Read a Good Book: Pat Conroy's Beach Music

A friend of mine recommended this book which she offered as a book-on-tape and I absolutely loved every minute of it. Beach Music centers around the suicide of Shiloh McCall and the effects it has on her family and friends. Shiloh has committed suicide as a result of the voices in her head finally overwhelming her and is instantly forgiven by her loved ones, though it does create turmoil that creates ripple effects throughout the book. Her husband, Jack McCall, is the main character who takes their daughter, Leah, to Rome until he is called back by his mother’s illness.

What ensues is a love story to the South that encompasses the beautiful descriptions of the landscapes and wildlife accompanied by the varied characters of Jack McCall’s family and friends who all grew up in the small town located in South Carolina. Jack’s brothers provide comic relief, especially John Hardin whose schizophrenic episodes turn all of life’s daily events on their ear, and the other brothers’ reactions to John Hardin.

Jack’s friends begin to reconcile the events that caused them to split apart in their college years once they are reunited in South Carolina. Mike Hess, now a movie producer, sets the stage for reconciliation between a friend who went missing and the father who believes and hopes is still dead and also kindles a new love interest for Jack as he begins working on a writing project with their beautiful and kind childhood friend.
There is something for everyone in this novel; it is witty, humorous, dark, poignant, and breathtaking. It is the kind of summer reading that endures long after it is finished and perfect for anyone who has felt love and loss.

You may be able to find this novel in your local library and you may also purchase a copy for yourself through Pat Conroy’s website by going here:
http://www.patconroy.com/beach-music.php

Pat Conroy has written many novels including: The Prince of Tides, The Water is Wide, and My Losing Season and more. To go to his main page, go to:
http://www.patconroy.com/about.php

Thanks always for reading, please drop by again next week…

Konundrum Engine Literary Review Open Submissions

Copy-and-pasted details below:
Poetry
Manners are important: before submitting, please have a gander at the site and the poetry in the archives. If you’d like to submit your work, please send your name, contact and biographical information, and two to three poems, pasted into the body of an email, for consideration. Do not send attachments. our Poetry Editors get too attached to things as it is. We will respond to submissions within two months. Courier is not a pretty font. That’s for the record.
poetry[-at-]konundrum.com

Features
Read our Features sections. Get the idea. Got something good to share with all the world? Send it in.
prose[-at-]konundrum.com

We'd like to get back to you as soon as possible, but you know how it is, what with the casino debt, the narcotics anonymous meetings, the nice, welcoming embrace of our mattresses. So wait, OK, Mr. or Ms. Ants-in-your-Pants? Simultaneous submissions are ok, as long as you let us know ASAP that the piece is being published somewhere else.

We get "First Serial and Electronic Rights." Publication rights revert back to the author, of course. We also hold the right to keep the work in our archives for the duration of the site. If the piece is first published here on the Konundrum Engine Literary Review, acknowledge us if it is subsequently re-published. Giving props is good. And yes, all work is subject to editing.

Note: We do not accept submissions between Memorial Day and Labor Day. It's summer. Go outside.

Be sure to submit before May 28th! For more details, go to:
http://lit.konundrum.com/pages/litsubmissions.php

Good luck to all who submit, please drop by tomorrow for a Read a Good Book Review…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.redfez.net/poetry/1478
“Quarantine” by Jay Passer

http://bombsite.com/issues/116/articles/5125
“The Weaver” (scroll down) by Sarah V. Schweig

Thanks for clicking in, please stop by tomorrow for more Open Submissions…

Posts to Follow

I have posts the rest of the week, including a Read a Good Book review for this Friday so please click in again…

Flying Guillotine Press

This press produces handmade chapbooks, beautiful, and I can’t wait to get my hands on them someday. Check out the craftsmanship of both the poet and the press at:
http://flyingguillotinepress.blogspot.com/
Thanks for dropping in, please click in tomorrow…

All Poetry

If you’d like to share your poetry in progress and receive feedback, this is the place for you! Check it out at:
http://www.allpoetry.com

Thanks for clicking in!

