Tag Archives: Poem

by | May 4, 2024 · 1:38 pm

Gorgeous Poetry about Being Human on an Endangered Planet

Looking for a new poetry book? Look no further than this beautiful collection by Candice M. Kelsey within this stunning cover.

The chapbook was published in March 2024 by the publisher, boats against the current. The cover art is by Matt Kish.

Find it at Amazon here:

https://shorturl.at/BGPU3

My Review of Postcards from the Masthead

Reading the poems in Candice M. Kelsey’s new chapbook, Postcards from the Masthead, feels a bit like finding your stride on a boat deck, as you learn to move with the waves, enjoying your place upon a vast body of water. The reader must navigate between the life of our planet and the life of the body which “dresses itself in courage / to face the morning / bastard glow.” There is a sense of connection between the larger, public world and the individual. These poems are fraught with angst over the dangers of climate change. At the same time, they investigate corporeal dangers and desires. The striking imagery and perspectives unique to Kelsey are a warning cry against our endangered lives. 

Here is a sample poem:

Meditation on the Pinky Toe, Port Side

Broken again littlest
one throbbing pink
loud the big toe shifts
like my father in a chair
Sunday sessions
mandatory for the EDU
a daughter in treatment
circle of silent frescoes
and he's unhappy as
the third mate's cat

Blue who bounds over
white cedar bulwarks
where I lean with today’s
galley of oranges
halved she capsizes
a feline Michelangelo
painting the Sistine 
or God dabs my toe wet
with paint-drop nose

she too knows injury
touches the gnarled-speck
perimeter of my foot
now a flesh canvas
cathedral ceiling scene
where I am broken
by a hundred Adams
awful fools busy naming
the garden of my body—

we catch ourselves
on the world’s harpoons
such sharp edges protrude
to hobble us with small
private dislocations and yet
like this little piggy
some of us make it home
somehow I make it
all the goddamn way

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by | September 9, 2023 · 10:51 am

“Tuesday Afternoon at Magpie’s Grill”

This post was originally published when I was thrilled to have a new poem up at Nine Muses Poetry. This poem was written about my occasional time spent writing poetry at Magpie’s and named, appropriately, “Tuesday Afternoon at Magpie’s Grill.” The journal is long-since out of business, but before that happened the editor, Annest Gwilym, nominated this poem for Best of the Net.

I decided to open my book Rooted and Winged with the poem because it fit so well my theme of the tension between the metaphorical desire to fly and our earth-bound lives.

Since the poem can no longer be found at the site of the journal, here it is:

Tuesday Afternoon at Magpie’s Grill

Flickering afternoon light slatted and parsed.

At 3PM, the booths empty except for me

and my notebook.

Would I notice if not for my companion,

my need to recognize and remember?

Without a record, will I hear the ice crashing

into the sink, the Dodger talk at the bar

at the end of the room under the Miller Lite

neon confident and beckoning?

My mother used to say about me,

In one ear and out the other, as if the words

flowed through me without stopping,

without truly entering me, leaving little

effect, as if I had no memory

of all the little parental transgressions.

Why am I not under the sycamore I spot

through the blinds in this Tuesday sunshine

listening to the very song with the shady tree?

What have I done with my life? When

I should have written a poem, I didn’t.

When I did, I didn’t get it quite right.

How can a poem do so many things:

wishing for the shade and thirsty for a beer,

feeling an urge to move my pen and noting

the tiny feet and brush of cuticle,

the solitary fly on my bare arm, while

imagining the chattering of the birds that swoop

from sycamore to jacaranda as if the parking lot

and dumpsters and broken bottles don’t exist.

No matter what I notice,

no matter what I record, I will never

capture the ease of wind-filled wings,

tail feathers a translucent backlit fan,

as my hollow bones jettison the detritus

to fly upward against the source.

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by | July 3, 2023 · 12:51 pm

Season 5 Episode 14:  Luanne Castle on A Poet’s Voice

“Note how the red rose,velvet worn by early frost,clings confidentlyto its own treacherous stem,never accursed by mirrors.” Luanne Castle Welcome to …

Season 5 Episode 14:  Luanne Castle on A Poet’s Voice

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by | June 12, 2023 · 11:03 pm

The Phoenix Rises in Fall: #TankaTuesday

Colleen at Wordcraft poetry suggested writing a syllabic poem about the mythological Phoenix or Thunderbird.

