Post by shayepoet on Oct 21, 2008 20:47:36 GMT 2
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Total Immersion
Glenna Luschei
My book, Total Immersion, takes a dip into the spiritual. One of the reviews said that these are "underdog poems." I like that because it means that the reviewer caught my struggles and revelations in life.
“How Glenna Luschei sings in Total Immersion! Her words dance just in the curl of the truth – the way one catches ‘molasses in that one second before it boils’.” --Shelby Stephenson
“Her writing celebrates its elements and seasons, the growing things and creatures, with sharp, evocative colors and a sinewy verse music alert to the poetic capacities in the sounds of such ordinary words as mica and tarmac, soap and oak.” --Tom Clark
“Glenna Luschei’s poems are always lively, brave, sometimes biting as lime juice – written by an enchanted mind.” --Robert Bly
Sample poem:
They do Death Right
They do death right
in the South.
"After they wash the corpse
the hair is straight.
I bring in my own hairdryer
and curling iron.
It's the last thing
I can do for my friend."
In the South, the dead
are safe. The traffic pulls
to the side of the road
to honor the funeral procession.
The snake handlers
quote Matthew. “They
who believe in the Lord
will not perish
from the serpent's bite.”
They do death right.
At his viewing, my yard
man who sowed ginseng
and cresie greens for me
wore a brand new pair
of bib overalls.
There was a telephone
among the gladiolas.
The ribbon said, "Jesus called."
They do death right.
Review of Total Immersion by Hugh Fox:
"Perfect title, because the immersion is total, life-death, pain- exaltation, anguish-safor/, you name it and it's here, although the overall, core vision is a kind of existentialist call to see, touch, feel, spread out into the present moment as long as we can.
There's one dialogue-poem, for example, where Luschei talks to the fifteenth century Hindu poet, Kabir, in which she contrasts her twenty-first century anguishings with Kabir's transcendentalism: "...I have been asleep 1000 years.//How beautiful I/When the wind blows/grass leaps up the hills like/antelope.//I tell Kabir life is/slipping through my hands....//"Welcome chaos. Something new is waiting/to be born." ("Wake up! Talks with Kabir.").
There are poems that surfacewise are about new houses, grandparents visiting from Nebraska, Zelda Fitzgerald, country people, all sorts of dreams, etc....but under all the surfaces Luschei is always preaching the same message, which is the way she lives her own life -BE, whatever else comes along, evil, good or neutral, BE. A real classic."
February 6, 2008
About the author:
Glenna Luschei is the founder and publisher of the poetry journals Café Solo, Solo and Solo Café (1969-2008) and is the author of many chapbooks, special editions and trade books, the latest being Total Immersion published by Presa Press in 2008 and Libido Dreams released by Artamo Press in 2007. She was named Poet Laureate of San Luis Obispo City and County for the year 2000. Luschei has also published an artist book of her translation of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Enigmas, Solo Press, 2006. She has received the D.H. Lawrence and the National Endowment for the Arts fellowships.
Please see my blog and other information at www.solopress.org
ISBN: 978-0-9800081-0-4
Presa Press (2008), Total Immersion, 96 pages, $12.00
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Amazon: tinyurl.com/62rxnj
Barnes & Noble: tinyurl.com/6q44kh
Abe Books: tinyurl.com/5ndka6