Bøger udgivet af Silver Birch Press

"For all its brilliance on a micro scale, it's easy to lose sight of the anthology's vastness...It weighs in at a hefty 240 pages, and features no fewer than 62 different contributors...One outcome is that I'll be following many of the names this anthology has brought to my attention, their work blazing a silver trail that I urge you to explore with as much curiosity as I will be." RORY O'SULLIVAN, Sabotage Reviews, sabotagereviews.com The Silver Birch Press Silver Anthology is a collection of poetry, essays, short stories, novel excerpts, and stage play scenes from 62 accomplished and up-and-coming authors in the United States and United Kingdom. The writing ranges in style and subject matter -- but all the work touches on "silver" in a variety of creative, original, and compelling ways. Contributors include: Barbara Alfaro / Jena Ardell / Melissa Berry / Jane Buel Bradley / John Brantingham / Rachel Carey / Chiwan Choi / Billy Cook / Barbara Dahl / Walter de la Mare / Colleen Delegan / Gillian Eaton / Barbara Eknoian / Merrill Farnsworth / Syed Afzal Haider / Joe Hakim / Andrew Hilbert / Donna Hilbert / Gaia Holmes / Zack Hunter / Diane Eagle Kataoka / Ruth Moon Kempher / Linda King / Thom Kudla / Moriah LaChapell / LeeAnne McIlroy Langton / Vickie Lester / Ellaraine Lockie / Gerald Locklin / Amy Lowell / Sandylee Maccoby / Tamara Madison / Clint Margrave / Daniel McGinn / Marcia Meara / Ann Menebroker / Jack Micheline / Ben Myers / Jax NTP
 / Hank Perritt / Meghan Pinson / Jackie Pledger-Skwerski / Kathy Dahms Rogers / Conrad Romo / Luke Salazar / Joan Jobe Smith / Clifton Snider / Dale Sprowl / Kendall Steinle / Adelle Stripe / Paul Kareem Tayyar / Kati Thomson / Jeri Thompson / Winston Tong / Margaret Towner / Mary Umans / Dirk Velvet / Melanie Villines / Fred Voss / Mark Weber / Tim Wells / Steve Williams / Pamela Miller Wood

The poems in ROMANCING GRAVITY navigate through worlds (and words) nestled in nostalgia, rooted in the uncanny, and prime with pain. Striking language and rich images frame gangbangers, classrooms, and family, while trying to carry the burdens that come with being alive. These are poems of baseball and breathing, of heaven and healing. The speakers of the poems wander from one world and into the next, looking down to find their footing, and looking up for proof that they exist. "In ROMANCING GRAVITY Daniel Romo has written a memoir in poetry. It is the poetry of growing up in Southern California, of childhood games and fear, of adolescent dreams and braggadocio, and a young man's coming into his own as a man and a poet. There are echoes of popular culture and the poems dance to the beat of an urban pulse. There are hallucinatory prose poems and sometimes the speaker sounds like an Old Testament prophet disguised as a homeless man, calling down curses on our decadent world. Lost children wave to us from the floor of the ocean. Do they wave in greeting or are they taking their leave? Either way, the reader waves back, the reader wants to dance or say 'Yes!' to these marvelous poems." Richard Garcia, author of The Persistence of Objects "Daniel Romo's ROMANCING GRAVITY is a terrific collection-at once edgy, comical, and big-hearted. I was immediately drawn to his streetwise grit, his luminous vision of urban America. These are poems that swagger, that 'boom boom sound' and leave your ears ringing." David Hernandez, author of Hoodwinked "Daniel Romo finds surprising lyricism in school classrooms, TV shows, and yard sales in his southern California neighborhoods. Celebratory, irreverent, and deeply personal, the poems in ROMANCING GRAVITY capture the quotidian in stunning ways and reveal what keeps us earthbound." Molly Bendall, author of Under the Quick

The Therapist explores forbidden love between a charismatic psychoanalyst and a beautiful patient. It takes us into the glittering salons of Boston society, the world of avant garde New York artists, and the politics of Harvard professorships. It is a story of passion and ambition, but, most of all, it is the story of a woman's awakening to self discovery and finding the courage to follow her dreams. "A page turner on the lives of the rich and the ambitious. We expect to find such astonishing narcissism in bankers, not therapists! Maccoby reminds us that power politics is everywhere." Katie Lee Weille, Ph.D., author of Making Sense of Parenthood "I loved the story. Very engaging. I raced to finish it, trying to guess which track the storyline would take. It is a story not only about the true values that save a personality from harm and illness but make it flourish; at the same time, it is a warning about what happens when people ignore these values or worse, choose the opposite. (The deadly sins are alive and well.) Great story!" Father Rick Frechette

Poetry, short stories, novel excerpts, essays, and memoirs that revolve around the many and varied connotations of the word "green" -- nature, luck, money, envy, young love, new life, the environment, food, trees, seasons, water, eden, and much more -- from over 70 authors in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Europe, and Africa. Contributors include: Barbara Alfaro / Jena Ardell / L. Frank Baum / William Blake / Al Basile / Jane Buel Bradley / John Brantingham / Jessica Brown / Rachel Carey / Chris Davidson / Colleen Delegan / Philip K. Dick / Barbara Eknoian / Dan Fante / Merrill Farnsworth / Syed Afzal Haider / Joe Hakim / Henry VIII / Donna Hilbert / Gaia Holmes / Gerard Manley Hopkins / Zack Hunter / Rodger Jacobs / James Joyce / Michael C. Keith / Erle Kelly / Ruth Moon Kempher / Thom Kudla / Steve Kuhn / Moriah LaChapell / LeeAnne McIlroy Langton / Ellaraine Lockie / Gerald Locklin / Amy Lowell / Sandylee Maccoby / Tamara Madison / Marc Malandra / Karen Margolis / Clint Margrave / Andrew Marvell / Daniel McGinn / Lori McGinn / Marcia Meara / Jack Micheline / Benjamin Myers / Brooke Nia / Jax NTP
 / Ivon Prefontaine / Jonne Rhodes / Conrad Romo / Luke Salazar / Tere Sievers / Joan Jobe Smith / Clifton Snider / Dale Sprowl / Kendall Steinle / Tate Swindell / Paul Kareem Tayyar / G. Murray Thomas / Jeri Thompson / Margaret Towner / Mary Umans / Dirk Velvet / Philip Vermaas / Melanie Villines / Kurt Vonnegut / Fred Voss / Bruce Weigl / Tim Wells / Pamela Miller Wood / Eddie Woods

Resurrection Party is a poetry collection that concerns itself, almost to the point of obsession, with the question of how the imagination grapples with the fear of death. The collection intertwines religious and mythical subjects and themes with more fleshly concerns about the body and decay, presence and absence. It has been described as containing poems of "almost exquisite refinement, illuminated by the taut glow of sensuous prosody and imagery" and as "a deeply meditative collection at once intelligent, tender, and utterly human." "Michalle Gould's poems are a study in beautiful paradox-their meticulously crafted structures serve as containers for the wilderness that resides within. Their terrain is somewhere between body and spirit, life and death, intimacy and solitude, elegance and intuition. Possessing a sly humor coupled with a laser sharp awareness and assertion of how all is ephemeral, Resurrection Party accomplishes the rare: it makes even the big questions fresh." Louise Mathias, author of The Traps and Lark Apprentice "Michalle Gould has been writing poems for years, and the long wait for her first book is finally over. In Resurrection Party, she intertwines the ancient and classic with the modern and popular, the sacred with the profane. The result is a deeply meditative collection at once intelligent, tender, and utterly human." Hayan Charara, author of The Alchemist's Diary and The Sadness of Others "Michalle Gould's Resurrection Party feels like wandering the wondrous caverns of a strange museum in the nighttime quiet. Again and again, we encounter poems of an almost exquisite refinement, illuminated by the taut glow of sensuous prosody and imagery, and yet there is a thrilling queerness there, a trembling corporeal hunger. The body, its potential for ecstasy, is deeply connected to these pageants of resurrection. Gould writes, 'To be human is to be like a cloud chalked in the sky . . .' Such whimsy, such recreation, stalks the heavy, sometimes biblical landscape where so many narratives of what it is to be human unfold. In Resurrection Party, Gould invites us to play there, to imagine, to fall into our graves and rise again, over and over. And at this party, we get to be different every time." Michelle Detorie, author of After-Cave

"This powerful memoir immediately establishes itself as the work of a highly talented young writer. In a voice that is strong, unsparing, never judgmental, Mayall traces her years-long journey as a young woman to find escape out of the entrapping mean streets of Los Angeles, a separated world invisible to all but its denizens. She does this with unflinching honesty and authenticity. She knows what it's like to wake up into the harsh sunlight in a Venice Beach parking lot, cramped in an old car with other outcasts. She conveys the urgency for chemical surcease that leads her into dangerous streets, dark alleys; surcease no matter if bought by a sordid paid encounter. A punishing dawn at times finds her still searching for that illusive escape. Through all this, Mayall is able to find poignancy and humor. She finds it in the drug recovery meetings she haunts in search of vagrant camaraderie. She finds it-and introduces the reader to a cast of memorable fellow exiles--in a rigidly ruled rehabilitation institution. This is a memorable book--beautifully and even lyrically written. At times it is melancholy, at times hopeful, at times shocking, but it is always moving. At times it is even exuberant with the sense of a life lived determined to survive." John Rechy, author of CITY OF NIGHT "...This is a real, a serious, no kidding writer...With this fierce memoir, Phoenix, Philippa Mayall comes roaring into the literary world; her sharp and angry Manchester, England, voice barges into the pale and tidy tea room of L.A. literature like a Harley with Drone power." Jill Robinson, HUFFINGTON POST Set in Manchester, UK, Los Angeles, and the center of the narrator's mind, PHOENIX is a compelling memoir that takes the reader through an odyssey of escape. The writing is as raw as the emotions of the narrator named Flip, and the story as gritty as the northern UK city where she was raised. The book begins with a tragic night when a house fire destroys her life as she knows it. Flip flees the scene, devoured by guilt and drowning in self-loathing. She leaps into a synthetic existence of mind-altering drugs and alcohol, but before long her pain starts to bleed into her psyche once again. Her desperate urge to escape takes her six thousand miles from home to L.A. Flip is distraught to discover her feelings came with her, and she soothes them with even more potent drugs offered to her by a new friend. This becomes the axis of self-destruction and self-discovery. She ends up homeless, living in a car with two other people and two cats, and a new flame is ignited within her. After a violent confrontation with her friends, Flip is forced to enter a drug rehab so she isn't sleeping on the streets. This is the beginning of her real and most courageous escape.

