Monday, July 12, 2021

Interview with Featured Poet, Carlo Parcelli

 



Carlo Parcelli is a poet living in the Washington DC area. He has six books of poetry including ‘The Canaanite Gospel’, ‘Newton’s Scalder Prophesies the End of the World and Other Poems’ and ‘Canis Ictus in Exsilium’. His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. But mostly he loves to perform. 

 

BE: On your website you referred to yourself as a “Poet Vaudevillian”. Are you primarily a satirist, entertainer or poet?


CP:  All three as regards the Canaanite Gospel.  The website is my vain attempt to get gigs – readings. But I’ve never been very astute at promoting myself. Witness – Vaudeville is dead.


(Sample Canaanite Gospel here.)


For the first 35 years of my poetic life, I wrote in Ezra Pound’s Canto style where the balance was tenuous between Phanopoeia, Logopoeia and Melopoeia. I wrote thousands of lines in the Canto style. The poems are long and referentially and intellectually ambitious. I had a strong reputation as one who could write in this difficult style. Roxana Prada, President of the Ezra Pound Society and editor of Make It New, wrote that I was like a “shark” in that I and my poetry seemed to never rest. Another critic compared it to John Coltrane’s ‘sheets of sound’ always probing.  


As I’ve said elsewhere, my mentor at the University of Maryland was Rudd Fleming who translated Greek drama with Pound when the poet was incarcerated at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital here in Washington DC. Rudd thought my early style was suited to the Cantos. Working in such a highly referential form, I read widely.


Though I had some initial success, my first book, Three Antiphonies appeared in 1976, few publishers were interested in long ‘intellectually transgressive’ works. Cultural transgression as exemplified by the Beats or the Confessional movements was in vogue in poetry. But, for all the rhetoric to the contrary, the iconoclastic ‘intellect’ was held in disrepute in America, a line of thinking fostered both by the materialism of corporate culture and the forces that combated it. America just had to loosen up. It didn’t have to die.


The Canto style was indeed most amenable to my poetic project of exploring western philosophy and poetics spearheaded by philosophical approaches to experimental quantum paradoxes. The poetics of Charles Olson was aphoristically central in this regard. For example, his ‘field theory resembled the quantum conundrums found in ‘position/momentum’ paradox in sub-atomic physics.


But I quickly became concerned with the ‘scientific method’ itself specifically the mathematization/quantification of ‘reality’ especially the late Renaissance/Enlightenment acceleration of it.


My concern from the beginning veered toward the apocalyptic. The most obvious development was nuclear weapons. But gradually other scientific technologies, ones associated with ‘progress’ and progressive thinking began to ratchet up my concerns. Now, we have global climate change. Why bother about the mechanism destroying the planet if that mechanism is so rooted in the dominant, western epistemology that no matter the operator’s intentions the resultant solution will be inherently Apocalyptic.  


So I was looking to move on even though it was obvious if that canard Jesus ever did dare come back, he’d be playing to an empty house. 


I was the poetry editor of a literary magazine called FlashPoint . One of our favorite poets was the Welsh/English poet/engraver David Jones. One of our staff members, the 20thcentury poetry scholar, Professor Brad Haas was a member of the David Jones Society.


It just so happened that Georgetown University here in Washington DC was bequeathed a huge collection of Jones material. The Jones scholars gathered here in DC for a 3 day symposium where it was decided that we would publish the papers being delivered.


In the process of  ‘editing’ the papers, I was energized to re-read much of Jones’ poetry. In a collection of ‘fragments’ called ‘Sleeping Lord’ Jones’ speaker is a Roman principalis. I always loved that voice. So I wrote a monologue along its style. It’s the first Severenus monologue in the Canaanite Gospels.


Eventually the work became the Canaanite Gospel with its 67 or so ‘voices’ all dealing with events surrounding Judea/Perea in 33AD. 



BE: What was your primary reason for writing the “Canaanite Gospel” and how are people reacting to it?


