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Tuesday, October 31, 2006

MARSH HAWK PRESS REPRESENTED IN NEW OTOLITHS!

In the brand new OTOLITHS,

Rochelle Ratner has five poems;

Thomas Fink has a collaboration with Tom Beckett;

and Eileen Tabios shows a sampling from her series "Dredging For Atlantis"

Sunday, October 29, 2006

SOME UPDATES FOR JANE AUGUSTINE

Jane Augustine's poem "Endgame" from her Marsh Hawk Press 2002 collection Arbor Vitae will appear in Joyful Noise: An Anthology of American Spiritual Poetry, edited by Robert Strong and to be published by Autumn House in March 2007.

She has an essay in Buddhisms and Deconstructions, edited by Jin Y. Park and published in February 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield. It is a volume in the New Frameworks for Continental Philosophy series edited by Hugh J. Silverman and supported by the International Association for Philosophy and Literature.

An essay of hers on Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman will appear in the first volume in a multi-volume work titled Finding the Ox: Buddhism and American Culture, editeby Gary Storhoff and John Whalen-Bridge. The first volume's title is Breaking Out: The Emergence of Buddhist American Literature. Anne Waldman is a prolific feminist buddhist performances poet and a member of the Marsh Hawk Press Artistic Advisory Board. Michael Heller of the press's Board of Directors also has an essay in this collection.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

MARSH HAWK PRESS PROVIDES ANTHOLOGY MATERIAL!

Of course, several poems published in Marsh Hawk Press books were previously published in anthologies. For instance, Corinne Robins' poem "Les Demoisells Davignon" in her book Today's Menu, was included in the 2002 Best American Poetry anthology guest-edited by Robert Creeley.

But even after our books come out, they continue to provide material for future anthologies. Here is a sample of poems reprinted or being reprinted from Marsh Hawk Press books for anthology use:

Thomas Fink's "(Un)tenured Tsunami", included in GOSSIP, was reprinted with the title "Hay(na)ku Sequence 3" in THE FIRST HAY(NA)KU ANTHOLOGY, co-edited by Jean Vengua and Mark Young, and published by Meritage Press (St. Helena & San Francisco, 2005).

Sandy McIntosh's "My Hay(na)ku" which was published in THE AFTER-DEATH HISTORY OF MY MOTHER, was reprinted in THE FIRST HAY(NA)KU ANTHOLOGY, co-edited by Jean Vengua and Mark Young, and published by Meritage Press (St. Helena & San Francisco, 2005).

Rochelle Ratner's prose poem, "Forever," included in Balancing Acts, was published in the anthology The Book of Hope and Dreams, edited by Dee Rimbaud, and published by Bluechrome Publishing (England, 2006). This is a joint venture with Spirit Aid -- profits go to helping Spirit Aid bring medical care to the children of Baglan, Afghanistan.

A shorter version of Eileen Tabios' essay "The History of the Hay(na)ku", published in I TAKE THEE, ENGLISH, FOR MY BELOVED, was published in THE FIRST HAY(NA)KU ANTHOLOGY, co-edited by Jean Vengua and Mark Young, and published by Meritage Press (St. Helena & San Francisco, 2005)

Eileen Tabios' poem "Manila Rains", also in ENGLISH, also has been accepted as a version entitled "The Flooding that Writes Itself" by the International Feminist Journal of Politics' Women and Water Issue, Guest Edited by Paola Corso, and to be published in 2007 by York University's Centre for International and Security Studies in Toronto.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

SHARON OLINKA AT POETS USA!

Rich and Poor, guest edited by Sharon Olinka, is a new feature on the online magazine Poets USA. It has poetry by Philip Levine, Wanda Coleman, Dennis Nurkse, and Wang Ping, among many other poets. Sharon Olinka's poem "Lottery Tickets" is also reprinted on the website, as part of the feature.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

TWO POETS REVEAL THEIR VISUAL ARTS

Thomas Fink has a folio of his paintings and Eileen Tabios a folio of her collage/drawings reproduced within the current Issue 2, Part 2 issue of Otoliths!

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

MARY MACKEY FEATURED IN THE SACRAMENTO BEE!

We are pleased to see that Mary Mackey and her new Marsh Hawk Press book, Breaking the Fever, was featured today on the front page of the Metropolitan Section of the Sacramento Bee. You can go to this link here to see the illustrated article, but we are also pleased to reprint it below:

Always a storyteller: Mary Mackey plans her life around desire to write
By Blair Anthony Robertson - Bee Staff Writer
October 17, 2006

CSUS professor Mary Mackey's persistence and writing talent have resulted in 11 novels - two under pen name Kate Clemons - and five books of poetry that have sold more than 1.5 million copies and been translated into several languages, including French, Japanese and Hebrew.

