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New Poetry from Pleiades Press

Dunstan Thompson: On the Life and Work of a Lost American Master D. A. Powell and Kevin Prufer, Editors $12.99 | paper | 190 pp. Pleiades Press ISBN: 9780964145412 Nonfiction. Poetry. LGBT Studies. Literary Criticism. In the 1940s, Dunstan Thompson, a gay WWII veteran, was a darling of the Modernist poetry communities in New York and London and widely considered one of the most talented poets of his generation. In 1950, he all but disappeared. This book (which includes his poems and essays by various critics—among them Katie Ford, Dana Gioia, Edward Field, Jerry Harp, Jim Elledge, and Heather Treseler) examines his legacy, his poetry, and his eventual abandonment of his earlier gay identity in favor of a reinvigorated Catholicism. It's the first volume in Pleiades Press's "Unsung Masters Series." LINK→

New Poetry from Canarium Books

The Irrationalist Suzanne Buffam $14 | paper | 104 pp. Canarium Books ISBN: 9780982237632 Poetry. In acclaimed poet Suzanne Buffam's second collection, her unusual range, formal rigor, and imaginative force are on full display as we are introduced to the wry meditations of a literary "irrationalist" who pursues her own poetic logic beyond the bounds of reason. Throughout the collection, in resolutely modern, rueful and eccentric lyrics, Buffam investigates the shifting grounds of knowledge while refusing to take any philosophical authority too seriously. Together, these poems compose a swift, durable, protean argument for the necessity of interior maps in a world that may be on the eve of extinction, but whose darkness is continually illuminated by a pyrotechnics of curiosity, candor, and wit. LINK→

New Poetry from Marsh Hawk Press

Almost Dorothy Neil de la Flor $15 | paper | 72 pp. Marsh Hawk Press ISBN: 9780984117734 Poetry. Winner of the 2009 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize. Praise from Forrest Gander, Contest Judge: "With a scenery-chewing imagination, deft linguistic cuts, slippery line breaks and disjointed or dehiscent narrative elements, Neil de la Flor abandons genre rules to explore gender roles, religion, domestic relations, science and history. The poems of ALMOST DOROTHY take place in spectacular leaps away from conventional patterns of development. They suggest a kind of super symmetry that links saints, elementary particles, two boys dressed for Halloween as Dorothy, and a butch Brazilian barman. Revisionary and anachronistic in its referencing and formally restless with its lyrics, lists, prose poems, definitions, and dramatic dialogues, ALMOST DOROTHY is the red-headed stepchild of Antony (without the Johnsons) and Jean Cocteau. Infusing poetry with theater, Neil de la Flor is at once bitingly original, funny, and uncompromising." LINK→

New Fiction from Ampersand Books

We Are Never As Beautiful As We Are Now Adam Gallari $15.95 | paper | 168 pp. Ampersand Books ISBN: 9780984102532 Fiction. At times both funny and heartbreaking, these nine emotionally rich and incisive stories follow characters grappling with the unanswerable question What next? A sudden encounter conjures a failed relationship. A minor league pitcher, in the twilight of a career that never was, tries to divine his future. A young man accompanies his veteran neighbor and father to a V.F.W. a few years after refusing to attend Annapolis. Stoicism and grit belie the vulnerability of people ultimately searching for someone or something to trust in. Though his literary forbearers may be Richard Ford and Ernest Hemingway, Adam Gallari reexamines the masculine with a deftness and a grace entirely his own. LINK→

New Literary Criticism from Book Thug

Unleashed Sina Queyras $20 | paper | 165 pp. Book Thug ISBN: 9781897388457 Literary Nonfiction. Afterword by Vanessa Place. 05/09/04 "Now she is blogging. Now she is sitting on the black couch listening to the sirens wail and the rain fall. Now she is thinking of oysters. Now she is wondering why this is worth sharing. Now she is thinking, how decipher what is worth reading? Who is to say? Sifters. She thinks we have become a nation of sifters." So began a three-year experiment in blogging. An experiment begun for many reasons-a way for an expat to keep in touch with fellow Canadian writers and artists, a way to come to terms with the increasing relevance of the internet in literary lives, and a way to figure out why, after decades of gains, women writers are still grossly underrepresented in critical dialogues. 11/27/05 "Where, one might ask, are the women? I have my theories. Look to the deletions, the hesitations, the reflective responses...the women are still out there thinking, their voices not quite up for the often bombastic and instantaneous responses." Taking up a public space and voice does something to one's brain. There is no getting away from the space one creates "out there"—unleashed. LINK→

