Tag: review

Sundress Reads: Review of The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful and A Playdough Symposium

Former Sundress Editorial Interns Jillian A. Fantin and Max Stone were messaging on Instagram and realized they both have micro-chapbooks being released by Ghost City Press in their 2023 Summer Series. They decided it would be fun to review each other’s micro-chapbooks. Though seemingly dissonant in content and form, Stone and Fantin’s micro-chapbooks support each other with their complementary takes on queerness.

Max Stone’s The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful

‘Oh my God, look.’ … [He] show[ed] them something in his hands…a handful of dust. ‘There’s glitter in it!’ he said. A man Fiona didn’t know peered over Yale’s shoulder. ‘That’s not glitter. Where?’ It just looked like dust.” —Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers

In The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful, Max Stone worldbuilds their queer experience through the words of a speaker sculpting their human and planetary body. Through personal, intimate experiences with moment(s) of anti-queer political and social violence, Stone’s speaker fleshes themselves into a queer corpus containing the delicate anxiety and the search for kinship that is the human experience. As the collection continues, so does the speaker’s development into an active, wise, and nearly eternal observer of the beings and bodies within their orbit, akin to the experience of a planet’s moon.

Max Stone opens his chapbook concretely by establishing the speaker’s queer identity and physical presence(s) within their world. In “Coming Out Ad Infinitum,” the speaker’s words in the coming out cycle disrupt their oral communication before forming their body: “Throat all choked up, / too much bread, something” becomes “Tight corset chest. Heartbeat extra violent” (Stone 3). Stone’s recalling tense, painful moments is especially masterful because of the way the “you” directly speaks to the “I” of their same body. Coming out is repetition in a world where you “can’t be open… / Not yet” (Stone 3). Meeting “a new person” or “a new doctor” implies the queer speaker’s ceaseless sculpting of their physical body (Stone 3). The intensity of this repetition is driven home with a final disruption of any created rhythm: “Again and again and again… / You’ll come out and come out / And come out and—” (Stone 4). Stone continues building solid ground with an explication of a public tragedy in “Waking up to News of a Mass Shooting at Club Q on Trans Day of Remembrance” and “Beaux,” which features a figure both grounded in human reality and elevated to nearly-unattainable ideal of transmasculinity. In just three poems, Stone establishes a distinct speaker while also leaving room for further self-transformation.

By the time we reach the micro-chapbook’s end, the speaker completes their aforementioned transfiguration to a body that is both fully man and fully moon. Like our moon, the speaker remains bound to the tides of a planetary body’s unique orbit and thus may only observe, act, and experience within those orbital boundaries. To be a moon is to contain billions of years, to be cratered with time and knowledge.

Nevertheless, the titular poem, “The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful,” is the true moment of corporeal and cosmic transformation. In a final scene, the speaker and their queer friends move from the domestic party sphere into the memory of a woody naturescape:           

Everyone else was in the river,

I was on the bank, watching

the moon reflecting on the water,

watching their limbs stir

up the light. (Stone 10)  

The speaker leaves us to consider their queer duality and the implications of that existence. Stone’s speaker seems to reside on the fringes of their community, a lonely existence of distance and observation. Still, The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful is nuanced in a final depiction of its speaker who refuses to stay in shadows. “Watching” becomes an act of love, like the dependable orbit of “the moon reflecting on the water” (Stone 16). Further, Stone’s speaker isin the water within everyone else. Their human body may be on the bank, but their planetary body is clearly reflected in the water and, thus, illuminated by the same titular beautifying light. And unlike “everyone else,” Stone’s speaker can see the light that reveals everyone’s beauty! Ultimately, Max Stone’s The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful ends with a speaker’s self-made dual existence as fully human and fully moon, allowing them to balance experiences of queer oppression and systemic bigotry while still knowing and hoping for the beauty inherent within the true queer experience.

At the start of this review, I quoted a scene from The Great Believers, wherein a woman watches a video featuring Yale Tishman, a gay man who died decades earlier from AIDS-related complications, eagerly showing the camera and his onlookers the glitter in the dust. Max Stone sees the glitter in the dust. He knows beauty because he is beautiful. He sees beauty because everything this bisexual lighting touches is beautiful. And he writes the beauty of the queer experience while still delving into public and personal pain and oppression because he knows the true queer experience is inherently, definitionally, and fundamentally beautiful. Stone and his micro-chapbook do not ignore the existence of the dust. By identifying the dustier aspects of his worlds and treating his work with formal and thematic care, Stone makes the glitter that is queer beauty and queer experience sparkle even more.

I remain shocked at how consistently buoyed I felt upon starting and finishing The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful. Very rarely does feeling “beautiful” elicit positivity given imposed cisheteronormative connotations of appearance and identity. Stone, though, makes me and my poetry feel beautiful—that is, “masculine but in the peacock way” (8)—and I truly believe that every queer reader will shine a little brighter after basking in the light of Max Stone’s queer poetics.

