Falling Home

Gary Turchin

Sugartown Publishing

When Deborah Dashow Ruth writes in her poem "Gardening," that "Fingers lease new growth/from the soil beneath the soil/where dormant life waits/to be coaxed into my world," she could be commenting on creative process as well as her poem. Al Young, former California State Poet Laureate, writes "Deborah Dashow Ruth's poetry -- always apple-crisp, sometimes ginger-bitter (spiced with lime) -- slips out to explore cracks in every sky, sea, desert and plain of our physical, familial and psychic worlds. Like vulnerable kites, these poems fly wayward, fly wild, fly into the heart." Originally from Chicago, Deborah Dashow Ruth makes her home in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Joyriding on an Updraft

Deborah Dashow Ruth

At the core of "The Harsh Green World" is that very green world of nature -- weather, mountains, wildlife, water, soil, rock. Unpredictable as it may be, in its droughts, storms, turbulent rivers, and inescapable heat, this world is the supportive base for one who can hold Earth close and dear -- with respect for its need for order and protection. The poems share a beautiful equanimity with nature through this remarkable poet's keen senses. "The Harsh Green World" is a study of relationships as well -- especially that territory between men in different generations: grandfather, father, sons, and friends. The reader is taken into a place expressed in gestures, tools, and shared exploration often than in words. Finally, there are poems that share disgust and horror at what people do in the name of politics or position but even here, the poet's tenderness often wins out over rage. Robert Coats works as an environmental scientist, specializing in water issues. With photographer Elizabeth Carmel and colleague Geoffrey Schladow, he co-authored "The Changing Range of Light," a photo-essay book about the impacts of climate change in the Sierra Nevada. A poet for forty years, his poems have received notable awards and been featured in anthologies and in print and online media, including "Orion," "Canary," "Bay Area Poets Seasonal Review," "Zone 3," and elsewhere. He lives with his wife Kathleen Silber in Berkeley, California.

The Harsh Green World

Robert Coats

Intimate yet universal poems recorded at the intersection of time and experience, a place sometimes rooted in a specifc locale, sometimes detached in the manner of some surrealist paintings. Fred Ostrander comes from an old California pioneer family and draws on his experiences as a hiker, climber, and outdoorsman, as well as his appreciation of art and literature in these richly textured, imagist poems. Trained in the Activist Tradition founded by Lawrence Hart and carried on through his son, John Hart, Ostrander has combined two previously published books with many new poems in this collected volume. Ostrander's work has been widely published in Blue Unicorn, Rattle, Zone 3, The Comstock Review, Nimrod, iota (UK), and elsewhere.

It Lasts a Moment: New & Collected Poems

Jannie M. Dresser, raised in California's San Joaquin Valley, writes hard-hitting poems about the working life. The book is divided into five sections: Farm to Factory, Builders and Makers, Pink Collar, Public Servants and Professionals, and Slaves, Prisoners and Artists. With gritty detail, wonderful characterizations and humor, the lives of working people are richly rendered be they Berkeley firefighters, Central Valley farmworkers, girls in ballet school, police, hair stylists, office workers or contractors.

Workers' Compensation

Jannie M. Dresser

Judith Yamamoto's "At My Table" reflects a deep domesticity the way environmentalists have come to describe "deep ecology" to combine our spiritual and psychological relationship to the world of nature. Yamamoto and her husband, Larry, a longshoreman and artist, built a house and spent several years on the North Pacific Coast. For Yamamoto, raised on her father's stories about his Russian Jewish past and her mother's ancestral tales about North Dakota prairie homesteaders, it was easy to find connections between generations and simple survival. The poet speaks from a woman's heart about women and men, women and children, women in lonely houses and in war zones. All seem to gather around her table like hungry ghosts waiting for Yamamoto to write their stories down.

At My Table

Judith Yamamoto

Judy Wells spins out playful yet profound tales inspired by ancient Irish island-voyager myths. Although the characters you will meet in these prose poems are not ordinarily associated with northern seas -- palominos, flamingos, even Popeye and Olive Oyl -- their mischievous guidance and shape-shifting proclivities are steeped in the Celtic wisdom tradition that Wells inherited from her ancestors -- updated in a classic search for healing and reunion.

THE GLASS SHIP Poems

Judy Wells

Dale Jensen is one of the most exciting poets writing in America today. After years of putting out chapbooks and running several popular reading venues in the San Francisco Bay Area, his attention turns to his favorite haunts in Yew Nork. Here, Rimbaud of The Illuminations meets Lou Reed in a Bowery bar, except Rimbaud has matured and Lou has taken a hope pill. Come to Jensen's work after a hot bath, double espresso, or stiff drink and bring a Zenlike openness to poems inspired by the cut-up tradition, DaDa, and Language Poets. Dale Jensen, born in Oakland, California, studied experimental psychology at the University of Toronto. He published and edited the experimental poetry magazine Malthus from 1986 through 1989.

Yew Nork

Dale Jensen

Truchas: Closer to Heaven [paperback] Chantal Guillemin; Chantal Guillemin (author); Lobsang Wangdu (photograph); Margaret Copeland, terragrafix (book cover and interior design); Harry Cordova (cover art weaving); Roger Guillemin [Forewor [Jan 01, 2015] ... 0991387090

Truchas: Closer to Heaven

Chantall Guillemin

"The Self-Evolution Spa" will grab you long before you know you've been grabbed, and you will remain grabbed through the last page of this funny, emotionally moving, and profound book." -- Dale Jensen, author of "Amateur Mythology" and "Yew Nork" "Bruce Bagnell's twisted lines give us a view of our twisted world that cannot truly be understood straight up." -- Adam David Miller, author of "Fall Rising," "The Sky is a Page" and "Ticket to Exile "He sinks a plumb line to the soul of America." - Naomi Ruth Lowinsky, poet and psychotherapist Bruce Bagnell is a Bay Area native since his time serving as a United States Air Force Captain in the Vietnam War. Cook, mechanic, college professor, Bagnell has also held various management positions including running a car dealership. Now, semi-retired, he still occasionally provides management consulting services and recently remodeled a 1930's French Laundry in Oakland, into an art and dance studio. Besides writing poetry, he co-hosts Poetry Express, a weekly reading series in Berkeley, California. He shares his life with Kathleen and a beloved extended family.

THE SELF-EVOLUTION SPA Poems

Bruce Bagnell

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