Florenz Eisman Archives - CavanKerry Press

Why Publish with CavanKerry Press?

August 7, 2020 By Dimitri Reyes 2 Comments

Throughout our 20 years in publishing, CavanKerry Press has always stood true to our dual mission by producing quality books of fine art and servicing the community. Our books are always crafted with a general audience in mind where we are committed to expanding the reach of poetry by publishing works that explore the emotional and psychological landscapes of everyday life.

This statement is more important than ever as we are looking to diversify our pool of authors and will be looking for stories like yours more than ever! In CavanKerry’s future we will continue to help foster emerging and established writers alike, with the aim of including more narratives from Trans, Queer, Black, Indigenous, and other Person of Color communities.

So Why Else Should You Publish with CavanKerry Press?

We’ve Published Over 75+ Authors & 100+ Books

Publishing isn’t new to us! We handle your collection from manuscript to book with the utmost care. Once selected, it goes through revisions and editing where appropriate, book design, typesetting, and printing.

We Offer Major Distribution

Aside from our website, our books are also sold through the Chicago Distribution Center which has countless connections with bookstores, libraries, and colleges across the globe. This means your book will be widely distributed and easily available.

We Perpetuate Stewardship & Community

When you sign a book contract with CavanKerry Press, you are also committing to do 3 community outreach events every year for the first 3 years of your book’s release. This can be a free reading, workshop, school visit, and more. This means that within 3 years, all 12 authors we publish per cycle participate in at least 36 public outreach events. This is our way of making sure we give back to the community while expanding our reach.

We Select Books for a Range of Different Reasons

Here are the 5 categories we look to highlight each publishing cycle:

Emerging Voices, works from early or mid-career poets
Notable Voices, works of established poets of merit and distinction
Memoir, memoirs of writers keeping with the theme Lives Brought to Life
LaurelBooks, collections of poetry and prose that explore the many poignant issues associated with confronting serious physical and/or psychological illness
Florenz Eisman Memorial Collection, work from a New Jersey writer in honor of CavanKerry’s first Managing Editor

Our Books Have Garnered Various Distinctions

Here are just some of the awards our authors have received with their CavanKerry books:

AWP Small Press Publisher Award
LA Times Book Award Nomination
Florida Book Award
Tillie Olsen Award
ForeWord Book of the Year Award Finalist
Jackson Poetry Prize
Ruth Stone Poetry Prize Finalist
Oklahoma Book Award Finalist
Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award
Whirling Prize
Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist
Eric Hoffer Legacy Award Finalist

Small-But-Mighty

We operate the entire press with only 5 people and we all work in collaboration with one another. Therefore, upon accepting your manuscript, you can count on getting to know each one of us, from the Founder/ Publisher, Joan Cusack Handler, to Elena Neoh, our Marketing Assistant. You can view our entire team here.

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The Birth of a Press Part 3: “Strokes of Fortune”

August 1, 2019 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

Part 3: Strokes of Good Fortune

Hallelujah!

Then as if all my collective saints, angels, and muses had heard my pleas and harangues and either concurred or together conspired to silence me, my dream became a possibility! The product of both an enormous stroke of good luck that took the form of an inheritance my husband, Alan received quite unexpectedly and most of all, his enormous generosity to me, I now had the start up capital to start my press. I was delirious. The first thing I did was call Molly and the second was to call my friends Karen Chase, Howard Levy, and Peggy Penn to tell them that I would be honored to publish their books. We were all elated.

I hit the ground running. I had to learn everything. Immediately! I decided to do it in tandem with the most capable person I knew who miraculously was looking for part-time work. Florenz Eisman (then Greenberg) was a former creative writing student of mine who, in addition to having a great gift for writing, had worked for several years as a vice president for a public relations firm. She, in the course of her career had done just about everything—from secretarial work, to research, to writing. She knew her way around people, business, and most importantly, books. Even computers!

Our Press Needed a Name

This was the first of many not-so-simple decisions we had to make. Surprisingly, in all of my dreaming, I had never come up with a name. That took considerable thought.

Remarkably at major points in my life—when life seemed to be clearing a path for me and success was in the wings, a woman in my life died. Or so it seemed. When I was given my husband, son, and Ph.D, it was my good friend Janice; when I was given my press, it was my mother. My love for Janice however was pure; my love for my mother was anything but. A driven and possessive woman, my mother was far more interested in my intellectual and social successes rather than my writing success. Her great pride was in the fact that I was a psychologist and a professional woman. It was “nice” that I wrote poems. During her illness, however, she developed a marked and seemingly earnest interest in my writing.

During her last visit to my home in East Hampton, she (and my father!) read my poems. In our family room I had a basket where I kept all of the journals that my published work was published in. I cautioned both of my parents that my work was brimming with profanity and what they’d consider obscenity, and that they violated all of Mom’s prescriptions about voicing personal family matters in public. They were undeterred as they handed poems back and forth to each other. Mom, did you read this one? Dad, look at this one.

