"Children of all ages will delight in its song and story." —Charles Martin, author of Signs & Wonders "Davey McGravy, Davey McGravy, a name to conjure with, to dream with by the cedar trees out in the rainy woods." In a misty, faraway-feeling "land of rain," Davey McGravy lives with his father and brothers, but mourns his missing mother. He follows the rhymes in his head into a forest of ferns, moss, and cedar trees where he meets animals wise and strange. A coaxing crow urges him onwards. A consoling peacock tells him that nothing is really lost. A fierce lioness frightens him. Following their voices, Davey travels deeper and deeper into the mysterious woods. Then he must find his way home, to a father who is sad but loving, and brothers who care for him no matter how they fight. Caught between his forest-world and the world of school, shopping, and family life, Davey wanders his way through grief. With playful and evocative verse, poet David Mason delivers him back to his boyhood but leaves the mysteries of love intact. Full of humor and melancholy, Davey McGravy movingly captures the longing of a child for his lost mother. "Across a series of poems, accompanied by early-Sendakesque etchings by artist Grant Silverstein, we meet a little boy named Davey McGravy living in the tall-treed forest with his father and brothers. A few tender verses in, we realize that Davey is caught in the mire of mourning his mother. Without invalidating the deep melancholy that has set in, Mason makes room for the mystery of life and death, inviting in the miraculous immortality of love…Only a rare poet can merge the reverence of Thoreau with the irreverence of Zorba the Greek to create something wholly unlike anything else — and that is what Mason accomplishes in Davey McGravy." —Brain Pickings "From his first full-length narrative poem, The Country I Remember, to his extraordinary verse novel, Ludlow, David Mason's ambition to expand the realm of narrative in contemporary verse has been central to his poetic project, even as successive collections revealed him as one of the best lyric poets of his generation. The latest proof of Mason's necessity, Davey McGravy, is both a vibrant celebration of language as play and the moving tale of how a young boy discovers, through heartbreaking loss, the transformative powers of the imagination. Children of all ages will delight in its song and story." —Charles Martin, author of Signs & Wonders

"Witty and heartfelt essays, shaken and stirred."—Kirkus Reviews "David Mason believes in literature as a weather event—even an extreme one. He reads to be changed—drenched, burned, blown away. He has no wish to have his standing position confirmed, and is alert to the ways in which his subjects are changed, both by their writing and its reception. These essays move comfortably from the lines of a Nobel Prize-winning poet to the dwelling of a Greek peasant who could have stepped out of Homer, on to the perils of literary biography. Mason is a reader as much as he is a writer. He looks into the political in order to find the personal—not the other way round. Incarnation & Metamorphosis is engaging all the way through, not least when Mason acts on the assumption, 'The imagination is free.'”—James Campbell, author of Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin “Literary criticism,” David Mason writes, “ought to entertain as well as illuminate.” In these essays Mason tells stories about embodiment and change, incarnation and metamorphosis, drawing connections between art and life without confusing the two. Mason considers the many kinds of change we encounter in our lives, our desire for justice, and the ways great writers complicate that desire. He discusses the lives and works of writers like Montaigne, Diderot, and Neruda as well as his colorful father’s fascination with a fictional character. He takes up such contemporary figures as the daring Australian writer Helen Garner, the playwright Tom Stoppard, and the poet-critic Dana Gioia; has fresh things to say about the perils of fame in the careers of Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney; and mourns the loss of poet Michael Donaghy. Incarnation & Metamorphosis is a book about living with literature—Mason writes that literature “is telling us that we are seen, warts and all. Criticism, such as the essays in this book, is a way of seeing back.”

Andrew Frisardi’s essays in Ancient Salt are about several modern and contemporary poets—British, American, and Italian. Frisardi offers close readings of these poets, and considers their work in light of the challenges of living and writing amid the extraordinary transformations of the modern era. Some of the poets are religious, some are agnostic or perhaps atheist, but all of them articulate a human-poetic response to modernity: its pluralism, mobility, scientific discoveries, innovations, and unprecedented global awareness; as well as its rootlessness, fragmentation, dehumanizing mechanization, materialism, environmental catastrophes, and even systematic genocide. The subjects of the essays are Scottish poet Edwin Muir (1887–1959); Italian modernist Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888–1970); Irish poet W. B. Yeats (1865–1939); Welsh poet Vernon Watkins (1906–1968); English poet and Blake scholar Kathleen Raine (1908–2003); English poet-editor Peter Russell (1921–2003); American poet and Alaskan homesteader John Haines (1924–2011); English poet Richard Berengarten (formerly Burns) (1943–); and American poet-critic David Mason (1954–). Frisardi’s accessible style and extensive knowledge of the thought and learning of these poets as well as of the craft of poetry makes these essays substantial nourishment for poetry lovers and students.