She's going to lose a bet... or I'm going to lose her heart.I'm about to lose my future wife, and we aren't even married yet. But despite me being sure she's the one I'm meant to marry, Holly's convinced we're not meant to be. That may have something to do with my mom being engaged to Holly's dad, but we didn't know about that until after the hottest night of our lives. That means nothing to Holly now, though; she wouldn't be caught dead dating a stepbrother.Maybe I should be offended, but I'm not really her stepbrother yet, and I see no problem with our relationship moving forward. But she's determined to find a date for the upcoming wedding-anyone but me.Holly's about to learn that when I set my sights on something I really want, I go all in. I'm offering her a bet: if she can meet Mr. Right and show up to the wedding with someone she's really in love with, I'll pay up. But if not? She's mine.I just hope I haven't underestimated how much she hates to lose... because there are some things that are more important than winning.Fans of Meghan Quinn and Pippa Grant will love the humor and steam of this opposites attract romantic comedy!

Bukowski Erasure Poetry Anthology is a collection of erasure poems based on the novels, letters, and poetry of Charles Bukowski. The 41 poets who contributed to the collection have high regard for Bukowski's work and approached this exercise with respect and even awe. So, with love and appreciation, we dedicate this collection to Charles Bukowski, who has inspired so many writers to keep writing and so many people to keep living. Contributors include: Suzanna Anderson, Tara R. Andrews, Beth Ayer, Jenni B. Baker, David Barker, Mary Bast, Alessandra Bava, Brinda Buljore, Kathy Burkett, Tobi Cogswell, Subhankar Das, Melissa Eleftherion, Mark Erickson, Alexis Rhone Fancher, Jeffrey Graessley, S.A. Griffin, Jack Habegger, Mark Habegger, Ara Harris, Mitch Hicks, Wm. Todd King, Laurie Kolp, Paula J. Lambert, Alexander Limarev, Karen Massey, Catfish McDaris, George McKim, DE Navarro, Kelly Nelson, Richard O'Brien, Winston Plowes, David S. Pointer, Sheikha A., Scott Stoller, Keyna Thomas, Melanie Villines, Mercedes Webb-Pullman, Zachary Weber, Theresa Williams, Birgit Zartl, Ali Znaidi.

Coffee House Confessions is a collection of poems written in and about coffee houses throughout the world. "I know no one else who manages to combine quantity of poems with quality the way Ellaraine Lockie does. She is a font of creative ideas and brings the ultimate in craft and experience to the realizing of those products of inspiration, observation, and research. I admire her work immensely." GERALD LOCKLIN, Professor Emiritus of English at California State University, Long Beach "This collection deserves a wide audience...once coffee houses were locales for galvanizing live poetry readings, now we can achieve almost the same nirvana by reading this witty book." Christine Pacosz, FutureCycle Press "...a very well done collection of poems... there's something for everyone in this collection. If you love contemporary poetry, you are sure to find some gems here that speak to you. If you don't know if you love contemporary poetry, this might be a good place to start finding out." Marcia Meara, Bookin' It "...a really great read." Jessie Carty, Review Wrap-Up, jessiecarty.com

KIRKUS REVIEWS: "Through poems and vignettes, Brenner's moving debut memoir commemorates her son's death. Brenner began writing poetry in earnest the night 6-year-old Riley died of an arteriovenous malformation brain hemorrhage...These free verse selections, mostly written in complete sentences, rely on alliteration, assonance and striking imagery rather than straight rhyming for impact. Perspective morphs subtly, starting in the third person and moving into a more intimate first-person present, with occasional outbursts of second-person address to Riley...A noteworthy exploration of a parent's grief." "The poems inside of this book were torn from the heart of a woman whose suffering is so immense that it could swallow her whole. Instead of letting the staggering pain consume her, Chanel Brenner crafted these undeniably gorgeous meditations on the death of her son. I read Vanilla Milk four times before putting it down, because I was afraid to let it go. Chanel Brenner has crafted a resplendent work of art that is unrivaled in its ability to make sense of the ebbs and flows of grief." MATTHEW LOGELIN, New York Times bestselling author of Two Kisses for Maddy "Chanel Brenner's Vanilla Milk is a transcendent work. The skill and courage of these poems inspire me to be a better writer, the generosity in them inspires me to be a better person." MIA SARA, author at [PANK] "The psychological and physical benefits acquired through the process of transforming painful emotions into words, as a means to regulate grief and distress is well documented, scientifically and via therapeutic art programs around the world. However transforming a mother's sudden loss of her six-year-old son into an expressively accessible collection of engaging and compassionate poems requires graceful crafting and emotional intelligence. By successfully mingling the chaotic rhythms of her grief and anguish, with her vivid illuminations, the poet has brought forth a collection of narrative poems that timelessly unite reader and writer, in both grief and healing." The Eric Hoffer Award for Books (Poetry Category, Honorable Mention, 2015) "Vanilla Milk...is a surprising blend of formats which melds a memoir to poetry...Chanel Brenner is not the first to use poems to immortalize and capture the events surrounding a child's death: Stan Rice's Some Lamb is one example of an outstanding synthesis of poem/memoir -- and Vanilla Milk deserves to take its place alongside it, on the shelf of exceptional writings." MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW "It is not every day that I read a collection of poems that lays bare to me the writer's soul. It is not every day that I read a poem that truly breaks my heart. And it is not every day that I find solace in sadness or hope in tragedy. The day I read Chanel Brenner's work was not an ordinary day...Chanel speaks of the enduring promises of life, of her love for her family, and of the hope that eventually takes root in her worn heart...Though the wound is deep and will never fully heal, Vanilla Milk creates 'life from loss.'" After all, that's what poets do." LINDSEY GRUDNICKI, Minerva Rising Vanilla Milk, a memoir told in poems, focuses on a mother's and family response to the sudden death of the author's six-year-old son. These elegies might be read as written snapshots forming an elegiac album, depicting how a traumatic loss alters relationships, love, and parenting, and perceptions of danger, time, and life. Characterized by unsparing honesty, clarity, and restraint, the poems explore the limits inherent in "recovering" from the grief of losing a child, and the need to continue experiencing joy. Includes a 20-page album of family photographs.

"RANSACK AND DANCE is a book by a poet reaching the heights of his art. Every word is where it is for a reason, and every sound is where it is for a reason. And those reasons add up to surprise and delight. This is the rarest thing for a collection of poems: there is not a line of prose in it!" THOMAS LUX "Chris Forhan's images and insights...seem...to spring from the poet's subconscious to the reader's, with the vessel of the poem their only necessary medium. I can think of no better reading experience or more that could be asked of the best poetry." LAURA KASISCHKE, West Branch Wired

In this impressive gathering of fifty poems, Nebenzahl discovers long-lost relatives that were displaced from World War II and the Holocaust. In this unearthing, Nebenzahl finds himself questioning his past and present to imagine a new future in elegiac dimensions. These expressions intertwine and mediate language as a process for divinity, humor, and truth. The poetry excavates with humanity the trauma of the unexplained and the mystery of creative response as an authentic gesture from the human hand and heart that is writing." KAREN FINLEY "Look for the rainbow fringes. At such bright speculative mind-trip edges in these poems, one finds polka dots and moonbeams, the summer of hate, dad's whiskey spittle on the lapel of a National Guardsman, poems written on A&P bags, Mingus, ice and madness, Freaky Jerry, red diaperism, fly-or-die panic, and people miraculously wearing love like heaven. The whole book is a dreamarium. In a world of jingles written like lead bullets, Paul Nebenzahl's poems stand generously to oppose them." AL FILREIS, Kelly Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania, author of Wallace Stevens & the Actual World.

JUAN FELIPE HERRERA, Poet Laureate of California: "Bull swaggers blues & rams through Klan days & lynch nights & he meditates & rumbles on Presley & Memphis, he stops visits, breathes family, chows catfish, gets hauled off to prison, alcohol afternoons & contraband inmate pruno drink. He is strong & lyrical, and most of all, Bull gores the veils & static stiffs of history. Bull is hungry most of all, to come back where he started, where he is, unafraid of pain, for he has suffered, he is suffering and because of that his virtue is courage, harmony, love, yes Bull is doused with the blues of love, where racism, segregation, slavery, are part of the double-dutch, hip hop scrim where Bull rises and transcends. A power-poetry here - a liberation heart-fire collection by our Salinas Poet Laureate, James P. Golden--no other like it." "Golden is a young man who is surely going to add to the rich tradition of poets, writers and intellectuals who have come out of Black America. His is an exciting voice, filled with creativity but seasoned, as well, with a potpourri of experiences..." JOHNIE SCOTT, cofounder, Watts Writers Workshop "His vernacular and prose are a rare find, he speaks truth to power and that power into contemporary issues." Senses Lifestyle Magazine "Golden creates phenomenal works of art." The National Steinbeck Center "We are proud to have a writer that hails from our great city return with the gift of poetry." MAYOR JOE GUNTER, City of Salinas. "Golden's poetry celebrates the contemporary experiences of young African Americans while delving into both the poet's professional and personal life." The Salinas Californian "Golden's poems are frank, explicit, and poignant." ROBERT WALCH, literary critic From the Author's Note: I can imagine the blood dripping slowly onto the mud beneath the dead man's body... and the smell of sun-stained flesh rotting above the lynch mob...and my grandmother's heartbeat as she unfolds her arms to somehow protect her children from the reality of the Jim Crow American South. While my grandmother, Henrietta, wasn't actually at the site of Emmett Till's murder on August 28, 1955, there were others like him, especially in South Carolina. The lynching, murder, and castration of Black men prompted the unexplainable disap-pearances, forgotten funeral services, and bitterness at God. The lynch ropes left unfathomable scars, especially on the young. I suppose my father, Bull, was one of them. Those scars resurfaced throughout his life in signature moments. Those recollections are the basis for BULL: The Journey of a Freedom Icon. My father, while flawed, is a representation of what I've always considered the great Black American Man, the old school cat, the Bull. He falls in line with the icons that were raised during one of the most horrific periods in America for people of color. In many ways, writing this book has been a cleansing of my own soul. I feel more connected to my father than ever, and he's someone I'd want to be connected to forever. As I experienced on the discovery of Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah, the stories of our elders heals our souls. My soul is healing. Above all, I feel honored to spring from a man whose life has been an iconic guidepost for Black men-all men, really. My dad's tenacity and ability to overcome every hindrance of a pitiless world makes him Bull; an unrelenting beast stamp-ing his hooves through many darknesses or, like Emmett Till, a father of many.

