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Three Years from Upstate By Jonathan Regier Poetry 74 pp, paperback ISBN: 978-0-9810091-0-0 Press Release Order at Amazon Three Years from Upstate is an exhilarating epic of story-poems. Compelling tales richly infested with free-falling images, Regier's book enacts a world of beggar-kings and philosophical ideas dropped as quickly as words from mouths. Three Years doesn't fit pre-existing conversations, but wants to provoke a new discussion, with a gambit of poetry startled by storytelling. —Thalia Field Thalia Field teaches at Brown University and has two books published with New Directions: Point and Line (2000) and Incarnate: Story Material (2004). Back to Top |
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Circular Stairs, Distress in the Mirrors Poems by Peter Klappert Drawings by Michael Hafftka Poetry/Art 102 pp, paperback ISBN: 978-0-9810091-1-7 Press Release Order at Amazon Peter Klappert’s 1975 collection of poems Circular Stairs, Distress in the Mirrors, is available again for the first time in two decades. In this collection, the artist Michael Hafftka created a new drawing for each of the poems. In twenty tightly wound, intensely inward poems, Circular Stairs explores relationships of self and Shadow, ego and inner antagonist, creator and created. Compared with much of Klappert’s other work, the poems here are spare, elegiac, and by turns, lyric, narrative and dramatic. To see the drawings click here. Back to Top |
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West Virginia Novel by Che Elias Drawings by Michael Hafftka Fictions 134 pp, paperback ISBN: 978-0-9782962-9-2 Press Release Reviewer's Choice at Midwest Book Review, July 2008 See the third Review from the top Order at Amazon In West Virginia, the protagonist relives a traumatic experience in the quest for rehabilitation and purging through a dialogue in which even the room is a participant. West Virginia, like The Terror of Loch Ness, describes an inner mental space bound by terrifying constrictions and expanded by vistas of the imagination. To view the drawings click here. Back to Top |
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Limit Point By Michael Brodsky Fiction 270 pp, paperback ISBN: 978-0-978-2961-6-2 Order at Amazon Publisher Weekly reviews Limit Point, 9/24/07: A veteran avant-garde novelist, playwright and translator of Beckett's Eleutheria, Brodsky (Detour) resurfaces with this beguiling collection of two novellas, one short story and three short-shorts. The title novella, which opens the collection, is written in that trickiest of forms, the second person (“you feel excluded, snubbed, far more than you've ever been, ever allowed yourself to be”), and follows the Beckettian peregrinations of Goodis (“you, Goodis!”) as he steals an overcoat, sits in a noirish diner and falls in with a low-end criminal gang, all the while commenting feverishly on what he sees: “Among the trashcans that divvy up the eft-head glimmer of an expiring streetlamp, you choose the biggest one to hide behind.” The second novella, “Midtown Pythagoras,” closes the book and is a similarly noirish, and very funny, play on detective fiction; a writer hires a private dick to strong-arm a reviewer into changing her views of the writer's work: “if I could make her vision of him coincide with his own then at last all would be well with his posterities.” All the work here is drenched in a weary angst, but Brodsky's joyful relief in writing—despite uncertain posterities—comes through on every page. Back to Top |
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Sum Yonat Hafftka Poetry 66pp, paperback Order at Amazon Review at Jewish Book World, summer 2008, by Eleanor Ehrenkranz: Some of the poems in this collection bring surrealistic paintings to mind deliberately, I imagine, as the grotesque imaginings seem to represent the current adult world today, as in the poem Out of Burnt Skins, where Hafftka writes: “I rise out of burnt skins Not a boy, not a girl, Into a confused world of Aching men and wasted women.” And these images are contrasted with Hafftka’s other poems which express the yearning for the beauty and simplicity of remembered childhood: “Let me go To the womb’s cave Deeper and closer, Down the steps, the walls Covered with gardens I wish I owned.” The overlay of melancholy extends to her philosophical poems as well, which concern the reflections of those in their forties who are beginning to assess their lives: “Mannerism has as strong a hold at forty As need had in the days of dependency.” The rueful attitude is also apparent in the wise observation that “Advice accentuates lack of sympathy.” Her perception combined with a sensitive longing for the ideal gives her poetry substance. Eleanor Ehrenkranz is a professor at Pace University, teaching writing courses. She got her PH.D at NYU. She has published articles in The New York Times, World Jewish Digest and The Greenwich Times, among other places. Back to Top |
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Aleph-Bet, An Alphabet For The Perplexed Text by Joshua Cohen Art by Michael Hafftka Judaism/Art/Literature Order at Amazon Writer Joshua Cohen and artist Michael Hafftka interpret the twenty-two letters of the “Aleph Bet,” the Hebrew alphabet. Through their images and texts, Cohen and Hafftka engage these letters, in form and in function, in manners both mundane and mystical. The images, and the three texts (two stories entitled Naming and Shabbos Dinner, with Letterforms, and the essayistic A Metaphysical Disquisition Upon the Nature of the Hebrew Sophiyot), together formulate a challenge to the Second Commandment, which forbids representation, in a style at once traditional and modern, expressively mindful of what it means to lack faith and yet, in the turn of a phrase, at the stroke of a paintbrush, refusing the consolation of cult. Review at the Forward, August 15, 2007 Back to Top |
