BEST POETRY BOOK GIFT FOR THE WOMEN ON YOUR CHRISTMAS LIST

PUT THIS BOOK ON YOUR CHRISTMAS 
SHOPPING LIST if you are looking for a gift for a woman aged 21-50, a woman who can read and loves to read books, a woman who especially loves to read literary poetry of our time, perhaps she writes poems herself. She is a woman who is not narrow minded but rather is one who is curious about humans and their relationships, one seeking a world view, whose concerns are matters of the heart, matters of the spirit.




I highly recommend this book:  Poet Nancy Simpson




Debra Kaufman's literary reputation is well known to readers of poetry. She is also the author of Family of Strangers, Still Life Burning, Moon Mirror Whisky Wind and A Certain Light. Individual poems have been published in Southern Poetry Review, Greensboro Poetry Review, Pembrok, Carolina Quarterly and in anthologies such as 100 YEARS OF NC POETRY and Literary Trails of NC. Her short and full-length plays have been performed throughout North Carolina, her adopted home.


To buy THE NEXT MOMENT, $13.95 add $2.00 postage




CONTACT Publisher:
http://www.jacarpress.com/contact.html



Want to read poems from this collection by the author 
Debra Kaufman? 


THREE POEMS BY DEBRA KAUFMAN all from 
her book THE NEXT MOMENT

Good Girls

Good girls always fall for bad boys.

We’re trained in the fine arts

of downcast eyes and demure smiles,

to caress the crisp pages of the Bible.

Trained in the fine arts

of be ye kind and don’t make waves,

I caress the crisp pages of the Bible,

Daddy’s rabbit pelts and pheasant breasts

(be ye kind and don’t make waves?).

I earn gold stars and pinch my sister.

Daddy’s rabbit pelts and pheasant breasts

teach me the secret glee of bad.

I earn gold stars and pinch my sister,

desire the scent of Brut and smoke, want

to be taught the secret glee of bad

by a boy whose eyes could size me up.

Desiring the scent of Brut and smoke,

the swagger, oh, of his lean body, I want

the boy whose eyes size me up,

his rough hands, wild hair, tight jeans.

Oh, the swagger of his lean body!

Engine thrumming, music blaring,

rough hands, wild hair, tight jeans.

I’ll take you to see Orion straddle the sky.

Engine thrumming, music blaring,

he takes me where Orion straddles the sky.

I say, I see the good in you. He laughs:

Good girls always fall for bad boys.

The Rushing Way I Went

As if each day were the same river

with variations—

one day tires, shingles,

a doll bobbing past,

the next, a heron, hunched

and studious on the bank.

I’d wake up, put in (yes,

I had then delusions of steering),

and set in motion this sequence:

make coffee, feed the kids,

get them to school on time,

on to my job, the turnpike commute,

yada yada yada.

Evenings, upwind, rewind.

Where were you?

In those short remaining hours,

your inevitable flights

took away the best parts of us.

All so long ago.

Now I wash dishes

to the tunes of smoky angels

and doves calling from the deep

down of their soft, gray breasts.

On Learning His Diagnosis 2

After September rains flies

cluster on the porch

like one still breath.

Tiny opportunists,

they zoom inside

in crushable husks,

settle on fresh-picked blackberries,

buzz lamps and windows.

Pitiless,

I vacuum up their no-account lives

as they cling to screens

in the last light they’ll ever know.

 www.debrakaufman.info

NCWRITERS NETWORK MEMBER BOB GROVE WILL DO DRAMATIC READING OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Bob Grove will have a dramatic reading of Dickens' Christmas Carol at 7 p.m. Wednesday, December 7, 2011, at the Folk School in Brasstown, NC. It will be followed by an 8:00 performance of the Folk School Morris, garland, and rapper sword dance teams. Free and open to the public.

