Category: Archive

JC, a Jane Austen devotee, just finished this Oakville author’s 2020 novel. JC gives it an 8.5/10 rating. Go to Bookends to see the review.

The June 12 Glebe Report carries JC’s review of this memoire by Whitehorse-based author Eva Holland. ALLEN LANE, an imprint of Penguin Canada published “Nerve” in May.

The review admits upfront that JC has known the writer since she was a child and has watched her career with an interest that is both a professional and personal.

If JC had reviewed the book on this site for her “Bookends” feature, what rating would JC have given “Nerve?” 9/10!

Here’s the link to the paper. The article appears on page 22.
https://www.glebereport.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/GR-June-2020_web.pdf

Right after Editor Melanie Villines ended this California press’s hiatus, JC welcomed the opportunity to contribute her poem “Deadbolt” to its new, online series.

“The Editor’s choice of ’my front door’ for the current series’ theme strikes me as inspired and evocative. During the pandemic, what happens inside or outside open or closed doors, whether metaphorical or physical, offers poets such scope to explore experiences real or imagined,” JC commented.

Silver Birch Press has published JC’s poems in a number of its anthologies and in various online series. She is the only Canadian whose work appears in its 2015 chapbook anthology, IDES.

Here is the link to “Deadbolt” to cut and paste into your browser:

Deadbolt by JC Sulzenko (MY FRONT DOOR Series)

zoom once defined a lens
now opens conversations
face-to-face-to-face

JC was delighted that Editors at VALLUM chose her found poem “Whether or not transference occurs” for issue 17.1, which launched at an innovative, online watch party on April 24, 2020. Here is the link that will bring you her reading.

“Whether or not transference occurs” uses words drawn unaltered from death notices and obituary articles published on a single day in the Toronto GLOBE AND MAIL. The poem is part of a full collection seeking a publisher.

“I thank VALLUM’S Editors for including my piece in the ‘home’ issue. It’s a privilege to appear in the magazine and to be in the fine company of other poets whose work is featured there,” JC noted after the launch. She took the opportunity also to read two centos.

Here is a link to VALLUM’s whole digital issue 17.1:

http://www.vallummag.com/current_issue_copy171.html

JC writes centos and found poetry under the pseudonym A. Garnett Weiss.

JC offers her deepest sympathy to the family of patriarch Ellis Marsalis along with her poem,”Like father, like son.” Written in 2003 after the Marsalis family played together at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, the poem has been published elsewhere, most recently in VERSE AFIRE (The Ontario Poetry Society.)

May memories of Ellis, as was his life, be a blessing.

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

Ellis Marsalis caresses the keys, releases melody.
His sons trombone, sax, trumpet, drum
into the music, explore its geography,
improvise new routes to the source of sound.

They play together, yet play alone,
a composition so intimate it’s a surprise
when the jazz flows back to where it began.

What lingers is not only the music.
It’s Ellis. His voice soft,
he introduces each son
as though unwrapping a gift.

Did he know from the start how it would be,
sharing the same stage, each other’s rhythms
the joyful dissonance, harmonies?

He’d likely say luck had a hand in it, led
his boys past the usual rejection of a father’s
ways to choose such instruments
for the love of him, for the love of song.

COUNTING

First the children, immune to this assault,
their coughs and sneezes innocent for now.
Then their parents, our children —
not in the crosshairs, but still…

These tykes, their dads & moms feel well,
grateful for no symptoms, yet wide-aware
every breath’s a timebomb tick
if they’re carriers.

We, the elders/the old, keep distant, weave
sorry days around, away from those we love.
Cloistered, anxious, tethered to a hope for health,
we hold no expectation of normal.

A wall
transparent, translucent

Easy to walk through
if you dare

I don’t
I stare at the street

Sunlit, snow covered
empty

Put my hands up to the wall
Feel cold, cold

cold as hard as my choices
Be exposed or cocoon

Hyper-vigilant, yet numb
I want to run, don’t know where

JC is very pleased that her work will appear in upcoming issues of VALLUM: CONTEMPORARY POETRY and THE NAUGATUCK RIVER REVIEW. In May, Poetry Leaves, a poetry exhibition and anthology project of the Waterford Township Public Library (Michigan), was slated to feature her for the second year in a row.

“I’m delighted by the reception my found poetry has received and look forward, as well, to seeing an ekphrastic poem based on an image by Prince Edward County photographer Graham Davies in print.

JC continues to curate “Poetry Quarter” for the community newspaper,THE GLEBE REPORT, and serves on the selection board for ByWords.ca, an online, monthly poetry journal.

BOXING DAY COLOURS

Three black pigeons found solace

in the too-warm puddles

They alone had not dreamt of a white Christmas

Did not regret the grim, gray slush

that bequeathed lines of salt to new leather boots

still stiff from packages, now crushed and

stuffed along with blue reindeer wrapping

and rivers of silver ribbon

into bulging green garbage bags

at the curb

of a new year