The Pronunciation Part

by Flavian Mark Lupinetti

Grand Prize Winner, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2024

In his prize-winning poetry collection, The Pronunciation Part, based on his 35 years as a cardiothoracic surgeon, Flavian Mark Lupinetti presents the triumphs and tragedies of the practice of medicine. The reader will explore the operating room, the emergency room, the intensive care unit, and the secrets of the human heart—in every sense of the word.

Enjoy the video of Mark Reading from the Book:

Early Praise:

I read The Pronunciation Part in one sitting the first time around. Now, a few months later, I have read it straight through again, and with the same amazement and pleasure. These poems have the propulsive force of a page-turning novel coupled with accurate, edgy language that lends wit to even the grimmest situations. The poems are so vivid, I can see the chapbook as a short film. There is a historical line of physician literary artists. With The Pronunciation Part, Flavian Mark Lupinetti joins the tradition.

—Donna Hilbert, contest judge, author of Threnody and Enormous Blue Umbrella

Tough, a master storyteller, irreverent with a biting ironic sense of humor, a scalpel sharp intellect and deep compassion to match, Mark Lupinetti is a rare poet. This debut collection, The Pronunciation Part, opens onto a world readers of poetry seldom see, the world of a heart surgeon who performed decades of heart transplants and surgeries as well as worked in a hospital ER helping patients who ranged from pandemic Covid patients to gunshot victims. Who is more qualified to be a poet than a heart surgeon? The best poets are always heart surgeons resurrecting our hearts. Mark Lupinetti is a stunning example. Particularly moving is his poem, “Peonies” for his wife who died of cancer: I remember the night you estimated how many times I told you I loved you./I remember how you loved peonies, like the peonies I planted on your grave. From the first poem to the last, Lupinetti held me in his electric language thrall, with his unforgettable, impeccably crafted imagery where every single end line was a gut punch.

—Pamela Uschuk, author of Refugee and Crazy Love, American Book Award

Crafting lived experience into thoughtful, compelling art is one of the things a poet can do, and exactly what Mark Lupinetti does in The Pronunciation Part. The poems in this chapbook are narrative driven, cohesive and have a tight-fisted muscularity to them, not unlike the human heart. Lupinetti’s work makes the political intricately personal and thoroughly felt.

—Elizabeth Jacobson author of Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air

These poems align the practices of medicine and the lyric imagination, exploring the complexities, limits and revelations of both getting it right and getting it wrong. Only a perspective hard-won from decades in the operating room, and in the mind’s operating room, could devastate and console with passages like the only clue the patient has/ about the quality of the surgery/ is how well you closed the skin, as in “Surgery Interns Know the Rules.” I admire this excellent collection of poems.

—Ed Skoog, author of Mister Skylight, Rough Day and Travelers Leaving for the City

About the Author

Flavian Mark Lupinetti, a Pushcart nominated poet, fiction writer, and cardiac surgeon, received his MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He received first place awards in the 2023 Social Justice Poetry Contest sponsored by Sport Literate and the 2014 Betsy Sholl Poetry Award sponsored by Words and Images. His creative writing has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Cutthroat, december, Redivider, ZYZZYVA, and other publications, and his contributions to the scientific literature include more than 90 peer-reviewed papers, research studies, and monographs. A native of West Virginia, Mark now lives in New Mexico.

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Ice Cream for Lunch: A Grandparents Handbook

by Laura Foley

Editor’s Choice, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2024

This sage grandparent’s tale begins atypically, with the birth of a special needs first grandchild, with learning to set aside anxiety, accept what is and practice gratitude, “learning to love/in sun and shade,/and finding grace.” The poems make delicious meals of the joys of grandparenting, the sweetness and humor as well as the wisdom gained, the ways grandparents can learn to relax and enjoy each moment, “singing/Let It Go, Let It Go,” with grandchildren, “knowing/both joy and sorrow are holy.”

Enjoy the video of Laura Reading from the Book:

Early Praise:

Reading Ice Cream for Lunch: A Grandparents Handbook transported me to a place of calm, a place of serenity, a place of awe. For the better part of a morning (for as soon as I finished the book, I read it again) I forgot about our troubled and troubling world and instead, remembered what a holy gift it is to spend time with those we love, especially children. Young Evelyn sees the best in everyone, teaches us to listen to the chairs, tells us when a beloved dog dies, Alys has just gone home—her old one and proclaims Grandma, you’re beautiful. Without being cloying, Laura Foley uses just the right details to capture a grandmother’s love of her three unique and remarkable grandchildren. I was absolutely charmed by this book.

—Lesléa Newman, author of I Carry My Mother and I Wish My Father

Laura Foley once again, and in the unwavering clarity we have come to expect from her poetry, teaches us how to navigate life—but this time, in the companionship of Evelyn, Eleanor and Milo. At once funny, tender, wise and generous, Foley translates the worlds of her grandchildren, inviting us to recognize Santa in the garbage truck driver, the Queen in the white-haired lady on the park bench, even the magnificence of our own aging bodies… The most important thing I learn from my granddaughter, Foley writes, is I’m here! I’m here! I’m here!

—Brooke Herter James, winner of the Fish Poetry Prize

In Ice Cream for Lunch: A Grandparents Handbook—a cornucopia of tenderness and delight in gentle, quiet poems—Laura Foley manages to convey the delicious sweetness and poignancy of grandparenthood without ever surrendering to the temptation to be maudlin or cloying. She knows both joy and sorrow are holy, expressing a deep reverence for the lives and lived experience of her young grandchildren in direct, spare language; she is always steeped in the wonder I don’t let go. Finally, she offers the reader the freedom to loose the ribbons of ourselves to the spirit of the wind. Those who have grandchildren will resonate with the newness, the pleasure, and the ache inherent in that relationship; those who do not will wish they did.

