DIVINE Madness by Paul Pines

DIVINE Madness by Paul Pines

New York: Marsh Hawk Press, 2012

Pages: 64


Cover: Paperback


Price: 15.00


Reviewed by Pam Rosenblatt







With a beautiful, colorful, abstract cover painting by Douglas Leichter, Paul Pines’ DIVINE Madness deals with a lot of things: religion, mythological figures, death, life, communication and of course mental illness, etc. His book is divided into three sections: Book 1: The Serpent In the Bird, Book 2: The Absent One, and Book 3: Who Knows The Knower.

In Book One:The Serpent In the Bird, Pines reveals his intentions for the 64 page trilogy in his first poem, “1 ● It’s not about us”.He suggests what we as readers should expect to discover throughout in DIVINE Madness:



It’s not about us

but what

connects us



a world

forged of links



the parrot’s beak

in the lion’s jaw



divine madness

encrypting our sleep



like Puritans sniffing out

God’s fingerprints



messages born again

and again from the rubble

of our assumptions



what we listen for



as if decoding

the depth

of diamond



or entering a winter landscape

suddenly don’t know

what we thought







until a child

who

for a moment lost

reappears full grown

to tell us

we need not

fear death



if touched by

the consciousness

of the gods

in men



Pines has introduced gently introduced us to DIVINE Madness. He begins with “It’s not about us/but what/connects us” and ends his poem “1 ● It’s not about us”with his advice that “we need not/fear death//if touched by/the conscious/of the gods/in men”.

Pines suggests that like the mythological serpent who lives inside of the bird (as the first section’s title reads), there are “gods [whose ‘consciousness’ lives] in men”.Some psychiatrists would call this mental illness. And since this book is titled DIVINE Madness, the readers may think so also.

As George Economou blurbs on Pines’ book’s back cover, “With extraordinary daring and inspiration, Paul Pines has dedicated the art he has exquisitely crafted for a lifetime to the service of the divine madness that has always distinguished poetry from mere writing.” He also comments on how Pines “captures the universal analogy anew by ‘connecting us to the consciousness of the gods in men’ …. ”

The way Pines writes about this ‘divine madness” is intriguing,after all perhaps this contact with “the gods” is a gift, or - better yet - maybe it’s mental telepathy. Whichever Pines is implying, the analogies/metaphors are there.

Throughout civilization, there have been myths and legends about serpents being powerful, evil, and frightening to humans. Now, in 2012, Pines suggests that, like The Serpent in the Bird, there are “gods” inside the minds of men. How creativeand brilliant, yet how disconcerting at the same time.

DIVINE Madness is filled with metaphors, vivid imagery, and has a pretty consistent experimental structure. While an abstract poet, he uses similar themes with different twists throughout his book. One topic often written about is birds, especially in Book Two: THE ABSENT ONE. His love for these feathered friends can be seen in “20 ● Did Audubon”:



Did Audubon

In the woods around Natchez

think of birds

as aspects of

his inner landscape



a mockingbird

in the marsh

the secretive

part of himself



the pileated woodpecker

his relentlessness



and what of

the thrush





whose song

bends the spectrum



filling the pine grove

of his heart?



Did December’s long beams

touch something



that moved in him

unseen



which he could neither identify

nor tame



but knew

only as a shadow



at day’s end when brandy

staves off dampness



that accompanies

the dark



a shadow

that moves still in his drawings



of flightless wings

stiff legs and talons



in stuffed owls looking down

from mantels



decoys on shelves

or paneled walls



did he imagine these too

had their place



fragments of unrealized

desire



known to him only

as shadows at day’s end?





While this poem is about mental illness or how “December’s long beams/touch something/that moved in him/unseen/which he could neither identify/nor tame/but knew/only as a shadow/at day’s end when brandy/staves off dampness”, Pines describes various birds so beautifully that we can almost visualize them: “a mockingbird/in the marsh”; “the pileated woodpecker/his relentlessness”; “the thrush/whose song/bends the spectrum”. Even “the stuffed owls looking down/from mantels/decoys on shelves/or paneled walls” have a place in his world where everything is “touched by the consciousness of the gods

in men”.

DIVINE Madness’s back cover has a blurb by Robert Kelly that reads, “[Pines] is the quiet sage who makes everything in his room a tender plaything.” He refers to Pines’ poem “20 ● Did Audubon”.

