Wednesday, December 4, 2019

ON HARRIET ZINNES

From Burt Kimmelman:

Harriet Zinnes, whose loss we feel deeply, had a full life, and we were, in her poems and other writings, the beneficiaries of that. The following is a passage I’ve modified from an unpublished essay that awaits some final editing from a journal where it will appear eventually. The essay discusses a poet’s late work. Those of us involved with Marsh Hawk Press were so very lucky to have been involved with Harriet’s late poems, which the press published, several volumes of them—and they’re a rare contribution to the canon. 

The passage from my essay goes something like this (here I’m starting in medeas res):

Perhaps Adrienne Rich had some, let’s say, unfinished business to take care of—which is not the same as what often most frightens a poet as she ages: self-repetition. Yeats’s late work has of course been the subject of so very much, justly reverential, commentary. The challenge for Yeats was, Peter Ure points out, “to discover his role in a universe.” Yeats’s diary stipulates a “reason for putting our actual situation into our art”—which is that “the struggle for complete affirmation may be, often must be, that art’s chief poignancy.” It’s fair to say that a substantial amount of Yeats’s late work is taken generally to be of equal power and grace as his earlier poetry. 

                 I’ve thought a lot about William Bronk’s concise, dense, late statements. They don’t possess the majestic sweep of his poems at middle age (in terms of line length, overall volume, the philosophical punch in the solar plexus). His late poems, however, hold their own, and they do seem typically of him. For me the comparison here is with someone like Harriet Zinnes; her late poems—their ethereal, sprightly, fleetingly brilliant statements seeming to have come from beyond the veil—are exciting in their exquisite lightness yet intrigue, which doesn’t dissipate. Zinnes’ last poems are supremely graceful, intelligent, paradoxically profound in their sheer defiance of gravity. Yet I’d not be surprised to find readers of her work over the years as feeling that the late poems are a distinct departure. They strike me as drawing upon the same wellspring of insight, finally, and possessing an eerie refinement—which in a way was less on display before, perhaps obfuscated by something more grand in presentation.

We, at Marsh Hawk Press, were so very lucky to have Harriet, her work, within our midst. She lived a long and full life, and we were only a few of the beneficiaries of that.

  • Burt Kimmelman

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

R.I.P, HARRIET ZINNES

The Marsh Hawk Press community is sorry to learn of the passing of Harriet Zinnes. According to her family, she “died peacefully in her sleep Saturday morning. The whole family except her niece who lives in Singapore was there.  She was 5 months shy of 101. She left in peace, in her sleep, with very little suffering.  The night before she listened closely to her son playing the piano, and was able to discern that he needed to practice more (we all laughed, because she was so right), and we played a silly game at the dining room table after dinner.  On her way to bed she asked that we be sure her notebook was right next to her in case she awoke in the middle of the night to write a poem, a habit she’d had for years.”

Rest in Peace, Harriet.



Sunday, December 1, 2019

REVIEW FOR EILEEN TABIOS' IN(TER)VENTION OF THE HAY(NA)KU!


Maileen Hamto reviews Eileen R. Tabios' new Marsh Hawk book, The In(ter)vention of the Hay(na)ku ... which also just appeared on SPD Books' Recommended List! Here's an excerpt of the review which you can see HERE:
“Poetry rules are sometimes made to be broken,” Tabios writes. At its core, the Hay(na)ku is liberatory and emancipatory, similar in magnitude to the genius of Black American inventors and innovators in literature, music and other creative pursuits. By developing the Hay(na)ku, Tabios invited her contemporaries to define FilAm, U.S.-born-and-bred poetry from brown-skinned Filipinos, to cease conformity with white supremacist notions of “goodness” in art and the expectation of appeasing the tyranny of literary gatekeepers in order to be validated.

