Thaliad (Montreal: Phoenicia Publishing, 2012)Art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins

See Clive's posts on Thaliad hereBook design by   Elizabeth Adams

CONTENTS OF THALIAD PAGE ON SCRIBD:

Publisher’s description: About Thaliad Author’s note Favorite Books of 2012: THALIAD What is Thaliad? Lee Smith Excerpt from THE BRIDAL MAY chapter What is Thaliad? Midori Snyder Excerpt: a full chapter from the frame story “Beautiful and powerful” Rachel Barenblat

Excerpt: wild weather from chapter 11, THE REBEL SKY

Caustic Cover Critic weighs in Excerpt from THE FACE OF LIGHT chapter The Wellsprings of Love: Damian Walford Davies Remarkable and daring: Ellen Kushner Excerpt from the WATER LIKE A STONE chapter A flair for the mythological: Kim Bridgford Excerpt: Artist Marja-Leena Rathje picks a

passage from THE DANCER IN THE FLAME chapter

ABOUT THALIADThaliad is a post-apocalyptic tale, orchestrated in verse. Part novel, part fantasy, and always compelling, it tells the story of a group of children who make an arduous journey of escape and then settle in a deserted rural town on the shores of a beautiful lake. There, they must learn how to survive, using tools and knowledge they discover in the ruins of the town, but also how to live together. At the heart of the story is the young girl Thalia, who gradually grows to womanhood, and into the spiritual role for which she was destined.

Following in the great tradition of narrative poetry, Thaliad tells a gripping story populated with sharply-drawn, memorable characters whose struggles illuminate the complexity of human behavior from its most violent to most noble. At the same time, through its accessible language and style, the epic presents wholly contemporary questions about what is necessary not only for physical survival, but for the flourishing of the human spirit. 

Thaliad is decorated throughout with original collages by the renowned Welsh artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins.

--from Elizabeth Adams, publisher, Phoenicia Publishinghttp://www.phoeniciapublishing.com/thaliad.html

AUTHOR’S NOTE: One additional thing you might like to know while reading the excerpts and comments below is that while the main story follows Thalia and her companions, a slim outer tale frames and at times comments on the main story. This is the account of its teller, the poet-historian and librarian Emma, born many years after the events of the main story. –Marly Youmans, http://thepalaceat2.blogspot.com/p/thaliad_7.html

MARLY YOUMANS, THALIADChosen for Favorite Books of 2012, Books & Culture Magazinehttp://www.booksandculture.com/articles/webexclusives/2012/december/favorite-books.html (Marly’s 2012 novel, A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, winner of The Ferrol Sams Award, was also chosen for the list, so look under “A.”)

WHAT IS THALIAD? AN ANSWER FROM NOVELIST LEE SMITH:

In THALIAD, Marly Youmans has written a powerful and beautiful saga of seven children who escape a fiery apocalypse----though "written" is hardly the word to use, as this extraordinary account seems rather "channeled" or dreamed or imparted in a vision, told in heroic poetry of the highest calibre. Amazing, mesmerizing, filled with pithy wisdom, THALIAD is a work of genius which also seems particularly relevant to our own time.          --Lee Smith

Lee Smith is the award-wining author of 16 books of fiction. She is a recipient of the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the North Carolina Award for Literature, and a Southern Book Critics Circle Award.

THE BRIDAL MAY,Selection from Thaliad from chapter XVII:

