The New Book Review

This blog, #TheNewBookReview, is "new" because it eschews #bookbigotry. It lets readers, reviewers, authors, and publishers expand the exposure of their favorite reviews, FREE. Info for submissions is in the "Send Me Your Fav Book Review" circle icon in the right column below. Find resources to help your career using the mini search engine below. #TheNewBookReview is a multi-award-winning blog including a MastersInEnglish.org recommendation.

Showing posts with label Judith Skillman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Judith Skillman. Show all posts

Saturday, August 29, 2020

CAROL SMALLWOOD INTERVIEWS POETS SERIES


CAROL SMALLWOOD INTEVIEWS POET JUDITH SKILLMAN


Poet: Judith Skillman
Publisher: Shanti Arts; April 2020
ISBN: 978-1-951651-26-8 (print; softcover; perfect bound)
94 pages; $12.95

Interview by Carol Smallwood

Judith Skillman is author of around twenty collections of poetry. She is the recipient of an award from the Academy of American Poets for her book Storm (Blue Begonia Press). Her work has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the UK Kit Award, Best of the Web, and is included in Best Indie Verse of New England. A faculty member at the Richard Hugo House in Seattle, Washington, Skillman also paints.

Smallwood: You hold a Masters in English Literature from the University of Maryland and have done graduate work in comparative literature at the University of Washington. When did you begin writing and was it poetry?

Skillman: I began writing poetry as an undergraduate student and then, when I went back to get a master’s in English Literature, I got it with an emphasis in creative writing. The MFA degree didn’t yet exist. It was quite a privilege, as I got to hear the excellent poets who came to read at University of Maryland’s reading series: Galway Kinnell, Tess Gallagher, Stanley Kunitz, and others. Actually, looking farther back, I wrote my first poem in fourth grade as an assignment, after Kennedy was assassinated.

Smallwood: your poem, “Blue Note” notes:


those holocaust stories told

and later taken back,

as the most difficult facts

come to be handled by time

and distance.

The Truth about Our American Births asks questions about a German Jewish heritage and of generations. Do you think it takes a certain time in one’s life to really delve into family history?


Skillman: Yes, I think the family history has to be somewhat removed by time in order for it to stand out as a subject matter. It wasn’t until my children were in school— two of them even in college—that I began to have the detachment necessary to ask questions about how I’d been raised. I knew I’d felt like an exile in Prince George’s County Maryland, where we lived when I was age six until twenty eight. I felt “different” than my peers, who had Christmas and other things I envied. The feelings were there, but I had no way to articulate any coherent questions about the past.

Smallwood: reviewers have noted your figurative language and imagery in the 47 poems in the book. I particularly enjoyed these lines from “Rift:’


Hardened is the name of woman.

All hands and arms.

Hangnails come to tell.

Chores for the charwoman.

See her bend into soap.

Lean away from leisure.

In her stained rag a map of the world.

Countries never seen.


Why did you use a period at the end of each line?


Skillman: I suppose end-stopping these lines seemed appropriate when I wrote it because the persona is angry.  She is enraged at the misogyny that exists in society and culture and religion throughout history. And so the poem became deliberately choppy.

Smallwood: what have you noted about the generational role of women?

This is a big question. Women give birth, nurture infants and children, and hold families together. I would say that from my own experience, women create in many ways, and provide a “generative” force as well as one that spans the generations. In addition, because we are trained to be verbal from an early age, we women often end up as the “storytellers” of the family. This is important role in that creating family certified “tall tales and legends” may enable those who are young to better understand their own origins.

But because ours is a patriarchal society, more often than not the work of women isn’t recognized financially. My views are admittedly 20th century, but in fields where women abound, such as teaching, they are under compensated. In arenas where women compete, including the arts and sciences, still females often are the ones who take it upon themselves to provide for basic needs of family and offspring. There are so many strong women I admire, including my mother and sister. All have had substantial obstacles to overcome.

Smallwood: what are you working on now?