The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful is available from Ghost City Press

Jillian A. Fantin (they/them) is a poet with roots in the American South and north central England. They are a 2021 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Poet Fellow, a 2020 Jefferson County Memorial Project Research Fellow, and the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of RENESME LITERARY. Jillian received an MFA in Poetry with a minor in Gender Studies from the University of Notre Dame. Their writing appears in American Journal of Poetry, Spectra Poets, Barrelhouse, and poetry.onl.

Jillian A. Fantin’s A Playdough Symposium

Jillian A. Fantin’s micro-chapbook Playdough Symposium (Ghost City Press, 2023) is a queer, contemporary re-imagining of Plato’s dialogues through a series of prose poems. The collection features two main characters that appear in each poem and engage in conversation, sissyfist (a play on words of Sisyphus) and two-piece suitor, who are based on Socrates and Phaedrus from Plato’s dialogues combined with Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O of the Jackass franchise. Sounds weird, right? Well, it is weird—in the best way. With two epigraphs, Fantin sets up a dichotomy between Ancient Greek philosophy and modern pop culture, the first being a quote from Plato’s dialogues and the second from Steve-O. The epigraphs set the stage and tone for the symposium, which is a delightful intermingling of so-called high and low culture as complicated philosophical concepts are superimposed on contemporary culture.

Each poem’s title is a concept from Greek philosophy, such as “Xenia,” the Ancient Greek concept of hospitality; “Eudaimonia,” the condition of human flourishing; and “Kleos,” which means eternal glory. Beneath the framework of these ancient philosophical concepts, sissyfist and two-piece suitor engage in strange, stimulating, and often crass dialogues.

Playdough Symposium is an apt title, as the world and characters are highly malleable and mercurial—nothing is stable. The reality of a liminal world both timeless and of the present day is constantly created, shaped, and re-shaped through the dialogue between two-piece suitor and sissyfist. For example, in this world, “AD means After Diane that is After Diane Keaton’s Bowler Hat,” (Fantin 5) which weirdly makes sense. Fantin’s work is deeply intelligent and sharply funny, packed with clever turns of phrase such as “so Medusa just made men rock hard?”, “hydraplaning,” and “Ice capades” (9). Nouns are used as verbs like “embryoing;” familiar phrases and cultural markers like brands are turned on their head, including when “sissyfist sucks two-piece suitor’s tootsies like he rolls his pop,” (Fantin 7). So much is packed into this short collection: misheard David Bowie lyrics, Jessica Rabbit, Zeus eating pita chips, and Buffalo Bill protesting no shirt no shoes no service.

sissyfist and two-piece suitor are hilarious and crude and their personalities leap of the page. A distinct undercurrent of sexual tension and homoeroticism courses through the poems: “a long soft kiss in the business district, two-piece suitor profiteroles back down the curve of sissyfist’s spine oh scoliosis groans two-piece suitor make me in your image” (Fantin 11). It’s unclear what sissyfist and two-piece suitor’s relationship is exactly, but it’s definitely queer-coded. sissyfist and two-piece suitor both use he/him pronouns yet neither seems to fit distinctly in the male category, which is exemplified when “two-piece suitor strokes the cervix in the hole in his thigh postpartum depression sissyfist nestles within that musculature,” (Fantin 8). That slightly unsettling image presents two-piece suitor as being both male and female or neither. sissyfist’s name alone is very queer, and his actions match as he “hissyfits” and “sissyshrieks.” Playdough Symposium also troubles and blurs the lines of gender. Above all, this work is deeply original. I can confidently say I have never read anything like it. Playdough Symposium is a delicacy of language, pop culture, philosophy, queerness, and mythology.  Each poem is layered with jewels of sound, word play, and genius turns of phrase. Each sentence is surprising—you’ll never guess one that begins with “ostrich egged,” will lead to two-piece suitor plaiting “pinkies into radishes,” (9). This collection may be playful, sexy, and funny, but there is also a poignant emotional depth. Fantin proves that Jackass can be philosophical and that the Ancient Greeks have a certain jackass-ness beneath the historical veneer of intelligence and sophistication. This is the micro-chapbook you never knew you wanted but definitely need to read. Right now!

A Playdough Symposium is available from Ghost City Press

Max Stone is a queer poet from Reno, Nevada. He holds an MFA in poetry and a BA in English
with a minor in Book Arts and Publication from the University of Nevada, Reno. He played
soccer at Queens College. Max is the author of two chapbooks: The Bisexual Lighting Makes
Everyone Beautiful (Ghost City Press) and Temporary Preparations (Bottlecap Press).

Sundress Reads: Review of The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful and A Playdough Symposium

Sundress Reads: Review of Cartography of Trauma

Book cover with white background and sillouette of a woman depicted with green lines like a topigraphical map. On the top, the title Cartography of Trauma appears. At the bottom is the author's name, Ashley Hajimirsadeghi.

It isn’t every day I’m offered the chance to discover a new favorite book, and I am pleased to say I have found exactly that in Ashley Hajimirsadeghi’s Cartography of Trauma. Published by Dancing Girl Press in 2021, the collection has a handsome cover featuring a feminine silhouette mapped out in green lines in the topographical style. What’s on the inside captured my attention even further.

