To order William Burke’s The World is Full of Peasants.:

309.81 is broken into four sections. The first section titled ‘In This House’ opens with this quote from Thoreau: “Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.” Each of the nine poems in this section addresses the odds and ends of our houses, like berber carpet, nail-polish & notebooks, and strands of hair, but their ordinariness is tortured by the harsh realities of this mother and this daughter. The second section is titled ‘To Be Fifteen Again’ and contains a series of poems that a numbered and series that, if you put all the titles together, you get the phrase ‘Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.’ This black humor surfaces throughout Mallino’s work, adding even more depth to the pieces.

Throughout all the poems, Mallino’s word choice is pure perfection. One of my favorite things about reading poetry is feeling the way the words writers choose roll around in my mouth. Mallino is sensory delight with lines like “I sniffed out the screwdriver / and ruptured that lock like any good scab” and “to have linoleum thin hair – a finger’s runway.” I found myself reading lines over and over again just to feel how they sounded, ones like “how z in Elizabeth / cuts right through the name’s soft tissue” and “this house is a comfortable chemical” and “maybe the bile / is my good Easter dress.” Simply fantastic.

These poems may center on the affects of a teenaged relationship between a mother and a daughter, but no teen angst will be found within these pages. Mallino’s words are visceral, and my ears were heavy with the weight to the all-too-real relationship that readers are forced into, the relationship between this mother and this daughter and medication and the frenzy of new life.

With this publication, dancing girl press has succeeded. 309.81 is like raw concrete you’ve fallen and scrapped your knee on. It opens you up so you feel the blood pumping inside. And later, you’ll realize you’re still tugging on the scar it left long after it’s healed.

I was not disappointed. In terms of its content, “I Ain’t Asked Any Pardon” chronicles the dissolution—and possible resolution (?)—of a relationship. Before you dismiss this as the standard fare, let me assure you haven’t seen a couple’s relationship explored quite like this before. It mixes the mundane (“When she woke up she put the coffee on”) with the absurd (“She unraveled a crow like a clementine…”) with the grotesque (“…and cooked the flesh in its mouth). Certain motifs become more and more apparent as the collection goes on: teeth, buzzards, trains, fire, bandits. As you trace them through the pages, you’re able to piece together a sense of what they might mean.

Overall, the chapbook provides a rather desolate and disturbing look at companionship. The whole thing is set in a desert—dry expanses of space, vast plains of hot heavy sand. Buzzards are always swarming overhead, waiting to feast on the kill. Vicious fires erupt and burn indiscriminately. It’s a bleak look at the monotony and boredom a relationship can take on, punctuated by harsh fires and fights that start “licking at that dry air.”

The poems in the collection work together to provide a cohesive and satisfying reading experience. Certain poem series work up to a fervor—especially the “Great Train Robberies” series—that provide you with distinct threads to hold onto. Amidst the fantastical imagery, these poem threads give you something with which to pull yourself through the collection, a string to trace your journey with. Through the fevered pitch of fire and buzzards and dry sands, the distinct sets of poems keep you anchored in the narrative.

“I Ain’t Asked Any Pardon” is the perfect length to be read all at once. You can sit down with it, read it from start to finish, and leave it feeling both fulfilled and wanting more. It’s a collection that merits multiple readings, with each reading leaving you feeling like you understand it a little more—and a little less. The collection is at once manageable and complex. I highly recommend it—from aesthetics to content, Sasha Fletcher delivers in her new collection “I Ain’t Asked Any Pardon For Anything I Done.”

The longest piece is the namesake of the book. It is 8 pieces that is like a fairytale in itself. Kara Dorris writes about fairytales and writes one of her own. It has love and mystery and magic, which is what all people love from the stories they heard as children. Kara Dorris brings reality into the imagination of childhood and still keeps the fairytale alive.

She finishes the book with “A Spell” which is how she interprets what happens when spells are made and used. “Dandelion germs, candlewick, toes & flour. The blood that turns the rest to liquid, an incanted language, the skin.”  She brings out all the feelings that one would feel hearing a spell in the story. The feeling that something exciting is going to happen. Kara Dorris brings this out in her book with a passion for the fairytales that brings the reader in and reminds them of childhood. She gives adults an excuse to reach back into their hearts to remember what it felt like being a child but brings out how an adult would feel now, cautioning the damsel in distress to not eat the apple. TO caution the girl with the red cape to not go to her grandmothers house that day. Kara Dorris brings this out of the reader in a magical way that gives an excuse for letting go and letting the stories bring them to a forest with a headsman giving them pardon and a reason to survive.

