Tertulia

by Seth Pennington

-These poems are love letters to manhattans, meteor showers, and mononucleosis; to friends hundreds of miles apart; to the great love I sleep with. I didn't go get an MFA; I got married instead. All of you, your books, your reviews and criticisms, I read you and learn daily. Some I am even lucky enough to work with at Sibling Rivalry Press. This education is worth more to me than any program I could have attended. So, thank you, for your wit, your courage, your intellect. Thank you for you.- -Seth Pennington

Genres: Poetry

46 pages, Paperback

Published April 28, 2017

About the author

Seth Pennington is editor-in-chief of Sibling Rivalry Press and is author of Tertulia, which was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Chapbook Award.He is Editor of Stonewall 50, which features 21 poets connected by Arkansas on queer life after the Stonewall Riots, and was Editor of Assaracus and Poetry Editor of Equinox, the literary magazine of University of Arkansas-Little Rock.

He has been honored as co-editor of Joy Exhaustible by the American Library Association and by the Rare Books and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress for his editorial, layout, and design work with SRP.

He was a 2019 Open Mouth Poetry Retreat Fellow and the recipient of the Richard Stanley Cooper Literary Award for Creative Writing. He is also a freelance book designer.
He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, with his husband, Bryan Borland.

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poem “House Sold” is fucking brilliant. And it is not the only one that felt so good to read.

[Brandon Amico · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tender collection of poems that dive into something I don't see many poets today focusing on: the nature of gratitude and appreciation. These short narratives are earnest and vivid, painting a picture of a speaker who has found difficulties in his life before but is still willing to forge onward for what good he can hold on to.

[BookChampions · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favourite poems: "Six Sparrows Bathing in Snowmelt in a Pothole on 4th," "Skin," Bryan," and "Hot Gin."

Favourite verse: "It takes this ache and this space, this change in / what keeps me and what I resist, to wake up / in the life I am not living enough."

and

"Where am I? What am I doing that is / so important that I haven't abandoned my job for / the road of rescuing you, when that is what you / have done for me?"

[Ron Mohring · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been said that everyone deserves love, but the hard truth is that many of us can feel we haven't earned it. This is, I think, one of the themes that makes this collection so compelling: how the poems track the small (and large) moments of a self opening into the possibilities of the world. Here is a poet who *sees* what's around him, who takes it--and us--in with a close attention to detail and to language itself:

"I called your mouth a mob and what I meant
was beautiful, but that wasn't enough, that didn't
beg how many parts of your mouth I found
and what I found in them: some beautiful design,
something like sunflowers, and words like prayer
flags and kisses like straight-line winds, and call me
blown over when I wake up in a new town and
someone else is tending the basil now,
the basil we grew and outgrew."
["Skin"]