers better known to American audiences, writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Martín Espada. Spanning twenty years of writing, the collection’s task is to show the scope of the poet’s work while emphasizing more recent poems. Many different translators have contributed, with Moreno editing the full collection, changing some pieces substantially, in consultation with Ambroggio, who is bilingual. The poems appear in Spanish and English, on facing pages.…
Questions of Fire: A Question of Formality by Gregg Mosson
Plain View Press ©2009
A Review by Mike Maggio— February, 2010
Ever since the US invasion of Iraq, the proliferation of anti-war poetry, by both known and unknown poets, has crammed the pages of books and web sites in almost every corner of our culture. Even prior to this duplicitous chapter in our history, when it was clear that war was merely the purpose, poets responded powerfully and clearly, taking part in a renascent anti-war movement that was to become a major voice against the war as well as subsequent attacks on individual and civil liberties. …
War Bird by David Gewanter
The University of Chicago Press ©2009
A Review by Grace Cavalieri — January, 2010
Poetry is a way of duplicating experience. The experience is only as good as the poem. The value
of the experience determines the value of the poem, then it becomes a referendum for readers. The
poem is made by putting one word in front of the other. How is all this done? These are thoughts taking
measure of a book that seizes our attention, attention that’s always wanted elsewhere.…
As You Like It by William Shakespeare
Directed by Maria Aitken
Shakespeare Theatre Company — Through December 20, 2009
Let us revisit the original play that Shakespeare wrote. As You Like It is said to have been written in about 1600 and published in a “folio” in 1623. The plot is thin but the language is more than abundant .It is based on a novel, Rosalynde by Thomas Lodge. Our heroine Rosalind (played to the hilt by Francesca Faridany) is banished from her uncle’s court. With her cousin Celia (Miriam Silverman) and Touchstone the Jester (Floyd King), she flees to safety to the Forest of Arden and –cutting to the final chase -- finds true love. Rosalind marries her Orlando (the versatile John Behlmann). …
DINNER DATE by Judith Robinson
Finishing Line Press, 2009
A Review by Natalie Lobe—November, 2009
Judith Robinson has ordered the poems in this collection so that the cumulative force makes us cling to and savor those few experiences that that one really lives for. The salient message of Dinner Date seems to be transience, pro tempore. Special relationships, events, places slip from our grasp and take on a new perspective with time: some to be cherished, many not. …
Soul-Hearted Partnership by Debra L. Reble, Ph.D.
HeartPaths Media ©2008
A Review by Grace Cavalieri—November, 2009
Debra L. Reble is a therapist who has wakened to “the possible” and she brings us along with her. She began her journey as we all did with the word “can’t”, in a world made narrow by hardship. Yet; instead of making a moral cause from this abuse and abandonment, she found something that follows friction and emotional forbearance -- a life of balance. Here we have a psychotherapist who writes not as a careerist but one who would arrange our grief unto the daring venture of happiness and worthwhile partnering. …
A Solitary Moment by Dan Murano
Photographs, ©2009
A Review by Grace Cavalieri—November, 2009
A book of photographs by a world class photographer. This is a sampling from a 30-year canon of work: Provincetown, Washington D.C., Zaire, Paris, Virginia, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas and more. What do our thoughts look like? Dan Murano’s sight is magnified by creating images that will last forever. A photographer who is an artist seeks not only to record, but to present his own longings. What Murano’s photos tell us, is that whatever we choose to see can be presented as story. …
Another Washington: Photography of Paul Feinberg
American University Museum at the Katzen Art Center
Tuesday through Sunday 11a.m. - 4.p.m — Through October 25, 2009
Paul Feinberg is a photographer who has documented the sights of this city since the 1970’s. This collection comes from that era and just in time to check in on the timelessness of Washington DC, to see what we were and what we are. It is about people, the lives of those who lived here behind closed doors, outside of the fancy hotels and the marble pillars, outside the gray offices, a tangled skein of people who are unraveled individually long enough for us to take a good look at them. Each one has his/her own story line. …
The Alchemist by Ben Jonson
Directed by Michael Kahn
Shakespeare Theatre Company
— Through November 22nd, 2009
Of his comedies and tragedies, Ben Jonson (1573-1637) is probably best known for “The Alchemist.” Written in 1610, it is too rarely performed in America. This play I’m sure was received differently in the 17th century when jokes about alchemy were emphasized in the original script, at a time when people were familiar with its claims, uses and misuses. We know little of that science now, but Michael Kahn doesn’t worry about that whatsoever. Alchemy is the subject, but human greed …
Carpathia — October, 2009
Carpathia is a very aptly named collection of lyrical poems and prose-poems, since the word Carpathia refers to the Carpathian Mountains in southeastern Poland, a geographic region that is probably little-known to most American readers. And the poet Cecilia Woloch’s great skill is transporting the reader to new and unfamiliar regions: geographic regions and regions of the heart and soul, including back to some glorious lunacies of childhood, friends from youth, and first love. …
Barbaro — October, 2009
In each of nearly 150 poems about the famed racehorse, Barbaro, Lyn Lifshin brings a new slant, a separate nuance, another dimension. The total effect is overwhelming. This collection of poems reaches the reader at many levels: namely the story itself, the impact of beauty on our lives and the universality of grief. …
City of Berkeley Honors Rafael Jesús González — September, 2009
The public is cordially invited to attend the City of Berkeley's honoring of Rafael Jesús González on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 7:00 PM in the Berkeley City Hall Council Chambers at Martin Luther King Jr Way, between Allston and Center Berkeley, California.
