Poetry, a mystery and a memoir for your summer reading
By Susan Swagler
Birmingham Poetry Review
(University of Alabama at Birmingham) Edited by Daniel Anderson
The new issue of Birmingham Poetry Review is
out, and there are some lovely pieces within.
Consider this excerpt from Amy Arthur's “Saint Roch Cemetery”: “The chapel stands, white in the middle of it all, dim to eyes that squinted in the sun. Winn-Dixie-bought votives, Holy Mother of God and Holy Son of Mary, scrawled over with Sharpie (for Marjorie's left shoulder, for Terry's cancer, and a simple St. Roch pray for me) wait patiently by the door for answers, their small flames asking.”
Or this from Jill McCorkle's “Domestic Dig”:
“The ex-wife's earring
lay buried
in the recesses
of the overstuffed chair.
Red faceted glass
sharp silver hook
along with two dimes and a penny,
pencil, paper clip
petrified potato chip
dog chew.
It said: I was here.
It said: I used to be
here where you are now.”
Editor Daniel Anderson says several of the poets with work in this issue are preparing to publish their first collections.
This issue marks the journal's transition from a bi-annual to an annual publication (times are tough for poets, too). However, this new issue has a number of highly accomplished poets and authors, including genre-crossing fictions writers McCorkle (Going Away Shoes, Ferris Beach) and Richard Bausch (The Last Good Time, Someone to Watch Over Me) as well as poet and critic William Logan and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Claudia Emerson.
This is a UAB publication funded by the UAB English Department and the UAB School of Arts & Humanities.
Whiplash
(Putnam) By Catherine Coulter
In this FBI thriller, Catherine Coulter's
wildly popular husband-and-wife
FBI special agent team, Dillon Savich
and Lacey Sherlock, return in what
is the 14th novel in this author's New
York Times-bestselling series. They are
joined this time by two new heroes:
Erin Pulaski, a private eye/ballet
teacher and Bowie Richards, who is
a tough, no-nonsense federal cop and
SAC (special agent in charge) of the
Hartford FBI field office. They all come together to solve a brutal
murder and get to the heart of corruption in a large, multinational
drug company. Coulter is the author of a whopping 65 novels.
Before writing contemporary thrillers, she earned her living (quite
a nice living, thank you very much) by writing funny historical
romances (most with good mysteries included). She has a M.A.
in 19th-century European history, and she continues to write long
historicals, interspersed with contemporary novels.
The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: An American Journalist in Yemen
(Broadway Books) By Jennifer Steil
Here's a memoir that reads like a novel.
Jennifer Steil's adventure began when
she left New York to take a short-term
job teaching a journalism class to the
staff of the Yemen Observer in Sana'a,
the beautiful, ancient and very conservative
capital of Yemen. In the course
of teaching a fair and balanced approach to her craft (to a staff that
included plagiarists and polemicists), she became fascinated with
the paper's staff and their city. She extended her stay and grew to
identify with (and appreciate the strength of) Arab women in the
workplace. She developed a new understanding of the role of the
media in the Muslim culture as well as the traditions and beliefs of
that culture as a whole. The book takes readers into the seldomseen
everyday life in a conservative Muslim country. Her account of
her time in Yemen, with adventure, mystery and some romance, is
entertaining and, perhaps, immediately important.