Skillman: I am working on a manuscript that pulls work from six books and contains poems written over the past couple of years. Also I’m co-editing an anthology on domestic violence http://www.persephonesdaughters.tk/submit/

Smallwood: readers can learn more about Judith Skillman on: www.judithskillman.com

MORE ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER


Carol Smallwood, MLS, MA, Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, is a literary reader, judge, interviewer; her 13th poetry collection is Thread, Form, and Other Enclosures (Main Street Rag, 2020)

CAROL SMALLWOOD INTERVIEWS POETS SERIES



MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG 


 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Authors, readers, publishers, and reviewers may republish their favorite reviews of books they want to share with others. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read and love. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page and in a tab at the top of this blog's home page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites so it may be used a resource for most anyone in the publishing industry. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. #TheFrugalbookPromoter, #CarolynHowardJohnson, #TheNewBookReview, #TheFrugalEditor, #SharingwithWriters, #reading #BookReviews #GreatBkReviews #BookMarketing

Sunday, November 11, 2018

Poet Judith Skillman Reviews Carol Smallwood's "In the Measuring"





Title: In the Measuring
by Carol Smallwood
Publisher: Shanti Arts
August 2018, Paperback:120 pages, 
ISBN: 978-1-947067-38-7
$17.00

Reviewed by Judith Skillman, originally for Compulsive Reader

Carol Smallwood’s language is exuberant as she threads themes of childhood, adolescence, maturity, aging, and mortality through the seventy-seven poems of her new collection, In the Measuring. Using free verse as well as formal, she examines seasons, myths, childhood, nature, and the plethora of experiences we encounter in everyday life.

Mysteries arise for Smallwood as she examines the ordinary. Under her microscope, something as everyday as a carwash changes suddenly to a cornfield: “Driving home, the corn that’d emerged in spring in such/straight emerald lines paraded in crumpled gold.” (“Today,” p. 34). Here, memory illuminates a landscape one generally equates with winter: “…–it was windy,/bags and newspapers flying the streets.” Through her wielding of the microscopic lens, a stray moment of recall provides not only a blast of color, but also a dose of nostalgia.

The saying goes: “the devil is in the details”; for Smallwood, however, one may say “the angel is in the details”. Whether it is a person, a landscape or a thing, concrete images accrue and become more than the sum of their parts. 

For instance, in “Falling Leaves” (p. 36), the change of season from summer to fall creates nuances of feeling—in this case, of exile—which are echoed by new developments that have sprung up in a familiar locale. We have experienced this in contemporary life; it’s become normative and expected. For the witness in this poem, the tree losing its leaves becomes a metaphor for abrupt and continual change:

Nearby stands one tree
with fallen leaves crumpled
by sea change without
having seen the sea

Bringing the sea inland and giving the tree permission to “be” sensory without anthropomorphizing it is an angelic act, given the harsh details that “swirl” through this short piece.

The aforementioned exuberance comes with the author’s novel treatment of the everyday—those ordinary, mundane tasks and chores we take for granted. Who would think to write a pantoum about dishwashing liquid? Yet Smallwood carries it off, and braids colloquial language with scientific. She assumes a persona the reader can identify with:

There are so many on the shelves but had to select one —
antibacterial, concentrated, degreaser, biodegradable:
how bad were phosphates (what did they do) in the long run?
Surely an experienced housekeeper should be capable.(“A Dishwashing Liquid Pantoum”)

In addition to glancing aslant at a world overfull with choices,In the Measuringreveals the journey of an open-minded life-long learner and an ironic soul, one who wanders lightly through days and years. The line of questioning follows an all too familiar path we all tread—that of the mortal whose days and years are numbered. Through many modes of assessment, and myriad daily problems to be solved (even the mundane filling out of a questionnaire at the dentist (“Waiting for the Dental  Hygienist” p. 84) standard communications become wholly inadequate.

