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Poetry Books

Just released June, 2008 by Červená Barva Press

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

"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

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: 2

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 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: 5

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: 5

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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: 2

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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: 2

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