PLEASURE BOAT STUDIO: A Literary Press

 

 

Announcing a new book from

Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press

 

Craving Water:

                                       Poems of Ordinary Life in a Northwest Village

                                                by

                                             Mary Lou Sanelli

                                            ISBN: 1-929355-19-X

                                                    Price: $15 (trade paperback) * 128 pages   

 

“Sanelli’s deft images capture nuances of life lived close in a small town of neighbors on the western edge of America, and tell more, much more, about the intimacies of their lives.”

Linda Clifton, Director of the Puget Sound Writing Project, U of Washington                                                    

 

About this book:

     In Mary Lou Sanelli's sixth collection, the author shows, in poem after poem, just what place means to her: the people, the landscape, the gardens, the cafes, and, yes, the water. She does, indeed, crave the water. For Sanelli, rain, for which the Northwest is so well known, has a mission to revive and cleanse rather than to depress or sadden, and she learns, along with her readers, how to grow and to thrive in this notorious rain. And then there's the harbor which gives her beloved Port Townsend its name, into which the ferryboat routinely travels and along which the author loves to stroll: This water, too, serves to inspire and uplift.

     But of course this collection isn't only about the water. It's also about the people who live by the water, the friends and acquaintances Sanelli encounters as she walks the beach, visits the boatyard, watches the sunset from the city pier, or attends a wake in honor of one of the Olympic Peninsula's old-timers. And it's about Sanelli's sojourns away from her home, her trips to the mountains of New Mexico, to the islands of Hawaii, and down the long peninsula of Baja California, sojourns she makes which only intensify her love of the Northwest.

     You'll come away from this book with a deep appreciation of this corner of America and, quite likely, with a longing to know your own home town and your own neighbors a little better than you do now.

 

About the Author:

     Mary Lou Sanelli was raised in Connecticut, educated in Boston, and now lives in Port Townsend, a coastal village located on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula, and in Seattle’s downtown Belltown district. This is her sixth collection of poetry. Her poems have been published widely and her poetic essays can be heard as commentary on the program Weekday on KUOW Radio, a Seattle based NPR station, as well as read in Port Townsend’s newspaper, The Leader, in her column entitled From A Writer’s Notebook. She presents her work and teaches writing workshops extensively throughout the Northwest.

 

For more information, contact Jack Estes