Her father was an OB-GYN, her mother a chemist, and when Mary Mackey went to bed as a little girl in Indianapolis, her parents would read to her -- fairy tales, Dickens, Twain, all the good stuff that takes hold of an impressionable mind.

The Kentucky side of her family instilled in her the oral tradition -- which basically means sitting around and telling stories, some of them true, some exaggerated a tad.

It didn't take long for Mackey to decide she would be a teller of tales, too.

"I knew what I wanted to do even before I could read. I wanted to be a writer," she said. "I loved telling stories to the other kids and I learned early on that if I stopped telling stories at the right parts, they would give me candy to go on."

But first she had to design her life around her desire to write. She was valedictorian of her high school and that propelled her to Harvard, where she graduated magna cum laude. Then it was on to the University of Michigan for a doctorate in comparative literature.

It was all part of the plan. If she taught at a college, she would have plenty of down time to think and wonder and write.

In 1972, Mackey landed at California State University, Sacramento, and began excelling in parallel worlds -- she would inspire her students, then carve out time to create and to write. Besides professor, she is also writer in residence.

She is disciplined and hardworking and she doesn't do angst. Unlike the stereotype of the introverted writer, Mackey is outgoing, engaging and funny.

While writing is her priority, she is acclaimed in the classroom. Among the creative writing classes students covet most is "Grandmother, Mother and Me," in which students are asked to write biographies about their families and themselves.

"Mary is what I call a legendary teacher," said Stephanie Antalocy, a CSUS English professor who has known Mackey since 1972. "I often hear people say, 'Next year, I'm taking Mackey's class.' They plan a year in advance."

From afar, it all looks easy. As a professor, she is entertaining and inspiring. As a writer, the words just pour out. Indeed, Mackey says she never suffers from writer's block.

She gets it down on paper, all right, but then she tinkers and rewrites and starts over and thinks about throwing it all away. When that happens, she starts writing in a journal about how she can't write.

Other than that, piece of cake.

Before publishing her first novel, "McCarthy's List," in 1979, she revised it 12 times -- working on a typewriter and typing the entire manuscript with each rewrite.

"I can write something that is awful, but I have faith that I can go back and fix it. That's where the craft comes in," she said. "I've never written a novel that I didn't want to give up on in the middle. What I do is just keep plugging away, because I'm extremely stubborn."

Her persistence and talent have paid off. Her 11 novels -- two under the pen name Kate Clemons -- and five books of poetry have sold more than 1.5 million copies and have been translated into several languages, including Finnish, French, Japanese and Hebrew.

"For reasons I have never been able to figure out, I was once the best-selling novelist in Finland," she said with a laugh, referring to "A Grand Passion," a novel about three generations of ballerinas. The 1986 novel sold more than 1 million copies and climbed to No. 17 on the New York Times Bestseller list.

Mackey has been a force in the local literary scene for three decades, and is considered to be an excellent reader of her work.

B.L. Kennedy, a Sacramento poet and poetry promoter, remembers encountering Mackey for the first time in the late 1970s, right after the publication of "McCarthy's List."

"It just blew me away," he said. "Here was a person who was just so funny. She had a remarkable, glowing energy. Mary was animated. I had never seen a writer who had that type of kinetic energy, that exuberance. She had the audience laughing. She had them spellbound."

Though Kennedy and Mackey have been friends for years, Kennedy said, "Very few people know her that well. She's busy writing and teaching."

The one who knows her best, her husband, Angus Wilson, said Mackey makes it work by getting down to work.

"She's very protective of her time. She blocks out time that is definitely hers and she doesn't want to be interrupted," said Wilson, a retired CSUS environmental studies professor. "A lot of writers think that it's all inspiration."

In addition to her talent with words, Mackey gets it down on paper with her discipline.

"I'm very organized. Early on, I learned how to budget time. I plan very carefully," she said.

When she's not teaching, Mackey likes to stick to a specific writing schedule, sitting at a typing table with her laptop in her home office and working from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. with a break for lunch.

"I have a deal with myself. I have to go in there and try writing, and if I can't write, I have to write about how I can't write. But I have to stay in there until 3 o'clock," she said.

For fun, she likes to walk along the levee near her River Park home or go for a swim in the nearby American River.

Mackey's days seem to always be full. In recent weeks, she has taken a weekend trip to Los Angeles for a meeting about a screenplay she is working on. The following week, she took off to New York for the launch of her new book of poetry, "Breaking the Fever." There, she did readings at a major bookstore, St. John's University and Poets House in Manhattan.