CP: The primary reason for writing the Canaanite Gospel was to abandon the Canto style which I had exhausted and had exhausted me. Also, there was the opportunity to utilize the voice Jones established in his two poems, ‘The Fatigue” and ‘The Wall’. But more importantly, I wanted the monologues to serve as an allegory for all empires especially the US imperialist empire which heavily resembles the brutal Roman version and its denouement.


This is where the swearing and the racist slang come in – both intimate facts of the language of empire and the clash of cultures it heightens. Empire ain’t pretty and neither are the Canaanite Gospels. This also helps to keep my readership down for as T.S. Eliot says in the Four Quartets, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality” -especially, poetry’s ‘humankind’.


As for reaction, I sent out about 200 invitations when I premiered the CG monologues. About 17 people, mostly old friends, came. After my hour and a half performance of 12 of the monologues, Gene Rosenthal who owns Adelphi Records offered me a recording contract. Now Gene is also the guy who released Patrick Skye’s “Songs That Made America Famous”. I was proud that Gene liked the monos after all he had had the guts to record Skye’s Luang Prabang. It seemed like good fit.


Another friend in publishing wanted to publish the CG. But nothing came of either project and Mark Kuniya and his Country Valley Press ended up publishing them in 2012.


Rosalie and I went to at least 100 open mics flogging the Gospels. Generally they were very well received especially by people who despised poetry. No one dosed off. No one was bored. Bars were the best. Patrons felt entertained by the humor AND the pathos – read Gesmas. The characters are real, not sentimentalized puppets rushing toward a two line sentimental bathos. 


I got to do my ‘intellectual transgression’ thing in an atmosphere that was entertaining for much of the audience and me. And I loved performing.


The ‘heavy’ accent as you call it, is my version of East End cockney. David Jones uses it in his epic poem ‘In Parenthesis’. This is all explained in the introduction to mark Kuniya’s publication of the Gospels. Also, I’ve tried to train my ear to Elizabethan prosody. It’s so much richer than any of the shit we spout now. 


Of course, with such ‘controversial material’ there are back stories galore; the city councilman who a decade after still raves about a performance of mine he attended.    

 

There’s the crowd that stared at me with grim hostility when I performed ‘Lazarus’. Turns out the jazz guitarist I was billed with was also a Deacon in his Baltimore church. So when Jesus says to his Uncle Lazarus “Don’ talks ta me maw like that, you fuckin’ lushy’ or ‘If he’s resurrect where the fuck is he’ for a moment things got tense. But it was a great experience. I got to feel what Lenny Bruce or Dick Gregory felt when they did their more risky bits.  


Sometimes I was flat out banned. A Christian biker bar outside of Annapolis proved inappropriate. I also was blocked from the stage at the Bossa Bistro round robin performance in the Adams Morgan neighborhood in Washington DC. I did the ‘Gesmas’ mono and then was physically blocked from retaking the stage.


This is notable because the MC was Shahid Bhuttar, the same who ran against Nancy Pelosi for the democratic nomination for Congress and is one of the country’s premier FIRST AMENDMENT, FREE SPEECH attorneys. 


Now, I know it wasn’t the government suppressing my speech, but still I couldn’t help feel that I was on to something when I got the bum’s rush from that bar with Bhuttar just letting it happen. No hard feelings. Shahid is a good man. 


There are dozens of other stories arising from experiences around the Canaanite Gospels and the more recent monologues of which there are legion with titles like ‘Henry Colburn Writes His Solicitor Concerning the True Authorship of ‘The Vampyre’’ or ‘Satan’s Imp in Milton’s Ear’ or ‘Jonathan Swift’s Letter to his Friend. Alexander Pope, Upon Lady Montagu’s Rejection of the Latter’s Protestations of Love’ which left a crowd of amateur poets slack jawed in a motel conference room in Darnestown Maryland. 



