In Ninnies Who Whinny, Eva Schlesinger writes with childish glee with a hint of Gertrude Stein’s repetitive sound play and more than a dash of James Thurber’s hilarious alliteration and rhyming. Her narrative nonsense almost makes sense, much like Lewis Carroll’s “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves.” But only Eva Schlesinger could write, “our clock strikes half and half ” and “At ten to sacramento piemiento/Ninny’s toes grew/sentimentally incrementally/like fresh-squeezed juice with mint moth balls.” Schlesinger is a gourmet of whimsy and whinnying, and we can only roll around her sounds in our mouths and laugh!
Judy Wells, poet, author of The Glass Ship, Call Home, and Everything Irish
From first poem to last, Schlesinger celebrates language's materiality: its sensuous capacity to seduce by sound alone. Do try reading these poems aloud! You'll hear "crows crow in snow globes,” see "meerkats at track meets,” and have mad fun with the Ninnies. Still, these are far from "nonsense" poems. How often is the Court Jester the only one who tells the King the truth? Here, we have deft and original social commentary within a truly delightful whimsy fix.
Dawn McGuire, author of The Aphasia Cafe and American Dream with Exit Wound
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Eva Schlesinger is the author of Remembering the Walker & Wheelchair: poems of grief and healing (Finishing Line Press, 2008) and three dancing girl press titles, for which she also designed the covers: View From My Banilla Vanilla Villa, Ode 2 Codes & Codfish, and Ninnies Who Whinny. She has received the Literal Latte Food Verse Award, and her poetry has been published in Cooking with The Muse, Changing Harm To Harmony: Bullies & Bystanders Project, Cricket, and elsewhere. She lives in a banilla vanilla villa, where she reads voraciously, improvises on many musical instruments, draws wildly colorful, whimsical animals, and writes.
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Sacramento Pimiento
At ten to sacramento pimiento
Ninny’s toes grew
sentimentally incrementally
like fresh-squeezed juice with mint moth balls
she marvels she’s lost marbles
every which way, especially midway
beaming on balance beams
Ninny whinnies from Oldsmobiles old mobiles
praying for lemon verbena salvation