It's been a while, poems published. More rejected. Ideas all floating through my fevered brain.
Here is a very lovely review written by Jim Lewis of Verse Virtual. I hope he also posts it there! Thanks Jim!
Book
reviewed: “Viruses Guns and War” by Dotty LeMieux (Main Street Rag
Publishing Company, 2023)
Reviewed
by Jim Lewis, editor of Verse-Virtual and author of 5 books of poetry.
It
takes courage and confidence to write about current social issues because they
are, by nature, controversial. Who better then, than a poet, to be the one to
take on topics
like "Viruses Guns and War"? In this engaging and compelling
collection of poems, LeMieux guides us through the challenges and conflicts of
our nascent century by giving
us glimpses, flash reminders of what we are living through.
The
grimness of THE pandemic is captured is such simple lines as
the police are too busy
confirming deaths
on park benches
to answer calls
about unsanctioned basketball
games in the park.
She
deftly pairs the COVID-19 pandemic with the pandemic of death and violence that
rages on the streets of America in "Double Pandemic":
American knee of oppression
on my neck.
Virus of death
in my lungs
I can’t breathe.
Poem
after poem, LeMieux shows us who we are, what we have done and are doing to
each other — bigotry, selfishness, and violence dominating our lives, and still
she manages to weave in threads of hope. This collection of poems made me
uncomfortable, as it should make anyone think about how we fit into the
patterns of avoidable destruction that surround us. Good writing does that, and
this is some of the best I have read.
Saturday, December 24, 2022
Happy Holidays everyone. My posts have been sporadic, but pleased to announce my new chapbook for the New Year: Viruses Guns and War from Main Street Rag Press: https://mainstreetragbookstore.com/product/viruses-guns-and-war-dotty-lemieux/ It is in pre-sales and you know what that means, I need you to buy now, get later. $7.50 to pre-order, and the more who do that, the more and faster the book is actually printed. At the site are three samples from the book for you to dip your toes into.
Here is the amazing cover by Donald Guravich, who has kindly offered art to grace the covers of four of my books to date:
My poem is up at Wild Roof; issue 11 - Read it here: https://wildroofjournal.com/
Angels protect us from angry gods
the ones you wrestle in the night. like kidnappers who snatch you from life and keep you isolated freezing starving for days on end then bring you an apple and some soft talk knowing you’ll do anything for them even kill
but wait say the angels beware of false gods and prophets even beware of false angels dressed in heavenly white wearing halos
real angels dress in work boots and have calloused hands furrowed brows the world weighs down on them the same as on you so that you never know who might be working beside you as you fire up the chain saw for felling a dead tree so massive a multitude of angels could dance on the stump
crowded and sweating like mortals and drunk and mean as ten thousand lumberjacks.
A very lovely review has been posted at Compulsive Reader today of my chapbook Henceforth I Ask Not Good Fortune.
Here it is. Enjoy. And read the others there. Very nice publication. Thanks for doing this.
A review of Henceforth I Ask Not Good Fortune by Dotty E. LeMieux
Reviewed by Kim Zach
Henceforth I Ask Not Good Fortune
by Dotty E. LeMieux
Fishing Line Press
$14.99, paper, ISBN: 978-1-64662-379-2, Dec 2020, 36 pages
Dotty LeMieux is no stranger to poetry. Her writing has appeared in a
number of publications, including anthologies, blogs, and online at Main Street Rag, Antonym, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Writer’s Resist, Gyroscope, and many others.
LeMieux has also published three previous chapbooks in addition to her latest offering, Henceforth I Ask Not Good Fortune. This
slim volume of fifteen poems over 23 pages demonstrates a variety of
subjects that at first may seem disconnected. In a quick read-through of
the table of contents and a skim of the poems themselves, I pondered:
“What is the common thread weaving these poems together?”
The poet identifies herself as a political activist; indeed, she’s
been a politician and is an attorney whose interests lie with
environmental law and progressive politics. This focus obviously has
spilled over into her poetry. The first few poems reflect a sympathetic
view of those who suffer from the world’s injustices. The strong images
ring true, and we realize that Lemieux has observed these scenes
first-hand.
In “Woman Her World on Skids” a homeless woman wrestles with the
burden of her meager possessions. Lemieux writes: “Urban traveler at a
crossroads/waiting out the light/weighted by the world on skids behind
her/Arms bent back holding the plastic/reins of flattened cardboard.”
The folded box will become a shelter and into black plastic trash bags,
the woman “has crammed husband/House, children now grown, job/in a bank
or a store/or a factory in another state.” She moves with unexpected
grace underneath the “cargo on her bent back not a bit/of slack in
sinewy limbs, face taut as a fist, eyes/tight against unforgiving sun,
not an ounce of wanting/to be here but with steadiness.”