BE: Who are some of the poets who have influenced you?


CP:  Homer, Dante, James Joyce, Virgil, Hipponax, Sophocles, Ovid, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Pope, Swift, John Wilmot, Holderlin, Catullus, John Milton, Villon, Blake, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Yeats, Eliot, Pound, Mel Tolson, Charles Olson, David Jones.


But since my work, especially my earlier work is so heavily referential other influences include Adorno and Horkheimer, Hans Blumenberg, Bruno, Hegel, Kant, Hume, Schopenhauer, Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Turing, Godels. Bohr, Heisenberg, Paul Feyerabend, Smedley Butler, Francis Jennings, Richard Drinnon, Noam Chomsky, Lenny Bruce.


Negative influences include John von Neumann, Nietzsche, Willard van Orman Quine, La Mettrie, Leibniz, Descartes, Karl Popper, Edward Bernays, Philip Larkin, Walt Whitman, Allen Dulles, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Nobert Wiener, Marvin Minsky etc. ad nauseam.


BE: What bugs you about the poetry/poets of today?


CP: Their lack of ambition in and for the work itself. No interest in keeping an audience awake. Poetry that looks for nothing more than self-affirmation. Reliance on feeling, sentimentality. 


Dominant poetic paradigms that exclude outsider work. The CG flies in the face of current literary thought that the best poetry is written at elite institutions. There, I just made the ghosts of Pound, Eliot and Byron laugh.    


BE: What are some of your greatest accomplishments?


CP:  Predicting the global apocalypse of climate change THROUGH POETRY. Being on the right side of history when it came to the Vietnam War, Iran Contra, the Gulf Wars etc., Seeing America for the murderous, imperialist, bloody shithole that it is. Turning down an invitation to meet the Dali Lama. Being named Beat Poet Laureate for Maryland.


BE: Any advice for young aspiring poets?


CP:  Don’t let your resume be your best poem.

 

Friday, July 9, 2021

LITERATI: The Advent and Impact of POD on Poetry by Hex'm J'ai


Then:
There were the large established publishers.  There were University Presses. There were Journals and Magazines.  There were the small independent and underground publishers and press.  There were self-published ‘zines’ and chapbooks (the route I typically went with limited resources- gutter punk publishing a la photocopier and hope).  There were even what was termed Vanity Presses which were predatory in nature. 


To be published, these were options or avenues open to the hopeful poet/artist.  Yet, there was the issue of accessibility. Would your work meet the aesthetic taste or sensibilities of those reviewing it?  Was your work marketable (concerning the larger entities)?  Did you have access to a university press as either a student or as faculty (and would said press even consider publishing something that wasn’t ‘academic’)?  If there was an independent or underground press that would potentially publish your work, were you even aware of it or have a way to connect with it?


To be published, these were options or avenues open to the hopeful poet/artist.  Yet, there was the issue of accessibility. Would your work meet the aesthetic taste or sensibilities of those reviewing it?  Was your work marketable (concerning the larger entities)?  Did you have access to a university press as either a student or as faculty (and would said press even consider publishing something that wasn’t ‘academic’)?  If there was an independent or underground press that would potentially publish your work, were you even aware of it or have a way to connect with it?


Now: With the advent of publishing on demand, we are presented with an entirely different environment and therefore a different set of, both, advantages, and concerns.  Granted, many of the above entities still exist and continue but in a much different landscape.


The Central Question- “What is the impact of “Print on Demand” on poetry now that EVERYONE can publish a book?”


Well, before answering this, I conferred with a few other poets/artists I know.  As this is a potentially double-edged blade, I wanted in-put.  That said, the responses I received were remarkably similar!  Before getting to that, though, let us explore the potential ‘cons’ and ‘pros’ of the “Print on Demand” phenomenon.


The Cons:


Market Saturation- Now that everyone can publish a book, regardless of skill, talent and caliber, everyone does.  Those gems, those shining stars of the poetic, literary and artistic worlds are at risk of being lost in the crowd.  Their ethereal light being drowned out or muted by the cacophony and echoes of the dross.