My mother who could hardly see twisted the pages high into the light to read every poem. Remarkably, no one died. Not them. Not me. Rather than be horrified, they were interested in what the poems had to say. My father reminded me that he’d been a laborer all his life so he’d heard those words before. Nor was he surprised by all the raging that went on in the poems. They asked me questions, particularly about events recorded in the poems. They did not argue; they did not chastise; most importantly they did not judge.

It Was a Miracle of Sorts

These poems had been there in the same spot during scores of previous visits and they showed no interest in reading them, but this time they were ready. I don’t know what prompted that openness, but I know the three of us were grateful. This was an intimacy that we had never known. For years, I had kept much of myself from their view. They knew only facts about my life; I kept what mattered safe inside; I had strayed from their version of good and wholesome and I long since saw any value in exposing either them or me to the worlds that separated us. They did not need to know; I did not need to confess. Yet on this weekend, this Saturday afternoon in November— I like to think it was even Thanksgiving weekend, as we always spent it together—we were ready. The gift of that closeness served us well during my mother’s illness.

My parents have always amazed me in their ability to grow as human beings as they aged. My father’s steps were always steady and involved with virtually no regression. He held fast to what was important to him, namely his Catholicism and the Church as supreme authority, but he was open to influence about everything else. All his life, he loved to learn. The world of people and nature were magical places for him and he reveled in each story or creation.

My mother was more complicated. Her growth did not come until her cancer. Prior to that she was of one mind about most things and that mind was always hers. You couldn’t convince her of anything and she was unpredictable—completely open one day and then refusing to talk the next. If she let you in, perhaps revealing some confidence, she would quickly shut you out. After revealing a devastating account of her mother’s death when she was a very young child, she was furious when I referred to it later on. She was enraged that I had taken this secret wound from her. I had violated her. She refused to speak to me. I stayed away from her for long stretches of time.

Miraculously, however, when she got sick, she shut the door on all that anger and resentment; it was simply over. She had other places to go. Kinder, happier places in which to live. It was as if she were reborn, but this time without the darkness. With her own mother seemingly close and whole, she began forming the bedrock of love that we all count on to carry us into adulthood, trusting that the world will care for and love us. She finally knew she was blessed. She finally believed she was loved. She was grateful and said so for every kindness or attention. Being close to her was effortless. She invited it; we all accepted.

And she lost no time. She wanted to know everything about each of us. In my case, my writing—what was I writing? Was I writing? I should be writing. I should tell my story. She gave me Reader’s Digest large print books that included autobiographies of strong women. Write your story, she said. People will read it; you tell the truth. Her support was palpable and unwavering. I told her that I had been writing the memoir of my young self as a 12 year old girl. She wanted to read it; I read it to her during hospital visits; I sat by her bed for hours everyday writing while she slept.

Our Name

There was no greater gift I could have received than to be close to my mother when she was dying. It had always saddened me that such distance was necessary, but my sanity required it. Though she longed for closeness on one level, she destroyed it on every other. To face a parent’s death with coldness between you is a barren, painfully lonely land. To be able to go with her and face it together was a blessing. She talked to me of cooking for Dad, teaching him to cook, her concerns for the grandchildren, what she felt, what she wanted, what she worried about. I was able to give to her for the first time since I was a child.

Shortly after she died, the money miraculously arrived for the birth of the press. A friend suggested I name it for her. I liked the tribute and was relieved and very pleased that rather than cut her out as I had in the past, I now wanted to include her in this major event in my life. But to name it after her alone would be incomplete. There was more I wanted to say with that name and I didn’t want to exclude my father. I settled on CavanKerry—the two counties in Ireland where they were born—my father, Cavan; my mother, Kerry. Though CavanKerry would not be an “Irish” press, it was from that land—those two lands—that my own writing grew.

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Remembering Florenz at the Thielke Arboretum

November 21, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

Our founding managing editor, Florenz Eisman, walked around the Thielke Arboretum on a regular basis. Recently, the CavanKerry team visited the location to celebrate Florenz.

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For Florenz: “Family” by Joan Cusack Handler

November 20, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

From GLOrious

Family
By Joan Cusack Handler

   Take for instance this African Violet bl o o ming its brains out 
the tenth year in a row: 
shameless in purple— scores of furious faces & voluptuous leaves.  
Like   me,
                     surrounded by its family, it’s just happy here 
                               sitting in its white   pot
                            in the middle of its Family  room.
 
         & like us, all our plants 
have had children:
                      the pencil cactus has three, two fully grown, 
one toddler, 
                                  the yuka,   just one,
     the fiddle leaf ficus, false aralia & rubber more than we can 
count  — 
just ridiculous in their  rushtooutdo.
  

                          Once upon a time a man,a woman & a boy 
                                   were so delirious  in love
                                    with the woods, that they 
                                   wantedthemcloser,  sothey
                                          built a house in the 
                                                    heart of
                                           the pines.	Then
begging the woods
    indulgence   they asked for a few trees:   a small rubber 
perhaps, 
            some fern,
                          a dracena.
But these 
g r e w 
TALLer, so
         the man, the woman & the boy 
         built a greenhouse, an A t r i u m 
         at   the   Heart   of    the   house: a 
         H	U	G	E	R    O   O    M
         with Skylights & Walls of Glass & 
         old brick & lots of cold well  water.

