Runaway Bay Books
10 Main Street
Sayville, NY 11782
Upon entering Runaway Bay Books you are greeted by a well fed (and presumably well read) tiger striped tabby that answers to Harry. Harry is just part of the coziness of this charming little book shop. Nestled in the Currier and Ives setting that is Main Street , Sayville, the building itself is warm and friendly. With 40’s era jazz vocals playing quietly in the background and worn cushions on comfortable wicker chairs, the setting begs you to relax and browse though you may have to displace Harry for a seat.
Chris and Marianne Bastian have owned Runaway Bay since 1991 and have taken care to stock the shelves with a wide range of books , from the classics to best sellers to children’s literature with a shelf dedicated to local poets, authors and publishers (though space constraints prevent face front display of these titles it is worth the effort to browse this shelf).
At roughly 1100 square feet, this is no big box store hawking café au lait to wash down the dispassion inherent in that environment, rather it is a place to share Marianne’s love of books (her favorite is Richard Ford’s “Independence Day”), and as an added bonus you can appreciate the melodic, sing-song quality of her voice as you engage her in conversation about her store and the material within.
Runaway Bay hosts occasional readings with local poets, you may contact Marianne at (631) 589-9212 for information on such events.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
I Know This Much is True ...by Wally Lamb
This novel goes deep into the human psyche, of both the healthy and mentally ill. Twin brothers deal with one's schizophrenia, guilt, responsibility and betrayal. Spans generations and continents, and ultimately takes us through an amazing lesson in forgiveness. Wally Lamb is a master of characters painted in rich detail. A long read, but one that had me turning pages. Definitely a favorite of mine.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Between The Lines
Why do we write? It has been said that everyone has at least one book in them, but that still doesn’t answer the question. Why do we write? Why do we subject ourselves to countless hours staring at blank pages awaiting our pearls to come forth, or countless rejections from publishers who don’t appreciate those pearls. Why expose out innermost thoughts and feelings to an uncaring or disinterested public?....Leanne Hanson suggests that writing is as integral to her life as breathing. A life sustaining affirmation of the self. And who’s to say if she’s right or wrong.
I used to tell myself that I wrote for myself; that I was unconcerned with my possible audience, but that of course, wasn’t true. Writers are always aware of their audience, especially if they wish to eek out some meager living as a writer. What changed my mind and opened my eyes to the greater audience (than one) was a reaction to a short thought included in my first volume of poetry…”She was a smile from ear to ear that would not go away…until she did”. When I wrote that simple thought it was from the point of view of someone who was just unceremoniously dismissed from a relationship. I never allowed that that thought could mean anything else until someone who lost a daughter in a car accident saw her daughter as the ‘she’. Realizing that the words could affect others differently then they affected me, I became much more aware of my audience and reconsidered why I write.
I still write for myself, to a large degree, but I have become more polished. My poetry has grown from pure free verse to include some complicated and sophisticated forms. For myself, I find that I am much more considerate of word choice when I write in form, but I don’t think I wish to impose my appreciation of sonnets and ballades on those who have “Born to Free Verse” tattooed on their arms.
The point is diversity. There is room for all types of stylistic nuance in the world of writing. The simple fact is that without the differences, reading would be boring. Not the biggest fan of the realists, I still have preferences within the genre. I rather enjoy Hemingway yet find root canal sans Novocain preferable to Faulkner – even though Faulkner has given me the singular thought that in writing “sometimes you have to kill all your darlings.”
I used to tell myself that I wrote for myself; that I was unconcerned with my possible audience, but that of course, wasn’t true. Writers are always aware of their audience, especially if they wish to eek out some meager living as a writer. What changed my mind and opened my eyes to the greater audience (than one) was a reaction to a short thought included in my first volume of poetry…”She was a smile from ear to ear that would not go away…until she did”. When I wrote that simple thought it was from the point of view of someone who was just unceremoniously dismissed from a relationship. I never allowed that that thought could mean anything else until someone who lost a daughter in a car accident saw her daughter as the ‘she’. Realizing that the words could affect others differently then they affected me, I became much more aware of my audience and reconsidered why I write.
I still write for myself, to a large degree, but I have become more polished. My poetry has grown from pure free verse to include some complicated and sophisticated forms. For myself, I find that I am much more considerate of word choice when I write in form, but I don’t think I wish to impose my appreciation of sonnets and ballades on those who have “Born to Free Verse” tattooed on their arms.
The point is diversity. There is room for all types of stylistic nuance in the world of writing. The simple fact is that without the differences, reading would be boring. Not the biggest fan of the realists, I still have preferences within the genre. I rather enjoy Hemingway yet find root canal sans Novocain preferable to Faulkner – even though Faulkner has given me the singular thought that in writing “sometimes you have to kill all your darlings.”
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Orient Point by Julie Sheehan
Orient Point
By Julie Sheehan
2006 W.W. Norton
135 pp
At a point in time when the term ‘contemporary poetry’ has come to mean generally poor attempts at emulating Whitman or passing off journal entries as poetry, there seems little willingness on the part of the contemporary poets to pay homage to the rich heritage of form and structure of the pre Whitman years.
