The Poetry of Marine Life

Just like the past, the future is connected to what happens in our natural world. As we watch the daunting cleanup of the BP oil spill off the Louisiana coastline, it brings to mind a heartbreak from the past, the Exxon Valdez spill. In the poem "Cry" from Marine Life (2010), a new collection out this month, the Exxon Valdez spill is addressed, sadly, 2o-odd years later, just in time for our current crisis:

. . .Tiny sea otters
smeared with oil,
are shown kindnesses;
nuzzled like babies
to mother’s breast,
given a rhythmic,
warm massage,
slow, gentle baths
in azure soap streaks.
Elixir of life,
the dish liquid Dawn.

. . .Can dish soap relieve pain
that comes from without?
Grief that smarts and sows
a slippery black ache?


. . .Twenty years later,
hard-bitten fishermen
of such oiled seas
still don’t cry.
Or maybe they do. Maybe they prefer to hide their tears.

Stirred by her lifelong interest in the beauty and lessons of the marine world—interests born as she watched The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau in her grandmother’s living room—author Karen S. Williams composed Marine Life: A World in Poems. It is her hope to give readers, poetry and nature lovers, environmentalists, and everyday humans a meditative collection that dares them to respect and care for the natural world. Let us hope it will not take us another 20 years to finally understand this message.

Major Critics Continue to Brush Independents Aside

Indie publishers continue to sound the alarm on how the New York Times critics' top books for 2009 all came from the eight major houses dominating the market. If not for the advent of blog reviewers willing to review books from independent presses, we would truly be in dire straits. Martin Shepard's blog (see link) offers practical advice for independents to fight back against being ignored. Independent press authors deserve major coverage, too. Unfortunately, it's pretty clear that the critics Shepard profiled are either clueless or truly do not care that the review coverage is woefully unbalanced. That being said, we can either try to open their eyes to the issue at hand and request a small press reviewer be added to their ranks (as suggested in Shepard's post), or forget them altogether and continue to pursue reviewers and bloggers receptive to good work, no matter the house it comes from. Perhaps soon, the right combination of independent reviews will trump that of conglomerate-inspired reviews and the reading public will hear more than eight voices. Until then, it's important for indie publishers to stay actively involved in this fight for the sake of their authors.

Poetry Will Never Die

For the past month or so, we have been touched by the outpouring of support for our new authors (Tara Betts, Antoinette Brim, Curtis L. Crisler) and their debut poetry collections. Thanks to fellow writers and poetry aficionados across the country, a door was opened for them during these hard economic times. The patronage shown these authors proves that there is still a powerful and viable market for poetry. Poetry should never be allowed to die; this world needs it now more than ever. It is our hope that this show of support will continue and build to the point where we have an unshakeable and consistent network of writers and readers ready to face the challenges of the new publishing paradigm--together.

The Blooming of a Sunflower, Part I

A Journey into the Creation of Psalm of the Sunflower by Antoinette Brim, Part I

As she nears the completion of her debut poetry collection, Psalm of the Sunflower, Aquarius Press author Antoinette Brim has agreed to share some of her thoughts about the creative process and her role as a poet in a world that sometimes forgets its poets:

I remember how I first discovered poetry. At about seven, I chanced upon Langston Hughes' Dreams. I don’t recall that I had yet begun to dream dreams, but I understood the power of a dream having just read King’s Dream speech from a volume of the Negro Heritage Library my Nana had given me. I looked out of my bedroom window at the frozen New Jersey landscape. I knew that when I began to dream dreams, I would hold fast. . .

. . .As I prepare for the release of my debut collection of poetry, Psalm of the Sunflower, it is apropos that, I again think about discovery and identity through poetry. All grown-up now, a woman in the South for the better part of thirty years, I have measured myself by what are sometimes very strict and conservative social mores. A failed marriage and the resulting single parenthood was a painful induction into a realm of unreturned phone calls, un-invitations and social anonymity. It was cause for prayer and the cause of poverty. However, my divorce after fifteen years of marriage and three kids, created an opportunity not to recreate myself, but to self-actualize – to, as Walcott would say, “love again the stranger who was your self.” Writing the book showed me again that poetry could tell me the whole, unabridged truth about the world, about me and about me in the world. My poetry taught me to dream dreams. And, as I learned so long ago, "to hold fast."