Fruits and Flowers and Animals and Seas And Lands Do Open

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks so much to Sid Miller at the Burnside Review and to Rory Sparks for the exquisite work on the cover.  Much gratitude to Hannah Gamble for appreciating the work and for the very gracious and sensitive blurb.  Finally, thanks to Jenni B. Baker at the Found Poetry Review, whose “Pulitzer Remix” project provided the impetus for the writing of this.

The title of the chapbook (which was written during April 2013) comes from a phrase attributed to Verrius Flaccus, who supposedly thought “April” came from aperire, “to open,” since in it, as he noted in the Fasti Praenestini, “fruits and flowers and animals and seas and lands do open.”

Fruits and Flowers and Animals and Seas And Land Do Open
by Michael Leong

Winner of the 2014 Burnside Review Chapbook Contest. Chosen by Hannah Gamble.

“Michael Leong’s vocabulary is totally stuffed/ multiplying in mirrors/ scattered over hillsides/ bubbling right over the top, and he’s going to give it all to you—he’s generous. He’s generous and funny and a little troubled—and “a little troubled” is, of course, the most logical and authentic response we could hope for anyone who’s examining life and poetry and personhood and artist-ness. This book is so enjoyable—like I said, giving and funny, but also very unlike anything I’ve read lately. It promptly wins the reader over.”

-Hannah Gamble

Michael Leong is the author of two books of poetry: e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009) and Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions, 2012). He has also written numerous other chapbooks including The Philosophy of Decomposition / Re-Composition as Explanation: A Poe and Stein Mash-Up (Delete Press, 2011), which won an &NOW Award, and Words on Edge (2012), which won the 9th annual Plan B Press Poetry Chapbook Contest. An additional chapbook is soon forthcoming from Belladonna*. He has taught literature and creative writing at Rutgers University and Goddard College and will join the English Department at the University at Albany, SUNY as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2015

~ by Michael Leong on March 11, 2015.