Wednesday, November 6, 2019

BURT KIMMELMAN AT DICHTUNG YAMMER

Burt Kimmelman and Thomas Fink offer a deeply-satisfying conversation in the latest installment at DiCHTUNG YAMMER.  Here’s an excerpt:

I do want my poems to exude clarity and an affect of clarity as well, and to haunt the reader’s inner experience. I guess the single-syllable vocabulary—that makes for a clarity. But what is involved in that clarity? It’s difficult to find an abstraction signified in a single syllable word. And then again, in English, the specter of the language prior to 1066, the Norman Invasion, and the transforming of the language in most ways by French inclusion, is never really far from us, albeit we don’t always pay attention to that. The English (German-speaking) peasants did not suffer the pressure from their masters to abandon their German, to use French. (The French aristocrats didn’t see the peasants, really, as human beings, so while they brutally imposed their new language upon everyone but the peasants, in an attempt to expunge a cultural memory, the peasants, illiterate, kept right on with their lives.) Many of our words for basic everyday things (including the word thing) is an inheritance of much earlier incursions into the British Isles by German tribes like the Angles and Saxons, having origins in German, not French, Latin or Greek. I always think of Oppen’s reference, in an interview, to the “little words that I like so much.” I want to reduce language to the poem’s essence, which, you might say, could nearly exist without words—but of course the beauty of poetry starts with the words.

Sunday, November 3, 2019

EILEEN TABIOS' MINIATURE VERSION OF HER NEW MARSH HAWK PRESS BOOK


Eileen R. Tabios' new book The In(ter)vention of the Hay(na)ku is available through SPD Books and other outlets. While it technically is released on Dec. 1, 2019, Eileen has commenced an Author's 2019 Holiday Special involving an enchanting miniature book!

The In(ter)vention...'s mini-book version--sized at 1-7/8" x 2.5"--can work as a Christmas Tree ornament. If you don't traffic in Christmas or Christmas trees, the ribbon used for hanging on a tree can be used as a bookmark. There are poems within the miniature book, as shown by the images below. 

This miniature book, available in a lovely Holiday-red gift bag, is available for $10 (plus $5 shipping). You can purchase just the miniature book or use its purchase for a credit of $10 off of the larger hardback release priced at $29.95. Yes, this means that for the price of the hardback, you also can get the charming tiny book!

Optionally, if you wish to give either the miniature book or miniature plus large books as a holiday present, Eileen is willing to gift-wrap them both and send them on your behalf to the gift recipient. (Free gift-wrapping.) A perfect gift for introducing poetry to, or sharing new poetry with, a reader!

Naturally, books can be signed!  If interested in this offer, email Eileen Tabios at galateaten at gmail dot com  . Offer good while supply of miniature books last!

Meanwhile, here are pics:








The miniature book is produced by OnceUponTheTree (Apollo, PA).




Saturday, October 26, 2019

MARSH HAWK REVIEW, FALL/WINTER 2019

Marsh Hawk Review's Fall/Winter 2019 issue, edited by Thomas Fink, has just been released. You can see it HERE. Here are the participants:



Thursday, September 26, 2019

DAVID LEHMAN SHARES HIS "CHAPTER ONE"


David Lehman is the October poet to participate in Marsh Hawk's "Chapter One" project that shares how poets got their start. You can read his contribution HERE, but here's an excerpt:
At the University of Cincinnati, where I taught as the Elliston Poet in Residence, I was asked what advice I would give to young writers. I looked at the bright, eager faces in the room, and I said — I didn’t know I was going to say this, it was just what I felt at that moment – that they should remember that poetry is not life. That there will come a time when all of them will feel envy and resentment, because they didn’t get the job they deserved, or the award, or the recognition. There is no one is the poetry world who feels he or she has received the recognition they deserve. The question is: How will you deal with the bitterness and resentment? Because those things are the enemies of poetry. Those things are not real — not real in the sense that grief and love are real. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to succumb to competitive envy. And that is why it is important to remember that poetry is not the whole of one’s life, but a part of it, and that we should not put too great a burden on the poetry that we love. Keeping it alive, poetry and the possibility of poetry, is the great thing.


Wednesday, September 25, 2019

MARY MACKEY AT HARVARD!


