Sawhorse (Eco/Co Books)

Literature & Fiction

Burfield, Tony

Poetry

Middle Creek Publishing & Audio

Almost Everything, Almost Nothing is a balm for busy and troubling times, immersing the reader in lyric landscape and birdsong, a tapestry as well as a kind of territory. Ballentine's subtle, personal narrative is a light revealed late in these poems, prompting the reader to reconsider the poem, so recently traversed, with acute reflection.   "Our connections with the past, with each other and our surroundings, and with current events sculpt our attitudes and actions."            ~ KB Ballentine The impression of this decades current events, our zeitgeist,  lies here as well, buried as bones, or blooming in hues of ash and bruise. The   ubiquitous  sorrow of humanity suffering at its own hands, in these poems, rises occasionally like the seep of deep aches from old wounds. brought on by inclement weather, striking through the surface to connect the poets narrative with our own. These moments of connection come and go, as if Ballentine's pencil  were a needle piercing and stitching a field of material, a material patterned with the more constant, yet seasonally shifting cycles of birds and flowers and weather. "Almost Everything, Almost Nothing could be a definition of life - its potential promise, its potential curse. In this intense collection, KB Ballentine presents the dark ghosts of loss and love, awakened and grieved amidst historical terror and the calming beauty of the natural world. Often loss creates a personal aloneness the landscape cannot fill. What can we do when terror strikes an ocean away - plant flower bulbs in winter before bluebirds signal spring? Ballentine leads us through a four-season journey in which we learn that as humans, we can't hide from our sorrows and live this gift of life. Ballentine's poetry helps us belong to the ghosts of our loves and silences, our leavings, losses and grief." ~ Bill Brown, author of Elemental "Through the poems of Almost Everything, Almost Nothing, we are led on walks through the natural world of rose blossom and mimosa feather, of mushroom huddle and carob shadow, and, most of all, of light. Love, desire, history, memory, terror, longing - a whole range of trancelike connections with experience - KB embraces them all with close, sustained, transforming attention and insight rooted in oneness with the universe." ~ Mary Kay Rummel, Poet Laureate of Ventura County, CA,  and author of The Lifeline Trembles

Almost Everything, Almost Nothing

Ballentine, KB

Ballantine, KB

Faces of Fishing Creek

Laws, Kyle

Although Bruce Owens has been crafting and publishing poetry for over forty years and is considered by many to be an undiscovered national treasure, he remains one of America's great, unsung poets. Across the Light is not only home to his most recent poems, it is a quintessential body of work from this contemporary master of the language whose foundation in beauty and spirit lends a generous and responsive perspective to his work. Some of these poems, in slightly different forms, have appeared in The Prairie Review, Indiana Voice Journal, William Everson: Remembrances & Tributes, and several previous collections to include Quiet Places, Eddies in the Rush, A Passage Through Stone, and Mend the Broken Branch. "Some people try to find their voice, some are found by it. Bruce Owens seems to be one of the latter, and reading his poems, I too, felt found—by ecstasy and vulnerability. To read Across the Light is to take a journey into the resilience of the human body and heart. Equal parts romantic and rugged, this collection points to the importance of solitude and, at the same time, how very much we need each other." ~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of Even Now, The Less I Hold, and The Miracle Already Happening "The poems in this collection establish Bruce Owens as one of today's most accomplished poets. His poems are rich in detail, striking in clarity and grace. Owens writes from the heart with power and passion, weaving together worlds both seen and unseen. His lines are sometimes deliberately simple, and often surrealistic, as he takes us to the edge of a dream, then leaves us there, marveling at what we have just discovered. This book belongs in every community library". ~ Janine Pickett, Indiana Voice Journal "Bruce has found a voice in poetry that beautifully frames thought in a language that resonates deep within where the ordinary and even mundane day to day things of life become spectacularly significant. He masterfully does that also with a camera - where a moment witnessed by many as quite ordinary, is captured and highlighted in a way that one wonders how it was possible not to see it like that in the first place! Reading his poems, then becomes an adventurous journey where one often finds oneself drawn into the moment not merely as honored audience but also as welcome participant." ~ Francois Du Toit author of Divine Embrace and The Eagle Story "Bruce Owens is one of the most powerful, original, visually and emotionally compelling poets in the English language. He's been amazing me for 40 years with the depth and scope of his genius." ~ James Dalessandro, author of 1906 and Canary in a Coal Mine. “Bruce is unlike any poet or writer I’ve come across. He meets me where I want to live. His poems, like the very finest . . . catch me off-guard, building line after line, until I forget I’m reading poetry. I’m simply lost in a scene that seems written only for me." ~ John Lynch, author of On My Worst Day "Like a lot of people, I’ve appreciated poetry all my life but can’t honestly say I’ve been one who has been passionate about it. Well, that was true until I encountered Bruce Owens. When I first began to read his poetry, something inside me shifted. For the first time, instead of being an outsider looking into a poem, I experienced what could only be called the transcendent sensation of being inside it. I didn’t read it. It read me. Bruce’s poetry seemed to somehow know how to touch the nerves connected to the existential questions about life and sooth me. For a man who doesn’t consider himself particularly artsy or one of unusual literary aptitude, his poems do something to me. Something good that always leaves me wanting more." ~ Dr. Steve McVey Best selling author of Grace Walk

