May News

BOOK REVIEW

We received our first review on Midnight Glossolalia. Poet Jerome Berglund writes, “…it’s absolutely one of the most interesting, provocative, entertaining works of poetry (and collaboration) I’ve had the enormous privilege and good luck of discovering.” Thank you so much, Jerome! Read his full review on Amazon or Goodreads.

FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS
Moonlight and Monsters, my latest poetry collection, will be releasing in June from Gnashing Teeth Press.

Screaming Intensifies, a collection of short horror stories, will be releasing later this year from Whiskey City Press – date TBD. I will keep you all posted.


PUBLICATIONS

Morels was released earlier this month from Voice Lux Press as part of their chapbook series. Download a copy for $3 on their website.

My prose-poem, “Below the Bible Belt,” appeared in Thanatos. Thank you to editors Rebecca Kilroy and Arden Delphine Young. This piece is also in my latest collection, Midnight Glossolalia (co-authored with Scott Ferry and Lillian Necakov).

“Little Brown Changeling” appeared in the May issue of Aphelion. It’s a poem about our dearly departed Otter, who we miss so much. Thank you to editor Dan Hollifield and the rest of the Aphelion team.

“Mimesis,” is up at the Rye Whiskey Review. Thank you, as always, to editor John Patrick Robbins.


APPEARANCES
On May 13, I attended the Dark and Stormy Night open mic at Darkwood House Gallery in Independence, MO. Darkwood House Gallery is a fabulous venue for dark art and events, as well as an oddities and curiosities shop, and a fashion boutique for designer Ezra October. If you’re ever in Independence and love strange/occult stuff, stop in! I look forward to visiting again.

My portrait by Beth Barnett and me! My portrait depicts me with a nightingale, to symbolize my voice as a poet 

The three portraits by Beth Barnett - Kyra Wiggins (left), mine (center) and Jennifer White (right) 

On May 20, I was one of the featured storytellers for Truth in Comedy. The event was held at the Bunker Center for the Arts. Thank you to everyone who came out and supported us—it was a fantastic evening! My fellow storytellers, Kyra Wiggins and Jennifer White, were compelling, the comedians were hilarious, and featured artist Beth Barnett painted three amazing pieces. Thank you especially to Byron Stamps for organizing the event. Truth in Comedy regularly does shows in KC, Topeka, Lawrence, and Dallas. If you ever get a chance to attend, I highly recommend it!

UPCOMING APPEARANCES

Moonlight and Monsters Book Release, hosted by Gnashing Teeth Press, Saturday, July 8, 2 pm CT; Scott Ferry will be joining us emcee and reader!

A Reading and Conversation with Lindsey Royce and Lauren Scharhag, hosted by Press 53, Thursday, August 10, 6:30 pm CT

SpoFest Featured Reader, Tuesday, September 5, 6 pm CT


OTHER NEWS

Some of my books are now available for purchase at the Darkwood House Gallery, 10918 E Winner Road, Lower Level, Independence, MO 64052. Thank you to Darren Hineslety for agreeing to peddle my wares! I think I’ve found my people at Darkwood House.

December News and 2021 Roundup

Here we are, friends—another weird year limps to the finish line. I hope the holidays have been good to you. Like a lot of people, I am reluctant to even speculate as to whether 2022 will be any better. Don’t want to jinx anything. But spira, spera and all that.

As for resolutions, I don’t really have one this year, just a goal. To get all sappy and inspirational, I hope to be better today than I was yesterday. That’s all. Even if improvement comes in microscopic increments.  

I don’t feel like I’ve been all that productive this year. The number of books I read is at an all-time low. I have only written two poems since April. (I suspect I’m entering a prose cycle, which happens periodically, and may last a few years.)

Still, I still managed to have 80 pieces appear in 45 venues, including a short story. I received three Best of the Net and one Pushcart Award nominations. I made it to the Lumiere Review Poetry Contest’s Top 100, and was nominated for Missouri Poet Laureate—both of which I decidedly didn’t win but still a great honor.