An invitation from Mary Mackey:

     Harvard has invited me to fly to Cambridge, Mass., to read poems from The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams as part of the Harvard Authors Speakers' Series.
     This invitation, which I think is due in large part to Jaguars winning the 2019 Eric Hoffer Small Press Award, came as a surprise, but--better yet--it comes as a sign of how much Harvard has changed in its attitude toward women since I was an undergraduate.
     In those dark days of Harvard misogyny, women were prohibited from entering Lamont, the undergraduate library, which meant I never got to hear Allen Ginsberg, Robert Frost, or any of the other famous poets who came to Harvard read from their work.
     On Monday, October 21st, at 7:00 PM, I'll be reading from Jaguars at The Harvard Coop (which is what Harvard calls its bookstore). I'll also be talking about the fires raging in the Amazon, since so many of my poems are set there. I plan to  dedicate this reading to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who like me, was turned away when she tried to enter Lamont because she was a woman. Drop by and join me if you're in the neighborhood.

Time: 7:00 PM. Place:The Harvard Coop, 1400 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge MA 01238.

Sunday, September 15, 2019

A REVIEW FOR MARY MACKEY!


Joan Gelfand reviews Mary Mackey's The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams: Collected Poems 1974-2018 over at Compulsive Reader! You can see the review HERE, but here's an excerpt:
Mackey is a magnificent thinker with broad passions: pagan cultures, literature, anthropology, ecology and history are subject explored in Jaguars. After graduating with her PhD from The University of Michigan in 1970, she arrived in Berkeley, California, and began publishing in earnest. Her first novel, Immersion, was recently re-released. An ecofeminist novel, which takes place in the jungles of Costa Rica, it is a portent of climate change. 
Serious topics such as ecofeminism, history, and ecology might sound dry, but like many magnificent thinkers before her, Mackey is in full possession of a wild and wacky sense of humor that always puts her readers at ease. I’ll also say here that while her mind is magnificent and her interests broad, her work, while stunningly layered, is always accessible.

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

DANIEL MORRIS IN "CHAPTER ONE"

Daniel Morris, the latest contributor to Marsh Hawk's "Chapter One" series about writerly beginnings, presents a brutally--and admirably--honest essay entitled "Reading Spivack/Reading Myself." You are invited to read it HERE.

Sunday, August 11, 2019

DURING EAST HAMPTON AUTHORS NIGHT

on August 10, 2019, how fun to see Alec Baldwin admire Sandy McIntosh's latest book, LESSER LIGHTS!






Monday, August 5, 2019

FABULOUS REVIEW FOR MARY MACKEY


Congratulations to Mary Mackey for her PANK review of her The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams! You can see review HERE but here's an excerpt:
Mackey is a magnificent thinker with broad passions: pagan cultures, literature, anthropology, ecology and history are subject explored in “Jaguars.” After graduating with her PhD from The University of Michigan in 1970, she arrived in Berkeley, California, and began publishing in earnest. ... 
Serious topics such as ecofeminism, history, and ecology might sound dry, but like many magnificent thinkers before her, Mackey is in full possession of a wild and wacky sense of humor that always puts her readers at ease. I’ll also say here that while her mind is magnificent and her interests broad, her work, while stunningly layered, is always accessible.


Tuesday, July 23, 2019

INDIGO MOOR IN "CHAPTER ONE" PROJECT!

Marsh Hawk Press is delighted to expand its Chapter One Project with Indigo Moor! You can see his contribution HERE, but here's an excerpt:
But old scars, like old fears, don’t fade easily. I told my guidance counselor about my dream of being a writer. Knowing no examples of successful writers, much less black ones, she redirected my shallow river of hope from Liberal Arts colleges to an engineering track at NC State. It wasn’t a difficult push. Artistic children with no guidance or direction are easy targets for those who know better than they do. Besides, the child who abandoned that rocket ship when it needed him most was still in me, always willing to hide from the light.


*

You can see other authors in Chapter One HERE which refers to the early days of being a poet. Here's our official description:
"The Chapter One Project from Marsh Hawk Press features the memoirs of outstanding poets from diverse backgrounds, recalling the ways by which they found their start as writers. While creative writing programs seek to develop the talents of maturing writers, recondite but essential information about the development of the writing craft will be discovered in the early memoirs—the Chapter One’s—of established poets published in this series. Each month we’ll post a new Chapter."



