Two extraordinary chapbooks from Marick Press

Storm, Katie Ford

SNOW

I held the chambered gun
and clicked its emptiness against the crows

let them fly inside me even as they fell
back into the saplings of thin woods

for when there is no storm
there is this stormed body

to keep alive in its solitary room
outside of which the snow is falling

One of us at a time.




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Listen to the University of Iowa podcast, Katie Ford: “Ghost Forms: Using Traditional Form in Free Verse

Katie Ford is the author of Deposition (2002) and Colosseum (Graywolf Press, 2008).Her poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Partisan Review, Seneca Review, Poets & Writers, American Literary Review and Pleiades.
















The Catfish, Franz Wright

THE STUDENT

I saw the blind student crying
on the steps to my Beacon
Street classroom that darkly
bright day in late October –
the next thing I knew
I was sitting beside her
and asking if she might like to
talk about it.
“No,”
she replied. “Thanks.”
This was said with great kindness and tact
as if in answer to a child
who offered her his sucker.
“Save your pity for yourself,”
wrote Heine in his obituary
on his friend Gérard de Nerval.
“Do you have the faintest clue
what may well one day happen to you?”



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Read a review at The Miracle Blog, Chanticleer.

Franz Wright is the author of fourteen collections of poetry. Walking to Martha's Vineyard (Knopf 2003) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. His newest collections, GodÕs Silence, and Earlier Poems were published by Knopf in, 2006 & 2007. WrightÕs other books include The Beforelife (2001), Ill Lit: New and Selected Poems (1998), Rorschach Test (1995), The Night World and the Word Night (1993), and Midnight Postscript (1993). Mr. Wright has also translated poems by Renz Char, Erica Pedretti, and Rainer Maria Rilke. He has received the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, as well as grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Wright has taught in many colleges and universities, including Emerson College and the University of Arkansas. He is currently the writer-in-residence at Brandeis. He has also worked in a mental health clinic in Lexington, Massachusetts, and as a volunteer at the Center for Grieving Children.

Ilya Kaminsky in the San Diego Weekly Reader

Marick Press poetry editor gets some well-deserved press.
Read the story

Marick Press writer workshops May 3, 2008

Date: Saturday, May 3, 2008
Time: 8:00-8:45 registration with coffee & bagels.
Location: Grosse Pointe Artists Association
15001 Kercheval Avenue, Grosse Pointe Park, MI 48230
Admission: Individual workshops are $100.00 each.
$150.00 includes all workshops, buffet lunch and refreshments.

Workshops

o 9am-11am Peter Conners: Flash Fiction: How & Why to Shrink your Story

o 11am-Noon Katie Ford : The Craft of Emotion

o Noon-1pm G.C. Waldrep: The Metaphor as Alchemy

o 1pm-2 pm Ilya Kaminsky: Reading Poems from Around the World

o 2pm-3pm Susan Kelly-DeWitt: Poetry Writing: The Poet as Camera

o 3pm-4pm Sean Thomas Dougherty: The Grammar of Metaphor

o 4pm-5pm Derick Burleson: Trailing Clouds of Glory: Making Poems with the Inner Child

To pre-register contact Mariela Griffor at mgriffor@marickpress.com, or Ryan Kelly at rkelly@marickpress.com, by April 25, 2008. Or call (313) 407-9236. Registration for any workshop is available throughout the Festival.

Emily Ate the Wind, Peter Conners

Emily in the Hallway

There are no night-lights here, but the shades are up on all the windows and the anemic moon bleeds into the hallway. Little feet. The lime green carpet is scratchy and stiff and a few forlorn pictures hang on the wall. Emily pauses to look up at one – a man with unbelievably sad eyes and a ring of sharp wood encircling his forehead. Yawns. Blue light flickers through the stairway railing slats illuminating the green carpet where the pale moonlight gives way. Emily presses her face between two slats. Fits all the way up to her ears. Puffy emerald eyes sweep across the den. No one. On the television a man with three distinct sections of strawberry blonde hair allows a grin to spread with immaculate, slow control across his face until it seems to protrude past his cheeks. Applause. Drum Roll. Laughter. The strawberry blonde man steps back, steps forward, fans his arms out to either side and then swings two karate chops down in front of him. Emily lays her head down on the carpet, drowsily watching the man. Her knees creep closer to her chest. Her thumb finds her mouth. Her little toes curl, release. Her little toes curl, release.


Copyright © 2005-2008 Marick Press All Rights Reserved

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"Sparks of brilliant images light up the compressed worlds Peter Conners creates with words. Music is made with whispers and curses, belches and laughter, pronouncements and asides and sly retorts. Startling lists transform into unsettling truths. The performances in Emily Ate the Wind are dazzling."