Once inside
the   P l a n t  s   S    t    r    e    t   c   h e	d	
         O	u	t  &	Up,
 
                                                       
                                           but complained,
theylikecrowdingleavestouching,Hovering    even.	
So the family	went outside, 
dug pine, hemlock, flowering plum &  filledtheroomtocrowding.
                                 They invited the birds:
 
                      ca r d i n a l  s
                                                came
some
                  b l a c  k	c r o w  s.
 

                                & they made no attempt 
                            to domesticate their trees
                              with tea tables & wicker sofas,
                              only a rocker or two
                           & a small bench for the  child.

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For Florenz: “Grievances” by Joan Cusack Handler

November 18, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

from Red Canoe: Love In Its Making


GRIEVANCES
By Joan Cusack Handler


            A  swelling  constant in my throat now & a burning in my 
chest as I make note of each new grievance—
 
                        it seems we’re helpless.

        He must criticize; I must react.
                                       But he says I provoke him.
 
He wouldn’t be so critical	    if I would be more rational
.	      I need screens, he says,	     distance.
              Think, he admonishes.
                     Emote less.
                            To him,  I’m an E X P L O S I O N: that 
torrent of	L	E	A	V	E	S
             overtaking him in today’s November W   I	 N	D.
I’m
s c a t  t er.	    I  ex a g g e r ate.
                    I’m rage, fire & t e m pest.
	            I’m our bedroom:  a	c
                                          h
                                        a
                                      o
                                 s       of Christmas 
                                     wrap

             f r en z I e d outfits
                            dang
                              - ling
                           from
                   doors,		our	bed 
                                   smotheredin 
                                   books&papers 
                                   catalogues last 
                                   month’sphonebills.

 
    I’m t  o   o  m u c h                     He likes boundaries.
dough  r  I  s  I  n  g  unattended in the oven,  
dinner for twenty to celebrate each holiday;  
                       I’m last minute
                       wine,
                  toilet paper, makeup&
               dessert,
                   visits to the bank,
                                  dentist & colorist.
                               I'm always cleaning your mess/he says
 
                                I'm repetitious-turning life inside
then out;	   I’m needy,
                         dependent &
               insecure.		I’m endless crises, 
                                        tirades, dropped
                                bladder & hysterectomy . . . .

             I spend my life, he complains, taking care of you.
       I know I love you, but I don’t know if I can live with you.


He’s tired.
He needs
     quiet.	Rest.
                     I’m intense, too analytical: “How do you feel?
What does that mean?  I’m at war with my body.
                                  Maybe I’ll go back into therapy.”

 
                                         You’re moody,
                                              he says,
 
    depressed.
                      He wants l i ght,	airy:	he wants
                                                   healthy:
          an Athlete, 

                          maybe a  Bimbo,	nothing  t o o
                                                intellectual. 
He wants to laugh,
                          play tennis,          a little piano
             get a suntan,
                                           make love
                                        with someone who 
                                      isn’t keeping score.
 
He wants entertainment:
                          movies,
                                 vacations.   He wants quiet.
    He wants
       peace.

                          He wants to be bored.

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For Florenz: “Reshapings” by Howard Levy

November 17, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

Reshapings

The shape of your womb

is how I learned to tilt my head

when listening hard, when taking in.

Your legs, one slightly shorter

than the other (not enough to limp

but enough to sculpt the muscles

of your back and tense your walk),

took me through my first merengue,

taught those small refinements

of sway and balance

and life spread over me

simply, cell by new cell,

as light spreads over a shadow,

lessons of pace,

lessons of patience.

A dream that you are talking.

You hold a peach and tell me

about the luxuries of shopgirls.

1943. Lord & Taylor, the lingerie

and nylon counter. Twenty,

no soldier to worry over yet plenty

to meet, the jewelry of the jitterbug

and free to stay in the city overnight.

You phrase it, the shiny black satin

of becoming a woman.

How quiet we are, the two of us.

Each reading in our favorite

chairs, the rainy afternoon

moving toward dusk and

the making of dinner.

I am proud to chop the onions

and peel the eggs.

I will earn a small piece of cake,

though not enough to ruin my appetite.

How the afternoon we made

enclosed us.

And yet such a loneliness chipped at you,

such a bleakness, as if everything

were too narrow,

people, ease, and the coronation

of desire, so that each day the loneliness

broke off some small edge of self

until the small, ruined abbey

of your heart lost its body faithful.

In the hospital,

your legs elephantine with water

growing larger into your death

and my father and I

growing smaller and smaller,

unable to talk directly and honestly to you,

as if you were not

a dying woman

we both loved.

The first deep cold day of winter,

the air with no sense of forgiveness.

I clear some last leaves from your grave.