This woman, clearly defying any standards of “decency”, brought to my mind a time when women were restricted in areas of all respects: society, education, profession, etc. I was reminded of a time when showing a little bit of your leg was considered risqué. I was reminded of a time when women found that being treated like a lady also meant being treated like a “lady”: someone who was known only by her husband’s name and was meant to be seen, not heard. I was reminded of a time when women started to defy that role in society and started to take risks, to make their impression.

The chapbook of poetry is split into the format of a play: Act I, Scene i, and so on. It is also prefaced with a quote from Macbeth: “These deeds must not be thought/ After these ways; so, it will make us mad” (Act II, Scene ii). This framing of the poetry automatically sets your mind back to a time and place of propriety and richness. This is what you expect upon opening this book of poetry; something along the lines of a Shakespearean play equipped with old English and such. However, Trisia Eddy defies these expectations of times past and drops you into the middle, or the end, of a long life of two women who have been carrying on a romantic relationship.

Edith and Aurelia, the main characters, are past the prime of their lives and are now looking back. Looking back at a time when their bodies were sensual and not stiff with age. You follow along with the characters as they begin in the summer, then on to autumn, and then the winter, before they end at the cusp of spring. You follow them as they move from their home into a nursing home, despite Edith’s distaste of the place. I am still uncertain whether Aurelia moved there as well, as I am also uncertain of the amount of love Aurelia had for Edith. Nevertheless, love is felt and instead of the warm, gushy, romantic thoughts that usually come about at the first utterance of the word “love”, you are met with a sad tale of inescapable time and desires.

Trisia Eddy’s writing is extremely sensory. The entire fifteen pages are packed with succulent images such as: “the deep purple-galaxy of blackberry stain”. She does a marvelous job presenting her story of love and lost time in such a short amount of space. I set the book down feeling sad but happy that I got to be a part of this love affair, or “romantic tragedy”.

The chapbook was printed by Dancing Girl Press, a press dedicated to printing only the work of women poets. This exclusionary act was originally what drew me to their website and I was thrilled to see women writers honored and promoted so enthusiastically. I was further thrilled to find that this chapbook, not only written by a female, was only concerning females. It was an interesting experience, to indulge in this world without male touches.

–Sarah Jennings

Edith and Aurelia: A Romantic Tragedy in Five Acts is a recent release by Trisia Eddy from Dancing Girl Press. DGP is a self-proclaimed indie publisher that aims to promote women poets. While browsing their website, the beautifully rendered cover art of this chapbook drew my initial attention; however, it was the excerpt, Act III, Scene i. An excavation site. that held my interest. The thought of prose poetry combined with elements of playwriting intrigued me, and as I sat down to read Edith and Aurelia, I happily found that my expectations were not disappointed.

The style of the chapbook is refreshingly unique: prose poems are titled as though they are parts of a play. The “Romantic Tragedy” of the chapbook is evident through both the inner musings of the characters and the way we view the world through their eyes. The writer seamlessly blends the beauty of all three styles: the simplicity of prose, the delicacy of poetry, and the directness of playwriting are all present throughout. Small snippets and phrases from Shakespeare’s Macbeth float in and out of the pages, adding to the tragic effect of the writer’s own poetry.

An air of nostalgia is present throughout Edith and Aurelia, from its vintage, photographed cover to its poems, which recall memories of childhood and past love. In her chapbook, poet Trisia Eddy avoids the common misstep of viewing the past through rose-colored glasses. Her poems are carefully written to not only convey the sentimental nature of nostalgia, but to also remind us of the pain that stems from old memories, even the happier ones.

“Regret makes no secret of itself, wafts openly through” this chapbook. Edith and Aurelia reads like the retelling of a painful memory, complete with the thoughts that flit in and out of the characters’ heads and the hyper-awareness of the smallest details one feels when the world slows down in these moments. I found it impossible to finish the book without longing for some bygone day – therein lies the beauty of Edith and Aurelia. This chapbook has the power to speak to each reader differently, drawing on past and personal experiences to create a unique read for everyone. Though the plot surrounds two women going through the frustrations of change and goodbyes, its greater themes of nostalgia and regret will easily resonate within anyone.

–Nadia Barksdale

Edith and Aurelia is available through the DGP Chapbook Series at www.dancinggirlpress.com.

But then we are in Kansas without fanfare… I slept through the welcome sign.  The sun is setting non-triumphantly in the plains as we drive down I-70, and I remember wondering where all the trees could be.

Downtown Lawrence is organized by streets named after each American state as they were admitted into the Union.  We laugh at Tennessee Street, which is an unlit dead-end with a run down fried chicken restaurant.  Alabama Street is residential, houses and apartments on both sides.  Kansas Street curves around and leads to the local junior high, empty this late at night.

We never really do see the school’s campus, mainly because we never asked.  The only glimpse we get as we drive by in the middle of the night is of beautiful stone buildings and red roofs, of fall trees still in the middle of color transition, and it reminds me of home.