If only, he repeated with a laugh.If we, when we were children wandering, Had gone as far as Patagonia Or borrowed ships and sailed away to sea To China, Congo, Singapore, Japan, Or stopped in port at Ivory Coast or Guam Or India or islands no one’s seen, If we had come to find the world a waste Where nothing grew and no thing held out hope, If we had tilled a countryside of ash, If we had eyed a land of pillared ice And sucked on snow for all our nourishment, If we had stumbled onto foreign thrones Or else been captured, forced to toil as slaves, I still would be your love, and you be mine. And so they married in the gothic churchWith Thalia presiding like a priestTo read the liturgy and hear the vowsAnd write their names inside the record bookWith those of many who had gone beforeAnd married in that ceremonialAnd sacred space while saints and angels stared.Maid of honor and best man played florist, Picking flowers from a ruined garden,And served as guardians of wedding peace,Their bows and shotguns left beside the door.Words echoed, wavering in emptiness:And in accordance with the purposes…First miracle at Cana, Galilee…And in accordance with God’s holy word…To live together in the covenant…Be faithful as long as you both shall live…The angel with the shattered face let inThe sun and, once, a wobbling butterflyThat made a patch of white inside the room.Beyond the doors, the end of May was gold,

Abundant living dust, persistent seed,Such lushness as they’d never seen beforeAnd hardly recognized for what it was—The promise harvest years would be ahead,For conifers and oaks, the hickoriesAnd walnuts, spruces, pines were blossomingAnd clouding air with fertile shining siltThat somersaulted in a beam of sun,That changed the spiderwebs to something rich,That kissed the surfaces of GlimmerglassAnd turned its scalloped border into gold,That moved across the air as if alive,The landscape’s bright epithalamion,The simple golden wedding of the world.

Vignette for Thaliad by Clive Hicks-Jenkins 

WHAT IS THALIAD? AN ANSWER FROM MIDORI SNYDER

. . . reminiscent of heroic epics (Homer meets Gerald Manley Hopkins), and packed with fairy tale and mythic references, Thaliad recounts the aftermath of a fiery apocalypse, and the perilous journey of a band of children led by a girl whose prophetic visions guide them to a sanctuary on the edge of a lake. Here, they confront the challenges of re-creating the world – a world illuminated by hope and love.Youmans has given . . . a wondrous text filled with richly layered and evocative poetry. Like a bardic tale, it demands to be read aloud. The images of nature are sensual, fertile, a source of healing. Violence is hammered into fierce staccato rhythms and Thalia’s ecstatic visions soar with heat and light as the human spirit is consoled by the divine. We are not spared the hardships of the journey, but through the storyteller’s voice we have confidence in our destination—it is this commitment to the angels of our better nature in Youmans' sublime poetry that gives Thaliad its power to inspire hope out of fear and love out of hate.     --Midori Snyder, "The Sublime Collaboration of Author Marly Youmans with Artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins: Thaliad," from  In the Labyrinth

THE CLAVEHere’s an excerpt from the frame story, told by Emma, at a time later than the main story:

VI. Anointed by the Clave

Year 59 After the Fire

Emma, recalling her anointing by the matriarch’s own hand,

affirms that she was named as bard and record keeper by the Clave

and so is worthy to recount the histories of Thalians.

Eleven, I was brought before the ClaveThat is the forum of full-grown adults,Each child of age is given charge to learnA mastery of all that’s meaningfulAnd needed by our tribe—of medicine,Of roofing or repairing cottagesAnd buildings, of our waterworks, of wood That fuels our houses in the wintertime,Of speaking to the world beyond this worldAnd catching souls in nets of liturgy,Of foraging beyond the bounds of home,Of fighting foes and ravening pack dogs,And all the craft for creeping through this worldOf wilderness and weather, hard to braveAnd rule without an understanding mind.They met in the glass church, where rainbow lightExpresses hope and promise to the Clave,Where fire-annealed glass figures stand aroundTo watch and bless us, and the bird in flightThat is the burning spirit of the Lord

Is caged with lead and crowned in yellow glass.They stayed me at the lych-gate, made me haltUntil the matriarch was on her throneTo ponder with the others what would beMy fate. Then one came walking with a wandOf gold that crested in the sacred crossWhere profane hours bisect the infinite,Reminding us that all our agoniesAre no more than an eye-blink in the schemeOf endlessness, that even God has borneFell shiverings as nails were slammed in flesh.She led me in that haunt of holiness,

Chaotic bulk, obscurity to eyesUntil the altar became visibleIn shade, lit solely by the light through glass,