In a few weeks, it will be seven years.

Your grandsons are growing well.

It is so cold, and here in this cemetery,

I imagine that you bear me

once again towards the vastness of future,

while I remember and bear you back

into this tiny present, this brief

regency of noise and light.

Light in Sheets through a Break

in the Clouds out toward the

Horizon in the East

Those must be the trails of angels filing into the choirstalls,

this wind the ruste of their feet and robes

as Bach takes up his baton,

humming to set the key, rising on his toes.

For this morning he has chosen the B minor Sanctus

and the angels thrill to it since no music rises to Him

as this Sanctus does. Their voices fill all heaven

and heaven’s gold breaks all through the sky.

The light pouring into all five senses,

into my shoulders and my spine,

into my hands fierce to hold it, to shape it,

to offer it up as the heart and grace of love.

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For Florenz: “Bird Call, Wave” by Laurie Lamon

November 13, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

Florenz was a beautiful and amazing part of my journey with my first and then miraculously my second book with CKP.

What I remember from all the emails and info about her is her passion for her love for poetry, and her passion for her family.

-Laurie Lamon

Bird Call, Wave

from Without Wings

Wife, my husband
said. Husband. The ocean

through the shades, motion
and light—the near call

of the bird we had begun to call
the 4 o’clock bird.

Then something else when I opened
my hand and turned

to the window side of the bed
where he had moved,

having drawn the sheet, cold
and welcome, across my shoulders.

Better to hear the waves.
Better the bird’s cry

released the way a spondee’s
struck sound is meant

to be given and given—not sweat
and mouth. Not the orchid

farmed and cut. No sound but the bird
and the sea, and no bird

alone but eye to eye. And then the praise
that was the sea. And then the wings.

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For Florenz: “The Laundress” by Paola Corso

November 12, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

from The Laundress Catches Her Breath

The Laundress
 
 
1.
           
Sheets are wet
 
worrisome mounds
in the basket, socks
     a pair of sorry balls
 
dripping in self-pity,
 
underwear a limp limbo
of cotton blends
                 no longer soaking wet
 
and not yet dry
                
waiting to be hung by a woman
            who scrubs away
      original sin
 
on a rock
 
along the stream
            with her hands
                 and the strength
 
            of resolve.
 
2.
 
            Sheets are hung
 
on the line, socks
clipped at the heel,
     drawers droop
 
with fear of never taking shape
from human proportion,
                 a clothesline low in the middle
 
as if bowing its head, waiting
                
 to be propped up by a woman
            who raises this offering
      that much closer
 
to where
           
the air gathers
puffs of wind
                  with breath enough
           
for divine intention.

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For Florenz: “Invocation/Intoxication” by Carole Stone

November 11, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

from American Rhapsody

Invocation/Intoxication
   
 
Oak barrels, hops and yeasty brew.
Answer the door for merrymakers
rushing to get sozzled,                                                                                                                          
tasty booze
flowing from kegs, basement jugs.
 
In bathtubs, in stills --
poteen, bathtub gin,
moonshine, apple jack, mountain dew,
sacramental wine --
 
Blue skies smiling at me
bottles emptied, thrown on garbage heaps from
     nightclubs, saloons and speakeasies
     gin mills, whoopee parlors
new generation of moneymakers roaring
their Twenties.
 
It’s here at last! Now for a new era of clean thinking and
clean living. The Anti-Saloon League wishes every man,
woman and child a Happy Dry Year, and a share of the
fruits of prosperity which are bound to come with 
National Prohibition.
 
On our side of the Hudson
      across from the big time
racketeers, past the Hoovervilles
beneath the Pulaski Skyway,

on bays and inlets of the New Jersey shore
       The Prohibition high seas operation
transported cases
of Haig & Haig, Piper Heidsieck, Booth’s Gin
from England, France, Scotland
to St. Etienne, Canada and on
 
to just beyond
the twelve mile limit off Sandy Hook    
the New Jersey Rum Runway  
where men transferred
them from fast skiffs to a fleet
of World War I Mack Bulldog trucks. 
Nothing but blue skies do I see
in my intoxication,
the cocktail and I are born.

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For Florenz: “Hands” by Shira Dentz

November 10, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

I would like to say that Florenz was the person at CKP with whom I had the most contact while my book was being made and I associate her presence with this book: her warmth, discernment, and enthusiasm were and still are very meaningful to me. My book was a vulnerable enterprise and Florenz’s place in it was and is part of its making.

-Shira Dentz

10. Hands

from door of thin skins

He splayed his fingers apart, their movement a Japanese pure, make-a-vacuum style, allowing them to twitch in all directions, implying cherry blossom petals dangling from boughs. He was a tall and fat man, his fingers incongruously refined, long and sculptural. Of course the fingertips flipped up. I say of course because even at rest he gave the impression that he covered everything; above and below.

How the very signal of that gesture enveloped to the point of obfuscating my senses. This is why it is nearly impossible to communicate, to hand over the experience.

