Most Wanted:
A Gamble in Verse
by Jeffrey Encke

Reviewed by Stephen Page

I just got home from an all-night card game after a Monday Night Football tailgate party. I can’t say how wonderful it was to play poker and read poetry at the same time.

These cards would be good for anyone who likes to shuffle the deck once and a while, whether it be poker, rummy, cribbage, crazy eights, go fish, 3 card brag–or, if you buy two decks and set aside the 2’s to 8’s, pinocle.

These cards are fun, intellectually stimulating, and soul filling.

Check them out here:

http://www.matlub.net/fulldeck/

http://www.matlub.net/

http://www.matlub.net/buy.htm

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0975857800/102-6854621-1264101

Pirate Talk or Mermalade will launch September 19 on Talk Like a Pirate Day in the appropriate anarchy of Bluestockings Bookstore, 7:30 p.m., 172 Allen Street, http://bluestockings.com/directions/ (closest subways: F at Delancy or the B/D at Grand). Free eyepatch for the first fifty pirates!

For those of you unwilling to walk the plank that night, see my Events page for other possibilities: http://www.teresesvoboda.com/events.html

which include a 4p.m. reading on Sept. 12 Brooklyn Book Festival with Per Petterson and Scott Spencer.

Naked mermaid in video::
http://www.youtube.com/user/t3r3s3#p/a/u/1/2dq7724_0oc

All best,

Terese Svoboda

contact: svoboda@el.net

Family Albums

By SUSANN COKAL
LEAVING ROCK HARBOR
By Rebecca Chace
292 pp. Scribner. $25.
THE HOUSE ON SALT HAY ROAD
By Carin Clevidence
285 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $25.
Long ago and far away, Aristotle called poetry (by which he meant imaginative writing in general) “a more philosophical and serious business than history; for poetry speaks more of universals, history of particulars.” He was describing the difference between the events we know to have happened to such-and-such a person on such-and-such a date and the wide scope of human reactions to those events. And, by extension, of the way imaginative writing can grab at our hearts to make history live beyond the limits of facts.

The best historical novels recreate the past as a series of intimate interactions and reflections punctuated by the wars, economic booms and busts, and acts of God that are readily checked by scholars. Recently, Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall”; Colm Toibin’s “Brooklyn”; and “The Help,” by Kathryn Stockett, have, in their very different ways, brought history home, and without the gimmicks of “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.” Now Rebecca Chace and Carin Clevidence are exploring the intersection of self with history in the first half of the 20th century, in “Leaving Rock Harbor” and “The House on Salt Hay Road.” Both novels are moody, with ominous beginnings and plucky protagonists who struggle for happiness despite the intrusion of outside forces. And both succeed as forays into small lives buffeted by great events.

Chace, the author of a previous novel, “Capture the Flag,” and a memoir, “Chautauqua Summer,” opens “Leaving Rock Harbor” on a note of despair. It is 1916, and Frankie Ross’s father has attempted suicide, prompting his family’s hasty relocation from upstate New York to the prosperous city of Rock Harbor, Mass. While her father readily finds work in a cotton mill, the fresh start is difficult for 15-year-old Frankie, who narrates the novel (sometimes distractingly) from the perspective of grown womanhood. Lonely and stifled, she’s relieved to attract the attention of the wealthy Winslow Curtis, son of a conservative (and prurient) politician, and his friend Joe Barros, a Portuguese millworker who is also the star of the high school basketball team. In “Jules and Jim” fashion, these three share picnics and scantily clad swims. But when Frankie talks the boys into giving her a tour of the Curtis mill, the visit ends in disaster: through Frankie’s carelessness, a young girl is pulled into a loom, mangling one of her feet.

“There are such nights,” Frankie reflects, “when everything changes either by accident or intention.” Nobody, she adds, “actually chooses how they behave at a time like that.” At first, Frankie makes few choices, and the accident has scant consequences. She and Winslow and Joe have fun until World War I plucks Joe away to Europe — and Frankie quickly abandons both corset and chastity to Winslow, who soon becomes her husband. But the image of that little millworker, mouth open in a scream drowned out by the machinery, haunts the rest of the novel, especially since the victim will make her adult presence felt at pivotal moments.