The next two days are wonderful.  The first we spend at the Great Plains National Park, among the buffalo and tallgrass.  It is here, on a hill overlooking smaller hills of golden grass, that my eyes were opened to the world.  I laid down in the grass, one leg bent toward the sky, completely in love with the prairie.  Later that day, as the sun set through the window into a mixture of orange, purple, and pink, we ate dinner in one of the Seven Culinary Wonders of Kansas and reflected on the day’s impact.

The last day began at small park, with a reading in front of a fountain.  As one of the readers from Lawrence spoke, a squirrel ran behind her for a drink of water.  We all notice, laughing. The second reading is in the basement of a downtown bar.  Many of us read our work impromptu into a duct-taped microphone: I from a phone screen, others from folded papers and from memory.  That night, we drank together and said our goodbyes.

Fifteen hours back, through four states but stuck in one for what seemed like years, the Ozarks and Arkansas.  We stop for a short time at a park overlooking a tributary of the Red River and countless ever-green trees, and I remember thinking of home.

This exchanging thing, it’s important to us. It is the sole thing that sets this internship apart from all the others. Slash Pine believes in cultivating a productive writers’ community. But the community must not be confined to just the University of Alabama, or even Tuscaloosa; the writers community must exist beyond our comforts. This is why we go to unfamiliar lands (Kansas prairies, Carl Sandburg’s Galesburg, Muncie), and share our passion for creative writing and all of the above. We exchange because we like to make friends. We like to make friends with people who like things. We like friends who like to write about things.

So, I went to Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois in October. It was a grueling twelve or fifteen hour drive. I can’t remember how long it was because I was asleep most of the voyage (Sorry Luke!). Four of us and a driver/mentor/writer/mid-westerner/teacher/friend. In a white university van. But We were stylin’. We stopped at Apple Barrel for breakfast and Boomland for fireworks (Not really – I bought some Amish popcorn kernels and Emma bought some post cards.) It seems like all of the stops we made were in Missouri. We were Missouri for a very long time. We arrived in Galesburg, Illinois around 8PM. Galesburg occupies a special place in our travel guide’s heart – it’s where he received his undergraduate degree. We had plans to attend an open-mic night. We weren’t really sure what this meant.

We found the skinny building and entered the quiet space. It was quiet for three seconds and then a crowd erupted with a rather enthusiastic applause. Enthusiastic. The adjective often gets lost in Tuscaloosa.  Perhaps it’s because our University is so big. The bigness generates a sense of impersonality, which swallows attention to craft. Attention to developing a community of artists.

This is what Knox College has that we don’t: A genuine, encouraging, and enthusiastic community of musicians, artists, writers, photographers, and dancers. A “we’re all in this together” feel and “we like you, so we’re going to make sure you know your craft is important to us too.”

It seems the people we met constantly believe in this. They don’t know that this is completely infectious.

When we got back from Galesburg, we couldn’t wait to share what we’d seen and heard with the other interns.

Smaller institutions have an easier time creating meaningful relationships, but that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible for this to happen at places like UA. It happens when people, like me and other Slash Pine people, make a conscious effort to mindfully cultivate and protect this our community of writers and artists. (Enthusiasm to the tenth degree.)

Our start for the Kansas Excange was a little slow. In the hour we spent at City Café, we covered everything possible in conversation: Kansas, MFA school, the weather, preferred dog breeds, education in low-income areas, and coffee consumption (Joseph and I were the only ones who ordered coffee. Everyone else’s excuse was that it was too early; my excuse was that it was that early). After yummy eggs and biscuits, we squeezed back in the van and hunkered down for the 12-hour drive. We didn’t get far; less than an hour later, we had tire pressure issues in the middle of Fayette County, but Shea just happened to have a tire gauge in her purse (how handy!). She has since been gifted the title of ‘Van Saver.’

After that Mary Poppins moment, the drive up wasn’t too eventful, unless you count visiting an Amish store with over 200 homemade cheeses and an eight foot tall mouse mascot, an invitation to an Ozark bike rally over lunch at The Garlic Rose, and reflecting on sheep rights at a random gas station in what we later dubbed ‘the worst state ever’ (aka Arkansas) as eventful.

After about 14-hours, we rolled in Lawrence, Kansas and found our way to Becky’s house (which is named Avalon and is on Avalon). The Kansans were there to meet us, and we all bonded over margaritas and mild salsa at a local Mexican restaurant we parkour-ed over walls to get to. The night of bonding commenced with a trek in the pitch dark through the woods and over a bridge to a (potentially illegal) bonfire and s’mores and Woodchucks. (Looking back on these events, it’s obvious these endeavors were pseudo-trust fall exercises in disguise.)

