Yippee! I’ve just received a blurb for my forthcoming chapbook THE PUPPET WIFE from Pudding House Publications. When I was first began submitting to chapbook presses, I loved applying to contests that offered all entrants a copy of the winning book. I read so many wonderful poets–new and established–that way and learned a lot about what makes a good chapbook of poetry. It was so fun to discover in the mailbox a little gift of poetry, someone’s work packaged in lines, saddle-stitched or bound, and decorated with a lovely cover design or art, and to see where that poet had been published before, where they studied, and who blurbed their book. That was how I first discovered the wonderful, quirky, playful poetry of Kristin Abraham with her delightful chapbook Little Red Riding Hood Missed the Bus. It arrived in my mailbox, perfect bound with a clean, sharp cover design, and filled with stunning poetry. Recently, I’ve also read her other collection Oranges Reminds You of Listening and wrote a little  mini-review of it on Amazon and Goodreads. This past year, she’s been editing Spittoon, a fantastic literary journal new in 2011, the content of which I find to be edgy and brilliant.

Here’s Kristin:

In The Puppet Wife, Laura Madeline Wiseman skillfully and subtly traces the strings that tie, the ties that bind, the knots and tangles, between language and line, man and woman, fish and fisher, poem and reader. These poems lay bare a lyric hope and tense, mutable codependence among “the guy with the strings,” “the guy [who] is the strings” and the guy who is “made of strings.”  Intricately woven from beginning to end, The Puppet Wife is a provocative, unsettling delight to read.

Yay! Thanks, Kristin!

Yay! I’ve just received a blurb for THE PUPPET WIFE, my new chapbook forthcoming from Pudding House Publications. Mary K. Stillwell is such a wonderful poet. I had the opportunity to read with her a few times times at Poetry at the Moon and to promote the Black Star Press 2012 Poets Calender. While I was a grad student, she was my classmate in Hilda Raz’s poetry workshop. She’s one of the editors of Nebraska Presence: An Anthology of Poetry. She’s also  working on a forthcoming book about Ted Kooser. Here’s Mary K.:

Laura Madeline Wiseman’s latest chapbook of poems, The Puppet Wife, draws the reader into a mesmerizing and sometimes haunting world, a puppet’s stage where fear lurks in shadowy corners. Eerily familiar objects—strings, fish lines, ropes, scarves ribbons, fish hooks, door hooks, knots, and fasteners—are transformed as the girl who never speaks becomes a woman. With courage and with hope, Wiseman redefines and articulates what it means to live and love authentically.

Thanks!