{"id":6121,"date":"2017-09-09T18:21:44","date_gmt":"2017-09-09T18:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/?p=6121"},"modified":"2017-09-10T20:00:52","modified_gmt":"2017-09-10T20:00:52","slug":"emanations-from-the-penumbra-collected-poems-by-em-schorb-reviewed-at-plt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/emanations-from-the-penumbra-collected-poems-by-em-schorb-reviewed-at-plt\/","title":{"rendered":"Emanations from the Penumbra Collected Poems by EM Schorb Reviewed at PLT"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emanations front cover only<\/a> Cover Painting “O Carib Isle” by the Author – ISBN: 978-0-692-03402-6
\n 
\nEditor’s Note: A short while ago EM Schorb contacted me for the address of a mutual friend, whose address he’d mislaid. Remembering i’d published a sonnet of his here in 2013, that later appeared in an anthology of sonnets Phoenix Rises from the Ashes<\/em>, i promptly requested another contribution from him. One thing led to another and he kindly sent me a copy of his latest collection of poems.
\n 
\nEmanations from the Penumbra. Schorb is a prize winning poet having gained recognition and awards several times over ( see below in his bio), so it was with some trepidation i approached this work with the intention of presenting it at our PLT (Poetry Life & Times ) site. It opens with a quote Penumbra: The “Gray area where logic and principle falter”<\/em> Hmm \u2013 it is in fact a corpus of poems, two hundred pages of them, written by a writer poet, – by that i mean, a person who writes extensively and writes poetry as well. Schorb has an excellent, polished and sophisticated technique in whatever manner he approaches a poetic theme and in Penumbra these are many and varied emanations. He is of course a writer\/artist who hails from the USA and he covers widely from its socio historico background, everything from workers rights, the broken war hero to the persecution of blacks by whites. P196. Part 6. titled the same as the name of the collection, starts -\/ Poets of my generation are turning up dead. A serial killer is injecting them with cancer heart disease and stroke \/<\/em> and ends \/ My generation think that this is a serial crime, but have no choice but to pull the ropes and toll the bell \/<\/em> Wow go figure \u2013 but as much as there is pessimism and cynicism, there are as many shades of mood together with a host of erudite literary reference ranging from Empson, Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound to Aristotle and Donne to name but a few. The fact that during the time i received and was reading this work, i also happened at the same time to be reading the classic Paterson by William Carlos Williams, i couldn’t help but find similarities and the recognition how a modern poet like Schorb has emerged out of the influences of such a great work in contemporary North American Literature. Carlos Williams set a trend for commentary on the mundane and current affairs in the city, whilst expanding into pure lyricalism, – and this is what happens in Schorb’s work, at least as i experienced it. In particular, i found a quote in Paterson, which Carlos Williams had seized upon, which i thought was entirely applicable to Schorb’s work in Emanations<\/em>, i quote it here, {recognizing the harmony which subsists between crabbed verses and the distorted subjects with which they dealt – the vices and perversions of humanity, as well as their agreement with the snarling spirit of the satirist. Deformed verse was suited to deformed morality}<\/em> – Studies of the Greek Poets, John Addington Symonds Vol: 1 P284. I could go on, the pathos of love, nihilism, spirituality are all covered by the poet and often brought out via descriptions of small scenic events like theater clips crafted into a free and flowing verse where the poet is speaking as often as not through another’s voice or persona \u2013 though sometimes we find self depreciation as in The Last Word<\/em> at the end of Part 4. P121. \/ Edwin Makepeace Thackery Schorb \/ Wrote many words into his books \/….\/ Was quite mistaken in all he did \/…\/ What is the truth? Oh who knows? \/ Say this: He drank and had to go! \/<\/em> Lets hope he’s not gone forever and comes back. It’s impossible really to select favorites from such a ranging work but i liked especially The Isle of Langerhans<\/em> P79. Written in vertical inter- facing columns, it makes the reader work hard at reading it and i think that’s important in modern poetry, why should poetry be made easy for the reader to read, it’s the struggle that counts. And here we present at PLT the particular poem Schorb has selected Because<\/em> P169\/70…\/ the unicorn is an ungulate because they say so \/<\/em>… Robin Ouzman Hislop<\/p>\n

