{"id":5021,"date":"2025-03-13T15:24:53","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T15:24:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/new\/?page_id=5021"},"modified":"2025-03-28T19:24:24","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T19:24:24","slug":"w-c-fields-in-french-light","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/index.php\/w-c-fields-in-french-light\/","title":{"rendered":"W. C. Fields in French Light"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wpb-content-wrapper\">[vc_row content_placement=&#8221;bottom&#8221; css=&#8221;.vc_custom_1741873638047{margin-top: 25px !important;}&#8221;][vc_column width=&#8221;2\/3&#8243;]<style>.vcex-heading.vcex_69d46e3597352{color:#000000;font-size:24px;font-weight:700;}<\/style><h1 class=\"vcex-heading vcex-heading-plain vcex-module wpex-text-balance wpex-heading wpex-text-2xl wpex-mb-0 vcex_69d46e3597352\"><span class=\"vcex-heading-inner wpex-inline-block\">W. C. Fields in French Light<\/span><\/h1><style>.vcex-heading.vcex_69d46e35982d4{color:#000000;font-size:18px;font-weight:400;}<\/style><h2 class=\"vcex-heading vcex-heading-plain vcex-module wpex-text-balance wpex-heading wpex-text-2xl wpex-mb-20 vcex_69d46e35982d4\"><span class=\"vcex-heading-inner wpex-inline-block\">1986, Contact II Publications<\/span><\/h2><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/W-C-Fields-French-Light-Poems\/dp\/0936556145\/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.3H3F6x9bjKiYUEL_WNIcpgaj4T1KIz-k8vIlSDFqYhC-_u_uEKArcdxJypHaNjPB.3SWruZqLw28hIpBaIgsMkbk1-b5MCS5dpqhV_mY0hOk&#038;dib_tag=se&#038;keywords=W.+C.+Fields+in+French+Light&#038;qid=1741879394&#038;sr=8-1\" class=\"vcex-button theme-button grey inline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span class=\"vcex-button-inner theme-button-inner wpex-flex wpex-flex-wrap wpex-items-center wpex-justify-center\">Buy on Amazon<\/span><\/a> [vc_empty_space height=&#8221;50px&#8221;]<style>.vcex-heading.vcex_69d46e3598fb6{color:#000000;font-size:24px;font-weight:700;}<\/style><h1 class=\"vcex-heading vcex-heading-plain vcex-module wpex-text-balance wpex-heading wpex-text-2xl wpex-mb-10 vcex_69d46e3598fb6\"><span class=\"vcex-heading-inner wpex-inline-block\">Press Release by Contact II Publications<\/span><\/h1>[vc_column_text css=&#8221;&#8221; bottom_margin=&#8221;0px&#8221; color=&#8221;#000000&#8243; font_size=&#8221;14px&#8221;]Contact II Publications is proud and delighted to release Rochelle Owens&#8217; newest book, W.C. Fields in French Light, a two-poem opus bursting with vigour and charm. Ms. Owens examines life as an astronomer gazing into the vast twilight sky, poring over details with a painful honesty, yet never losing sight of the greater universe which her expansive view transforms into a celebration of poetry and life. As the Village Voice proclaims: &#8220;The shining energy, the music, the grandeur are in the writing itself, at once obsessed, knowing, flamboyant and concise.&#8221;[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=&#8221;1\/3&#8221;]<figure class=\"vcex-image vcex-module\"><div class=\"vcex-image-inner wpex-relative wpex-inline-block\"><img width=\"274\" height=\"440\" src=\"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/cover_w_c_fields.jpg\" class=\"vcex-image-img wpex-align-middle\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/cover_w_c_fields.jpg 274w, http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/cover_w_c_fields-187x300.jpg 187w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 274px) 100vw, 274px\" \/><\/div><\/figure>[\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row content_placement=&#8221;middle&#8221;][vc_column][vc_column_text css=&#8221;&#8221; bottom_margin=&#8221;30px&#8221; color=&#8221;#000000&#8243; font_size=&#8221;14px&#8221;]Taking the best from the American literary tradition, from Walt Whitman to William Carlos Williams, Ms. Owens entwines us with an epic style, remaining fully aware of the contradictions that afflict our poetic heritage and our nation. W.C. Fields is invoked as mythologized savior, leading us through the American poetic landscape:<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re a myth<\/p>\n<p>and I intend<\/p>\n<p>to utilize you.<\/p>\n<p>By cross-cutting culturally and inter-continentally, a whirlwind journey taking us from the glamor of W.C. Fields to the intimacies of W.C. Williams, from Nez Perce Indian massacre site to French countryside, Ms. Owens fulfills wonderfully Jerome Rothenberg&#8217;s description of her as a &#8220;great tribal and primitive poet,&#8221; able &#8220;to change public and private histories into primal myth.&#8221; The myth of W.C. Fields; the myth of W.C. Williams; her search for literary truth in an age of untruths and doublespeak. The chanting, almost spoken quality of these poems builds like musical movements in successive waves, ultimately overwhelming us with awe.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row content_placement=&#8221;middle&#8221;][vc_column]<div class=\"wpex-slider-preloaderimg \"><img width=\"756\" height=\"600\" src=\"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_001.jpg\" class=\"skip-lazy\" alt=\"\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_001.jpg 756w, http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_001-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 756px) 100vw, 756px\" \/><\/div><div class=\"vcex-module wpex-slider slider-pro no-margin-thumbnails vcex-image-gallery-slider\" data-thumbnails=\"true\" data-thumbnail-height=\"auto\" data-auto-play-delay=\"5000\" data-buttons=\"false\" data-animation-speed=\"600\" data-height-animation-duration=\"500\"><div class=\"wpex-slider-slides sp-slides\"><div class=\"wpex-slider-slide sp-slide\"><div class=\"wpex-slider-media\"><img width=\"756\" height=\"600\" src=\"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_001.jpg\" class=\"skip-lazy\" alt=\"\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_001.jpg 756w, http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_001-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 756px) 100vw, 756px\" \/><\/div><\/div><div class=\"wpex-slider-slide sp-slide\"><div class=\"wpex-slider-media\"><img width=\"756\" height=\"600\" src=\"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_002.jpg\" class=\"skip-lazy\" alt=\"\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_002.jpg 756w, http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_002-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 756px) 100vw, 756px\" \/><\/div><\/div><div class=\"wpex-slider-slide sp-slide\"><div class=\"wpex-slider-media\"><img width=\"756\" height=\"600\" src=\"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_003.jpg\" class=\"skip-lazy\" alt=\"\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_003.jpg 756w, http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_003-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 756px) 100vw, 756px\" \/><\/div><\/div><div class=\"wpex-slider-slide sp-slide\"><div class=\"wpex-slider-media\"><img width=\"756\" height=\"600\" src=\"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_004.jpg\" class=\"skip-lazy\" alt=\"\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" 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data-no-lazy=\"1\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_007.jpg 756w, http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_007-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 756px) 100vw, 756px\" \/><img width=\"756\" height=\"600\" src=\"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_008.jpg\" class=\"wpex-slider-thumbnail wpex-block wpex-w-100 sp-nc-thumbnail skip-lazy\" alt=\"\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_008.jpg 756w, http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_008-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 756px) 100vw, 756px\" \/><img width=\"756\" height=\"600\" src=\"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_009.jpg\" class=\"wpex-slider-thumbnail wpex-block wpex-w-100 sp-nc-thumbnail skip-lazy\" alt=\"\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_009.jpg 756w, http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_009-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 756px) 100vw, 756px\" \/><img width=\"756\" height=\"600\" src=\"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_010.jpg\" class=\"wpex-slider-thumbnail wpex-block wpex-w-100 sp-nc-thumbnail skip-lazy\" alt=\"\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_010.jpg 756w, http:\/\/rochelleowens.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/wcfields_in_french_light_010-300x238.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 756px) 100vw, 756px\" \/><\/div><\/div>[\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row content_placement=&#8221;middle&#8221;][vc_column]<style>.vcex-heading.vcex_69d46e359db34{color:#000000;font-size:24px;font-weight:700;}<\/style><h2 class=\"vcex-heading vcex-heading-plain vcex-module wpex-text-balance wpex-heading wpex-text-2xl wpex-mb-10 vcex_69d46e359db34\"><span class=\"vcex-heading-inner wpex-inline-block\">Review by Barry Silesky<\/span><\/h2>[vc_column_text css=&#8221;&#8221; bottom_margin=&#8221;30px&#8221; color=&#8221;#000000&#8243; font_size=&#8221;14px&#8221;]\n<p>The 11th book of poems by this poet and playwrite is a series of related poems\u2014really a single long poem\u2014exploring the poet&#8217;s personal history and shaping it in the context of myth. Line by line, image by image, it is an ambitious work in design and invention. The texture is surreal, &#8220;A fragment catalog paste-up\/of the 20th century\/a time lapse\/a naive father allegory&#8221; intertwining several motifs which don&#8217;t coalesce into the kind of popular unified statement we see in much current poetry, but instead are held together by recurrent themes and the considerable power of voice.