Coffee House Confessions Reviewed by Boston Small Press & Poetry Scene

Congratulations to Ellaraine Lockie, author of the Silver Birch Press poetry release COFFEE HOUSE CONFESSIONS on another stellar review — this one from Boston Small Press & Poetry Scene. Here’s the review…

COFFEE HOUSE CONFESSIONS
by Ellaraine Lockie

Reviewed by Zvi A. Sesling

How many times have you sat in a coffee house or café observing people, taking notes or writing poetry? Most poets have at one time or another. In the back of Coffee House Confessions, Ellaraine Lockie’s tenth volume of poetry, it states she, “writes every day in a coffee shop no matter where she is in the world.”

Often we find her in a Starbucks, but no matter, the poems carry humor and keen observation as in White Noise and Other Muses:

The woman sitting next to me in Starbucks says
I wish I were as dedicated to something
as you to whatever you do here every day
Little does she know I’m eating her alive
Dissecting her and spitting her out on paper 

Or in another poem titled Ashes:

He’s been to this Starbucks before
Someone at a nearby table says
he rotates to avoid arrest
A mountain man or maybe Santa Claus look
Except skinny as a stage-four Jesus
Guitar on top of his grocery cart
over piles of clothes and a bag of cat food
Cat food, when there’s no place for a cat
Twenty-six degrees last night and damp

But not everything is stateside or Starbucks. Indeed we find her in Italy and Portugal and other unnamed locations, yet each poem provides insight into the people at each site.

A few samples include Man About Town in which “His stride was a study in meter/And any female looking his way/from the Leaf and Bean/as he crossed the street/would become an immediate student”

Or there is the study of a female in Short-Shorts on Midlife Legs: “Does she know/how the back of her thighs/look without shadow of shade

Ms. Lockie knows what to look for and how to put it down on paper. The latter was in a Peet’s somewhere that doesn’t really matter because it is the observation and its placement on the page that brings it all to life.

In reading this I was often chuckling or smiling inside at the descriptions of people who might turn purple if they read this book and recognize themselves. Are you one of them? After all, one of the coffee houses could be in your town.

About the Reviewer: Zvi A. Sesling is the author of King of the Jungle and Across Stones of Bad Dreams, editor for Boston Small Press & Poetry Scene, Muddy River Poetry Review, and Bagel Bards Anthology 7.

Visit Boston Small Press & Poetry Scene at this link.

Joan Didion Reads Honey Bear to Quintana Roo

In this charming photo from 1969, novelist/screenwriter/essayist/writing icon Joan Didion reads HONEY BEAR by Dixie Willson to three-year-old daughter Quintana Roo Dunne. Since Didion is a writer par excellence, we are assuming that she picked only the best books to read to her daughter — and it follows that Honey Bear is a classic.

Wow! Yes! None other than Tom Wolfe — author of one of my favorite novels THE BONFIRES OF THE VANITIES and many other fiction and nonfiction works — claims that Honey Bear by Dixie Willson was the piece of literature that inspired him to become a writer (no kidding!). Because Wolfe’s take on Willson’s book is so fascinating and informative, I’m including an excerpt from his musings below.

From “The Books that Made the Writers” (YALE ALUMNI MAGAZINE) by Tom Wolfe:

“…I was… galvanized…by a writer who never rated so much as a footnote to American literary history: Dixie Willson. Dixie Willson wrote, and Maginel Wright Barney illustrated, a book called Honey Bear in 1923. My mother used to read it to me at bedtime long before I knew one letter of the alphabet from another. Over and over she read it to me. I was small, but like many people my age I had already mastered the art of having things my way. I had memorized the entire poem in the passive sense that I could tell whenever Mother skipped a passage in the vain hope of getting the 110th or 232nd reading over with a little sooner. Oh, no-ho-ho…there was no fooling His Majesty the Baby. He wanted it all. He couldn’t get enough of it.

Honey Bear is a narrative poem about a baby kidnapped from a bassinet by a black bear. Maginel Wright Barney drew and painted in the japanais Vienna Secession style. To me, her pictures were pure magic. But Honey Bear’s main attraction was Dixie Willson’s rollicking and rolling rhythm: anapestic quadrameter with spondees at regular intervals. One has to read it out loud in order to be there:

Once upon a summer in the hills by the river
Was a deep green forest where the wild things grew.
There were caves as dark as midnight—there were tangled trees and thickets
And a thousand little places where the sky looked through.

The Willson beat made me think writing must be not only magical but fun…I resolved then and there, lying illiterate on a little pillow in a tiny bed, to be a writer. In homage to Dixie Willson, I’ve slipped a phrase or two from Honey Bear into every book I’ve written. I tucked the fourth line, above, into the opening chapter of The Right Stuff (page 4) from memory as I described how not-yet-an-Astronaut Pete Conrad’s and his Jean Simmons-lookalike wife Jane’s little white brick cottage near Jacksonville Naval Air Base was set in a thick green grove of pine trees with ‘a thousand little places where the sun peeks through.’ Peeks… looked… Ah, well, hey ho…”

Read more of of “The Books that Made the Writers” at YALE ALUMNI REVIEW.

