New chapbook! pale leaf floating by gaye gambell-peterson

Cherry Pie is delighted to announce a new chapbook -- pale leaf floating, by gaye gambell-peterson. This one is lovely to look at, and a muscular pleasure to read.

The poems gather up the objects of everyday life -- stones, a leaf, a bird, pennies, an egg -- and convert them to a wise philosophy of endurance as the poet navigates her way through illness, losses, the pleasures of grandchildren, the determination to enjoy each day and let every cup overflow.

Here's a poem:

Omens

There flew the gladdening red bird,
again, again, across my path.

There smiled the pale sliver of moon,
with a bright star at her side.

There bobbed upon flooded river, a bit
of trash that stayed afloat while I watched.

Here bloomed, after two years of making
only leaves, the purple ruffled iris.

There upon my cottonwood sat the
mourning dove – but his back was to me.
I am protected from grief.

I collected these omens so they’d tell me
the truth the way I wanted it to be.

Here on my stoop is one of my kept stones –
flecked gray, rounded, a solidity that reassures.
I turn its damaged side to a corner.

And another one, with an equal amount of grit and good cheer in balance:

Corticosteroids

“Common: loss of balance; puffy face; chronic trouble sleeping.
Rare: a sense of well-being.”
- from a list of side effects

I am at my open door, breathing,
as another day lowers.

Magenta stripe flashes a cloud belly
and Venus elevates,

hangs near my moon.
I let my attitude rise to her,

my lifted face newly full.
Some sort of conjunction, this new

aspect – between exaggerated
euphoria and dire possibility.

I’m awake on the high road,
tilting the light fantastic,

exalting for the stiff-jointed
marionette having left the building.

I am condensed to a quiddity,
leaning against my edges.

She moves away.
Comes back. Gleaming.

You might recognize gaye gambell-peterson as the artist of some previous Cherry Pie chapbook covers (Rotogravure, The Permeability of Memory, and the anthology Breathing Out). Here, she has again created the cover artwork, and also included half a dozen collages inside the book to illustrate her own poems.

pale leaf floating (ISBN 978-0-9748468-9-7) is $10, and available at Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid, St. Louis, MO 63108 (ph 314.367.6731). You may also order from Cherry Pie Press -- email cherrypiepress@yahoo.com for information, or download the order form from this blog site.

Memory and war

Helen Eisen's chapbook, The Permeability of Memory, has been mentioned in the blog Writing the Holocaust. John Guzlowski interviews Eisen about the experience of childhood in the deportation camps, and the experience of absorbing memories of the war from her parents and from other adult survivors. Eisen's descriptions of how she sees memory working, how it moves through time and distance and the body, and how it is shared and transmitted, is fascinating -- layered and nuanced the same way her poems are.

Read the interview here: http://writingtheholocaust.blogspot.com/.

Contest -- Cherry Pie Poem BakeOff Contest

To celebrate Poetry Month and the three chapbooks forthcoming from Cherry Pie in 2008, we're announcing the first annual Cherry Pie Press Poem BakeOff Contest.

1st Prize: Free copies of each of the three chapbooks to be published in 2008 (by Erin M. Bertram, Niki Nymark, and Mary Ruth Donnelly). Even better, the winner's poem will be published here on the Cherry Pie Press blog.

Rules: Contest is open now through the end of April 2008. To enter, write an original poem in any style or format using all five of the words listed below (one word selected from each of the published Cherry Pie chapbooks). You can see this contest will increase in difficulty each year as the list of publications grows, so enter now while it's still easy!!!

Words to use: brine, half-life, knife, proportion, opera

Notes:
brine is from Colleen McKee's My Hot Little Tomato.
half-life is from Helen Eisen's The Permeability of Memory.
knife is from Donna Biffar's Kiss Me Cold.
proportion is from Nan Sweet's Rotogravure.
opera is from Martha Ficklen's The Palm Leaf Fan.