Pines appreciates birds, living or deceased. He even writes about “birds in an ice storm/as if nothing were/more important than/the direction of our intention” in Book Two: The Absent One’s poem “28: Grief strips us bare”and about “… reef birds/feeding on life beneath/the surface” in poem “35: Starting out from a Spain” found in Book Three: Who Knows The Knower. Pines’ birds seem to have a purpose, or a direction, and have a functional existence.

Pines writes how it’s important to know one’s role in life, and to accept it, as seen in Book Three: Who Knows The Knower’s poem “33: The sea beyond bare trees”:



The sea beyond bare trees

under a winter sky

extends to the horizon



highlighting branches

mossed by wind

skinned by salt air



golden finches at the feeder

blue and white nut-hatches

pecking at rind



He understands the role of salt

the geometry of shells

the bios of ocean



how marine life

melts into stone shelves

hollows out

submerged cathedrals

for worship crabs

where the eel of solitude

electrifies its prey



as armies clash wave

upon wave

in the agitation of forces

seen and unseen



he can watch

the gods make love

in the privacy of

his heart



and continue to chop the carrots

dice the garlic.



In this poem, Pines hasthese non-living or living things do their normal routines. The poem’s voice “understands the role of salt/the geometry of shells/the bios of ocean”. Why “he can [even] watch/the gods make love/in the privacy of/his heart” and remain so detached that he can “continue to chop the carrots/dice the garlic”.

As he writes in the final poem “46: but shall we leave it here” in Book Three: Who Know The Knower, “but shall we leave it here/with a drop of dew/on a leaf//stars snaking through/the heaven//the underworld/in the Milky Way//to navigate/the world as it forms around us/the universe”.

Here questions are raised that are probably thousands of years old like: Is a god, or are there gods? How did the world begin?Is there a heaven and hell? And will we ever find the answers to such inquiries?

In “46: but shall we leave it here”, the poet also asks:



the voice

that asks us



is it hard

to look upon the fear

in your father’s face?



who calls the ancient one



HaShem?



Paul Pines presents and deals with difficult topics throughout this read. And if asreaders we keep an open mind, we can appreciate and understand Paul Pines’DIVINE Madness.





###

Gloucester Writers Center Presents Nov. 14, 2012

Gloucester Writers Center Presents Nov. 14, 2012


Come see these great poets. Afaa Michael Weaver is a featured poet in the new issue of Ibbetson Street due out this month. Sam Cornish is the Boston Poet Laureate and author of Dead Beats ( Ibbetson Street Press), and I was proud to have poet Martha Collins as a featured reader at The Somerville News Writers Festival. This is a great new center in Gloucester, so all should come out and support it. And thanks to Endicott College Creative Writing Student Maxwell Snelling (An intern at the Center) for informing me about this!--Doug Holder/Endicott College/Office of Ibbetson Street Press

The Hungry Ear Poems of Food and Drink edited by Kevin Young

 
The Hungry Ear

Poems of Food & Drink

edited by Kevin Young

Bloomsbury

New York NY

Copyright © 2012 by Kevin Young

ISBN: 978-1-60819-551-0

Hardbound, 300 pages. $25

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

There are a lot of anthologies out there, a number of them about food.  Few, however,

top Kevin Young’s entry.  Young, an excellent poet in his own right, does a fine job of selecting gastronomical verse from a marvelous and diverse group of poets.

To name just a few, Mary Oliver, Seamus Heaney, Yusef Komunyakaa, Lucille Clifton, Elizabeth Bishop, Mark Doty, Billy Collins, Ted Kooser, Charles Reznikoff, Langston Hughes, William Carlos Williams, Matthew Dickman, Jane Hirschfield, Charles Simic, Frank O’Hara, W.B. Yeats, Philip Larkin, Charles Baudelaire, Pablo Neruda, Sylvia Plath and a nice selection of Young’s own poetry.

On the humorous side Roy Blount Jr.’s Song to Bacon brings it home:

Consumer groups have gone and taken

Some of the savor out of bacon.

Protein-per-penny in bacon they say,

Equals needles-per-square-inch of hay.

Well, I know, after cooking all

            (You also get a lot of lossage

            in life, romance, and country sausage.)

