Poet Reviewing Poet: Theresa Rodriguez Intrigues with Take on Chronicles in Passing

Author: Carol Smallwood 

Title: Chronicles in Passing

Publisher: Poetic Matrix Press, P.O. Box 1051, Lake Isabella, CA, 93240, 2019. 

102 pp. $17.00.

Available on Amazon

Reviewed by Theresa Rodriguez

The thing that struck me most strongly upon reading Carol Smallwood's Chronicles in Passing is the complete command of classical forms: the Rondeau, the Cinquain, the Pantoum, the Triolet, the Vianelle, and the Sestina. Smallwood displays fine technical mastery while uniquely using classical forms to frame her focus on the mundane and commonplace. Her writing flows with ease within the structure and rhyming of the classical forms. One can clearly see, as Smallwood mentions in her Introduction, that she “finds writing in formal style enjoyable” by “giving readers something extra,” “like presenting a box wrapped in a special paper with a bow.”

What I could also appreciate is that she does not limit herself only to formal or classical verse but recognizes that “there are times... when words in free verse are better in conveying the intended message,” in her endeavor to “try what fits.” I was glad to see free verse that did “fit” the intended topics very well.

Smallwood does indeed write about the mundane and commonplace, but her treatment of these topics is anything but mundane and commonplace. She manages to deftly take the mundane and transform it into the sublime. She gives weight and dignity to topics of life that might normally be overlooked. Blue jeans, the supermarket, clothes on a clothesline, a car wash, store flyers, homemade quilts and clothing, ballroom dancing, grocery shopping, going to a restaurant, dirt roads, spools of thread, clothing fashion, and the color pink-- none of these topics escapes Smallwood's decisive treatment. It causes one to be mindful of some of the ordinary things of life, things that can be shaped into works of great beauty, especially by the mind and pen of a skilled poet. It has given me an appreciation of our common world in a way I had not had before reading this volume. It has taught me to seek out the simple things and find the poetry in them. Smallwood most definitely has done this, in great measure!

I also enjoyed her sense of imagery and description which can be found throughout the volume. For instance, in one of my favorites “A Hardcover Book,” Smallwood talks about being perceived as some kind of anachronism by carrying around a hardcover book as opposed to “a small electronic tool,” as “quite the dinosaur, out of touch and even speckled with mold” (8). In her free verse “The Place of the Cure of the Soul,” Smallwood describes “something about the feel of books, the crackle of newspapers, smell of magazines and in owning them” (14). In her Vianelle “Counting Backwards,” she shares how

“...the chatter near Christmas Day

was irritating, but told it was just feminine hormone delay

and before long it would be better so wisely didn't reply when addressed” (17).

In “The Hovering,” deities are “defined in other cultures as weavers of destiny upon a tapestry loom” (19). In her Sestina “A Regular” we are given a lovely image of salt on a tray: 

“... I noticed its salt sprinkles made a vast night sky full of wonder

and understand why our ancestors made stories of constellations” (26).

In “There Were Only,” she describes “gentle rain reinforcing the nose as the most elemental of the senses” and poignantly thinks of “computers blinking in the empty library like solitary lighthouses” (32).

My favorite, however, is the vianelle “Our Unconscious Censor,”where the subject of writing down dreams upon waking produces some excellent imagery, where one  can “train” to write down dreams as soon as you wake:

“and confront the subterranean fear as if a waiting rattlesnake

coiled in a yawning cavern that's deeper, more terrifying than any hell”

and

“so get rid of the hoary, deep oozing fear making your tremble, shake:

but your built-in censor is a trench against shattering bombshells--”

Finally, she asks:

“Is one a coward not to go ahead and capture dreams, face at daybreak

once and for all-- end the fear-- what could be that awful to dispel?

One can train to write down dreams just as soon as you wake

yet is it best to let your built-in censor block when so much is at stake?” (70)

I also found her many of her choices of rhymes to be ingenious: I have never seen rhymes for “necessary,” “customary,” “shade vary,” “monetary,” “them airy,” and “arbitrary” in one poem before, but this is the quality of inventiveness we find in the Vianelle “An American Icon,” a poem about blue jeans (51). I was equally impressed with the rhyming of “myth” and “Monolith”  in her Pantoum “The Pleiades” (16), and “diverged,” “surged,” “purged,” “converged,” “urged,” and “submerged” in her Vianelle “Two Roads” (68).

In reading her work in this volume I only occasionally see her inner life-- and the moments here and there are intriguing, and make me want her to reveal more. In “The New Galaxy,” she describes a date with “Mitchell,” where an evening at the opera reveals understated but deep feeling:

“...I remembered smiling at the attendant when he

asked 'Did you and your wife enjoy the performance'

because it meant we looked like we belonged together”

She goes on to share how she clutched the program of Aida, “proof that the night was real” and how

“...When Mitchell walked me to my

car in the darkness, his coat blew against me,

a benediction I knew had to be lasting. Would I ever 

know the new galaxy the student had said with such

excitement had just been discovered?” (33)

I like this aspect of her writing, and wish there was more of it: tenderly rendered and touching. We do find more of this revelatory aspect in “A Matter of Nightmares,” where descriptions of  Bob's nightmares are “terrible” and Alison's brother 

“who'd returned from Nam:

unexpected sounds sent him diving under

any cover; certain smells made him shake,

his arms were infected trying to get rid of

“crawly leeches.”

She then describes Lily has having 

“post-traumatic stress disorder first called 

shell shock: that what went on behind white

picket fences was war.” (50)

I do like her understated treatment of the emotionally profound. I only wish there were more moments like this, as they intrigue and attract me. What more does this poet have inside, waiting to be revealed?

Carol Smallwood is to be praised for her skill, perspective, and philosophy over a wide poetic range. Hers is a unique set of senses, capturing sights, sounds, moments, and observations of the everyday world in such a manner that causes the reader to see what is all around him in a fresh, new way.

 MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

--Theresa Rodriguez is the author of Jesus and Eros: Sonnets, Poems and Songs (Bardsinger Books, 2015), Sonnets(Bardsinger Books, 2019) and Longer Thoughts (Shanti Arts, 2020).

