THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE POEMS, Dave Newman’s first full-length poetry collection, is a series of narrative poems that tell the stories of people often kept behind the scenes in American literature – slaughterhouse workers, bowling-alley managers, strippers, prisoners dreaming of better lives. Written in the spirit of world poets like Nicanor Parra and Nazim Hikmet, coupled with American grittiness, Newman’s poems hold a place of their own – real, heartfelt, true.

The Slaughterhouse Poems

Literature & Fiction

Newman, Dave

Poetry

White Gorilla Press

THE POEM FACTORY is where you end up when the world no longer wants you. These are poems set in the corners of America seldom mentioned in poetry. Waitresses and strippers, truck drivers and store managers, outsider poets and welders fill the pages with their lyrical insights, their midnight desires, their miseries and their hope. Here are the good times against the bad times. In The Poem Factory, Frank O’Hara is the world’s laziest mover and Walt Whitman is a guiding light. Wal-Mart looms and the student loan people want their money back. Temp work is a career choice. Getting your teeth cleaned is a luxury. Written in the spirit of world poets like Nicanor Parra and Nazim Hikmet, coupled with pure American Grit, Newman’s poems start where most poems stop. He tells truths we’re all embarrassed to know. “Dave Newman is an immense talent!” —Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time and Knockemstiff “Dave Newman is the truth about America. He is lyrical and outrageous and tells the saddest stories I know. In The Poem Factory, he shows our great decline and how we don’t know how to fall. This is a beautiful, powerful book.”—Mohammed Pouchek

The Poem Factory

East Pittsburgh Downlow

East Pittsburgh Downlow focuses on characters who struggle to pay their bills but know they want a better life or, at least, the chance to wreck the life they're living. The characters are waitresses, UPS employees, and bartenders. They are former professional athletes and drug dealers with dreams. They are students of all ages who don't know what they want to be or even what they can be. Told in the first-person by Sterling Hart, a former welder turned community college professor, East Pittsburgh Downlow narrates the lives of characters who understand now is the time to make their dreams come true. Every day the world is a little uglier. Every day, you get paid a little less. Sterling wants to write a literary novel set in Western Pennsylvania about the working-class people he teaches, students who work full-time while taking classes in Air Conditioning & Heating Repair. Sterling knows about careers. He grew up in dives and trailers, attended university on a wrestling scholarship, and graduated with a useless English degree. He learned a trade and spent the next 11 years welding on bridges, dreaming of being a writer, eventually publishing western novels under the name Montana Jones. East Pittsburgh Downlow is the story of Sterling's mom-"Call me Joanie, mom makes me sound old"-who lives on artificial sweetener and mangos.

J.New Books

East Pittsburgh Downlow focuses on characters who struggle to pay their bills but know they want a better life or, at least, the chance to wreck the life they're living. The characters are waitresses, UPS employees, and bartenders. They are former professional athletes and drug dealers with dreams. They are students of all ages who don't know what they want to be or even what they can be. Told in the first-person by Sterling Hart, a former welder turned community college professor, East Pittsburgh Downlow narrates the lives of characters who understand now is the time to make their dreams come true. Every day the world is a little uglier. Every day, you get paid a little less. Sterling wants to write a literary novel set in Western Pennsylvania about the working-class people he teaches, students who work full-time while taking classes in Air Conditioning & Heating Repair. Sterling knows about careers. He grew up in dives and trailers, attended university on a wrestling scholarship, and graduated with a useless English degree. He learned a trade and spent the next 11 years welding on bridges, dreaming of being a writer, eventually publishing western novels under the name Montana Jones. East Pittsburgh Downlow is the story of Sterling's mom--"Call me Joanie, mom makes me sound old"--who lives on artificial sweetener and mangos. She's currently dating a young veterinarian. She's purchased a poodle to impress him. She hates poodles. It's the story of Megan, the student that Sterling has fallen in love with. After the class where Megan has turned in another brilliant story, Sterling answers a call from his former coach Carlton Haslerig, the greatest heavyweight collegiate wrestler of all time and a former all-pro guard for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Carlton is five minutes out of jail. He needs a ride, he needs a friend, he needs to get off drugs. Everyone is on drugs, what you can score and what doctors prescribe. Brandon, a student who only writes violent satires, may be off his medication. He may be carrying a gun. He may have plans to use his gun. Fat Bill, a former student, has joined the Marines, only he's realized he can't kill anyone. He loves books and he's thinking of going AWOL. If so, he's going to need a lawyer. John Grisham, the lawyer who shares a name with the writer who publishes legal thrillers, is available when he's sober. Pittsburgh's most famous citizen, Mr. Rogers, said "In times of crisis, look for the helpers." East Pittsburgh Downlow is the story of the helpers. It's the story of the helpless and people desperately trying to help themselves; lives will change and end and people will be re-born. Families will be saved. Love will find love because that's what love sometimes does.

The Same Dead Songs

Literary

Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children is a brilliantly written story of Dan Charles, a writing professor who teaches at a small college outside of Pittsburgh. It is about the daily struggle to survive while raising two children with his wife. Funny and heartbreakingly real, author Dave Newman captures the humanity and heartbreak of one man's struggle to navigate the vicissitudes of life as a working writer in America.

Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children

Writers Tribe Books

Dan Charles reads Whitman the way some people read the Bible. He works three jobs. He attends college. Dan’s older brother sells industrial parts and wants out. Dan wants something. In Two Small Birds, the brothers take flight in the worst possible way. This is the story of what it means to be family, to be working class, and to dream of being a poet in a world that refuses books. Set in tiny apartments and roadside diners, truckstops and warehouses, dive bars and worse hotels, Two Small Birds is a story of misdemeanors and perseverance, the jobs we take and the lives we lose. It’s the story of love, and whoever is in charge of that.

Two Small Birds

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Newman, Dave. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Newman, Dave

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Newman, Dave. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Slaughterhouse Poems

The Poem Factory

East Pittsburgh Downlow

East Pittsburgh Downlow

The Same Dead Songs

Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children

Two Small Birds