<\/p>\n<p>It is an exploration of sources, where the persona is by turn &#8220;the woman as wrongly treated\/as the Nez Perce Indian,&#8221; &#8220;the lonely poet&#8221; who &#8220;speaks into the darkness\/in the voice of W.C. Fields,&#8221; &#8220;The tramping American\/revolutionary,&#8221; W.C. Williams&#8217; Flossie, at least indirectly Williams himself, &#8220;a whore\/wearing a hat with oriental frankincense\/and money tucked\/in the seams\/ &#8230; a singing sailor in jail &#8230; \/a poor cowboy,&#8221; and &#8220;Hamlet of Brooklyn&#8221;; in short, the Whitmanesque American Everyman, 1980&#8217;s version.<\/p>\n<p>Owens resists Whitman&#8217;s penchant for the grandiose, however, preferring instead a rhetoric that takes into account the complexities of experience, and renders them convincingly. For her, poetry is &#8220;the essential nucleus\/of the sphere of human\/existence&#8221;; and not surprisingly a central aspect of her experience is her relation with language and imagination: &#8220;The text is behind\/the revolution\/desperate with imagination\/eyelids, the bodily organs,\/analytic, figure-making\/The solid family-tree.&#8221; The ongoing work is the difficult coming to terms with the sprawling landscape these elements inhabit: &#8220;My voice is a prolonged\/ muscular twitch thick\/as an elephants trunk\/When will I develop\/into a form?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s no real answer to that question, nor any resolution to the difficulties the poem engages, except the poem itself. It can be a frustrating condition; but that, as they say, is life\u2014which is what the best poetry always is. This is genuinely interesting and challenging work; it deserves more attention than it will probably get.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row content_placement=&#8221;middle&#8221;][vc_column]<style>.vcex-heading.vcex_69d46e359e7a8{color:#000000;font-size:24px;font-weight:700;}<\/style><h2 class=\"vcex-heading vcex-heading-plain vcex-module wpex-text-balance wpex-heading wpex-text-2xl wpex-mb-10 vcex_69d46e359e7a8\"><span class=\"vcex-heading-inner wpex-inline-block\">The Long Poems of Rochelle Owens: Fragment Catalog Paste-Up of the Twentieth Century. Journal of Poetics Research (2016)<\/span><\/h2>[vc_column_text css=&#8221;&#8221; bottom_margin=&#8221;30px&#8221; color=&#8221;#000000&#8243; font_size=&#8221;14px&#8221;]<strong>ABSTRACT<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Journal of Poetics Research 5. The long poems of Rochelle Owens have been little explored within the developing field of studies in modern and contemporary expansive poetics. Owens\u2019 long poems present a reworking of the epic tradition. They construct a social subjectivity where voices, tonalities and subject-positions are legion. Varied in genre, style and form, they are incantatory, intersubjective, modern, ancient, monodic, lyric and choral. Professing a \u2018kaleidoscopic\u2019 sense of form, these long poems rework the details and capacities of the page, unsettling modes of reading and writing long poems, and reanimating contemporary practices of sustained reading.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.academia.edu\/29115245\/The_Long_Poems_of_Rochelle_Owens_Fragment_Catalog_Paste_Up_of_the_Twentieth_Century_Journal_of_Poetics_Research_2016_\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Click here<\/strong><\/a> to read more.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row content_placement=&#8221;bottom&#8221; css=&#8221;.vc_custom_1741873638047{margin-top: 25px !important;}&#8221;][vc_column width=&#8221;2\/3&#8243;][vc_empty_space height=&#8221;50px&#8221;][vc_column_text css=&#8221;&#8221; bottom_margin=&#8221;0px&#8221; color=&#8221;#000000&#8243; font_size=&#8221;14px&#8221;]Contact II Publications is proud and delighted to release Rochelle Owens&#8217; newest book, W.C. Fields in French Light, a two-poem opus bursting with vigour and charm. Ms. Owens examines life as an astronomer gazing into the vast twilight sky, poring over details with a painful&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5021","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","entry","no-media"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.8.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>W. C. 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