Athena Pappas

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  • Category: Chapbook

    • Chapbook Review: Any Kind of Excuse

      Posted at 1:06 pm by athenapappas, on February 6, 2012

      Any Kind of Excuse

      By Nin Andrews

      26 pp. Kent: The Kent State University Press

      Poetry. $7

      ISBN 0-87338-757-0

      Nin Andrew’s beautiful little collection of poems, Any Kind of Excuse, is the third chapbook in the Wick Poetry Series. The entire chapbook is a series of poems narrated by a young girl growing up on a Southern farm.Andrews’ narrator’s voice is clear and unwavering, innocent yet observant. This landscape she has created  is populated with farm-hands named Jimmy, a rooster that won’t stop crowing, and a grandmother who predicts deaths.

      One unique trait of these poems is how the titles act as the first line of the poem, bleeding down into the work. For example, the poem “Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” begins, “Grandma always said.” These poems really play with the readers expectations of title and poem. Colloquialisms and strange turns of phrase are carefully placed throughout the work to give authenticity to the setting, although they bordered on cliche at times. One of my favorites is the line “I never could get rid of that awful sweetness” found in the poem “Awful Sweet.”

      I would recommend Any Kind of Excuse as a great example of how poems can function together as a series in a complete collection.

      Click here to purchase from Amazon.

      Posted in Chapbook, Review | 0 Comments | Tagged Chapbook, poetry, Review, The South
    • Chapbook Review: Love Poem to Androgyny

      Posted at 1:06 pm by athenapappas, on January 30, 2012

      Love Poem to Androgyny

      By Stacey Wait

      37 pp. Charlotte: Main Street Rag

      Poetry. $10

      ISBN 978-1-59948-038-1

      Stacey Waite’s chapbook Love Poem to Androgyny is the winner of Main Street Rag’s 2006 Chapbook Contest and an incredible collection of poetry. Jan Beatty describes these poems as having “no coded language, no playing dress-up here.” They are not only beautiful and moving, but highly accessible.

      The first third of the collection begins with the poem, “In the Womb” and progresses through adolescence. While the form of the poems sways from short, tight lines to gain bulks of text, each compliments the content of the work. These poems bear witness to a struggle with identity in a sensual, yet vulnerable and honest manner.

      Waite then moves into a series of poems, “On the occasion of being mistaken for a boy/man…” This series contains poems of long lines and long stanzas, which convey a very narrative, almost casual tone to the poems. They are simultaneously funny, heart-breaking, empowering, awkward, and thought provoking. Lines such as, “before baseball and the movie Dirty Dancing/because don’t we all want to be Patric Swayze exemplify this.  The final third of the collection seems to be poems that are more reflecting, a response to the incidents in the “On the occasion” series.

      Last year, I had the great privilege of seeing Stacey Waite read in Pittsburgh. S/he was a phenomenal reader, engaging and personal (and totally hilarious). If you ever get the chance, you should absolutely go see Waite read. I would highly recommend her chapbook for anyone interested in gender studies, or just looking to come to a new understanding of gender. Craft and content-wise, these poems are great examples of powerful, moving poetry. Also, many readers complain that they don’t like poetry because it is “hard to understand.” These are poems for those readers, too. They are in your face and brutally honest, but they will make you think.

      Click here to purchase.

      Posted in Chapbook, Review | 0 Comments | Tagged Chapbook, poetry, reading
    • Chapbook Review: Shake It and It Snows

      Posted at 1:05 pm by athenapappas, on January 23, 2012

      Shake It and It Snows

      By Gailmarie Pahmeier

      17 pp. Pittsburgh: Coal Hill Review (an imprint of Autumn House Press)

      Poetry. $8

      ISBN 978-1-932870-39-8

      Coal Hill Review’s 2009 Chapbook contest winner was Gailmarie Pahmeier’s Shake It and It Snows. These poems are a hauntingly brief and beautiful glimpse into the world of a small town off the highway. Pahmeier’s diction is simple and straight forward, yet, the stories of these poems stay with you.

      The collection begins with the frank line, “Everyone has a story to tell/that’s set inside a bar.”  The poems are strongly narrative, but with precise line breaks and unique turns of phrases such as, “clear grey eyes that can be blue, can be/startled into green,” Pahmeier’s poetry veers away from being too prose-like. Collectively, the poems create a sense of home for the reader, even if her images are completely unlike the ones we are familiar with. There is a sense of nostalgia in the objects she lists: End of the Trail, jukeboxes, cheesecake, family photos, paint drops and Dolly Parton. Yet, this is nostalgia without saccharine sentamentlity or cliche. Lines such as “This is what some people call/a moment of truth that tiny second of clarity/we liars hope to own but/only lease- no matter how earnestly/ no matter how often we pray,” are so moving and honest. This short collection of poetry is quite worth checking out.

