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Clothesline Logic

Pudding House Press is proud to present, Clothesline Logic, the newest collection from Columbus poet, Rikki Santer, who won finalist recognition in our 2009 national chapbook competition.  “Santer crafts her language with wit and joy,” says Pudding House publisher Jennifer Bosveld.  “It is clear that she is attracted to the interplay of content with form as well as to the sly underbelly of satire–from the fetishizing of popular culture to the sticky tangles of philosophy.  And yet some of her poems are quiet and wise, examining the elegant simplicities of humanity’s corollary in nature.”

Rikki Santer has worked as a journalist, a magazine and book editor, co-founder and managing editor of an alternative city newspaper, a poet-in-the schools, and her all-time favorite job–bagel street vendor. She earned a M.A. degree in journalism from Kent State University and a M.F.A.  degree in creative writing from The Ohio State University. Her work has won honors from  The Poetry Forum (the William Redding Memorial Contest), Black Lawrence Press (the St. Lawrence Book Award Competition), the Ohio Poetry Association, and the Best of Ohio Writer Contest sponsored by the Poets’ & Writers’ League of Greater Cleveland. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Ms. Magazine, Poetry East, Grimm, Margie, Potomac Review, Alabama Literary Review, Asphodel, The Adirondack Review, Main Street Rag, as well as several anthologies. She currently lives in Columbus, Ohio where she teaches literature, writing, and film studies.  Her first poetry collection, Front Nine: A Biography of Place, which explores the mysteries of the Newark, Ohio Earthworks, was published by Kulupi Press.

 

From the book:

Clothesline Logic
by Rikki Santer

With clothesline I too often
got ahead of myself,
retractable tongues and tacks.

What I knew was slim
and linear, shifts and surface
aberrations, memories flapping

like moire, schemes snapping
from too much wind:
chintz, duck, felt, net,

satin, velvet, cheesecloth, wool–
patterns of ladders, lions,
midnight clouds, and

shimmering appliques.
Now the haze
compels the glow,

sense in nonsense,
clotheslines with wings,
tails in flight, cousin kites,

the plodding unfettered
and propulsive,
freed from a two-point plan.


Publisher: Pudding House Publications.
Pudding House Chapbook Series
ISBN  1-58998-828-0. 
Publication:  September 2009.
Price: $10.00
Pudding House Publications
81 Shadymere Lane
Columbus, Ohio 43213




 


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