Welcome to Lightwood and to the Spring (or Fall depending where you are) issue #13: your leap into a new season of creativity. This issue is filled with poetry to celebrate April’s Poetry Month; book and music reviews and writings from new and returning Lightwood writers.
Recently I was listening from one of many media sources and found something that stayed with me. Writers, poets and visual artists create landscapes, seascapes, urbanscapes and a host of other scapes. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins brought up the term “inscape”, when we explore the inner constructions from a being that reaches for life. Perhaps this is the “scape” that constantly drives us forward and that we want to share with others.
Lightwood is here publishing the inscapes from a variety of word and visual artists. Enjoy them in this and in our back issues. And help us build our Lightwoodpress.com community by spreading the word and encouraging others to submit works in a diversity of themes and subjects. And, of course, stay well and be kind. The world depends on you.
L. Carr, publisher
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Welcome to Lightwood Spring 2023 Issue #13
Welcome to Lightwood and to the Spring (or Fall depending where you are) issue #13: your leap into a new season of creativity. This issue is filled with poetry to celebrate April’s Poetry Month; book and music reviews and writings from new and returning Lightwood writers. Recently I was listening from one of many media…
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Spotlight on writer Suzanne Cleary/ Pushcart Prize Nominee
Lightwood congratulates writer Suzanne Cleary on her nomination for a Pushcart Prize for her poem, “To the Person at the Zoom Poetry Reading, Unmuted, Doing Hand Laundry, June, 20, 2020.” The poem was first published in Lightwood’s March 21, 2022 issue. Ms. Cleary is an exceptional and widely published poet, and we’re honored to have…
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The Bob Dylan Bootleg Series: A Totally Subjective Retrospective/ music review by Mike Jurkovic
The Rock n Roll Curmudgeon Rides Again The Bob Dylan Bootleg Series: A Totally Subjective Retrospective Author’s Disclaimer: If ever I have set out on a fool’s errand, this is most certainly it: Ranking Dylan’s voluminous Bootleg Series. So, like the man himself told a beleaguered Christopher Columbus on the riotous “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream”…
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The Devil’s Fools/a poetry book by Mary Gilliland/review by Laurence Carr
Lightwood congratulates poet Mary Gilliland for her book, The Devil’s Fools, winner of the 2023 Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award. Each year, Codhill Press chooses one poetry book from the hundreds that are submitted for this coveted award, named after nationally recognized poet, essayist, and educator, and Codhill author, Pauline Uchmanowicz, who died in 2019. The…
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The Distance in Light Years of Dreams/ poem by Matthew J. Spireng
Some mornings we wake disturbed by a memory of what had danced through our brain while asleep, a memory so vague it cannot be brought up from the depths of the unconscious mind. It leaves us uneasy, feeling as if something has been left undone, though as time passes it becomes less and less of…
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The Golden Record (SETI) / poem by Ann Lauinger
Voyager 1 and 2, launched in 1977 into interstellar space, each carried a Golden Record containing a variety of music. After my dream—Bach & boogie-woogie etched in gold & ceramic, launched into space toward anything that might be listening—I had to stop myself from driving those four cartons crammed with her teacups, gold-rimmed plates, her…
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The Girl and the Kouros/ prose poem by David Stuntz
She serves with skill at the small café in rocky hills above Naxos’ port. She opens the retsina with care, exposing its pine-pitch aroma. Then comes the salad topped with black olives and feta. She moves with Hellenic grace among the hillside tables. A rocky path leads to a marble ledge. Twenty-five hundred years ago…
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The Best Thing in the World/ poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
What’s the best thing in the world? June-rose, by May-dew impearled; Sweet south wind that means no rain; Truth, not cruel to a friend; Pleasure, not in haste to end; Beauty, not self-decked and curled Till its pride is over plain; Light, that never makes you wink; Memory, that gives no pain; Love, when, so,…
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Embracing Aimlessness/my trip to Nepal 2017// a memoir essay by Jason Woehlke
You might think that this will be a picturesque story of my time spent in Nagarkot, Nepal. About the beautiful landscapes, the layers of snow-capped mountains seen in the distance, and the many vibrant flowers and plants. Or, perhaps the sight of new insects, giant spiders crawling around resort rooms because there’s a gap under…
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COMMENTS ON A MOTHER’S COMMENTS ON HER DAUGHTER’S POETRY I don’t understand it. It’s so abstract/ poem by J.R. Solonche
Don’t feel so bad. Mothers are not supposed to understand it, their daughter’s poetry. Nor are fathers, brothers, and sisters. Only the one who hasn’t arrived yet except in her daydreams is supposed to understand it. The one with the hair as fair and as curly as a girl’s, with the teeth as evenly white …
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The Obscure Substance of the Sky/ poetry by Alicia Wirt-Fox/ book review by Laurence Carr
Alicia Wirt-Fox is a muti-talent: poet, visual artist, writer, designer, educator. For her book The Obscure Substance of Sky, (Codhill Press, 2023) she’s tapped into her poetry and painting skills to create an engaging volume that stimulates our intellectual and the emotional lives. The book drew me in from the beginning, dividing into three sections:…
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Watching the eclipse without him (moon)/ poem by Kateri Kosek
I’ve already offered all the usual things—so now, barns. The soft dark flanks of mountains. The light of a full harvest moon about to be totally eclipsed. In my mind is a map of the knowns, small certainties studded in the constellation of The Things You Won’t Tell Me. Blankets on damp grass. While the…
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The Figures I Discern/ poem by Arthur Russell
Behind closed eyes, there is a darkness,a darkness that can be altered by light from outside the eyelids, for example, sun on the beach that illuminatesthe eyelids with a translucent glow,and can make a red capillary crossingthe yellow eyelid visible. There are other irregularitiesin the dark behind the eyelidsthat seem to come from the inside,perhaps low-voltage electrical…
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The Refugees on the Train/ poem by Lucia Cherciu
The Refugees on the Train are looking at empty fields. The windows—mirrors of fear. What would you give away today? Restlessness, disbelief. Stop ordering foolish things for a year while everything they own is in that bag. What can you give up today? What can you go without? The day is tilting towards unabated angst,…
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Earthen, poems by Thomas Festa/reviewed by Ken Holland
EARTHEN by Thomas Festa is published by Finishing Line Press (www.finishinglinepress.com) (2023). The cover art is by Dietmar Rabich and the cover design is by Elizabeth Maines McCleavy Here is a chapbook that brings an engaging variety of form—from free verse through a sprinkling of prose poetry, haiku and renga—all of which keeps the reading…
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Spotlight on Earthen, poems by Thomas Festa/ reviewed by Laurence Carr
With anticipation, I awaited the arrival of Earthen, poems by Thomas Festa who is no stranger to Lightwood. We’ve published two of the poems from this new collection, “On the Death of Miles Davis” and “The Algebra of Origins”. Along with these, Mr. Festa has written reviews for Lightwood, examining the works of Jorie Graham…
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To March or to Marry: A Novel (excerpt) by Violet Snow
This short excerpt is from Violet’s Snow’s novel published in 2021 by Epigraph Books. Lightwood presents this piece as part of our collaboration with the reading series, Next Year’s Words, curated by Susan Chute. This novel is a fine addition to the history of the Feminist/Suffragette movement in th early 20th century. ////// Summary of To…
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