Phedre — September, 2009
Ed Herendeen, Founder and Producing Director of CATF premieres the season with five new productions, plus lectures, readings and other arts events. On three stages are five plays: “The History of Light “by Eisa Davis and ”Yankee Tavern” by Steven Dietz (directed by Liesl Tommy ;) “Dear Sara Jane” by Victor Lodato, “Farragut North” by Beau Willimon and “Fifty Words” by Michael Weller ( directed by Ed Herendeen.) …
Calvin — September, 2009
The past, William Faulkner wrote, in Requiem for a Nun, is not dead. It's not even past.
He was referring clearly to his own point of view and to that of other Southern writers, who with love and hate, anguish and self justification, need to gnaw on the bones of their early lives until there is only whiteness left. The first novel Calvin by William Littlejohn is another installment in this obsessive restirring of the thick racist soup that nourishes such narratives. …
Judah's Lion — August, 2009
I was not prepared for what I would find in Judah's Lion. There is one thing—the human condition, its beauty and terror. There is another—the rare voice able to speak its lacerations and intensity in distillations such as the poems presented here. Caston's poetry is gripping, her images haunting. …
And by Michael Blumenthal — July, 2009
Michael Blumenthal’s stunning new book, And, is an Eliotic celebration of life in the world as continuum and progress. He achieves this through a simple and seductive meditation upon the conjunction, “and,” and the way it enriches the complexity of language as it shapes lived experience. He introduces us to the intricacies of the conjunction with the deceptively simple first line of the Prologue, of which the sole poem is aptly entitled “And"…
Contemporary American Theater Festival Opens its 19th Season
at
Shepherd University in Sherpherdstown, West Virginia — June, 2009
Ed Herendeen, Founder and Producing Director of CATF premieres the season with five new productions, plus lectures, readings and other arts events. On three stages are five plays: “The History of Light “by Eisa Davis and” Yankee Tavern” by Steven Dietz (directed by Liesl Tommy ;) “Dear Sara Jane” by Victor Lodato, “Farragut North” by Beau Willimon and “Fifty Words” by Michael Weller ( directed by Ed Herendeen.) …
Greg Hall, 1946–2009
Poet Greg Hall, who lived in Santa Cruz in the 1970's, died Tuesday, June 23 in his San Jose cottage. You can read a remembrance by Stephen Kessler in the July 1 Santa Cruz Weekly and Metro San Jose. You can read the post by Greg’s friend Bea Garth on her blog Eos: The Creative Context and find poems there. F.A. Nettlebeck also has a post on his blog Sewing Memory including a poem. Liz Henry has posted a tribute, some poems and links to three audio recordings (mp3). There will be a Memorial Celebration of Greg Hall’s life and poetry at 6 PM on Sunday, July 19 at WORKS Gallery in downtown San Jose, 451 South First St., San Jose, CA 95113.
The White Bride by Sarah Maclay
A Review by Merrill Leffler — June, 2009
The White Bride is Sarah Maclay’s second full-length book of poems—her first was the provocatively titled Whore (she’s also published several chapbooks). Here’s the title poem, though it’s not what you might expect: …
Lindley Williams Hubbell:
a memoir by Yoko Danno — June, 2009
He was like an ironstone, with the base (the western culture and literature) buried deep underground. Myself being a 'traveler' with only a small compass (intuition), without a map, I felt sometimes a need to keep a certain distance from him so that my 'compass' wouldn't approach too near to the iron. He spurred me to write, with praises, like a good horse-trainer. …
Persephone
by Lyn Lifshin
A Review by Natalie Lobe — June, 2009
To read Lyn Lifshin’s, Persephone, is to be energized by a flow of poems which catapult through the book’s 181 pages. Prophetically, none of her poems ends with a period so our natural instinct is to read non-stop, absorbing the cumulative effect. Her subject matter ranges from self discovery, love, motherhood, women and poems of place and important events. Although the topics appear diverse, there is a natural, almost urgent flow from one poem to the next.…
Dreaming Invisible Voices
Poems by James McGrath
Drawings by Margreta Overbeck
A Review by Mary Morris — June, 2009
It is said that Mary Oliver speaks for those who cannot—the animal world, the wind, the field. In the poems of James McGrath, there is a sense that he actually embodies creatures and the natural world, often in ethereal terms. …
Design for Living, by Noel Coward
Directed by Michael Kahn
Shakespeare Theatre Company
— June, 2009
After writing about a play that I really love, I will nevertheless get emails saying: “But should we go see it?” May I begin this by saving time and saying first: “Yes You Should Go See It!” Through June 28 at the Lansburgh Theatre, 450 Seventh St. NW. Call 202-547-1122 or visit http://www.shakespearetheatre.org. …
Announcement — June, 2009
Coro Hispano de San Francisco's IX Fandango, Fri. June 26th & Sat. June 27, 7:00 PM, at the Presidio Officer's Club, 50 Moraga Ave. at Argüello, San Francisco Presidio. Admission Free!
