Presents : [poems]

Mudfoot, Judyl

Mudborn Press

Presents: [poems]

2nd Edition, 2013. This novel tells the story of the re-entry of a Peace Corps Volunteer, who has served in Tanzania, returning to the United States in the middle of the Sixties, an entirely different country than the one he left. How does he cope, what choices are there to make, whose side is he on (if any)? The story is about finding one's footing in a rapidly changing world, in a rapidly changing body and relationships (or not) with women. The setting is in a college town, a basement rent-free, with plenty of beer and college girls. Meanwhile the narrator's mind goes back to the radically different culture and values of Africa, the assumptions before going, and the political tensions rising in even the simplest actions. The story is illustrated by the author, with scenes and people, to give a sense of place to the episodes. Though the novel is based on reality, part of the story is that reality itself was coming undone, in flux. The theme is, if anything, coping -- coping with possibilities, exigencies, sexuality, in a time when it seemed that all options were on the table. The future was to be written in personal lives. One might call it a "coming of age of a late bloomer." Or "a piece of recent history from the underbelly of society."

The Basement: A Novel of the Sixties

Biographies & Memoirs

Newborn, Sasha

Historical

<p>This story of two decades of a marriage documents a catalog of changes accepted and changes refused, between two people who grew up in the Forties and Fifties. By the Seventies, the world had changed and so had they. And so had the marriage. The uncommon word eachother is the main topic of this book—the relationship of two people in which every action or thought, whether expressed or not, affects the partner. Eachother is precious when it works, treacherous when both feel trapped with the other. The Last American Housewife is the second volume in the Marty Series, following The Family Secret. The third volume will be Period Pieces, the post-marriage years.</p>

The Last American Housewife: pieces of a marriage

Literature & Fiction

Hill, Eleanore

Literary

<p>Rarely do we find an honest account of incest in the news. Though it has long been taboo in almost every culture, and for sound biological reasons, the occurrences of incest continue in many families and communities. Having a rational conversation about it, however, is difficult to achieve. Do not expect lurid accounts of threats and torture and kinky S&M from this book. This story is told with names changed, from the point of view of the girl—a straightforward account of the relationship of father and daughter over nearly twenty years. As she grew into young adulthood, the father became protective, but not possessive. And the girl-becoming-woman began to understand her strengths, and to test them—eventually to break free, marry and have a productive life of her own. For most of the time, the relationship was a secret from the rest of the family, and certainly from the rest of the world. Eleanore Hill has chosen to stand up and proclaim herself a whole person of her own, and to share her experience publicly. Few have had the courage to do so, which makes this narrative especially valuable. In fact, when the book first came out in 1985, it garnered the Rhodora Prize, and was picked up by one of the major publishers, at a time when incest was scarcely talked about. These days, with digital publishing, many more writers have committed their stories to print, emboldened by Eleanore Hill’s forthrightness with the “secret.” Some publishers simply aim to titillate with the topic, hoping to benefit from prurient curiosity. For them, there will always be an audience. For the more serious-minded, this three-dimensional account of the topic brings it alive in a real sense, not as a cautionary tale or a scold, but to see, as it were, behind the headlines, as a human story that needs to be told, and told with integrity.</p>

The Family Secret: A Personal Account of Incest

The Deadword Dictionary was first written more than twenty years ago. I’m making some changes, based on further refinement of the concept, and also including an “Iffy” section. Here are the rules for the selection of Deadwords: Orphans, words used in only a single common expression, with no flexibility, such as “yore” as in “days of yore.” Faux amis, words borrowed from another language but misunderstood or misapplied (à la mode) Obsolete words or phrases Iffy words—you decide whether they still have  weight in today’s language. You might call this the rearview mirror perspective, with a “huh” under one’s breath. Yeah? They really said that? The English language is like a kitchen sponge: it picks up all the tiny pieces of we-don’t-know-what but we need a word, so we’ll just use this stray one from we-don’t-care-where. But when did you last see a “doublet” or “spitoon” or use “whilom”—why keep them around? A little housecleaning is in order here. Got your favorite overworked obsolete nugget? Send it in to bandanna@cox.net.

The Deadword Dictionary: A Book of Outdated Words

Reference

Words, Language & Grammar

Hallmark Piece: Or The Suicide Book

Wicklund, Millae Mae

(from the Afterword by Peter Whigham) Paul Portuges’s translations are unusual in that they are a reliving in modern terms of a body of ancient experience. This sounds straightforward enough; but there is a catch: the body of ancient experience can, in human terms, only be guessed at. There are no Aztec poems of which these English poems are the rendering. There is no living record, save in the most attenuated forms, of the rituals and the attitudes which are their subject. Discernment can come only through the most strenuous acts of historical imagination, working two ways: in order to find out what they—then—must have felt like, try it on oneself—now--under similar circumstances. The author and his wife, armed with various Indian manuals of childbirth, went to Tepoztlán, so that their first child, Amin, might be born there. This is not the place for biography, but Paul Portugés’s efforts at in-feeling—at feeling himself into an ambience, ultimately unknowable--can only be regarded with respect. The result is to be seen in the poems, solemn yet celebratory instances of living, translations, in the general sense of all art that “brings it off’, and in the sense of cultural transference. However, they are also translations in the narrower sense. They draw, often word for word, on Brother Bernardino de Sahagún’s records, in Aztec, of ancient Aztec ritual.

Aztec Birth: the turquoise mockingbird of light (Inklings)

WHIGHAM, Peter

Portuges, Paul

Poetry

I Ching: Passages 4. twinned (he or she) edition (I Ching Gender Series)

Politics & Social Sciences

Wen, King

Chou, Duke of

Philosophy

Ossian Legends

MACPHERSON, JAMES

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