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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by Steven Croft

In At Home with a Dreamlike Earth, Steven Croft explores the natural beauty in his birth-state of Georgia, where his poems bring the reader to the lush coastal landscapes of the Barrier Islands and the nurturing comforts of Southern living.

Enjoy a Video of Steven Reading from the Book:

Steven Croft — A Featured Poet on The Poetry Box LIVE (Jan 2024)

Early Praise:

At Home with the Dreamlike Earth drew me into a solace of coastal Southern landscapes – the Ichetucknee and Alapaha, back roads to Alabama, fish crows, one-room schoolhouses, Beautyberry. Steven Croft’s deft, sensory lyrics, impressionistic in the best painterly sense of that word, alternate with gripping narratives like “Conversion,” in which a farmer watches a lightning-sparked fire burn across his fields toward his home. In “Alapaha” and “Azaleas,” seeing new blooms in the landscapes his grandfather and grandmother knew before he did, the poet feels their presence in the wild, ongoing life of these places. This chapbook lifted me, poem by poem, as gradually and gracefully as a Georgia high tide.”

—Gordon Johnston, author of Scaring the Bears 
and Where Here Is Hard to Say 

In At Home with the Dreamlike Earth, the poet, Steven Croft, welcomes the reader into his world, primarily St. Simons Island, a beautiful and haunting barrier island off the coast of Georgia. These poems paint pictures in which “crooked oaken branches drape skeins of moss” and pay homage to the quiet moments of life, some of them forced upon us, as in “Still Life on the St. Simons Causeway, Eastbound Traffic Stopped by an Accident.” Readers will enjoy Croft’s gift for words in expressions such as the moon’s “ceramic stoicism,” and beautiful lines: “Where night’s invisible heart sits so still on the earth / no one could want the sun to come, kill the ceiling / of silent stars.”

—Connie Jordan Green, author of Darwin’s Breath

These liminal poems spirit-walk through the storied landscapes of the coastal plains south, seeking the nurturing presence of nature. Theirs is a kind of wild abandon, at times unnerving, often elegiac, as if everything “vanishes to dusk.” When I read this beautiful work, I find myself holding my breath, waiting and watching. Mythic in scope, layered with meaning, Steven Croft’s poetry strips bare a deep longing for the places that live in memory, in history, in the dark soil. In this powerful collection Croft holds his compass still; it points us toward a wildness none of us can forget

—Janisse Ray, author of Red Lanterns

About the Author:

Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia on a property lush with vegetation. He is the author of three previous chapbooks: Coastal Scenes (The Saltmarsh Press, 2002), Moment and Time (The Saltmarsh Press, 2015), and New World Poems (Alien Buddha Press, 2020). His poems have appeared in Willawaw Journal, San Pedro River Review, Chestnut Review, North of Oxford, Anti-Heroin Chic, The New Verse News, Soul-Lit, and other places, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

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A Journal of Poetry & Art

The “Superstition” issue of The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (Issue #13) is 162 pages and includes poetry and artwork on a variety of topics by 76 poets/artists from around the globe, featuring poetry by Ellen Bass, James Crews, Andrea Hollander, and Paulann Petersen.

Cover Design by Robert R. Sanders, featuring art “Prowling After Midnight” by artist Beverly Ash Gilbert of Gig Harbor, Washington.

Contributing Artists:

Beverly Ash Gilbert • Carella Keil • Dale Champlin • Elaine Franz Witten • Estelle Meadoff • Jan Baross • Jeanne Julian • Jone Rush MacCulloch • Judith Skillman • Linda Briskin • Pattie Palmer-Baker • Robert R. Sanders • Romana Tarlamis

Contributing Poets:

Jan Ball • K.S. Baron • Jan Baross • Ellen Bass • Jenny Blackford • Rose Mary Boehm • Katy Brown • Paul Bufis • Dale Champlin • Jennifer Clark • Daphne Clifton • James Crews • Steven Dieffenbacher • Susan Donnelly • Ann Farley • Laurel Feigenbaum • Linda Ferguson • Eric J. Forsbergh • Sylvia Freeman • Gabby Gilliam • Tony Gloeggler • Peter M. Gordon • Melanie Green • Jan Haag • Catherine Hamrick • Leslie Hodge • Andrea Hollander • Christopher J. Jarmick • DB Jonas • Tim Kahl • Casey Killingsworth • Tricia Knoll • Sigrun Susan Lane • Abigail Licad • Jone Rush MacCulloch • Carolyn Martin • Joy McDowell • Matt McGee • Hannah Mead • Jessica Mehta • James Merrill • Judith Montgomery • Susan Woods Morse • Charlene Stegman Moskal • Kathy Nelson • MaryJane Nordgren • Francis Opila • Paulann Petersen • Vivienne Popperl • Jeannie E. Roberts • John Rowe • Robert R. Sanders • Shawn Aveningo Sanders • Joel Savishinsky • JoAnna Scandiffio • Penelope Scambly Schott • Allegra Jostad Silberstein • Ona Siporin • Amy Smith • Doug Stone • Shawn Dallas Stradley • Colette Tennant • Michael Waterson • Julia Wendell • Ingrid Wendt • Melody Wilson • Sally Zakariya

A Few Sample Pages:

A Sample Audio Poem:

Tim Kahl reading his poem “A Consumer of Spaces and Speeches”

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Uprooting: Leaving the Cycle of Abuse

Jade Rosina McCutcheon & Kristin Thomas

Uprooting: Leaving the Abuse Cycle is a full-color anthology of poems, visual art, and stories from survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. The book is framed around Portia Nelson’s famous poem “Autobiography in Five Chapters” (from the memoir There’s a Hole in My Sidewalk) and offers helpful information and resources for women looking to leave and recover from a cycle of abuse.