Unearthly flesh made ravishing by sunTo stream a luminist’s enchantment forthAnd bathe me in a mist of shining motes.The matriarch looked fearsome in her robes,A ruler I had never glimpsed before,Though I had seen her daily all my life.She raised her arms and charged the Clave to beA witness to the high anointing hour,Entrusting me to labor and to serve.Her thumb that stroked the scented holy oilIn shape of time crossed by eternityWas rough as if a hand carved out of woodHad kissed my forehead with its fragrant sap.This child is now a woman of the Clave.Long we have called her Emma, bookish girlWho bends her heart toward poetry and tales,But now we shall devote her to the wordAnd deed her to the first of useless things,The ones that jar the soul but are not drinkOr hoe or medicine or daily bread,Though some go ill and hungering for them.Today we name her Emma, Bard of Clave,Who’ll make a record of our passing years,As if the stone of the philosophersWere letters, ink and pen, or printing pressTo transmute copper coin of hours to gold:I charge her now to speak of us in wordsTranslucent to the people, yet aspireTo flower into syllables of joyAnd sorrow like the famous bards of oldWho knew their tools and unashamed to singInspired by holy spirit or the museDanced on rhythmic feet into the twilight.And also I enjoin her to becomeHigh Storyteller of the fallen world,Preserver of the knowledge of the past,Librarian of Clave, to judge the booksAnd winnow dross, to forage for the bestIn dangerous far regions of the land,

To guide our children in the paths of tasteAnd learning, for the coming world shall beMade better than the one that died before—So save the best of the inheritanceAncestors passed to us, encourage hopeThat we in time can learn to speak as wellAs they. Despite the rigor of this life,I have long loved our little library,And wish that all my children’s children gainA care for books and culture so we may

Be civilized, upholding right and law,Embellishing our lives with graciousness.

I tire, remembering the matriarch,The moments when she taxed me to pursueImpossibles, the pegasus of art,The mastery of verse, the libraryWith all the stored-up wisdom of the world,And so the trivial floats into mindAs I recall a gown of champagne silk

My mother foraged from a dead girl’s house:How delicate it was, the bodice richWith seeded pearl, the rest a blossomingOf cloth in petal on petal, swathed in tulle . . .For years I have been forager of booksAnd ventured out with sword and shield and flameOn quests that roving gangs of dogs despise,A blade and buckler to defend my back, Exploring libraries now tenantedBy owls, their scholars only ghosts of dustTo make me tremble at a touch of breathAnd whirl abruptly in familiar fear,Half longing for a solid face and formTo then resolve from shadows of a room.But this is not my tale. All I’ve declaredWas said to prove that I am rightful bard,Anointed by the hand of Thalia,

Although I’m not yet worthy of the taskAnd hardly fit to speak high historiesOf matriarch or seven Thalians,Orphaned children wandering in blindness,

And how they came to settle on this shore

When world’s so wide. The sparkles of a fireBeside the lapping endlessness of lakeAscend, and children clamor for accountsOf journeying and risk and dire mistake,And so I shape the words in mind: begin.

BEAUTIFUL AND POWERFUL EPIC

The epic form is not an easy one, and in lesser hands this audacious project would have failed . . . but Marly makes it work. The subject matter, post-apocalyptic survival, is grand enough to merit the form she's chosen--and the children's journey is told with deep sentiment but no cloying sentimentality. This is a beautiful and powerful book--worth owning, worth reading and rereading. I am so glad that it exists in the world and that I can turn to it, time and again, glorying in the language and the hope.   --Rachel Barenblat, "Marly Youmans' Thaliad," from Velveteen Rabbi

Vignette for Thaliad by Clive Hicks-Jenkins

WILD WEATHER FROM CHAPTER 11, THE REBEL SKY

The roses blossomed on heat’s latticesIn blues no earthly rose could conjure up—Great cabbage roses, bruising cumulusWith pearly dew that sluiced the prickled stemsAnd, sliding on cold streams within the air,Vaulted from a moveable precipice To slam from heights on wind-lashed surfacesAs lightning’s forests sprouted upside down. Somewhere impossible to breathe and be,Where cataracts are ring-tailed roarers seizedAnd then let go, where hail is grown from dustLike instant pearls to rattle in the sky.A power struck war hammers on the roseAnd rock of anvil-clouds: the rain obscured,Erased the land, ascended as a mist.

