(Warning: Mini-Blog-Chapbook-Review!)
Congrats to blogger and fellow poet Steve Mueske, who recently (and happily) had his manuscript A Mnemonic For Desire, accepted for publication by Ghost Road Press! I recently received Steve Mueske’s chapbook, “Whatever the Story Requires” from Pudding House, which deals with subjects of mortality, music, Evil Kneival dolls, and the insect world, is a collection of simple grace and understated melancholy. One of my favorite poems was “After Reading of an Amazing New Device That Brings Back the Dead in Lifelike Holographic Images.” These are some excerpted lines: “…and there Aunt Mertle/ bends to the bright task of baking rhubarb pies…and soon Uncle Fred,/ dead these seventeen years, is splitting wood for the fire…Here cousin Matthew will never know/ the slice of a boat propeller, and Anne can safely ignore/ / those pricks of pain in her arm.” Good stuff. I love discovering the work of other bloggers that I might never have seen otherwise; one example is I remember being blown away by Suzanne Frischkorn’s chapbook, really lush and magical and eerie, which I can also highly recommend.
I’ve been on a reviewing roll; just finished up a review for the journal 88 and reviewed Tom C. Hunley’s The Tongue for Raven Chronicles.
Okay, back to your regularly scheduled Mother’s Day Activities. Enjoy your brunch and try to dodge those guilt trips!