Across the Light: New & Selected Poems

Owens, Bruce

Bjorklund, Bengt O

These poems are about relationships - their tenuous beginnings, their midpoints - somewhere in between, their resolutions or ending. Some poems are loving, mystifying, sad, uncontrollable, and even a bit sarcastic or funny. These poems hold emotions that run the gamut of relationships. May you find one that especially speaks to you. Carol's poetry flows onto paper and into your senses with the clarity, skill, and nuanced rhythm that few poets master. However, it is her bravery to explore what is innermost within us all, that brings one to read, reread and remember her poems." Gary Morgan "Carol explores relationship from inside out, looking back on a life well lived, even as she wanders through a maze of ups, downs and sideways. Her poetry is magical, moving and mysterious: enjoy!" Susan Bassett "In Carol Fortino's Somewhere Between "Love... like a fine architectural drawing" opens her latest volume of poetry. Family, friends, and landscapes that she inhabits, here and abroad, are the glue that holds these poems together. The collection resolves with "I regret that I must inform you...." and A Journeys End. A fascinating read about one woman's journey." Kyle Laws, poetess author of So Bright to Blind

Somewhere Between

Fortino, Carol

"Among the Zen handbooks or primers out there, none fit your hand so simply as these sixty-four poetry-like chapters of Hoag Holmgren's No Better Place. Like the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching, each widens into a far-off state of mind. Turn them over in your thoughts though, and they prove to be guides to where you are standing. Ten in particular, which refer to the 12th century Chinese Oxherding Pictures, point North American Zen back to a mythic world of ancestors. Old-time buddhas, those ancestors. They are our brothers and sisters in the ecology of mind. Thanks to Holmgren's book, you can stand eyebrow-to-eyebrow with them.". -Andrew Schelling Editor of The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry .."No Better Place is a penetrating and affecting presentation of the Buddha Dharma cast in a thoroughly Western idiom. Hoag's simple, clear prose invites entry in this very place, now." -Danan Henry Roshi.."Hoag Holmgren writes from the depths of his own understanding in this profound and simply expressed primer. These words will touch and inspire readers to surrender to a joyful experience of compassion for all.". -Jiun Hosen, Osho Abbess, Bodhi Manda Zen Center.."While No Better Place may seem like a slight book, it's actually a wide-open doorway-into the essence of Zen! It says so much so succinctly and insightfully, that reading its brief chapters brings real "Aha!" delight. I look forward to sharing this book with my own Zen students. Many thanks to Hoag Holmgren!". -Rafe Martin Sensei, Award-winning author, founding teacher and spiritual director, Endless Path Zendo.."No Better Place is simple, clear, and beautifully written. I highly recommend it for anyone (new or experienced) interested in the path of Zen. This book captures the heart of this journey and beckons one to step in.". -Peggy Metta Sheehan Sensei, Zen Center of Denver..

