Co-authored by award-winning poets
Magdalena Ball
and
Carolyn Howard-Johnson
A
Military Writers Society of America Winner of the Bronze
Nominated for Global E-Book Award 2013
Deeper Into
the Pondis an e-chapbook and paperback
published in the time-honored
tradition
of poets everywhere.
That is, it self-published by the
poets
using Amazon's CreateSpace.com.
That makes it as new, in its way,
as it is traditional.
You'll love
hearing Magdalena Ball
read "Jupiter's Moons"
from Deeper Into the Pond
here:
Magdalena Ball runs
The
Compulsive Reader. Her short stories, editorials, poetry, reviews
and articles have appeared in a wide number of printed anthologies and
journals, and have won local and international awards for poetry
(including the Roland Robinson literary award), and
fiction. She is also the author of the critically acclaimed novel
Sleep Before Evening, a nonfiction book
The Art of Assessment: How to Review Anything and two other poetry
chapbooks
Quark Soup, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson,
Cherished Pulse. She runs a monthly radio program podcast
www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader
Carolyn Howard-Johnson's first novel,
This is the Place, and
Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered are both
award-winners. Her fiction, nonfiction and poems appear in national
magazines, anthologies and review journals. She speaks on culture,
tolerance, writing and promotion and has appeared on TV and hundreds of
radio stations nationwide. She is an
instructor for
UCLA Extension's Writers' Program
and has shared her expertise at venues like
San Diego State's world
renowned Writers' Conference, Dayton University's
Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop and SPAN's (Small Publishers
Association of North America) annual conference. Carolyn was recently
awarded Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment by the California
Legislature; her home town's Character and Ethics Commission honored her
for her work on promoting tolerance and the Pasadena Weekly named her to
their list of "San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen" for
literary activism. Her nitty-gritty how-to book,
The Frugal Book Promoter won USA Book News' Best Professional Book
2004 and her chapbook of poetry,
Tracings, was honored by the
Military Writers' Society of
America for excellence. Published by Finishing Line Press it is
available on
Amazon.
About the
Cover Artist
Jacquie
Schmall
Fourteen business cards predate the
1990’s when
Jacquie turned her attention to all things theater, and
film. Alphabetically through 1994, her jobs/projects, read
like this: deep tissue massage, ghost writer, hypnotherapy,
medical research, newspaper writer/editor, real estate
agent, sales (retail, wholesale), secretary, and travel
agent. Subsequently, she added, actor, art director,
assistant casting director, model, producer, set decorator,
and set designer.
In
her spare time, Jacquie occasionally painted, and developed
a style she calls “rainbow geometry.” After spending time in
theater productions, and on film sets, she was compelled to
paint a series of watercolors reflecting the powerful energy
of women in the process of co-creation. The painting on the
cover is one of them.
Jacquie says life’s highway has lots of off ramps, so why
not try more than a few, really enjoy the ride, and take
time to enjoy the scenery by the side of the road.
Jacquie lives in San Diego. She holds a B.A. in Zoology from
the University of Connecticut, and an
M.S.in
Microbiology from Long Island University.
Jacquie's colorful work was
chosen from among many others in a contest conducted by the
poets for the most suitable artwork.
Reviews for Deeper Into the Pond
Reviewed by J. R. McRae
This is a rich tapestry of a
celebration.
It opens with Carolyn’s verse and a
ballad of marine exotica and moves to the name bearing poem
“Narcissus Revisited” which mirrors the suffocation of
‘progress’ that gives freedoms with one hand and takes with
the other. Here the deadly oil slick wall kills as readily
as any of glass – progressive killing -
Those who feel
new freedoms like I, some later-borns
unaware that they are new, accept
the yellow-bright shimmer
spread across the surface
as if it were our doing
or our due.
The next poem makes a nod to John Masefield’s “ Sea
Fever” but taking it in role reversal with ship at dock and
the poet manning the great swooping cranes that unload.
I want to go down to
the sea at dawn
with a lunch bucket and thermos,
[and then]. . . pull
and push the big gear shifts to make a boom
tall as a building turn, swing down toward carloads
of gravel, clamp chunks of whatever freighters
I love the bittersweet of “Ariel” and
its death-defying reach in to the unknowable.
You need
the music to tell your story,
to find it, to understand it
to know the truth,
to reach above the
ocean's surface
where
others
live.
Death is horribly present in the all
too revelatory “what I once would have called a little
tiff”. Those of us who have lived long enough know too well
of what she speaks…
i learned
to call a spat a spat,
an inheritance something
more than money,
an argument,
a fight-to-the-death.
Magdalena’s opening poem both
celebrates and denounces the hippy freedom of a generation
that chose to ‘love’ but not their children well.
secretly leaning in
for more
parenting I didn’t get
punishment I
deserved
no rod spared
here
no spoiling.
“Time Out” speaks of the guilt trip that is
motherhood if you are, as many creatives are, a
perfectionist and time your merciless master .
I shoot a response
what now? two bullets of
frustration land in
her timeless lap
as she slips off.
Magdalena has written a powerfully
poignant tribute to all those frightened elderly flood
victims, trapped in rising waters and psychologically unable
to leave their lives behind –
You pretend
three hundred netfriends
hold your virtual hand
take you places
that don’t involve
leaving
home
the perpetual womb
shroud
you’ve pushed into.
