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Creative Spark Gallery
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About the Book:
Beth Gulley’s poems take note of the fleeting and temporary state of society, of daily life, while simultaneously reminding us of the constants that we must not take for granted–kindness, love, and the fascinating ways of nature. These short poems are light and whimsical in their recognition of the simple pleasures, such as having McDonald’s in a foreign county, and also in their documentation of the more poignant and troublesome things, including war and other injustices.
About the Author:
Beth Gulley’s most recent books include Picking Fights in Book Club (Bottlecap Editions) and Frog Joy (Anamcara) and The Secret Life of Bubble Wrap (Alien Buddha). Some of her writing is included in The Gasconade Review, The Best of Alien Buddha, Tiny Spoon, Thorny Locust, and The Write Bridge. She teaches English at Johnson County Community College, serves on the Riverfront Reading Committee and the Writers Place board. She currently resides in Spring Hill, Kansas, which gives her easy access to Hillsdale Lake where she enjoys trail running and open water swimming. More information can be found on her blog at https://timeeasesallthings.wordpress.com/.
What Readers Are Saying:
Spritely “Helpers hang out / in the margins / hiding in plain sight” in Beth Gulley’s aptly titled poetry collection. Gulley is teacher, student, and mother seeking meaning in a world shifting beyond its limits. The once-stalwart New York Times sports section disappears in “another surprising goodbye / to an institution we took for granted.” “Nothing lasts,” she writes, “no matter how much / we wish it would / not even a fair / and balanced / Supreme Court.” But while all else changes, constants remain in the liminal space just beyond the world’s grasp. Here we find immigrants, travelers, and unexpected communities rising from the understated but sometimes surprising rhythms of daily life. Wistfulness combines with anger, love, and empathy to give In the Margins a continuity that makes this collection well worth the reader’s time.
—Dr. Patrick Dobson, author of a brief infidelity and other reveries and When the Titan Sleep and Other Dreams
Beth Gulley has long been the master of giving voice to the most profound, often most pivotal, moments in our lives, and does so with as few words as possible. The poet’s trademark brevity gives her spare words all the more impact. In the Margins might be her most ambitious and, ultimately, her most moving book to date. No subject is off-limits in this new collection. From war to love to fear to romantic relationships to a personal communion with the world as we have made it, the world we haven’t touched, and the world within the self, Gulley’s poetry gently screams from the page: you are not alone. In the Margins is a book to be read and reread as an affirmation of this. If there is a central theme to the collection, it’s that there is always a “kindness / that fills the empty space /underlining it all,” and “Sometimes / a little / is enough.” Read Beth Gulley’s In the Margins today, and just maybe your tomorrow will be that little bit brighter.
—James Benger, author of Rust Stain Reality
In the Margins is an open testimony to the care and attention required for global citizenry. From airports to classrooms and long-distance races, Beth Gulley captures the cyclical beauty of living and what it can teach us. Reminding us beauty “lives in the present, / doesn’t cling to nostalgia, / knows when to fade, / go dormant, / regenerate.”
—Huascar Medina, author of Protest as Love Poem and Un Mango Grows in Kansas
There are a lot of things to be found In the Margins, the latest collection from Beth Gulley. Sometimes it’s a memory from a balcony in San Salvador as bombs go off in the distance, to years later revived in the bombs that fall on Gaza, or Ukraine. Always a silent hope in the margins, “I hold open a space / . . . / where you also / might walk under / the safe blue sky / and forget.” There is the group of travelers bonded by their long flights in a McDonalds, and the promise of sites in the folded maps they carry, and the realization that “nobody is thinking the others / are out of place.” This is a collection of deep empathy fueled by a humanistic belief in the ability of people to connect. This is found in the way notes in the margins become their own stories. It is here, in extraordinary and ordinary flights of observation, the simplest truth is to be found; “Helpers hang out / in the margins / hiding in plain sight.”
—José Faus, author of The Life and Times of José Calderon
—Dr. Patrick Dobson, author of a brief infidelity and other reveries and When the Titan Sleep and Other Dreams
Beth Gulley has long been the master of giving voice to the most profound, often most pivotal, moments in our lives, and does so with as few words as possible. The poet’s trademark brevity gives her spare words all the more impact. In the Margins might be her most ambitious and, ultimately, her most moving book to date. No subject is off-limits in this new collection. From war to love to fear to romantic relationships to a personal communion with the world as we have made it, the world we haven’t touched, and the world within the self, Gulley’s poetry gently screams from the page: you are not alone. In the Margins is a book to be read and reread as an affirmation of this. If there is a central theme to the collection, it’s that there is always a “kindness / that fills the empty space /underlining it all,” and “Sometimes / a little / is enough.” Read Beth Gulley’s In the Margins today, and just maybe your tomorrow will be that little bit brighter.
—James Benger, author of Rust Stain Reality
In the Margins is an open testimony to the care and attention required for global citizenry. From airports to classrooms and long-distance races, Beth Gulley captures the cyclical beauty of living and what it can teach us. Reminding us beauty “lives in the present, / doesn’t cling to nostalgia, / knows when to fade, / go dormant, / regenerate.”
—Huascar Medina, author of Protest as Love Poem and Un Mango Grows in Kansas
There are a lot of things to be found In the Margins, the latest collection from Beth Gulley. Sometimes it’s a memory from a balcony in San Salvador as bombs go off in the distance, to years later revived in the bombs that fall on Gaza, or Ukraine. Always a silent hope in the margins, “I hold open a space / . . . / where you also / might walk under / the safe blue sky / and forget.” There is the group of travelers bonded by their long flights in a McDonalds, and the promise of sites in the folded maps they carry, and the realization that “nobody is thinking the others / are out of place.” This is a collection of deep empathy fueled by a humanistic belief in the ability of people to connect. This is found in the way notes in the margins become their own stories. It is here, in extraordinary and ordinary flights of observation, the simplest truth is to be found; “Helpers hang out / in the margins / hiding in plain sight.”
—José Faus, author of The Life and Times of José Calderon