No Better Place: A New Zen Primer

Religion & Spirituality

Holmgren, Hoag

Buddhism

Secondary Cicatrices was an Award-Winning Finalist in the Poetry category of the 2019 Best Book Awards sponsored by American Book Fest, a 2020 Human Relations Indie Book Award Gold Winner, and a 2020 Finalist in the International Book Awards. In 2021, Secondary Cicatrices won a Finalist Award in the international Book Excellence Awards and awarded Distinguished Favorite of 2021 Independent Press Awards, and garnered a "Distinguished Favorite" in the poetry category of the NYC Big Book Awards."Love betrayed. Lives wrecked. Silence at water’s edge. How does one dissect catastrophe and make peace with it? Lynne Goldsmith searches for answers in this brave, painstakingly rendered collection which depicts in unflinching detail the silence and longing of lives that know no poetry. Do bare landscapes listen? Goldsmith asks. Despite all, she finds resilience and an answer: Yes." --Robert Leonard Reid, author of Because It is So Beautiful: Unraveling the Mystique of the American West, a finalist for the 2018 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay."The engaging poems in Secondary Cicatrices span vast caverns of emotion, from delectable nature poems, to elemental love poems, to brutal poems about all-consuming addiction, the violence of war, and the abuse of animals. In “Waterful,” Goldsmith carries the reader into the center of a river, where the speaker loses herself in rushing water, blissfully remarking “I am no one here” and “Overflow is everywhere.” And deliciously, in “Snapdragon,” the flower speaks of the honeybee’s“hairy body tip[ping] my petals overevery time until he finds my coolest nectar”These nurturing moments sustain us when we have to face the book’s unsettling explorations of human experience, like the flashbacks of war in “Splitting Wood” and the speaker’s uncomfortable acknowledgement that,there’d been some senseless pleasurein having been caught in a momentruled by a mob, a forceGoldsmith’s eye is unflinching and compassionate, finding humanity alike in speakers immersed in the joy of the natural world and those who, in the desperation of drug addiction, commit acts of unforgivable cruelty." —Ann Tweedy, author of The Body's Alphabet (Headmistress Press, 2016) and White Out (Green Fuse Poetic Arts Association, 2013), Beleaguered Oases (tcCreativePress, 2010).————————————————————————————————————————About The Author Lynne Goldsmith lives in the Sierra Nevada mountains. She holds three graduate degrees in teaching, counseling, and English and has also been a triple-licensed therapist and National Certified Counselor. In addition to writing poetry, she also enjoys writing in other genres.

Secondary Cicatrices

Goldsmith, Lynne

Rosemerry's poetry speaks to our hearts, to our deepest knowing, to being here in each moment. She wakes us up again and again and reminds us that the sacred is right in front of us-in the night sky, in the moist earth, in the leaf at our feet. To be awake in this moment is our deepest potential; these poems bring us here with reverence and joy. Like all great teachers, Rosemerry points the way so clearly that we arrive, having forgotten the finger, and seeing only the moon. -Susie Harrington, meditation teacher, Desert Dharma With Hush, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer once again turns her attention toward insights gleaned from daily life, trusting that everything we encounter, from evergreens and bluebonnets to snapdragons and an achy back after shoveling snow, has something to teach us about being human. Throughout each of these exquisite, open-hearted, often sensual poems, she brings us along as she finds a kind of "renegade beauty" wherever she looks. "Let's go outside,", /i> she writes, i."and praise/the light till the light is gone, and then praise the dark," modeling for us just the kind of radical gratitude we need in our literature, and in our lives right now. --James Crews, editor of Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection These are not quiet poems-they are forthright meditations on truth and courage, love and loss. They are life itself, revealed with compassion and grace. The poems in Hush speak like a healing meditation, a reminder of the beauty and sustenance in living with hearts and minds open. -Susan J. Tweit, plant biologist and author of Walking Nature Home , br>In these quietly rendered poems, we are invited into the garden, and further into the wilderness-and find ourselves giving praise for that which is mud smudged and lumpy, for the sincerity of wild strawberries, and for the onslaught, which every gardener knows. Here Rosemerry shows us how one might endeavor to be the peace we want in the world. One comes away remembering that tending is at the heart of all healing. Because thorn bush. Because great blue heron. Because puddles. -Wendy Videlock, author of Nevertheless ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer's poetry has appeared in O Magazine, TEDx, in back alleys, on A Prairie Home Companion and on river rocks she leaves around town. Her poems have been described as "a deep oasis for all who seek to experience the sacred in every moment." Her most recent collection, Naked for Tea, was a finalist for the Able Muse Poetry Prize. Other recent books include Even Now, The Miracle Already Happening and The Less I Hold. She's included in the acclaimed anthology, Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, and leads mindfulness poetry discussion groups. She served as San Miguel County's first poet laureate and as Western Slope Poet Laureate (2015-2017) and was a finalist for Colorado Poet Laureate (2019). Since 2006, she's written a poem a day. Favorite themes in her poems include parenting, gardening, the natural world, love, thriving/failure and daily life. She's performed and taught poetry for Think 360, Craig Hospital, Ah Haa School for the Arts, Weehawken Arts, Camp Coca Cola, meditation retreats (with Susie Harrington), 12-step recovery programs, hospice, Deepak Chopra, Shyft, and many other organizations. She is the co-host of Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process (with Christie Aschwanden), co-host of the Talking Gourds Poetry Club (with Art Goodtimes), and co-leader of Secret Agents of Change (with Sherry Richert Belul). Though she earned an MA in English Language & Linguistics at UW-Madison, she still can't effectively pair socks. Favorite one-word mantra: Adjust.

