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Her Limestone Bones: Selections from Lexington Poetry Month 2013
Her Limestone Bones is a 122-page collection of poems written and submitted by a diverse group of poets during the 2013 Lexington Poetry Month, in which participants were challenged to write at least one poem a day. The result is an exciting, thought-provoking five-section poetry anthology featuring 75 authors.
122 pages, Paperback
First published April 15, 2014
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May 28, 2014
Next Sunday (June 1, 2014) marks the beginning of the second Lexington Poetry Month, a poem-a-day project for the city of Lexington, Kentucky.
Thus it seems an appropriate time to consider the anthology created from poems submitted for that project. Lexington Poetry Month is the highly successful brain child of Hap Houlihan formerly of the Morris Book Shop and Katerina Stoykova-Klemer of Accents Publishing, and it was they who found financing and sponsorship for both the project and the anthology.
Her Limestone Bones contains the work of 75 poets who posted work to the LexPoMo blog. (Each poet who signed on promised to write a poem a day and to post at least ten to the blog. Over a thousand poems were posted.) It contains everything from shape poetry to the villanelle. The result is a chorus of voices, young, old, black, white, gay, straight, nostalgic, angry, joyous.
These poems written on the run are of remarkably high quality. Here's a sampling from a handful that stood out for me:
If sound echoes, then it must echo forever--
softer with each iteration, the more delicate
the ear needed to catch it.
--Kristine Nowak, "The Meeting Room, Shaker Village"
I am complaining again
about miracles
this morning, the birds
--Pauletta Hansel, "Miracles"
After refilling her cup to tea,
I return
to observing
as she reads
Katherine Mansfield.
--Matthew Haughton, "For Laura on a Sunday Afternoon"
He drank in my loneliness at the bar,
threw it back like straight bourbon . . .
--Savannah Sipple, "Myrtle's Regrets, On the Rocks"
. . . he
nibbles my ear
as if it were
buttered sweet corn
still on the cob.
--Jay McCoy, "Frank after Dinner"
I am the sigh in the corner
of a sick room, the rattle
of the breath.
--Marianne Worthington, "Loss (On Father's Day)"
the Angel of Ephemera
. . .
rises out of the memory box
of an eight-year-old girl
who knows that nothing
is truly evanscent, that all
things matter & leave their mark
--Jeremy Paden, "The Angel of Ephemera"
Most of what
I lost I took
from myself.
--Leatha Kendrick, "Eviction" (entire poem)
It's almost as if you don't wish to see them, their amber and onyx bodies lying curdled on the blacktop, weathered as ancient coins, and still as winged seeds left abandoned by the wind.
--Bianca Spriggs, "Reverie VIII"
I came to the stuck place.
I nudged. I coaxed.
I mocked. Walked away
--George Ella Lyon, "Stuck, Unstuck"
this must be where Anne
wrote her poems each rhyme bubbled
up like hungry yeast . . .
--Joanie DiMartino, "Anne Bradstreet's Kitchen"
I have loved for so long the beauty
mark above your curvy lower lip
--Deborah Adams Cooper, "Ode to the Semicolon"
[All I want]
is to make it home nights without drawing attention to
myself, before I'm accosted by concerned passersby--
--Jude Lally, "All I Want"
Oh, this is overkill and I have to stop.
Much here to charm you, amuse you, arouse you, and move you.
And, disclosure, I also have a poem in this anthology.
Thus it seems an appropriate time to consider the anthology created from poems submitted for that project. Lexington Poetry Month is the highly successful brain child of Hap Houlihan formerly of the Morris Book Shop and Katerina Stoykova-Klemer of Accents Publishing, and it was they who found financing and sponsorship for both the project and the anthology.
Her Limestone Bones contains the work of 75 poets who posted work to the LexPoMo blog. (Each poet who signed on promised to write a poem a day and to post at least ten to the blog. Over a thousand poems were posted.) It contains everything from shape poetry to the villanelle. The result is a chorus of voices, young, old, black, white, gay, straight, nostalgic, angry, joyous.
These poems written on the run are of remarkably high quality. Here's a sampling from a handful that stood out for me:
If sound echoes, then it must echo forever--
softer with each iteration, the more delicate
the ear needed to catch it.
--Kristine Nowak, "The Meeting Room, Shaker Village"
I am complaining again
about miracles
this morning, the birds
--Pauletta Hansel, "Miracles"
After refilling her cup to tea,
I return
to observing
as she reads
Katherine Mansfield.
--Matthew Haughton, "For Laura on a Sunday Afternoon"
He drank in my loneliness at the bar,
threw it back like straight bourbon . . .
--Savannah Sipple, "Myrtle's Regrets, On the Rocks"
. . . he
nibbles my ear
as if it were
buttered sweet corn
still on the cob.
--Jay McCoy, "Frank after Dinner"
I am the sigh in the corner
of a sick room, the rattle
of the breath.
--Marianne Worthington, "Loss (On Father's Day)"
the Angel of Ephemera
. . .
rises out of the memory box
of an eight-year-old girl
who knows that nothing
is truly evanscent, that all
things matter & leave their mark
--Jeremy Paden, "The Angel of Ephemera"
Most of what
I lost I took
from myself.
--Leatha Kendrick, "Eviction" (entire poem)
It's almost as if you don't wish to see them, their amber and onyx bodies lying curdled on the blacktop, weathered as ancient coins, and still as winged seeds left abandoned by the wind.
--Bianca Spriggs, "Reverie VIII"
I came to the stuck place.
I nudged. I coaxed.
I mocked. Walked away
--George Ella Lyon, "Stuck, Unstuck"
this must be where Anne
wrote her poems each rhyme bubbled
up like hungry yeast . . .
--Joanie DiMartino, "Anne Bradstreet's Kitchen"
I have loved for so long the beauty
mark above your curvy lower lip
--Deborah Adams Cooper, "Ode to the Semicolon"
[All I want]
is to make it home nights without drawing attention to
myself, before I'm accosted by concerned passersby--
--Jude Lally, "All I Want"
Oh, this is overkill and I have to stop.
Much here to charm you, amuse you, arouse you, and move you.
And, disclosure, I also have a poem in this anthology.
Displaying 1 of 1 review