Monday, July 15, 2019

THE 2019 MARSH HAWK PRESS POETRY PRIZES

Congratulations to the winners:

2019 Prize Winners
Chosen by Marge Piercy
The MARSH HAWK PRESS POETRY PRIZE
($1,000.00 Cash Prize and Publication of the Book)
“Blood Memory” by Gail Newman
The ROBERT CREELEY MEMORIAL AWARD
($250.00 Cash Prize)
“American Duende” by Jay Griswold
The ROCHELLE RATNER MEMORIAL AWARD
($250.00 Cash Prize)
“Bird” by Meg Kearney
FINALISTS
Julie Phillips, Mara Adamitz Scrupe, Julie Danho, Morgan, Jill Gonet,Howard Levy, Doris Ferleger, Seif-Eldeine Och, Allison Adair, Ahann Ray,Veronica Corpuz, Janlori Goldman, Christien Gholson, Eric Burger,and Stephen Priest


Friday, June 21, 2019

FINALISTS FOR MARSH HAWK PRESS POETRY PRIZES

CONGRATULATIONS to the Finalists for the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prizes:

Julie Phillips, Mara Adamitz Scrupe, Julie Danho, Matt Morgan, Meg Kearney, Jill Gonet, Howard Levy, Doris Ferleger, Seif-Eldeine Och, Gail Newman, Allison Adair, Ahann Ray, Veronica Corpuz, Janlori Goldman, Christien Gholson, Eric Burger, and Stephen Priest
The Finalists manuscripts will be judged by Madge Piercy.

More information is available at our WEBSITE.


EILEEN TABIOS ON "ANOTHER WAY FOR POETRY"


From Jacket2, June 20, 2019


Eileen Tabios' poetics essay, "MURDER DEATH RESURRECTION: Another Way for Poetry," has just been published as part of Jacket2's "Extreme Texts" feature. While the essay focuses on her 2018 book MURDER DEATH RESURRECTION, it also discusses poems from her first Marsh Hawk Press book, Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole. Go HERE for this unique essay; here's how it begins:

In 2013, I was weary of everything I’d written. So I decided to murder my poems — specifically twenty-seven poetry collections published up to that point — in an attempt to find another way for creating poems. For this attempt, I also wanted to deepen my interrogation (and disruption) of English which had facilitated twentieth-century US colonialism in my birthland, the Philippines. Finally, I wanted to develop a consciously closer link to the Filipino indigenous value of “Kapwa.” “Kapwa” refers to “shared self” or “shared identity” whereby everyone and everything is connected.



REVIEW OF FRETWORK: "BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN"


Congratulations to Lynne Thompson for receiving a review for Fretwork at the Pedestal Magazine. You can go to the review HERE, but here's an excerpt:
Fretwork is a beautifully written and complex book filled with extraordinary language and heartbreaking truths. It offers no easy redemption, heroism, or salvation. Encompassing one family’s migration from the Caribbean Islands to Los Angeles, and many stops between, its power lies in Thompson’s courage and the wry humor of her lines. Discovery awaits the reader on every page of Fretwork.



Friday, May 31, 2019

KIM SHUCK FEATURE at "CHAPTER ONE"

(Photo by Doug Salin)
San Francisco Poet Laureate Kim Shuck is the next feature on Marsh Hawk Press' unique "Chapter One" project. You can read about her beginner-days as a poet over HERE
You can see other poets discussing their poetic beginnings at Chapter One's Table of Contents.


Monday, May 6, 2019

MARY MACKEY RECEIVES ERIC HOFFER AWARD!

Marsh Hawk Press Congratulates Mary Mackey On Winning Eric Hoffer Award
Which Also Honors Marsh Hawk Press



The Eric Hoffer Awards Committee has just announced that Mary Mackey’s collection of poetry The Jaguars That Prowl Our DreamsNew and Selected Poems 1974 to 2018 (Marsh Hawk Press)  has won the 2019 Eric Hoffer Award for the Best Book Published by a Small Press. 

The Hoffer Award, which also honors Marsh Hawk Press, highlights salient writing, as well as the independent spirit of small publishers. Since its inception, the Hoffer has become one of the most important international book awards for small, academic, and independent presses and a platform for and the champion of the independent voice. 



Information for the Eric Hoffer Award HERE.