Jeffrey Alfier acquired a keen poetic vision from years of living and traveling throughout the Southwest. Composed mainly in syllabic verse, The Wolf Yearling exhibits strict attention to tightly controlled language that renders, in rich imagism, American deserts and mountains, the plains of the Trans-Pecos, border towns, and the sandy soils of east Texas. Man and beast transit borders blurred in heat-shimmer, the air "so candent even a kiss could warp." There is a splendor to what survives the desert's beleaguering high-noon sun that "owns the graves of water;" or, in its twilight descent, trawls "a final swath over the saltpan of dead ocean." The Southwest flora and fauna that Alfier celebrates is wide-ranging. Readers will come to know the desert as Alfier does, seeking to join him down "forgotten dirt trails / impassable to anything with wheels" amid the sublime or fading beauty of towns and landscapes. Strangers, wanderers and residents alike populate his verse as they thrive in austere wildness where the world endures in canyons where "iridescent crows...glimmer through dust motes graining the light," out among the "igneous giants of petrified time," the ever-lurking coyote a "dark movement breaking a highway's mirage," while someone watches a puma laying bare the "sudden bloody ribcage" of a palomino. Thus an elegiac thread runs throughout The Wolf Yearling. We find an aged father being returned to his boyhood home in the California desert where "dust devils churn birds to air" when he recalls "names of friends lost in Rommel's Africa." Alfier also locates among harsh settings the simple, quiet idyll of nightfall on a bajada, where yucca flowers are "clustered like monks at vespers." Where there is elegy there is healing and pastoral beauty. We find this throughout, in the nourishing darkness of the mesas, alive with "verdant windrows of remnant springs;" in witnessing "trails written by storms" that come seasonally to the desert, offering temporal rivers a man and his grandson skip stones, while a romantic couple splashes in the storm-swollen Gila River, the red waves of the woman's hair "singing with light. Alfier is an alert and attentive witness of the American Southwest, and the vision of The Wolf Yearling is both precise and significant. "Alfier's sharp lyrics come upon you like a door slammed by a hot desert wind might wake a lonely man into a new life. They are demotic, lived, and, without being sentimental, hopeful that our little span of being human matters after all." DOUG ANDERSON, Poet-in-Residence at Ft. Juniper, Amherst, Massachusetts, instructor in poetry at Emerson and Smith Colleges "If the forbidding and starkly beautiful American Southwest were condensed to the nuances of language, Alfier would be its quintessential oracle. He writes forcefully not only of the flora and fauna eking out existence in its sunlight and its shadows but also of the existential loneliness so piquantly characteristic of its human inhabitants. Even more striking, however, than the engaging and powerfully rendered subjects of his poems is his mastery of language. I know of no poet writing today who handles the demanding form of syllabics (while consistently maintaining line integrity) with the consummate artistry of Alfier. Without any hesitation whatsoever, I give this fine collection of poems my highest recommendation." LARRY D. THOMAS, Member, Texas Institute of Letters, 2008 Texas Poet Laureate "Each poem is a testament to Alfier's unflinching observations and hard-fought love of the Southwest. This is a rich portrait of a stunning landscape...The Wolf Yearling is a gift." KEITH EKISS, author of Puma Road Notebook, Jones Lecturer in Creative Writing at Stanford University

In this original poetry collection, Silver Birch Press of Los Angeles has gathered poetry chapbooks by 14 distinguished poets from across the United States and produced a unique anthology of verse. Poets of singular and diverse expression are joined together to celebrate the written word in one voice. The reader is treated to not just one or two poems by each author, but to a generous body of work self-contained in 14 separate and distinct chapbooks. If flight is a common language of birds, Swallow Dance is a celebration of poets on the wing. The poets and their chapbooks included in this anthology are: Lightning Storm by John Brantingham All Other Time Is Peace by Kirsten Dierking The Hollywood Catechism by Paul Fericano Bone Box by Chris Forhan Her Blue Dress by Jeffrey Graessley The Democracy of Carbon by Donna Hilbert Beach House by Ruth Moon Kempher Four Years in Pocket Change by Steven Kuhn Out of the Earth by Tamara Madison Aida by Catfish McDaris In the Garden by Carolyn Miller Where the Stars at Night Are Big & Bright by Joan Jobe Smith Letting Go of Ashes by Rick Smith Wasn't Columbus a Bachelor? by Fred Voss

I Am the Maker of all sweetened possum is the strangely-capitalized, full-color collection of found poetry by james w. moore. Working from the text of Julia Peterkin's Scarlet Sister Mary, moore has created visually striking poems that acknowledge their source while making new worlds for Peterkin's words. Found poetry is a method of creating poems from already existing work; moore's found poetry acknowledges its source material by creating the poem directly out of a page of text. His work strives to stand out in words and in the visual remaining on the page. Using exacto knives, whiteout, markers, paint, and even cross-stitch, moore's work has a homemade feel that reflects the source text. In the introduction, he says, "there's a handmade quality to Scarlet Sister Mary. seemingly every interaction happens while someone is making food, or mending garments, or picking crops. i strove to reflect that tactile feeling in my work. i wanted each piece to feel like you can see the marks left behind." james w. moore took part in Found Poetry Review's 2013 National Poetry Month initiative -- The Pulitzer Remix -- where 85 poets each selected a Pulitzer prize winning work of fiction and created a poem for each day of the month. This collection rounds up poems that were created as part of the Pulitzer Remix.

