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Protection - Gregg Shapiro (Gival Press)
Protection. Gregg Shapiro. Gival Press. Arlington, Virginia. 2008.
Although this book is eight years old it is brand new to me -- and as refreshing as a needed cold shower.
Protection is Gregg Shapiro's first book and it is gob-smacking good.
Today's book of poetry could talk about the LBGT references (as the acronym stood in 2008) but there is no need. This poetry is so inclusive you might think Mr. Shapiro has been in your head playing with your thoughts.
Anyone who likes good poetry is going to love the high octane brilliance of Gregg Shapiro's dancing. Like Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly, Shapiro makes it look effortless -- but then like Fran Lebowitz -- he makes it true as a comedy howitzer.
My Mother Says The F-Word
At first, it felt like I'd been slapped across the face --
open palmed and swift. It reminded me of how she
would try to break up fights between my brother
and me, in the back seat of the car, while she was
driving. She would take her shoe off the foot that
wasn't needed for braking or accelerating and flail
around behind her on the off chance of making contact
with a flying arm or leg. This would make us laugh
so hard that we soon forgot why we had been fighting.
My father had been saying it for years, the word
coming out as easily as air. I know my mother
must have been dying to try it out for herself, slip
into it like an expensive Italian pump. I know I learned
to say it before I ever heard my father use it at the dinner
table, over the phone, in a traffic jam. He waited until
we were old enough before he spat it as us, watched us
retreat a little, than treat him like one of our schoolyard
buddies. It will take some getting used to, hearing it from
my mother's mouth. A mouth not accustomed to such
expressions or outbursts. A mouth full of praise and
kisses, outlined in Quicksilver Coral lipstick and easing
into the smile of someone who knows they're too old
to have their mouth washed out with a bar of soap.
Shapiro writes little screenplays to movies we all want to see. His cinematic vision
and technicolour detail suggest a deep well that he has access to.
Some of these poems read like great morality plays with sitcom laugh-tracks and good lighting with Shapiro, the expert puppet master seeing all.
And sex. There is lots and lots of sex. For the most part, joyous and loving, playful and celebratory.
Looking at the Ceiling
Rug burns on my elbows, tailbone, shoulder
blades, scalp. Burn for burn, I still come
out ahead. Wonder how I can go to the beach,
take off my shirt in public (everyone will
know!). I will lie on my back, basted in
sunblock, naming clouds. For now, I will lie
on the sand-colored carpet, stare at the galaxy
of water spots on the ceiling. Cobwebs
are moonbeams, jutting out from the light
fixture. Your face is a planet orbiting mine,
light years away. Our lips collide, tongues
tangle, teeth clack like a meteor shower.
Satellite hands, you are out of this world.
Tell me again about the big bang theory.
Shapiro is a details guy, he illuminates the general conception of things by reducing them to the moments of human nuance that we all understand. This is a very good skill to have.
Today's book of poetry was happy-shocked by this book.
The boss's wife comes to me with secrets
I must take to heart, to my grave, beyond.
Spilling from lips, thick with red. Punctuated
by brown eyes darting, silent clicks in code.
Facts to be filed, stored for future reference.
She told me that she broke down in the shower.
Crumpled into a heap of steam, salt and water.
Her dreams kept me awake at night. Vivid dreams
of forbidden addictions, another life. Now I know
why February can be as cruel as April. Twenty-eight
days, mimicked by March, with little or no chance
for improvement. Just the promise of white going
gray, hardening like cement.
Gregg Shapiro
Gregg Shapiro is one of the leading literary figures in Chicago's gay and lesbian communities and an influential critic of the literary and musical arts.
Locally, his work has been published in Outlines, Nightlines, En La Vida, BLACKlines, and Gay Chicago Magazine. His music commentaries are heard on LesBiGay Radio.
His reporting on the sexual-minority arts scene is syndicated throughout North America, appearing in Baltimore, Boston, Washington, D.C., New York, West Hollywood, Philadelphia, Miami, Toronto, and Houston.
Shapiro has worked tirelessly to increase awareness of Chicago's gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered literary excellence, both within local sexual-minority communities and beyond them. He has been a member of the New Town Writers and the SoPo Writers groups and has organized readings for them. He has supported Gerber/Hart Library through benefit readings and through donations of signed first editions and manuscripts. He has been a participating writer and performer in arts festivals, and adaptations of his works have been produced at Puszh Studios and Bailiwick Repertory theaters.
Though quiet and unassuming, he has received national recognition for his own poetry and fiction. His works were heralded on the cover of Christopher Street, the gay literary publication of the 1980s and early 1990s, and some of them have been featured on Dial-A-Poem Chicago. His works have appeared in more than 50 literary journals and in more than half a dozen anthologies.
Shapiro's expertise in popular music is widely recognized. He has been a judge at the Gay and Lesbian American Music Awards for the past three years. He has presented workshops and been on panels at the annual OutWrite conferences. In Chicago, he has taught workshops and judged student work at Columbia College and in the Art Institute of Chicago's Master of Fine Arts writing program. He has also organized group readings and panel discussions at local bookstores.
At every event in which he is involved, Shapiro strives to include representation from all sectors of Chicago's sexual-minority communities. He is one of Chicago's most honored openly gay writers and has long promoted recognition of the city's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered literary and musical talent.
*Please note that this bio was reproduced directly from the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame website: http://www.glhalloffame.org/index.pl?item=133&todo=view_item
"Moving across the country, Gregg Shapiro finds his poetry on the same highway traveled before him by Henry Miller and John Rechy - at the intersection of sex and night, the place where the brakes go out."
Carol Anshaw, author of Aquamarine, Seven Moves and Lucky in the Corner
"Gregg Shapiro's stunning debut marks the arrival of a new master poet on the scene. His work blows me away."
Greg Herren, author Mardi Gras Mambo, Jackson Square Jazz and others.
Filmed at Outwrite Bookstore, Atlanta, Georgia
givalpress.com
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Labels: carol anshaw, gival press, greg herren, gregg shapiro, henry miller, michael dennis, protection
And I Alone Escaped To Tell You - Sylvia D. Hamilton (Gaspereau Press)
And I Alone Escaped To Tell You. Sylvia D. Hamilton. Gaspereau Press. Kentville, Nova Scotia. 2014.
"The settlement of African peoples in Nova Scotia is a richly layered story encompassing many waves of settlement and diverse circumstances–from captives to 'freedom runners' who sailed north from the United States with hopes of establishing a new life. The poems in And I Alone Escaped to Tell You endeavour to give these historical events a human voice, blending documentary material, memory, experience and imagination to evoke the lives of these early Black Nova Scotians and of the generations that followed. This collection is a moving meditation on the place of African-descended people in the Canadian story and on the threads connecting all of us to the African diaspora."
...from the Gaspereau Press website introduction to And I Alone Escaped To Tell You by Sylvia D. Hamilton
As a white man who is approaching sixty years of age, history would tell us that I've grown up with a catalogue of privilege. So I might not be the best equipped reader to handle the incendiary poetry of Sylvia D. Hamilton, but I'll give it a shot -- and you should too.
Melville Island
Silenced by the snow
they wondered if even God
had finally forsaken them
home a stone prison
temporary officials say
we used to temporary
come in from the fields one day
to find out we been up and sold
we invented temporary
when they line us up
after they drag us
off them waterbeds of death
we ready for a new kind of temporary
nova scarcity
seed potatoes turnip tobacco
good crop in the fall
now all froze to the floor
and if we still here
we try again
Hamilton's And I Alone Escaped To Tell You is a sad litany, a terrible history and a necessary part of our tapestry.
If some of these poems are hard to read -- imagine how hard they were to write -- imagine how hard they were to live.
Today's book of poetry rarely talks about form or technique and the firm, terse, precise and haunting narrative Hamilton hammers out moves with such compelling force and content that the form hardly matters.
English Level 4, Book 2 c.1962
Lesson: Listen to the Language
I worked like a ____________________.
He's a real ____________________ driver.
She ____________________ over a hot stove
all day to cook his supper.
He cracked the _________________ to make
them work harder.
INT. HIGH SCHOOL -- DAY. C. MAY 1966
FADE UP: EMPTY PALE HOSPITAL-GREEN HALLWAY, BEIGE
LOCKERS ON BOTH SIDES:
IN VOICE-OVER, MALE VOICE, THE PRINCIPAL
...And next week will be our slave auction. All those participating must
remember that you can't have your slave do anything that is illegal or
embarrassing. Only those students participating will be allowed to attend
the school dance of Friday. Funds raised will go to the student council.
The glee club will meet today at noon in the Library. The boys' basketball
team will have a home game...
Racism in its' many guises razes havoc across the globe and here at home. We here at Today's book of poetry think there is only way of conquering racism and all it's evil spawn and that is through mutual understanding, tolerance and respect.
Books like Sylvia D. Hamilton's And I Alone Escaped To Tell You offer a small portal, an open door, to just that much more understanding. Hamilton has given us access, nay, forces us to take a look at a dark part of our collective story.
We are all richer for the light.
Malcolm's Question
I was fourteen when Malcolm X was murdered. I didn't know him then.
Later in that b/w file when he asked me where did you get your name, I
had no answer. Tarbaby, Sambo, Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, Topsy--they
weren't my name but that's what people called me. Don't let anyone call
you out of your name, the Sunday School mothers said. You got but two
cheeks, defend yourself. When I told my white grade four teacher that, she
didn't believe me, strapped me anyway.
Hamilton reads like the very best of George Elliot Clarke and that makes her very, very good.
Sylvia D. Hamilton
Sylvia D. Hamilton is a filmmaker and writer whose awards include a Gemini and the Portia White Prize. Her poetry has been published in The Dalhousie Review, West Coast Line, The Great Black North andUntying the Apron: Daughters Remember Mothers of the Fifties. She was a contributor to, and co-editor of,We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up: Essays In African Canadian Women's History. She lives in Grand Pre, Nova Scotia.
gaspereaupress.com
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Labels: african people in nova scotia, and i alone escaped to tell you, gaspereau press, george elliot clark, michael dennis, sylvia d. hamilton
