April J. Asbury, Writer

Category: Reading

Everything about reading

New Poetry for October

October 29, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Before October 2022 gets away from us, let’s talk about new poetry by three of my favorite women writers, all of whom share ties with my home state of Virginia.

Poetry and Music in Auburn on an October Friday Night

New Releases from Annie Woodford . . .

Annie Woodford, author of Where You Come from Is Gone

Imagine my surprise when, my first week in Alabama, I’m lucky enough to hear a friend from “back home” read from her new poetry collection!

Annie Woodford celebrated the release of her latest volume, Where You Come from Is Gone, with a reading at the Auburn Oil Co. Booksellers. (Her earlier work, Bootleg, is still available from Groundhog Poetry Press.) Accompanied by her musical family, Woodford read from her visceral, devastating new work.

Where You Come from Is Gone, titled from a Flannery O’Connor quotation, explores different understandings of Kitezh, the legendary Russian city hidden underground to escape invasion: the four parts evoke Kitezh as Family, Country, Body, and even Henry County, Virginia.

Poet Maurice Manning writes, “The sacred act of remembering in this haunted and heart-breaking book is finely harnessed to artistic precision, articulating the history of the rural South. The result cloaks anguish with beauty, suffering with grace, ignominy with a dignity whose desire to redeem is wholly human.”

My own review is less eloquent: these poems hit me deep in the gut. Over and over, I found myself murmuring, “Damn . . . Damn . . . Oh, Annie, damn!”

. . . and Kim Ports Parsons!

Cover for The Mayapple Forest from Terrapin Books

October 31st marks the official release date for the The Mayapple Forest by Kim Ports Parsons. This collection from Terrapin Books has an appropriately gorgeous cover, mayapples painted by Frances Coates.

Parsons’ collection explores memory, sensuality, grief, and family relationships. Images from nature, including the wonderfully scientific, weave through these poems, which show a mastery of style and variety.

One of my favorite poems in The Mayapple Forest is “This is Not a Sestina about Quarks,” a playful exercise about the “charmed” language of quarks; others are haunting in their vulnerability and sensuality. In “Cool Glass of Water,” Parsons writes, “. . . if I could, I would drink that memory like a cool glass of water every day of my life.” Parsons gives us poem after poem, one cool glass of water after another, that leave the reader refreshed, reawakened, and inspired.

One last treat this Hallowe’en weekend . . .

Cathy Hailey Up for Preorder

Cover of I'd Rather Be a Hyacinth, with a butterfly and flowers against a sunset.
Cover and photo from Finishing Line Press

Another Virginian poet, Cathy Hailey, has a new book on the way from Finishing Line Press. Her chapbook, I’d Rather Be a Hyacinth, is available for preorder now.

According to Finishing Line Press, Hailey’s work “features ekphrastic poems inspired by an episodic performance of the Moscow Festival Ballet interwoven with poems of refuge from grief, the comfort and healing found in nature, memory, and family.”

Remember that preorders boost the author’s royalty percentage from FLP, so your preorder will help the writer directly, both today and in the future.

Spotlight: George Ella Lyon

October 13, 2022 / / 1 Comment
Author Gurney Norman hugs George Ella Lyon with a background of green leaves.
George Ella Lyon with Gurney Norman. Photo by Ann W. Olson

This long-overdue author spotlight honors one of my favorite writers, teachers, and people in the entire world: the gracious, multitalented George Ella Lyon!

In addition to her fiction, playwriting, songwriting, and poetry, Lyon’s books for young readers are a favorite in classrooms and libraries. Her newest book, Time to Fly, illustrated by Stephanie Fizer Coleman, features a hesitant baby bird enticed to leave the cozy nest for the first time.

Lyon is a writer who understands the importance of home, as well as the power of continuing to touch lives in a larger community. When her book All the Water in the World appeared in a cereal promotion, she was thrilled to think of her book finding families at the breakfast table.

Lyon’s work has traveled the world, perhaps none more so than her poem “Where I’m From.” She developed a writing exercise used by writers, teachers, and students of all levels; this year, her work turned up in a speech given by a certain familiar professor . . . Dr. Jill Biden.