He did it when he tried to make a point, but I tell you whenever he did it all I was aware of was the portrait he made with his hands. At their widest opening on their way down they were bird wings flapping—and the hole between the wings, where there should have been a body, was me.

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For Florenz: “The First Signs of Spring” by Teresa Carson

November 7, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

When CavanKerry Press accepted Elegy for the Floater, I was clueless about, and daunted by, the publication process. Lucky for me I had Florenz as my guide. She calmly, kindly and patiently helped me to get done what needed to be done—e.g. the many, many pages of the UPNE questionnaire; the search for blurbs. No matter how “stupid” my question was, she never was curt or snippy or short-tempered with me. Never. Now that I work for CKP and know what pressures the Managing Editor works under, I have more admiration for, and am more grateful for, how Florenz treated first-time-author me.

In honor of Florenz, here’s my favorite poem from Elegy for the Floater.

-Teresa Carson

The First Signs of Spring

Because it was April

the tulip buds cracked then revealed

satin sheened blood red petals,

and the blossoming pear trees on Ninth Street

filled the air with bridal stillness—

the perfect setting for

the song of an unseen bird.

Then the woman in front of Balducci’s screamed,

Adam, give me your fucking hand,

at the small boy with the dropped head,

his fists clutching his jacket.

I knocked her down, picked up the boy,

and fled up Sixth Avenue.

We stopped to get Toby, the ginger-striped cat

asleep in the lap of a drunk on Fourteenth

who had scribbled on cardboard:

Toby and me are homeless PLEASE HELP.

I put ten bucks in his paper cup.

On the ferry across the Hudson

we tore the past off our skins

and threw the pieces into the river.

That night in my kitchen, windows wide open,

fragrance of hyacinths filling the room,

Adam and I laughed, danced to a salsa beat,

while Toby stretched out on a blue velvet cushion

and scrupulously licked his fur clean.

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For Florenz: “Crazy Stuff” by Kevin Carey

November 6, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

I’ll be forever grateful for her commitment to bringing poets like me to publication.

-Kevin Carey, The One Fifteen to Penn Station

Crazy Stuff

I hold your hand while you sleep,
your swollen fingers squeezing mine.
There’s a football game on TV,
orange Syracuse jerseys covered in mud
the way we saw ourselves playing,
rainy days on the side lawn in the fall,
while you watched from the kitchen window.
You wake for a moment and I ask you how you feel,
your eyes fogged and far away,
and I remember what we talked about,
the doctors, my mother, God.
“Do you believe in God?” I asked
“Sure,” you said, like why not or who doesn’t,
and the few days before that when I told you
“I’m sorry for all the crazy stuff, it must have
been hard.”
You clutch my hand
like a frightened, fevered child
holding for a breath that might not return,
and I am reminded of Lucinda Williams,
a Lake Charles country song,
and the angel at your ear
in those long last moments.

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For Florenz: “Brook and Rainbow” by Andrea Carter Brown

November 5, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

How delighted I was to hear personally from Florenz after The Disheveled Bed was published. Usually the work of a managing editor is done behind the scenes, more a matter of logistics and deadlines than aesthetics, but I came to understand that Joan and Florenz were true editorial partners in every sense. No book published those first 14 years of CKP was without Florenz’ blessing and imprimatur. I could not tell you how, specifically, but I am absolutely certain our books are better for her eye, ear, and heart. Learning that she lived in the town where I was born and grew up, Glen Rock, New Jersey, created a special additional bond. When I decided to write about this town and to include portraits of the ten victims of 9/11 from Glen Rock in September 12, Florenz helped me with research, and we looked forward to ice cream cones at Van Dyke’s on Ackerman Avenue when I next came out to Glen Rock. Sadly, that was not to be. In absentia, I raise a black raspberry cone to Florenz, with deep gratitude for the twinkle in her eyes, and for her enthusiasm and support.

-Andrea Carter Brown

Brook and Rainbow

from The Disheveled Bed

“Go ahead, touch,” you said so I petted
both almost dead fish. A drool of blood
clung to the rainbow’s underslung jaw.
By default I know the brook, its flanks
delicately freckled, tawny as a smog-bound
sunrise. A scant hour and I can’t believe
the change: the rainbow’s pastel prism
purpled over; the brook’s spots swollen
into splotches, enormous empty fish-eyes
staring back. I watch you scale, slit, gut,
wash, dry, dust with salt and peppered flour,
pan-fry, and filet them. On my plate, two

half fishes: you won’t tell me which is
which but it’s plain to see each carries
into death something of life—pink, blue,
and green veined near-translucency beside
opaque late summer sunset. We take a bite
of brook, one of rainbow. Then another
rainbow, and a brook, until tiny bones
fringe the rim like lashes. Why should we
have to chose? Yet, even when we don’t,
we do. If I could, would I undo everything
we’ve been through? Any scientist knows
a rainbow doesn’t actually exist, except

in the mind’s eye. Just try to hold on
to flowing water, it escapes or becomes
something else. But one changeable day,
showers vying with sun, you brought us
both, brook and rainbow, and I wouldn’t
trade the heartache that brought us to this
happiness for the world. If I had to,
I guess I’d take the brook, its down
to earth sweetness, the miracle of bugs
converted to muscle, like love
fattened on grief, lingering sweeter
on the tongue for what it’s consumed.

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For Florenz: a selection from “Primary Lessons” by Sarah Bracey White

November 4, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

Chapter Eight

From Primary Lessons

“Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah, Sa-rah-can’t-go-to-real-school.”

Sandra has found yet another weapon to use against me.

“Stop teasing your sister,” Mama says. “You’re too big for that kind of foolishness.”

“She started it,” Sandra answers. “Always acting like she’s better than us. I just said she can’t go to school ’cause she’s still a baby.”

“I’m not a baby. I went to school in Philadelphia and I can too go here. Can’t I, Mama? Can’t I?”

“The law says you can’t start school unless you’re already six or will be before the end of December,” Mama answers. “You won’t be six until February, so you can’t start this year. You’ll stay at Mother Primo’s. When I come home, we can have pretend school. I’ll teach you all the things I teach my class.”

“I don’t want pretend school. I want real school!” I hurl the words at Mama, then run out the back door and scurry to my favorite hiding place under the house behind the brick supports for the kitchen chimney. There, hidden in the cool darkness, I cry while muttering to myself. I hate it here. It’s not the law, it’s them. They won’t let me do anything. I have to go to school. Aunt Susie said that as soon as I learn to write, I can write her a letter and tell her how I’m doing. When I learn to write, I can tell her how much I hate it here. Once she knows, she’ll send for me to come home, to Philadelphia, where I belong.

The next week, when Mama sends me to buy a half pound of bologna from the store around the corner, I see something that makes me forget my errand. A nun, dressed in full black habit and white wimple, leads a line of children from a brick building into a small church next door. After the last child enters the church, the nun closes the big wooden doors. I climb the steps and peer into the church through a wide crack between the doors. Most Sundays, Aunt Susie and I used to go to the church around the corner from her house, but our church was nothing like this one.

A sweet, smoky smell makes its way through the crack and tickles my nose. A man in a long black robe with a red sash around his middle stands in the pulpit reciting in a language I can’t understand. Every now and then, the children answer in unison. Sunlight pours through a stained glass window and bathes a statue above the pulpit with a rose colored light. I watch, mesmerized. When the priest marches out of the pulpit and down the aisle toward the door where I stand, I run home.

“Mama, Mama, I saw a nun – just like the one that gave Loretta to Aunt Susie. She was leading some children into a church. There’s a school next door to the church. Can I go there? Can I please?”

“Hold your horses. You can’t go barging in there. It’s a school alright, but it’s a Catholic school. It costs money to go there. I can’t afford it. Wait until next year. Then you can go to Liberty Street with your sister.”

I stamp my foot. “But I want to go to school now!”

“Don’t you talk back to me! I said you’ll go to school next year when you’re old enough. Now go and get that bologna for lunch – and come straight back home.”

I do as I’m told, but several times during the next few days, I manage to sneak off from Mother Primo’s to watch the children. One little girl waves at me and I go over to her. “Hi. My name’s Sarah,” I say. “What’s yours?”

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For Florenz: “At Fifty” by Jack Ridl

November 3, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

At Fifty

from Losing Season

Coach hurls the ball against the garage door,
grabs it on the rebound. He’s missed ten
in a row. He steps to the line, bounces
the ball twice, hard, and the fans from
thirty years ago send their hopes across
their weary lungs. He listens to the hush
of the home crowd while the taunts
of those from out of town float through
the rafters down across the backboard,
spinning around and around the rim.
He slams the ball one more time, feels
the leather, eyes the hoop, shoots.
The ball caroms off the back of the rim, rolls
across the driveway into the herb garden
his wife planted the year they found this house.
Once he could drop nine out of ten
from the line, hit half his jump shots
from twenty feet. Coach sits down at
the top of the key, stares, sees himself
bringing it up against the press, faking,
shaking his shoulders, stutter stepping, shifting
the ball left hand to right, then back, then up,
his legs exploding, his wrist firing, the ball
looping up, down, through the hoop, making
the net shimmer, the crowd roar. He gets up,
goes over to the garden, reaches for the ball,
stops and pulls some weeds growing through
the oregano, basil, sage, and thyme.

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For Florenz: “Yes” by Catherine Doty

October 31, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

from Momentum

Yes

It’s about the blood
banging in the body,
and the brain
lolling in its bed
like a happy baby.
At your touch, the nerve,
that volatile spook tree,
vibrates. The lungs
take up their work
with a giddy vigor.
Tremors in the joints
and tympani,
dust storms
in the canister of sugar.
The coil of ribs
heats up, begins
to glow. Come
here.