Thursday, May 2, 2019

SANDY MCINTOSH THE LATEST "CHAPTER ONE" POET!


Sandy McIntosh is the May poet for Marsh Hawk's "Chapter One" project. Here's an excerpt:
"To my great good fortune, after graduation, I found myself at Southampton College, in Eastern Long Island. Like every college, Southampton depended on local adjunct professors to supplement the small, costlier full-time staff. But, unlike most colleges, Southampton was able to hire the local artists and writers, who—the Hamptons being the Hamptons—were often the best in the world. For instance, Willem de Kooning taught elementary painting. Ilya Bolotowky, the neo-plasticist painter, with his huge mustache and thick Russian accent, taught my Freshman English class. The Bollingen-prize poet David Ignatow taught creative writing, as did the poet, playwright and translator, H. R. Hays. 

"Why did a group of distinguished artists and writers congregate at a new, undistinguished college? “You see,” de Kooning told me after we’d become acquainted. “In the wintertime, they’re here all alone. They work in their studios all day and then want to get together at night, usually at Bobby Van’s, or some other bar. Then they get into a fight—Jim Jones likes to throw punches—or get drunk and the police take them to jail. It’s either that or they meet at the college and have a good time without getting into too much trouble.”
You can read Sandy's essay HERE.

*

You can access the whole line-up to date HERE, which features


Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Monday, April 22, 2019

JON CURLEY CELEBRATES PAUL PINES!


Jon Curley and Easter celebrates Paul Pines--you can see it all at Jon Curley's Blog, but here's an excerpt:
Easter is or should be an occasion for revelation and ritual, prayer and reflection, pageantry and passion. My ideal demographic for celebrating its conceit would be the deeply observant, the remote bystander, the variously non-Christian, even the antagonistic, indifferent, or downright non-religious. Everyone! The process promised by its occasion is toward mind-movement, the imagination instilling the art/knot/anchor of enterprising otherness, thinking deeply and differently; deeply differently. Such attitude inclines to poetry's precincts and, on this day, my fellow poet and co-spirit-er Paul Pines comes to mind, heart, art.


Thursday, April 18, 2019

A REVIEW FOR SANDY MCINTOSH!



Congratulations to Sandy McIntosh for his latest review. You can see entire review at The East Hampton Star, but here's an excerpt:

With “Lesser Lights,” Sandy McIntosh continues his “Hamptons Apprenticeship” memoirs. Here we meet pugilistic novelists, an oversexed sculptor, and an impecunious painter, among others. Mr. McIntosh has crafted a collection of vignettes and a few longer pieces that focus our attention on a Hamptons barely recognizable today. With this collection’s longest piece, “Robert, in Twelve Episodes,” he also appears to challenge the notion of what constitutes the meaning of “memoir” today. 
Most of “Lesser Lights” concerns itself with life on Long Island’s East End, including Southampton College, where Mr. McIntosh studied in the early 1970s. The vignettes — most of them brief but entertaining — evoke a time when artists and writers constituted a more visible part of the Hamptons’ year-round community, when it wasn’t unusual to see Willem de Kooning wavering down narrow roads on his bike in Springs or Jean Stafford in her housecoat and slippers at the end of her driveway checking her mail.

Friday, April 12, 2019

SPRING 2019 BOOK LAUNCH!

Announcing: Our Spring 2019 Book Launch Party

Friday, May 10th, Poets House, New York City
6:00 – 8:00 pm

MARSH HAWK PRESS invites you to oin us for a reading featuring new titles by Mary Mackey, Susan Terris, Sandy McIntosh, and 2018 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize Winner Lynne Thompson in celebration of our Marsh Hawk’s Spring 2019 book launch! The reading and reception to follow will also include a tribute to the late Paul Pines, Marsh Hawk Press author and great friend.