. . . for my first lesson of the year, I use the poem, “Where I’m From,” by George Ella Lyon. Its verses tell the story of the author’s hometown, not in locations, but in sensations and experiences and memories. Then I ask my students to think about their own lives: Where does their inner strength come from? What made them who they are?”

First Lady Jill Biden, Los Angeles City College Commencement, 2022

Building Creative Communities

Lyon’s creative life is rich with teachers, mentors, and friends. She gives credit to her parents’ love of story and song, her marriage to a musician (a “partner who values the creative life as much as I do”), and her children who, she says, opened her eyes and deepened her soul.

“And I can’t leave out Richard Jackson,” George Ella says, “my beloved editor, who in 1984 invited me to write for children, giving me work that I love . . .” And of course credit also goes to “all the trees who have held and counseled me.” (Appropriate, considering her 1993 poetry collection, winner of the Appalachian Book of the Year award, was titled Catalpa!)

If you ask George Ella what she would most like to celebrate, a list of supporters, teachers, and fellow creatives pours out: Ruth Stone, Danny Marion, Gurney Norman . . . “Gurney got me to Hindman,” she says, “and you know what happens when you cross that bridge!”

At Hindman Settlement School, working with Jim Wayne Miller, washing dishes at the historic Appalachian Writers’ Workshop at Hindman Settlement School with Harriette Arnow, taking part in readings and classes and friendships, George Ella says she “grew up as a writer.” Those days have given her a writing community she still enjoys today.

Below is a writing prompt from George Ella Lyon that may look a little familiar: it’s a variation of a “Map” prompt shared by Leatha Kendrick. Lyon notes she and Kendrick are fast friends. Working together leads to learning together, not just about teaching, but about writing too.

In a perfect example of an entwined creative community, this exercise grew from shared work and creative community, including the shared inspiration of Jo Carson, who published maps of herself and her body in Now & Then magazine.

Writing Prompt: Mapping Your Memory House

While both Kendrick and Lyon begin the exercise with sketches, Lyon’s version “navigates memory in a different way.” Comparing these two is a great example of adapting a prompt for different audiences.

  1. Draw the floor plan of a place where you have lived. Show where all the rooms are. Use another page if you need to.
  2. Now make a note of a memory, something that happened in each room. Include hallways, bathrooms, closets, the attic, basement and garage. Write this directly on your map.
  3. Choose the memory that has the most energy for you. 
  4. Draw the scene in that room.
  5. Put yourself back there. Who was with you? How old are you?
  6. Take a sensory inventory. What can you taste, touch, smell, hear see? Write this on your map.
  7. Can you hear anyone talking? What do they say? Is there music?
  8. Is there something in this scene that you can’t draw?
  9. Is this a moment of power? Who has it? Does it shift from on person to another?
  10. Free-write this moment. You might begin “I am in the __________.”

We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection. Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value as images. Memories of the outside world never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets, and an emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of poetry that was lost.

from Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space (1956, trans. Maria Jolas, 1969)

Getting Better All the Time

November 8, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Well, that took longer than I thought . . . For the last three weeks, I’ve been updating the site, mostly through trial and error. It’s still a work in progress, but I’m always learning something new.

Now, if you check out apriljasbury@com, you’ll see new additions and upgrades:

Please take a minute to check it out. I hope you’ll sign up for the newsletter, too; this month the Author Spotlight will be turned on the legendary George Ella Lyon. You won’t want to miss it!

A black cat sitting with a large candy corn pillow and a quilt
Shadow is unimpressed by the lack of October content.

FREE Virtual Poetry Reading & Open Mic

September 20, 2021 / / 0 Comments
Flyer for PSV reading and open Mic

This event is free and open to everyone on Zoom. Please click the link to register so you can attend.

The first Poetry Reading & Open Mic for the West Region of the Poetry Society of Virginia is scheduled for Sept. 28, 2021, from 7-8 EST. I’ll be reading new work, as well as poems from Woman with Crows.

The event also features internationally-recognized poet and translator Pedro Larrea, author of The Wizard’s Manuscript, The Free Shore, and The Tribe and the Flame.

