Gypsie-Ami Offenbacher-Ferris lives in Southport, NC, USA. Gypsie-Ami’s photographic artwork was chosen beside twenty-four other artist’s works by “Up Your Arts” and the City of Southport as winners in the fourth annual pole banner art project, “Raise Up Your Arts,” May through November 2026.
She is a twice published poet in Cameron Art Museum’s Writers Respond to Art Program and was awarded the Certificate of Completion for completing the 2021 – 24 Hour Poetry Marathon and the 2022 – 24 Hour Poetry Marathon. Her poem “Wheels” was published in the 2021, 24 Hour Poetry Marathon Anthology. Her poem, “The Date”has been chosen for publication in the 2022 – 24 Hour Poetry Marathon.
She is a published author in Whisper’s& Echoes, an on-line literary magazine and in 50 Give or Take for her 50-word stories, “Love,” “The Wedding” and “The Sleep Doctor.”In Visual Verse with her poem “Mother Earth” and several editions of The Virtual Poetorium. Ami is also published in Spillwords Press with her stories, “No Ghosts This Christmas!,” “Look!” and “I Am Not A Man!”
Gypsie-Ami has had the honor of being published by Carrot Ranch Literary Community in their Baby Ducks Ate My Lunch Collection for her 99 word story, Duckling Survival Guide.
Gypsie-Ami writes flash fiction, short stories, creative non-fiction, and fiction as well as poetry. Her short story, “Conversations With My Neighbor” is published in the anthology, Trouble, by Daniel Boone Publishing. Ami received Honorable Mention in Tales from the Moonlit Path2021, a yearly Halloween Issue titled Abandoned Places Halloween Challenge, for her short story, “Abandoned Memories.” Her short story “Grandmother And The Strawberry Moon”was chosen as a semi-finalist in Stories That Need to Be Told: The Contest.
Gypsie-Ami’s first chapbook of poetry and photography is titled Flowers Flowers Everywhere! She has written two stage plays to date and is currently completing her second action/adventure/romance preternatural novel.
Ami is a member of NCWN (North Carolina Writer’s Network) and WWN (Women Writer’s Network). Ami’s core writing group and the women who literally saved her life during her COVID-19 illness, Coastal Women’s Writer’s Group of Wilmington, NC.
Ami is known to her closest friends and relatives as Gypsie.
We are pleased to announce the New Release of Man Afield by Jim Krosschell.
Jim Krosschell has published poems and essays in some 85 journals, plus two essay collections: One Man’s Maine, which won a Maine Literary Award, and Owls Head Revisited. He lives in Deer Isle, ME and Newton, MA, and volunteers on Boards for Coastal Mountains Land Trust and the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.
His poetry collection, Man Afield is a lyrical journey through the living world, guided by a backyard naturalist attuned to both wonder and warning. These poems chronicle spiritual and physical excursions into landscapes larger than any one mind or body — places where awe, joy, disorientation, and reckoning intertwine.
Organized in six evocative sections, the collection:
I. bears witness from a seaside deck;
II. wanders through yard and neighboring woods;
III. explores the shifting shoreline;
IV. imagines the vast and restless ocean;
V. surveys the scars of environmental damage;
VI. honors home in its many meanings.
Throughout, the poems dwell in the charged space where humans and the natural world meet. They examine our peculiar paradox: we are the only species that knowingly fouls its own nest — and the only one capable of choosing restraint. With clear-eyed honesty, Man Afield mourns the grinding erosion of precious places while celebrating the stubborn beauty that persists despite us — and sometimes because of us.
From deck to forest trail, from tidal pull to smoke-streaked sky, these poems trace one person’s evolving relationship with plants, animals, weather, memory, and spirit. Intimate yet expansive, they invite readers to travel outward into the wild and inward toward belonging.
Man Afield is at once a field journal, a meditation, and a love song — to earth, to home, and to the fragile bond between them./
What reviewers have to say:
A “backyard naturalist,” Jim Krosschell writes about human relationships with the natural world. His previous books include One Man’s Maine and Owls Head Revisited. He has been Board President for Coastal Mountains Land Trust and the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance and continues to volunteer in conservation and publishing communities. Before retirement, he worked in science publishing in Boston and now lives in Deer Isle, Maine and Newton, Massachusetts.
I read Man Afield in one sitting, delighted as the speaker in these poems trains his roving eyes and ears on his surroundings and the wonders of the natural world, searching for any “wildly beating heart.” There is no high or low in the cataloguing and noticing that happens here—gnats, ants, many kinds of birds and trees, rivers, oceans, the delicious names of plants all receive attention and care. These poems are clear-eyed, not romantic—they take in the “miles of Walmart, Ford, and Shell” and Land Cruisers “junked on the veldt” and know well how precarious our world is. Krosschell still chooses, again and again, to draw his careful attention to, say, three loons on “this stretch of shore / on the coast of Maine…” and to allow himself, and us, to be mesmerized.
Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, Author of Deke Dangle Dive
What a satisfying and uplifting ride it is to join Krosschell’s journey from young man, “with his dreams of rivers” to old man with his “permanent perch on a hermit’s wild ledge,” overlooking the forest and coast of Maine, mindful of carbon’s engulfing demise, delighting in the “manna of joy administered only in crumbs.” From Man Afield’s opening flight of poems that expose what’s small and barely perceptible, to its closing epics and late-life gatherings, these are poems of a specific earned grace brought to beauty by Krosschell’s firm roots in the natural world. There is lament here for irreparable loss but also humor and social commentary (“Turkeys,” “White Man’s Footstep”), a retort to Frost (“Whose Woods These Are”), and a brilliant ode of reflection to Thoreau, “March Into April” and its haunting question, “will spring still come to the window and wake me?” Man Afield’s poems are grounded in the terra firma of New England, but their reach is universal, and they reward fully with the music of observation.
Bruce Willard, Author of In Light of Stars
In graceful, accessible language, Jim Krosschell’s poems create a glass pane through which to view and ponder the wonders of the natural world and the fraught relationship of humankind to it. Often clear and bright, sometimes dark, and always reflective, these poems reveal a man alive to the world he observes precisely and lovingly, and to which he longs to connect his self and the transcendent. Something we all, in our own way, seek in our lives. Man Afield is a collection that invites us in to learn from one man’s journey to our benefit.
When someone you love is diagnosed with late-stage cancer, language shifts.
Ordinary words—appointment, waiting room, prognosis—take on new gravity. Time bends. Conversations sharpen. Silences grow louder.
In Cancer Courts My Mother, LindaAnn LoSchiavo transforms that altered landscape into poetry that is intimate, unsparing, and profoundly human.
When Cancer Enters the Family
This is not a clinical account of illness.
It is a daughter’s reckoning.
A caregiver’s vigil.
A complicated love story between mother and child—layered with devotion, resentment, memory, humor, and the quiet tenderness that surfaces when the end approaches.
Across 25 poems, LoSchiavo gives voice to:
The exhaustion of caregiving
The ache of unresolved history
The strange flashes of beauty inside sorrow
The love that refuses to leave
Her poems do not look away. But they also do not surrender to despair.
Instead, they ask:
What does it mean to accompany someone to the threshold? How do we hold grief and grace in the same hand? What remains when words fail?
Why Readers Are Saying Yes
Readers and reviewers have described the collection as:
“Candid and unflinching.”
“A testament to complicated love.”
“Tender without sentimentality.”
“A lyrical exploration of resilience.”
The poems resonate because they speak to universal themes—loss, reconciliation, anger, hope, and the stubborn persistence of love—even as they remain deeply personal.
If you have ever:
Managed medications and memories
Struggled with unfinished conversations
Loved someone through decline
You will recognize yourself here.
A Voice of Candor and Grace
LindaAnn LoSchiavo writes with clarity and restraint. Her lines are spare yet resonant. Her images—closets, gardens, corridors, dance-like metaphors of movement and stillness—carry emotional weight without excess.
There is sorrow here.
But also wit.
There is anger.
But also forgiveness.
And, perhaps most powerfully, there is presence.
Receive a Free Sample
If you’re curious about the emotional depth and artistry of this collection, we invite you to experience it for yourself.
Let these poems accompany you—whether you are navigating illness, remembering someone you’ve lost, or simply seeking language for the complexities of love.
When I saw the following interview with Nolcha Fox, I was so pleased that I just had to share. It’s been such a pleasure to work with Nolcha Fox with the publishing of the above books. All are available on ProlificPulse.com/NolchaFox
Thank you to Poetic Bloomings for interviewing this prolific poet!
Thank you to Peter Mladinic for this excellent review of Ken Tomaro's latest collection. [Sensitive Content Warning]
The House of Representatives: a review of You’ve got it all wrong, by Ken Tomaro. Prolific Pulse Press. Raleigh, NC. 2025. $12.95 paper.
Reviewed by Peter Mladinic
Just as there are representatives in politics, poetry too has its representatives, one difference being: there’s no party line to the imagination. Ken Tomaro, in the state of Ohio, is reminiscent of two poets in the neighboring state of Pennsylvania, John Yamrus and Dan Flore III. Like them, he eschews capitalization and standard punctuation, and like them, his comments are blunt, succinct, and direct. Yet all there are distinct voices. Ken Tomaro, like the hero in Frank Capra’s film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, speaks for all of us. Three things worth noting in Tomaro’s poems are his imagery: his syntax, particularly his interpolated interjections, and his use of the first-person plural we.
