Hidden Treasures of Booktube

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#readwomen, abookolive, bookslikewhoa, booktube, Emily Croy Barker, Emily Skaja, Hollow Kingdom, Ink and Paper Blog, Jean BookishThoughts, Karen Walker Thompson, Kira Jane Buxton, Marilou is Everywhere, Martha Wells, Mary Roach, Murder Bot Diaries, Packing for Mars, Ruth Reichl, Save Me the Plums, The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

Real Talk: Booktube is not my favorite thing. It tends to be overloaded with YA and is lacking in diversity in just about every category. That said, there are four  channels that are pure gold.

1.

 Jean BookishThoughts is produced by a Scottish academic, who reads across genres and always manages to surprise me with her recommendations.  It was because of her that I fell in love with Martha Wells’ Murder Bot Diaries series.

Currently, there are four, killer novellas about a rogue sec unit thrown by its human side. Start reading now because a full- length “sequel” is due out in 2020.

 

 

 

2.

Mara of bookslikewhoa describes her reading tastes as “omnivorous” and it certainly shows. After her mini-review, I devoured Emily Croy Barker’s  The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic. 

It is comparable in size to one of Gabaldon’s Outlander tomes and is about a grad student who walks into an alternate world full of medieval-ish magical beings. Really absorbing and also due for a sequel.

 

 

3.

Ink and Paper Blog (owner of awesome bookshelves) is the place to go for mainstream and indie reads.  Recent favorites from his channel are Karen Walker Thompson’s The Dreamers, Kira Jane Buxton’s  Hollow Kingdom and Sarah Elaine Smith’s Marilou is Everywhere.

 

4.

abookolive has fantastic non-fiction picks and is not too shabby in the other categories either. Mary Roach’s Packing for Mars and Ruth Reichl’s Save Me the Plums were gems I found because of her channel.

Any booktubers you love? Let me know in the comments.

(Belated) Sunday Sentence 7/14/19

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#readwomen, David Abrams, Paper Son, Pegasus Crime, SJ Rozan, Sunday Sentence

My weekly contribution to David Abrams’ “Sunday Sentence” project in which participants share the best sentence read during the past week “out of context and without commentary.”

She pulled her head back into the kitchen like an annoyed turtle.

 
SOURCE: Paper Son (Pegasus, 2019), a novel by S.J. Rozan

 

 

Week Four #readNDN #2sDayPoems

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#readNDN, #readwomen, Bad Indians, California Indians, Chumash, Deborah A Miranda, Essenlen, Gloria Bird, Greenfield Review Press, guest post, Indian Cartography, Native American Heritage Month, Native American Women's Poetry, prose poems, Reinventing the Enemy's Language, Spokane, Stories I Tell My Daughter, The River of History, Trask House Press, What We Owe, women poets

So sad to be wrapping up this special Native American Heritage Month series of #2sDayPoems. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have, but even more importantly, I hope that you have found some NDN poets you really love. Feel free to write a guest blog post if you did!!

I love to hear from you fabulous readers. The poetry community is more fun as it grows!

Ok, enough on that tangent.  Here’s today’s poets:

Deborah Miranda (Esselen/Chumash) has written a fascinating “tribal memoir” about her own Esselen family group and California Indians in general, titled Bad Indians that I recommended in another post. She also has several collections of poetry out.  The one that I find myself returning to is Indian Cartography (Greenfield Review Press, 1998).

“Stories I Tell my Daughter” is one of my favorite poems from the book. She also blogs at–you guessed it –Bad NDNS on blogspot.

 

Poet and critic Gloria Bird (Spokane) released a powerful collection of prose poems called The River of History (Trask House Press) in the late nineties. Today’s poem  “What We Owe” is from that work.

Another interesting read is Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Contemporary Native Women’s Writings of North of America, which she co-edited with Joy Harjo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week Three #readNDN #2sDayPoems

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#readNDN, #readwomen, Catching Cooper, Copper Canyon Press, Crazy Brave, DiveDapper, Joy Harjo, Mojave, Muscogee, Natalie Diaz, Native American Heritage Month, native american poetry, Native American Women's Poetry, NPR, Patterns in Mudhills, Secrets from the Center of the World, Stephem Strom, University of Arizona Press, When My Brother Was An Aztec, women poets

I am so impressed by Natalie Diaz (Mojave). Not only does her poetry make me feel like I’m falling off a cliff–in a good way, of course–but her work in preserving the Mojave language gives me hope for other endangered Native tongues.

If you don’t have her first collection When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon, 2012),get it. And be anticipating the release of her second collection, also with with Copper Canyon, that she teased in this late 2015 interview at DiveDapper. You’ll find links to several of her new poems there.

But the one I wanted to share with you today is “Catching Cooper“. You won’t be the same after you read it.

 

Okay, if you’ve spent any time on this blog, you’ve seen this woman. Joy Harjo (Mvskoke) opened the door to Native American poetry for me and continues to be my poet-hero. Get all her books immediately, seriously, like right now.

