your midsummer annogram

Free Ferry featured in blog

Thanks to reviewer Darrell Laurant for featuring Free Ferry today on his blog, Snowflakes in a Blizzard. Discover the backstory behind Free Ferry if you’ve read it. And if not, now is the perfect time: Free Ferry is at a discounted price of $7. Read it to see astonishing similarities of our current geopolitical climate with the 1960s.

The Enchantment of the Ordinary

Mutabilis Press has accepted my poem, “Kin”, a salute to the time I first met my lovely Texas and Oklahoma relatives, for a Texas-themed anthology, The Enchantment of the Ordinary. Big hugs to my cousin Katherine in Fort Worth who knew all the relatives named! My dear friend Linda Simone, a San Antonian, has a poem included too, and we can’t wait for the book’s debut this fall.

The Hero forthcoming from Chax

So excited my translation of Hélène Sanguinetti’s The Hero will debut soon from Chax Press! The publisher, Charles Alexander, a poet and book designer, takes the utmost care in producing fine books. Poet and translator Cole Swensen has also praised the book in a generous inscription. Get ready to read a seriously audacious work from one of France’s top contemporary poets!

Lydia Davis at the Albertine

Lydia Davis

How great to meet Lydia Davis at the Albertine Prize program last month! Ms. Davis, award-winning micro-fiction writer and Swann’s Way (Penguin, 2004) translator, is now translating from Dutch. She told me she read all of Proust’s correspondence for Letters to His Neighbors (New Directions, 2017), and that this edition corrects prior timeline errors. Thanks to Beth Gersh-Nešić, art historian and André Salmon translator, for inviting me to this wonderful event!

Summer reading

Rona Carr

My friend, and an excellent coach, Rona Carr likes me to recommend summer reading. Look no further than Upper Hand Press, whose books are $7 now. Discerning readers I know were moved by 100 Years of Marriage, a sleeper classic; Saving Phoebe Murrow, winner of the 2018 Indie Novel of the Year; and Elizabeth Primamore’s Shady Women. Why not complete some holiday shopping now?

Marilyn Monroe in Stamford

Forever Marilyn by Seward Johnson
Photo Michael Cefola

Members exiting Stamford’s First Congregational Church have quite a view—the backside of a 30,000-lb, 26-foot-tall Marilyn Monroe. The Seward Johnson statue, in Lapham Park for the summer, captures Ms. Monroe’s iconic The Seven-Year-Itch pose, where her billowy dress blew upwards over a New York subway grate. Both awe-inspiring and creepy, it recalls Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, “Harry… Harry….”

Sarah Bracey White in Read 650

Sarah Bracey White

Congratulations to Sarah Bracey White on appearing in last month’s Read 650: A Writer's Art at the National Arts Club. This is Sarah’s second appearance in the hit series featuring 650-word readings. Agnes of God playwright John Pielmeier calls Read 650 “evocative, entertaining, and moving.” Watch Sarah’s delightful “Camp Cook” here, and don’t miss her photography exhibit this summer at the Greenburgh Town Hall.

J. Chester Johnson on Auden

What a joy to hear J. Chester Johnson at St. James the Less on Auden, the Psalms and Me (Church Publishing, 2017). It’s a book you feel compelled to read in one sitting, so fascinating is the “religious” Auden never discussed in contemporary literature. Auden’s letters cast a lasting influence over Chester’s life as a poet and translator, and important considerations for the rest of us.

New releases

Dante Aligheri, trans. W. S. Merwin, Purgatorio: A New Verse Translation (Copper Canyon Press)

Michael Baldwin, Beyond Passing Strange (CreateSpace)

Karen George, A Map and One Year (Dos Madres Press)

Ivy Johnson, Born Again (The Operating System)

Jim Lavilla-Havelin, West, Poems of a Place (Wings Press, 2017)

Mostafa Nissabouri, trans. Guy Bennett, Pierre Joris, Addie Leak, Teresa Villa-Ignacio, For an Ineffable Metrics of the Desert (Otis Books-Seismicity Editions)

Erick Sáenz, Susurros a mi Padre (The Operating System)

Creative opportunities

Kevin Pilkington

Diode Editions by August 15, 2018

Nourish – poetry calls for work

Last call for Kevin Pilkington’s Maine Media Poetry Workshop in Rockport

Poetry, essay, drama, or hybrid on Simone Weil (Word, RTF, or PDF) with author info to weilanthology@gmail.com by August 1 for Orison anthology

Stupid-Easy Cole Slaw

Again, from George Motz’s The Great American Burger (Abrams, 2016): Halve ingredients if only serving two or three people, and use a bag of shredded cabbage for a stupid-fast slaw.

