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Omer Hadziselimovic
THE EYES OF KEYHOLES by Milorad Pejić
Translated by Omer Hadziselimovic
Červená Barva Press, 2015-
Milorad Pejić was born in Tuzla, Bosnia, in 1960. Since 1992 he has lived in Sweden. His books of poems include The Vase for the Lily Plant (1985), The Eyes of Keyholes (2001, 2012), and Hyperborea (2011, 2013), for which he received the "Slovo Makovo-Mak Dizdar" prize in Bosnia in 2012.
Omer Hadžiselimović, formerly a professor at the University of Sarajevo, is now an adjunct professor of English at Loyola University Chicago and at North Park University, Chicago. He has published works in American studies, English literature, and travel writing. In recent years he has been translating poetry from Bosnian into English and from English into Bosnian, published in various venues.
FISHING VILLAGE
I mourn for the cypresses I brought
from Hvar: under tiny days, like through
sunglasses deficient they grow, breathing
with deaf leaves as if through a button.
From their horrible disease, like a thin trail
of ink spilled on a newspaper, they bleed out
at night over the yard wall into the moonlight.The long winter is drying out the boats down
$7.00 | ISBN: 978-0-9966894-1-0 | 44 Pages | In Stock
at the lake, a small church above smoking
roofs looks like a fishing buoy. No one from
anywhere to unlock me from the cypresses.
Planted in the snow, they traipse after me with
their shadows' needles like after a vial of lavender.
Ed Hamilton
THE CHINTZ AGE tales of love and loss for a new new york by Ed Hamilton
Červená Barva Press, 2015-
Ed Hamilton is the author of Legends of the Chelsea Hotel: Living with the Artists and Outlaws of New York's Rebel Mecca (Da Capo, 2007). His fiction has appeared in dozens of small journals, including Limestone, The Journal of Kentucky Studies, SoMa Literary Review, Exquisite Corpse, Bohemia, Omphalos, and in translation in the Czech Republic's Host. His non-fiction has appeared in The Villager, Chelsea Now, The Huffington Post, and Living With Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog. Ed lives in New York City. Visit his website at www.edhamilton.nyc
Just as Soylent Green is people, so The Chintz Age is now. Everything is cheaper and chintzier than in the past, from consumer products to culture itself. Our great cities, and, in particular, New York, are being transformed as we speak, as rising rents squeeze out the artists and bohemians who honed and burnished the city's glittering cutting edge. So should we look backward in teary-eyed nostalgia for the glorious past, or grit our teeth and move forward, accepting the inevitability of change in order to carve out a place for ourselves in this Brave New New York? This book of gritty urban fairy tales represents a heartfelt prayer for the future of the arts in New York, as well as a blueprint for a moral and spiritual resistance to the forces of cultural philistinism.
In seven stories and a novella, Ed Hamilton takes on this clash of cultures between the old and the new, as his characters are forced to confront their own obsolescence in the face of this rapidly surging capitalist juggernaut. Ranging over the whole panorama of New York neighborhoods—from the East Village to Hell's Kitchen, and from the Bowery to Washington Heights—Hamilton weaves a spellbinding web of urban mythology. Punks, hippies, beatniks, squatters, junkies, derelicts, and anarchists—the entire pantheon of urban demigods—gambol through a grungy subterranean Elysium of dive bars, cheap diners, flophouses, and shooting galleries, searching for meaning and a place to make their stand.
PRAISE FOR THE LEGENDS OF THE CHELSEA HOTEL
"There's something remarkable about the way the author manages to celebrate the Chelsea's singular atmosphere — the exuberant aspiring artists, the divorced movie stars, the disheveled blonde who may have Tourette's and who lingers in the lobby hissing like a snake — without ever forgetting how toxic the air is for many of the people who come desperate to breathe it."
—Jeff Giles, The New York Times Book ReviewReviews:
Boston Magazine: http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2015/10/02/gentriwatch-gentrification-book-somerville/
$18.00 | ISBN: 978-0-9861111-9-8 | 284 Pages | In Stock
Judson Hamilton
Celebrity Slumbers by Judson Hamilton
Červená Barva Press, 2009-
Judson Hamilton lives in Wroclaw, Poland. He has a chapbook entitled ‘No Rainbow' (Greying Ghost Press) forthcoming this year. More of his work can be found by plugging his name into the search engine of your choice.
He can be reached at: be_mightee@hotmail.com
Celebrity Slumber [17]
We all stood in the greeting line after the wedding, waiting to congratulate Dustin Hoffman on his upcoming role as Nolan Ryan. When it came my turn I edged forward and gave him the requisite three kisses, ducking under the bill of his Astros cap and commented briefly on his sunset-striped uniform. He seemed taller in cleats as he transfixed me with a warm gaze, holding my hand in both of his mitts.