—Joanna Scott

Peter Conners is editor of PP/FF: An Anthology (Starcherone Books, 2006), founding co-editor of the literary journal, Double Room, and a contributing editor to Del Sol Review. His third collection of poetry and prose, Of Whiskey and Winter, is forthcoming from White Pine Press. His poetry and prose appear in such journals as Mississippi Review, Fiction International, American Book Review, Salt Hill, and, in several anthologies. He lives in Rochester, NY where he works as Editor/Marketing Director for the literary publisher BOA Editions.

Never Night, Derick Burleson

Harvest

He stands beside his father on the Gleaner
gripping the metal rail tight in both hands
staring down into the sun blur of sickle,
clouds of dust and straw and chaff blown behind,
and all the way to the horizon, to the curve
of round earth across the plain, nothing but wheat
and a cloud of dust for each combine cutting.
When wheat fills the machine, his father starts
the auger and a stream of gold pours into
the truck, where he is not allowed to play
since nearly every year a boy falls asleep
in the sun on that pile of gold smelling
of bread in the heat of late June and is
buried alive by his father under
the grain we in those parts of Oklahoma
all lived to raise from red soil. Thirteen hours
the sun spun across the unbroken blue sky,
thirteen hours we and the Gleaner gleaned
until moon rose and dew fell too heavy
down and wet the ripe wheat, and the silence
in that absence of machine was an abyss
only crickets could understand. I see the boy
there on that machine, the sure hands of his father
on the wheel, on the levers that sped or
slowed, raised or lowered to keep the wheat feeding
evenly in. How the boy stares down into
that spin of bright hot steel, of well-oiled blade
against steel cutter bar, the auger whirling,
a steel cylinder pulling fate and will together
where steel fingers grab grain and chaff and straw,
above it all into the metal monster’s
ravenous maw. I watch the boy hold tight
and I hope he will not fall.


Copyright © 2005-2008 Marick Press All Rights Reserved

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"Derick Burleson has given us a far northern book of invitations ("You'd like it here where/it's never night"), which shines with a radiant spirit. It is a work of soul-making." – Edward Hirsch

Derick Burleson's first book, Ejo: Poems, Rwanda 1991-94 won the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. His poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review and Poetry, among other journals. A recipient of a 1999 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, Burleson teaches in the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks.

Letter from the publisher

Dear Friends of Marick Press,

Hi, this is Marick Press again, with information about our new releases and workshops. This year we launch our new titles at ‘Mini-Literary Festival 2008’, with a reading on Friday May 2, workshops on Saturday May 3 and the 2008 Launch on Sunday May 4. The 2008 Launch will be held at 2pm at the Tompkins Center in beautiful Windmill Pointe Park in Grosse Pointe Park, on Lake St. Claire. Read the press release for more detailed information about these three days.

This year, we look forward to an exciting event. Some of the most promising poets of our generation will be traveling to be with us here, to hold workshops for the first Marick Press Mini-Literary Festival. The Festival workshops will take be held on Saturday, May 3 at the Grosse Pointe Artists Association, located at 15001 Kercheval, Grosse Pointe Park, 48230, from 9 AM to 5PM.

Our masterful authors will be sharing their skills and insights on a diverse variety of subjects dear to writing, both in poetry and fiction. Susan Kelly-Dewitt, the author of six chapbooks, will hold a workshop on "Poetry Writing: The Poet as Camera." Peter Conners is a poet and fiction writer. He is an editor and marketing director for BOA Editions, Ltd. He will instruct "Flash Fiction: How (and Why) To Shrink Your Story." Ilya Kaminsky teaching at San Diego University is the author of Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004), which won numerous awards. Ilya will lead "Reading Poems from Around the World." G.C. Waldrep holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and is currently a visiting professor at Kenyon College. His poetry workshop "The Metaphor as Alchemy" will be enlightening. Katie Ford is the poetry editor of the New Orleans Review whose work has been widely published in journals such as the American Poetry Review and Ploughshares. Ford’s class will be "The Craft of Emotion." Sean Thomas Dougherty is the author of nine books, and is known for his captivating performances. He will teach "The Grammar of Metaphor." Lastly, Derick Burleson from Alaska. In 1999, he received the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. This year Burleson will bring us "Trailing Clouds of Glory: Making Poems with the Inner Child."

The community will benefit by participating in this landmark event. The description of the workshops and the registration form for the program are available for download here. If you have any questions, please contact our Marick office at (313) 407-9236, or email us at minifestival2008@marickpress.com or at mgriffor@marickpress.com. Staff and writers are available for interviews and questions.

With gratitude,


Mariela Griffor, Publisher
Marick Press
P.O. Box 36253
Grosse Pointe Farms, MI 48236
marickpress.com
chileanconsulatedetroit.org
marielagriffor.com
Phone (313) 407-9236
E-mail: mgriffor@marickpress.com

The Blue City, Sean Thomas Dougherty

passage from IN THE CITY OF THE BARE BULB

This is the city three regimes deep. More than the psychopath, the criminal, the pimp. More than the schemer and the simply poot. More than the misanthrope and the destitute. Who collects their green printed check at the first of the month at the small postal drop door? It is the pensioner, those who rock in their small rooms with the bare bulb swinging above.

