News
Wild Muse: Ozarks Nature Poetry
Release Date: December 11, 2022
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Featuring poetry by C. D. Albin, Wendy Taylor Carlisle, Paulette Guerin, John J. Han, Phillip Howerton, Gerry Sloan,
Mark Spitzer, Agnes Vojta, and Amy Wright Vollmar
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Foreword by Steve Wiegenstein
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Wild Muse is a collection of contemporary poetry engaging Ozarks nature and environment. Some topics and themes explored here are nature's beauty, sense of place, loss of place, environmental diminishment, and human dependence on nature and its sublime indifference to our existence.
Combining the best aspects of chapbooks and anthologies, this "chapthology" features extensive selections from the work of nine Ozarks poets providing readers a generous introduction to the voice, style, and perspectives of each writer. In total, this collection presents almost 200 poems and offers biographical material about each poet, discussion of some poems included, and advice about writing nature-based poetry.
Reviews
“The poems in this little book remind us that everything about life is ephemeral and to be experienced, endured, celebrated – and remembered, whether it is the sight of a budding plant, a memory of fence building, a flight of geese, or a season of drought.”
Susan Croce Kelly, managing editor of OzarksWatch
“Wild Muse is a beautiful and at times astonishing collection of contemporary ecopoetry. With the space and depth afforded its wide-ranging poets, few anthologies have so thoroughly captured the spirit of a place the way this book does for the Ozarks. It is thoughtful, provocative, entertaining, and deeply engaging, and each poem invites us to live a moment in the wild world.”
Brian Hardman, University of the Ozarks
“Though not immune to the leveling forces of national culture, the Ozarks retains a regional flavor and remarkable biodiversity. The poets in Wild Muse know and live this. They reach deep into place and nature as they serve the region they love.”
Matt McGowan, author of 1971 and North Fork
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Crytozarkia
Mark Spitzer
Tentative Release Date: January 2023
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The Ballad of Johnny Bell
John Mort
Release Date: October 7, 2022
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Field Trip: Stories
James Fowler
Released January 1, 2022
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Steve Wiegenstein's Scattered Lights has been shortlisted
for the PEN/Faulkner Award
Ozarks Alive Story and Interview
News Story by Steve Yates in Clarion-Ledger / Hattiesburg American Mississippi Books Page
Review by Craig Albin in Elder Mountain: A Journal of Ozarks Studies
Listed among the 25 favorite books of 2020 by the editors of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Review by Aarik McDanielsen in the Columbia Tribune
Review by Dale Singer in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Review by John Mort on Down Along the Piney
Interview with Steve Wiegenstein by Steve Yates at Skylark Bookshop
The New Ozarks Literary Renaissance (Rolla Public Library)
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Steve Wiegenstein's short story "Magic Kids," first published in Elder Mountain and now collected in Scattered Lights, received an honorable mention in the Mary Mackey Short Story Prize contest, sponsored by the National League of American Pen Women___________________________________________
New Poems by Amy Wright Vollmar in Elder Mountain
Web Links
Missouri State University News
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Jim Hamilton's Ozarks RFD: Selected Essays received the 2020 Best Nonfiction Book Award from the Ozarks Writers League.
https://www.westplainsdailyquill
Review of Jim Hamilton's Ozarks RFD
in the October 2020 issue of Roundup Magazine (Western Writers of America)
In “A Mind Like a Bucket of Bolts,” Jim Hamilton philosophizes on those collections of nuts and screws a lot of us keep in coffee cans – potentially useful little things you can’t bear to throw away. That’s how his mind works, he says, and his 109 short essays, originally appearing in newspapers from the small Missouri towns of Buffalo and Bolivar, are accordingly eclectic: how mud used to plague small farms; the smells of childhood (new sawdust, horses, smoke); fishing for the fighting carp; the pleasure of wearing overalls; and, though Hamilton eschews any sort of politics, memories of the Kennedy assassination and 9/11. Always nostalgic, Hamilton is homespun without being sentimental. Keep this handy for those times when you need a shot of hard-earned, humble wisdom.
– John Mort
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