Hidden in Childhood – Full Cover Reveal and Preface

I read your words and a thousand childhoods burrowed into my heart.

  • Gabriela Marie Milton

My Dear Readers

Thank you to everyone who submitted to Literary Revelations Publishing House’s collection Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology, due to be released late January. If anything changes, I will let you know.

I am thrilled to release the full cover of the anthology and the preface I wrote. I have tears in my eyes. Here is why.

I am beyond humbled by the number of submissions. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for entrusting me with your beautiful poetry. Most important you entrusted me with glimpses of your childhood. That honors me more than words can possibly express. I rarely talk about myself. Yet, last night after 14 hours of work I was listening to the winter knocking on my windows and thinking of your poems. A sentence inscribed itself into my soul. It will stay with me forever. I read your words and a thousand childhoods burrowed into my heart.

We are looking at a monumental work of poetry; a work of breathtaking beauty and substance. I included over 150 poets and around 280 poems. The Word file I will send for formatting tomorrow has 456 pages. I suspect after the formatting the anthology will have over 456 pages. Congratulations to everyone who was included.

I wrote a good number of rejection letters and I am not done yet. To those poets who were rejected: please do not get discouraged. I am honored by your submissions too and ready to collaborate with you in the future.

One other important thing I learned by reading your poems: this collection teaches the reader about childhood perhaps more than an academic treaty could do it.

————–

Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology – preface by Gabriela Marie Milton

If you open the pages of this poetry collection, you will be mesmerized by the talent of the contributors, and by the range of stylistic approaches they use to recreate the world of childhood.  It must be said from the beginning that this is not a poetry collection for children. The pages you will read memorialize the beauty and magic of childhood – remembrance of love and fairytales – as well as its ugliness – abuses, poverty – that unfortunately still exist in our world. Some of the authors of the poems included in this anthology were brave enough to talk about the pain they endured in childhood. I salute all contributors: those who tell the world that childhood is love, and those who still bear the wounds of a difficult childhood.

As the editor, curator, and publisher of this book, I am honored and humbled that so many poets entrusted me with their work. The poems I included in this anthology are stunners. They are magnificent in their wealth of emotions, and very diverse in style. It is the role of the editor to try – as much as she/he can- to stylistically unify the works included in poetry collections. To a certain extent, I decided against it. I allowed for English spelling, as well as for American spelling. I overlooked places where perhaps I would have used different words, in the interest of clarity. Why did I do it? Two reasons: (1) These breathtaking poems have their own energy, an energy that continuously echoes in one’s soul, and it sends shivers down the spine of the reader. There is a freshness about them, freshness in front of which the strive for better formulations ends up in patheticism. (2) Perfection is most of the time sterile. There are emblematic poets who sometimes consciously allowed for small degrees of clumsiness – here and there – in their poems in order to preserve the authenticity of the feelings. I hope I did that in this collection.  

The themes and archetypes the contributors use are very diverse. You will find the father as the protector and/or as the abuser, the figure of the mother as the nurturer and/or as the monster, the loss of siblings, the heavenly paradise of grandparents, the fight with disease, and the list can continue.     

To turn to a different idea, once Charles Baudelaire wrote, “The child sees everything in a state of newness… Nothing more resembles what we call inspiration than the delight with which a small child absorbs form and color.” No doubt, during childhood we are first and foremost the recipients of the sensory world.  

The academic literature on childhood – as well as our common understanding – frequently defines childhood as a period of our lives that precedes adulthood.  Whatever happens during our first years is formative and important to our becoming. However, we tend to dissociate childhood from maturity. Most people subscribe to the dichotomy of childhood/adulthood.

Indeed, the prima facie reading of the poems included in this anthology shows that the authors kept in mind the dichotomy of childhood/adulthood.

Yet, what strikes the reader during the second and/or third reading of these stunning poems is how present childhood is in the lives of the authors, now mature people.  For these poets, whether they know it or not, childhood is not a simple memory filled with joy or pain.  Childhood constitutes itself as an integral part of their poems, a part that continues to transform them as they write.

The strength of this poetry collection is the capacity of its authors to blur the line between childhood and adulthood. Whether the authors talk about joyful memories, or sadly abusive childhood, the effect is stunning. We do not know anymore where childhood stops, and adulthood starts.

Am I returning to Philippe Ariès and his Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (1960), who put forward the idea – albeit controversial – that during medieval times childhood was not recognized as a distinct phase of human existence?

No. I am not. I merely claim that the idea of childhood is not as transient as authors such as Ray Bradbury claimed.

In many aspects, childhood never goes away. It stays with us forever.

This is what you will discover in this anthology, which contains the most beautiful, as well as the most heart-wrenching, verses one has ever read. And this is a phenomenal discovery.

Gabriela Marie Milton
author, editor, publisher

Coming Soon: Literary Revelations Publishing House

Coming soon: Literary Revelations Publishing House

Dear Readers,

It is with utmost pleasure I announce that the Literary Revelations Publishing House will open soon. It will be up and running in early November of this year.

Literary Revelations honors the memory of my mother whose passion for literature knew no limits.  

I owe a great debt of gratitude to both my parents. However, it was my mother’s love for languages, literature, and arts that permeated every fiber of my being starting very early in my childhood. That love has never left me.

I am happy to tell you that Literary Revelations has already manuscripts under consideration, and it will open with a call for an anthology. Literary Revelations will feature a poetry journal and provide services for authors such as marketing, reviews, and Spanish translations staring January 2023.

Please watch this space for more updates and the launching of the press’ website. Follow me on Twitter @shortprose1.

Have a glorious weekend everyone and let me know if you have any questions.

Below please find a paragraph describing Literary Revelations’ mission.

Literary Revelations Mission Statement [excerpt]

Our mission is to feature emerging and established authors of poetry and fiction.

We publish most poetry genres: epic, lyric, narrative, or prose poetry.  We expect work that dazzles the intellect, and delights the soul; work that makes feelings blossom into symphonies of love, beauty, and sorrow. Interpret the silence. Find the place where love was born, and tears are entombed. Be the voice of prophets. Be the soft whisper of Sakura.

Dream, create, suggest. Avoid cliches. Avoid the banal and the explicit, even if both have become trendy.  Remember “To define is to kill. To suggest is to create.” (Stéphane Mallarmé).  

We also publish fiction such as mystery, romance, fantasy, and other types. We do not publish erotica.

Remember a novel is not the mere act of outlining one thing after another. We do not look for tables of contents. We want you to love, and to suffer, with your characters.  To remember the importance of the landscape, and to look over your shoulder where the unknown lies.  Embrace it. Remember what Jorge Luis Borges said: “When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.”

Make sure you get everything right.

Gabriela Marie Milton
Pushcart Prize Nominee
#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020

The Blue Jay’s Feather by Gabriela Marie Milton #short story #literature

Image: Gabriela Marie Milton, 2022, Interior of Capela dos Ossos, Évora

Autumn. The day after Helen left for Madeira. The city’s noises vanish in a moribund sun. A paraffin lamp burns on a glass table. The light trickles on the walls like water. There is something familiar about this room. Vague scents of dried flowers. Tear-like motifs on the walls.

I hear footsteps.
I shudder.

Miguel, let’s get out of here.

He put his hand over my month.

Laughter comes from upstairs. It’s Jacques’ laughter. His and the laughter of a woman. She is not Helen. It can’t be her. Helen left yesterday. What am I thinking? The laughter can’t be Jacques’ either. He is dead. Jacques is dead.

The smell of the dried flowers Helen put on his coffin on the day of his funeral invades my nostrils.

I pull away from Miguel’s arms, my soul dark, the tightness in my throat stronger. In a mirror I replace my image with that of my mother. My voice is not mine anymore.

Miguel, with you or without you, I am getting out of here. Where is the door?

He bites his upper lip.

Anastasia, I know you are surprised.

I am enraged.

Surprised? Who? Me? If Winston Churchill would walk in this room right now, wearing Josephine Baker’s famous top hat instead of his, and Bottega Veneta stiletto sandals I would not blink an eye. From now on until the end of my days I swear nothing is going to surprise me anymore.

The light from his eyes vanishes.

Anastasia, how many times have you asked me for the truth?

I shout.

Oh, the truth. Stories masquerading reality: the plot, the characters, the setting, the conflict, the theme. Spare me the banalities. I do not need your truth anymore. I want to get out of here. There are dead people in here, or ghosts, or whatever. I want out.

Anastasia…. Listen…

The geometry of the space changes. Through a little square cut from nothingness, I see a lonely blue jay feather floating in the sky.

Paraffin and dried flowers.

Was Jacques dead?

*draft – modified version of The Blue Jay’s Feather, a piece published in my #1 Amazon Bestselling Book: Woman: Splendor and Sorrow I: Love Poems and Poetic Prose.

Announcements:

  • I wrote in a previous post that I was going to launch a new project in mid-October. Thank you to all my followers who expressed interest. The launching may come a bit later due to circumstances that are out of my control. Please be patient. Much love to all of you.

  • I am deeply grateful to everyone who reads and supports my work. Your likes, comments and shares brighten my days. Thank you to those of you who brought to my attention that my posts are getting reproduced on some WP sites on their entirety without my permission and without any links to my original work. To the very few of my followers who do that a gentle reminder for now: unauthorized use and/or duplication of my posts without express and written permission from me is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank you.