And I will vote for making it cheaper,

Wider, longer, leaner, deeper

But let’s not throw the baby, please

Out with the (visual rhyme here) grease.

There’s nothing crumbles like bacon still,

And I don’t think there ever will

Be anything, whate’er you use

For meat, that chews like bacon chews.

and also: I wish these groups would tell

Me whether they counted in the smell,

The smell of it cooking’s worth  $2.10 a pound.

And how bout the sound?

And then there are some tantalizing opening lines such as Hot by Craig Arnold: 

I’m cooking Thai—you bring the beer./The same order, although it’s been a year/

--friendships based on food are rarely stable./We should have left ours at the table

There is Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Green Chile:

I prefer red chile over my eggs

and potatoes for breakfast.

Adrienne Rich begins Peeling Onions thus:

Only to have a grief

equal to all these tears!

There’s not a sob in my chest.

And finally there is Howard Nemerov’s two-line tribute to Bacon & Eggs:

The chicken contributes,

But the pig gives his all.

These are just a few of the selections in this volume worth devouring. In often intriguing or delightful verse there is discourse on melons, berries, meat, vegetables, fruits – enough to fill a supermarket or your refrigerator and pantry.  It covers appetizers, main courses, desserts, celebrations, holidays and the seasons. The views of food and their relationship to us are there for our discovery.

If you are a fan of food – and who is not, even if dieting – then this book will whet your appetite and crave a snack.

______________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling is author of King of the Jungle (Ibbetson Street, 2010), Across Stones of Bad Dreams (Cervena Barva, 2011) and the soon to be published Fire Tongue (Cervena Barva). He is Editor of Muddy River Poetry Review and Bagel Bards Anthology #7.

Poet Manson Solomon: A well traveled poet with the wisdom of 'Solomon'

Manson Solomon fishing in Nova Scotia

Poet Manson Solomon: A well traveled poet with the wisdom of 'Solomon'




By Doug Holder




Early on Manson Solomon had a bad case of wanderlust--that brought him to many countries, advanced degrees, and a successful business. He is the rare bird that combines business acumen with artistic talent. Solomon wrote the News:





“I emerged from the womb with a mission to be a writer with a large trust fund. Said trust fund being inexplicably absent, I took the road more traveled, {acquiring graduate degrees in Economics, Psychology and Philosophy from the London School of Economics, Columbia and Harvard,] engaging in various academic, artistic and entrepreneurial pursuits — in New York, London, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, Nova Scotia, Wellesley, Cambridge – I am currently a member of the Bagel Bards of Somerville, Mass.”





Doug Holder: What was it like for a Jew in South Africa in the 1950's?



Manson Solomon: It was like living in Newton or Brookline. It was like a ghetto. People were from immigrant backgrounds who would cluster in the suburbs. As far as the literary scene here is a clue. When I left and had my farewell party--I read from Emerson and Thoreau. There was no one local worth reading. Now you have a couple of people like Nadine Gordimer, Fugard, etc... that I read.



DH: Why did you leave South Africa?



MS: I left when I was 20 or 21. All my interests, all my soul, simply were with Western culture...particularly American literature and music. I loved Gershwin and Berlin--all that spoke to me. Again I asked:" Why am I here?" I didn't know. South Africa was too provincial and confining for me.



DH: You had a sever case of the wanderlust. You traversed Europe--picking up degrees--probably picking up fodder for your poetry--did you have any mentors at the time?



MS: I don't think I had any mentors. I learned from people who might have listened to me, people whose work I read, but I can't point to a teacher and say this person inspired me to do one or the other thing.



DH: For a while you had a life in the academy.



MS: I did. I majored in economics and business because I figured I had to make a living and I thought  how could I make a living from studying the literature and humanities?



DH: You left the academy, and poetry, when you started a family. Did the family life prevent you from having a creative one?



MS: For me there was no time to do anything creative. I had to pay the tuition bills. If I didn't have a family I probably would have explores a more creative life in writing and poetry.



DH: Do you think poets and writers are in need of more business acumen?



MS: Generally. I really didn't like business and economics but I came to learn it wasn't a bad thing. I can make money much faster for projects than say an artist or academic who is going for a grant.