Cartography of Trauma depicts the way all generations of people, specifically women, navigate traumatic situations. Through metaphor, Hajimirsadeghi reveals common coping mechanisms to find where those experiences fit into everyday. Conceptually, the chapbook can be organized into three categories: Stranger poems (the subject of the poem does not appear to be related to the speaker in any way), Family poems (what it looks like when families are purged from their homes, uprooted in violence), and Self poems (snapshots of each speaker at one moment in time). These separate storytelling methods combine flawlessly in Cartography of Trauma to reflect the reader’s own hurt disguised as the trauma of a stranger. 

One of the Stranger poems, “His mother was strange,” reveals a mother’s sorrow in one tight column. Grief permeates the air around this poem like Chanel No.5 wafting from the poem’s subject – “Mad Molly” – who has a moment of inspiration. Hajimirsadeghi writes, “She says a mother’s / grief rings with the clamor of the / rusting church bells in the square / but no one listens” (5). It’s almost as if the reader experiences this silence like a thick cloud of perfume, strong and invasive and completely invisible. 

The poem “Diorama,” focuses readers’ attention onto the ills born into a family hardened by the violence of men. Hajimirsadeghi explores an imagined life where the speaker takes the place of family members wronged, a past where “Grandmother is alive and healthy, three-dimensional” and “Grandfather, too, isn’t an old revolutionary haunt” (8). Probably the most haunting line of this poem is just after the speaker imagines taking Grandfather’s place, saying, “I am bleeding in 1978 Iran,” and “I am bleeding in 2020 America” (8). The speaker compares this trauma, this fear and resentment which springs from the violence of men’s decisions, to life in America with just two lines.

“Encoded” features an American tradition, the “how are you” greeting which many know to be rhetorical, and the speaker’s response, both internal and external. In the poem, the greeting (“how are you?”) and the answer (“I’m fine,”) are separated by the speaker’s real truth: “I think I’m splintering” (Hajimirsadeghi 13). Hajimirsadeghi continues, “if Sylvia were alive she’d laugh… I think I’m eroding, dying to throw myself into the incinerator, end this hunger–” (13). To the speaker, “I’m fine” includes all of these hurts and wants and givings up, but all that a stranger hears is that “I’m fine.” This is sometimes how we cope, by lying to the world and pretending we are okay; Hajimirsadeghi’s poem captures this innocent need to appear okay even when we’re burning inside.

“Self-portrait in youth” is presented “in Technicolor” that is colored after the fact. When the reader imagines scenes depicting youthful romance, it is through the goggles of Technicolor; the past looks brighter and more colorful. “Self-portrait as lady vengeance” is directly opposite “in black & white.” It is stark, honest, simply representative. There is no romance, no fantasy. The speaker is dark and smudged and real. The last line hits the reader like a freight: “stop filming me. I don’t want you to see me cry” (Hajimirsadeghi 26). There is a lost fantasy here which leads to a crippling vulnerability. Nothing hides in black and white, so we use Technicolor to escape, to cope with reality.

The final Self poem, “Self-portrait as erasure,” is possibly the most brutally powerful of them all. The speaker describes “[bleeding] blue out on the patio, barefoot & dancing in the rainstorm” (27), a scene conflicted. A generally joyful activity such as dancing is depicted simultaneously with precious and dangerous loss, and this is the truth of Cartography of Trauma. This poem is the anthem of the world, especially the world of women, a world in which women dance in the storms we did not create and bleed black and blue for a sliver of joy in life’s great tempest. 

Cartography of Trauma uses accessible language and creative formatting to tell the story of women by a woman for women. And what an anthem it is. The last line of “Self-portrait as erasure” (and the entire book) sticks with me even in my sleep: “Ma, you wouldn’t // believe me if I set this place on fire tonight… just wait–” (27). The reader is left to wait in violent anticipation for the flames of this book to catch the world. 

Cartography of Trauma is avalible through Dancing Girl Press.

A white woman in a black turtleneck stares into the camera. The background is a blurred scene of trees and sun.

Kenli Doss holds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.

Sundress Reads: Review of Four in Hand

A book cover that reads "Four in Hand" in white letters against a dark green background with a folded down piece of yellow in the top right-hand corner. "Poems" is written in yellow in a vertical line below the title and the author's name "Alicia Mountain" is written in black letters at the very bottom of the page against a white outline that wraps around the dark green and yellow.

Alicia Mountain’s new poetry collection Four in Hand (BOA Editions, 2023) is comprised of four heroic crown sonnets—a sequence of fifteen interlinking sonnets wherein the last line of the first sonnet is the first line of the next, and so on, and the fifteenth sonnet consists of the first lines of the previous fourteen. Quite a complicated structure indeed, and tricky to pull off, but Mountain does so masterfully. She weaves together eloquent, and at times archaic, language with urgent issues like late-stage capitalism, the pandemic, environmental devastation, LGBTQ issues and discrimination, drone strikes, the 2016 election, etc. with contemporary references and found text. Mountain also offers contemplations of familial structures, her gay poetic lineage, love and loss, as well as investigations of the self and place.  Aside from the political undercurrents and heavier themes, Four in Hand is also tender and personal suffused with numerous kinds of love, including the lingering love that persists even after heartbreak, “I offer to trade you / a poem for the story of the place we pressed / our bodies together.” This book feels like a necessary antidote to the crushing pressures and anxieties facing us today.

