In The Plague of the Tender-Hearted, Cindy Frenkel makes her way through the maze of family death, divorce, even a brother’s suicide without ever losing the ability to embrace joys small and large. Despite heart-rending troubles there is still beauty in the natural world, the discovery of an unlikely new love, and moments with a beloved daughter when night “stars spill out, / enough to occupy the universe.”
–Mary Jo Firth Gillett
With her three-part alchemy of plain speaking, suddenly perfect metaphors, and explosive, morally anchored last lines, Cindy Frenkel portrays a family in The Plague of the Tender- Hearted. From the witty to the elegiac, the poems quest for the why beneath a brother’s suicide and examine the underside of prosperity. But the marvels of this collection are the sassy buoyant poems of love for a daughter and unexpected love after divorce. Frenkel uses memory, the dynamics of ageing parents, and the legacy of the holocaust to pierce us with her bullseye poetic one-liners. The Plague of the Tender-Hearted, with its gem-like rhymes, is both an exploration and a revelation.
–Molly Peacock, author of The Analyst and Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems
Like time travel to a bygone era, this second volume of poetry by Gregory Joseph Firlotte depicts summertime in subjects ranging from the natural world to inner worlds where love, hope and dreams reside — alluding to the sumptuous years of the Gilded Age leading into the twentieth century in often surreal and metaphysical landscapes crafted in words, emotions and visions. Throughout are vintage and contemporary black and white photographs that complement many of the poems, capturing the feeling, places and geography of New England environs which are integral components of Firlotte’s romantic style. The wraparound cover of drifting lily pads — a photo taken by the author on a July afternoon while canoeing on Cobbosseecontee Lake in Central Maine — inspired the book’s summertime theme.https://www.amazon.com/Gilded-Summer-Poetry-Gregory-Firlotte/dp/B0948JWX4V/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=firlotte&qid=1621056436&sr=8-2
In Gloria Mindock’s powerful new book, the flames of love die out and the ashes linger until they dissolve into air. The body is hostage, in charred relics of failed intimacies—The burnt-out ends of smoky days (T.S. Eliot). There’s beauty in the truth of Mindock’s words and images: Things got smokier, battling the embers with//false waters. And there’s hope: Not everyone believes in destruction.// All the heart wants is to beat. Above all, these poems radiate feeling, compassionately aware, attuned to a world of broken love that is burned beyond recognition, the ashes drifting and settling: how much sorrow can this heart take?// There is never an answer. Ash sears and sings. -Dzvinia Orlowsky, author of Bad Harvest
Ash by Gloria Mindock (Glass Lyre Press, 2021, Glenview, IL) To order: www.glasslyrepress.com
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May 9, 2021 New Poetry & Open Mic readers
Kathleen Aponick, a native of Cambridge, is a former teacher and textbook editor. Her poems have appeared in such publications as Poetry East, Notre Dame Review, Poetry Ireland Review,Hollins Critic, and Paterson Literary Review. Her poetry collections include two chapbooks: Near the River’s Edge and The Port, as well as two full-length collections: Bright Realm, published by Turning Point Press in 2013 and a finalist in the New Rivers Poetry Prize at Minnesota State University, and The Descendant’s Notebook, published in 2020 by Kelsay Press. She lives with her husband, Tony, in Andover, Massachusetts.
Purchasing information: The best way to buy the book is to do a Google search for The Descendant’s Notebookto find the link that shows the book’s title with Kelsay Books, the publisher. It takes you right to the book. It is $16. If you order through Amazon, you pay $18.50.
Jeffrey Harrison’s sixth book of poetry, Between Lakes, was published by Four Way Books in September 2020. His previous books include Into Daylight, (Tupelo Press, 2014) winner the Dorset Prize, Incomplete Knowledge (Four Way, 2006), runner-up for the Poets’ Prize, Feeding the Fire, which won the Sheila Motton Award from the New England Poetry Club in 2002, and The Singing Underneath, selected by James Merrill for the National Poetry Series in 1987. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA, and his poems have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, including Best American Poetry andthe Pushcart Prizevolumes, and been featured in American Life in Poetry, The Writer’s Almanac, Poetry Daily, and other online and media venues. More information can be found at jeffreyharrisonpoet.com.
Ed Meek writes poetry, fiction, articles and book reviews. He has had poems in The American Journal of Poetry, The Baltimore Review, The Sun, The Paris Review. He has had poems featured on NPR affiliates WBUR and WCAI. A collection of his short stories, Luck, came out in 2017. He has had stories in The North American Review, Hobart, Cream City Review, Adelaide. He has had articles in The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, Cognoscenti, TheBoston Review, Counterpunch. He writes book reviews for The Arts Fuse. His poem “In the Provinces” won an Honorable Mention in the National category of this year’s Outermost Poetry Contest. “It’s Not Always Easy” was just selected for the Boston Mayor’s Poetry Program and will be exhibited for the next year in City Hall. He is a volunteer Editor for Full House magazine. He tutors adults for the GED and teaches creative writing. His new book of poems, High Tide, came out last summer. https://www.edmeek.net @emeek
Poet, photographer, and multi-genre writer, Shanta Lee Gander is the winner of a full-length poetry prize from Diode Editions with her debut poetry collection, GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues out this June.
GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA time travels by creating and recapturing memory from a fractured past to survive in the present and envision a future. In her first full-length collection GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues, Shanta Lee Gander navigates between formal and vernacular styles to introduce the reader to a myriad of subjects such as scientific facts that link butterflies to female sexuality and vulnerability; whispers of classical Greek myth; H.P. Lovecraft’s fantastical creature, Cthulhu; and the traces of African mythmaking and telling. Beneath the intensity, longing, seeking, wondering, and the ‘tell-it-like-it-is’ voice that sometimes tussles with sadness, there is a movement of sass and a will that refuses to say that it has been broken. Gander leaves a door ajar in this ongoing conversation of the Black female body that walks the spaces of the individual within a collective; the tensions between inherited and hidden narratives; and the present within a history and future that is still being imagined. To pre-order your copy, visit: GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA by Shanta Lee Gander | Diode Editions Shanta Lee is a Connecticut native and a new member of the New England Poetry Club.
NEPC member Kate Chadbourne is hosting a free, open-to-all Poetry Celebration this month on YouTube with weekly videos, prizes for participation, and tons of great community spirit and inspiration. The latest video … Read more
This latest issue of Arrowsmith journal includes an excerpt from Mark Pawlak’s forthcoming memoir “My Deniversity: Knowing Denise Levertov” (MadHat Press fall 2021). In this excerpt, he recounts a time … Read more
The New England Poetry Club, Friends of Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters, and Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site are pleased to announce the 2021 Virtual Summer Poetry Festival: Poetry as a Voice for Activism. This year’s festival, which begins Sunday, June 27, will take place live online and connect poetry lovers across the country with remarkable poet-activists who will read and discuss their work.
Stephen M. Honig announces his publication this March of his third book of poetry, entitled Obligatory Covid Chapbook. The volume traces the first ten months of the pandemic from a personal and societal perspective. This COVID chapbook, along with Mr. Honig’s prior works (Messing Around With Words, Rail Head), are available through Amazon Books and Barnes and Noble.