$7.00 | 35 Pages | In Stock
Matthew A. Hamilton
The Land of the Four Rivers
My Experience as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Armenia (2006-2008)
by Matthew A. Hamilton
Červená Barva Press, 2012-
Matthew is an MFA candidate at Fairfield University and a poetry reader for Mason’s Road and Drunken Boat. Prior to graduate school, he served as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Armenia (2006-2008) and the Philippines (2008-2010). He is also a former Legislative Assistant on Capitol Hill and a Benedictine Monk.
A 1999 graduate of Belmont Abbey College (BA History) Matthew is currently the librarian at Benedictine College Preparatory, an all-male, Catholic military high school. He lives in Richmond, Virginia.
The Land of the Four Rivers
I crawl out of the plane and walk
through a terminal that reminds me
of a prison I once visited in Moscow.
I smell soviet uniforms pushing people
out of moldy bread lines.
I see a black and white picture of two soldiers
beating a man in the frozen gulag.
I follow the line from baggage claim
out into the diesel air packed with greetings
and logistics, firm handshakes.
I throw my bag under the bus and take my seat,
fall asleep as we pull away toward the rising sun.
I wake up and look out the window.
Mt. Ararat is protruding
from the earth like a newborn’s tooth,
searching for the lost city of Noah,
the eyes of red delicious.
I see sun shadows, blue tears
of Eden dance in fields of cognac
and gold, the crevices of echoing snow
and yellow skies nourishing the navel
of the world.
Reviews
The winner for Peace Corps Writers 2013 Best Book of Poetry:
http://peacecorpsworldwide.org/pc-writers/2013/09/12/matthew-a-hamilton/Fairfield University Review:
http://blog.fairfield.edu/inspired/?p=912Christopher Allen interviews Matthew A. Hamilton on his blog "I Must Be Off"
$7.00 | 42 Pages | In Stock
http://www.imustbeoff.com/#!/2012/05/expat-author-interview-with-matthew.html
Daniel Y. Harris
Hyperlinks of Anxiety by Daniel Y. Harris
Červená Barva Press, 2013-
Daniel Y. Harris holds a Master of Arts in Divinity from The University of Chicago, where he specialized in the history and hermeneutics of religion and wrote his dissertation on The Zohar. He is the author of The New Arcana (with John Amen, New York Quarterly Books, 2012), Paul Celan and the Messiah’s Broken Levered Tongue: An Exponential Dyad (with Adam Shechter, Červená Barva Press, 2010; picked by The Jewish Forward as one of the 5 most important Jewish poetry books of 2010) and Unio Mystica (Cross-Cultural Communications, 2009). He is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. His poetry, experimental writing, art and essays have been published in The Denver Quarterly, European Judaism, Exquisite Corpse, The New York Quarterly, Poetry Salzburg Review, among others.
His website is www.danielyharris.com.
Daniel Y. Harris’s new volume of poetry brings together a range of texts – older and newer – evocative of the qualms and uncertainties of our new millennium. A subtle and highly affective read.
—Sander L. Gilman, Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences; Professor of Psychiatry, Emory UniversityIs cyberspace the most recent iteration of the diaspora? Will the next Zohar be composed in computer code? Can notarikon generate lyric poems out of the discourses of pharmacology, neurology, biophysics…? Welcome to the Hotel Url, Daniel Y. Harris, sole owner and proprietor, where these questions—and others that the reader has yet to dream—will be answered. No need to be anxious: in less than a nanosecond, the hyperlinks elaborated in Harris’s poems will whisk you from catastrophe creation to apocalypse and beyond. Beam me up, Ezekiel!
—Norman Finkelstein, Professor of English, Xavier University and author of On Mount Vision: Forms of the Sacred in Contemporary American PoetryDaniel Y. Harris combines impressive erudition with a profound awe for continuity—that the eternal energies underlying Life itself constantly (re)iterate and (re)incarnate in myriad waxing and waning forms. Ideas birth Art; Art births Ideas. In such fashion, to employ classic terms, the heart and mind forge a dynamic union resulting in both clarity of perception and depth of feeling. These are poems to be read and reread, concepts and descriptive phrases operating like portals into other worlds. In Hyperlinks of Anxiety, Harris functions as a twenty-first century, digital alchemist, adeptly yoking the abstract and concrete, offering us singular and transformative experiences, all the while reminding us that Poetry is trans-authorial, Mystery our only true teacher.
—John Amen, author of At the Threshold of Alchemy; editor of The Pedestal Magazine
Reviews
Review by John Amen:
http://www.albany.edu/offcourse/issue54/john_amen_review_d_y_harris.htmlStride Magazine (Out of England):
$17.00 | ISBN: 978-0-9883713-4-7 | 156 Pages | In Stock
http://www.stridemagazine.co.uk/Stride%20mag%202013/July%202013/Fear%20The%20Moral%20Nebulae.htm
Paul Celan and the Messiah's Broken Levered Tongue: An Exponential Dyad
by Daniel Y. Harris and Adam Shechter
Červená Barva Press, 2010-
As Ron Sukenick so aptly put it in his last book "Mosaic Man," Jews are both proto and posthuman. Adam Shechter and Daniel Y. Harris are possessed of that molten globe of fiery perdition that draws the brighter children of the tribe to the flame. Add poetry and oy! What can I say? Shechter and Harris have made another journey to the hellchamber of Jewish mystery/creation/death and came out in company, a big company that includes a lot of fried geniuses, but most of all they came out, and it's good to see them.