A narrative thread is braided through the book, submerging then reemerging signaled by motifs like “train tracks,” “the queen,” and “violet,” “which operate as anchors that ground the poems and refocus the reader’s attention. The form lends itself to this loose, nonlinear narrative and though each heroic crown appears disparate at first you begin to notice the intricate patterns as you read further.

Each sonnet rolls effortlessly into the next, turning the meaning of its last line to mean something completely different—even opposite—when it becomes the first line of the next sonnet. For example, the last line of the ninth sonnet in the first sequence “Train Town Howl” reads “whomever you love. They belong beside you,” which seems to be a lament that their ex-lover likely has a new lover. But in the next sonnet, the same line reads as well-wishing towards the lover rather than lamentation—the speaker is now expressing to their past lover that they deserve to be with someone they love, whomever it may be, and be happy. Mountain achieves this reversal of meaning simply by changing the sentence structure. As a last line “whomever you love” is part of the sentence that begins in the previous line, but as the first line of the tenth stanza, “Whomever you love” is the beginning of the sentence, starting a thought rather than completing one. It’s a tiny change but has a significant impact, which is a testament to the virtuosity of Mountain’s. The syntax is delicately crafted and each period, comma, line break, and word, and is intentional.

On the note of intentionality, while many sonnets in the collection resemble traditional sonnets, the sonnet form never feels tired because of Mountain’s experimentation. In the second sequence “Sparingly,” she pushes the boundaries of the form: each line consists only of a single word. A traditional sonnet puts pressure on the line as a unit, by using one word per line Mountain zeroes in on the word, forcing us to linger with each word and really notice them, hold on to each syllable, savor the sounds.

Despite the dark cloud of political instability, environmental degradation, and loss that permeates, Mountain finds moments of lightness and hope, especially in the “elementary poets” the speaker is teaching poetry. They like “butts and cats and killing” and the girls are “purple princes too.” This childhood silliness and wonder contrasts the “The sinister lever-pull that will not right us / came swift in November,” meaning the election of Donald Trump and the dividedness of the nation. Mountain asks, “How long has it / been since you worked for an hourly wage?” exemplifying the disconnect between the wealthy and the politicians and the rest of us. By posing this question and then going to work with eight-year-old poets, the speaker is deciding to do not be crushed by despair and do the important work of investing hope in the future, represented by the children, and in small but not inconsequential actions. Such a kernel of optimism is found when “Eight-year-old writes, We befriend enemy / countries like we were never enemies.” A vision of a more peaceful world without senseless violence—a better world.

Four in Hand is an epic, ambitious work, the opulent landscapes, gentle intimacy, and acute awareness of corruption and destruction that we are complicit in, “Often, I forget I am a benefactor / of war by birthright,” will percolate in your brain long after you’ve put the book down. It is a perfect alchemy of the personal and the political, of abundance and sparsity, of the quotidian and the extraordinary. Mountain demonstrates dexterity in both form, lyric, and blank verse while retaining a pleasurable cohesiveness. This book is achingly beautiful and exemplifies the magic of poetry—how at its best, poetry can touch you deeply; make you feel, and think, and cry, and hope, and yearn, and be glad to be alive.

Four in Hand is available from BOA Editions

Max Stone is in his final semester as an MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of Nevada, Reno. He received his BA in English with a minor in Book Arts and Publication from UNR in 2019. He is originally from Reno, but has lived in many other places since including, most recently, New York City. His poetry has been published in Black Moon Magazine, & Change, Fifth Wheel Press, Sandpiper Review, Night Coffee Lit, Caustic Frolic, and elsewhere. Max is also book artist and retired college soccer player.

Sundress Reads: Review of She Has Dreamt Again of Water

Stephanie Niu’s chapbook, She Has Dreamt Again of Water

Stephanie Niu’s chapbook, She Has Dreamt Again of Water (Diode Editions, 2022), conjures both a dreamer’s perspective and longing for freedom, as well as a clear-eyed understanding of how it can be restricted. She searches for some balance between nourishing other people and relationships, and self-preservation. No answer to that question could be straightforward, and Niu’s thoughtful exploration of it ensures its emotional dimensions remain intact. 

The first two poems of the collection (following a mythic sort of prologue) immediately set up some essential themes, with the motif of water carrying particular weight. “Water Dreams” pulls the central mother-daughter connection in and out of focus, like a tide. “Her relief that I can conjure, / even in sleep, what she cannot give me—good rest, / good luck, an ocean to dream in.” This care, as well as the discomfort of it at times, is evident throughout the chapbook, with the speaker frequently drawn in and away from the mother’s gravity. “She is always in motion, urgent for something / she cannot name.”

