Paulette Tavormina Crabs and Lemon, after P.C., digital pigment print from the series Natura Morta, 2009

January, 2023

January, and our newsletter mercifully brief, as we begin the new year with cover art that offers a double-trick, rather in the vein of another Plume cover (#130), Hendrik Kersten’s “Cosy” – here, Paulette Tavormina’s take on a Dutch Master’s take on, not a portrait this time, but a photograph with “a roemer, a crab and a peeled lemon”. Which given this tenuous, illusion-packed departed year, seems somehow appropriate.

(For more information on Ms. Tavormina and this work, entitled “Crabs and Lemon after P.C., 2009” among others, a good start might be made here and here. )

That aside, as promised, below see the final promotion of our print anthology Plume Poetry 10, with this poem from the book, Grazyna Wojcieszko’s odd and oddly… prescient “Blue Day”:

Blue day

Yurek
the sea is talkative today
it’s having a talkative blue day
and the waves brought in a stormy
rabble

on the beach a shocked herring
shocked that it’s not working
its just not working for him at all
swimming

his mouth won’t shut
his mouth won’t shut and his lips
flap in the wind and remember
something

his tail records on the sand
on the sand it writes of the stomach
of the eaten-up bowels
of the liver

it gazes with an astounded eye
an ever paler eye
it looks at the misty world
and the sky

the sky is azure blue today
he has an azure blue day of indecision
he doesn’t know what to do what to do
with his memories

from Incantation (unpublished) by Grazyna Wojcieszko, translated by Sarah Luczaj
Viking

Okay.

Ah, yes  —  I should repeat, that Plume Poetry 10 is available for purchase at SPD and the Plume Anthologies Store, (with discounts for orders to be used as texts), Amazon, etc.

And offer once more a visual to refresh your memory:

Not to forget: Profound Gratitude Redux — this time to Daisy Fried & Glorious Piner, and Gregory Orr & Safiya Sinclair, “partners” in Plume Poetry 10 who read on December 3^rd at the Writers Center. In Washington D.C. Amanda Newell emceed, with technical support from Zack Powers. A wonderful evening of poetry and conversation.

Finally, as usual, a few recently published/forthcoming books from Plume contributors:

Wendy Barker                   WEAVE: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS
James Hall                        Romantic Comedy
Monica Youn                     From From
Molly Peacock                   A Friend Sails in on a Poem: Essays

That’s it for now. More in February, including news I can’t quite spill yet.
I hope you enjoy the remainder of your holiday/s – and the issue!

Daniel Lawless
Editor, Plume