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Just released December 15th, 2009

Van Gogh's Ear by Pamela L. Laskin Van Gogh's Ear by Pamela L. Laskin
Červená Barva Press, 2009

Pamela L. Laskin, a teacher, writer, cyclist, swimmer and avid reader, has had many poems, short stories and children's stories published in journals and magazines. She is a lecturer in the English Department at The City College, where she directs The Poetry Outreach Center. Central Station, her first book of poetry, was the winner of the Millennium Poetry Prize. Remembering Fireflies, her second collection, was published by Plain View Press, and Ghosts, Goblins, Gods and Geodes, her third collection, was published by World Audience Press. In 2009, Plain View Press published her fourth collection, Secrets of Sheets. Three poetry chapbooks, five picture books and two young adult novels have been published as well. She edited a collection of original fairy tales, The Heroic Young Woman, published by Clique Calm Books. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, Ira, while her children, Craig and Samantha, are away at school completing their degrees.


Pamela Laskin is equally able to grasp the big picture -- “born/ out of millions of years/ of old thumbs and cortexes” -- as well as the small, luminous detail. She writes with vivid immediacy about the people and places around her, so that each poem, “Each bead is like the cell of a body/ passing through a busy street/ on a quiet day.” It is a pleasure to spend time with and have one’s senses sharpened by this book.
-Elaine Equi

Pamela Laskin’s new poems move richly and swiftly through memory and presence, through family, romance, friendship, and art, through Brooklyn and the rest of the world. They are passionate, quiet, thoughtful, intelligent. I want to say there is something modest about them, but it’s the modesty of someone who knows she knows and will lift the screen for a second if only to see if you can figure it out. Van Gogh’s Ear is a fine and generous collection.
-Mark Statman

In a Glass Ball

Clouds stuck in the sky
summer has evaporated
anorexic trees,
children gone from the streets.

Soon I will be snowed under
as I am, perhaps, already
staring out the window

like the woman trapped in a glass ball
which people turn over, indiscriminately
watching the tiny flakes
scatter haphazardly

observing
the unsettling appearance
of a woman
going nowhere.

$15.00 | ISBN: 978-0-578-04084-4 | 74 Pages | In Stock

Released October 24th, 2009

Pentakomo Cyprus by Irene Koronas Pentakomo Cyprus by Irene Koronas
Červená Barva Press, 2009

Irene Koronas is the poetry editor for the Wilderness House Literary Review and Ibbetson Street Press. She is the author of self portrait drawn from many (Ibbestson Street Press, 2007). She also has several chapbook publications, the latest being, Zero Boundaries (Cervena Barva Press, 2008). Irene’s work has been widely published in numerous literary journals including Lummox, Free Verse, Posey, Arcanam Café, Spearhead, Index poetry, Unblog, Haiku Hut, Lynx and the anthologies Bagels with the Bards and WHLR Anthology, 2006. Articles written about Irene have appeared in The Boston Globe, What’s Up With Your Words, Sedaca, The Alewife, Spare Change, The Somerville News, and the Cambridge Chronicle.


These poems of beauty and strength unfold one into another as Irene weaves an engaging, thoughtful cacophony of experiences lived out over six weeks in Cyprus. I was drawn into a visual arrangement of days by an extraordinarily gifted communicator. I couldn't put this book down until I lived through all the wonder and discovery on display.
-C K Johns, author

Irene Koronas writes with the confidence of a life-long poet. She knows the ground on which she stands. With tenderness and honesty she takes her readers to the churches, kitchen, and dusty paths of her ancestral village. Orange trumpet flowers, rusty rocks, pregnant dogs, figs, saints, kneaded dough, peacocks, icons, olive oil and old women pepper the pages of Irene’s poetry painting a generous, complex, vibrant picture of Irene’s recollections of six weeks in Cyprus. At its heart, this is a love story. It traces the passion, ambivalence, and longing of desires that cannot be resolved simply. In recounting her journey, Irene invites us to look for the remains of our own histories, our own relinquished passions.
-Jennifer Peace, Ph.D.

In, Pentakomo Cyprus, Koronas finds her way through each day, image by image, sound by discrete sound, giving us the crystalline collection of things, our mixed media realities. The collection is a mobile of emotions made small and delicate or large and brusque. It is this honesty that lets the reader into a life that is wondrously and marvelously made, tiny step by tiny step, great leap by great leap.
-Afaa Michael Weaver

$15.00 | ISBN 978-0-578-02262-8 | 50 Pages | In Stock

Released June 12th, 2009

Anthem by CL Bledsoe Anthem poems by CL Bledsoe
Červená Barva Press, 2009

CL Bledsoe has published work in over 200 journals and anthologies, including The Cimarron Review, Nimrod and The Arkansas Review. Winner of the Blue Collar Review's Working People's Poetry Contest, he is also a 3-time Pushcart Prize nominee. He is an editor for Ghoti Magazine. http://www.ghotimag.com and the author of a chapbook entitled_______(Want/Need)

CL Bledsoe's Anthem is succinct, shrewd and contemporary. Bledsoe is a modern-age poet with the unique ability to bring the reader smack into the moment with him ... Anthem's poems are no exception. Often confessional, occasionally biting, Bledsoe proves once again that he is the poet for generation X, Y and whatever lies beyond.
-Patricia Gomes, editor of Adagio Verse Quarterly and poetry moderator of iVillage's Poet's Workshop

Fresh, funny, hip, anarchic, jaded, secretly hopeful, angry, wry, laid-back: to read CL Bledsoe's Anthem is to enter a world that may make you twitch - but will surely help you keep on keeping on. These songs of punked-out innocence stage-strut across the page, even when they claim they're simply slacking on the couch. Join Frog and Death and the absinthe squirrels on a savvy, consciousness-jolting road-trip through the landscape of right now. I loved this smart and artful book. I bet you will to. Open it. Find out.
-Jeanne Larsen, winner of the AWP poetry book award

$15.00 | ISBN 978-0-615-25796-9 | 65 Pages | In Stock

Released June 12th, 2009

Anezka Ceska (Agnes of Bohemia) by 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

Released April, 2009

Grief Hut by Nancy Mitchell Grief Hut by Nancy Mitchell
Červená Barva Press, 2009

Nancy Mitchell is the author of The Near Surround (Four Way Books, 2002) and her poems have appeared in Agni, Poetry Daily, Salt Hill Journal, Great River Review, and are anthologized in Last Call by Sarabande Books. She has received an Artist in the Schools grant for Virginia, and residency fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, Virginia and in Auvillar, France. Mitchell teaches in the English Department at Salisbury University, Maryland, and has taught in the Stonecoast MFA program in Maine. She resides in Salisbury, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, with her husband John Ebert, a filmmaker.

The Grief Hut stands on an imaginary beach, where women help each other to give birth to their griefs: the birth of sorrows here is given words with a growing power, intensity, and wisdom, a wisdom still wired to its human love and memory.
-Jean Valentine

Mitchell is blessed with a vivid--and haunting--memory--of particulars, the things of our past, and of the more complex feelings the things generate. She refuses nothing, she is deadly accurate, yet she sings. We should read her.
-Gerald Stern

The poems in Nancy Mitchell's book Grief Hut are so lucidly and deeply felt that they cut directly to the bone of the experiences they are recounting. This is a true and an incredibly beautiful book.
-Malena Mörling

Her descriptions of people, the details and detritus of their lives are studied and stunning. May we hear more from this talented poet.
-Doug Holder/Ibbetson Street Press

$15.00 | ISBN: 978-0-615-25797-6 | 66 Pages | Restocking

If you order this book, it will ship on or about January 10, 2010

Released March, 2009

The Curvature of Blue by Lucille Lang Day The Curvature of Blue by Lucille Lang Day
Červená Barva Press, 2009

Description: The Curvature of Blue traverses an arc from the personal to the social and historical to the cosmic and philosophical. As a scientist and poet, Lucille Lang Day goes beyond celebration of the natural world to explore the intersections of science, nature, and human experience, and to meld scientific accuracy with intuition and emotional response. Whether writing about jellyfish, war, or her own experience, she draws attention to important questions and inspires us to think more deeply about what it means to be human and how our choices affect the planet Earth.


"In Lucille Lang Day's poems, stunning transformations of language cross the placenta barrier between the worlds of science and human emotion. She thinks and feels in color, enabling us to inhabit the complexity of the universe-as experienced at breakfast with a lover, in the wild with caribou, or in meditations on acts of historical horror-all made radiant by her lyric gifts and wisdom."
-Teresa Cader

"Intelligence enjoying itself, awareness at play, attentiveness dancing through life's minefields: smiling at itself in its new black car ("Nor have I shunned onyx jewelry. That would be foolish"), Lucille Lang Day will at first glance make you smile and smile again. Then, with her scientist's mind, her woman's heart, her pain at injustice and evil, and her poet's eye and ear, she will carry you "through the mountains and canyons of space-time" to a fuller humanity. The Curvature of Blue is a wonderful book and I feel lucky to have read it"
-Alicia Ostriker

"Is the sky blue? Day's poems paint it a hundred different ways, full of geometry and change, structure and feeling, as plangent as a sunset, as secret as an electromagnetic field. Divine love holds the physical parts together, even as human love and its marvelous stories are the substance of our lives. Here are witty, intelligent, affectionate poems making grand, skeptical comparisons and painting us and our shadows in brilliant colors--perfect poems for our time."
-F.D.Reeve

$15.00 | ISBN 978-0-692-00181-3 | 90 Pages | In Stock

Back in stock:

Dog Soup and Donuts by Susanne Morning
Indian Bay Press, 2008

"Morning's poems; a haunting grace that captures the unknown Korea. She takes the reader on a unique journey, leaving us wanting more..."
-Gloria Mindock, Červená Barva Press

"With striking images and ellptical thoughts, Morning's poetry lurches between humour and depths too dark to plumb..."
-Colin B. O'Connell, Ph.D, Canada

"...An archeological dig that will put dirt under your nails and priceless relics in your hands."
-Haery Lee, Korean Author and Illustrator

"...She demonstrates the flexible nature of words and phrases in the context of second-language usuage with much humour and passion."
-Owen Bullock, Associate Editor Poetry New Zealand

$17.95 | ISBN: 978-0-9773695-2-2 | 79 Pages | In Stock: 3

New Arrivals February 14, 2009

Discovering Mortality by Bruce Lader Discovering Mortality by Bruce Lader
March Street Press, 2005

The poems in Discovering Mortality are all focused on the most significant subject any poet can engage with: down-to-earth, day-to-day lived human experiences. With crystal clear language and subtle craftsmanship, Lader dramatizes relationships and conflicts of childhood (including children who are psychologically and socialy at risk), the nuclear family, marriage, sex, death, war, and social concerns. The poems are imbued with Lader's reverence and unsentimental love for his subjects as well as the mystery of our interactions with the natural world.
Gerald Barrax, author of From a Person Sitting in Darkness
Emiritus Professor of English at North Carolina State University

Vivid evocations of childhood, wry and pointed humor, pungent details, and tellin episodes--Bruce Lader's first book of poetry contains enough strong material for several volumes. Discovering Mortality is a maiden voyage not maidenly in the least!
Fred Chappell

Bruce Lader's Discovering Mortality presents an array of fully realized poems on everything from family and marriage to world issues, Jewish culture, and teen street culture. The thread that holds the volume together is lyric honesty, a poet expert in remaking his own experiences into an artful gift for readers.
Joe Benevento, poetry editor, Green Hills Literary Lantern,
author of Holding On and The Odd Squad

$12.00 | ISBN: 1-59661-026-3 | 80 Pages | In Stock: 3

New Arrivals October 22, 2008

Distant Kinships poems of Anthony Bernini
A.P.D., 2002

The poems of Anthony Bernini are favorites of those who attend poetry readings in the Capital District of Upstate NY. Now, with this book, the rest of the world can get to know his poems too.
"In Bernini's poetry, we encounter love and the loss of love, generosity of spirit and cruelty, mystery and understanding, the profound in the mundane, the hope of the pessimistic optimist… a wry, realistic, yet tender smile for a confused humanity that doesn't seem to have much of a chance but carries on anyway, not having much of a choice."
-from the introduction by Michael Mannion

 

$12.00 | ISBN 0-9714631-2-3 | 51 Pages | In Stock: 3 copies
Love, its Wrath and Others A collection of Poetry and Artwork by Jane Chakravarthy

Jane Chakravarthy, originally from England, now lives in Massachusetts and Bangalore, India.

 

 

$10.00 | ISBN 9788175258037 | 57 Pages | In Stock: 4 Hardcover copies
Seeking Center by Joan Gelfand
Two Bridges Press, 2005

"Ms. Gelfand's exquisite, breath-taking poems tell us about our deepest selves, reaching these secret places where we all overlap and long for validation."
-Jane Swigart, author, The Myth of the Perfect Mother

 

 

$9.95 | ISBN 978-0-9723947-6-5 | 71 Pages | In Stock: 3 Signed copies
Still Waters by Thom Brucie
Tight Curtain Press, 2006

"These extraordinarily moving stories explore the intricacies of human suffering and joy. Thom Brucie writes with rare power and insight; his lyrical descriptions echo in the heart and mind of the reader."
-Libby Tucker, author of Campus Legends

-Thom Brucie is a 2006 Georgia Author of the Year Nominee

 

$16.00 | ISBN 0-9774897-1-X | 102 Pages | In Stock: 5 copies
The Number Before Infinity by Zack Rogow The Number Before Infinity by Zack Rogow
Scarlet Tanager Books, 2008

"The Number Before Infinity reads like a novel or memoir in verse. Each poem is a chapter in the story of two lovers united by passion but separated by previous commitments. In lyrical, accessible verse, the book follows the lovers as they choose between their deepening connection and their existing loyalties.

Reading Zack Rogow's The Number Before Infinity, I was reminded of young Neruda's love poems; here is that passion, tempered and informed by briars and grace of marriage and family. Bravo Love. Bravo Poetry."
-Cornelius Eady

"Very few poets have the courage to open themselves as fully as Zack Rogow does as he pours out, in passionate poetry, the story of a love affair and the family fallout it generates. These poems are hot, honest, propelled by the skill of a first-rate worker in words to serve what William Carlos Williams said poetry was all about, feeling. Any reader who opens this extraordinary book and begins reading won't put it down. That's a guarantee."
-Bill Zavatsky

$16.00 | ISBN 978-0-9768676-0-9 | 72 Pages | In Stock: 2
When the Body Calls by Martha Cinader
Harlem River Press, 1998

"When you cook chicken you have to stick a fork in it to tell if it's done, but you don't have to do that to Cinader's poems. They're raw and cooking at the same time. She's like a female Sun Ra who can coax words out of her saxophone. She never omits any detail even when she's taking us to another stratosphere. This book is daring and unflinching. An important body of work."
-Hal Sirowitz, author of My Mother Said and My Therapist Said

"The challenge of being a woman, being a lover, a mother, a user or words, of metaphors, signs and symbols in this postmodern age in terms of one's self identity can easily lead to rage. These stories, poems, and memoirs are not simply told, but as you read and listen to them, they easily unfold and innervates one's soul, the spirit."
-Steve Cannon, A Gathering of the Tribes

 

$12.00 | ISBN 9780863162794 | 127 Pages | In Stock: 3 copies
The Season of Love by Flavia Cosma The Season of Love by Flavia Cosma
Červená Barva Press, 2008

Once again in The Season of Love, Flavia Cosma offers us those momentary glimpses and sensations briefly felt and viewed which hide and yet reveal the testament of life. Through the transient sensations of reality, the poet lures her readership deep into the mystic world of her eternity. Each poem serves to lead the reader through the pain, suffering and loneliness of life while searching for truth's hidden mysteries which serve to make life meaningful and beautiful, yet remain to be discovered in that continual renewal and rebirth of life.
David Mills, poet and critic
Toronto, Canada


One of prevailing themes in Flavia Cosma's poetry is love, but not as a banal, run-of-the mill experience. Instead, it has the elemental intensity of natural phenomena, which best picture both the breakdown of feelings and the undying hope. And that's where the poet places her wise optimism.
Dr. Irena Harasimowicz-Zarzecka
PHD Philology, University of Bucharest, Romania
Toronto, Canada

Excerpt from the Introduction:

"...Cosma employs

No such wasteful rhetoric. Her poetry—

Analytical, elegant, eloquent—

Is as superb as poetry demands.

Her devotion delights; her lines instruct.

The Season of Love is a fresh gospel,

Skewering our pretensions forcefully.

Its lush richness of imagination,

Singing through Cosma’s and Siedlecki’s English,

Is compelling and a consummation,

Marrying music and morality."

George Elliott Clarke
E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature
University of Toronto
Laureate, 2001 Governor-General’s Award for Poetry

Flavia Cosma is an award winning Romanian-born Canadian poet, author and translator. She has published thirteen books of poetry, a novel, a travel memoir and three books for children. Her book, 47 Poems, (Texas Tech Press) received the ALTA Richard Wilbur Poetry in Translation Prize. Červená Barva Press published her chapbook, Gothic Calligraphy and will be publishing her newest collection, Songs at the Aegean Sea.