Because I live in Phoenix, Arizona, I wanted to write about the city. Phoenix was named after the bird of myth, but is often associated with it because of the extreme heat of the summers. In reality, it earned the name because it was a new city built on the ruins of the Hohokam civilization. I wrote a double tanka so I could work with both notions.

With flat-roofed houses

and white adobe mission,

they built a city

on the ancient vill ruins

of the Hohokam nation.

In celebration

of the fiery eponym

the city’s named for,

every summer it burns

to ash, then rises in fall.

###

Fall brings perfect weather, new and colorful flowers, and relief after the hellish summers.

City of Phoenix flag

As we move into summer, though, we do have lovely cactus flowers.

Grand dog Theo (love to babysit him)

When I take Theo out I try to walk in shade because I am very aware of the danger of heat to his paws.

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by | May 17, 2023 · 5:15 am

Robbie Cheadle’s Guest on Treasuring Poetry

I’m excited to be author and blogger Robbie Cheadle’s May guest for her monthly Treasuring Poetry article on Writing to be Read. She had some wonderful questions for me about writing, and I enjoyed answering them! You can find the publication here: https://writingtoberead.com/2023/05/17/treasuring-poetry-meet-poet-and-blogger-luanne-castle-and-a-review-poetry-poetrycommunity-bookreview/. Robbie has also posted a beautiful review of both Rooted and Winged and Our Wolves.

With son and DIL living here, we have their dog Theo here as well. He’s such a little goofy guy, and I get to let him out when his mom and dad are both gone for three hours or more. I can’t physically handle walking him on a leash, although in a pinch I can take him on the driveway on a leash because he’s very good for me. But I like to let him roam the backyard, which is fenced. He’s very loved and what’s rewarding for me is that he loves his Grandma! In his photo you can see a very typical expression he gets on his face as he is always trying to figure out what’s going on.

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by | February 21, 2023 · 9:47 am

Thank You, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily

I maybe have shared when my poem “Waterland” was first published by Open: Journal of Arts and Letters. Then it became part of my new full-length collection Rooted and Winged. Today I’m really tickled that editor Christine Klocek-Lim has published it in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. She expresses her thoughts about the poem at the end. I’m grateful for her enthusiasm for the poem.

https://autumnskypoetrydaily.com/2023/02/21/waterland-by-luanne-castle/

This is the photo that inspired me to write this poem. Yes, that’s baby me with my pretty mom.

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by | February 7, 2023 · 10:30 am

New News and an Anniversary Present

Don’t miss my interview yesterday with poet Millicent Borges Accardi: https://writersite.org/2023/02/06/from-mrs-virtue-to-the-covid-19-pandemic-an-interview-of-millicent-borges-accardi/ Millicent talks about the teacher who instilled her love of poetry as a kid. It so happened that the teacher was the daughter of a famous poet. She talks about her Portguguese heritage, both generally and the literature as well.

In January, I had another ekphrastic piece, this time a poem, taken at Visual-Verse. I neglected to mention last time that we only get one hour to write these to the art prompts. It’s a very intense process. https://visualverse.org/submissions/the-tournament/

Are you interested in a Giveaway for Rooted and Winged? LibraryThing is running one right now. https://www.librarything.com/ner/detail/46725/Rooted-and-Winged

Main Street Rag has published my review of Justin Hamm’s Drinking Guinness with the Dead. While I can’t post a copy of the review as it’s a print issue, I can tell you I give it two thumbs up. Hamm’s work is really tied to the Midwest and its vast once-farmland, so while anyone would love it (I think), Midwesterners would especially cherish it.

My daughter’s wedding was a year ago this coming Sunday. So look what I made for daughter and son-in-law. A wedding junk journal.

I had to find this nifty little suitcase after I realized that with the fragility of the book (cuz junk) and their lifestyle the book wouldn’t last long without protection. I was able to add in their wooden ring boxes, little place cards, extra photos, and the napkins from their previous courthouse wedding where we drank blue prosecco and ate cookies. Last year’s wedding was the whole shebang because that’s what they like.

See inside on the left? That’s a little clutch I made out of plastic grocery bags to store the cassettes of their wedding music.

That project was loads of fun, but now I’m about hearted and laced and sweetthinged out.