—Andrei Codrescu (www.codrescu.com), is the author of The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess (Princeton University Press) and edits Exquisite Corpse at (www. corpse.org).I can't begin to comprehend/surround all that is transpiring here in this Harris/Shechter collaboration/fusion—I'll need other readings toward adequate bearings—but as Seine suicide Paul Celan hovers among these pages of prayerful heresies—"no Shabbos-always Shabbos"—I experience a language that wields "pen as scalpel," and I feel flayed but grateful for this awakening into wild inquiry/attack. By way of thousands of years of Jewish history & of their own lives slashed out in poems & prose pieces of mesmerizing power, even as they wonder if they've gone too far, these two visionaries/revisionists have made something powerful & new here, something of charismatic complication. Oi Vey, & mazel tov.
—William Heyen, author of Shoah Train: Poems, finalist for the National Book Award
Adam Shechter is from Un-Brooklyn, the imperceptible imperialist brownstone aesthetic of 1989 Prospect Park West benches by Garfield Street. Adam has never been published in The New Yorker and The Paris Review and this fact is likely to never change. For this reason, he started the online journal, The Blue Jew Yorker. Sadly, this quaintly anarchistic periodical has not found its reputation competitive with the above named titans of publishing. Still, Mr. Shechter receives great emotional satisfaction in publishing authors and artists in the journal. A tragic and ironic fact of Adam's life is that his neighborhood of birth and raising, Park Slope, now houses some of the most successful authors of the writing world. Roger Cohen moved in next to his parents, a house where the fabled Christiansen family once lived. In line with Freud, listening to the same song over and over is one of Adam's favorite hobbies.
Daniel Y. Harris, M.Div, holds a Master of Arts in Divinity from The University of Chicago, where he specialized in Jewish theology and comparative religion and wrote his dissertation on The Zohar. He is the author of Unio Mystica (Cross-Cultural Communications Press, 2009) and Hyperlinks of Anxiety (forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press, 2012). He is the associate editor of The Blue Jew Yorker. He is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Among his credits are: The Pedestal Magazine, Exquisite Corpse, In Posse Review, European Judaism, SoMa Literary Review, Mad Hatters' Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Wheelhouse Magazine, Moria, Ygdrasil, Wilderness House Literary Review, Poetry Magazine.com, Denver Quarterly, Convergence, Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture and The Other Voices International Among his art exhibitions credits are: The Jewish Community Library of San Francisco, Market Street Gallery, The Euphrat Museum and The Center for Visual Arts. His website is www.danielyharris.com.
Big Bridge, Jake Marmer’s review:
http://www.bigbridge.org/BB15/toc.html
Click here for PDF VersionReview in The Pedestal:
http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/gallery.php?item=16628Review in The Jewish Forward by Jake Marmer:
http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/132899/Paul Celan and the Messiah’s Broken Levered Tongue was picked as one of the 5 most important poetry books of 2010 by The Jewish Daily Forward. http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/134268/
$7.00 | 58 PagesNo Longer Available
Bob Hartley
Following Tommy a novel by Bob Hartley
Červená Barva Press, 2012-
Bob Hartley was raised on the West Side of Chicago. He holds an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Pittsburgh. He has been, among other things, a writer, actor, singer, teacher, bartender, mail room clerk, and soap mold washer. He currently makes his living as a respiratory therapist and lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and two children. Following Tommy is his first novel.
Following Tommy tells the story of the O'Days, two young brothers living in an Irish American, working class neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side in the 1960’s. As thieves they are the bane of the neighborhood until the arrival of the first African American family.
“Following Tommy,” is a powerful, mesmerizing debut novel by Bob Hartley. Sharp-edged and honed to perfection, this novel takes us back to the Irish ghetto of the West Side of Chicago in the early ‘60’s. These characters pack-a-punch to the gut: tough, perceptive and shrewd. An unforgettable read.
—Meg Tuite, author of Domestic ApparitionIn Hartley’s novel, set in the heartland of America, we dive deeply into disturbing pathos of intriguing and relatable characters. His keen narrative balances so the lively dialogue, and we feel we know, or at the very least, can relate to so much of his book. I urge you to read this remarkable debut, “Following Tommy.”