A collection of poetry, short stories, memoirs, book excerpts, interviews, and essays about Charles Bukowski as well as portraits of the author from over 75 writers and artists around the world. Cover Art: Mark Erickson (markerickson.com) and Katy Zartl (birgitzartl.com) Contributing Editors: Jocelyne Desforges, S.A. Griffin, Suzanne Lummis, David Roskos, Joan Jobe Smith, Eddie Woods Contributors include (in alphabetical order): Christopher R. Adams / Sheril Antonio / RD Armstrong / The Art Warriors (Antonio Gamboa) / David Barker / William Barker / Black Sifichi / Harry Calhoun / David Stephen Calonne / Jared A. Carnie / Neeli Cherkovski/ Kim Cooper / Abel Debritto / Henry Denander / Jocelyne Desforges / Rene Diedrich / John Dorsey / Mark Erickson / Dan Fante / Paul Fericano / Karen Finley / Jack Foley / FrancEyE / Ed Galing / Joan Gannij / Anggo Genorga / Marjorie Gilbert / Jeffrey Graessley / S.A. Griffin / win harms / Donna Hilbert / Rodger Jacobs / Linda King / Harvey Kubernik/ Dana Laina / Lautir (Fabrizio Cassetta) / Suzuki Limbu / Michael Limnios / Gerald Locklin / Suzanne Lummis / Marvin Malone / Adrian Manning / Dean Marais / Germa Marquez Catfish McDaris / Ann Menebroker / Heather Minette / Austin Mitchell / Richard Modiano / Jon Monday / Jeff Morgan / Paul Nebenzahl / Gerald Nicosia / Michael O'Brien / bart plantenga / David S. Pointer / Alvaro Pozo / D.A. Pratt / Wendy Rainey / Steve Richmond / David Roskos / Russ Runfola / Richard Schave / Raymond King Shurtz / Joan Jobe Smith / Ben Talbot / Mark Terrill / dirk velvet / Melanie Villines / Fred Voss / Scott Wannberg / Vanessa Wilken / A.D. Winans / Bradley Wind / Erik Woltersdorf / Pamela "Cupcakes" Wood / Tim Youd / Katy Zartl

...a wife discovers her spouse does not always cry wolf, a son finds his father's seemingly odd behavior is anything but, a raging sea delivers a young woman's fantasy lover, an inexplicable event disrupts life on the planet, a long-perished civil rights activist saves a young man from humiliation, and visitors from another world wreak havoc by curing all earthly ills. These and other stories in EVERYTHING IS EPIC continue the unique themes Michael C. Keith has established in previous books of acclaimed fiction. "From the relentlessly restless imagination of Michael C. Keith comes his latest collection, EVERYTHING IS EPIC. With his usual outrageous characters, poignant storylines, and exceptional writing, Keith has once again earned his place as one of our very favorite writers." Robin Statton, BOSTON LITERARY MAGAZINE "Michael C. Keith is one of a handful of working writers who has the ability to locate the precise point of psychological discomfort in his characters. In fact, Keith works in a far more interesting genre -- not books of terror or tedious stories of vampires and zombies, but stories of ordinary people whose lives are touched by what is fearsome and macabre, people like us who live, always, under the shadow of forces that undercut our complacency and show what life really is -- a losing negotiation with chaos."George Ovitt, author of THE SNOWMAN

In The Hollywood Catechism, his latest collection of poems, Paul Fericano shines a bright searchlight on our addiction to pop culture, our fixation on celebrity worship, and our suspicion of religious ideas. Each poem is a small lens flipped to reveal an alternate universe into which the reader enters bravely with no exit sign in sight. Fericano's unique perspective is marked by a skill and talent that blends socio-political satire with suffering and sentiment. In the process, he manages to acknowledge our shenanigans and celebrate our humanity. Elizabeth Taylor, Jesus, and Joe DiMaggio join hands with Freud, The Three Stooges, and Ann Landers, as Burt Lancaster, Charles Bukowski, and Johnny Unitas break bread with Wallace Stevens, Dean Martin, and Dinah Shore. And as U2's Bono and Tyrone Power's Zorro haunt each other's dreams, the Marx Brothers discuss opera with Oprah. From the wickedly satirical "Sinatra, Sinatra" and its use of the crooner's name in vain, to the irreverent appeal of "The Actor's Creed," "The Halle Berry" and "Prayer of the Talking Head," Fericano's lampoons are equally deft. The book's empathetic "Howl of Lon Chaney, Jr." is not only a luminous parody of Allen Ginsberg's epic poem "Howl," but a stunning work that stands on its own merits. American/British poet and critic, Robert Peake, captured it best when he wrote: "Paul's poetry is a distinct turn of mind-able to sweep up humor, irony, and deep feeling in a winning trifecta. It is precisely in the moment I am laughing in a Paul Fericano poem that my guard is down. It is then when Paul slips in a modicum of pathos, reminding me of how complex it is to be human, how, as Virginia Woolf puts it in Mrs. Dalloway, 'dangerous it is to live even just one day.' These are poems that read like the messages in a bottle that might be written by the last sane man on Earth, when everyone else has gone mad."

Spanning a 40-year timeframe, 1967-2007, GERALD LOCKLIN: New and Selected Poems features many of this esteemed poet's most iconic and memorable poems.

Reading Merrill Farnsworth's Kissing My Shadow creates the same effect on its reader as a long, much-needed session of yoga, for within these pages exists, indeed, a yoking of mind, body, and spirit. These are poems as comfortable in the quotidian world of corn flakes, flourless chocolate cakes, and Fridgidaires as they are in the realms of Persephone, Emmaus, Gabriel, and Nirvana. Here is a poet who loves and honors the whirl...toward the sun, yet embraces just as gratefully and graciously that tumble from the sky...the singed wings... CATHY SMITH BOWERS, Poet Laureate of North Carolina (2010-2012)