Deep appreciation to Angela Dribben for organizing this event. Dribben, a poet and the author of Everygirl, has electrified the Western Region of the Poetry Society of Virginia since her election.

In the past few months, Dribben organized new events (like this one), increased outreach, publicized other writers and events, and helped members connect with publishing and writing opportunities.

You don’t need to be a PSV member to attend this reading and open mic, but now is a great time to join . . . Especially with the annual poetry contest coming up. Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday (the traditional deadline) is sooner than you think!

Night of the Living Read

September 13, 2021 / / 1 Comment

A few days ago a student told me she loved poetry written by my friend. In fact, she enjoyed my friend’s book so much that she asked if she could write an essay about it for high school English.

Her teacher refused. My friend was an unsuitable subject . . .

She was still alive.

Two hands reaching from behind a grave in a cemetery.
Detail from jessiejacobson, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

For this assignment, the subject had to be dead. My friend and I are very happy she didn’t make this particular cut. But why not encourage students to read writers who still have heartbeats?

In his LitHub article, “Whatever Your Classroom, Please Teach More Living Poets,” Nick Ripatrazone describes the movement to “Teach Living Poets,” as well as the elder “Poets in Schools” initiative. Even currently-deceased writers Robert Frost and Donald Hall argued that living poets belonged in the classroom.

These vital programs help connect living writers with current students. Melissa Alter Smith, creator of “#TeachLivingPoets,” has collected a slew of resources for teachers, including a virtual library, a network to find poets, poetry reviews by teachers for teachers, and lesson plans.

Just check out this fantastic page of lesson plans for Crystal Wilkinson’s new collection, Perfect Black. This unit, a whopping 41 pages, brings a living, contemporary writer to students in an immediate way . . . While also connecting her work to writers such as Maggie Smith, Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, and Elizabeth Acevedo.

As much as I love centuries-old writing by dead authors–I have not one, but two “I Read Dead People” T-shirts–we can’t send the message that “real” literature is old literature, and the “good” writers are molderin’ in the grave.

Fluffy poodle looks at camera
Byron wants you to know he has never, ever been fed. Not ever.

Some of my favorite people, writers included, are deader than a Norwegian blue. By all means, read as many dead writers as you want, but use the work of the not-dead-yet to show students that poetry itself is a living tradition.

Not to mention living writers still need to eat. We have bills to pay and adorable pets to feed, so maybe toss us some change, will you? “Big Textbook” won’t miss it.

In Memory of Jeff Daniel Marion

August 4, 2021 / / 1 Comment

On July 29, 2021, regional literature lost a powerful and eloquent poet, teacher, mentor, editor, printer, and friend. Jeff Daniel Marion was a prolific author, publishing Letters to the Dead, Ebbing and Flowing Springs–in total, according to Still Journal, nine poetry collections, four poetry chapbooks, and a children’s book.

The children’s book, Hello Crow, is one of my favorite illustrated books. This story celebrates the wonder of nature, which lasts a lifetime, accompanied by Leslie Bowman’s vibrant artwork.

A selection of Marion's books, including a volume of Hello Crow, an issue of Iron Mountain Review, Letters to the Dead, The Chinese Poet Awakens, and Miracles of Air
A celebration of Marion

Another illustrated jewel is Miracles of Air, a 12-page chapbook illustrated by George Chavatel, a beloved artist and professor at Emory & Henry College for many years. Marion hand-set 226 copies, including 26 lettered “A-Z,” signed by author and artist.

Marion shared a vision of the book as a whole piece of art, not just free-floating poems. (Those poems, floating now across digital pages, still shine with their own grace and integrity.) Marion’s vision gave us a cohesive creation of poetry, visual art, and printed design.

When I began this post, I almost typed the cliched words, “A voice in poetry has fallen silent.” But that isn’t true at all. Through his carefully-crafted work, his numerous students and readers, we can still hear his voice, and it will echo for generations.

Jeff Daniel Marion Online

Remembering Some Advice

In addition to his writing and teaching, Jeff Daniel Marion was a printer. He spent long hours hand-setting type, an experience he described to classes and workshops.