—Robert Vaughan, editor of Flash Fiction Fridays
Bob Hartley's Website: https://sites.google.com/site/bobhartleyfollowingtommy/
Reviews:
The Small Press Book Review:
http://thesmallpressbookreview.blogspot.com/2013/10/review-of-bob-hartleys-following-tommy.htmlGapers Block:
http://gapersblock.com/bookclub/2013/08/27/at_first_glance_theres_something/Alt Hist; Historical Fiction and Alternate History:
http://althistfiction.com/2013/05/21/book-review-following-tommy-by-bob-hartley/Books in Brief Review:
http://booksinbrief.net/2013/02/11/following-tommy-by-bob-hartley/The Historical Novels Review:
http://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/following-tommy/RALPH Review:
http://www.ralphmag.org/HH/tommy.htmlEvergreen Review:
http://www.evergreenreview.com/b/following-tommy-by-bob-hartley-reviewed-by-kevin-riordan/Ofi Press has archived its Following Tommy review:
Here is the new link. http://theofipress.webs.com/hartleybob.htmPittsburgh City Paper review:
http://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/novel-explores-racism-in-chicago/Content?oid=1580219Boston University Radio Interview:
http://wtbunews.wordpress.com:80/2012/09/07/author-bob-hartley-discusses-new-book-following-tommy-racial-tensions-in-chicagos-west-side/Review by The Irish Champion, New Zealand:
http://www.irishchampion.co.nz/following-tommy-full-of-hart/Pittsburgh Post Gazette Review:
http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/ae/book-reviews/bob-hartleys-following-tommy-sharp-as-chicago-651535/Review by Irene Koronas: http://dougholder.blogspot.com/
August 23, 2012
"A Little Gem" by Noel Ignatiev, PM Press: http://www.pmpress.org/content/article.php?story=20120822160414534
Out of Stock, Please Order it from SPD Books:
$17.00 | ISBN: 978-0-9831041-8-6 | 104 Pages | In Stock
http://www.spdbooks.org/Search/Default.aspx?SearchTerm=Following+Tommy
Roger W. Hecht
Talking Pictures by Roger W. Hecht
Červená Barva Press, 2012-
Roger W. Hecht grew up in Wheaton, Maryland, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. His work has been published in Denver Quarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, Mudlark, Diagram, Prick of the Spindle, and other on-line and off-line journals. He was the winner of Syracuse University’s Delmore Schwartz Poetry Award. He is the author of a poetry chapbook, Lunch at the Table of Opposites (Red Dancefloor Press), and editor of The Erie Canal Reader: 1790-1950 (Syracuse University Press). Roger earned an M.F.A. from the University of Arizona and a Ph.D. from Syracuse University. He is currently an Assistant Professor of English at SUNY, College at Oneonta. Roger lives with his wife, Joan Marcus, and two daughters near Ithaca, New York.
Roger W. Hecht’s Talking Pictures is a vivid book of poems which draws us to “....this underworld.” He invites us to have a glance, a look, and then we as readers are deftly taken elsewhere. The taking (and the “talking!”) provides a keen sense of tempo and tone. The poetry is also often comic: in the strangely heroic poem “The Rumsfeld Sestina” (imagine!) the question is raised “What will they do once they catch you?” “You ask me what I knew and when I knew it” (from the same poem) hints at the kind of personal and impersonal worlds and factors which impinge, at least, on all of us. I return to Talking Pictures with pleasure. The variations Hecht employs in the poems’ shapes and cadences intrigue.
—Michael Burkard, Author of Entire Dilemma and UnsleepingRoger W. Hecht’s vocal and evocative collection, Talking Pictures, collects all right, is stuffed with stuff. The things (not poems exactly and not so much prose either but some hybrid unbranded entity) collected here have a thing for thing-ness. It is as if Hecht has constructed an elaborate yet elegant filter that slows the speed of light, turning it into a rich syrup, a saturated plasma, and gorgeous chunks of heretofore unknown matter materialize out of the either or ether. Picture that!
$15.00 | ISBN: 978-0-9831041-5-5 | 50 Pages | In Stock
—Michael Martone, Author of Four for a Quarter
George Held
After Shakespeare: Selected Sonnets
by George Held
Červená Barva Press, 2011-
George Held is a teacher, translator, writer, and poet whose work has appeared in such places as The Philadelphia Inquirer, Confrontation, Notre Dame Review, New York Quarterly, and Rattle, as well as on NPR and in two dozen anthologies. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he has published a book, ten chapbooks, and two e-books of poetry and edited Touched by Eros, an anthology of erotic verse. He holds a B.A. from Brown, an M.A. from University of Hawaii, and a Ph.D. from Rutgers, taught at Queens College for 37 years, was a Fulbright lecturer in Czechoslovakia (1973-76), and serves on the executive board of The South Fork Natural History Museum, Bridgehampton, NY. He lives in Greenwich Village, with his wife, Cheryl.
