| SPD RECOMMENDS: New Titles September 8-22 |
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| New Fiction from Dorothy, a publishing project |
 Event Factory
Renee Gladman $16 | paper | 136 pp. Dorothy, a publishing project ISBN: 9780984469307 Fiction. A "linguist-traveler" arrives by plane to Ravicka, a city of yellow air in which an undefined crisis is causing the inhabitants to flee. Although fluent in the native language, she quickly finds herself on the outside of every experience. Things happen to her, events transpire, but it is as if the city itself, the performance of life there, eludes her. Setting out to uncover the source of the city's erosion, she is beset by this other crisis—an ontological crisis—as she struggles to retain a sense of what is happening. EVENT FACTORY is the first in a trilogy of novels Renee Gladman is writing about the invented city-state of Ravicka, a foreign "other" place fraught with the crises of American urban experience, not least the fundamental problem of how to move through the world at all. LINK→ |
| New Poetry from Action Books |
 Hank
Abraham Smith $16 | paper | 132 pp. Action Books ISBN: 9780979975585 Poetry. "In an era of overpolished workshop poems and vague, bloodless experiment, Abraham Smith's HANK risks a caterwauling quagmire both lyric and epic in scope, replete with 18 kinds of loneliness. A folk paean to Hank Williams, Sr., its excess is astonishing, its unpunctuated burble is propulsive, funny, unforgiving, and raw. HANK is an 'elegy for gravel' along the lost highway we've been hunting for. It belongs only to the future of American poetry"—Joshua Marie Wilkinson. LINK→ |
| New Poetry from Nightboat Books |
 We Press Ourselves Plainly
Nathalie Stephens $14.95 | paper | 88 pp. Nightboat Books ISBN: 9780984459803 Poetry. "WE PRESS OURSELVES PLAINLY is a particularly affecting development in an already virtuosic, Ovidian body of work because it renews and makes newly visible crucial continuities: between Continental and North American Postmodernism, the Nouveau Roman and New Narrative, WWII and Operation Enduring Freedom. From out of agile and Celinian ellipses, Nathalie Stephens creates an asynchronous, transnational 'discordance...in time,' a hugely amplified recent past whose familiarity haunts us not as nostalgia but as trauma. Among 'immaculate and catastrophic' ruins and lacunae, having forgotten 'the sentence for behaving,' the narrator embarks upon an 'adverse and objectionable' litany of a history whose abjections yield a kind of nihilistic courage: 'Hope is for martyrs.' Given that now 'even the fictions are fictions,' Nathalie Stephens puts 'holes...where there were none' as a way of underscoring that there's nothing inevitable about gender or genre or violence, just as 'What is inevitable is not the war but the language that determines the war.' As grim as Beckett, as moral as Genet, as seductive as Duras—yet this book moves me like no other"—Brian Teare. LINK→ |
| New Fiction from Publishing Genius Presss |
 Pee on Water
Rachel B. Glaser $13.95 | paper | 143 pp. Publishing Genius Press ISBN: 9780982081389 Fiction. "Rachel Glaser has written a game-changer. I have a couple of rules about things I allow myself to like. Rachel breaks all of them and her stories leave me hunting for my rule book. Where is my rule book? Damn her. Bless her. Say what you will. PEE ON WATER is a new way to breathe"—Giancarlo DiTrapano. LINK→ |
| New Poetry from Factory Hollow Press |
 Crash Dome
Alex Phillips $12 | paper | 64 pp. Factory Hollow Press ISBN: 9780984069859 Poetry. Factory Hollow's first full-length book, CRASH DOME is a book-length poem by Alex Phillips. "That from the twenty-six letters of our alphabet this book could be born is a miracle, a heartbreakingly glorious one that demands it be read, and talked about, and marveled over, and, like all true miracles, doesn't give a damn if it isn't"—Mary Ruefle. LINK→ |
| New Poetry from Cuneiform Press |
 Haecceities
Michael Cross $16.95 | paper | 92 pp. Cuneiform Press ISBN: 9780982792643 Poetry. "In HAECCEITIES, Michael Cross has made an interim language, his invention a relation between the words—as if this unknown relation or 'noumenon' is 'a hide enthinned' of futuristic Elizabethan single words each at once tactile, optical, aural simultaneously traces and events of reinterpreted future-present spurred in 'the many hundred wing-lit hives'"—Leslie Scalapino. LINK→ |
| New Poetry from Listening Chamber |
 everything goes but the poem + Calliope