$15.00 | ISBN: 978-0-615-20097-2 | 89 Pages | In Stock
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 News

Order online at Lulu.com: http://www.lulu.com/content/2651312

$13.00 | ISBN: 9780979531361 | 72 Pages
Same Sex Séances by Rane Arroyo
New Sins Press, 2008

In prize-winning poet Rane Arroyo's gay America, readers meet cowboys and vaqueros, untamed drag queens, Internet surfers, AIDS survivors, underwear models who are salsa gods, men risking their lives by loving in dark cornfields, gay music videos stars, street corner sphinxes and other documentarists. This is Sodom as a mindset and a refuge. Through Latino personae and Arroyo's life experiences, these poems offer us profound adventures:

How ridiculous for us to be
fallen men in Fall.
                                   Still, you're
here and I've nowhere else to go
Let's be as naked as a diaspora.

"Rane Arroyo's poems are passports to his passions"
-Emanuel Xavier

"He writes because he has to, not to exorcise himself of the ghosts that haunt him"
-Dr. Betsy A. Sandlin

"Arroyo gets to play the role of Dionysus...and other tricksters and transformers."
-Robert Miltner

These 5 books are autographed by the author
-Editor

$20.00 | ISBN 978-0-9796956-1-2 | 82 Pages | In Stock: 5
Blood Soaked Dresses by Gloria Mindock
Ibbettson Street Press, 2007

In her fascinating poem cycle, Gloria Mindock jolts back into memory the roots of El Salvador's present day violence. Mindock coaxes to the page the voices of the dead who lie, less in peace, than in restless obsession with the atrocities they suffered. She brings forth as well the voices of the living who seem startled to find that they died somewhere between the horrors they witnessed and the grave they have yet to lie down in. Blood Soaked Dresses is a beautiful, harrowing first book.
--Catherine Sasanov

We are reminded of Cezar Vallejo's witnesses: bones, solitude, rain, and the roads -- that we are tied to each other in beauty and suffering, life and death. Gloria Mindock's poems grant us the voice of a soul caught on a limb between the promise of peace everlasting and impossible resurrections. Poem after poem we are asked to uncover those whose bitter ash weeps over the world, and no other country/wants to see it. This book is written from a compassionate heart that whispers and grieves, one that isn't afraid to holds its gaze.
--Dzvinia Orlowsky

A poet must never shy from the necessary, no matter how hard it is. In poetry that is both elegant and brutal, Gloria Mindock exposes the horror of the Salvadorian conflict especially on women. Though Salvador has faded from the front pages, the war has reincarnated in other countries on other continents making "Blood Soaked Dresses" completely contemporaneous. This poetry possesses, as Yeats said, "a terrible beauty." And we need it now more than ever.
--John Minczeski

The reader of Blood Soaked Dresses is enriched by Mindock's power and commitment. She has earned a place among our great protest poets, reminding us, with lyric tension, that social justice is our constant and necessary concern.
--Simon Perchik

$13.50 | ISBN: 978-1-4303-1034-1 | 72 Pages

 

Order at Lulu.com: http://www.lulu.com/content/1172519

To read reviews go to:
Boston Globe review by Ellen Steinbaum:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/12/09/

Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene Reviews:
http://dougholder.blogspot.com/search?q=lo+gallucio
http://dougholder.blogspot.com/search?q=irene+koronas

A new book from John Dickey

Quebradillas Quebradillas by John Dickey
Terranova Editores, 2008

From the back of the book:
John Dickey's poetry has a wonderful, fresh wit that shines through many of the poems contained in Quebradillas, his second book of verses. Inspired by rural life in the northwesern town of Puerto Rico that lends its name to this book, these poemas are about life in motion, captured in snapshots or observations of a world in constant physical transformation, the compilation of a knowledge which can only be mediated, not appropriated, through and by language. Thus, poetry becomes an attempt to bridge the distance between us and this "knowledge", and how we intregate with it. Quebradillas is about universes at work -the physical and the poetical- in all its fullness.

$14.00 | ISBN: 978-0-9799961-6-0 | 93 Pages | In Stock: 3

3 New Arrivals from PRESA :S: PRESS

The Burning Mirror by Kerry Shawn Keys
PRESA :S: PRESS, 2008

…the work seems to exude like sap from a sugar maple or ants from a hill. What an incredible wealth. The sort of poet people dream about when they dream about poets.
--Robert Bringhurst

 

$14.95 | ISBN: 978-0-9772524-9-7 | 92 Pages | In Stock: 3
Total Immersion by Glenna Luschei
PRESA: S: PRESS, 2008

Like the best of poets and other artists, Glenna Luschei never grew up. Rather, she grew and goes on growing. Vast is her sense of wonder and awe. Again and again, her every poem celebrates the ways the world begins.
--Al Young

 

$15.00 | ISBN: 978-0-9800081-0-4 | 96 Pages | In Stock: 3
Wild Strawberries by Eric Greinke
PRESA :S: PRESS, 2008

Eric Greinke's infinite variety has never staled nor withered. His poems have the surrealisticmagic of Magritte or the younf Dali. He is an eclectic poet for all seasons and all times of the day.
--Leslie H. Whitten Jr.

 

$15.00 | ISBN: 978-0-9800081-1-1 | 96 Pages | In Stock: 3
Awakenings by Richard Wilhelm
Ibbetson Street Press, 2008

In Richard Wilhelm's powerful free-verse, sonorous, image-tapestried first collection, the mature poet takes us through a remarkable series of awakenings, most of them to profound interconnections between himself and primordial riches of the natural world--half-buried treasures that glimmer with mystery, ecstasy, and the divine--
--Douglas Worth, author of Catch the Light

 

$15.00 | 52 Pages | In Stock: 3
No Bones To Carry Poems by James Penha
New Sins Press, 2007

James Penha's imagination will whet your own. This book is a feast.
--Louis Crew

James Penha is able to mold exotic topics into poignant universal truths. Should I be called upon to speak at a funeral. I would choose to quote the first four lines of the evocative title poem, 'No Bones To Carry.'"
--Virginia Howard, editor of Thema

The poems in No Bones To Carry are nuanced and expansive, defining the individual's place in the larger world. Here, Penha reminds us of the limitations of our perception and the poet's struggle to see beyond them.
--Blas Falconer

$13.00 | ISBN: 978-0-9796956-0-5 | 71 Pages | In Stock: 4
Earth A Narrative in Verse by John Dickey
authorHOUSE, 2005

From the formation of the solar system, 4.6 billion years ago, to the fate of the Sun as a fading white dwarf, six billion years from today, Earth: A Narrative in Verse recounts the epic of Earth’s evolution in 44 cantos that document the struggle of irrepressible Life with inevitable Death. Astronomy, geology and biology are melded in poems that employ and celebrate the sounds and symbols of science to describe the formation of planets, tectonic motions, climate change, catastrophic happenings, and the odyssey of terrestrial Life from single cells to complex organisms and finally back to single cells, the last earthlings. Sobering yet uplifting, the work presents Earth in the context of universal time and space.

$17.95 | ISBN: 1-4208-3266-2 | 210 Pages | In Stock: 3
Bird Scarer by Glenn Sheldon
Červená Barva Press, 2008

MARTHA COLLINS-Structurally and emotionally expansive, Bird Scarer covers more territory than most first books. Beginning as a displaced Bostonian who finds himself in Chicago, where a "terrible blankness fills my eye," Sheldon next moves into a more abstract landscape, where he finds a "permanent address" that is both actual and mental. Finally, he opens his emotional eye to the variety and vibrancy of Latin America, where his travels become the metaphorical basis for a "Geography of Desire." Though often playful, the book is carefully observant and edgily serious: "I'm alert," the poet says, "like a bus rider / with a drunk driver making up / the names of the streets." Metaphors like this, usually emerging from setting, as well as less easily defined conceits ("The anarchists' picnic is / a disaster: Where? Why? When?"), turn these well-grounded poems into delightfully non-linear narratives that keep the reader as alert as the poet.

SUSAN AZAR PORTERFIELD-I am impressed by Sheldon's form. Always the stanza, always very regular, tercets or quatrains, etc., which seems to suggest a kind of control as does his use of short lines as well as short sentences. It suggests a kind of control and even terseness, but what I like is his unexpected bloom or rush of thought and/or feeling that really comes through. In other words, he gets us to ride on this seemingly tidy little train, but then the journey takes us on a wilder ride than we anticipated. I like the surprise of that. I also like what I perceive to be his tone and voice. Quiet, a bit sardonic, but also heavily emotional, Bird Scarer is lovely.