Jezebel's Got the Blues...And Other Works of Imagination is a series of performance pieces that puts a new spin on stories from the Old Testament. In Merrill Farnsworth's inspired telling, Jezebel, Cain, Noah, Delilah, Lot's wife, and other denizens of Bible history reveal themselves as people with very modern stories to share. Jezebel and her friends are true originals - taking readers (and audiences!) on a creative, thought-provoking, insightful ride. Author's Note: Jezebel's Got the Blues...is a collection of stories and paintings created over a nine-month period. As an artist, I often go into the studio, take up a brush filled with paint and begin making marks on paper or canvas, letting the marks take shape and allowing shapes to emerge, as they will. One day in September, a face began forming, and I followed the inclination to form a woman's face. In time, I saw the face of Jezebel staring out at me, and it occurred to me she looked frightened. I'd always imagined her as defiant. As a daughter of the South, I was warned about Jezebel and picked up on the notion she was a bad apple. I was told she wore too much rouge and knew she came to a bad end. Having gone through a period of life that didn't end so well, I felt a certain compassion for Jezebel when she showed up that day in September. I began painting more and more layers of red on her cheeks, thinking that somehow more red would keep her from feeling so blue. As I painted, I began imagining a story about Jezebel, told from the point of view of the rouge on her cheeks - a voice that became a strange witness to her story. That is how a series of stories and paintings came to be called Jezebel's Got the Blues...and Other Works of Imagination. After I finished the paintings and had written the stories, I called upon friends, all talented actors I'd performed with over the years. I asked if they'd join me to perform this series of monologues and dialogues. All said yes, as did Phil Madeira, who accompanied us with improvised blues on his guitar. It was a magical night for me. All my imagining became something real - to me, my friends, and to the audience gathered for the retelling of stories about a ragtag crew of characters who share a longing for grace to bend the notes of our blues towards love.

The Furthest Palm is an urban novel shaped as a series of disjointed short stories held together by tone, perception, and the single-named protagonist, Trace, a loner navigating the savage streets of Los Angeles, whose best friends are Jack Daniels, Potter's vodka, his 1948 Packard, and three women -- Lisa, Amy, and ex-wife Josephine. Trace is a writer-for-hire, a lifestyle choice that puts him in constant contact with those who live under the "vaporous cloud of wretched hopelessness" that is at the core of the rotten L.A. promise. His L.A. is one of drumming rainstorms, raging brushfires, cloying hangovers aggravated by the crackling desperation of marginalized low-budget movie producers, meth-addicted hustlers and con men, a one-armed stripper, taco shop poets, serial killers and cannibals, overcrowded Urgent Care clinics, toxic red tides in the Santa Monica Bay, psychopathic stalkers, and a victim of spontaneous combustion. Trace's adventures are mirrored by those of his own fictional alter ego, Dan Knight, a tough-talking, gun-toting P.I. who resolves every conflict, major and minor, with his own brand of bullet-riddled Social Darwinism. Hovering in the background of The Furthest Palm are the ghosts of Chester Himes, Sam Peckinpah, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. By the time we arrive at the shattering epilogue, Trace himself dissolves into his own mythology. "I'm drawn to The Furthest Palm and the adventures of Trace as he wanders through L.A. phenomena, particularly the blown-up pigeon and his dilemma with dwarfs, as well as the Kafka-like episode with the cop, and, of course, Josephine, and all the details of L.A., the dinner and the film and scribbler encounters, the curse of survival."Rudy Wurlitzer, author of Quake and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

A respectful, affectionate literary profile of novelist and poet Charles Bukowski (1920-1994). Awarding-winning writer Joan Jobe Smith -- a Pushcart Honoree -- shares up-close, personal recollections of her mentor and friend, Charles Bukowski. Charles Bukowski Epic Glottis also includes remembrances and comments from the women in Bukowski's life -- including Frances Dean Smith (francEyE), Ann Menebroker, Linda King, and Pamela Miller Wood (aka Cupcakes). "Joan Jobe Smith's book is a joy! A terrific, sweet, loving book--the interviews, everyone's reminiscences, the poems & Fred Voss's, the First Bukowski Festival--a moving, endearing Love Song, the kind of thing that happens at funerals when people stand and spontaneously tell stories filled with their love & memories. A book full of heart, Joan's own love for Bukowski's girlfriends, her own large spirit makes her the perfect hostess for this festival & whenever she speaks of herself it's with self-effacing & humorous humility. Her sweetness & goodness permeates the whole book. I'm moved on every page." STEVE KOWIT, author of The First Noble Truth(University of Tampa Press, 2007)

Lillian Fitzgerald has made a terrible mistake. She's gone a hundred thousand dollars into student loan debt for a Master's Degree in Creative Writing, only to discover that she might not actually be a good writer. In an attempt to buy herself enough time to salvage her ambitious but depressing thesis novel, she accepts a part-time job doing SAT tutoring for Calvin Bolt, whose father Henry owns Bolt Bank, the very company that services her student loans. But Lillian soon discovers that dangerous secrets underlie the wealth and power of the Bolt family, secrets that could launch Lillian onto the bestseller list...if she manages to survive long enough to write about them. In DEBT, Rachel Carey's sharp, fast-paced satire of New York during the 2008 financial meltdown, it turns out that everyone, even all-powerful billionaire Henry Bolt, is in somebody's debt.