 
\nBECAUSE
\n 
\nin the port-cities they have found everything out and
\nAristotle-like have put everything into categories
\nand the unicorn is an ungulate because they say so
\nbecause the fine-print of the unreligious sun says we circle it
\nit is not for us but we for it because the moon hit us
\nand bounced off instead of was born of our first spin
\nbecause the ninth planet is an invading comet caught
\nand because there is no now and there never has been
\n 
\nbecause we look upon ourselves in savannas past
\nknuckling to water because we see the white lemming\u2019s hole
\nin the snow smashed down by hooves and hear its pitiful
\nchirp of counter-aggression because the avalanche
\nindifferently buries the contested world of the snow
\nvalley because stars die because we believe in facts
\nand because the deluge led to the ark because because
\nand because we bury our dead and dig up their bones
\n 
\nbecause the unsoundness of our judgments lead to sound
\njudgment and because facts are facts and we must reckon
\nand because the sea is cruel and because time flies
\nbecause the wind blows down our houses and because
\nwe remember the snow hare and the hawk because
\nbecause the dove is taken in air by the eagle
\nand because space is either empty or full of dark matter
\nbecause galaxies hold for a long time their pinwheel-shapes
\n 
\nbecause time and space are curved and we can blow ourselves up
\nand because we blow ourselves up constantly and because
\nit makes us wonder because doesn\u2019t it mean something
\nbecause we are riding a mud-ball through space because
\nwe were born here and because we have categories and
\nbecause we dig up our bones and dogs dig our bones up
\nand because we are not even safe in pyramids because
\nwe dig ourselves up and look upon our own bones
\n <\/strong>
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 
\nBiography
\nE. M. Schorb attended New York University, where he fell in with a group of actors and became a professional actor. During this time, he attended several top-ranking drama schools, which led to industrial films and eventually into sales and business. He has remained in business on and off ever since, but started writing poetry when he was a teenager and has never stopped. His collection, Time and Fevers,<\/em> was a 2007 recipient of an Eric Hoffer Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing and also won the \u201cWriter\u2019s Digest\u201d Award for Self-Published Books in Poetry. An earlier collection, Murderer’s Day,<\/em> was awarded the Verna Emery Poetry Prize and published by Purdue University Press. Other collections include Reflections in a Doubtful I, The Ideologues, The Journey, Manhattan Spleen: Prose Poems, 50 Poems, and The Poor Boy and Other Poems.<\/em>
\n 
\nSchorb’s work has appeared widely in such journals as The Yale Review, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Chicago Review, The Sewanee Review, The American Scholar, and The Hudson Review.<\/p>\n

 
\nAt the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2000, his novel, Paradise Square<\/em>, was the winner of the Grand Prize for fiction from the International eBook Award Foundation, and later, A Portable Chaos<\/em> won the Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction in 2004.<\/p>\n

 
\nSchorb has received fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the North Carolina Arts Council; grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, the Carnegie Fund, Robert Rauschenberg & Change, Inc. (for drawings), and The Dramatists Guild, among others. He is a member of the Academy of American Poets, and the Poetry Society of America. <\/strong>
\n 
\nPRIZE-WINNING BOOKS
\n BY E.M. SCHORB
\nBooks available at Amazon.com
\n_______________________________________
\n  
\nDates and Dreams<\/em>, Writer\u2019s Digest International Self-
\nPublished Book Award for Poetry, First Prize
\n  
\nParadise Square<\/em>, International eBook Award
\nFoundation, Grand Prize, Fiction, Frankfurt Book Fair
\n  
\nA Portable Chaos<\/em>, The Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction,
\nFirst Prize
\n 
\nMurderer\u2019s Day<\/em>, Verna Emery Poetry Prize, Purdue
\nUniversity Press
\n  <\/p>\n

Time and Fevers<\/em>, The Eric Hoffer Award for Poetry
\nand Writer\u2019s Digest International Self-Published Book
\nAward for Poetry, each First Prize <\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nAmazon.com Author Robin Ouzman Hislop<\/a>
\n Aquillrelle.com\/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Emanations front cover only Cover Painting “O Carib Isle” by the Author – ISBN: 978-0-692-03402-6   Editor’s Note: A short while ago EM Schorb contacted me for the address of a mutual friend, whose address he’d mislaid. Remembering i’d published a sonnet of his here in 2013, that later appeared in an anthology of sonnets … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,780,572,781,179,788,366,754,401,43,52],"tags":[198,790,789,18,136,3,147],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6121"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6135,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6121\/revisions\/6135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}