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What are they saying ...?

...Carla Schwartz is the 2023 winner of the New England Poetry Club's e.e. cummings prize! See link to register for this reading at 3 PM Sunday October 8, 2023 here.

...about the book, Signs of Marriage

"My favorite is Turntable Park, which may be seen as a contest with nature: wind, rain, waves, with focus on the finish line. The vivid imagery draws the reader into this exploit in this nicely woven poem with no loose threads-a fresh, original creation."-Harris Gardener, poet and poetry editor, Ibbetson Street Press

"As far as (Schwartz's) poems go, they are lovely and gut-wrenching in a good way!"-Jessica Frelow, writer and editor, Discretionary Love

"I can't seem to get away from the truth of Contemplating Humanity While Swimming. It's such a startling piece of writing, the theme of it. We all have the capacity, I think, to do what we think we'd never do, what others would swear we'd never do. This poem captures that, the heinousness of possibility in being human."-Chila Woychik, writer and editor, Eastern Iowa Review

Of Stones: "Of course, it's a love poem, but who would ever think of flirting and seducing a woman with stones? The journeys along the path to love and matrimony-from a joke to the heavy emotional boulders hauled by a come-along to the small hand-held face up crystal of a loving face at the end-extraordinary."-Robert Ober, poet

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...about the book, Intimacy with the Wind

"Living on a solar-powered houseboat as it moves up and down Lake Champlain is bound to make one intimate with the wind — its vagaries, energies, and comforts alike. But in Carla Schwartz's new collection of poems, there are also the winds that pass over and through the inner landscapes. There are, for instance, the winds that bring us together in love, and the winds that draw us apart in grief. Also, there is the chill wind of the harm that some may do to others, and there are the winds of determined resilience, the kind that carry the survivor to the shore. These finely crafted poems give us this poet's vivid sense of being in the world, as if we are with her breathing in what life has to offer, a good wind overhead, like a blessing."
- Fred Marchant, author of Said Not Said (Graywolf Press, 2017)

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"We humans are so entangled with everything that goes on! There are tides and mothers and sisters and fathers and chosen ones and roots that invade and fruit we greet with joy. Threats and promises. Carla Schwartz’s new book widens the horizons of her earlier collections to follow the uncontrollable elements of wind, water, and family into spaces few poets have explored. This is a hugely rewarding book, more so as you go back and read again."     - Terence Hegarty

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"The intimacy in these poems reaches out to pull me into encounters with the natural world, with self, with family, and with connections among all of these. Her images move us to reflect on what there is to learn from the simple offerings of our world, on subtle interactions with family, on our search for what it means to be human." - Susan Jo
Russell

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Check out this interview relevant to "Signs of Marriage" and other books by Carla Schwartz

March 16, 2023 Thursday evening

Carla Schwartz is featured on ECAT (Easton Community Access TV)

For the Love of Words

with interview by John Holgerson

Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA9wSBNC_X4

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Check out these interviews and articles relevant to Intimacy with the Wind:

Print interview on Mass Poetry

Article in The MetroWest Daily News
 TV Interview on Poetic Lines with Elizabeth Lund

 Interview on Gyroscope Review for National Poetry Month

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...about the book, Mother, One More Thing

“In Carla Schwartz’s Mother, One More Thing, the details of the natural world, as well as the lives we make together as families, friends, and even individual daydreamers, come into radiant focus. Schwartz attends to her subjects with great sympathy, but she refuses to sentimentalize those subjects. Poems such as ‘Green Dress,’ ‘Last Glass of Orange Juice,’ and ‘Mother, One More Thing’ only strengthen their emotional force by exploring the subtle and often contradictory aspects of their occasions. Schwartz is an excellent poet, and her book is built to last.” – Peter Campion, Pushcart Prize-winning author of The Lions: Poems.


“Darting between the elegiac and the voluptuous with the guilelessness of a young girl, Carla Schwartz’s graceful first collection examines loss and continuation from the perspective of a naturalist and a daughter. Schwartz’s poems display a flirtatious reverence for the world of all that ripens and wizens – processes worthy, to this poet, of equal praise. We follow her five keen senses from berry patch to sickbed to clear and frigid lake, feasting and lamenting at what must perish. By the end of this succulent book, we have grieved and celebrated lavishly, and our fingers and lips are stained with nectars and pigments the poet has offered us from her unabashed palette.” – Frannie Lindsay, author of Our Vanishing, and If Mercy.


"Mother, One More Thing: a meaty, topical, alluring, and dynamic piece of work. The narrator takes over her mother's skin at times, climbs inside, and thinks for her. An amazing collection.” – Lea Banks, author of All of Me.

See also. these articles:
Mass Poetry's Interview with Carla Schwartz https://www.masspoetry.org/newbookschwartz
Somerville times: https://www.thesomervilletimes.com/archives/47675

Chad Parenteau's blog: https://chadparenteaupoetforhire.blogspot.com/2014/04/april-28-carla-schwartz-one-more-for.html

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Carla won the May 2019 Lunch Ticket Twitter Poetry Contest with her poem, Anthem.

Check out this interview on Mass Poetry
Check out this article in the MetroWest Daily News
Check out this TV Interview on Poetic Lines with Elizabeth Lund

Check out this National Poetry Month 2018 Interview on Gyroscope
Check out this mashup of my poem "Antidote" with John Dishwasher's modification to a Diego Rivera mural

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... about Carla's performances and her book

"Carla Schwartz charmed us with her poignant poems and spoken word pieces accompanied by piano (our new piano, which sounds fabulous). I couldn't get her piece "Frank" out of my head. Thank you so very much, Carla, for such a fine performance!" P.J. Rogoshewski, host of the Harvest Cafe open mike. 

"Simply wonderful, Carla! I'll try to make a few of your readings. You really hit the ball out of the park with your reading at Chapter and Verse, loved it. You are truly a wonderful reader.

Be well. I'm reading your book now. Lovely."

Preston H. Hood