MORE ABOUT THE BLOGGER, THIS BLOG, AND ITS BENEFITS FOR WRITERS

 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 everything 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.

Note: Participating authors and their publishers may request the social sharing image by Carolyn Wilhelm at no charge.  Please contact the designer at:  cwilhelm (at) thewiseowlfactory (dot) com. Provide the name of the book being reviewed and--if an image or headshot of the author --isn't already part of the badge, include it as an attachment. Wilhelm will send you the badge to use in your own Internet marketing. Give Wilhelm the link to this post, too.

#TheFrugalbookPromoter, #CarolynHowardJohnson, #TheNewBookReview, #TheFrugalEditor, #SharingwithWriters, #reading #BookReviews #GreatBkReviews #BookMarketing

Poet Carol Smallwood Interviews Indie Friendly Review Pioneer

This interview may be a first for this #TheNewBookReview blog. I try to be choosy about what appears here beyond book reviews. I have long been an adversary of #bookbigoty and any other kind of bigotry so this blog features any submission as long as it is family friendly and has the permission of the original reviewer to reprint it. But "extra" material--that is anything beyond these reviews must help readers, publishers, reviewers, authors and anyone else associated with the publishing industry in a pertinent way.  And, yep! I get to choose. A disclaimer here: Jim Cox has reviewed most if not all of my books--my self-published ones as well as my traditionally published ones--and included them in his newsletter.  And I, because I see the value of what he does, highly recommend Midwest Book Review in several of my HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers.  The interviewer, Carol Smallwood, is also a valued contributor of reviews to this blog. So, have fun.  Print or save some of the valuable resource material you are about to find here! (-:

The Carol Smallwood Interview Of Jim Cox 

Jim Cox is the founder of the the highly popular and comprehensive Midwest Book Review. Since 1976 it has  hosted 9 monthly book review magazines such as the Reviewer’s Bookwatch and Internet Bookwatch which are written by volunteer reviewers while the other related magazines are by Midwest Book Review principals and associates.

Smallwood: How did you become the Editor-in-Chief of The Midwest Book Review physically located in Wisconsin?

Jim Cox: In the summer of 1976 I was sitting in a Wednesday night meeting of the Madison Science Fiction Club in a State Street restaurant. The purpose of our weekly get-togethers was to socialize with like minded folk for whom fantasy and science fiction were something more than just another hobby.

Into that night's gathering came a good friend of mine by the name of Hank Luttrell. Hank was a mail order book dealer specializing in comics, mysteries, and science fiction - and whose ambition was to create his own bookstore (which he subsequently did and it's still in business here in Madison, Wisconsin, as 20th Century Books).

Hank came in with a copy of an expensive coffee-table sized book called "The Toynbee-Ikeda Dialogue," It was a compilation of correspondences over the years between the late British historian Arnold J. Toynbee and the Japanese philosophy/educator Isadeu Ikeda.

Hank knew that I was a history buff and well versed in the writings of Toynbee. He said to me: "How would you like to have this book for free?" I said to him: "Whose kneecaps do you want me to break?"

It turned out that all I had to do was read the book and then on Saturday go down to a new radio station that had just opened up in Madison a few weeks earlier. It was WORT-FM,  a non-commercial, counter-culture, community supported radio station of the leftish persuasion.

I was to go on a talk show with a fellow named John Ohliger and take three minutes to tell him (and his audience) what I thought of the book - and then I could keep it for myself!

I said to Hank: "Hand me the book and tell me where this radio thing is located."

The following Saturday morning I went down to the ugliest one-story cinder block building I had ever seen. I was introduced to this older gent who was some kind of liberal University of Wisconsin college professor. After John Ohliger made his introductory remarks I commenced to tell him (and his audience) about Toynbee, Ikeda, and this book of theirs.

I was still going strong when John reached over and gently tapped me on the arm and said he had to wrap things up; his thirty minute program was over. While John was signing off I sat there mentally upbraiding myself for the motor-mouth I had been and prepared to apologize profusely for hogging his whole show.

John had a stack of books by his elbow. After we were off the air and before I could launch into my abject grovel, he pushed that stack of books across the table to me and asked if I could look through these books and come back next week.

Thus my career as a book reviewer was born!

Three months later I was hosting that show ("The Madison Review of Books") myself. A couple of months later I had expanded it to one hour (thirty minutes was just way to short!); and a few months after that I had added a second one-hour book show that specialized on science fiction ("The Sci-Fi and Fantasy Hour with James Andrew Cox" - I think I was born with an ego as big as that program title!).

John Ohliger was a professor in the field of Adult Education and Life Long Learning. He was also an ardent social activist. He had been one of the key people to establish WORT-FM as a commercial free "talk show" radio forum for public issues. He started up "The Madison Review Of Books" as one of his experiments in adult education. He wanted to see what would happen if you put brand new books in the hands of ordinary folk - cab drivers, housewives, students, social workers, janitors, etc. - and then gave them a forum from which they could express their opinions and critiques to the community at large.

Back in the 70s, book reviewing (as it had been for pretty much the previous century) was largely an elitist operation of the New York/East Coast literati. John Ohliger (populist and leftist agitator that he was) wanted to break that stranglehold and see what would happen.

So John Ohliger started up his little radio show, got 15 of the major publishers to send him some books, and sent folks like Hank Luttrell out into the Madison community to recruit folks like me into sharing our views of what we were reading and what was being published.

I, along with a half-dozen others, banded together with John Ohliger and operated that little book review. I hosted the radio show and did most of the grunt work of publisher notification, book solicitation, and assigned reviewer follow-ups.

Then two years later, John Ohliger was working with still another group of citizens who wanted to insure a public access channel in the newly arriving television cable company (if I remember rightly it was Viking Media) that was then wiring up Madison. John talked me into going with him to endless meetings in small non-air-conditioned rooms over that sidewalk egg-frying Wisconsin summer. In the end, we were charted by the City of Madison and contracted with the cable company as the Madison Community Access Center - Cable Channel 4. The first show we taped was with a heart specialist doctor. The second show we taped was the television version of our little radio book review show.

