Poetic Book Tours: Field Guide To The End Of The World by Jeannine Hall Gailey

Book Description:

Field Guide to the End of the World, winner of the 2015 Moon City Poetry Award, delivers a whimsical look at our culture’s obsession with apocalypse as well as a thoughtful reflection on our resources in the face of disasters both large and small, personal and public. Pop-culture characters—from Martha Stewart and Wile E. Coyote to zombie strippers and teen vampires—deliver humorous but insightful commentary on survival and resilience through poems that span imagined scenarios that are not entirely beyond the realm of possibility. The characters face their apocalypses in numerous ways, from strapping on rollerblades and swearing to taking notes as barns burn on the horizon. At the end of the world, the most valuable resource is human connection—someone holding our hands, reminding us “we are miraculous.”

Title: Field Guide To The End Of The World 
Author: Jeannine Hall Gailey
ISBN:  978-0913785768
Publisher: Moon City Press/2016

One things sticks out when you read Gailey's poetry. That she has deep knowledge about science. She touches War in all its forms, Disappearance of Bees, and Natural Disasters. Pondering about all these should stop us on our tracks and it does. 

Field Guide To The End Of The World is dark. Yet the humour makes the dark bearable. The way she makes us think is like keep changing channels for our favourite programmes. We want to watch it all at the same time. Same with her poems. We want to savour the poems all at the same time.

In the poem In Case, it starts with matter of voice but gets fanciful when we reach the middle. 

We were taught in grade school different lessons of survival:
In case of nuclear attack, hide under your desk.
In case of chemical attack, buy duct tape.
Buy a rape whistle.Learn a martial art

I read old fairy tales, wolves lurking behind trees
and parents ready to kill children.Magic mirrors,
dragons, spells that charm and protect.
Burn this herb to banish ghosts.

Sometimes I imagine afterlife, puffs of pink
clouds and unicorns, or gold harps, or glass cities
with streets made of Emerald. The whole earth
spinning like a child's marble below, pitiful.