Gabriela Marie Milton
Pushcart Prize Nominee
#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020.

Young Autumn by Gabriela Marie Milton #poetic prose #short story #literature

image: Gabriela Marie Milton

Lethargic trees, nights dripping verses in our bed, Baudelaire’s ennui silhouetted against my soul. A young autumn, breasts stuck to the moon, cloudy eyes caught between sunrise and sunset.

There are too many eyes in this place: mine, yours, those of the portraits and the photographs on the walls, why do we have so many portraits and photographs?

Facing the armoire, left arm under your head, you sleep. Black dahlias invade the bedroom. I listen to the sound of nothingness.

I sit in front of the computer. On the screen, Sebastian’s letter.

Anastasia, I have no idea why Jacques fell in love with you. Your mild manners, your lipstick always in the right place, banal essences of Coco Channel on your clothes. Why do you dress in black all the time? Oh, wait, I know, Baudelaire, À une passante,  

La rue assourdissante autour de moi hurlait.
Longue, mince, en grand deuil, douleur majestueuse,
Une femme passa, d’une main fastueuse
Soulevant, balançant le feston et l’ourlet

That’s the way you got Jacques. Soft black fabrics, mixtures of innocence and mysteries, the majestic air of an untouchable nun burning with desires.

I try fitting in one of your dresses. Why do you pick taffeta all the time? It’s so yesterday.

I look down. Ravishing view from your balcony. The moon bathes in the water, nightingales sing, the air is soft like the touch of a virgin… Beauty and then forever night… How I long for the forever night… the black of your dresses…

I am not in our bedroom anymore. I hang onto the balustrade of my condo’s balcony. Void. Impulses of self-destruction. I taste their ashes.  A mannequin floats in the air. I am scared…

Jacques’ arms wrap around my shoulders.

Anastasia what are you doing in front of the computer?  It’s 3am. Back to bed.

Sebastian….  Sebastian’s letter on the screen…. Read it.

What letter, love? There is no letter on the screen. There’s a website that says, “Travel to Corsica.”

*draft

Gabriela Marie Milton
Pushcart Prize Nominee
#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020.

My name is Gabriela (II) #flash fiction #short prose #poetic prose

Head of a Woman’ by Jean Jacques Henner, Public Domain

Flash Fiction by Gabriela Marie Milton

My name is Gabriela. Papa used to call me Marie.

One night the moon stretched in our bed, its lips sultry, its breasts soft like two humongous cotton candies bought by the Holyoke Merry-Go-Round Carousel. That night your cascading laughter made all naked desires hide under the bed. I tried to drag them out. I couldn’t.

Later, head on your shoulder I looked at the stars through the broken ceiling, my eyes plagued by an inexorable yearning to prove my existence. I don’t know why. Those who want to prove their existence live in the realm of the inexistent. They are bizarre people who write love letters to themselves trying to deceive others.  Any trick is a cry for recognition. Any cry for recognition is a basic assertion of impotence.

What was I doing? Oh, I was trying to get into my red dress. I couldn’t get it over my hips. The humidity of the night must have made it stick to my skin. Did you laugh again?  Stop. Put your shirt on. We’re going out.

Anyway, I was talking about the absence of existence itself which always leads to sorcery. The skin of an eel caught in the spring, dried, stuffed with rose petals and rosemary, chopped and hidden behind the head of the bed. A night spent in that bed will haunt the two lovers for life. Like I haunt you.  

How did you call me? Why did you use that name? Yes, it is my first name, but nobody uses it. Everyone calls me Gabriela.

Stop calling me Anastasia. I am not resurrected yet. I don’t know who Anastasia is. I’ve never met her. But don’t get fooled. That doesn’t make her less dangerous than me.

Follow me on Twitter here.

Thank you.

Gabriela Marie Milton
#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings

Cruel Sunsets by Gabriela Marie Milton #poem #poetry #short prose

 Anna Ismagilova; Shutterstock

Cruel Sunsets by Gabriela Marie Milton

Summer sunsets with their cruel debaucheries of orange and purple. Concentrated scents of saffron and roses in the hallways. Dates filled with marzipan.  I crave sweetness like I crave you.

Nightmares. A sailor drowned a cat at sea. Someone paid him to do it.

I cannot breathe anymore.  

Last night in one of the upstairs bedrooms the child’s toys changed places. A candle lit by itself.

I do not wish you were here. I am beyond that. My blood flows in the opposite direction. I am the plenitude of my febrilities. I am incandescent.