I still remember that first television production. I hosted. We had one black/white television camera. We had one chair. We also had one guest. I introduced the book review program. Then a huge poster board sign was held by hand directly in front of the camera lens. I jumped up out of the one chair we had. Our guest sat down in it. Then I proceeded to interview him while standing next to the camera. When we were ready to wrap, the poster board sign went back up in front of the camera lens. The guest got up. I sat down. The poster board sign was whipped away. And I said farewell to the viewing audience.

The whole affair was the very definition of amateur - but we were all thrilled to enter this new medium of public access television and spread the word about books.

That show became "Bookwatch" and ran from 1978 to 2003 with me as its host. Our crew were always volunteers who donated their time for a sheer love of the cause. And the studio quality of our productions would match and occasionally surpass what PBS was doing.

Because of health problems slowing me down I finally had to retire after almost three decades from the television part of our Midwest Book Review operation in January 2003. But the show didn't disappear from the air for another 8 months or so. My producer/director had such a large backlog of old shows that he ran them in our regular Wednesday night time slot on WYOU-TV (which emerged in the early 1980s out of that original MCAC group) until finally the archives were exhausted.

In 1980 my job as a Developmental Disabilities Coordinator (a glorified kind of school social worker) for the Broadhead School District was terminated through lack of funding. Ronald Reagan had been elected president and one of the things he did in collusion with a conservative congress was to gut the money devoted to special education. Another program funding that was gutted had to do with Federal money for public library systems.

As a social worker I saw the writing on the wall for social services spending for the next few years. So I took my 30 hour a week "hobby" as a book reviewer and turned it into a full time profession. John Ohliger and I parted company over that. He was an altruist and a social reformer who felt that his little experiment should remain as band of local Madison community part-timers who were in it for the honor of it all. I wanted to go national, launch a library newsletter, expand out onto the internet, and be able to support myself.

I was primarily responsible for the necessary grunt work (read office work) that kept the wheels turning and the pump priming. Three weeks after I left his little book review operation it collapsed because no one wanted to take over the hard work of writing letters, sending out tear sheets, following-up review assignments, emptying the trash, manning the phone, etc.

It was sort of like the story of Henny Penny who easily found all manner of animal friends to eat her bread - but none to help her plant it, weed it, harvest the grain, prepare the dough, or even bake the loaf.

Everyone like the idea of free books (you got to keep the book you reviewed) but nobody wanted to do the day-to-day grind that insured there would be free books to hand out for review.

I borrowed $1000 from my father-in-law to buy letterhead stationary, a computer, and some postage - and never looked back.

Over the years John and I would come across one another. Madison is that kind of community. He was constantly involved in one or another group, issue, cause, or experiment. He hung out with the likes of Noam Chomsky and was always up for this or that demonstration or movement for social justice.

I always acknowledged my debt to John as my mentor and the man who made my subsequent career as a book reviewer and as the editor-in-chief of a multi-media book review operation possible.

The late John Ohliger (he died some years ago at the age of 77) was a dramatic and lasting influence on my life and career as a book reviewer and on the Midwest Book Review.

Smallwood: It was good to see that self-published authors are not turned away and you give priority consideration to small presses as well as the academic and that it is possible to have a book reviewed. There are so many resources on your web under Writing and Publishing. Also Reader Resources! Also a search option and site map for The Midwest Book Review. How do you keep up with all of these?

Jim Cox: What you see now on the Midwest Book Review is the cumulative work of more than 40 years. At the current age of 76 I work in my little office 3 to 4 hours a day, seven days a week. When I get an idea or write something that I think would be of value to authors, publishers, librarians, book publicists, and/or the general reading public I pass it along to my daughter (who is the web master and Managing Editor of our book review operation) to get it up on our web site. The same applies to discoveries I make out on the web, as well as items of interest and relevance that other people bring to my attention. So our web site is a constantly expanding repository of useful information and resources specific to the writing, publishing, and marketing of books.

Smallwood: Besides helping publishers and writers, please tell readers about how you make your reviews available to U.S. and Canadian libraries?

Jim Cox: We have two monthly contracts with companies that maintain book review databases for libraries and library systems.

One of them is the Gale Cengage Learning's 'Book Review Index'. Here are some links that describe and explain what that is:

https://assets.cengage.com/pdf/fs_BRI-online.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Review-Index-2018-Subscription/dp/1410328120

https://www.gale.com/c/book-review-index-plus

The other one is CLCD Enterprise and has a book review database exclusive to children's books preschool through young adult, fiction and non-fiction. Here is a link to them:

http://www.clcd.com

In addition, we have library mailing lists for hundreds of community, academic, government, and corporate libraries for our monthly book review publications including the one specifically called "Library Bookwatch".

Smallwood: What seems the most heavily used links of all your resources offered on your web or the topics you get the most questions?

Jim Cox: The three most clicked on sections of our rather massive web site are:

Advice for Writers and Publishers (an archive of my 'how to' articles) found at:

http://www.midwestbookreview.com/bookbiz/advice/advice.htm

Other Reviewers (a database I created of freelance book reviewers, book review publications, book review web sites and blogs) is at:

http://www.midwestbookreview.com/links/othr_rev.htm

Jim Cox Report (my monthly column of advice, commentary, tips, tricks and techniques for marketing books) is at:

http://www.midwestbookreview.com/bookbiz/jimcox.htm

As for topics, I get asked about pretty much everything and anything that has to the publishing and marketing of books.

For example, just yesterday I got a phone call (asking me what she could do) from an author who used a POD (publish on demand) company who was apparently in continuous violation with respect to their contract.

The day before that I got a phone call asking about copyright law.

It's a rare week that goes by when someone doesn't email me or phone me with a question about some aspect of getting published or getting their books noticed in the highly competitive book business.

Smallwood: What resources do you have for the General Reading Public? Those interested in Children’s Books?