MARSH HAWK REVIEW, SPRING 2019

Marsh Hawk Press is delighted to release the Spring 2019 edition of its Marsh Hawk Review, edited by Dan Morris and featuring

Gabriel Gudding
Tom Mandel
Andrei Codrescu
J. Peter Moore
Norman Finkelstein
Adeena Karasick
Willard Greenwood
Daniel Y. Harris
Burt Kimmelman
David Epstein
Jamey Hecht
Maria Damon and Alan Sondheim
Susan Terris
Eileen R. Tabios
Thomas Fink
Jon Curley
Thomas Fink and Maya D. Mason
Stephen Paul Miller
Mary Mackey
Tyrone Williams
Daniel Morris
Tobey Altman



Friday, March 29, 2019

MARSH HAWK BRINGS "CHAPTER ONE" TO AWP!

Through Marsh Hawk Press' "Chapter One Project," established poets write about how they began as writers. As it turns out, it's also a panel at AWP...and here are the reps: Geoffrey O'Brien, Jason McCall, Sandy McIntosh, Barbara McIntosh, and Lynne Thompson. Hope you caught them--it's a fabulous series (no one else is presenting such) which you can see at https://marshhawkpress.org/chapter-one/


Tuesday, March 26, 2019

MARCH ACTIVITIES!

Come to AWP in Portland Oregon and hear Sandy McIntosh, Mary Mackey, Denise Duhamel, Geoffrey O’Brien, and Jason McCall read from Marsh Hawk’s exciting new Chapter One Project: On Becoming a Poet. TIME: 10:30 am to 11:45 am Place: Room A103-104, Level 1, Oregon Convention Center, 777 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Portland, OR 97232. Please Note: To attend this event AWP Conference registration is required.
Friday, March 29thSacramento Poetry Center, 1719 25th Street, Sacramento, CA 95816.
Sandy McIntosh and Mary Mackey present the Marsh Hawk Press Chapter One Series in which well-known poets such as Jane Hirshfield, Dennis Nurkse, and Phillip Lopate write short pieces about how they became poets. Mary will read from her new collection of poetry The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams and from her Chapter One essay: “Jungles and Fever.” Sandy will read selections from his forthcoming memoir Lesser Lights: More Tales from a Hampton’s Apprenticeship. Time: 7:30 pm. Place: Hosted by Tim Kahl.

Saturday, March 2, 2019

HEARING OTHER by GEORGE AND SUSAN QUASHA


Congratulations to George Quasha whose collaboration with photographer Susan Quasha is now online at Dispatches Poetry Wars!  Go to this link -- https://www.dispatchespoetrywars.com/virtual-chapbooks/hearing-other/ -- where you will see it as a virtual chapbook, downloadable as a PDF. It is best viewed on most screens at 50%.





Monday, February 25, 2019

MARGE PIERCY NEXT JUDGE FOR MARSH HAWK PRESS POETRY PRIZE!


Marsh Hawk Press is pleased to announce the judge of our next annual poetry prize: Marge Piercy. Deadline is April 30, 2019. More information at the link:
https://marshhawkpress.org/submissions/

CHAPTER ONE FOR JASON MCCALL

Jason McCall is the next poet in Marsh Hawk Press' "Chapter One Series", which presents poets discussing their poetic starts. Forthcoming poets in this series include Dennis Nurkse, Burt Kimmelman, Barbara Novack. Eileen R. Tabios, Geoffrey O’Brien, Dan Morris and Sandy McIntosh. Already featured poets are Jane Hirshfield, Burt Kimmelman, Mary Mackey, Philip Lopate and Denise Duhamel.
Here's an excerpt from Jason's piece entitled "Who Are You?"
"If I say I started writing to find myself, then I’m only telling a half truth. Growing up, I had a clear identity. I knew who I was because of all the teachers, church members, and relatives who reminded me of who I was. I was Lindsey’s brother. And Shonda’s brother. And Tonya’s Brother. And Ethel’s boy. And Lindsey’s boy. I am the baby of my family. It’s fun to tell that to my young nieces and nephew and see them try to sort out how a grown man can still be a baby. But it wasn’t always a source of fun with me. Like the youngest member of many families, growing up, my existence was normally explained by a point of reference. When I was smart, I was smart just like my brother and sisters. When my dad got me job working at the hotel where he worked as a chef for his second job, the managers told me I laughed just like my dad. When I open my eyes, my wife tells me I have my mother’s eyes. 
And like the youngest member of many families, I hated the constant comparison to my family members."