In Ethics of Sleep, Mayer's poetic voice is once again at its very best as she conjures up some of the most pioneering and experimental explorations in American letters today. This ground-breaking masterwork springs from the netherland of her dreams; surely to be considered by readers and scholars alike in the same legendary company of Memory, Studying Hunger, and Midwinter Day as one of her more triumphant and dynamically accomplished works to date.

Ethics of Sleep

Literature & Fiction

Mayer, Bernadette

Poetry

Trembling Pillow Press

Lee Grue is arguably one of the finest practitioners of poetry in New Orleans' storied history. These superb writs are equal to the upwelling of jazz itself: from Treme street corners, to the wayward French Quarter, to the carefree vibes of Bywater, all the way to back o' town; this astonishing collection speaks from a mythic pantheon off yowls & beats as timeless as the Crescent City herself.

Downtown

Grue, Lee Meitzen

Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Music. John Sinclair pays poetic tribute to jazz musician John Coltrane in a collection of Sinclair's poems along with jazz album reviews and concert reviews from the 60s as well as edited and refined earlier works spanning decades of Sinclair meditating and reflecting on the influence of Coltrane and his music. As stated in the afterword by poet Dennis Formento, this collection reveals Sinclair to be in the lineage of the great Beat poets who were moved by the culture and the influence of Jazz in the 60s. "John Sinclair's writing about 'The Music' has always been well informed and inspiring, from his early Detroit-hip days. So it's important to gather this writing to show where he and we have been, and the great period of American Classical Music we lived through and particularly the marvelous revelation that John Coltrane provided everybody who could hear"—Amiri Baraka.

SONG OF PRAISE: Homage to John Coltrane

Sinclair, John

From author ruth weiss on writing DESERT JOURNAL: a life of its own — this book DESERT JOURNAL. thought it would be novel to write a novel. do the math. 5 x 4 = 200. so for 40 days do 5 pages. decision. 5 pages non-stop each day whatever surfaces. even if only one word per page. forget characters &amp; plot. this is a novel moderne. focus — the internal desert. being a water-sign — most fearful place the desert. need to explore that place. had never been to the actual desert. 1961. begin. it was finished in 1968. 7 years. readings through those years had audience call numbers up to the point of completion. someone would always ask “how do you know this about me?” DESERT JOURNAL has a life of its own. i’m only the instrument. sent manuscript out. no takers. 1975. went to NEW YORK CITY. in &amp; out of publishing houses. no takers. back home in SAN FRANCISCO. no mistaking the message. MAGNETIZE THE CALL FOR IT. a week later. phone call from BOSTON. CHARLEY SHIVELY of GOOD GAY POETS press. had heard me at WILD SIDE WEST, a women’s bar in SAN FRANCISCO. i had mentioned looking for a publisher. DESERT JOURNAL came out in 1977. currently i’ve stolen lines from it &amp; collaged into new poems — LIGHT WORKS, BYPASS LINZ, &amp; SUICIDE DREAMS. 40 days — 7 years. those numbers have far-reaching biblical references. was not aware of that. now, thanks to DAVID BRINKS of TREMBLING PILLOW press in NEW ORLEANS, this book continues as a reprint. on a life of its own.

Desert Journal

Weiss, Ruth

Aesthesia Balderdash is the first, full-length book of poems by Kim Vodicka. The poems both mock and exalt femininity and feminine "types" (valley girls, housewives, mothers, prima donnas, virgins, debutantes, celebutantes, hookers, black widows, murderesses, gender queers, drag queens, trannies, bitches of the male persuasion, etc.), French braiding sound play, pun, and sense(lessness) into siren songs that are sometimes screamed, or shouted, or sung sweetly, or whispered. These moody, PMSy, moon-maddened poems, trannies and tyrannies as they are, may be lusty, intoxicating, hypnotic, sentimental, and/or nauseating. The text is drunk most of the time on seduction and repulsion. It satirizes the American girl's desire to be an elle--a woman worthy of the belles and whistles of the French féminin suffixes (-ette, -euse, -enne). In short, Aesthesia Balderdash is "whispery, pink-packaged poésie signed by Elizabeth Arden and sealed with an adulteress."

