Maureen Doallas Reviews “Poetry at Work”

Poet and writer Maureen Doallas blogs at Writing Without Paper. Maureen is a writer, researcher, interviewer, and poet, and the author of Neruda’s Memoirs: Poems, published in 2011.

Each Monday on her blog, she has a featured called Monday Muse. And today, Monday Muse took a look at my new book, Poetry at Work. It’s a wonderful review, and you can read it at Writing Without Paper or on Amazon.

Do Reviews Sell Books?

In November, I saw that Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper had posted “Monday Muse Reads ‘The Wishing Tomb.’” If you know Maureen’s blog, you know that Monday Muse is often about poetry. And this one was indeed about poetry, a collection entitled The Wishing Tomb by poet and editor Amanda Auchter. 

This poetry collection is all about New Orleans. Maureen had a long, in-depth review (she never does anything by halves). I read it, clicked through the links to Auchter’s web site and then to her blog. I was intrigued, especially about the fact these poems were about New Orleans. 

So I bought the book. A fine review by Maureen Doallas means a virtually automatic decision. So to answer my question above: Yes, reviews sell books, especially this review. 

And it’s a wonderful collection of poems. Auchter writes about the New Orleans I grew up in – the history (I knew whom Lake Pontchartrain was named for), the casket girls, the fire of 1788 (which resulted in the Spanish rebuilding the French Quarter), Marie Laveau, the Cornstalk Hotel (on Royal Street), the Pontalba Apartments, the cemeteries, Hurrican Betsy in 1965 (I lived through that one).  

But more than the history, her poems have the feel of New Orleans, the soul of a city that I have not lived in for 40 years and yet will still be part of my mental and emotional DNA. 

I liked all the poems in The Wishing Tomb. And I liked this one: 

Down in the 9  

In the shadow of his house, Fats Domino

climbs from broken shards 

of an attic window. His body is flashbulb- 

stunned, humid. The floorboards

give and splinter behind him, open 

to water. Wild 

hair, sweat. For days, the city was song-

sodden, newspaper-inked. For days 

he watched the dark 

flood rise fifteen feet,

did not know that all over the country 

houses burned with the blue 

flicker of television, the missing

poster of his face, or how in Ohio, 

a radio crooned Ain’t That A Shame. 

Up and down the block, he hears

whistles through fingers, then a boat 

under the eaves. Tonight, he breathes 

in the heat of himself, this world

of sewage and snakes, the sea- 

sick waves, a hand 

under the pit of his arm. Tonight,

he steps out into the flashlit dark, 

returns himself to the small explosions 

of light. 

So go read Maureen’s review. If you like poetry, good poetry, and even don’t know or care much about New Orleans, you’ll find The Wishing Tomb an enchantment.

On Publishing the Priest

Today, Maureen Doallas (one of the best interviewers I've ever experienced) has a post at Writing Without Paper on "Publishing the Priest." We talk about the writing, editing and publishing of Dancing Priest: how it started as a 150,000-word manuscript, how it met the standard rejections by agents and editors, and how it ultimately found a publicaiton home.

You can read the interview at Writing Without Paper.

Me and My Kindle

I had delayed buying an e-reader for a long time. It wasn’t that I was a “physical book I can hold in my hand or nothing” kind of person. It was more “this isn’t a priority right now.” I knew I did not like reading a book on my desktop computer. But Father’s Day was coming, and I solved my wife’s problem for a gift by saying I’d like to have a Kindle.

In due course, it arrived, “it” being the Kindle 3G. A friend at work had an earlier version. He had recently upgraded to a 3G, which he said was a vast improvement over earlier models.

Having the Kindle in my hands, I had to test it out. Immediately. The instructions were simple, and within seconds I had my first e-book, Gravestone by Travis Thrasher.

Oh, my goodness.

Instant gratification.

Press a button and it’s here.

Okay, so obtaining a book was easy. What would it be like to read one? Would I like it, or would I discover that that Father’s Day present was destined to sit on a shelf, gathering dust?

Gravestone was surprisingly easy to read. It was a good introduction to reading an e-book – fast paced and engaging, I’d read a page, press the advance button, and keep going.

I finished Gravestone and said, OK, that was all right. But what about poetry?

Right about that time, Maureen Doallas over at Writing Without Paper had a feature about poet Julie Kane, and noted that her first book of poetry, Body and Soul, was only available on Kindle. Ah, ha, a test! So I downloaded the poems, and found that poetry was just as easy to read.

Since then, I’ve two more, the suspense novel The Undertaker by William Brown and Underworld: The Modern Orpheus, poems by Matthew Duggan. And I took advantage of two promotional specials I ran across, one on Facebook and the other on a blog, and downloaded the English Standard Version of the Bible and another mystery/suspense novel, both of which were free (there may be no such thing as a free lunch, but there is such a thing as a free book) (and the ESV is still available on Kindle for free, as least right now). And I downloaded Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination, and Spirit by Luci Shaw, just in time to start reading it for the weekly book discussion at The High Calling.

Two novels and two books of poetry later, I can say that I really like this little e-reader. I like it a lot. It’s easy to use. It’s back-lit, so you don’t get a lot of glare. It’s easily portable. And it can carry up to 3500 books. That last factor alone wowed my wife, who sees a solution to the bookcases that threaten to overwhelm our house.