The Year Of No Mistakes - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz (Write Bloody Publishing)
The Year Of No Mistakes. Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz. Write Bloody Publishing. Austin, Texas. 2013.
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz is so damned smart she must glow in the dark.
And she gives us hope.
The Bowery
We danced like ball bearings.
We laughed like ripped newspapers.
We smoked like backwards rain clouds.
We kissed like slammed doors.
We drank like taxi cabs in snowstorms.
We ate like honeybees swarming bears.
We screamed like willow trees in windstorms.
We wrote like a knife to our throat.
We fought like a thousand, tiny paper cuts.
We struggled like teeth against brick.
We fucked like rubber-necked car crashes.
We loved like we invented it.
This is the sort of poetry I like best. Almost every moment is filled with a twist of language that is an instant familiar or a reminder of something you think you should have known. Aptowicz is clearly from that clan that perfects language for the rest of us.
Dazzling isn't too bright a word. This poetry is as honest as a child without guile.
The Year Of No Mistakes is hilarious and as engaging as a phone call from an old friend.
Not Doing Something Wrong Isn't The
Same As Dong Something Right
In my defense, my forgotten breasts. In my defense, the hair
no one brushed from my face. In my defense, my hips.
Months earlier, I remember thinking that sex was a ship retreating
on the horizon. I could do nothing but shove my feet in the sand.
I missed all the things loneliness taught me: eyes that follow you
crossing a room, hands that find their home on you. To be noticed, even.
In my defense, his hands. In my defense, his arms. In my defense,
how when we just sat listening to each other breathe, he said, This is enough.
My body was a house I had closed for the winter. It shouldn't have been
that difficult, empty as it was. Still, I stared hard as I snapped off the lights.
My body was a specter that haunted me, appearing when I stripped
in the bathroom, when I crawled into empty beds, when it rained.
My body was abandoned construction, restoration scaffolding
that became permanent. My body's unfinished became its finished.
So in my defense, when he touched me, the lights of my body came on.
In my defense, the windows where thrown open. In my defense, spring.
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz takes things as seriously as a Richard Pryor heart-attack or a Sylvia Plath swoon, and never looses her balance.
Aptowicz's powerful, powerful poems are never bullying or academic. They are wise beyond her years, whatever the hell her age is.
If you have friends who don't read much poetry, and you want a guarantee to knock their socks off - show them this book.
My Tiny God
likes balance. He has me step in dog shit today
so I might catch an express train next week. He likes
how happy I am to earn it. How suffering to me is
like loading a gift card in karma's outlet mall.
My Tiny God knows I like established paths, following
dotted lines to my destination. My Tiny God thinks
no one learns anything that way, turns off the headlights
when we're still racing down a road.
Still, My Tiny God is the one I pray to on a rainy tarmac,
in the waiting room, on the other end of a static-filled line.
My Tiny God doesn't always take my calls. I don't know
if he listens to my voicemails. Sometimes he goes missing.
I remind myself he doesn't have to watch over me all the time.
He doesn't need to carry his scale everywhere. He is allowed
to get bored. He doesn't have to watch me write for me to know
that he likes it when I've written, to see the paper pile up.
These days, My Tiny God clocks in every morning. Coffee,
our favorite miracle. Work, our favorite song. Faith, our lucky
number. He pours sunlight on my like syrup, fluffs every cloud,
smacks the birds from the trees just so I can watch them scatter.
Today's book of poetry needs to develop a scoring system (not), just so books like this could go to the top of it. The Year Of No Mistakes by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz is electric energy you hold in your hands.
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
(Please note, this bio was "borrowed" in full from the author)
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz is the author of six books of poetry (including Dear Future Boyfriend, Hot Teen Slut, Working Class Represent, Oh, Terrible Youth and Everything is Everything) as well as the nonfiction book, Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, which Billy Collins wrote "leaves no doubt that the slam poetry scene has achieved legitimacy and taken its rightful place on the map of contemporary literature." On the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) podcast Art Works, host Josephine Reed introduced Cristin as being "something of a legend in NYC's slam poetry scene. She is lively, thoughtful, and approachable looking to engage the audience with her work and deeply committed to the community that art (in general) and slam poetry (in particular) can create." Cristin's most recent awards include the ArtsEdge Writer-In-Residency at the University of Pennsylvania (2010-2011), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry (2011) and the Amy Clampitt Residency (2013). Her sixth book of poetry, The Year of No Mistakes, was released by Write Bloody Publishing in Fall 2013 and her second nonfiction book, Dr. Mutter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine, was released by Gotham Books (Penguin) in Fall 2014.
For the truly curious, here's the longer story:
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz (b. 1978) was born and raised in Philadelphia. In 1996, she graduated from Central High School of Philadelphia, and moved to New York City to attending NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. She was a sophomore at NYU when she was first introduced to poetry slams by her classmate, Beau Sia. In 1998, Cristin co-founded the NYC-Urbana Poetry Slam, a weekly reading series dedicated to showcasing the most innovative voices in poetry. NYC-Urbana has captured the National Slam Championship title three times and won the first ever Group Piece Nationals, which celebrates multi-voice poems. The NYC-Urbana Poet Slam is still held weekly at NYC's famed Bowery Poetry Club.
After college, Cristin worked as an editor for the "Adult" section for online portal About.com (serving as inspiration for her book, Hot Teen Slut), slung coffee as the founding cafe manager for the Bowery Poetry Club and served as a rights manager at the Artists Rights Society.
In July 2010, she was named the 2010-2011 ArtsEdge Writer-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, where she spent the year researching and writing a book on Thomas Dent Mütter, founder of the Philadelphia's (in)famous Mütter Museum. It was during this residency year that she was also awarded a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry.
Cristin continues to perform and lecture internationally & nationally, including residencies with or performances at the Sydney Opera House, the Gasworks Art Complex (Melbourne Australia), Joe's Pub (at NYC's Public Theatre), the Largo Theatre (Los Angeles) and over 100 universities and colleges, including but not limited to Yale University (CT), Brown University (RI), Columbia University (NY), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MA), Dartmouth College (NH), Boston University (MA), Brandeis University (MA), Amherst College (MA), University of Pennsylvania (PA), University of Chicago (IL), New York University (NY), University of Alabama (AL), University of Arkansas (AR), Minnesota State University (MN), State University of New York (Freedonia) (NY), George Washington University (DC), University of Maryland (MD), Berklee College of Music (MA), Penn State Berks (PA), College of Saint Rose (NY), Columbia College (IL), Hamline University (MN), Eastern Illinois University (IL), Tennessee Tech University (TN), Husson University (ME), Goucher College (MD), Colby-Sawyer College (NH), Slippery Rock University (PA), College of St. Benedict (MN), Universities of California (Santa Cruz and Davis, CA) and Universities of Australia (Melbourne and Sydney, Australia), among others.
Her poetry and non-fiction has been published in various journals, including Rattle, McSweeney's Internet Tendencies, Pank, La Petite Zine, decomP, Umbrella, The Other Journal, Danse Macabre, Conduit, Barrelhouse and Monkeybicycle, among others…
From February 2013 to August 2013, Cristin was the 2013 poet-in-residence at the Amy Clampitt House, where she finished her sixth book of poetry and sold her second book of nonfiction
Her sixth book of poetry, The Year of No Mistakes, was released by Write Bloody Publishing in Fall 2013 and her second nonfiction book, Dr. Mutter's Marvels: Thomas Dent Mutter and the Dawn of Modern Medicine, will be released by Gotham Books (Penguin) in Fall 2014.
For more information on forthcoming gigs, recent press and/or her schedule of performances, please see here or write aptowicz@yahoo.com.
"Though this a book full of trouble--there's a lot of un- and underemployment; and though love is found, love is mostly lost--Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz is really a poet of honesty and humour. Through all the transitions and difficulties presented here, affection lingers in and hovers around these poems, particularly an affection for place, for the cities she has moved through and taken into her being. "I meet you here at the intersection of pitbull and/pigeon"--passages like this offset the day-to-day struggle with language that is simultaneously accurate and transformative, giving us both a take on the world as it is and a sense of the better world our minds can make. Whenever I meet this poet, I want to stay."
Bob Hicock, Poet and two-time National Endowment for the Arts Fellow
"Haunting, lovely and heartbreaking. The Year Of No Mistakes is a revelation. It is Aptowicz's best book yet: a poetic Odyssey that takes the reader along on her journey of personal transformation, leading us from love to loss to new frontiers. This book will feel like home to anyone who has ever faced a dark night, or even a dark year, of the soul. Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz is the poet laureate of your heart."
Wess Mongo Jolley, Poet & Founder of the Performance Poetry Preservation Project (P4)
Crispin O'Keefe Aptowicz
Cristin O'keefe Aptowicz, author of "Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Throught Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam", published by Soft Skull Press, performs her Spoken Word Poem "Notes on Rejection" as part of the Junkyard Ghost Revival tour with Anis Mojgani, Buddy Wakefield and Derrick Brown at Brown University, October 2008
writebloody.com
Labels: bob hicok, cristin o'keefe aptowicz, michael dennis, the year of no mistakes, wess mongo jolley, write bloody publishing
Mules of Love - Ellen Bass (BOA Editions)
Mules of Love. Ellen Bass. BOA Editions. American Poets Continuum Series, No. 73. Rochester, New York. 2002.
Today's book of poetry bought this book by Ellen Bass at the public library in Bryn Mawr, just outside of Philadelphia.
As a rule, Today's book of poetry only writes about books that we receive in the mail. But this is my house and I get to do what I want. So here is the rare exception.
Last year I was visiting an old friend and fine poet, Chui, in Bryn Mawr. He and his astonishing wife Patt live in a huge stone house filled to the brim with art. It's a monster beautiful home that is older than Canada.
As luck would have it his backyard abuts the grounds for the public library. I checked out the "Book Sale" room and scored a mountain of poetry. I bought as much as I could carry home on the plane. It was about 30 books.