The city of the bare bulb belongs to the police who shine its sun into the eyes of the mistakenly-picked-up to keep them awake and blind. There is no shade for the lamp of the police sergeants, hips lips are grit, his fists are lumps of coal, coal-hearted former children.

Can you tell what city we are in?

How do I know these things? I who took bags of bread, fish Tomas gave me, spinach, tomatoes grown on roofs, took them to my great aunt Zelda who sang beneath the bare bulb in her one room at the end of the three flights of stairs in the shadow of the Great Machinery Plant whose twelve smokestacks filled the skyline with blackened earth.



Copyright © 2005-2008 Marick Press All Rights Reserved

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"Be prepared for wonder: The Blue City is a place where you will see paper boats made by God illuminated in the merciful light that rises from the eyes of the dead. Be prepared to grieve for the children who sing a song you sang in childhood. Sean Thomas Dougherty's mesmerizing tale is a song of praise, a hand-written psalm, a visionary prayer made from the last handful of earth." -- Melanie Rae Thon.

Sean Thomas Dougherty is the author of nine books including Nightshift Belonging to Lorca, a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and Except by Falling winner of the 2000 Pinyon Press Poetry Prize from Mesa State College. His awards include two Pennsylvania Council for the Arts Fellowships in Poetry. Known for his electrifying performances, he has toured extensively across North America and Europe. He received an MFA in poetry from Syracuse University and lives in Erie, PA where he teaches writing workshops.

The Fortunate Islands, Susan Kelly-DeWitt

POMEGRANATES

My mother, gray bird
beside a white bowl
of pomegranates

They flare
against her face
creating an odd
balance

She is retelling the family
myths. In this one, her mouth
is cut and bleeding, her teeth
pop out like seeds.

It is winter.
My father is King
of the Underworld.

"My whole mouth,"
she explains, drawing open
her lower lip, exposing the hidden
scars, "was pulp."

I memorize exactly, word
for word:

He was quick
and strong, his punch
like a boxer's.

We'd been married
only six months, still newlyweds...

as I pluck a pomegranate
from the bowl, hack it

open, place

a single blood
red seed on my tongue



Copyright © 2005-2008 Marick Press All Rights Reserved

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Read what The Montserrat Review has to say about The Fortunate Islands.

Susan Kelly-DeWitt is the author of six chapbooks: A Camellia for Judy (Frith Press, 1998), Feather's Hand (Swan Scythe Press, 2000), To a Small Moth (Poet's Corner Press, 2001), Susan Kelly-DeWitt's Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2003), The Land (Rattlesnake Press, 2005 ), and Cassiopeia Under the Banyan Tree (forthcoming, September 2007), as well as a letterpress collection, The Book of Insects (Spruce Street Press, 2003). Her work has been included in national and regional anthologies such as Claiming the Spirit Within (Beacon Press), I’ve Always Meant To Tell You, Letters to our Mothers (Pocket Books), Things I Never Said, An Anthology of Letters to Fathers (Story Line Press), O Taste and See (Bottom Dog Press) and Highway 99 (Heyday Books), and Words and Quilts (Quilt Digest Press, 1996); her poems have appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, North American Review, Rosebud, Cutbank, Nimrod, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Iris, Comstock Review, Oxymoron, Yankee, Runes, Poet Lore, Smartish Pace, Poetry Southeast, Cimarron Review, Spoon River Quarterly, Hawaii Review and Passages North, among many others. Her short story “The Audience” is forthcoming as an illustrated chapbook (Spring 2007) from Uptown Books. She has been the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University and has won a number of awards, including The Chicago Literary Award from Another Chicago Magazine, the Bazanella Award for Short Fiction and a number of Pushcart nominations. Her essays, interviews, reviews and creative non-fiction have appeared in Poetry Now, Small Press Review, Perihelion and Gardening at a Deeper Level (Garden House Press, 2004). She is currently a part-time instructor for Sacramento City College and the University of California, Davis Extension. The Fortunate Islands is her first full-length collection of poetry.

Review: The Boy Who Killed Caterpillars

Read the insightful review of The Boy Who Killed Caterpillars by Joshua Kornreich in The Meridian.

"Much of the pleasure in reading The Boy Who Killed Caterpillers does indeed come from the use of the language itself; once adjusted to the rhythm and flow of Kornreich’s isolated sentences, the reader may find it difficult to imagine the Boy’s story told any other way. Yet beneath his public image as a linguistic trailblazer, Kornreich proves himself to be a fine storyteller: outrageous and bizarre, certainly, but also subtle, perceptive, and sensitive enough to win the reader’s heart." —Tina Blevins

Marick Press Mini-Literary Festival 2008

Greetings

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