Both qualities of the relationship become more apparent in “Midden / Appetite,” the first of many poems that center less around water and more around themes of food and, more significantly, “trash” or “garbage,” as the mother identifies herself. These more potent metaphors reappear throughout the poems. Love is intertwined in what is consumed, as when the speaker notes the mother “eats what we won’t,” despite her complaint that “no one wants to be garbage.” Later, the mother wishes, “If someone loved me more, / maybe I wouldn’t gain weight.”

Finding a connection between the mystic ocean themes and the more mundane question of nourishment, Niu draws a sketch of a dead whale’s remains becoming an “ecosystem,” contradicting her mother’s wish not to “become food”—illustrating a fear that love means being consumed. What power do we have, or do we not have, to choose to linger in the lives of others? To sustain our loved ones in whatever way they may need?

In the next poem, “Garbage Boogie,” the speaker notes that she has “trash guilt” and will “discard what [she] can’t carry”—a stark contrast. More crucially, she believes that “the system / can’t need us to be superhuman” as she watches “the ways we still overflow / with hunger, so much hunger / with nowhere to go.” It doesn’t feel quite like a judgment on the mother, but perhaps a rejection of that model for herself after witnessing the wear on her bones.

Later, in “Before Desire,” the speaker makes this conflict a bit clearer. She uses the metaphor of pelicans filling their mouths with fish, accepting that “our way of being in the world / was the only one we wanted,” knowing that “we had no dreams.” The reader can’t help but think of the collection’s title, however, and the speaker’s insistence on dreaming, even if it’s almost apologetic.

In later poems, the speaker’s father appears to be the opposite, somehow: struggling to find the right way to nourish those in his care, misfeeding parakeets who don’t know to “keep their bellies full” like chickens do—an apparent metaphor for himself. In the next poem, however, the speaker reconsiders, noting that “he has learned to fly,” thoughtfully providing her two pears for travel; they have the “sharp crunch of water” and nourish her more fully, while being more acceptable on a plane than liquids.

The narrative of her father is clearer than that of the mother, perhaps. But maybe painting such a clear portrait of each of them is enough.

Through the three parts of “Diver Walks into the Sea and Stays,” the speaker finally creates a narrative for herself, slowly “learn[ing] to clear [her] ears,” and then beginning to explore, finding “everything […] worthy of devotion.” She concludes, “I need / nothing. I survive” in the image of an angler fish. Then, in the collection’s titular poem, she longs for exile, for the moon (“What better home / for her lonely body than another lonely, / celestial body?”)

One of the chapbook’s highlights, “Migration,” carries the reader from that longing and exploration into the collection’s final quiet moments. The poem is a sestina, using the end-words of each line to pull together many thematic elements and details that have flowed like driftwood through the collection, like “mother” and “free” and “swell.” 

In one stanza, the speaker’s mother seems to accept her “early desire to be free,” at which the mother “swell[s]/with pride;” later, that acceptance is reciprocated, when the speaker realizes, “I wish I could say what I needed to be free/from, what thing. Not any particular, even my mother.” She promises to “show [her] mother the swells” of the ocean someday.

Clear, cleansing prose runs through these poems like a river. They are not simple or transparent, yet the reader’s mind doesn’t stumble over the words. They are musical, but also purer than that, spoken with a clear throat yet an exploring mind. The language invites us to spend time with it, inside of it, like opening our eyes underwater and examining an unknown landscape. The vision is sharp, translucent. 

Much of this language is used to create the ethereal atmosphere of many poems, a similar magic to the title. At other times, though, it finds other purposes, even play. “Garbage boogie,” for instance, is aptly named after its musical qualities: “the sound of hollow boxes” dancing with “and old bottles of booze / lulls me, confused, into its groove”; “culpable” ricocheting off of “compost” and “recyclables”—all this just in the first few moments of the poem.

Although the ocean metaphors were unsurprising, I didn’t anticipate the themes centered around food and remains. At times, there is emptiness and hunger, while at others, fullness and the act of consuming. There is a clear contrast in these themes, the mysticism of water and the practical care of feeding. Yet, moments of connection are scattered throughout, such as the whale’s corpse becoming sustenance. In other cases, food and water act as both sources of life and nourishment (literal food, and metaphorical spiritual freedom of the ocean) as well as, perhaps, suffocation (consumed and being consumed; dreams being put to rest).

The final poem, “I Drive As My Family Sleeps,” offers some resolution of these themes. The images of this poem are quiet, nearly still, except for the lullaby hum of the road beneath the words. Something intangible lingers there, in the space this family creates for each other. “But for now, /this quiet mile is the only thing on earth that is ours.”

She Has Dreamt Again of Water is available at Diode Editions

Laurel Elizabeth is a writing tutor and success coach for Kennebec Valley Community College’s TRIO program, where she recently earned an associate degree in liberal arts. Additionally, she is a graduate of Vassar College’s Exploring Transfer summer program, and aims to begin a BA in English this fall. An emerging writer and aspiring English teacher, she has a special interest in the role of creative empowerment in education.

