Support Orison Books!

Orison Books is currently conducting a fundraiser through Indiegogo to support the publication of its forthcoming titles, including The Divine Magnet: Herman Melville's Letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by scholar Mark Niemeyer and with a foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Paul Harding; Jordan Rice's debut poetry collection, Constellarium; and the inaugural volume of The Orison Anthology! Please take a moment to watch the video below, and consider making a contribution at www.igg.me/at/orisonbooks/x/8130574.

The Mountain Xpress on Orison Books

Read the Mountain Xpress blog post on Orison Books here: http://mountainx.com/blogwire/local-publishing-house-orison-books-raises-funds-for-successful-launch/

Introducing Orison Books

It is with great pleasure that I introduce Orison Books, a 501(c)(3) non-profit literary press focused on the life of the spirit from a broad range of perspectives. Please visit our website and our Indiegogo page, where you will learn about our mission, our goals, and our first title, scheduled for release early next year, which I am thrilled to present to the world. 

Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today:

Website: http://www.orisonbooks.com/

Indiegogo: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/orison-books

The Southern Poetry Breakthrough Series: North Carolina

Attention all North Carolina poets who have yet to publish a full-length book: An exciting call for submissions from Texas Review Press (publisher of, among many other things, The Southern Poetry Anthology series, an anthology that features writers from a different southern state each year, organized by series editor William Wright). 

The Southern Poetry Breakthrough Series, judged by Paul Ruffin, is open this year to North Carolina residents who have yet to publish a first book. A resident is defined as follows: 

-If you were born in NC, you are eligible.
-If you live elsewhere, but have lived in NC for at least five consecutive years, you are eligible.
-If you now live in NC, and intend to live there for at least five years total, you are eligible.

Send a manuscript of 50-80 pages. Please include a cover letter with your submission, as well as two title pages—one with your contact information, including e-mail address, mailing address, and phone number—and the other with the title only. Include an acknowledgments page for previous publications.

There is no reading fee. The Breakthrough Poetry Prize entails publication of the winning manuscript, national distribution via the Texas A&M University Press Consortium, plus twenty-five free copies furnished to the author upon publication.

All submissions must be sent as e-mail attachments to William Wright at vercimber@hotmail.com in one of the following formats: .doc, .docx, .rtf, or .pdf. Please include a short (75-100 word) bio as a separate attachment in one of the above formats. 

In the subject heading of the e-mail, write "NC Breakthrough" followed by your name in parentheses.

Deadline for submissions is September 15, 2014.

Christopher Davis reviews Poems of Devotion for Anglican Theological Review

"Poems of Devotion: An Anthology of Recent Poets is an interesting, unique collection of poems, each of which in some way demonstrates that the act of writing a poem can be 'devotional' in the same spirit as prayer. In his eloquent and compelling introductory essay, editor Luke Hankins writes, 'If there could be only one criterion for devotional poetry, it would be authenticity of personal religious or spiritual expression' (p. xxi). Hankins emphasizes the ways in which the creative process is as volatile and active an experience for the artist as other forms of worship. Discussing a poem by George Herbert, Hankins claims, 'The poem is so successful in articulating the spiritual struggle that we can speculate that Herbert was actually experiencing a sense of separation from God as he composed the poem – it is at least a possibility – so that the spiritual struggle being dramatized is not simply a re-enactment' (p. xvii). This is a brave stance to take in an era of critical theory, irony, formalism and coolness. Whatever reservations a reader might have about this possible conflating of 'performance' with 'prayer,' once that reader has spent time with the actual poems, he or she will probably be convinced that 'authenticity' is possible, when the poet, often so closely identified with the speaker of the poem as to be indistinguishable from that speaker, unstintingly, passionately, imaginatively and humbly risks complete exposure of sensibility through writing. 

[...] 

The consistency of tones and approaches of these poems is balanced by the great diversity of kinds of poets represented here. Beginning with T.S. Eliot, the anthology includes several poets writing originally in languages other than English, such as the thrilling Hungarian poet Janos Pilinszky, whose 'Complaint' is a prayer which startles in its strange intimacy: 'Does my complaint reach you? / Is my siege to no purpose? / All around me glitter / reefs of fear' (p. 31). Many exciting poems by younger American writers appear here too, giving the reader a chance to enjoy the continuity of a tradition of devotional poetry. This anthology would be an excellent text to use in any college Religious Studies course focusing on religion in the arts. The quality and quantity of poems which explore the human, psychological side of transcendental experience would also make for fruitful 'book club' discussions. There is a fierce, passionate commitment to the art of poetry embodied in this book, made especially exciting because it is equal to, and inseparable from, faith."

-Christopher Davis, Anglican Theological Review (Winter 2014) 

Review of Psalms of All My Days, by Patrice de la Tour du Pin, translated by Jennifer Grotz

My review of Psalms of All My Days, by Patrice de la Tour du Pin, translated by Jennifer Grotz (Carnegie Mellon Univ. Press, 2013), is up at the blog of 32 Poems magazine here. 

Mystical Sensualist: Eric Pankey's New Book

Eric Pankey, one of the poets included in my anthology, Poems of Devotion, has a beautiful new book out from Milkweed Editions entitled Trace. Pankey's spare, condensed poems in this collection examine details of the physical world with the kind of reverence we usually reserve for works of art, or perhaps for scripture. The voice here is one of a mystical sensualist, one who is highly attuned to the most minute visual or tangible details of experience and who senses a mysterious spiritual significance underlying it all. Here is one of my favorite poems from the collection, reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions. (Note: A burin is a flint or metal tool used for engraving.)

Moon Phases Carved on a Bone
by Eric Pankey

One can interrogate the stars,
Count the barbs as they slope
Toward the feather's tip,

Make of prime numbers 
A hive of the mind,
Speculate with images.

At the shore of waking,
A fragment insinuates narrative,
A sequence of events, phases:

The half-moon adorned in its cornhusk mask,
The crescent moon as it sheds
Scree, grit, pollen, and spores,

The straw effigy of the new moon--
Expiatory, a jabber of smoke--
Rendered, reduced to a notion.

Yet awake, one recalls mere sleep,
Not the torch-marks on the bear's skull,
Not the blister the burin rubbed up.

"Moon Phases Carved on a Bone," from Trace by Eric Pankey (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013). Copyright © 2013 by Eric Pankey. Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions. www.milkweed.org