I have two short story publications lined up for 2022; I have others drafted/written. I’m hoping 2022 will be a time of continued improvement on that.

I’m close to finishing an untitled Order of the Four Sons project, which I’m still not even sure I will release. If I do, it will be released serially. A friend suggested I just post it here on this blog. We’ll see. Otherwise, it’s been a lot of fun hanging out with these characters again.

I appreciate everyone’s continued readership and support. So, to finish up this post, here are my publications for the month of December:

My cadralor poem, “Home,” appeared in a new magazine, Lucifer’s Retreat, one of the many literary venues helmed by John Patrick Robbins. Thank you, as always, John!

“Storytellers” is up at the Dope Fiend Daily. Many thanks to editor Scott Simmons for giving my work a home again.

Lothlorien Journal has released their fifth volume of printed work. It includes five of my poems (Cursed Images, Of a Feather, Service Dogs, The Holy Sweet, and The Dead Watch). I am honored to be included among so many talented poets. Many thanks to editor Strider Marcus Jones. It is available for purchase on Lulu.

And finally, I was a featured reader at the Verse-Virtual monthly reading. If you were unable to attend, a recording is available on YouTube. My fellow features were terrific, as were the open mic readers. Well worth a listen!

Thank you again for stopping by. Have a safe and fun New Year’s celebration!

 

October News

Happy Halloween, friends! It’s the most wonderful time of the year. I hope you’re enjoying spooky thrills and candy and pumpkin spice treats! 

If you're interested, there are several free horror reads right here on this blog. My horror novella, Our Miss Engel, is available on Amazon, Smashwords, and other retail sites. 

First, I will be a co-host at this year’s SpookFest, which will be held tomorrow, Oct. 30, starting at 6 pm CST. There’s still time to sign up if you’d like to read at the open mic. (If you would like to read, please register on Zoom so we can send you the event link.) Bring your spookiest horror stories and poems, or a personal paranormal experience you’d like to share. There will be a costume contest – winner gets a $25 gift card. Hope to see you there!

I'm thrilled to share one more Best of the Net nom came in after I posted my news last month. This one was for my poem, "A Seat at the Table." My deepest thanks to my dear friend and editor at the Rye, John Patrick Robbins, who has graciously given so many of my words a home, and congrats to my fellow nominees!

 

In publication news, my poem, “St. Teresa’s Day” appeared—again, in the Rye Whiskey. This poem is a cadralor, so if you’re interested in learning more about that form, I hope you give it a read.

“March,” appears on pages 209-212 in the latest issue of Open Skies Quarterly. The magazine is available as a free PDF, as well as in paper and hardback. Many thanks to editor Keith E. Sparks, Jr.

“Abundance,” appeared in Sledgehammer Lit! Many thanks to editor J. Archer Avary.

It is also my honor to share that Gleam: A Journal of the Cadralor Issue 3 is now out. We hosted a launch party for contributing poets to read their work. I'm so proud to be a member of this editorial team, and many thanks to all the cadraloreans who submitted their beautiful pieces. For those who don’t know, the cadralor is a new poetic form. The Gleam website has detailed info on what they are and how to write one. We’ve also added an editors' cadralor section as examples for future submitters to explore. My poem, "Baby's Breath," is included there. We are not yet open for submissions for Issue 4. I will announce on my social media pages when we are, as well as any other events, like workshops.

 

 

 

 

November News

Hello, friends! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and your tryptophan hangover is not too terrible.

This month, my new poetry chapbook, HIGH WATER LINES, was released by Prolific Press!

From the publisher: High Water Lines is a swan song for the American dream, where the notion persists that anyone can still pull themselves up by the bootstraps to escape poverty. This is a collection of poems for the working poor, especially those that dwell in the places deemed “flyover country.” These poems are for anyone who has ever had to pick up and move to chase a job or escape eviction, for anyone who has ever had to punch a time clock or bust their hump for a measly tip, for anyone seeking a better life in another country, for anyone who is one emergency away from homelessness.