Chace’s novel shows earnest ambition as it addresses the history of the labor movement and factory reform in the years after the war. As the Massachusetts cotton industry lags, beleaguered workers protest pay cuts and factory conditions, and Frankie’s father finds his calling in agitating for their cause. As Winslow Curtis’s wife, Frankie is, naturally, placed in a difficult position, but Chace’s social conscience seems stronger than her narrator’s. Frankie may help her father in small ways, but she remains unengaged in the larger political struggles, eager to shrug off her responsibilities and her painful memories. The novel’s descriptions of the mill are painstakingly thorough, and exposition intrudes into the dialogue as Chace’s characters inform one another (and us) of what’s happening in the wider world. Frankie is predominantly invested in her love life — for Joe, wounded in the war but no less alluring, has returned to become a labor organizer, still unmarried and still in love with his childhood friend. Cue fireworks and sticky situations.

The fireworks in Carin Clevidence’s first novel, “The House on Salt Hay Road” come early, but the novel keeps a steady flame burning until its final scenes. When an explosion in a fireworks factory rattles a Depression-era Long Island coastal community, 12-year-old Clayton Poole sets out on a panicked search to find his older sister, Nancy. The orphaned siblings are the central figures in a narrative that will be shaped by mourning and rescue. These two are deeply attached to each other, to the exclusion of their late mother’s father, brother and sister, who have welcomed them to the now crowded house on Salt Hay Road.

On the day of the explosion, Nancy is distracted by a young museum curator from Boston, visiting the mansion where her aunt works as a cook. Their subsequent love affair, which Nancy is determined to bring to the altar (via the bedroom if necessary), disrupts the household’s uneasy equilibrium. Clayton, for one, is devastated when Nancy announces her engagement. Taking refuge in the outdoors, he sketches dead animals, trying, his sister notes, “to understand the meaning of . . . loss by studying the mechanics of decay.”

Clevidence’s Long Island is a lushly described place of wild marshes, shallow bays and beckoning beaches. The people who live here hunt, fish and sail not for amusement but as a way of life that brings its own hardy pleasures. There may be a bit too much local color for some readers’ tastes, but the eccentric characters we expect of a small town are evoked with a reverence that lifts them from the precious to the pageworthy. On a warm day, pet cockatoos roost in a tree outside a bird fancier’s house. Clayton’s crusty grandfather plays cribbage while telling tales of his former career rescuing shipwreck victims. Still grieving over a lost love, Uncle Roy begins a new courtship while his sister, Mavis, bakes with Depression-defying abundance and tries to bring religion and superstition to an understanding of her own failed marriage.

Driven gently by these tensions, and a few Nancy discovers in her own impetuous romance, the story creeps toward disaster, which arrives with the great hurricane of 1938. Again family members are separated as the storm demolishes homes and rearranges the landscape. Who will rescue whom? Are the family members defined by their responses to crises like the hurricane or by the small moments that make up most of their lives? The answers are wrenching, melancholy — and yet, for some, surprisingly hopeful.

Clevidence has a gift for creating images that express the unspeakable. When Clayton walks along the beach just before the storm, he notices orange-and-black butterflies trying to fly while “mixed with the salt spray.” Then “tumbling over the sand were bright scraps of butterflies that had been ripped apart in the wind.” A storyteller with this fine an eye might put more trust her own powers and avoid plot-based fireworks. Clevidence’s invented emotional lives convey truths that lurk below the surface of historical events, truths that, like those butterflies, bring pleasure even as they remind us how easily they can be torn to bits.

Susann Cokal, the author of the novels “Mirabilis” and “Breath and Bones,” is a frequent contributor to the Book Review.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: August 1, 2010

A review on July 18 about “Leaving Rock Harbor,” a novel by Rebecca Chace, misspelled part of the title of her earlier memoir. It is “Chautauqua Summer,” not “Chatauqua.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/books/review/Cokal-t.html?_r=1

http://www.amazon.com/Rebecca-Chace/e/B001H6POVG/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1

http://www.amazon.com/Leaving-Rock-Harbor-Rebecca-Chace/dp/1439141304

http://grouppenbabookreviews.blogspot.com/

http://doniganmerritt.wordpress.com/2010/08/20/are-you-a-writer-read-this/

We would like to invite you to

TALKARAMA.
English/Spanish-French Conversation Group
Bilingual chats and hang-out

Saturday, 31th of July
From 7 to 9.30 pm
,

PIZZA MASS (PASEO LA PLAZA)
Sarmiento 1601(Esquina Montevideo)
Buenos Aires City

-No fee charged
-Feel free to invite your friends and spread this out.