We are told to vaccinate, o educate, to warn.
Traffic tickets, parking signs: bureaucratic safety nets.
Our governments promise safety in exchange for....
I will light a candle, listen to the solar-charged radio for a sign.
```````````````````````````````````

Introduction to the Body in Fairy Tales

The body is a place of violence. Wolf teeth, amputated hands.
Cover yourself with a cloak of leaves, a coat of a thousand furs,
a paper dress. The dark forest has a code. The witch
sometimes dispenses advice, sometimes eats you for dinner,
sometimes turns your brother to stone.

You will become a canary in a castle, but you’ll learn plenty
of songs. Little girl, watch out for old women and young men.
If you don’t stay in your tower you’re bound for trouble.
This too is code. Your body is the tower you long to escape,

and all the rotted fruit your babies. The bones in the forest
your memories. The little birds bring you berries.
The pebbles on the trail glow ghostly white.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have the following poetry books by Gailey and loved those 

The Robot Scientist's Daughter by Jeannine Hall Gailey and
Becoming the Villainess by Jeannine Hall Gailey

But Field Guide To The End Of The World is one of her best till date. It has been divided into sections and each one reaches out. As I understand Rocket Science only too well, these poems touched the scientist in me....

The poems makes an impact, changes us in subtle ways, and make us wish to reach out and touch the words. Need I say more? May be yes...may be no....I must mention here I am no fan anything apocalyptic or of zombies or vampires. Despite that I couldn't put down this book of poetry.

In short, I am going to read more of Gailey's poetry....

Wish I had the print copy of this.....

Poetic Book Tours: You're the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened by Arisa White

Synopsis:

Angular, smart, and fearless, Arisa White’s newest collection takes its titles from words used internationally as hate speech against gays and lesbians, reworking, re-envisioning, and re-embodying language as a conduit for art, love, and understanding. You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened works through intersectional encounters with gender, identity, and human barbarism, landing deftly and defiantly in beauty.

My views:

The first thing I felt about "You're the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened by Arisa White" is that it is very liberating. Each and every poem is about love. Not the fairy tale kind but the everyday kind which sustains. I won't say these are spiritual but are visceral, the kind which touch the gut. The poems are like songs of set to tune. Those soulful songs we all love to listen to, in certain moods. With deep feelings, these poems take us to that realm of deep thoughts. We sit back and contemplate. It ceases to matter what kind of relationship. Love is love, irrespective of who loves whom...the race, gender, social ladder is irrelevant. Eroticism is not something which has to be hidden. It can be flaunted subtly, sensually and is to be celebrated.

Tenderness touches the loneliness, a paradox in itself but isn't that how it works? 

I loved the following poems....

I will read Arisa White again and again....

tail

There are little words

that can fit in little places

if you say them small enough.

To fit a song into a pore

you have to be prepared

for the day it will sweat.

If words could stick on people,

if spoken, they would become

a different creature.

Blinded and you’re turned

five times around. Nothing

in you knows what it knew.

It’s the best part of the game:

Prick the girls you like best

while pinning on the donkey’s tail.

Poetic Book Tours: Ergon by George HS Singer

Book Description:

George Singer's ERGON is precise, delicate and fierce in its engagement with the world.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ergon: The core function or purpose of something or someone. Virtue arises when the ergon is realized fully. 

Aristotle (Nichomachean Ethics, 1.7, 12)

Title: Ergon
Author: George HS Singer

• ISBN-13: 978-1625491923

• Publisher: WordTech Communications LLC/2016
• Pages: 86

George HS Singer has made the simple things in life poetic. The use of imagery is awesome. The poems deal with everything in life as well as nature. The poems are deep and very insightful. They make us think about life in ways we have not imagined. I feel that every poetry lover should read his poems. Such a slim volume but with so much depth which touches the core. Heartfelt and at times overwhelming....

One of the best poems:

Our Quotidian

I love you differently 


now than when you were hot 

and I sizzled—

I sweep the floor, scrape away 


squashed berries, pry 


tops off medicine bottles you no longer can
and you drive

across town to find just the right


apples, open the bills first, brew kimchee,
worry for the both of us.

I listen for your stuttering laugh
downstairs and feel the silence
that concentration makes

when you ply your needlework,


racing to finish the Christmas stockings
as if the cosmos required it.

Children phone with stories about


their children. We need only change


the beds in their old rooms twice a year.

You call 911 and you’re there


with me when the anesthesia
wears off—worry webbing around

your eyes. Too, you call me cheap


and I spit lazy. We walk past each other
in the hallways.

Until we jump back from


the loneliness as, when on a hike,


a diamond back shook its rattle at us.

You vacuum, I mop.


I know your smell and you, my snore.
In line at the market, you lean into me,

Grazing my shoulder with the warm loaf
of your breast, I tap your thigh—still here,
together in the quotidian.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Don't we all wish for everlasting and sustaining love like that?

Poetic Book Tours: Saris and a Single Malt by Sweta Srivastava Vikram AUGUST blog Tour

Book Description:

"Saris and a Single Malt" is a moving collection of poems written by a daughter for and about her mother. The book spans the time from when the poet receives a phone call in New York City that her mother is in a hospital in New Delhi, to the time she carries out her mother's last rites. The poems chronicle the author's physical and emotional journey as she flies to India, tries to fight the inevitable, and succumbs to the grief of living in a motherless world. This collection will move you, astound you, and make you hug your loved ones. 

Saris and a Single Malt by Sweta Srivastava Vikram
ISBN 13: 9781615992942

Pages: 46

Publisher: Modern History Press/2016

How does one review a poetry book which you know is going to hit you on the solar plexus? How does one keep one's self from getting emotional?

You can't....you simply let it be.....

The poems are like conversing with self, the anticipation of what awaits one at the end of the journey. The rituals are the means to an end...they help us cope. With grief, With oneself...and yes we also bond with our siblings...

When my dad passed away in 2002, he was 72. He had a fall, broke his hip bone, had a surgery. We expected him to recover but that was not to be and was gone within 11 days. I went numb. The feelings just ebbed out of me. I felt nothing for a while. All three of my brothers were there for me and got me out of the stupor.

My SILs took turns to be with maa, never leaving her alone ill the rituals were complete. 

I know I am digressing. Maybe not. I had the thoughts but at that time I didn't have he words. The words that poured forth from the poet...where images of her mother are made alive for us...

Saris and a Single Malt is too poignant for me. It is matter of fact, and conveys the eternal emotions too well.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PAGE 22 

GRIEF

Everyone has an answer---how to cope and grieve when you have regrets and guilt. But no one tells you how to deal with loss when there is nothing you want to change about your past or your relationship with the deceased.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

POETRY: The Couple Who Fell to Earth by Michelle Bitting June Blog Tour

The Couple Who Fell to Earth by Michelle Bitting 

The poet has taken the everyday experiences into a different level. While reading one can visualize those but long after, it leaves such a mark that is beyond the mundane. One is left wondering at the words. The present day trials and tribulations give rise to such beautiful poetry. We all have such things happening in our lives but poetry coming out of it is a revelation.

The conscious and the subconscious merge at some point...the poetry

out of it, leaves the reader in a trance. 
Just read the following poem and you will know what I mean....

The Goods

It’s the corporeal feelings
I crave the most: aridity, lust,
their aches’ redaction, love-weariness, 

kiss-quest, falling in bed again 

when loneliness breaks a sweat 

and we mount a horse 

called faith borne 

on this wheel of March, 

charge and stamping heat 

of the noble night 

that will carry us, 

tongue and thigh 

entwined and shuddering 

against our own coming history. 

