Deer have ventured out through thinning trees
into thickening traffic. Men in trucks gentle them
to the breakdown lane with shovels. The last leaf’s
twisting stem is the voice of the deer in November.
Emily Hancock of St Brigid Press, publisher of a few beautiful letterpress editions of works by This Here Poet, is releasing a new book this week entitled “Soundings.” The book consists of haiku and illustrations by Emily, the Founder of SBP. Check out the SBP site for more pics and info about the process. /JS
We are pleased to announce the publication of Soundings, a new book of haiku by Emily Hancock. Inspired by the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where Hancock makes her home, this lovely book collects over 30 of her poems and 3 original linoleum block prints.
The title page of Soundings, on cream-colored Rives paper, with banana-leaf decorative paper facing.
One of 33 haiku by Emily Hancock, collected here for the first time.
One of 3 three illustrations printed from original linoleum block carvings by the author.
Designed, hand-set, letterpress printed, and hand-sewn here at the Press in a limited edition of 85 books. Pre-order a copy HERE; books will be shipped on November 10th.
Each book is hand-sewn with linen thread.
Live text block fore edges.
If you are in the area, please join us for the official Book Launch Reception and Signing ~ this Friday…
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With a moon not yet full behind a sky not yet clear
a glowing handprint floats over the house
holds emptiness like a drifting welcome
closed to nothing always open to you
Winter begins in the stones. In a dream the sky house
gets closer as if it is trying to hear a secret or tell me one
but when I can read its lips I see it is just pretending.
In the car: stones from a trip to the beach.
A thousand miles from where we found them
for months they have rested in a drink holder
with no discernible nature acting on them,
no car tides or car gulls have hampered their stillness.
Now when we pick them up on a drive we marvel
at how cold they are on this mild first day of November.
You can press them to your hand, your neck, your cheek
and they stay cold. They are telling me a secret
without moving their lips or pretending to tell me anything.
They are coming closer without moving, like snow clouds.
The Night Before
Is it the night you decide to save your own life
or whether to save your own life
The night after the three page do-not-resuscitate note
they found on your hotel bed in the morning though you were
found there with it, smoking, complaining, in the room your father
paid for, not wanting to abandon you as the hospital had,
as you feel the whole world had. In your deepest misery
you could not abandon yourself, though your note
claimed death was better than being alive. It is not
the first such note but the first in a while, and
begs the question, why were you both there
this morning when we arrived? You wanted
both to be found. You wanted your death to be found
and your life to be saved without engaging either
of them. On my desk tonight I open
an envelope I have had for three dozen years. It’s filled
with cancelled stamps from around the world, from places
you and I will never visit. Chad, Posta Romana, Dahomey.
Magyar Posta. Ceskoslovensko, some countries
that no longer exist, no more than the messages
whose freight these stamps once paid. One stamp depicts
only another stamp from thirteen years earlier.
Thirteen years earlier would you have believed
you’d be here, in a hotel you can’t pay for,
To make a decision you think someone else
should make for you. You are more
Than what you have paid in pain to be
transported here. More than a value a black mark can cancel
but you are not something that can be opened and read.
You are the author of the note demanding you not be saved.
You cannot be reached by phone. Or any other method
save a mark on tomorrow you have not yet made.
In a space under trees I can hear the wind that is not here
like a can kicked across the street by a boy still coming
or as if the act of the boy shaping his mouth to shout
made a sound before the sound of the shout
What is the word that I hear before the trees
above me shake and give the wind a momentary word
What is the sound of a loosening of leaves
like forgetting hands just before they drop
to our sides? The interval of apprehension.
The time we are alive. The boy stepping up the curb.
The idea was simple–let’s all gaze at the moon together, wherever we are, and share our words and images. Let’s have a full moon social event that the Ancients would understand and appreciate.
On October 8, 2014 WordPress and Twitter sparkled with poems, prose fragments, and photos from an assortment of creative folk using the hashtag #fullmoonsocial2014. It was a fun night to moon-gaze — and to refresh our searches on that tag to see what new poem or photo had popped up.
As much as I could, and with the permission of the authors, I have gathered this work into a humble anthology, available in PDF format. While designed like a traditional book, and without the website-inspired underlining, the websites or Twitter handles of each contributors are live links which will take you directly to their sites to find out more about the author and her/his work. The Contents pages are likewise linked to the book as well.
Please feel free to download it here, as a keepsake and a thank-you from me for joining in, to write, contribute, and to read. Any typos or other issues are mine, and please do not hesitate in letting me know if some adjustment needs to be made.
Likewise, if you’re an author or artist or photographer who contributed to the Full Moon Social but you don’t see your work here, let me know and I’ll add it in.
And if anyone’s interested in doing it again…
Today the sound of rain is over my head, in the leaves.
For a month it will get more and more silent
As the canopy thins, even as each drop more directly
hits its mark it will be more and more like a whisper
of something going away, until the level of leaf is ground
and then in the first cold rain a new sound like a cough
rattling to life instead of death, louder and colder will
arise from the earth, for a few times anyway reminding
us that nothing not even death stops talking until the
first snowflake tells it utterly and quietly to shut up.
I’m putting together our first Full Moon Social anthology, based on the posts to the #fullmoonsocial2014 event on October 8th.
The anthology will be FREE and available as both a PDF and epub. Each page contains a poem and a link to the author’s website or Twitter page. Where a contributor is only known by their WordPress or Twitter handle, I used that in place of an author name. It will be a nice way to honor the hours we spent together writing under the moon.
To be on the safe side, I’m asking any contributors to the event to email me at jeffrey.schwaner@gmail.com to confirm that you give permission to being included in this free commemorative ebook. This will also help me if in my collection efforts I have missed some of the poems or photos posted by you.
By Friday I will be finalizing the anthology based on the permissions I’ve received. It has been fun to revisit these poems as I’ve been placing them in the (admittedly very basic) book design, and I look forward to sharing them once again in a more book-ish format.
So where is the past? Is it the terrain
in periphery, never the destination
but whose contours shape the weather?
Is it the icy light the moon reflects
on the tracks of things before me?
Wonderful deeds have we done, and
fearful things. They lay across the path
of parting like roots or over-hang
my steps with shade and snakes.
I do not wish to look
back. I only need to know
from which direction will come
the monster-god it has nurtured
to replace me so that I may stand
before him in the breach to turn away
his wrath, convince this pale reflection
that it could be a kinder god
Translations from the English 