For the general reading public we archive all nine of our monthly book review publications on our website. Additionally, each of them can be directly subscribed to for free just by sending me an email asking to be signed up for one or more of them.

With specific reference to children's books, one of our nine monthly book review publications is the "Children's Bookwatch" for kids books, preschool through young adult, fiction and non-fiction. Here's a direct link to where they are archived on our web site:

http://www.midwestbookreview.com/cbw/index.htm

Smallwood: Midwest Book Review has no advertising, banners. How does it manage? When I have submitted reviews, I’m informed when they are posted which is a great courtesy. Thank you for all you have done for writers! Do you have something new in the works for your amazing website?

Jim Cox: We are primarily funded by two annual foundation grants for the purpose of promoting literacy, library usage, and small press publishing. That's why we accept no advertising or charge for the reviews of published (hardcover or paperback) books.

It's common place for us to receive more good books than we have the reviewer resources to handle them all. So for any book that passes our initial screening but ultimately fails to achieve a review assignment simply because of 'too many books, not enough reviewers' we have a kind of safety net option so that the book can at least be drawn to the attention of librarians, booksellers, and the general reading public subscribers. If that author or publisher has a review from anyone else, and if they obtain that reviewer's permission for us to do, so we will run that review in their behalf and under the reviewer's byline in our monthly book review publication "Reviewer's Bookwatch". There is no charge for this service.

We do have a $50 Reader Fee option for authors or publishers who want a review of a digital (Kindle) book, or a not yet published manuscript, galley, uncorrected proof, pdf file, or ARC (advanced reading copy). But under this option it should be noted that the reader fee goes directly to the authorized and assigned reviewer - not to the Midwest Book Review. What I get out of it for being the 'middle man' in getting the author and reviewer together is that if the author approves of the review then I get to run it in our own monthly book review publications.

As the editor-in-chief of a book review operation the very beginning of this little enterprise, I hit upon two strategies that have proven immensely successful over the decades.

The first was to give priority consideration to self-published and small press published authors because they were a part of the publishing industry that was deliberately neglected by the major book review publications back then – and to a large extent, even now.

The second was to always provide that author or publisher with a copy of the review and a cover letter informing them of all the places we had published or posted our review of their book - back then (and often still now) a practice not routinely done by the Publishers Weekly, library journals, or New York Times Review of Books of today.

So to leave your readers one last thought about the role and mission of the "Midwest Book Review" and its editor-in-chief: Our purpose and goal is to help writers to write better, publishers to publish more profitably, librarians to make more informed considerations for what they should add to their collections, and to bring to the attention of the general reading public worthwhile books that they might otherwise never know about.

 MORE ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Carol Smallwood, based in Michigan, is a prolific poet who also does freelance interviews . This one was originally published by The Bookends Review, an independent arts journal,  in November, 2019. Smallwood's recent book is Patterns: Moments in Time (WordTech Communications, 2019).

MORE ABOUT THE MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW

In addition to running a juggernaut online book review site with resource pages galore, Jim cox also puts out a newsletter that primarily features his own reviews of books related to writing careers, everything from editing to publishing to marketing. He says, "All of the previous issues of the "Jim Cox Report" are archived on the Midwest Book Review website at www.midwestbookreview.com/bookbiz/jimcox.htm. If you'd like to receive the "Jim Cox Report" directly (and for free), just send me an email asking to be signed up for it." You can reach him with your review queries (or requests for his newsletter) at mwbookrevw@aol.com. Other contact information is Jim Cox, Midwest Book Review, 278 Orchard Dr., Oregon, WI, 53575.  Several of his reviews have been featured on this blog, usually submitted by grateful independent authors (see the badge at the left or use the search function on the home page of this blog). 

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

Special thank yous to Carolyn Wilhelm for the badges she makes for participants in this review blog. Tweet with her @wiseowlfactory and find many of her free teacher's aids to promote literacy at Pinterest. 

UK Poet James Sale Reviews American Poets Latest Poetry Book

Chronicles in Passing
Author: Carol Smallwood
Paperback: 102 pages
Publisher: Poetic Matrix Press, 2019
ISBN-10: 1733702539
Available on Amazon

Reviewed by James Sale

Carol Smallwood’s latest collection is full of her wonderful inquisitive and challenging response to the world. I particularly like her strong sense of form, which is evident throughout the collection, especially her use of repetition in her Villanelles, which is masterful as each lines draws out more implications and meanings for the reader. She is what might be termed a space and time poet. In other words, she is sensuously aware of her immediate topical environment, whether that be the shops or stores open nearby; or the flowers that are growing in the woods. At the same time, she has a wonderful historical imagination as she peels back the layers of history to interrogate Herodotus, Homer and even Gilgamesh; and not just people—the artifacts (for example, the Pyramids) too. 

This gives her collection its enormous range and sweep in terms of forms, times and place. Alongside all of this are her formidable powers of observation, as she notes all that is particular in what she sees. We may remember Thomas Hardy’s famous line: ‘he was a man who used to notice such things’. Well, Carol is a woman who notices such things. From the quotidian to the sublime, there is something here for everyone to resonate with.

 MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

James Sale has had over 40 books published. His poems have appeared in many UK magazines as well as the United States media. He was the winner of The Society of Classical Poets Poetry prize for 2017, and winner of their Prose prize for 2018. Learn more at:
https://www.amazon.com/James-Sale/e/B0034OVZ5I

MORE ABOUT THE BLOGGER, THIS BLOG, AND ITS BENEFITS FOR WRITERS

 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 everything 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.

Note: Participating authors and their publishers may request the social sharing image by Carolyn Wilhelm at no charge.  Please contact the designer at:  cwilhelm (at) thewiseowlfactory (dot) com. Provide the name of the book being reviewed and--if an image or headshot of the author --isn't already part of the badge, include it as an attachment. Wilhelm will send you the badge to use in your own Internet marketing. Give Wilhelm the link to this post, too.