Writers often say each word matters. (The legendary William Strunk Jr., of Strunk & White fame, commanded us: “Omit needless words.”) As a printer, Jeff Daniel Marion said he learned a much deeper appreciation for cutting excess words.

Marion would laugh as he described long hours setting a poem word by word, letter by letter. Once each word meant extra work, he was acutely aware of the words a poem needed and the words to let go.

Few of us have access to vintage printing presses, but his story is a reminder to slow down, read closely, and then read even closer. Take a poem or paragraph you need to revise and copy it by hand in your most careful print. Have patience, give your full attention–have mercy on the printer!–and savor every word.

What we leave behind is memory,
those little seeds drying on the sill,
the hope of harvest
to return again and again.

     Jeff Daniel Marion, from The Chinese Poet Awakens

How Dead Is a Doornail, Anyway?

July 12, 2021 / / 0 Comments

I don’t mean to say that, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for.

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Dad was fond of the saying “dead as a doornail.” Dad was fond of a lot of colorful expressions, some of which can be attributed to his West Virginia upbringing: “sure as God made little green apples,” “ain’t got the sense God gave a turkey,” and, my personal favorite, “cute as a speckled pup on a little red wagon.”

Two copies of Inklings with a sealed bag of rough-looking iron nails. The bag reads, "Coffin Nails."
Two high school lit mags, topped with the deadest nails of all

At some point in high school, I wondered why “dead as a doornail” became the ultimate measure of annihilation. Dickens wryly suggests the phrase is “the wisdom of our ancestors.” Sure enough, it was already old hat when a guy named Shakespeare used it in Henry IV Part 2.

“Look on me well,” snarls the hangry Jack Cade. “I have eat no meat these five days; yet, come thou and thy five men, and if I do not leave you all as dead as a doornail, I pray God I may never eat grass more.”

Spoiler alert: somebody dies, but it’s not the other six guys.

So this poem is high-school me wrestling with the question. I blame my father. And possibly Marley. And I should probably apologize profusely to anyone who makes it to the end.

Just How Dead is a Doornail?

Just how dead is a doornail,
and how came this doornail to die?
Hung, shot, stabbed, crushed by a whale,
fallen fifty stories in an effort to fly?
Then, perhaps, by the end of this tale,
you won’t care how, or when, or why.

When it gets itself got I have paid for a plot
inside a Kroger parking lot. Flowers, lilies, have I bought,
morbid now are all my thoughts, but the doornail sickens not.
Though we two have never fought, Doornail’s deathwatch is my lot.
            And the doornail does not die.

The villains are foiled, the waters are oiled,
the pure have been soiled and the workers have toiled.
The snakes are uncoiled and the lobsters are boiled,
the sun-bathers broiled and great treasures despoiled.
            But the doornail . . . does not die.

Time crawls by and shall ne’er again fly
as I wait for nail nigh to finally die,
and I ask why, O Great God on High,
why, O God, why have I this curiosity?
            For this doornail does not die!

While my plants have died and my chicken’s fried,
the brave heroes hide and the honest have lied.
They succumb to the tide no one can abide;
we’re fit to be tied, and the whole world has cried.
            Yet the doornail will not die!

            Gnats live days and flies just weeks,
            and everyone dies and begins to reek . . .

But the doornail never ages, nor war on illness wages,
and my heart inwardly rages as I live out life’s last stages.
We all find our coffin cages as we flutter through the ages,
and the poets pin their pages from the heroes’ hemorrhages—

            BUT THE DOORNAIL . . . DOES NOT . . . DIE!

Originally published in Inklings, the literary arts magazine of PCHS, 1991. Additional blame and/or credit to Monica Hoel, for keeping the existential angst of domestic ironmongery in her desk and in her heart.  

Spotlight: B. Chelsea Adams

June 24, 2021 / / 1 Comment

This is my first “Spotlight”: a series (I hope) of posts about favorite regional writers, their works, and their favorite “getting started” exercises. Today I’d like to turn a spotlight on an excellent writer, teacher, and mentor, B. Chelsea Adams.