Photo: Joan Didion Reads Honey Bear by Dixie Willson to daughter Quintana Roo Dunne, Los Angeles Times, 1969, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Note: Honey Bear by Dixie Willson is currently out of print, but copies are usually available on ebay (starting at around  $100)…

The Garrick Year, novel by Margaret Drabble, Read by Paul Newman

In the photo at right, Paul Newman reads THE GARRICK YEAR, a 1964 novel by British author Margaret Drabble. Written when she was 24, a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and married to an actor, THE GARRICK YEAR is an insider’s account of a young woman’s life in the theater.

I don’t know if Newman’s face expresses an “Oh, those Brits” reaction to the book or if he’s just squinting in the sun. (Where are your sunglasses, Paul?) Also don’t know if this shot was taken on a movie set or while Newman was racing one of his cars. (It was probably snapped on the set of the 1967 movie COOL HAND LUKE, since Newman looks as if he’s dressed for a chain gang.)

In 2009, Roger Angell wrote a “Summer Reading” piece in the New Yorker where he discussed his love for THE GARRICK YEAR (he rereads the book each summer) — and why he thinks it’s the prolific Drabble’s most “alive” novel. Read Angell’s article here.

Find THE GARRICK YEAR by Margaret Drabble at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Margaret Drabble is the author of 17 novels, including The Sea Lady, The Seven Sisters, The Peppered Moth, and The Needle’s Eye. She has written biographies of Arnold Bennett and Angus Wilson, and is the editor of the fifth and sixth editions of The Oxford Companion to English Literature. For her contributions to contemporary English literature, she was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2008.

Coffee House Confessions Reviewed at Quill and Parchment

The recent Silver Birch Press poetry release COFFEE HOUSE CONFESSIONS by Ellaraine Lockie has garnered a rave from reviewer Ed Bennett at Quill and Parchment (quillandparchment.com).

Here are some excerpts from Bennett’s review:

Christmas has arrived early this year with the publication of Ellaraine Lockie’s latest book Coffee House Confessions. As always, Ms. Lockie has assembled a group of poems that allows one to read and then spend some time pondering the relationship between her words and our own emotional landscape. The theme of this book revolves around Ms. Lockie’s personal discipline of going to a coffee shop, no matter where she may be, and draw inspiration from the rest of the patrons and the staff. The resulting collection is a laser eyed look at humanity and the way we interact in this caffeinated laboratory…

Ellaraine Lockie has written ten collections of poetry and, not surprisingly, she has won awards both in the United States and in the United Kingdom. This latest book carries the characteristic stamp of her work: accessible language with creative imagery and an understanding eye that sees deeper into the realities of the world.  Despite the familiarity of style, each of her books is a unique work and Coffee House Confessions is no exception. While we may see our local coffee shop as a good place for a brew, Ms. Lockie sees a workshop of human interaction. What we may dismiss as a fleeting gesture, she finds a more complex meaning.
 
Yes, I knew the merits of this book before I cracked the cover but each poem gave me an enjoyment that so few other writers can muster. This is a wonderful book by a talented poet. I recommend it highly, especially for those summer days sitting outside at your favorite coffee shop.

Read the entire review at Quill and Parchment.

Ellaraine Lockie Featured in Women Write Resistance Poetry Anthology

 

Ellaraine Lockie — author of the Silver Birch Press poetry release COFFEE HOUSE CONFESSIONS — is featured in WOMEN WRITE RESISTANCE: Poets Resist Gender Violence (Hyacinth Girl Press, February 2013) edited by Laura Madeline Wiseman. The collection includes work by over 100 women poets. 

This generous and ambitious anthology is a gathering of necessary and affirming poems written by some of the best poets writing in America today.” Kwame Dawes, author of DUPPY CONQUEROR (Copper Canyon Press, 2013) and editor of PRAIRIE SCHOONER

The first California reading — and first national reading — to celebrate the book’s release will feature appearances by Ellaraine Lockie, Judy Westhale, Rebecca Foust, and Dawn McGuire. (Details below.)

WHAT: Reading to celebrate the release of WOMEN WRITE RESISTANCE, an anthology of poetry about resisting gender violence. 

WHEN: Saturday, May 11th at 7 p.m.

WHERE: Frank Bette Center for the Arts, 1601 Paru Street, at Lincoln Avenue, Alameda, California 94501, 510-523-6957, frankbettecenter.org.

Mirror, Poem by Sylvia Plath, Read by Megan Fox

MIRROR 
by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful –
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

##

PHOTO: Actress Megan Fox curls up with SYLVIA PLATH: Collected Poems.

 

Since May is “Get Caught Reading” Month, we will try to feature photos of well-known people reading books where we can, in fact, make out what they are reading. But this isn’t always easy — since the covers for many books change over the years.

On several obscure (to me) websites, I was able to find the cover for the edition of SYLVIA PLATH: Collected Poems that Megan Fox ponders in the photo above — but unable to locate it at the major online booksellers. It seems that the volume now sports a cover with a photo of Plath looking into the camera, in contrast to how she was depicted in the book’s previous incarnation — a coloring-book outline drawing of her looking down.

Another change in the newer edition: The word “the” has been added before “collected poems” — perhaps to let the reader know that this is “the” definitive collection of Plath’s work.

Coffee House Confessions Reviewed at Examiner.com

Congratulations to Ellaraine Lockie, author of the Silver Birch Press poetry release COFFEE HOUSE CONFESSIONS, for her book’s review in the May 2, 2013 Examiner. We are including the stellar review in its entirety below.

A POET FINDS A MUSE
Examiner.com review
by Cheryl Wyneken

Ellaraine Lockie’s book of poetry, Coffee House Confessions (Silver Birch Press, 2013), piques my interest with its fresh ground coffee aroma that brings the promise of insights into life rising on each page. It introduces us to people of all sizes and shapes, cultures, ages, race and political or religious outlooks: a Teddy Bear man, raking pebbles in a Buddhist Zen sand garden out front, a Stockbroker in a Silicon Valley suit, an Italian coffee maker/at the Bar La Cisteria, the ghosts of Lord Byron, Hans Christian Andersen and Luis Vaz de Camoes. As the title suggests, the collection is a compilation of the insights Lockie has gained from watching people come and go in coffee shops around the world where she arrives daily with pen and pad in hand.

As a true poet she uses vibrant images: Starbucks, Santa Claus, stage four Jesus, Mountain Man, Mobile, pack of Camels, Salem cigarettes and Valium. Her delightful free style poems are also enhanced by her use of poetic compression and alliteration: bristle/brush and lettering/lizards.

Lockie opens the collection with “Java Genetics,” an analysis of the connection between storytelling around campfires of prehistory, to today’s coffee houses and poets, likening their relationship to a seed (coffee bean) that has been planted and evolved in our DNAs. She explains her use of the word confessions in “White Noise and Other Muses”: Little does she know I’m eating her alive. “The Privacy of Public” deals with how troubles in life can often be dealt with better under the restraint of strangers watching: Something horrible here that can be alluded to/…perhaps only in the privacy of public. In “The Young and The Restless,” she finds memories from her own life in one coffee house as she watches the antics of a lively dog: The woman ties her charge to the table legs/…He sniffs the air then yanks the table toward /leftovers in a garbage can.

The last entry, “You’ve Come a Long Way Baby,” brings us to a typical coffee shop occasion portrayed as a scene in Edwardian England where the poet has come to sell her chapbooks and a sale buys the day’s quota of caffeine.

I recommend this entertaining and well rendered collection of poems.

Coffee House Confessions is available in Kindle and paperback formats at Amazon or ordered from bookstores.

Cover photo: Nick Warzin (nickwarzin.com)

I have measured out my life in coffee mugs, poem by Dale Sprowl

I have measured out my life in coffee mugs
by Dale Sprowl

I have measured out my life in coffee mugs
Mornings I choose my mug based on my mood;
Today it is grandma MJ’s shiny, black mug
which sits just right in my hand
and holds the coffee (and me) perfectly.
 
Another day may bring the distant warm waters of Caneel Bay,
While tradewinds stroke my face and queen palms dance.
The family mug reminds me of Christmases long ago,
And Conky’s mug reminds me of the yellow rose of Texas
Who made the best breakfasts.
 
But some days, I choose the stainless steel Harley mug
as I ride up the coast between Laguna and Long Beach. 

##

Photo: Caneel Bay, St. John, Virgin Islands, mug available at zazzle.com.

Happy Birthday, Annie Dillard

April 30, 2013 marks the 68th birthday of Annie Dillard, best known as the author of PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK, which won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Dillard spent decades as a creative writing professor — and captured many of her insights in THE WRITING LIFE, a collection of short essays published in 1990.

Here are some excerpts from what I consider one of the best books about writing — for its  insider tips, advice, inspiration, and motivation…

“One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better.” 

“A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, ‘Simba!’” 

“There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress & its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, & the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.” 

THE WRITING LIFE is available at Amazon.com.

Note from Carolyn Cassady

 

Poet Joan Jobe Smith forwarded yesterday’s post – where we wished Carolyn Cassady a happy 90th birthday — to the grand lady herself, and received this reply (excerpt):

Many thanks to one and all. I did have a delightful day …The house looks like a funeral parlor with all the flowers…life goes on at 90 and gratitude for health. XXCC

Thanks for your note, Carolyn. Wishing you many more happy, healthy years! 

Photo: Carolyn Cassady in the early 1950s with Jack Kerouac and her daughter Cathleen.