As the adventure unfolds, this explorer searching for a way to properly interpret, label, and explain the world in scientific terms learns lessons she passes on to the reader:

How much knowing is good for us to know?
Venus, the admired morning star, is a sulfuric hell.
Know Thyself can be a Medusa turn-to-stone blow:…(“Knowing”, 70)

When examining the role of childhood myths, from Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, to the Wizard of Oz, Smallwood waxes feminist: “Sleeping Beauty/was awakened by the prince./What would’ve happened if/she hadn’t been a beauty?” (79)

The overwhelming amount of information that must be processed more and more quickly in our contemporary world cannot be reduced—that is no longer an option. Reading Smallwood, however, is not only possible but advisable. She herself is an avid reader. Perhaps the best we can do to insulate ourselves from the inevitable intrusion of overload is to opt in to one of Smallwood’s worlds. An ideal example can be found in one of her vignettes, a four-line poem emblematic of the whole:

I’m a child again
wanting to read
darkened tree bark
like Braille (“On Days of Slow Rain”, 96)

As a wanderer, this female Don Quixote struggles until, as a compulsive searcher, she finds a way to lower the bar and arrive at home under her own terms. That is, she comes to grips with the impossibility of finding a proper answer to unanswerable questions. She turns from shadows cast by inanimate objects to actual living things, even if those things must be  bugs:

 “The Bug”/ “was on the post office floor so put it in my purse:…” (p. 100). 

What a surprising move.

The persona then goes on to describe what this insect liked: “…Subway lettuce, drops of coke in the car;”—and brings the bug round to another angelic moment: “It had survived countless species long extinct–/and if we wait, we may see the Spring”. Spring is capitalized intentionally here, for it is a Spring where the reader, who, we learn, lives between worlds (“I Read that Between,” 113) can hold winter and summer, and therefore light and darkness, at once.


MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Judith Skillman’s recent books are Premise of Light, Tebot Bach; and Came Home to Winter, Deerbrook Editions. She is the recipient of grants from Artist Trust and from the Academy of American Poets. Her work has appeared in Shenandoah, Poetry, Cimarron Review, The Southern Review, and other journals. Visit www.judithskillman.com

Poet Judith Skillman Reviews Carol Smallwood's "In the Measuring"


MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG AND GETTING REVIEWS

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ) that covers 325 jam-packed pages covering everithing from Amazon vine to writing reviews for profit and promotion. Reviewers will have a special interest in the chapter on how to make reviewing pay, either as way to market their own books or as a career path--ethically!

This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Friday, March 23, 2018

Prolific Reviewer Shares Chapbook of Poetry



Author: Carol Smallwood
Publisher: Finishing Line Press, 2017
$18.99 [paper] 108 pp. 
ISNB 978-1635342338
Available on Amazon

Review by Judith Skillman originally for Ragazine

Carol Smallwood’s new collection, Prisms Particles, and Refractions, is at once playful and serious. Her work in this volume ranges from extremely concise poems such as “On Days of Slow Rain” where the speaker becomes “a child again / longing to read / darkened tree bark/like Braille” (53) to the four-page oeuvre written in journal form, “A Late Summer Diary.” The fact that these two poems are neighbors makes the transition between short and long more emphatic, and creates echoes and resonances.

As Smallwood deftly moves through a variety of content and subject matter, the reader gets a sense of an unpredictable world, despite the anchor of a wealth of scientific evidence to the contrary. Facts are posited, yet not accepted as givens. For instance, in “We See,” the persona examines exactly how we do see and absorb light, and questions knowledge imparted during college years. Here, the title becomes the first line: “We See / with rods and cones I learned / in college—it may not be true/today…” (13). As this poem deepens, mirrors, faces, and sacrifice come into play, as well as the automatic adjustment made by the retina from upside down to right side up. This piece is emblematic of Smallwood’s gift—focused examinations that lead to “aha” moments for both writer and reader.

The poems in this book have been published in many journals. Clearly the art of poetry is one Ms. Smallwood has lived and learned. Her forms range from cinquain to villanelle to sestina; she switches from formal to free verse with ease. The myriad references and allusions in these poems draw from philosophy, psychology, physics, metaphysics, history, and literature.

