In Honor of Poetry Month: Angela Consolo Mankiewicz

Crossposted from my Blogetary:

I forget how very talented my friends are sometimes. They’re my friends. We sit around drinking tea and coffee and discuss physical and emotional aches, pains, triumphs and losses. And the fact that they work very hard at being the best writers or artists or dancers or actors that they can be slips right by my brain pan most days, especially when we end up talking about their cats or dogs or boyfriends/girlfriends/spouses and children.

In honor of poetry month, I’d like to share a couple of poems by one of my friends, Angela Consolo Mankiewicz. This poem was published by RadiusLit.org December 2012:

“The Machine Stops”
By Angela Consolo Mankiewicz

It may be our only hope:
shoot down the satellites, dynamite
the grids, melt the cell towers ….

Let whole populations die out
leaving just enough to burn
or bury the dead and dot
large isolate masses of land;

and light, let there be no light
other than the sun to read by
and read only what is at hand
and what is at hand is only Euripides,
Dante, maybe Dickinson,
Shakespeare, something Zen.

And something else — no priestesses, no priests;
maybe a Keeper to distribute refinements
to inhale, drink, bite into and swallow
to keep us from agitating over more /
better / different / other / mine
something to help us believe life is / can be /
will be good, something to help ease
a beloved’s death, something to ease our own
something to dissolve the depression of being
however temporary the sensation.

We are savage creatures, like most,
and as improbable, in need of taming —
quickly — before the 2am last-call is proclaimed
by a rattle in the species’ throat.

We did it once, brutes to less-brutes,
less brutes to gentlemen and women
despite remaining “all the same
under this fancy linen”

We can do it again: re-generate generosity,
charity, mercy, kindness the Greeks and Dante,
Shakespeare and Zen, maybe we can
confound the gods and do better this time
even build a better machine that self-destructs
at just the right time.

This poem, Beyond Loneliness, is from Full of Crow:

“Beyond Loneliness”
By Angela Consolo Mankiewicz

At the edge of the ocean,
perhaps the only ocean,
you wheeze recollection
and hope into your lungs.

You have been led here
to the edge of this ocean
by the smell of salt.

The water is warm over your toes,
warmer than expected;
perhaps that is a good sign.

You turn away,
lift your chest as best you can
and raising flimsy arms, wail
one more time, a long,
hollow cry that breaks no heart.

You count the usual number
of unclocked minutes, then smile
at the familiar blank reply
freeing you to proceed.

It has been a very long time
since you had access to books
to tell you what to hold to,
what to love, what to hate,
what to respect and what to despise*
but you are no longer lost and confused.

You kneel, dig your fingers
into the sand around you
for a sting, a snap, a hop perhaps
but there is none.

Like a child, you lean on your hands
and pull yourself upright, like a child,
unburdened by shame, you turn back
to face your ocean; you are
what the world was known as; you,
it has all come down to you.

*From the last page of Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground

Angela Consolo Mankiewicz, originally from Brooklyn, now lives in Los Angeles and is the author of four chapbooks, the newest being An Eye, from Pecan Grove Press and As If, from Little Red Books-Lummox. She has also been the Contributing Editor and Regional Editor, respectively, for the small press (now defunct) journals Mushroom Dreams and New Press Quarterly. The title of this poem refers to a 1928 short story by E.M. Forster.

You can read more of her poetry on Rusty Truck here and you can follow her blog here.

A Review of "The G.O.D. Factor" and a Farewell

Cross posted from http://puttputtproductions.com/blogetary/2011/09/06/a-review-of-th…and-a-farewell/

Back in June this year when "The G.O.D. Factor" first came out I was looking for people who would read my novella and honestly review it on their blog or in their forum, or wherever they let out their great "yawp" the most. I got some volunteers - some of which posted reviews on their blogs and others who felt more comfortable simply emailing me. However I heard it, though, it was exciting to hear what people had to say about my little novella. (You can find those reviews here: http://www.puttputtproductions.com/published_work/novellas .)