I've read them all now and this is the one I want to tell you about because it is monster good.
Everything on the Menu
In a poem it doesn't matter
if the house is dirty. Dust
that claims the photographs like a smothering
love. Sand spilled from a boy's sneaker,
the faceted grains scattered on the emerald rug
like the stars and planets of a tiny
solar system. Monopoly
butted up against Dostoyevsky.
El techo, a shiny sticker, labeling the ceiling
from the summer a nephew studied Spanish.
Mold on bread in the refrigerator
is as interesting as lichen on an oak--
its minuscule hairs like the fuzz
on an infant's head, its delicate
blues and spring greens, its plethora of spores,
whole continents of creatures, dazzling our palms.
In a poem, life and death are equals.
We receive the child, crushed
like gravel under the tire.
And the grandfather at the open grave
holding her small blue sweatshirt to his face.
And we welcome the baby born
at daybreak, the mother naked, squatting
and pushing in front of the picture window
just as the garbage truck roars up
and men jump out, clanking
metal cans into its maw.
In a poem, we don't care if you got hired
or fired, lost or found love,
recovered or kept drinking.
You don't have to exercise
or forgive. We're hungry.
We'll take everything on the menu.
In poems joy and sorrow are mates.
They lie down together, their hands
all over each other, fingers
swollen in mouths,
nipples chafed to flame, their sexes
fitting seamlessly as day and night.
They arch over us, glistening and bucking,
the portals through which we enter our lives.
When I read these poem by Ellen Bass I feel hopeful.
Mules of Love reads like a long-play record you don't want to end. It is languorous and so flesh and bone human. Ellen Bass has wandered wise into my sphere as a reader and boy was I waiting for this. Here is a poet you really would want to sit down and have a glass of red with because you know her warm understanding of the world would elevate yours.
Remodeling the Bathroom
If this were the last
day of my life, I wouldn't complain
about the shower curtain rod
in the wrong place, even though
it's drilled into the tiles.
Nor would I fret
over water marks on the apricot
satin finish paint, half sick
that I should have used semigloss. No.
I'd stand in the doorway
watching sun glint
off the chrome faucet, breathing in
the silicone smell. I'd wonder
at the plumber, as he adjusted the hot
and cold water knobs. I'd stare
at the creases behind his ears and the gray
flecks in his stubble. I'd have to hold
myself back from touching him. Or maybe
I wouldn't. Maybe I'd stroke
his cheek and study
his eyes the amber of cellos, his rumpled
brow, the tiny garnet
threads of capillaries, his lips
resting together, quiet as old friends--
I'd gaze at him
as though his were the first
face I'd ever seen.
Clearly here at Today's book of poetry we have a bias for narrative poems. We are also suckers for a style we like to call Romantic Realism. Really hoping Ms. Bass doesn't object but that's where I'd throw her hat.
Think Thomas Hart Benton meeting Andrew Wyeth.
Happiness After Sorrow
No days were good, but some were worse.
I'd gotten as far as my door--reach out,
they always tell you--then had to pee.
Two steps toward the bathroom. But
what did peeing matter? I slid down
like a coat shrugged off. And slumped there,
on the edge of the frayed rug, I catalogued the worst
things that could happen to a parent. This--
my daughter stripping the medicine chest, rimming
the sink with plastic cylinders, her life
suspended in transparent amber--
was number three.
And then years pass. And you're making meatballs.
Exactly the way your family likes them.
A little bread crumbs. A little matzoh meal.
No egg. A dash of sherry.
You're browning them in a pan. Diana Krall's
singing "Peel Me a Grape." And you're happy.
The present is what you're crazy for,
each moment plump and separate as a raindrop
reflecting the world on its curved skin.
It happens. Our troubles familiar
as the peeling paint in the back
hallway, the stain on the couch
where the cat threw up.
We live with all the unbearable knowledge--
the hole in the ozone, the H-bomb,
and right now fathers are hurrying
children in their arms across barbed-wire borders.
After we weep, we fold the newspaper
and drive our kids to school.
How do we do it? How do we want
to make supper again? Squeezing
cold mush through my fingers, patting
it into pies. How does love keep
swelling in the cavities of our frail bodies,
how do these husks hold so much jagged
pleasure in their parched split skins?
I tip the pot, oily water rushes out
and steam rises. All I have lost
swirls around me. I scoop
the mist with my palms.
We passed Mules of Love around the office for weeks, reading it aloud, sometimes reading the same poem twice in a row, out loud. Every single poem made us like this poetry more.
Ellen Bass has published several poetry collections, including Mules of Love (BOA Editions, 2002), a Lambda Literary Award winner; and The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book. She coedited with Florence Howe one of the first anthologies to highlight feminist poetry, the groundbreaking No More Masks! Her nonfiction books include the best-selling The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth. She has published poems in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Sun,Ploughshares, and of course, Rattle. Among her many awards is a Pushcart Prize, the Pablo Neruda Prize, the Larry Levis Prize from Missouri Review, and the New Letters Prize. Bass teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Pacific University. Her new collection of poetry, Like a Beggar, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in early 2014. (ellenbass.com)
"The sudden intimacy of these poems will hold you to the page. Ellen Bass knows an awful lot and is ready to tell it all. Her poems will quicken the pulse, and as you read you will become anxious to discover more and more. But she can only tell you so much, one good line at a time, and that is more than enough."
--Billy Collins
"Reading Mules of Love gave me great joy. I found the poems striking, full, complete and beautifully crafted. Ellen Bass is a poet writing about quintessential beauty, and these poems are swollen with it. These radiant poems emerge from her Santa Cruz garden of life. Bass writes with a Dionysian ecstasy yet infuses it with the calm energy of a gardener's earthy-hands."
--Diane Wakoski
"Ellen Bass's voice is direct and unambiguous. These are intimate, confessional poems, yet in almost every instance they go beyond the specific details to strike a universal chord. A highly readable and touching book."
--Maxine Kumin
"Ellen Bass writes of ordinary life with a fierce a loving passion. Her honesty, her insights, and her mastery of language, particularly metaphor, make this book compelling to read."
--Linda Pastan
Ellen Bass reading "Gate C22"
Cornelia Street Cafe
boaeditions.com
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Labels: billy collins, diane wakoski, ellen bass, linda pastan, maxine kumin, michael dennis, mules of love
Alibi for Two - Augustus Merrill (Parallel Press)
Alibi for Two. Augustus Merrill. Parallel Press. University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries. Madison, Wisconsin. 2014.
The poems in Augustus Merrill's Alibi for Two are diptychs. Or at least that's what they would be called if they were paintings. Masterful painting at that.
I asked our intern to find the appropriate literary term for this form, a poem in two parts with a prose introduction, but she left the office for lunch yesterday and hasn't been heard from since.
Merrill is a retired English professor and I think, after reading these fine, fine poems, I would have enjoyed listening to what he had to say about almost anything. I'm certainly game for more of these poems.
Perhaps these poems could be filed in the "call and response" tag - but ultimately it doesn't matter. Each of the poems in this collection starts with a short prose section or introduction and ends with a brief poetic retort, summation, response.
The effect is startling.
The Crossing Guard
They moved to town for the sake of the baby. It was just too hard
living out like that. She was immediately relieved. The grocery store,
the Laundromat, the city parks. It took him the remainder of his life
to make the adjustment. As a very old man his greatest pleasure was
to look out his narrow window at the young crossing guards directing
traffic by the elementary school in the middle of the afternoon. If
civilization were like this, he thought, he never would have gone to live
Not a decade behind them
The young crossing guards stand duty at the stop.
Already they have assumed the serious and sober robes of responsibility.
In neon safety vests they arrive early at their stations
Dwarfed by the nine foot signs.
With miniature mirrored signs of their own they stop traffic.
On the world's windswept open streets.
Obediently the traffic halts
As the guards conduct their small charges to safety.
No one, not even the most hardened criminal
Would disobey their small upraised hand.
Whatever the future brings, into this scene
Such authority and obedience will never be theirs again.
The power and satisfaction given over to them as children
Will soon be replaced by defiance and disappointment at every turn.
Before accelerating again
We stop to admire the young guards and to admire ourselves
Doing what we are supposed to do.
Stylistically Merrill's intelligent poems read like a familiar, but Today's book of poetry has never seen quite this sort of poem work quite this effectively.
To go back to the diptych metaphor; Merrill has found the recipe to create the perfect union between the two halves of these poems.
Merrill has mastered pace and tension so that many of these poems read and sound and taste like folklore we had forgotten.
Leave Your Bow Man Alone
They had been married and divorced three times, and now they were
trying to go down a little, rocky, northern river together. He screamed
for her to paddle on the right. She paddled on the right. He screamed
for her to paddle on the left. She paddled on the left. All the while
she didn't say a word. Her thoughts flowed with the current as light
and easily as a leaf. Three times is enough, she thought, three times is
Leave your bow man alone;
You are lucky to have him there,
And if he is a she, leave her alone too--
She has had enough of your bad advice already.
Choose which side is dear
Then change like the changing of the year
Without premeditation, plan, or word.
Leave your bow man alone.
Steer when you are tired,
Moving forward as you never would have done alone.
If you must command,
Command yourself to the passing world
Remembering that you are heavy
And that she is light
And that the two of your are only being led along
Because the water has forgiven you both.
Go to the shore in silence and tenderly touch the limbs
That have brought you home at last
Where there is no water
And no need for forgiveness.
Augustus Merrill uses dry humour with much the same delicacy as a painter using the dry-brush technique.
Wait, that's the ticket!, diptych's, dry-brush technique -- this guy is a painter. And what lovely paintings.
I Sit With You
It was not a good place to quarrel. In a city or in a town there would
be restraint, but there was no restraint there and the lake did not help.
When it began to freeze their differences were magnified. The water
creaked and groaned as though it were in its death throes. It pinged
without mercy through the fragile house and the fragile marriage.
When there was no more to say, a cruel silence would set in. Sometimes
it would last almost until the lake thawed in spring.
No wind over the eighty-eight acre face of Lake Nothing,
No moon in the leaf stained water.
The pike who has hunted the ducklings
