Remote Control

by Laura Esther Sciortino

The work in this collection is a practice in ordinary love, both longing for and celebrating connection. Here, we may partake in reading as if a friend speaks to us directly. This friend that—despite mistakes and overreaching—invests herself with unabashed earnestness in the greenest of hope, imagination, freedom, beginner’s mind, surrender, and renewal.

Enjoy a Video of Laura Reading from the Book:

Early Praise for Remote Control:

Adopting many guises, the speakers of Laura Sciortino’s smashing new chapbook Remote Control at times give advice, provide witness, make prayers, lament, gossip, agitate and soothe. The mix includes small invitations, such as “Swell,” whose lyrical sentences entangle gestures domestic and marine, and the dense canopy of “Green,” whose lush prose block sways with need and rebirth. Sciortino suggests her mission and method here in “Not My Last Words,” warning, But my work is not / to tell/ My work / my love is to show.

—Ed Skoog, Author of Travelers Leaving for the City

With sass and swagger, with spunky outspokenness, with humble wonder, Laura Sciortino offers us her debut book of poems. In this collection where paying attention is a kind of love, Sciortino’s work finds its own easy place / a moggy right place / clear as water / old as sunlight.

—Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita

Sciortino’s poetry Remote Control opens up to the vulnerable self with wit, memorial, potency, and song. Alternatively commanding and beguiling these poems speak to the lyricism of sexual attraction and attrition, moving with a shining intelligence through the fragile units of the family and the powerful bonds of friendship and marriage. Sciortino places her work at the center of lived experience, she has a fantastic eye for our embodied metaphors in pockets, remotes, and drill press. We read to know a life other than our own. These poems are a delightful introduction to Sciortino’s perceptive modern vision, through the lens of a wondering and generous talent.

—Merridawn Duckler, author of Idiom, Interstate, Misspent Youth and It’s a Wonder

In Laura Sciortino’s debut chapbook, Remote Control, her lyrically adventurous, playful, and irreverent poems offer wisdom on navigating the human condition. Like the mall vending machine where, at 13, she inserted one dollar and my cursive / for handwriting analysis, Sciortino’s poems dispense elegant, idiosyncratic advice mixed with the fruits of her own loving and astute attention.

It’s better to show than to say she writes in “Advice for a Young Woman Looking for Love” and show she does, through dazzling images and skillful wordplay. With wit and insight, she explores the vivid and mundane moments that make up a life, from postpartum muck, slipped condom funk, to being certain as a fiery coal, purple hot and set to cook, to learning to relax in a moggy right place / clear as water/old as sunlight, all the way to death and beyond.

[M]y work is not/to tell / My work / my love is to show, to point, to offer as gift Sciortino writes in “Not My Last Words.” And what a gift this book is to all who read it.

—Rebecca Jamieson, author of The Body of All Things

About the Author

Laura Esther Sciortino writes poetry, fiction, and lyric essay. Her work has appeared in The Comstock Review, Muse/A Journal, great weather for MEDIA’s Escape Wheel Anthology, Dadakuku, The Flying Dodo, and Unleash Lit. Along with her husband, son, and their three affable cats, Laura lives in Portland, Oregon.

To learn more and get in touch, please visit LauraEstherSciortino.com.

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Kansas, Reimagined

by Anara Guard

In the winter of 1882, L. Frank Baum visited Kansas. He said it was the worst place he’d ever been and vowed never to return. In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, he described Kansas as completely gray: prairie, house, Uncle Henry. What a dreary contrast to technicolor Oz and the Emerald City.

This clever collection of persona poems shows the Midwest in full-color and beauty, giving voice to familiar characters and to unexpected entities. Hidden aspects of their lives are revealed, showing Kansas as a place worthy of imagination, one that demands our attention.

Enjoy a Video of Anara Reading from the Book:

Early Praise for Kansas, Reimagined:

These poems remind me of the images we used to be able to see in my childhood (in the early 1960s) through toy called a ViewMaster—images presented to the mind side-by-side brought into focus by the eyes’ binocular cooperation, where lo and behold, a sense of three-dimensionality, of actuality (beyond what one can get in a flat photo) leaps up and forward at the viewer. That’s what these poems do for me: when juxtaposed among my other apprehensions, memories, and the interpretations of other artists, [Anara’s] world of Kansas (and of Oz) does come filling in with a heavy, gravitational physicality. I so enjoyed reading them.

—Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked

When we think of The Wizard of Oz, we visualize grand, cinematic scenes such as the fearsome funnel cloud and that magical moment when vibrant color replaces black & white. But in this inventive collection, Anara Guard focuses our view on the inner musings of beloved characters and of the Kansas landscape itself. With clever wordplay and subtle rhyme, Guard reveals surprising motives, resentments, and points of pride that enliven our understanding of Dorothy and those around her. With these engaging poems, Guard invites us to try on the ruby slippers, allowing us to slide / effortlessly across time.