This is the seminannual Able Muse Review (Print Edition) - Winter 2013 issue, Number 16. This issue continues the tradition of masterfully crafted poetry, fiction, essays, art & photography, and book reviews that have become synonymous with the Able Muse-online and in print. After more than a decade of online publishing excellence, Able Muse print edition maintains the superlative standard of the work presented all these years in the online edition, and, the Able Muse Anthology (Able Muse Press, 2010). ". . . [ ABLE MUSE ] fills an important gap in understanding what is really happening in early twenty-first century American poetry." - Dana Gioia. CONTENTS: WITH THE 2013 ABLE MUSE WRITE PRIZE FOR POETRY & FICTION - Includes the winning story and poems from the contest winners and finalists. With the winner and runner-up sonnets from the 2013 Able Muse / Eratosphere Sonnet Bake-Off. EDITORIAL - Alexander Pepple. FEATURED ARTIST - Peter Svensson. FEATURED POET - Jehanne Dubrow; (Interviewed by Anna M. Evans). FICTION - Cheryl Diane Kidder, Charles Wilkinson, Blaine Vitallo, Donna Laemmlen. ESSAYS - A.E. Stallings, Peter Byrne, Philip Morre, David Mason, Chrissy Mason. BOOK REVIEWS - Rory Waterman, Jane Hammons. POETRY - Rachel Hadas, R.S. Gwynn, Catharine Savage Brosman, John Savoie, D.R. Goodman, Jeanne Wagner, Richard Wakefield, Melissa Balmain, Tara Tatum, Anna M. Evans, Matthew Buckley Smith, Stephen Harvey, Elise Hempel, Marly Youmans, Amanda Luecking Frost, Rachael Briggs, Chris Childers, James Matthew Wilson, Alex Greenberg, Catullus, Sappho, Theocritus.

In these twenty-two interviews with verse novelists from the UK, USA, Australia and Canada, Linda Weste explores the uniqueness of storytelling through poetry and the genre of the verse novel. Her subjects are notable representatives of countries where the genre thrives; among them is Bernardine Evaristo, joint winner of the Booker Prize in 2019; and what they have to say enriches our understanding of the many ways poetry and narratives can meld to create a unique reading experience.

In these thirty-five interviews with verse novelists from Australia and Aotearoa–New Zealand, Linda Weste explores the uniqueness of storytelling through poetry and the genre of the verse novel. Her subjects are notable representatives of a region where verse novels for Adults, Children and Young Adults thrive; among them is Steven Herrick, winner of the prestigious Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 2019; and what they have to say enriches our understanding of the verse novel across each of its publishing categories.

A memoir of friendship, history, and longing in a Greek village that “introduces us to a rich cast of writers and ex-pats, shepherds and urbanites” (A.E. Stallings, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry finalist). In his twenties, an American manual laborer and poet found himself living with his beautiful wife in a village in southern Greece. Their first encounter with that country would prove an unrecoverable dream of intimate magic, but through decades of steadfast affection, David Mason grew to a deeper understanding of what it means to be a citizen of one’s own country and a citizen of the world. From a writer praised for his “often intoxicating language” (Kirkus Reviews), News from the Village is a lyrical memoir of Aegean friends, including such figures as Orhan Pamuk, Bruce Chatwin, Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, Yiorgos Chouliaras, and Patrick Leigh Fermor, each of whom comes fully alive, along with a brilliant cast of lesser-known characters. Fearing he has lost Greece and everything it has meant in his life, Mason goes back again and again to the country he knew as a young man. He encounters Turkey and Greece together in the shadow of 9/11; follows the lives of his friends, whose trials sometimes surpass his own; and brings them all together in the circle of this generous narrative. Ultimately, Mason’s memoir is about what we can hold and what slips away, what sustains us all through our griefs and disappointments. “Mason realizes he must confront shifting politics, village tensions, family tragedy, and history with blood on its hands before he can love Greece as she is rather than as he would have her be. Along the way, he introduces us to a rich cast of writers and ex-pats, shepherds and urbanites—and travels that stretch from the Rockies to the Bosphorus—the journey of a lifetime.”—A.E. Stallings, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Like