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SPD RECOMMENDS! New Titles July 7–27

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New Poetry from Apogee Press My rice tastes like the lake Tsering Wangmo Dhompa $15.95 | paper | 88 pp. Apogee Press ISBN: 9780978766702 Poetry. Asian American Studies. "Tsering Wangmo Dhompa's MY RICE TASTES LIKE THE LAKE echoes in the mind, mouth, and heart as its strangely calm English phrases settle into measured lines and stanzas. This is serious, beautiful, haunting work—a unique expression, in post-modern writing, of a contemporary Buddhist woman in exile, searching for a language capable of spanning her own past, present, and future. 'It is not enough to have one tongue./It cannot point to everything/and in every direction'"—Norman Fischer. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry from Hanging Loose Press What It Is Like: New and Selected Poems Charles North $20 | paper | 302 pp. Hanging Loose Press ISBN: 9781933527482 Poetry. WHAT IT IS LIKE is the definitive selection of adventurous work by the man James Schuyler called "the most stimulating poet of his generation." "The challenge of writing about the sensual qualities of New York City which seems so tired, by North's pen becomes transcendent again. And that's only one of the things his poetry accomplishes. He is witty when wit seems all but lost, gorgeous when gorgeousness is supposed to have crawled off to wherever Frank O'Hara's odes come from"—Ange Mlinko. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry from Plinth Books Sakonnet Point Bill O'Connell $15 | paper | 79 pp. Plinth Books ISBN: 9781887628105 Poetry. Bill O'Connell's poems are illuminations born under a rising moon or in the growing brightness of morning. These poems are fierce, quiet, and always tender celebrations in the living of our lives. O'Connell believes in the purity of joy in these cynical times, and is unafraid to seek the ineffable in our collective sorrow. He is a writer whose heart is haunted by the world. Because of this, he must sing. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Drama in Translation from The Green Lantern Press Kordian Juliusz Słowacki $20 | paper | 143 pp. The Green Lantern Press ISBN: 9781450742085 Drama. Translated from the Polish by Gerard T. Kapolka. KORDIAN is a Polish classic written in 1833 by Juliusz Słowacki and features an amalgam of revolutionary spirit, tradition, modernist bravado and suffering—topics navigated by a young Romantic protagonist after whom the play is named. Within the canon of Polish literature KORDIAN offers pivotal insight into the development of Poland's Romantic movement (her literary golden age), and Polish literature as a whole. The Green Lantern Press is pleased to publish the play's first English translation by Gerard T. Kapolka. Illustrations by Lilli Carré and silkscreen covers by Aay Preston-Myint. This book was published in an edition of 500. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry from Displaced Press The Persians by Aeschylus Brandon Brown $14.95 | paper | 78 pp. Displaced Press ISBN: 9780982212059 Poetry. "The Persians, an ancient play by Aeschylus, shows the Persian court during the time of the war between the Persians and the Greeks. It depicts the Persians learning of their massive defeat at the hands of the Greek army. I believed that the text which proceeded from my body should report on my total experience of reading The Persians by Aeschylus, not simply report on the 'meanings' of the 'words' of that work. This was an obviously impossible project. To help myself out, I tried to include many collaborators to intervene in the translation, especially including Edward Said, Jane Austen, Walter Benjamin, my Arabic class, the Clash, e-mail correspondence with a translator recruiter from the U.S. Army, and Rumi; also all the things I ate and drank and wore and said and did are in the translation; and most especially I tried to pay attention to the terrific war and the terrific language that the war made that completely infiltrated all of my food and beverages and clothes and words and actions, and I let that get in the way of the translation too. In this way, THE PERSIANS BY AESCHYLUS transmits numerous reports: a report of a reading, a toxological report of the reading and the writing; those latencies did not lie down"—Brandon Brown. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry from RedBone Press Our Name Be Witness Marvin K. White $15 | paper | 140 pp. RedBone Press ISBN: 9780978625153 Poetry. African American Studies. LGBT Studies. "Comprised of catalogs of dreams, questions, advice, recipes and observation, OUR NAME BE WITNESS describes the complicated communities that are the foundations of our neighborhoods, our aspirations, and our hearts. Raw and honest, Marvin K. White's third collection reminds us that 'every time you tell the truth, you become the truth.' In one of the most striking of this book's freewheeling prose poems, White claims, 'Writing is magic. Is a grounding thing. Connects floating stories to paper and earth.' Indeed"—Camille Dungy. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry from Fence Books Negro League Baseball Harmony Holiday $15.95 | paper | 88 pp. Fence Books ISBN: 9781934200421 Poetry. African American Studies. Winner of the Motherwell Prize, this debut collection represents the fullness of "Thoughts on Fire" in living color, solid sound, barely arrested motion. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry from sunnyoutside Next Analog Broadcast Charly "the city mouse" Fasano $13 | paper | 56 pp. sunnyoutside ISBN: 9781934513316 Poetry. NEXT ANALOG BROADCAST is a collection of poems set in the moments following the final shifts from analog to digital media. It is an exploration of everyday situations and observations of characters attempting to find their place in a society driven by automated convenience. NEXT ANALOG BROADCAST is the story of the human condition in am isolating and ever-changing digital culture that extends the assumption that ultra-reality and high definition are the only ways to document life experiences and share information. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry from Pressed Wafer The Enormous Chorus Frank Kuenstler $15 | paper | 128 pp. Pressed Wafer ISBN: 9780983197546 Poetry. "The retrieval here of a fair portion of Frank Kuenstler's prolific work is an event of the utmost importance toward the mapping of a true history of American poetry in the second half of the twentieth century"—Jerome Rothenberg. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry from Brick Books Sharawadji Brian Henderson $19 | paper | 112 pp. Brick Books ISBN: 9781926829692 Poetry. Brian Henderson has established himself as a poet who brilliantly makes us aware of language as an instrument of discovery. In his work we realize, over and over again, that each of the mind's worlds speaks a secret language, which it is the poet's task to discover and translate.In SHARAWADJI, this includes not only such worlds as those created by the surreal paintings of Jacek Yerka, but the intense, re-humanizing experience of loss and grief. "Brian Henderson is one of the most innovative poets writing in Canada today. SHARAWADJI is his greatest achievement so far.... He is a master at distilling lived experiences down to their linguistic and emotional essences.... What he has created on these pages has my deep and lasting gratitude"—Don Domanski. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Essays from El León Literary Arts The Tolstoy of the Zulus Stephen Kessler $20 | paper | 368 pp. El León Literary Arts ISBN: 9780979528583 Literary Nonfiction. Art. Music. Kessler's lens is wide but his focus is sharp as he surveys, with clarity and fresh understanding, both famous and unsung figures of contemporary culture. Selected from more than thirty years of journalism, THE TOLSTOY OF THE ZULUS includes 55 essays on such diverse topics as the creative repercussions of September 11, the art of the letter, a trip to Disneyland, Google's Universal Library, the Watts Towers, Marlon Brando, Charles Manson, Bob Dylan, Luis Buñuel, J. D. Salinger, Romare Bearden, Philip Roth, Harry Belafonte, Edward Hopper, Thelonious Monk, Charles Bukowski, Saul Bellow and an array of other, less celebrated but equally remarkable players in the multifaceted cultural life of our times. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Nonfiction Novel from IF SF Publishing An Old Junker: a senior represents Howard Junker $10 | paper | 144 pp. IF SF Publishing ISBN: 9781453717196 Fiction. Literary Nonfiction. AN OLD JUNKER is a rambling multi-genre first book—a blognovel, a proto-memoir, a novel of ideas, a coming-of-age narrative, a meta-parody whose rambling plot savages Dave Eggers and Jonathan Franzen and Richard Serra, denounces foodieism, and insists that Kierkegaard is Post-Avant. Along the way Junker details his day-to-day principles as an editor...and the agony of searching for a successor. Plus: candid snaps from his iPhone! VISIT WEB PAGE

New Interviews from Poltroon Press Where You're At: Poetics & Visual Art Kevin Power $19.95 | paper | 210 pp. Poltroon Press ISBN: 9780918395276 Literary Nonfiction. Poetry History & Criticism. Art. These eight interviews—with Jerome Rothenberg, Robert Duncan, Robert Bly, Michael McClure, Robert Creeley, George and Mary Oppen, Bill Berkson, and David Meltzer—were conducted in the mid-1970s and constitute a mapping of American poetry during these dramatic years when a series of major alternatives were being opened in poetics. The conversations look at the relationships between poetry and other disciplines, focusing above all on the intense exchanges between contemporary art and the work and writings of these poets. Power discusses "deep image" and ethnopoetry with Rothenberg, subjective verse and myth with Bly, and lyrical philosophy and Objectivism with the Oppens. He also looks at the central role of West Coast Expressionism, collage and assemblage, focusing on the centricity of artists such as Hassel Smith, Corbett, and Jess in Duncan's work, the dramatic impact of Abstract Expressionism on the poetics and writing of Creeley, the impact of Pollock and Surrealism on McClure, the presence of Herms and Berman in L.A. and the collaborations with Semina in his conversation with Meltzer, and the fluid and vital exchanges that were going on between abstract and figurative artists and the New York School of poets in his discussion with Berkson. The conversations bring us close to the ways in which contemporary art impacted so significantly on the work of these poets. Rich with anecdote, personal history, and sharp insights, this is an invaluable resource for students of modern American literature. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Cultural Writing from Talisman House, Publishers Istanbul: Metamorphoses in an Imperial City M. Akif Kirecci and Edward Foster, Editors $16.95 | paper | 170 pp. Talisman House, Publishers ISBN: 9781584980803 Literary Nonfiction. INSTANBUL: METAMORPHOSES IN AN IMPERIAL CITY brings together essays and memoirs by noted scholars and writers. The book opens with an introductory essay on the history of Istanbul by M. Akif Kirecci, followed by a series of essays on the city and its development since the creation of the Turkish Republic in 1923. Included are essays by Burcu Özgüven, "Creating Ideas on the Urban Modernization: Istanbul's Development in the Thirties"; Laurent Mignon, "Istanbul Disorientated: From the 'National Poet' to the 'Unnational' Novelist"; Z. Esra Mirze Santesso, "Literary and Photographic Aura in Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories and the City"; Murat Nemet-Nejat, "Istanbul Noir"; and Iffet Evin, "Mehmet the Boatman," translated by Robert P. Finn. A second group of essays concerns American perceptions of Istanbul. Edward Foster summarizes the deep admiration of the city and Turkish culture generally by visitors from the United States in the nineteenth-century. The book closes with reminiscences of the modern city by the critic Walter Andrews, the poet Sidney Wade, and the playwright Anthony P. Pennino. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Photojournalism from Seoul Selection Moon Tides: Jeju Island Grannies of the Sea Brenda Paik Sunoo $65 | cloth | 240 pp. Seoul Selection ISBN: 9788991913783 Literary Nonfiction. Southeast Asia Studies. Photography. Interpreted and translated from the Korean by Youngsook Han. Imagine strolling along the windy shores of Jeju Island, off the southwest coast of Korea. Suddenly, you hear whistling echoing from the sea. Turning to the water, you spot weathered faces bobbing to the surface, and you realize that the sound is the exhaled breath of sea women, known as haenyeo. With a sigh of gratitude, the aging divers have returned to the surface to replenish their aching lungs. Jeju Island's haenyeo are a dying breed—perhaps the last of their generation. As their maternal ancestors did for centuries, they have scoured the island's sea floor, harvesting seaweed, octopuses, sea urchins, turban shells, and abalone. Their numbers have dwindled from 15,000 in the 1970s to approximately 5,600 in recent decades. Driven by economics, these free-divers continue to labor well into their eighties—the hardier ones often plunging 65 feet while holding their breath for two minutes or longer. Brenda Paik Sunoo gathered these women's stories while living in their diving villages for a total of seven months between 2007 and 2009. MOON TIDES is the first book by an American journalist to document the lives of these rare divers through intimate interviews and photographs. Their stories will appeal to those of us desiring a life of purpose—undulating and infinite as the sea. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Fiction from Dark Sky Books Hunters & Gamblers Ryan Ridge $12 | paper | 125 pp. Dark Sky Books ISBN: 9780983067450 Fiction. A sham pastor hires a cocaine-sniffing centaur to act as mascot for an Evangelical mega-church's arena football team; Paul Revere flashes across a revolutionary sky on the back of a sunbird; an ammo-less infantry drummer and a bleeding medic are beat back to a Best Western parking lot in the Battle of Sacramento—such are the situations contained in Ryan Ridge's HUNTERS & GAMBLERS. Winners of the negative lottery, these characters have learned to love to lose everything until there's nothing left to lose. And the end is desperate, black, drenched in whiskey, but punctuated by poignancy and revelry and revelation. The tales in this lurid, edgy debut illuminate blackness with even blacker humor and a sense of outlandish beauty. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Fiction in Translation from Host Publications Indian Tango Ananda Devi $15 | paper | 163 pp. Host Publications ISBN: 9780924047817 Fiction. Translated from the French by Jean Anderson. INDIAN TANGO, published in French in 2007, is set in Delhi in 2004, against a background of monsoon rains and the general election that would see Sonia Gandhi briefly head a coalition government. A visiting writer becomes obsessed by Subhadra, a woman glimpsed on the street, and as this unconventional relationship develops, the cost of pursuing passion and desire in a vibrant but deeply conservative society comes into sharp focus. A sometimes bitter, always moving meditation on the limitations placed on women's (and others') lives by convention builds inexorably to a powerful and stunning conclusion. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry in Translation from Tavern Books The Countries We Live In: The Selected Poems of Natan Zach 1955-1979 Natan Zach $17 | paper | 120 pp. Tavern Books ISBN: 9781935635086 Poetry. Translated from the Hebrew by Peter Everwine. THE COUNTRIES WE LIVE IN is the most comprehensive collection of Natan Zach's poetry in English. Selected, translated, and introduced by Peter Everwine, this volume of Zach's essential early work showcases a poetry that is both complex and astringent, a poetry that bears witness to the existential dilemmas of the human condition. His modes are those of pervasive irony and wit. Zach's is not an art of elegance, but one of rigorous perspective and distinction. This volume reintroduces North American readers to one of Israel's major contemporary poetic figures. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry in Translation from The Bitter Oleander Press Afterglow/Tras el rayo Alberto Blanco $21 | paper | 144 pp. The Bitter Oleander Press ISBN: 9780978633554 Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Spanish by Jennifer Rathbun. This bilingual edition of Alberto Blanco's AFTERGLOW/TRAS EL RAYO represents the first full book of his work in translation and offers the poetry reading public a glimpse into the wide ranging focus that Señor Blanco takes with his language and his perception. The impeccable translation by Jennifer Rathbun helps make the entire volume not only accessible to the reader whose Spanish was limited, but brings the Spanish language alive in an English that is very welcoming. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry from Station Hill Press of Barrytown Uncertainties Robert Kelly $15.95 | paper | 150 pp. Station Hill Press of Barrytown ISBN: 9781581771220 Poetry. "Call and response. The breathing body of poetry from the beginning. The psalms of David, the wave of them, rise and fall of plainchant, verse and response. The constantly shifting pause between the half-lines of Old English poetry and the poems of the Edda, the half-lines of the Kalevala swayed out four-handed on the saga bench. So I thought towards the two-line stanza as experiments in duration, in complex syntactic and melodic demands. The melody of the first line necessitates the melody of the next. Shape shaping shape. Formally, the poem engages with one constraint: each line wants to be semantically intact—ideally, any line could stand alone, be my Last Words, my epitaph. Yet it also must link syntactically or narratively with the line that follows. And each stanza must stand in like relation with the stanzas before and after. This requirement extends to line structure something that I have worked with for years (usually furtively): hypersyntax, where phrases link with what comes before or after, or plausibly stand alone. UNCERTAINTIES tries to use these strategies in mental strife, to solicit the dissolving of certainties in between the inbreath and the outbreath, where nothing is fixed, and freedom begins"—Robert Kelly. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry from Octopus Books Correct Animal Rebecca Farivar $12 | paper | 84 pp. Octopus Books ISBN: 9780980193862 Poetry. "In CORRECT ANIMAL, Rebecca Farivar re-enlivens and re-imagines the art of the tiny poem. Forgoing both the high seriousness of imagism and the theatrics of conceptual gesture, these poems instead offer themselves up as graceful, wry, and surprising acts of compression illuminated from within by a mysterious and moving intelligence that is Farivar's alone"—Maggie Nelson. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry and Prose in Translation from Chelsea Editions The Straw Sandals: Selected Prose and Poetry Pierre-Albert Jourdan $20 | paper | 334 pp. Chelsea Editions ISBN: 9780982384985 Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the French and edited and introduced by John Taylor. Pierre-Albert Jourdan wrote down observations, notes, aphorisms and diary entries with such dedication to clarity as to remove the distinction between prose and poetry. This is a book of original reflection, marvel at the beauties of nature and keen awareness of the fleeting moments of life. "For Jourdan, writing was a tool for exploring what it means to have come into being, for determining how to live in the world every single day and thus how to die, and for intuiting possible spiritual truths in our midst. This task was always more important than seeing his work in print and establishing a name for himself. This radical genuineness now radiates from all the pages that, thankfully, are in print"—John Taylor, from his introduction. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry from BlazeVOX [books] Trailers Michael Basinski $16 | paper | 124 pp. BlazeVOX [books] ISBN: 9781609640583 Poetry. "With TRAILERS, Michael Basinski engages in a Joycean celebration offloOwering. As he 'gave up and just repeated again and again singing softly, deeply with his eyes closed,' the language bloomed past the letters, numerals, wingdings, webs and crickets into a dream language of the 'noise for active space'"—derek beaulieu. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry from Lunar Chandelier Press Deliberate Proof Vyt Bakaitis $15 | paper | 131 pp. Lunar Chandelier Press ISBN: 9780984607600 Poetry. "He penetrates unsparingly, out of generousity. His sentiments have shadows where he focuses his examination.... His poem, like a soliliquey, seems to open up while at the same time drilling inwards"—John Godfrey. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry from Tebot Bach Houses CB Follett $12 | paper | 36 pp. Tebot Bach ISBN: 9781893670709 Poetry. "A house made of doors? A house sewn from pockets? A house constructed out of watches? To read this book is to take a delightful, wildly imaginative tour through a series of improbably desirable homes. I, for one, want to live in CB Follett's house of straw where cows are spoked and nibbling. Or the hedgehog house where I can stick all my notes on the ends of their spines. Or the house of lemons with its 'changing cinema of light.' Or..."—Susan Terris. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry from NYQ Books Takes Guts and Years Sometimes: New and Selected Poems Linda Lerner $18.95 | paper | 280 pp. NYQ Books ISBN: 9781935520313 Poetry. Linda Lerner's latest book, TAKES GUTS AND YEARS SOMETIMES, is a collection of poems dating from the early 80s to the present. An immigrant daughter's courageous search for her identity, her refusal to compromise who she is for a paycheck or for love is viewed in the backdrop of major public events. Upheavals in her personal life are paralleled by those in the larger world. There's the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the subsequent attack in 2001 six blocks from her home. This latter event triggers memories of stories her estranged father told about his escape from Russia. There are the hardships caused by gentrification. The locale is primarily New York City, but it could be any place, where the fault lines of vulnerability in individual lives suddenly give way to tremors outside, and the earth shifts beneath them. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry from Epic Rites Press Crunked Jack Henry $17.50 | paper | 113 pp. Epic Rites Press ISBN: 9781926860015 Poetry. "CRUNKED was not written. Not even close, not even for a second. CRUNKED was ripped from the very darkest, most sinister portion of my brain. Written over the course of seventy-two hours, CRUNKED is the full realization of who and what I had become at that point in time. I started putting the words down after a sixty-six hour high, words that spilled out like a stuck pig or a slashed femoral artery. When I came up for air after sleeping twenty-four hours, I read the thing, typed it up and put it in a box. This bitch should never see light, or so I thought. It is something so raw and so personal I didn't want to publish it. I still don't, but some spark tells me I should. CRUNKED is a nothing more than a narrative. It's neither cautionary nor celebratory, it just exists as a document of experience"—Jack Henry, April 2011. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Anthology from Passager Books Burning Bright: Passager Celebrates 21 Years Mary Azrael and Kendra Kopelke, Editors $18 | paper | 300 pp. Passager Books ISBN: 9780983620907 Poetry. Fiction. Literary Nonfiction. BURNING BRIGHT: PASSAGER CELEBRATES 21 YEARS presents over one hundred of the most memorable and distinctive poems, stories and memoir published in Passager, the oldest literary journal in the country dedicated to promoting older writers. Sections include: Old age, War, Sex and Love, Generations, the Body, Death, and Time. Writers in their 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s give powerful expression to their lives. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Anthology from The Backwaters Press Aspects of Robinson: Homage to Weldon Kees Christopher Buckley and Christopher Howell, Editors $25 | paper | 359 pp. The Backwaters Press ISBN: 9781935218210 Poetry. In this remarkable anthology of poems about Weldon Kees or inspired by Weldon Kees—each accompanied by a statement by the poet regarding Kees's influence, magic, and power over the imagination of 20th Century American poetry—the editors Christopher Buckley and Christopher Howell have scored a major coup in American letters. Coupled with these poems are nearly 20 essays by some of the greatest lights of 20th Century American poetry, including Dana Gioia and Joseph Brodsky. VISIT WEB PAGE

New Poetry from Hanging Loose Press Falling Out of Bed in a Room with No Floor Terence Winch $18 | paper | 80 pp. Hanging Loose Press ISBN: 9781934909225 Poetry. "The title of Terence Winch's newest collection says it all: the wonderfully droll, self-deprecating, hard-hitting and deliciously comic narrator of these poems knows only too well what life exacts from us. A trivial event like losing one's watch and replacing it brings on the rueful recognition that 'it ran so fast, / I had to live every day / as if it were tomorrow.' It's a dilemma we all face. No rest for the weary! As the narrator of 'Low Life' puts it, 'You must still explain to the babysitter what has to be done.' In a sequence of dazzling and poignant memory poems about love and death, friendship and family trauma, Winch once again displays his uncanny ability to take the most ordinary of incidents and endow them with radiance. One reads FALLING OUT OF BED IN A ROOM WITH NO FLOOR with a steady shock of recognition. Here WE are!"—Marjorie Perloff. VISIT WEB PAGE