Exposure/Promotion- A vast amount of the work being endorsed and promoted by the entities that provide the POD service, those that are reaping the financial benefits outside of the corporations as well as additional promotion and distribution are not those who necessarily have merit or skill as an artist or poet, but those who draw attention and have notoriety via social media.  This has become a new facet of the cult of personality or celebrity.  Ultimately, as one poet pointed out, these “insta-poets” will probably be forgotten in a decade or so.  But as that may true, those who are of higher caliber but not as marketable, are being lost in the shuffle and perhaps, could be lost altogether in time as well.  This brings us to the next…


Corporate Sellouts- “If you can’t beat’em join’em” goes the adage (as I type this, the little crust-punk version of Hex’m J’ai just threw a beer bottle at and tried to head-butt me!).  Most proceeds from POD go to the printing costs and to the corporate overlords and therefore ‘feed the machine’ not the artist.  If you attempt to get a reasonable sum for your creation you ultimately jack up the price for the customer and therefore alienate many who may purchase your work.  The bottom line, if you are not a social media sensation but want a paycheck, you will have to get a job.


Well, enough gloom and doom (well, the boring kind anyway).


The Pros:


Format- So, with many versions of POD you can manifest your work in either a hard copy or digital version!  From an environmental perspective, as pointed out by another poet/artist, this is a huge win as we are not harvesting acres of trees and sacrificing resources for unwanted or terrible manuscripts to be overstocked, end up warehoused as surplus, go to the bargain bin and then the trash.  The only hard copies created are those requested.  Having a low-cost digital version of your creation also makes your work more accessible both physically and economically.


Community/Collaboration- So the flipside of ‘Promotion/Notoriety’.  Through POD coupled with social media you can get the word out!  You can build rapport with other poets, artists, musicians, and creative folk that you would not have been able to reach in decades past due to simple logistics.  The corporate overlords may have their darlings, but they can piss off because now you can collaborate with those of like mind and sensibility!  This, of course, can lead to…


New Forms/Experiments:  Having the ability to interact with and present/receive work to/from others that we could not before promotes evolution of form and further experimentation.  I can now interact with another poet/artist who is in NC, CA, CO, the UK, or Nigeria while on a bus in upstate NY.  We can then take our collaborations and experiments and publish them in the format(s) of our liking to present to others.  We can also continue to be educated by those we interact with as we are exposed to other cultures and styles.  This is ultimately the result of…


Accessibility- This word/concept has appeared in this diatribe repeatedly for a good reason.  Because it is a “Good Reason”.  With POD, those who could not create and present their work in a book format before can.  Those who could not access an appropriate venue for their creative endeavors now can create their own.  Even when kickin’ things gutter-punk, harvesting letters a la serial-killer or ransom note, there were still incidental costs in both money, time, and resources.  Those who could not afford or sacrifice for such an endeavor now can pursue it.  They have the opportunity to present and possess a creative voice of their own and share it with others without having to worry if their particular aesthetic is the correct flavor of aesthetic for the publisher. 


Saturation?  Are you concerned that your gilded letters and verse will be lost in the murmur of thousands?  Are you worried that there will be an onslaught of ‘bad’ poetry? Perhaps, it is a viable concern, in my humble opinion an elitist concern, but valid enough.  Yet, like most terrible art it will erode and vanish in time.  But, that said, what of the poets or artists of excellent quality or of unique experience that would never have been noticed, shared, or experienced due to lack of access? Consider that, for just a moment.   


Consider the work of a young Genesis P-Orridge.  Prior to their projects like Industrial Music or Throbbing Gristle they embarked on an act of guerrilla poetry called Beautiful Litter. In this act, Gen and high school friends (called “Knights of the Pentecostal Flame”) essentially left stacks of cards with random words and phrases on them at pubs and other public places.  The intent was that whoever found them could read them and therefore create poetry/become a poet! 


