THE DOLL WITHOUT A FACE.
NEW POEMS AND REVISIONS BY BRETT RUTHERFORD.
A faceless Iroquois doll is presented to a young boy by his grandmother, along with a wrenching tale of how Native Americans lost children, children their parents, and all, their identities, as the Mingo Indians were driven west out of Pennsylvania. The same grandmother relates a folktale full of warning to the present-day, as playing children are whisked away into the sky by mysterious forces. The boy who grows up to be a poet is charged with keeping these stories as dreams, “until the time of remembering.”
In this collection of 46 new poems and revisions, presented consecutively as they were written in 2018-2019, Brett Rutherford leaps from childhood memories of another set of desperately-poor grandparents (“Out-Home Summers”), to a Medieval Annunciation painting, to a battle of the Napoleonic war set in bombarded cemetery, to stories of the gods and heroes of Greece and Norse/Germanic mythology.
Inevitably, a troubled era intrudes on the poet’s writing, in poems that ask a complacent symphony audience, whose children have not disappeared, whom they voted for; in a hex song for thirteen witches planning a beer-infused punishment for a high-court judge; in a dream-message from frightened animals; in a ballad-style lyric about a partisan-fighter and the woman who loved him; and in a lonely mountaintop vigil, looking down on the horrors of war. One autumnal poem set at a Pennsylvania lake challenges, “Where does one take a stand for life?”
Translations are an important part of this volume, and each has a special urgency. A war narrative by Victor Hugo. A rumination about degenerate empires and their cruelty by Yevgeni Yevtushenko. A political warning by Solon the Athenian. Sad lyrics about being a poet in troubled times by Anna Akhmatova (“Who Cares to Listen to Songs?”) and Ludwig Uhland (“The Poet Who Starved”).
Love poems, supernatural fantasies, and other word-explosions in this volume show the poet still as mischievous as ever, sitting with Poe on a Manhattan pier, recounting Providence’s urban horrors, a dream of being Dante, trying to fend off love with plasma physics, reflecting on rampant fungus, eavesdropping on the Virgin Mary, and employing sorcery to fight off a persistent vampire.
This is the 241st publication of The Poet's Press. ISBN 978-0-922558-96-5. 132 pp., 6 x 9 inches, paperback. Published May 2019. $12.95.
PDF Ebook Edition. This is the 293rd publication of The Poet's Press. 132 pp., 6 x 9 inches, PDF format. Published December 2020. $2.99.
Version 1.1 Updated December 25, 2020.
History of the Press
Book Listings
Anthologies
- Opus 300
- Wake Not the Dead!
- On the Verge
- Group 74
- Meta-Land
- Beyond the Rift
- Tales of Terror (2 vols)
- Tales of Wonder (2 vols)
- Tales of Terror Supplement
- Whispering Worlds
Joel Allegretti
Leonid Andreyev
Mikhail Artsybashev
Jody Azzouni
Moira Bailis
Callimachus
Robert Carothers
Samuel Croxall
Richard Davidson
Claudia Dikinis
Arthur Erbe
Erckmann-Chatrian
Emilie Glen
Emily Greco
Annette Hayn
Heinrich Heine
Barbara A. Holland
- The Holland Reader
- After Hours in Bohemia
- Selected Poems 1
- Selected Poems 2
- Shipping on the Styx
- Out of Avernus
- The Beckoning Eye
- The Secret Agent
- Medusa
- Crises of Rejuvenation
- Autumn Numbers
- Holland Collected Poems
- In the Shadows
Thomas D. Jones
Michael Katz
Li Yu
Richard Lyman
D.H. Melhem
David Messineo
Th. Metzger
J Rutherford Moss
John Burnett Payne
Edgar Allan Poe
Meleager
Ovid
Suzanne Post
Shirley Powell
Burt Rashbaum
Ernst Raupach
Susanna Rich
Brett Rutherford
- New and Recent Poems
- Island of the Dead
- Story of Niobe
- The Inhuman Wave
- Fatal Birds
- Pumpkined Heart
- Doll Without A Face
- Crackers At Midnight
- Anniversarius
- Gods As They Are, 2nd ed.
- Prometheus on Fifth Ave
- Things Seen in Graveyards
- Prometheus Chained
- Dr Jones & Other Terrors
- Trilobite Love Song
- Expectation of Presences
- Whippoorwill Road
- Poems from Providence
- Twilight of the Dictators
- Night Gaunts
- Wake Not the Dead!
- Pity the Dragon
- It Has Found You
- Autumn Symphony
- By Night and Lamp
Boria Sax
Charles Sorley
Vincent Spina
Ludwig Tieck
Pieter Vanderbeck
Jack Veasey
Jonathan Aryeh Wayne
Jacqueline de Weever
Don Washburn
Phillis Wheatley
Sarah Helen Whitman
Section Links
Featured Poets
- Joel Allegretti
- Jody Azzouni
- Boruk Glasgow
- Emilie Glen
- Annette Hayn
- Barbara A. Holland
- Donald Lev
- D.H. Melhem
- Shirley Powell
- Brett Rutherford
- Jack Veasey
- Don Washburn
- Poe & Mrs. Whitman