Copies are available on the Prolific website. If you read it, as always, reviews and feedback are much appreciated!

I am also thrilled to share that my poem, "Comfort Animals," was the first-place winner of the Seamus Burns Creative Writing Competition (Northern Ireland). I am touched, honored, elated, humbled, to name a few. Thank you so much to Judge Colin Dardis for choosing my poem as the winning piece, and congratulations to my fellow poets! It will be published in the upcoming issue of The Honest Ulsterman. In the meantime, you can check out a video of me reading the poem on the Verbal Arts Centre’s Facebook page here.

I would like to say thank you to KC Reach Out and Read for inviting me to read at their Librarian’s Happy Hour event. I wrote some original poems for the occasion, “The Page” and “Suburban Library,” which have been posted on KC Reach Out and Read’s blog here.

I received a new five-star review on my horror novella, Our Miss Engel. Amazon reader Red Butler calls it "A real dark old-school creep." So pleased you enjoyed, reader!

And finally, I am pleased to share that I almost have a complete first draft of Going Forth by Day, the last book of The Order of the Four Sons series. My goal was to have a rough draft completed by the end of the year. I don’t know if I’m going to quite make it, but I’ll be so close, I won’t feel bad. Look for a sneak peek next month.

Thank you so much for reading! Happy Holidays to everyone!

July News

Hello, friends. I hope you’re having a great summer! I have some very exciting news to share!

My poetry chapbook, High Water Lines, has been selected for the Prolific Press International Chapbook series! High Water Lines is a collection of poems about poverty and the working poor. I don’t have a release date yet, but I will be sure to update regularly on my social media sites. (Look! Their symbol is a bunny! You O4S fans out there will know why this makes me ridiculously happy.)

I have also received notification that my poem, "Hirsute Woman," was selected by readers and a panel of judges to be included in the Anniversary Edition of Voice of Eve Magazine. Huge, huge thanks to editor Richard Holleman for leading this amazing magazine for women's voices.

Also, Duane Vorhees, who has been so gracious as to regularly give my work a home, interviewed me for Duane’s New PoeTree Blog.

Here are my latest publications:

The Mojave River Review. My poems "Kitten Love" and "Casino Christmas" can be found on page 175.

Ponder Savant’s Art of Depression series. Many thanks to editor Mia Savant for including my poem, “Paper Wasps.”

The Wild Word’s Long Summer Nights issue. I am always thrilled to add to my list of international publications, and The Wild Word is based in Berlin! Thank you to editor Kusi Okamura for including my poems, “Return,” “Jesus Flicks,” and “Girl with a Cigarette.” Ich bin ein Berliner!

Reviews on Requiem for a Robot Dog (Cajun Mutt Press) are starting to come in on Amazon! The first was five stars:

"Requiem for a Robot Dog is an excellent collection of poems, thought-provoking and gorgeously written. Curl up and ponder life with this book from the big terrors to the little miracles. Let Lauren’s words fill your mind and your heart with their joys and sorrows. You won’t regret it."

Another five-star review called it, "Engaging, thought-provoking work. Bravo!" 

Requiem also got a mention in Literary Mama’s editor’s recommendations. Allison Blevins, poet, editor of The Harbor Review, and editorial assistant at Literary Mama, wrote:

"I left this book with more questions about myself and my world than when I entered. Requiem for a Robot Dog is truly a liminal space holding up a mirror to our culture and beliefs and shared experiences."

Many thanks to these kind readers for their feedback!

For you O4S fans out there, I am making slow but steady progress on the final book. I just hit the 79,000-word mark. I'm still hoping to have a draft done by the end of the year. I have some O4S trivia and other bonus material planned for the coming months.

Thank you, friends, for stopping by! I am so grateful for your support and your readership.

April News

Hello, friends! I have big news to share with you this month! 

Six years after West Side Girl & Other Poems, I am pleased to announce I will be publishing a new poetry collection with Cajun Mutt Press. The collection is called Requiem for a Robot Dog. (The title poem appeared last year in trampset.) We are shooting for a May release. I will keep you all posted on its progress! It's so very exciting!

