When Marilyn Monroe Met Edith Sitwell

By Howard Winn

In this prescient collection, consisting of works gathered across the spectrum as well as new pieces, the poet shows his range from gentle satire to breathtaking poignance. Winn captures the observations of the everyday with an economy of words that ring with the depth of an unusual brilliance and a grasp of true humor and feeling. Whether you spend a few moments at a time or an afternoon, the experience within these pages delights and surprises with timely wit and compelling introspection. Inspiring and cerebral, Winn's skill with words is nothing short of ingenious. Readers will find profound breadth within these pages, leading perhaps to considerable ponderings, dialogue, and an enlightened view of the world around them.

Howard Winn holds a B. A. from Vassar College, with a major in English. He wrote his senior thesis under the direction of Ida Treat Bergeret, who published extensively in the New Yorker Magazine. He completed additional work at Middlebury College, where he studied with Robert Frost, John Ciardi and A. B. Guthrie, Jr. He has a graduate degree from the Stanford University Writing Program where he studied with Wallace Stegner and Yvor Winters. Mr Winn also completed doctoral level work at New York University and the University of California at San Francisco. His writing has been published in such journals as New York Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review, Raven Chronicles, Beloit Poetry Journal, Descant, Laurel Review, Dalhousie Literary Journal, Descant (Canada) Galway Review (Ireland) and many other literary journals. A collection of his poetry, Four Picture Sequence of Desire and Love, has been published by a now defunct small press. His prose writing has been included in an anthology of work by Hudson Valley writers, "Water Writes." His poetry was included in “Bridges,” an anthology of Hudson Valley poets, edited with a forward by Mary Gordon. He has also been included in an anthology of "Post Beat Poets: Seventy On The Seventies," published by the Ashland Poetry Press. He has been nominated for a Pushcart prize three times, and is a faculty member at the State University of New York. Mr. Winn's debut novel, Acropolis, was published by Propertius Press in 2017.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Propertius Press
• Release date: Jul 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463845394

Howard Winn

Howard Winn holds a B. A. from Vassar College, with a major in English. He wrote his senior thesis under the direction of Ida Treat Bergeret, who published extensively in the New Yorker Magazine. He completed additional work at Middlebury College, where he studied with Robert Frost, John Ciardi and A. B. Guthrie, Jr. He has a graduate degree from the Stanford University Writing Program where he studied with Wallace Stegner and Yvor Winters. Mr Winn also completed doctoral level work at New York University and the University of California at San Francisco. His writing has been published in such journals as New York Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review, Raven Chronicles, Beloit Poetry Journal, Descant, Laurel Review, Dalhousie Literary Journal, Descant (Canada) Galway Review (Ireland) and many other literary journals. A collection of his poetry, Four Picture Sequence of Desire and Love, has been published by a now defunct small press. His prose writing has been included in an anthology of work by Hudson Valley writers, "Water Writes." His poetry was included in “Bridges,” an anthology of Hudson Valley poets, edited with a forward by Mary Gordon. He has also been included in an anthology of "Post Beat Poets: Seventy On The Seventies," published by the Ashland Poetry Press. He has been nominated for a Pushcart prize three times, and is a faculty member at the State University of New York. Mr. Winn's debut novel, Acropolis, was published by Propertius Press in 2017.

Book preview

BLESSED BE

On the day celebrating

The Feast of St. Francis of Assisi

Methodists of Maine living in

Cape Elizabeth bless the dogs.

Sharing a personal moment with

each dog, the pastor will

consecrate the dog’s life.

Following this sacred ceremony,

several contests will be held–

best dog costume best dog trick,

dog with the longest tail, and

dog with the loudest bark.

but no dancing or card

playing -- Which god will

be listening or watching or

caring?

AT THE CROSSROADS

At the crossroads, they call it Red Oaks Mill on the AAA map,

in an empty obeisance to some historic past.

Mill is gone, dam remains but crumbling,

the red oaks have long been dead.

Empty strip mall stores stare

blindly at each other across the highway.

The Sunny Day Gift Shop

and its Korean proprietor are gone

with the Hallmark cards

cheerily celebrating birthdays, weddings,

mothers' and secretaries' day,

along with Michael who made flower and fern

arrangements prettily next door.

Paper taped to plate glass makes mirrors of windows

reflecting upon absence, loss, and death.

Liquor, Wine and Lotto,

respite from diminishing reality,

has moved along to cheaper digs.

Phil the pharmacist has been absorbed

by a glittering Rite Aid

expanded to sell Wonderbread, Campbell Soup, Twinkies, Kraft Cheddar,

and beer

because Grand Union is gone,

directed by numbers from a foreign land.

Closed, the lost Burger King where too slow-moving beef and fries

incinerated some franchised American Drive-Thru Dream.

The former hardware store owner wears

an orange apron at a distant Home Depot and smiles

when he makes eye contact and perhaps, perhaps not,

when he receives his regular hired hand's paycheck.

The farm is foreclosed and subdivided,

Black Angus finished by abattoir,

not even picturesque tumbleweeds blown against abandoned fences,

but pools, dentists, and barbecues rampant.

Lawns staked through the heart with signs of Century 21.

REALITY SHOW

I find no meaning in popular works about zombies,

human vampires, or extraterrestrial aliens, nor

even the legendary Texan chupacabra – blood-

sucker human flesh eating monsters of the myths,

ancient and contemporary, even when written by

well-known authors to pander, or to make the New

York Times Best Seller List, and pay for their next

European tour, not when we have our very own

investment bankers, our hedge-funders, pyramid

schemes, insider trading, cold-calling predators,

off-shore tax havens, numbered bank accounts,

money-laundering, oligarchs, Russian and other

wise, bought elections that subvert democracy to

boot. Reality is quite sufficient, enough to raise

the hairs on the back of the neck in dread and distress.

SEAGULLS IN THE PARKING LOT OF A SUBURBAN MALL

Facing west into the wind, they

stand quiet as statues in the mall

parking lot, seventy miles from the

sea. This flock, fifty or more, might

as well be ranged on a Wellfleet

beach, waiting out the squalls of

Cape Cod. Heads and beaks hold

firmly in this earthbound dusty

wind as if it were blown across

waves, foam, or spindrift, and not

around cars parked beyond their

open space, left by buyers of

substance who traverse the stores of

the mall. An absence of herring

leaves them waiting for something

unsold by the merchants of the

mall; these gulls acclimated to trash

from this unnatural lot are neither

out of place nor genuine for this

space. We have to live with

contradiction.

CONTAMINATED

Men in space suits are removing lead and asbestos

from a house down the street. Begun in the

twenties, this house remained from when

innocence prevailed as did cancer the crab,

moving sideways into the lungs and other vital

organs, both male and female, from room paint,

hot air ducts and shingles covering innocent Cape

Cod cottages, moon walkers in airtight costumes

earn a healthy living from the fear of death, this

summer house is now year round. It holds an

angular blonde mother who runs along Shore

Road with like wives, a sinewy square-jawed

father who drives his hefty SUV to work and to

his health club, and coaches his vigorous son for

little league fame in the weekly mowed large side

lawn cared for by a landscape service that comes

in substantial truck and trailer to haul away the

unwanted grass. across the street from our front

windows. In the mist of life, death by carcinogens

lurks in the up-scale décor and in the pipes of

necessity. Running, running, running, they cannot

run away. Running, running, running, they cannot

run away. Nes est certain, vita est non

PARTY BLOCK

I have to confess I am not a block party sort of person and I

live on a block that has an outdoor party in the

neighborhood of Labor Day. I go, usually, to prove that I am

not a snob; although, I would prefer that those people

ringing the barbecue did not think about the fact that I am an

English teacher. "Oh, English was always my worst

subject," they say, taking a step backwards in case I beat

them about the head with a run-on sentence, or attempt

surgery without anesthetic on their split infinitive.

Body language is always clear, if not their expository prose. I

suppose I must be a snob since I cannot discuss the Super Bowl,

the World Series, nor do I have another Bud with my burger,

knowing that the Big Mac Double Cheeseburger is a weapon of

mass destruction, eating and drinking neither at this block back

yard party of the good people in my neighborhood who ask for a

moment of silence from us while one says Grace to the lawn, the

trimmed hedges, the bird feeder where the squirrels forage,

elbowing aside the finch and chickadee. Deer walk through the

yards, consuming ornamental shrubs; wild turkeys chuckle in the

woods at some fowl joke. Do they all have a moment of holy

silence before consuming the natural and unnatural set before

them?

VIRGIN IN THE BATHTUB

Blatant blues, purples and pinks color the robe

and plaster body sheltered from the suburban

elements by the curved end of a half-buried

bathtub. Yellow pie plate shines, custard pie

halo behind the celestial head, conferring

sainthood from the church fathers of centuries

past and present. The church mother is

acknowledged in this protected front yard

from the devils of the moment, gnawing away

at the faith of those fathers in a century where

Darwin stands astride the earth, the new