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Linda Nemec Foster, one of the contributing poets to Riffing on Strings, has a new chapbook out. Here's the announcement: Cervena Barva Press is pleased to announce the publication of "Ten Songs from Bulgaria" by Linda Nemec Foster
 I. Two Vladimirs at the Window
Small lives, small lives,
we are trapped inside
small lives. Call this window
a prison of rotten wood; the hinges
a broken lock that still won’t release us.
Call us the curse of clouded mirrors,
the blank faces of the soul
stuck inside an old kaleidoscope.
Small lives, small lives. We hum and chant
to the silence outside the frame.
The first lines in Linda Nemec Foster’s Ten Songs from Bulgaria, sing 'Small lives, small lives/ we are trapped inside/ small lives.' The paradox here is that Foster’s poems reveal how large and rich the worlds are in which these small lives are lived. In line after line, we encounter the depths and reach of those who live outside the zones of everyday safety. Foster makes herself vulnerable to a world 'as tangible as fog' with her own penetrating observations. She walks 'the long journey' and her poems reflect the haunting music of ode and elegy.
-Jack Ridl
These poems evoke--in their concision and clarity--intense, disturbing images of lives shredded into pieces so small all that’s left is the memory of having endured. They are caged inside the empty space of the page, which seems to want to suffocate their spare, fragile, incredible beauty. Each image speaks a world that is window and mirror of what we hide from in the fabricated assemblages we make against the truth these poems speak.
-Faye Kicknosway
Linda Nemec Foster is the author of seven books of poetry including Living in the Fire Nest (a finalist for the Poet’s Prize) and Amber Necklace from Gdansk (a finalist for the Ohio Book Award in Poetry). Her most recent book, Listen to the Landscape, was short-listed for the 2007 Michigan Notable Book Award. Foster’s poems have appeared in over 250 magazines and journals including The Georgia Review, Nimrod, North American Review, and New American Writing. Her collaboration with jazz musician Steve Talaga, Contemplating the Heavens, was nominated for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Music. She has been the recipient of honors from the Michigan Council for the Arts, the Arts Foundation of Michigan, the National Writer’s Voice, and the Academy of American Poets. From 2003-2005 she served as the first poet laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Foster is the founder of the Contemporary Writers Series at Aquinas College and currently is a member of the Series’ programming committee.
Order online at Cervena Barva Press
Ten Songs from Bulgaria
by Linda Nemec Foster
$7.00 + $3.00 S/H
20 pages, paper
Publication Date: June, 2008
For information contact:
Gloria Mindock
Cervena Barva Press, Somerville, MA
Email: editorATcervenabarvapressDOTcom
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