Now that my big exam is done I am hoping to get back to a regular schedule here at Poet Hound. I am taking a break the rest of this week to organize my house, a belated spring cleaning if you will. Please drop in next week as I will be more settled in and able to do regular posts again...

Barefoot Review Open Submissions

Jamie Sue Austin was kind enough to let me know that the Barefoot Review is actively seeking submissions and that seek poetry that talks about disabilities and illness and how it affects everyone. You will need to use the link to read the guidelines as they are fairly specific. I am happy to see that there is a forum out there that allows those going through difficult times to express themselves whether they are a caretaker or the one going through an illness or living life with a disability. I urge you to check them out at:
http://www.barefootreview.org/submit.html


Good luck to all who submit and please stop by again next week…

This Week

I have a post ready for Thursday, so please drop in for Open Submissions, I will return to a more regular schedule after I take my re-certification exam this Friday, thanks for your patience…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://poetrysuperhighway.com/pshffa.html
Not a poem but an awesome idea for sharing more poetry with the world…

I have a major re-certification exam next Friday and have been studying more so there are no more posts for this week, please stay tuned for next week…

Indiana Crime Edited by Murphy Edwards and James Ward Kirk and Durable Goods Issue 61 Edited by Aleathia Drehmer

Indiana Crime 2012 is an anthology of poems, flash fiction, short stories, and art focusing on the crimes and horror stories of the Midwest. Edited by Murphy Edwards and James Ward Kirk, there are gruesome tales as well as heartbreaking hard-luck tales within its pages. Below, I’ll share a couple of poems and a review of one of the stories:

Murder in greasepaint
By: Brian Rosenberger

A painted smile
can hide many things
some longer than others
but nothing forever

Matchless mirth maker
and member of the
fun bunch
in good standing
Harry the clown
had a hole in his heart
as red as his nose

Morganna, mistress of the high wire
and Harry’s bed
was found in repose with
the dead harlequin
wearing the clown’s oversized shoes
and a matching wound

The lovers’ final performance
went largely unnoticed,
save for one

Esmerelda, wife to Harry
and resident sword swallower
bit off more than she could chew
a victim of her own devices
after dispatching the adulterous pair,
she choked hiding the murder weapon

And that marked
the last time
the circus
came to town.

A tale of circus performers caught up in high-stakes of a different kind, this poem is entertaining and tragic all at once. For the sword swallower to choke on the murder weapon is a morbid twist of fate for seeking revenge on her adulterous husband. I enjoy seeing such a story as a poem instead of as a short story tale, taking the skeleton of it and setting its bones for the reader to fill in their own picture of the scene.



Pulp City
By: Roger Cowin

1. Welcome to Fat City

The city is a vampire that bleeds
the vitality from the soul, breeding
its own infestation of violence, greed,
hatred and hopelessness,
leaving only half animated corpses
wandering the brutal streets
looking for their next fix,
the next big score,
the next sure bet.

Welcome to Fat City,
city of suicide dreams and wasted lives,
of sterno bums, junkies, thugs
and ten dollar whores,
of cop killers and killer cops,
of dime store hoods and degenerate gangsters,
a city populated by the living damned
where being down and out is a way of life,
and every cockroach that crawls out of the sewer
has its own story to tell.

This poem actually has six sections and so I share with you its introduction. The description of the city as being a vampire sucking the life out of you is vivid and straightforward enough to let the readers know that only bad things happen here. The following sections showcase miscreants and mishaps, it is riveting and well worth reading.

The Kill Stand by Larry D. Sweazy is a short story of a man who served in Vietnam and is now working a blue collar job killing turkeys for a living and must confront the fact that he must work a third shift regardless of the fact that his granddaughter will be performing in the local church and wants him to be there to see her. It is a heart-breaking story that people can relate to more nowadays than ever before in an economy where jobs are scarce and you must sacrifice time with family to keep whatever job you can. The ending fills the reader with uncertainty and hope that I cannot spoil here. All I can say is if you have every worked long hours and had to face tragedies in family life that effect your ability to keep a job while slogging away then this story will shoot you like an arrow through the heart.