Larry Kearney $12.99 | paper | 91 pp. Listening Chamber ISBN: 9780963932150 Poetry. "[A]nd what does it say? words / and words and celluloid / gone crisper take / the world in your hands the world / holds your hands take / the powder dispersed / and feel so warm and huddled down / in bed where dreams come differently / from nothing / but sequence scared / and scared get phantom rickshaw / come to pick you up / for the darktown strutters say / my feet have heavy shoes and now / the line of the train is called / shuttery kodak..." The first substantial collection available from Larry Kearney in two decades, since Streaming (O Books/Trike, 1988), this book collects two new works. One exceptional long long poem—"everything goes but the poem"—stretches over some 60 pages, the extended lyric. It's joined by one shorter long poem, "Calliope," some of the parts of which are pictures, some of the words of which are others' words. All together, they make a curious music: "catch your breath and put it in the mayonaisse jar, with the cricket." LINK→ |
| New Poetry from Furniture Press Books |
 Undone: A Fakebook
Chris McCreary $12 | paper | 100 pp. Furniture Press Books ISBN: 9780982629918 Poetry. "The poems in UNDONE are like echoes down a canyon—reverberating, overlapping, vibrating, creating a new kind of music - each word like a boat dislodged from its mooring, 'like pieces of things / from which to weave / a dreaming.' That words have sound values which translate into meanings is the guiding principal and McCreary plays each note at its own perfect speed. Everything we didn't know we needed to know is right here"—Lewis Warsh. LINK→ |
| New Poetry in Translation from Shearsman Books |
 Ficticia
María Baranda $15 | paper | 80 pp. Shearsman Books ISBN: 9781848611238 Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. Translated by from the Spanish by Joshua Edwards. FICTICIA was first published in Mexico in 2006. The book is a trilogy of long poems: an initial sequence bearing the overall title, a series of "Letters to Robinson," and a "Sky Cycle." While these series are distinct poems, they are all interconnected and intended to amplify each other and make a greater whole. The first sequence has a narrative voice and addresses an unidentified "you"; the second, the Letters, is addressed to Robinson, a witness to the events that unfold; the third returns to the narrative voice. LINK→ |
| New Poetry from White Pine Press |
 Adamantine
Shin Yu Pai $16 | paper | 108 pp. White Pine Press ISBN: 9781935210184 Poetry. Asian American Studies. In ADAMANTINE, the poet explores the strength of stone and spirit, disarming hardness to explore the power of the human spirit to transform itself through adversity. Drawn from global news stories, the subjects of these poems range from the tallest man in the world, an Olympic medalist, and a burning monk to a family stranded in the Oregon wilderness. An ongoing investigation of the poet's interest in the visual arts, a suite of poems contemplates the work of Goya, Warhol, Rothko, Cornell, and Calder, as well as master artists and craftsmen from the Eastern traditions. LINK→ |
| New Poetry from Coffee House Press |
 Sarah—Of Fragments and Lines
Julie Carr $16 | paper | 74 pp. Coffee House Press ISBN: 9781566892513 Poetry. A National Poetry Series winner, chosen by Eileen Myles. In the wake of a mother's battle with Alzheimer's and a child's impending birth, Julie Carr gathers the shards of both mourning and joy to give readers poems that encompass it all: "Zebra and xylophone cyclone and sorrow." Here she says, "Since I lost her I stored her like ore in my / form as if later I'd find her, restore her," giving voice to the longing that accompanies life's most profound losses and its most anticipated arrivals. LINK→ |
| New Poetry from Wave Books |
 The Cloud Corporation
Timothy Donnelly $16 | paper | 144 pp. Wave Books ISBN: 9781933517476 Poetry. The long-awaited second collection by Columbia University professor and poetry editor of Boston Review, Timothy Donnelly's THE CLOUD CORPORATION is an absolute tour de force, fully investing itself in the possibilities of language and intelligence—by way of a traditional and abiding faith in poetry—to illuminate the ceaseless advances of personal, political, and social contingency. "The poems of Timothy Donnelly astonish by their inventive intelligence.... We learn that self-knowledge can be adequate to knowledge of the world, in all its violence and complexity"—Allen Grossman. LINK→ |
| New Poetry from Adastra Press |
 The Bodies Beneath the Table