—Linda Jackson Collins, author of Painting Trees

I didn’t mean to come back here, multi-genre, prize-winning writer Anara Guard says in her stunning poems centered upon her vision of Kansas and its marriage to the actual memories of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. What I find so memorable about this undertaking are the noun and verb choices used to accentuate the belief, the certainty, that we are indeed in Kansas, that Dorothy is real, that Cyclones are entities, and that precise, imagistic poetry can trap it all in our psyche. This is poetry that does more than introduce us to Kansas. Anara paints with sensual poetry, often with imperceptible slant rhyme, next to beautiful. This is not a collection. The poems are connected in taste and tincture. And it will be remembered for bringing us back to a new Kansas.

—Indigo Moor, former Poet Laureate of Sacramento, author of Everybody’s Jonesin’ for Something

Click those ruby slippers together and – when you open Anara Guard’s Kansas, Reimagined, you will find yourself, not on the yellow brick road, but on a path through Kansas via her remarkable poetry. Poetry rich with images and characters that will stay with you long after you have closed the volume’s covers.

—Carol Koss, author of Camera Obscura

About the Author

At the age of nine, Anara Guard was hired to mind a corner news stand, where she read all the tabloid papers. Later, she worked as a small-town librarian, textbook fact-checker, and editor, among other jobs. A Midwesterner at heart, she writes from her home in northern California.

Anara’s poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and, improbably enough, won both a John Crowe Ransom prize and a Jack Kerouac prize. Kansas, Reimagined is her second poetry collection. She and her sister perform poetry and offer writing workshops together as Sibling Revelry. Anara’s novel, Like a Complete Unknown, won Book of the Year Honorable Mention from the Chicago Writers Association, as well as other accolades. It draws upon her memories of that city and the music that provided a soundtrack to the late 1960s.

You can connect with Anara at:

www.anaraguard.com

https://www.facebook.com/AnaraGuardAuthor

https://www.instagram.com/anaraguard

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Now Is What Matters

by Janet Steward

A Finalist in the The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2023

Janet Steward became caregiver for her husband when memory loss joined his list of chronic conditions a few years ago. This moving collection of poems not only documents the couple’s journey, but it offers a source of insight, courage, and comfort. More than anything these poems teach us that the practice of love is a lifelong exercise, one that is rewarded with a beautiful, intimate dance for two.

Enjoy a Video of Janet Reading from the Book:

Early Praise for Now Is What Matters:

Like colorful strands of yarn threaded across a loom, the poems in Janet Steward’s Now is What Matters stretch from loss to comfort and from grief to gift, weaving a rich tapestry depicting the full picture of caring for a partner suffering from memory loss. The constant thread—the longest and most vivid strand running through the poems—is love. “We will swim in its ocean,” Steward vows. Love, she states, will “feed us for the rest of our lives.” Steward bravely lives and beautifully writes poems of truth and wisdom. We are lucky to be warmed by the insight and courage of her words.

—Annie Lighthart, author of PAX

About the Author

Janet Steward took advantage of retirement to write, learn Spanish, and collect memories with her husband, Larry. She decided she wasn’t destined for a long-term relationship, but fortunately Larry convinced her to try again. Their age difference of sixteen years made being a caregiver a probability, but she was surprised to find deepening intimacy, affection, and personal growth far outweigh the frustrations and loss that come with that role.

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The Old Folks Call It God’s Country

—Poems of the Tarheel and Palmetto States

by Carol Parris Krauss

Carol Parris Krauss weaves stories of North Carolina and South Carolina through various people and places. Her poems are a glimpse into the place the Old Folk’s call “God’s Country.” From looking outside her grandparent’s home in Brevard, North Carolina to recounting her sister’s journey to a cottage at Pawleys Island, the reader can travel with her on this journey of recognition and recollection.

Enjoy a Video of Carol Reading from the Book:

Early Praise for The Old Folks Call It God’s Country:

Carol Krauss’ poems are authentic, multifaceted stories of being born and raised in the Carolinas. She makes this richly textured environment she’s known all her life familiar to us through the juxtaposition of vivid memories of growing up in “God’s country” and her observations of being back there in the present. Krauss’ warm, down to earth storytelling is interspersed throughout with startling imagery which makes each poem in this collection a delight to read. From her grandparents’ house that was thumb-smashed into the side of a mountain to the sour breath fog of a hurricane that rears back its head and roars, her words provide a unique view of a physical landscape that is in her blood. She weaves the historical with the contemporary, taking on universal subjects of family history, alcoholism, and school shootings, and grounding it all in her own lived experience as a Southern girl. This collection is also a testament to Krauss’ knowledge of form and her exceptional ability to utilize it to keep each poem new and surprising from page to page. Her ode to Eudora Welty and her conveyance of the shared complexity of being a woman writer in the last poem is a perfect closing to this impressive collection.