I am also thrilled to share that author Jennifer Perkins reviewed my children’s book, The Ice Dragon, on her blog, Author Esquire. She gave it a Mithril armor rating! (That’s five out of five stars, for any non-geeks reading this blog.)

Perkins wrote, “The Ice Dragon is wonderfully imaginative. It reminds me of the books I loved to read as a child. It has a touch of whimsey which reminded me what it was like, as a child, to believe in magic. The prose is elegant, while the voice of the characters is clear and emotional. Further, I think the book would appeal to children of all ages and backgrounds.”

Read the full review here.

Now, for my usual news—I had ten pieces appear in various publications this month:

"Goddess Poem," is up on La Scrittrice Magazine. Poetry Editor Jessica Drake-Thomas said, "I love how you’ve woven so many different Goddess traditions into this piece. It’s so cohesive and well-crafted—as soon as I read it, I had to send you an acceptance.” Thank you, Jessica!

Poems “Chimera” and “Evacuation” appeared in the spring issue of Nixes Mate.

"Tiny Effigies," appeared on Duane's PoeTree blog.

“Wanted” is in the latest issue of The Literary Nest.

 My thanks to editor C. Derick Varn for publishing three of my poems, "Disembody," "D.," and "Ozone" in Former People magazine.

Louisiana Zombie Afternoon, Jen Zedd

Thank you to editor Jordan Trethaway for publishing my poem, “Girl Alone” in The Ekphrastic Review. I’d never written an ekphrastic poem before, but I loved the inspiration piece, Louisiana Zombie Afternoon by Jen Zedd.

Some of you may have read my review of Red Focks’ Dead Celebrities on this blog. It is also in the latest issue of Alien Buddha Zine. I highly recommend Focks’ weird, funny and poignant collection, available on Amazon.

Also, just ICYMI, I posted a new flash fiction piece here earlier this month, Newton’s Needle, in which the scientist ponders his experiments with light.

I got a little behind on my reading/reviewing this past month, but look for a review of the excellent The Mercy of Traffic, a poetry collection by Wendy Taylor Carlisle.

Thank you, as always, for reading! I look forward to seeing what May will bring.

Flash Fiction: Newton's Needle

Newton by William Blake

It doesn’t really hurt—not really. The trick is pushing past your own squeamishness, the instinct to flinch away.

I will admit, the idea came to me when I saw a group of boys playing at marbles on the road. In my youth, we used to play thus, crouched around our circles like old divinators at their casting sites. We had mostly dull clay pieces worn the same color as the soil. But one lad had a glass piece. How we coveted that perfect sphere-- perfect in our eyes, though now, as I recall, it had a faint greenish hue, its interior pocked with imperfections. I recall how the glass marble caught the light, how it winked in the sun as our taws struck it and rolled it out of the circle, a pale shadow moving inside of a larger, darker one along the ground. I was reminded, also, of the bubbles children blow out of pipes, floating and wavering, iridescent on the air where the light struck it. So many simple pleasures of youth: watching the afternoon sun filtering down through the branches of an elm, turning its rippled leaves transparent, like fingers stringing a harp. You see, color is not inherent to the thing. Color is the interaction between the light and the thing reflecting it. When the world goes dark, everything goes dark with it.

There is only the slightest discomfort as I probe around, searching for the best point of entry. Perhaps discomfort is too strong a word. There is pressure, certainly. But no worse than if I was rubbing at my eye with my fist—which, as I have found, will also produce colored circles in the vision.

I have looked and looked at the sun, considering the light itself. It turns out that this was good practice as I trained myself not to blink so often. After a particularly long stretch of sun-gazing, I needed several days in a darkened room to recover. During that time, I had a searing headache. Anytime I shut my lids, I saw the most fantastic colors, as if they had been permanently imprinted on the eye itself, fiery wheels of red, orange, blue, a vision out of a prophet’s dream. These colors were most clear just after I had looked into the sun and gradually faded as my eyes went back to normal. I meditated on the colors and what they might mean. Is the pain I endure penance, well-earned for my innumerable sins? Or is it a sacrifice, the price one must pay for unlocking His mysteries? These thoughts were never far from my mind, even as I formulated my plans. Finally, when I was able to see again, I opened the windows back up and greeted the light once more. I procured the bodkin.

