"Until The Words Came"- New Book!

Just a quick update-- how time flies! April was jam-packed with poetry doings, and I'll be bringing you all up to date this week. For now, I'm happy to announce that my new collab with Guy Reed, Until The Words Came, has just been published by Post Traumatic Press!

The text is based on a reading we did together about a year and a half ago at Teresa Costas's WOMPS (Word of Mouth Poetry Series) at the Art Bar in Kingston, NY. Instead of the same old, same old, we decided to pick a theme that we could both live with, then truly read together, alternating poem by poem.

Oddly enough, the theme we picked was "Poets & Poetry." We've gone to several of the old, good Dodge Festivals together, as well as many, many readings around the Hudson Valley over our almost twenty-year friendship. I say oddly because I find poets writing about poetry to usually result in pretty dreadful work. Hopefully this chapbook bucks the perceived trend.

If you might be interested in a copy of Until The Words Came, you can drop me a line at cheryl.a.rice.02@gmail.com for now. The cost is $12, postage included. Soon, you'll be able to go to https://www.posttraumaticpress.com/ to order it there, too, but since the ink is barely dry, for now reach out to me.

Summer Sun & Shadows

I knew my promise of “weekly” updates would fall by the wayside sooner or later, but between you, me & the lamp post, I’m thinking I needed a break. The Universe just took it upon itself to impose that break upon me.

My day gig underwent its usual season changes, but with each service department short-staffed. The time between calls that I’d previously used to pound out a few notes for the blog evaporated, and exhaustion at the end of the day didn’t really allow me much energy to make up for it at home. Then July, whether because of global warning, natural Earth evolution, or other, was oppressively hot. We even broke down and bought a small air conditioner for the bedroom area, so that sleeping could occur.

All this limited my writing time substantially. However, the ongoing projects are never far from my fingertips. I’ve got a chapbook pending with Post Traumatic Press, a collaboration with my friend Guy Reed. Look for more about that this fall. For a few weeks there, I was chucking three poems a day out to various small zines, only the ones that made the process extremely easy. It had to be by email, and it had to be free. I have nothing against Submittables, but I had no energy for the extra step, and if my output was limited, I could at least send out previous work. I’ve had a few hits, and a few misses, but over all I’ve gotten a few more things out in the aforementioned Universe, and off the hard drive.

On August 20, I had the pleasure of presenting a work-in-progress at my day gig, in the form of an evening reading/lecture. More on that next week… promise. 

**Of Ice and Men: An Overdue Publishing Announcement!**

This past spring, my latest chapbook, MY MINNESOTA BOYHOOD, was published by Post Traumatic Press in Woodstock, NY. Contrary to its title, I neither had a boyhood nor grew up in Minnesota. It is a collection of poems inspired by a close friendship with a man who did, comparing and contrasting, through fantasy and present experience, his childhood there and mine on Long Island.

As do most fantasies, this one was obligated to end, somehow, in its final pages of course. Following is the last poem from the book. I give away nothing by sharing it here. There is no secret story told in the rest of the poems. It is simply a gentle admission that, indeed, returning to New York, now, was at the last, the necessary and healthy thing to do:

Leaving Minnesota

Rail's the only way to go, fast

and yet you can still make out

faces at the depots, houses, coffee shops.

By car, you stop and start as you please,

deviating for a last pretzel or Orange Julius

at the Mall, or strong coffee, a slice of

rhubarb pie before hitting the highway.

Airplanes are efficient, surreal, as you

board in one part of the country,

say, the part that's cold, filled with frozen lakes

and men who insist on fishing them,

and get off in another world where

winter is for satellite TV, writing poems about places

you never really knew, green fields and blue lakes

you've heard about on Public Radio.

But it's time to go, before reality sets in,

before that sentimental journal sees another sunrise,

shows wrinkles in your smooth imagination,

before daylight proves you're alone.

Leaving Minnesota any way is best, but leaving is key.

Let memory ripen like a plum on a spring bough,

let flowers bloom on the untouched branch.

Let the lakes melt, boats return to the water, fish begin

the happy cycle of love, of life, of rushing off to hook or harbor,

their bright tones fading with summer and sun.

Let the small houses rest onshore,

waiting for other summers, other expeditions.

Let the giant walleye, as its name implies,

look to its future with one eye on winter past,

remember indigo twilight of November,

the real freeze that comes before buds

burst into one more verse of their same song.

MY MINNESOTA BOYHOOD is available for $8 from  either myself or Post Traumatic Press, at PO Box 544, Woodstock, NY, 12498.