1 head organic white cabbage, shredded

6 organic medium-large carrots, grated

1 cup mayonnaise

¼ cup apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons yellow mustard

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground black pepper

Combine cabbage and carrots in bowl and set aside. In large bowl, whisk together mayo, vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper. Add carrots and cabbage, tossing to coat. Cover and refrigerate for an hour before serving, or up to 24 hours.

And, as promised from the last annogram, toppings for the beet burger recipe:

Sautéed Mushrooms

1 tablespoon butter

2 cups sliced organic cremini mushrooms

½ cup dry white wine

Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat and add mushrooms. Cover and cook until mushrooms release their liquid. Pour in the wine and raise the heat to high. When liquid in pan is reduced, remove from heat. Salt to taste and set aside until ready to use on your beet burgers.

Caramelized Onions

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 medium organic Vidalia or Walla Walla onions

3 pinches salt

¼ cup white wine

1 tablespoon salted butter

Preheat skillet over medium heat and add olive oil. Slice onions into thin rings or strings and add to skillet, stirring to coat with oil and continuing to poke, pat and move around until onions become limp, about 6 minutes. Add salt and stir. Add wine and raise heat for 1 minute, stirring constantly until liquid evaporates, then return to medium heat and add butter, stirring until melted. Cook, turning onions in pan frequently for another 10 minutes or until nicely golden brown and caramelized. Remove from heat and set aside.

Beet Burger assemblage

See prior annogram for beet burger recipe: While burgers still brown in the pan, add spoonful of sautéed mushrooms to top of each followed by a cheddar cheese slice. Cover, cook until the cheese melts, about 2 minutes. Transfer beet burgers to toasted buns and top with caramelized onions.

Poetry / literary events

Joan Silber on winning the 2017
National Books Critics Circle Award
for Fiction

Bryant Park Reading Room, July 17, 7pm, Whiting Foundation Poetry Awards, Sharon Dolin, Terrance Hayes, Rickey Laurentiis, Jenny Johnson

The Meetinghouse, Canaan, NH, 7:30pm: July 19, Christopher Wren, Lauren Groff; July 26,Howard Mansfield, Robin MacArthur; August 2, Lloyd Schwartz, Joan Silber

The Merchantile Library, July 17,7pm, Richard Hague and Paulette Hansel on memoir

HVWC, July 20, 27; August 17; 7:30pm, Open Mic Night; August 19, 10am, $5

John C. Hart Library, July 21, 1pm, Book Fair and Reception with Local Authors

HVWC,, August 1, 8pm, Chen Chen and Nathan McClain, $10

̓Round the Net

Clouds Rte 84 by Meg Lindsay

Poet Llyn Clague on his poem “Kayakers in the Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene blog

Poet Terry Dugan for this interview with new Times Poetry Editor Rita Dove

Novelist Herta Feely on having Saving Phoebe Murrow profiled in Snowflakes in a Blizzard

Poet Gary Glauber for work on page 14 in Event Horizon and in Synchronized Chaos

The Katonah Poetry Series for interviews with Peter Balakian and Monica de la Torre

Duc Le for sharing the Poetry Journal in Print, a journal of Vietnamese and English poetry

Artist Meg Lindsay for participating in Upstream Gallery's PaperWorks 2018 exhibit through July 29

Blogger Rolf Maurer for this profile of Yorktown Heights Poet Laureate John McMullen

A Throw of Dice (1929)
British Silent Film shown at
The San Francisco Silent Film Festival

Poet John McMullen for sharing this video from a Holocaust Remembrance Day this spring

Art historian Laura Morelli on how to choose quality leather in Florence

Poet Ralph Nazareth for sharing the Times obit of poet Donald Hall

The NEA for this federal survey indicating that poetry readership is up

The New York Public Library for its July Staff Picks

Sir Paul McCartney

Bass player Larry Schwartzman for “Five Bass Lines Not Written by Paul McCartney

Poet Linda Simone on reading next month at San Antonio 300, her poem “Whisk” in the San Antonio-Express News, and essay in Far Villages: Essays for New Beginner Poets forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press

Songwriter and singer Fran Sisco on her new film, Happy Trans Girl Like Me

Pianist Donald Sosin on participating in the San Francisco Silent Film Festival

Wishing everyone a summer full of rest and recreation so necessary for creativity!  See you back here in September….

Until next time,

Ann