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For Florenz: “Childhood Elegy” by Joseph O. Legaspi

October 30, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

When I think of my first book, Imago, which would forever be my first, I can’t help but feel immense gratitude. In part because I felt heartened and validated that someone, a duo, a generous publisher, believed enough in my poems to package and deliver them to the world. And how unsurprising that one of those important someone was Florenz Eisman. Such a kind soul, Florenz was nurturing but also truthful, upfront with her opinions, ready with her advice. With her guidance, the process of book-birthing was relatively painless, rather invigorating and surprisingly humane. I’ll always be thankful and indebted to Florenz, who played a huge role in making my dream of a book come true.

-Joseph O. Legaspi

Childhood Elegy

If our angels hover above us,
they will see a darkening cornfield, the spectral traces
of lightning bugs, and two brothers
lying among the stalks.
We come because sometimes it is hard to live.

The cornstalks, limp under the tropical sun,
revive in the cool of twilight.
The angels will know we have been here for hours.
They will land and rest their feathers around us
and whisper soothing names of winged things: finch, monarch,
whippoorwill, ptarmigan, Daedalus, Icarus, Gabriel…

The angels will bend down and touch their faces
onto ours and borrow our eyes: Earlier,
a horse slipped, breaking its leg.
A boy stood beside his younger brother.
Their father came into the stable, carrying a gun.
Quails flitted out of a bamboo tree; the boy

traced the trail that had led him here,
the field tilled by the dead horse,
where his brother laid down,
dust on his cheeks.

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For Florenz: “Misconceptions of Childhood” by Celia Bland

October 29, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

I send along this poem because I remember that Florenz liked it — she thought it, I believe, rather mordantly funny, and asked me if Bernini’s orgiastic depiction of St. Theresa had inspired the last verse (yes, yes!). Florenz was a lovely woman — thoughtful, kind, quick to laughter. My experience with the production of my first book was first-rate from beginning to end, from the editorial side (Joan) to the design (Peter) to the dailiness of production, marketing, etc. (Florenz). I read at a fundraiser for CavanKerry with Jean Valentine and I remember watching Florenz’s face as she listened: so open to the enjoyment of image and idiom and phrasing, so ready to enter into the sensual experience of poetry. So alive to the community of readers and listeners. A true woman of letters.

It was a pleasure and a privilege to have known her.

-Celia Bland

Misconceptions of Childhood

from Soft Box

My father was a sidewise Jack,
always in profile, a hand on his rod.
His pack was a Destroyer, said my mother,
where he played ping-pong on
the deck, two fingers flat on his spade.
I saw his photo: a big-bellied dick
in a tailor-made sailor suit.
“Bye-Bye!” he waved, and out I
sprang, strong enough
to shove all the drawers shut.

My teeth took root. White
stalagmites, their stems sunk inward
and rotted. Biting strawberries,
they sheared unripe heads from
luscious tips.
The leaves caused a rash.

My mouth’s toes, St. Theresa,
grind with your hips
when you close your eyes. Sex is
sacred, you say.
Leaving me, to prove it.

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For Florenz: “Overcast October First” by Wanda S. Praisner

October 28, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

Always with warmth and grace, Florenz guided my work from manuscript to print to delivery.

I was sorry I never met her, never had a chance to say hello–or good-bye.

-Wanda S. Praisner

Overcast October First
from Where the Dead Are

A friend called from the UK,
wished me Happy Rabbit’s Day, luck
for the first of the month, a family custom.
Here too it’s fog, no luck finding
the Great Blue Heron, actually gray, absent
since leaves began to fall. Like time,
when you look for it, it’s never there–
September and all its losses gone–
I cut short my son’s last call to watch TV,
told my mother in the hospital
I’d visit in the evening–
the silence now of words never spoken.

My friend ended the call
with Happy White Rabbit’s Day,
what his granddaughter wished him earlier,
but I’m still with gray: the rabbit’s foot
my grandfather gave me after butchering one
for supper, I not knowing what luck was,
still don’t. But I know gray: squirrels
crossing the meadow, nuts carried
in mouths for burial; a rabbit foot matted
in blood; the heron spending time elsewhere,
gone without a goodbye—
no well-wishes, not even See you later.

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For Florenz: “Bathing in Your Brother’s Bathwater” by Nin Andrews

October 27, 2014 By CavanKerry Press 1 Comment

I never met Florenz in person, but I always looked forward to her emails. Always kind and encouraging, she offered such great comments and insights. Even over the internet, she could light up my day.

-Nin Andrews

Bathing in Your Brother’s Bathwater

from Southern Comfort

Bathing, Miss De Angelo informed us in health class,

is very important, especially once you become a teenager.

In fact I can smell many of you this very day,

so I advise every one of you girls

to go home and take a good long bath tonight.

I know some of your folks like to skimp on water,

but consider it homework.

Say Miss De Angelo assigned it to you.

But girls, let me warn you.

Never take a bath in the same water as your teenage brother.

Why?

Well picture this.

All those tiny bubbles settling on your legs

when you sit in a nice tub of water?

If you could count every itty, bitty bubble,

that would be only a fraction of how many sperm

stream from a single man.

Even if he doesn’t touch himself,

the water does.

