is like understanding a drum solo.–Tom C. Hunley,
Bigger Than They Appear:
Anthology of Very Short Poems
(Accents Publishing)
On the porch at Wawona he would sit
in his wheelchair and watch the deer.
He spoke with his clear eyes
and his palsied body.
Did you see Ginger today? Ginger was a doe.
Yes, he said, by looking right at you
and raising his eyebrows and stiffening his back.
Do you want to go inside now?
No, he said, pursing his lips and lowering his eyes.
For thirty years he was fed with a spoon
and a spill-proof cup. Sometimes he would choke
and spit up like an infant.
When he had to go, someone had to go with him
and hold him on the toilet and wipe him clean.
Sometimes he would sigh and smile the calmest smile.
When he was happy and excited he would kick his feet
and wave his arms like broken flowers.
The deer came right up to him
and ate the grain scattered at his feet
and sniffed his knees
and breathed with him in the early evening.
–Greg Pape,
Animal Time
Accents Publishing
The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning is hosting one of its quarterly KY Great Writers Series. The featured readers will be Sharon Mauldin Reynolds, Accents Published Tom C. Hunley (of Scotch Tape World), and Paulette Livers.
An open mic will take place before the show, and sign-ups begin at 6:30pm. The open mic will also feature readings from students from the Carnegie Center’s Author Academy.
Check out the Facebook Event page for more info.
| When: | Tuesday, February 9, 2016 @ 7pm |
| Where: | The Carnegie Center |
| 251 W. Second Street Lexington, KY 40507 |
|
| (859) 254-4175 |
On a mark1.
A butterfly counted
my knuckles.
Declared the white
unnecessary.
2.
The wind recounted
to a lake
the color of my eyes.
The red—it said—is a little much.
3.
A tree
hollowed by thunder
painted my mistrust in green.
The bark—it whispered—is not just a cover.
My silence
was not.
-Valentin Dishev,
translated from the Bulgarian
by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer,
The Season of Delicate Hunger:
Anthology of Contemporary Bulgarian Poetry
(Accents Publishing)
Valentin Dishev was born on May 7th, 1962 in Blagoevgrad. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia. He is a publisher and serves as editor-in-chief of Ars, an independent press for Bulgarian literature, as well as editor-in-chief of the online journals Crossroads and DICTUM. He is the creator and curator of the ArsMedia National Literary Festival. Valentin is the author of several poetry and prose books, most recentlyMarguerite and Other Registers (2013). For over 10 years he has hosted literary radio programs on Bulgarian National Radio (Radio Blagoevgrad).
His sense of dislocation was palpable, like a sofa
Thom Ward is sole proprietor of Thom Ward’s Poetry Editing and Proofreading Services. Ward’s poetry collections include Small Boat with Oars of Different Size (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2000) and Various Orbits (Carnegie Mellon, 2004). Ward’s poetry chapbook, Tumblekid, winner of the 1998 Devil’s Millhopper poetry contest, was published by the University of South Carolina-Aiken in 2000. His collection of prose poems, The Matter of the Casket, was published by CustomWords in 2007. Ward teaches creative writing workshops at high schools and colleges around the country, tutors individual poetry students, and edits poetry manuscripts. He is a faculty and advisory board member at Wilkes University’s Graduate Creative Writing program in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Thom Ward lives in western New York with his girlfriend Jennifer and their cat Phantom.
There was a gate,
old and green,
that swung in the wind.
No fence stretched away
on either side anymore,
if ever one had.
The gate stood alone,
open on the meadow,
a seamless drift of land.
To my eye, that gate
organized the whole field
of vision. Everything
circled around the gate,
or radiated out from it,
or passed through it.
Surely I could never think
of crossing that field
and not passing through.
There was an inevitability
to it, and a promise that,
after passing through,
something remarkable
was sure to be revealed
on the other side.
–Frederick Smock,
The Deer at Gethsemani: Eclogues
Accents Publishing
Frederick Smock is associate professor of English at Bellarmine University, where he received the 2005 Wyatt Faculty Award. He has published four previous collections of poems with Larkspur Press. He is also the author of Craft-talk: On Writing Poems, and Pax Intrantibus: A Meditation on the Poetry of Thomas Merton. His poems have appeared in The Antioch Review, The Hudson Review, The Louisville Review, The Merton Journal (UK), Poetry East, Trajectory, and other journals.
Ideas blow in rapidly
like cold fronts
on chilly autumn afternoons
Without the capability
to write
I seek means
to salvage dreams
Must be a way to get
them down before I forget;
maybe keep a tape recorder
by the bed
or rush to the computer
where the whole voluble world
awaits?
Which do I foster
and which surrender
to the subconscious?
10% make it to the hard drive—
the syntax casualties are enormous
–Jude Lally,
I’m Fine but Thanks for Asking
(Accents Publishing)
Jude Lally writes and recites poetry as an outlet for his creative needs and as a means of enlightening, inspiring, engaging and entertaining listeners. Fortunately, Jude’s main source of inspiration in his writing is easily accessible; unfortunately, so many places in the world are not: in 1998 Jude was diagnosed with a rare, degenerative neuromuscular disease called Friedrich’s Ataxia. Jude received a BA in Business Administration in May of 2006. Jude is a member of the poetry group Poezia, occasionally attends The Poet’s Supper and the Artcroft writer’s group outside of Carlisle, KY, and is a regular presenter at the Holler Poets series events.
Only her dressit is not proof
of love
the night train crosses
from one day to another
the door of the cabin opens
alone
Only his eyes
are blue
in the black-and-white photo
but this is not a sign of weakness
nor is it a sign
of life
the night train crosses
from one darkness
to another
the door of the cabin closes
alone
-Petar Tchouhov,
translated from Bulgarian
by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer,
The Season of Delicate Hunger:
Anthology of Contemporary Bulgarian Poetry
(Accents Publishing)
Withered hand turns–Matthew Haughton,
Bigger Than They Appear:
Anthology of Very Short Poems
(Accents Publishing)
(1950)
To escape the tangle
she becomes her sewing needle
plunging through the fabric
of her sea blue blouse.
Again and again
she dives and surfaces,
a skipping stone,
a cormorant,
a marlin
at play in the frozen mists
of the North Atlantic.
Such is her joy
that for minutes, months,
whole seasons at a time,
she is able to forget
the line through her tale.
–Andrew Merton,
Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs
Accents Publishing
Andrew Merton has been a political reporter and columnist for the Gloucester (Massachusetts) Times, The Boston Herald Traveler and the Boston Globe, and a contributing editor with Boston Magazine. His articles and essays have also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Ms. Magazine, Yankee Magazine and The Boston Phoenix. His book Enemies of Choice was published by Beacon Press in 1980, and his anthology In Your Own Voice: A Writer’s Reader was published by Harper Collins in 1995. His poetry has appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Powhatan Review, Paper Street, The Comstock Review, Silk Road, Third Wednesday, The American Journal of Nursing and elsewhere. He teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire.