Paul Allen’s His Longing (The Small Penis Oratorio) (2005)

Over the next few weeks or months, I will post all my reviews (“Tom’s Celebrations”) that appeared in Redactions: Poetry, Poetics, & Prose (formerly Redactions: Poetry & Poetics) up to and including issue 12. After that, my reviews appeared here (The Line Break) before appearing in the journal. This review first appeared in issue 6/7, which was published circa mid-2006.

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Paul Allen’s His Longing (The Small Penis Oratorio) (FootHills Publishing) opens with “Prologue: Charity” to let us know that the small penis, & the anxieties that come with the small penis, will be used as a bigger metaphor for all of us who have one disturbing abnormality that is difficult to deal with in our daily lives. The life of the small penis will parallel, almost, the life of The Elephant Man.

The book moves into “1. Initial Consultation,” a hilarious (for us to watch) but embarrassing (to experience) situation for the man with the small penis. A situation filled with all the ego-painful moments one could have at a doctor’s office when others learn of the small penis. Best of all this poem doesn’t click shut, it slams shut, but I’ll leave that for you to experience.

The second poem, “2. Air Condition,” brings in the religious aspects that Allen deals with, but more perversely as a porno shop becomes a temple & the passed out man in back, a bum whose “face, a fielder’s glove — that worn in, that burnished – snagging every line drive kissed off that sweet spot,” becomes a priest-like figure providing forgiveness, “the blessing of a curse,” for the small penis.

The seriousness & religiousness of the poems moves into the using of Luther & Jesus as analogs to his condition. (Later we will meet Calvin & an encounter between John & Jesus.)

The movement between the hilarious, jocoserious, & serious pervades throughout, & it is worthy for us who also have anomalies (like a mole on the face or an outie belly button) that consume our thoughts. It’s a book about being cursed, coping with the curse, facing the curse, & overcoming the curse. I leave this book with new confidences in myself & in the poetry of Paul Allen.//

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Allen, Paul. His Longing (The Small Penis Oratorio). Kanona, NY: Foothills Publishing, 2005.//

My June 14th Poetry Reading with Adam A. Wilcox

Happy 30th Anniversary, Writers & Books!!!

Put together a poet/foodie and a poet/oenophile, and what do you get?
A banquet of tastes, textures, and sensory delights for the literary palate.

The Genesee Reading Series, with impresario Wanda Schubmehl, continues to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Writers & Books with a program featuring Tom Holmes and Adam A. Wilcox.

Tom Holmes (that’s me) is the editor of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics. He is also author of After Malagueña (FootHills Publishing, 2005), Negative Time (Pudding House Publications, 2007), Pre-Dew Poems (FootHills Publishing, 2008), Henri, Sophie, & the Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound: Poems Blasted from the Vortex (BlazeVOX Books, 2009), The Oldest Stone in the World (Amsterdam Press, 2011), and Poetry Assignments: The Book (Sage Hill Press, forthcoming). He has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared on Verse Daily and has also appeared in Blue Earth Review, Chiron Review, Crab Creek Review, The Delmarva Review, The G. W. Review, Mississippi Review, Mid-American Review, New Delta Review, New Zoo Poetry Review, Orange Coast Review, Rockhurst Review, San Pedro River Review, Santa Clara Review, South Carolina Review, Sugar House Review, Swarthmore Review, and many other journals that don’t have “Review” in their name. His current poetry book reviews and writing about wine and poetry can be found at his blog, The Line Break: http://thelinebreak.wordpress.com/, which is right here!

Adam A. Wilcox is President and founder of Writ Wilcox, an information design company. Before that, he was a radio producer, curriculum developer, manager of technical documentation, and instructional designer for e-learning, and also ran an entrepreneurial custom-courseware business.

His poetry has appeared in Poetry, The Colorado Review, Cairn, and Folio, among other journals. For eight years, he wrote the “Gut Instincts” food column for Rochester City Newspaper, and currently writes for and edits RochesterFoodNet.com.

He also plays bass for The Dan Eaton Band and leads the Saturday Service Band at First Unitarian Church of Rochester. He lives in Rochester, NY, with his choreographer wife, Anne Harris Wilcox, their three home-schooled children, and their Bernese mountain dog.

The Genesee Reading Series will be held at Writers & Books, located at 740 University Avenue, Rochester, NY 14607, on Tuesday, June 14, 2011, at 7:30 pm. Admission is $3 for members and $6 for the general public.

Download the PDF flier for more information: Holmes Wilcox Genesee Reading Series 6-14-11.

Mark it on you Facebook calendar here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=172684909454121.//

A Different Path Gallery Reading Series: May 2011

On Saturday, May 21 at 7:30 p.m. at A Different Path Gallery (27 Market St., Brockport, NY), John Roche and Kitty Jospé will read their poetry.

Kitty Jospé – Teacher with a passion for languages and the arts. Music and poetry both require a precision in elements of craft applied to the endless possibilities of personality.  This line from her poem, “Rumbled in the Street,” sums up her ars poetica: “I want to land a helicopter – stop the massacre of what it means to be human.” Her book, Cadences, will be available. Proceeds go to Women Helping Girls.

