NEW Review of the Blood Pudding Press chapbook Sister, Blood and Bone by Paula Cary

The 2013 Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook, "Sister, Blood and Bone" by Paula Cary has received an utterly awesome review by Eileen Tabios at the new Galatea Resurrects, here - http://galatearesurrection21.blogspot.com/2014/01/sister-blood-and-bone-by-paula-cary.html

Read the review and then consider buying a copy of the chapbook in the Blood Pudding Press shop here - https://www.etsy.com/shop/BloodPuddingPress?section_id=14819899&ref=shopsection_leftnav_1 

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"Oh I really really like Paula Cary’s chap, Sister, Blood and Bone!  Its poems contain the paradox of garnets—stones for, say, jewelry but ever evoking blood. Jewels that should be pretty but end up with other significances besides decorativeness."

"I also love how some poems, while loving, are not sentimental.  That’s a good enough combo, except that Cary ups the juice to actually end up in nothing less than rapture!"

"And I love how other poems make my bones wince (yes, bones, not merely flesh as the effect goes deep)—except that I’m wincing with delight.  It’s that paradoxical effect—you know, you’re thinking: that’s a tad perverse and yet being highly amused."

"I am attracted to these poems for their beauty and charm, notwithstanding—or maybe, in addition to—their rather eerie facets."

Blood Pudding Press 2014 Poetry Chapbook Contest Results!

Four Semi-Finalists (in no particular order):

~wingless, scorched and beautiful/Allie Marini Batts

~Old Mother Witch Woman: Nursery Rhymes/Jessy Randall

~Interior Ransack/Martha Deborah Hall

~Love like Jack/Pattie Flint

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Three Finalists (in no particular order):

~There’s No Place Like Hell/Jay Sizemore

~The Last Place on Earth/Donavon Davidson

~Red Moon/Kelly Andrews

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The Three Winners (in the order I plan to publish them):

~House on Fire/Susan Yount

~Stick Up/Paul David Adkins

~They Talk About Death/Alessandra Bava

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Big congratulations to all of you!

My tentative time frames for publishing the three winning chapbooks are as follows:

Susan Yount’s House on Fire in early February

Paul David Adkin’s Stick Up in late March or April

Alessandra Bava’s They Talk About Death in June, July, or August

I will be in touch with each of you closer to that time to discuss more details – so that means I will be in touch with Susan Yount fairly soon.

Best, Juliet Cook, Blood Pudding Press

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To partake of previously published chapbooks by Blood Pudding Press, take a look at the Blood Pudding Press shop here - http://www.etsy.com/shop/BloodPuddingPress 

A NEW poem of mine is up in LUSTRE

"Now you’re just a hole filled with nothing except your own contorted head."

from a NEW poem by me, "Insecticide Dye Job" which now appears on the new LUSTRE, along with other new work by Cassandra Dallett and four men, here - http://lustremagazine.co/

"They poison you and then pull themselves out. You rip out more and more of your own debris and flush it partway down and then pull it back out of the clogged drain and try to decide what the hell to name it."

Thirteen Myna Birds is brimming with dying deer, dark birds, and other twisted creatures

Newly updated Thirteen Myna Birds flock, offering even more hideously awesome innards than usual - this time it includes a flock of SEVENTEEN! 

"To give oneself up one must have a self - from the belly feathers - vocal chords, bleating - eating all in its path - patches of mud or pale disintegration - mangled bird in his hands - dread is a skull - pumping your chest - the blood boiling fever - Skin sloughs off - It smothers the airy colors - but I know how to rise - Gleaming spider webs of poison filled spit"

Seven poems by Jennifer MacBain-Stephens (from her chapbook "EveryHerDies", forthcoming from Emerge Literary Journal Publications) and poems by Kathleen Kirk, Jason Fisk, Annette Marie Hyder, Bekah Steimel, and John Grey!

http://13myna.blogspot.com/

little cold spell

suddenly feeling rather tired and glum. I think a bird somehow broke a leg or a wing or is dying from the cold outside of my house, because last time I opened my front door to take my dog outside for a few minutes, as soon as we stepped out, a bird flung itself up from the ground and started partly flying around the porch, repeatedly hitting its head. I quickly moved my dog back inside and closed the door, because the bird had no sense of direction and I certainly didn't need it to accidentally bang/fly itself into my house because then what? it clearly wasn't flying right, so now I'm imagining it freezing to death outside. i've heard other odd little banging sounds outside my house today; maybe it was the dying bird.  maybe i'm just feeling cold and tired and small as if sometimes my well-meaning and time-consuming projects don't mean very much. and/or maybe I'm suddenly feeling overly bummed by the cold dying bird even though it doesn't ultimately mean very much. and/or maybe I'm just feeling tired but as if I didn't get enough done today and so going to bed already would seem dull and like i'm suddenly broken and who cares?

New Year New Spectrum

Do you ever miss the part of life where you feel as if you still have all kinds of different and interesting new things to find out and new relationship experiences awaiting you and other new adventures? I do. I sometimes get into these modes where I feel like the more life goes on and the older I get, the more ridiculous and relatively meaningless everything seems, at least on any broad scale.

But then I think it's a matter of mentally convincing myself that I DO still have all kinds of unknown potential horizons in my future. Even if most of them are small scale, that doesn't make them uninteresting on a small, exciting personal level. 

I don't particularly relate to the people who think that life experience and the maturity it endows upon you equates to knowledge and power and success. Heck, I'm not even a fan of maturity. What is the point of maturity? What does maturity even mean? I'm more a fan of ongoing excitement (whether it's mature or immature) and oddity. 

I'm not one of those 'knowledge equals power' persons. I'm more of an excited by small delights type of person. Especially if the delights are unexpected and/or odd and/or artsy and/or sexy and/or more than one of those things plus cause me to feel young and new, instead of old, blah, and been there/done that.

Yes ongoing life experience gives you more knowledge, but it doesn't necessarily make you wiser. In fact, it makes some people seem kind of boring in a been there/done that/stuck in one place and wanting to stay positioned in that one place forever and thus way too toned down for ongoing excitement. I know some people like being relaxed and toned down into one place/position. I'd rather be revved up and find out about a new place/position. Maybe that's because I feel like I don't fit in to any one normal, easy, basic position.

Why don't more people want to change their positions and re-position their placements? Why do some people seem to think that if you still want to try new things and have new experiences once you've reached a certain age, that's kind of immature? It's not. Maybe it means you still have interest and passion and desire for excited spells and don't want to dull yourself down and conform into standardized parameters.

Maybe life on a large scale is relatively meaningless and ridiculous - but you can still create your own small scales and misshapen little color hues if you want to. You can experience your own spectrum of meaningless ridiculousness and hopefully every once in a while, one of those hues will feel meaningful and unique and new.