George Held's new collection of sonnets, After Shakespeare, is, at every turn, funny, surprising, and sharply observed. In poem after poem, Held follows Ezra Pound's injunction and "makes it new." Whether they are about Edmund Spenser on the E-train, painter Alice Neel or the Kennedy family, Held's poems delight with their music, and at the same time offer a deep wisdom. I love the way Held reinvents poetic tradition here and the way these poems, as he writes in "Discord," bring "joy beyond harmonic motion."
—Nicole CooleyBeginning with his cheeky title (a chronological placement rather than a stylistic description) there is much to enjoy and admire in this new collection of sonnets from George Held. It is as though the awareness of his own belatedness is liberating to the poet, allowing him to explore all manner of interesting topics in a variety of sonnet forms and styles. Anyone interested in the vitality and accomplishment of the contemporary sonnet will want George Held's After Shakespeare.
—Charles MartinTo Hope
You're the thing with feathers, flying skyward
To inspire us when we lack the divine
Afflatus, lifting our spirits, like prime
Vintage or even swill like Thunderbird.You're what springs eternal in the human
Breast, though eternity remains unproved,
Just hyperbole to cheer an unloved
One or fodder for some preacher's sermon.But skeptical as we may be, inured
To loss of jobs and sinking stock prices,
Unfaithful friends and false mistresses,
Past the point where pride can still be injured,
Ears still prick up to your springtime twitter,
Unhibernating souls long in winter.
First Literary Review-East
After Shakespeare: Selected Sonnets by George Held
Cervená Barva Press, Somerville, MA (2011)
ISBN #978-0-9831041-9-3Reviewer: Arthur McMaster
Click here: Book Review - George Held's "After Shakespeare: Selected Sonnets"
$15.00 | ISBN: 978-0-9831041-9-3 | 71 Pages | In Stock
The News Today by George Held
Červená Barva Press, 2008-
The News Today is George Held's second chapbook from Červená Barva Press, the first being W Is for War (2006). His other poetry books include Beyond Renewal (2001) and the chapbooks Winged (1995), Salamander Love and Others (1998), Open & Shut (1999), Grounded (2005), The Art of Writing and Others (2007), and Phased (2008). Other books include the e-book American Poetry (2004), the art book Absolut Death & Others (2000) (with paintings by Roz Dimon), Martial Artist (2005) (translations of Martial's epigrams), and the anthology Touched by Eros (2002), which he edited. Held's poetry has appeared in more than a dozen anthologies, received five Pushcart Prize nominations, and been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac (NPR). He has co-edited The Ledge Poetry and Fiction Magazine since 1991. In addition, he served as a Fulbright lecturer in Czechoslovakia, 1973-76, and has been on the executive board of The South Fork Natural History Society and Museum (Bridgehampton, NY) since 1991.
Mark Lamoureux on four Červená Barva Press Chapbooks,
$7.00 | 33 Pages | In Stock: 20
Gently Read Literature Review:
http://gentlyread.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/mark-lamoureux-on-four-cervena-barva-press-chapbooks/
W Is for War by George Held
Červená Barva Press-2006-
In one way or another, ranging from inconvenience to death, we all become victims of war. In these fine, even-toned poems, Mr. Held outlines the price in folly and flesh paid by all sides. Ultimately, war is the last of last resorts--and not to be undertaken but for the direst circumstances.
THE ICONOCLAST #94W Is for War, a new poetry chapbook by political activist George Held. In this collection of poems, his ninth, George expresses his protest against the war in Iraq. "Because he supports our men and women in arms, he resists sending them into battle without compelling, legitimate reasons."
The whole collection hangs together very well. I admire your guts in publishing the volume, and I'm glad I own a copy as it's a little piece of history. --Gretchen Fletcher
WIFW gives precise and true voice to what many patriots think. It's courageous and passionate. --Michael Graves
Some of your best work is in this book. They say no one in love ever wrote a good love poem, the point being that passion gets in the way of craftsmanship. But it hasn't in your case. --James McGowan
This chapbook is wonderfully cohesive, and I admire the way you move through the war by moving through all the players: President, populations on both sides, a Vietnam vet, poets writing on the war, a mother and child, a single Everyman speaker, and by invoking the government of ancient Rome. This endows the collection with variety, a quality I prize highly in any collection. --Margot Farrington
Small Press Review /September-October Picks, 2006
$7.00 | 29 Pages | In Stock: 20
Krikor Der Hohannesian
New Release: The Last Day by Krikor Der Hohannesian
The Last Day by Krikor Der Hohannesian
Červená Barva Press, 2023Krikor Der Hohannesian’s poems have appeared in over 275 literary journals including The South Carolina Review, Atlanta Review, Louisiana Literature, Connecticut Review, Comstock Review and Natural Bridge. He is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee and author of three books, "Ghosts and Whispers" (Finishing Line Press, 2010), "Refuge in the Shadows" (Cervená Barva Press, 2013) and "First Generation" (Dos Madres Press, 2020). "Ghosts and Whispers" was a finalist for the Mass Book awards poetry category in 2011. "First Generation" was selected as a "must read" by Mass Book Awards in 2021.