New Fiction from Otis Books/Seismicity Editions

The Capricious Critic Ari Martin Samsky $12.95 | paper | 234 pp. Otis Books/Seismicity Editions ISBN: 9780979617768 Fiction. THE CAPRICIOUS CRITIC is a satirical look at our society through the distorted lens of the absurd. Chronicling the author's forays into bizarre worlds, Samsky is part cultural anthropologist, part reluctant wayfarer. Originally under assignment for the web museum Smyles & Fish, Samsky rates and reviews fantastic places, products, and activities that reflect upon current society. He spares no detail. With wit and humor, Samsky leaves no exhortatory stone unturned, from reviewing fountain pens to describing the various subsets of Hell. Iris Smyles's provocative afterword concludes this collection of critical essays. THE CAPRICIOUS CRITIC is the newest addition to the canon of cult literature. LINK→

New Poetry from The Word Works

Mayweed Frannie Lindsay $15 | paper | 96 pp. The Word Works ISBN: 9780915380732 Poetry. Winner of the 2009 Word Works Washington Prize. With seamless craft and lyricism, Frannie Lindsay elevates personal grief to a universal level. Through the natural world, she invites "mayweed, earnest as milkmaids" to flood the valley of death. Lindsay offers the reader light, often surprisingly warm, in the chill darkness of death. Cover art by Deborah Mayhall. LINK→

New Poetry from The Post-Apollo Press

The New Make Believe Denise Newman $13 | paper | 62 pp. The Post-Apollo Press ISBN: 9780942996715 Poetry. "A strange intelligence guides the works in THE NEW MAKE BELIEVE toward insistent, yet nearly ineffable, redefinitions of commonplace words, as if everything were, in being named, strange. 'Accident,' 'law,' 'memorial,' 'wolf,' 'pants,' 'sex' and other such terms participate in intense proto-symbolic musicalities to reveal (or cover) what seem to be crucial yet cheerily personal insights into what it is to be alive as or in a person surrounded by a baffling world of dark beauty—and mysterious others. Denise Newman's work is here more haunting than ever, and as needful of contemplation"—Norman Fischer. LINK→

New Memoir from Faux Press & Other Publications

Memoir and Essay Michael Gottlieb $16 | paper | 170 pp. Faux Press & Other Publications ISBN: 9780982549506 Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. Critical Writing. Responding to MEMOIR AND ESSAY Ron Silliman writes, "Michael Gottlieb saw it all, did it all & appears to have taken notes. MEMOIR AND ESSAY is a personal history of the evolution of Language poetry in New York City in the 1970s as viewed by one of its key innovators. Gottlieb's attention to detail & sensitivity to the interpersonal dynamics of the scene make this a crucial document for understanding progressive poetics in the late 20th century. Gottlieb's prose makes it a pleasure." K. Silem Mohammed adds, "A life in, of, and for poetry: Michael Gottlieb generously lays bare the one he has led, putting in plain terms the measures by which the discipline asserts itself as a constitutive force, a shaping regime of identity and counter-identity, community action and individual reflection. In his recounting of his own experience coming into poetry in 1970s New York, as well as his meditations on poet's work (the work of poetry itself and the work that poets do in the world), Gottlieb gives us an immensely valuable document in the annals of Language writing and contemporary literary autobiography generally." LINK→

New Poetics in Translation from Nightboat Books

Poetic Intention Édouard Glissant $16.95 | paper | 248 pp. Nightboat Books ISBN: 9780982264539 Literary Nonfiction. Poetics. African American Studies. Translated from the French by Nathalie Stephens. This marks the publication of the first English-language translation of POETIC INTENTION, Glissant's classic meditation on poetry and art. In this wide-ranging book, Glissant discusses poets, including Stéphane Mallarmé and Saint-John Perse, and visual artists, such as the Surrealist painters Matta and Wilfredo Lam, arguing for the importance of the global position of art. He states that a poem, in its intention, must never deny the "way of the world." Capacious, inventive, and unique, Glissant's POETIC INTENTION creates a new landscape for understanding the relationship between aesthetics and politics. LINK→

New Fiction from Les Figues Press

Not Blessed Harold Abramowitz $15 | paper | 86 pp. Les Figues Press ISBN: 9781934254134 Fiction. Poetry. In NOT BLESSED, a story is told not once, but twenty-eight times in twenty-eight shifting versions. Here, a story acts as a chosen narrative constraint, a constraint which, once chosen, becomes a compulsion within the text, a landing point the narrator must reach again and again. NOT BLESSED: a brilliant twist of a tale, where narrative is spun like politics in the nightly news, deployed in a language that delights and distorts as it winds toward the trauma of non-truth and multiple non-originals. NOT BLESSED asks: what is the what that makes who? LINK→

New Poetry from Tinfish Press

The Dandelion Clock Daniel Tiffany $16 | paper | 64 pp. Tinfish Press ISBN: 9780978992996 Poetry. "Daniel Tiffany's 'pocket rhapsodies' are gorgeously spring-loaded, micro-tuned, and aching with time, time lost, syllabic time, dreamtime, time the conqueror. THE DANDELION CLOCK is a burning fuse and a wonderful book"—Peter Gizzi. LINK→

New Poetry from Rust Buckle Books

Mum Halo John Coletti $15 | paper | 104 pp. Rust Buckle Books ISBN: 9780984346806 Poetry. "I moved to New York City, was handed Physical Kind and was in love in seven lines. I have been waiting for this collection ever since. I like poets who let me get in their heads. It's about being with them more than understanding every synapse that fires. Everything that happens in a Coletti poem is treated with equal emphasis, is experienced with equal weight. It's not easy to wake up with a shell sewn inside your ear but Coletti takes the potential burden of hyper-perception and cycles it out to us with 'fighting charm'"—Stacy Szymaszek. LINK→

New Poetry from Ahadada Books

Coördinates of Yes Janée J. Baugher $16.50 | paper | 92 pp. Ahadada Books ISBN: 9780981274430 Poetry. Written during a six-week trip through Europe, COÖRDINATES OF YES marries nuances of travel (loneliness, restlessness, adventure, reverie, risk, discovery) with ekphrasis (poems inspired by the visual arts). This collection of poems addresses different ways of seeing: The experience of travel and art-viewing can enlighten as well as confuse, while the literal eye that travels is undifferentiated from the eye of the imagination. At the core of COÖRDINATES OF YES lies dualism: "Coördinates" refers to place and transience of travel, and "Yes" suggests the mind-set required of both traveler and viewer of art. LINK→

New Poetry from Coach House Books

Rhapsodomancy kevin mcpherson eckhoff $14.95 | paper | 80 pp. Coach House Books ISBN: 9781552452318 Poetry. Reading is slow, and writing is slower. Words are old-fashioned. Why not consider the communication of the future? In 1837, Sir Isaac Pitman began a sixty-year obsession with producing a system of Shorthand that accurately and swiftly captures voice as evidence of the mind's movements. In the 1950s, John Malone developed Unifon, a forty-character phonetic alphabet intended for international communication by the airline industry. Both projects reached for artful utility, and both have largely been forgotten. In RHAPSODOMANCY, kevin mcpherson eckhoff remembers them. Exploring these two phonic alphabets as image, these poems playfully interrogate the relationship between voice and visual poetry. Can pictures represent voice? Can unutterable writing express thought? RHAPSODOMANCY offers an imaginative response to such questions via empty suits reciting onomatopoeia, letters defying the laws of reality, and drawings divining the future. LINK→

New Fiction from Bronx River Press

The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores: A Novel of Sex and Murder Corey Mesler $15.95 | paper | 197 pp. Bronx River Press ISBN: 9780978984717 Fiction. THE BALLAD OF THE TWO TOM MORES is set in the fictional Queneau, Arkansas. Restaurant reviewer Tom More is living the good life, small town style. He is a cad, a rural Romeo. But his sense of self is abruptly shaken when another man with the same name moves into town. Meanwhile, as the inhabitants of this countrified Peyton Place are lustily carrying on, there is another darker energy at work. Somebody is bumping off the male inhabitants of Queneau. Someone, it would seem, is on a self-appointed mission of extermination. THE BALLAD OF THE TWO TOM MORES is dark comedy at its most outrageous—imagine a three-way between Carson McCullers, Henry Miller and Peter DeVries. Cover image is by celebrated photographer William Eggleston. LINK→

New Anthology from Ellipsis Press

The Harp & Altar Anthology Keith Newton and Eugene Lim, Editors $17 | paper | 336 pp. Ellipsis Press ISBN: 9780963753649 Poetry. Fiction. In its short tenure, the Brooklyn-based online literary magazine Harp & Altar has defined itself by publishing innovative, risk-taking literature, establishing a home for serious readers attracted to its groundbreaking writing and original design. The energy and talent on display have been widely recognized—and now the best of this online magazine has been collected in THE HARP & ALTAR ANTHOLOGY, which features a selection from the fantastic poetry and fiction published in the first three years. LINK→