Tomaro’s images are exacting, “on the mark, in that they are essential to the whole poem. In “I remember the distinct aroma” as the title indicates, the olfactory takes precedence. The speaker, in a coffee shop smelled an aroma reminiscent of “Polish donuts…from childhood.” The coffee shop workers “couldn’t tell me which pastry it was because I couldn’t describe it.” At the end, his question “but it goes deeper than that, doesn’t it?” is like the donut image at the start, absolutely essential to an appreciation of this imagist poem about memory. “Make it stop” relies on a tactile image. The speaker is irked or annoyed by people violating his personal space.
they were standing 3 feet from my desk talking about their kids, comparing all the sports they were in all the after-school activities which coach does his job, which one needs to retire blocking the isle so I couldn’t escape if I wanted to
This tactile image leads to a comment on society that is both poignant and funny. His pain is his readers’ pleasure as he says, “death is 5 feet away from me in the living room every night.” "Cash,” paper money, in “I can’t give you that” is what the speaker wants for Christmas. It leads him to say, “I can’t give her her old life back / I can’t give her a new set of legs / I can’t give her a million dollars.” This poem is similar to, yet opposite from “Playing God.” In that poem he looks out a window, “down on the traffic / speeding down the highways.” Rather than the person painfully aware of his limitations in “I can’t give you that,” here, in “Playing God” he pretends the cars are little race cars, “toys / running on an electric track / and I am …deciding how fast or slow they go.” The interpolated interjection is an element of syntax Tomaro uses to achieve compactness in his poems. It is particularly effective in “Summer of ‘89, where he puts one complete comment inside another.
the cement blocks we walked along were perfect squares but now, after years of Lake Erie slapping against them made them worn down and smooth there were little pockets along the surface
“Lake Erie slapping against them made them warm and smooth” the complete comment within the other complete comment “The cement blocks …were perfect squares / but now …there were little pockets along the surface “layers the texture of those blocks, adds to these things readers can touch. In “Chickens,” the speaker, running errands, sees something out of the ordinary, “two chickens pecking away at a pile of leaves …in suburbia.” He says, “I laugh for a moment at the absurdity of what I’ve seen / this is truly absurd; I can’t be the only one who thinks so.”
The comment within the comment— “this is truly absurd” accents his surprise at seeing “chickens where chickens shouldn’t be.” Other poems in which interpolated interjections play a vital part are “Reminiscence” and “Bad genes. In “A glittering shitshow of smash-faced adults” the interpolated interjection acts as a bridge of time linking adulthood to childhood:
I’m sitting in the office listening to John Prine pining for that good old country life feeling all weepy and shit he knew the deal he knew how it was and there I was a 14-year-old boy with a half-assed mustache surrounded by a town full of smashed-faced kids
The interjections “he knew the deal / he knew how it was” are followed by “I was,” and a memory of childhood.
Like the hero in Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ken Tomaro speaks for we, the people. One of his talents is that his deeply personal voice speaks for all of us. Like us, the speaker is an imperfect person living in an imperfect world. If he could he’d tell God that “this masterpiece he created / is just a pile of mud and sticks / slapped together haphazardly.” The title of the book comes from the first line of “We all carry anger.” With his direct address, the speaker conveys empathy. “I think you’ve got it all wrong / but I can see your grief from losing something.” Farther along, “I know you had a plan / and maybe it didn’t go as planned.” And finally, (profoundly), “you continue to do all these things / you say you can’t do /without even realizing you’re doing them.” This book does not lack for humor. “The big God damned bang” gives a unique spin to Adam and Eve’s fall from grace:
This is for you and only you. Go forth and explore, take in all the beauty and the glory. Go wherever you want, do whatever you want. Think and feel however you want. Just don’t touch that fucking apple, is all I’m saying. Give me a fucking break, man. Don’t invite me into your house for a party and tell me eat, drink, be merry, just don’t sit on the couch in the family room. It’s an antique, my grandmother’s, in pristine condition…
This irreverently funny passage conveys an exasperation people must feel at one time or another when thinking about Adam and Eve’s being cast out of paradise, to toil and sweat and grow old and die.
This passage of satire depicts the human condition of transience and mortality. Ken Tomaro’s topic is the human condition. The quotable passages in his poems are many. He is poignant, funny, irreverent, inquisitive, and contemplative. With an attentively attuned ear and a sharp eye for beauty, he makes the subjective objective, the local universal. He says things his way, as he simultaneously instructs and entertains. At the end of the book, he addresses his readers. “Here’s wishing you well and safe travels.” He means it. And his book is deserving of many readers. ... Peter Mladinic was born and raised in New Jersey. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1973 and earned an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas in 1985. Professor emeritus at New Mexico Junior College, where he was a member of the English faculty for thirty years. During that time, he was a board member of the Lea County Museum and president of the Lea County Humane Society. He is the author of seven books of poems; his most recent book, Maiden Rock, is available from Uncollected Press (2024). An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, USA.
As a teacher, I will always remain a student. In the classroom of life, l wish to work with and educate others. Whether you’re a teacher, student, or just your average person, here are a few of my "TEACHERble" moments.
Hi! my name is Sebastian (You can call me Seb!) ...welcome to my Blog. I'm a photographer from Worcester, Worcestershire, England. Thanks for dropping by! I hope you enjoy my work.
Prolific Pulse Blog 