Böcker av Mary Meriam

Amy Lowell's contemporaries, writing at a time when lesbians were invisible, described her as an old maid. But as Lillian Faderman argues, Lowell wrote "some of the most remarkable, barely encoded, lesbian poems since Sappho," while living in a Boston marriage with her muse, Ada Dwyer Russell. Lady of the Moon offers a combination of three voices on the Boston marriage of Amy Lowell and Ada Dwyer Russell. The first part contains a selection of Lowell's love poems to Ada. The second part contains a scholarly essay by Lillian Faderman that analyzes these poems in relation to Lowell's life. The third part contains a 27-sonnet sequence by Mary Meriam which draws from the first two parts and supports the story with imaginative details. In this jewel of a volume, a great love is reanimated. Imagist Amy Lowell's love poems to actress Ada Russell, pioneering lesbian-feminist scholar Lillian Faderman's landmark essay on Lowell and Russell, and contemporary poet Mary Meriam's heartfelt sonnet sequence speaking to Russell in Lowell's voice, combine to create a remarkable erotic and poetic event. Like Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Lowell and Russell had a great creative partnership that made an indelible mark on literary and lesbian history. Lowell called her "tense and urgent love" for Russell an "amethyst garden;" today's readers will find gems of all colors in Lady of the Moon.-Lisa L. Moore, author of Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes (Lambda Literary Award, 2012), and Professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies, The University of Texas at Austin What an erotic trinity! Amy Lowell's fiery poems about Ada Dwyer Russell; Lillian Faderman's illuminating essay about the couple and their "Boston marriage"; and Mary Meriam's contemporary poems in Lowell's lustful voice. Forget "Amygism" and "Patterns" with this brilliantly edited selection of works by and about Amy Lowell, Mary Meriam restores Lowell to her rightful status as a groundbreaking feminist poet.-Julie Kane, National Poetry Series winner and recent Louisiana Poet Laureate Mary Meriam writes as Amy Lowell and her beloved Ada. She imagines, in a variety of sonnet forms, the richness that Lowell removed from her own love poems. While making use of Lowell's language, the sonnets' insistence on the psychological fullness of the two women and their relationship unsettles the century-old sounds so that a sense of quaint mimicry falls quickly by the wayside. The organization of the volume's three parts is astute, though, finally, these sonnets cohere into a whole of their own.-Marcia Karp, poet and translator

