Shamu, Splash & Solemn: The Creative Writing of Carole Jayne Stoa Senn

Perhaps I have a need for much rougher prose or poetry than I had been anticipating. I’ve been wanting to write something jewel-like, but maybe what I want isn’t exactly the point. The hatchet sank into my knee. My hands were numb from the vibrations of peeling the bark from oak fence posts all day long. First I crouched from the pain, then when I stood up I was so dizzy. It was a beautiful evening in summer. A weightless sky. A light yellow, indistinct sun, a washed-out blue and my lover didn’t want to stop what he was doing up on the hill in order to help. So I walked down the ridge road myself and found the simple stream, not much of a stream really. I sat in it in my blue jeans. I tore the leg off of one where I had sliced into my knee, and watched the blood make a delicate weave with the water. The water and sky the same empty color, like 7-Up. —Carole Stoa Senn Shamu, Splash & Solemn — Carole would put horses, rather than herself, at the center of her story — is a necessarily fragmented account of how a talented and lovely young life was ravaged twice by violent attacks against which she had no way to defend herself. —From the preface by Emilio DeGrazia