Cover art: "City Landscape" by Garabed Der Hohannesian
$16.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-20-8 | 37 Pages
Refuge in the Shadows by Krikor Der Hohannesian
Červená Barva Press, 2013-
Krikor Der Hohannesian lives in Medford, MA and has been writing poetry for some 40 years though only submitting work over the past several years. Since then, he has had poems published in many literary journals including The Evansville Review, The South Carolina Review, Atlanta Review, Peregrine, The New Renaissance, Hawaii Pacific Review and Connecticut Review. He also received honorable mention for the New England Poetry Club's Gretchen Warren Award for best published poem of 2010. His first chapbook, "Ghosts and Whispers," has been published by Finishing Line Press (2010). He also serves as Assistant Treasurer of the New England Poetry Club.
Cover Art: Garabed Der Hohannesian
"In Krikor Der Hohannesian's poetry, we hear things we might not be able to hear otherwise. "A man is down" signals the wind and rain coming in from the east, and the poet listens. In another poem a wife is keening, a child is crying, and the poet listens, listens with all his imagination and his heart. We hear colonial whispers emanating from the Granary Burial Ground. We hear the particular beauty of the names of the winds in many languages, and in another poem we hear the equally specific sadness of parents grieving a lost child. We hear final words, and words that should have been said, and we hear in several of these poems the long, agonized memory traces of the Armenian genocide. In all there is a deeply empathic imagination at work, and these poems give the poet and the reader alike a place of refuge, a place in the shadows in which to hold onto what is so profoundly dear and filled with meaning."
–Fred Marchant, Author of The Looking House
CRATERS OF THE MOON
"…and the dead tree gives no shelter"
T.S. Eliot – The Wastelandthe land is not quite black here,
more the deathly gray of volcanic ash
that mimes the absence of color.
Hiroshima might have looked like this
the morning after. Squeezed hardbetween fissures in a vast mantle of tuff
haphazard scrub pine stretch gaunt fingers
skyward, clawing for what they cannot eke
from leached earth. Forlorn natural scarecrowswith no birds to scare off nor crops to shade
forsaken even by black buzzards
looping in futile parabolas.Craters of the Moon National Monument Idaho
Reviews
Boston Area Small Press And Poetry Scene
$7.00 | 44 Pages | In Stock
Review by Dennis Daly
June 9, 2013
Refuge in the Shadows: by Krikor Der Hohannesian
http://dougholder.blogspot.com/
Doug Holder
The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel by Doug Holder
Červená Barva Press, 2008-
Order online at Lulu.com: http://www.lulu.com/content/2651312
For years that image of the man in a small plastic booth in the fume-filled Midtown Tunnel that connects Queens to Manhattan in NYC haunted me. As a kid traveling into the city from the sheltered, well-manicured lawns of Long Island to the enigmatic, cosmopolitan world of Manhattan, I couldn't help but wonder about that blue- uniformed lone figure pacing the perimeter of his plastic cage. I think he represented to some extent my fear of the world outside the comforts of my family, and the staid, small town I lived in, Rockville Centre.
I have always admired writers like the New Yorker's Joseph Mitchell, who wrote about the outsiders, the denizens of the old Bowery, the ner-do-wells, the poseurs, the dandies, and the stumblebums, who make the city a both fascinating and frightened place. I always wondered as a kid if I would wind up in the middle of a metaphorical tunnel, a man in a cage, looking for the light. And I guess to some extent we all do in one-way or the other, whether we like it or not.
So I thought this image would be a perfect focal point for my poetry collection, a sort of "Spoon River Anthology" that would consist of character studies of the many men and women I have met, watched and imagined in my time across this stage. I include myself in this collection, because I have always identified with that man and I see his ghost wherever I roam.
Doug Holder
"I am enjoying The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel -- perfect poems, particularly in that ambiance."
-Dan Tobin, Chairman, Writing and Publishing Program at Emerson College"Aside from being the founder, publisher, and co-editor of the prestigious and influential Ibbetson Street Press, Doug Holder writes poetry with a passion and insight that deserves prestige and influence all its own."
S. Craig Renfoe, Jr., Main Street Rag"Holder's work is rich with textual imagery… a master poet who sees the world clearly and shares that vision generously with readers.
Laurel Johnson, Midwest Book Review"A great poet and a Boston legend."
Joe Gouveia, host of "Poet's Corner," Provincetown radio"I don't think I send you kudos enough because I take your magical perceptions of the ordinary, your unique take on the everyday, as something you do time and time again always in surprising ways.... from toilet to pay phones, to the fluid connection to all things human is utterly Doug Holder and there isn't anyone out there remotely doing what you do so beautifully...so dryly and always with human regard."
