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Books
Going Without Peggy - Poison Pearls - Brain Stemmed Roses -Author: Karl Stuart Kline
Epilepsy, a mutual disability since childhood, was the unlikely catalyst that engendered a lifelong romance. A mutual understanding and commitment that amazed other people, even twenty years after we had first met and led to our elopement against her parents’ wishes. A seventeen-year honeymoon that made the hard times and heavy loads easy to bear, knowing that we had all we needed as long as we had each other. Then there was breast cancer, a drawn-out and hard-fought illness that we couldn’t defeat, facing death at the end just as we had faced life—together and hand in hand. Romance, devotion, disability, death, depression, bereavement and recovery… all words that oversimplify and understate the struggles and physical realities that are all part of what may be seen in retrospect as one of the greatest love stories of our time. A love story that is ongoing and reflects the undying devotion of her surviving husband. Peggy always believed that we were reunited lovers from a former lifetime and that “Greensleeves” was our song. Perhaps we will be reunited and “lost lovers will be lovers again.” Prose and poetry come together in this volume to tell a story of love like no other.
Poison Pearls is a disturbing, gritty exploration of modern slavery, human trafficking and prostitution, often as seen through the eyes of the victims. The author has been motivated and inspired by friendships and correspondences that he has had with women around the world, some of whom he fears may have been lost to the trade in one or another of its many forms. Perhaps he cannot rescue them, but he can be a voice for them and expose some of the evil that has befallen them. There is a warning here and if it is taken to heart by even one prospective victim, then it is a life that has been saved and that one life is enough to make this book worthwhile. If we are so fortunate as to have this book sell well and be well distributed, perhaps it will affect many lives and become a weapon in the fight for those who would live free.
Already the author of two books, Karl Stuart Kline is returning with a new and different look at his talents as a poet.
His first book, Poison Pearls, was a dark look at the modern tragedy of human trafficking, inspired by his own experiences, correspondences and travels to Russia and Kyrgyzstan, where he experienced firsthand the wonderful hospitality of the citizens of the former soviet republics as well as the circumstances under which they are living.
His most recent book, Going Without Peggy, is currently in the Pulitzer Prize competition in two categories, both as verse and as a biography. Winners and finalists will be announced in the spring of 2006.
Brain Stemmed Roses is divided into six sections that include thought provoking pieces about writing poetry, early works from the 60s and 70s, a continuation of the steamy Going Without Peggy, poetry about his romance and friendships in Eastern Europe, a section dedicated solely to his Russian wife of five years (who was too shy for a book to center around her!), and several of his best, but otherwise unrelated to each other works.
Credit: http://www.wooffer.com/poetry.htm
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Barbara E. Mercer New Book
Website: www.barbaramercer.com
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I am a member of CPA and would like to submit my poetry collection for posting on the CPA Bookstore. I already have the CPA banner linked on my web site http://www.ascentaspirations.ca/authorlinks.htm
Going to the Well
ISBN 0-9736568-08
By David Fraser
2004; 94 pp; Pa; Ascent Aspirations Poetry,
1560 Arbutus Drive, Nanoose Bay,
British Columbia, Canada
V9P 9C8.
$14.95
About the Book: Testimonials and Reviews
This publication is David Fraser’s first collection of poetry. Whether writing poetry or short fiction, David examines characters struggling with time and entropy, with relationships and with finding meaning in lives often caught up and stagnant in their own existence, their aging and their loss. Many poems deal with the darkside of the human condition as a political protest to man’s inhumanity to man, and to man’s blatant disregard for our greatest resource, Mother Earth. However within this dark perspective there is tenderness and hope and lyrical imagery of what life wonderfully can be.
“David Fraser looks up, looks around him, takes in his surroundings, and does a good job of reporting on nature as a vital restorative element in our lives.” - David Chorlton
“David Fraser’s ‘Going to the Well’ is a remarkable journey filled with a zest for all that life offers. His poems surprise, delight, and enrich the reader. They truly deepen our understanding of the human condition…all in all, this collection represents a most impressive debut.” - Vernon Waring
Sample Poems:
Blackberry Picking
These sharp, honed razor stalks
sprouted up and mixed with broom
coat the scars of land disturbed.
Their stalks reach up and cling to trees,
stretch in tangled barbed islands,
a refuge for quail and rabbit,
snakes and mice.
I wade into the thorny waters
to pick those plump rich berries
just a stretch away,
a scratch away, a curled hand,
two subtle fingers reaching up beneath a leaf,
the juice of picked berries staining
them, rich and red, purple in the shade.
The canes move and grip my hat,
claw at the cotton shoulders of my shirt.
I pick with either hand,
held in a cocoon of time,
lost in picking,
Lost in all the tangles of a life.
I eat a few; the juice exploding on my tongue.
The dogs, tired of chasing rabbits
sit in the long dry grass beside me.
I feed them berries
and they, too, begin to pick from the lower stalks.
We gather together,
the hot sun of a blue sky and a breeze
much a part of us
berries, dogs and me.
David Fraser 2003
Previously published in Ygdrasil, Nov. 2003 and
in the collection Going to the Well, Ascent
Aspirations Publishing
Fossil Hunting
(Hornby Island)
The tide is out across
the beds of cretaceous shale
among the scuttling crabs,
over smoothed boulders,
’round jagged erratics.
exposed, I wander among
ochre stars glinting in the sun,
eel grass flat, sea hair and rockweed
where shield-backed kelp crabs move,
mossy chiton cling.
The slippery walk flat and low
across the Georgia Strait
beneath the blue pleasure of the sky
where seal pups play
upon their rocky jut of solitude,
where two eagles perched apart
fish from rocks.
and all around,
a wealth of snowy peaks,
our island heights melting
fresh water to the sea.
The continuous margin of the strait
sparkling in the vacant expanse of air.
hammer-handed, I search,
choosing not the smooth granites
that can break my wrist
but dull concretions, gray,
smooth or barnacled,
formed ’round some nucleus;
a stem, a stone, once living things,
an ammonite perhaps; Aha!
a crab carapace
formed delicate within the rock
before human feet stepped ashore.
Maybe further down the beach,
a mosasaur, its curving neck,
razor teeth held
captive in the stone.
I sit with my discoveries and dreams
far out at sea
on my glacial-carried seat
amid the muck of time,
the here and now and then.
David Fraser 2004
Previously published in Ardent,
August 2004 and in the collection
Going to the Well, Ascent Aspirations Publishing
Ascent Aspirations Publishing www.ascentaspirations.ca
ascentaspirations@shaw.ca ascent@bcsupernet.com
Member of the Federation of BC Writers
http://www.bcwriters.com/
Member of WAVE Publications Cooperative
http://www.wavecoop.com/
Member of the Canadian Poetry Association
http://www.canadianpoetryassoc.com/
Member of the Canadian Federation of Poets
http://www.federationofpoets.com/
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