Better Than Starbucks June 2018

By Better Than Starbucks

The Interview: Julia Gordon Bramer & four poems.
Featured Poems “Strange Fathers” by Steven Haberlin & VENDOR AND CHILD by John Eppel. Poetry: Doug Hoekstra, Tobi Alfier, Allison Bohn, DS Maolalai, Timothy Robbins, M. A. ISTVAN, JR, Steve Denehan, Anne Britting Oleson, Jack Priestnall, Pawel Markiewicz, Angelee Deodhar, Sean Lynch, Elisabeth Liebert, Arun, Joseph Davidson, Angela Davidson, Devon Richey, John Rowland, Bob Whitmire, Richard Wakefield, Lisa Barnett, John Beaton, Kate Bernadette Benedict, David Landrum, Carol Smallwood, Diane Elayne Dees, Michael Fraley, C.B. Anderson, Laura J. Bobrow, Dr. Jinghua Fan, A-Xiang, Karen Poppy, Pablo Neruda, John Eppel, Killian Nhamo Mwanaka, Beaton Galafa,
Michael R. Burch, Miklós Radnóti [1909-1944],
Cameron Gorman, Robin Helweg-Larsen, Allison DeRose, Ben Taylor, Patrick Lazzari, Richard Leach, Ndue Ukaj, Jack Priestnall, David B Gosselin. Fiction: Jose Norono, Albert Davenport, Tobi Alfier, Martin Porter.
Better Than Fiction!: Larry D. Giles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781387838844

Book preview

Better Than Starbucks June 2018

Copyright © by Better Than Starbucks. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. First Printing: ISBN 978-1-387-83884-4

Managing Editor Vera Ignatowitsch

Publisher & Editor-In-Chief Anthony Watkins

Florida, New Jersey, Tennessee, Canada, Pakistan, Zimbabwe

https://www.betterthanstarbucks.org

Cover Image:

Flowers Wide Enough to Wrap a Fairy In!"

© Philip Sutton RA

https://www.betterthanstarbucks.org

Featured Poem of the Month

Strange Fathers

by Steven Haberlin

Oh, what a strange father

Walking around the house

In his underwear

Eating ice cream

Calling you by his name

"Daddy, would you turn on the T.V?"

Asking me to rake leaves

Cigar smoke and whiskey-breath

Then, your dad

Living off worker’s comp

Replacing his lawn with rocks

So he could spend more time

Shooting his bow and arrow

In the backyard

Where he chased foxes

Telling you to "come on, beat me!"

When simply shooting baskets

For fun

And your new dad

Wheeling around

In his chair

Calling your brother

The literal red-headed step-child

"Red"

Not allowing us to be boys

Because of what the elevator did to him

Jealous we could wrestle

In the backyard

Steven Haberlin is a PhD student at the University of South Florida, who explores poetry as part of his research.  His work has been published in the Journal of Poetry Therapy and recently accepted by the journal Asian Signature.

Featured Poem (publisher’s choice)

Strange Fathers

Featured Poem (editor’s choice)

VENDOR AND CHILD

by John Eppel

African Poetry

John Eppel is one of Zimbabwe’s most celebrated writers/poets with over 18 books published. He has won several awards. His latest book is Absent: The English Teacher.

The Interview May 2018

Julia Gordon Bramer

by S. Ye Laird

Julia Gordon-Bramer is the author of Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath (2014, Stephen F. Austin State University Press) and the Decoding Sylvia Plath series, including Decoding Sylvia Plath’s Daddy and Decoding Sylvia Plath’s Lady Lazarus both published in 2017 by Magi Press and available on Amazon. Her recent articles appear in Ms. Magazine, AWP Writer’s Notebook, The American Journal of Poetry, and more. In 2013, the Riverfront Times called her St. Louis’ Best Local Poet. For more information, visit www.juliagordonbramer.com.

"…And now you try

Your handful of notes;

the clear vowels rise like balloons."

Sylvia Plath, "Morning Song"

Decoding Sylvia Plath's Daddy: Discover the layers of meaning beyond the Brute

by Julia Gordon-Bramer

S. Ye: Why is Sylvia Plath’s work and life important to us today?

JB: Sylvia Plath’s work and life are still important today because she made a model of what poetry can do through mysticism. Each one of her Ariel poems are perfect multi-dimensional works of art with at least six different meanings: spanning tarot, alchemy, mythology, history and the world, astronomy and astrology, and the arts and humanities. It is astounding how this woman made her words work, and how many layers of meaning she packed in. She was truly a genius’ genius. And yet few people realize this and they just focus on her drama and her suicide. Such a waste!

S. Ye: What can we learn from her poems?

JB: The poet and reader of poetry can learn through Plath what poetry is capable of; it truly is a kind of magic all its own, which is why the god Hermes was the god of Poetry in Ancient Greece. The follower of mysticism can see not only a practical application of the occult, but evidence of a divine order through the universe. Mind-blowing stuff.

S. Ye: How did you come to know and study Sylvia Plath? Do you remember your first impression of her? as a poet? as a mother of two young kids and suicide-r? What mystery still embodies Sylvia Plath in your research?

JB: I first found Sylvia Plath when I was around sixteen and picked up a copy of The Bell Jar which belonged to one of my parents. It stayed with me, and I became somewhat obsessed with her poem, Mad Girl’s Love Song, included in a biographical note at the end of my edition. There was something about that repeating line, I think I made you up inside my head that would not leave mine! My serious study of Plath didn’t come until much later, in graduate school in 2007, when I was working toward my MFA in poetry and fiction. I realized that there was a lot of tarot card imagery in Plath’s poetry collection Ariel, and I brought this to the attention of my professor. He was not familiar enough with tarot to link the two, and he asked me to make this my semester-end project. What started as a school project then became my life’s work. I realized that Plath had aligned all her poems in order with the tarot, and this vastly expands each poem’s meaning. I came to learn that Plath’s Ariel poems have at least six different levels of meaning.

I’ve spent more than a decade in this work and hate how the label confessional poet is slapped on Plath. It bothers me that people know her mainly for her depression and suicide. Even you call her a suicide-r but we are not our actions or the things that happen to us. One isn’t a cancer-er if they have cancer, are they? Depression is a disease, not her identity. Suicide is an action, a verb. Know what I mean? Lots of people are mothers, and lots of people are not, and I’m not sure why that has to go into the final judgment of her. I guess what I want to say ultimately is that Plath’s poetry is so much deeper