The Breath before Birds Fly, A Review By Steven Stam

M.E. Silerman’s chapbook The Breath before Birds Fly, recently published by Emerge Literary Journal, brims with powerful imagery rooted in the casual detail. The poems stand connected through themes, images and ideas: there are fathers, both lost and found; birds floating into and out of our existence; the ever presence of water as both a destructive and constructive force, and perspectives on Judaism from all ages.

In the collection’s opening work, “Fumes,” Silverman juxtaposes the image of a “mosquito meals on my arm” with that of angry father being left by his family. This father pays for familial crimes from atop his outdoor throne: “On the busted porch,/Father crushes cans, smokes,/strikes.” On one hand the child narrator cares so little for their person, ignoring the bug, allowing it to dine, while on the other the father glares, surrounded by his destruction as he busts up the family with each smoke filled stare. Do we hate this man? Does the author? This is not the typical dad left us woe is me poem, but rather an expressive exploration of how and why two women became refuges from their own family unit.

Later, in “After You Left,” one cannot help but hear a father’s ghost staring at a homemade bridge, the plank kind built for small bodies to cross a stream into adventure: “I arrive on this plank-board bridge/built before you left.” Leaving, it seems, represents the problem—the character, perhaps an abandoned father or lonely soul, finds memory in the casual discovery. Sometimes people are gone, sometimes things are beyond repair, yet the tiny bridge can persevere, leaving haunting memories of love, joy, and passion. These memories will resurface in a “Ritual for Learning History,” where Silverman notes how a grown man can go gaga for matzah balls and a bottle of wine can allow even a strong man to spill soul in an effort to glorify his childhood. Whether true or false, we witness a visage of bygone days and ritual sacrifice as well as an excuse to eat scalding hot food in front of an adult child: “Father loves matzah balls more than me,/more than anyone. He doesn’t pause for them/ to cool, a child with a prize.” He gave back then, he can have now.

Such paternal themes reoccur, prompting the reader to consider not only the author’s relationship with their progenitor, but also their own. How do we feel about dear old dad? Is the drunken stumbling man hanging in the background of “Noah Shops for an Ark,” falling into a hardware store’s nail display, our patriarch: “Noah, nervous and sweaty,/crumples onto a small stack/of hollow display boxes?” Or do we have the dad that laments over the childhood, spilling their past while holding back a tear? Are we afraid to find out?

The very same ark Noah built finds a new home in “What I know about Jerusalem Rain,” this time in the form of a child’s dream: “head toward something solid,/toward the ark we imagine we built/when we were young,/ still stock-piling.” We want to know these dreams, to float and pass through such a prestigious city with the splendor of a young child. This yearning extends on in “Echo Locating,” where the dreams that once filled the ark are expressed in the open search for self. It is here that Silverman expresses man’s innate desire to both find and understand the self, intuitively placing the product of said exploration into the hands of an unseen force that emanates both from and back toward us. We live in the echo of our perception, and Silverman’s words cement this fact.

In a creating a collection, Silverman succeeds in both captivating and entertaining the reader. These poems flow, they have logical connection, and spiritual meaning. The Breath before Birds Fly, is now available through Amazon.com.

Slouching Towards Pakistan by Contributor Jack Foster, A Review

Although sometimes I long for plain first lines, the ones that tell me exactly where I am and exactly what is happening, sometimes I tire of making my way through metaphor, fragment, or obscure juxtaposition and long for something like this:

Some say the closing of doors leads

to an inverse reaction – an economy of favors

hidden in the walls like electricity or body parts. (from “Out of Many, None”)

Are you not pulled in?  What precise words: closing, inverse, economy, electricity.  The scene is drawn so sharply—we see it—the doors, the reaction, the electricity.  Comparatively, “He thinks the morning belongs to himˮ is the statement Jack Foster makes in the first line of his poem, “A Father Leaves in the Morning”. In fact, most poems in this chapbook start with a tantalizing hook. Here are some other opening lines:

 

Drones in a flock, a kettle, a murder, ascend

into the bright, smoggy firmament, unbound from

the fetters of Euclidian geometry. (from “Birds of Paradise for the New World Order”)

 

The sound of worn tread weaving up

a familiar concrete slab echoes in the

ethereal silence of the night. (from “A Father Returns in the Nighttime”)

 

It is noted that even from the beginning, his work is carefully shaped and paced, such as begins “Prologue”:

 

Since the day our primate fathers earned

primordial thumbs, as the first son gripped

an innocuous sun bleached radius of a less-fit rival,

and when the handheld arm cracked through bone

and blood and sinew, the art of war immediately began

to forget its own sense of intimacy….

 

I can’t stop reading any poem beginning with lines like these. But this chapbook is not just technically skilled entertainment. The poems in Slouching Towards Pakistan may take off from interesting directions but lead the reader along darker paths. For instance, the first stanza from “The Road back Home”:

 

He attempts to enjoy the global news before his day

becomes a talking point, before both sides split

hairs and ignite basic fires. The ceremonial cover that garlands

his head falls off, the silken threads unravel,

revealing his worn body – all that remains

is an American man: birthed by the war

machine and cut from a sacrificial cloth.

