A new bookstore has opened on Third Avenue in Sturgeon Bay! We used to have two bookstores, but they have closed. Now Margaret Magle has opened a new bookstore on Third Avenue downtown. She is, right now, featuring books by Ethel Mortenson and Thomas Davis. We are hoping both tourists and local folks visit the store at 41 N. Third Avenue since we are hoping Margaret succeeds in her new endeavor.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry, Published Books, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
I keep looking
for the breathing holes
beneath this thick sea ice,
a place where
I can propel
up towards the light,
grasping for a breath of air
that smells like earth
and soil and green things.
I keep looking
for that rare space
because I cannot hold
my breath much longer.
There. Over there
I see some light
through honey-colored ice.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
Four Windows Press announces the release of a new book, The Glowing Pink by Standing Feather. Standing Feather is a New Mexico poet who lives near the El Morro National Monument and the Ancient Way Cafe. He operates a gallery, Galleria Carnaval, and paints as well as writes magnificent poetry.
Copies can be ordered at amazon.com or from Standing Feather’s gallery.
Praise for The Glowing Pink
In The Glowing Pink, Standing Feather reminds us of the almost unspeakable intimacy shared by all beings. I view the poems of this collection as passageways to the sacred, to the sheer beauty and wonder of life. Reality is luminous. There are songs and blessings for “creatures that may spend their entire lives inside a flower.” What nourishes us, what makes us whole, is empathy, and an awareness of our union with the universe. Line by line, page by page, these poems are a deep bow to all of life: the vast, the miniscule, the unseen.
James Janko, winner of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Pride for the Novel, author of The Clubhouse Thief and Buffalo Boy and Geronimo
If poetry has a searing edge that is part flame and part cool, silver moonlight, mixed with the fragrance of deep emotion, it has reached beyond everydayness into a realm as wild, beautiful, and perhaps dangerous, as those regions of space where stars are born. There must be music too, even if it is subtle music, and an unusual insight into human experience and what substances are melded together to make a human spirit. It must also look outward to others, whether they are people or living parts of the earth, and create an ecosystem of connections that reflect out of the poet into the reader so that the reader can discover something vital and true about themselves. In The Glowing Pink Standing Feather achieves all of this as poem after poem images with words that either are carved from the bedrock of stone quarried from generations of poets or sparked like flashes of quicksilver dancing and twisting into a bewilderment of light and dark. If we need a reason to read poetry, then this book gives us that reason. Thomas Davis, author of The Weirding Storm and three novels.
Filed under poems, Poetry, Published Books, Uncategorized
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
I dream of
a different world:
one where I can*
take refuge,
where you and I
will be sisters,
where the First Peoples
are striding along
with the Second peoples,
learning from each other,
where they are no longer refugees
in their own land,
where freed slaves
are helped to build
new lives with the colonists,
no longer refugees
in this new land.
I dream of
a different world:
where no one is heard
shouting from a window,
“Go back to where you came from.”
* The first two stanzas are a quote from Ariel Dorfman, a refuge.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Art by Ethel Mortenson Davis, Ethel Mortenson Davis
by Thomas Davis
I thought some of the readers of Four Windows Press might enjoy this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XyqwWR3_d4, which describes the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math work being done in tribal colleges across the United States.
This is obviously not about poetry, art, or photography, but I have worked in American Indian Education from 1972 up to the present time. I helped establish the National Science Foundation’s Tribal College and University’s Program (TCUP), working closely with Carrie Billy, then the Director of President Bill Clinton’s White Initiative of Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), that this video explores. My role was not that important really, but I am proud of the work I did throughout my career in the tribal college movement nevertheless. Carty Monette and Carol Davis, both featured in the video, are not only good friends, but played a major role in helping establish the TCUs nationwide.
What the TCUs are achieving throughout the United States is, at least in my opinion, some of the most important educational work being done in the world today. This video just gives a small glimpse of that work and might introduce to at least some of you the TCUs.
Filed under Essays, Thomas Davis