Abraham’s Bay & Other Stories by Jack Greer
A Review by Laura Orem — May, 2009
Since the time of Jonah, people have written stories about the sea. Perhaps it is because we are mostly water ourselves; perhaps it is because, no matter how advanced our technology, the sea eludes our control; but whatever the reason, we are fascinated by stories of the ocean and the people who live and work on her. …
Versed by Rae Armantrout
A Review by Ken Jacobs — May, 2009
Rae Armantrout’s Versed, both the product and producer of intense concentration, never lies down -- no matter what the scope, no matter how I define the perimeters of the elements of the book, whether limiting my attention to the poems, the series of poems, or the segments that comprise the poems. When I seek to identify the found or source material cobbled within or the vividly panned landscapes and environs of southern California that act not so much as metaphor, but as sign posts that draw my attention outward, other elements compel me toward the interior. …
In Praise of Books
An Essay by Denis M. Garrison — May, 2009
When I first began reading, as a child in Tokyo, Japan during the Korean War, it was paper that fascinated me—the exquisite local stationery we used for our childish lessons; the artisan paper used for sumi-e, origami, and other arts. My senses were engaged even as I slogged through the most prosaic reading. Of course, the following years were filled with school texts and those wonderful library books encased in plastic and marked with each book’s history of being read. Towards the end of my school years, in Baltimore, Maryland, I discovered the city’s old books stores and their musty, dusty atmosphere permeated my bibliophilia. …
Quantum Lyrics by A. Van Jordan
Cradle Song by Stacey Lynn Brown
A Review by Laura Orem — April, 2009
Two recent books of poetry attempt to come to terms with the great elephant in the American living room – race. They are Quantum Lyrics by A. Van Jordan and Cradle Song by Stacey Lynn Brown. Both of these collections reflect on what race has meant and continues to mean in our country, one from the perspective of a black man; one from the perspective of a white girl growing up in Georgia. …
If the Heart is Lean by Margaret Luongo
A Review by Peter Fontaine — March, 2009
If you are like I was, you’ve never heard of Margaret Luongo and probably haven’t heard a thing about her debut collection of stories If the Heart Is Lean. If you are like I was, then this review is for you. I hardly need to address those readers lucky enough to have caught one of these stories found in this slim but dense volume in an issue of Tin House or Cincinnati Review. …
My Vocabulary did This To Me, The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer
A Review by Richard Harteis — March, 2009
In India once, I was speaking to a group of academics - there are perhaps 100 Ph.D. programs in American literature alone in India, and a professional society just for its caretakers - and the first question that came out of the shoot was the importance of Carribean poetry in American letters. …
BELONGING: New Poetry by Iranians Around the World
Edited and translated by Niloufar Talebi
A Review by Avideh Shashaani — March, 2009
Do butterflies long for the cocoon they’ve left behind? Does longing for what is past prevent us from belonging to the present?
Belonging is a translation of works by Iranian poets who write in Persian and have lived outside Iran since the Iranian revolution in 1979, as well as those who were born after the revolution and now live in countries other than Iran. …
ION, by Euripides, translated by David Lan.
Directed by Ethan McSweeny
A Review by Grace Cavalieri — March, 2009
Any time a theater piece opens with a red satin banner lowering a godlike figure to the stage, and puppets enact the preamble, in a few sweet gestures, I praise the Good Greek Gods before even knowing the plot. Very few people know this play but we do know that Euripides was the most innovative of the Greek dramatists, perhaps the most iconoclastic. However, in this drama there is no condemnation, more a civic tribute to Athens in an historical time of ongoing war with Sparta. …
The Dog in the Manger
by Lope De Vega, translated by David Johnston
Directed by Jonathan Munby
SHAKESPEARE THEATRE COMPANY – Through March 29, 2009
I was a week late play going because of family matters of illness and health, and when I finally walked into a matinee, every seat was filled. This must be good, I thought. Little did I imagine that I was about to witness the best performance/play/production of 2009 (I realize it is but February, so I will make that 2008 too.) Once in awhile the language, direction, acting and spectacle come together to provide an event so exquisite you cannot believe your good luck.