      Want to purchase this chapbook? Order it directly from the publisher by going to autumnhouse.org or on Amazon

      http://www.amazon.com/Shake-Snows-Gailmarie-Pahmeier/dp/1932870393/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327266536&sr=8-1

      Posted in Chapbook, Review | 0 Comments | Tagged Autumn House Press, Chapbook, Coal Hill Review, poetry, Review
    • Chapbook Review: In the Methow Valley

      Posted at 11:21 am by athenapappas, on January 16, 2012

      To change things up a bit, this weeks review is actually a fiction short story chapbook. Before I start my review, I would like to say that the chapbook is a very viable means of publishing short stories. They are often published in journals, both online and in print, but those journals have strict word count guidelines. Also, collections of short stories are generally not as marketable as full length novels. The fiction chapbook could be a home for that short story you have that does not seem to fit anywhere else.

      In the Methow Valley

      By Vincent Rendoni

      15 pp. Pittsburgh: Mimus Publications

      Fiction.

      In the Methow Valley is the debut publication of MFA candidate Vincent Rendoni. This story succinctly, and quite brilliantly, captures the relationship between a man and his family, a family and their relationship to the landscape of the Pacific Northwest.  The story beautifully renders an incredible saga within this short medium.

      Told in the first person, In the Methow Valley begins with the narrator’s relationship to his grandfather. The tone of prose is strong and simple, yet surprises the reader with lines like, “she thought it was the funnies thing until I swatted her silly.”  The hard drinking characters are as harsh as one would imagine the landscape surrounding them.

      As the plot progresses, the narrator describes the violence and restlessness that lead to his grandparents running to the Methow Valley from Canada. He also recounts his last camping trip before his grandfather passes away. The story wraps around to present day and the Methow Valley’s trans-formative powers on his own life. In fifteen short pages, Rendoni successfully tells a lifetime of stories.

      The prose of the chapbook is well written, sharp and controlled. Each of the characters are well rounded. They are violent and harsh, yet the reader also sees their loving, natural side. The story could almost be called nostalgic, but only if one meant the gritty, smudged nostalgia called to mind when one smells woodsmoke in an old favorite, forgotten shirt.

      I would highly recommend this chapbook for both people looking for a great read and lovers of the Pacific Northwest. Even for those who have never seen this region, the characters of In the Methow Valley, create this landscape for the imagination. Add this book to your chapbook collection.

      To purchase a copy, email the author at vrendoni@gmail.com

      Posted in Chapbook, Review | 0 Comments | Tagged Chapbook, Fiction, Review
    • Chapbook Review: Some Cold, Bright, Old-Fashioned Facts

      Posted at 4:23 pm by athenapappas, on January 9, 2012

      Some Cold, Bright, Old-Fashioned Facts

      By Matthieu Pierce

      30 pp. Pittsburgh: Word Parade Books

      Poetry. $8

      ISBN 978-0-692-00286-5

      Matthieu Pierce’s debut chapbook, Some Cold, Bright, Old-Fashioned Facts, brings a fresh, modern style of poetry into the world. Every page is permeated with lyrical, fascinating poetry and even the front and back inside covers of the chapbook are adorned with poems. But what are these facts that are alluded to in the title of the work? They are short, succinct yet brilliantly clever poems that explore the environment of urban life, death, religion, and many other facets of the nuclear glowing life in the 21st century.

      The first several poems are hauntingly harsh, sharp views of the urban environment. For example, in “Construction”, after carefully describing a disgusting urban environment, the poem ends with the image that one’s “body is built built/by myth and trash bin.” And, in the poem “In the Gravel Parking Lot,” the finches explore cars in a parking lot and truly see these instruments in which people, “live dangerously in the moving ruins/ of your daily grind.” Not only do these two poems present strange, disturbing images of urban life, but they also explore a darker, deeper side of this lifestyle. What does it mean to be both connected to ancient life and modern life? Death and pain can be found within the subtext of these poems but not in the typical overt manner of other modern poets.

      From the first four poems, Pierce dives even deeper into the harsh realties of life with his poem “Apology.” The imagery in this poem can only be described as brutally harsh as the concept of an apology is compared to a crumbling and decaying mouth. The violent but almost stumbling language is jarring and incredible for the reader. Yet, from “Apology,” the tone of the chapbook seems to change and grow as the moments become even more urgent. The poem “Rusted Moose” embodies this. Here, while one still can see the sadness and decay of our modern landscape, an almost sentimental and nostalgic feeling creeps into the poem. However, these feelings do not overpower the reader with sappy sentimentalism; but instead, the power of memory is strongly conveyed throughout this poem.