Aesthesia Balderdash

Vodicka, KIm

Winner of the 2012 Bob Kaufman Award, this manuscript was selected by 2012 judge Bernadette Mayer. “I want to write a Christopher Rizzo poem. He reminds me of Clark Coolidge. So here it is: demeter disney’s demerol drinks in / her daughter’s forgetting that she / lives in the show me state, full of gentian prairies. Or this: I once knew a guy named Gerard Rizza / Whose poetry I also loved; there’s also RZA / Of the Wu-Tang Clan. (P.S. You have permission to sign my name as William James). Always striving!” —Bernadette Mayer, author of Ethics of Sleep (2012 Judge of the Bob Kaufman Award) “The unnerving nerves of this first-rate book are a deep-sampling via elegant breaks &amp; stabs of our new &amp; nervy ‘microwavable century’, a mix with a BPM rate has John Wieners &amp; Frank O’Hara dance all night (yet never getting to the slow) as they do, double-scratched as they are with all our other fathers &amp; mothers into this double, triple, multi-layered HVP (High Velocity Poetry): It will tup you to ramiform boo as its juju goes loco with mojo. Read this book standing up and moving about, &amp; just try not to wake up on fire. Who said that? You, our century, did. Love it!” —Pierre Joris, author of Poasis

Of Love & Capital

Rizzo, Christopher

Tracey McTague is a “sorceress in sweet depravity/ & general decay.” She calls forth a world crowded with the debris of daily life, lit by “the wide-eyed radiance” of the poet’s mind: Antigone brand condoms and H.R. department emoticons. These poems brim with wonder, but also warning. They gather global gods and folk rituals, as if the present, or, more precisely, the future, required the resurrection of every possible power — hope here residing not above us but in the ways such prayers access “the primordial wisdom in the world as it is.” -Allison Cobb Tracey McTague’s amazing collection of poetry Supernatural, fires up the language. Folklore, nature, and the quotidian meld into bars of gold and silver. These poems dedicated to family and friends, lift off the page and light up poetry’s sky. Grounded in folklore, McTague’s poems can’t be nailed to the wall, they are tricksters, shape shifters that defy our expectations and rules. -Brenda Coultas Delivered with the spontaneous mind of "first thought best thought," each word is also a well wrought amulet stowed in the shelves of the poem. It's their sense of strangeness, vast associative possibility and sonic kinkiness that makes me feel we can use them as chants to combat commonplace wrong-doers. As she writes, "bird-herald appears/making a joyful noise/& always pays your debts." -Stacy Szymaszek

Super Natural

McTague, Tracey

I Love this American Way of Life

Evans, Brett

loaded arc is so fine it will rain owls and fathers. -Bernadette Mayer What can the lyric postmodern do in the face of large-scale violence and micro aggressions? Laura Goldstein knows. loaded arc, in pages of intense music, pulls us sonically down deep into truths that are knowable because of beauty. This poetry enacts relationships: hurricane Katrina and inequality, fluctuating bank balances and television, attempts at accounting for everything “because the world/is for falling in love with…” and anxious conceptualizations of fatherhood/homeland. In sure sculpted lines, calling up multiple voices and a wide array of sources, and always maximizing The Word’s out-loud potentials—because utterances can be simultaneously sacred and secular—this book is buoyant, is hope, “is clearly room for action and alternatives can be planned … ” -Jill Magi Laura Goldstein’s loaded arc is a musical triptych, one powered by an engine equal parts surging internal rhyme and propulsive alliteration. Here, rain’s rhythmic patter mirrors reportage’s inability to render in language the contours of event, then our alphabet goes all allegorical, and we’re left to contend with the historical aftermath of a few more burning bushes. Look out whorled, Goldstien’s parting some sees. -Noah Eli Gordon

loaded arc

Goldstein, Laura

The “psalm-poets” of the Reformation wanted to bring etheral ideas down to earth. “Thou, once a body, now but air/Arch botcher of a psalm or prayer/From CarfaxJ come/And patch us up a zealous lay” penned the 18th century psalm-poet Robin Wisdom. 21st century psalm-poet Jen Coleman is involved in her own reformation of psalms as proceeding from the ground up. She details how “The dirt holds eight immutable truths” while acknowledging that she can list but six of them – and they don’t present themselves in numerical order! While it is a mystery that Robin Wisdom predicted the existence of Carfax (insert emoticon of choice), it is no secret that Jen Coleman has reclaimed the psalm for those of us who still puzzle over the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question of what life is all about. — Tina Darragh

Psalms for Dogs and Sorcerers

Coleman, Jen

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