Books in Print
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Fine Fine Music
Fine Fine Music is a collection of stories about the other side of rock and roll and coming of age in the land that time forgot. Lake Ronkonkoma is stuck in 1981, an alcoholic blackout of unnatually tan people waxing their Camaros to Foreigner on cassette and knowing the words to every Billy Joel song whether you want to or not. From an internship making Seamonkey costumes, a childhood fear of My Buddy dolls, and a heartbreaking crush on Aerosmith, funny lady Cassie J. Sneider delivers her tales of growing up in a land of fist-pumping Snookies
with the antagonistic wit of a record store clerk.
144 pp. $15.
ISBN 978-0-9819534-4-1
ISBN 978-0-9819524-5-8 (eBook)
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Other Clues
Prose poems…or short shorts? Grafton’s writing is a hybrid style distinguished by sensate labyrinthine takes on life that are powered by reversals that drop the bottom out and fragment combinations that contain complete scenarios. These prose poem short shorts are language driven, glints of narrative delivering irony both witty and dark.
88 pp $15.
ISBN 978-0-9819534-3-4
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Rising at 5:00 A.M.
This book is a life intersecting with many lives. Poems that read like narratives traverse years of suffering, learning and delight. They open doors of Provincetown, summer camp, prep school, the mental ward, Russian novels. With unerring rhythm and in countless ways Marc Hofstadter sings his passion to the reader’s heart.” Neal Oxenhandler.
104 pages $14.
ISBN 978-0-9819534-0-3
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WiLD WEST
The poems in WiLD WEST excavate the human condition in postmodern America. The poet takes on our idiosyncratic lives at the edge of contemporary American democracy. These poems will not let the reader be comfortable.
$12.00. 64 pages.
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but then you danced
Jeanne Lupton writes, “I enjoy writing tanka as emotional diary, as a way to peace, as a song of nature, as a reminder of love, as play and work, as connection, as celebration, as gift, as a practice in concision, as a practice in honesty, as a way of life.” These are free form tanka that give uplift and depth to our everyday experience. Most of these tanka have appeared in tanka journals.
$10.00. 64 pages.
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Beyond Midnight
The poems in Beyond Midnight put our everyday experiences in a new light with language that leaves us wanting more. A solid collection by a poet who keeps breaking through barriers of language and content: Think of it this way, words skid over the stillborn silence,/an arrow pierces the red morning/as the raven wakes free.
24 pp. $6.00
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Where I Live
I am a gardener. I chose that profession so that I could be a poet. I prefer perennial plants to annuals, trees to shrubs. I love pruning so that the tree looks like it was never touched, that it just grew that way. I feel the same way about my poetry. Wherever I work with plants I am also working on my poems and, in the poems, I am working on living. The day I found something useful to do with my hands, my real life began and all of the days I had before, fertilize it.”
64 pp. $8.00
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Writing From The Center
An exploration of focusing on awareness itself as the energy of writing: Is it possible to bring you forth? Can you be summoned? I'm Worn thin, translucent. I feel the ferns of your existence softy uncurl within me. I see the slow seed seeking the sun. [Pat Hughes]
64 pp. $8.00
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Out of Nothing
Out of Nothing (OON) is “a” story of awareness by way of the intersection of language and experience. The key element in OON is to break logic apart by using logic and demonstrating that experience is the final arbiter: Transmuted matter-energy comes from acts of self-reflection which are then stored in memory… the animal brain having direct control over matter-energy within the brain.
120 pp. $12.00
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If We Had Stopped We Would Have Had Nothing
Listening to Nita Donovan read from her poems, I can almost imagine a collaboration of Gracie Allen and Escher—or, let’s say, Dorothy Parker, after one too many of her “fresh hells,” sipping from the flask of Breton. She disarms with a deadpan humor, but the pan belongs to Dali. Sarah Maclay
Latitude Press, 72 pp. $12.00
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The Light's Still On, Ida
Linda Zeiser received a grant from the San Leandro Chamber of Commerce to put a book of haiku and tanka together with sayings from her Alzheimer's students. This book, The Light's Still On, Ida, has gone into its second printing. The poems are uplifting, full of gratitude and wisdom, a book to give caregivers hope—to be read and reread.
48 pp. $10.00
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Tangos Come and Tangos Go
For well over 1,000 years, the Chinese poets never tired of attempting to trap the moment’s vision in the net of four lines called the Wu Song. The goal was to paint a passionate, delicate or even playful word-picture of the beloved and the emotions of the author in four lines of two couplets that often seemed decoupled even as there was a feeling of totality or fusion between them. No analytical response is required, only to see the “paintings” and feel what they evoke.
80 pp. $10.00
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The Melon-Carts Have Overturned
This book was written over a period of three years of letter-writing between the authors with no thought that one day a book would come from the exchange. Two different writing styles, one the lyrical poet and the other a spare-bones prose writer come together with the spark of inspiration. [Note: Tanka, a Japanese poem form, predating haiku, consists of 31 syllables in 5 lines, with 5 syllables in the first and third lines and 7 syllables in the second, fourth and fifth lines. Another form of tanka is the “spirit” of tanka in which the 5 lines are maintained but not the syllable count per each line.]
80 pp. $10.00
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WHAT I WANT FROM YOU
an Anthology
Contributing Poets –
Judy Grahn, Elana Dykewomon, antyne, Lea E. Arellano, Caren Armstrong, Gwen Avery, Aisha Ayers, Dominika Bednarska, Annette M. Berkobien, Beth Bourland, Cassandra Bramucci, Robyn Brooks, Giovanna Capone, MK Chavez, Dajenya, Patricia Edith, Beth Elliott, Izabela Filipiak, Judy Freespirit, Nicole Griffin, Christina Hutchins, Susan Jones, Donna M. Lane, Harriet Leider, Beatrice Ilana Lieberman, Laura Loomis, Jeanne Lupton, Christie McCarthy, Janell Moon, Patty Overland, Diana Quartermaine, Judith Rechter, RedHorse Womon, Tesa Rigel, Jean Sirius, Jan Steckel, Janette Wolf, Jessy Wolf, Karen X, Kris Yates, Linda Zeiser
This anthology brings together a sampling of the vibrant East Bay poet’s community. From the first published to the well published, forty-two poets write on love, relationships, death, marriage, monogamy, surviving cancer, politics, coming out, crip loving, mothers, and yes, even prayers and meditations to the ancestors, the dark goddess, superwoman, witches, childhood, and to writing itself. 146 pp. $14.00
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Publisher's note: What I Want From You straightforwardly establishes an instant connection of attention and questioning. What is wanted? The what is the doorway between the poet and the reader. These poems establish that connection at the level of desire, the heart, of struggle...at the level of living. I felt enlivened by the voices of these women living within their own identity, without qualifications or comparisons to external criteria. To live one’s own life from the center of oneself is the heart of liberation—no matter that liberation is a constant struggle from moment to moment. For me, having the privilege to work with these poets was to experience each poet’s light burning and to know it was not reflected light. I am heartened to know I am surrounded by such a vibrant community of free-spirited, strong women ready to follow their own internal spirits—we are, as in Judy Grahn’s powerful poem, She Who continues.
~ Trena Machado