DH: You got your PhD in Philosophy from Columbia University. What did your dissertation concern?



MS: It was a study of what goes into making a judgment of something. If you are saying something is good are you describing it? Or are you approving it; urging someone to like i?. I tried to tease out the different parts of making a judgment. My great contribution to philosophy. (Laugh)



DH: Why did you leave Columbia?



MS: Well it was during the tumult of the 60s. I finished my course work, and then I secured a fellowship to Hebrew University in Israel to teach. Then I took off with friends to live off the land in Nova Scotia. When I finished my dissertation at Columbia, I came to Harvard as a visiting fellow in philosophy. I spent eight years at Harvard.



DH: You started a successful real estate business. Why did you switch paths in life?



MS: It was an accident. I wanted to get out of Cambridge for the country. I bought up distressed real estate, rehabbed it, and sold it for a profit.



DH: A lot of your poetry is infused with nature imagery. Who or what influences you?



MS: That's true. What influences me most is going to my house in Nova Scotia every summer. It overlooks the ocean. I have been doing that for 40 years.



DH: You have had a number of poetry publication credits since you retired 5 years ago.



MS: Yes. I have been in the Muddy River Review, Bagel Bards Anthology, Ibbetson Street, Lyrical Somerville, and others.



DH: How do you write a poem?



MS: I'm walking a long . I see something--something happens--I jot down ideas--go away--come back--after awhile I flesh it out.







WINTER HAS COME







Winter has come



quietly



tumbling white



out of the grey



grey sky.



Trees stand



to attention



pointing blindly.



Scattered clusters



of dead oak leaves



snagged on the outstretched fingers,



orange-brown tatters, cling



to the stiff, empty coat-racks



stark witnesses



to the creep



of the insidious white



along the bark’s crevices.



Blanched bladelets accept



without protest



the enveloping ice



until they disappear



entombed



deep-frozen.



Forsaken by the sun,



starved into submission,



the earth yields



to the suffocating pillow of snowflakes,



life drained from its desiccated veins



it draws a final sigh,



exhales



and lies still



in its white, white silent shroud.



No birds, no squirrels, no blooms,



no song.



No gentle breezes stirring the



odorless air.



Only the steady drift



of the accumulating crystals



smothering,



embalming



the colorless earth.



Nothing moves.




- Manson Solomon

God Lights His Candles Poems By Dorothy Morris

God Lights His Candles

Poems

By Dorothy Morris

With an Introduction by Sam Cornish

Ibbetson Press

Somerville MA

ISBN: 978-0-9846614-2-8

52 Pages

$15.00

Review by Dennis Daly

Today’s society undervalues serenity and that is too bad. In other eras serenity has flourished as a positive concept promoting sometimes poetry and sometimes prayer and sometimes merging the two. Francis of Assisi, for example, could not have written his revolutionary Canticle of the Sun, combining both pagan pantheism and Christian monotheism, unless his soul centered on sereneness and a profound sereneness at that.

Dorothy E. Morris in her book of poems, God Lights His Candles, draws from an obvious reservoir of spiritual serenity to compose her quicksilver images of natural and ritual happiness. Her poem Images is a good starting point. Like all good imagistic poetry her three subjects interest us with texture and emotion. Here’s the first image,

On a looping wire

Myriad starlings squat

Like black Majorca pearls.

The second image turns ducks into a line of obedient monks. Did I mention that serenity can, but need not, be eremitic? The poet puts a little twist in the third image,

It’s been three years,

I saw a crimson cardinal.

Was it you?

The sadness at a glimpse of that flamboyant bird offered here has no sharp edges. Serenity persists.

In Spring: Beach Walk the poet turns the sun into a toddler playing hide and seek, then, as he carries the burden of original sin, sends him on his way seeking redemption.  The poem ends with these lines,

Out of darkness

Night to light

Traversing the way

In search of

Eternal grace.

In our modern world bringing up grace as a poetic motif doesn’t happen. Brave woman!

I don’t believe the poem July Benediction works well independently. However it does further the context and sets up what comes after. By the way, the first four lines of this poem do create a wonderful stand-alone image. Here they are,

Twilight,

The sails are coming down.

Sun is waning.

Serenity.

Morris’ version of serenity again does not exclude melancholy. But it is a considered thoughtful melancholy. In Elegy the poet says,

A chill.