New Anthology from Oyster Moon Press

Hydrolith: Surrealist Research & Investigations Hydrolith Editorial Collective $16 | paper | 240 pp. Oyster Moon Press ISBN: 9780578050393 Poetry. Fiction. Literary Nonfiction. Art. Music. This book brings together in one volume some of the most exciting recent work from the international surrealist movement. With over 80 contributors from 17 countries around the world, the book contains drawings, paintings, games, comics, photographs, poetry, prose, theoretical and political writings on a huge variety of subjects, including special in-depth investigations of music, space and myth. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in the surrealist movement today. LINK→

New Poetry Anthology from Paper Kite Press

Poem, Home: An Anthology of Ars Poetica Jennifer Hill and Dan Waber, Editors $20 | paper | 212 pp. Paper Kite Press ISBN: 9780979847073 Poetry. The title says it all. Includes poems by: Kelli Russell Agodon, Flor Aguilera, Karren L. Alenier, Sandra Alland, C. J. Allen, Ivan Arguelles, Anny Ballardini, Gary Barwin, Annette Basalyga, Rick Benjamin, John M. Bennett, Maxianne Berger, F .J. Bergmann, Cliff Bernier, Gregory Betts, Celia Bland, Dean Blehert, Helen Boettcher, Peter Boyle, Allen Braden, Therese L. Broderick, Mary Buchinger, Ana Buigues, Mike Burwell, Mairead Byrne, Nick Carbo, Cathy Carlisi, Wendy Taylor Carlisle, James Cervantes, Joel Chace, Ellen Cole, Ed Coletti, Jennifer Compton, Anne Coray, Alison Croggon, Del Ray Cross, Craig Czury, Yoko Danno, Lucille Lang Day, Denise Duhamel, Patrick Dunagan, Riccardo Duranti, Paul Dutton, Susanne Dyckman, Lynnell Edwards, Dan Featherston, Annie Finch, Thomas Fink, Alan Halsey, Sharon Harris, Lola Haskins, Nellie Hill, Nathan Hoks, Paul Hoover, Mikhail Horowitz, Ray Hsu, Halvard Johnson, Jill Jones, Adrianne Kalfopoulou, Bhanu Kapil, W. B. Keckler, Karl Kempton, Kit Kennedy, Tracy Koretsky, Greg Kosmicki, Gary Leising, Amy Lemmon, Lyn Lifshin, Diane Lockward, Rupert Mallin, Dr. Pamela McClure, Dr. D. H. Melhem, Hillary Mellon, Paul Mitchell, Carley Moore, Daniel Thomas Moran, Maggie Morley, Richard Newman, Angela O'Donnell, Shin Yu Pai, Helen Pavlin, Jonathan Penton, Alice Pero, Patrick Phillips, Paul Pines, Kevin Prufer, Chelsea Rathburn, Susan Rich, Cynthia Ris, Kim Roberts, Jay Rogoff, Kate Schapira, Barry Schwabsky, Derek Sheffield, Shoshauna Shy, Sue Stanford, Lucien Suel, Rod Summers, Eileen Tabios, Elaine Terranova, Heather Thomas, David Tipton, Juanita Torrence-Thompson, William Trowbridge, Priscilla Uppal, Katherine Varnes, Jeanne Wagner, Amy Watkins, Scott Watson, Melissa Weinstein, Carol Clark Williams, Jacquie Williams, Ernie Wormwood, Mark Young, and Andrena Zawinski. LINK→

New Fiction from Interactive Publications

A Beginner's Guide to Dying in India Josh Donellan $22.95 | paper | 256 pp. Interactive Publications ISBN: 9781921479304 Fiction. Winner of the 2009 Interactive Publications Picks Best Fiction Award. Part comedy, part tragedy, part henna-drawn thriller peppered with romance and intrigue, A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO DYING IN INDIA is a spiritual journey across the continents of the soul. Commencing in Australia and traversing toward the climactic scene in the snowy mountains of Northern India, this novel crosses exotic external and internal terrains with humor, sharp wit and a resonance that expands with each chapter. While confronted with mounting grief and loss in Australia, Levi is suddenly called to India by his brother and delves, though somewhat reluctantly, into the shifting sands of his own spirituality. In fulfilling his dying brother's wishes, Levi embarks on a path intersecting with adventure, new-found friends, a treasure trove of riches (and not just the material kind). LINK→