"I got my 15 minutes of fame about three times," she said. When she got back to Sacramento, the copy-edited manuscript of her latest novel, "The Notorious Mrs. Winston," had arrived, including handwritten suggestions from the editor.

How does she respond to criticism? No tantrums, no posturing, no insecurity.

"I'm very open to doing whatever it takes," she said. "My aim is to make the book as good as possible."

Sunday, October 15, 2006

A FIFTH YEAR ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATORY NOTE

Marsh Hawk Press was born in 2001. We are proud of the titles we've released during our first five years, and hope you enjoy reading them, listed here in the order of most recent to oldest release:


Claudia Carlson, The Elephant House

Steve Fellner, Blind Date with Cavafy

Rochelle Ratner, Balancing Acts

Corinne Robins, Today’s Menu

Mary Mackey, Breaking the Fever

Sigman Byrd, Under the Wanderer’s Star

Ed Foster, What He Ought To Know

Sharon Olinka, The Good City

Harriet Zinnes, Whither Nonstopping

Sandy McIntosh, The After-Death History of My Mother

Eileen R. Tabios, I Take Thee English for My Beloved

Burt Kimmelman, Somehow

Stephen Paul Miller, Skinny Eighth Avenue

Jacquelyn Pope, Watermark

Jane Augustine, Night Lights

Thomas Fink, After Taxes

Martha King, Imperfect Fit

Susan Terris, Natural Defenses

Daniel Morris, Bryce Passage

Corinne Robins, One Thousand Years

Chard deNiord, Sharp Golden Thorn

Rochelle Ratner, House and Home

Basil King, Mirage

Sharon Dolin, Serious Pink

Madeline Tiger, Birds of Sorrow and Joy

Patricia Carlin, Original Green

Stephen Paul Miller, The Bee Flies in May

Edward Foster, MAHREM: Things Men Should Do for Men

Eileen Tabios, Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole

Harriet Zinnes, Drawing on the Wall

Thomas Fink, Gossip: A Book of Poems

Jane Augustine, Arbor Vitae

Sandy McIntosh, Between Earth and Sky

Burt Kimmelman and Fred Caruso, The Pond at Cape May Point

THE CONSTANT CRITIC Reviews Stephen Paul Miller

's latest Marsh Hawk Press collection, Skinny Eighth Avenue. You can go here for the entire review written by Joyelle McSweeney, but here's an excerpt:

Skinny Eighth Avenue is a lively, brainy, probing and variform collaboration between the latter-day New York School poet/critic Stephen Paul Miller and his artist son, Noah Mavael Miller, who was in third grade at the time of the book’s release about a year ago. Miller’s erudite, humane, and yes, talky poems are punctuated by young Noah with exuberant drawings of mastodons, turtles, and other fauna, often climbing into and out of computer-generated holes (the most cheerfully loony of which is a large drawing of a grinning sea turtle which appears under the title "Hustling"). The resulting book, at once a capsule of private life and a contemplation of such public themes as the Iraq war, the Sixties, the Holocaust, and the collapse of the New Deal, mixes the zaniness, purposefulness, and frankness of kidhood with the zaniness, emotional nuance and intellectual range of an adult heart and mind at work
.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

MADELINE TIGER READING

You are invited to:

CAMDEN COUNTY CULTURAL & HERITAGE COMMISSION
A Division of the Camden County Library in conjunction with The Camden County Board of Freeholders

presents

AN EVENING OF POETRY AT THE HOPKINS HOUSE
featured poet
~ MADELINE TIGER ~

Author of Birds of Sorrow and Joy: New and Selected Poems (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003), Madeline Tiger is a visiting writer in schools through NJ State Council on the Arts and the Dodge Foundation. She won the Artist/Teacher Award of Playwrights Theatre of NJ in 1993. Her poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies.

OPEN READING FOLLOWS

An interview with Madeline Tiger will be available on the county website: Arts.Camden.lib.nj.us.

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 9, 2006
7:00 PM
RSVP Requested 1-856-858-0040
Hopkins House Gallery/ 250 S. Park Dr./ Haddon Twp., NJ
between Cuthbert Blvd. & Rte. 130: directions available on website
This program is made possible through a grant by the NJ State Council on the Arts/ Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

YOU ARE INVITED TO A PREVIEW OF THOMAS FINK'S NEXT MARSH HAWK PRESS BOOK

viz Staccato Landmark, Thomas Fink's new e-chap published by Beards of Bees (). The poems in this chap -- which can be accessed directly here -- will also appear in Tom's next Marsh Hawk Press book, currently scheduled to be released in Fall 2008.

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