Like, as LaForge writes "the calculated wreckage through mirrors and poetry," there is a beauty and gruesomeness here that speaks boldly to all that listen. These poems are tightly woven, evocative portraits. And you will take notice, because there is a certain religious quality at work. A worship of words and schemas, a concise arc of time and evolution, each poem the body and the blood, a feeling of knowing that LaForge has a plan in mind for you. ~ Lisa Marie Basile  Jane Rosenberg LaForge's poems read like a catalogue of the curious. She creates not one but many worlds with deft language , stark images and a wide, gaping eye.   Nothing is off limits as these  poems tackle Putin, ankles, youth, teeth, Jagger, old age, sisterhood and other delights and vagaries of the living and the dead. Part mythology and fable, part prayer and dirge , part telescopic and up close and personal, these magnificent poems resonate, throb, and fairly hum with the the fascinating details of the way lives are lived. ~ Michelle Reale, author of four chapbook collections, and two-time Pushcart Prize nominee

With Apologies to Mick Jagger, Other Gods, and All Women

Literature & Fiction

LaForge, Jane Rosenberg

Poetry

Aldrich Press

Letters from under the Banyan Tree

Stevenson Grellas, Carol Lynn

'Brackish' is an illuminating and pitch-perfect portrait of a region and a people, and Jeff Newberry’s wonderful collection also serves as a powerful demonstration of the role that the places we call home have in both shaping and cursing us. These haunting, evocative poems will stay with you for a very long time.   ~ Skip Horack, author of The Southern Cross and The Eden Hunter

Brackish

Newberry, Jeff

In “First Dust, Star Dust,” Elizabeth Rivers writes: “Still, mystery’s here: dark clouds that cool the universe enough / to let small stars like ours condense and wear / their furious light.” In the lovely play of that verb “wear,” we sense the intelligence of Rivers’ poetry: there is a wide and rich universe condensed in these short verses. I know of no other poet who brings such humanity and gentle humor to the disturbing recognition of our temporary situation in this universe. Look at how closely she gazes, both at microcosm and at macrocosm, in “The Transit of Venus”: “Einstein knew everything/is in transit./Black ant’s tiny shadow/ doubles its scurry past me/ while I practice focus, / binoculars up to my face. / I’ve added Mylar frames: I won’t be blinded,/just put in my place.” Colors of the Universe puts us in our place, and it is a place where we are encouraged to marvel at the world, to chuckle over it and to grieve it. We leave this book restored to a new and brave appreciation of what language makes possible. Christopher Bursk

Colors of the Universe

Rivers, Elizabeth

"This is work of high accomplishment, by one who serenely takes her place among the better poets of America."  ~ X.J. Kennedy Suzanne Rhodes writes technically honed, emotionally true poems that draw the reader closer to nature: its power to awe and humble and enrich our human relationships. ~ Eve Shelnutt

Hungry Foxes

Underwood Rhodes, Suzanne

In a distinctive voice that is at once both mythic, in a fable-telling kind of way, and realistic, in a no-punches-pulled kind of way, William Neumire's new book, Estrus, charts our desire for connection and the forces that keep us from connecting. The person behind these poems is the "worst Buddhist" because he wants "something out of everything," yet is living, like all of us, in a world of "Marxist disconnection," in which, cut off from the rhythms of life, we live in "urges," "amazed [only] by how little we know of ourselves." These are poems of great yearning, which like "animals in estrus will run/for miles through traffic & snow & bullets" in order to "collapse with bloom" rather than be extinguished by soul-less work in "factories that do not close."~ Robert Cording