But I also wanted to seek out reviews from people who didn't know me, who hadn't read anything I had ever written, and might see something completely different in my work than what I assumed was there. My friend Angela pointed me in the direction of Hugh Fox, who wrote reviews for Small Press Review. But he was also a poet with 54 volumes of poetry under his belt, as well as the first writer to tackle a critical study of Charles Bukowski, and one of the founders of the Pushchart Prize, and that is in addition to his many other accomplishments. To read more about him (other than the Wikipedia entry above, go to the poetsencyclopedia.com entry here.

Small Press Review is a "magazine with review columns, information and helpful hints on getting published. Published bi-monthly, it contains up-to-date and late-breaking news on the small press and small magazine industry." From what I can tell, it's been around since 1963, founded and edited by Len Fulton, also a prolific poet, writer and editor in the world of the small press.

To get such people to take the time to take a look at my work would be a wonderful thing indeed, no matter if they loved it or hated; that they would take the time to read and comment would be enough. So, I was very excited to have Angela help me with that. However, there was a little bit of a mix up in the sending of a review copy; I sent it to the wrong address. And then my other copies of "The G.O.D. Factor" were delayed in getting to me, then Len Fulton passed away on July 28, which made me wonder if this was the right time for this (Google Len Fulton and you get link upon link of people announcing his passing), but by hook or by crook, between Angela and I, we got a copy to the correct address, that is to Hugh Fox, and it was even before the book signing at Chevalier's on August 20.

After all that, I was grateful that he'd even take a look at my little novella. But read it he did and came up with the below review. It is such a completely opposite view of what I had in mind when I wrote "The G.O.D. Factor" that I laughed aloud when I read it. It's beautiful when people find things in your writing that you never saw. It can be ugly, too, but in this case, I thought it was awesome. Mark Twain was right, just say yes when people tell you what they thought you meant when you wrote something. In any case, I'm honored to have received Hugh Fox's review, copied and pasted below:

The G.O.D. Factor
Novel by Rachel V. Olivier
$6.00/ Sam’s Dot Publishing

Review by HUGH FOX

A dual-levelled book that at the same time deals with space-ships and their crews, but also is a metaphorical commentary on the place of the divine in the human universe. Very subtle:

“Monica? Monica?” The G.O.D. had finished going through all variations. It had been an enjoyable exercise if he did say so himself. And, he realized, he did. The G.O.D. ran through the systems to find Monica.Sensors indicated neither she nor anyone was aboard ship, but the ‘ship’ was much smaller than the one he woke up in,....the G.O.D. was fascinated by where it was. Running through information filed away almost 100 years ago, the G.O.D. found the charts from the Galactic War, back when they’d known this part of space. ...Humans he could help; humans that would have a better life because he, the GO.D.. would be able to show them how to have better, more efficient, life. “Get in touch with Gawwd.” (pp.48-49).

On one level it’s all spaceship games, but what we’re really dealing with is God looking back at the earth, human beings, seeing how things have gone, convinced that if mankind really dealt with God their lives would be better, better, better, that they should come back and get in touch with him/her. So there is a huge, important message here, and at the same time Olivier is a masterful writer dealing with the whole space-ship level of the book. I imagine lots of reader might miss the huge metaphorical double-level here, but some second-thinking, re-reading will eventually bring them into Olivier’s major message: return to The Divine.

***

Again, it truly is an honor to have Hugh Fox review one of my works, and I love how he saw an alternate vision to what I had in mind.

Yesterday I heard from Angela that Hugh Fox passed away this weekend, and this could be one of the last reviews he ever wrote; it may or may not make it into print at Small Press Review (which is still going after Len Fulton's death). But it seemed fitting that I post Hugh Fox's review with a final thanks to him for taking the time to review my novella and a farewell to him on his death.