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Conscious/Unconscious Michael Hafftka Fiction/Literature Amazon reviewed at Dalkey Archive Press, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. XXVII, #3 Hafftka began writing Conscious/Unconscious in 1973 and completed it in 2006. Conscious/Unconscious is a book of short stories narrated in the first person, weaving an inner life made real by paradoxes and conflicting drives. The 27 drawings created for this book are not illustrations of the stories, but rather add another dimension to the written words. Hafftka is a visual artist represented in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum, The MoMA, The Carnegie Museum of Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, et al.... Back to Top |
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The Terror of Loch Ness Che Elias Drawings by Michael Hafftka Fiction/Art Pre-order at Amazon “The Terror of Loch Ness” is a spiritual resolution born from an extreme experience of rape, psychic devastation and violence. Che Elias's sentences can often be interpreted in several ways, while the gut-wrenching story and the essence remain specific. Given the intensely emotional and cathartic nature of The Terror it is altogether appropriate, if not artistically necessary, for Elias and Hafftka to express such extremes honestly by wielding a pen, or a brush, with total abandon. Reviewed at MUNGBEING.COM Back to Top |
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The Fall of Miss Alaska Poems by George Franklin George Franklin studied poetry at Harvard with Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, and Robert Fitzgerald. His poems have appeared in a number of magazines, and in two anthologies, First Flowering: The Best of TheHarvard Advocate, and Roof: Poems From the Naropa Institute. The Fall ofMiss Alaska is his first book of poems. Back to Top |
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Epitaph Poems by John Menesini From the author of the well-received The Last Great Meat Million comes EPITAPH, the second collection of poetry by the Pennsylvania-born writer John Thomas Menesini. Full of visceral imagery, Menesini concocts a strong cocktail more Molotov than Martini. "John Thomas Menesini is a lyricist turned satirist, a descriptive poet turned Beat, and a protest writer with a strong intimate tone. He is outraged by contemporary mores and makes no bones about it (and maybe takes no prisoners). He uses the body and body parts as a medium for outrage. He has a good wildness." —James Liddy Back to Top |
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Death Poems Che Elias Fiction/Poetry Amazon A new collection of poetry and fiction some of Elias' texts from his middle period which were unpublished up til this point. Death Poems is funny, fierce and maddening. Some of his best writing. Back to Top |
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Arab on Radar Poems by Angele Ellis Amason Angele Ellis’s poems have appeared in Mizna, Grasslimb, and Pittsburgh City Paper, and are forthcoming in Voices from the Attic, Volume XIV (The Carlow University Press). Arab on Radar (Six Gallery Press, 2007) is her first book of poetry. She was a prizewinner in the 2007 RAWI Competition for Creative Prose for “Desert Storms,” an excerpt of a novel in progress. Arab on Radar was written in response to a post-9/11 world. This first book of poetry reclaims the author’s Arab-American identity, and reaffirms the power of imagination in the wake of political and personal crisis. Back to Top |
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Paradise, or the part that dies Dana Killmeyer Fiction Amazon Dana Killmeyer's First Book. is one of the finest in years... a funnny, brilliant and enthralling take on life and personal growth, Paradise, Or The Part That Dies is written in an affirming prose style which shifts from straight and clear to darkly mystical.. One of the best discoveries of the year. Back to Top |
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Jazz 2: Parents Jiri Klobouk Fiction Amazon Six Gallery Press is proud to present the Re-Release of Jiri Klobouk's groundbreaking text from the 1960s a truly unique approach to writing at that time, or any other. A truly amazing book "Jazz 2: Parents" is a long awaited return to print for Klobouk! Back to Top |
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King Everything Kristofer Collins Fiction/ Poetry Amazon King Everything collects Kristofer Collins best poems, the ones he chose to have preservered from several of his earlier collections and manuscripts. It is lucid, funny, beautiful and tightly written. Back to Top |
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Meddles Into Preclusion (Collected Poems) Che Elias Poetry Amazon 140pp, trade paper Meddles Into preclusion Collects Che Elias Best Poems The ones that he wishes to have preserved. Ranging From his Early Stream Of Consciousness Verse To his later More Complex Prose Pieces. The Collection completes the daunting task of gathering them all here for the first time These pieces in particular had Never Before Been Presented As A Whole Piece, the author hopes that they are represented as a consistent Entity. Back to Top |
