Dreaming with Open Eyes

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Poems for Vincent Van Gogh

Louis Martinelli

$17.95 – Purchase online

Louis Martinelli’s grand performance in language guides us through the psyche of Van Gogh, surrounds his sorrow, illuminates his achievement, exalts in the ecstasy of painting he gave the world. I will savor these poems and for a long time to come.

—Jason Berry, author most recently of City of A Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Year 300

 

Lou Martinelli’s visionary collection of poems on Van Gogh, Dreaming with Open Eyes, is a marvel. While its sharp focus and consistent tone unify the volume, individual poems evoke an intriguing dialogue among a variety of voices. I am transported by their range, ingenuity, and fearlessness. The overall effect is breathtaking, culminating with a pair of exceptional poems.

Moreover, this edition incorporates a selection of Van Gogh’s own evocative drawings. In addition, it rewards the reader to look online for celebrated paintings named in many other poems—such as “Pieta,” “Sorrow,” and “Undergrowth with Two Figures.” Martinelli’s imaginative treatment of each piece strikes me as unerring. The sketch of Gachet, for instance, is especially soulful; indeed, his troubled expression seems to complement the discussion of Van Gogh’s psychology and distressed state of mind perfectly.

The author has also thoughtfully included an illustrated “Afterword.” A section entitled a “Note on Method” is especially illuminating, above all for an exchange with noted American ecologist and literary naturalist Paul Gruchow. Ultimately, the poet is bold in his assessment of the artist’s significance: “If Von Humboldt is our first ecological scientist, perhaps Van Gogh is our first ecological painter; everything he saw is connected to everything else.” Yet it is ultimately Van Gogh himself who utters the “last word”—as if a grace note closing the collection as a whole: “I have a wonderful lucidity at moments, these days when nature is so beautiful, I am not conscious of myself anymore and the painting comes to me as in a dream.”

—Christian Knoeller, Purdue University, Author of Reimagining Environmental History

 

Sparks

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Delta Eddy

Sparks

$17.95 – Purchase online

Full disclosure: I knew Delta Eddy when she was Gary. The dedicatee of her elegy “Student,” Anthony Piccione (d. 2001), who is a central presence in Sparks, was an English Department colleague and close friend of mine. Delta writes, “I keep / walking toward my teacher’s home. He’s moved deeper into the woods, his poems crows / flying silent among bare trees.” And by way of this book, it’s as though Tony—I believe I can speak for him—and I are now in turn walking into our student’s house where we are feeling Emerson’s “perpetual revelation” by way of startling observation, concentrated voice, earned statements and leaps. But more: by way of Eddy’s imaginative power toward primal intelligence that questions everything but hopes, in the end, in part by way of poetry, to be of spiritual use, even as we “Dispose of ashes thus: / Everybody gets a cupful to spill / in their doorways on their icy steps” … Cosmic sparks to earthly flames to ashes, this breakthrough book will keep giving of itself to us, merging with us, as its strong and surprising and riveting poems keep realizing that “there is no soul / in birds or grass or me that is a separate thing.”  William Heyen, National Book Award Finalist, author of Nature: Selected & New Poems 1970-2020

These are poems from the earth and sky and they rise from a spirit that has moved mountains with a lifetime devotion to poetry. Delta Eddy’s vision is far reaching because what she sees brings us closer to the truths we carry in our lives. We turn to these poems because they not only sustain us through the music of faith but, they remind us of what the great poet Pablo Neruda once declared, “Poetry is power.”  Ray Gonzalez, author of Beautiful Wall and Feel Puma

Anchored in the earthly world, Delta Eddy’s poems are Orphic excavations that explore the subliminal, then arise to contemplate the heavens. These poems touch on the Biblical and Classical world of our forebearers but move into our contemporary world to ask our oldest question: “why?”

Ranging from “Why the Shakers Didn’t Write Poetry,” an ars poetica about poetry’s consolations in a difficult world, to lyric appreciation in “Why I Love Slimy Texas Blues,” Eddy’s images reverbate: “guitar licks pointy enough/to kill the roaches in the corners.”

“The Moment the Lightning” fuses the Biblical, the ecstatic, and the natural world in one brilliant lyric gasp.

