“Persuasive” Woman Drinking Absinthe explores “Illicit Love” in New Review from Compulsive Reader
Charles Rammelkamp delivers a witty and erudite review of Katherine E. Young's opus.
In his new review of Katherine E. Young's Woman Drinking Absinthe, Charles Rammelkamp delivers a write-up worthy of its subject. With careful erudition, and no lack of wit, he mines Katherine's beautiful and heartbreaking poesy about "illicit love" for words of affirmation.
"Love, indeed, is the overarching theme of this remarkable collection," writes Charles. And he shows how this recurring theme speaks throughout the book, pointing to the "conflict between marriage and desire," in the early poems, the link between "sex and violence" in poems like "Bluebeard," and the "demimonde of women in the midst of affairs of the heart" as in "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" and many others.
In these depictions, Charles writes that, "Woman Drinking Absinthe is unflinchingly honest and lyrical."
Read the entire review here.
Talking Jazz and Rock with Poet Reuben Jackson (Laura Ritchie)
Author and music educator Lauren Ritchie sat down with ASP’s Reuben Jackson this week to talk jazz with the man himself. Reuben’s music credentials are long and impressive, from curating the Duke Ellington Collection at the Smithsonian to hosting a weekly Jazz radio show for NPR Vermont, to his poetry which takes inspiration from and frequently comments on the American Jazz idiom. Listen to or read the interview…
Rose Solari talks with Acclaimed Poet David Gewanter
This Sunday, October 21, at 8 p.m., ASP’s Rose Solari is reading with acclaimed poet, essayist, editor, and professor David Gewanter in a new poetry reading series at Second Story Books, 2000 P Street NW, Washington DC. In preparation for their reading, Rose talked with David about his work, particularly his most recent collection, Fort Necessity. Here is a part of their discussion…
Featured Audio: “Margaret in Oxford,” a Reading by Rose Solari
Robert Olen Butler loved Rose’s debut work of fiction for its sense of the eternity. This is one of many reasons why all of Rose Solari’s work must be treasured. It plays on life motifs, flips, forms, and languors upon the archetypes formed of human experience. We have spoken previously of Rose’s reverence for the myth in modern day. We even looked before at A Secret Woman’s sense of itself as being both poem and novel…