A close look at “The Road back Home,” will show how many of Foster’s poems work. As we’ve seen “The Road back Home” opens with the wish for a quick death, an end before any radical stripping away of one’s place in the world imposed by, say, war. In fact, the entire poem layers tension with passion—a devastating mix. It is because Slouching Towards Pakistan gives us many poems like “The Road back Home” that I’ve read the chapbook again and again.

 

It is hard to say what exactly happens

beneath a foreign skyline. Jagged, ancient

landscapes skew the fish-eyed vision of men…

 

…There will be no water break,

no giving thanks for the guarantee of universally

recycled breath.

Many of the poems in Jack Foster’s deftly crafted chapbook, like “Before the Aftermath” from which the lines above are taken, focus on the complicated course of turmoil in a modern world—the wonder and the fear.  In “A Father Returns in the Nighttime,” like much of the chapbook, there are depths and precipices everywhere:

 

My father sneaks into the same

house he has lived in for years….

 

…delouses in front of the mirror,

scrapes his hands and chest with pumice

stone, as if to destroy every atom

every fiber. This time, too, does not belong

to him – his skin, like steam, rises into midnight’s

density, and fills the house with lingering

pain.

Overall, Jack Foster’s language is precise, but layered. He is grounded. Many poets are diverted by the various trappings: technical strictures, narration, sparkles of language when the purest poetic object is in its being, a composed composure. The greatest power of poetry is this of concentrating our concentration—and if the counter is made, poetry does this in a special way, powering-up our attention at the same time it provides objects profounder than jig saw pieces. Which is to say, these poems at their best are deep and deepening. They are quiet. They do not draw attention to themselves by tripping over themselves. This is the sterling quality of Jack Foster’s Slouching Towards Pakistan. This is why you should read it.

2013 ELJ Publications Chapbook Competition Winner…

And, we have a winner! Congratulations to Leah Sewell for her prize winning chapbook manuscript, Birth in Storm.

Leah Sewell is assistant editor at Coconut Poetry, an MFA candidate at the University of Nebraska, and a book designer, poet and mother. Her work has appeared in such publications as [PANK], Midwestern Gothic and Weave Magazine and was nominated for a Pushcart by Coal City Review in 2012. She lives in Topeka, Kansas where she’s the moderator of the Topeka Writers Workshop and a part-time vegan chef.

Chapbook Competition Ends…

ELJ Publications 2013 Chapbook Competition is in the final stretch. Entries will only be accepted until midnight. At midnight, Submittable will close the category and it will disappear. Prize is up to $75. 7 finalists have been forwarded to 3 excellent judges to be judged blindly within the next 10 days or so. We developed a matrix scoring model that will reduce a subjective reading response. Manuscripts will be judged on 4 categories: aesthetics, use of language, use of imagery and cohesiveness. The total score will be averaged for a total by judge and the averaged again between the 3 judges. It’s simple, the highest average score wins. I will announce semi-finalists and finalists when the winner is chosen and all entrants are notified regarding their submission status. Prize will be awarded as a Visa gift card or postal money order based on the winner’s preference. We are aiming to publish the winner no later than April 1, 2013. Should there by a tie, we will re-evaluate the scoring and publish the runner-up in addition to the winner. Should this scenario occur, the runner-up will also receive 2 copies of their book, but only the winner will receive the cash prize. Good luck to our finalists and many thanks to our entrants.

Chapbook Competition Announced…

Emerge Literary Journal is forming ELJ Publications for an annual chapbook competition and is excited about discovering the emerging poetic talent that is out there. We will consider your work for publication only if you have never published a chapbook or full-length collection before. ELJ Publications is is an independent publisher that publishes one-of-a-kind sophisticated and beautiful chapbooks via print-on-demand technology. We will market the winner via our website, Facebook and Twitter. ELJ Publications prefers narrative and free verse poetry that explores human emotions, experiences, dreams, revelations, etc. We also veer towards the surreal with powerful images and language. If you feel that your poems fit into any of these categories, please consider us.

Please submit 25-30 poems along with title page, acknowledgements and bio. Please also provide a statement that the work you are presenting is your own and that you hold all the rights to the work. Please no collaborations. We appreciate a manuscript that has been fully proofread and is just about ready to be published. Contest is only open for 14 days, beginning tomorrow, February 14th, and will be advertised through our website, Duotrope, Facebook and Twitter only. There is a $7 contest fee. Winner will get 50% of the net incoming fees and 2 copies of their book. We will pick a winner in March and publish the book in April or May. Please direct any questions to emergeliteraryjournal@gmail.com. Submittable is scheduled to open up for the contest at midnight.

Current Submissions….

Due to the editor’s unexpected hospitalization from 12/29/12-1/4/13, we are a bit behind on our current submissions. There were a decent amount that we had already made decisions on prior to and just have not gotten the correspondence out on. We will begin by sending correspondence on prior determinations and then move forward with reading the newer submissions. Please accept our apologies for not having gotten back to everyone sooner. With any luck, the backlog will be resolved in the near future.