Cover Painting by Allegra Printz

Publication launch:
      April 11, 2010
$17 paper
84 pages
ISBN 978-1-934400-18-0

Rock Village Publishing
“Preserving Our
      New England Heritage”
Memoirs      Cookbooks
Legends      Folklore
Local History      Poetry


Photograph by John Goldie

 

THE ETYMOLOGY OF SPRUCE
by Joyce Wilson

Joyce Wilson’s first book, with its intriguing, seductive title, is long overdue. It has the virtues of a first book—a fresh voice with a fresh perspective—but none of the drawbacks. This is a very grown-up enterprise, loving without sinking into sentimentality, aware of life’s ironies and horrors yet confident enough—as in the remarkable couplets of “The Rodin Drawing” —to accept the possibility of a happy ending. I know I won’t forget these poems and look forward to re-reading them with pleasure.
   —Lloyd Schwartz, University of Massachusetts Boston

This is Joyce Wilson’s book of memory, where we see its deep roots and dynamic energies, the way it flowers in images of beauty and pain, images that the poet both embraces and resists. In these beautifully crafted poems the imagined past helps make the present tense of life more real, as real as can be, even beautiful.
            —Fred Marchant, Suffolk University

I love these poems for their intimacy, humor, and surprise. It’s hard to write well about writing, yet she does it here in more than one poem. Her approach to writing about writing is workmanlike and highly original.
                        —Ellen Davis, Boston University

Joyce Wilson, editor and creator of The Poetry Porch, a magazine on the Internet at www.poetryporch.com, has taught English at Suffolk University and Boston University. Her poems have appeared in literary journals such as Antigonish Review, Agni, Cyphers, Harvard Review, and Poetry Ireland. One of her poems won the Daniel Varoujan Award from the New England Poetry Club of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and another won the Katharine Lee Bates Award from the Falmouth Historical Society. She reviews books of poetry regularly for Harvard Review; other reviews can be read online at The Drunken Boat at www.thedrunkenboat.com.

 

A new book of poems from
     Rock Village Publishing
      41 Walnut Street      Middleborough, MA 02346      508/ 946-4738
      Contact: Edward and Yolanda Lodi, Publishers

March 31, 2010

Enclosed please find a review copy of our new collection of poems The Etymology of Spruce by Joyce Wilson.

The Etymology of Spruce has received high praise from Lloyd Schwartz, Fred Marchant, and Ellen Davis, who all read the original manuscript. As with all our projects, we have worked hard together—author, artist, editor, designer, printer—to make the final product a work of art with an artistically designed cover and good quality paper.

Joyce Wilson has been an active participant in the poetry communities in Boston and Cambridge and on the South Shore. For over a decade, she has edited The Poetry Porch, a magazine on the Internet for poets, teachers, and students. She teaches English at Suffolk University. Her poems have appeared in many journals, among them Agni, Antigonish Review, Harvard Review, and Poetry Ireland. She has given readings of her original poetry in venues from Cambridge to Brockton to Provincetown. This is her first book of poems.

Rock Village Publishing specializes in memoirs, cookbooks, legends, folklore, local history, and occasionally poetry. The Etymology of Spruce is our sixth poetry publication. We have published collections by the poets Faye George, Diana Lee Vielli, and Pamela Perkins-Frederick, emphasizing quality over quantity as we pursue our dedication to “Preserving Our New England Heritage.”

Thank you and best wishes,

Edward and Yolanda Lodi

 

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Copies of The Etymology of Spruce may be purchased from
Joyce Wilson, 158 Hollett Street, Scituate, MA 02066, 781-545-0731
Buttonwood Books, Shaws Plaza Route 3A, Cohasset, MA 02025 781-383-2665.