* Conjuring My Leafy Muse (Book 2) nominated for 2015 Poets' Prize * Girlie Calendar (Book 3) selected for 2016 ALA Over the Rainbow List "A poet can survive anything but a misprint," wrote Oscar Wilde, flippantly intimating that poets are made half-mad by a world of trouble. One rootless poet lost in trouble, Mary Meriam, found an anchor in The Lillian Trilogy, which combines in one volume her three recently published poetry collections: Word Hot, Conjuring My Leafy Muse, and Girlie Calendar. The poems use a wide variety of poetic forms to capture and command relentless buckets of loss and heartache, revealing the untold horrors of her life and turning them around in a magnificent blossoming of longing, lust, sadness, and wit. This is very strong, fearless stuff, beautiful.-Rhina P. Espaillat Mary Meriam is a rare and original poet. This is a dazzling book, a fusion of anguish and wit and song, written in clear and compelling language. I love the wildness, the inventiveness, the always surprising but accurate metaphors. She writes of real things, real people, always musically. She uses Mother Goose rhythms and rhymes or echoes of Sapphic meters or settings as grim as any of the Grimm Brothers' tales, to tell searing truths that move, frighten, and delight one with the skill of their telling.-Naomi Replansky Mary Meriam is a frightening poet, a frighteningly good poet. The intensity of her writing will frighten you, but also her technical skill. She can put a chill into the most common rhyme. The poems speak like "a gust of gorgeous / thundering swallows." She identifies her models as Christina Rossetti and Charlotte Mew, whose Goblin Market and "Farmer's Bride" rightfully haunt the collection. But her real soulmate is Thomas Lovell Beddoes, the ultimate poet of the queer and scary whose masterpiece, Death's Jest Book, was left appropriately unfinished. She may ask us to "unspook" her dreams, but we won't succeed. The uncanny is too engrained in her sensibility. All we can ask is that she continue to keep writing.-David Bergman Mary Meriam is a poet who takes risks, by which I don't mean what you think I mean. There's nothing risky about breaking rules that haven't been in effect since 1880. I'm talking about the modern rules, the new respectability, the advice given in poetry workshops by legions of successful poets whom no one reads. Mary doesn't give a shit about Pound's "don'ts," she's too busy writing fierce, gorgeous poems about love and pain. She's a true rebel, in all her heartfelt, singsong, vulnerable, girly glory.-Rose Kelleher Mary Meriam is an accomplished technician and imaginative Mother Goose artist, who like Mother Goose (my favorite collection in the world), is almost always serious, even tragic, along with fun. I am floored by poems with lines like the opening of "I Learn Today My Mother Lied" "Not one drop of Jewish blood / in me or you!" my mother cried, / as if she had a drop to hide... We are lucky to have her dissident voice.-Willis Barnstone Mary Meriam's formalist poems are compressed bliss, dreamlike couplets and velvet quatrains honed to a fabric delightfully carnal. Like two of her touchstones, Frost and Bishop, her masterful metrics are handmaidens to her message at play in the fields of passion, loss, and redemption.-J. Patrick Lewis This is my kind of a poet. 'She speaks, ' as Larkin said of the beautiful and wistful and utterly different Stevie Smith, 'with the authority of sadness.' She also speaks in the language of tradition. She uses old forms fiercely. She is rather a fierce poet. Oh, and a Lesbian. You can't ignore that. But what does she do? Do with words. Magic. Above all, Mary Meriam is a magic poet and if that is what you want (as I do) this is a book for you.-John Whitworth

* Selected for the 2016 American Library Association Over the Rainbow List Song is mysterious. It seems to arise when the separation between sophistication and simplicity has been submerged in deep water. Song is that ringing-out of the wrung heart whereby what is personal becomes what is universal-and so it is fitting that all the archetypal seasons in Mary Meriam's Girlie Calendar have their own specific songs to share, their own ardent delights. Yet these delights are hard-fought, because song is also that inspiring moment of transcendence so in evidence in the courage of these lines: "A knife of pain may bend you over double, / but hover, swing from your trapeze, breathe." Mary Meriam's songs are thus both breath-taking and breath-giving. Indeed, there is a rigor of architecture in these poems, as well as in the construction of the book as a whole, that is exacting, deliberate, astonishingly disciplined-and yet surrendering to such songs, as a reader, seems as natural as breathing. "Let steel become a sigh," she sings to herself in her month of August. Those five words rise and fall as an exquisitely fragile monument to all song. I would even go so far as to say that they are a powerful medicine for what ails us.-R. Nemo Hill, Author of When Men Bow Down and Publisher of EXOT Books