The Silver Birch Press SUMMER ANTHOLOGY is a collection of summer-related poetry, prose poems, short stories, essays, and memoirs from over 70 established and up-and-coming in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, and Africa. Contributors include: Jeffrey C. Alfier / William Blake / John Brantingham / Julie Cadawallader-Staub / Anton Chekhov / Virginie Colline / Colleen Delegan / Kirsten Dierking / David Dondero / Paul Laurence Dunbar / Barbara Eknoian / Merrill Farnsworth / Paul Fericano / Chris Forhan / Susie Sweetland Garay / Jeffrey Graessley / Syed Afzal Haider / win harms / Donna Hilbert / Rodger Jacobs / Diane Eagle Kataoka / Michael C. Keith / Ruth Moon Kempher / Linda King / Ted Kooser / Thomas Kudla / Moriah LaChapell / Ellaraine Lockie / Gerald Locklin / Tamara Madison / Karen Margolis / Clint Margrave / Catfish McDaris / Daniel McGinn / Lori McGinn / Marcia Meara / Edna St. Vincent Millay / Carolyn Miller / Paul Nebenzahl / Gerald Nicosia / Jax NTP
/ Jason Parker / bart plantenga / Jackie Pledger-Skwerski / Stanley Plumly / Ivon Prefontaine / Conrad Romo / Daniel Romo / Carl Sandburg / William Shakespeare / Raymond King Shurtz / Tere Sievers / Joan Jobe Smith / Rick Smith / Clifton Snider / Dale Sprowl / Kendall Steinle / Caitlin Stern / Robert Louis Stevenson / Tate Swindell / Larry D. Thomas / Thomas R. Thomas / Jeri Thompson / Mary Umans / Dirk Velvet / Philip Vermaas / Melanie Villines / Diane Wakoski / Bruce Weigl / Edith Wharton / Heathcote Williams / Eddie Woods / Joanie Hieger Fritz Zosike

Self-portrait poems from 67 poets around the world. The authors offer portraits of themselves that are, by turns, humorous, heartfelt, harrowing, honest, stunning, surreal, and full of surprises. Contributors include: Kathryn Almy, Cynthia Anderson, Ivan Argüelles, Ronald Baatz, Suvojit Banerjee, Carol Berg, Alan Birkelbach, Eric Burke, Ana Maria Caballero, Mary-Marcia Casoly, Tobi Cogswell, Beth Copeland, Anthony Costello, Tasha Cotter, Kaila Davis, Rodrigo V. Dela Peña, Jr., Daniel Patrick Delaney, David Diaz, Barbara Eknoian, Adelle Foley, Jack Foley, Michael Friedman, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Phillip Giambri, John A. Grochalski, Clara Hsu, Elizabeth Jacobson, Loukia M. Janavaras, Mathias Jansson, Jax NTP, Kasey Johnson, Jennifer Lynn Krohn, Angela La Voie, Roz Levine, Alexander Limarev, Stephen Linsteadt, Tamara Madison. Adrian Manning Michael Mark, Daniel McGinn, Victoria McGrath, Bob McNeil, Ann Menebroker, Danielle Mitchell, karla k. morton, Robert Okaji, Jay Passer, Alan Passman, D.A. Pratt, Billy Roberson, Rizwan Saleem, Paul Sands, Rebecca Schumejda, roy anthony shabla, Sheikha A., Jakia Smith, Kimberly Smith, Eddie Stewart, Jacque Stukowski, Rosa Swartz, Simen Moflag Talleraas, Keyna Thomas, Sarah Thursday, A. Garnett Weiss, Denise R. Weuve, Liz Worth, Birgit Zartl

Cover art by Guy Budziak, www.filmnoirwoodcuts.com Edited by Melanie Villines Contributing Editors: Jenni B. Baker, Catfish McDaris, james w. moore, Gerald So A collection of poems based on the writings of a range of noir authors, including James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Patricia Highsmith, Walter Mosley, Robert B. Parker, and Cornell Woolrich. Poets include: Jeffrey C. Alfier / Beth Ayer / Jenni B. Baker / David Barker / Kathy Burkett / Candace Butler / Freda Butler / Kim Cooper / Subhankar Das / Andrea Dickens / Barbara Eknoian / Chris Forhan / Laura Hartenberger / Paul Hawkins / Deborah Herman / Sandra Herman / Mathias Jansson / Jax NTP / Rosemarie Keenan / Wm. Todd King/ Joseph Lisowski / Renee Mallett / Adrian Manning/ Karen Margolis / Catfish McDaris / Marcia Meara / james w. moore / Sarah Nichols / Winston Plowes / David S. Pointer / D.A. Pratt / David Rachels / Jonne Rhodes / Van Roberts / Daniel Romo / Tere Sievers / Gerald So / Sherry Steiner / Caitlin Stern / Scott Stoller / Thomas R. Thomas / Mary Umans / Melanie Villines / Mercedes Webb-Pullman / Richard Wink / Joanie Hieger Fritz Zosike

Reissue of the 1958 classic true story of a woman's descent into schizophrenia and her journey back to sanity. "O'Brien has produced a work of brilliance and power, evoking a combination of Kafka and Joyce, with a touch of Orwell." Robert R. Kirsch, Los Angeles Times "An absorbing account of life in the dream world of a schizophrenic." Publishers Weekly "For six months she travels around the country on Greyhound buses, captive of the Operators, who push and pull, torment, confuse, and exhaust her. And at the end of her time of madness, she understands precisely what has been happening. Her insight is penetrating and irresistible. Her writing is delectable. She displays gut-wrenching humor and pungent metaphor with an eloquent, eminently readable style. This book is enthusiastically recommended." Coevolution Quarterly "Astonishing recollections." Punch "Striking autobiography." Phenomenological Sociology "Brilliantly reveals what the unconscious is like." Publishers Trade List Annual "...the author is contributing irreplaceably to our knowledge." Archives of General Psychiatry "A beautifully lucid autobiographical description of a psychotic episode that lasted six months whose healing motion is clear." R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience "With penetration and satisfying imagery, Miss O'Brien (a pseudonym) describes her psychosis, from which unaccountably and spontaneously she recovers." William F. Buckley, National Review