John Roche  earned his PhD from SUNY Buffalo, studying with Robert Creeley and John C. Clarke. His first two full-length poetry collections are Topicalities (2008) and On Conesus (2005), both from FootHills Publishing. His latest book of poems, Road Ghosts, is available from theenk Books. He also edited the collection Uncensored Songs for Sam Abrams (Spuyten Duyvil, 2008), co-edited with Patricia Roth Schwartz an anthology of poetry by inmates at Auburn Prison called Doing Time to Cleanse My Mind (FootHills, 2009), and edited Martha Rittenhouse Treichler’s Black Mountain to Crooked Lake: Poems 1948-2010, with a Memoir of Black Mountain College (FootHills, 2010). Roche is an Associate Professor of English at RIT.

To download a printable post, click Roche Jospé Poetry Reading Poster PDF.

Schedule it on your Facebook calendar by clicking here.//

Three Bad-Ass Poets Reading

Poets shouldn’t jingle jangle jingle. They should be tough like cowboys.

No. Tougher than that.

They should be rough as sandpaper and tough as nails. They should be:

Who are these Bad-Ass Poets?

The Doc (Charles Coté) is the author of the chapbook Flying for the Window (Finishing Line Press, 2008) and is working on a full-length book of persona poems called Shrink, which is  about a man in search of himself amidst the patients he tries to help. Publication credits include: Upstreet, Salamander, The Cortland Review, Redactions, Free Lunch, Identity Theory, Blueline, Modern Haiku, Connecticut River Review, and HazMat Review. He is a psychotherapist in private practice and teaches poetry at Writers & Books in Rochester, NY.

The Babe (Sarah Freligh) is the author of Sort of Gone (WordTech Communications, 2008), a book of poems that follows the rise and fall of a fictional pitcher named Al Stepansky. Her work has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac and in the upcoming anthology Good Poems: American Places. Among her awards are a 2009 poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a poetry grant from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation in 2006, and a grant from the New York State Council for the Arts in 1997. Sarah was born and raised in Michigan, and she currently teaches at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.

The Wino (Tom Holmes) is the editor of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics (www.redactions.com). He is also author of After Malagueña (FootHills Publishing, 2005), Negative Time (Pudding House, 2007), Pre-Dew Poems (FootHills Publishing, 2008), Henri, Sophie, & the Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound: Poems Blasted from the Vortex (BlazeVOX Books, 2009), The Oldest Stone in the World (Amsterdam Press, 2011), and Poetry Assignments: The Book (Sage Hill Press, forthcoming 2011). He has thrice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared on Verse Daily and has also appeared in Blue Earth Review, Chiron Review, Crab Creek Review, The Delmarva Review, The G. W. Review, Mississippi Review, Mid-American Review, New Delta Review, New Zoo Poetry Review, Orange Coast Review, Rockhurst Review, San Pedro River Review, Santa Clara Review, South Carolina Review, Sugar House Review, Swarthmore Review, and many other journals that don’t have “Review” in their name. He also maintains this blog and makes posters.

For more information about A Different Path Gallery and their other events, visit their website: http://www.differentpathgallery.com/.

To download the poster as a PDF, click Three Bad-Ass Poets Reading Poster PDF.//

The World’s Deadliest Readers . . . Coming Soon

Movie’s shouldn’t be the only medium with a trailer. A reading with three wonderful writers should also have a trailer.

Alright, so the reading doesn’t have a budget for its own trailer since it was all spent on wine and tapas for the reading. But imagine if those guys gave a reading, then you’ll know what this reading will be about.

That’s right. Steve Fellner, Tony Leuzzi, and Lindsey Brown will be giving a reading on Saturday, February, 26th at 7:30 p.m. at A Different Path Gallery on 27 Market Street in Brockport, NY.

(To see a larger version of the poster, click the poster. To download a printable PDF, click The Writer Within poster PDF.)

Tony Leuzzi is a poet who teaches literature and composition at Monroe Community College. He is also the author of two books of poems: Tongue-Tied and Singing (FootHills Publishing, 2004) and Radiant Losses (New Sins Press, 2010). His prose and poetry has also appeared in a wide range of journals, such as Arts and Letters, Pinyon, Rhino, Left Curve, and The Kenyon Review.  He is currently completing a book of interviews with American poets and is mid-way through his third book of verse.

Lindsey Brown has studied fiction writing with Pinckney Benedict and Michael Knight at Hollins University and interned at Francis Ford Coppola’s literary magazine Zoetrope: All-Story. She completed her Bachelors degree in Spanish from SUNY Brockport in 2008 and earned her Masters in English at Brockport in 2010. Her work is forthcoming in the anthology, Love Rise Up. Certified in bilingual elementary education, Lindsey now teaches Spanish to seventh, eighth, and ninth graders at Allendale Columbia, an independent day school in Pittsford, NY.

Steve Fellner’s first book of poems Blind Date with Cavafy (Marsh Hawk Press, 2007) won the Thom Gunn Gay Male Poetry Award. His memoir, All Screwed Up (Benu Press, 2008), focuses on his relationship with his ex-trampoline champion mother.//