Sparks looks back on a life of reading and writing with a longing for that early “hunger/for poetry.” The poems are a tender commentary on long relationships—familial and artistic––and though they address our attenuated attentions, Eddy reminds us of the poetic impulse to reach beyond ourselves.  Sparks is a marvelous collection.  Elizabeth Oness, author of Fallibility and Leaving Milan

Ghosting

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Steve McCown

Debut Collection

Ghosting

$17.95 – Purchase online

When Steve McCown finally gathered together the pages for this book he was probably a bit surprised to realize he had been a poet for the better part of his life. What possessed him all those years? A courage and curiosity to see where distant roads and nearby doorways might lead. An eye for the authentic and for what matters most. An urge to find words––the most precise, most meaningful ones. A need to structure small individual works into the framework of an unfolding life story. Many of the revelations he provides in these poems are now mine.

—Emilio DeGrazia, Emeritus Professor of English, Winona State University

In the middle of Steve McCown’s luminous book of poetry, there’s a hurricane. After the storm, the poet’s eye catches a bright yellow hummingbird feeder still unbroken amid the wreckage: “Its bright inner life, in the gloom,/was still visible, alluring./ We—displaced from our home,/adrift on the streets—hovered near.” This graceful book performs a kind of poetic salvage operation, rescuing small moments of beauty and meaning from the wreckage of life and the rising flood of time.

Rob Hardy, Poet Laureate of Northfield, Minnesota

A Mark of Permanence

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Justin Watkins

New and Selected Poems from Land and Water

by the author of the award winning chapbook Bottom Right Corner.
“Justin Watkins’ poems always surprise, and I have long admired them. They are imperial messages, and contain the secrets that arrive from close observation and the knowledge gleaned from it. The reader will see the world in a new way and be wealthier for reading them.” —Larry Gavin, author of Necessities, Least Resistance, Stone and Sky, and The Initiation of Praise.

“As he looks at corpses of muskrats – ‘puts some thought on porcupines,’ – or pauses while dragging out a deer on snow, thinks about how ticks wait out their prey, Justin Watkins’ poems take us into the heart of the Midwest as lived through its language.” —Jim Johnson is the former Poet Laureate of Duluth. His latest book, Text For Our Nomadic Future, came out in August 2018.

 

Photo by Dan Fraiser

I’ve always been a fan of the work of Justin Watkins. By Dan Frasier

His blog, Fishing and Thinking, where he writes under the pen name “Wendy Berrell”, is a truly special place to read the ruminations of a scientist who sees a value in living life close to the land. Beyond his blog, Justin’s book of poetry Bottom-Right Corner from Red Dragonfly Press is a brilliant work of outdoor poetry about life as an outdoorsman in South Eastern Minnesota. So I’ve been a fanboy for a long time.

In his newest book A Mark of Permanence published by Shipwreckt books, Justin takes his work to a new level; integrating poetry and his uniquely stark factual prose, Justin has created a series of vignettes into life being lived in modern Minnesota as it was lived centuries ago. His deep respect for the quarry in his tales along with the land and water they live in shines through like rays of sun through a dark grey cloudy ceiling. Yet Justin achieves this feat without flowery language or high-minded soliloquies. Instead, he tells you the facts like they are and lets the overwhelming reality of just how interconnected we are with the world around us speak for itself.

I think nothing better exemplifies this amazing talent of Justin’s than 2 stanzas in the poem

“The Hidden Flat”

Paleozoic Seas have come and gone here

Flooding and receding

Leaving shelved limestone

That our boot cleats bite and hold

We study the ceaseless hefting of water

For there is no other signature

Water rock two hunters and the fish:

Dark shapes deliberate in the shallows

Amazon reviews—

From Oliver: “Great read for anyone who loves being outdoors. This is a solid read and one I’ve enjoyed several times since it came in the mail. The poems and prose presented are thoughtful and make me long to be near a trout stream or hiking through the forest. I highly recommend this read.”
Dan Fraiser says: “Clear and real picture of the life of a Modern Day American Sportsman. Don’t open this book expecting some romantic tome about nature and harmony and good vibes. This is a stark and realistic look into the interconnectedness, harsh realities and oftentimes dissonant life of a modern-day outdoorsman. Fantastic read that I’ve gone back to more than a few times.”

K. Bartlett: “Thoughtful stuff by Justin Watkins. My copy arrived and I thought, “I will just read the first poem.” Then I sat down and read the entire book in one sitting. Fantastic writing for anyone who has an appreciation of life and the outdoors.”