JIM DANIELS-Bird Scarer is an impressive collection of poems. The voice is wise and mature. The structure of the book both clear and sophisticated. One of the things I look for in a book of poetry is an accumulation of momentum from beginning to end, and I found that here. The book creates interesting tensions in terms of place-the links between physical places and emotional landscapes are explored in all their complexities. Sheldon has a fresh voice-quirky and disarming, frank and witty. And always precise. I was struck by the consistent use of tight, packed language, and his careful use of the poetic line. I love the understated humor in many of the poems, and how he uses form to reinforce that humor. The depth and tonal richness of the comparisons seem effortless and natural, yet carry enormous weight in these poems. They roll through these poems, one after another, creating surprise, discovery, insight, throughout. And fun.

LUIS URREA-Glen Sheldon's earlier poetry is certainly filled with promise. We find a full voice in play. Perhaps the poems are shaded by his expertise in Thomas McGrath. Still, this influence does not in any way dull the poems' brio. It is as an American poet that Glenn Sheldon will ultimately be remembered (and revered). He will have a major career as a poet, as Bird Scarer reveals his full maturity and trajectory.

$14.00 | ISBN: 9780615171678 | 60 Pages | In Stock: 20
A Careful Scattering by Philip E. Burnham, Jr.
With illustrations by Louise and Elizabeth Burnham
Červená Barva Press, 2007

Each year, for the forty-two Christmases of our married life, my wife, Louise Hassel Burnham, illustrated the poems I wrote to celebrate the festival season of the years’ ending and beginning, the Solstice, Christmas, and New Year. Her illustrations were in a variety of media: line drawings, block prints (both wood and vegetable), collage and paint. Many of the drawings represent views of our house in Newton, Massachusetts, including such details as the front door, a mirror in the hall, the fireplace. Others include the names and places of family and friends woven into trees. Louise’s final card, from 2001, is a gathering up of many earlier cards. While the original intent of these cards was to celebrate a single year, together they sum up our lives over four decades. We discussed their publication before her death, and it was she who chose the title, “A Careful Scattering.” In their publication I want to remember our partnership, and to dedicate this book to her memory with love.

$16.95 | ISBN 978-1-4357-0003-1 | 98 Pages | In Stock: 30
aerolith by William Cirocco
Harbor Mountain Press, 2007

…singular, intelligent and moving…
--David Miller

 

 

$14.00 | 84 Pages | In Stock: 2
Alice by Louis E. Bourgeois
PRESA :S: PRESS, 2007

…His work is void of spurious hope, yet taunts us with a lingering sense of individual purpose.
--Laura Qa, Red Dragon Press

 

$6.00 | ISBN ? | 40 Pages | In Stock: 3
Cell Mate by Ana Merina
Harbor Mountain Press, 2007
Translated by Elizabeth Polli

Ana Merino is one of the best contemporary Spanish poets, and Cell Mate is a wonderful place to start reading her. In these poems all of Ana's registers are present: the whimisical one some times, others the haunted one. Ana writes dark lullabies, fairy tales for grown ups, and she does it without losing the sense of childish wonder. How is that possible? Open the book.
--Edmundo Paz-Soldan

Winner of Bolivia's National Book Award

 

$14.00 | 51 Pages | In Stock: 2
If You Like Difficulty by Jan Clausen
Harbor Mountain Press, 2007

Jan Clausen's witty, resourceful poems turn on a dime from "abab" formal to text message-y digital, hugging the curves of language with precision and wild glee…
--Rodney Koeneke

 

$14.00 | 84 Pages | In Stock: 2
In the shop of nothing by David Miller
Harbor Mountain Press, 2007

"…[David Miller's] poetry of meticulous observation is not merely descriptive, striving as it does for the intuitive moment, which flickers, however briefly, in language; attempting to reveal how the ordinary and simple can disclose the transcendent…"
--Tim Woods, from The Poet's Voice

 

$14.00 | 122 Pages | In Stock: 2
Limbos For Amplified Harpsichord by Stanley Nelson
PRESA :S: PRESS, 2007

Stanley Nelson may be the best poet you've never heard of.
--Alan Catlin

Here is a poet who crosses the line without fear of label. His experimental writings and verse lend freely to all areas of literature. Nelson is a writer whose rapture is deeply embedded in his craft.
--Rattlesnake Review

$17.95 | 144 Pages | In Stock: 3
The Other Side of Broadway
Selected Poems 1965-2005 by A. D. Winans
PRESA :S: PRESS, 2007

A.D. Winans is a man in search of his soul. He has great heart and compassion for people and his native city, San Francisco. I like his uncompromising spirit. He pulls no punches.
--Jack Micheline

 

 

$18.00 | 131 Pages | In Stock: 3
Dog Watch by Valerie Lawson Dog Watch by Valerie Lawson
Ragged Sky Press, 2007

Valerie Lawson's crisp lines often startle us with their concision-soeffective in among others, her inimitable nature poems. In Dog Watch we meet a fully arrived poet of passionate intelligence, able to speak forthrightly in resounding accurate words.
-XJ Kennedy
Exploding Gravity: Poems to Make you Laugh

[S]o many…stand out with special clarity, for the unexpected views of reality they offer, for their daring use of language, and for intelligent, sentient human voice behind all of them.
-Rhina Espaillat
Playing at Stillness

$10.00 | ISBN: 978-1-933974-01-9 | 81 Pages | In Stock: 3
the near surround by Nancy Mitchell the near surround by Nancy Mitchell
Four Way Books, 2002

The best of these poems-and there are a good number-are delicate and strong, simply told, full of longing; they take part in the mystery which is not made by any poet, but given. The Near Surround is a fine and moving book.
-Jean Valentine

The resistance of silence, the breath on the mirror from back, the figure feeding bees from a sack to the birds in the low branches, the grass in the photograph that keeps on growing: this is the place to which Nancy Mitchell takes us, the spare intensity of her poems like the midnight flare of the stove's burner, its "wreath of blue-white flame."
-Eleanor Wilner

$13.95 | ISBN: 1-761884800429 | 59 Pages | In Stock: 5
About Time by Diana Der-Hovanessian About Time by Diana Der-Hovanessian
Ashod Press, 1987

Strong poems in a strong voice. It is this voice that makes the book a rare first book because it sings so clearly, so cleanly, so individually…compelling, funny, sad, moving, doing all the things poems are suppose to do and usually don't.
--Joel Oppenheimer

Poems that will take their place as part of the international epic of migration and resettlement.
--Victor Howes, Christian Science Monitor

A striking and original artist who is the foremost translator of Armenian poetry.
--Herbert A. Kenny, Boston Globe

$8.50 | ISBN 0-935102-20-5 | 96 Pages | In Stock: 2
Bone Strings by Anne Coray Bone Strings by Anne Coray
Scarlet Tanager Books, 2005

(Excerpts from the back of the book)
Anne Coray's poems are deeply satisfying for their graceful combination of devotions, to the natural-animal /vegetable/mineral-and to the way nature resonates in us, the humans who live in a sacred space.
--Rosellen Brown

Anne Coray's precise, austere yet sensuous language is a fine instrument for tracing the harsh geography of her native Alaska. Cool as the moon, her poems shine a clear light on unforgiving landscapes, and on tough truths of the heart. Bone Strings sings a hard-earned song.
--Stephen Kessler

$15.00 | ISBN 0-9670224-9-5 | 77 Pages | In Stock: 2
Call Home Poems by Judy Wells Call Home by Judy Wells
Scarlet Tanager Books, 2005

Named a Best Book of 2003 by The Irish Times

Excerpts
Judy Wells tells the story of an Irish-American mother who has endowed her clan with a sense of drama and high humor that will prepare them to negotiate the pitfalls of property inheritance and re-negotiate what it means to be a family after a funeral…
--Bridget Connelly, Ph.D., Author of Forgetting Ireland

Call Home is a novel of charm and heartstrings-except that it was written as verse. Mither, pass the poetry.
--Jack Foley, Poet, KPFA Literary Host

I cried as I read the poems in Call Home, both for their poignancy and how beautifully they captured the bittersweet experience of dealing with death, dying, letting go and moving on…
--Mary McCall, Ph.D. in Human Development and Aging
Professor, Psychology Dept., Saint Mary's College of California

$15.00 | ISBN 0-9670224-7-9 | 89 Pages | In Stock: 2
crimes of the dreamer poems by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky crimes of the dreamer by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky
Scarlet Tanager Books, 2005

