A Thing Significant

 

My new Shakespearean sonnet, "A Thing Significant" is now online at Pulsebeat, along with other fine poems by many of my friends.

Thank you to editor David Stephenson.

Save the date!

Image of an 18th century woven coverlet similar to the one that figures prominently (and symbolically) in my book. Reprinted by permission of Melinda Zongor, Director and Curator of The National Museum of the American Coverlet, Bedford, Pennsylvania.

HERE is the official announcement of my September 18, 2022 lecture/reading/signing event where I will present my new book, Annals of the Dear Unknown, at historic Nathan Denison House in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania.

Thank you, Mary Walsh and colleagues at the Luzerne County Historical Society!

 

 

MY NEW BOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE !

 

Dear Friends,

My new book, Annals of the Dear Unknown, a creative historical verse-tale, is now available for purchase at Amazon and Kelsay Books.

I look forward to hearing your comments on this unusual departure from my previous collections of lyric poetry.

I'll be reading and signing the book on September 18 at Nathan Denison House in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, and hope that you'll consider attending the event.

To give you a sense of the background for my writing this book, below is the Author's Note, which appears at the beginning of the book:

Author’s Note

Rose’s people came from Connecticut.

            That vague description of my great-grandmother, Rose Munson Chandler, as well as a sepia-toned family portrait of Rose sitting alongside her husband, Benjamin Chandler and their three sons, were all I knew as a child of my Munson family history. Like the protagonist in Thomas Campbell’s poem, Gertrude of Wyoming, I often thought about my “dear unknown” ancestors who had emigrated from Europe to Connecticut, and from there to Pennsylvania.

            It wasn’t until the death of my father several years ago, when I took possession of an old tome titled The Munson Record, that the Munson ancestry came alive for me. In tracing my lineage, generation through generation, back to Captain Thomas Munson who, along with other Pilgrims, sailed to America in 1634, I came across the story of Rose’s great-great-grandfather, Obadiah (“Diah”) Munson, his wife Rachel Tyler Munson, and their twelve children.

            I discovered that I was a descendant of one of those children, Walter Munson, who, with his older brother, Wilmot and other siblings, was part of a frantic departure from the town of Westmoreland at the time of the Battle of Wyoming in Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania.

            During this exodus, known as the Great Runaway, over two thousand frontier settlers were forced to abandon their farms, taking narrow Indian paths and rudimentary roads over mountains and through dense forest areas known as The Great Swamp and The Shades of Death as they made their way to safety hundreds of miles away. Others escaped in canoes and rafts, desperately paddling and poling downstream on the Susquehanna River to Fort Augusta and beyond.

            The history of Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania in the years prior to and during the Yankee-Pennamite Wars and the American Revolution is complex on many levels. It is not the purpose of this book to re-litigate the legal concept and cultural notion concerning the proprietary right of soil. It will not question the wisdom—or lack thereof—of the military decision made on July 3, 1778, nor will it dwell on or dispute conflicting, exaggerated and debunked accounts of the battle’s aftermath.

            Rather, Annals of the Dear Unknown is simply an honest and plainly-told tale, written by someone who, in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay History, has hoped to “attain and maintain that lofty sight where facts yield their secret sense, and poetry and annals are alike.”

    

—Catherine Chandler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Almost there . . .

 

I'm thrilled to announce that final editing is now underway for my upcoming verse-tale based on historical events in Connecticut and Northeast Pennsylvania in the late 18th century.

Annals of the Dear Unknown, published by Kelsay Books, will be available from the publisher and on Amazon by the end of August.

I'll keep everyone posted.

Thank you, Karen, Delisa, Shay, and team!

Coming to Terms

 

 

 My sonnet, "Coming to Terms" won third prize in the 2021 Better Than Starbucks sonnet contest.

HERE is the link to the top ten poems. Below is the poem.

Thank you to Editor-in-Chief, Vera Ignatowitsch.

 

Coming to Terms

 

I set aside my one-size-fits-all shirt,

my pants with the elastic tummy-panel,

as music to a silent world of hurt

strains from a distant country-western channel.

 

Still, there’s compassion. I’ve been granted leave —

a week in which to heal and convalesce,

to peel away the glow-stars, to unweave

the year I’d stitched onto your christening dress.

 

I rearrange my premises — perverse

assumptions! — gather unripe figs. Throw out

the bloodied bedclothes. Scour the universe

in search of you. And God. And go about

my business as my crooked smile displays

the artful look of ordinary days.

 

 -- Catherine Chandler

A Handful of Poetry Publications for 2022

 

 My sonnet, "Coming to Terms" has won third prize in the Better Than Starbucks annual sonnet contest. Not bad, out of over 500 entries 🙂! Thank you Vera Ignatowitsch and judges! The poem is available on the Better Than Starbucks website https://www.betterthanstarbucks.org/sonnet-contest 

Two chapters of my forthcoming verse-tale, "Annals of the Dear Unknown" are now available in the current issue of Alamaba Literary Review. Thank you, Bill Thompson! I'll let everyone know when the print journal is available online!

Two poems, an ekphrastic sonnet inspired by the painting "Rooms by the Sea" (1951) by Edward Hopper, "The Jumping-off Place" and my English translation of Pierre de Ronsard's "Ode à Cassandre" will be published in the January issue of the journal Mezzo Cammin. Thank you, Anna Evans! 

Another sonnet, "On Reading the Grand Jury Report, An Altar Boy Remembers" will be published in the journal Presence 2022 in an upcoming issue. Thank you, Mary Ann B. Miller! 

Last but not least, my epigram "Flammarion Pilgrim Woodcut Redux", originally published in my first book, Lines of Flight, will be published in an anthology titled "Outer Space: 100 Poems" edited by poet Midge Goldberg for Cambridge University Press as part of their 100 Poems series of anthologies. The poems range from Homer to the present. 

The anthology will be both print (run of 2000) and downloadable (3000) for worldwide distribution. I'm honored to have my work appear along with a fabulous group of scientists, poets & translators including Liz Ahl, Ned Balbo, Bill Coyle, Robert Crawford, Dick Davis, Martin Elster, Rhina Espaillat, Michael Ferber, John Foy, Alice Gorman, Sarah Howe, Allison Joseph, A.M. Juster, Donna Kane, X.J. Kennedy, Janet Alexa Kenny, Len Krisak, Gwyneth Lewis, Leslie Monsour, Victoria Moul, Alfred Nicol, Linda Pastan, Jay Ruzesky, Tracy K. Smith, Alicia E Stallings Yun Wang, Deborah Warren, Richard Wilbur, Anton Yakovlev and others. 

Thank you, Midge Goldberg for the invitation to have my work published in this great project!