Tag Archives: Lost Horse Press

Acts of Contrition by Gwendolyn Cash

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Acts of Contrition is the first short book in the first volume of the Lost Horse Press New Poets Series. “Today I’m going to lie about everything” begins Cash in the opening prose poem, “Lies.” The poem, like the whole collection, is actually stark and startling for its honesty, taking up Emily Dickinson’s advice to “tell all the truth but tell it slant.” For example, under the guise of enumerating lies, the speaker tells us:

I’m going to lie about how many times I let a man break my heart, how many times I looked in his eyes hoping for a piece of myself, and finding nothing, crawled into the animal warmth of his body, gambling against the time when there was nothing left to take or give. I’m going to lie about every time I went back and begged him to break me again.

This gritty truth-telling reaches its apex in the title poem, a ten-part long poem sequence where a daughter who feels herself inadequate addresses her abusive mother. The raw imagery, bold address, and dreamlike progression are reminiscent of Galway Kinnell’s early masterwork, The Book of Nightmares.
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Short Book Forthcoming

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[UPDATE: books are now available for sale.]

I just received the good news from series editor Marvin Bell that a collection of my poems will appear in the Lost Horse Press New Poets | Short Books Series, Volume V. Like the previous four volumes, this book will again bring together what are essentially three chapbooks (also called “pamphlets” in the UK) by three up-and-coming poets, all under one cover. The format of this series was inspired by Scribner’s “Poets of Today” series, edited by John Hall Wheelock, which debuted poets such as James Dickey. According to Bell:

The series will introduce poetry that presses the boundaries of language–the sociopolitical, the surreal, the nutty, the extreme, good free verse, and good formalist verse. We prefer lively nonsense to earnest meaninglessness. We do not care for theory-based experiments. Manuscripts will be made up of poems someone can hate and someone can love. Middle-of-the-road doesn’t interest. Anyone who reads the work, whether they love or hate it, should immediately say to herself, ‘Well, this is different.’

I am thrilled to be part of this series, which has already brought so many gritty, gutsy, sharp-as-tacks new American poets to light. The book is scheduled for publication in February 2011.

Me & Coyote by Abby E. Murray

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When I ordered Abby E. Murray‘s new chapbook, “Me & Coyote,” I initially forgot that it came as part of the Lost Horse Press New Poets Series, the fourth in a series of book-length collections made up of three chapbooks by three different authors. The other two poets in this book, Jesse Fourmy and Karen Holman–also fellow students from the Pacific University MFA program–are both poets of distinctive voice and character. Their work deserves its own attention and careful reading.

But tonight I want to write about Abby’s poetry, because reading Abby Murray makes me want to be a better poet. By “better” I mean more wild, fierce, and free. Life can drive you crazy, if you let it. Health problems in the family and pressures at work have been leading me up to the brink. How refreshing, then, to read poems that regularly swan-dive off the edge, with such panache.

A poem like “Barnacle’s Son” convinces me, completely, that even if a man can’t be born from a rough sea creature, it ought to be possible. And within the language of the poem, it is. Equally convincing is the poem “How I Love You,” whose lines taper down and down, constricting on the final phrase, in all its tough rightness: “I love you more than / an iron fence / loves her / house.” And when “They Took Her Away in a Birdcage,” my face wanted to smile and frown all at once.

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