#TheNewBookReview #TheFrugalBookPromoter #CarolynHowardJohnson #GreatBookReviews #GettingGreatBookReviews #HowToDoItFrugally #SharingwithWriters

Professor Emeritus of English Reviews Carol Smallwood's "Visits"

Title:  Visits and Other Passages

Author: Carol Smallwood. Georgetown, Kentucky

Publisher: Finishing Line Press, 

Copyright: 2019, 134 pages

$18.99

Available on Amazon

REVIEWED BY RONALD PRIMEAU

         In her latest of over sixty books, the prolific Carol Smallwood serves up a feast of genres in a hybrid of fiction, poetry, essays, letters, and other vignettes that exemplify her career-long mastery of exquisite close observation. These fresh and widely varied selections play like a documentary film about visits and revisitings, the feelings of loss and passage, and the ways we can either miss totally or experience more fully the process of living as it unfolds. Smallwood—always a master of character—sends her narrators on simple quests that will change the way we see everything and introduces us to an array of fascinating folks who drop by for visits that we don’t want to end.

    Like most of her collections, Smallwood’s latest is almost always about the creative process itself as we live it in our everyday experiences and try to capture it in writing and reading. In an interview four years ago, Smallwood suggested that “writers do most of their work when not actually writing; thinking is where it boils. The subconscious is the mother of all.” In fact, the most crucial times in her way of writing occur when she does not appear to be writing at all.  Ideas come while daydreaming or washing dishes and then need “brooding time” to “mull over” what she calls “the incubating bits” which “appear to have no connection until when one is at last ready, the seemingly loose ends can be fit together” (“Arriving at the Aha Moment,” 75-76). The mulling over time also forges the connections between the actual process of writing and the rigors of paying attention to details we generally overlook. In her Introduction Smallwood quotes Heraclitus (“We are estranged from that with which we are most familiar”) and sets out to reconnect herself and readers to the passages and visits we live through every day. Enter writers who “see things with fresh eyes (“Perspective” 46)  and give readers a chance to recover from the self-induced blindness of familiarity: “What we see in everyday life is often limited from seeing it so often: people become part of the furniture.” Hence we need the aesthetic sensibility that defamiliarizes what would otherwise never get beyond mere ordinariness to “what is there just beyond reach” “Sleep,” 33).

    Smallwood’s defamiliarization includes works that take a closer look at what is easily missed—concentrating on the passages we encounter and the visits and revisitings that show how we participate in community. Close ups include a fly eating a morsel of fruitcake near her keyboard, deliberations about how to handle mounds in the lawn, members of a spice-shelf brigade standing for military formation, a tea party with a treasured vintage doll, looking at clocks for more than the time, and the art of folding napkins like J. Alfred Prufrock would do it.  The most notable visits to include the dentist, Aunt Heidi’s, the supermarket, and the library; visits from feature friend Polly and an unsuspecting Avon Lady who never knew what hit her.  The “revisiting” poems include significant discussions of memory and the spirit of place.  Other selections pause over a brief and fascinating history of libraries, the shifting of continents, thoughts on the evolution of cornfields, and a show-stopping recollection of her Uncle Walt’s funeral.  The collection is rounded out by a series of short essays on various authors and other subjects.  While interesting in themselves, some short discursive and less illusive reflections don’t always find their right place alongside the other more successful pieces.

    In her Foreword to this volume, which she calls a travel narrative, Su Epstein identifies what is “comfortingly familiar, fascinatingly foreign, and intellectually thought provoking” as “a life lived” sneaks out from behind the narrator’s magnifying glass.  In “One December Day,’ a maestro fly walks to the podium for the volume’s overture as it nibbles “ fruitcake with an occasional kick of the leg.”  More close ups come into view as the narrator struggles to address the problem of mounds taking over her lawn.  Rejecting outright killing, she decides on sonic rockets that would trigger swift and thorough evacuation.  This plan too is vetoed by “dreams of families forsaking homes” to become “the underground homeless,” and in the end profoundly mundane activities are left to unfold: “Don’t let your molehills become mountains” (“Mounds Keep Appearing,” 10). The villanelle “The Last Doll” introduces us to a long-haired beauty who sits with two other Christmas presents, ruling over them perhaps because “she’s not been held as often for validation” (“The Last Doll,” 32).  Soon we see Prufrock folding napkins in fast food restaurants, pause at a three-month cancer check-up where we endure “the smile for the aged,” and find ourselves reading a letter to God exploring why we keep on thinking “everything revolves around” us and go on to “kill each other especially in your name.”  And then there is the unforgettable spice shelf in every store where those iconic jars “stand at attention facing you always on parade.”  Again all around us where so much is too familiar to see, “there’s tales worth knowing” if we “just look” (“There’s Much to See,” 45).

    Just as these altered perspectives defamiliarize what would otherwise be lost in narcoleptic ordinariness, many of the varied genres in this volume infuse vibrance into ordinary visits that make up much of daily life.  In Smallwood’s hands, a visit from the Avon Lady is whimsical and poignant.  This visitor shares not only products and calendars but updates on her grandchildren, her sister who “still doesn’t know her place” at the age of 45, and a battery of questions intended to “welcome” new customers to the neighborhood. As an extension of the passage motif of moving away from one’s home and into a new neighborhood, “Polly’s Visit” brings an assault of unpleasantries from  someone who tries to stop the passage of moving on from divorce, poverty, and the death of a spouse. Some of the best selections in the volume about passages are portraits of those jealous of others who are moving on. “Lunch at Aunt Heidi’s” is another prickly trip down memory lane as the narrator fends off advice about battle fatigued returning veterans, Heidi’s life with Uncle Walt, and polite exchanges about the benefits and destructiveness of religion. When the narrator shares stories of a Vietnam Vet scarred for life. Heidi advises that he “drink prune juice for iron and pray.” Even a trip to the dentist is grist for Smallwood.  “Give me all the shots you can,” she says to “the masked man” who looks like Zorro or the Lone Ranger and dispenses pain medication like candy.

