A Short Supply of Viability

by Annette Gagliardi

Scheduled Release Date: July 15, 2022

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Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “compassion fatigue” as the physical and mental exhaustion and emotional withdrawal experienced by those who care for sick or traumatized people over an extended period of time. Annette Gagliardi’s poetry offers compassion for the compassionate. Her poems are informed by the shift of comfort that occurs with caregivers, from the decision to provide care, to the fatigue and grace of caring for others, then to the grief and relief of saying goodbye. A Short Supply of Viability provides insight, thoughtful consideration of issues, glimpses of those being cared for, and relief from grief. It is a must read and a welcoming balm for anyone faced with becoming a caregiver, whether it be in a professional capacity or taking care of a loved one whose health is declining.

 

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“Annette Gagliardi’s dazzling poetry collection, A Short Supply of Viability, confronts mortality—our decline, our need for care, our love for life. Her preface defines viability as the ability to work, to survive, to live, to flourish, variations that thematically resound in her elegiac work, touching on the spiritual, the natural, the grief and consolation that accompany our journey on this earth. She mourns lost youth, lost parents even as she buoys our spirits, reminding us, as William Cullen Bryant does, to live: If food is what you want, eat now (“The Sea Shifts”). Her poems thrum with rich images of the natural world: Small glimpses of who you/ used to be emerge—recede/ like dolphins in the sea (“Grief in the Sail”) or the diminishing light/ pinpricks that bright vanishing/ into the landscape of stunned darkness (“Mirage”). Ultimately, she embraces death as a lover, part of the natural order, reminding us in her beautiful poems that vita brevis est.”

—Donna Isaac, author of Persistence of Vision; Footfalls; Holy Comforter; and Tommy

Fencelines

by Angela Hansen

Scheduled Release Date: June 15, 2022

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Angela Hansen’s Fencelines, written during a time of deep hurt, explores how she found healing in the countryside surrounding her Nebraska acreage. Her imagery captures the strength and tenacity of the prairie and how it affects her own soul. Grounded in the passing of the seasons, both physically and mentally, these poems chronicle her journey along, over, and around the fencelines of the past decade.

 

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“Fencelines is a body of work encapsulating Hansen’s personal journey of self-preservation and growth, “where all the Nebraska seasons meet for coffee and gossip.” Hansen exhibits the resilience of womanhood among the prairie. Her poems read like Polaroids; she carries her readers through colorful snapshots of her personal love, loss, pain, and acceptance, all nestled between vivid, organic imagery of an unforgiving, yet fruitful countryside existence. Every poem in Hansen’s collection embodies cathartic release.”

—Sharon Nicole Carr, Adult Services librarian, Wayne Public Library

This Conversation

by Christopher Bogart

Scheduled Release Date: June 15, 2022

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In his new book of poetry, Christopher Bogart follows the lead of Emanuel Acho (author of Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man) who encourages white people to be courageous, informed, and empathetic to the treatment of their Black brothers and sisters. Bogart is stepping up “to do his part.” Employing the paradigm of an accidental meeting between two white strangers at a local bar and the conversation that ensues, he encourages the reader to explore the problem of systemic racism and to start this conversation with others.

This Conversation is divided into two forms of poetry: poetic dialogue written in free verse to present the dialogue at the bar between the two strangers, and a variety of traditional & non-traditional forms of poetry to expand upon the issues that are brought up and discussed in this conversation.

 

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“Chris Bogart’s book is a lightning rod of discomfort and relevance. It is indeed an allegorical conversation that honestly takes place between the reader and the reader’s societal subconscious. This Conversation is to be read with an open heart in chest and mirror in hand as it will force readers to re-examine themselves, as Bogart demands, with more compassion, critical thinking, and candor as they pertain to mending and rectifying the evils of generational racism from all who dare to read this crucial work from a true ally.”

—Ras Heru Stewart, CEO of Rebel Ink Publishing,
executive producer of Rhythm & Words: Creative Writing

Olympic

by John L. Miller

Scheduled Release Date: June 15, 2022

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Olympic is collection of personal, persona, and pandemic poems inspired by various Greek mythological tales, guided by Robert Graves’ The Greek Myths. Throughout the book, John Miller masterfully employs this mythology as a creative vehicle to both witness and contemplate the current realities of life against a backdrop of history and legend.