Linda Larson, former editor-in-chief of Spare Change NewsNow available as a talking book for the blind:
http://webopac.klas.com/id1aopac/title/summary.jsf;jsessionid=feeaf4946520e01dff3aa80219f9?id=142445757.9032Order online at Lulu.com: http://www.lulu.com/content/2651312
$13.00 | ISBN: 9780979531361 | 72 Pages
Of All The Meals I Had Before: Poems About Food and Eating
by Doug Holder
Červená Barva Press, 2007-
These food poems are served up spicy like Italian cousine. Read them before dinner or after dessert, either way like Chinese food, you'll return hungry for more.
A.D. WinansIn his collection, “Of All The Meals I Had Before: Poems About Food and Eating” Doug Holder serves up a hearty fare. He fills our plate with “unapologetically greasy Egg Foo Young,” “tamed tenderloin,” “a chorus line” of “rotisserie chickens,” and “some fraction of gelatinous liver quivering.” He not only takes us out to dine with him, but he also looks around for us, makes sure we notice the “ancient waitresses…[who] bark the orders\through the swing of doors” and “old man Cardullo spit from\his cigar-studded mouth” and the undertaker beside us who “delicately wipes his mouth\… runs his well-veined hand\through the shoe polish\in his hair.” Holder offers a truly eclectic cuisine and company to match– savory, and unsavory, occasionally bitter, more often sweet. Even as we polish off dessert, he leaves us wondering, “What If We Froze with a Fork in Our Hand” and “just\took a\minute\to simply\pause.”
Mary Buchinger Bodwell, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of English
Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health SciencesA delightful and delicious collection of poems, whetting the appetite for more. These are the kinds of witty, Jewishy poems I envision Woody Allen would write, should he ever take to writing poetry.
Helen Bar-Lev, Artist, Poet
Editor-in-Chief Voices Israel Anthology
Author: Animals are Nature's Poetry
Co-author: Cyclamens and Swords and other poems about IsraelDoug Holder's All the Meals I Had Before delivers again and again. Each poem is a savory dish worthy of five stars at Loch Ober's. Holder's poetry feeds our high expectations and does not disappoint. His wit and erudite observations constantly shine with sterling results. A lot of the poetry has a certain edginess mixed with wit and humor that equally provokes to thought while it entertains. Everyone should indulge themselves in this gourmet buffet.This collection, as well as Holder's other published works, belong in every serious collectors library.
Harris Gardner
Executive Director
Tapestry of VoicesAside from being the founder, publisher, and co-editor of the prestigious and influential Ibbetson Street Press, Doug Holder writes poetry with a passion and insight that deserves prestige and influence all its own.
Take, for instance, “Of All The Meals I Had Before: Poems About Food and Eating,” a work with an organic feel surprising for a chapbook. Among some odes to nostalgic eateries like “Last Night at the Wursthaus” and “At Benson’s Deli,” Holder ponders the silly—“Milk Duds”—and the sublime—“Portrait of My Mother During Her Solitary Meal.” His eye for the rattling image drives many of the poems, like “Eating Out” where he observes: “As the Latino/scrapes the masticated/bone and marrow/into a bloody bin/ and flashes a gold-toothed smile,/at the chef/ whose cleaver/tears through a prime cut--/then holds some/fraction of a gelatinous liver/quivering in his hands…” What makes his work so enjoyable is not only his well-described world but also the fun he has with it, as when he ends the same poem with the line,” “Meanwhile I order desert.” The book flirts with food and sex, comparing breastfeeding and sucking on a straw or rotisserie chickens and pornographic images, until it climaxes in the final poem “Cannibalism,” that begins:
$7.00 | 23 Pages | In Stock
“And what could be more intimate?/ To deflesh a skull/ crack a femur/ to get down/ to the very marrow/ Is there a greater/ act of love?”
--S. Craig Renfroe, Jr., Main Street Rag
Winter 2007-8 Edition
Preston H. Hood
2012 Maine Literary Awards:
The Hallelujah of Listening by Preston H. Hood won the Book Award for Poetry!
The Hallelujah of Listening by Preston H. Hood
Červená Barva Press, 2011-
The Cover Art is a photo of G. Buddy Swenson’s Elusive Liberty (August, 2001) Paint on Wood Panel (48”X”36”)
Preston Hood was born in Fall River, Massachusetts and grew up in Swansea, Mass. He served in Vietnam with SEAL TEAM 2 (1970), and was a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Boston, Bachelor of Arts in English, Magna cum laude, the University of Southern Maine, Bachelor of Science, and the University of Maine, Orono, Master of Education. For fifteen years, he was a member of Veteran’s for Peace. He published a poetry CD, Snake Medicine (2002), which was recorded by Berred Ouellette, and produced by Master Mind Audio. Summer Home Press published his first book of poetry, A Chill I Understand (2006). The Hallelujah of Listening is his first Chapbook (2011).
A CD of Preston H. Hood reading his poems is also available for $7.00. It was recorded by Berred Ouellette and produced by Disc Makers. The cover art of the CD face is a photo of G. Buddy Swenson’s Elusive Liberty (August, 2001) Paint on Wood Panel (48”x 36”).