This collection of poems, stories, and artwork is a well-rounded collection of tragedies and hard luck that I highly recommend reading. If you enjoyed this review you may obtain a copy of Indiana Crime for yourself for $12.48 through Amazon of Indiana Crime by using this link below:

http://www.amazon.com/Indiana-Crime-2012-James-Ward/dp/1468146718



Durable Goods is a microzine edited by writer Aleathia Drehmer and issue Number 61 landed in my mailbox recently. Similar in size to the small journal of Lilliput Review, the issue arrives in your standard letter-sized envelope and contains several poets’ poems within. Inside this issue there are poems that describe the daily items of life such as magazines, Dixie cups, clothes you hang on the clothesline, and the feelings that overwhelm us amongst our every-day life existence. Since there are so few poems I will only share one of them with you:


A Lack of Color
By: Jesse Bradley

This couch is like a gondola, spines of
magazines brushing against it
when I almost trip over them;
airbrushed areolae, stomachs
almost break my neck. I drink just
enough for your number to melt
from my thumb. I build a wedding
chapel out of used red Dixie cups
after impregnating your voicemail. I
slap it apart in the morning when
the right side of the bed feels like
the last days of autumn.

I love the imagery in the poem, the couch as a gondola floating among the mess of magazines and Dixie cups in the living room, the idea of a wedding chapel made out of those cups. I’m not sure exactly what the inspiration behind the poem is but I picture the aftermath of a party and the hostess waking on the couch alone and realizing she has filled an ex-lover’s voice mail from drunk-dialing. Jesse Bradley’s poem is enticing in its potential story lines and I hope she sees this post and sheds some light on her poem, even if my interpretation is completely wrong.

If you enjoyed this short sample you can subscribe to Durable Goods for an entire year for a mere $12.00 with an issue being sent your way every two weeks. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful change from receiving nothing but bills in the mail, too? To find out more, send an e-mail to Aleathia Drehmer at:
Windwitch27ATyahooDOTcom


Thanks always for reading, please click in tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…

Michael Wells’ Blog Stick Poet Superhero

Insights into poetry, poets, and art, all irresistible, can be found at the also irresistibly titled Stick Poet Superhero at:
http://stickpoetsuperhero.blogspot.com/

Thanks for clicking in, please stop by tomorrow for two poetry reviews…

Anti Open Submissions

I have copied-and-pasted straight from the website for you:
Submission Guidelines


Send 3-7 original, unpublished poems as a single attachment (Word .doc or RTF) to antipoetry@anti-poetry.com. Either in the file or the body of the e-mail, include a cover letter with your name, contact information, a contributor-note biography of 50 words or less, and a statement of 50 words or less on what you’re against in poetry. This statement can be general or specific to your submitted poems, serious or tongue in cheek, broad or ridiculously minute. It needs to be something you want to appear on your page if we accept your work. Poems will be considered for both issue and featured writer slots.

The Fine Print
We are open for submission throughout the year, with occasional short breaks that will be posted here. Be sure you’re a reader of contemporary poetry. We love simultaneous submissions as long as you notify us if a poem is accepted elsewhere. We consider translations if you can provide the original version as well (and we will consider exceptions for good reasons). We ask for first serial rights, and copyright remains with the author. Anything that has appeared in an online or print journal is previously published. Posting drafts to an online workshop or blog is not previously published provided they’re removed prior to submission. Anything the editor can Google is previously published. Please do not send work more than once per six months unless we request otherwise. Please send a file attachment as requested above, not a link to a saved file. Don’t ever send revisions of work still under consideration. Revisions to work already accepted are at the discretion of the editor. Please feel free to query if you do not hear back from us within two months. If your first impulse reading these guidelines was to ask if we pay, we are likely not the place for you.

