Sitting in Powell’s Watching Burnside Dissolve in Rain

by Doug Stone

Updated Release Date: Aug 11, 2020

“Here the rain tells the truth about everything it touches.” Combine elegiac Oregon rain with the spareness of Tang dynasty poets, and you get the honest lyricism of Doug Stone where the joy of swallows can write in the sky that “poetry may not save the world/ but reminds me/ the world is worth saving.” And please don’t miss the magnificent tribute to artist Rick Bartow.

—Penelope Scambly Schott, author
A Is for Anne: Mistress Hutchinson Disturbs the Commonwealth
(Oregon Book Award) and Lovesong for Dufur

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Catching Narcissus

by Rheanna Haaland

Scheduled Release Date: June 23, 2020

From broken to passing, Catching Narcissus begins fragmented and broken and ends with an idea of composure that invokes hope for a future. Haaland climbs out of a hole, carrying all the baggage that came out, and finds a way to survive. Mechanically thoughtful and brutally honest, Catching Narcissus doesn’t pull punches, even when those punches are directed inward.

—Tim Nunes, Senior Editor at PlayStation Universe

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The Winter of J

by Gary Percesepe

Scheduled Release Date: May 15, 2020

In The Winter of J, Gary Percesepe writes compellingly about the commingled passion, loneliness, and surprising bliss of a doomed relationship with “J,” a woman who moves fleetingly and luminously through his life one winter season. It is a scorching exploration of both transience and intimacy, transcending the personal to touch a universal connection with all that is.

~ Joelle Fraser, author of The Territory of Men

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The Eater of Dreams

by Christopher Bogart

Scheduled Release Date: May 15, 2020

“Christopher Bogart’s poems demonstrate that poetry’s embrace can include the idea of justice and the feeling of outrage.”

—Robert Pinsky, United States Poet Laureate (1997–2000)

The Eater of Dreams begins with a vulgar curse and ends with an open question. The poems tell stories of the journey that begins in the hells of the poorest sections of Central America and ends with the hope of salvation in a new land.

The title refers, in a narrow sense, to the poem that tells of what happens to those whose lives and dreams are chewed up under the wheels of the freight train known as The Beast. In a greater sense, it refers to all of the obstacles: violent gangs, drug cartels, Mexican immigration authorities—all the dangers these migrants face on their journey north to the US. Each year, only forty percent of those who begin the journey make it to the border. One out of every five of these migrants is an unaccompanied minor. Two out of every five, men and women, are raped (or worse) by gangs or drug cartels. Some either drown in the Rio Grande or die of thirst in the American deserts. Approximately 500 bodies are either washed up on the shores or found in our deserts each year. But they keep coming because, for them, paradise could be just one more hell away.

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My Miscellaneous Muse:

Poem Pastiches & Whimsical Words

by Ralph La Rosa

Scheduled Release Date: May 15, 2020

Ralph La Rosa, as the title indicates, has created a delightful collection of poetry pastiches and whimsical words-of-play, including playful sonnets, weird lists, clerihews, proverbs and converbs, tailgating couplets, strange rhymes, and auto-epitaphs of famous poets.

Enjoy La Rosa’s celebration and unique spin of the classics, as he pays homage to Dickinson, Whitman, Yeats, Frost, Plath, Keats, Pound, Williams and more.

I have eaten
the bacon
that was in
the fridge …

Readers will enjoy the poet’s resurrection of famous poems as he uses them as springboards to tackle today’s pop culture and politics. And to wrap it up, he ends with a brief story about Chinese and American writers, including Allen Ginsberg and Annie Dillard, whom La Rosa leads through Disneyland.

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The Screaming Silence

by Lanser Howard

Updated Release Date: April 21, 2020

Silence can be as sweet as the most beautiful symphony. Or it can be a scream—so terrifying it will keep you up all night trying to get it out of your head.

Loss has followed Lanser Howard his whole life, clinging to him like a wet coat. And during such times, it is the silence that always seems to speak the loudest. It screams truth, and anyone who has gone through deep, dark pain knows this. Too often, this screaming silence feels inescapable—like you can never turn it off—and can make you feel like you’re losing your mind. You will do anything to block out the noise of The Screaming Silence.

In his first full-length poetry collection, Lanser Howard examines loss, the most barebones of human emotion. He takes readers on a merciless journey through the depths of agony and grief—through The Screaming Silence—and then into the light of hope. Hope to have the courage to fight on.

 

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Breakpoint

by Christopher Bogart

Scheduled Release Date: April 15, 2020

Breakpoint is a collection of poems that speaks to a nation in crisis. Its poetry is commentary on a country that was built on the promise of the American Dream, and yet is now led by a president who, in 2015, declared that “The American Dream is dead!”

It explores the nightmares of Trump’s America: the rise of white supremacy, the separation of 5,400 migrant children from their families, the resurgence of virulent racism and the rise in hate crimes against Muslims, Jews, and people of color. These poems explore the promise our forefathers made of an American Dream – a dream enshrined in the words of the Declaration of Independence, on the base of the Statue of Liberty and in the hearts of immigrants who have come to America in search of that Dream.

This is a call to action, to protest, to participate and to break the silence of indifference—a silence we can no longer afford if we want the promises of America’s past to be fulfilled in the present, and to guarantee American’s future.

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(good cape weather)

by Wes Jordans

Scheduled Release Date: April 15, 2020

With the quick passing thoughts that we so rarely catch, Wes Jordans takes readers on a flurry of perspectives and relationships, while trying to move forward down the only open road, enjoying the process of being on the way—to live in the moment and take the chance, wear the cape when you can. (good cape weather) wants you to know the protagonist, but not necessarily know what they’re up to.

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