Sundress Reads: A Review of Ghost Dogs

Dion O’Reilly’s debut collection of poetry, Ghost Dogs, is a fascinating portrayal of growth and perspective. The collection is separated into five sections and primarily follows the same nameless narrator. We follow this narrator’s life from childhood to old age and witness their growth as the poetry itself becomes more mature. While early poems are full of pain, regret, and anger, the later poems possess a wry wit and a sense of optimism.

The first two sections primarily regard the narrator’s childhood and teenage years, in which they suffered physical abuse at the hands of both her parents. She calls out her father’s hypocrisy in the poem “Liberal Father,” in which we meet a father who works tirelessly to promote social and political justice while beating his children.

The early poems are teeming with pain and the confusion that comes to a child who does not understand why the one who should love them continues to hurt them. “Ode to High Tea” wonderfully juxtaposes, “Apricot pie, lemon bars, scones, water biscuits…” and an overall idyllic California afternoon with their mother slapping the back of her head with a wet flannel dishcloth before yanking a fine-toothed comb through her matted hair. Suddenly, the rest of the family has joined them in the kitchen and she is left contemplating the origin of her tea.

O’Reilly does an incredible job of portraying the irrationality of young minds; one moment experiencing trauma, the next daydreaming about tea, “…carried on the heads of porters / a hundred miles across mud valleys.”

As the narrator grows, the poems begin to change. The narrator shifts from suffering at the hands of her parents, to suffering at the hands of men. Some are stories of bad relationships and some are of violence. The memories our narrator accounts are still portrayed as things she does not fully understand. There is still confusion in her voice and anger at her misfortune.

By part three, our narrator starts to look outward—Daydreaming about prehistoric man and a man who steals a plane. She begins to speak with more agency than in earlier poems. In the poem “Ex” she sees her ex-boyfriend exit a Trader Joes and unpack his groceries into his car. As she watches, she recounts their sex life and does so without shame or embarrassment but also without any remorse for the relationship being finished, illustrating the narrator’s growth from dwelling on the negative to embracing the positive.

In parts four and five our narrator finds her voice. These poems are more concerned with the present, rather than lost in the past and when they do go back in time, they do so with the wisdom and perspective of old age.

In the early poems you get a sense of the narrator feeling sorry for herself but in the later poems the narrator is poised and in control. She’s learned not to take life too seriously and to live in the moment. In the poem, “At 62” our narrator describes a visit to the doctor where she is told she has the body of an 80-year-old woman but her response to this troubling news is lighthearted, wishing for a physician who would, “list her body’s features / like a used-car-pitch.” Our narrator is no longer interested in victimhood or understanding the irrationality of abuse; she’s past that. She’s looking outside of herself with bravery and honesty. In “Birdman” she admits that her parrot probably doesn’t want to live in a cage in her house and in “Another Happiness” she humorously speaks of her struggle as a poet, “You can’t write like that. / You don’t read enough Virgil and Milton, don’t start”…

It’s almost as if our narrator comes to life in these last two sections, shedding the ghosts of her past and refusing to let them continue to haunt her. Because much like dogs, memories treat us the way we treat them. If you stick your memories in a cage, beat them and starve them, they will be sure to bite. But when we embrace our memories and take ownership of them, however bad their origins have been—when we rescue them and show them kindness, they will not hurt us. Instead, they show us all the good we have inside us; they show us how to be better people. Ghost Dogs shows us how this process unravels and I, as a reader, can’t help but take delight in the bumpy, violent, and beautiful journey.

Ghost Dogs is available at Terrapin Books

In addition to being an Editorial Intern at Sundress Publications, Ada Wofford is a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying Library and Information Science and was recently accepted to the University of Rochester to earn an MA in English. They graduated Summa Cum Laude from Fairleigh Dickinson University with a BA in English Literature and have been featured in a number of publications including McSweeney’s and Literary Heist. They are also a Contributing Editor for The Blue Nib and the founding editor of My Little Underground, a music review site written exclusively by musicians. You can follow them on twitter @AdaWofford. 

A-Line: Amorak Huey’s Seducing the Asparagus Queen

Sundress Publications is pleased to present A-Line, a new review series. A-Line will feature reviews of new books and chapbooks by our Sundress authors published by other presses. Our hope is to feature the critical and thoughtful insights of our editorial interns about books by the authors we love.

 

Asparagus-Cover-204x300-1.jpgAmorak Huey’s second full-length collection Seducing the Asparagus Queen can best be described by a line from “Six Years in Sudbury, Ontario”: “Whatever doesn’t kill you fucks you up in some other way.” Huey’s book chafes against American culture and with that the American Dream, by using common sayings about work or life and twisting them to reveal the truth—when bad things happen you don’t just get over them unscathed no matter how many cross-stitched pillows say you will, there will be scars. You’ll come home from war and your father still won’t be proud. You’ll work a job, grind yourself down because you’re supposed to, and your wife will touch herself to Dancing with the Stars while you get drunk and flirt with someone from high school in the same stuck as you. Huey makes the truth easier to swallow with his witty and punchy lines like “Cut your girlfriend in half, she holds it against you for weeks.”