*Selected for the Best Books List for June 2014 by Grace Cavalieri of the Washington Independent Review of Books The editor travelled for several decades throughout the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, and Australia (with side trips to Finland, France, and Greece) to collect the rarest, most beautiful, most irresistible contemporary sonnets. The trip was fruitful. Among many colorful characters, the editor found Old Tom in the garden, a bull rider from the American West, God's secretary in His Office, the magician's bashful daughter, and Aunt Mim and Uncle Jimmy at the Rehab Lounge. Published by Headmistress Press on March 31, 2014, Irresistible Sonnets consists of 71 sonnets by 71 living poets. There are city poets, country poets, older poets, younger poets, 43 women poets, 28 men poets, rising poets, and poets laureate. Of requiems, revivals, and chores, death and desire, remembrance and music, 'sapphire dawns' and 'dew-sharp gardens, ' lingering language-every poem in this collection sings words in new ways. Some tell stories with beginnings and endings lost in thought; grand dreams, simple dreams, the prosaic becomes profound. In this book of poetry, of sonnets, a single poetic shape is reshaped by diverse modern poets who, as Mary Meriam states in her Preface, create 'an intimate dance between poet and form.' This is a treasure that you must allow to ravish you slowly.-Robin Williams, Author of Sweet Swan of Avon: Did a Woman Write Shakespeare? The sonnet has seen a resurgence in recent years, and with that resurgence we have gotten anthologies of the things, to the point that the bar for a new multi-author collection of sonnets is pretty damn high. "Irresistible Sonnets"? As in "sonnets that one cannot resist, even with... I dunno... Jedi Mind Tricks or some such"? Really? Well, now that you mention it.... Mary Meriam of Headmistress Press (fantastic name!) has created a varied anthology with many names I knew and others I'm glad I know now. Yet as a book, despite the multitude of styles herein and indeed through their combination, Irresistible Sonnets has a personality, at times whimsical, at times serious, but always passionate. You should get this book. I would if I were you.-Quincy R. Lehr, poet, critic, and general man-about-town The sonnet embodies the "turn" (volta) from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and today still offers us a turn towards introspection, interior dialogue and contemplation. Its fourteen lines provide the poet with a nutshell of infinite space: challenging, compact, yet liberating-even surprising-with its possibilities of multifaceted form. This stunning collection of "Irresistible Sonnets", like a handful of snowflakes, contains no two alike. They continue a tradition initiated by Petrarch, Dante and Sidney-a dialogue between self and other self-in which much more remains to be said.-Rayne Allinson, Author of A Monarchy of Letters: Royal Correspondence and English Diplomacy in the Reign of Elizabeth I Mary Meriam's anthology reminds us of the semantic and sonic miracles that can happen in the compressed room of the sonnet. From the elevated diction of Anne Stevenson's moving elegy "The Circle" and Anne Drysdale's humorously elegant portrait of "A Cat in the Garden" to intimate, colloquial portraits such as Jason Lee Brown's "Chores with my Father" and Suzanne J. Doyle's "Demon Rum," Meriam has assembled a collection of arresting, frequently astonishing poems that prove the sonnet is still alive and well, emotionally urgent, linguistically inventive, and, just as the title promises, irresistible.-Joy Ladin, American Poet

Any art from a marginalized group is first dismissed as necessarily trivial or lesser because it doesn't value the same ideals as the mainstream. It is only through iteration and resilience that the markers used to keep us out become the elements for which we are prized. That's why a journal devoted to lesbian poetry and art is vital: it rejects tokenism; it makes visible the common themes between otherwise dissimilar writers and artists; and, most importantly, it shows the range and prowess of those who would otherwise be limited to one feature of their work. -Eloise Stonborough, on Lavender Review at Ms. Lavender Review, born on Gay Pride Day, 2010, is an international, biannual e-zine dedicated to poetry and art by, about, and for lesbians, including whatever might appeal to a lesbian readership. This is Lavender Review's first foray into print, and represents a selection of poems from the first five years. The 48 contributors to this anthology include renowned and new lesbian poets; translations of Marina Tsvetaeva, Renée Vivien, and Sappho; some poems from the past by Amy Lowell, Charlotte Mew, Sara Teasdale, and others; and a few lesbian-friendly poems by straight and gay poets. ABOUT THE EDITORPoet Mary Meriam is the founder of Lavender Review, co-founder of Headmistress Press, editor of Irresistible Sonnets, and author of The Countess of Flatbroke, The Poet's Zodiac, and The Lillian Trilogy (Word Hot, Conjuring My Leafy Muse, and Girlie Calendar). She contributes essays, reviews, and interviews to Ms. Magazine Blog and The Gay & Lesbian Review. ABOUT THE PUBLISHERHeadmistress Press is an independent publisher of books of poetry by lesbians. As a small press, Headmistress is dedicated to honoring lesbian existence, discovering a range of lesbian voices, and promoting lesbian representation in the arts.

