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Little Spells
"The beginning should eat the eyes." With intimate and imagistic language, the start of Little Spells offers a graceful meditation on how to write a poem, drawing us into a poetry collection filled with humor and sorrow and the bright details of a hyphen-American life. Also a journalist, Emma Trelles is a Cuban-American writer accustomed to crossing cultures, and these poems wind with equal ease between a host of settings, and with a lens trained on the magic of the ordinary. Urban hamlets are painted as fables and saints and musicians offer salvation, as do intricate women, the green wilds of Florida and a spry attention to the beauty of words. - GOSS 183 press
34 pages, Paperback
First published October 9, 2008
34 people want to read
About the author
Emma Trelles
17 books34 followersEmma Trelles is the author of the poetry chapbook Little Spells (GOSS183) and the full-length collection Tropicalia (University of Notre Dame Press) — winner of the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize and a finalist for ForeWord Reviews/IndieFab poetry book of the year. Her poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review; Miramar; Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity; Poet Lore; The Best American Poetry; PoetsArtists; Best of the Net; the Miami Herald; & others. She has taught creative writing workshops at Antioch University, PINTURA/PALABRA, an ekphrastic project sponsored by Letras Latinas/Institute for Latino Studies at Notre Dame; the Sanibel Island Writers Conference; The Center for Literature and Theatre in Miami; and Florida International University. She is the receipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship in poetry from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs & now lives with her husband in Santa Barbara, where she programs the Mission Poetry Series.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 10, 2008
'Everything looks better in a poem...'
LITTLE SPELLS is a book of poems that is just what its title suggests: observations of the ordinary made extraordinary in the gifted mind and pen of Emma Trelles. In this collection of 22 poems Trelles manages to ponder love found or desired or lost, survey the intoxicating flora and fauna of Florida, recall childhood in the tastiest ways, and tell short stories of strange incidents in the format of a few lines of free verse poetry. Her command of descriptive vocabulary astonishes without pushing us away for lack of immediate recognition - and she asks (or expects) her reader to think! Refreshing work, this.
For this reader the joy of Emma Trelles is the return to poems that sparkle with descriptive atmosphere much the way memories of favorite places nudge us to return. In HEADING INTO THE EVERGLADES she weaves
'The road rivers through two horizons,
palmetto and dragonflies flower the ground
by the highway that threads through the cypress.'
In IN AN ALCOVE BETWEEN THE BEACON AND THE AVALON she paints
'...the sky
chalked cobalt and plum, everything
rose-soaked until the very air is watercolored solace.'
In FROM THE SHORECREST, MIAMI BEACH she playfully wanders through her memories of childhood and after
in '....this place where the sky at dusk is an altar
Chagall would have painted with his plain-faced angels.'
At once witty, nostalgic, romantic and funny, Emma Trelles offers Little Spells in every poem she writes. This is an important American poet. Reader Alert! Grady Harp
LITTLE SPELLS is a book of poems that is just what its title suggests: observations of the ordinary made extraordinary in the gifted mind and pen of Emma Trelles. In this collection of 22 poems Trelles manages to ponder love found or desired or lost, survey the intoxicating flora and fauna of Florida, recall childhood in the tastiest ways, and tell short stories of strange incidents in the format of a few lines of free verse poetry. Her command of descriptive vocabulary astonishes without pushing us away for lack of immediate recognition - and she asks (or expects) her reader to think! Refreshing work, this.
For this reader the joy of Emma Trelles is the return to poems that sparkle with descriptive atmosphere much the way memories of favorite places nudge us to return. In HEADING INTO THE EVERGLADES she weaves
'The road rivers through two horizons,
palmetto and dragonflies flower the ground
by the highway that threads through the cypress.'
In IN AN ALCOVE BETWEEN THE BEACON AND THE AVALON she paints
'...the sky
chalked cobalt and plum, everything
rose-soaked until the very air is watercolored solace.'
In FROM THE SHORECREST, MIAMI BEACH she playfully wanders through her memories of childhood and after
in '....this place where the sky at dusk is an altar
Chagall would have painted with his plain-faced angels.'
At once witty, nostalgic, romantic and funny, Emma Trelles offers Little Spells in every poem she writes. This is an important American poet. Reader Alert! Grady Harp
October 16, 2008
I just read this book and was spellbound (as the title certainly predicted, in my case). I also admit to suffering a huge case of 'poem envy' reading Emma Trelles' book. She's good! She's better than good. It's a book that let me walk along with her and want to continue that walk long after it was over.
In 'From The Shorecrest, Miami Beach' she says
You wrote your way out of central Florida
land of camshafts and juke-punch palms
an otherness so thick it sealed
your mouth with alien-dust.
Mine was a death-by-Cuban-good-girl rules:
And in 'Chicken Lady'
You pay a price for spackle and spit,
for rent, Raid, utilities. Then the drop-kick fee
no one tells you about for living
in the guts of your city.
It can pick your skull clean.
and further down, after she moves...
guilotine window and invisible neightbors.
The cats are collared, the garbage doubles as sculpture.
I could go on, but will just say, buy this book. You won't regret it!
Pris
In 'From The Shorecrest, Miami Beach' she says
You wrote your way out of central Florida
land of camshafts and juke-punch palms
an otherness so thick it sealed
your mouth with alien-dust.
Mine was a death-by-Cuban-good-girl rules:
And in 'Chicken Lady'
You pay a price for spackle and spit,
for rent, Raid, utilities. Then the drop-kick fee
no one tells you about for living
in the guts of your city.
It can pick your skull clean.
and further down, after she moves...
guilotine window and invisible neightbors.
The cats are collared, the garbage doubles as sculpture.
I could go on, but will just say, buy this book. You won't regret it!
Pris
November 5, 2009
There are voices you can deliver your entire attention to on a gold platter. Similarly, there are poets and poems that bring you into their spell, utterly, and you don't want to be let go. Such is the poetry of Emma Trelles in this delightful collection Little Spells. I'm thinking especially of "Millificent," "What Would Have Happened If I Had Married You," "Churchill's Hideaway," "Hunger," and "Novena Poderosa."
I smile at the sacrosanct, cheekiness of "How To Write a Poem: #62."
I enjoy the beautiful, yet simple & sparse language of the "Florida Poem."
And I continue to fall deep inside the longing for reciprocity of love and the emotional swells of the poem "Love."
One of my favorite reads of 2009.
A more substantial review forthcoming.
I smile at the sacrosanct, cheekiness of "How To Write a Poem: #62."
I enjoy the beautiful, yet simple & sparse language of the "Florida Poem."
And I continue to fall deep inside the longing for reciprocity of love and the emotional swells of the poem "Love."
One of my favorite reads of 2009.
A more substantial review forthcoming.
November 28, 2010
Read and hear Little Spells online at
"The beginning should eat the eyes." With intimate and imagistic language, the start of Little Spells offers a graceful meditation on how to write a poem, drawing us into a poetry collection filled with humor and sorrow and the bright details of a hyphen-American life. Also a journalist, Emma Trelles is a Cuban-American writer accustomed to crossing cultures, and these poems wind with equal ease between a host of settings, and with a lens trained on the magic of the ordinary. Urban hamlets are painted as fables and saints and musicians offer salvation, as do intricate women, the green wilds of Florida and a spry attention to the beauty of words. - GOSS183 Press
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
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