Was it only the fear of ice

Or the cold to come

That brought sudden despair?

Or something deeper,

A long-ago September

When summer ended,

Bringing regret, guilt or grief.

The poem entitled Advent 2007 takes place within the confines of the poet’s car. While listening to the Magnificat sung by the Mormon Temple Choir, she meditates on the sun’s reflection on the bay’s surface in front of her. Images of her childhood are recalled and the lost cleanliness that the water of baptism offered, and that strange word “grace” shows up again. Morris explains,

In my car mirror I watch the sun

Reflecting on the water of the bay

I think: grace

How one might dip one’s fingers

In the water

Or naked, immerse oneself

In the icy pool

To be clean.

Another poem which speaks of rebirth is After The Storm: Winter 2007-2008. It begins with childhood observations touched with pagan magic and then proceeds to adult images gleaned after a Nor’easter had struck. Once again a hint of sadness: the poet likens the iced up trees to a heart’s brittleness. On the other hand even the “the dead of winter” becomes a hopeful time of promise in this poet’s eyes. Morris says,

Why do they call it

The Dead of Winter?

When the tiniest blade

Brings promise,

And one can and must hope.

In Changeling the poet gives us a compelling image of the ocean personified. Morris speaks from memory of the sea’s many moods: the rage, the tempest, and the thunderous roar. The scene then changes to the present. The poet concludes,

But today

With the sun shining on you,

You seem almost serene,

Tranquil, gentle

As with a sigh

You glide gracefully to shore

Notice the use of the word “gracefully.”  These pieces are most assuredly imagist poems with a spiritual bent.

All religions use symbols in their rituals. Sometimes these symbols become so powerful they merge into the reality that they represent. Transubstantiation is one of them. Morris borrows this symbol from Catholicism in her poem Eucharist. Then she does something different. She describes the ordinary transference of the host from priest to communicant in a way that transforms her into a mother of divinity, a Madonna. Morris accomplishes this with these simple lines,

I hold the Host

Making a cup.

Like Mother Mary

I lift him up.

Another poem set in church is Holy Thursday. The poet begins in a tangle of trees, a pagan setting and ends at evening Mass where she observes the regeneration of human- kind. The poet marvels,

In the pew before us

A small blonde woman in a loose blouse

Prays.

Her husband turns to look at her

Then gently, reverently pats her belly.

In the poem All Hallows Eve the poet espies one more mother and child moment. A three year old child hops off his bicycle and offers his nearby mother two dandelions. The poet continues,

“For you, Mom,” he said proudly.

She laughed, “Two weeds.”

“Lucky you,” I called to her.

Sometimes I wonder if God is three years old.

Neat finish. Nice sentiment.

Now find that quiet spot within your selves and give Morris’ book a try.

********** To order go to   http://ibbetsonpress.com

Book Launch Dec 2, 2012:With Robert Lowell and His Circle Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz, & Others by Kathleen Spivack

Please celebrate with us!

The Harvard Bookstore and the Grolier Poetry Bookshop

invite you to the book launch of

With Robert Lowell and His Circle

Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz, & Others

by Kathleen Spivack

A memoir of a famous poetry circle

published by the University Press of New England, November, 2012

Sunday, December 2, 2012, 4-6 p.m.

Co-hosted by the Harvard Bookstore and the Grolier Poetry Bookshop

Refreshment, books, and celebration at both locations

The Harvard Bookstore: 1256 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA, 617-661-1515

The Grolier Poetry Bookshop: 6 Plympton St, Cambridge, MA, 617-547-4648

****************

****************

The book is available for pre-order through the University Press of New England, and will be released on November 13.

Call toll-free, 1-800-421-1561, email university.press@dartmouth.edu, or visit their website here.

Also available at your local bookstores and online.