hush

Trommer, Rosemerry Wahtola

"Catchments is a very powerful and emotionally vulnerable collection that moves the reader through a collection of passages in a brief but deep arc, like the curve of a bow, or more aptly that of a knife, suddenly razor sharp and drawn through the reader, such as in the poem "Island," with ease, "When you descended from my body, / there was a moment your head crested/ between contractions/ and the doctor said/ Wait./ A moment when the room turned away/ from me/ and I was set adrift from the continent of family." Many of these poems are heart-sundering masterpieces, antidotes against the snap-shots taken and developed in the darkest rooms and solutions, by the poet's own hands . . . so many small words within each poem connect to, and enhance, other poems . . . akin to the coupling rod or side rod connecting the driving wheels of a locomotive which transfer the power of drive to all wheels." -David Anthony Martin, author of Span, Deepening the Map, Bijoux, and The Ground Nest. "A catchment is something that captures water, a measure of that water, and the act of catching it. E. A. Lechleitner's Catchments draws on all three meanings. These poems gather and hold the water of life-the rivers, lakes, and oceans of it-and the tsunamis. The rain, the flooding, the sinking and the floating. In these poems, deep losses are balanced by love, intense longing leavened by insight, the mortal and ephemeral known by what lasts, for a while-all in precise and often surprising images and fresh, unexpected language. In "Your Longing," for example, the speaker as a child aches to hear "at least the timbre of your voice / when you tucked me into bed / and announced my name to sleep." In "Falconry," the sustained imagery illuminates the mystery that is family. The poem opens with "My mother would be a falconer," and ends with these lines: "But always I return to her gloved hand / because when I would be a falconer, / she will come for me." Reading Lechleitner's Catchments ignites our deepest level of attention to the world, as only poetry can." -Veronica Patterson, Poet Laureate of Loveland, Colorado and author of Sudden White Fan, Thresh & Hold and Swan What Shores? "E.A. Lechleitner's poetry walks through the seasons of grief accompanied by the seasons of nature, all the while trying to make sense of loss beyond comprehension. Her poems look for answers to unknowable questions and she admonishes, we keep asking the wrong questions. She celebrates commonplace things, like riding bicycles and fly fishing, which become beautiful emblems of life. In this elegiac tribute, she tells us, "we are all alone and surrounded by water/without so much as a palm tree." By dealing with absence, and moving through grief, she paints a beautiful portrait." -Kathleen Willard, author of Cirque & Sky ABOUT THE AUTHOR E. A. (Beth) Lechleitner has lived in Northern Colorado her entire life, traveling far from home whenever she can, even if only in her mind. She thinks she wrote her first poem as a pre-teen while driving past the Tetons in a white Chevrolet station wagon on a road trip with her mother, father and brother. Her career has been split between high tech marking and education. She currently teaches writing at Colorado State University and owns Second Letter, an editing, writing and creativity coaching business. She irregularly muses about writing and promotes local writing events on her blog: Second Letter Writing Salon. She has two children and four grandchildren.

Catchments

Lechleitner, E. A.

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