POET OF THE MONTH OF NOVEMBER, 2011 MALAIKA KING ALBRECHT WITH THREE NEW POEMS

Malaika King Albrecht is the Featured Poet of the month of Novemer, 2011. I first met Malaika in a NCWN Conferene  Master Class, "Line Dancing" taught by Kathryn Stripling Byer. Malaika is a serious young poet with publications in magazines and anthologies to her credit. She is the author of a chapbook poetry collecitons and two recent full length collections. Congratulations to Maliaka King Alrecht in this her birth month. She one of our most  shining stars out of North Carolina at this time.

If you like these poems, let me know and I will pass the word on to our poet of the month, or you can leave a comment for her yourself.
Thank you for reading. --Nancy Simpson

 3 poems by Malaika King Albrecht  upcoming from Press 53 book

How to Walk Right Through a Woman

I can’t remember the curse that made me

invisible. I only know that one day

he held my hand and then another,

my hand slipped through his like sand.

I stayed in the room, an empty vase

in the dark and not even moonlight could find me.

He may have sensed my presence

as he stepped around me and around me

packing his books, clothes, toothbrush.

By morning he could walk right through

as if I were an open window,

a door, the immaterial air.

 Previously Published in Bay Leaves

 On the Shore at Holden Beach 

 I.

High tide reveals

in every beginning,

an end.

The sea asks, How strong

will you stand? Rises and falls

all around you.

No matter where

we die, we’re buried

at sea.

Once my daughter nearly drowned

blue lips and

the sound of waves

inside her chest.

Cut adrift,

we clung to a hospital bed

for three days until she

thrashed ashore-

said I want to go home.

II.

She finds a whole

sand dollar in the surf,

places it in my palm. Don’t

lose it, mommy. Squeeze tight.

I say No, it will break.

How to teach her

that a fist

is how life catches us

in the jar of our own desire

to hold, to count

what we think is ours.

I show her, Hold your hands

with the sand dollar

between your palms.

Like we’re praying, she says

walking gently back to shore.

published in Asheville Poetry Review

The Dusting


Every body wants. The tongue licks
that last hint of sugar from lips.

Fingers rub satin clean from the blanket’s edge.
The soles of our feet sink into earth until the air

carries the odor of crushed grass.
Everyone wants more. The eyes

of the dying are wide open. The mouths
of the dying are wide open. The nostrils. The ears.

The hearts incessant: More. More.
Listen. A dark song folds the night clouds

into a clap of thunder. I will die.
There will be nothing

left but a wisp of smoke rising
from my open mouth like a Satin moth

wheeling towards the slow turning-
a kiss of white wing dust on my lips.

 Previously published in The Pedestal


Malaika King Ablrecht's newest book Spill was also published by Main Street Rag. Her poems have been published in many literary magazines and anthologies and have recently won awards at the North Carolina Poetry Council, Salem College and Press 53. She’s the founding editor of Redheaded Stepchild, an online magazine that only accepts poems that have been rejected elsewhere. She lives in Pinehurst, N.C. with her family and is a therapeutic riding instructor.

Book can be ordered here http://www.mainstreetrag.com/MKAlbrecht_2.html

COMING SOON - SUNRISE FROM BLUE THUNDER - Pirene’s Fountain Japan Anthology

Poems forthcoming from Nancy Simpson, Maren O. Mitchell, Karen Paul Holmes, 

and Janice Townley Moore. Information will be made available as soon as the book is in print.

Edior: Ami Kaye

Katherine Herchler

Book Cover by Tracy McQueen

How to buy a copy: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/sunrise-from-blue-thunder/18777045

AFTERWARD - NCWN FALL CONFERENCE

WHEN WORDS ARE ALL WE HAVE


It was a huge success. That's what I heard. The NC Writers Network Fall Conference in Asheville last weekend had more writers attending than ever before. I met people from as far away as Wilmington and Durham, yet I saw only one of my old NCWN  friends from the east. That, I'm sorry to say only reinforced my belief which is: "They do not look west."   NCWN certainly did all in their power to "educate" and to point out the misconception that many have of the mountain people. I counted 200 seats filled with listeners who heard truth personified when Silas House spoke. (photo)

I'll always remember this NCWN conference as the best opportunity I've been given in years as a poet and instructor to "pass it on." My poetry writing workshop was well attended. I am certain that some poems written in my workshop will be published and will be read  by some of you readers of literature in the future.  I wish I had some of those poems to post for proof right now, proof that I was there and it did happen. I wish I had one good photo, proof it did occur. At this point, it seems more like I dreamed it all.


