New Site For Scrapper Poet

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(The photo is courtesy of Jamestown Community College)

Note: The Scrapper Poet's site has moved to

www.thescrapperpoet.wordpress.com

Saunter on over to Wordpress and pay a visit.

Splendid New Chapbook from Karen Weyant

(image: cover of Stealing Dust, by Karen J. Weyant)








I just finished reading a chapbook of poetry by Karen J. Weyant, Stealing Dust. It is splendid.

The poems are firmly anchored in working-class experiences in an area of the nation routinely called "the Rust Belt," and they represent varied, nuanced elements of those experiences, including but not limited to the perspectives of working-class women. The poems are clear and accessible but deceptively complex, and one wants to return to poems multiple times. The voice is mature and unpretentious, the imagery superb, and the control of language admirable.

Several poems have irresistible titles: "The Spring of Hand-Me-Downs," "The Girl Who Carved Jesus Into Her Forearm," "Delusions of a Die Setter's Daughter," "Beauty Tips from the Girls on the 3rd Shift," and "Why Men in Factories Should Never Write Love Stories." The latter poem may well be my favorite in the book, but it has lots of competition.

Certainly my own working-class roots (albeit on the Left Coast) and a general affinity for working-class literature draw me to the book, but at the same time, this poetry succeeds on its own merits, and if you like strong, unaffected contemporary poetry, you'll enjoy this chapbook.

It is from Finishing Line Press, P.O. Box 1626, Georgetown, Kentucky 40324, and of course it's available on amazon.com as well. The ISBNs are 1-59924-397-0 and 1-59924-397-9. Buy one for yourself and for a friend (a National Poetry Month gift), and most certainly urge your local librarian to order one. Finishing Line is a well know publisher of chapbooks.

Weyant teaches writing and literature at Jamestown Community College, and she also writes a blog called "The Scrapper Poet," which is on the blog-roll to the right.

Muser Wins Award

Lumpenprofessoriat has bestowed upon Poet's Musings one of several curmudgeonly awards. The bar was set high: I had to appear to be a poet. My old bones appreciate it when the high-jump bar is placed on the ground. With the award comes a grave responsibility--to bestow other awards on other bloggers. I think you see where this is headed and why Lumpenprofessoriat suspected poets, among others, might like it. The idea is not necessarily to subvert awards, awarding, and awardification, but--well, actually, I think that may be the idea, or one of them.

Here, then, are my awards, which bring with them the image above, although I may have copied the wrong image (sigh, I am a poet), but a giant squid embracing (?) a whale is better than an Oscar, if you ask me.

1. The What's Not To Like Award goes to the Hyperborean, who writes smartly about a range of political and economic topics: what's not to like about that?

2. The Get Off Your Duff and Blog On the Road award goes to KCugno , known as ms. cugno to some, and also the blogger formerly known as Island Musings. Spanning the globe from Hawaii to New Zealand and points in between, this blogger does much more than sit in the chair and blog, and this is but one reason her blog is interesting.

3. In the grand tradition of award-giving, I give an award to the awarder, Lumpenprofessoriat ,
for inventing this ironic award-scheme, and for exhibiting the correct mixture of befuddlement and grumpiness in blogging. As many of us know, befuddlement is often a mask that is as polite as a grump can be, and grumpiness often springs from not being able to understand that which is too outrageous to understand, such as the utterance, "I'm the Decider." A Decider does not say "I'm the Decider"; thus befuddled grumpiness ensues.

4. The Scrap Irony award goes to The Scrapper Poet, for writing poetry, teaching, blogging, and driving in snow--almost simultaneously! --And for just publishing a scrappy chapbook. And because I couldn't summon the discipline to resist the pun, scrap irony.

5. The e.e. cummings/Ansel Adams award goes to Waking Jonas for deployment of the lower case and wry humor, and for photo-management on a blog. If I were to receive some training, my photo-management skills might eventually reach the level of rudimentary.

6. The Poetry Diaspora Award goes to Poefrika, a blogger who posts great poetry early and often, and who also alerts readers to new books of poetry and other literature recently published. Poefrika is among the hardest working bloggers in the blog-business.

I urge you to let the award-games continue. Play anthems of your choice.