POETRY, PROSE POETRY, CROSS-GENRE Tara Betts arc & hue 978-0-9819208-7-0, $15, paper, 94 pp.
John Bradley you don’t Know what you don’t Know 978-1-880834-90-9, $15.95, paper, 75 pp.
WILLOW BOOKS/AQUARIUS PRESS 2009
CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY POETRY CENTER 2010
Poetry. Foreword by Afaa Michael Weaver. ARC & HUE explores the paradoxes of life in America’s past and present through the eyes of a biracial woman pondering the complexities of the world. This collection is also rich in musicality, a chorus of strong voices such as Billie Holiday, Tina Turner and Pablo Neruda. ARC & HUE was nominated for an American Book Award, a Pushcart Prize, an Anisfield-Wolf Award, and a Hurston Wright Legacy Award.
Poetry. Winner of the 2009 Cleveland State University Poetry Center Open Competition. A collection of prose poems that might be described as Franz Kafka and Frida Kahlo going out for a date at Coney Island. The book reflects what happens when you drop an American history textbook, an issue of People, and a short history of dreams into a blender.
Deborah Bogen let me open you a swan 978-1-932418-36-1, $17, paper, 88 pp.
John Bradley, Editor eatinG the pure liGht: homaGe to thomas mcGrath 978-1-935218-02-9, $20, paper, 156 pp.
ELIXIR PRESS 2010
THE BACKWATERS PRESS 2009
Poetry. LET ME OPEN YOU A SWAN is the winner of the 2009 Elixir Press Antivenom Poetry Award. Judge Michele Mitchell-Foust had this to say about the winning manuscript: “Deborah Bogen is the real thing, and she knows the power of beautiful language to stir and hypnotize, to get to the heart of the matter, but also to confuse the issue, to send the reader dreaming, so she slows her beauty down, roughs it up, breaths air into it, so the reader never dreams through the good parts.... What we have in Deborah Bogen’s LET ME OPEN YOU A SWAN is sublime poetry, the rare gift of a terrifying look into the shaping of a warrior poet and her work.”
Poetry. Prose. Eighty of Thomas McGrath’s former students and friends offer a moving tribute in poetry and prose to one of the seminal poet-teachers of the twentieth century. “To honor the poet and his poetry, this anthology was born. Some of the poems affectionately recall McGrath’s life. Other poems examine the world with his bite and wit. Read this book and see for yourself—the legacy of Thomas McGrath endures” —John Bradley.
B. H. Boston by all liGhts 978-1-893670-45-7, $15, paper, 64 pp. TEBOT BACH 2009
Poetry. “The Art lies in hiding the art, Horace teaches us, and B.H. Boston is a master of such concealment in poems that are spare and tight, that speak to us without patronizing of things that matter most in this life. I love the delicacy, tenderness and intimacy of pieces such as “I am Reading,” the faith and incantation of poems like “Processional,” and the mystical realism of “Apiary.” This book is about remembering and paying attention and healing and praising. Ultimately, it is about the human spirit—and it soars”—Ilya Kaminsky. Amanda J. Bradley hints and alleGations 978-1-935520-07-8, $14.95, paper, 80 pp. NYQ BOOKS 2009
Poetry. Amanda J. Bradley’s debut book of poems, HINTS AND ALLEGATIONS, takes the reader on an inward journey from a place of disturbance to a recovered equilibrium. These poems probe intense scenarios and emotional states, then step back to inquire what sense can be made of them. Delving for a purpose becomes a purpose in itself and ultimately reaffirms a life well examined. J. Bradley dodGinG traffic 978-0-9841025-2-5, $12, paper, 93 pp. AMPERSAND BOOKS 2009
Poetry. Loud, raucous, lively: J. Bradley’s poetry is widely published and admired, and, in this, his first collection, he brings the full bore of his trademark poetic styling and larger-than-life imagery. Lust, love, contempt, digust, parental guidance, and poetic revenge, crafted with unbridled imagination and unmistakable skill. Bradley’s poetry hearkens back to the times of childhood, when life was still interesting and imagination could bring cardboard boxes and discarded love affairs to life. DODGING TRAFFIC is equal parts laughter and loving insight.
Andrea Brady wildfire: a Verse essay on obscurity and illumination 978-1-928650-31-7, $15, paper, 80 pp. KRUPSKAYA 2010
Poetry. WILDFIRE is a verse essay. It is trying to persuade us, to recognize that certain catastrophes and felicities are not inevitable. It concerns the history of incendiary devices, of the evolution of Greek fire from a divine secret which could sustain or destroy empires, into white phosphorus and napalm; the elliptical fires of the pre-Socratics, Aristotle’s service to Alexander in the fashioning of pyrotechnics, the burning/blooming/ mating bodies of G. H. Schubert and the self-feeding crowds of Elias Canetti; mechanisms to project fire, to make it burn on water and stick to wood and skin, to keep it off the walls of the besieged towns, and what those mechanisms (projection and defense) have done to geometry; the courts of fire, the legal chamber and the hortus conclusus, and the margins of ambiguity where it is lobbed with impunity; embedded nuggets and embedded reporters, the discovery of the chemical element, industrial tragedy, the resistance of the matchgirls at Bryant & May, the corruption of Quaker capitalists, washing powder and toothpaste. It is an etiology of metaphors, “shake-n-bake” and whisky pete and phantom fury. It is also an argument about obscurity and illumination: WILDFIRE does both, smokes the bright air and singes the night with trajectories. And so an interrogation of writing practices which fume as much as they enlighten. Earl S. Braggs younGer than neil 978-1-934695-12-8, $20, paper, 166 pp. ANHINGA PRESS 2009
Poetry. African American Studies. “Nothing changes until it’s changed in everyone’s memories. Earl S. Braggs remembers and records his experience, protesting America’s attempt to make him smaller than these large, vivid, Kerouacian, music-saturated poems. The reader is returned, through repetition’s felicities—the epic extension of the moment of composition—inward to our national soul”—Alice Notley.
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