Jade Rosina McCutcheon and Kristin Thomas are the curating editors of Uprooting: Leaving the Abuse Cycle. They are passionate about volunteering their time to help women escape dangerous environments and get the help needed to recover from the trauma of abuse. As writers and artists themselves, they know how the act of creation and sharing can be a powerful force for healing, and therefore reached out to their communities to invite poets, writers, and artists to share their work as it relates to this important topic.

McCutcheon and Thomas have also done extensive research to include helpful information for leaving the cycle of abuse including how to build healthier relationships, recognize the dynamics of power & control and gaslighting, the effects of trauma on the brain and behavior, healthy exercises for healing, navigating the legal system, uplifting encouragement, and a vast list of resources for finding additional support.

Contributing Artists, Poets & Writers:

Diana Blackstone-Helt, Candice Campo, Dale Champlin, K. Commander, Frances Greenwood, Summer Harlan, Jarmac, Jayme Sue, Marilyn Johnston, Sherri Levine, Ann L. Lovejoy, RMae, L. Medsker, Kelley Morehouse, Susan Woods Morse, Shannon Rose Riley, Shawn Aveningo Sanders, Rebecca Smith, Cassandra Sumner, and many other brave women who shared their stories but choose to remain anonymous

Early Praise for Uprooting:

The anthology, Uprooting, contains the record of over 21 women who bear witness to the wretched destruction caused by emotional and physical abuse. But—most significantly—the collection also offers proven ways to escape and transcend such devastation. Daughter, mother, wife, these writers and visual artists—many published for the first time—reach out to other women, providing a tested path toward an abuse-free life. This sisterhood extends a lifeline to other sisters.

—Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita

About the Editors:

Jade Rosina McCutcheon holds a Doctor of Creative Arts and a PhD in feminist film studies. She is a recipient of the Kay Snow Award and received honorary mentions from Kay Snow and the National Federation of Poetry Societies. Jade works with Sable House part time as an advocate and support facilitator. Publications include books, Awakening the Performing Body, Embodied Consciousness Performance Technologies, Narrative in Performance, and chapters in edited, peer reviewed journals and books. Small Feather was published in 2020 and the tossing dream comes out in May 2023, both with by Finishing Line Press. Her poetry has appeared in /pãn| dé| mïk/ 2020: An Anthology of Pandemic Poems, Beyond Words, and in The Silent World in her Vase. She is a member of the Mid Valley Poetry Society, The Salem Poetry Project, Artists in Action and the Oregon Poetry Association. Website: jaderosinamccutcheon.com

Kristin Thomas is a native Oregonian whose biggest accomplishment and source of pride is her children and grandchildren. This is her first-time writing poetry, and she finds the lines often write themselves during her early morning meditation and prayer. She is a survivor of childhood abuse, domestic violence, and sexual violence. Beyond writing, she enjoys being in the forest, near any body of water and laughing.

BISAC Categories:
SEL001000 – Self-Help / Abuse
BIO026000 – Personal Memoir
POE024000 – Poetry / Women Authors

Sample Pages:

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by Zeina Azzam

Using the Arabic words bayna bayna as a nod to her Palestinian Arab heritage, Zeina Azzam’s poetry reflects on the feeling of being in-between home and exile, childhood and adulthood, wholeness and loss, and living and dying.  Her poems express a bicultural and bilingual view of the world which is at once enriching, bewildering, and beautiful.

ENJOY A VIDEO OF ZEINA READING FROM THE BOOK:

Zeina Azzam — A Featured Poet on The Poetry Box LIVE (May2021)

About the Author

Zeina Azzam is a Palestinian American poet, writer, editor, and community activist.  She volunteers for organizations that promote Palestinian human rights and the civil rights of vulnerable communities in Alexandria, Virginia, where she lives.

Zeina currently works as publications editor for the think tank, Arab Center Washington DC. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Passager Journal, Pleiades Magazine, Cordite Poetry Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Mizna, Sukoon Magazine, Split This Rock, Heartwood Literary Magazine, Lunch Ticket, Barzakh: A Literary Magazine, The Fourth River, Infinite Rust, and the edited volumes Tales from Six Feet Apart, Bettering American Poetry, Making Mirrors: Writing/Righting by and for Refugees, Write Like You’re Alive, The Poeming Pigeon: Love Poems, The Poeming Pigeon: Pop Culture, Gaza Unsilenced, and Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves. With the poet Sharif Elmusa, Zeina co-translated 14 poems by Arab poets for the Fall 2019 issue of Loch Raven Review. She holds an M.A. in Arabic literature from Georgetown University and an M.A. in sociology from George Mason University.

Twitter: @zeina3azzam  •  Instagram: @zeina.azzam1

Early Praise for Bayna Bayna:

To be an immigrant is to come with a box of memories and expectations, tiny possessions, all that one can carry. If that person is a poet and lifts the lid, she gives us the ability to be with her as she paves her road. Zeina Azzam, through her stories, and through the integrity of language, creates a world of beauty and patience, even when ideals are shattered. Because this poet knows who she is and is secure in that, the poems are true. Each page encounters a moment where the facts are prevalent; and where passion and technique lift an unforgettable story.

—Grace Cavalieri, Maryland Poet Laureate

On this earth Zeina Azzam reminds us that we are all Palestinians. We are all people of the blue-green watery globe. The evening news unfortunately continues to describe only amnesia. We suffocate when oppression places a hood over our memories. Zeina Azzam writes about being the history book and the poem. She writes between mind and heart. Bayna Bayna is a “chapbook suitcase” filled with longings and desire. Included are poems of love and a gentle rain for all our mornings.

—E. Ethelbert Miller, literary activist and host of On the Margin (WPFW)

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