I am sure that Naomi Lowinsky goes into what Robert Graves called poetic trance when she writes, because reading this book one is overwhelmed by the wild rhythms of original poetry…
--Alicia Torres, Venezuelan poet and writer
author of Fatal and Regarding the Rose

$16.00 | ISBN 0-9670224-8-7 | 80 Pages | In Stock: 1
Embrace poems by Risa Kaparo Embrace by Risa Kaparo
Scarlet Tanager Books, 2002

(Excerpts from the back of the book)
Risa Kaparo writes poetry of 'soul- making.'
--Richard Silberg, author of Doubleness

A poet who makes beauty out of her suffering.
--Floyd Salas, author of State of Emergency

Risa Kaparo's poetry takes you into a world that is raw, brilliant, and unnerving.
--David Surrenda, Founder and former Dean, John F. Kennedy University Graduate School of Holistic Studies

$14.00 | ISBN 0-9670224-6-0 | 69 Pages | In Stock: 2
Everything Irish by Judy Wells Everything Irish by Judy Wells
Scarlet Tanager Books, 1999

Everything Irish is a hoot! This family memoir in verse is at once a poignant poetic documentary of Irish-Catholic girlhood and a rollicking riot of laughs…
--Bridget Connelly, Emerita Professor of Rhetoric, UC Berkley

Judy Wells' collection, Everything Irish, says it all for me. She captures the times all of "our girls" were haunted by a wayward Holy Ghost, a perfect Holy Mary, a thundering Holy Father…
--Mary Norbert Körte, Poet, Ex-nun, Environmental Activist

$12.95 | ISBN 0-9670224-0-1 | 112 Pages | In Stock: 2
Fire in the Garden by Lucille Lang Day Fire in the Garden by Lucille Lang Day
Mother's Hen, 1997

Fire in the Garden is a book of beauties and mutilations, erotic intimacies, distances and mysteries, seductive dreams and sardonic deflations of our common dreamlife. It runs hot, cold and shivery, and will keep you with the " taste of ash" on its lips.
--Alicia Suskin Ostriker

…Her powerful, sharp-edged, declarative poems speak to all of us.
--Timothy Houghton

$9.95 | ISBN 0-914370-72-3 | 63 Pages | In Stock: 2
infinities poems by Lucille Lang Day infinities by Lucille Lang Day
Cedar Hill Publications, 2002

(Excerpts From the Back of the Book)
Her poems are eloquent, imaginative, and informed by a knowledge of contemporary science.
--Kurt Brown

The description of "Nature" has always been an important aspect of California writing. In this brilliant book, Lucille Lang Day has found an entirely new way to do it. Her exploration of both human and nonhuman perspectives are impeccably and superbly alive.
--Jack Foley

She explores scientific concepts from astrophysics to marine biology with erudite care but always infuses the poems with tangible emotion.
--Dana Gioia

$15.00 | ISBN 1-891812-31-9 | 82 Pages | In Stock: 2
red clay is talking by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky red clay is talking by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky
Scarlet Tanager Books, 2000

(Excerpts From the Back of the Book)
The voice here is rich and musical. It balances the breadth of a woman's life on the turtle back, the bull's hips of myth.
--Richard Silberg

We partake with her ecstacy and darkness, passion, epiphany and hunger, and our world is larger for it.
--Diane di Prima

$14.95 | ISBN 0-9670224-2-8 | 141 Pages | In Stock: 2
The Fallen Western Star Wars Edited by Jack Foley The "Fallen Western Star" Wars
Edited by Jack Foley
A Debate About Literary California/Essay

From the back of the book
When Dana Gioia, the author of "Can Poetry Matter?," published his equally provocative essay, "Fallen Western Star: The Decline of San Francisco as a Literary Region," he knew that certain quarters would be up in arms. Prominent California literati were quick to defend the San Francisco Scene and wrote articles attacking Giola. Others attacked the attackers. The entire exhilarating, sometimes hilarious exchange appears in this book.

"Jack Foley is doing great things in articulating the poetic consciousness of San Francisco."
--Lawrence Ferlinghetti

$14.00 | ISBN 0-9670224-4-4 | 85 Pages | In Stock: 1
The Old Chore by John Hildebidle
Alice James Books, 1981

From the back of the book
These thirty-three poems represent an extended effort to consider the nature of this place and time, often by looking backward but never by looking away.

 

 

$4.95 | ISBN 0-914086-34-0 | ? Pages | In Stock: 10
VISIONS paintings seen through the optic of poetry by Marc Elihu Hofstadter VISIONS
paintings seen through the optic of poetry
by Marc Elihu Hofstadter
Scarlet Tanager Books, 2001

(Excerpts From the Back of the Book)
Marc Hofstadter wields an optical instrument that captures the rays that emanate from the interiors of things, rather than from their outsides…
--Yves Bonnefoy

Following the Chinese dictum, 'paintings are silent poems,' Marc Hofstadter bequeaths the canvas word…
--Willis Barnstone

To read Marc Hofstadter's VISIONS is to feel you've walked through an intimate museum…
--Kim Addonizio

The big question-love, death, life-evolve in the painter's mind, flow out of the brush, and take shape and color as they hit canvas. Why didn't I realize this before? These poems put me in that mind, as if, for a moment, I am a painter.
--Clive Matson

$14.00 | ISBN 0-9670224-5-2 | 71 Pages | In Stock: 2
Wild One by Lucille Lang Day Wild One by Lucille Lang Day
Scarlet Tanager Books, 2000

Excerpts from the back of the book
In Lucille Day's Wild One we are invited to ride shotgun as we travel and witness the full arc of a life from our window seat…
--Toni Mirosevich, author of The Rooms We Make Our Own

Few books of poems have the sheer narrative intensity of Lucille Day's Wild One. It sweeps the reader up like a powerful coming-of-age novel-half hilarious, half heartbreaking-but always with the sharp lyric edge of genuine poetry.
--Dana Gioia, author of Can Poetry Matter?

$12.95 | ISBN 0-9670224-3-6 | 99 Pages | In Stock: 2
All The Blood Tethers by Catherine Sasanov
Northeastern University Press

The 2002 Morse Poetry Prize
Selected and introduced by Rosanna Warren

The poems in Catherine Sasanov's All the Blood Tethers arise from an ancient, violent, and sacrificial world, a world of Roman Catholicism so atavistic, so embedded in relics, body parts, 'hair strands, blood spatters, bone,' as to seem nearly pagan....Like a restorer cleaning a fresco, the poems wipe away layers of piety and orthodoxy to uncover some violent, primal, stark expressiveness, a dream of Eve's original protest. ...The result is a sophisticated poetry of presense realized as image, as dramatic statement, and as a record of mind and heart collaborating in anger, yearning, testimony, grief, and wonder
--Rosanna Warren

$10.00 | ISBN 1-55553-538-0 | 82 Pages | In Stock: 1
Traditions of Bread and Violence
by Catherine Sasanov
Four Way Books, 1996

(Excerpts from the back of the book)

Catherine Sasanov breathes spirit into flesh and blood and turns tears into our daily bread. Her poems should be said out loud like prayers. It has been years since I have read poems of such humanity.
--Elena Poniatowska

These extraordinary poems dwell on violence, dwell in the violent truth of the world - Christ's body torn, or a lover's chest cut open, and the Milagro stamped from tin into the shape of a body part...
--Gregory Orr

$12.00 | ISBN 1-884800-09-2 | 54 Pages | In Stock: 1
A QUESTION OF SURVIVAL by Richard Moore
University of Georgia Press, 1971

"I like this book wondrous well, admiring the skill and bite of it immensely. At their best, Moore's poems are funny and serious at once--by no means light verse."
--Howard Nemerov

"Here, with this book, is a poet full-grown. These are healthy poems. There should be no question of survival--for either the man or the book."
--May Swenson

$15.00 | ISBN 8203-0265-1 | 106 Pages | In Stock: 3 (Signed)
BOTTOM IS BACK by Richard Moore
Orchises Press

The best and most serious poetry is full of gaiety, and it's only dreary poets and their too--earnest readers who consider light verse demeaning…
--Richard Wilbur

Poetry Book

$11.95 | ISBN 0-914061-43-7 | 95 Pages | In Stock: 3 (Signed)
BUTTONED INTO HISTORY by Richard Moore
Pivot Press, 2006

"Is nothing sacred, I wonder, reading Richard Moore's new smorgasbord of hilarious, hard-minded, and marvelously crafted verse. Fearlessly, Moore shoots his lethal darts at false gods of every kind, doing a job on embalmers, dictators, matriarchs, lecherous presidents, Robert and Elizabeth Browning, and more…"
X. J. Kennedy

$12.00 | ISBN 0-9726582-8-9 | 52 Pages | In Stock: 3 (Signed)
NO MORE BOTTOM by Richard Moore
Orchises Press, 1991

(Excerpt from the back of the book)
…The Moore of this frighteningly hilarious volume is a classic poet in the grand tradition of Rabelais, Swift, and Ogden Nash…

Poetry Book

$10.00 | ISBN 0-914061-22-4 | 75 Pages | In Stock: 3 (Signed)
PYGMIES AND PYRAMIDS by Richard Moore
Orchises Press, 1998

(From the back of the book)
Richard Moore graduated from Yale University and has been a Fulbright Scholar. A former Air Force pilot, he has taught at Brandeis and New England Conservatory of Music. Poems and essays of his have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harpers, The Hudson Review, The New Yorker, Poetry, The Southern Review, and many other journals.