Want to read article by Jon Elliton from MOUNTAIN XPRESS? click

http://www.mountainx.com/article/37694/.Ts49egUeFmF.blogger

NC WRITRS NETWORK FALL WRITING CONFERENCE IN ASHEVILLE

AS PART OF THE REGULAR PROGRAM OF WORKSHOPS AND EVENTS, THERE WILL BE A READING BY THE FACULTY.

Saturday, November 19, 5:00-6:00 pm
The DoubleTree Hotel Asheville-Biltmore, 115 Hendersonville Rd., Asheville
The North Carolina Writers' Network 2011 Fall Conference will present the following faculty readings: Anthony Abbott, Ellyn Bache, Danny Bernstein, Stacy Hope Jones, Vicki Lane, Rob Neufeld, Heather Newton, Scott Owens, Randy Russell, Nancy Simpson, and Katherine Soniat.

 

CELEBRATING POET OF THE MONTH OF NOVEMBER 2011 MALAIKA KING ALBRECHT

LIVING ABOVE THE FROST LINE celebrates Malaika King Albrecht as Poet of The Month in this her birth month. 

Malaika King Albrecht’s chapbook Lessons in Forgetting was published by Main Street Rag and was a finalist in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and received honorable mention in the Brockman Campbell Award. Her newest book Spill was also published by Main Street Rag. 

  
Her poems have been published in many literary magazines and anthologies and have recently won awards at the North Carolina Poetry Council, Salem College and Press 53. 
She lives in Pinehurst, N.C. with her family and is a therapeutic riding instructor.



3 poems from Lessons in Forgetting
Published in Fieralingue

Book can be ordered here 

http://www.mainstreetrag.com/MAlbrecht.html

My Father Teaching my Eldest Daughter

Fill the basin with about three inches

of warm water and add a dash of baby oil.

Begin with her eyes. With a cotton ball,

start at the inside corner of one eye

and wipe outward. Do this to both eyes,
and then gently wash the rest of her face.

Make sure to get behind her ears,
drool and spit-up tend to collect back there.

He stops talking. My daughter’s hands caress
my mother’s forehead, which relaxes.

Mom opens her eyes and looks at them.
Her wet face beautiful in my daughter’s hands.

The Riddle Song 

Grocery bags in my arms,

I hip the front door open

and hear my father singing

to my mother,

I gave my love a cherry

that had no stone.

He stretches out her right leg

and then slowly rotates it in circles.

She hasn’t walked in three years

or gotten out of bed in two.

I gave my love a baby
with no crying.

Her legs resist, the muscles

tight as fists. He massages

the leg nearly straight, moves

to the next one still singing.

A baby when it's sleeping
it's not crying.

The story of how I love you
it has no end.

Of course I’m crying

in the kitchen doorway.

I can’t see her eyes from here,

but I’m hoping that their open

that she’s awake

looking directly into his eyes.

He moves to her left arm,

tucked beside her body

like a broken wing,

and gently spreads it out.

published in Wild Goose Review

How to Stay Afloat 

This morning, he’s gone when we wake up.

Amani says, Where’s Pop Pop?

Did he go to get biscuits?

I walk outside, and his car’s there,

and in the driveway,

the empty canoe stand.

He’s been threatening

to lug that old dugout canoe

into Cat Point Creek and paddle

to the small island in Menokin Bay.

On the pier I stand in the morning fog

and cold drizzle and scan the water

for movement. Nothing.

Then I hear him whistling a song.