CAUSTIC COVER CRITIC WEIGHS IN

A while ago I was looking at a poet's website and saw that her next book was a post-apocalyptic blank verse epic, with specially commissioned illustrations. Someone's written a book just for me! I thought to myself. And Marly Youmans has, it would seem, done just that: Thaliad is a marvelous work, an exciting and heartbreaking myth of origin for a society born of a clutch of children who survive a nuclear war. (Youmans' very name suggests a post-English-language attempt to write the name of our species.)     -- Caustic Cover Critic

EXCERPT: THALIA HAS A VISION, CHAPTER XII, THE FACE OF LIGHT

Fresh sunshine made a starburst where the head

That lay in dreamy pieces on the floorOnce shone, auroral work of Tiffany;

The star face brought a lightening of flesh

To Thalia until the piercing rays

Transformed her body into starriness,And rain of light made reign of light within,Till she was drowned and nameless in its flood,And there with trembling let the angel speakAt first as if she heard a shell-cupped voice,And later on as if a bell had clanged,And last in speaking silence that could shakeThe body, drive it onto knees in glass:Remember in the shadow of despairWhat you have known: the messenger of fireWho burned with syllables on water’s skin,For God is otherwise than what you dreamAnd knew your secret name before the shear

Of light, explosive kiss that birthed the starsAnd juggled planets in their whirling course—He calls your glowing name and bids you rise,No matter if the universe is scorchedRight to the root a thousand thousand times,For you must still be phoenix to the world.Again she heard her name as in a shell,The echoes fragmenting in corridorsOf nacred pearl—she walked its labyrinths,Pursuing through the shining halls and roomsThe quiet steps of someone like a star,And when she woke on blades of glass and leaves,The taste of blood was acrid in her mouthAnd world seemed muted, sluggish like a dreamIn which our limbs are helpless, stayed by forceOf something powerful and yet obscure.

THE WELLSPRINGS OF LOVE: DAMIAN WALFORD DAVIES

Daringly, Marly Youmans’ Thaliad takes the blank verse epic into post-apocalyptic territory. In its reflections on group memory and foundational myth, this is a poem that relishes the ways in which the modern teller – whether the bard Emma or Youmans herself – fashions fragile new worlds in the act of rehearsing the old. Above all, perhaps, Thaliad is a plea against violence in all its forms; a call – articulated in different voices throughout – to protect not only the wellsprings of human love, but also those of the natural world, whose ‘simple golden wedding’ we may yet experience, as long as our memory is sufficiently long, and our desire for a different future strong enough.          --Damian Walford Davies

Co-director of the Centre for Romantic Studies at Aberystwyth University (Wales), Damian Walford Davies is the author of three collections of poetry, editor of many

collections of essays, and author of a monograph and many articles about the Romantics.

Vignette by Clive Hicks-Jenkins

EXCERPT FROM XXI, THE LAKE-WASHED QUEEN(Samuel and Thalia, after tragic events):

Then Samuel in sorrow vowed to herNow I will leave and find another place,A village where my heart is not in earth,And Thalia replied to him with truth:There is no other village, is no placeTo find where your dead heart is not in earth.And still he moaned his lot, exclaimed with tears,I want to go where ground is not a waste,And where my life is not a ruined town.And Thalia with mercy answered him:In time you will begin to heal your heart

And all that seems a waste will bloom once more.But he went on in anger, blaming God,The strangers who had maundered into town,The grave that meant a stone around his neck,Until she spoke in haste against his words:For you there is only this blood-drenched ground,The murdered life that is your freight of guilt,Also the murdered life that is your own,The world that you create by how you actOr see or how you dream the world to be,Your world that’s ruined everywhere like this,Which you yourself have caused to be a waste,Which you yourself have scorched with inner fire.