W. D. Ehrhart $18 | paper | 83 pp. Adastra Press ISBN: 9780982249574 Poetry. Forty-one poems ranging from the effects of fireworks on a war veteran to resurrecting the memory of an old love and finally burying it. Each of these poems is informed by Mr. Ehrhart's Vietnam War combat experience, whether listening to the president saying violence is not the answer while he is ordering missiles launched ("Kosovo"), or remembering that 9/11 changed the world similarly as did Sputnik where patriotism is called for or is called into question ("Manning the Walls"), or refusing to talk about escapist love ("All About Love"). Ehrhart's voice is sure, his rhythms contemporary, his themes relevant and moving. LINK→ |
| New Poetry from Ink. |
 One for None
m. g. martin $12 | paper | 75 pp. Ink. ISBN: 9780982828410 Poetry. ONE FOR NONE is the debut book of poetry from m.g. martin, the host of San Francisco Literary Death Match. The collection is separated into two sections (Spoken & Words) reflecting all his styles. martin tackled the spoken word and wrestled it onto the page until his rhythm and cadence sang with the poem. His written section blends style and tradition; an understanding of how the poem works and a diligence to completely break the rules. The poems expand and contract on his whim, are minimal and expansive at the same time. ONE FOR NONE speaks from an old soul in the lingo of the hippest poet in the city. LINK→ |
| New Fiction Anthology from Fast Forward Press |
 Fast Forward: The Mix Tape: A Collection of Flash Fiction, Volume Three
K. Scott Forman, Kona Morris & Nancy Stohlman, Editors $15 | paper | 293 pp. Fast Forward Press ISBN: 9780981785226 Fiction. "If you'd rather be rapt for a moment reading a flash than strung out for pages in a novel, FAST FORWARD is for you. It's the best flash fiction around—a book full of raptures"—Robert Shapard, editor of Flash Fiction Forward and Sudden Fiction series. Fast Forward Press strives to deliver diverse anthologies of international flash fiction by established and emerging writers. The stories range from under 100 words to 1,000 words, each one a self-contained emotional experience. In THE MIX TAPE, the third in the series, masters of the genre—Linh Dinh and Barbara Henning—are mingle with talented newcomers—Bryan Jansing and Teresa Milbrodt. The resulting book has all the pleasures of listening to a good mix tape: flashes of poetry, deep solemn undercurrents, and the laughable and the ludicrous. THE MIX TAPE is pure musical pleasure without the tape-hiss. LINK→ |
| New Literary Journal from epic rites press |
 The Epic Rites Journal Issue No. 1: Building a Better Bomb
Wolfgang Carstens, Editor $15.50 | paper | 146 pp. epic rites press ISBN: 9780981184494 Magazine. Poetry. Fiction. Literary Nonfiction. The first issue of THE EPIC RITES JOURNAL is absolute dynamite! It features new poetry by Rob Plath, John Yamrus, Gerald Locklin, Todd Moore, John Dorsey, Tony Moffeit, Jason Hardung, Wolfgang Carstens, Ben Smith, Casey Quinn, Jack Henry, Erek Smith, Mathias Nelson, Mike Meraz and Zach King-Smith; new prose by William Taylor Jr, Zack Wilson, Pablo Vision, Karl Koweski, Rob Plath, John Yamrus, Todd Moore, Tony Moffeit and Mark Cobb. The centerfold is a massive, no-holds barred forty page interview with the late, great Todd Moore. Forget about "small" press journals that are nothing more than poorly edited, photocopied, crudely constructed pamphlets held together by rusty staples, dental floss and bubble gum. THE EPIC RITES JOURNAL is a 138 page, perfect bound, professionally printed and assembled book! The Epic Rites Journal is dedicated to Todd Moore. These sticks of dynamite are for you! LINK→ |
| New Drama from UCLA American Indian Studies |
 What's an Indian Woman to Do? and Other Plays
Mark Anthony Rolo $16 | paper | 187 pp. UCLA American Indian Studies Center ISBN: 9780935626643 Drama. Native American Studies. "Mark Anthony Rolo's plays are a welcome addition to Native American theater. Rolo romps his way through stereotypes and romanticized notions of American Indians, while giving Native actors a rare chance to chew the scenery. From metatheatrical satire and farce to the poignant drama of The Way Down Story, this anthology enriches and extends the American Indian voice in drama"—Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. LINK→ |
| New Writer's Reference from Writ Large Press |
 You Already Know: A Playwright's Guide to Trusting Yourself; Practical Exercises to Open the Channel
