Luanne Castle: Poetry and Other Words (and cats!)

The Ekphrastic Review has reprinted another poem from my first collection Doll God. As I mentioned last week, the journal is a very unique literary magazine. The emphasis is on publishing writing that responds to visual art. Thus the name of the journal. Check out this article for explanation: Ekphrasis

Thank you to editor Lorette C. Luzajic for choosing my poem “Debris.” There is a strong connection between the poem and my mother-in-law’s art.

Here is the poem up at The Ekphrastic Review:

Debris by Luanne Castle

The photo above is the cover of the book that is a story of The Birdland jazz club illustrated by my mother-in-law’s Birdland murals. That is where my photos on the journal site originate from–not the actual murals themselves.

That wraps up a full week of five poem publications. I hope you’ve enjoyed them and aren’t jumping out of your tree to get away from my postings. Closing comments, but you are more than welcome to post at the site. Thank you!

I’ll leave you with the cutie pie Perry.

Perry Como and My Mother-in-Law

Now that National Poetry Month and NaPoWriMo are over, I have been revising poems. Mainly, they have been small changes, so either I did better than I thought last month or (and more likely) I am still not seeing them clearly.

Spring is in full swing in Arizona, and everywhere I look it’s yellow, green, and blue.

I’ve been going through some of my mother-in-law’s paintings that were left over after she passed away. (She died 15 years ago, so it’s time to look at them again). The reason I pulled them out is because my daughter moved into her own place, and I am looking for paintings to bring her for her to choose from.

I wrote about my MIL’s art My Mother-in-Law’s Legacy, Part I and My Mother-in-Law’s Legacy, Part II and My Mother-in-Law’s Legacy, Part III

A lot of her paintings are portraits, and those are more difficult to hang on a wall than landscapes. I thought I’d share one of the portraits with you today. Maybe share some more later . . . .

Because my MIL was hired to paint a lot of celebrity portraits, the ones that are left are often “first drafts,” but sometimes she just painted them because they were famous and she hoped to sell those paintings.

Do you know who this is?

That’s right: Perry Como and his family, wife Roselle, son Ronnie, daughter Terri, and son David. Perry and Roselle were teenage sweethearts and were married until her death at age 84.

I love Perry Como’s voice and laidback coooool style. This is one of my favorites: