Neca Stoller's
Bound by Red Clay

Neca Stoller publishes her first book of poetry! Stoller is an acclaimed poet both in print and on the Internet. Bound by Red Clay details life growing up in rural Georgia,USA. A must read for poetry and southern history enthusiasts!

Stoller:
Winner of the Poet's Award

CONGRATULATIONS NECA ON ANOTHER AWARD!
International Kusamakura Haiku Competition
Foreign Language Category
Nyuusen (Third Prize)
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REVIEWS:

Stoller's voice is a new southern voice which speaks with all the grace and poise of the best qualities and traditions of the South. She is, as her title indicates, bound to the soil. Stoller is kin to Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, and William Faulkner--if not by blood, then certainly by tradition. She introduces us to cousins, to siblings, to parents, and to children. Neca Stoller speaks per force out of her southern heritage and experience with her own southern voice, but as those in her tradition before her have done, her voice transcends these sources to profoundly universal human dimensions. ---Ben Bohnhorst, Ed.D., Professor Emeritus, College of Education, Michigan State Univesity
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A reader from East coast of Australia:
Neca Stoller's work transcends national borders When I ordered Neca Stoller's book I wondered if the high standard I had admired in examples of her work I'd seen on the net would be sustained through a book. It was. My other concern was whether poetry specifically drawing on a Georgia, USA, landscape would be relevant in Australia. It was. Australian friends have validated my opinion on this. Like the book itself the poetry is spare, direct and captures the essence of her subjects. Her focus is not distracted by any vanities. The discipline of Japanese genres shines through. The poetry is strong and credible. I commend it to anyone with a sense of place and community, no matter where in the world they are centered.
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A reader from Americus, Georgia
Southern images arranged like minalmist short stories
Even the title of Neca Stoller's first book of poems--Bound by Red Clay--tells us we're dealing with a Southern poet who deals with solid images. Many of these pictures painted by this Savannah poet are Southern and specifically Georgian: magnolias, lowland graveyards, 1960's protest marches, Cherokee excavations, front porches on sultry evenings, even a moonshiner by the name of "Flem." Red clay is a good image for the poets of Georgia, especially those who have left the land: Anyone who has tried to scrub the knees of a child's pants or footprints left on a beige carpet knows that red clay stains will always remain. One might be able to dull their immediate brilliance, but the brick-red trace will remain truly bound to the material.

That fading but "bound" sense of images propels the poet--and then the reader--through this book. The volume contains poems that are slim on words and fat on images. Stoller paints tiny pictures that loom large in one's verbal and pictorial memory. A pair of pinking shears "left marks like a bobcat's bite." Corpses are freed from their graves during the Flint River flood of 1994; "their hands rose and waved . . . they sat in the mud, naked-- / grinning--not a bit shy." On the morning after a lovers' tryst, the poet bittersweetly proclaims, "Such a short night, / still out of breath."

The poet reminds us we are tourists passing by a world full of scenes; the most important admonition someone can make to us is simply to look. Her haiku-like poems resonate with ideas and emotions that emerge out of the things pictured here. For instance, there's "White Chrysanthemum": "tucked between / fallen leaves / a white chrysanthemum / once pinned to my lapel / by your unsteady hands."

After a while, the poems begin to resonate with each other. Arranged into sections that Stoller calls "Chapters," the volume is like a collection of minimalist short stories: The poet's youth, a set of scenes with a former lover, her experiences during the University of Georgia's first year of integration, scenes from nature, and Stoller's own shifting and meditative identity as a poet.

Every semester, I post a new poem on my office door. I try to find one that immediately charms and then provides an opportunity for me, pausing with keys in hand, or for my students waiting for their office conference, to reflect. Stoller has given me a new volume's worth of poems to place on my door; this book will provide you with a similar opportunity to recognize and meditate.
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WHAT EXPERTS ARE SAYING ABOUT NECA STOLLER:

"Neca Stoller continues to represent the brightest of her generation. Any work that bears her name fulfills the role of the nature poet and serves the reader twicefold. She is among the most satisfying prose poets writing in America today."
--Ernest Slyman,Reverie:Forum for Creative Excellence in the Arts--The Guggenheim Foundation in the Arts
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"Its simplicity is both refreshing and beguiling; her meaning is never as simple as it may first appear. Her work requires the reader to dig beyond the surface and reach conclusions of his own."
--Katherine Hageland,Editor, El Dorado Poetry Review
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"Ms. Stoller's tanka are of the highest quality, evoking the time,place,and emotion of a single moment with clarity, precision of language, and a fine attention to rhythm."
--Laura Maffei,Editor, American Tanka
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"Neca Stoller's poetry is vibrant and vivacious, and captures in its essence the spirit and elegance of Japanese poetry in an English medium. Over the years Ygdrasil has had the great pleasure to publish many outstanding writers and poets, and Neca Stoller ranks among the finest."
--Klaus Gerken,Editor and Founder,Ygdrasil, A Journal of the Poetic Arts
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Click here to order your copy.