In its August issue Long Island Pulse Magazine is carrying two pages about books by Long Island authors. One page is devoted to poets Alan Semerdjian and George Wallace reviewing each other’s books. Says Wallace of Semerdjian in The Architecture of Bone, “his aim—to delve deep into the architecture of his people’s experience. This involved the Armenian genocide unleashed by the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Wallace says it is the ”tension between the hidden trauma and the surface calm that is the real power of Semerdjian’s poetry.”
Semerdjian says in his book, Poppin’ Johnny, “Wallace is quintessentially and unabashedly American, stealing capitals from proper nouns and undressing run-on sentences, bitten by and finally surrendering completely to the magical beast that is poetry. You may recognize some of the players. Tinsel town is here. So are Pittsburgh, Forth Worth and the BQE. Conversations with the nightshift guy and the baseball fanatic turn surreal in stream-of-consciousness list poems.”
Kathy Donnelly’s monumental Paumanok: Poems and Pictures of Long Island makes it into the center of the other LI books page. “Her unique display of Long Island is a perfect way to escape the hustle and bustle of our lives and relax once a day, with some food for thought and striking images of our natural surroundings.”
Other books reported are Hideous Exuberance by Stephen C. Bird, Last Tango in Jacksonville by William Rue, Looking for Closure by Maria Stewart, Siren by Tricia Rayburn and The 1800 Club by Robert P. McAuley.
Also, Long Island Pulse Magazine is running a top to bottom announcement about the Summer Gazebo Readings at 7 PM Monday evenings at Schoolhouse Green, Foxhurst Road, Oceanside.