—James K. Zimmerman, author of The Further Adventures of Zen Patriarch Dōgen

There’s nothing sticky-sweet in this spirited collection of poems exploring one grandmother’s relationship with her grandchildren as they dance and sing, climb hills, feast on mussels, or simply sit together side by side, with eyes closed, instructing each other. Willing to follow wherever the joyous curiosity and imagination of the child may lead, the poet also acknowledges the inner feelings of sadness and longing that well up at times beneath the surface— yet finds her way back to the present moment, knowing both joy and sorrow are holy.

          The many adventures of this lively bunch will wake in the reader a palpable joy, while the haunting poem “Sacred Space” embodies an overarching sense of comfort and safety in the close love and light of family.  This book is a gem—completely whole from start to finish in its wisdom, its humor, and the gift of openness—every word an embrace of the world as it is.

—Clyde Watson, author of Father Fox’s Pennyrhymes

About the Author

Laura Foley is the author of ten previous poetry books, most recently, Sledding the Valley of the Shadow. Her book Why I Never Finished My Dissertation received a starred Kirkus Review and an Eric Hoffer Award. She has won a Narrative Magazine Poetry Prize, The Common Good Books Poetry Prize, Atlanta Review’s Grand Prize and others. Her work has been included in many journals including: Alaska Quarterly, Valparaiso, Poetry Society London, Atlanta Review, Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. She lives on the steep banks of the Connecticut River in New Hampshire, and romps with the grandchildren as often as possible.

Learn more at lauradaviesfoley.com

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by Allison Thorpe

Designer’s Choice, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2024

A Girl, Her Slipper, and Yesterday’s Rainbow explores escape and memory. Discovering no Cinderella footwear in the alcoholic environment of growing up, a girl runs off to the freestyle chaos of the 1970s before seeking asylum in quiet country living. After her husband’s death, she retreats to the city but discovers you can’t hide from memories. With acceptance and humor, these poetic musings paint experiences familiar to so many.

Enjoy the video of Allison Reading from the Book:

Early Praise:

In this evocative collection, Kentucky poet Allison Thorpe weaves a tapestry of memory, changing place, and belonging. With a keen eye for detail and a voice that resonates in both its tenderness and rebellion, Thorpe invites readers through the field of my history, yesterday’s rainbow a riot of weeds.

Thorpe’s poetry vibrates with the tension between roots and developing wings, spanning rural landscapes and city environs. Her vivid language brings to life a place where memories rise like party balloons, a testament to the power of place in shaping identity and the pull between “home” and our wider worlds. Her verses craft a poignant exploration of what it means to leave, to stay, and the unseen forces that shape our perceptions of place and self, offering a lyrical reflection on the complexities of longing and becoming, times where each night we charted the stars with our farewells.

—Shaun Turner, poet and editor

The poems in Allison Thorpe’s brilliant, new chapbook literally bring the reader to a point that teeters the fluid and the frozen. A Girl, Her Slipper, and Yesterday’s Rainbow balances on the palpable tension between a life tethered to family and its messiness and the untethered life of free-spirited and unpredictable adventure, bringing the book its energy and its dramatic core. In the poems, the speaker comes of age through discovery, journeying from thoughts of herself as street clutter to the experience of thrills mothers warned about and on to the maturity of feeling happy just to be a knobbly goddess. In these poems, Thorpe keeps us guessing by changing from her usual lyrical countryside venue to a kaleidoscope of settings and poetic forms. The surprising anecdotes, the inventive language, the speaker’s honesty, all these give these poems an almost supernatural quality, balancing the reader on the virtual tightrope of life.

—Nancy K. Jentsch, author of Between the Rows

Through A Girl, Her Slipper, and Yesterday’s Rainbow, we take a journey alongside a girl who is the daughter of a father who was captain of the drink/A flagging ship in a whiskey sea and a mother who snuck Newports and danced to Billie Holliday with arms fluid as liquid persuasion. I say “alongside,” but I felt as if I was inside of this girl—that I was this girl—so visceral is the portrait created by poet Allison Thorpe. A girl, simple as a sidewalk, who is lured to leave the dark things congregating within her Tenth Avenue Normal and head west with a girl with ears slathered in dazzling dots. A girl who forgot the language of snow as Arizona sun converted/ the crust from my northern bone / into orange smoothies and halter tops—who becomes a woman who loves/ to stare into the sky/ as if it were an oracle. Throughout this stunning collection, Thorpe turns to nature to make sense of the girl’s world. Even as the girl-turned-woman moves to the city and tries on different “slippers” (Jimmy Choos), she can’t resist waving to a “suspicion of crows” (strutting the pigeon roof like princes) from her urban balcony, just in case. Thorpe’s masterful use of the organic transforms the inexplicable—but highly relatable—into something I could touch and, more importantly, feel deeply.

 —Missy Brownson, author of Hush Candy

About the Author

Sylvia Ahrens (writing as Allison Thorpe) grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan. After adventuring around the country, she and her husband settled at the end of a lovely dirt road in Kentucky where they built their own home of natural stone and wood, raised a family and an organic garden, and reveled in bird song for almost four decades. Along the way, she earned degrees in English Literature, Creative Writing, and Women’s Studies. Her books include six collections of poetry and a series of cozy mysteries.

Inspirations include the growly screams of Janis Joplin, the enduring courage of Aung San Suu Kyi, the complex melodies of Bela Fleck, and the beautiful finality of the Oxford Comma. She works as a writing mentor at The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, loves lilacs, yearns to be a poker star, and lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

Learn more at allisonthorpe.com

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