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LOST HORSE PRESS NEW POETS SERIES: NEW POETS, SHORT BOOKS | VOLUME V

LOST HORSE PRESS NEW POETS SERIES: NEW POETS, SHORT BOOKS | VOLUME V

$16.95Price

ISBN: 978-0-9844510-8-1

Pub Date: Mar. 2011

Pages: 108


Marvin Bell, series editor


What's Truly Is Feral by Valentine Freeman

Human Shade by Robert Peake

On the Murder of Juan de la Cruz by Jensea Storie


From the Introduction to Volume V:


. . . The poets in this volume–Valentine Freeman, Robert Peake and Jensea Storie—like those in the first four volumes, deserve to be better known, but public promotion of the poets was never my primary aim. That would be a bonus, but only a bonus. Rather, I hoped the chance to put together a short book for print would reconfirm for each poet the personal, even intimate, value of the imagination in general and of poetry in particular. Their own imaginations, and their own poetry.


I invited poets whose inner lives, I felt, would be rewarded by a lifetime that includes poetry or another art. I do not know if they learned the lesson or not. Check back in ten years. Poetry at its best, like philosophy, is a survival skill...


It was also my intention that each poet should commit to a manuscript that embodied his or her individuality, by following his or her instincts, sans editorial meddling or “house style.” Hence, I dodged their requests for detailed input and kept my suggestions to a minimum. I selected poets who, I felt, were writing from within their language and experience rather than simply applying skills learned in the classroom.


Our country is being attacked from without and within. Ideologues have taken the place of thinkers and judges, democracy has been distorted by TV politics, and the so-called American Dream is fast disappearing as health, safety and privacy become increasingly the luxuries of the wealthy. As always, the soul of a nation survives in the interstices of political and economic events. It survives, preeminently, in the arts. Art makes life better, even in the harshest of circumstances.


In the glut of poetic gymnastics, amusements, hip talk, glittering confessions and conventional commentary, there will yet and always be, I believe, poets who write from inside, for whom poetry is a way of thinking from within emotion, and for whom a poem is about what happens as you write, read or hear it. No village explainer can tell you why this matters or persuade you to love it. I have cared for my students, and for these “New Poets,” more than they know. But they had to do the work themselves for it to matter. As I said, check back in ten years. Maybe twenty.

—M. B., November 10, 2010

    I asked power to spit on my hands,

    Bring death closer to my heart, I said.

    Inside me, me, me, me.


    —from “Bring Death” by Valentine Freeman



    It is mine

    to bear, this sack

    of dust, broken

    rhythms of night’s

    covered drum.


    The wind has something

    to tell me.

    Look how it tugs

    at my sleeve.


    —from “To Friends Not Knowing What To Say” by Robert Peake



    . . . As he fell

    into her arms, panting like a dog,

    he knew only that the catcalls

    beyond the silence filling his ears

    were not from heaven

    for heaven was nowhere.

    Only the foothold of cornflowers

    rose above him carrying the scent

    of his brothers’ boots.


    —from “On the Murder of Juan de la Cruz, August 16, 1973” by Jensea Storie


    Marvin Bell was born in New York City on August 3, 1937, and grew up in Center Moriches, on the south shore of eastern Long Island. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Alfred University, a Master of Arts from the University of Chicago, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa.


    Marvin Bell was born in New York City on August 3, 1937, and grew up in Center Moriches, on the south shore of eastern Long Island. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Alfred University, a Master of Arts from the University of Chicago, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa.


    Bell taught for forty years for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, retiring in 2005 as Flannery O’Connor Professor of Letters. For five years, he designed and led an annual Urban Teachers Workshop for America SCORES. Currently he serves on the faculty of Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program. He has also taught at Goddard College, the University of Hawaii, the University of Washington, and Portland State University. He and his wife, Dorothy, live in Iowa City and Port Townsend, Washington.

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