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Mercury, the Dime Michael S. Begnal Poetry Amazon Written in 1992-93, this long poem represents an important step in the poet's evolution. Is it a lyrical post-Beat vision of America, or the deployment of self-distancing tactics and imagery in the growing knowledge of the illusion of such a notion? Both. This well-produced volume features an original cover design by graphic artist Kim Decker. Back to Top |
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Naked Prayers John Reoli Poetry Amazon Naked Prayers collects John Reoli's best poems over the last few years, A decidedly unqiue collection. Back to Top |
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Regionrat Richard Laskowski Fiction Amazon 448pp, trade paper Excerpted from Tim Miller's review: "Regionrat is essentially a tale of friendships, relationships, parties, drugs, and death, that takes place in the first three or four months of 1995. Such material could have easily been mangled by a lesser author--it could have descended into a dry memoir, a vapid and uninteresting story of self-indulgence, or it could have simply been boring. After all, how many novels about high school does there need to be? Thankfully Laskowski sidesteps all of these pitfalls." Back to Top |
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The Abacus Che Elias Fiction Amazon Che Elias's 4th novel and finest work to date, tells the tale of his own upbringing and downfall in contemporary West Virginia, Written in a straight forward though far from mainstream style which is a great departure from his early work yet still cutting edge, a moving portrayal of retribution in the tradition of Breece D'j Pancake and William Faulkner. Back to Top |
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The Book of Assassinations Robert Gibbons Poetry. Amazon 132pp, trade paper From Alice Clemente, reviewer: "The poems of Robert Gibbons, like many by his mentor, Baudelaire, are gem-like petits poemes en prose. Some of them oneiric, others more direct reflections of daily experience, they speak sensitively, often eloquently, to life's many epiphanies. Streets for Two Dancers and The Book of Assassinations testify to a life close to books, art, nature and, above all, the depths of the human spirit." Back to Top |
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The Condemned Noah Cicero Fiction Amazon Noah Cicero's The Condemned is surely one of the most important books of the year. The Second to Be Published by the acclaimed author ... A series of unforgettable images of the Lives, Loves and Hates of many inhabitants of Youngstown Ohio... Beautiful, Maddening... Obscenely Funny! Back to Top |
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The Lakes of Coma Michael S. Begnal Poetry Amazon 68pp, trade paper: $8.99 USD The poems in The Lakes of Coma range across America and beyond, taking in a wide array of subject matter-from small town unrest to the realities of life in the city, human relationships, race, sex, and becomes an examination of modern-day society to the very limits of language itself. The writing is original, laden with vivid imagery and passages that form a unique mode of expression. Along with shorter pieces such as "Steady Bombing" and "Sensualist Notes," The Lakes of Coma also includes the long major poem "Mercury, The Dime" (coming in 2005 in its full, unexpurgated form). This collection, Begnal's first, represents a poetic vision more than ten years in the making. Back to Top |
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The Last Great Glass Meat Million
John Thomas Menesini Poetry Amazon 112pp, trade paper The Last Great Glass Meat Million is a collection 7 years in the making. The book can be described as an autobiographical pome novella, wherein the documentary-style material was written at different times under different circumstances, it reads as a whole, following a powerful thread from beginning to end. The strength is in the detailed observation of the dead and dying american smalltown. Back to Top |
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The Pagan Ellipsis Che Elias Fiction Amazon 328pp, trade paper Includes introductions by Kane X. Faucher and John Thomas Menesini Elias' fourth book extends his current whimsical linguistic rampages through a collagist mysticism that challenges the very conventions of narrative. Themes of sexuality intersperse with diaphanous naturalist themes to produce what is perhaps Elias' most "musical" examples of his prose. Back to Top |
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The Rite of Passage Joseph McCullough Poetry Amazon 96pp, trade paper Perhaps the best way to characterize McCullough's work is to let the work itself speak: "Perfect as itself and its imperfections, as within ourselves a mind learning of the earth and its position in a universe simultaneously becoming a self of one and global society, by rising to a level of self intraspection where ideas flow." Back to Top |
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Jacob's Ladder 2 ed. Tim Miller Amazon Fiction/Poetry/Interviews 280pp, trade paper The Dosoevsky tribute, uniting all of us to the underground where it is more rational to be splenetic. Back to Top |
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Wheeling Che Elias Fiction Amazon Early stories written by Che Elias in between his novels "Juliet..., Remember" and "The Pagan Ellipsis"--These early pieces present a uniquely off kilter view of the world --Which later carried through in works Such as "The Abacus" And "Death Poems". Back to Top |