All summer in the shallows
Is hunted himself now
By the pressures of the winter thermocline.
The otters in their den,
The city people in their city,
The loons flown south,
I sit with you, my silent wife,
Until the wind stirs and the ice forms
Between us and the lake.
Augustus Merrill's poetry has the confidence of the experienced and the humility of man who knows too much. This chapbook of very human poetry remind us at Today's book of poetry that some of the very best things come in small packages.
Lee Merrill, his hunting dog, Belle, and his grandson, Bastiaan.
Augustus Lee Merrill is retired from a thirty-year career as professor of English literature at Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin. He has been involved in the conservation issues of the Lake Superior region as a member of the boards of the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute and Voyageurs National Park. His writing has appeared in College English, Poetry Now, The Wisconsin Academy Review, and Gray's Sporting Journal. Merrill lives with his wife Melinda in Washburn, Wisconsin.
parallelpress.library.wisc.edu
Labels: alibi for two, augustus lee merrill, augustus merrill, michael dennis, parallel press, today's book of poetry., university of wisconsin-madison libraries
The Anatomy of Clay - Gillian Sze (ECW Press)
The Anatomy of Clay. Gillian Sze. ECW Press. Toronto, Ontario. 2011.
Here is a kicker for you!
I might have found a perfect poem. It is on page 18 of Gillian Sze's The Anatomy of Clay and it is called "Cigarette".
Today's book of poetry is not going to share this poem because we want you to find this book and read it for yourself.
Sze is quite the poet. Her excellent work feels so casual and light - when in truth there is nothing casual about it. Sze has laser vision.
The Taken Wife
These evenings
you find more joy in the television
than in me:
your face an empty dish.
Tonight's show,
a woman tells her daughter:
your life becomes what you pay attention to.
I remind myself to use jasmine lotion
after I emerge from the shower
and yet, each morning,
I fail to do so.
Domesticity is more than
the cup of coffee
I set at your side
as you listen, one ear to morning news,
the other to the traffic.
It is the distortion
that takes places when all that's left
is the cooling stovetop,
a dripping shower,
a mix-up between
compassion and compression,
the latter felt
with each plunge of the French press,
each squeeze of a package of brown sugar.
Before you come home,
I wash,
tumble dry on low,
and fold myself into your drawer.
Good poems are like good movies, they allow you to, invite you to, insist that you, inhabit them. Gillian Sze's The Anatomy of Clay is a pleasure palace of cinemascope type renderings that all retain that home movie feel.
Sze seems to have access to an instant intimacy device which cloaks her poems in the familiar.
from Delilah In Seven Parts
Delilah lost the baby two months in. She doesn't like the details
and tries to forget most of them. All she knows is that shortly
after, Thomas stopped coming home at night. Sometimes he'd
be gone for two whole days. Delilah started reading the book
Sally gave her and would write Post-it notes to herself that she'd
stick to the bottom of her underwear drawer. She would write
out pieces of advice like, How to discover a cheater: search his
car; or How to discover a cheater: bring him close and note any
peculiar scents.
After Thomas came right out and told her, Delilah locked
herself in the room, chopped off her hair so it hung just below
her ears in jagged locks and packed her belongings in her
suitcase. When she got to the bottom of the drawers, her eyes
were so wet that they stained everything incomprehensible. She
couldn't even read her own writing: How to discover a cheater.
It didn't really matter though. She realized later that they were
both saying the same thing.
I am utterly won over and convinced. Gillian Sze writes with humour and charm and a playful surgeon's knife. The Anatomy of Clay is one of those surprisingly good books of poems where you can open to any page and feel the full force of Sze's dynamic and consistent pen.
My seven-year-old nephew
tells me that he is fourteen
in shark years.
I bark twice.
The whale has me beat.
It knows six different sea languages,
and I, on land, know two.
One day, I tell him,
you'll stare at someone
and all expression will be lost.
A linguist can attest.
How are we all not the same,
as we lie here like cows
waiting for rain?
a fox
like a woman.
This poetry is as precise as it is pretty. Sze's ability to be down to earth is chthnoic.
If this book were a vegetable it would be an onion. Every poem/layer as sweet as the next, every single one as good as the last. Everyone in the office loved this book.
Gillian Sze
Gillian Sze is the author of three chapbooks published with Withwords Press: This is the Colour I Love You Best(2007), A Tender Invention (2008), and, most recently, Allow Me to Conjugate (2010). In 2004, she received the University of Winnipeg Writers' Circle Prize and her collection, Fish Bones (DC Books, 2009), was shortlisted for the QWF McAuslan First Book Prize and longlisted for the 2010 ReLit Award in poetry. Her work has appeared in a number of national and international journals. She co-edits Branch , a quarterly online magazine showcasing Canadian art, design and writing. She has a Master's degree in Creative Writing from Concordia University and is currently pursuing a PhD. The Anatomy of Clay (ECW Press, Spring 2011) is her second poetry collection. Her most recent book, Peeling Rambutan , has just been published by Gaspereau Press this spring.
"A contagious lyrical energy ignites when concept gives way to necessity and Sze's subjects--family, place origin--are given voice."
"Gillian Sze's debut collection dazzled... The poetry is intelligent and playful... at once pared to the bones--pun inteneded--and wondefully rich and sensual."
McAuslan First Book Prize jury citation for Fish Bones
ecwpress.com
Labels: ecw press, gillian sze, michael dennis, the anatomy of clay
The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths - Sandy Longhorn (Jacar Press)
The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths. Sandy Longhorn. Jacar Press. Durham, North Carolina. 2013.
"Once there was a girl" named Sandy Longhorn who traveled in time to discover The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths. I suspect she dug it up from under the floorboards of some dusty and forgotten shack.
And now Longhorn has the temerity to claim these myths as her own. Clever work.
Midwest Nursery Tales
In the stories, someone's always lost
amid the cornstalks, crushed beneath
a tractor's wheel, or swept away
in a flooding season. Most nights,
the children ask for the one about the girl
who refused to mind, who followed
a pair of moths into a field of alfalfa
ready for reaping. The girl trailed
the papery wings through a maze of grass,
ignoring her mother's wind-pitched voice.
Out of earshot, a fox appeared, chased her
dizzy and nipped her heels until she fell.
When the searchers arrived, all they found
were her shoes and a patch of blood-red
poppies. Each year those flowers bloomed
no matter how deeply they tilled the soil.
Well bless Sandy Longhorn's cotton socks because The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths is a spectacular read. It could just as easily been called "A Cautionary Compendium and Glossary to the Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths".
Longhorn's west is a harsh, bloody place and the women of the prairie are called upon in ways that test the limits of the most vigorous hearted.
But these are strong, strong women.
Cautionary Tale for Girls Caught Up in the Machinery
Once there was a girl who dreamt each night of tools,
the hammer's heft and the wrench's clamping jaws,
her favorite pair of pliers, handles worn smooth
from twisting taut the new-strung wire.
She burned the roast, sewed uneven hems, but knew
what needed tightening before her father spoke
his soft commands. They worked as an efficient pair
and some days he forgot his lack of sons.
But then she reached a certain age and the dreams
began to change, tools transformed to the teeth
of rabid dogs, the flailing hooves of horses driven
to crush her bones, anything wild and out for blood.
Her mind gone soft from lack of sleep, she forgot
to kill the tractor's engine and felt her sleeve
brush the humming belt. In the span of one quick breath,
she was pulled into the belly of that greasy beast.
When her father came to find what took so long,
there was nothing there. Nothing save a tractor
with an engine seized and a scrap of cloth,
nothing to prove she hadn't simply wandered off.
Longhorn never takes a short-cut and never takes the pressure off. In her prairie universe women are constantly being called upon to survive the most arduous challenges.
These poems read like an almanac of continuous wonder. Longhorn's voice in these poems has the force of astuteness to it. These myths all sound and feel like fully formed historical words of wisdom, true myths that Longhorn has pulled out of the ether.
Stopping the car, we let the dust return
to the gravel road behind us. Ahead
is the house, our destination, engulfed
in tall grass, which requires a wading
through weeds and pockets of thicket,
a fending off of all that bites and stings.
Because we must approach what haunts us
with gifts in our hands, we make ready.
We unwrap the cloth that protects
the owl's claw tangled in trumpet vine,
loosed the lid on the jar of fireflies,
although it is day and they appear to sleep.
Draping our shoulders with red silk scarves,
we dip one fingers each into the fat pot
of honey, harvested only miles from here.
We are not burdened by these offerings.
Threading the remnants of a path, we arrive
at the door intact, calling out the name
of our beloved, a song rising from the grass.
Today's book of poetry loved this book. It is taut and menacingly tasty poetry.
I am interested in where lyric and narrative intersect, in working with the strengths in each of these forms. I am interested in white space and line breaks, in the way silence creates room in which words collide and ricochet. I am interested in the kind of tension that can be made visually and linguistically with letters placed on the page. And I am interested in sound, in how the repetition of sounds creates density and intensity within lines, stanzas, and entire poems.
These sly, beautifully crafted poems inhabit and haunt the heart-land. Sandy Longhorn is a poet with the gifts of observation and imagination. An original voice with a knack for telling tales.
— Stuart Dischell, Backward Days, Dig Safe, Evenings & Avenues, Good Hope Road (Viking Press)
The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths is a stunning collection of poems. With her gift for startling images and precise music, Sandy Longhorn converts the normally peaceful vision of the prairie into a place that perpetually threatens to turn innocence into a cautionary tale. In these poems, young girls discover haunting consequences for "refusing to mind." Disobedience transforms girls through underground language or the bright forgetfulness of poppies. In this landscape formed by
elegy and glaciers, everything worshiped is dead or wounded, yet Longhorn's imagination and lyricism resurrects these myths so you can "taste the light his body had foretold."
— Traci Brimhall, Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton), selected by Carolyn Forché for the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize
reading "Gracie's Great Adventure"
Tin Roof Project #44
jacarpress.com
Labels: jacar press, michael dennis, sandy longhorn, stuart dischell, traci brimhall
Shouting Your Name Down The Well - David W. McFadden (A Stuart Ross Book/Mansfield Press)