Simply stated poetry is the nobility of the language, all else is prose in cheap disguise. Yet few poets are willing to move out of their ‘safety zones’ to experiment with the language and we are deluged with confessions and laundry lists passed off as poetry.
Then there is Julie Sheehan and her book of poems titled “Orient Point” which is a tremendous piece as a whole as each piece resonates with the reader through her range and strength and reverence for the language.
The first thing that struck me when reading “Orient point” was that Ms. Sheehan isn’t afraid to (Gasp!!!) rhyme. Personally I love it. I tend to think that a poet is more considerate of their choice of words when delving into the world of rhyme and structured meter. It’s too easy to lay out stream of conscious claptrap and pronounce it a poem, let’s face it …even Kerouac falls flat on more than one occasion.
Sheehan goes that extra step. She carefully constructs her thoughts and verse. Take, for instance, “Sonnet: On a Recurring Argument Going Nowhere”:
The red-eyed gas gauge glares: attend! attend!
But you insist we’re nowhere near empty.
We taxi past Texacos, bypass BPs,
Our engine inventing fuel, me at wit’s end,
you fuming at my lack of confidence.
We pause at last, a Shell somewhere in Jersey
Not to fill up, but just to buy some candy.
By now I’ve hit the interstate of silence,
The pissed-off lane, the sullen bend, the unsound
skid and brakes. I ponder where to go
the next chance I can take a sabbatical.
The car konks out. Stillness emphatical.
I’ve never much complained of breaking down
until today. Guess what: I told you so.
Sheehan takes the wonderful Petrarchan form and makes it palatable to the modern reader. Her skillful use of enjambment allows this to read in a conversational vein, but make no mistake, each word is placed within a well crafted structure. Her subject matter – the simple act of running out of gas – looms so much larger as the masterful metaphor of the inability to communicate or even a relationship that has ‘run out of gas’. The humorous tone is hammered home with a rhyme Gilbert and Sullivan would envy; sabbatical/emphatical.
Too, Sheehan offers several free verse poems, mixed in with her sonnets and ghazals and never loses sight of the purpose of poetry, which is to entertain and enlighten.
This book was the winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and deservedly so. A must have for you poetry library.
By Julie Sheehan
2006 W.W. Norton
135 pp
At a point in time when the term ‘contemporary poetry’ has come to mean generally poor attempts at emulating Whitman or passing off journal entries as poetry, there seems little willingness on the part of the contemporary poets to pay homage to the rich heritage of form and structure of the pre Whitman years.
Simply stated poetry is the nobility of the language, all else is prose in cheap disguise. Yet few poets are willing to move out of their ‘safety zones’ to experiment with the language and we are deluged with confessions and laundry lists passed off as poetry.
Then there is Julie Sheehan and her book of poems titled “Orient Point” which is a tremendous piece as a whole as each piece resonates with the reader through her range and strength and reverence for the language.
The first thing that struck me when reading “Orient point” was that Ms. Sheehan isn’t afraid to (Gasp!!!) rhyme. Personally I love it. I tend to think that a poet is more considerate of their choice of words when delving into the world of rhyme and structured meter. It’s too easy to lay out stream of conscious claptrap and pronounce it a poem, let’s face it …even Kerouac falls flat on more than one occasion.
Sheehan goes that extra step. She carefully constructs her thoughts and verse. Take, for instance, “Sonnet: On a Recurring Argument Going Nowhere”:
The red-eyed gas gauge glares: attend! attend!
But you insist we’re nowhere near empty.
We taxi past Texacos, bypass BPs,
Our engine inventing fuel, me at wit’s end,
you fuming at my lack of confidence.
We pause at last, a Shell somewhere in Jersey
Not to fill up, but just to buy some candy.
By now I’ve hit the interstate of silence,
The pissed-off lane, the sullen bend, the unsound
skid and brakes. I ponder where to go
the next chance I can take a sabbatical.
The car konks out. Stillness emphatical.
I’ve never much complained of breaking down
until today. Guess what: I told you so.
Sheehan takes the wonderful Petrarchan form and makes it palatable to the modern reader. Her skillful use of enjambment allows this to read in a conversational vein, but make no mistake, each word is placed within a well crafted structure. Her subject matter – the simple act of running out of gas – looms so much larger as the masterful metaphor of the inability to communicate or even a relationship that has ‘run out of gas’. The humorous tone is hammered home with a rhyme Gilbert and Sullivan would envy; sabbatical/emphatical.
Too, Sheehan offers several free verse poems, mixed in with her sonnets and ghazals and never loses sight of the purpose of poetry, which is to entertain and enlighten.
This book was the winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and deservedly so. A must have for you poetry library.
Things, Actions and Experiences
by Mankh (Walter E. Harris III)
"So the universe "eyes" in the same way a tree "apples" and space "stars." (You can always turn a noun into a verb because every thing is also an event, a happening.
