Burning River

September 24th, I’ll be reading as part of The New Yinzer Presents again.  The Small Press Fair, Pittsburgh event will be at The Beehive Coffeehouse & Dessertery alongside some other excellent authors, Noel Sloboda and Micah Ling (associated with sunnyoutside) and perhaps more readers to be announced soon…

A special thanks to Savannah Schroll Guz for the invitation to this reading!

In October, we’ve some amazing events planned for the release of Jim Meirose’s chapbook Crossing The Trestle here in Cleveland.   He’ll be reading alongside authors Dianne Borsenik, Miles Budimir and more at Mac’s Backs on October 13th and a part of the 2nd Annual Author Invitational and Open Mic at the Morgan, October 15th.

The 15th event sports early sign-ups for authors willing to participate in the open mic by e-mailing morganreading@burningriver.info and will be included in the Octavofest list of calendar events.

Chapbooks of the four featured authors, including Jim, Meredith Holmes, Robert Miltner and Sammy Greenspan that night will be on sale, as well as (I’m sure) a number of authors selling and trading throughout the crowd.  Come join us!

I was grateful enough last week to receive a copy Sandy Green’s chapbook, Pacing The Moon (Flutter Press) and fair warning, this collection is distinctively descriptive.   Green gives and takes from a sentence it’s structure and what she wants, commanding it through periods, line breaks and even on into poems in parts, as The Blue Side of Winter I,II, and III suggest.   With such advance movements into prose, I found a lacking in her work, distinctly a narrative or perspective though  Sandy glides us easily through moments and scenes.  However rarely had I the feeling that something from within the poem, more concretely a character, had definitively changed and less than that, neither had I.

A piece I admired from Pacing The Moon, Missed Goodbye, originally ran in the Bitter Oleander:

“…as birds of no distinction

blink their wings and

drift like eyelashes

on a paper face.”

These lines easily illustrate what this writer is best at: a visual sorting of things through language.  Here I have a concept, a dream, even a river of flowing pictures changing shape within the confines of a sentence that is built and not built like a sandcastle, built like skyscraper.  Green’s strengths and hard work lie in her innate ability to capture not just a slight mood and not a person, but more importantly a moment of time;  the cloud you’d missed from that photo of friends, the frown in the class picture, the person crossing fingers at the reception.  These are the kinds of poems, not stories, but poems that she dives into.  She is not here to grant you inspiration, she is not here to entertain you, more to the point I felt she was there to show me the truth of her visions of imagination.

Sandy originally described this collection as ‘exploring relationships where the parties involved do not have the same investment in each other.’   There is definitely a vast interpersonal desolation to these works.  If you’re looking for something extremely uplifting, do not look here.  Though Sandy’s work has been included in Chicken Soup For The Child’s Soul (HCI, 2007), it is not something to be read or waxed on when down and out.

For her full biography, as well as links, news and other information about this author and her career, please visit her website here.

Thanks for reading,

Chris

Tina Puckett, poet and Northeastern Ohio Master of Fine Arts student, describes her poetry as poems that ’sound simplistic and are easy to follow.’  She easily alludes that they usually have another message going deeper than the surface–an epiphany, a life lesson, an ironic message.

In her collection Crushed Sunlight, Tina takes the grace of nature and bends it into us, for us, and makes it a part and not apart of us.

From the beginning poem We Had Never Seen until the last piece in this collection A Swirl in Red Leaves, River Rushing, where she says of a love

‘…pushes me into his heart.
It’s sewn on his jacket
and his stomach feels like a rock.’

one gets the sense that Tina is not only in love with poetry, people or nature but that she bridges the gaps between them, the spaces sewn by her execution of a simple language become snapshots like clicks of a camera and to be mounted in a family and dining room like Norman Rockwell prints, a part of simpler times.

Though she will not lose you to the night, and would soften the bumps, the pebbles and rocks toward this end and road.

The words are innocent.  The words cannot hurt you and yes, they can be digested quite easily no matter the state of your stomach.   Puckett bends nature and ‘crushes sunlight’ to assure you of it.

The setting in each poem takes place in or around sunset, at and into a night even to see you through as
‘…the sky-violet plum-bruises toward morning.’

Tina Puckett’s Crushed Sunlight can be found through it’s publisher David B. McCoy of Spare Change Press (Massillon, Ohio) or by e-mailing Tina at tdpi@juno.com for more info.

For those visiting the AWP conference this year in Denver, please take the time to stop by the Open Thread table to see the Burning River display!

I’ve been invited and accepted an invitation to read at  the Path Cafe, which is located at 131 Christopher Stree, from 8 to 11 p.m. through Fast Forward Press on Saturday, June 19th.

A collective of authors besides myself will be reading, tentatively including the following:

Nancy Stohlman

Kona Morris

Katharyn Grant

This event is intended to promote the release of Fast Forward Press‘ release of their 3rd anthology of flash fiction, in which a piece of mine was accepted.

This is a huge honor to be included in this volume and invited to read.   Volume I of this series was nominated for a Colorado Book Award in the category of  Collection/Anthology in 2008.

More information, as well as times, extended readers and information about this year’s volume itself, will be posted as the date nears.

Best,

Chris @ Burning River

April 21st, Michelle Reale and myself will be at The New Yinzer Presents monthly reading in Pittburgh.  I’ll be selling copies of  this year’s Noun Vs. Verb, as well as Michelle’s chapbook, Natural Habitat.  Should be a great time, with a potluck buffet and other creative types.

Jane Rosenberg LaForge, Michelle and myself will also be featured at Paper Kite Press and Studio on April 23rd for readings in Kingston, Pennsylvania.  Books will be available for sale as well as some great conversation and meet-ups.

If anyone is in either of these areas, feel free to stop by or say hi.

Best,

Chris @ Burning River

Featuring work from authors Cheryl Snell, Jeff Vande Zande, Joseph Reich and many others! Cover cost $9.

Author M. Reale, while working as an academic librarian at a university in the suburbs of Philadelphia, has had her work featured in Word Riot, Gloom Cupboard, Pank, Rumble, Eyeshot, Monkeybicycle, Underground Voices and many others.

“From nighttime radio shows where deejays held séances…this beautifully-brilliant book is ablaze with savvy, style, and tender insights.” ~Boston Literary Magazine, Fall ‘09

Please follow the instructions below to order a copy of our Noun Vs. Verb Literary Journal 2009, our initial release.

Cover cost is $4 plus $1.95 for shipping using Paypal.

You may also request or find our books at select independent bookstores linked in the left sidebar or order by mail.

Thank you for your interest in Burning River and our projects!