Shouting Your Name Down The Well - Tankas and Haiku. David W. McFadden. A Stuart Ross Book. Mansfield Press. Toronto. 2014.
David W. McFadden's last book of poetry, What's the Score?, won the Griffin Prize for Poetry.
Shouting Your Name Down The Well is a completely delightful encore. This time out he is exploring the Japanese forms of tanka and haiku. McFadden would seem to be a bottomless well of excellent poetry.
I've met the man a few times and am always surprised. I keep expecting to see a giant lumber gracefully into the room rubbing his knowledgeable noggin on the ceiling. Instead, this gentle, humble man, carefully disguised genius.
Today's book of poetry is going to let other Canadian poets tell you what they think:
"David McFadden is such an essential writer for us. His wonderful poems before and after Gypsy Guitar, his great Trip Around the Lakes series, feel to me the central unofficial voice of our time. He has always kept us close to the earth with his humour and his wandering off the beaten path of literature."
I was on one of
Those happy drugs for three months
And liked it okay.
But soon I got nostalgic
For a little misery.
"David McFadden's poems come across as passages in a long, thoughtful, roaming conversation about matters no less deeply serious for sometimes being utterly frivolous. As the title of one of his books, There'll Be Another, suggests, it all seems easy--this stroll from one poem to the next, this leap between stanzas--but that's part of McFadden's art. There won't be another like him. Let's treasure the one we've got; the conversation of his poems includes us."
STEPHANIE BOLSTER
Tanka is to me
As bicycles to Curnoe.
His friends kept thinking
This was the end of the line
But it was merely the start.
"Dave McFadden's attention to writing has always been top-notch, right from when he published Mountain magazine in the early '60s through many years of a wide range of poetry, prose, teaching, editing, and just being open to the beauty of language. In my generation he's a master."
FRED WAH
Give me those who aren't
Afraid to say "I don't know."
You can have the rest.
"His words would rip a hole in the night."
LILLIAN NECAKOV
When you're ninety, say
Grandma, people you haven't
Seen in fifty years
Appear so real in your dreams
You can reach out and touch them.
"David McFadden has won every book prize ever lodged in a secret corner of everyone's heart, his acceptance speech echoing in our heads."
GEORGE BOWERING
Turns out the love in
Love songs is true. Everything
Will last forever.
The wind blows a gust of rain
All over my desk and me.
"Part rascal, part rogue, David McFadden is one of Canada's chief mischief makers. He condenses essential wisdom and offers it generously. I'm made more human by reading his work."
SANDRA RIDLEY
I could walk so quietly
Through the woods that once
Without any warning I
Saw a dozen dozing deer.
"The world is full of wonder, but this can be easily forgotten. The poetry of David W. McFadden is a manual for restoring that sense of wonder. I'm quite certain reading it has improved my life tremendously."
PAUL VERMEERSCH
I'm eight years old and
I've read Peter Pan eight times.
Now for my ice cream.
"David McFadden is one of the purest and most radiant poetic souls of our time."
STEVE VENRIGHT
The poems we write
After the Holocaust must
Be the type Hitler
Would have despised, that would have
Had us put in cattle cars.
"I feel like writing the most wild / and humble poems in the world / but David had already written them."
SUSAN MUSGRAVE
I'm a subjective
Man. I never ask questions.
I just work it out.
Today's book of poetry could go on forever with both David McFadden poems and the gushing voices of so many other Canadian poets, But you get the idea. McFadden is a poet that other poets love.
Stuart Ross continues to champion some of our best poetry with his imprint for Mansfield Press.
David W. McFadden
David W. McFadden has been publishing poetry since the early 1960s. He is the author of about thirty books of poetry, fiction, and travel writing. Why Are You So Sad? Selected Poems of David W. McFadden (Insomniac Press) was shortlisted for the 2008 Griffin Prize for Poetry, and Be Calm, Honey (Mansfield Press) was short-listed for the 2009 Governor General's Award for Poetry (his third such nomination). In 2013, What's the Score? (Mansfield Press) won the Griffin Prize for Poetry. David lives in Toronto.
"David McFadden's poetry is probably the poetry most often read aloud at my house...His broad talent, a unique voice and real vision."
Elizabeth Bachinsky
The Griffin Poetry Prize - 2013
reading "It's Not Funny Anymore"
from What's the Score?
mansfieldpress.com
Labels: david w. mcfadden, fred wah george bowering, griffin prize, mansfield press, michael dennis, michael ondaatje, paul vermeersch, shouting your name down the well, stephanie bolster, steve venright
The Collected Poems of Patrick Lane - (Harbour Publishing)
The Collected Poems of Patrick Lane. Patrick Lane. Harbour Publishing. Madeira Park, British Columbia. 2011.
Today's book of poetry has seriously floundered in attempting to write about Patrick Lane and his collected poems.
How do you write about your heroes?
This monumental collection is a pure object of beauty before you open the covers. Harbour Publishing have done their boy proud.
Oh yes, the poetry.
Now that he was older
the artists had begun to paint him, and the photographers,
the clever ones with their miniature machines came
and arranged him in gardens and poolrooms, bars and verandas,
to capture the images of who he was, who they thought
he had been. Most of the artists were his age
but some were younger, beautiful young men,
and woman with large hands, their hair pulled back
tight, their clothes unruly. He liked them best.
He liked the way they would walk around him
after spending days and nights with his books,
his poems, the way they would stop and stare
while painting him, all his words in their minds,
all the suffering intact, precise and imaginable.
You can pretty much jump in anywhere to harvest the rich vein of work Lane has been pounding out since his work was first published in the sixties. Twenty-seven books of poetry so far.
Just so you know, from Today's book of poetry perspective, Patrick Lane is the poet of the people. Horrible moniker to lay on anyone but in this case it fits. His very approachable body of poetry is working class no-nonsense and as erudite as the golden tongued whisper of the angels.
He sat at the foot of the low bed and watched her cry.
It was not like Rome burning and it was not
like the spare fires he had built
when he was alone in the wilderness,
the ones he sat away from, the ones he put out
when he was tired of watching.
Her grief was of another kind, an event
that was merely ornament, a thing
that perishes as it is made, as a performance
in a northern town perishes line by line
with no one to remember it, something less than art
as time is less than merit. He had made her love him.
She hadn't wanted to. He had shaped her love
by shaping himself, giving himself to her
in the exactness of her integrity, becoming
her, and so, becoming less, their time
together an intimacy which was only imitation.
Sitting there he felt the same
as when he was a child and dressed
in his mother's clothes, his posturing
in front of her mirror, the inaccuracy
of that kind of dance.
He understood his gluttony, the wanting more,
his greed for her loss, the pain
she seemed to love more than him.
She did not tell him to go away, and
she did not call out to him.
What he had was what an observer has,
the man who gazes alone from a private box
protected by velvet curtains, a glass of good wine beside him,
the play going on and him with no rights, one way
or another, the man who watches with detachment
as a critic does, having no stake in the event.
I had the privilege of meeting Patrick Lane once. It was back in the late 70's. I was driving taxi in Peterborough and writing my little poems. I got a call from my high school drama teacher, for some reason or another she was meeting Patrick Lane for drinks and was inviting me to join. Of course I did. Pretty sure I was able to get another young poet, Richard Harrison, to join me.
And that's the end of that story.
I've met Acorn, Purdy, Layton, Birney. And just meeting those men took my breath away. But Lane has always been the poet whose work paralyzed me with pleasure most. Of all the giants, he is the giant that makes the most sense to me.
My intern disagreed. You will not hear from that intern again.
Last Water Song
It is not the water you tried to find when you were young.
That was the water that lost you.
You climbed trees to look and the water was there.
You walked on the earth and the water was nowhere.
That was the losing water.
This water is the finding water.
It is cloud searching water.
When you are old it comes down.
It stretches out on the earth.
It says follow this water.
First water is woman water.
The belly of woman has this song.
This water was the first learning song.
This water is the last learning song.
It is the cloud under the earth.
Now you climb down roots to find this water.
Now this tongue is a root.
Open this mouth in the earth.
Now sing this water song.
Now you are the last water.
For many of us at the Today's book of poetry offices Patrick Lane sets the bar for the rest of Canadian poetry. The Collected Poems of Patrick Lane should be an essential for every poetry collection in the country.
Patrick Lane
Patrick Lane, considered by most writers and critics to be one of Canada's finest poets, was born in 1939 in Nelson, BC. He grew up in the in the Kootenay and Okanagan regions of the BC Interior, primarily in Vernon. He came to Vancouver and co-founded a small press, Very Stone House with bill bissett and Seymour Mayne. He then drifted extensively throughout North and South America. He has worked at a variety of jobs from labourer to industrial accountant, but much of his life has been spent as a poet, having produced twenty-four books of poetry to date. He is also the father of five children and grandfather of nine. He has won nearly every literary prize in Canada, from the Governor General's Award to the Canadian Authors Association Award to the Dorothy Livesay Prize. His poetry and fiction have been widely anthologized and have been translated into many languages. Lane now makes his home in Victoria, BC, with his companion, the poet Lorna Crozier.
"Like the classic Buddhist, Lane finds in the recognition of life's horrors, or the terrible things men do to men and even more to other beings, the reason for an ultimate compassion, for a desire to nurture love where it survives."
"Patrick Lane is our most essential poet; tough, tender, fearless, and beautifully dangerous. For decades he has been our guide to darkness, and our provider of unexpected flashes of brilliant, almost blinding light. Now gathered together in one spot, the poetry of his life enhances and energizes us, and takes us to places we would never go on our own. Lane is a true Master."
"Lane's poems have a lucid, generous eye for the unsung and excluded, an abiding dignity in their rhythms of blind continuance, compromised peace."
Ken Babstock
"...a breathtaking achievement of moral and poetic genius."
Tim Lilburn
Patrick Lane @ 2008 Calgary Spoken Word Festival
harbourpublishing.com
Labels: george woodcock, harbour publishing, jane urquhart, ken babstock, lorna crozier, michael dennis, patrick lane, the collected poems of patrick lane, tim lilburn
And I Alone Escaped To Tell You - Sylvia D. Hami...
The Year Of No Mistakes - Cristin O'Keefe Aptowi...
Alibi for Two - Augustus Merrill (Parallel Pres...
The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths - Sandy Longh...
Shouting Your Name Down The Well - David W. McFadd...
The Collected Poems of Patrick Lane - (Harbour Pub...
Satisfying Clicking Sound - Jason Guriel (Signa...


