Friday, November 06, 2009

Scott Owens' review of my book, Sea Trails

Scott Owens is co-editor of The Wild Goose Poetry Review where this review appears this month. He reposted his reviews on his blog. Since the Wild Goose review page is in PDF, this link is easier to get to. Thank you, Scott. I'm glad you liked the book!


Sea Trails: Poems and 1977 Passage Notes, by Pris Campbell
Lummox Press (2009)
ISBN: 9781929878024

If you like poetry, you’ll love Pris Campbell’s new book Sea Trails (Lummox, 2009). If you don’t like poetry, even if you don’t understand poetry, even if you resent poetry and poets, you’ll love this book. If you like a story, if you like the sea, if you like memoirs, confessions, and reality shows, you’ll love this book.

It’s easy to be impressed with the creativity on display in Pris Campbell’s decision to juxtapose log notes from a sailing journey down the East Coast with highly personal and evocative poetry written about that journey. The complementation of prose and poetry, art and memoir creates a unique example of mimesis in action, a wonderful opportunity to speculate on the relationship between art and life, and the most enjoyable means of facilitating the comprehension of a poem that I’ve ever encountered. All that’s missing is the movie.

Read the rest of the review atScott Owens Musings Blogspot.

4 comments:

steve said...

So good to read this review and the samples of your poems...

Pris said...

Thanks, Steve!

Pat Paulk said...

Pris glad to see you have another book out. Have a friend that wants to cruise the inter-coastal when she retires. Scary part is she wants me to be her captain.

Pris said...

Pat!! Good to see you back. Are you a sailor? The worst thing about doing it now is that it's almost unaffordable for anyone without much more money than when I did it. Anchorage areas have become paid moorings. We anchored out except when we had a big load of wash to do, plus stock up on food, etc. Even then, dockage was inexpensive as was food. We carried 10 gallons of gas on the boat for areas we couldn't sail when we hit the waterway and it would last us for days at around 35 cents a gallon. Tell your friend about my book. I'm not trying to hawk it, but she may find it interesting to look at prices and experiences then. I'd love to hear what she thinks of it if she opts to buy it. Oh capi...tan....oh, capi..tan.. how does that poem go??