This is very strong, fearless stuff, beautiful.- Rhina P. Espaillat

* Nominated for the Poets' Prize Mary Meriam is a rare and original poet. This is a dazzling book, a fusion of anguish and wit and song, written in clear and compelling language. I love the wildness, the inventiveness, the always surprising but accurate metaphors. She writes of real things, real people, always musically. She uses Mother Goose rhythms and rhymes or echoes of Sapphic meters or settings as grim as any of the Grimm Brothers' tales, to tell searing truths that move, frighten, and delight one with the skill of their telling.- Naomi Replansky, Author of The Dangerous World and Collected Poems Mary Meriam is a frightening poet, a frighteningly good poet. The intensity of her writing will frighten you, but also her technical skill. She can put a chill into the most common rhyme. The poems speak like "a gust of gorgeous / thundering swallows." She identifies her models as Christina Rossetti and Charlotte Mew, whose Goblin Market and "Farmer's Bride" rightfully haunt the collection. But her real soulmate is Thomas Lovell Beddoes, the ultimate poet of the queer and scary whose masterpiece, Death's Jest Book, was left appropriately unfinished. She may ask us to "unspook" her dreams, but we won't succeed. The uncanny is too engrained in her sensibility. All we can ask is that she continue to keep writing. - David Bergman, Poetry Editor of The Gay & Lesbian Review Mary Meriam is an accomplished technician and imaginative Mother Goose artist, who like Mother Goose (my favorite collection in the world), is almost always serious, even tragic, along with fun. I am floored by poems with lines like the opening of "I Learn Today My Mother Lied" "Not one drop of Jewish blood / in me or you!" my mother cried, / as if she had a drop to hide... We are lucky to have her dissident voice.>Mary Meriam's new collection is a treasure chest of charm and trouble. Her sonnets, lyrics and chants show the best of the New Formalism, being personal but not ever inaccessibly private, and musical without a touch of pretense. There is life and sweetness in her approach, and reproach and rue as well.- Zachary Bos, Editor of Poetry Northeast Mary Meriam is a poet who takes risks, by which I don't mean what you think I mean. There's nothing risky about breaking rules that haven't been in effect since 1880. I'm talking about the modern rules, the new respectability, the advice given in poetry workshops by legions of successful poets whom no one reads. Mary doesn't give a shit about Pound's "don'ts," she's too busy writing fierce, gorgeous poems about love and pain. She's a true rebel, in all her heartfelt, singsong, vulnerable, girly glory.- Rose Kelleher, Anthony Hecht Prize for Bundle o' Tinder This is my kind of a poet. 'She speaks, ' as Larkin said of the beautiful and wistful and utterly different Stevie Smith, 'with the authority of sadness.' She also speaks in the language of tradition. She uses old forms fiercely. She is rather a fierce poet. Oh, and a Lesbian. You can't ignore that. But what does she do? Do with words. Magic. Above all, Mary Meriam is a magic poet and if that is what you want (as I do) this is a book for you.- John Whitworth, British Poet

In this collection, filled with linguistic surprises and narrative leaps, Meriam upends the charm, ghazal, pantoum and sonnet to deliver poems of extraordinary originality. The erotic and a passionate connection to the natural world inform Meriam's agile, imaginative poems.-Robin Becker, author of The Black Bear Inside MeThe quality of freshness is not strained in Mary Meriam's work. Vision, hearing and form interact in these poems to convey a sense of beauty and purpose. It takes a deft touch to kindle a new wick. How far this poet's candle casts its light in a dark world.-Alfred Corn, author of UnionsThe translucent materials of the natural world that frequent Meriam's ontological homes, owl-call her rich wisdom on the nature of life and existence to return to its queenly throne.-Vi Khi NaoPossessed of a voice both starkly candid and utterly otherworldly, Mary Meriam inhabits the varied forms of these extraordinary poems as naturally as a tree wears its leaves.-Mark McDonnell