    Return visits provide additional layers of passage enabling a measure of not only change but of how well memory holds up against inevitable change.  Returning to college after retirement, the narrator takes note of changes but revels in the “freedom intoxicating” of new ideas in class discussions. Feeling empowered by this trip back home, she quotes Hemingway: “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life. It stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast” (“Hallways”). For Smallwood, passages require reciprocity. Her narrators take stock of the moving forward that is central to relocation and growth itself even as they go back in time to places they have left on trips where “memories of when I’d been there competed with each other” (“Revisiting, 52).  Repeatedly in these selections she learns the lessons of what D.H. Lawrence called “the spirit of place.”  Living through and coming to understand passages requires, of course, almost constant change—whether in physical spaces, concepts or movements, the evolving meanings of words, or the growth spurts and almost imperceptible deterioration of aging itself.  Smallwood’s Epilogue is called “passage” where the evanescence of summer ice testifies to both “the pleasure of the moment” and the inevitable passage of time.  Cubes turn round and swirl into miniature rings: “Evaporation could be measured/ if there were days enough.”

    Inviting readers into its variety of places and perspectives, Visits and Other Passages successfully defamiliarizes ordinary events so we can reconnect with the lives we are experiencing. Clocks reveal more than the time of day. Napkins in fast food restaurants and spices on grocery shelves have stories to share. Smallwood’s poems, stories and vignettes are rooted in the two-fold belief that “we are usually too much a part of our setting to be very conscious of it” (“Location and Character”) and that creative estrangement from what has gotten encrusted in ordinariness can be learned.  For readers of this book, dentists’ waiting rooms will never again be the same. Wonder may be restored once more to corn fields, supermarkets, libraries, and front porches. Smallwood’s defamiliarization moves forward strikingly as she attends to so much that is generally overlooked. A postcard from a funeral director urging her to “PLAN AHEAD WITH PIZZA” is read carefully on its way to the wastebasket: “It was good it was sent to RESIDENT--/it discouraged being selected as a/prime candidate for the Grim Reaper” (44). There’s the Avon lady’s hair that “looks just like the wig called ‘Caesar’s Wife’ in a catalog”(1), colorful puzzles on placemats at Wendy’s” (12), and the oft overlooked spiders whose intricate work created the first ever curtains in her new home” (23).

 For most of us perhaps nothing brings more estrangement than death, and in this book perhaps the summative passage bringing everyone together is the formal visitation at Uncle Walt’s funeral. Perhaps the pivotal work in this collection, “Preparing for the Service” asks whether we attend funerals to honor the deceased, comfort survivors, or jolt ourselves at least temporarily out of numbing familiarity. Uncle Walt is a significant presence in this volume. He seems a steadying influence who monitors the excess of people around him to the point of telling his overzealous wife “I never know what the hell kind of bugs I’ll find in your cooking” (“24). Even though Uncle Walt has died, our attention is drawn not to him but to the preparations unfolding for his memorial. In the satiric demeanor of the deceased, the speaker remarks on the colors of the Big Boy placemat and eases pain by trying to “float away on whiffs of Belgian Waffles” (29).  Talk of corn relish and the clatter of plates gives way to a waitress who walks “like one of her heels is missing” and reaches under a counter to give “her underwear a quick tug.”  Relatives gather to help with casket and flower selection and wonder what happened to their Uncle’s blood: “Did they just slit his wrist and let it drain like oil from a car?” The narrator provides details on the funeral procession which, once moving, felt like being “in a car wash.”

    Readers used to poetry collections or volumes where the prose knows if it is fiction or nonfiction might at first be perplexed by the way genre boundaries are transgressed or redrawn this time around. But my bet is that those who come with a spirit of adventure will be rewarded by the irreverence and innovation on almost every page. Visits and Other Passages provides enough threads of a motif that knits up a quest myth, patterns of loss and recovery, and the power of visitation. The language is fresh throughout and constructs mastery of form and characterization. A half dozen or so selections could have been cut, and the editing misses a few too many errors.  The cover design creates simple elegance.


MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Ronald Primeau, Professor Emeritus of English, Central Michigan University and Adjunct Instructor, The University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee


MORE ABOUT REVIEWS AND ACCESS TO 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.

Note: Participating authors and their publishers may request the social sharing image by Carolyn Wilhelm at no charge.  Please contact the designer at:  cwilhelm (at) thewiseowlfactory (dot) com. Provide the name of the book being reviewed and--if an image or headshot of the author --isn't already part of the badge, include it as an attachment. Wilhelm will send you the badge to use in your own Internet marketing. Give Wilhelm the link to this post, too! 

Poet Aline Soules Calls Carol Smallwood's Chapbook a "Universal Collection"

Visits and Passages by Carol Smallwood

Paperback:134 pages; 

Finishing Line Press (January 4, 2019) 

ISBN-10: 1635348005; $18.99

Available on Amazon

Reviewed by Aline Soules originally for B. Lynn Goodwin's WritersAdvice.com

         In Visits and Passages, Carol Smallwood not only writes in multiple formats (short stories, diaries, fantasy, poetry, and others), she offers her explorations of everything from the color pink to a letter to God. All come from the heart of American life. As Roland Barksdale-Hall notes: “Smallwood paints with delicate strokes a splendid cornucopia of lyrical ruminations on family, nature, literature and places.”  

         In her first piece, “A Visit from Caesar’s Wife”, Smallwood writes: “Avon made me feel a part of things: it was as American as McDonald’s, the Fourth of July, or the Reader’s Digest.” This sets the tone of the entire eclectic collection and the evolution of her world.

         In her memoir about a relative, she recalls Christmas in Poland where the table was set with hay under the tablecloth, the common shepherd who was fed in turn by each villager, the swing used by the whole village, and a beautiful brook where the author waded.  It’s a far cry from a family that grew flax, spun linen thread, and made cloth on a loom to the modern American woman who later writes a piece called Wendy’s where she read the Canterbury Tales over chili, a baked potato, and a senior Diet Pepsi, and observed tabloid headlines like “3500-Year-Old Mummy Gives Birth.” A woman who observes the humanity around her, wondering if a young teenage couple in line will turn into another couple with kids at a back table.