~~~~~~~

We all have such kind of feelings and emotions at one point or the other. However, we don't know how to describe those feelings.....and to understand those is even harder. The poet has done that. She has given us a piece of ourselves. If one knows what I mean....

It is not THAT particular couple who fell to Earth. We did too, with them....and what a grand feeling that is....

Poetic Book Tours: Paradise Drive by Rebecca Foust

Foust has won the 2015 American Literary Review Creative Writing Award for Fiction judged by Garth Greenwell and the 2015 James Heart Poetry Prize judged by Jane Hirshfield. 

MEET PILGRIM

on-the-wane, children grown and gone.

Who, voice-trained from birth in desire,

wakes one morning wanting—nothing—

in 
Foust has won the 2015 American Literary Review Creative Writing Award for Fiction judged by Garth Greenwell and the 2015 James Heart Poetry Prize judged by Jane Hirshfield. the way of things. Wanting some not-thing

not quite not-seen. Her dreams

—Macy’s-parade-balloon-sized dreams—

now lie, a tangle of downed silk and line.

Waist-deep in bright ruin, she labors to sing,

wondering if wanting is, after all, all

there is. Somewhere far away old ice recedes;

somewhere new wars combust. Here, rain is rare

and Pilgrim sings her scales to the dust.

House of no children, guest room of no guest;

no god or guide, a broken song. Her quest.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Title: Paradise Drive
Author: Rebecca Foust
ISBN: 9781941209165
Publisher: Press 53/2015
Pages: 114

I have a deep seated love for Sonnets. I have written a lot. Reading Rebecca Foust was a pleasure. Her sonnets deal with the 21st Century issues. Very contemporary and hits the gut. The Pilgrim's journey has just begun. The quest, the questions, the path and how to define oneself in this modern era....

Contemplating the sonnets, one can hear the music, understand the irony, the humour, the perception.

She covers terrorism, autism, divorce, birth, war, drugs.....I never could think of Sonnets in the modern context. There I was sitting, reading the sonnets, and thinking about that eternal search of truth the poet has tried to find for herself and for us, the reader. There is darkness, yet there is light. In many ways, I could identify myself with The Pilgrim.....

Filled with vivid imagery, descriptions, sensuality, deep thoughts, the language is simply beautiful. The references are very meaningful and give us great insights into each of the sonnets.

I recommend this book to those who love sonnets, poetry and also those who try to experiment in their reading...