It’s not better or worse than reading a physical book. And there are going to be some books that simply won’t work on a Kindle; I’m thinking here of books like The Four Holy Gospels, illustrated by Makoto Fujimura, which is more like a work of art than books.

But for the vast majority of books, the Kindle will work fine. 

As I sit here, reading on my Kindle, that with the cover weighs less than 14 ounces, I’m beginning to glimpse one of the forces transforming the book publishing business. 

The Poems of Walter Bargen

Walter Bargen, who just this past month completed his two-year appointment as the state of Missouri’s first poet laureate, had written several volumes of poetry, included a new collection just published. Today, Maureen Doallas has published an article on him on her blog, Writing Without Paper, and I’ve posted a review of his Days Like This Are Necessary: New and Collected Poems over at TweetSpeak Poetry. Take a look and let us know what you think.

The Fourth Day of Christmas: Maureen Doallas

I think of Maureen Doallas as the Renaissance lady.

I met Maureen like many are met on the web – via blogs, comments and web sites. She operates a business called Transformational Threads, which licenses images of original fine art for rendering into embroidery “paintings,” also known as thread or needle paintings. She officially retired in 2007 from a job as writer and editor, but you wouldn’t know it from the sheer energy she exhibits when it comes to the arts and poetry.

She’s into all things art. She loves art, and you can see and experience her passion by reading her posts at her blog, Writing Without Paper. She’s introduced me and a lot of others to artists all over the United States. She keeps tracks of what’s going on with exhibitions, gallery openings, theatre, dance performances, concerts and movies, mostly in but not limited to the Washington, D.C., area, and she shares them on her blog in what she calls “All-Art Fridays.”

How she finds all the art-related videos on YouTube is beyond me, but when she posts one, it’s always worth watching.

And then there’s her poetry. Maureen has been writing poetry for a long time, has published some, and regularly posts her poems on her blog. She’s also a faithful contributor to our poetry jams on Twitter, which we publish at TweetSpeak Poetry. She writes beautiful words and lines – raising the bar for the rest of us. Take a look at the one she wrote for the One-Word-At-A-Time Blog Carnival on grief, or her three-part Christmas poem. Moving, simple, elegant.

She also does occasional interviews of people. And speaking from experience, she’s the most intelligent interviewer I’ve ever run across (and I’ve been interviewed by 2,000+ people in the course of my career). Likely reflecting her background as a researcher and writer, she spends an enormous amount of time researching her interview subjects, and then developing insightful, meaningful questions. I was blown away.

Maureen’s happily married (except, apparently, when it comes to fighting for space on bookshelves) and the mother of a son. She has four sisters and two brothers, and family is important to her – that comes through in all of her writings.

So read Maureen’s blog. Follow her on Twitter. She may have officially retired, but as she says on her blog site, “I’m not done yet, as you can see.” And you’ll be glad for it, too.

(Over at the High Calling Blogs, we’re celebrating the 12 days of Christmas by highlighting a blog or web site of someone besides ourselves during this season of Advent and Christmas.) (Which is what we should also be doing the other 353 days of the year.)

Interview with a Speechwriter/Poet

I was interviewed (via email) by Maureen Doallas, one of my online blogging and tweeting friends who joins us for the Twitter poetry jams (plug here for TweetSpeak Poetry).

When she sent me the questions, I was surprised by how much research she had done -- Maureen knows how to do an interview right (and she has a lot to teach working journalists about this).

You can find the published interview at Maureen's blog, Writing Without Paper.

Email Surprise

Tonight, I received an email from a poet. She'd read my "Sunday Morning Rain," and was inspired to write this. It caught me with all my message points and cue cards down. I truly don't know how to respond, or respond adequately. And what a beautiful thing she had done -- and written.

So where did "Sunday Morning Rain" come from?

I woke early yesterday, earlier than I had to, and was sitting in my office reading from the book of Proverbs. I’ve been participating in a group reading of Proverbs on Twitter, where each day you tweet a verse, something that strikes you, or how something speaks to you (check #SCLPRO for all the various tweets). It was started by Jon Acuff over at the Stuff Christians Like blog, and he’s got a book in the works that sounds like great fun. As I was reading, I gradually became aware of the rain striking the gutters and rattling around the downspout that’s right outside my window. I listened and read, and then the thoughts, images, phrases and words started crowding in. I knew a poem was trying to be born. I reached for the pad I usually draft poems on and began to write.

The thought occurred that I couldn't recall a single example of rain happening in the gospels. I checked the concordance, and sure enough, there are only two references, both in the Gospel of Matthew and both in parables. I pondered that for a bit, and thought about synonyms for rain. And then the idea of "tears" went on like a light bulb. And the only reference to Jesus' tears is in the Gospel of John, as he stood at the tomb of Lazarus.

I worked the draft over several times; the last line was one of those abrupt things that just happened, and it changed the entire poem. I stared at it, started to edit and rework it, and then stopped. No, I thought, this is what it's meant to be.

I've had online friends mightily encouraging me in my "poetry doodling," as L.L. Barkat calls it. My wife encourages me, too, even when she knows a lot of the poems are about her. She's a private person and isn't totally comfortable with all of my online writing. But she encourages me anyway.

Check out Maureen's poems at Writing Without Paper. She's good.