A Letter of Praise for a New Book

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 I received this letter as an email about how we hold on, my latest collection of poetry. An author could ask for no greater praise.

Dear Karren:

I'm up in Vermont for a few weeks and have been reading your book, which arrived just before I left. I cannot tell you how impressed I am by your inventiveness, the range of your subject matter, your formal "flexibility," and the poems themselves. I read the entire thing in two sittings, which says a lot!

Another project while I'm up here is putting together a new workshop on prose poetry for The Writer's Center. Would you let me include your "Girl Talk" poem on the handout? I won't be teaching this until next spring, and the content is still in flux, but at the moment this poem would seem to fit in perfectly.

I found the love poems--particularly "Composition"--very moving. I know it has been a while since you lost your husband, but these poems really brought back a lot of what we long-married types seem to take for granted. So thank you for that.

with admiration,
Sue Ellen 

Heron Clan VIII Publication

 

 The Steiny Road Poet is pleased to announce that she was published in the Heron Clan VIII anthology along with Doug Stuber, Adebimpe Oluwafunmilayo Adeyemi and many others. 

"cooking lesson" is Karren Alenier's (a.k.a. Steiny) poem response to Gertrude Stein's "Cooking," a Tender Buttons Objects subpoem. Alenier's poem begin "alas a lass Alice at last."

Alice Toklas was Gertrude Stein's life-long partner and she was a good cook.

What Does an Author Want in a Book Reivew?

 

What does one hope for in a book review?

 

The Steiny Road Poet has been mulling this over after receiving  what she experienced as a better than average review published in Mom Egg Review July 22, 2021. In this review, Sara Epstein, who is a clinical psychologist as well as a poet and songwriter, looks at ten poems from the 60 published in the collection how we hold on. She agilely addresses that none of the poems use punctuation:

 

“Alenier pulls us along with minimal or no punctuation. We pause in the white spaces, line breaks, and other places where it makes sense to pause. Otherwise, we race with the pace of the speaker’s life.”

 

What Steiny means about the reviewer’s agility is that the reviewer understands that a line break doesn’t necessarily mean a full stop. Certainly Steiny’s intention in dropping punctuation was to provide fluidity and to keep the action moving.

 

Another aspect of how we hold on which was satisfyingly appreciated by the reviewer was the collection’s use of poetic form. Epstein commented that the format of the title poem seemed to hold on to the message: “The structure itself is a kind of holding in the way it contains her message in this rhythmic, evenly spaced form (23).” Steiny particularly enjoyed the reviewer’s discussion of her Golden Shovel poem: “‘What Was Hidden’ is yet another masterful example, using form to show what hides in plain sight. A line from Claude McKay’s poem …is broken down so that his words end each line of Alenier’s. Alenier evokes Anne Frank as she looks back on race and white privilege in a scene from childhood.”

 

Sometimes it’s surprising to see what poems may garner mention. What does that say about that poem? Is it standing out to the reviewer because it doesn’t quite fit into the overall collection? The bottom line is that what any poet whose book is being reviewed hopes for is accuracy. The beauty of online reviews is that an author can request minor corrections if needed.

Stockbridge Redux

 

In the age of Zoom, some things seem more possible. For example, Steiny (a.k.a. Karren Alenier) was invited to give a second reading for the Stockbridge Library. The recording had failed to render for the first reading, but the producers of this series that gives laser focus to the poet with a generous introduction, a 30-minute reading, and a Q&A, thought enough of her reading to want to capture what had been missed.

 

John Gillespie said it would just be Wendy Pearson, himself and Karren Alenier. However, Karren asked if it would be ok to invite a few people and so she did. The advantage of having some outside people in the audience was that Karren had audience reaction as she read and the Q&A became more intense. Barbara Goldberg asked about poems that depict family members and likened them to a cannibalistic action—“You eat them up.” (them being family members.) Karren said poems help her process things on her mind and said, “it’s not like they are revenge poems, but yes, it does lend to chewing on the actions of the family.”

 

The reading includes 10 poems and can be seen at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq5xK0TBZXc&t=8s

 

Tips for a Successful Reading: Stockbridge Library Reading

 On April 28, 2021, Stockbridge Library featured Karren Alenier in a solo program that included interview, 30-minute reading and a Q&A.

 

 

The interview included questions about current themes—she said she was writing about breakables, everything from a plaster ceiling falling to the mental health of Marilyn Monroe; the influence of the pandemic on your themes—love and loss were already themes Karren had been writing about but it made her stop and think about her great grandfather who died during the 1918 pandemic; and poetic process—she described writing right out of sleep into her daily journal the poetic letters to her great grandfather, which are published in her new book how we hold on.

 

Poets rarely get 30 minutes to read. The assumption is that the audience better tolerates half that time. So longer readings need to be carefully planned and practiced. Karren’s rules for a successful reading includes picking a poem to start that is fairly short and memorable either for its sonority or levity. “the funny guy and his origins” has a fair amount of rhyme and dark humor. Introducing the poems helps orient the listener to the reader’s voice and gives breathing space around the poems. Karren read ten poems, making sure to include only one long poem and that opening and closing poems were on the short side. Pacing is also important. Rushing through poems shows nervousness and hints that the reader might not have practiced enough or that the poet chose too many poems for the allotted amount of time.

 

After the reading, it’s helpful to find out from attending friends if they thought the reading was rushed or whether it dragged. Additionally, it’s good to know what poems stood out in the listener’s memory. That can help with planning the next reading.

 

Many questions were asked after Karren finished the reading. The one that stands out is how does the poet decide to use a form. Karren read a villanelle entitled “all America girl,” which deals with a cousin who was dying and who told her son she didn’t want to be buried or cremated. Karren said she picks a form when the subject is hard to handle and can benefit from some limitations. In the villanelle, there are a set number of stanzas and a fixed pattern of repetition and rhyme. The form concentrates how many details can be told.

 

Part of the success of any reading is the audience. Karren managed to attract over 20 people to this afternoon reading done in the Eastern time zone. She was thrilled to have three European-based friends attend. They came from Paris, Berlin and Athens. Moreover, the hosts for this reading John Gillespie and Wendy Pearson were located in Massachusettes, while Karren was located in the Washington, DC area. Other friends and colleagues attending were hearing this program from their locations in New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Florida, Texas and Karren’s tri-state area known as the DMV. Of course this was a virtual reading done on Zoom. While it was disappointing that the recording of this event failed to render properly, the good news is that Karren has a 30-minute reading at the ready should another opportunity like this arise.