The pairing of his humorous, cut-through-the-thick tone with intriguing images make his poems ache—the embodiment of the broken extrovert, bandaging his wounds in laughter like the clown imagery in a few of his poems. Because of this I found Seducing the Asparagus Queen refreshing and relatable. Huey captures every phase of life—the restlessness and desperation of youth, the disillusionment and the self-doubt of adulthood, mourning, and really the disillusionment with life in general. I felt understood by this chapbook. Like I slumped down in a barstool, head to bar top, and this chapbook slid me a whiskey shot, and gave voice to the stirring feelings underneath. It told me that life is hell and probably cursed a few times before taking another shot, pausing as the whiskey burned its throat and said that no one has the answers. I found a comfort and camaraderie in feeling stuck, in someone wading in too far to turn back, but unsure of how to continue. Whether that be the moment in the back of a car somewhere in the middle of nowhere, where touch is the only language, your whole future ahead of you, or you’re trying to figure out how to fit, how to work, how to be a parent, how to let go of one home for another, how to lose someone and keep moving forward. Seducing the Asparagus Queen is funny, insightful, and exactly what I needed to read.

 

Order Seducing the Asparagus Queen at Cloudbank Books

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Jenna Geisinger is a fiction and creative non-fiction writer from New Jersey. She attends the MFA Professional and Creative Writing Program at William Paterson University, while working as an associate managing editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal and a reader for Philadelphia Stories, where she has been previously published.

Be All Ye Can Be, Literary Citizenry: 10 Aids for Being a Good Literary Citizen

Literary Citizenship Word Cloud

The literary community is much more than an abstract ether of rejection and acceptance letters syncing contemporary artists together on the web. It’s not just a hunky dory image of a spotlight on a youthful reader possessed by a fleeting muse in a coffee house. It’s real people and real connectivity in a real age of driven networking. Contemporary literature is a thriving community with its arms wide open.

The greater good the literary citizenry serves cannot be denied. Its members watch out for each other, keeping each other inspired and creative. They are a tight knit bunch as concerned with their own development as they are with the welcoming of every new voice joining the artistic conversation, which bubbles under keyboards from China to Chiquimundi and back.

But how do literary folks everywhere move past the warm and fuzzy conceptualization of community and become powerful movers and shakers within the group? It starts by owning up to his or her own potential to serve as an exemplary literary citizen. Being “exemplary” doesn’t mean owning a polished Submittable account with heaps of published work or being a traveled laureate. Literary citizenship starts with the smallest attempts to broaden one’s own experience, until all the ripples eddy into a big splash on the scene that will surely be as rewarding for the author as it is for his or her community.

The staff at Sundress meditated on the lofty subject of literary citizenship for awhile across various snowy summits in the Smokey Mountains and came to some pretty nifty conclusions. (Actually, we just solicited advice from loyal Facebook users. Thanks, friends!) Here are some of the best ways to be the best kind of literary citizen you can be.

1.Revive with Reviews

“Review some work you might not pick up otherwise unless you were going to review it. Try to learn from it and see its merits,” says Sandra Marchetti. Writing reviews is a great way to flip the breaker in your critical mind to spark some new ideas. Through evaluating the work of others, you can come to realize your own strengths and weaknesses, or even discover some new ones. Really excavating a work also gives you some key talking points within your literary community, points that could further the efforts of your peers.

But don’t just stop at reviewing creative writing! Go further, reviewing literary journals, non-fiction, and websites. T.A. Noonan encourages writers to cite the things journals and presses are doing differently or strongly. The Review Review is a great example of a voice putting literary journals under the microscope.

2. Harness Your Passions

It’s okay to be a stuttering, flabbergasted literary fan; but when the spasms stop, it’s time to promote your newly discovered sensation and create some internet buzz. “Be available to blurb/help promote on Facebook when new work from writers you love/admire drops,” says Sara Henning. Social media is a powerful tool most artists rely upon today, a tool only as effective as its constituents.

Speaking of social media, Lisa Marie Basile encourages us to “Read work by people you don’t know and share it across social media.” The next best thing to loyal excitement is distributing that same loyalty and pizzazz to other authors. Be brave. Branch out.

3. Self-help with Self-promotion

You’ll never be scolded for shouting off rooftops about your publishing victories, except by the neighbors. Sebastian H. Paramo writes, “Don’t be ashamed to self-promote where you have published or your friends’ work. It shows support for the press and encourages others to do the same.” Paramo makes an excellent point that success is all the sweeter celebrated and shared.

But moderation is key, for too much presence or a sudden jump in publication may lead to a misunderstanding of one’s place in the greater artistic landscape. Malcolm Gladwell of The New Yorker refers to such successful leaps as tipping points, or moments where one’s craft culminates in a sudden series of publications. Dana Guthrie Martin warns against such points, saying they can argue with one’s creative flow. “Never think you’ve arrived in terms of your own writing. You haven’t. You are always on the journey, just like everyone else,” Martin says.

4. Recognize Relevance

To further one’s public relations endeavors and really promote peers, it’s vital to work smarter, not harder in terms of utilizing connections. Rather than posting paper fliers for a reading or paying for feed space on Facebook, why not send an email to someone with some pull in the literary world? While Stephen King might not pick up the line, there are plenty of major and minor players with a variety of strengths. Gladwell campaigns for writers to recognize someone’s status as either a social butterfly, a specialist of a certain corner of knowledge, or a persuasive activist.

