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.
New Releases from Annie Woodford . . .
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!
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
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.