New Poetry from El León Literary Arts

Some, like elephants Laura Glen Louis $15 | paper | 48 pp. El León Literary Arts ISBN: 9780979528545 Poetry. She was the golden girl and twenty. A year later she was dead, and by her own hand. The young woman's father called Louis with the news, he, a college boyfriend. The next day she could not get out of bed, could not get dressed. Over the next months a tetraptych emerged. She came skittering across the road like a water bird.... The sun behind her the paler star. Like being thrown off axis by a quake, Louis was derailed. She set aside her novel and turned to poetry. A daughter must tell her mother she will die; a man at the height of his creative powers is killed in a freak accident; an American icon is painted in a chiaroscuro as uncompromising as a Rembrandt. The title poem steps back to explore the many ways in which we grieve, while Louis's meditation on her own mortality gives apt and inevitable conclusion. Candid, annealed with precision, these poems haunt and invite revisitation. LINK→

New Poetry from Shearsman Books

Sonnets Camille Martin $16 | paper | 108 pp. Shearsman Books ISBN: 9781848610705 Poetry. In her second book of poetry, Camille Martin breathes fresh life into the sonnet in a collection that is at once edgy and lyrical. The word "sonnet" comes from "song," and the musicality of SONNETS is not surprising, given Martin's background as a classical musician. These poems demonstrate a virtuosic range of approaches and themes; some are inspired by texts as disparate as nursery rhymes, theories of cognitive science, a history of street names, and her own dream journals. The chorus of voices in this collection sing confidently and fluently, proving the sonnet to be an ideal vehicle for Martin's love affair with language. LINK→

New Poetry in Translation from Tupelo Press

This Lamentable City Polina Barskova $11.95 | paper | 48 pp. Tupelo Press ISBN: 9781932195835 Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Russian by Ilya Kaminsky. Polina Barskova's poems are a zesty paradoxical concoction: bawdy and erudite, elegant and raw, subtle and brazen. As Ilya Kaminsky attests in his introduction to THIS LAMENTABLE CITY, "Barskova is an elegiac poet who brings to her American readers a language formally inventive, worldly and humorous. One of her strengths is her ability to bring together strikingly erotic, sensual images...with a deep sense of history and culture.... In Russian, Barskova is a master of meter, rhyme, and alliteration, and...(w)hat comes across in English is the tonality of the poems, the clarity of her vocal play and images, her intricacy of address." Though her prize-winning books of poetry in Russian have earned an international reputation, and individual poems have appeared in prestigious journals and anthologies—for instance, in Contemporary Russian Poetry (Dalkey Archive, 2008) and An Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets (University of Iowa Press, 2005)—this is the first book of Barskova's poems to be published in translation, in a handsome dual-language edition. LINK→

New Poetry from Ahsahta Press

Gallowglass Susan Tichy $19 | paper | 96 pp. Ahsahta Press ISBN: 9781934103135 Poetry. Susan Tichy is a poet embedded: with U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, twined together through history; in the landscape disrupted by war, perseverating on a deer killed by a mountain lion, or hearing direction in birdsong; and in the language of war: "gallowglass" is a corruption of a Gaelic word for "mercenary soldier," and dark, ancient ballads appear like forensic evidence. Surrounded by cultural touchstones from Pythagoras to the Grateful Dead, Tichy refuses to let the reader's gaze, or her own, turn from the violence of modern living. LINK→

New Fiction from Cleveland State University Poetry Center

Snaketown Kathleen Wakefield $9.95 | paper | 159 pp. Cleveland State University Poetry Center ISBN: 9781880834855 Fiction. Winner of the 2007 Ruthanne Wiley Memorial Novella Contest Selected by Steve Lattimore. SNAKETOWN tells of a place that captivates and holds hostage, a place hermitic and congenital like the families that populate it. It tells the story of heredity and tragedy; how evil can magnetize as mightily as beauty, how a family, nostalgic for past times—devastating times—can revise damaging, damning memory; how the familiar should never be trusted. LINK→

