Red Room comment

Author Comment:

River by the Glass is an eclectic 212-page collection of poems that explores life and the living of it. River by the Glass is a collection of poems spanning two decades. The poems, says publisher of River by the Glass, Ron Pickup of GlenHill Publications, contain a whimsical wit and metaphysical humor ~ poems such as “Carp” or “Eye” ~ and such poems as “A Poet” or “Yellow the Dead Canary.” With biting humor and haunting verse, found in “Chester and the Bluebird” and “On the Fence,” the poems reflect visual puzzles and conundrums of life, thus the viewing of the River ~ by Glass ~ through lenses, windows, screens, mirrors, and drinking vessels. Rose recalls a time in her childhood when her barefoot ways met the barbarism in the human defacement of nature ~ broken beer bottles with ugly shards of brown glass marring the lovely boulders, sand, and water purity of her favorite river haunt, the Kern River. She could never understand how people could deface the lovely places in our lives ~ the only kind of refuge from the asphalt and concrete world that levels our aspirations and deadens our nerves and senses. Yet, in a strange kaleidoscopic way, those shards of glass that derived from sand and water, seemed to glitter and demand meaning for being what they were ~ products and reality. They existed and they were there, clashing with the ideal of what she envisioned. This collection is her way of cleansing some of the unpure places in the human heart and exploring the mysteries in human behavior as well as the natural movements in nature. It is a celebration of life in the natural and unnatural worlds that collide within, and without us. Yet, it’s not a collection of judgment and critical pointing of fingers. It’s also a glimpse into the quirky behaviors of man as well. The leaving of loved ones and the world of dementia ~ the meeting with a deer that connects the aspects of wild and tame ~ parthenogenesis, gold panning, gardening, skipping stones, finding a harmonica in the river sand ~ making coffee in the morning ~ the dying of friends ~ the haunting by a black dog when even holy water couldn’t protect enough ~ contemplating the breaking of a bull pine limb while a couple sleeps ~ the celebration of a woman’s cycle of birthing coming to an end with the flow of the “Tuolumne River” ~ and poems that whimsically explore love through visions and images of the particular, spilling into the universal. All of these and more… Take a sip of River by the Glass and quench your thirst. You may find yourself drinking harder than you thought.

.

Books and anthologies with editing work by Monika Rose

River by the Glass River by the Glass front cover small, A Collection of Poems by Monika Rose

Released, April 2011- 212 pages, 85 poems, photography by Tuolumne County talent Ron Pickup

River photography includes Tuolumne River, Clavey River, Stanislaus River, and more….

Publisher, GlenHill Productions, Soulsbyville

Purchase on this site.  $21.95, add shipping and tax: $28.50

 

 

 

 

Wild Edges: volume 6 of Manzanita – Poetry and Prose of the Mother Lode and Sierra

Editor: Monika Rose – Published Aug. 2010 – pub. Manzanita Writers Press – 216 pages featuring over 100 poets and fiction writers from California and the U.S. Over 30 photographers and artists featuring their work – a 16-page full color glossy spread by talented artists and photographers of the Mother Lode and Sierra – Purchase from Manzanita Writers Press for $15.00.  2,000 printed – 1,000 remaining        Wild Edges - volume 6 Manzanita anthology front coveradd tax and shipping