      Pierce does not stop surprising and pleasing the reader with fresh, new images that bring his poems to life. One of the best examples of this imagery can be found in the poem “Driving Through Hartford.” The landscape from a car window is described as, “radioactive corn-on-the-cob or a plate/of creamed disco balls.” Not only does this image capture its own essence of the New England town of Hartford, but it also shows the incredibly disjointed and disconnected view one has of the environment as seen through a car window. The poem concludes by saying, “The land expands in all directions like a cartoon/written by Dickens, drawn by Dali, and colored by Klee.” This simile is a powerful literary and art connection to the words on the page and proves the author’s fine mastery of language.

      In addition to brilliant poems of landscape and language, several of the poems contained with in Some Cold, Bright, Old-Fashioned Facts, can best be described as small vignettes of persona poems. The first comes as “Rodney, the Day Laborer”. It is short and natural, as one would imagine Rodney to be as the entire poem is,

      His filthy, unfiltered face

      smears and cracks slow

      as winter sidewalks or the knuckled

      faucet of a riverside park

      pregnant with trailers.

      With these five short lines, an entire character comes to life for the reader. Here, Pierce masterfully maximizes his language and creates so much in so few words. Later, death is personified in “The Way Grandpa Describes Him.”  Such a poem runs the risk of being clichéd or unoriginality, but with the final line, “his eyes, which are blue, and kind, are the best you’ve ever seen” the reader is given a unique, fresh view of this character often personified throughout literature and poetry—Death—in an incredible way. This line sends chills down one’s spine. The persona poems continue to get eerier and eerier with the poem “Mannequin,” a strange look at the “life” of this inanimate and spooky object. These intimate views into ordinary people, concepts, and objects are transformative for the reader.

      Yet, even with these portraits, Pierce returns repeatedly to poems about the urban life. He explores nature and the relationship between people and the world around them. One of the most apt metaphors he uses for this is in “Hidden Crickets”: as a grasshopper is a beggar asking the speaker for change, but like the beggar, the speaker also has none to spare. Another strange juxtaposition between urban life and nature can be found within the poem “Urban Scarecrow.” One can vividly see the bleak, dirty urban landscape over which this scarecrow would preside. The poems of urban America with their loss of the natural world are some of the strongest within the collection of poems and come alive to the reader.

      As the collection continues, the reader is given a glimpse into the world of childhood and the transformation into adulthood without resorting to clichéd stereotypes of growing older. A sad, poignant example of the loss of childhood and the innocent joy it creates can be found in “Prerequisite for Adulthood. The poem is commanding as it tells the reader, “forget these scraps of low-born magic, playground prestidigitation;/they sully up your dry-cleaned money, and money moves the nation.” In that moment, all loss of childhood comes flooding back to the reader in a moment of sad, shame. But then the poem continues and almost whispers to the reader, “(Reverse all this. Remember dandelion puffs, and starburnt/ summer rains)”. This poem is an incredible example of the authors ability to fit so many different emotions into a poem, yet gives the reader a hopeful, poignant feeling by the end of the poem.

      The poems within Some Cold, Bright, Old-Fashioned Facts, almost seem to jump all over at first glance, from one subject matter and tone to another. Yet, with close examination one can see they all progress smoothly from one to the next. As Pierce describes it, “the kid gloves are off,” these poems are studies of our human condition and life trapped in the modern, urban landscape with each is its own portrait of this life and the individuals contained within it.

      Available online here:

      http://www.amazon.com/Some-Cold-Bright-Old-Fashioned-Facts/dp/0692002863/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1326125937&sr=8-3

      Posted in Chapbook, Review | 0 Comments | Tagged Chapbook, poetry
    • The Chapbook: Or the Perfect Medium for Poetry Books

      Posted at 8:13 pm by athenapappas, on January 6, 2012

      Sunset in New Orleans, May 2010

      After several poetry workshops and many assigned readings, I have determined that the chapbook is the perfect way to publish a collection of poetry. What is a chapbook? Typically, it is a short, published book of under 48 or so pages. They are usually not “perfect” bound like the paperbacks in bookstores. Instead, they are often stapled or even bound by hand. They can anything from a simple pamphlet to a beautifully crafted work of art.

      Why do I think they are perfect for poetry? Because they are shorter collections then a full length book of poetry, the chapbook collection is just the right size for a reader. Reading 15-20 poems is much more pleasant and digestible compared to sitting down to read 100 pages of poems. Also, I believe that often they can be stronger then a full length collection, as the include the very best of a poets work. There are no “filler” poems in these small collections. Many publishers have chapbook contests to publish the works of first-time authors, so they are a great way to get your first publication.They are easier to produce for small presses that do not have the budget for large books. In addition, chapbook publishers take great pride in creating works of art in their chapbooks, often hand producing them.

      Therefore, I am going to feature a chapbook or chapbook publisher review once a week here on my blog. If you are a publisher or writer with a chapbook you wish to be reviewed, please contact me.

      Remember, even if your boyfriend stole your last black and mild, it’s Friday!

      Posted in Chapbook, Writing | 1 Comment | Tagged Chapbooks, Writing
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