EXCERPT FROM THE START OF WATER LIKE A STONE

XIX. Water Like a Stone

Years 6-7 After the Fire The winter brings back childhood to the four, though Fay is caught by dreams and shadow-phantoms make the others move uneasily through town.

December: windswept ice of GlimmerglassWas ballroom floor, adventure’s field, or road.Then Samuel unpacked a trove of fursAnd winter gear—although not NorthernersWho had the skill to swoop across the lake,They liked to teeter on the blades and laughWhenever someone blundered onto iceOr spun and dropped as quickly as the leap

Of merriment and mischief in the mind…

And Ran set out a wooden throne for Fay,A chair enlivened with carved fruit and leaves

That stayed beside the bonfire on the shoreOr else was pushed across the moonlit ice.There and everywhere she seemed more inward,Stopping wordless, hand upraised and settledOn air, with the uncellared apple heldAnd yet forgotten as she floated freeOf work and fear, her swelling body cauledIn foraged velvet gown and long mink coat.The cry of winter birds, the sudden swordsAnd rumpled panels of the northern lightsAwoke her from a dream, and then she smiledAnd played invented games with SamuelAnd Ran and Thalia, as if they wereBut children for a little while, amused By sliding smooth-worn stones across the iceOr dragging one another on a sledOr in the tiny craft that stood tiptoe

On a silver runner—they sailed the boatAlong the lake and lingered by the spireOf Kingfisher Tower, the chasmal darkAblaze with seas and riverbeds of stars.

REMARKABLE AND DARING: ELLEN KUSHNER

A remarkable and daring work of interstitial art: an epic poem of the new future than demands you read it on its own terms, and rewards you greatly for it.More to the point, it's believable: an artifact of a dystopian future that combines the best of epic poetry with modern fiction.By turns funny, insightful and deeply moving. I'd love to hear it read aloud.          --Ellen Kushner Ellen Kushner is the award-winning author of six fantasy novels and was the host of WBGH's Sound and Spirit for 14 years.

Vignette by Clive Hicks-Jenkins

A FLAIR FOR THE MYTHOLOGICAL: KIM BRIDGFORD

Marly Youmans has always had a flair for the mythological, but it is new to add the apocalyptic. Thaliad marries the end of the world to its new beginning, and does so by joining children’s literature with adult literature. The City of Ember, The Giver, The Road, The Tempest: Youmans merges genre with the symbolic truths about our lives, and comes up a long blank verse poem that speaks to suffering and hope, to cruelty and to resurrection. If we feel that the world has been lost, Youmans reminds us that “God is otherwise than what you dream / And knew your secret name before the shear / Of light, explosive kiss that birthed the stars. . . . / He calls your glowing name and bids you rise.”          --Kim Bridgford 

Author of four books of poetry, Kim Bridgford is an award-winning poet, editor of Mezzo Cammin, founder of the Women's Timeline Project, and director of the West Chester Poetry Conference.

Vignette, Clive Hicks-Jenkins

ARTIST MARJA-LEENA RATHJE PICKS A PASSAGE FROM THE DANCER IN THE FLAME

Marly's writing swept me into another world with her beautiful language and her storytelling magic. Here's one of my favourite passages:

The glare threw flames of dazzle, dazzle castUncanny aura, aura beckoned dream,And dream was drowned by day and brought tideOf gold in spilling flood, to flood the mindUntil no mind was minding anythingBut lapping radiance, and radianceRuled Glimmerglass and flashing form, the formOf something weird, making and unmaking,Unmaking Thalia till Thalia WasEmpty husk, and husk was packed with sun,And sun was sealed in trembling dark, and darkArose in dreams, and dreams made lucent night.          (from Chapter XVI, page 62-3)

To me, these words seem like waves repeatedly washing ashore. That repetition and rhythm made me think of The

Kalevala, a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Finnish and Karelian oral folklore and mythology.     --Marja-Leena Rathje, at on printworks and other passions 20 January 2013