 Some of the writers featured: J.P. Dancing Bear, Mara Feeney, Taylor Graham, Ted Laskin, Linda Field, Jim Lanier, Ron Pickup, Helene Pilibosian, Jackie Richmond, Monika Rose, Andy Shupala, Allegra Silberstein, Laura Snyder, Norine Radaikin, Jackie Rogers, William Keener, Bill Gainer, Michael Lee Johnson, Brad Buchanan, Zoe Keithley, Shelley Muniz, Joseph Milosch, Kathy Isaac-Luke, Kevin Arnold, Moira Magneson, Barbara Leon, W.F. Lantry, Carol Ann Lindsay, James Jacobs, Jodi Hottel, Gail Entrekin, Johm Fitch, Maureen Flannery, Lara Gularte, Dianna Henning, Lisa Gelfand, Connie Corcoran, Sandy Crepps, Chrissy Davis, Donald Anderson, Dawn Bonker, David Anderson, Marta Brady, Barbara Bass, Tim Bellows, Gary Cooke, Alan Cohen, Leslie Bailey, Marcia Adams, Glenn Wasson, Dorothy Wake, Andrena Zawinski, Patricia Wellingham-Jones, Daniel Williams, Paul Willis, Brigit Truex, David Sullivan, Michael Spinetta, Robert Walton, Anne Wilson, Paula Sheil, Dave Self, Michele Rugo, Dave Seter, Scott Siegel, Anne Privateer, Mark Redfearn, Marie Ross, Nick Samaras, Zara Raab, and many more…

Cover photo by Paul Neal

 

Manzanita Volume 5 – released Sept. 2008 – 1,500 copies published – 400 remaining

Over 100 writers and artists featured – still in print Manzanita volume 5 Front cover – cover photo by John Doane

Editor: Monika Rose

Published by Writers Unlimited, sells for 15.00 plus tax, shipping

 Back cover volume 5 – photo by Ron Pickup

Poem by Jackie Richmond

Manzanita volume 5 back cover - photo by Ron Pickup - poem by Jackie Richmond

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Manzanita – volume 4  – over 100 writers and artists featuredManzanita volume 4 Front cover

Editor, Monika Rose – published by Writers Unlimited, 2006

Now, Manzanita Writers Press

published 2006 – 1,200 copies printed – 50 remain – sells for 15.00

Cover photo by Ron Pickup of Soulsbyville – lovely Manzanita blossoms frosted by a surprise snowstorm in the late spring

 

 

 

Ted Laskin’s collection of Short Stories and Essays

George A. Custer, Please Come to the White Courtesy Phone

Available from the author and Manzanita Writers Press

17.95 plus shipping and handling – 8.25 % tax – total: 23.00

George A. Custer, Please Come to the White Courtesy Phone - by Ted LaskinEditing work: Monika Rose  – Ed. Manzanita Writers Press, 2010

Joy Roberts – chief editor  on the project

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glenn Wasson’s collection of poetry, essays, and flash fiction

Tales Mark Twain Would Have Loved to Steal – revised edition

Tales Mark Twain Would Have Loved to Steal - revised edition - by Glenn WassonEditing work, Monika Rose, Joy Roberts: 2008 and 2010 (2 volumes)

Winner of the Readers Choice Humor Award

Available for 21.95   plus shipping, and 8.25 % CA tax

Total 28.50. 

Publisher: Manzanita Writers Press

Contact author via press

 

 

 

 

 

 

Getty Ambau’s Young Adult Novel

Desta and King Solomon’s Coin of MagicDesta and King Solomon's Coin

Monika Edited: 2009 and 2010  (not exclusively)

Manuscript also reviewed by Lodi High students

 

River by the Glass – What Readers Say about the Poetry Collection by Monika Rose

Welcome to the web site of Monika Rose, Poet, Author, Editor

Contact Monika at mrosemanza@jps.net

Founding editor: Manzanita Writers Press

New Poetry collection released :   River by the Glass

 

 

Monika Rose, Poet and AuthorHere are what other poets and writers say about River by the Glass:

Pattiann Rogers, poet, says:

The poems in River By the Glass are rich with the details of the earth moving moment by moment from death to life, from life to death.  Monika Rose understands the union of these transformations and records them with the energy, contemplation, and originality of finely composed poetry.  Like glass, her poetry offers both a reflection of the physical world and a window into our human experiences of its shifting beauty and mystery.

       –Pattiann Rogers

Kathy Isaac-Luke, poet, says:

In her new collection, River by the Glass, Monika Rose shows her
formidable range. By turns meditative, profound and imaginative, her
poems are always, at their core, genuine and unflinchingly honest.
Whether rooted in landscape or familial memory, these poems are rich
in metaphor and finely crafted. With the precision of a scalpel and
the clarity of fresh water, River by the Glass takes the reader on a
journey of discovery.

           —Kathie Isaac-Luke, author of Chrysalides, 2010, Dragonfly Press

 

Kevin Arnold, poet and director of the San Jose Poetry Center says:

Monika Rose inhabits the Mother Lode country, a geography that produces poetry.  Down the highway from where the Squaw Valley Community of Writers winter with Gary Snyder, her poems grow out of local soil.  No wonder Monika is dedicated to bringing out the best of her community.  These fine poems could have been written nowhere else.

        –Kevin Arnold
http://www.redroom.com/author/kevin-arnold

From Mary Mackey, novelist and poet:

“Rose’s poetry captures the texture and currents of the river, translating water into words.”
           –Mary Mackey            

mackeym@mindspring.com

About the poem, Harmonica, from River by the Glass, and notes by the poet, Monika Rose

One of the most interesting things I ever found was a tiny harmonica on a chain at Tuolumne Meadows, embedded in the sand bank, close to the Tuolumne bridge that traverses the Tuolumne River. The one-inch harmonica lying in the sand, attached to a tiny chain, sported four tiny reed holes. I tested the sound, a resounding and high-pitched tweedle–which added harmony to the river burble and the distant murmur of a pair of lovers’ voices dangling over the bridge. I gave the harmonica away, and then got it back and promptly lost it somewhere. Some things continue to want to be lost. The memory of my friend who passed away, fellow poet Julia Holzer, is intertwined with that harmonica. She was with me when I picked it up. She has been lost to the river of sky, no longer with us. The music of the harmonica still sings to her somewhere. Someone lost that harmonica. I wrote a poem about the losing. I wonder whose amulet it was. I wonder if they will find me through the poem. It won’t matter. The harmonica remains lost. The poem stays. If someone reads it, the harmonica will be found again, though in another form.

Side note having nothing whatsoever to do with the poem: The moniker, “harmonica” had been attached to my name, Monika, by my old Geometry instructor Mr. Flynn, who, in his darling Boston accent, would call out “harmoniker,” referring to me, while erasing the board with the elbow patch on his tweed coat and at the same time, and with the same arm, writing new material on the board simultaneously with erasing the old.   

Notes by the poet on the poem, “Harmonica, ” in River by the Glass

 

Harmonica

 

Forgetting the music

But finding new sound

Here by the river

Where stone shapes the

River songs,

An amulet glitters

In the sand

 

A talisman lost

By a lover

Maybe, last night

Here, by the water

Straining under the weight

Of new romance

 

A four-holed harmonica

On a black string tossed

In a groan

Or a sigh

Flown into sand

Reeds altered by grit

 

Bitter on the tip

My lips almost envelop

The musical words

Wondering how

The tryst went

How deep

Did it slip

And how the

Taste lingers.

 

 

 

How to Write a Sonnet by example – two poems by Monika Rose

                                                          

 Here is how Monika Rose converted a free verse poem to a Sonnet form — see the poem titled “Father” below the sonnet titled “Fish”, which was transformed from the free verse form.

                                                Conversion to an English Sonnet     (time: 2 hours)

Start with a situation and a statement of a condition, situation, or event which begins a plot or set of complications or logical argument—there should be a motive behind the speech:

 

The Fish

 

My father taught me how to swim to life

He must have seen my sudden fetal crawl

My body slicing membranes like a knife

While gasping, choking, wriggling in the squall

 

Continue with elements or aspects of that condition or situation and be sure to further the story — there should be a complication or advancement of the narrative:

 

How I kicked my legs and leaped into his world

Beginning struggle at an early stroke

And like a butterfly in flight unfurled

To wings of infant innocence he spoke

 

Add the volta (9th line — a turn or some kind of complication or reversal)

Then an explanation or elaboration . . .

 

Push off the heart he warned when leaving home

And turn like silver lest you lose retreat

Keep moving under water and its foam

So journey take you back where all ends meet

 

Add a resolution or solution to some aspect of the situation set up:

 

The backstroke takes you far into the start

The breast stroke brings you back into your heart.

 

 Finished! Fait accomplit!

 Finished sonnet:

 

— from River by the Glass, A Collection of Poems by Monika Rose

 

The Fish

 

My father taught me how to swim to life

He must have seen my sudden fetal crawl

My body slicing membranes like a knife

While gasping, choking, wriggling in the squall

How I kicked my legs and leaped into his world

Beginning struggle at an early stroke

And like a butterfly in flight unfurled

To wings of infant innocence he spoke

 

Push off the heart he warned when leaving home

And turn like silver lest you lose retreat

Keep moving under water and its foam

So journey take you back where all ends meet

 

 

The backstroke takes you far into the start

The breast stroke brings you back into your heart.

 — from River by the Glass, A Collection of Poems by Monika Rose

Father                                                

 Prenatal

 He watched from the outside

As I swam inside

The breast stroke

The butterfly

He watched

As I swam out

Wriggled

Gasped

Choked

 

Parental

This is the crawl he spoke

The fastest stroke

Kick your legs

Pull your arms

Cup your hands

 

This is the breast stroke

Push out from the heart

 

This is the butterfly

Unfold your wings

 

This is the backstroke

Retreat sometimes

 

Paternal

 My father the fish

Who taught

Me how to

Stroke ripples

Blow bubbles

Gulp quickly

Push away

And swim back

 

Publisher GlenHill Productions, Ron Pickup, Praises River by the Glass in his Introduction

INTRODUCTION

I first published Monika Rose’s poetry in the Mindprint Review, a literary journal of regional and international writing and art published back in the late 1980s. And even then, I was taken with her whimsical wit and metaphysical humor in poems such as “Carp” and “Eye.” Today, she has evolved these skills into the biting imagery but sensitive and haunting verse found in the likes of “Drowning in the Kern, ”  “Chester and the Bluebird,” and “On the Fence. ”

This is the ethereal yet concrete fine poetry of a master poet. In “Chester and the Bluebird,” a spirited bluebird standing in for a beloved pet steer, just reduced to sizzling steaks on the family barbecue, is Rose’s respectful reply to the classic, important image of a “red wheel/barrow/glazed with rain/water/beside the white/chickens,” written by the pillar of Objectivism, William Carlos Williams.

The poetry in this collection has been forged and tempered over decades of writing, while also teaching English at the secondary and college level; attending numerous workshops with some of the best writers of our time; and promoting and showcasing the work of her fellow writers and artists through founding Writers Unlimited and editing and publishing the Manzanita anthologies and other publications.

With the publication of River by the Glass, we at last have the collected poetry to date, of the hardest working poet I have been privileged to know. GlenHill is proud to present these fruits of her long labor.

Ron Pickup

March 23, 2011

Soulsbyville,California

Authors Praise River by the Glass

River by the Glass front cover smallHere are what other poets and writers say about River by the Glass:

Pattiann Rogers, poet, says:

The poems in River By the Glass are rich with the details of the earth moving moment by moment from death to life, from life to death.  Monika Rose understands the union of these transformations and records them with the energy, contemplation, and originality of finely composed poetry.  Like glass, her poetry offers both a reflection of the physical world and a window into our human experiences of its shifting beauty and mystery.

       –Pattiann Rogers

Kathy Isaac-Luke, poet, says:

In her new collection, River by the Glass, Monika Rose shows her
formidable range. By turns meditative, profound and imaginative, her
poems are always, at their core, genuine and unflinchingly honest.
Whether rooted in landscape or familial memory, these poems are rich
in metaphor and finely crafted. With the precision of a scalpel and
the clarity of fresh water, River by the Glass takes the reader on a
journey of discovery.

           —Kathie Isaac-Luke, author of Chrysalides, 2010, Dragonfly Press

 

Kevin Arnold, poet and director of the San Jose Poetry Center says:

Monika Rose inhabits the Mother Lode country, a geography that produces poetry.  Down the highway from where the Squaw Valley Community of Writers winter with Gary Snyder, her poems grow out of local soil.  No wonder Monika is dedicated to bringing out the best of her community.  These fine poems could have been written nowhere else.

        –Kevin Arnold
http://www.redroom.com/author/kevin-arnold

From Mary Mackey, novelist and poet:

“Rose’s poetry captures the texture and currents of the river, translating water into words.”
           –Mary Mackey            

mackeym@mindspring.com

Order River by the Glass!

River By the Glass Cover Front and BackRiver by the Glass is ready to ship! Monika Rose wants you to sip and dip in! It’s your glass and you can cry if you want to. But you won’t cry ~ most of the poems will make you see aspects of life once again, from your own buried memories. Bring up those shards and hold them up to the light! There are pieces for everyone, encompassing a wide swath of subjects. You will be awash in reflective delight. Poetry is meant to shake you and make you think about what is really important. Forget the movie you had planned. Sit down and swim in the important aspects of life that you will create within yourself. And enjoy the beautiful river photos by Ron Pickup, Tuolumne County renowned photographer and writer and photographer for Sierra Seasons.  In fact, there is a mysterious thing you can do with the cover that will astound you! Ron’s cover photo is absolutely astounding when you hold the book in your hands. 216 pages of a two-decade span of poems, polished and shining ready for your reading.

Order now!  Mail a check made out to Monika Rose c/0 Manzanita Writers Press for $26.50, to cover 21.95 sales price, plus tax, plus shipping. PO Box 632, San Andreas, CA 95249. In fact, order extras for your friends and family for gifts and the upcoming holidays! Allow 3.50 for shipping costs per volume and 8.25% tax per volume.

Many of the poems spin around the river themes and flow of life and love and death and explore absurdities and wonders of experience. The kinetic energy from “Tuolumne River” in which a mother’s childbearing cycle winds down into memory, blending with the water, sand and boulder life of the river’s cycle, and her once-productivity, reflects on our time in this world and what we are here to do. “Cleaning Fish” evokes an Elizabeth Bishop kind of experience, but darker. “Variations on a Skipping Stone,” takes you back to your skipping stone days and then turns on you.  “Carp” is a hilarious depiction of fisherman wisdom with a twist.

And there is that word reflection. River by the Glass ~ depicts mirrors, windows, watery reflections, kaleidoscopic bits of meaning, camera and digital lenses, videorecording lenses, eyeglasses, car windows, glass on art frames, purity of water that should be drinkable but often, isn’t….in any glass, and more.  Refractory and reflective ~ visual and visceral ~ the poems force us to see, whatever it is we see or want to see, in a new light. It’s similar to picking up a piece of old glass from another century, and straining to see through its cloudy, hard membrane. We see what we’re able to see, what we construct for ourselves.

Read poems about clashes and meldings with nature, elegies to those who have passed before us, quirky poems about life (like “How to Spot a Serial Killer” and “Yellow the Dead Canary” or “Venial Sins” and more. If you’ve ever felt guilty about eating beef, or had sympathies with the rancher’s dilemma, dare to read “Chester and the Bluebird” and/or “Animal, Vegetable, darkly humorous poems with a twist.  These are not greeting card poems. Their particular images will evoke your own memories and bring them up to the surface in a bubble of haiku moments.