I make sure it has a nice, dull edge. It wouldn’t do to lay anything sharp alongside the optic organ, to scratch that sensitive, quivering plain. Despite my best efforts, my eye waters when the tip of the bodkin touches the moist flesh of the underlid. I move the bodkin carefully along the socket, undeterred even when it scrapes bone, shaping my eye this way and that with the point, peering up into a beam of light as I do so. The circles appear and disappear, just as before. As I do, I think again of my boyhood, kneeling beside the circle drawn in the dirt, aiming my taw for the glass marble. But I never won it. I never did. At length, I remove the bodkin from my eye with an unpleasant sucking sound.

There was light enough left for me to go out, past where lads were playing—some other game today. Leapfrog, by the look of it. In the market, there is a seller of trinkets who sold me two prisms made of Venetian glass—another child’s toy. The lens I already had in my possession.

Just pieces of glass. Baubles, really. To think that they could reveal so much. I will mount the three pieces, just so, to show how light reflects and refracts, filling the parlor with ribbons of color.

Light has form. It is a thing to be perceived and evaluated. It is a revelatory force. It brings warmth. It dispels dampness. It commands both the planted seed and the trees of the wood. Pagans built their altars to its avatars. It commands the life-bearing seasons.

 Miniscule corpuscles float on the air, beaming from lens to prism. The world is whiteness. Everything is a step in its scale, mounting its way from darkness to violet to red and back again, like a bruise.

Sometimes, to see things, we must suffer certain discomforts. The rain drives the boys from the lane, lest their playthings be lost, swallowed up by the muck. We must be blinded to see, we must kneel outside the circle to understand desire. And yet, to heal, sometimes we must retreat from the fires of fervor and illumination.

The colors merge to make whiteness again, pure in its unity. It is divine. All colors that flow from the Almighty ultimately flow back unto Him and His light. As do we.

When I am finished, satisfied with my experiment, I will close the shutters. I will add to my catalogue of sins: coveting another child’s toy in boyhood.

March News

Hello, my lovely friends. March has been a very busy and exciting month, with nine publications, radio shows, reviews, and poetry readings. I’m so pleased to share with you all the latest and greatest:

I usually make these round-ups chronological, but I am just so excited about this one, it’s going front and center: I am the featured poet in the latest issue of Loud Zoo, with five poems and the most thoughtful, in-depth interview I’ve ever had the good fortune to participate in, starting on page 39. The five poems are, “Garbage Pail Kids,” “Southpaw,” “Linda Martinez and Ed McMahon Say Hello from the Afterlife,” “No, I don’t have a foot fetish,” and “Grandma’s Fan.”

But that's not the coolest part. The coolest part is the amazing music composed by Tripp Kirby of The Electric Lungs to accompany the poems! They can be listened to on the magazine site, or go directly to Sound Cloud.

Special thanks to Tripp for the awesome collaboration! If you haven't listened to his music, I highly recommend Don't Be Ashamed of the Way You Were Made. I might be a little obsessed. Also, big thanks to editor Josh Smith for pulling this all together.

I had three poems appear in The Woven Tale Press, “Crystal River,” “Super Blue Blood Moon,” and “Buddhas on Death Row.” They are on pages 9-10 of the digital copy. The print version is available here. “Buddhas on Death Row” was also accepted for their monthly spotlight. Many thanks to their team for continuing to support my work.

For those who don’t know, “Buddhas on Death Row” was inspired by my pen pal, Moyo, who has been on death row in Texas for 18 years. While incarcerated, he has become a Buddhist and an artist. His work has been displayed in various galleries in the US, Finland, and the UK. He is currently working with at-risk youth, and taking classes to become an educator. Learn more about his art at www.buddhasondeathrow.com.

