Copies of Amy Wright Vollmar's Follow
are now available from Cornerpost Press!
Please forward check or money order for $16.00 (tax and postage included) t0
Phillip Howerton
214 West Maple
West Plains, MO 65775
Copies of Jim Hamilton's Ozarks RFD: Selected Essays, 2010-2015
are now available from Cornerpost Press!
Please forward check or money order for $20.00 (tax and postage included) t0
Phillip Howerton
214 West Maple
West Plains, MO 65775
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Follow: Poems by Amy Wright Vollmar Published by Cornerpost Press
Poet Amy Wright Vollmar invites readers to slip on their muddiest shoes before they open Follow, her first book of poetry published by Cornerpost Press, then stray with her into the forests and along the rivers of the Ozarks.
Through fifty poems, illuminated by Jacob Vollmar’s photos, readers of Follow will explore hollows and peer into caves, look for secret places where coyotes den, splash through flooded creeks, and map waterfalls that have no names. Vollmar learns from her landscapes even as they entangle her in deeper mysteries. Through chert that cuts skin or the sight of a mayfly winging clean of the river, the poems of Follow engage the reader in deep play, and in wonder.
Amy Wright Vollmar began writing poetry as a child in Alton, Illinois, while she explored the wooded ravine behind her subdivision. Deeper in southern Illinois, with her father’s family, she learned how to sing Appalachian folk songs and where to find the sweetest hickory nuts. At Monmouth College in Illinois, Amy majored in English, but also wrote a few poems during botany labs. After graduating she lived in Texas, where she worked for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, helping museum visitors touch interesting things: a live opossum or an Apollo astronaut’s glove. With her family, she chose to move to Springfield, Missouri, near the woods of the Ozarks. Hiking, kayaking, and writing followed, along with a job creating curriculum and teaching first graders at Phelps Center for Gifted Education in Springfield. Now retired, Amy volunteers with students, writes, and hopes to show people the beautiful fragility of the wild places she loves through poetry.
Vollmar’s poetry has appeared in the Cave Region Review, in Elder Mountain: A Journal of Ozarks Studies, and in Advanced Development Journal.
Of the poetry in Follow, Hope Coulter, author of The Wheel of Light, The Errand of the Eye, and Dry Bones has written: “Follow returns us readers to our central relationship to nature, moments where we are the visitors, not asserting dominance but bestowing attention and imagination. In a time of environmental anxiety, such gestures are as essential and restorative as water that beads from limestone and “still falls— / drop by / clear drop.” And Carla Kirchner, author of The Physics of Love, writes: “Vollmar’s exquisite poems write the Ozarks as a region of mystery, both quietly beautiful and beautifully brutal. A walk through this collection takes the reader on a journey through the wilderness both without and within.”
Signed copies of Follow may be purchased by contacting the author at amy.vollmar@gmail.com.
Follow can also be purchased online at Amazon.com, Walmart.com Barnes&Noble.com, Target.com and directly from Cornerpost Press at www.cornerpostpress.com.
Cornerpost Press, based in West Plains, Missouri, is a professional, peer-reviewed book publisher specializing in literary work based in rural America. More information about Follow and Cornerpost Press is available on the press’s website.
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Jim Hamilton Essay Collection Published by Cornerpost Press
Longtime journalist and newspaper editor Jim Hamilton shares his memories, experiences, and impressions in his latest book, Ozarks RFD: Selected Essays, 2010-2015, recently published by Cornerpost Press.
For more than forty years Hamilton’s editorial columns have appeared in area newspapers, and Ozarks RFD contains more than 100 of these essays. In this collection, Hamilton reflects on several aspects of daily life in the Ozarks, such as weather happenings, childhood memories, local history, old dogs, community events, the challenges of farming, local heroes, hunting and fishing, and joy and grief.
Hamilton was brought up on a small dairy farm in southern Dallas County near Elkland, Missouri. He began his journalist’s journey as his FFA chapter reporter in 1964 and later was editor of the Southwest Missouri State College Standard 1970-71, served as a U.S. Air Force journalist and base newspaper editor, and worked as a news editor at the Bolivar Herald-Free Press. In 1978 he began a 24-year stint as editor and publisher of the Buffalo Reflex. He subsequently served as managing editor of Springfield! Magazine, then returned to Neighbor Newspapers in 2004 and served as a regional writer/columnist until retiring in May 2015. He continues to freelance columns and features.
A collection of his columns, The River of Used To Be, was published in 1994. Hamilton was inducted into the Missouri Southern State University Regional Media Hall of Fame and the Missouri Press Association Hall of Fame in 2016.
Several writers and editors have praised Ozarks RFD. Steve Wiegenstein, author of the popular and critically acclaimed Daybreak novel series notes that Hamilton’s “columns capture a moment, dig deep into a memory, and analyze an emotion. Each column is a finely crafted exploration of an experience or recollection.” Dave Berry, a former newspaper editor and a member of the Missouri Newspaper Hall of Fame, states “Jim Hamilton has long been a wordsmith whose weekly offerings have reconnected community newspaper readers with memories of their own early years.”
Signed copies of Ozarks RFD may be purchased by contacting the author at jhamilton000@centurytel.net.
Copies are also available at the offices of The Marshfield Mail, The Buffalo Reflex, Bolivar Herald-Free, The West Plains Quill, and other Phillips Media publications, as well as at the Lawrence County Record and Ash Grove Commonwealth.
Ozarks RFD can also be purchased online at Amazon.com and directly from Cornerpost Press at cornerpostpress.com.
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