Category: books
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No silver bullets, if you please.
When Vincent has been denied something he dearly wants and feels he clearly must have (such as a broom to chase to chase the cat with, or a fresh bar of soap to gnaw on, to name the two most recent catalysts), like most toddlers, he has a tantrum. As he is my first child,…
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“The trouble with writing poetry…”
The trouble with writing poetry is that you have readers, and the trouble with readers is that you have to listen to them after they have spent their time reading you. Mine, unless they are young poets or teachers of English, usually say one of three things. If they are relatives, they ask me why…
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And so it goes…
It’s official: the Jeffery Amherst Bookshop, my place of employment for the past 10+ years, will close its doors within the next few weeks. This economic climate became the perfect storm we couldn’t survive: with the confluence of the credit crunch (no financing for potential buyers), the changing paradigm of the book & textbook business,…
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Waterlight, by Kathleen Jamie.
One of the more inconvenient aspects of parenthood, for me, is that I can’t simply sit down and read a book whenever the mood strikes, which used to be pretty much all the time. But I did manage to carve out a fair amount of time this weekend to spend with the Scottish poet Kathleen…
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“Good job, Mommy!”
My life day to day was lived through ordinary actions and powerful emotions. But the more ordinary, actual, the more intense the day I lived. The more I lifted a child, conscious of nothing but the sweetness of a child’s skin, or the light behind an apple tree, or rain on slates, the more language…
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Pleasures of the Quotidian.
After what has been a time of submission silence, and week of personal strangeness, this evening I received a clutch of emails from journals, and not an actual rejection among them. One acknowledged receiving my submission (sent 44 days ago), and assured me I’d hear from them again with 4-8 weeks. One apologized for the…
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Lea Banks, All of Me: The Launch!
Tonight was the official launch of my dear friend Lea’s debut chapbook, All of Me, published by Shelburne Falls’ own Booksmyth Press, a.k.a. that one-woman phenom, Maureen Moore. (And isn’t that cover art, Daphne, by Lilliana Pereira, just amazing?) We were early, so Vincent & Lance ended up departing for the short walk home before…
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What I’m reading:
After the long spate of fiction I zipped through this summer, I’ve been unable to get back into novels again. One of the last I read, Pocketful of Names, by Joe Coomer (which has the absolute worst cover, seriously, what was Graywolf thinking?), I loved so much. I deeply identified with Hannah, the curmudgeonly young…
Marie Gauthier 