https://open.substack.com/pub/kennethsalzmann/p/i-want-the-word-that-saysi-feel-it?r=aaf1d&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

I want the word that says/I feel it all, all at once

A poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

KENNETH SALZMANN

AUG 19, 2023

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When she sat down to write, Rosemary Wahtola Trommer knew that “paradox was at the heart” of the poem she was about to create. But how to find the essence of that paradox was still an open question, even after “the first lines fell right out.”

And “For When People Ask” was going to be the most personal of poems, after all, drawn directly from her own endlessly complex experience. Her son had taken his own life. 

She was searching for the answer to a question she heard so often from caring and well-meaning people: How are you? 

There was no easy answer that touched on the truth, Wahtola Trommer knew. If her son’s final act had brought devastation, he had also brought boundless joy into her heart during his too-brief time in the world, and his life and death could not be reduced to simple polarities like devastation or joy.

“ I want the word that says/I feel it all, all at once,” she wrote.

That word may not even exist in the English language, but what she found instead may be the perfect metaphor for the “swirl” of complicated, contradictory feelings that are an inescapable part of every human experience, especially one so profound. . . .

https://open.substack.com/pub/kennethsalzmann/p/i-want-the-word-that-saysi-feel-it?r=aaf1d&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

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Just taking a moment to let you know about some wonderful  new books by How to Grow a Poem contributors whose work has appeared here over the past few months. It’s an impressive list.

Order Joseph Stanton’s “Lifelines: Poems for Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper” from Shanti Arts.

Mary Makofske’s latest, “No Angels,” is available from Kelsay Books.

“Prayer Can Be Anything” by Karen Elizabeth Sharpe can be ordered from Finishing Line Press.

Barbara Louise Ungar’s “After Naming the Animals” is forthcoming from The Word Works (any day now!).

And “The Beloved Community” by Patricia Spears Jones (who will be featured on “How to Grow a Poem” in the coming weeks) is available for pre-order from Copper Canyon Press in advance of its September release.

Brian Turner also has new books—three of them—coming out this fall from Alice James Books. “The Goodbye World Poem” is coming in September and is now available for pre-order.

I hope you will consider adding some (or all!) of these titles to your personal library and/or encourage your local library and booksellers to add them to the shelves. 

Oh! And please share both this news and How to Grow a Poem with your poetry-minded friends.

Thanks,
Ken

Of course, What Remains is concerned with the most serious of subjects, but that doesn’t mean it’s without humor, as in Sheryl Nelms’ account of a Texas funeral brimming with the deceased’s personal style.

Sheryl L. Nelms

THE FUNERAL AT MINGUS, TEXAS

they said

Bobbie Lou

paid for them to do it

her way at the cemetery

blue tarp

roof

live band

and her

right there

in her pink coffin

on the stand

over the grave

while they

line danced

did the Cotton-Eyed Joe

and swigged

cases

of Pearl

and Lone Star

that she bought before she died

then tossed

their empties

into the hole

before they lowered

her away

https://www.amazon.com/What-Remains-Many-Goodbye-Anthology-ebook/dp/B07ZBMVB1W/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1621970600&sr=8-1

Three Tamales for the Señor by the late James Tipton is a captivating collection of his short fiction, but many know Jim as a widely published and highly regarded poet as well (consider that Isabelle Allende called him “the man who writes like Neruda”).Here’s a taste of his poetry, recorded just weeks before his death from cancer.https://www.amazon.com/Three…/dp/B088KTHLXP/ref=sr_1_5…

“James (Jim) Tipton was a man so alive, so aware, so immersed in life, that it seems nothing escaped his attention: not the changing sound of rain, not the soft whisper of a butterfly’s wing, not the shadow of sadness behind a smile, nor the tremor of joy beneath a frown. He saw and loved all of it, and the stories collected in this book give testament to the depth and breadth of his understanding.”– Rachel (RJ) McMillen Author of the Dan Connor Mystery Serieshttps://www.amazon.com/Three…/dp/B088KTHLXP/ref=sr_1_1…

All results from the 2021 Eric Hoffer Book Award judging are now in and we are pleased to let you know that What Remains: The Many Ways We Say Goodbye has garnered yet another award.

The new award is in addition to the collection having been picked out of a field of some 2,500 books last week and shortlisted for the Grand Prize.

This time, it is the ebook edition of What Remains that is being honored. It is one of three Honorable Mentions in the Nonfiction eBook category.

Thank you once more for helping to make the anthology a (multiple) prize-winning book!

• 

Baby Boomers Write About the Soundtrack of Their Lives, Poems and Essays

In What But the Music, dozens of highly accomplished and widely honored writers and poets—largely Baby Boomers, but also some who came into the world a little bit before or a little bit after the years that demarcate that generation—consider the songs and artists who helped create the soundtrack of their lives.The evocative poems and personal essays in this collection recall many of the expected musicians who shaped the sounds of the 1950s through the 1970s, with (as might be expected) a heavy dose of Sixties music throughout. Of course, the Beatles and Rolling Stones are included, and so are everyone from Lesley Gore to Lou Reed, the Dave Clark 5 to the Fugs, Aretha Franklin to Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Ian, B.B. King, and Frank Sinatra. Les Paul and Mary Ford are to be found in here. So are Buddy Holly and Dolly Parton and Miles Davis. Ben E. King and Helen Reddy. Edith Piaf and Bruce Springsteen.And so many more icons of the age.But readers are likely to be surprised from time to time, when they happen across tributes to such people as Claudio Abbado, John Williams, Al Hibbler, or Nolan Strong and the Diablos—surprised, that is, until they settle into the memories and realize that those musicians too are a part of the soundtrack of our lives. In assembling the anthology, we never knew who or what might come our way next. And that was one of the delights we experienced working with such a talented group of writers. We hope it will also be a delight for each reader, and we are pretty sure it will.So dust off the turntable and crank up the sounds. Enjoy.https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KZFN54R/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1…

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