Let me say that I yearn for language that can be spoken and heard without flaw, language written with high locution and raw hilarity. A playwright largely unknown to me, except in books, I knew to be “the Shakespeare” of Spain. This can be daunting if you cannot speak Spanish so you never expect to fall in love with him. The translation has brought this playwright shoulder to shoulder to an evening with Shakespeare. The adaptation is so witty, …
The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest, edited by Hadley Haden Guest,
A Joint Review by Grace Cavalieri and Merrill Leffler — February, 2009
What do you do in preparation to review a 500 page book. Well, you set it down in the middle of the room and circle it for awhile, then each day, read a little, each night read a page or two, like the Bible or the Koran. And then decide what poems are thoughtfully arranged and how they sound. A lifetime of work in one volume cannot be overpraised. Given the power to judge it, I demur. Given the power to respond, I’ll gladly take it up. …
Becoming Billies Holiday, by Carole Boston Weatherford,
Art by Floyd Cooper
A Review by A.B. Spellman — January, 2009
About thirty years ago I attempted to write a biography of Billie Holiday, who many, including me, consider to be the greatest of all jazz singers. After digging around in the alley-to-mansion-to-alley maze that was her life I gave up; the last twenty years, which were lived in a haze of heroin, gin, & mean, exploitative men, were too much of an ugly sameness to write. Now I am given Carole Boston Weatherford’s book for young adults, Becoming Billie Holiday, and I am pleased to write that Ms Weatherford has chosen just the right entrance into this troubled artist’s life. …
Inventory, by Cicely Angleton, Elaine Magarrell, and Reed Whittemore
A Review by Ed Zahniser — January, 2009
If it hasn’t yet dawned on you that someday you’re worm food—as the Robin Williams character tells his lads in “Dead Poets Society”—you need this book. Not to scare you, but to console, or so you can witness to your own aging. But it’s not a self-help book; if it were, my telling you about it would defeat the purpose. …
Taking the Road Where It Leads, by Andrena Zawinski
A Review by Laura Orem — January, 2009
One of the pleasures of reviewing is here is the opportunity to write about chapbooks. Chapbooks are often seen as the red-haired stepchildren of poetry publishing, and many journals and reviews choose not to feature them in their pages. This is unfortunate. There is a lot of excellent poetry out there in chapbook form, especially since, as we all know, there are not many opportunities for poets to publish their work as full-length manuscripts. Taking the Road Where It Leads by Andrena Zawinski is an example of the best that chapbook publishing has to offer: a collection of deeply moving, highly crafted poems – a “real” book – it would be tragic to overlook. …
The Royal Baker's Daughter, by Barbara Goldberg
A Review by Laura Orem — January, 2009
The Royal Baker’s Daughter is a remarkable book of poems. It explores, in familial, historical, and global contexts, the idea of boundaries and conflict, connection and redemption. These poems in a way remind us that all human relationships are negotiations – and that the integrity with which we navigate through them is often the only thing anchoring us to a comprehensible place. …
Sum, by Yonat Hafftka
A Review by Barbara Goldberg — January, 2009
A quest narrative, the “journey,” traditionally stars a male hero. Not here. Yonat Hafftka travels from origins, to discovery, to investigation all the way to speculation, but her journey is an inward one, one that begins in the dark primeval chaos, a world of dank waters, snakes, hungry dogs. Yet this world also provides nourishment, meager as it is. …
Voices, by Lucille Clifton
A Review by Cheryl A. Townsend — January, 2009
Winner of the National Book Award, Clifton writes the truths of social injustice…she writes to the very the depths of love .. she sings in harmony. She is. This collection begins in the voices of the subservient, downtrodden, subdued , and persecuted .. be they animals, native Americans, children .. all essentially slaves. All living their lives as intended until man comes along and decides they should be controlled.. altered/forced into service. Owned. …
Shakespeare's Twelth Night
Directed by Rebecca Bayla Taichman
A Review by Grace Cavalieri — Through January 4, 2009
Into the raging and sometimes ugly debate in literary circles today over just who has the right to make final artistic and editorial decisions about a book – poet or editor – comes this new collection by Lucille Clifton: a refreshingly collaborative effort between Clifton and her publisher/editor, Thom Ward. Perhaps it is because Ward is a poet also that he is so finely-tuned to what is going on in the poems and makes a book worthy of them, a book which not only showcases the writing, but a book which, in itself, becomes a work of art.…