“Be able to identify these personality types in others, and you will not only be making friends and contacts in the literary world who will be people that you can relate to on a creative level, but who will also be advocates for your work in a post MFA world,” Gladwell says.

5. Sponsorship

“Sponsor other writers by reading and sharing their work. Make a point of doing it *especially* when you get no political benefit from it,” Sara Biggs Chaney says. Chaney marks an important distinction between an alliance like the one Gladwell might foster and the idea of camaraderie for the sake of itself. Authorial friendships can launch entire movements once people began to discover their common goals. 

6. Stop Trolling in Its Tracks

How many times has a perfectly constructive feed on the internet been derailed by a line of thought as trite as it is obnoxious? Debates that are anything but productive can pop up, and people can be downright shocking. Trolling happens, but Chaney brings up another form of feed policing that any committed literary citizen should take seriously. Aside from perusing for those in direst troll peril, try to up the anti of a literary discussion with your own two cents.

“… when you can, try to raise the level of discourse that passes between writers online. When you think that your perspective could help someone else or provide insight in any way, try to provide it. Don’t be cute or hateful just because you can,” Sara Biggs Chaney says.

7. Fight for Rights

“Stand with those who have been hurt or wronged by other writers. Say no to bullying, abuse, assault, and other transgressions that occur in the writing community,” poet Dana Guthrie Martin says. This social responsibility should not be taken lightly. Passivity towards injustices, whether spoken or typed, will only lead to a breakdown in our community. If any person should be unduly ostracized or their voice stymied by oppressive harassment, his or her fellow artists have every right to step in to defend one of their own.

8. Wear Appropriate Hats – Submit with Tact

Leslie Salas makes an excellent point on the issue of submissions and bruised egos: “Another addition: Don’t be an asshat to editors. (The amount of unprofessional grumpy whining we get when writers try to skip the slushpile or when they get rejections is ridiculous.)” Sad but true, editors are often overwhelmed, and all it takes is one email to make one’s day go from bad to worse. Try not to be that headache if you can help it.

Erin Elizabeth Smith goes on to advise all those submitting to journals to “Practice internet decorum.” Remember, anything you spew into the airwaves or onto a blog could spread like a bad germ. Accepting rejection, arguing a literary point, or posting a seemingly innocuous social media comment must be handled with integrity and grace. Not a proverbial curtsy in the style of a Jane Austen heroine per se, but  grace nevertheless.

9. Suit Up and Show Up

While the internet and its multitudes are a great way to grow closer to one’s craft and reach an audience, a vast and very tangible marketplace of indie book stores, zines, and release parties are alive and well in the digital era. Literary citizenship should be a hands-on experience in the backyard, one that fosters the same frantic DIY attitude the draft process instills. Dana Guthrie Martin says friends and fans should show their support for presses and their catalog of authors by arriving in person to their respective events.

Don’t let the unknown keep you at home.  A roster of readers or a press you are unfamiliar with at a local event may be the perfect way to unveil a fresh scene or make new, productive connections. “Go up to people you don’t know whose work you like and say it was good,” Lisa Marie Basile advises. That’s always a good way to break the ice.

Don’t know where to find such events? The websites of local bookstores, small presses, and MFA programs often cite imminent events. Annual art festivals occasionally sprout up that feature literary readings, such as the Pygmalion Festival in Champaign, IL.

10. Escape Comfort Zones Before You Zone Out

Last but not least, carrying out the role of a good literary citizen means being equally good to yourself: change things up despite your authorial goals. Varying one’s literary intake makes for surprises in the craft process, and personal discoveries lead to public discoveries upon their acceptance by a journal or press. Dana Guthrie Martin expands upon this, saying that writers can box themselves up if they are not careful.

“Read writing that challenges you so you don’t fall into the habit of liking one kind of work. At least learn to appreciate aspects of work that doesn’t exactly speak to you,” Martin advises.

In the interest of breaching each of our literary routines, below is a list of sites for anyone interested in fulfilling and broadening their role as a literary citizen. May this list and the ten points above serve ye well.

–Duotrope

–Six Questions For

–CWROPPS-B Group Yahoo Group

–P&W Online

–Joseph Dante List of Literary Journals for LGBTQ Writers, Women, and Writers of Color

–Aerogramme Writers Studio

–Writers Helping Writers

–New Pages

–Submission Bombers: Spotlight

–Places for Writers

–Antioch Writers

–Submissions Grinder

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Jacob L. Cross lives in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. He studied creative writing and publishing at the University of Illinois Springfield, where he served as editor of The Popcorn Farm Literary Journal. His work has been featured in Still: The Journal, The Alchemist Review, and elsewhere. More recently, his poems are due for release in Clash by Night, a poetry anthology inspired by the punk staple, London Calling. He enjoys hiking with his wife, traversing Zelda dungeons, spoiling his dogs, and half-priced sushi.

Photo courtesy of Allie Marini Batts.