LeMieux’s advocacy is evident in imagery that lends dignity to the downtrodden. In“Solstice”
she describes a man at a food pantry as wearing a “long brown coat like
a cape/ swirling around bony shoulders.” He crosses the street “cape
billowing out behind his slender frame/he is transformed into a Romantic
poet,” and then “strides in front of my car/stopped now to let him
pass, to watch/his coat-tails fly in his wake/like autumn’s last
leaves/swooshing around us.”
In “America Sends More Thoughts and Prayers,” the narrator directs
our attention to “poverty and injustice/inequality and crazy on
every/street corner” both present and past. The poem itself becomes a
prayer, as she recites a litany of maltreated groups: felons, children
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, citizens of Flint Michigan, immigrants, and
the Iroquois nation.
The most effective images, however, are when those groups become
individuals. She speaks of “the lady in pink who sings alone in the
park, surrounded by pigeons,” “the veteran in his chair beside the
shuttered window,” and “Leticia who cleans my house.” The ending accuses
and commands: “We know you’ll never be able/ to make amends—/But at
least get down/on your knobby knees/hang your hoary head/and cry.”
The next poems are lighter and more playful, serving as much-needed
comic relief. “For a Poet I Once Loved” is a tongue-in-cheek
apology—”Sorry that I took your words/for mine; but I did leave/your
silk purse with the rainy day/fund; and I refrained from drinking the
new wine/you were saving for inspiration.” Another apology poem, “Just
to Let You Know,” is a riff on William Carlos William’s poem about
eating the plums in the icebox. Lemieux writes, “I polished off/the
prunes in/the cupboard/which you were probably/planning to eat/for
regularity/ Sorry, I needed them/more/.
Her wry sense of observant humor continues in “The Toothbrushes are
Kissing.” With an extended metaphor, she compares the toothbrushes to
two lovers. She writes, “On the ledge
under the bathroom mirror, like they are passing each/other in the
hall, like two lovers working different shifts, one coming/the other
going.” She describes their “bristles stiffening, reaching/out and
whisking by, barely touching—an air kiss like they might be/French then
back again.”
The final third of the collection returns to more somber topics. “Ah
Death” is a one-sided conversation with the grim reaper. The narrator
reprimands him for being a “workaholic” with lines like “Death, cut it
out/Can’t you give it a rest/,” “Death, I’m on to you,” and “Death, time
to take a load off.”
LeMieux’s knack for creating vivid images continues in “Salt Hospital
1.” The patient says, “Cocooned/ in a room of my own/but nothing like
what Virginia Woolf imagined” and “like some old forgotten steer/dried
to sun-bleached bones/straining to reach the last salt lick/on the
plains.”
The final poem “Skip to My Lou, My Darling,” is an exercise in word
play, yet the light-hearted title belies the foreboding of the first
line: “Skipping, you are bound to trip.” She deftly incorporates other
phrases, varying the use and meaning of skip, like “The way your heart
skips a beat” and “I skipped out on the check.” The last two stanzas
shift from the general to the specific:
The girl with coltish legs crossing the parking lot
her arms like sticks, and tall as a young oak
How many meals did she skip to have that
disappearing look?
How long until she vanishes altogether, her mother hoping
her schoolmates just skip the funeral
no one could prevent, no amount of square dance tunes
karaoke or prom invitations could cajole her out of?
The view is sadly breathtaking and showcases LeMieux’s greatest
strength—crafting images that compel us to see the world that she
sees.The poet’s uncompromising attitude towards her subject matter is
the unifying thread of her poetry. The reader eventually surrenders to
the juxtaposition of seemingly mismatched topics and finally comes to
appreciate the variety of ways in which LeMieux accomplishes this.
About the reviewer: Kim Zach is a writer whose work has appeared in U.S. 1 Worksheets, Genesis, Clementine Poetry Journal, Clementine Unbound, Adanna Literary Journal, and Bone Bouquet.
Her poem ‘Weeding My Garden’ was nominated for a Pushcart prize. She is
a lifelong resident of the Midwest where she taught high school English
and creative writing for 40 years. She currently works as a book coach,
giving other writers the support and guidance they need to complete
their projects, whether fiction, non-fiction, or poetry.
I remember our trip in a rental car: Ray, John Crawford, and me, just
after September 11, to Lowell, Massachusetts, in search of Jack
Kerouac’s grave, but finding instead a Middle Eastern Karaoke bar across
the plaza from the Industrial Museum. There we joked about whether the
woman might be Osama bin Laden’s wife in exile—the bin Laden family did
own property in Boston after all—cooking barbeque with her small
daughters, smiling for the tourists. Eventually we made it to the Jack
Kerouac Memorial Park, thinking how much alike the words Kerouac and
Karaoke are, yet so very different.
And years later, John is on the long-distance phone, asking: Remember the bin Laden girls? I wonder what they’re doing now? what language they speak? Farsi, Arabic, Pidgin English?
Laughing at how insensitive we sound, but not caring, no one else is
listening (except possibly the NSA)—and we have been politically correct
for decades, back to when it wasn’t even a thing.
Reviewed by Kim Zach