Cheers!
Pablo
15-5886-3322

PIZZA MASS,
Sarmiento 1601(Esq Montevideo),
Paseo La Plaza

Cheers
Pablo

contact: potenza78ar@yahoo.com.ar

Demeter is the ancient Greek goddess of agriculture and fecundity. She is often depicted in artwork as carrying corn, shafts of wheat, or the horn of Cornucopia (or a combination). She governs harvestable food for the people and plant life for the earth. The myth goes something like this, depending which version of the myth you read: Demeter bears a daughter named Persephone. When Persephone is a young maiden, Hades, the Greek god of the underworld spies her picking flowers in a field of Narcissi. She is humming to herself and roaming about the field without parental supervision. Hades bursts up from the ground and snatches Persephone, descends back to the underworld with her in his arms, and declares her his wife. Demeter, not knowing what happened to her daughter or where she is, searches the face of the earth for ten days with a torch in her hand. Her search is futile, and she is depressed. During those ten days, her wandering and depression result in negligence of the world’s crops, which wither. On the tenth day, she discovers that it was Hades who abducted her daughter, and that Zeus, the ruler of the gods, had some hand in the plan. Demeter is irate at Zeus, so she lets the crops and the rest of the world’s plant life die; and she promises never to restore fecundity to the earth until her daughter is returned to her. The people on the earth suffer famine, so they no longer pay homage to Zeus. Zeus, an egoist and a clever barterer, strikes a deal between Hades and Demeter-part of the year Persephone will live on earth with Demeter, and part of the year she will reside underground with Hades as his wife (where she is crowned Goddess of the Underworld). Demeter agrees to the deal, but secretly swears that during the months her daughter is underground, the world’s crops and plant life will wither and die; and during the months Persephone is on the earth, the crops and florae will flourish. This myth is ancient Greek reasoning for the seasons.

Ivy Alvarez is obviously well read in Greek mythology. In order to know the Demeter and Persephone myth well, one must know many of the other Greek myths. In Mortal, Alvarez updates the Demeter and Persephone myth in a series of poems. A story unfolds between a contemporary daughter and her mother, who are named Dee and Seph. Alvarez refers to the myth numerous times in the poems, but she takes the liberty of revising the myth in many ways. One of those ways is to have Dee abducted by Hades. As Alvarez’s story progresses throughout the series of poems, Dee and Seph age, and a major theme of the collection links with the title of the book.

In “a memory of corn” the crops that Demeter governs, the seasons, and the underworld are mentioned:

A sky blue with hysteria, roses blowsy and promiscuous, bees fat-bottomed and buzzing-it is a shaking, baking summer. Dee and Seph eat by the reservoir, the firepit coals sing to the meats roasting above them, which hiss and spit at them. Mother and daughter take a corncob each… the corns’ niblets darken in the heat…

In the poem before that one, Seph is born-via cesarean section-and the tale is told from Dee’s point of view:

they had to unzip me
to let the cat
out of the bag
blood bathed my belly
thighs
and baby Seph
I stopped counting stitches
forgave the marring
of my clean envelope…

Soon into the collection, we find the traditional Greek myth reversed:

The abduction of Demeter
This time it is Demeter Hades wants. He
drags her through the garden, throws her to
the ground. It opens like a mouth. Grains scatter
from her hand…
…the wet earth swallows…
…Demeter
Disappears. Persephone falls silent, the
garden grows cold…

Alvarez so aptly implements assonance, alliteration, and internal rhyme into her poems, they are unnoticeable-yet they add musicality to the poetry. Alvarez’s poetic ear is likely innate. Alvarez writes the poems from various viewpoints, which allows the reader an objective omniscience. The wonderful thing about this collection is that even if you are not familiar with Greek mythology, you can appreciate the book for its high-quality poetry, and the story for its narrative arc.

A Web site for Mortal can be found at www.ivyalvarez.com. The Web site for Red Morning Press can be found at www.redmorningpress.blogspot. com, and the book can be purchased from Amazon.com or from Small Press Distribution at www.spdbooks.org.

this review first published on http://www.howjournal.com/reviews-books.html

She scrambles the eggs while the baby howls at her knees. To drown out the racket, she hums and jabs the fork into the yolks… then does a quick sidestep when the baby lunges for her knees.
His little fat hands grasp the air, throwing him off balance. He totters on his heels for a moment then sits hard and rolls back sideways, bumping his head on the floor. He stops crying abruptly and flails his arms in the air like a bug stuck on its back.

The neglect continues: “She’s barely gotten the toast buttered when John Junior starts up again. He’s poopy, she can see it rimming the edges of his diaper… she carries him out to the pickup and puts him squish onto the seat.” The mother-narrator of this story, whose name is Cynthia, justifies her behavior by blaming it on her husband’s possible infidelity: “Cynthia can’t remember when things changed. Maybe it was when she suspected John of sleeping with his secretary.” By telling the story in the third-person, Cynthia can distance herself from her own monstrosity. She lets the reader know she was wrong for neglecting the child. Cynthia notes that she was submissive to her husband before the baby was born: “John and she never fought before. Well, sometimes, but it was always more of a disagreement and once Cynthia apologized, it would be over.” Cynthia, in another attempt to defend her actions and plead forgiveness from the reader, confesses that she was not always a child neglector: “She used to love her life . . . She used to love the feeling of everyone needing her so badly . . . And when the baby fell asleep, she would sit and hold him just as long as he would sleep.”

Another story, “Mooncalf,” begins with the frightening first line, “How you recognize a monster is dependent upon how you view normality.” “Mooncalf” is the tale of Siren, an intelligent woman with cerebral palsy. While she is at college, she believes she is blessed when she meets and marries Chris, a man whom she perceives as good-natured. Soon after they are married, Chris begins to reveal his true character-even when Siren, who speaks in the first person, denies the existence of his temperament, saying, “In our early marriage, I spent my days struggling to fix Chris’s meals . . . Chris almost never fussed.” Then they have a colicky baby whom they name Jonah (apt because of the wailing). Chris’s reaction to Jonah’s constant crying is this (speaking to Siren): “Please don’t misunderstand . . . I know he is a precious gift . . . But some days I wish it were just you and me, like it used to be.” O.K. Reasonably, what parent has not thought this very same thought at least once in his or her early marriage? But not every parent voices this thought, and if one does, the thought usually passes as soon as the words are uttered. Chris’s words are a narrative tactic to reveal more of his character, and a foreshadowing technique. Near the end of the story, we find out just what Chris is made of, when in the middle of the night, as Jonah is crying in the other room and Chris is pacing the floors of the house because he cannot sleep, Siren tells the reader:

I awakened, suddenly to the sound of Chris speaking again. His cadence and tone were strange. His voice was breathy and frantic, and held an edge of panic, “Stopstop- stop-stop-stop-stop-stop!” he said. Jonah’s cries stilled and I heard the side of the crib go back up . . . I lay there listening hard in the stillness and staring at the blackness of the ceiling. An uneasy feeling curled itself around my insides and tightened.

In the story “Wholesale,” a late-adolescent girl with addictive behaviors runs away from home and an alcoholic father. She becomes a drug-addicted young woman and allows men to sexually abuse her in return for her fix. The main character uses drugs and men use her. Akers probably added this story as an allegory-that for some women, attraction to abusive men is an addiction in itself.

The women protagonists in Mary Akers’s stories live in worlds dominated by imperfect men, but they are not perfect characters themselves since they chose to be who they are. They are controlled by “monsters,” but they have become monsters. Yes, they are victims of circumstance, but they are not quick to choose behavioral change or a way out when they are in cognitive dissonance. Akers sums up the collection in this quote from “Wholesale”: ” . . . life can be hell. But also that our choices keep us there, or free us from it, according to our actions.”