Houses are "housing.")" --Alan Watts from Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal, Vintage Books: 1968, 1974 p.65.
* * * * *
Intellectually, and grammatically, people tend to think of nouns as objects just sitting there doing nothing, while verbs, on the other hand, are the busy bees of language.
To grasp the basics of grammar we agree to this, and yet to further understand language and how it reflects actual living experiences, we are wise to look beyond the limits of these labels.
As a glass is lifted, although "lift" is the verb, the glass itself is in motion, and hence participating in the very action this verb exhibits; and without some "thing" to be lifted, the verb "lift" becomes an idle verb, a supposed action with nothing to act upon or with.
Akin to the chicken-egg, acorn-oak tree "which came first question," verbs and nouns work in living harmony.
The poets who write something like:
glass blue-tinted graceful-lift
though seeming to defy the rules of grammar and individual words, perhaps come closer to the true experience of what it's like to lift a glass without much attempt to define that, instead, simply enjoying the experience.
With the glass blue-tinted and the lifting graceful, what we call "adjectives" are added to this collective descriptive process.
Science tells us that even inanimate objects are busy moving around on a cellular level, actual energy-patterns that have somehow agreed to bond into what appears to us as a solid form. Thus, even an immobile object such as a "rock" (grammatically a "noun",) is active (though invisibly to the naked-eye,) and active enough to have what animistic cultures would call "a rock spirit".
Chinese picture-writing expresses the verb "to speak" as a combination of a "swinging door or gate" and a "mouth". A person opens or closes the mouth when speaking so the definition is apt. As far as English grammar is concerned, this Chinese "verb" is made up of two nouns, "door" and "mouth," that only imply the action. So who invented grammar anyway?
Though an essential part of speaking and writing logically and accurately, the rigidity of grammar softens when it comes to word-pictures, verbal-images, and the use of nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. in our striving to convey actual (and sometimes imagined) experiences.
A sharpening and heightening of the use of words occurs when the poet explores more deeply the link between the verbal tools and the actual experience attempting to be conveyed. The written form then becomes yet another experience--not just the words, not just the experience described, but all of these combined and born anew on the page...
or the computer-screen...
or from the invisible energy-patterns emanating from the opening and closing of our door-mouths as "spoken word, speech, voice."
( first published at http://www.performancepoets.org/page12.html )
-----------------------
Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is a poet, essayist and small press publisher.
His website: www.allbook-books.com
"So the universe "eyes" in the same way a tree "apples" and space "stars." (You can always turn a noun into a verb because every thing is also an event, a happening.
Houses are "housing.")" --Alan Watts from Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal, Vintage Books: 1968, 1974 p.65.
* * * * *
Intellectually, and grammatically, people tend to think of nouns as objects just sitting there doing nothing, while verbs, on the other hand, are the busy bees of language.
To grasp the basics of grammar we agree to this, and yet to further understand language and how it reflects actual living experiences, we are wise to look beyond the limits of these labels.
As a glass is lifted, although "lift" is the verb, the glass itself is in motion, and hence participating in the very action this verb exhibits; and without some "thing" to be lifted, the verb "lift" becomes an idle verb, a supposed action with nothing to act upon or with.
Akin to the chicken-egg, acorn-oak tree "which came first question," verbs and nouns work in living harmony.
The poets who write something like:
glass blue-tinted graceful-lift
though seeming to defy the rules of grammar and individual words, perhaps come closer to the true experience of what it's like to lift a glass without much attempt to define that, instead, simply enjoying the experience.
With the glass blue-tinted and the lifting graceful, what we call "adjectives" are added to this collective descriptive process.
Science tells us that even inanimate objects are busy moving around on a cellular level, actual energy-patterns that have somehow agreed to bond into what appears to us as a solid form. Thus, even an immobile object such as a "rock" (grammatically a "noun",) is active (though invisibly to the naked-eye,) and active enough to have what animistic cultures would call "a rock spirit".
Chinese picture-writing expresses the verb "to speak" as a combination of a "swinging door or gate" and a "mouth". A person opens or closes the mouth when speaking so the definition is apt. As far as English grammar is concerned, this Chinese "verb" is made up of two nouns, "door" and "mouth," that only imply the action. So who invented grammar anyway?
Though an essential part of speaking and writing logically and accurately, the rigidity of grammar softens when it comes to word-pictures, verbal-images, and the use of nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. in our striving to convey actual (and sometimes imagined) experiences.
A sharpening and heightening of the use of words occurs when the poet explores more deeply the link between the verbal tools and the actual experience attempting to be conveyed. The written form then becomes yet another experience--not just the words, not just the experience described, but all of these combined and born anew on the page...
or the computer-screen...
or from the invisible energy-patterns emanating from the opening and closing of our door-mouths as "spoken word, speech, voice."
( first published at http://www.performancepoets.org/page12.html )
-----------------------
Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is a poet, essayist and small press publisher.
His website: www.allbook-books.com
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