—Beth Dulin, writer & editor

The Old Folks Call It God’s Country is full of love and transitions: old bridges, old houses with too-small replacement windows that block the mountain views, old memories that slide into the present. We meet Krauss’s grandfather, an alcoholic, but the standout image in his poem is a beautiful window full of brightly colored bottles—stained glass, really. And there is a wonderful lament about a small crop of winter lettuce, ruined by a cold snap. This is a book of the rural Carolinas with their mountain streams, homegrown corn, and Dollar Stores, where men are gifted the tools but women put the household wheels in motion. These allusive poems, with references to Jane Kenyon and Eudora Welty, create a kind of liminal space, a pause for reflection between a little girl’s miserable corrective shoes and an older woman’s sore hip. Carol Krauss can see bullets in red rubber pencil erasers, but also finds grace on mountain tops and a cruise downtown to the old Courthouse. I call shotgun!

—Christine Potter, author of Unforgetting, Sheltering in Place
and The Bean Books series

In The Old Folks Call it God’s Country: Poems of the Tarheel and Palmetto States, poet Carol Krauss paints a family history that intersects with the beauty and dangers of the natural world. Each poem offers a story to us, full of the wisdom gained from the small hurricanes we live through together.

—Michael Jon Khandelwal, executive director, The Muse Writers Center (Norfolk, VA)

About the Author

Carol Parris Krauss lives in an 83-year-old multi-generational home, that also includes many pets, in Virginia. This Clemson graduate is a high school English teacher. She enjoys employing place and nature as vehicles for her varied themes. She was honored to be recognized as a Best New Poet by UVA. In 2021 her book of poems, Just a Spit Down the Road, was published by Kelsay Books. Some venues where her work has been published include Louisiana Lit, One Art, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Story South, Highland Park Poetry, and Susurrus. Carol was selected for Ghost City Press’ 2023 Micro-Chap Summer Series.

Carol’s author website: CarolParrisKrauss.com

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by Stephanie A. Marcellus

This collection of how-to poems offers the words to help us find our way in life, to navigate through difficult times, to cope with grief, and to celebrate the beauty and strangeness of the world around us. In How to Say, Stephanie Marcellus gives us a poetic instruction manual for everything from picking mulberries, saying I love you, to living with ghosts. These poems apply the language of direction—with its imperatives and step-by-step guidelines—to life’s experiences and emotions and offer insight in a unique poetic manner. Themes include the transformative power of nature, the importance of memories, and how writing helps us preserve cherished experiences, as well as heal our wounds.

Enjoy a Video of Stephanie Reading from the Book:

Early Praise for How to Say:

In How to Say, Stephanie Marcellus gives us guidelines on how to cope with loss, express our love, and experience life, including appreciating the natural world and our near and far surroundings. Several poems make extraordinary use of metaphor: A knife to help sharpen our words; paint to learn how to live with discipline (The painter said, you need to learn/ something about technique/ about how to avoid/ the messes you’re always getting yourself into); and how to live with ghosts (I open my mouth/ and my mother comes out/ more and more each year.) The poem “How to Go to Church on a Sunday Morning” is a walk in the woods and on the prairie, taking into the body native grasses, leaves, wild fruit, wildflowers, and bittersweet. What could be better?

—Twyla M. Hansen, Nebraska State Poet (2013-2018) and author of Feeding the Fire

Stephanie Marcellus’ How to Say is put together like the instruction manual we need, one for life as a partner, as someone living in a house, a child of parents and grandparents, as someone just trying to get through the winter. With titles like “How to Water the Yard,” “How to Let Go,” “How to Live with Ghosts” and more, Marcellus gives us poems which start from the ordinary, grounded place of each title and take us to somewhere unexpected. You’ll find yourself laughing at really funny bits from “How to Leave Yellowstone” then, in the next poem (“How to Speak to the Dead”), want to sit a little bit with lines like Reach your hand out into the darkness./ Let your fingers clasp the open air/ and don’t let go. My own “How to” would have you set yourself into a comfortable chair, open to page 1, and enjoy.

—Matt Mason, Nebraska State Poet and author of Rock Stars

About the Author

Stephanie A. Marcellus is a professor of English at Wayne State College. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Colorado State University and a PhD in Nineteenth-Century British Literature from The University of South Dakota. Her work has appeared in Plainsongs, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Alligator Juniper as well as two other chapbooks, All That I Thought Was Light and What Is Left Behind: Garden Elegies. She lives in Wayne, Nebraska with her husband, two cats, and dog. She enjoys spending time on the family farm, being out in nature, and finding time to read in her hammock.

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