What does Diablo do after he becomes a telephone pole in the desert? Why is the smallest of the tarantulas frozen to the boulders after midnight, while the other spiders play baseball with the old man Jose? Who loved Scarletta better than angels? The Red Bowl is an archetypal fable in first person poems that will take you on a surreal and beautiful journey through the dark valleys and harrowing beauty of the taboo aspects of human desires--before its startling and unexpected end.
Praise for The Red Bowl
“Holaday Mason’s The Red Bowl: A Fable in Poems is a blow against poetic narcissism, an audacious and successful example of a lyric voice transcending the self and engaging the messy glory of this world. To get some sense of the lyric / dramatic adventure that awaits the reader, imagine a previously unpublished Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel printed not on paper, but on multicolored porcelain. Imagine that porcelain falling onto a stone floor, scattering in a kinetic burst. Imagine Joni Mitchell gathering together the richest, most startling pieces of this porcelain novel and reassembling them into a set of musical monologues that compress the novel’s emotional and spiritual essences. Now, remove the echoes of Garcia Marquez and Mitchell, and prepare for Holaday Mason’s
uniquely passionate voice to give life to characters you have never met before.”
--James Cushing
For full press release click here
Praise for The Red Bowl
“Holaday Mason’s The Red Bowl: A Fable in Poems is a blow against poetic narcissism, an audacious and successful example of a lyric voice transcending the self and engaging the messy glory of this world. To get some sense of the lyric / dramatic adventure that awaits the reader, imagine a previously unpublished Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel printed not on paper, but on multicolored porcelain. Imagine that porcelain falling onto a stone floor, scattering in a kinetic burst. Imagine Joni Mitchell gathering together the richest, most startling pieces of this porcelain novel and reassembling them into a set of musical monologues that compress the novel’s emotional and spiritual essences. Now, remove the echoes of Garcia Marquez and Mitchell, and prepare for Holaday Mason’s
uniquely passionate voice to give life to characters you have never met before.”
--James Cushing
For full press release click here
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The She Series: A Venice Correspondence
Praise... Holaday Mason and Sarah Maclay's spirited, aptly-titled collaboration, The She Series: A Venice Correspondence, reads like a dream image that totally alters your day, and that, even days later, has everything to do with you. In these ghostly pages, She is, and is again—mesmerizing, gorgeously-wrought, and alone. She is desire—lushly so, wholly-present, and unrequited. And She is in touch with everything in this life, as in a dream—the way talking out loud, to somebody else, keeps it real. --Ralph Angel, author of, Neither World & Your Moon In this book the poetic voices of Holaday Mason and Sarah Maclay reveal a multifaceted universe—almost painfully private—where “She” appears as a dream-like composite of sexuality, longing, awareness and courage. This book is an unapologetic body, an incandescent house in the middle of the night. We read the poems of Mason and Maclay and we are mesmerized by what is born in-between: a third voice (an interlanguage) made of echoes, identities, silence, and sparks of humor. The voices converse in an oblique dialogue that creates a new space, a new, fragmented poem that keeps multiplying its meanings. It is in this sensual, forceful interlanguage where the reader gets immersed, transformed. Ultimately, where the reader becomes “She”. --Marianno Zaro, Author of Tres Letras & The House at Mae Rim |
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The anthology Angle of Reflection (Arctos Press), featuring the work of poets Marjorie Becker, Jeanette Clough, Dina Hardy, Paul Lieber, Sarah Maclay, Holaday Mason, Jim Natal, Jan Wesley, Brenda Yates, and Mariano Zaro, with an Introduction by David St. John.
“Wisely, ... [these poets have] understood the ways a group anthology could go beyond a mere showcase of their writing.” — David St. John, author of The Face and The Auroras “The poems in Angle of Reflection are... sensuous and savvy, and the interaction between inner and outer landscapes is consistently mesmerizing.” — Gail Wronsky, author of So Quick Bright Things “This anthology covers tremendous ground.” — Chris Abani, author of Sanctificum and Hands Washing Water |
Holaday is the author of five collections of poetry, "Towards the Forest" & “Dissolve” (University of Minnesota, New River Press 2007, 2011),“ Light Spilling From Its Own Cup” (Inevitable Press, 1999) & “Interlude” (Far Star Fire Press, 2001). “The Red Bowl: a Fable in Poems", published May 016 with Red Hen Press is available in book and audio format. “The “She” Series, A Venice Correspondence” (with Sarah Maclay) is due on What Books, fall 016. “ The Weaver’s Body” was finalist & won honorable mention for 014 Dorset Prize & her chapbook “ Transparency” was a finalist for the Snowbound 2015. Pushcart nominee, publications include, Poetry International, American Literary Review, Pool, Smartish Pace, Runes, Solo, The River Styx, The Spoon River Review, The Laurel Review, Spillway. She worked as co-editor of Echo 68, poetry editor of Mentalshoes.com & her photography has graced many websites and books.
She lives in Venice California where there are marvelous flocks of wild green parrots, uniquely evolved from many species of lost or runway domestic birds, making a new, beautiful & constantly changing breed.
Contact info:
310 850 2461* [email protected]
She lives in Venice California where there are marvelous flocks of wild green parrots, uniquely evolved from many species of lost or runway domestic birds, making a new, beautiful & constantly changing breed.
Contact info:
310 850 2461* [email protected]
The following books are in Limited Print,
please contact us to purchase
please contact us to purchase
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Reviews
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Reading Holaday Mason's Towards the Forest, one feels in the hands of someone driven, someone who knows her way around the interior life of the mind and the imagination, one who takes risks and is brave. There's not a false note or false step, each emotion deeply felt and ringing true. In images memorable and sharp as cut-glass, she lays down her "beauties" in ways that reverberate, leading us to a fish that surprises—like the cop hidden behind the billboard—because we didn't expect truth's reckoning to be waiting there for us. My impression on first reading this collection and with each subsequent reading was "Wow! This is poetry." Alice Friman, author of The View from Saturn", Vinculum and The Book of the Rotten Daughter.
"These are poems that examine the strangeness of the self, the hardships of a shared life with someone we can't help hurting or being hurt by, the pain of living without and the grappling with lost love, the way such loss shadows us, 'the new companion that follows.' Mason is a poet who knows 'the limits of language/fill the sky,' and it is into that vastness that she breathes these daring, beautiful words." Natasha Trethewey, author of Domestic Work and Bellocq's Ophelia
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The landscape of Holaday Mason's poems is most often a haunted, nocturnal landscape, a landscape of broken dreaming and calling blossoms, of shadows that shift with the wind, an erotic and dangerous and beautiful place. Mason shows us a world that's dark and graceful, full of human doom, and of love. She writes with a breathtaking—sometimes breathless—lyricism, with extravagant passion and with unflinching nerve.
Cecilia Woloch author of Sacrifice, Tsigan and Late In her heartbreaking and wondrous new collection, Dissolve, Holaday Mason accomplishes the seemingly impossible act of making the unraveling of marriage into a theater of luminous wisdom. In showing us how love itself is often insoluble even in the grieving for a past, she illuminates the complex process of reckoning and forgiveness... Elegant in their composure and electric in their passions, these poems combine to make a try extraordinary collection. David St. John, author of The Red Leaves of Night, The Face: A Novella in Verse and Prism.
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