Poetry. Moving through a great range of moods and modes over twenty-four years of writing, yet unified by an unmistakable voice--lyrical, colloquial, ardent, irreverent--TELL IT TO THE RABBIS is a generous revelation of Stephen Kessler's heteroformalist poetics. From the erotic to the satiric, the surreal to the prosaic, the journalistic to the intimate, the sentimental to the cynical, the epigrammatic to the incantatory, the author's versatility, passion, wit and imagination are alive on every page. "A love poet of sensitive memory, he constructs his poems as bastions of feeling amid crumbling values and collapsing affirmations"--Jack Hirschman.

Tell It To the Rabbis and Other Poems 1977-2000

Literature & Fiction

Kessler, Stephen

Poetry

Creative Arts Book Company

Fiction. At the dark end of the 1960s, a young poet is launched on a bizarre odyssey that leads him from the ill-fated gathering of rock-and-roll tribes at Altamont through San Francisco City Prison to various psychiatric hospitals up and down California in search of his role in the Revolution. An anti-nostalgic, at times terrifying, often comical exploration of a period largely misremembered in the collective imagination, this picaresque narrative is a vivid evocation of a tumultuous moment in American cultural history, an intimate account of acute psychosis, and an archetypal tale of artistic initiation.

The Mental Traveler

Genre Fiction

Greenhouse Review Press

Nonfiction. Literary History &amp; Criticism. Essayist for more than thirty years in Northern California's liveliest periodicals, Stephen Kessler here presents a selection of his deeply informed and informative writings on poets, poetry, and translation. Rooted in the literary culture of the west coast (Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Bukowski) and radiating outward across the United States (Denise Levertov, W. S. Merwin, Frank O'Hara) to Latin America and beyond (Ernesto Cardenal, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Yehuda Amichai), Kessler's articulately accessible vision in MOVING TARGETS speaks to both the knowledgeable and the newcomer. His concluding essays on the art of translation, "antiwarism," radio as a poetic medium, and inspiration also offer provocative insights into the process of writing, reading, and appreciating poetry.

Moving Targets: On Poets, Poetry & Translation

History & Criticism

El Leon Literary Arts

Literary Nonfiction. In these hybrid writings—a mixture of memoir, prose poetry, personal essay, travel journal, and spiritual meditation—Stephen Kessler synthesizes a lifetime of experiences in language of extraordinary concentration, vividness, and lyricism. The stories he tells and the visions he evokes of places and people he has known could be anyone's, but they are the distillation of a singular personal history in a voice uniquely his own. "Stephen Kessler's WHERE WAS I? consists of brief meditations, musings, and reminiscences on place, presence, and the passing of time. They are astonishing reflections on how the past resurfaces in the present, lending a new dimension for which we have no name, where the here and now is framed by what was, where memory is transposed by imagination, and where experience through the spell of art is alchemized into eternal moments. In page after page of this amazing book, Kessler celebrates and mourns our mortal world. These pieces re-vision a lifetime of luminous and fugitive experiences; they are a thanksgiving and praise to a life well-lived coupled with an artistic intelligence that appreciates and celebrates its wonders."—Joseph Stroud

Where Was I?

Literary Nonfiction. One of the most versatile writers of his generation, Stephen Kessler has distinguished himself over the last forty years as a poet, critic ("certainly the best poetry critic in sight," according to Lawrence Ferlinghetti), translator, novelist, and a wide-ranging journalist. As editor, he founded the international journal Alcatraz (1979-1985) and the Santa Cruz newsweekly The Sun (1986-1989), as well as The Redwood Coast Review (1999-2014). Following his earlier two books of essays, organized around themes of poetry and cultural criticism, in this third collection he gets more personal and political. Kessler's keen eye, sharp wit and readable style&#8212whether reflecting on Viagra, multilingualism, Miss America, fatherhood, Gertrude Stein, anarchism, Robinson Jeffers, the pleasures of gossip, a trip to Cuba, Steve Jobs, Charles Bukowski, or getting mugged in New York&#8212keep his writings vividly alive. The eclectic essays in NEED I SAY MORE? have both the immediacy of the present moment and the lasting value of literature.

Need I Say More?

Last Call (Black Widow Press Modern Poetry)

Commonwealth Books, Black Widow

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