Monthly Archives: November 2025

by | November 30, 2025 · 7:58 am

The Wonderful Feature Called the Poetry Bookshelf

I hope my American friends had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Mine was wonderful as my kids took on most of the work, and I got to spend a lot of time with my “best friend,” my little grandson. The gardener and I watched him the day before and the day after the holiday, as well as spending time on Thanksgiving Day itself. The day before we took him to the clock shop because he is passionate about clocks. And he sat down to explore our keyboard.

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If you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you still have much to be grateful for.

Enjoy the concert:

One of the Thanksgiving blessings of my life are writing friends and supporters. Case in point: A huge thank you to Editors Juan Re Crivello and Barbara Leonhard for putting my full-length poetry collection Rooted and Winged on the Poetry Bookshelf of LatinosUSA.

If you haven’t read my book, please check out this link if you have the time.

https://latinosenglishedition.wordpress.com/2025/11/30/featuring-rooted-and-winged-by-luanne-castle/

Enjoy your transition time into the holiday season!

P.S. I’m also grateful for decent medical care as I prep for this week’s colonoscopy. Yay!!!

 

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Filed under #poetrycommunity, Book promotion, Books, Poetry, Poetry book, Poetry Collection, Rooted and Winged, Writing

by | November 10, 2025 · 6:20 am

Review of Merril D. Smith’s HELD INSIDE THE FOLDS OF TIME

Here is my book review of Merril D. Smith‘s beautiful new poetry collection. I hope it makes you want to order a copy!

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Merril D. Smith’s new poetry collection, Held Inside the Folds of Time, is a testament to Smith’s background as a historian. But what is more important is Smith’s sensitivity to previous generations. She opens the collection with a poem about a cave painting. By doing so, he connects us with all who have come before.

She recognizes what she’s learned from her ancestors, who–in “How I Learned”–“showed me that I have my own wings– / unfold them, fly. This, too, is part of the pattern.” The poet can’t or won’t get away from them: “My dead follow me through every timeline” (“Suspended, Surrounded”).

Smith’s ancestors who immigrated to the United States, her own family of origin, even the soldiers who died in a Revolutionary War battle are all subjects of the book. “In Memorium: For the Unknown Soldiers at Red Bank Battlefield” asserts “their ghosts roam the battlefield / settling their bones, unsettled in time.”

Nature features prominently in Smith’s poetry, and this is where the lyrical beauty of her writing is best displayed. She uses many poetic techniques, particularly variations of rhyme, such as off rhyme, end rhyme, and internal rhyme. These lines are from “Cross-Quarter Days”:

The blooms have browned,

blossoms scattered to the wind

now snow veils the ground,

there above, one bony root unpinned.”

While the poems contain examples of the beauty of life, the overall tone of the book is a lovely mournfulness. As Smith writes in “Winter Birches,” “there is no happily ever, only after.”

Held Inside the Folds of Time demonstrates the potential gorgeousness of language as it mourns and celebrates the poet’s world.

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by | November 4, 2025 · 12:29 pm

A Shadorma for #TankaTuesday Poetry Challenge No. 37, The Veil, 11/04/25

This week’s #TankaTuesday syllabic poetry prompt is by Yvette Calleiro. She asked for poems using the image of veil. While this is a great idea I learned something or maybe noticed is a better word about syllabic poetry. It’s very hard to approach subjects obliquely or “slant” (credit to Emily Dickinson) with syllabic forms.

I chose shadorma (possibly Spanish or of modern origin) for the form. This is a six line poem of 3-5-3-3-7-5 line lengths. I wanted a form that didn’t require the subject to be about nature, which is why I selected this form.

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thanks to sfetfedyhghj

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The Mask Reveals the Heart

 

Bride’s coy veil,

vamp’s pillbox netting.

They conceal

to reveal—

no different from a mask

where disguise tells all.

 

Two years ago, the following flash fiction was published at The Ekphrastic Review. The veil in this case refers to the veil between living and dead or between this world and THAT world.

​Waiting for the Handsome Prince: A Farce (Of Course)
after “An Unexpected Visit” by Remedios Varo

Some girls left a glove or handkerchief, hoping to obligate a gentleman to return it. Eleonora liked to think she was different. She dropped a pump knowing he would imagine her barefoot and helpless. She remembered the velvet of his broad chest, jeweled medallion clanking, felt parts of her responding. Her new friend, Fairy Godfather, helped her prepare for Handsome Prince’s visit, adding to her pretty table setting an inexhaustible carafe and a trick candle, while assuring Eleonora they were traditional heirlooms with magical powers. Before he departed with an unnecessary hug, he reminded her what would happen if the spell were broken. All she needed to achieve the spell’s fulfillment was one kiss from Handsome Prince.Eleonora waited at the table for Handsome Prince all day. Then all night and the next day. She examined the events of the ball repeatedly. What went wrong? Was she too assertive? Too quiet? Did he prefer juicier curves or richer daddies? She tried to drink the water, but it was ensconced inside the glass, unattainable. She tried to rise, but the broken spell had already begun to claim its reward. The transformation into feline had begun. She was locked in place, the fur growing, even as the spinster cat had begun to dissolve into the woods. Just as the pitying fairies arrived to spirit her off beyond the veil, the now-unmasked Fairy Godfather appeared in his pumpkin, his goblin face taunting her.

NEW PUBS THIS WEEK

6 mixed media collages: Does It Have Pockets

2 speculative microfiction: Dog Throat Journal

revenge lit micro: Villain Era

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