Greatunpublished.com Title No. 82 ISBN:1-58898-082-0
f there's anyone lurking here who doesn't know who Kay Day is, it's time you made her acquaintance. Ubiquitous internet personality, poet, critic, longtime Poetry Editor of Suite101.com, and a moderator of AR's popular poetry forum, The Gazebo, she has tidily summed up a lifetime of devotion and service to the literary community in this recently published offering.
The book itself is a trim package, almost of a size (about 5x7") to slip into an overcoat pocket, but filled with essential information on poetry, the writing of poetry, revision, and tips on publishing, including a frank discussion of the pros and cons of self—publishing, plus a valuable list of links to internet sites, and topped off with forty of the author's own poems.
Beginning with some background on her own career, she treats the reader to a wonderful story of her work as an undergraduate with the poet James Dickey, followed by a road map of the necessary stages in the development of one determined to become a professional writer. Told with both pride and humility, the entire book reflects a personality filled with not only competence but a singular generosity in welcoming aspirants to the literary life at every level of experience. There is a freshness and an immediacy to every section of the book that seems directly connected to Day's bouncy presence in the poetry forums she participates in, never talking down to her reader but offering an across-the-board sharing of both inspiration and perception, a free exchange between peers.
About the poems themselves; the collection is an ample sample of forms and topics, including well-turned sonnets, poems of place and situation, a tender concern for the human condition in its manifold ways of getting itself into trouble and finding reasons to keep trying anyway. This is a a woman's voice, and notably a southern voice, punctuated by signature double and even triple stresses:
"When the day ends
like a bent spoon . . . "
". . . dead parts thrown
in scrub oak woods . . ."
that persistently announce themselves as not copied, but legitimately inherited, from a still-honored school of Southern writing.
As available to the casual and unknown reader as she has been for years through her columns and forums on the internet, Kay Day even offers in the book an email address for anyone who wants to contact her, and whoever does can be sure of an answer. Newcomers will find a rare encouragement, and veterans will be grateful for a discriminating eye and ear that can zoom in on even minor defects in a piece of work, while always managing to find something to praise or encourage.
© Sandy McKinney