Submission of entries: Send your poem in an email by midnight April 30, 2008 to cherrypiepress@yahoo.com. Please put "Poem BakeOff" in the subject line, and include your name with the entry. Submission of a poem for the contest implies permission to publish the winning poem on the Cherry Pie Press blog.

Eligibility and Judging: Poets previously published by Cherry Pie, or scheduled for publication in 2008, are not eligible to enter. Judging, due to the perennially low budget here, will be done solely by the Editor (me).

The Permeability of Memory

Helen Eisen's long-awaited chapbook, The Permeability of Memory, is coming out this week! The poems spin transformations out of love, survival, the brutality of war, the passage of memory through time and generations, the durable power of humor and art. Helen Eisen’s unique voice and unflinching eye carry her poems into a new country of lyricism and renewal.

If you have never read Helen Eisen's poems, you owe yourself the treat of exploration. The poems are relentless in pushing the envelope of honesty. They are witty and kind and gentle in a world that often is not. Here is passion, and here is compassion. Here also is a sly and hard-edged look at things exactly as they are, stripped of myth. Helen Eisen's poems will leave you in love with language, and polished by her ferocity, humor, and clear vision.

Here is the first poem in the book, the first step on this amazing journey --

Chai

(Signifies life and the number 18 in Hebrew)

Life had a life of its own
after the war, inhabited and other
than the life of this world, spun
at a different rate, and traveled within
another orbit.

When I stepped out, into the world,
the sun shone; when I stepped back
in, to the other, the dark was alive
on its own. Night and day, parted
and pulled, as one, by lives enduring

after, and lived before
a war, under another sun; before
the trees, before whole forests
were felled and split for kindling
fueling an armored hate.

In America I breathed
another air, different than there,
other than here.

The poems navigate dangerous history -- the poet's own history, and the history of our common world. Helen Eisen understands what it can cost to survive, and that endurance can be both a gift and a burden. Her gaze is unwavering, her heart generous.

we were running and lost one shoe . . .


(for my mother; for Roz and Anja)

I could not protect my mother
I could not bring back or fix the past
Those figures she drew
Were so weighted with paint
On a space the width of a thread
The canvas collapsed of itself
Broke what she saw
In my hands

I ran away instead
Speeding faster than thought
And no one knew where I was
But the crowds amassed
Behind a skein light as a spider’s web
Glinting from the same fibrous
Thread my mother had sketched
And hidden in her hands

These are stories of survival and of loss; these are poems of great hope.

The City Girl Learns About Birds and Trees


(for Steff)

A few months before your death
I became aware of the mourning dove’s call—
That silken coo of grey pearl
With tail and wings

(Little by little I learn)

Today in Tower Grove Park
I found a Gingko tree
Gingko biloba
One of three in a row—
Fan-like leaves fallen
Minute elephant ears listening—
Their heart-shaped globes
Of pale orange, pale yellow
Lying nearby

There are mallards in the pond
Tall grasses
The last of the gorgeous white lilies
A weeping willow, pine trees, dead bamboo
In the center of the lake the mist from a fountain—
A teenager takes off her shirt in the sun
Her bra is black lace
I smile and think go girl as she runs
Toward her friends

A mulberry tree stands near another tree
With heartbreaking, luminous, yellow leaves—

The sun is leaving behind
A memory of itself
Repeating thousandfold—

Helen Eisen's The Permeability of Memory (ISBN 978-0-9748468-4-2) is available locally in St. Louis at Left Bank Books, or send an email requesting an order form to cherrypiepress@yahoo.com.

Click here to view a flyer and order form for The Permeability of Memory. Click here to view the press release.

HELEN EISEN is the daughter of Polish Jews who survived Hitler’s Europe. Born in a DP camp in 1946, she crossed the Atlantic on a freighter with her parents and arrived in New York in 1950. Her poems have appeared in The Original Coming Out Stories 2nd edition, Natural Bridge and Breathing Out: Poems by Loosely Identified.