My poems, “Therapy” and “The List” appeared in Alien Buddha Press.

“Bug Out” and “Low” appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic.

I had two short stories in Ariel Chart Magazine, “Astronomical Events” and “The Little Holly Market.” Editor Mark Antony Rossi messaged me to say, “Your fiction pieces are ranked 2 & 3 this month in reads. That’s not the norm. Usually poetry beats fiction. Thanks for being so damn good.” I want to give a shout-out here to Mark, who has published my work before. He is also the force between the Strength to be Human podcast.

“Moon Song,” “Faces,” and “The Nostalgia Project” were published on Stanzaic Stylings. This rounds out the series of six that were published on that site. Thanks so much to editor Joanne Olivieri, it's been fun! “The Nostalgia Project” also appeared this month on Duane’s PoeTree Blog.

And my last publication was in the TOUCH issue of memoryhouse, two poems: "Brain Ghosts" and "Resonance."

Voice of Eve Magazine, which had previously published my poetry, gave West Side Girl & Other Poems a five-star review.

I can also be heard on Songs of Selah, an online radio show. I called in during the open mic portion in the second hour of the March 12 episode and had a fun conversation with host Scott Thomas Outlar and featured poet, Duane Vorhees. I read my poems, “Kitten Love” and “New Year’s Eve Talamada.”

I was at the Last Monday poetry reading at the Penn Valley Quaker Center. It’s a monthly open mic that’s been running for almost thirty years, and one of my favorite groups. If you’re in KC sometime, I hope you stop in for a listen!

And finally, ICYMI, I posted three reviews on my blog this month, (Letters to Joan, Dead Celebrities, Ghost Train), as well as a micro-essay (Supernatural). If you haven’t read those already, I hope you do.

My blog schedule is always a moving target, but what I have planned for the near future are: more poetry reviews, another micro-essay and maybe some O4S-related stuff.

Thank you, as always, for your readership!

Poetry Review: Letters to Joan by Allison Blevins

I didn’t know who Joan Mitchell was. I am an art enthusiast. I live in a cool art city. I live within walking distance of two museums and an art institute. I’ve taken my share of art history classes.  

Never heard of her.  

So, first and foremost, I want to thank Allison Blevins for introducing me to Mitchell’s work through her lovely chapbook, Letters to Joan. I blame the usual patriarchal bullshit for failing to give Mitchell the attention she deserves, despite being a contemporary of Pollock, Rothko, and de Kooning, and, from what I’ve seen of her, I like her better than those dudes. Mitchell passed away in 1992, after a long, distinguished career. She spent most of her life in Paris, but she was originally a Midwesterner, like Blevins. Mitchell’s work is frequently described as violent, physical, athletic—her brushstrokes, the moods she was trying to evoke; a gallery owner remarked, “She approached painting almost like a competitive sport.”  

I found all this out after the fact, so I actually read Letters to Joan twice, once without having viewed the art, then again after I had. I wasn’t able to view all of the paintings online, but enough to give me an idea of Mitchell’s style, to see what Blevins had seen. Without the art, I was still able to appreciate Blevins’ poems. But the poems were infinitely richer when paired with the visuals.  

In Letters to Joan, Blevins offers more than mere ekphrasis. She carries on a tradition of female interiority: quiet, meditative, dreamlike, deep. She offers poems that are keenly attuned to the body, which is fitting—not only for women, who I think inhabit our bodies in a way that men do not. But also because a book of poems inspired by Joan Mitchell should focus on physicality—for her ferocity, and because Mitchell fought so tenaciously against a series of debilitating illnesses: oral cancer, resulting in a dead jawbone; osteoarthritis; hip dysplasia; and then, ultimately, lung cancer. Women are more likely to suffer from chronic pain, from a variety of physical and mental health issues that don’t seem to affect men as much. Women are socialized to believe our bodies are all that matter, we who are charged with protecting our bodies from violation, and for having bodies that are capable of housing new life. Blevins offers poems that are sometimes self-recriminating, exploring themes about ambivalent motherhood and disappointment in our own mothers. Sometimes she attacks the sacred cow that is motherhood, referencing Susan Smith and such women who do the unthinkable.  