Magdalena’s “Coming Back ends the
collection with an almost whispered reverie on love and loss
in a no man’s land of guilt and recriminations –
No one dared point a
finger.
We tried not to look at her but it was hard.
So we looked out of the corner of our eye when
we walked past, our heads thrown back fake
laughter all the while drawn towards the silence
of that pain the peripheral gravity that wouldn’t
let us settle into our evening of forgetting.
This collection offers the feminine
take on life, love and everything in between and does it
with élan!
~
J.R.McRae’s short stories appear in anthologies such as
Basics of Life [ALR Anthology], 100 Stories for Queensland,
Stories for Sendai, Road Trip, The Spirit of Poe, Tribute to
the Stars, Pot Luck, and more, as well as journals
Wired Ruby and Rose &Thorn. Her poetry/haiku have
won awards and are published in numerous journals and
anthologies including Quadrant, Long and Winding Road,
Antipodes and Divan. Artwork / photography by JR
features on covers of Ripples, on ABC Pool and in
issues of The Mozzie. As J.R.Poulter, she has 12
books for children and education published, including major
award winner, “Mending Lucille”. She once worked in a
circus! Website:
http://www.jrmcrae_subversive.weebly.com
/
www.jenniferrpoulter.weebly.com
Last
night I dreamt
I swam with dolphins
under the angry chaos above
boiling, bubbling wave crash
we moved slowly
sharing mammalian wisdom
in clicks and whistles.
My
cetacean body slate blue
thick and fluid
moved easily through the pod
belying the great heft of me
swimming, like flying
the glide and slide as I forgot everything but smooth
flow
velocity.
Sonar
guided me forward
echolocation to a destiny
nothing like domination
consumerism and desire
the triple bang crack of light
that woke me
to my frail, flawed humanity.
Memory's two
voices,
the you-girl
suffering the moment
and the you-now
who interprets.
You promise yourself
you won't fear the secrets,
won't tell what happened
without the feelings.
You deny yourself that
and you become Ursula
stealing your own song,
leaving yourself gurgling
under the sea. You need
the music to tell your story,
to find it, to understand it
to know the truth,
to reach above the
ocean's surface
where
others
live.
Carolyn Howard-Johnson (c)
Buy Links for
Carolyn's Books
Click and Order Any of Maggie and Carolyn's Poetry Books
Subscribe to
Carolyn Howard-Johnson's Sharing with Writers Newsletter
and get a FREE copy of Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips for Writers
"I have been a professional writer 40 years, and am also a
tenured full professor of journalism. Carolyn's Sharing with
Writers newsletter is most useful for me--and for my
students. I emphasize to them that while research is 90% of
writing, and the actual writing is about 10%, there's another
100% out there called promotion. Carolyn shows numerous ways to
get the message to the mass media."
~Walter Brasch, author
and educator
The newsletter has a poetry corner to help poets with resources
and craft.
Best Book Award for The Frugal Book Promoter (2004) and The Frugal Editor (2008)
and the Second Edition of The Frugal Book Promoter
(2011).
Reader Views Literary Award for The Frugal Editor
New Generation Award for Marketing and Finalist for The Frugal Editor
Book Publicists of Southern California's Irwin Award
Military Writers Award of Excellence for Tracings, A Chapbook of Poetry.
A Retailer's Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotion wins author Military
Writers Society of America's Author of the Month award for March, 2010
Gold Medal
Award from Military Writers Society of America, 2010.
MWSA also gave a nod to
She
Wore Emerald Then,
a chapbook of poetry honoring mothers.
The Frugal
Editor
Named #! on Top Ten
Editing Books list.
Finalist
New Generation Book Awards 2012, The Frugal Book
Promoter, Finalist 2010 The Frugal Editor,
Winner 2010 Marketing Campaign for the Frugal Editor
The Oxford Award
recognizes
the
alumna who exemplifies the Delta Gamma precept of
service to her community and who, through the years,
devotes her talents to improve the quality of life
around her.
Nominated: Diamond Award
for Achievement in the Arts
Glendale
California's Arts and Culture Commission and the City of
Glendale Library.
And more than a dozen other awards for Carolyn's novel, short story collection and poetry.
See the awards page on this site.
Other
Chapbooks
Cover art by Vicki
Thomas, Poetry by Magdalena Ball and Carolyn Howard-Johnson
"Cherished Pulse is full of poems that describe love from the eyes and
hearts of young and old. We see love in its youthful stage,
stirring the hearts of man and woman alike and tying a bond that even
death cannot break. As we continue reading, we understand that love
deepens into an awesome, but quiet joy as the couple grows older. These
poems renew our faith in love as they remind us of our own experience
with this most sought after emotion."
~
Lucille P Robinson for
Alternative-Read.com
Tracings is winner of the Military Society of
America's Award of Excellence and named to the Compulsive Reader's Ten
Best Reads of 2005
Third in the Celebration
of Chapbooks with Magdalena Balls, written expressly for fathers "and
other masculine apparitions.
She Wore Emerald Thenis a book of
Moods of Motherhood:
thirty poems by award-winning poets Magdalena Ball and Carolyn
Howard-Johnson, with original photography by May Lattanzio. A
beautifully presented, tender and strikingly original gift book, ideal
for Mother's Day or any day when you want to celebrate the notion of
motherhood in its broadest sense. Share this collection with someone
you love.
Deeper Into the Pond