text:
Baker Street to Study Fundraising Feasibility for Proposed Interpretive Center
The Friends of Devil's Lake State Park is pleased to announce they have retained the Stevens Point-based consulting firm, Baker Street Consulting Group, to assist them in organizing and conducting a fundraising planning and feasibility study.
Friends of Devil's Lake seeking fundraising consultant for possible educational center at Baraboo park
he Friends of Devil's Lake State Park are seeking a fundraising consultant to manage the $18 million campaign for a possible new educational building at the park, their first step forward on the project since unveiling concept designs at a public meeting in April.
Devil's Lake interpretive center proposal met with public resistance
By SUSAN ENDRES
The Friends of Devil's Lake State Park board organized the meeting at Baraboo City Hall to allow contracted firm GWWO Architects and their design partners to present concept designs for a possible new building and findings on the best site locations.
New facility at Devil's Lake State Park meeting set
A new facility is being proposed at Devil's Lake State Park. The Friends of Devil's Lake State Park, Devil's Lake Concession Corporation, and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources have embarked on a plan to design and build a state-of-the-art Multi-Use Educational and Outdoor Recreation Center.
Devil's Lake educational center design expected by summer
A Baltimore architecture firm is evaluating potential locations for a new multimillion-dollar interpretive center at Devil's Lake State Park, with local project leaders expecting a final conceptual design by early summer.
Visit the Friends of Devil's Lake State Park Facebook Page
Photograph by Christin Gill
Additional Park News
For additional news about Devil's Lake State Park, please visit the Friends of Devil's Lake State Park's.
Friends of Devils Lake News
To leave feedback about the Devil's Lake Interpretive Education Center project, please use this contact form. Your message will be sent to the project team.
© 2019 The Friends of Devil's Lake State Park. All rights reserved.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Articles / Social Media Management / I Tried Hootsuite's "5-Day Plan for Increasing Twitter Engagement"
I Tried Hootsuite's "5-Day Plan for Increasing Twitter Engagement"
Social media is probably an essential part of your marketing plan whether you're at a large corporation or startup or SMB. But managing a social media account can be intense and time-consuming. Fortunately, there are great tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Buffer & Tweetdeck to make social media management a lot easier. At Stacklist, the majority of startup founders report using a social media management tool to help them manage and optimize their posts.
The most popular tool? Hootsuite.
Nearly 1 in 4 founders on Stacklist report using Hootsuite. At Stacklist, our team uses Hootsuite for Twitter posting and we're happy with it. We use Twitter aggressively to get information about helpful tools out to founders and startup teams; Hootsuite is critical in this process.
But we were sensing some monotony in our social media strategy and execution and wanted a refresh. So, recently, I decided to try out Hootsuite's "5-Day Plan for Increasing Twitter Engagement." You can download it by filling out the form here.
So how did it go? All key metrics were up.
Here's more about our experience.
Hootsuite's task for the 1st day of their 5-day plan was to create 3 lists, reflecting 3 types of accounts or people whom you think will value and engage well with your brand. Hootsuite's recommended framework was (1) loyal customers (2) influencers and (3) press & potential partners.
2. "Founders/CEOs" was a list full of founders and CEOs (didn't see that coming, did you?). We want to stay tapped into this group because, not only do CEOs & founders contribute thousands of insights and reviews to Stacklist, but we also need to stay tapped into questions and comments founder might have about their business tools via twitter.
shoutout to the folks who fav my tweets but don't return my texts!
Hootsuite lets you turn the lists into streams that show up for easy viewing in your Hootsuite dashboard. This was pretty cool. I used to only use Hootsuite to schedule tweets, but now I have one place to see every tweet we schedule, as well as tweets from important accounts.
Hootsuite's step for Day 2 is all about providing value by initiating conversations with people whom you can help with your expertise. The key to this is setting up searches for questions you want to answer; to do this on Hootsuite, you create a stream based on AND and OR functions for keywords. And you can get as granular as you want.
Since we know a lot about business tools, our first stream for this targeted search was for anyone mentioning tools and asking a question. So we cast a wide net and built a "tool?" stream.
Most of what showed up in this stream was a lot of people calling other people tools. Or asking who the biggest tool was. Spoiler alert: It's usually someone in government. Or someone's friend.
I quickly identified someone who asked about collaboration tools with a remote team – and gave him some advice. The tweets that show up in this stream come at a slower volume than in other streams but they yield much higher quality engagement with people who need the advice we provide.
Day 3 of the plan is to use visual content to increase engagement. Using GIFs, photos, videos and Vines to offer a variety of content and make your Twitter profile page a bit more colorful. Besides the aesthetics--tweets with pictures have higher engagement.
If you are or using your own images (or stock photos) then you have to make sure your images are the right size. This helpful infographic by makeawebsitehub.com is a great reference to make sure all of your images are the right size on any social network.
You can manually resize your image using a variety of tools like MS Paint or Photoshop, or you can check out Sprout Social's free image resizing tool Landscape. This is a great product that will resize your image (and keep it high quality) for any social network.
After creating a stock of images and drafting a few tweets, I went into Hootsuite's publisher and scheduled out tweets for the rest of the week, making sure most if not all tweets going forward contained an image.
Protip: Pictures take up 24 characters, leaving 116 characters to work with after the picture is included. However, tagging a picture doesn't take up any characters, so this is a great way to engage other Twitter accounts that are relevant to the post.
The genius of a Twitter chat is that it generates intensive engagement in a short period of time around topics that are relevant to your company - not to mention, the hashtags you use can help spread the word virally that there's a conversation happening. Here's Hootsuite's advice on hosting a good Twitter chat.
You can also decide to host your chat using a variety of livestreaming tools now - for example, Twitter has Periscope.
Instead of hosting our own Twitter Chat, Hootsuite was actually hosting their own that day about using Twitter as a customer service platform. At 3 pm ET the chat started. I introduced myself and started following the hashtag #HootChat in a Hootsuite stream and would reply to questions Hootsuite asked about social customer care.
At first, the #HootChat seemed very hectic (considering they have over 7 million followers) but the participants were informative and ultimately it did seem like a good, efficient way to get important information via both Hootsuite and their community.
I did notice a higher engagement rate for tweets that were part of #HootChat. After the chat though, engagement settled back down to normal.
I'd say hosting a Twitter Chat is helpful if you find someone to partner/co-host/feature for the chat. That way both of you expand your audience to their followers. As a whole, the experience was helpful for finding some influencers in the marketing field and for engaging with other people in the chat.
The last task for Day 5 is to use Twitter and Hootsuite to monitor brand mentions, identify cases of customers using your product for the first time and use these strategies to increase conversions. When you find someone first experiencing your product, you can engage with them further and boost the chance of them having a positive "welcome" to your brand. Depending on your business, this could take the form of, offering help and guidance or send discounts and targeted incentives.
With streams set up from Day 1, it was easy to monitor brand mentions and thank users directly for sharing or mentioning us. And, on Day 5 I was happy to see our recommendation for PushBullet from one of our weekly New Tools Roundup was helpful to James.
Thanks @theStacklist for another great recommendation, just started using @pushbullet to sync notification across devices.
The use of streams is a great way to monitor mentions and engage with users. It's also very helpful to see what content is performing well via shares, retweets and likes.
This guide set out to help us make Twitter an active vs. passive routine. The guide was largely successful in breaking some of our patterns. The guide provides several easy ways to use Hootsuite to actively increase engagements on Twitter. It also pushed me to keep our Hootsuite dash active on our desktop through the day - looking for any questions I could answer or interesting other people on Twitter to engage.
The plan was definitely a great way to learn Hootsuite best practices. Before I was just using it to schedule tweets, in a "passive" manner. Checking streams has become a daily habit to see where I can engage with users and plan more engaging tweets.
AND instead of looking at a hectic Home feed, I can look at streams for the different lists I've made, monitor mentions and help out people looking for specific tools.
Increasing engagement is definitely just one part to a social media plan involving Twitter. By focusing on engaging content, you maintain the quality of what you put out and develop advocates for our brand.
If you're looking into social media management tools for your startup, check out our list of tools here and you can follow us on Twitter @theStacklist.


