"This is not vaporous poetry. Steele strikes flint. Sparks fly."
— Douglas Spangle, Stewart H. Holbrook Litarary Award winner; author, A White Concrete Day
"For Australian poet Judith Steele, not only the world of dreams but also the world of childhood is a great inspiration. Her poetry collection Islands of Disbelief draws from nature and myths. Her view of old age is unsentimentally precise. Nevertheless, confidence and a true zest for life permeate her verses: "Some grace drops into my dreams / between dreary islands of disbelief."'
— Florian Vetsch, poet, essayist, translator; author, The Fire Potions, Tanger Trance, and 43 New Poems
" The Weight slowly builds while staying in the same place. It's funny & weird & unique. And also good."
— Shannon Wheeler, New Yorker cartoonist; author, Too Much Coffee Man
" I envision future bibliomancy where readers randomly flip to pages in this book for insight. Is the correct response to today's challenges the reckoner or the donk?"
— Jennifer Robin, author, performance artist, narrative trickster; You Only Bend Once with a Spoonful of Mercury and Death Confetti
Five graphic narratives from Croatian artist Miroslav Nemeth.
The Roman Key, light, lighthearted and fanciful, shows us Nemeth's search for the key to "Roma," perhaps the city, perhaps a girl.
In I Had a Dog, vivid and expressionist black and white linocuts tell the tale of Nemeth's pet dog who "behaved like a king."
The Hood is an expressionist visual description of parts of Nemeth's childhood.
A Smell from a Nose builds on that and becomes a tale of his later youth.
Metaphysics in the Yard describes a clash between Nemeth and his father. Jagged black and white panes and perspectives collide on the page like the fears and aggressions of the tale.
Keller's vivid feuilletons prove the music is always with us, resurrecting, inexplicably present in distant earphones, as the universe arriving between piano notes.
Sequel & companion to America the Beautiful, these surreal fictions about jazz (from America the Beautiful), appear en face in English, German, Croatian, Lithuanian, Bengali, Spanish, and Russian.
"Welcome to Christoph Keller's America the Beautiful And Other Indictments, whose title is as misleading as its aperçus are biting original. Like pinpricks penetrating a dark veil, these glittering insights are arranged as cunningly as they are crafted, for a constellation greater than the sum of its shards."
— Madison Smartt Bell, author, All Souls' Rising and Zero db
"Michael Shay's The Words I Own is captivating. The poems are by turns playful and heartbreaking, the manner uncluttered, generous in its amicable approach to the reader. His writing carries the resonance of a life with which most readers will identify. The Words I Own, among its many virtues, is a good read."
"Few writers around are offering us journeys as haunting, evocative and distinct as Mark Mordue. Here is the rare poet not afraid of going his own way, regardless of fashion and convention."
— Pico Iyer, author, Autumn Light and The Art of Stillness
"M. F. McAuliffe's writing is an invitation to reconsider the in-between moments, the sometimes quiet moments I too often leave uninvestigated. And once there, once I'm in her stories, the challenges and surprises and heartbreaks and joys that live in these moments are revealed by a remarkable storyteller. McAuliffe's wit and humor and heart fill the stories that make up I'm Afraid of Americans and Other Stories, and I will be revisiting them from now on."
"The Jesus He Deserved is about being a soldier. Three distinct voices speak for a generation about the new kind of war, trying to patch up the aftermath of modern warfare—and the old kind fought alone when soldiers return home. This book is going to live in my backpack, pages curled and worn, to be brought out when the ache of being human needs some company, when I need to soldier on."
— Jessica Standifird, co-editor, War Stories 2016 & 2017
"'Only my contradictions hold me upright,' claims one of the poems in this ferociously lucid and often funny new volume by M.F. McAuliffe. On the one hand it batters us with Lear-like bleak assertions which it goes on to illustrate, most impressively, in the series of poems retelling the Orpheus myth. On the other hand, the very rhythm, almost reassuring, of other aphoristic conclusions suggests an admiration, despite everything, for the world it so passionately curses and condemns."
— Luisa Valenzuela, author, Deathcats, The Lizard's Tail, He Who Searches, Black Novel (With Argentines), Bedside Manners
"A disillusioned photographer works as a photo librarian. The writing parallels old style photography: film processed until a latent image becomes visible. The story emerges with the same chemical intensity."
— Mark Mordue, author, Dastgah, Diary of a Head Trip and Darlinghurst Funeral Rites
"Coleman Stevenson's poems defy their own longing by making a want's darkest recesses glow, turning language fresh as a new love feels, familiar, flaming, and true."
— Brian Foley, author, The Constitution, editor, Brave Men Press
"Coleman Stevenson's Breakfast will jolt you awake, buzzing and crackling with a febrile, plain-spoken intensity."
— John Beer, author, Lucinda, The Waste Land and Other Poems
"Brenda Taulbee's poems give my spine reverb, like poetry is meant to, like only poetry that matters, can."
— Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Chronology of Water and The Book of Joan
"Her poems are told like a secret, filled with yearning: ephemeral and visceral."
— Amy Temple Harper, author of Cramped Uptown
ISBN: 978-1-68454-469-1
The Art of Waking Up
This first edition has sold out.
Information & shipping options for the 2nd edition are here
A White Concrete Day
"There is a quietness about Doug Spangle's voice that allows you not to realize how much he has to say (so quietly), what superb art his craft conceals (to the point of invisibility), how large is the experience he offers the reader.
This collection accumulates the power, skill, passion and intelligence of his poetry to the point where I wonder, is anybody writing better than this?"
— Ursula K. Le Guin, author of The Earthsea Trilogy, The Hainish novels and Lavinia
"Luisa Valenzuela is the heiress of Latin American fiction. She wears an opulent, baroque crown, but her feet are naked."
— Carlos Fuentes, author, Aura, The Old Gringo
"Luisa Valenzuela's books are our present, but they also contain much of our future."
— Julio Cortazar, author, Hopscotch
"Before Kathy Acker, before Patti Smith, before Angela Carter, there was & still is Luisa Valenzuela. Deathcats is a prescient fever dream against the new millennium, a take no prisoners satire, a sardonic after midnight liturgy."
— Richard Nash, former publishing editor, Soft Skull