New Folklore in Translation from Quale Press

Zarma Folktales of Niger Amanda Cushman $14 | paper | 120 pp. Quale Press ISBN: 9780979299988 Fiction. Folklore. African and African American Studies. Young Adult Fiction. Translated by Amanda Cushion. ZARMA FOLKTALES OF NIGER presents for the first time in English the folklore of the Zarma, a lesser-known tribe of West Africa. These tales run the gamut from teaching ethical and moral lessons to portraying tricksters to naming animals to farting contests to having fun. Humor and an emphasis on living justly bind the stories together. So far there have been few mentions of the Zarma people in Western texts, and no sign of their folklore, until now. While many English translations of African folklore exist already, they are mainly restricted to better-known cultures. ZARMA FOLKTALES OF NIGER captures the reality of the culture that created the tales, preserving what might otherwise have been lost from the oral tradition. Unlike similar collections of African folklore, ZARMA FOLKTALES OF NIGER provides the cultural and historical context necessary to truly appreciate and understand these tales. The introduction outlines Niger's history and describes the relationships of the Zarma to neighboring tribes, and the glossary explains common terms and expressions found in the stories. These tales will be of interest to children, general readers of folklore, and those interested in African culture, as well as to cultural anthropologists and ethnographers. LINK→

New Memoir from Sun Dog Press

Charles Bukowski's Scarlet Pamela "Cupcakes" Wood $15.95 | paper | 234 pp. Sun Dog Press ISBN: 9780941543583 Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. "It began as a whim"—an impulsive meeting between the iconic Charles Bukowski and his famed muse, Pamela "Cupcakes" Wood—that leads to a two-year relationship Wood chronicles in this memoir. Her story is refreshingly blunt as she details their often ridiculous, yet charming relationship. This is a Bukowski enthusiast's dream—an immersion into his life with the independent and spirited "Scarlet," the woman he wrote about in the book of the same name. She appears as "Tammie" in Bukowski's book Women. What was the powerful chemistry between Bukowski and the woman whose identity intrigued so many? Written with engaging wit, this is an insightful recollection of their life together. We see Buk as a gifted, flawed man, yet we appreciate him for his deeply sensitive and compassionate nature. LINK→

New Poetry from Pleasure Boat Studio

Moonlight in the Redemptive Forest Michael Daley $16 | paper | 112 pp. Pleasure Boat Studio ISBN: 9781929355624 Poetry. Book with accompanying CD. Michael Daley's MOONLIGHT IN THE REDEMPTIVE FOREST drives a stake into the heart of complacency. Its theme is war, though not warfare. From spoken and unspoken minefields in drug addled families of America, from final solutions at Auschwitz and Eastern Europe, the savage firebombing of Tokyo, the poems depict survivors and victims with compassion and, ultimately, hope. Its longest poem evokes in narrative form a legend from Daley's South Boston Irish heritage, where poverty and suspicion overshadowed innocence. These poems should be heard—a CD, with music by Brad Killion, comes with the book—and savored for their crisp and daring language; not paeans to the virtuous triumphant, these are songs of the wounded who sing in their chains. LINK→

New Poetry from Sidebrow Books

Selenography Joshua Marie Wilkinson $20 | paper | 103 pp. Sidebrow Books ISBN: 9780981497525 Poetry. Joshua Marie Wilkinson's SELENOGRAPHY finds words in want of their own life to chart an adumbrated landscape, "a good song played // too patchily / to keep / in your lungs." Side by side with full-color Polaroids by Califone's Tim Rutili, these poems traverse thought and image, object and vestige, contingency and intention, likening the haunted drift through this sounding of words to a river, "easy incomplete but it / took us / like twigs." LINK→

New Poetry from BlazeVOX Books

From Old Notebooks Evan Lavender-Smith $16 | paper | 178 pp. BlazeVOX Books ISBN: 9781935402855 Poetry. Cross-Genre. FROM OLD NOTEBOOKS is a memoir, a novel, a poem, an essay—a self-styled "memoivel"—which exemplifies how love of language and literature enriches our lives, and explores, often with great humor, the many pitfalls confronting a young writer and father on his journey to maturity. Each entry in FROM OLD NOTEBOOKS is literally that—an idea written in a writer's draftbook. Within this unconventional format, Lavender-Smith is able to tell us the story of his life while ruminating on subjects ranging from fatherhood to philosophy, art, football, music, politics, TV, teaching, fear of death, and everything in between. In the process, Lavender-Smith lays bare the day-to-day trials and tribulations of an artist confronted by the pressures of culture, family, writing, and, simply, being. Witty, original, poignant and deeply insightful, FROM OLD NOTEBOOKS is a coming-of-age story, an ode to writing and reading, to living and loving—a celebration of "human thought in all its glory, all its mundanity." LINK→