text:
Ryszard Rumianek (Varsóvia, 7 de novembro de 1947 — 10 de abril de 2010) foi um religioso polaco.

Foi uma das vítimas do acidente do Tu-154 da Força Aérea Polonesa.

Mortos em 2010
Religiosos da Polónia
Vítimas do acidente do Tu-154 da Força Aérea Polonesa

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Q: Can I end a sentence with " may jeopardize."? Can I say the following?

*

*If we don't fix this problem now, then our plan may jeopardize.

A: Your sentence improperly treats jeopardize as an intransitive verb meaning come into jeopardy—that is, become exposed to risk. But jeopardize is a transitive verb meaning put [something] into jeopardy—that is, expose [something] to risk.
What you want to say is something like

Not fixing this problem now may jeopardize our plan.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Hikers used the chain at Angel's Landing because it was a 1,488-foot fall to the ground, but also because the chain existed. Simply looking at the chain caused many people to become fearful. For inexperienced climbers- having a "safety net" of sorts was important.
Of course I went off leash most of the time. Not for a contrary purpose. I just didn't need the chains to guide me. I barely have a grip on this version of reality, but I have a grip on nature & treading where angels dare to go.
We often hold to the things we've outgrown out of duty and familial obligation or material security. It's okay and important that chain, the religion, the support exists. Sometimes we need that validation and security these things offer.
Still when we are attached to our expectations, relationships, professions- anything outside of us we can become chained in forms of mental and emotional slavery.
These sentences of servitude are subtle and reflect enculturation of societal norms. They are not easily broken and often take years of meditation, therapy, and re-education. Just desiring liberation is one of the most important part of "the work."
There is more knowledge readily available to humans now than there has been in any other time in recorded history. Yet our cultures are not up to speed with the technological breakthroughs which have come at such an advanced pace. The proliferation of hints about misinformation are almost worse than the actual misinformation itself.
Propaganda from all sides keep pointing out false ideologies. Take your pick of soups and conspiracy theories du jour. But there is no inherent sense of fascism in this type of soup nazi. A problem with taking in so much information is that we don't know where all to put it. That at the end of the day- people are forced into camps and baskets of good and bad.
We praise logic and lucidity when it matches up with the general consensus of the day. Scientists and theologians start out with the intent to discover something new or to come to greater understanding of their chosen discipline. Yet many observers, of both spiritual and scientific leanings, tend to maintain the status quo- to becoming maintainers of the knowledge instead of advancing it further.
It's been proven throughout all of history that those in power attempt to maintain that power by adhering to the science and religion that best benefits the perpetuation of that culture's ideals and motivations.
In his famous allegory, The Cave, Plato presents several chained prisoners who are forced to look at a fire casting shadows/images reflected on the back of a cave wall. He said, "On the walls of the cave, only shadows are truth." We see mere reflections of the Forms- beauty, truth, life but do not actually ever see "Truth," "Love," "Mercy," as they exist on their own. Everything is just a reflection of an ideal and we cast our own assumptions, experiences, desires and label it good, love, bad.
Objectivity of the material world becomes more apparent in nature. The riddle of "if a tree falls in a forest" becomes more clear when you're the only one in the forest to hear its silence.
Almost all of us live this way to some extent. Not asking questions which would shake the foundations of our societies, are homes, relationships, and selves. I've literally known self-actualized people who said they don't want to ask the hard questions because they don't want to know "the answer."
Often I wish the desire to ask these questions did not burn within my heart because life would be a lot easier to take at face value. But to stay in this false safety net would be boring, predictable, and antithetical to the propagation of life on this planet.
We spend half of our lives deprogramming ourselves from the bogus agendas of lack based mentalities that were socialized into us. But now that we know this- we have a chance to create the life which works for us and for the greater part of human civilization.
I used to think I was in the craggy places because of judgment and worthlessness. I was too precious to be planted in a garden but my heart would not be content alone in the alpines. Hearts have a way of wandering around until they find each other.
Brave hearts are not made for fences, chains, or cages. When we become less dependent on the chains we have grown accustomed to we move into bolder power.
We have the freedom to taking art, thought, life farther than it has been before. Keep following the freedom which is calling within you.
Unchain yourself from relationships, expectations, governments, and jobs which do not serve you. For each step forwards expands creation farther than it has been before and closer to where you want to go.
Share this: Pass It Forward!


Based on excellence we strive to provide the least intrusive yet most effective behavioral interventions with supports that can be sustained by the individuals natural environment.We are a company that holds fast to the technology and the underlying principles of Behavior Analysis while maintaining our humanity and compassionfor people.Our chief goal is to put the people we serve in the position to not only be independent but to dictatetheir own hopes and dreams as they lead their team on the journey with them.
Who We Are Is Not Nearly As Important As Who We Serve.
We have the blessing and honor of working with a diverse group of people. We specialize in helping adults and children with behavioral concerns and learning difficulties.Our partners are well seasoned in helping individuals with both developmental disabilities, Intellectual Disabilities, Mental Illness and Autism. We are able to accomplish this through the science of Applied Behavior Analysis.
Our passion is to serve people by putting them in control of their own future. We do this by offering an array of services that are taylor designed for each individual. We find that putting the individual as the pilot of their own life there is not only a greater success rate but a stronger foundation that someone can use to shape their life.
It is common in todays treatment to dismiss the foundation of our field but at Morning Star we insist on its existence and application for the people that we serve.
Star believe that if it can be seen it can be measured and if it can be measured it can be changed. This is a key in the way treatment is viewed and carried out instead of having a very daunting goal of "communication" we can measure and teach skills that are integral in this process.
the individual leads starting with paid staff and continuing to other people in their life in order to customize natural supports.
what precautions and protocols are needed to be in place in order for this skill to remain in this persons life, for the long haul?". If any of these questions cannot be answered with a functional skill that can be measured we don't teach it.
Based on excellence we strive to provide the least intrusive yet most effective behavioral interventions with supports that can be sustained by the individuals natural environment.


Attracting a strong and loyal customer base is a matter of life or death for your e-commerce company. Ideally, adoption will snowball, and your startup's future will be bright and profitable. But how to make it happen?
1. Acquire and understand 100 early adopters.
DigitalOcean attracted its first 50 customers by demoing in front of a New York tech meetup.
However you capture your first cadre of users, make sure to offer whatever you're creating or building for free in beta and then learn from your mistakes as quickly as possible.
"'Fail faster' is the motto, and that's going to allow you to adjust and find the success stories and work within those success stories," Wainer says. "You want to learn as much as possible about your first hundred users in the beginning."
When DigitalOcean was in its infancy, Wainer says, he would have phone conversations with early adopters and ask them a variety of questions, about their favorite foods and books, what kinds of blogs and websites they visited most often, as well as how they found DigitalOcean in the first place. The point? To come up with a blueprint of a typical customer to know how to target the rest of the 900 you want, or 199,900 you eventually want, using your products or services.
2. Allocate a small marketing budget, set goals, and diligently track your progress meeting them.
You may be bootstrapping, but getting the world to find and try your website or app isn't going to happen without at least a bit of investment. Set goals such as doubling your user numbers within 30 days or by a certain percentage.
"Whatever it is, you want to set targets and goals month over month, and you want to be tracking day to day," he says.
3. Offer promo codes to increase conversions.
They're highly effective in increasing user growth and engagement and can be distributed via banner and text ads as well as social media.
"Display advertising worked really well for us when we were building the first hundred customers," Wainer says. "We used BuySellAds.com and BuyAds.com to find relevant websites to place a banner ad on, and on those banner ads, we would offer a promo code."
In the beginning, as you're accelerating, it's important to closely monitor every marketing campaign you set in motion as well as every tweak you make to your website to understand what's most effective in getting people to sign up or otherwise take an action you want them to take. To do that, Wainer suggests creating monthly key performance indicator (KPI) reports, an easy thing to do with a simple spreadsheet populated with data from Google Analytics as well your conversion data. For example, are people signing up with a credit card or only with an email and password?
"You want to build monthly reports to track your channels and your spend, and how many users came through that channel, and then the CPA (cost per action) for those specific channels," Wainer says. "For instance, if it's social media or if it's banner ads [that are] producing a high CPA, and then you find that retargeting generates a lower CPA, you might want to allocate your funds to retargeting instead of investing more money into social media."
Wainer says he uses Google Analytics URL Builder nearly every day to gauge campaign performance by creating a tracking link. To use it, you enter the URL for a page to which you want to redirect an ad, as well as the campaign medium, such as Google, Twitter, or Facebook, and whether it's cost per click, a banner, or an email. After assigning a name based on the campaign title, the tool creates a long URL you can shrink on a URL shortener such as bit.ly.
"You can create different campaigns with that link and add it to your Google Analytics account to understand how many conversions a campaign drove, and then make a decision on whether or not to scale that campaign or to cut back," he says.
5. Hire a writer and get serious about content marketing.
Providing quality content for free is a fantastic way not only to draw people to your website but to demonstrate your domain expertise. For example, DigitalOcean not only provides programming tutorials on its site, it also pays developers $50 per post to contribute content.
Create listicle BuzzFeed-type headlines involving numbers, such as "5 Ways to Do XYZ."
Post longer content. Google likes 500-plus words.
Use Google's keyword tool within AdWords to understand which key words generate high-volume traffic, high-search volumes, and low competition. Google Trends also shows which words people are searching for most at the moment.
Include calls to action at the bottom of blog posts or articles, where they tend to get more engagement compared with other places on the page.
Optimize headlines and meta descriptions with H1, H2, H3 tags (check out that link if you don't know what this means).
Post content on other websites and include links back to your site.
Consider including a user community on your site where people can ask and answer questions. "[At DigitalOcean] those questions become individual pages, so essentially we're having user-generated content on our website that gets indexed by Google and drives more traffic to our website, which again gets retargeted throughout the Web," Wainer says.
In short, you need to build a marketing engine that puts into motion a snowball effect.
6. Measure churn, cost of acquiring customers, lifetime value of customers, and more.
To get the next 900 users and beyond, it's important to measure as much as possible, including your monthly churn--which is the percentage of users who unsubscribe or stop using your service--a number that shouldn't rise above 10 percent, with 2 percent being an acceptable number, Wainer says.
Other things to measure: cost of customer acquisition (CAC), lifetime value of your customer (LTV), and the relationship between the two. Wainer says software as a service (SaaS) companies like DigitalOcean should aim for an LTV to be three times greater than a CAC.
"Also, you want to understand...how many months it will take to pay back the CAC," he says. "The best SaaS businesses are able to recover their CAC between five to seven months."
7. Play with your pricing and website design.
Wainer says DigitalOcean was able to expand the number of users fourfold by AB testing call-to-action buttons, pricing models, positioning, messaging, and design. The important thing is to track the funnel of how users interact with your website--when they sign up with an email address, enter payment information, convert, and activate.
"You want to create this funnel and attach numbers to each layer of the funnel going down," says Wainer, "and then basically you're going to build out [the] percentages [of] your conversion rates from when they sign up to when they activate with a payment profile."
8. Be aggressive with PR.
Wainer used his personal network to find a friend of a friend who could make an introduction to someone at TechCrunch, and then spent time selling the writer on an exclusive story that would announce a product launch.
"It catapulted our growth immediately," he says, "so we were signing up about 10 customers a day, and then after the release came out, we started signing up over 100 a day, so PR can really help spark a new level of growth for your business if you pair it with the right product release of the right announcement that's going to disrupt the market. So just work your network, and don't be afraid to cold email the writers that write about your industry."
9. Incentivize users with a referral program.
If you want your customers to become your salespeople, it's important to empower them with ready-made banner ads and materials that are easy to share on the Web and create referral links that generate more traffic for your website.
DigitalOcean also offers to pay customers who successfully promote the platform with credits for reduced-price subscriptions instead of cash, a strategy Wainer says helps keep costs down. His favorite referral automation tool: Ambassador, which has plans that start at $99 a month.
"Another great referral tactic is to create a contest to incentivize your users to generate more signups within a given time frame, like a 30-day period," he says. "At the end of the 30-day period, you can reward them with 2X or 3X commissions for the month. And maybe create a leaderboard for a little bit more of a competitive environment."
10. Target and engage with key influencers and ideal customers on social media.
DigitalOcean has used HootSuite and Sprout Social as well as Facebook and Twitter ads to get help doing this.
"[It's] understanding who your key influencers are in the industry, engaging with them, retweeting them, favoriting their tweets to get on their radar, reaching out to your user base with promo codes or incentives to sign up for your product online," Wainer says. "Actively participate in tweets and mentions in a timely manner. Engage with them, create conversations, create relationships, because those relationships build more awareness and spread via word of mouth your product or service."
He also suggests answering highly visible questions on Quora that are relevant to your industry or your business and position your company as a thought leader.
11. Use email marketing, but keep it simple.
DigitalOcean has used MailChimp and Campaign Monitor for help with email campaigns, but Wainer says the most important thing here is to keep emails and subject lines as simple and short as possible.
"An email with a subject line with just 'Thank you' works really well," he says. "A/B test every email. Focus on subject lines, add large calls to action at the bottom of every email to increase engagement. Include incentives such as a promo code."
The best time to send promotional emails? Midweek between the hours of 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. ET, when overall Web activity is at its peak.
Goodwill works well, too. Wainer says DigitalOcean has had success automatically sending customers who drop the service an email from the CEO asking for their feedback along with a note telling them their account has been auto-credited. In fact, during one 30-day period in which the company sent out 4,700 emails, 15 percent reactivated.
"It generated an additional $100,000 in annual run rate," says Wainer.
Clearly DigitalOcean is doing something right. The company--valued at $153 million--recently raised $37 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz.