Portrait of B. Chelsea Adams in front of trees.
B. Chelsea Adams

Chelsea was born in Fairfield, Connecticut, and she has spent much of her life in southwest Virginia. She earned an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Hollins College (Hollins University today), working with writers such as R.H.W. Dillard.

For many years she taught at Radford University; I met her through my mother, Jo Ann Aust Asbury, as they taught in the English department. Chelsea’s friendship and her generosity with her gifts has left an expansive legacy within the creative community. Writers have blossomed in her writing groups, flourishing in a rich creative company.

Chelsea’s work runs from the elegiac to the playful, the contemplative to the sensual. Consider some of the titles from her Sow’s Ear Press collection, Looking for a Landing: “Chaos Theory,” “Aesthetics of Dying” . . . And, in contrast, the simply-titled “Bike Ride” and “Cows.”

It’s hard not to love her slender chapbook, Java Poems. This elegant book is a paean to the writer’s elixir of life: Coffee! The truly fortunate have been lucky enough to see Chelsea perform her “java poems” live, beatnik style, complete with beret and the jazz accompaniment of her husband, Bill.

Chelsea’s poetry collection At Last Light is available from Finishing Line Press. Both her fiction and poetry regularly appears in Floyd County Moonshine, including their most recent issue. Her 2020 novel, Organic Matter, promises “romance and roadkill” and is currently available on Amazon.

The Sure-Fire Poetry Exercise

Below is a “sure-fire” exercise from B. Chelsea Adams. Answering its deceptively-simple questions will put you “in place,” giving you a quick path to concrete imagery and creative experssion.

Answer these four questions.  (The answers can be real or made-up.)

  1. Where are you?  (But you can’t say, “I am . . .”)
  2. What are you doing?  (You can’t say, “I am . . .”)
  3. What are you thinking or feeling?  (Don’t say, “I am . . .” or “I think/feel . . .”)
  4. What do you see?  (But don’t say, “I see . . .”)

And that’s it! Have fun, and see if it’s “sure-fire” for you, too!

Writing with Cats: Famous Purrsonages

June 10, 2021 / / 1 Comment
Black and white tuxedo cat caught on dining room table
Josie Cat says hello

A history of writers is also a history of the creature companions, furry familiars, and meowing mewses. (I’d better get this out of the way: I adore alliteration and no pun is too punishing. I won’t even apologize.) Let’s consider, for a moment, the long tradition of writing with cats.

Whatever damage the 2019 film Cats did to his feline-friendly legacy, T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats remains a poetic testament to the personality and mysterious secret lives of cats. If you spend time with cats, Eliot’s description rings perfectly true:

 When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
     The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
 His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
     Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
         His ineffable effable
         Effanineffable
 Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

Some cat non-fanciers may argue kitty is meditating on treats or murder, but let’s indulge Eliot this time. The poor guy’s grave is still spinning from that CGI nightmare in 2019.

Eliot isn’t the only contribution to the kitty literary canon. Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “Cat in the Rain,” lingers in literature books like contagious loneliness.

Meanwhile, descendants of his famous six-toed cats still roam his former home in Key West. The Hemingway Home and Museum estimates the current population may be as high as 60, which means an extravagance of toe beans.

LitHub, among others, has featured great lists of cat-lit. I’m just thankful that Emily Temple, the LitHub author and editor, specified, “15 Great Cat Poems Not Written By Cats.” Thanks to Zoom and the pandemic, we know the lines between us can be a little . . . fuzzy. (I will not apologize for the puns, I will not apologize . . .)

Josie the tuxedo kitten stretches while standing on a laptop keyboard.
What? She’s helping!

Writing with cats isn’t all catnip and cuddles. Even medieval monks endured cats getting where cats shouldn’t be.

The next time a kitty settles on your laptop, renaming your files, sending cryptic “chat” messages with her butt? This story about inky prints on a manuscript may give you “paws” . . . And remember, it can always be worse.

No manuscript is safe from a curious kitten. Fortunately, no heart is safe, either.

© APRIL J. ASBURY, 2021-2023. Unauthorized use or duplication of material without express written permission from this site’s author is prohibited. Excerpts and links must provide full, clear credit to April J. Asbury with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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