****************

"This book is absorbing and alive, human and compelling . . . the best memoir yet about Robert Lowell."
-- Steven Gould Axelrod, University of California, Riverside

"A portrait [of Lowell] that serves to define his role as poet and teacher in fresh and significant ways . . . . This is a memoir that will make an impact right away and that will be referred to by scholars, readers and biographers for many years to come."
-- Thomas Travisano, Hartwick College

"I devoured your book in one sitting last weekend; it's extraordinarily evocative of the poet and his time, your time. Thank you so much for writing it . . ."
-- Don Share, Senior Editor, Poetry Magazine

****************

With Robert Lowell and His Circle

Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz, & Others

by Kathleen Spivack

A memoir of a famous poetry circle

In 1959 Kathleen Spivack won a fellowship to study at Boston University with Robert Lowell. Her fellow students were Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, among others. Thus began a relationship with the famous poet and his circle that would last to the end of his life in 1977 and beyond. Spivack presents a lovingly rendered story of her time among some of the most esteemed artists of a generation. Part memoir, part loose collection of anecdotes, artistic considerations, and soulful yet clear-eyed reminiscences of a lost time and place, hers is an intimate portrait of the often suffering Lowell, the great and near great artists he attracted, his teaching methods, his private world, and the significant legacy he left to his students. Through the story of a youthful artist finding her poetic voice among literary giants, Spivack thoughtfully considers how poets work. She looks at friendships, addiction, despair, perseverance and survival, and how social changes altered lives and circumstances. This is a beautifully written portrait of friends who loved and lived words, and made great beauty together.

A touching and deeply revealing look into the lives and thoughts of some of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, With Robert Lowell and His Circle will appeal to writers, students, and thoughtful literary readers, as well as to scholars.

****************

At the Feet of the Master: Designer and Publisher Steve Glines

At the Feet of the Master: Designer and Publisher Steve Glines

.

Doug Holder

 One of the major reasons the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville is still around is because of Steve Glines. Glines has been in the business of designing and publishing since the 1970’s when he had a small shop in Harvard Square. Since those days Glines has worked for magazines, high tech companies, taught college and did consultation work worldwide. I met Glines some years back at a meeting of the Stone Soup Poets at the Middle East Restaurant in Cambridge. Since then Glines and I have collaborated on a number of projects, but the most consistent one has been publishing poetry books, and putting out the lit mag Ibbetson Street. Glines, 60, is an energetic man with an easy laugh, and is the kind of guy who likes to have a lot of things on his plate. Glines founded the Wilderness House Literary Review http://whlreview.com  and has his own publishing press the Wilderness House Press. Glines is a member of Somerville’s literary group the Bagel Bards that meet at the Au Bon Pain in Davis Square, Somerville. I recently caught up with him to chat about publishing, design, and whatever came to the Master’s mind.

Doug Holder:  What is a good product?

Steve Glines: A good product is one that everyone is happy with and sells well into its target market: well written, well edited, well designed and well marketed.

 
DH: Which printers are responsive?

SG: That depends. Every printer has slightly different equipment, expertise and focus. The most responsive printers are the ones that sell only in their sweet spot. By that I mean one printer may have a good offset press and a full case binding setup. You wouldn't send a short run
paperback to this printer because he can't utilize his equipment
effectively. The printer I use most effectively is one that has a modern
efficient digital web printer with directly connected paperback binding
system. This printer can effectively print from 100 - 10,000 books in a
couple of days but don't even ask him to quote on a case bound book.
 
 
DH: Should a small press use digital or offset?

SG: The breakeven between offset and digital has gotten blurred to the point where for runs under a few thousand there isn't much difference in cost although digital has become the better quality in the short run. By that I mean the quality of good quality short run digital printing (1-500
copies) is better than short run offset (500-5000 copies).  At larger
press runs offset is by far cheaper and quality offset can be near
perfection. Offset also offers many different choices with regards to
paper and ink. Digital printing is limited to very flat paper, Xerox
style paper, and 4 color printing. Digital printing can look great but
offset printing can be extraordinary.
 
 
DH: What are the pitfalls of e-books or cheap hard copy printing?

SG: The hardest part about e-book printing is cleaning up the manuscript.
Authors are known to change their minds (often in the same page) about
what constitutes the end of a paragraph. The end of a paragraph may be
signaled by a carriage return, a carriage return (or two) with one or
more tabs and/or multiple spaces. The manuscript should be just the
words with as little formatting as possible to suggest to the designer
how to design the book. Writers who try to "design" their books in
Microsoft Word just create a lot of extra work (and expense for the
publishers) for the real designers.
 
Before a book can be designed for hard copy printing the MS has to be
cleaned up anyway and once it's cleaned up and rendered in RTF (Rich
Text Format) it can easily be converted to an e-book, any version.
 