         Interspersed among the prose are poems of memoir and reflection. The poem, “A Lace Piece,” ponders the fragile beauty of lace, its history, its universality, its grace. In “Grandmother Said,” she mixes a memoir of her grandmother with the universality of sewing with needle and thread, possessions her grandmother obviously valued greatly as social objects that addressed loneliness. As Su Epstein notes: “A picture may paint a thousand words, but Carol Smallwood’s words paint a million images.” Mary Langer Thompson calls Smallwood “a keen observer collecting fragments that make up a life.”

        The author raises questions: “What is our definition of home?” she asks in “Home.” In “A Letter to God, Revised,” she asks, “Why such an odd world of 71% water, a round planet rotating around a boiling star with a moon also held by gravity?” She can question all she wants, but she still has to form an opinion. In her “Dear Diary” section, she lists essay topics for class, which are often questions in another form, for example, “The Importance (or Lack Thereof) of Knowing Why the Sky is Blue.”

  

        The author ends the collection with an epilogue, a poem called “Passage,” which she starts with “summer ice, pleasure of the moment: / proof of time’s passage” and ends with “evaporation could be measured / if there were days enough—/but ice has many forms.”  The momentary nature of time and the multiplicity of forms, whether of ice or passages, makes this a universal collection.

MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Aline Soules, is the author of:

 "Evening Sun: a Widow's Journey" (chapbook), https://amzn.to/2OTFXVE and

"Meditation on Woman," https://amzn.to/2CHEhst. 

Lean more about her on her blog a http://alinesoules.com/blog or at Twitter (@aline_elisabeth). Her work has appeared in such publications as Literature of the Expanding Frontier, Kenyon Review, Houston Literary Review, and Poetry Midwest.

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG AND GETTING REVIEWS AND ANOTHER FREEBIE

 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.

Note: Participating authors and their publishers may request the social sharing image by Carolyn Wilhelm at no charge.  Please contact the designer at:  cwilhelm (at) thewiseowlfactory (dot) com. Provide the name of the book being reviewed and--if an image or headshot of the author --isn't already part of the badge, include it as an attachment. Wilhelm will send you the badge to use in your own Internet marketing. Give Wilhelm the link to this post, too! 

Professor Emeritus Reviews Smallwood's "In the Measuring"

 Title:  In the Measuring
Author: Carol Smallwood
Publisher:  Shanti Arts, 2018.  Brunswick, Maine:
116 pages, $14.95, paperback.
Available on Amazon

Reviewed by Ronald Prime originally for his Ragazine

It is often said that we cannot measure what is real, what actually counts or matters most. In The Measuring demonstrates that in the right hands we can do all that and more. For Carol Smallwood, we do not find meaning already made; rather, in the activities of our everyday lives we make meaning in ways that affect how we learn, store, remember, and pass on the truths of our experiences.

This collection of seventy-seven poems is packed with insights set in motion by an epigraph from Emily Dickinson: “The truth must dazzle gradually/ Or every man be blind.”  Smallwood is not the first to insist on this “dazzle,” but she is especially subtle in depicting the feel of the crucial gradualness. In so many different ways these poems reveal the gradation of steady and deliberate measurements in the ordinariness of our daily lives.  How measuring opens us up to mystery is the book’s organizing motif. “Proof of Transitory” looks at fading and blossoming, dusty shelves and unfulfilled resolve, and how we learn to negotiate the fine line between fading and progressing.  From the chemical reactions of making and breaking bread to the sifting through a myriad of dishwashing liquids on a grocery shelf, we face choices in every moment.  Some measurements seek us out: the feel of a waiting room after a diagnosis, the funeral-planning postcard that arrives “to resident” and thereby sidesteps the more threatening personal surveillance from the grim reaper. We also experience the information storage system woven into making  quilts, a driver in a car wash who is content to settle into “the tracks of those who went before,” measurements so subtle that we feel evaporation and the melting of ice.

Smallwood‘s presentation follows six sections with a precision that is never repetitive or overly rapid. A Prelude suggests that however we arrive at truth, there will always still be mystery in the measuring. “The Domestic” stirs  deeper into the ordinariness of rain and leaves, cooking and sewing, light pouring through a window to create shades of gray, efforts to “prove” what we assume we know for sure, discovering that the frustrating efforts to prove something only intensify the thirst for proof. “Sea Change” locates meaning in a shrug or a frown, takes a “Brief Look” at the sublimity of what is ordinary, finds Prufrock measuring his life with cups from fast food restaurants, and catches the subtlest signals missed by all except the most astute “sorters and watchers.” In the brilliant “Shopping Sestina Sans Meter” a shopper envisions everything in a supermarket from her imagined funeral procession at the dairy counter and turkeys in hiking boots, to  the perfect biscuits made by the Clabber Girl—all leading to yet another question of measuring: “How much knowing is good for us to know?”

Emily Dickinson (“Tell all the truth but tell it slant’) again provides the title for section four, “Slant,” which reminds readers that measurements must be somewhat circuitous as well as slow and deliberate to create meaning about time, the moon, clocks, tile floors, and the man who calms his wife’s worries about how she can ever list all her ailments. “You’re just supposed to circle things” he assures her.To be gradual, sometimes the dazzling must wander into productive distraction where the profundity of a philosophy class is interrupted by a train whistle that carries “Augustine, Wittgenstein, and the professor neatly away” (91).

Though most often thought of in cooking or construction and generally seen as an accumulation, in Smallwood’s steady hands, measuring is also an acceptance of necessary losses. Symbols of aging are big business with large print and assistive devices signaling a compromised independence (“Arrival, 59”). “Catching On” suggests that felt experience can be squashed by too much “talking out” and that measuring devices—scientific and otherwise—are always “still figuring out what to do with” the ubiquitous mysteries of every day. Again the shopping sestina surveys a restaurant grouping of “always the same men on the same stools” counting out the minutes they have left in talk firmly planted in shoes with “holes that gave them personality” (62).  The men reflect back on their lives and ask about the unknowables where even the sage “Know thyself can be a Medusa turn-to-stone blow” burdened with too much knowing (70).