Poetry Book

$12.95 | ISBN 780914-061717 | 79 Pages | In Stock: 3 (Signed)
SAILING TO OBLIVION by Richard Moore
Light Quarterly Imprints, 2005

Introduction by X.J. Kennedy

RICHARD MOORE is a distinguished poet of many voices, all of them pleasing and intelligent. Sailing To Oblivion is a book done in his comic voice, though it too is divisble into several kinds of light verse: some are offhand and playful, some (like "The Real Thing") are deeply funny, and some are learned and elegant like "A Country Boy Goes to Rome." I like them all.
--Richard Wilbur

Poetry Book

$12.00 | ISBN 0-9670437-1-9 | 63 Pages | In Stock: 3 (Signed)
THE MOUSE WHOLE by Richard Moore
Negative Capability Press, 1996

"For happiest results, take this book's trimeter sips in one sitting, like a great litre goblet of beer at a sidewalk café in Paris on a hot afternoon…"
--Mona Van Duyn

"…an unfashionable and remarkable undertaking. The meter is handled and kept with great courage. The mouse's story, perhaps because of its maddening eccentricity, is poignant and witty."
--Robert Lowell

"…His mouse epic is just like the cat's ass. Somewhere in the wings of Heaven, Pope must be clapping his pinions and Byron (if in the same location) must be lifting a bumper in salute."
--X.J. Kennedy

Poetry Book

$15.00 | ISBN 0-942544-50-1 | 223 Pages | In Stock: 3 (Signed)
The Naked Scarecrow by Richard Moore
Truman State University Press

(Excerpt from the back of the book)
In The Naked Scarecrow, Moore first acquaints us with the absurdities, agonies, and paradoxes of being a husband and father in contemporary America. He then expands his view into society as a whole. In the final sequence, Moore brings the self and its naked helplessness into mystical contact with the world.

Poetry Book

$14.00 | ISBN 0-943549-59-0 | 67 Pages | In Stock: 3 (Signed)
WORD FROM THE HILLS
A Sonnett Sequence in Four Movements
by Richard Moore
University of Georgia Press, 1972

(From the back of the book)
The author of this sequence has dared to write in a form which has become unfamiliar to contemporary readers, but he has succeeded masterfully in this bold strategy…

Poetry Book

$15.00 | ISBN 0-8203-0287-2 | 74 Pages | In Stock: 3 (Signed)
A Slow Boat to Valhalla by Thomas M. Catterson, edited by Robert Dunn A Slow Boat to Valhalla
by Thomas M. Catterson, edited by Robert Dunn
Founder's Hill Press, 2005

Thomas M. Catterson died on December 1st, 2003. This volume contains those poems of his that were, for whatever reason, uncollected in his previous books. But these poems deserve an audience, because they demonstrate not only his passion and vision, but also, on occasion, his whimsy. Thomas wanted me to look after these poems after he passed on;I ransacked his apartment upon his death to "rescue" them. However, one does not generally seek or receive credit in a book for "burglary," even if such actions were sanctioned by his family. So I guess that leaves me the title of "Editor"--I was obligated to do a minor amount of editing. Not too much, though--I didn't want to spoil the flavor (if not the idiosyncrasies) of the work. --Robert Dunn

$15.00 | ISBN: 1-892109-27-1 | 77 Pages | In Stock: 4
Being Love Estar Enamorado Being Love Estar Enam0rado
by Jay Ross (signed copies)
Indian Bay Press, 2005

Being Love is radiant with a higher love…they are more like Rumi than Neruda. He evokes Love at its most transcendent…
Guy K. Ames: award-winning song writer

Sufi mystics say "God is love, lover, and beloved." Jay's poems spring from a very personal, sensual experience of this wondrous union and fusion.
Geoffrey Oelsner: author, Native Joy

The sense of Love that emanates from your poetry is as deep and profound as I imagine the Original Love. It inspires me to a richer appreciation/interaction to my own existence. Your voice brightens the world.
dab

$12.95 | ISBN: 0-9773695-0-1 | 80 Pages | In Stock: 3
Beyond Renewal Beyond Renewal by George Held
Cedar Hill Publications, 2001

Free verse and other longer poetry. Perfectbound, 84 pages. Inscribed by author to Bob Spiess.

Beyond Renewal has a voice reminiscent of George Orwell… --Anthony O'Brien

Infinite purpose informs his perpetual play… --William Hathaway

…Held is an American Rilke. --Vince Clemente

$5.00 | ISBN: 1-891812-29-7 | 80 Pages | In Stock: 3 copies
BLOOD COCOON Selected Poems by Connie Fox
PRESA :S: PRESS, 2005

Our Lady of Laussel…a totally different cup of tea…genuinely powerful imagery…difficult to identify with or even understand but strangely also very compelling…very readable…
--Ore, England

…Connie Fox is like an old woman rattling and knitting, only she uses guts instead of yarn.
--Ken Sutherland, Mockreviewsz

$15.00 | ISBN 0-9740868-9-4 | 71 Pages | In Stock: 3
Cannon Fodder by Robert Dunn Cannon Fodder by Robert Dunn
Fidlar-Doubleday, Inc., 2003

Some of the material in this book orginally appeared in Satire, Buy the Poem, The Blind Man's Rainbow, Glass Tesseract.com, Timber Creek Review, Moose Bound Press, Pandaloon, Candelabrum, Hayden's Poetry Review, Word and Image, Riverrun, Office Number One, Aileron, Saturn, Big City Lit.com, Nomad's Choir, For Poetry.com, Breakthrough, and Krax.

$15.00 | ISBN: 0-89304-689-2 | 165 Pages | In Stock: 4
Cantar Del Huff by John M. Bennett Cantar Del Huff
A Bilingual Edition
by John M. Bennett
Luna Bisonte Prods, 2006

CANTAR DEL HUFF - A series of poems - as narrative as anything Bennett has ever written - in a medieval Spanish form. Bennett's translations into Spanish face the original English.

Excerpts

His poetry scrapes along the roughened floors and causes us a kind of pain, so that ultimately language is restored to us in a new skin, and we are somehow made grateful like Vallejo before him, Bennett is willingly to go deeply into debt for his art in order finally to give it to us for free. Bennett isn't interested in converting you, or taking you prisoner; You must understand something is happening, that is sufficient, and that it will happen with or without you.
--Jon Cone

One has to winnow through the garbage to find such real experimenters as John M. Bennett, now considered a pioneer in this field. With his additional interest in the visual aspect of writing, Bennett harkens to earlier schools such as dada and surrealism, as well as to such poets as Guillaume Appolinaire or Vicent Huidobro. Indeed, the reader will find nothing that is neat and tidy here, nothing that speaks for order either internal or external...
--Ivan Arguelles

$12.00 | ISBN: 1892280469 | 183 Pages | In Stock: 1
Demon Dance by Vernon Frazer
Nude Beach Press in association with
Woodcrest Communications, 1995

(excerpt from the back of the book)
Demon Dance is an exhausting but exhilarating volume of poems. Following the searing confessional style of Burroughs, Bukowski, Ginsberg, Algren, Kerouac and Celine, Frazer absorbs his influences and vaults beyond them, into his own consciousness, like a man who has outlived a deadly disease and has nothing to lose…
…In the title piece, an epic struggle between the forces of light and darkness, the poet becomes both Dante and Virgil and finds his way from hell to life
.

 

$6.00 | ISBN 0-9633465-1-2 | 53 Pages | In Stock: 3
Double Feature: Rogue's World Double Feature: Rogue's World by Joanne Lowery
Pygmy Forest Press, 2000

Joanne Lowery has had numerous poems published in literary journals including Columbia, Florida Review, Northwest Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, The Literary Review and River Styx.

