Speaking the Words Anthology

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Bright Hill Press

The Word Thursdays Anthology gathers together the writings of 75 people who have read at Word Thursdays or Speaking the Words annual tour and festival, centered in the Catskills area of New York State. Culturally broad-based, the anthology includes work from a wide range of writers, including: Maureen Brady, Enid Dame, Carol Frost, Maurice Kenny, Lyn Lifshin, Andrea Lockett, Phillip Mahony, Joachim Neugroschel, D. Nurkse, Hal Sirowitz, Janine Pommy Vega, Barbara Weekes, and dozens of others. The second such anthology produced by Bright Hill Press (following Speaking The Words Anthology, 1994).

The Word Thursdays Anthology of Poetry and Fiction (Word Thursday Readings Series)

The Man Who Went Out For Cigarettes may be brief, but encompasses the whole range of human experience' the blind drive of desire, initiation into consciousness and loss, love, childbirth, broken marriages (the monotonous duplications/ of history), and death -- Eric Trethewey. The poems here are lyrical and witty, playful and serious: The only time I try the kidnapping of frogs, /the water is hot, my pant leg rs wet, /and six million children laugh by the lake In the words of Larry K Richman, The fifteen fierce and finely crafted poems tn this tiny collection have an immediacy and a sense of the dire consequences of casual actions that I can only call startling.

The Man Who Went Out for Cigarettes (Bright Hill Press Poetry Chapbook Award Series)

Blevins-Church, Adrian

Native American anthology, a survey of the poetry, fiction, essays and visual art of the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora peoples. Edited by Bertha Rogers with Robert Bensen, Tom Huff and Maurice Kenny, Iroquois Voices, Iroquois Visions features works by a number of poets, fiction writers, and essayists, with performance works by The Ankle Deep Singers, The Akwesasne Mohawk Singer, The Onondaga Nation Dancers, Set of Nines, and others, along with reproductions of visual art by literally dozens of artists and craftspersons.

Iroquois Voices, Iroquois Visions: A Celebration of Contemporary Six Nations Arts (Native American Arts Series)

Rogers, Bertha

Arts & Photography

Stories of the low country of coastal Georgia. Winner of the Bright Hill Press 1996 Fiction Chapbook Award.

Low Country Stories (Bright Hill Press Fiction Chapbook Award Series)

Harris, Lisa

Contemporary

Poems and assemblages by this poet who "breathes" the wild, who understands and appreciates the wildness in all of us, and who translates that understanding into keenly observed poems and works of visual art.

Blue Wolves: Poems and Assemblages (Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Award Series)

O'Melveny, Regina

Whatever Was Ripe (Bright Hill Press At-Hand Chapbook Series)

Jolliff, William

History & Criticism

Poetry. Fiction. Cultural Writing. On a wintry January evening in 1992, in a hilltop house in the Catskill Mountain region of New York, a reading series began. That series, Word Thursdays, and its subsequent affiliates--the annual Speaking the Words Poets and Writers Tour and Festival, the Share the Words Catskill High-School Poets and Writers Forum, Workshop, and Competition, and Radio by Writers, have hosted more than six hundred established and emerging poets and writers from New York and other states and, through Bright Hill Press, published their poetry and prose. This collection celebrates those vibrant voices.

The Second Word Thursdays Anthology (The Bright Hill Press Word Thursdays Anthology Series, V. 2)

On the Watershed: The Natural World of New York's Catskill Mountain Region (Bright Hill Press Word Thursdays Anthology Series.)

Writers, Catskill Student

A New & Selected Collection from awardwinning poet Robert Bensen The poems in WHAT LIGHTNING SPOKE, new and culled from six collections, take place in the U.S., Caribbean, Indigenous Americas, Europe, and Arabia. Around the globe, lightning strikes 44 times each second. With luck, a poet gets hit six or seven times in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, Randall Jarrell said. For Robert Bensen, once was a calling: "...when lightning branched and hooked in myriad brilliances streaming, / its rivers and rivulets flooded me with one idea: / in plain air, power makes infinite ways." Shakespeare said lightning "unfolds both heaven and Earth." Similarly, these poems manifest spirit in the world: in the child's devotion to dance ("Two Dancers"), the privations of Alzheimer's ("Quick Bright Things"), or a celebratory 50th-anniversary slog ("Rainforest"). They reveal forces deadly and vital: courage after injury ("Sonata for the Left Hand," "1959"), fear following a terror attack ("At a Solemn Wind Ensemble"), greed for gold ("Orenoque"). In sundry guises--a 12thCentury Japanese princess, a girl in Trinidad, Eurydice, and others--the voices in these poems deal with gender, racism, genocide, teenage hormones, rabies vaccine, eaglewatching, home repair, and worse. Between the mundane and sublime, Robert Bensen's lines illuminate with the force of revelation. "Robert Bensen's poems reach wide and drive deep and ride on the strong motion of their making. Bensen can map the moment tellingly, but there is always a backdrop of historical awareness that grounds the lines. He knows, literally and figuratively, the 'lay of the land.'"--Sven Birkerts, author of Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age "Robert Bensen's poems are filled with humor and wisdom, piercing imagery, and a vast range of striking stories. Central to all of this: the music! Vivaldi, Mozart, Meringue, a croak in a frog's throat, and Bensen's sensitive translations of Baudelaire, Degas, and Nizar Qabbani. Without a doubt, WHAT LIGHTNING SPOKE is an electric book. It forks lightning." --Roger W. Hecht, author of Talking Pictures "WHAT LIGHTNING SPOKE documents a life devoted to poetry as a humane vocation seeking transcendence in a world of difficulty. Robert Bensen's sympathetic lens focuses on loved ones, aging friends, dancers, indigenous people, and questers historical and contemporary. The jawdropping range of his new poems embraces, among others, immigrant ancestors, a grade school fire drill, a wedding anniversary in a rainforest, a house consciously resisting needed repairs, and a Shostakovich quartet as a warning of world disaster. Bensen's expansive and capacious language celebrates this variety and illuminates it lovingly." -- Jay Rogoff, author of Loving in Truth: New & Selected Poems "The poems in WHAT LIGHTNING SPOKE involve unforeseen but extremelywell controlled shifts in diction, tone, and narrative--and before you know it, the poem is headed in a fresh direction that you eagerly follow. His voice is conversational, but capable of a haunting mystery, humor or poignance. This is a fabulous collection by an extremely talented poet."--Thomas Travisano, author of Love Unknown: The Life and Worlds of Elizabeth Bishop Poetry.

What Lightning Spoke: New & Selected Poems by Robert Bensen

Bensen, Robert

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