One thing that bothers me is that major publishers are charging far
more, relatively speaking, for an e-book than they are for hard copies.
For example a 300 page hard back book might cost about $8 to
manufacture. The list price is $25.00 and the publisher gives up 55% to
a distributor/bookstores and/or Amazon. The publisher will make about
$3.00 per book sold. The same book sold by a major publisher as an
e-book will most likely be around $10 but the e-book has no
manufacturing cost. Most publishers could sell the same e-book for $6.00
and make the same profit. If the demand for the product has any
elasticity, that is cheaper books sell in greater volume, then a
publisher could sell far more books (and garner a greater profit) by
selling an e-book for $6 than for $10. The big boys don't appear to
realize this which is why there are so many Romance e-books out there
for $.99.
 

Steve Glines can be contacted at steveglines@gmail.com and is available for a wide range of services.

Review of Angles of Incidents by Jon Curley

Review of Angles of Incidents by Jon Curley (Dos Madres Press, 2012)




Lawrence Kessenich



There are the poets of image and emotion and there are the intellectual poets, poets of ideas, and Jon Curley falls solidly in the latter category. The poem from whose text the title of this collection was drawn (more or less), “Existents and Precipitants,” conveys this as well as any other poem in the collection:



Like watching the scene from an angle

As it stretches itself out, grows anamorphic

And between the bodies and their outlines

You can see the widening inner spaces growing

Outer, indications of the ingenious layering effects

of perception which, if stripped, reveals the sub-

phenomena of aura, arriving into this world

from some others:



These we can call the angels of incidence



How often do you read such a short poem – or any poem, for that matter – that contains words like “anamorphic,” and “sub-phenomena”? Even the rhythm of the poem is intellectual, the rhythm not of an event unfolding but of a thought process. “Thought process” is perhaps the best way to characterize Curley’s poems overall. They are not often experiential, in the way highly personal poems are, not emotionally revealing, the way confessional poetry is, but seem to work as explanations—a man standing back and making a case for an idea. Here are the opening lines of “Exhibit B” (itself a title that implies the presentation of a case).



Here in the off-chance oblivion’s staved off

and ordinary life does not fixate itself too lovingly

on itself we can herald some formulations

encrypted as myth but trusted to us as forms

through which we move



Can we agree that deferring out obligations,

those typical hesitations,

only helps to beck us back to where we had come…



And this opening from “Polarities”:



Intersecting angles

The imposture of doubt

bordering the premise

colliding with self-impression



I stagger over and over

at the rupture line of tension and release

words and movement

wishing for errancy and ardency…



Occasionally, some more passionate words and feelings do make themselves known in the poems, such as in the line “I stagger over and over” in the poem just quoted. However, even the more intense moments tend to be subsumed in a more intellectual whole. “Body Politics” is a good example of this:



Traumatic impulse in the brain, enhanced tremors

Of terrors, the night cries of the body contemplating

itself encased with mixed signals, chromosomal divination,

the faculty of predestination, preparing for cell division

to go libertarian, arbitrarily, subject to no fathomable

arbitration, the cancer secreting its cells, its selves

going haywire, re-wiring all to anarchy, where state

upends into mirage of sanity then goes weak with the

husbandry of self devouring self, genomic entropy

which calls for nothing but grief and utopia of the gone



Presumably, this is a poem about cancer taking over a body, but it has none of the gritty physicality of other poems I’ve read on the subject, nor the emotionality of someone dealing with impending death.



I also must admit to not always understanding what Curley is trying to say in his poems, though his convincing diction usually makes me believe it is important. And being that convincing is an achievement. The poem “Blake in 1989” exemplifies this so well that I’ll end this review with it, and leave it to the reader to decide if he or she is convinced:



The walls fell. Most ceilings

trembled. Foundations floundered.

Some sundered, some stayed the same.



The firmament was still an umbrella.

Under it, rained change. The watchtower

became voyeur, yet its beacon still

burned. Flies crowded to its beams.



That nine-year-old girl in the crowd,

near the ramparts, imagines herself

a goddess, wandering through

dead furnishings, new futurities.

She wonders how the walls that fell

could keep propped their fearful lies.



I whisper phantoms in her ears.