Spotlight on Bill Reynolds

Now I Lay Me….

As I lay on my bed
listening to the sounds
in the street below
I thought about the play
we had done :
a melodrama
faceless characters
exaggerated actions
magnified emotions.

Rose was in it
the persecuted heroine
more sinned against than most
and I was the manly hero.

“Rose,” I said. “Meet me
on the bridge at midnight!”
and the words
of the deep-dyed villain
rang in my ears :

“You shall pay dearly
for this night’s work!”

I lay back and wondered:
What would it be like
to meet Rose at midnight
here in my room? and What
would I have to pay so dearly for?

As I stretched out, near sleep,
the giant garage door
of the Apex Hauling Company
across the street
emitted a long, rasping groan;
it creaked, broke into sections,
and lifted on its rollers to
let the trucks enter for the night.

 

 
PublishAmerica is proud to announce the recent release of Bill Reynolds's new book:

The Language Game!
 
Here's what the author says about the book: In our everyday use of English, most of us plunge right in; but when on the spot - when we know that someone might be paying special attention - many of us become nervous. We're quite sure what we want to say, but we're uncertain about how to say it. / "The demon which possesses us," says Donald J. Lloyd, "is our mania for correctness. It dominates our minds from the first grade to the graduate school; it is the first and often the only thing we think of when we think of our language.... Correct! That's what we've got to be, and the idea that we've got to be correct rests like a soggy blanket on our brains and our hands whenever we try to write." / The articles in this volume, which appeared as a biweekly column for three years in a local paper, offer observations, comments, and criticism of how we play the game of language. / Are we actually as crippled by our "mania for correctness" as LLoyd suggests?
 
We are offering you an opportunity to secure your personal copy of Bill Reynolds’s exceptional book today.  Please click here: http://www.publishamerica.net/product49283.html to secure your copy of the book*, then click Add to Cart. For an introductory discount of 20%, use this coupon code: Discount20.

 

Bill’s Poems:   Now I Lay Me and Peonies

 

Bill’s novel, The Ringalievio Tree was published in 2004.

 

Here is Richard Beyer's review of the book:

It is a troubling mosaic of a boy’s coming-of-age during World War II. To some degree, we are all Billy Ridley, the central character, and as we read we begin to see our own adolescent selves, the friends and families of our youth who are reflected in the  strongly etched characters.

In a family rife with hidden secrets, old distrusts, endless oddities and an ultimate betrayal, Billy Ridley manages to tiptoe through the many land mines of adolescence to emerge a fine young man with great promise. The author shrewdly takes us in and somehow manages to put us, the readers, into the heart of the tale.

For all the tragedies, big and small, all the hard bumps and all the unpleasantness in his road toward manhood, we never quite see Billy’s reactions to any of it. We see him bumped around, but we never see his bruises; we see him cut, but we never see him bleed. He acts, but it seems he never reacts. Author Reynolds never quite shares Billy’s emotions and so we are subtly coerced into supplying our own.

    The Ringalievio Tree is a remarkable achievement. It would make fine reading in college English classes and has the potential to become a dramatic motion picture. 

 

Other reviews may be read on www.publishamerica.com/books/6512. Click on “Read Reviews.” A copy of the book may be ordered on this website, through Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com.

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Peonies

Ants crowd the surface of the buds
in early May sucking the nectar
that seals the petals closed. Day
after day they work, attacking
the petals’ edges. Week after week,
the buds grow larger, and then
one morning, there they are:
the petals in the night have given in,
the ants are gone, and the buds have
flowered into a lovely white tinged
with pink. Other buds attract no ants
for some reason, or not for long, and
forgetting the promise of bloom, they
harden and wither away.
Marriages are like that.