Lemuria Bookstore Blog

As kid’s manager, I get to meet amazing young people who are as smart as tacks. Two of those amazing people are Lauren Allen and Tracy Rappai. Not only are they good readers (they are both in my 6th/7th grade book club!) but also have published their own book of poems (penned by Lauren) and [...]

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I recently had a chance to sit down and talk to Dr. Steve Kistulentz, a local writer, about his new book of poems entitled The Luckless Age. If you skim through the titles of the poems, you may find yourself laughing. Only a child of the 1980s with a PhD in English could write a [...]

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Beso the Donkey Poems by Richard Jarrette Michigan State University Press (2010) If you are like me, you’ve often wondered why someone picked out a particular book to give to you as a gift. Also, if you are like me, your reading is very scheduled, organized, chosen, valued, and reserved for those precious times when [...]

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When I was a student at the University of Southern Mississippi, I was lucky enough to have Angela Ball as one of my academic advisers.  During my years there, I went to several of her poetry readings.  And I should tell you now that I’m not really a big poetry fan, but Angela’s poems are [...]

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Lately if I have been in a mind to read poetry, it has been that of Rainer Maria Rilke. A collection of selected poetry was given to me as a gift awhile back, might have been Christmas; but I think that it is one of the only gifts that is still giving as much as the day [...]

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In Such Hard Times: The Poetry of Wei Ying-wu Copper Canyon Press (2009) Last July I blogged about Hinton’s fine translation of Classical Chinese Poetry. While enjoying that book, I stumbled upon a poet I haven’t read much of, Wei Ying-wu. I tried to find a collection of his poems and couldn’t. Soon after the [...]

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I have not read much in the past few days. Sometimes you just have to let your mind empty out. Once emptied, it can be used  and filled up again. Emptiness is often thought of as a negative condition, but I am thinking of it in the positive sense. It seems to me that Kay [...]

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I think most people have had a teacher who made a difference in their lives. Margrethe Alschwede taught a class entitled “Women’s Lives” where I went to college. I still reflect on that class as it continues to help me in so many varied and unnameable ways. No doubt Pearl London was one of these [...]

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The Best of It, March 1, 2010, Grove Press Poet Kay Ryan “starts with details, oddities, categories, then unscrews and rebolts them, magnetizes them so that in turn they draw all the bright filings the world throws out. Each of her poems is like a telescope that keeps the observer at a distance while focusing [...]

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Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness and Open Your Heart Edited by Patricia Donegan Shambhala (2008) I enjoy reading good haiku very much.  Sometimes I’m astonished by how much can be said with so few words.  Good haiku is a direct result of understanding complex reality and stating it precisely, correctly and beautifully.  Haiku [...]

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