Chez Robert Giron

Gival Press is pleased to announce that Barbara Louise Ungar of Saratoga Springs, New York has won the 8th Annual Gival Press Poetry Award for her collection entitled The Origin of the Milky Way.

In addition to winning a cash prize of $1,000.00, Ungar will receive twenty copies of her book after publication, which is due to be released in early fall.

The Origin of the Milky Way was selected anonymously by Donna J. Gelagotis Lee, the winner of the award for the previous year.

Barbara Louise Ungar is the author of Thrift (WordTech Editions, 2005), which was a finalist for the May Swenson Poetry Award, the Tupelo Prize, among several others, and a chapbook Sequel (Finishing Line Press, 2004), which won honorable mention in chapbook competitions at the Center for Book Arts, ByLine Press, and Finishing Line Press, which published it in 2004 as part of the New Women’s Voices series. Her poems have appeared in Salmagundi, The Minnesota Review, The Cream City Review, The Literary Review, and many other publications. She is also the author of a chapbook, Neoclassical Barbara (Angel Fish Press, 1998) and Haiku in English (Stanford Humanities Honors Essay XXI). Born in Worcester, Massachusetts and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, she has traveled around the world, and earned degrees from Stanford University, City College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. An associate professor of English at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, she lives in Saratoga Springs with her young son Izaak.

Finalists:

The Myth of Photography
by Rick Bursky of North Hollywood, California.

History Lessons
by Jennifer Pruden Colligan of Nausau, New York.

A Superstitious Atheist
by Robert Miltner of Canton, Ohio.

Confluences: Indian Women, Indian Goddesses Poems
by Nishi Chawla of Bethesda, Maryland.
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Mother's Day at the Washington National Opera this afternoon was not your typical Sunday fare. Jenufa by Leos Janacek gives a new meaning to dear olde mother. Without giving the complete plot away, lets just say that it's not an opera that most mothers want their children to remember them by.

Sung in Czech, the performance was wonderful and Patricia Racette in the role of Jenufa was superb. As you might have gathered, the opera is troubling but the music is so enchanting that the singing is perfectly in sync that one doesn't even notice the singers' breathing. This led me to think: I wonder what this opera would sound like in another language? But Janacek so tightly fit the music to the singing that the effect would ruin the opera, I believe.

The lovers, Kim Begley as Laca and Raymond Very as Steva were perfectly cast not only for the breadth of their voices but also for their visual attractiveness. No wonder Jenufa falls for both of them.

And then the stepmother, the Kostelnicka, played by Catherine Malfitano keeps the tension going to the end. It is she who one would not want as a mother or stepmother. Malfitano is convincing and sung her role so eloquently that one leaves feeling sorry that perhaps forgiving her is not out of line but she must still pay for her sin.

So poor Jenufa realizes that the one she loves is the very man who slashed her face out of jealousy and desire, making this traumatic opera end in an uplifting spirit. Not what one would have thought, but then opera is not for reality but this opera somehow reflects true life perhaps more realistically than most operas.

Jenufa will play at the Kennedy Center through May 24, 2007. If you love opera, treat yourself to this surprisingly brilliant afternoon or evening at the opera.

Thank God Governor Kaine had the sense to sign an executive order which closed the loop-hole by which the shooter at VA TECH was able to purchase guns even though he was declared dangerously mentally ill by a court in Virginia.

The ban covers the sale of guns to individuals who have been involuntarily committed to impatient or outpatient mental health treatment.

One has to ask: If this executive order had been in place, would the killings have taken place?

One will never know but at least Governor Kaine has the sense to put this ban into law.