Spend rewarding time with this book and you will find yourself discovering much that is new about what you thought you already had firmly in hand. “In Passing” concludes the volume with some dozen poems that measure “differences in what seems the same” (95), watches closely the processes unfolding in “a Happy Meal Cup of melting ice” (97), transports a bug from the post office floor to nurturing crumbs and to live again in the window plants of home. An “epilogue” creates an apt coda where we live and measure our lives in the halfway between the deepest oceans and the highest mountains.

Smallwood asks many times what all the measuring does for us anyway. Does it find explanations that are already there or create meanings through the often painstakingly slow dazzle of language? Is it all about keeping track of things, deciding how to store and share what we learn, and then struggling with uncertainty? The slow progression of gradations is discovery as well as an acceptance of loss. Blossoming is best in “the struggle of dandelions in sidewalk cracks” that brings more hope than “crowds of daffodils” (55). Here the literary allusions leap beyond Dickinson, calling upon Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality” and suggesting the title of Alice Walker’s very early book Revolutionary Petunias that push their way through inner-city cement.  We hail the annual coming of spring with its rite of passage but repress bugs and lawn mowing.  It’s all about loss, the measuring—not all accumulation as we hope—but learning to let go and accept diminishment.

Understanding the processes of measuring teaches being at peace with loss.  “Ephemera,” from the Greek meaning “living a day” flashes the fast dance of nurturing in which we ignite, mature, and die in an instant. In a measured way, aging is an arrival recognized when people hold doors and smile, when catalogs flood the mailbox, when “large numbered clocks and colorful canes” are offered in the hopes of prolonging independence (59). Yet another measuring of letting go is “A Multigated Acquisition” exploring a test of whether a heart is “strong enough for chemo” (54.) Other speakers reflect on whether—after a hysterectomy--one’s remains are packaged “in a paper sack like the gizzard, heart, liver, neck inside a roasting chicken” (62) and pursue the unanswerables when even “Know Thyself can be a Medusa turn-to-stone blow” where the knowing might not turn out to be knowing at all (70). Such questions might ordinarily be the province of the philosophers, but in this book they are better explored in the aisles of a grocery store, sitting in the light of a window sorting pieces for a quilt, while waiting for a dental hygienist, in every ordinary ritualized passage through changing seasons—all ways of measuring the extraordinary in ordinary places and moments to “explain the familiar so that I might understand” (102).

From section to section and within each poem, we are treated to intricate patterns of repetition found in everyday experiences. Some are like the musical refrains of the oral tradition or the contrapuntal wizardry of Bach; others use variations and inversions to capture multiple perspectives or introduce the rhythms of the blues. Smallwood is a master of forms whether it is villanelles floating variations that coalesce in a concluding couplet, the expected but still surprising repeated endwords of her sestinas, or lines sewed together seamlessly through successive stanzas where beginnings and conclusions meet in pantoums. The masterful wedding of mundane experiences and heightened awareness is found in “A Kroger Villanelle,” where a regal-feeling shopper passes in review objects on shelves “lined at attention,” her wobbling crown cautioning deliberateness in her step. As the shopping cart swerves through each aisle six times “she nodded and smiled” (110).

Live with this book for a while, quietly and thoughtfully, and you will be dazzled by seeing things as if for the first time. It will come over you, for example, that so much of what we assume has been decided opens up again because of “mystery in the measuring” (“One Way,” 25). You will notice the worn-out elastic, the “almost invisible 3-corner tear,” and how a white apron “must’ve gotten untied” in “Raggedy Ann” (41). Of course we like measurements assumed to be exact and undisputable, sometimes even declared true by definition. But do we truly know for sure what day we are living in with the help of a calendar, a dated email message, when the garbage is picked up, or an electronic sign on a bank? And how do we determine which metric might have gotten it wrong or—when they conflict, how to decide on accuracy (“Proof,”44)? Quilt making is all about measuring: selecting, cutting, matching, planning for counterpoint, storing memories. Can the drive to measure go too far; do quilts have to have purpose and be made to live with certain people, or after we are gone will their final measurement be “ending up in the night pyre” (“Sewing by Day,” 46). As part of elevator talk about how busy we all are, a  know what is what or the meaning of either “is” (“What Does it Mean,”51). Do we quantify maybe overmuch sometimes as when a customer wonders “how many sperms died not reaching the egg” that formed the cashier who was a “Fred Astaire with bills” (“Sorters and Watchers” 69).  All the measuring in the world brings us back to a wholeness; we avoid overreliance on measured analysis by learning that “it’s wise to detect differences in what seems the same” (Seeing the Whole.” 95).

In the Measuring will remind you of the strengths and limitations of every device we use to capture lived experience. Smallwood is at home in a wide variety of forms and styles. She is meticulous about modifying forms for special uses, and matches them unobtrusively to content they were made for. The organization of the book will serve as a guide but never get in the way or overcomplicate. Cover and interior design by Shanti Arts Designs are gorgeous reminders of the process explored everywhere in the book. Layout, design, font, and spacing are pleasing, with plenty of white space for readers who annotate as they read. In a few places really short poems positioned at the top of a page might seem abrupt to some. I would have liked a few more glimpses of the author’s ways of composing or motivations for the project in an overly short but otherwise effective Introduction. The Foreword by Foster Neill, founder of The Michigan Poet, welcomes us to ways of enjoying the surprises in the wisdom a keen poet has created for us.

MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Ronald Primeau is Professor of English Emeritus at Central Michigan University.

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG AND GETTING REVIEWS AND ANOTHER FREEBIE

 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 everything 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.

Note: Participating authors and their publishers may request the social sharing image by Carolyn Wilhelm at no charge.  Please contact the designer at:  cwilhelm (at) thewiseowlfactory (dot) com. Provide the name of the book being reviewed and--if an image or headshot of the author --isn't already part of the badge, include it as an attachment. Wilhelm will send you the badge to use in your own Internet marketing. Give Wilhelm the link to this post, too!