CastleDeepBooks and loveandwords.com announces the dual release of Cassandra Tribe’s collection as cd, softcover and ebook with audio.
109 pages
ISBN 978-0-615-25620-7
Library of Congress PCN 2008909591
“Raise your head
and look forward, Angel,
let the ash
fall from your eyes.
Stand in balance
with not a word said,
and let the constellation
of your life rise . . .”
download preview
softcover $6.95
cd/itunes
ebook with audio $3.98
ebook $1.98
The Perfect Duet
What you don’t expect when you meet Cassandra Tribe is the sense of humor that bubbles beneath the surface. The same poet who has moved her audiences to tears with “Leela Raquel” and made hearts ache with “the dreams of bees”, the same hand that wrote the frightening social commentary “Monster” - is fun to be around. You would expect someone capable of describing forgiveness as a monster sitting on a throne made of “children bound together” to be a bit more dark. Instead, you find a woman who not only is self possessed and has an immediate sense of humor, but who radiates a kind of joy and interest in life that is nothing less than infectious. People stare at her and you get the sense that they’d like to sit down and join the conversation.
“I wanted to do a live album.” Tribe says over coffee, “I had just come off helping host an open mic and had begun to do more and more internet radio and I wanted to take my writing somewhere different. What needed to be said needed a different voice and it turned out to be my own.”
Recorded in a church in outside Magdalena, New Mexico, “Angel” has only five tracks, but these five come together to form almost 40 minutes of material.
“You don’t show up on someone’s stage and do a 14 minute piece unless they are expecting it. The cd let me take some of my newer pieces and give the words the time that they needed.”
The result is a cd of poetry that grabs your attention with her performance and moves you, sometimes beyond your comfort zone, with the power of her writing. She has drawn comparisons to Edgar Allen Poe and Anne Sexton and her stage presence brings to mind a young David Bowie. There is something about her that commands attention. All Tribe has to do is walk to the mic and the sense of expectation that takes over the audience is palpable. I saw her perform “the dreams of bees” in a bar and by the end, every pool stick was down, beers were forgotten and every person in that building hung on her voice. I turned to the man beside me and asked him what he thought and he said, “I don’t even like poetry, I wouldn’t have even come out tonight if I had known this was going on but it’s like there is a reason I am here tonight and I am hearing this.”
“The book was a fluke, “ she says, “ when I was sending the cd out for opinions I kept hearing from people that they wanted to see the text. So I thought I would put a small booklet in with the cd but “Monster” alone would have filled the case. One thing led to another and suddenly, one of the people I had asked to preview the cd, who was a publisher, said it has to have a book. And there it is. It was a nightmare pulling off the book in the same time frame as the cd, these things usually take months. We created the imprint CastleDeepBooks to marry the two projects and distribute them together.”
The book, “The Greedy Heart”. contains all the pieces on the cd and twelve others, including the acerbic title piece. Yet it is her version of Ovid’s morality tale, Baucis and Philemon, that takes center stage. Perhaps one of the best contemporary versions ever written, Tribe doesn’t bother retelling the tale (except in an author’s note) she plunges into the very last moment of their lives and reveals the inner secrets of their hearts. In her hands it becomes possible to have the kind of love that creates a story that will be told until the end of time. The ability she gives her audience to hold her words and listen to them is an experience that begins to allow the layers of her meaning to come to the fore.
“What is important, “ she says rising from the small table, “is that you keep trying to find out who you are and how to live. All of that is changing and evolving with every moment. Its much easier to demand the past or hope for the future, the challenge is to become willing to be present.”
Cassandra Tribe has managed to create the perfect duet with the simultaneous release of her third cd, “Angel” and the book, “The Greedy Heart”. Both are distributed in digital and hard copy on indieryhthm.com and on her website, loveandwords.com. Starting in December of ’08, Tribe launches on what she describes as a “long, slow tour” beginning in Chicago and ending in Montreal appearing in a series of invitation only venues that have been sold out since August. She has intermittent radio appearances planned throughout the year. and plans on “popping in” on open mics in areas she is performing. You can try to keep up with her through her popular and award winning blog, love and words.
(A. Baumgarden, New World Review, Volume 12, Issue 3, October 200
"What's your Tribe? The one who speaks the words of longing you didn't even know existed inside you, or the one that scares the pants off you with the mirror that she holds up to reveal your dark potential? Just perfect..."(James Duckworth)
Put your hand out, let Cassandra Tribe walk you though this journey. She will be your reflection on this trip to reality. “Angel,” Tribe’s new collection of poetry explores the human condition, from the painful ebb and flow of love to the uncertainty of living in a world where “Our poets are silent/Our singers drunk.”
Tribe, lends her audience a didactic and Humanistic view of the world, whether it is through her poetry, essays or her daily blog. One stand-out poem by Tribe, the epic-length “Monster,” urges readers to face the harsh reality that comes with being irresponsible in life—the false gods and monsters created by blind acceptance.
(Vagner Revol, Poet Tree Magazine)
Her reading of Monster is bone chilling…not until near the end, when she begins to reveal glimpses of the humanity that lives within the monster does the piece change from a horrific cant worthy of Poe, to an epic tale of infinite loss and caution…brilliant.
(Jackson Willet, DarkCorners)
The dreams of bees, there is power there, this will get lots of play.
(Most Vocal Poets Society, Canada)
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