To learn more about Anti and to explore their website and poems, go to:

http://anti-poetry.com/guidelines/



Good luck to all who enter, please drop in again next week…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://juked.com/2012/04/youknowwhat.asp
You Know What by Dennis James Sweeney

http://anti-poetry.com/hainesan1/
Love Song of the Starving Chick By Anne Haines

Thanks for clicking in, please drop in tomorrow for more Open Submissions…

Nick Courtright's Punchline

Nick Courtright’s collection of poems, Punchline, has been published by Gold Wake Press and is a riveting read. Nick Courtright was born in Ohio and currently lives and teaches in Austin, Texas and is also the interviews editor for the Austinest. His work has appeared in journals including The Southern Review, the Boston Review, and his chapbook, Elegy, has been published by Blue Hour Press. Punchline is a philosophical collection of poems that reaches into the large and the small, from the universe down to the atom. It is a living, breathing collection and I am happy to share a few poems with you:

Freedom Evolves

You at outside the old house and there

Learned of paint
and shelter and the meaning of roofs

when they reveal their feelings about being

shield against the rain, a protector.

.


Now the sky is a wide cloth above

and the moment outside
has become me. It will rain so hard

the whole idea of wet will change—

we are all being waited for, we are all the analogy.

.

You believe in free will

and then one day so does

one atom of the gum-covered underbelly
of a forty year old desk

and who is affecting who?

.

Maybe that one atom is responsible
for the whole room around it

as a human is for the galaxy, the awful galaxy.

In that case, slow down,

little everything.

I think this is a beautiful poem. Mr. Courtright introduces us to the concept of shelter by way of an old house and then the meaning of shelter against an open sky which becomes a wide cloth which is another version of shelter. Then we come to free will and our choice to be in that open sky and how free will may be within a single atom. That single atom can effect the entire galaxy, something so small against something so large. In this poem we get to contemplate the stars and the sky that we seek shelter from and how small things have an impact on larger things.



Wake

The room is full of flowers,

the flowers are on the wallpaper,

they subsume the walls into flowerness,

there is a person watching the flowers,

I watch the flowers.



Tomorrow, thank you for existing.



So many people are waiting in line, so many people

for all eternity waiting,
so many waiting people.

In this poem I can picture the poet sitting and observing the room around him at a funeral home. The flowers from loved ones blur into flowers on the wallpaper, the thought of tomorrow with the deceased absent and the words “thank you” strike me. Especially when the next and final three lines are about people waiting, perhaps waiting to join the deceased in the afterlife. Here the wake inspires the poet to observe his surroundings and contemplate the idea of people waiting their turn to view the deceased one last time or perhaps waiting their turn.


Connection

The seawater sloshes relentlessly
against the green pier, calling God under its breath, God,

God, God,

and nothing changes.


I have a feeling
if I moved
even a bit—

if I could move—

it would be like the loose thread on an old argyle sweater

which, pulled, sends
the sweater

spiraling into non-existence.

The poet observes his surroundings and imagines changing, shifting, the universe. I love poems like these because I can picture myself lost in thought, too, listening to the ocean waves and thinking about life, death, and the universe. This poem does and creates a backdrop for us to imagine ourselves in, a view of the green pier and the water sloshing in such a way that it seems to be talking. This is another beautiful poem.


If you enjoyed this sample you may purchase a copy of Punchline for $12.95 through Barnes and Noble and published by Gold Wake Press go to:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/punchline-nick-courtright/1104063553?cm_mmc=affiliates-_-linkshare-_-tnl5hpstwnw-_-10%3a1&ean=9780983700128

To learn more about Nick Courtright please visit his website at:
http://nickcourtright.com/about/

Thanks for dropping by, please click in tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…

Shark Forum Blog

This blog encompasses art and poetry reviews, two of my favorite things. Stunning visuals abound, in addition to features on music, design, and more so check it out at: http://www.sharkforum.org/blog.html Thanks for clicking in, please drop by tomorrow for another featured poet…