LESTER GRAVES LENNON

Translating his father’s Braille, Lester Graves Lennon’s My Father Was a Poet (CW Books, Cincinnati, Ohio) questions who we are as human beings who want to make a difference in a world permanent with bliss and pain. Lennon’s gutsy poems turn family history and color-line into words natural as wind and sun, rain and earth around his father’s grave in Whiteville, North Carolina.

My Father’s Father’s Children

My father’s father, Mack, a rough shrewd son

of freed field slaves, owned a tobacco farm,

thirty years after slavery in Whiteville,

North Carolina. His wife, Aradella,

worked home and soil, gave birth to thirteen children:

D’Ossey, the first born who died at Shaw;

Ben, Quentin, Roscoe – the three who stayed and farmed;

Eva, the youngest all called Tiny Bee;

Bessie, Naomi, Minnie, Lillian,

the four whose high cheek bones and red brown skin

best showed their mother’s mother’s Cherokee

birth; Acy, at four hundred pounds the largest

and closest to my father; Shady Macon,

the youngest boy haunted by crying spells;

Early the first through college; and my father.

Nine shared their field hand grit to earn degrees.

Seven had striking blue-rimmed eyes, the seven

who lost their sight. My father lost his last.

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Dr. W. David Schwaderer

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SHELBY STEPHENSON
Ronald H. Bayes’s Earthen Music
The Collected Poems, Ronald H. Bayes, Selected and Edited by Joseph Bathanti and Ted Wojtasik

(St. Andrews University Press: 2015, 685 pages), with Introduction by Joseph Bathanti;

Poet Ronald H. Bayes

For almost five decades Ronald H. Bayes has wowed the world with poetry and with love of the arts and compassion for helping others get into print, founding St. Andrews University Press, Laurinburg, North Carolina, and becoming and holding the atmosphere for dozens and dozens of writers to read once a week at the St. Andrews Forum which he also founded: the roll call of writers is endless:

James Laughlin, Robert Bly, Betty Adcock, Julie Suk, Stephen Smith, Joseph Bathanti, Tom Wolfe, Mary De Rachewiltz, Agnes McDonald, Shirley Moody, Margaret Baddour, Ann Deagon, Jonathan Williams, Jeffery Beam, Guy Owen, Paul Jones, Tom Hawkins, Anna Wooten, Marty Silverthorne, Fred Chappell, Terry Smith, Joel Oppenheimer, Robert Creeley, Lenard Moore, Glenna Luschei, Jaki Shelton Green, Tom Patterson and on and on, all the time writing poems right out of the air of the world – like conversations of rapscallions looking for a grange-meeting.

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-Ryan J. Hodge
For someone who enjoys a great story, is there anything better than a narrative that engages you from the very start? Imagine a world so rich you can almost smell the scents in the air, a delivery so clever it forces you to think in a way you never thought you would. I’m Ryan J. Hodge, author, and I’d like to talk to you about…Video Games.

Yes, Video Games. Those series of ‘bloops’ and blinking lights that –at least a while ago- society had seemed to convince itself had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. In this article series, I’m going to discuss how Donkey Kong, Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty and even Candy Crush can change the way we tell stories forever.

What Star Wars: Rebellion Teaches Us About Writing Asymmetrical Conflict

It may surprise some to know that my all time favorite strategy game is a rather obscure title from 1998. It’s called Star Wars: Rebellion and despite the weight of the franchise, its reception was fairly mixed among SW fans and gamers alike.

I can certainly appreciate their concerns; the pace is slow, the battle interface is clunky, and even for ‘98 the visuals…could be better.

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