 

$10.00 | ISBN: 0-944550-55x | 52 Pages | In Stock: 3
Everything is small From a Distance Everything is small From a Distance
by Leonard Cirino
Pygmy Forest Press, 2000

Leonard Cirino is one of the best and most original poets of his generation. Though he has suffered many difficulties, he has triumphed over them, and achieved a voice and style of his own… --Charles Edward Eaton

Leonard Cirino is not only one of the most important poets;he is also, I believe, one of our most needed poets. In almost every poem, he is creating a path through the mystical depths of nature toward the atonement we all feel we must make for acts of madness, blindness, insensitivity toward the life force. He is a poet of catharsis. His language works at refinement and purification of the soul… --Pierre Delattre

Portrait of Fernado Pessoa was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2003 by Bayou.

$12.00 | ISBN: 944550-67-3 | 107 Pages | In Stock: 3
Except for One Obscene Brushstroke Except for One Obscene Brushstroke
by Dzvinia Orlowsky (signed copies)
2003

In reading this book I had the most vivid sensation that I was being allowed to look inside a woman's head and soul in a way I don't think I have ever experienced. --Franz Wright

--the words sink deep and then haunt. --Dennis Lehane

Brilliant, erotic - nobody gives it to us with quite the direct bravery of Dzvinia Orlowsky. --Stephen Berg

$14.00 | ISBN: 0-88748-387-9 | 65 Pages | In Stock: 1
Glossolalia Poems 2002-2003 Glossolalia Poems 2002-2003
by Leonard Cirino
Pygmy Forest Press, 2002

Many of the poems in this collection were published in The American Dessident, Dufus, Edgz, Grasslimb, The Hiram Poetry Review, Home Planet News, The Lummox Journal, The Mid-American Poetry Review, The New American Imagist # 4 & 8 and others.

Leonard has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize twice in 2003.

$15.00 | ISBN: 0-944550-23-1 | 152 Pages | In Stock: 3
Heat Lightning 1986-2006 Heat Lightning 1986-2006 by Judith Skillman
Silverfish Review Press, 2006

Judith Skillman lets us see through her to ourselves, not as through a glass darkly, but with glorious light.
--Stephen Meats, Editor, The Midwest Quarterly

Judith Skillman has already amply demonstrated her ability to document the fragile ecology of domestic relationships with the resolutely unsentimental eye of the naturalist.
--Deborah Woodward, Prairie Schooner

$15.95 | ISBN: 1-878851-23-3 | 145 Pages | In Stock: 5
Homing Homing by Philip Ramp
Pygmy Forest Press, 2005

Philip Ramp is an American poet who has lived in Greece for many years. Shoestring Press has previously published his translations of Nikos Karouzos, Tassos Denegris, Lydia Stephanou, and Spyros Vrettos. Ramps other collections of his own poetry include: Jonz, Butte, and Glass of an Organic Class, which were published by Politka Themata Publications, Athens.
--Pygmy Forest Press

$12.00 | ISBN: 0-944550-72-x | 88 Pages | In Stock: 3
Improvisations Book 3 by Vernon Frazer Improvisations Book 3
by Vernon Frazer
Beneath the Underground Press, 2004

Frazer's new poetry is a vision…It has innocence, purity, an inner and a smooth, homogenous outer surface of strength…carries with it a lot of U.S. and international society and culture as it is today…
--Tom Hibbard

…jazz rhythms, glossolalia-like word-expulsions, and a distinctively graphic imagination…a territory composed of an altogether different nature than the ones examined by L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and related poetries…
--Sidereality

To me, Vernon Frazer's Improvisations seems a 21st century 'alternative' masterpiece unfolding before our eyes…
--Ric Carfagna

$12.50 | ISBN 0-9745270-0-9 | 95 Pages | In Stock: 3
Improvisations I-XXIV by Vernon Frazer Improvisations I-XXIV
by Vernon Frazer
Beneath the Underground Press, 2000

Improvisations (I-XXIV) employs an open-ended structure that allows the reader to perceive the work as a long poem or a sequence of inter-related poems. With an improvisor's ear tuned to nuances of sound, rhythm and structure, Frazer's literary analogue to free improvisation and action explores the creative terrain from Kerouac's spontaneous bob prosody through Olson's projective verse and the Language movement to consciousness itself.
--Beneath the Underground

…All of human history seems to present itself, too, as in the tradition of Olson, Frazer too seems to insist that 'the hinges of civilization…be put back on the door…'
--American Book Review

$10.00 | ISBN 9633465-7-1 | 93 Pages | In Stock: 3
Improvisations XXV-L by Vernon Frazer Improvisations XXV-L
by Vernon Frazer
Beneath the Underground Press, 2002

Excerpt from the back of the book
In this section of open-ended work, Frazer's verbal music and visual textures - literary counterparts to free jazz and action painting - blaze through each extended poem/chorus with a vitality and invention that approaches the ecstatic intensity of glossolalia.
--Beneath the Underground

$12.50 | ISBN 0-9633465-8-x | 95 Pages | In Stock: 3
IN MIRRORS by Lyn Lifshin
PRESA :S: PRESS, 2006

No one is more precise, focused, as deftly impressionistic as Lifshin…
--Hugh Fox

…Lifshin's poetic power is evident in these imagistic variations on the theme of insight.
--Eric Greinke

$15.00 | ISBN 0-9772524-3-4 | 84 Pages | In Stock: 3
INSIDE THE OUTSIDE An Anthology of Avant-Garde American Poets
PRESA :S: PRESS, 2006

Includes poets: Doug Holder, Richard Kostelanetz, A.D. Winans, Hugh Fox, John Keene, Kirby Congdon, Stanley Nelson, Harry Smith, Lyn Lifshin, Eric Greinke, Lynne Savitt, Mark Sonnenfeld, Richard Morris.

$29.95 | ISBN 0-9772524-1-8 | 303 Pages | In Stock: 2
Instruction Book by John M. Bennett Instruction Book
by John M. Bennett
Luna Bisonte Prods, 2006

INSTRUCTION BOOK - Poems written in the form of absurdist instructions. Reading these poems WILL change your life.

 

$9.00 | ISBN: 1892280493 | 117 Pages | In Stock: 1
Leaves of a Diary Leaves of a Diary by Flavia Cosma
KCLF-21 Press, 2006

Once again, Flavia Cosma combines the sweet-and-sour of life better than anyone, with her Gothic fairy-tale sensibility.
George Elliot Clarke

Words of sensibility from a warm heart. A spring whirls for hope in a natural and surrealistic landscape.
Dae-Tong Huh

Flavia's documentary, Romania, A Country at the Crossroads, won the Canadian Scene National Award.

47 POEMS (Texas Tech University Press) won the prestigious ALTA Richard Wilbur Poetry in Translation Prize.

$13.00 | ISBN: 0-9689561-7-3 | 71 Pages | In Stock: 4
Medea's Demonic Grin by Kent Kruse
Pygmy Forest Press, 1999

Poems were published in Chiron Review, Driver Side Air Bag, Hellp, Mind in Motion, Oxygen, Luna Negra, Semi Dwarf Review, ZZZ Zine, Cer*Ber*Us, First Time, Silent Treatment, Wooden Head Review, Lucid Moon, and Expose.

 

$10.00 | ISBN: 0-944550-52-5 | 75 Pages | In Stock: 2
Mister Hatter's Matters Mister Hatter's Matters by Leonard J. Cirino
Pygmy Forest Press, 2005

Leonard J. Cirino is the author of 14 chapbooks and 10 full-length collections from numerous presses in the past nineteen years.

His book, Steelie Rhymes is forthcoming from Willo Press and a chapbook, The Truth Is Not Real is due out by Adastra Press.