There are romantic or sensual poems like “The Ritual of Coffee Making,” or “Harmonica” or “The Long Dance” and “Coming into Love” and a love of the wild in “What is to Wilderness” –“Deer in the Road” or “Bull Pine” —  or even a love poem gone sour, based on ironically sweet-sounding language from the business pages of the Wall Street Journal, called “Love and Finance.”  Maybe you’d like to contemplate the metaphysical, with poems like “On the Fence,” in which a fox hanging on barbed wire fence from a child’s memory, linked to a dead fox found in the underbrush, evoking a strong gut-level reaction. “Worms” explores death wriggling from under the concrete walk, and friends who have passed, communicate out from beyond the grave in a universal call of beautiful sadness. Or “You Can Take It With You” makes a person think about the hereafter, with its series of exhibits of life and death.

There is the “Estate Sale” and another, “Food for Thought,” searching for meaning in everyday events, as well as “The Other Side,” a touching dialogue between the collective family narrator at a distance, and the dementia-laden speaker who just wants to go home, wherever that may be. Yes, there are poems about death – many of them. The opening poem, “Drowning at the Kern,” provides one of the strongest, lyrical visions of a honeymoon couple separated by the waters of the eternal reality, with the call of a bride echoing eerily in the canyon, while seeing her draped in the algaed strands of river tangle. The Kern River is a dangerous lover.

The poems are whimsical, touching, and artistic. Yet, if you’d like to be cheered on, and laugh along with the poet, why not read a narrative poem about a teacher’s mistaken thought that what she teaches, likeThoreau, and the Crucible,  is actually relevant to teens lost in the throes of their own private worlds,  in “Transcendental Perch.” Or poems about art, like “A Poet” or “Slowpitch Poetry, or “Eye Think.”

There are poems dedicated to fathers — one having the words, Prenatal, Parental, and Paternal, all containing the same letters, as sections framing the movement of a daughter’s love for her father contained in a poem. There are poems dedicated to mothers and daughters, exploring genetic traits passed down the line. There are elegies like “Desert Bloom” and “Navajo Traveler” and “Need Fire,” combining Clampus E. Vitus rituals with a departed friend. There are poems dedicated to children and eternal guilt in parenting ~ “There is a Cough” and “Nails” and in the mysteries of animals ~ “Black Dog” and the “Gift of the Fat Dalmation.”

Or dip into poems of conscience, “Navajo Gifts” and “Leper Lady at Swiss Park” or “Beauty and the Beast: The Movie.” Squaw Valley experiences include “Marimba Mountains,” or “What is to Wilderness” (a question posed by Jane Hirschfield of a nature panel) , or “Four Levels of Mist” and “Top of the Mountain.”  Photographers will wonder at what is going in “Eye for and Eye” or “Glass” or “Yoga at the Y.”

Anyway, I won’t give it all away. There are 85 poems in this collection.  You should see the ones that got away! Or rather, dove into the depths.  Hid in folders! Dipped down under the waters, chilled to the bone, and looking for cover from boulders and shoulders!

Please write me comments!

Delightfully yours,

Monika

 

River by the Glass just released!

River of Glass just released! by GlenHill Publications. Ron Pickup, Editor at GlenHill has something to say about Monika’s work!

My book of poems has a mix of subject matters ~ anywhere from the unpredictable and puzzling world of nature, to the equivocating nature of human kind. Metaphysical poems and whimsical and witty turning over of stones abound. Read a poem a day ~ or two.  Read a poem to your child, your loved one, and to yourself.  Think of the book as a kaleidoscope and each poetry bit as a smooth shard of colored glass tumbling in the mix. When you stop turning the tube, the glass bits fall into place and form a beautiful design. View that as the poem.

 

You will be able to listen to my interview coming to the site soon,  in which I talk about the book and the process of writing poetry, then I read poems from River by the Glass, and more, in the new author interview program called Manzanita Voices ~ hosted by Linda Field, fiction editor of Manzanita Writers Press and Director of Manzanita Voices. This recording is archived from the Manzanita Voices program, which can be heard every first and third Sunday, streamed live at 9:00 A.M. at KVGCradio.com. Or, if you’re in the area of Calaveras or Amador counties, tune in live that morning at 1340 AM. Contact her at writers@kvgcradio.com and let her know how you like the show.