“A Prufrock Measurement” (74) employs playfulness and formal rhyme in order to merge two vastly different subjects—contemporary fast food proliferation with the persona of Eliot’s Prufrock. This willingness to draw from disparate sources creates a prismatic effect: varied and brilliant. In the introduction, Smallwood states her intention to present poems “aimed at capturing…aspects of light…and light as metaphor.” It is this reviewer’s sense that she has succeeded.

Judith Skillman’s recent book is Kafka’s Shadow, Deerbrook Editions. Her work has appeared in LitMag, Shenandoah, Zyzzyva, FIELD, and elsewhere. Awards include an Eric Mathieu King Fund grant from the Academy of American Poets. She is a faculty member at the Richard Hugo House in Seattle, Washington. Visit www.judithskillman.com

MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Skillman also reviews for Scarlet Leaf Review, www.scarletleafreview.com and Mom Egg Review, http://momeggreview.com.  

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ) that covers 325 jam-packed pages covering everithing from Amazon vine to writing reviews for profit and promotion. Reviewers will have a special interest in the chapter on how to make reviewing pay, either as way to market their own books or as a career path--ethically!

This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Sunday, January 7, 2018

Judith Skillman Offers Skilled Review of Poetry Chapbook

by Carol Smallwood

Publisher: Finishing Line Press, 2017, 
$18.99 [paper] 
ISNB 978-1635342338
85 pp.
Formerly published in Ragazine, http://ragzine.cc; Scarlet Leaf Review, https://www.scarletleafreview.com; Mom Egg Review, http://momeggreview.com 

Reviewed by Judith Skillman

Carol Smallwood’s new collection, Prisms Particles, and Refractions, is at once playful and serious. Her work in this volume ranges from extremely concise poems such as “On Days of Slow Rain” where the speaker becomes “a child again / longing to read / darkened tree bark/like Braille” (53) to the four-page oeuvre written in journal form, “A Late Summer Diary.” The fact that these two poems are neighbors makes the transition between short and long more emphatic, and creates echoes and resonances.

As Smallwood deftly moves through a variety of content and subject matter, the reader gets a sense of an unpredictable world, despite the anchor of a wealth of scientific evidence to the contrary. Facts are posited, yet not accepted as givens. For instance, in “We See,” the persona examines exactly how we do see and absorb light, and questions knowledge imparted during college years. Here, the title becomes the first line: “We See / with rods and cones I learned / in college—it may not be true/today…” (13). As this poem deepens, mirrors, faces, and sacrifice come into play, as well as the automatic adjustment made by the retina from upside down to right side up. This piece is emblematic of Smallwood’s gift—focused examinations that lead to “aha” moments for both writer and reader.

The poems in this book have been published in many journals. Clearly the art of poetry is one Ms. Smallwood has lived and learned. Her forms range from cinquain to villanelle to sestina; she switches from formal to free verse with ease. The myriad references and allusions in these poems draw from philosophy, psychology, physics, metaphysics, history, and literature.

“A Prufrock Measurement” (74) employs playfulness and formal rhyme in order to merge two vastly different subjects—contemporary fast food proliferation with the persona of Eliot’s Prufrock. This willingness to draw from disparate sources creates a prismatic effect: varied and brilliant. In the introduction, Smallwood states her intention to present poems “aimed at capturing…aspects of light…and light as metaphor.” It is this reviewer’s sense that she has succeeded.

MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER


Judith Skillman’s recent book is Kafka’s Shadow, Deerbrook Editions. Her work has appeared in LitMag, Shenandoah, Zyzzyva, FIELD, and elsewhere. Awards include an Eric Mathieu King Fund grant from the Academy of American Poets. She is a faculty member at the Richard Hugo House in Seattle, Washington. Visit www.judithskillman.com

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ) that covers 325 jam-packed pages covering everithing from Amazon vine to writing reviews for profit and promotion. 

This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.