Marly
www.myspace.com/marlyyoumansMood: absent
Posted at 3:43 PM Jan 29 view more
Marly
- from the Carolinas but living near Glimmerglass, New York, US
- Last Login: 2/12/2009
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196188540|102|11110|http://c4.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/28/m_ec83aae595238184b48d71d8cb3b6ba3.jpg
Interests
General
Between writing and reading and three children and the horrid need to dust and wash and straighten my corner of the world, I don't have much time for other obsessions of my very own, though I do have a seams-bursting cottage garden on the front and side of my 1808 Yankee house. Writing and family are time-consuming passions. Through children, I am dragged into realms of manga, peculiar historical pockets, small furry animals, etc. Also, I am married to the most hobby-oriented person I have ever met--he has repaired antique toys, sewn quilts by hand, learned to be a wonderful cook and baker, made a study of paperweights, done some acting, written a book for sheer fun, and generally frolicked in many fields. This is jolly to be around. When my children fledge and fly into the big world, I'd like to draw more, make more of my secret boxes, and learn a new language. I have a deep desire for a little hovel in the Carolinas, as it's just too dratted cold for me in upstate New York. A jumble of some other things I like: domestic architecture; live oaks; chocolates; good pictures and eccentric ones; Burmese cats; Joseph Cornell's dream boxes; dreams of flying; dreams containing poems or story ideas; tidal pools; noodling about art museums; visions (so far); people, especially those with a pleasing abundance of life; lady peas; the beliefs of children; mermaids and faeries; Arthurian legends & such; aged houses; the Medieval world & medievalism; my possibly-false memories of Louisiana; boiled peanuts, picked green and young; artists who surprise me by their materials and method, like Fujimura's Nihongan method of painting with crushed jewels, animal glue, and cochineal; babies; homemade chocolate croissants, or homemade chocolate anything; great streams of freedom; Carolina mountain crafts; black eyes and crowders; an utter lack of complaining, whining, and bossing in my vicinity; nooks, crannies, tiny cupboards; mimosas in bloom; memories of me in a little Cajun town, wearing green lizards with pink throats as earrings, standing under a tomato tree, with the spiders standing around; Himalayan blue poppies; okra; a Queen Anne house in Collins, Georgia; a sharecropper's shack in Lexsy; my little boy's magic tricks; Cherokee legends; overwhelming peace, like a flood; cottages & castles; trees with character; glassmaking; mythologies & fairy tales; an afternoon with "nothing" to do; a walk with stars and fireflies; most things spirit-struck; messing in antique and junk shops; puppets and puppet theatres; the Blue Ridge mountains; etc.Music
Another one of these infinite topics... I've bought two CD's in the past ten days--Willie Pickens, "Jazz Spirit," and Zehnder, "breathing," which my children like very much. I sat with the band at a dinner, and that was interesting. Last live music: I just went to Philip Glass, Orphée, at Glimmerglass Opera. Lately I've been listening to a lot of John Taverner.Movies
The movies I saw this week (end of May, 2007) were "Notorious" (again) and "Pan's Labyrinth." Kurosawa, Fellini (especially "8 1/2"), Bergman (I like all the early work and have a fondness for "The Silence" and "Wild Strawberries" and several dozen others), Hitchcock: I have many favorites, but find that popular movies can be dangerous for a writer. Too many books are already 3-part screenplays. Lately I've been watching a lot of Hitchcock and Kurosawa with my children.Television
I don't do television. Not even a whit. It's that terrible little matter of time... Every now and then I turn one on in a hotel room and am startled by how the thing looks these days.Books
Sheer endlessness here. You'd do better to hop to my main web site or blog (see addresses above) in order to find out about me and books. I do review books on my blog, particularly those I think overlooked, and I introduce young writers (and sometimes illustrators) who are struggling toward that first book. Some loves: Leon Garfield and Diana Wynne Jones and Lewis Carroll; the Gawain poet; Old English poetry and lots of Medieval poems; George Herbert and John Donne and Andrew Marvell; Shakespeare; John Webster; Christopher Marlowe; Keats & Yeats; Charles Dickens & Wilkie Collins; the Bronte sisters; Emily Dickinson & Walt Whitman; Robertson Davies; Mervyn Peake & J. R. R. Tolkien (pooh to fashion!); Russell Hoban; Virginia Woolf; Jean Toomer; Gerard Manley Hopkins, etc. Okay, that's barely a scratch on work in English, and I haven't even gotten started on translations of Undset, Calvino, Borges, etc.
Quote from a current nonfiction read by novelist and short story writer H. E. Bates: "Critical jargon has no word which is the expression of the instinctive part of the writer's self.... To see a writer building up his tale, piece by piece, as one builds up a toy tower of match-sticks, and to feel that he knows both instinctively and consciously which match-stick must be last and exactly when the tower will bear no more, is an experience which can become, also, a general critical test of form." --The Modern Short Story
Details
- Status: Married
- Here for: Networking, Friends
- Height: 8' 3"
- Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius
- Occupation: poet & writer of short stories, novellas, & novels
Blurbs
About me:
"From a certain point there is no turning back. That is the point that must be reached." --Kafka
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http://www.marlyyoumans.com HERE you can find books, reviews, and more.
http://www.thepalaceat2.blogspot.com THIS is my blog.
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How to pronounce my name: Father of an astounding number of children and owner of a major beard, my great-grandfather Nathaniel Yeomans was born long before those busy-bodies who brought in spelling reform. Being of a free-wheeling sort, he spelled as whim took him. Somehow he metamorphosed from "Yeomans" (as in an English archer or a yeoman farmer) to "Youmans." However, my branch of the family still pronounces the thing properly. YO-munz. We may not know how to spell it, but we can say it.
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My writing takes the shapes of novel, novella, short story, poetry (mostly formal, these days, as I like to make my poems as unlike my prose as possible, and I rejoice in approaching song), and very American, very Southern fantasies. These are my seven books, in chronological order, with a snip of review for each:
ONE.
Little Jordan (David R. Godine, Publisher, 1995), novella. "“Miraculously, Marly Youmans blows a fresh breeze through the summer coming-of-age novel." --Gilbert, The Boston Globe
TWO.
Catherwood (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996), novel. "Ms. Youmans’s language is trenchant, graceful and, in places, sumptuously archaic, filled with a richness that provides more than just period color. Her prodigious powers of description render with acuity both small moments and large: the sea crossing, childbirth, snowfall, the slitting of a fawn’s throat, the 'rammish' stench of a trapper. Ms. Youmans has written a subtle, intelligent novel about one of the most enduring issues in the American experiment: how to embrace 'the world and God' as 'better' than men dream." --Philip Gambone, The New York Times Book Review
THREE.
The Wolf Pit (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001), novel. The Michael Shaara Award for 2001.“The novel’s many dramatic and traumatic events will keep the reader breathless, while the haunting, lyrical language and the fierce intelligence behind it remind us we are reading a writer and storyteller of the first order.” --starred review, Publishers Weekly
FOUR.
The Curse of the Raven Mocker (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003, Southern fantasy "If you haven't heard about this novel, that may be because it was published as a Young Adult book. Then again, it's a novel that eludes categories right and left. It's a fantasy--but nothing like most books in that genre. It draws a lot on Cherokee lore, but it isn't a 'Native American' book. It is a portrait of the artist as a girl about to become a woman, and a story of the Spirit (and of spiritual warfare). As I have learned since first getting acquainted with her work a year and a half ago, Youmans (pronounced like 'yeoman' with an 's' added) is the best-kept secret among contemporary American writers. She writes like an angel—an angel who has learned what it is to be human." --Wilson, Top Ten Books of 2003, Books & Culture
FIVE.