Aaron Henne $15 | paper | 138 pp. Writ Large Press ISBN: 9780981483627 Drama. Playwriting. Writing Reference. YOU ALREADY KNOW ingeniously uses exercises to end-run the enemies of creative freedom (intellectual over-analysis, fear, self-doubt, a tendency to get stuck in familiar patterns) and open the heart and mind of the playwright to fresh, imaginative possibilities. In highly entertaining fashion, Aaron Henne prods, charms and cajoles the reader through roughly 80 writing exercises, helping each of us find our play by asking the right questions of ourselves and of the world. LINK→ |
| New Poetry in Translation from Green Integer |
 The Sorrow Gondola
Tomas Tranströmer $11.95 | paper | 72 pp. Green Integer ISBN: 9781933382449 Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Swedish by Michael McGriff and Mikaela Grassl. THE SORROW GONDOLA is the first collection of poetry Transtromer completed after the debilitating stroke he suffered in 1990. Since its publication, it has sold over 30,000 copies in Sweden alone. This is its first single-volume English edition. LINK→ |
| New Poetry from Copper Canyon Press |
 Is Music: New and Selected Poems
John Taggart $19 | paper | 180 pp. Copper Canyon Press ISBN: 9781556593048 Poetry. IS MUSIC—a major retrospective of an American original—gathers the best poems from John Taggart's fourteen volumes, ranging from early objectivist experiments and jazz-influenced improvisational pieces to longer breathtaking compositions regarded as underground masterpieces. There is a prayerful quality to Taggart's poetry, rooted in music—from medieval Christian traditions and soul to American punk rock. He is also heavily influenced by the visual arts, most notably in his classic "Slow Song for Mark Rothko," in which he did with words what Rothko did with paint and dye. "John Taggart's poetry is not like music, it is music"—George Oppen. LINK→ |
| New Fiction from Autonomedia |
 The Ass's Tale
John Farris $15.95 | paper | 208 pp. Autonomedia ISBN: 9781570272219 Fiction. John Farris's THE ASS'S TALE is a Rabelaisian story of a dog's search for his identity. Told in the existential down-and-dirty vein of Ralph Ellison, Ishmael Reed and Chester Himes, this book (in manuscript form) circulated through New York City's Lower East Side for years. John is a longtime denizen of the neighborhood; he still lives above the Bullet Space Gallery at 292 East Third Street. "Hot dog! Dirty dog! If you ever wanted to know about invisible sex, check this out!"—Steve Cannon, author of Groove, Bang, and Jive Around and Director of Gathering of Tribes Gallery. LINK→ |
| New Anthology from WriteGirl Publications |
 Beyond Words: The Creative Voices of WriteGirl
Keren Taylor, Editor $19.95 | paper | 356 pp. WriteGirl Publications ISBN: 9780974125190 Literary Anthology. Young Adult. Fiction. Nonfiction. Poetry. BEYOND WORDS is the ninth anthology from WriteGirl, winner of the Governor and First Lady's Medal for Service as 2010-2011 California Nonprofit of the Year. More than 150 teen girls and professional women writers share their diverse perspectives and stories about family, identity, friendship, love, music, loss and more in this unique collection. From poignant poetry to breakup lyrics to an essay on finding meaning within a shag carpet, BEYOND WORDS unveils a broad range of confident and fresh voices. The book concludes with a full chapter of innovative writing activities and advice for aspiring writers at any level. LINK→ |
| New Poetry from Singing Horse Press |
 The Empty Quarter
Lindsay Hill $15 | paper | 74 pp. Singing Horse Press ISBN: 9780935162455 Poetry. Poetry. "In THE EMPTY QUARTER, his fifth full-length book of poetry, "Lindsay Hill creates an existential drama of loss and recovery, isolation and agora, reminiscent of Kobo Abe's powerful novel The Woman in the Dunes. The considerable beauty of the work is achieved not through rhetorical striving but by quietly establishing the precision of the case: 'She has never / stood so close / to anything / as she is / to that / which the sand / takes.' The tone and rhythm of the work are perfect, as sand, woman, and city drift into each other"—Paul Hoover. LINK→ |
| New Poetry in Translation from Chelsea Editions |
 Natural Theater: Selected Poems 1976-2009
Giampiero Neri $20 | paper | 204 pp. Chelsea Editions ISBN: 9780982384954 Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Italian by Ron Banerjee. Edited with an Introduction by Victoria Surliuga. Steeled by war, informed by Darwin and Hobbes and influenced by Rimbaud and Pound, Neri holds that poetry should inform readers about harsh reality and the perennial contest between good and evil, not by expressing feelings, but by crafting precise and truthful depictions. This is a book of short, icy capsules of time in which man, plants and animals struggle for survival. LINK→ |
