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.

The post Remote Control appeared first on The Poetry Box.

In The News

We live in a world where access to breaking news is available 24/7. But how often do we go beyond the headline? What happened next? What was the impact on our fellow humans across the globe? Can we learn? Can we change? Can we make a difference? We invite the world to read these poems and start a conversation—perhaps one that is way overdue.

Contributing Poets from Around the Globe:

Alan Catlin • Anita S. Pulier • Anne Casey • Bett Willett • Brad G. Garber • Brian Garrison • Brigitte Goetze • Brittney Corrigan • Carolyn Martin • Cathy Cain • Charissa Menefee • Charles Rammelkamp • Charlotte Mandel • Christopher Luna • Christopher Stolle • Claudine Nash • Colette Tennant • D.R. James • dan raphael • Daniela Gioseffi • David Belmont • David Lawton • Deborah Jang • Dianalee Velie • Dotty LeMieux • Ed Mabrey • Eleanor Berry • Eleanor Kedney • Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios • Elizabeth Kuelbs • Emily Madapusi Pera • Eric le Fatte • Gary Fisher • Heather Truett • Heidi B. Morrell • Ingrid Wendt • Irene Bloom • J.I. Kleinberg • Jamie Brian • Jan Ball • Jane Blanchard • Jane Yolen • JD Amick • Jeanne Julian • Jeff Fearnside • Jo Angela Edwins • Joan Colby • Joanne M. Clarkson • Judith Skillman • Judith Terzi • Judyth Hill • Julene Tripp Weaver • Junious Ward • Kathleen Patterson • Kathryn Staublin • Katy Brown • Kelly Konya • Ken Cathers • Laura LeHew • Liam Stegman • Linda C. Conroy • Linda Ferguson • Linda Kraus • Linda Strever • Lindy Low Le Coq • Louisa Clerici • Lucy Duggan • Lynn M. Knapp • Marc Swan • Marilyn Johnston • Martin Jon Porter • Maryah Converse • Matt Farr • Melanie Green • Michael H. Lester • Michael S. Glaser • Naila Claudia Schulte • Nancy Flynn • Pamela Ahlen • Pat Brisson • Pattie Palmer-Baker • Paul Bufis • Paul Genega • Pesach Rotem • Phyllis Wax • Ralph Long •  Sandy Deyoe • Sarah Lilius • Sharon Alexander • Sharon Wood Wortman • Shawn Aveningo Sanders • Sherry Chandler • Stephen C. Pollock • Steve Williams • Suzanne Bruce • T. McClelland • Tara L. Carnes • Tim Gillespie • Tom Hogan • Tracy Davidson • Tricia Knoll • Trina Sotira • Valerie Forde-Galvin • Veer Frost • Vivienne Popperl • Wendy Brown-Baez

Sample Poems:

Take a Knee
by Jane Yolen

Take mine, I give it freely,
though it’s hardly worth the bend.
Filled now with metal,
worn from years of dancing,
fencing, walking for justice,
standing on vigil lines.

Take mine if you will,
though you will find it stiff
from trudging at night
to comfort babies, grandbabies;
from watching for birds, bobcats;
Standing on podiums giving lectures.

Take mine if you can.
I may have but ten years
more use in it anyway.
If it can support justice,
bring comfort to the distraught,
help the weak walk, lead the poor to work.

Take it if it can help children run,
students cross streets,
the poor to stand tall,
pickers kneel in the field,
union men and women long on lines.
Then take my knee indeed.

On Hearing News of the Massacre Of The Children
~ After Milton’s “On the Late Massacre in the Piedmont”
by Veer Frost

To remember, not where I was
but what
a child is

Still mostly soul
in sudden hummingbird halts
and starts
toward embodiment,

And how the rambunctious light
out of a child’s skin
comes and goes
back in

As if it has two homes
and need not choose
between the springing cowslip world
and migrant heaven.

An Audio Poem from the Book:

Any Given Day
by JD Amick

The post The Poeming Pigeon: In The News appeared first on The Poetry Box.