Claire (Louisiana State University Press, 2003), poetry collection. "Time and again, I hear what seems to be perfect wording and pacing. Youmans’s poems address a world accurately registered and carefully kept—in gracious reminders of old meanings of ‘keep’: care, attention, heed, notice. I wish more poems were like these." --William Harmon
SIX.
Ingledove (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005), Southern fantasy. INGLEDOVE is a marvelous book. I loved it and thought it was even better than Marly Youmans's first book about the magic land of Adantis, The Curse of the Raven Mocker, where the inhabitants and their magic are half Cherokee, half Border Celtic. I loved the way the Hidden Land materializes around you as you read as naturally as breathing. And the magic seems to arise almost as naturally--though it can be as sudden and cruel as a snakebite--and all of it is always breathtakingly wonderful. Then, instead of leaving you simply gasping at her marvels, Marly Youmans has the courage and the good sense to point out that experiences of this order cause people to change. I really admired this book. --Diana Wynne Jones
SEVEN.
Currently forthcoming in Spring 2009 is the short novel Valorson in two hardcover limited editions from P. S. Publishing in the U. K. Jacket/cover art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins. Introduction by Catherynne M. Valente.
If you're interested in short fiction or poetry, there's a selected bibliography of anthology and magazine publications here.
Agent: Liz Darhansoff
Comments
Sep 15 2009 10:37 AM
May 1 2009 3:45 PM
and have bathed in the light of its living force
remember what you have felt;
and whenever you pass a tree
whether it stands alone in a wilderness of human making
or in the depth of woodland,
give a moment of your time to listen to its voice.
For in many parts of the land the trees are dying
only the hearts that know something of the true wisdom can save them. (Anon)
Time to welcome in the Summer, health and happiness.
Si usted ha paseado por el centro del bosque verde
y se ha bañado en la luz de su fuerza viva
recuerde lo que usted ha sentido;
y siempre que usted pase al lado de un árbol
si está parado solamente en un yermo de fabricación humana
o en la profundidad del bosque,
dé un momento de su tiempo para escuchar su voz.
Porque en muchas partes de la tierra los árboles se están muriendo
solamente los corazones que tengan algo de la sabiduría verdadera pueden salvarlos. (Anón)
Hola, encantado de conocerle.
Feb 12 2009 9:32 PM
:)
Feb 12 2009 3:07 AM
I have said magic words, and burnt some Spam as an offering to Tom and the gremlins who run this show.
We'll see if it works.
Feb 7 2009 2:23 PM
Feb 7 2009 1:23 PM
You know what? I think the phishy one is Tom.
Jan 30 2009 5:33 PM
Dec 12 2008 12:41 AM
Keep warm, and in touch. I missed seeing you around!
Dec 11 2008 5:31 PM
Aug 22 2008 4:25 AM
May 19 2008 8:24 AM
Hi here's the link www. novel-storm. com
Please register - it's FREE and takes mere seconds! There's books, poetry, scripts & screenplays being added all the time. Visit the forum to see where the new material has been added and please leave feedback there for the authors.
Kindest regards
Matt Townsend
Director of Novel-storm Ltd.
Apr 20 2008 3:17 AM
Feb 28 2008 6:37 AM
Jan 20 2008 5:34 AM
Jan 16 2008 11:43 PM
Dec 31 2007 5:01 AM
Dec 31 2007 5:01 AM
Dec 28 2007 3:03 PM
Dec 23 2007 2:43 AM
Dec 16 2007 1:30 PM
Hope you are not sick and having a grand Christmas!
Dec 13 2007 6:02 PM
I am the hottest black lady on myspace each christmas!
Dec 12 2007 3:51 PM
Dec 10 2007 4:17 AM
Hope Martini glasses ring!
Dec 3 2007 9:18 PM
I hope you're on the road to recovery. Very sorry that you were ill.
Nov 21 2007 7:41 PM