The book opens with mothers and children in, “Watching Dust Glow in the Window Light,” which describes the poet’s complicated feelings towards her daughter, and towards her own mother who left. She juxtaposes, “I want to keep you safe,” with “On days I wish you’d never been born.” Its images suggest helplessness: floating, shaken, caught, “caged-bird lips.” The idea of being caught in a snow globe that’s been shaken is a womblike image, a round ball of fluid, something small and self-sustaining, yet delicate and precious. The next poem, “Moored,” a word that implies being tethered, feels like a progression. It describes mothers worn “transparent as nightgowns,” the toll being a mother exacts on a person, bodily, mentally, spiritually. “The Color of Tearing” explores separation and separation anxiety, the distance between bodies in all relationships, and the inevitable demise that awaits, both in the relationship itself and for us, individually, as mortal beings.  

“How to Explain Fertility When a Friend Asks Casually” digs into bad mothers, “all the women and children dead/a history of female drowning.” Drowning does feel like something iconic in the deaths of women (Ophelia, Virginia Woolf). Drowning has also been a preferred method of infanticide, especially with unwanted girls. Water subsumes mother and child alike (again, a replica of the womb). At the same time, there is deep sympathy for the people involved in these situations. The title implies undertaking fertility treatments, which, for women who have trouble conceiving, can be a taxing endeavor in every possible sense. Imagine going through all of that only to find you don’t like motherhood very much, or that you aren’t very good at it. Drowning can feel like a way of erasing your mistake, of coming clean.  

In a series of body poems, Blevins focuses on the female form, though not in the way a male artist would, asking, “What is this burden of estrogen?” Blevins describes hair falling out, excessive perspiration. This reads to me like a meditation on age, dealing with mood swings and night sweats, and the anxiety that accompanies these seismic hormonal shifts. “Say my body, drooping and defiant,/ is a thing I can possibly control,” Blevins says, when, obviously, we all knows it’s the opposite. Yet, Blevins celebrates the body in “The Actual Size of the Rifts in the Human Heart May Vary Depending Upon Age and Use,” with erotic descriptions of explosions, “when a tongue figure eights/in your mouth” and “your bones draining into the basin of another woman.”  

My favorite image comes “From My Box of Tangled Memories,” of a girl, “with sirens for hair/and flashing blue and orange where her mouth/should be.” In a book rich with sensory imagery, I found that very evocative, the meshing of the mythological sirens with a beacon of warning.  

Water is a recurring motif—the feminine/womb imagery, as I mentioned, but water is also a powerful natural symbol on its own. I hear the quiet of the Midwest in the waters, in images of ponds, both wet and dry (even in its absence, water leaves an indelible mark). I hear the hills and plains. Blevins also weaves in combines, semis on back highways, stones, chicken, and deer. Even wood paneling and a rifle make appearances, which you will find in almost any mid-century home in the dozen states that make up the Heartland.  

Another recurring motif is color, which makes sense for poems that were inspired by visual art. “Promises Attached to this World” is a simply beautiful poem inspired by Mitchell’s No Birds, which, in turn, was inspired by van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows. Mitchell believed that this was van Gogh’s suicide note. This poem is the most overtly ekphrastic, referring directly to “the blue in the corner,” the suggestion of blackbirds in flight on the canvas. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that this is one of Mitchell’s less abstract pieces.  

Now that I’ve viewed Mitchell’s art, I can see why it would move a woman poet to such an outpouring of expression. I am impressed that Blevins would undertake such a project—transliterating abstract visual art into words is ambitious, to say the least. I’m pleased to say that she rises magnificently to the challenge.

Purchase Letters to Joan on Amazon. 

Also, be sure to check out The Harbor Review, an art and literary journal of which Allison Blevins is the publisher/editor-in-chief. They are currently open to submissions.