In this sense, everyone is or can be a ‘Poet’.  That’s right my elitist friends, EVERYONE CAN BE A POET!


In Closing:

So, the input I requested basically echoed all the above, the real concern being the topics listed as the Cons (obviously), specifically the fact that POD is corporate by nature and that the market is essentially saturated.  Otherwise, the resounding response was that this overall, the POD phenomenon, is positive, the benefits of accessibility strongly outweighing the negative aspects. 


For me, it does not matter if what you are creating is good, bad, beautiful, ugly.  I will gladly sift through the dross to discover that one star, that one gilded spark.  I implore any of you to take this opportunity.  Create!  The phenomenon of Print on Demand is apparently here for the long haul, so as other poets and artists have done in the past, adapt!  Make this phenomenon a creative weapon of your own!


Can you hear that?  That faint crackle in the back of your brain?  

GOOD.


With my sincerest encouragement:

Get to it.


-Hex’m J’ai


[Special thanks to Wolf Kevin Martin, R.M. Engelhardt, Matthew Bowers and Belinda Subraman 

for providing input.]



Tuesday, July 6, 2021

MICRODOSE Review of The Pull of Autumn by Rosie Varela

 


Welcome to a new feature, MICRODOSE music reviews by  Rosie Varela, writer/musician and G.A.S. member. She’ll be writing mini-review poems (50 words or less) inspired by new music that’s off the beaten path and experimental. She encourages you to listen to the selection and write your own mini poem review in comments as well! 


Artist:  Pull Of Autumn

Song: The Stars Or The Jungle


Review: 


Hot sand burning feet

How is it that each tiny grain harnesses 

Such a feral power 

That makes me run for shade

The same way I ran from that sudden cloudburst

Straight into your arms 

Each raindrop holding my secret longing

Soaked to the bone

Hiding from the sun



Pull of Autumn: The Stars or the Jungle



Sunday, July 4, 2021

MIDSUMMER by Glen Armstrong, reviewed by Joe Kidd

 

In today's modern arena, there are few poets that I have discovered, that can do what Glen Armstrong does with such ease and consistency.  That is, to observe what is normal, even mundane, and present it as an unexplored world.  Glen has a poet's talent that enables him to experience and translate his visions into colorful, surreal actual occurrences.  

This book plays with words.  They become shiny stones.  Armstrong writes in a comfortable and relaxed style.  Nothing to prove.  No ranting, no complaining, no diary entries here.  It's not about him, but it is all him.  We can tell that Glen is fascinated by what he sees, and not uptight about what he does.

What he does a lot of is connect images that are not normally connected.  Things that exist with things that do not exist.  The poems in this book are numbered,  not titled.  That is how it must be.  It would not suit the work to give it a preconceived point.   Example:


XX


the poets and folksingers

who weave their parallel universe

have never heard of you


no naked foot

hastens upon its wings


no face brightens

as your name is rescued from

muddled thoughts


yet you breathe

in and out

warm nothings


owing legend everything


free to slip through windows/bricks

pines/sleepy witnesses


saying nothing

maybe


they dream


staying nimble

saving your kisses for now


These poems are free of constraint, they are short, they are brilliant, they are unique.  Their language is captivating and alien.  The book is filled with lines like this:  


"but that largely imagined membrane/separating the night

from my own unseen depths/is thin"


"information the shadowy trees might have/can be coaxed with a feather"


"expose any aperture/and that other world/starts whispering"


"explosives and bugs/big enough for their own middle/initials"


The front cover of Midsummer is a photo of two empty lounge chairs facing the sea on the sand under a palm tree.  It tells me that Glen is on vacation here, he's got this thing.  After reading Glen Armstrong, I am drawn to the classics.  Yeats, Wilde, Keats, those are the poets who are equipped to follow.  I've been considering this review for a few months, not sure of an approach.  Most likely I have left some important facts out.  All I really want to do here is call on those who read poetry and understand poets, to call on Glen Armstrong.


Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester Michigan.  He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters.  His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit, Cream City Review, and many others.


Reviewed by Joe Kidd (www.joekiddandsheilaburke.com)

for GAS: Poetry, Art, & Music



Saturday, July 3, 2021

GAS Featured Poet: Vernon Frazer



Vernon Frazer has written more than thirty books of poetry, including Anchor What (Unlikely Books),IMPROVISATIONS and Avenue Noir, three novels and a short story collection. His poetry, fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous print and electronic publications. His latest poetry collection is Gravity Darkening.

Working in multi-media, Frazer has performed his poetry with
the late saxophonist Thomas Chapin, the Vernon Frazer
Poetry Band and as a solo poet-bassist. His jazz poetry
recordings and multimedia work are available on Youtube.

Frazer resides in central Connecticut. He is widowed.
Poster published by Unlikely Books


Vernon states:  "As a jazz and William Burroughs aficionado, my recent poetry fuses improvisation with cut-ups. At times, I orchestrate the text to create a multiple voice on the page. When in doubt about how to read my page, read it in every possible way." 



Takeout Delivered


her room mother
condemned iteration muttering
                           whenever

     quivering lips
     parlayed discomfort again 

                           when cannibalization pickled 
                           the backyard respiration con
                           the six-speculum sport room
              
   communion pawned the windows

         for                             vegan
    woodpile                   peregrination             
  shake-ups                   caravanserai    
                    coachmen

                            in the sky

             disposable resourcefulness
             trading away with confusion

                          a stale wisp
                          foiled metal’s furnaces

she hugged the convert
to finer vermouths and scarves
          yet 
                burning divisions 
                                            over

                              drainpipe confidences
                     
             curtails admixture jangles

                             from the wrist
                             the telltale dripping
                             of standing lost

                                       shattered a sideswipe      




In Search Of


enzyme underling reaches
happiness annihilation mediators
              outspread
                              shavings cluster

                   its own tautology

                             cannot release 

                                      lurid rhetoric 

                                            where braking 

                             *

swollen adobe surprised 
trill palms past the cigar song
prolonging the darkening                 topic

                   once creaking mildly

         when transforming
         their autumn gate dance
         from the heavy went

                    to shadow
                                     beginnings

                        sealed in the materializing 

                             *

between craven reasoning 
the urban thrombosis choir 
waxed where their shifters

               furnished the tableau
               reverberating introduction
the thunderstruck slanted
      against sure parka longitude
              despite stagecoach instructions

                    emanating grifters
                    bouncing for a dead envelope

                                                 monetarily bulging




 Gone Psychic



subgum illusion tracer
no courier tilled the basin mix
nor 

     a stilled hypotenuse
     riding the retro crux in style

          the rains crane
          wet-necked cribagge sticks

     reek aplomb
     regaining its nether post
     new vision declared

          a sublminal envy curtain

               curtailed

                             happenstance remission

                   hinting at raincoat
                   exposure and rosary factory outlets
                   lovebeads canned
                                                 ova buttoned

          loose origin persuasion
          pineal from a vacant forehead

                           erasing    
                           past futures for one
                                              present     




Friday, July 2, 2021

POWER by Linda Hogan, reviewed by Su Zi

  

The hungry reader can be a seeker, a welcoming mind to ways of perception that sometimes influence our daily realities, a person for whom certain works may be their touchstone in life. Perhaps the discovery of a work fulfills the dream of being soul-feeding. Sometimes, the hungry reader will discover a work and also discover many works by this writer; to what wonderment we might find whole canons, whole Wikipedia lists of a previously, perhaps minimally, explored genres. Such might be how a reader receives Linda Hogan’s Power (Norton, 1998). Hogan has a resume of books, awards and residencies that position her merit, and is included in low-level search responses for Native American Writers, as well as an extensive list by Wikipedia of Native American Women writers.


