Description
Just Like Oz:
Essays on a Few Poet Wizards & Their Multifaceted Magic
by George Drew
ISBN: 9781956440126 Paperback $20.95
ISBN: 9781956440133 ebook $9.99
6 x 9″, 158 pp.
Essays / Literary criticism
October 2022
Just Like Oz, a book consisting of eighteen essays, some short and some long, mostly examines the work of “wizard poets,” some well-known and even iconic, a few unknown to the wider literary community. George Drew’s purpose is to take a deep critical dive into the art of poetry by analyzing the work of those wizard poets and, in doing so, praising them and their shimmering art. For those poets, Drew shows us, the poetic flood flowered. For readers, these essays provide a kind of yellow brick road into an Oz of truth and beauty that is the magic realm of poetry.
George Drew is the author of nine poetry collections, including Pastoral Habits: New and Selected Poems and The View from Jackass Hill, winner of the 2010 X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, both from Texas Review Press, Fancy’s Orphan, Tiger Bark Press, and most recently Drumming Armageddon, Madville Publishing, 2020. Drew also has published a chapbook, So Many Bones: Poems of Russia. He has a new chapbook coming out titled Hog: A Delta Memoir, Bass Clef Press. He has won awards such as the South Carolina Review Poetry Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Award, the Adirondack Literary Award, the St. Petersburg Review Poetry Contest, the Knightville Poetry Contest and in 2020 the William Faulkner Literary Competition. Drew was a recipient of the Bucks County Muse Award in 2016 for contributions to the Bucks County PA. literary community. His biography appears in Mississippi Poets: A Literary Guide, U. of Mississippi Press, edited by Catherine Savage Brosman. In 2019 Drew collaborated with singer/songwriter Rick Kunz on a CD of original poetry and songs entitled A Triumph of Loneliness, KBW Music.
Friends of Madville Publishing will know that George has been a friend of the press since the beginning. We published his poetry collection, Drumming Armageddon in 2020. And he is a great friend to the other writers at Madville. George Drew Poem for Brian Petkash. George has been known to write a guest post on occasion.
kpdavis –
Students of poetry will find George Drew’s careful examinations of a handful of poets fascinating. What shines through is Drew’s own warmth and kindness, as a reader, and as a friend.