| New Poetry from Bear Star Press |
 The Kilim Dreaming
Robert Hill Long $16 | paper | 104 pp. Bear Star Press ISBN: 9780979374562 Poetry. Comprising three sonnet sequences and one very long indefinite sentence ("...of Exile in Florence, Massachusetts"), THE KILIM DREAMING showcases Robert Hill Long's gift as a storyteller. "The Spear Lily" introduces readers to two prostitutes—male and female—whose date in a botanical garden becomes the catalyst for them to reimagine their futures. "The Book of Joel," dedicated to the poet's former neighbor, who died unexpectedly, presents his portrait in nineteen sonnets, one for each of his nineteen years. The title poem, a true thriller, takes us into Turkey and the twined lives of Ahmet, a rug merchant specializing in kilims, and a weaver desperate to escape the confines of her culture and history. The book's rollicking closer describes with varying degrees of truthiness the poet's own former life in a Massachusetts village settled by Italian immigrants. Talking crow poets, Dr. Bronner's soap, local history, and a popular diner contribute to the poem's antic mood. LINK→ |
| New Poetry from Beatitude Press |
 The Space Between
J. R. Brady $9 | paper | 38 pp. Beatitude Press ISBN: 9780982506660 Poetry. "Ms. Brady's THE SPACE BETWEEN deftly reveals scenes that range from the generational aspects in 'The Empress' to the almost mythological 'An Applicant Contemplates Louise Brooks' and on toward the myth-making tale of 'Loch Ness.' This collection offers us visions of particular experience and universal patterns suggesting realms of inward connection and outward recognitions engaging lives sustained beyond easy solution"—Vince Storti, North Coast Literary Review. LINK→ |
| New Poetry from Etruscan Books |
 Outside the Narrative
Tom Leonard $22.95 | paper | 216 pp. Etruscan Books ISBN: 9781901538687 Poetry. OUTSIDE THE NARRATIVE contains what Tom Leonard wishes to retain in print of the poetry in his two main collections Intimate Voices (Poetry 1965-83) and access to the silence (Poems 1984-2004); also poems from Being a Human Being (2006) and new and unpublished work including an elegaic sequence for his mother, a prose memoir of his father, a poem-suite "on the page" and a tri-part envoi to the collection. LINK→ |
| New Poetry from Wild Ocean Press |
 Mother Speaks Her Name
Frank Adams $10 | paper | 52 pp. Wild Ocean Press ISBN: 9780984130467 Poetry. "MOTHER SPEAKS HER NAME is classic in theme, operatic in structure, beautiful, fundamental...the very heart of a man's life and vision—all the gender myths and hells of the eons. Frank Adams writes from the shadows, from the darkness, a survivor's tale in verse. MOTHER SPEAKS HER NAME is powerful poetry, poetry asking to be heard"—Sharon Doubiago. LINK→ |
| New Poetry from Red Dragonfly Press |
 In the Ninth Decade
Marilyn Zuckerman $15 | paper | 87 pp. Red Dragonfly Press ISBN: 9781890193461 Poetry. "Marilyn Zuckerman is a public poet, a true citizen poet, which is a radical thing to be these days. This does not mean that she eschews the private. But even in her work's most intimate moments—the moments in which she struggles, for example, in the trap of an aging body—the voice is still that of a resilient, big-hearted woman in a traumatic and beautiful world"—John Andersen. LINK→ |
| New Poetry from Browser Books Publishing |
 Waters of the Afternoon
Claudia Jensen Dudley $20 | paper | 76 pp. Browser Books Publishing ISBN: 9780982850107 Poetry. Book + CD. WATERS IN THE AFTERNOON is a poetic and musical journey into the heart of a great question. Both intimate and epic in scope, it echoes Eliot's Four Quartets, Tagore's Gitanjali, and Rilke's Duino Elegies. But WATERS IN THE AFTERNOON stands unto itself. Three powerful stories unfold in narrative poetry and prose, concluding with eight "Canticles" (set to music on an accompanying CD, sung by Lori Hedrick Helfand) of lyric intensity. The seemingly unanswerable question of maya, or Illusion, resounds through them all. As in chiaroscuro painting, WATERS IN THE AFTERNOON uses shadow and light to create a third dimension. Its haunting rhythms, its riveting narratives evoke the ineffable in the silence beneath words. It calls us to face without fear both the mystery inherent in our personal journeys and the Mysterium Tremendum that is beyond telling. LINK→ |
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