The influence of the first people of any area is often present in place names, sometimes family names. In the general culture, beyond the fight against slurs, there’s the horror of appropriation and embarrassing grammar. Sometimes, beyond woo-woo and performative uses of leafy incense, dead bird parts and other totem objects, there might come the perception of this other way of being, this other way of life beyond that of the dominant culture. For multi-cultural people, the presence of personal culture in their  life can be a frictive experience, and reviews of Power tend to emphasize that aspect of the novel, along with the coming-of-age modernization of the hero’s journey. A literature course that includes this work might also include a list of two dozen binary considerations as essays topics; the novel hoists these with ease –- for our ways of being include dates versus seasons and how we view the land. 


While Hogan’s novel has a plot based on true events, and a symbolic array of characters, the considerations of the work extend into a view of environmentalism that Hogan handles with a deft use of elegiac language: “It’s the way she lives in the place where Cuban lizards climb trees and plants look enough like gold in the deep shade and slant of afternoon sun that the Spanish believed there were riches here, in this place that is now darkening with storm and smelling of rain”( 17). In the best hurricane sequence since Zora, the novel proceeds to lay out the multiple symbols, characters and events that propel the narrative. Of note is the re-occurrent and apparitional appearance of four women who are ‘walking slightly above the ground as if they are gliding and have no feet”(24). These women appear, together or singly, throughout the novel, and they are both literal and symbolic figures of ancestry, of a way of being at odds with the culture of cars and casinos.


Lest the reader fear for their air conditioning, Hogan almost spoonfeeds this ancient world perception to the reader, as it is everpresent in a manner that is deemed lyrical or beautiful on dust jacket blurbs. Perhaps an academic would note this as setting, but Hogan’s work endeavors to give voice to nature, to force the reader to perceive how it would be to live with that awareness: “The frogs are loud this morning”(102) or when visiting the town “A few trees stand, alien and foreign, in a ground that not long ago was all theirs. The ground belonged to them and the marsh birds and the possum. I believe they are surprised to be alive at all, those lonely trees, and nothing in the world acknowledges them”(115). The sense of the living world, of life forms beyond our own having birth on our shared earth is more than mere plot mechanics, it is a perception steeped onto every page.


With the effects of climate crisis being now daily news, Power’s now nearly quarter century of existence as a publication highlights aspects of our awareness that are overdue for overhaul. It might be that the reader has recently come to some speculation about how we experience time, and maybe how the land upon which we live begs us to reconsider our ways of being, if we would only listen.


Linda Hogan has had awards and fellowships. from The Lannan Foundation, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the NEA, and was one of three finalists for a Pulitzer when John Updike received it. It was her first novel; MEAN SPIRIT. Her other books have also received awards or nominations. She has a fellowship from the Native Arts Foundation. She also received the 2016 PEN THOREAU AWARD, an honor also awarded to EO Wilson and Peter Matthieson. Her novel PEOPLE OF THE WHALE has been very popular in Taiwan and China, POWER is set in Florida, with a focus on the Florida panther. It has been used with both adult and younger audiences. SOLAR STORMS includes both the James Bay HydroQuebec project in the far north, and is also about adoption in Native communities. DWELLINGS has been a best seller in Japan and done well in U.S. Her new and selected book of poetry, DARK. SWEET. is now available, and she has just finished a new novel, THE MERCY LIARS, not yet in print. Hogan is respected for her work in Indigenous knowledge, Native Science and wildlife rehabilitation as well as her writing that includes ecosystem research. She has a new book of poems, A HISTORY OF KINDNESS coming out from Torrey House Press in April 2020, and a book of essays on relationships with animals and their place in her wilderness region, in Native life, and as fellow travelers with us in an increasingly difficult world. This will be published by Beacon in Fall of 2020. The Radiant Lives of Animals.