Estrus

Neumire, Bill

Remarkable, really, the way in The Kingdom Where Everybody Sings Off Key Helen Ruggieri moves from her life's early music when she was a teen angel with a Jersey Girl's desires, when in the dark of a car her angora sweater "electrified itself" as it slipped over her hair & when, somewhere, it was always 1955 with Little Richard & Elvis & doo-wop ? to, for example, the mature & spiritual reconciliations with the past that we hear in her penultimate poem in which she realizes "the larger rhythms rocking us" & embraces/makes a part of her being that "cepuscular kingdom / where no one keeps time." Yearning & yearning for the past subside, & the poet stands whole, in an off-key but deeply human twilight of poetry & deep understanding. This is a hard-earned, wonderful book. ~ William Heyen

The Kingdom Where Everybody Sings Off Key

Ruggieri, Helen

"The poems in Incorrect Astronomy by Steven L. Peck are exploratory in important ways, leading in a multitude of directions through a wide and penetrating range of subjects, from "Wyoming Rabbit Hunts" and "A Walk by the Duck Pond" to "The Five Known Sutras of Mechanical Man" and "The Dead Mouths on My Toes." The poetry in this book is factually beautiful and accurate, often witty, often profound, often touching, and rich with originality." Pattiann Rogers Author of Wayfare and Fire Keeper: New and Selected Poems  “If you’re expecting Steven Peck to choose a theme and stick with it, think again. Incorrect Astronomy serves up nothing if not variety: kingfishers and antlions, dark matter and white dwarfs, aliens and angels and robots that soak in soup. These poems, both comic and cosmic, encourage us to look afresh at our darkling world and sing about what we see.” Lance Larsen Utah Poet Laureate; Author of Genius Loci

Incorrect Astronomy

Peck, Steven L.

In Faraway Confections, Nina Romano evokes memories that are time and world travelers, spanning a life that took her from America to Italy, France, Spain, and beyond. Lush in exotic imagery, recollection ignites the senses, recreating the flavor and flowering of place and self. These elegant poems are a love letter to her past, and at the heart, a consecration of her marriage. Addressing her husband Felipe, as many of the poems do, she admits, “We’ve tread the razor’s edge/ of love and hate/ rapture, rupture and despair….” Yet by the close of the collection, time comes round to the beginning: “Our lives/ fading stars at dawn, are dwindling,/ yet here I am once more/ mid-winter mad/ in love with you.” This new collection is a stunning memorial to what has passed and what still endures. ~~Jane Ellen Glasser: The Red Coat, Light Persists, Naming the Darkness Nina Romano’s poems make your mouth water with anticipation as you can literally taste her words, the olive oil rich and oily on your tongue. She not only draws you into her gastronomy, but she titillates your senses with finely drawn landscapes, human interaction, and an appreciation for that which we cannot control, nature at its most mysterious. To read Faraway Confections is to give in, luxuriously and without guilt, to your most basic of needs: your sweet tooth, ultimately coming to the same conclusion: moving on is something we do: inevitably, and with grace. ~~Barbra Nightingale: Geometry of Dreams, Two Voices, Lunar Equations

Faraway Confections

Romano, Nina

"Abid Hussain is a poet who delights in the natural world and specifically in the exotic landscapes of his native Pakistan. His poems are lyrical, sensuous, sharply-observed and full of both insight and dignity. He is aware too of the random cruelty of nature, as when the graceful river he loved, 'wrapped in a peace of its own', delivers a bloated corpse, caught by the fierce currents. He writes in free verse though the swing and flow of his lines is very reminiscent of formal poetry. An exception is 'The Song of the Purple Sunbird', a charming rhyming and metrical poem written for his children. There's a gentle wistfulness to these poems. In the title poem the river, hard to cross, marks the boundary of a different world, a metaphor for the barriers that build in human relationships. Similarly, changing scenes and seasons are reminiscent of the cycle of human life. Even so the poet sees the natural world as sufficient in itself: 'Let others seek eternity/in promised worlds; I am content/with this world of fragrant colours/and bitter-sweet vicissitudes.' These poems are both accessible and profound and I found them a delight to read." ~ David Gwilym Antony

The Far Bank

Hussain, Syed Abid

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