After attending The William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences for 9 years, he edited with Jacqueline Loring and Gary Rafferty the Summer Home Review I (2002), and II (2005).
Through the Cape Cod Writer’s Center, he was interviewed with John McHugh, Secretary of the Henrich Böll Association, County Mayo, Ireland for Books of the World Television Program in Harwich MA (2006).
With Jacqueline Loring, he co-presented an overview of the Sixties Beat Poetry for The Wrinkle in Time: San Francisco Summer of Love (1967) Conference at Osher Life Long Learning Institute at University of Southern Maine. At the same workshop, he served on a panel discussion of both Civil Rights Issues and Why We Were in Vietnam (2009).
His poetry has been published in national and international journals and anthologies. He is a retired teacher and administrator currently writing his memoir. He spends his other time bicycling, kayaking, and hiking with his spouse Barbara J. Noone. He lives in Lyman, Maine.
The Hallelujah of Listening
From Dooniver we’re lured
by angels in the sun-dappled wind. They dance
with shadows, their radiant hair,
a seascape of waves & salt sundog air.Some of us walk through Achill’s mist
anointed by the whispering surf. Or charge into a valley
of an image, rave about the lowered moon
behind Slievemore’s cloud-covered top.Like first-light finches, I dart
into the thicket, feel the cool
morning silence. I climb with pilgrims
under a salmon-coral sky, voices chant invocations.The red-bellied fuchsias lift & sway
on this steep path, bloodstones of penance. Even sheep
turn to listen. I wish I knew if Croagh Patrick could be mindful
of them, & us, rapt in our chorus of hallelujahs.
With this stunning collection, THE HALLELUJAH OF LISTENING, Preston Hood will take his place among the greatest of the poet-warriors and poet veterans of our times. Hood’s poems bear witness to how the human spirit survives that which would kill it. One speaker stitches up the opening in the sky “before the dead crawl out” (“Opening in the Sky”). Another, painting naked in the yard among the blue jays and bees, draws “a door in the sky to enter,” hoping to “find what’s lost” (“first born”). I’m awed by the poetic joining of courage and beauty in these fierce and precise poems.
—Cynthia Hogue, Professor, Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University, Tempe; Or Consequence (2010).I love Preston Hood’s new poems, and I cherish the spots of time he has been able to hold still in these poems just long enough to change your life. (From the Forward)
—Bruce WeiglWith Preston Hood’s The Hallelujah of Listening, I see a newfound confidence in the expression of his art. His beautiful images are often intimate and passionate, illusive and questioning, then shocking, real and haunting. As with other veteran poets, even when Preston’s poem is not about war, it forces you to think about warring, keeps you out of your comfort zone. In this new book, Preston asks us to “enter the mist, sit down in the fire of thought” to “let go of sorrow, let sorrow go” and promises, “the spirit lives to a renewal.” The journey is worth taking.
—Jacqueline M. Loring, Poet, Playwright, and Editor, Summer Home Review Anthologies, Volumes I and IIThe poetry of Preston Hood’s The Hallelujah of Listening is indeed a “climb from the struggle into the marvelous” as he says in his poem, “Our Singing.” His new book reads almost like the scripture of Psalms such is its beauty and transcendence. Indeed, “a tongue of the sky” slipped into his mouth and our soul is awakened to the realms in which only poetry has a voice.
—Lamont B Steptoe, Publisher/founder of Whirlwind Press, Winner of the American Book Award (2005)
Reviews
Hayden's Ferry Review:
$7.00 | ISBN: 978-0-9831041-7-9 | 56 Pages | In Stock
http://haydensferryreview.blogspot.com/2012/03/book-review-hallelujah-of-listening.html
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Jaromir Horec
Anezka Ceska by Jaromir Horec
Translated into English by Jana Morávková Kiely as Agnes of Bohemia
Červená Barva Press, 2009-
Jaromir Horec was born on December 18, 1921 in Chust, in Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, which in 1919, at the treaty of Versailles, had voted to become part of the newly formed Czechoslovak Republic with an enlightened, freely elected government led by the humanist philosopher, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk.
Throughout the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, Jaromír Hoec was active in the underground anti-Nazi youth movement. After World War II, Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia was not returned to Czechoslovakia but was annexed by Stalin to the Soviet Union. Thus Horec, living in Prague, became an expatriate in his own country. He was a prolific poet, who was not allowed to publish for two periods of twenty years each: 1948-1966 and 1969-1989.
In 1977, he signed Charter 77 and two years later, he founded the Czech underground press Ceska Expedice for which he was imprisoned in 1981. His many works of poetry, include Anezka Ceska, and Chleb Na Stole, as well as many other publications, such as Why I Am Not a Communist and Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia-an Unknown land have been coming out only since 1989.
$15.00 | ISBN 978-0-578-02262-8 | 54 Pages | In Stock
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