$12.00 | ISBN: 0-944550-75-4 | 81 Pages | In Stock: 3
Mudsong Mudsong by Michael Spring
Pygmy Forest Press, 2005

In poems made of muck, time, magic and jazz, Michael Spring's Mudsong reminds us that nature, ours and the world's, is at once organic and mysterious… --Lex Runciman

…This is a stellar collection, dramatically envisioned, beautifully crafted.
--John Amen, Pedestal Magazine

$12.00 | ISBN: 0-944550-71-1 | 76 Pages | In Stock: 3
My Dream has Red Fingers by Stella Vinitchi Radulescu My Dream has Red Fingers
by Stella Vinitchi Radulescu
CeShore Publishing, 2000

Combining lyrical, European prose with the sharp imagery of contemporary verse, My Dream Has Red Fingers is a collection to be enjoyed time and again. Stella Vinitchi Radulescu reveals profound insight and keen intellect in her rendering of love, emotion and human nature.
--CeShore Publishing Company

$9.95 | ISBN: 1-58501-050-2 | 58 Pages | In Stock: 2
PRE-SOCRATIC POINTS & Other New Poems by Stanley Nelson
PRESA :S: PRESS, 2006

This is the most radical opening up of poetic form since Walt Whitman's Leaves Of Grass. Stanley Nelson is one of those who defines an age, not only for his contemporaries, but for posterity.
--Guy Gauthier

 

$15.00 | ISBN 0-9772524-4-2 | 83 Pages | In Stock:
Pulsa a book of books Poems by Richard Cambridge Pulsa a book of books
Poems by Richard Cambridge
5 copies/ 4 are signed
Hanover Press, 2004

(Excerpts)
Reminiscent of Rainer Maria Rilke's noted A Book of Hours, Cambridge's "Pulsa - a book of books" is less a collection of individual poems than it is a dramatic narrative -- warm and conversational, intimate and humorous. One that brings us to a deep recognition of the humanity that lies within us all.
— Faith Vicinanza, publisher, Hanover Press

Indeed, Cambridge's innovative vision updates ancient insights with a fresh, experimental use of imagery and spiritual metaphor. His heroic, mystical Song of Self offers a healthy, humane alternative to the psychic chaos of Today's post-modern disaster.
—Askia Touré, winner of the American Book Award

"Full of heart, sincere ambition and a genuine devotion to the mysteries of language, Richard Cambridge is a true poet of the streets, of the city that gives him his name, and also of the books he loves that give his book its title and structure."
— Robert Pinsky, U.S. Poet Laurette

Pulsa: A Book of Books by Richard Cambridge, with illuminations by Michelle Warriner Bolt, is an amalgam of William Blake and the Book of Kells. I’m not being flip, here. It’s that good. Light years beyond Rilke’s Book of Hours (to which it has been compared), with Bolt’s lovely, almost child-like runic calligraphy and drawings that capture the spirit of each separate section in the book, and with Cambridge’s Lao Tzu-like wisdom and Whitmanesque command of language, this collection is a satyagraha of the spirit. It takes its reader not only down the road not taken, but where there is no road.
— Thomas Rain Crowe, Publisher, New Native Press
(Excerpt from his review of Pulsa that appeared in Bloomsbury Review)

$15.00 | ISBN: 1-887012-24-9 | 76 Pages | In Stock: 5 copies/ 4 are signed
Raw Materials Raw Materials by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal
Pygmy Forest Press

With his first collection, Raw Materials, I sense that Luis Cuanhtemoc Berriozabal is just getting started. These poems are evidence of a great voice warming to its deceptively simple and immediate themes, and a great heart and mind beginning a journey that is sure to range over the earth for many decades to come-if we are so lucky. Among new poets, Berriozabal is the rare, authentic article.
--Michael McClintock, Editor
The New American Imagist

$10.00 | ISBN: | 89 Pages | In Stock: 3
Selected Poems 1972-2005 by Eric Greinke
PRESA :S: PRESS, 2005

Greinke has magically melted several worlds together. I'd call it Whitmanic rorschach: a wild high!
--William Harrold, Small Press Review

Greinke has put a lot of thought into context and structure. His poems are filled withsimple images which have a deeper meaning and keep the reader interested throughout.
--M.C. Eichman, in Wisconsin Review

$20.00 | ISBN 0-9740868-7-8 | 138 Pages | In Stock: 3
Selected Poems & Prose Poems by Kirby Congdon
PRESA :S: PRESS, 2005

A poet like Congdon is a man who binds himself to the mast and sails off determined to miss nothing, record everything, even the siren song that leads everyone finally to the reefs of extinguishment.
--Joan Colby, Small Press Review

 

$15.00 | ISBN 0-9772524-0-x | 83 Pages | In Stock: 2
SOUND DIRT by Jim Leftwich & John M. Bennett SOUND DIRT
by Jim Leftwich & John M. Bennett
Luna Bisonte Prods, 2006

SOUND DIRT - Textual and visual poems, created collaboratively by Bennett and Jim Leftwich. An opulent production, with many works in color.

 

$12.00 | ISBN: 1892280477 | 173 Pages | In Stock: 1
The Buffalo Sequence The Buffalo Sequence by Mark Pawlak (signed copy)
Copper Canyon Press, 1977

Rare and out of print, First Edition, 1977
One of the first books by Copper Canyon Press

"earnest and urgent pieces about growing up American"
--Celia Hagan, Northwest Review

Introduction by Denise Levertov

$10.00 | ISBN: 0-914742-19-1 | 64 Pages | In Stock: 5
THE DRUNKEN BOAT & Other Poems From The French of Arthur Rimbaud
Bi-Lingual Edition
PRESA :S: PRESS, 2007 4th Edition

Greinke's renderings come across with such a remarkably contemporary feel, that he easily gets away with the occasional use of words like 'car' and 'suburbia'. This little collection boasts many fine poems. The Drunken Boat is wild and lovely and perhaps the poet's most vivid expression of his desire to find a life of total freedom.
--Edward J. Hogan in Aspect

$15.95 | ISBN 0-9772524-7-7 | 107 Pages | In Stock: 3
The Fatman in The Mirror The Fatman in The Mirror by Kenn Mitchell
Pygmy Forest Press, 1997

This is Kenn Mitchell's second book of poetry. Poetry of the Deformed (1996) was also published by Pygmy Forest Press.

 

$10.00 | ISBN: 944550-46-0 | 100 Pages | In Stock: 3
UNION POEMS by Don Share UNION
POEMS by Don Share
Zoo Press, 2002

Excerpts:

Union presents a moving and original combination of vernacular directness, subtlety of tone and cadence, and imaginative vigor. Poems of mythologized autobiography--grief for a smashed marriage, for a lost childhood--are framed within the larger historical and political context of the poet's pained reckoning with his native Tennessee. --Rosanna Warren

Share's quest takes him back into the green heart of the country, looking down Union Avenue in Memphis where the Arkansas joins the Mississippi, flowing toward the Gulf, and where "the past still hurts, and gets sung about." Like those earlier singers, Whitman and Dickey, Don Share discovers again the distinctly American narrative, "the original catastrophe of our history," as he calls it: "We fought America in ourselves." And still fight, I might add. I delight in the precision of these chiseled poems and in the sizeable, important ambition of Share's imagination. --David Baker

But Union also sings the eternal concerns of love and time, death and longing...Few books are as lovely or profound. --Alice Fulton

$12.00 | ISBN: 0-9708177-7-0 | 67 Pages | In Stock: 5
View from Behind the Mirror by Lois Beebe Hayna View From Behind The Mirror
by Lois Beebe Hayna
Red Poppy Press, 1998

Excerpt from blurb:
They have a kind of shimmering clarity, a clean music, and an unsentimental generosity that rings in the mind after they are put down.
--Mary Crow

$11.95 | ISBN: 0-9650383-0-0 | 108 Pages | In Stock: 3
Winter Light Poems by Alfred Nicol Winter Light Poems by Alfred Nicol
The University of Evansville Press, Hardback Edition

Recipient of the 2004 Richard Wilbur Award

Excerpts: ...poems in this collection burn with cool radiance.
--Jay Parini

The energy of youth, the wisdom of maturity: what poet could long for a better combination, the one thing this terrific book epitomizes?
--Sydney Lea

It is tempting to describe Alfed Nicol as a "poets poet," because he uses language with a grace so effortless that it creates the illusion of having arranged itself, by itself. But Nicol is much more than a poet's poet; he is also a reader's poet, and his work, though dazzling, is not intended to simply dazzle but to convey, with charm and profundity, the experiences of our common life....
--Rhina P. Espaillat

$15.00 | ISBN: 978-0-930982-58 | Pages | In Stock: 3
Zen Yentas in Bondage by Robert Dunn Zen Yentas in Bondage by Robert Dunn
Ostrich Editions, 1997

Robert Dunn is Editor -in-Chief of The New Press Literary Quarterly, the Executive Editor of Medicinal Purposes Literary Review and host for public access cable programs. Robert has appeared in many television programs including Egg Cream Theatre, Showcase Showcase, Poetry Live!, Mac's Acts, and the Florence Morrison Show. Robert Dunn has also appeared on many radio shows.

$10.00 | ISBN: 0-89304-083-5 | 64 Pages | In Stock: 4

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