I step to the edge of the dock

and see him. Floating with the outgoing tide

towards home, he’s kneeling

in the canoe, bailing with a kitchen pot.

On all sides, water breaches

the canoe gunnels. He sees me

and yells, See. She still floats.

published in Lessons in Forgetting Book

THE CLASS, "WRITE YOUR POEMS IN FREE VERSE FORM," AFTER 8 WEEKS ON TUESDAY AFTERNOONS WITH INSTRUCTOR NANCY SIMPSON, ENDED NOV. 8TH.

Institute For Continuing Learning at Young Harris College.

Nancy,

   I hope you are so proud of the Free Verse class.  You did a super job of organizing and presenting one type a week with clear examples, and then we had time to respond with our own writing.

   The submitting information was very good. I think I submitted more poems in the last few weeks than in the last few years. The way you sent us submission and contest information at the beginning, and then ended with more ambitious projects was perfect.

   The opportunity for having two poems critiqued each week, one for whole class, one for you and another poet, was not only very helpful, but also stimulated me to write more than one a week.  Great technique.

   Mary and I on the way home (we had to rush, she had a client waiting) both talked about the growth we thought we saw, and how much better the last poems were.  Wasn't Mary's good about her mother?  And the other Mary's poem was excellent.  Having two versions of Janet's poem to discuss was very interesting, too. I've only been to a limited number of writing  
classes up here, but this was by far the best. --Peg Russell

(Photo above )Janet Bentley, Joan Howard, Clarence Drummond, and (front) class supervisor Ann Cahill. 




Peg, 

  Yes, I am proud of this class. Your appreciation message means more to me than you realize.  During the past 8 weeks, with such a large class, with some beginners and more advanced poets preparing  chapbook and full length book  manuscripts, my teacher-training provided back-up when I needed it the most. I still believe in "The Teachable Moment." We had a few of those during our 8 weeks together, thanks to the practicing poets in the class who generously shared their knowledge. I saw each class member advance their understanding of poetry week by week. There were many fine poems shared. I expect to see some of those poems in print in the months to come.   
-- Nancy Simpson

Carol Richard Thompson, Jo Carolyn Beebe, Del Delcuze, Mary Ricketson, Peg Russell 

and Mary Anderson.

SUNSET ON 11-11-11 AND MOONSET ON 11-12-11

NOVEMBER DAYS IN THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS 2011

 WINDOW OPEN TO  THE VALLEY.

 THE LAST GLORIOSA DAISY IN MY GARDEN.

 LEAVES, LEAVES, LEAVES.

Nancy Simpson Will Teach POETRY WRITING HERE AND NOW at the NC Writers Network Fall Conference in Asheville Nov. 19th. Register now.

"Start packing your bags, books and poems. Come join us in Asheville." --Nancy Simpson

Nancy Simpson is the author of three poetry collections: Across Water, Night Student, and most recently, Living Above the Frost Line: New and Selected Poems, published in 2010 by Carolina Wren Press. She is also the editor of the recently published anthology Echoes Across the Blue Ridge. Her poems have appeared in the Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, and other literary magazines, as well as in several anthologies. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and is a recipient of an NC Arts Council fellowship. She is one of the co-founders of North Carolina Writers’ Network – West, the Network chapter for writers in the westernmost counties of the state. 

POETRY WRITIG WORKSHOP

Poetry Writing Here and Now with Nancy Simpson
Poets of today have many choices and much freedom, but it is a misconception to think that as practicing poets we can write with a total abandon of rules. Yes, Free Verse breaks with traditional forms and rhyme is shunned. This workshop will cover and promote a list of specific guidelines that – although not rules – can greatly advance your poetry and make it more publishable. Where to break the line, and how to make your poems sing with sound, will be discussed. We will also talk about how to connect with the reader on a sensory level, on an emotional level, and on an intellectual level. We’ll consider specific free verse forms, especially the lyric poem, and we’ll write one in this workshop.