Readers will empathize with this book because the “monster” lives inside all of us. Good people keep that monster in check. Readers will also relate to this book because everyone has had at least one bad relationship in his or her life, or gone through a rough period in his or her long-term relationship. Akers writes well-her dialogue and situations are realistic, she wastes no words, her metaphors are aptly used; she applies good hooks, good foreshowing, good character development; her stories are devastating, stark, not obvious; she has a large, non-pretentious vocabulary; she captures the voice of each character according to his or her socialization and education; she knows just what information is needed and which is not for the reader to comprehend the intent of the story; and she knows how to start and end a story. Group all of these strengths together, and the result is a writer who knows how to write a short story. Akers’s can be ranked with Proulx, Hemingway, Carver, and Cheever.

This book is available online at Press 53 at www.press53.com, and at Amazon.com. Akers maintains a Web site, www.maryakers.com, where her biography can be found, as well as a blog at www.maryakers.blogspot.com.

this review first published on http://www.howjournal.com/reviews-books.html

It’s been a very eventful month.

In June, I celebrated my 50th birthday here in
Uruguay. Because I was so far away from many friends
and family, my oldest daughter got stealthy, contacted
my Facebook friends asking them to send her a birthday
video or image, and she put it all together in a ten-minute
miracle video of love and blessings. It was the best gift I have
ever received, hands down. You can watch it here:
http://www.mayafrost.com/blog/2010/06/19/fifty-years-love-adventure/

Tom and I spent most of June traveling around Uruguay in order to
escape the most disruptive stage of the remodel of our farmhouse.
We spent time in Montevideo and also in Punta del Diablo, a small
beach town that’s very quiet during the winter but crazy in summer.
I had an idea for a book I wanted to write there, so I was doing
research and soaking up the vibe of the place. We stayed in a hostel,
which is something I haven’t done in years. It was a fantastic
experience. If you’re headed that way, I highly recommend El
Diablo Tranquilo Hostel: http://www.ElDiabloTranquilo.com

It’s been incredibly exciting to be in Uruguay during the World Cup
and to be part of the celebrations as the country reached the #4 position.
The small town near us (home of one of the players) went absolutely crazy
with each win. You can see some of the videos on my blog at
http://www.MayaFrost.com/blog

And speaking of the blog, I’ve made a big shift.
I am no longer blogging about education.
Rather than writing about skipping the SATs or saving thousands on
study abroad, I’m focusing on things closer to home: life in this
rural area of Uruguay. I wrote a blog post describing my reasons
for making the switch. Here it is: http://bit.ly/crq7B2

So, if you visit my blog, you’ll find stories about the stray dog
that adopted us (and was hit by a car two weeks later), a stray pig
that showed up, the ongoing remodel, the quirky and delightful things
we are learning about life in Uruguay and updates on my writing as it
continues to morph (now finishing a Young Adult novel).

Of course, it’s still about learning and mindfulness, because LIFE
is about learning and mindfulness!

Those of you in the north are celebrating the middle of the summer,
but down here in Uruguay, it’s the middle of the winter. Every
day is an adventure as we test new windows and roof, the roadworthiness
of our decidedly bare-bones car, our ability to make long-lasting
fires in the woodstove, and our patience in living a rural life with
very limited access to the outside world.

Life is full of change, and at 50, I’m grateful to have a chance to
embrace all that lies ahead.

I hope you’re finding your own ways to delight in the changes around you.

(And if you need a little help in seeing your own possibilities, I invite
you to contact me. I’m working with clients by email only these days–
it’s a wonderful way to thoughtfully communicate and TAKE TIME to ponder
the road ahead.)

Happy mid-whatever to you!

Maya

Maya Frost
writer/mindfulness trainer
http://www.MayaFrost.com

How’s your summer/winter going? I’d love to hear from you!
Please drop me a line at Maya@MayaFrost.com and tell me
about the surprises and challenges in your life right now.

U.S. Address:

Bold School Group

14525 SW Millikan Way #15705
Beaverton, OR
97005
US