Saturday was spent driving to the untouched prairie land and just being on the prairie. That next day was the Sunday morning event in the park’s graffiti-ed gazebo. We read the pieces we wrote while sitting in the prairie grass. Mine was extremely short and completely unfinished so I wasn’t totally thrilled about this part. I had the distinct feeling (and not for the first time) that the Kansans were quite used to reading their work and it gave them no qualms to share. I was not so fortunate and my nerves got me a little bit; they were obviously oblivious to the fact that there was only one non-exchange attendee at the whole reading. However, after spending so much time with the Kansas group, I was very excited to hear how each of them writes, to know what drives their work. It’s just like taking a skip or two towards them to see how and who each of them are, just a little more intently than before. I loved what I saw. Such distinct voices and all different.

The same goes for our mighty Alabama group of six. I hadn’t heard or read anything for my fellow Slash Pine-ers and I was delighted with the work they shared. From Shea’s odes to Bill Murray to Sara’s lyrical pioneer story, we all had different stories to tell. It’s funny; we’d all been out on the same prairie, rolled around in the same grass, dug our fingers into the same thick thatch, laughed at Ranger Eric’s bison, petted the orange barn cat, and eaten a ‘Handful of Everything.’ But as in all things in life, we came out with something different. I think of the grasshopper that licked by boot and liked it, of the ‘presidential floors’ in the schoolhouse (to steal a line from Trevor), of how clean the air made me feel even while it was tangling my hair,  of “contemplating the flower” and Joseph’s lesson on distance manipulation and vanishing points, of “everyone looks good on a prairie” and of now knowing how to correctly spell ‘prairie.’

Of the four days, we only spent one day on the prairie but it’s that identifier we given everything from the trip. It’s no longer the Kansas Exchange but the Coniferous Prairie Project. In that wide-open space, we convalesced and clustered. We bred writer-ly ties in the inspiring thatch.

 2:30pm, downtown Tuscaloosa: I am leading a long parade of people I have never seen before in my life. We are weaving through downtown Tuscaloosa, meandering through the city on a tour of words. I am exuberant, flabbergasted; I can hardly believe my eyes, much less my ears or my skin. The weather is perfect: a sunny fall afternoon, with slanting shafts of light and red leaf-strewn paths. The writers really seem to have taken to the “false history” prompt, delighting listeners with tales of elves inside the Old Bindery, letters to a theoretical city, and plenty of murders/eerie deaths to go around. I don’t know these people, and maybe that’s the best part. This is not a procession of interns’ and writers’ friends. This is not an event for writers by writers. This is an event for Tuscaloosa by writers. There are lots of pairs and trios of friends, none of whom know each other; we all arrived as strangers but unite for a single afternoon, not as isolated pairs and trios, but as lovers of art and this Druid City we call home.

8:45pm, Sokol park: we might have rekindled history by day, but somehow kindling this pile of sticks by night seems a much more daunting task. We are writers. We think in similes and impractical adjectives, not in matches and lighter-fluid sensibility. Thank goodness for Katerina, wood-gatherer and fire-champion of Slash Pine Press.

9:00pm, Sokol park: S’mores. S’more s’mores. Light-up hula-hoops, human pile-ups, and snuggly cuddle sessions. Friends. S’mores. S’more stories and poems. Chilled and fire-warmed, smokey air. A final triumphant Slash Pine “Roll Tide!” Journey back to the parking lot, all of us retrieving the mason jars with candles that line the path. (They look like caught fireflies in your hands). Farewells and goodnights. Relief, and then—is it possible?—almost immediate excitement for the next Slash Pine venture. All I can say is, I hope you’ll join us.

Til next time, friends!

Greying Ghost Press was born in 2007. Like Slash Pine, all of the their books are handmade. But this isn’t why I’m a fan. They stuff the chapbook full of stuff. FREE poetry pamphlets, an old photo of a baby named Paul Roos, a page out of Lassie, shapes of the map of the mouth of the Chattahoochee River. The text is printed on résumé paper. Novelty and personality rolled into one.

The story told by Andrew Borgstrom is about a boy, a mother, and a father. It’s also about a cat named Kitsch and a murder. The entire piece focuses on possibility and irrelevancy in a world in which matters don’t matter. Each page possesses three “sections.” Each section moves from clarity to ambiguity. A favorite section occurs on the last page. Don’t fret – this part doesn’t give anything away:

The inscription may have mentioned the time year, the holiday that
required the gift to be inscripted. The inscription may have referred
to the book as a classic, even if it was not an actual classic, even if the
inscriptor did not know what constituted a classic, even if the pages
were blank, even if it was a dictionary, which is possible and likely.

Borgstrom disorients the reader by his constant building and breaking down of the same images. It is both mystifying and absorbing. An aesthetically charming chapbook with a twist: a mysterious slaying of a possible father.