Remember that scene from Jane Eyre? We discussed. Bertha: beautiful, exotic, insane, locked in a room. Bertha whom Rochester married in Jamaica. Every time he tried to open the door she would rush to tear him apart. Why am I thinking Bertha?

I can see you walking in the streets of another continent. I can hear your murmurs by the sea.

I still cannot breathe.

My darling, “will you still be loving me when the summer is gone?” 

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:

Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology (ed.), Literary Revelations, 2023
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020

Bewitched #poem #poetry collection

 ch123; Shutterstock

Included in my poetry collection Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings.

perhaps I was bewitched by the North Star
or by a ballad as dateless as my blood
geography of feelings populates unwanted interludes
my eyes, the nests of dewy grass and leaves
emerald eyelashes flaunt
black taffeta chirps between my fingers like piano keys
inside my soul your kisses soar
soft lilac tones like prayers of the youngest nun
perhaps because I read your poetry last night
and cut my soul between a stanza and a strife
perhaps a child played with a kite
a kingdom for a sup
maybe it was the wind
that woke me up

Passions featured in San Francisco Book Review
Passions featured in Manhattan Book Review.

Amor, Amore, Mon Amour – A Poem From My Poetry Collection Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings

 Liliya Kulianionak; Shutterstock
amor, amore, mon amouramor, amore, mon amour
love strikes like the Mistral in Saint-Tropez
winds, hallucinations of pianos,
decide to howl in D major
enigmas move inside the wombs
incubations murmur under the phases of the moon
bewitched, allegories of love raise odes to exasperated nudes
a prophet gazes at a virgin sybil
whose liquid eyes foretold our love in gold
reflections, lava of our souls,
a mirror hangs itself onto the wall in the red room
a phoenix rises
our bodies drown
into the liquid time of the Mediterranean
amor, amore, mon amour
the splendid flesh of a gestating poem
washes our singular and frenzied souls
amore colpisce come il maestrale
nei venti di Saint-Tropez, allucinazioni di pianoforti
decidono di ululare in re,
enigmi maggiori muovono dentro l’intimo:
mormorio, incubazioni sotto le fasi della luna
stregate allegorie d’amore sollevano ondine a nudi esasperati
un profeta guarda una vergine sibilla
i cui occhi liquidi predissero il nostro amore
nei riflessi dorati, lava delle nostre anime,
uno specchio appeso al muro nella stanza rossa
una fenice solleva
i nostri corpi affogati
nel tempo liquido del mediterraneo
amor, amore, mon amour 
la splendida carne di un poema in gestazione
lava le nostre anime singolari e frenetiche

Italian translation by Flavio Almerighi.

Passions featured in San Francisco Book Review
Passions featured in Manhattan Book Review.

@Gabriela Marie Milton

The Ides of October #poem #poetry #poetry collection

 

I paid for all the happiness that was bestowed upon us by the Ides of October.
I used to feel the presence of the child all around me.
A woman said I should pick a piece of slough cast by a snake and wear it against my skin.
I did it.
Flushed as a young peach every sunset became a resurrection.
Roses wrapped around my waist and later in June the child was born.

 

A new October sets our pictures on the Spanish chest.
Emotions animate your cheeks.
Every night above the trees the moon nurses the stars.
When I see cocoons of the larvae, I think silk as soft as the hair of the child.
When I say I love you, I think death as the harbinger of birth.
Your lips tremble and your voice flattens.
I know you love me.
With nude fingers the Ides of October betroth us again.

[Ides as the 15th day in March, May, July, and October according to the Roman calendar]

 

My poetry collection Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings is available on Amazon here .
Passions featured in San Francisco Book Review
Passions featured in Manhattan Book Review.

image:  Maria Okolnichnikova; Shutterstock; [link]

@Gabriela Marie Milton

lilies of the valley #poem #prose poem #short prose #poetry collection

I can see the woman who assumes things. Every night she picks the flowers that I throw on the road: withered lilies of the valley. She wants to be me. She wants my blood. She does not know I rearranged the bell-shaped whites so no one else can breathe their sweet scents. No one else can be me. No one else can make you, you.

The woman puts the withered flowers in her bag.

A new moon rises over her left shoulder. Bad luck.

I shiver.

I rush to protect her.

I stumble.

Before he died my father said:

If you try to do justice to the wicked, you will forget to do justice to the virtuous. And if you forget to do justice to the virtuous you only work for yourself. That is the biggest sin of all.

I have to think again.

 

My poetry collection Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings is available on Amazon here .
Passions featured in San Francisco Book Review
Passions featured in Manhattan Book Review.
image: Sandratsky Dmitriy; Shutterstock; [link]

@Gabriela Marie Milton