NEW Steady Snake with iPad support for hands-free reading, writing, viewing anywhere.
Got that iPad, Maxi or Mini? Want to take pictures or videos with it, but can't hold it steadyl? Use the SteadySnake Neck-Pod with our accessory removable iPad tripod support. Read that book in bed on the iPad without needing to hold it. The iPad gets heavier fast, while holding it. But not when you have the SteadySnake-Neck-Pod! And you can watch movies on your iPad® without feeling that your arms are ready to fall off.
Pictures below taken with the iPad on a SteadySnake Neck-Pod, show how useful it is as a "Real" camera you can have with you and shoot with all the time.
Versatile way to shoot, hold, watch any videos or pictures.
Only 2 pounds 2 oz together (Steady Snake plus iPad support).
iPad support plus iPad- sold separately).
The Original Steady Snake Steady Snake is a flexible monopod/ NECKPOD that will flex around your neck, act as a monopod with high shots over the crowd (camera boom) or low shots where you really don't want to bend down (into something) but you really want that flower or dog or cat picture. Perfect for that marvelous Apple iPads, large and small High Definition Digital Video camera where you just need stability but hate hauling around that bulky 3 legged tripod. Great for the smaller cameras and video camcorders that are used today. Steady Snake can fit around your neck and allows both arms free to concentrate on taking that gorgeous video of your son or daughter - at the soccer game where you have to move very fast to get the action or that horse jumping competition. Perfect for sports videos, dance recitals, shooting videos for YouTube, and is also perfect for your digital still camera. Steady Snake is 39 inches long with atached full control quick release tripod head. knobs. 2 pounds weight. CAMERA NOT INCLUDED!
Up ,down, all around, around the neck, around the town.
We have 30 inch (small) and 39 (Medium) versions, and we recommend the medium size(39 inch) for the iPad. (iPad, cameras not included). iPad tripod holder/mount also sold here. Click Products for ordering and pricing information. Made in USA.


Many businesses holders continue to expand across the globe every day, due to the fact they maintain a close contact with the large number of social media followers by providing the best adds that can help to convert them to potential customers. In order to guarantee quality marketing techniques among business holders, the best social media marketers have developed a well outlined platform where impressive social media marketing tools can be embraced that will definitely help to market a business with ease. As a result, it is advisable for individuals with an urge of marketing their products easily across the world to go through the best social media marketer reviews so as to identify the best social media marketing company with quality reviews.
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text:
ST GEORGE'S PRIMARY SCHOOL
Pupils starting reception
Moving to secondary school
Governors login
The Governing Board of a Foundation school is responsible for all aspects of school life, including:
An oversight of the conduct and curriculum of the school with
specific policies in sex education and religious worship.
The management of the school budget and other grants received
from central government.
Monitoring the extent to which the school achieves its aims and
The appointment of teaching and non teaching staff.
The maintenance and development of the school buildings and
facilities.
The fostering of good relationships and effective communication with the parents and the wider community.
The Governing Board comprises:
4 Parent Governors
1 Children's Services Appointment (CSA) Governor
1 Staff Governor
3 Partnership Governors
4 Co-opted Governors
3 Associate Members
The Governing Board meets formally at least once a term, and minutes of these meetings are available to parents. Each governor has a particular responsibility for an aspect of school life, and regular reports of governor business in the form of newsletters are sent to parents. The Governing Body does not make detailed decisions on the day to day running of the school; this is the role of the Headteacher. A successful school will have a close working relationship between Headteacher and Governing Body. Such a relationship exists at St. George's Primary School.
Chair of Governors Mrs Lisa Vranch-Wellman (C)
Vice-Chair of Governors Mr Andy Craft (P)
Headteacher Mrs Jo Luxon (H)
Mrs Jeanne Harris (CSA)
Mrs Christine Taylor (P)
Rev. James Menzies (C)
Dr. Stuart Burley (C)
Mrs Liz Canham (EP)
Mr Mark Ward (EP)
Mrs Catherine Bennett (EP)
Mr Tom Millett (EP)
Mrs Marisa Restorick (S)
Mr Michael Coombs (A)
Mrs Debbie Roberts (A)
Mrs June Rowe (A)
Clerk of Governors Mrs Gillian Mintern
Copyright © 2020 ST GEORGE'S PRIMARY SCHOOL . All Rights Reserved.


text:
Vote for your favorite Led Zeppelin songs for SiriusXM's Top 50 countdown
What are the most essential Led Zeppelin songs of all time? Led Zeppelin Radio calls upon you to cast your votes NOW for The SiriusXM Led Zeppelin Top 50.
Vote for your favorites below, then tune in Friday, 5/22 at 6pm ET on Led Zeppelin Radio to hear the results from this poll. Stream free until 5/30.
Encores: Saturday 5/23 at 12pm ET; Sunday 5/24 at 6am ET; Monday 5/25 at 12am ET.
Directions: Select 5 songs from the list below. You may vote once between now and 5/21/2020 at 9 am ET.
Celebrate Robert Plant's 70th birthday on Deep Tracks!
Robert Plant on life after Led Zeppelin and what has fueled his solo career
Music, Rock
Billy Joel on hearing Led Zeppelin for the first time: 'It just pulverized me …'


text:
New Berlin man shot by police dies from his injuries
Sophie Carson D.L. Davis
The man shot by New Berlin police in June has died from his injuries, the Wisconsin Department of Justice announced.
The DOJ in a statement also identified the man for the first time since the June 22 shooting that left him critically wounded.
Michael P. Wolski, a 57-year-old white New Berlin resident, died Friday, the DOJ said in a statement.
Also Friday, Waukesha County prosecutors filed an arrest warrant for Wolski and charged him with first-degree recklessly endangering safety. The details of the complaint were not immediately available over the weekend.
The DOJ's Division of Criminal Investigation is investigating the shooting that occurred June 22 about 10 p.m. in the 4000 block of South Moorland Road.
According to the DOJ, at around 10 p.m., a New Berlin police officer was parked in a parking lot in the 4000 block of South Moorland Road in New Berlin when dispatchers received a 911 call about a suspect with a gun at the same location.
The DOJ has previously said that Wolski apparently called 911 on himself to attract police. Investigators determined that Wolski told dispatchers he saw someone with a "long" gun in the parking lot of Crossroads Community Church on South Moorland Road.
When the 911 call came in around 10 p.m., the officer, Rick Helm, 44, was already parked in his squad car nearby. The DOJ did not indicate whether Wolski was aware the squad car was close to his location.
Regardless, the investigation so far has revealed that it was Wolski who took the initiative and "confronted" the officer, the DOJ said.
New Berlin police, citing the DOJ's external efforts, declined to speculate on Wolski's possible motive.
During the incident, Helm shot Wolski.
Police radio traffic recorded during the incident indicated that Helm was confronted with a rifle equipped with a scope. Unsure of the victim's condition several minutes after the shooting, Helm requested a shield-equipped arrest squad to move in to secure the area.
"I'm OK right now. He's down, and the gun is at his feet," Helm told dispatch as additional squads mobilized.
It was only after reinforcement units arrived that police were able to check the man's condition and perform emergency lifesaving measures before Wolski was taken to the hospital.
Responding officers provided emergency medical support, and he was transported to a local hospital.
He died from his injuries on Friday.
No law enforcement officers were injured during the incident.
Helm, who has been in law enforcement for 20 years, has received several policing awards and is a use-of-force and de-escalation instructor, New Berlin Police Chief Jim Hingiss has said.
According to online records and media reports, Helm 19 years ago fatally shot a Milwaukee man armed with a knife during a standoff. The shooting was ruled justified self-defense.
Helm is on administrative leave as the investigation continues.
DCI is leading the investigation with assistance from Wisconsin State Patrol, Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory, Muskego Police Department, and Waukesha County Sheriff's Office.
According to online court records, Wolski had not been charged with any felonies prior to the charges filed Friday. In 2014, Wolski received his third drunken driving conviction, a misdemeanor.
Jim Riccioli of the Journal Sentinel contributed to this report.