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by | January 27, 2023 · 7:56 pm

Elizabeth Gauffreau Reads a Poem from Rooted and Winged

I did post about the beautiful review of Rooted and Winged by Elizabeth Gauffreau in the new issue of Anti-Heroin Chic. Now Liz has recorded a poem from the book–and it’s such a treat! She published it on her post with her link of the review.

Publication First: #BookReview: Rooted and Winged by Luanne Castle
A big thank you to Liz for both the review and this charming reading.

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by | January 24, 2023 · 5:30 am

Review of Ken Gierke’s Glass Awash

The new poetry collection of poet Ken Gierke, who blogs at https://rivrvlogr.com/, is called Glass Awash. I wrote a review of it and hope it inspires you to buy a copy!

Ken Gierke’s debut poetry collection, Glass Awash (Spartan Press 2022), is about making art, connections between inhabitants of the planet, and the voices that attach and sustain us. These inhabitants can be human, animal, plant, or mineral. In the poem that titles the book, “Glass Awash,” a piece of glass is tumbled in the waves at the shore where it dries under the sun. Then, “From swaying reeds, / a red-wing remarks on / its beauty, soon consumed / / by a frost, a reminder / of each kiss found / in grains of sand.” In this case the connections seem to be between animal (bird), plant (reeds), and mineral (glass and sand). However, the human is implicit as it is the human who records the event.

These free verse poems are spare with a minimum of words so that the images are not cluttered with less important language. The poems protest against “[o]ur growing world of disconnect,” but notice the “invisible connections” within the natural world (“The Intent of Moonlight and Ethereal Synapses”). Although poems are titled “Words without Voice” and “Thoughts without Voice,” the struggle seems to be to bring voices into being. In “Other Voices,” the persona tries to find a stone at the water’s edge “that speaks to you,” and then the stone with other stones will also speak. These stones, much like the tumbled glass, speak to us only if we listen carefully.

Some of the poems within this collection are elegies for the poet’s mother during her final illness and after she is gone. These are beautiful and while still sparely constructed vibrate with love and loss. These are a few of my favorite lines: “Hidden / in the pockets of my mother’s dreams, / surrounded / by the accumulated lint / of a faded lifetime, are dusty memories / sharper / than this morning’s breakfast.” Gierke uses the uneven line lengths to give emphasis to certain words.

Because the poems are short and not great in number, you can read this book very quickly. But you will want to read it again and again to really explore meaning in this lovely collection.

You can purchase the book on Amazon. Here for the U.S.: https://www.amazon.com/Glass-Awash-Ken-Gierke/dp/1958182222/

Here for the UK: Glass Awash: Amazon.co.uk: Gierke, Ken: 9781958182222/

I presume it’s also available in Canada and other countries.

Ken Gierke is retired and has lived in Missouri since 2012, when he moved from Western New York, where the Niagara River fostered a love for nature. He writes primarily in free verse and haiku, often inspired by hiking and kayaking, while his fondness for love poetry may be explained by the fact that he moved to Missouri to be with the woman he eventually married. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming both in print and online in such places as Ekphrastic Review, Amethyst Review, Silver Birch Press, Trailer Park Quarterly and The Gasconade Review, and it has appeared in several print anthologies, including three from Vita Brevis Press and easing the edges, edited by d. ellis phelps. His first collection of poetry, Glass Awash, has been published by Spartan Press. His website: https://rivrvlogr.com/

Ken can be reached on Facebook. Ken Gierke | Facebook

He has video poetry at https://www.youtube.com/@kengierke

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by | December 30, 2022 · 8:00 am

An Interview by Christine Butterworth-McDermott for Gingerbread House

This post is about something exciting to me at the same time that it is sad. Gingerbread House Editor Christine Butterworth-McDermott has interviewed me in the new issue up today. You can read it here:

Luanne Castle / Poem & Interview

Gingerbread House Lit Mag, with its emphasis on fairy tale-inspired literature, is one of my very favorite journals. Very sadly, I must say that this is the final issue of GH! Butterworth-McDermott will go on to do exciting things in the literary and artistic worlds (she’s an artist as well as a poet/writer), but this feels like the end of an era.

Please check out the whole gorgeous issue through the link above.

And here’s to a healthy and peaceful 2023.

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