The poem I’m sharing today is from Secrets From the Center of the World (Univ. of AZ press), which pairs her poems with the photography of Stephen Strom.

This is “Patterns in Mudhills“.

OMG! So beautiful. Check out her interview at NPR about finding her voice and her memoir Crazy Brave. Oh yeah, she reads a few poems there too.

 

 

Week Two #readNDN #2sDayPoems

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#readNDN, #readwomen, Allison Hedge Coke, American Life in Poetry, Bee Poems, Burn, Cell Traffic, Cherokee, Coffee House Press, Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum of Archaic Media, Heid E. Erdrich, Huron, If Bees Were Few, MadHat Press, Metis, Michigan State University Press, Natalie Diaz, Native American Heritage Month, native american poetry, Native American Women's Poetry, Off-Season City Pipe, Ojibwe, Pen Ten interview, Poetry Foundation, Stung, The Change, University of Arizona Press, University of Minnesota, women poets

Award-winning poet and activist Allison Adelle Hedge Coke (Huron/Metis/mixed Cherokee, SE Native) writes the type of poetry that  is seared into the mind like a daguerreotype at the shortest  exposure. Fittingly, her latest collection is titled Burn (MadHat Press, 2017) and is an illustrated poetic endeavor. How cool is that?

Haven’t actually got my hands on it yet, but I hope to love it as much as Dog Road Woman (Coffee House Press, 1997), or Off-Season City Pipe (Coffee House, 2005).

Trust me, you’ll love her work. Here’s  “The Change,” straight outta Dog Road Woman, hosted at the Poetry Foundation archives.

 

So you’ve heard me talk about Heid E. Erdrich (Ojibwe) before.  ICYMI, I highly recommend her 2012 collection Cell Traffic (Univ. of AZ Press). The jury is still out on her latest Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum of Archaic Media (Michigan State Univ Press). It’s kinda trippy, what with its fairies, QR codes that link to film poems and other weird, but good, shit.

Before you dive into that book, try some of her more earthy work, like “Stung,” from the anthology If Bees Were Few: A Hive of Bee Poems. You’lll want Santa to bring you that one.

And while you’re out there floating in cyberspace, check out this Pen Ten interview with Heid E. and her sister, fellow writer Louise Erdrich, where the ladies answer questions (presented by Natalie Diaz) on writing in general and space for the voices of indigenous women.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week One #readNDN #2sDayPoems

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#readNDN, #readwomen, Compass, DiveDapper, Graywolf Press, Inupiaq, Joan Naviyuk Kane, Lakota, Layli Long Soldier, Milk Black Carbon, Native American Heritage Month, native american poetry, Native American Women's Poetry, Northshore Press, Pitt Poetry, The Cormorant Hunter's Wife, West Texas Talk, Whereas, women poets

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, the next four #2sDayPoems posts will highlight work by my favorite native writers.

I’ve been a fan of  Joan Naviyuk Kane (Inupiaq) since 2009 when her first collection The Cormorant Hunter’s Wife was released by Northshore Press. As you’ll see from the link, it’s now available in a second edition as part of the Alaska Literary Series. Anyhow, I was delighted to find (and share with you) her poem “Compass,” which is read to you by the author in both English and Inupiaq.

You can hear a few more of her poems scattered throughout this interview with West Texas Talk. Her latest book Milk Black Carbon, released early this year, should be at the top of your wishlist.

 

Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota) definitely blew me away with her debut collection Whereas (Graywolf Press).  It is currently a finalist for the National Book Award and has been reviewed and recommended by The New York Times, the LA Times and several other national publications.  And though, you may have heard her name connected to the pipeline issue at Standing Rock, she insists that she never set out to be a political poet.

That statement is in spite of the fact that the book grew out of news of the buried apology to Native Americans in the Defense Appropriations Act of 2009. Boy was that thing buried! Read this excerpt from the collection for yourself, and you’ll see that she is an extraordinary talent, who arrived on the scene just in time.

Also, be sure to check out  this interesting interview on poetry as prayer, or this one at DiveDapper for more of her encouraging words.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remembering Nora Dauenhauer on Foremother Friday

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#readNDN, #readwomen, Life Woven With Song, Nora Dauenhauer, poetry foremothers, Tlingit oral narratives, Tlingit poetry, women poets

Those who follow my twitter feed, already know that Nora Dauenhauer, one of our Tlingit culture-bearers, a wonderful poet and sweet person, passed away this Monday. I’m re-reading and re-reading her collection Life Woven With Song as I work on my own Fish Psalms. Haa Shuká, Our Ancestors: Tlingit Oral Narratives,which she co-edited with her husband, is also poured over frequently. Click on her name above for more publications and her long list of awards and achievements.  I won’t go on too much here.  Her work (below) will speak for itself:

 

More poems:

Grandmother Eliza

The Storm

How to Make Good Baked Salmon From the River

 

#2sdayPoems (2×2) featuring Natalie Young

Tags

#2sDayPoems, #readwomen, Drunken Boat, Hurricane Maria, Natalie Young, Puerto Rico, Rock and Sling, Sugar House Review, Superstition Review, Terrain, women poets

Natalie Young is my kind of poet, art director by day, wordsmith by night, a leftie, a mixed blood, a fan of Tom Selleck, purple pototoes and Oscar the Grouch. She also happens to be the founding editor of Sugar House Review, a poetry gem. And although I question her taste for green olives and swiss cheese, I find her poems always absolutely delectable.

On more of a down-note, as the terrible fly-over footage of Puerto Rico’s devastation from Hurricane Maria rolls on, I keep thinking about her monster poems from one of the 2015(?) issues of Rock And Sling. Yes, they are about the personified Great Salt Lake, but the lonely orphan “island” felt like PR.

Anyway, I can only give you one of the monster poems (from her own website), but I’m throwing in three more on other “alien” subjects from their various online homes.

THE GREAT SALT LAKE HAS BEEN SHRINKING SINCE THE ROUNDING OF THE LAST ICE AGE

The monster has lasted centuries

            with little light, in one place.

This lake once spanned hundreds of monsters,

           millions of gallons to roam.

Now he has a small city, a village

           deep enough to safely travel. He doesn’t mind much,

but wonders about humans and sun.

What will be done when the many things collected

           are uncovered? Bones and rings and rocks.

What was lost. Cast off.

           The trash of time. He and his house release

only what breathes oxygen or is…

FULL TEXT HERE (you may have to scroll)

 

notes on earth life

A child in a pink coat leaves her music lesson. Her cheeks match her coat. Her father sells
insurance based on how long an equation expects a person to stay alive.

The old man died. Sometimes humans just die. And you cannot save them.
Sometimes humans do not die, and you cannot save them.

There is a television program about a real human family doing normal earth things—there are
many programs with real people doing what people always do. Humans stop doing what they do
to watch.

When humans determine an animal is too ill, they…

FULL TEXT HERE (w/audio)

the mums are always dying

We’re gonna do it easy, but then we’re gonna do the finish rough.
—Tina Turner’s intro to “Proud Mary”

Holding out a bundle of mums
from the grocery store
to offset a bad day,

She tells the alien how hard it is
to remember everything, every day to do
every thing, how proud she feels

to have shopped and gathered
so much, saved
dollars with coupons and…

FULL TEXT HERE (w/audio)

 

bird of war

Today let’s talk about the bird who wages his own war.
He flutters shades of late summer: cloudless sky, cornfields,
early-morning sun, asphalt.

He clangs his black beak against his cage in rapid fire, hurls
steel bowl to ground, a landmine of fruity pellets. His head full
of mischief juts to the hum of vacuum erasing siege.

Tomorrow he will…

FULL TEXT HERE

Of Time &Its Fruits: Reflections on Kelly Cherry’s TEMPORIUM: FICTIONS

Tags

#readwomen, hybrid prose, Kelly Cherry, Press53, small press reviews, Temporium, Women writers

 

Kelly Cherry is a prolific writer, one who defies categorization and has so highly tuned her craft that her work manages to exist in perfect beauty wherever it lands, and especially– in this case–the twilight zone of hybrid prose. Her latest collection Temporium: Fictions (Press 53) shines in such a place. Not-quite prose poetry, mini-essays or fiction, Cherry describes “the book as a museum… curat[ed], harbor[ed] or displaying…bits and pieces– moments of time…arranged… more or less chronologically”.

Cleverly stitching together the previously published with new work, she delights us with characters as diverse as first century martyrs, assorted colonists, Einstein, Kafka, a literally vanishing office worker, a Ming Dynasty feminist, undead communists, aliens, and various incarnations of God. We peer in on them at all points along the cosmic ripple from pre-Big Bang darkness to post-Apocalypse reset, and we are at every junction, thoroughly entertained.

At times, I felt like the octopus from one of her six-word stories who is divested of his arm, only to be gifted two legs. The whole experience was fascinating, scary-pleasant and rocket-propelled. Like a magic trick, like a clever sleight of hand, Cherry brought out personal and universal cosmic truth without all of the inflated, academic language. Did I mention I love basically everything she writes?

I am obsessed with “Derek,” an over-loved bat and the woman who just can’t bring herself to let go of him. I am haunted by “Thomas Leigh” and a future where the last humans leave the space ark only to find themselves absorbed into the collective conscientiousness of an indigenous ‘alien’ race.

Ever the professor, the real cherry on top might be the mini-lecture/short “How to Write a Story,” a piece that manages to boil down all human conflict to the fraught interaction of one man and woman.

From any perspective, this book, maybe more so than her others, proves that Cherry is not limited by anything as mundane as region or genre or time. In one fell swoop, she unites continents, makes us believe in 3D printed souls, transcendent love, and life after the universe eats its tail like a snake.

This is a definite must-read. Scoop it up!

Review of MEN&BEASTS in Sabotage

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#readwomen, Angelina D'Roza, poetry chapbooks, Sabotage Reviews, women poets

Feast your eyes on Angelina D’Roza‘s take on Men&Beasts in the latest Sabotage Reviews post.