Eleanor Lerman

As a child living at The Stargazer’s Embassy bar in upstate New York, Julia Glazer’s mother had tried to introduce her to a group of space aliens but she had refused. Even after her mother’s death, Julia continued to resent her for, as she saw it, choosing the aliens over her. Now she works as a cleaning woman in New York, working as many hours as she can get, always with her disc player on to ensure that she is not bothered by these aliens who still seem determined to contact her. show more But, despite all of her efforts, she finds herself involved first with a Psychologist who believes that aliens are real and whose patients are all abductees and then with the abductees themselves.

The Stargazer’s Embassy by Eleanor Lerman is a beautifully written novel told in the first person by Julia who does not always seem a reliable narrator. The story is divided into two parts. The first is about her efforts to avoid the aliens despite how her life seems to constantly intersect with them. The second part, which begins after a tragedy caused, at least indirectly, by her refusal to admit her relationship with the aliens, is about her efforts albeit very reluctantly to finally discover what it is they want from her.

The novel is certainly about aliens but also the complex relationships between parent and child and within relationships It is also perhaps about how we try to reject realities that don’t fit into our own chosen life narrative and how tragedy and refusal to face it can affect and shape every aspect of our lives…or perhaps not. But the thing about this novel –like all good speculative fiction, it’s the kind of story that raises questions beyond the narrative and makes the reader think long after they have finished reading it.

Thanks to Netgalley and Mayapple Press for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review show less

When an old man’s body betrays him, he’s suddenly faced with the fact that, like his own father, he’s no longer young. But at least he can cope on his own. And at least he can still visit his father. And at least he can still make new friends even if old ones have disappeared.

Meanwhile a woman faces the fact that the body which always betrayed her is still treacherous. Once just another boy in school, now she’s a woman who knows she’ll never quite be who she seems. An even older show more man, the father, is betrayed by memory’s frailty, but perhaps not as lost as he seems. And the ghost just wants some recognition for who he really was.

Perhaps it’s magical realism, or perhaps it’s realism freed by a hint of magic. Either way, Satellite Street imbues its darkness with ever-present touches of light and joy. The night sky still has stars. Satellites can still be seen, even if they don’t take off on schedule. Deceivers can still be deceived. And strangers can help each other. Godzilla stomps on the tee-shirt and in dreams, while protagonist Paul Marden travels from rundown beach to big-city and back again. Meanwhile a story that wanders evocatively through times and places, ends exactly where it should—with light and joy relaunched despite all the changes and dangers that lie underneath.

Disclosure: I was given a preview edition by the publisher and I offer my honest review. show less

Radiomen might be the builders of crystal sets, listening for radio echoes from foreign lands. Perhaps they’re engineers, running wires above the waves. Or maybe they’ve captured the sounds of alien transmissions. In Eleanor Lerman’s Radiomen they could be all of these. But forty-year-old Laurie just finds comfort in the sounds of her uncle’s radio after working the night shift mixing drinks. Then, one night, Laurie calls into a late-night talk-show and everything changes.

Author show more Eleanor Lerman tells this story in the totally convincing, casual, and mildly confused and amusing voice of her protagonist, giving the story an immediacy that soon has readers believing there’s a Blue Awareness cult out to get her. If they can’t get her, they might be after her uncle’s memory, her new dog, or even the guy who runs the radio show. From the far side of Queens to the pride of the rich and famous, from the wrong side of Rockaway to hints of African legends and the Dogon tribe, from now back into a history of uncles and fathers sailing the wild blue yonder with shortwave radios at their side, Radiomen captivates with casually evocative descriptions, cool commentary, wonderful dogs, and a cast of convincingly three (or more, or less) dimensional characters.

Do engrams hiss? Do memories hide? Do dogs believe in people, and do aliens pray? By the end of this wonderfully enticing tale, the biggest question is how on earth will it ever come to a close. But the author brings it to a captivating conclusion, with great good humor, passionate determination, and even a touch of curious reverence. Because, in the end, the real question is something entirely different. And without our questions, we’re adrift on a sea of radio waves.

Disclosure: I was given a free preview edition by the publisher and I offer my honest review. show less

STRANGE LIFE
by Eleanor Lerman
Mayapple Press, 2014
81 pp.

Award-winning poet, Eleanor Lerman, has the gift of writing such intimate poetry that it feels confessional, even though she never gives us personal information. That’s because her poems are about all of our private selves—the stranger inside us who will try anything, go anywhere, to find our place in this world and the next. In Ask Ed About the Coral Castle, Lerman comes right out with one of her essential questions. Where, you show more ask, where do you fit in? In Date Night in America, someone whispers, Where do you fit in? In Anonymous, “After all/ we have always been “the other.”
Strange Life is the journey of an ironic seeker who consorts with Carlos, a Nagual (Carlos Casteneda)—a human with the power to turn himself into a donkey or turkey, or, something sexier, like a puma or jaguar. The journey will take you to Virginia Beach, to the Edgar Cayce Institute “where it is promised that / All Questions Will Be Answered.” The seeker will make art and parade the artworks around, causing “the soft brown mountains where the spirits live” to write a letter that says, “they felt even more magical than they had in the old days.”
Sometimes Strange Life comes close to speculative fiction. We Have Our Dogs and Their Ancestral Blessings prepares us to survive the world’s end. And there are times that plain old good advice is sprinkled into the esoteric. And yet every poem, no matter how far out it goes, remains grounded in the everyday. In Dreamland the question is posed, “So how can it be avoided, the juxtaposition / of the household and the eternal.” Lerman’s language is full of contrasts. Who would expect to find “fanged revenant” and “the real deal” in the same poem?
Having had to memorize Joyce Kilmer’s Trees in elementary school, and always ending up the one who had to recite the line, “Upon whose bosom snow has lain,” I have never been a fan of personification, but Lerman use of this tool has won me over. Everything is alive in her poems where a raincoat can give an embrace and time sits on the couch beside you, looking heavy and dumb and the wind carries songbirds and bends the reeds in the lonely marshes.
It feels as if Lerman could give a terrific course called Science for Poets. Her poem, The Crab Nebulae, sent me to Google. Without reading her poem, I may never have known that when a star dies a violent and fiery death, it spews its innards out across the sky, creating an expanding wave of gas. And I was inspired to read about the Marfa Lights from one of her poems, ghostly lights, will o’wisps, that have been seen near U.S. Route 67 in Marfa, Texas that some believe are U.F.O’s, others the reflection of highway lights. Whatever you believe, this phenomenon makes a perfect foil for Lerman’s out-there imagination. And the title poem led me to learn about “the blue hour,” the time of twilight each morning and evening when there is neither full sunlight nor complete darkness, a time so prized by photographers that they call it “sweet light.” You can see that sweet light shape the landscape of Lerman’s poem.
I found myself as thrilled as a kid on a treasure hunt when I came across references that set off bells in my head. In the Nature and Attributes of God, I found “and starve / with the best of our generation.” (Hello, Ginsberg.) Heartbreak begins “You are not a hotel…” (Elvis Lives.) And I got to find out that Endymion was a mortal who fell in love with the moon.
For all the wit, there’s an underlying urgency to this collection. Lerman, like a soothsayer, a prophet, a rabble rouser, encourages us to start our own revolution if there isn’t one out there that fits us. Her poem, Deadpan, is a cautionary tale of what happens when we try to force ourselves into a life that doesn’t sustain us. She encourages us to support each other, to kiss the stranger. And Lerman sprinkles in good advice for anyone getting overly worried about what others think of us. “Think about satellites drifting out / of orbit beeping hello, hello, as they wander / through the starry void.” show less