"Barbies" Giveaway Winner

No, I didn’t forget that we had a free copy of Barbies at Communion: and other poems by Marcus Goodyear to give away. We did the random drawing. I just forget to post who the winner was (although I did let the winner know) (and she's scheduled to receive her copy this week, Amazon says).


In the interests of disclosure, the random drawing worked this way: I took the names of the commenters, wrote them on slips of paper, placed them in a bag, and pulled out one.

And the winner was Megan Willome, who blogs at Sabbath Says. Congratulations to Megan, and my thanks to all who commented.

Giving Away "Barbies"

I’m an unabashed fan of Barbies at Communion: and other poems by Marcus Goodyear. I’ve got the book’s badge over on the supper right of this site, and I’ve now posted an interview with the poet himself over at TweetSpeak Poetry. He talks in detail about how he come to love and write poetry, some of his own background, and how he sees the poetry in the everyday.

And here’s an example of that “poetry in the everyday:"

"Epiphany" by Marcus Goodyear

We put our Jesus in the attic
after Christmas, buried in boxes
between plastic wreaths and cheap lights.
I rarely think about the idle figure
when I fetch luggage for business trips.
Near the boxes, the space is a maze
of pipes wrapped in thin foam, too thin
for January freezes when water reminds us
who is in charge. So here I am,
my breath like a pillar of cloud.
When the pipes crack, the water sprays.
There is no controlling this flood
and the damage it causes, soaking
through our Christmas, baptizing Santas,
Rudolphs, wreaths and every single Jesus.

I like this poetry so much that I’m giving away a copy (the print version). All you need to do is drop a comment – your name, a say-hey, anything you’d like – in the comment box by Wednesday, July 21 at 8 p.m. A name will be selected at random (I ask my wife to pick a number) (if she’s read the comments, then I’ll ask my next-door neighbor) and then posted/contacted next Wednesday night. That’s all you need to do.

And if your name isn’t selected, you should buy this book of poems. (I’ve never said that in a review before, but I’m saying it now.)

The Song Has Not Been Heard

The song has not been heard in the
street or the market, nor sung in the
village or on the highway, nor flown
across the courthouse square since
before the time people remember.

The farmer in the field mourns a way
to end his day; the mother grieves
the absence of what quiets the child.
The singer stands mute, impotent; the
poet despairs with a shriveled soul.

Locked within the white tower, the
song has become a fictional shadow, a
parody of itself, preoccupied with its
form, its structure, its notes, its lack of
notes, its own self and none other.

It sits within its assigned cage, failing to
entertain a priestly few, a few deaf
priests, priests with bony fingers and
hearts of stone who poke and prod with
sticks but hear no music.


The poem above describes what I believe one of the ideas behind “Barbies at Communion” – to help celebrate the poetic in everyday life and in so doing help return poetry to people.

Over at TweetSpeak Poetry, we are helping Marcus Goodyear celebrate the publication of Barbies at Communion: and other poems. I reviewed the book of poems last week; we devoted a TweetSpeak poetry jam to Barbies on Tuesday. Check out how to win a signed copy of Barbies.

You can order the Kindle edition at Amazon, and the print edition at CreateSpace. You can also order a signed copy via the book’s web page through PayPal.

Marcus Goodyear’s “Barbies at Communion: and other poems”

You’re sitting in church, the communion plate is passing down the pew, and as you reach for the little cup of grape juice you notice your young daughter playing with her Barbie dolls.

You’re coaching your first boys’ soccer game, and you err on the side of bending the rules so the kids can have a little fun.

An old resort hotel is abandoned to collapse in on itself. Or you cut your grass too short and here come the weeds. Or a water pipe breaks in the attic, ruining the stored Christmas decorations. A puppy dies when it catches the motorcycle it’s chasing. Two friends build a bookshelf. Deer show up in the negihborhood to eat your plants. Piano practice.

This is the stuff of poetry? This ordinary, everyday living stuff?

In Barbies at Communion: and other poems, poet Marcus Goodyear (editor of the High Calling Blogs) answers with a resounding yes, because something profound is found in this ordinary living.

Consider “Epiphany:”

We put our Jesus in the attic
after Christmas, buried in boxes
between plastic wreaths and cheap lights.
I rarely think about the idle figure
when I fetch luggage for business trips.
Near the boxes, the space is a maze
of pipes wrapped in thin foam, too thin
for January freezes when water reminds us
who is in charge. So here I am,
my breath like a pillar of cloud.
When the pipes crack, the water sprays.
There is no controlling this flood
and the damage it causes, soaking
through our Christmas, baptizing Santas,
Rudolphs, wreaths and every single Jesus.

Like many of Goodyear’s poems, “Epiphany” is full of Biblical allusions, and not only the direct reference to Jesus. Consider the flood, the breath like a “pillar of cloud,” the reminder of “who is in charge and the water from the broken pipe as a kind of baptism. On one level, “Epiphany” is a poem about nothing more than a broken pipe. But he massages it into a richly layered meditation on faith and God, using the commonality of Christmas decorations – how we understand faith – and how that understanding drowns in the reality of what faith is really about.

What Goodyear has done in this collection of “poetry in the everyday” is to demonstrate that poetry can be accessible, understandable, and real to people who long ago turned their backs when it came to be dominated by the academy.

This is about the poetry in life, about poetry as life, the life we all know.

Reading these poems was like reading some of my own personal history. Like when I was 5 and my dog was hit by a car. And the three days after Christmas we spent in a motel when the pipes burst in our house in New Orleans after a hard freeze. And cutting the grass too short. And cutting the grass on a Sunday. And riding my bike up to Tastee Donuts on Sunday mornings to get breakfast for the family. And the time when I worked with a carpenter friend who made me a typing table and a bookshelf out of yellow pine. That’s the stuff of Barbies at communion.

It speaks to the depth and insight of the poems that they become and reflect our own experiences.