And it only takes one.

One fast-moving whip-tailed sperm.

And you know how easy it is to catch a cold,

how quickly that little virus races clear through you.

And once that happens,

no one will believe you’re any Virgin Mary,

no matter what you say.

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For Florenz: “To Forgive Is” by Pamela Spiro Wagner

October 24, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

from We Mad Climb Shaky Ladders

to begin
and there is so much to forgive:
for one, your parents, one and two,
out of whose dim haphazard coupling
you sprang forth roaring, indignantly alive.
For this, whatever else followed,
innocent and guilty, forgive them.
If it is day, forgive the sun
its white radiance blinding the eye;
forgive also the moon for dragging the tides,
for her secrets, her half heart of darkness;
whatever the season, forgive it its various
assaults — floods, gales, storms
of ice — and forgive its changing;
for its vanishing act, stealing what you love
and what you hate, indifferent,
forgive time; and likewise forgive
its fickle consort, memory, which fades
the photographs of all you can’t remember;
forgive forgetting, which is chaste
and kinder than you know;
forgive your age and the age you were
when happiness was afire in your blood
and joy sang hymns in the trees;
forgive, too, those trees, which have died;
and forgive death for taking them,
inexorable as God; then forgive God
His terrible grandeur, His unspeakable
Name; forgive, too, the poor devil
for a celestial fall no worse than your own.
When you have forgiven whatever is of earth,
of sky, of water, whatever is named,
whatever remains nameless,
forgive, finally, your own sorry self,
clothed in temporary flesh,
the breath and blood of you
already dying.
Dying, forgiven, now you begin.

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For Florenz: “Goya’s Instructions” by Baron Wormser

October 23, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

Before the stench is vicious
Sketch the corpses
Where the bomb has visited,
Where limbs and torsos roost
Obediently
And the vitals lie open
To frank but harmless light.

Resist the impulse of simile.
Art instructs us
To linger in the present.
Human hands assembled
These deaths. Stained
Fingers remain beautiful.
Blame God for dexterity.

Resist too the camera’s
Encompassing wisdom.
Mark by eager mark
Ferret this disaster—
The hand’s best work
Is to feel like the blind
Through the fog of suffering.

Do not fret. Do not turn
Away. Later there
Will be the valedictions
Of flowers and creeds.
Cries and wails will shred
The air but loss cannot
Be summed. Draw, then,

So lines can fashion
Feeling. What is blank
Can be contoured in black.
No priest can undo
Such persistent vision.
On that half face there—
The effigy of a grin.

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For Florenz: “The Salt Of Our History” by Mark Nepo

October 22, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

Florenz left a caring mark on each of our books, bringing them into the world.

-Mark Nepo

The Salt Of Our History

from Surviving Has Made Me Crazy

The net is more important
than the fish. It is the casting,
the waiting, the pull, not knowing
what is resisting. And the fact
that every good net has holes
is a reminder that everything
that lands in our hands
is just a borrowing.

After burning our hands,
things too big must be
returned, too.

And we who cast
are netted and let go
as well.

When we are caught,
we pray to slip through.
When we slip through,
we pray to be lifted.

And God is just
an invisible fisherman
burning us with soul
before throwing us back.

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For Florenz: "Body of Diminishing Motion" by Joan Seliger Sidney

October 21, 2014 By CavanKerry Press Leave a Comment

“Body of Diminishing Motion,” which must have caught Florenz’s attention as title poem to the book she chose. I’m forever grateful to her, when, after several months of hearing nothing from CKP, I called and spoke to her. Florenz said that the post office hadn’t been forwarding all of the manuscripts since the move, that I should send it to her and if she thought Joan would like it, she’d give it to her. My great luck!

-Joan Seliger Sidney

Body of Diminishing Motion

Even the saguaros,
split by lightning
or disease, die in thick armor.
Even the cactus
can’t count on its red blooms.

For thirty years I denied
the day might come
when to walk across a room
would be too far.

Now shriveled,
my leg muscles are unwilling
to bear my body.

A climber’s legs
once, they stretched
across rock faults, hiked
the hard way up a dike.

I slid the rope
through my fingers,
rappelled my body
rock to rock.

Back and forth
I crawl across the room,
synchronizing
opposite leg and arm,
trying to train my nerve cells
to reconnect, as if
there’s method to disease.

The voice inside
guides: Test of faith.
Don’t hope, expect.
Hope leaves room
for doubt.

Articles, stories, books—
every day I read how
people healed themselves.

In every cell memory.
Every pain, every emotion
imprinted and passed on.

Grandparents I never knew,
their bodies tossed
into a pit for Zurawno’s Jews.

Last night in bed
my bowels erupted, spewing
across my sheets and thighs.
Was I my great-aunt in Auschwitz,
dysentery draining her skeletal body?

So many voices
through me trying to speak.
Shechinah, female face of God,
free my body from their shadows.
Let me tell their stories and mine.

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For Florenz: “Body of Diminishing Motion” by Joan Seliger Sidney