Announcing Frances Justine Post’s ‘Beast’ As Augury’s Next Poetry Publication

Photo by: Cecelia Post
From collection: Natural Won’t Change Disaster

This announcement concerns our upcoming poetry publication. Keep checking in or follow this blog (bottom right corner) for our fiction announcement, coming soon.

First things first: We want to emphatically thank everyone who submitted their work to Augury Books during our reading period. As always, it was a great pleasure and even greater honor to have the opportunity to read so many exceptional manuscripts. We are so grateful to all of you for trusting us with your work.

We are thrilled to announce that we will be publishing Beast, the debut collection by Frances Justine Post, in the genre of poetry (fiction genre announcement TBA, see above).

Frances Justine Post

Frances Justine Post received her MFA in poetry from Columbia University and is currently earning her PhD in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston, where she is a Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast. She is a recipient of the 2013 Inprint Verlaine Poetry Prize from the University of Houston, the 2008 “Discovery” / The Boston Review Poetry Prize, and the 2006 Amy Award from Poets & Writers. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Letters & CommentaryThe Boston ReviewDenver Quarterly, The Kenyon ReviewPleiadesand others.

We would also like to salute this year’s poetry finalists, some of whose work you can see featured here in the upcoming season:

Tina Schumann — Praising the Paradox

Stephanie SchlaiferClarkston Street Polaroids

Pia AlipertiSolitude Must Share My Solitude

Travis Macdonald3

Andrew WeatherheadCats and Dogs

Many thanks to Frances Justine Post and our finalists for giving us the opportunity to recognize their wonderful work. Stay tuned for our fiction announcement.

—Augury Books

Jeff Alessandrelli, Editors’ Prize Finalist, Shares ‘The Ample Harvest of the Luminous Never’

Photo by Dave Bledsoe, FreeVerse Photography

“The ample harvest of the luminous never.”—Tristan Tzara

What have the starfish

—glowing bright—

stolen from so many millions of stars?

If the information age cannot tell us,

if the digital age cannot,

nor the pulsating electronic nodes constantly circling

in and around our heads,

how can we lull ourselves

peacefully to sleep at night,

content in our ignorance?

Mystery is tangible, is constantly converting

the preying jaws of death

into a rocking chair, a La-Z Boy,

something colored-smooth and reclined.

Life resides here,

there. Death.

Luminous harvest of some ample never,

glowing bright, bright.

Even if you never learned how to swim,

even if you are 20,000 leagues under the sea

swarming in starfish,

it is impossible to drown,

to awake and—in wonder—

believe and be whole again.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Jeff Alessandrelli lives in Portland, OR. This Last Time Will Be The First, his first full-length collection of poetry, is forthcoming from Burnside Review Press in early 2014. The name of his dog is Beckett Long Snout.

Remembering in Third Person: Poem by 2012 Finalist Stephanie Anderson

Photo by Dave Bledsoe, FreeVerse Photography

Remembering in Third Person
Look at what we have
             established:
                               It is possible to have
                               a conversation with
                               a stranger.
The cats under the bed
The tiny tick of carbonation
We don’t imagine the
               scene:
                                 We inhabit it.
Closing lids against the sun
That shade of red
What makes
               a journal:
                                 a list.
The multicolored boards
The needy dog
The blue-and-white
               check:
 
We’ve lost the car:
                                 what has been
                                 taken.
The peeling paint
The glitter glue
               in her hair
What makes it better.
                                 The girl launching
                                 the waves
The water falling on
               the water
If you love error
               so love zero.
The dirty sill
The violet door
The pink cake
________________________________________________________________________
Stephanie Anderson is the author of In the Key of Those Who Can No Longer Organize Their Environments (Horse Less Press, August 2013) and four chapbooks, including the forthcoming Sentence, Signal, Stain (Greying Ghost Press).  She lives in Chicago and edits the micropress Projective Industries.