some author activity: Armantrout, Naughton, Barwin, Beaulieu, Kratz + mclennan,

Rae Armantrout has two poems in Granta; Katie Naughton has a poem up at Poets.org; Gary Barwin is interviewed over at River Street Writing, and again, via podcast by Jamie Tennant; Derek Beaulieu offers his year in review, as does Al Kratz, and rob mclennan as well.

Susan Rukeyser's Whatever Feels Like Home (2021) reviewed by Alice Kaltman at Heavy Feather Review

Alice Kaltman was good enough to provide a review of Susan Rukeyser's Whatever Feels Like Home (2021) over at Heavy Feather Review. Thanks so much! This is actually the third review of Rukeyser's collection of short prose, after one posted to the Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library website, and a further posted by Al Kratz over at his blog. You can see Kaltman's original review here.

Susan Rukeyser’s new chapbook may be short in stature, a mere twenty pages, but there is nothing slim about the rich, emotionally resonant prose within. Whatever Feels Like Home reads like a songbook, each of the ten stories, melodic and masterful, ask that age-old query; What truly is home? With Rukeyser at the helm, the answer comes in fresh and alarming ways.

Here are tales of longing for belonging, of place and displacement, of family and estrangement. Each story is awash in wonder, regret, envy, and disappointments. Home is where the heart is? With Rukeyser’s sober and honest perspective, that’s not always the case.

This unusual collection showcases Rukeyser’s impressive range of narrative style. She’s as masterful in humorous first person as she is writing in a deeply mournful third. Some stories are no more than a paragraph long, lengthier ones barely brush past two pages. Still each story has heft.

Poetic lines are dropped in just the right places, always without pretense. At times I gasped at their potency and beauty. For example: “Everything shellacked with filmy silence” from “Stuck Shut,” a story about escape from disappointment and domestic claustrophobia. Or “Forgiving slacks were armor. Her smile, a shield,” from “Hers,” Mrs. Anderson’s brief but powerful story which sits in the very center of this marvelous book, across the page break from “His,” Mr. Anderson’s companion piece, as if on the opposite side of a bleak, marital divide.

There’s also a quiet humor threading its way throughout this book, even when a story is anything but funny. The first piece, “Yes, You Can Eat Your Goldfish,” starts with “Yes, you can eat your darling goldfish. He is most likely a form of ornamental carp, and he will taste as you expect: muddy and full of bones.” From there, Rukeyser leads us (in one brilliant page no less) from what appears to be a funny list of instructions but is ultimately a sobering tale about impossible romantic notions of love, of squashed expectations, and ultimate loss.

Really, every story in Whatever Feels Like Home is a winner. There’s the laugh out loud “FOR SALE: Galloping Horse (brass wall art)>>>Mint<<<,” where heavy wall art wreaks all sorts of violence and relational mayhem.

And then, the alarming “You Were the Girl Who,” chronicling gushing adoration in unrequited youthful friendship (you were the girl who made our town interesting), a cautionary tale which takes a surprising, devastating turn, setting the idea of the safety and comfort of ‘home’ completely awhirl.

Rukeyser writes in “Human/Nature”: “I want to be that rock, she thinks. I want to be yielded to … I want to be that rock, she thinks. I want to be pushed.” Read Whatever Feels Like Home. Yield to this book and guaranteed; you will be pushed along by the solid, sumptuous, powerful prose in this startling collection.

some author activity: Boyle, Kratz, Joseph, Johnson, Eleftherion, Koss, Cortese, Kaplan + Betts,

Frances Boyle has a new poem up at Literary Mama, three at Anti-Heroin Chic, and further in issue #11 of CP Quarterly; Al Kratz has a new essay over at my (small press) writing day; Alexander Joseph's above/ground press debut is written up in an article for The Mountain Ear, and he was interviewed as part of The Mountain Ear Podcast; Chris Johnson has a new poem posted as part of National Poetry Month at the Chaudiere Books blog, as do Melissa Eleftherion and Frances Boyle and Zane Koss and Franco Cortese and Genevieve Kaplan; and Gregory Betts has a new poem posted as part of the "Tuesday poem" series.

some author activity: Barwin, Kratz, mclennan, Prime + Hofmann,

husband and wife Gary Barwin and Beth Bromberg are featured in the Toronto Star; Al Kratz is zoom-interviewed by Constance Malloy as part of her "In Conversation" series; rob mclennan has a new poem up at his blog; Tom Prime has a poem in the "Tuesday poem" series; and Ava Hofmann has some new work posted at Sulfur.

new from above/ground press: OFF THE RESTING SEA, by Al Kratz

OFF THE RESTING SEA
Al Kratz
$5

Sergio wakes on the beach where yesterday’s view offered so much promise. What time is it? He barely remembers falling asleep on the sand, the feeling of something slipping away. The sun hasn’t warmed the beach yet, which, as far as Sergio can see, he has to himself. The beach. Oh shit, they really did it. Jane had always asked him to keep driving south on the Jersey Turnpike and not stop until Cocoa Beach. Jane, Sweet Jane. The original Queen of Disaster. Where was she now?
      Maybe she went for seashells. He picks one of the ways she could have gone, trusting his luck while ignoring the equal chance he’s walking away from her. Trusting the ocean. Such an incredible thing. At six foot five, a rare moment of feeling small. Early morning waves limping, but he knows they’re lying. He knows their true power.  
      They really did it. The sand and the ocean? Jane had given them to him. He thought she was joking. “Skip our exit, baby. Take me to Florida.” She said it every day. He’d spend his daydreaming about escaping the concrete life that belonged to someone else, Sergio always the borrower. This time, Jane following up with: “I’m serious. Let's do it.”

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2021
as the sixth title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Al Kratz lives in Indianola, Iowa with his wife, Kristy. They have ridden out the 2020 storm with writing, painting, and watching every television show possible. His work has been in Smokelong, Hobart, Pithead Chapel, Bull, and others. In 2020, he was shortlisted in the Bath Short Story Award. In 2019, Off the Resting Sea was shortlisted in the Bath Novella-In-Flash Award. He is a Fiction Editor at New Flash Fiction Review and co-founder of the Flash Monsters!!! blog. His work can be followed at alkratz.com.   

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com