NEW in the Rag Queen Periodical - My tendency to feel as if expressing myself is wrong

"My tendency to apologize when I haven't done anything wrong

other than accidentally hurting the feelings of someone

who doesn't understand my feelings.

My tendency to feel like a hissing venomous snake

when the reason I hissed is because my own space was invaded

with mouths that can't stop themselves from approaching me their way.

They don't get me, or they don't see me, or they want to change me,

stomp me down into their so-called solidity"

from my poem "My tendency to feel as if expressing myself is wrong" at Rag Queen Periodical

(somehow I missed this when it meant up last week, so I'm posting it this week. Hey, it's still December after all and I'm very excited to be a Rag Queen. I love the image above the poem too, of a little girl and her snake.)

More HERE - http://www.ragqueenperiodical.com/single-post/2016/12/21/My-tendency-to-feel-as-if-expressing-myself-is-wrong

Another NEW Review of A Red Witch, Every Which Way!

Another wonderful new review of "A Red Witch, Every Which Way" (the collaborative poetry book by j/j hastain & I , published this year by Hysterical Books), written by Stephanie Kaylor on Goodreads. (I'm not sure how I missed this, because it looked as if I had "liked" the review, but I don't remember reading it until today. Maybe I'm having a mental glitch, but in any case, here's the review):

"One side a positive/ healing/fetish violence./One side a negative/stab wound/fantasy/reality./Never ending hemorrhaging hemisphere. Never/ending lavish/light."

This collaborative book felt like a haunted house-- disturbing yet deliciously so, a journey one walks into and doesn't want to leave despite the grotesque nature of it all; the internal, the walls, the decay, the macabre and its traces. The interviews at the end were as rich as the poems, breaking down the barrier between process & product as swiftly as they did the same with the bodily & textual."

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31395925-a-red-witch-every-which-way

***

The book reviewed is available via Amazon HERE - https://www.amazon.com/Red-Witch-Every-Which-Way/dp/0940821044/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483005994&sr=1-6

The book reviewed is also available from Hysterical Books HERE - http://www.hystericalbooks.com/product-page/1a2d7e83-4bef-31d5-09e1-3326ee271c09

And it is also available from the Blood Pudding Press shop HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/473901408/new-a-red-witch-every-which-way-2016?ref=shop_home_feat_1

A NEW Review of A Red Witch, Every Which Way!

I just got quite excited because I noticed this 5 star review of j/j hastain and I's collaborative poetry book, "A Red Witch, Every Which Way" which appeared via Amazon earlier this month!

Meanwhile, I didn't know if anyone was even reading the book, so unexpectedly encountering a review that calls it Weirdly Beautiful (and mentions Frank Stanford!) feels pretty giddily great!

Here's the review followed by the Amazon link. Thank you Wayne F. Burke!

"A macabre work full of gory details and with a kind of surrealism that makes the reading of it a delightful adventure. "Pond scum will burst/out the eyes/once the eyes have been/revised into a film" (New Superhero), "...Box/elder stability/yearns for torn pages/in a series of open books" (Clawing At the Confessional), "Meniscus pirouettes/into maximus piranhas/chiming within/broken bones" (Conjured Talisman), "thinning/ossein to massage/scrim by which to scry/mutant shrapnel made" (Access Achieved Then Denied).

Weirdly beautiful language usage, full of surprises, twists and turns, and wordplay: language adroitly used, as in "Paradoxical Flight": "when a road kill/cat/black/silk cradles a/hyper notch/broken down/purring/crotch panel/rotting neural/blotch/an aural/round path/so partial/pussy extract/carefully oozing/from new particles/networks/jet stream/proving/an either or/model..."

Does it make sense to me? Hell, no. Does it matter? Again, no. As someone once said to the late Frank Sanford concerning his work, "I don't understand it, but I know what you mean."

These examples I've used should not be construed as representative of a flighty or loose style of writing because this is a disciplined work of serious stature also with an underlying structural design (3 "Acts"). I gather the last part of this statement intuitively and cannot say I have the slightest idea what the structure consists of. And you know what? It does not matter. This is a book to read and reread. A phantasmagorical journey where "Horses run through hoarse/barns. Hemlines narrow their slits." A book that asks such deep questions as "How do we engrave an orifice?" and answers "Coagulate all the swag/down our throats and then/gag ourselves..." Readers--enjoy."

https://www.amazon.com/Red-Witch-Every-Which-Way/dp/0940821044/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483005994&sr=1-6

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The book can also be acquired via the Hysterical Books website HERE - http://www.hystericalbooks.com/product-page/1a2d7e83-4bef-31d5-09e1-3326ee271c09

And via my own Blood Pudding Press shop HERE - https://www.etsy.com/listing/473901408/new-a-red-witch-every-which-way-2016?ref=shop_home_feat_1

Happy Horrific Holidays from Thirteen Myna Birds! (The last Myna Birds flock of 2016 is HERE!)

Happy Horrific Holidays from Thirteen Myna Birds!

Gifts of new poetry for you by Matthew Hall, Craig Firsdon, Timothy Thomas Cole, Mitch Grabois, Erin Renee Wahl, Jennifer MacBain-Stephens, J.C. Mari, John Grey, and Catfish McDaris (and one older poem still remaining by Howie Good).

"We eat flames and don’t rinse - the slightest interference could potentially destroy everything - lock up your daughters - carnage comes when the creeping crescent wanes - black and white butterfly - of a dead and forgotten poet - your shine smaller - red proves the prophecy - Money is that thing that makes me special - out the windows with laughter - The gut bucket fills up immediately - Mummies are dancers - Church spires pointing toward hell - a silence like all the mouths are sewn shut "

HERE - http://13myna.blogspot.com/

Happy December!

Happy December! Even for those of us who don't like December much (which includes me), the first day of this month is off to a wonderful start for me poetically speaking.

I received an acceptance of a poem from Muse /A Journal!

A podcast interview of me (about poetry and other stuff) is up at This Choice, HERE - https://renpowell.com/2016/12/01/this-choice-juliet-cook/! 

In the next few days, I plan to make a small announcement about Blood Pudding Press.