 

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“Olympic offers a vision of the past enfolded into our burgeoning future, in the form of the intimate whisper of a secret witness to the inner lives of the gods who happens to have a time machine, allowing the poet and his readers to slip through a portal to Ancient Greece and back again, sometimes before we’ve reached the end of a single line of poetry.”

—Christopher Luna, Clark County, WA Poet Laureate 2013-2017
and author of Exchanging Wisdom: A Guide for Parents of the Autonomous

Built to Last

by Tara L. Carnes

Scheduled Release Date: May 15, 2022

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In Built to Last, Tara L. Carnes weaves the voices of survivors into poems to take a fearless look at domestic violence and the support systems that make it possible to heal from the trauma.

 

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“In language as precise as it is restrained, Tara Carnes’ Built to Last is a testament to Carl Jung’s theory of the individuation process—that process each of us must move through in order to become the human beings we were intended to become. Carnes shines a vivid light on scenes of shame, despair, abuse, and terror and on scenes of courageous attempts to help others who have experienced the same. Despite the physical and emotional traumas these poems explore, Carnes shares with us those moments when she has finally taken ownership of her power, enjoying unabashedly her comeuppance. Always, though, at the core of this trilogy of suffering and survival, there is a deep reverence for those both Divine and earthly who have journeyed with her in the darkness/ sharing [their] wisdom and faith.”

—Cathy Smith Bowers, Poet Laureate of North Carolina 2010-2012

Shells in the Sieve

by Nathan Fryback

Scheduled Release Date: May 15, 2022

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The Shells in the Sieve are the things of substance in our lives that we keep as we move through growth, change and renewal. Family, sense of self and a deep reverence for the great wheels of the natural world are the solid artifacts found on the shore in these poems. Voiced from the perspective of various, sometimes inanimate entities, the work here seeks to express the power of place amidst constant change and the search for grace in the human endeavor.

 

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“Nathan Fryback has crafted a collection of unbelievable beauty and loneliness in this his first collection. From things as seemingly mundane as a grocery cart to the fantastic supernatural of the moon and stars, he expertly pulls you in and takes you on a journey of not only his own history and life experience but makes one consider one’s own life in a poignant and sometimes bitter sweetness. A must have for all poetry lovers.”

—Sarah Walker, fiction writer, professor of Anthropology at CSU, San Marcos

A Nest in the Heart

by Vivienne Popperl

Scheduled Release Date: Apr 15, 2022

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In A Nest in the Heart, Vivienne Popperl conjures the lives of her ancestors to better understand their stories and their influence on her life. The poems will take the reader on a journey through Johannesburg, Europe, and the Willamette Valley of Oregon, as the poet faces the age-old question: “Where do I belong?” Influenced by the poetry of Elizabeth Woody, she explores how the body’s physical landscape intersects and resides within the natural, geographical world.

 

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“In Vivienne Popperl’s luminous book, A Nest in the Heart, she listens for the unknowable stories of her ancestors—refugees from Lithuania, farmers and women doctors in Apartheid South Africa, letters from the dead—to come back to herself. “She kept her nerve,” Popperl says of her mother’s story, “fierce brave heart.” The same could be said for Popperl’s collection. It takes courage to tell the truth of our families, grace to make them shine. “Poems of love/ stitched/ the blue sky” she says of her youth in Johannesburg. Thankfully, throughout A Nest in the Heart, they still do.”

—Claudia F. Saleeby Savage, author of Bruising Continents

Finalist from The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, 2021

Tell Her Yes

by Ann Farley

Scheduled Release Date: Apr 15, 2022

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A drop of rain slips from leaf to ground, perhaps to river and beyond. Like rain’s journey, our lives twist and turn, hit dry stretches and unexpected turbulence, land on moments of beauty. Nurture and nature, with its solace and challenges, weaves through the poems in Tell Her Yes. Themes of love and parenthood, friendship, aging, dementia, and death wind through this collection like a river, while a heron keeps watch, and a crocodile lurks in the murk.

 

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“In Tell Her Yes, Ann Farley offers us lyric poems that speak the language of forgiveness, of patience, of humility and reverence. A number of these poems are about the natural world. A number are about her work giving palliative care. Given their compelling tone, all these poems are—in themselves—advocates for what’s palliative. Calling us toward our better selves, this collection asks us to see ourselves as capable of sustained generosity and kindness. Farley’s poems remind us that, like a beneficent river, “At our best we are an expanse of blue, / a shallow of nurture,” a haven for all whose lives touch ours.”

—Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita