When All Else Fails

by Lana Hechtman Ayers

Scheduled Release Date: May 15, 2023

Pre-order at a discount now thru April 15th
For details, reviews, and placing orders: click here

Lana Hechtman Ayers’ unflinchingly honest and sensual poetry traces her journey from a difficult childhood in Queens spent in the dark house of my mother’s anger where the poet grew scrupulous as an owl, to a wildly luxuriant maturity in the Pacific Northwest where she revels in intimacy with sky and water, trees, birds, and a loving partner. The shadows of New York give way to a wide open spaciousness and a vibrant appreciation of simple gifts: eggs from the Farmer’s Market, the sound of rain, a beloved dog, and the window in the poet’s study where One windy day I became a kite. Ayers generously takes us along on her journey from violence and decay to a hard-earned rebirth into nature, love, and art. In the end, we too are redeemed.

—Alison Luterman, author of In the Time of the Great Fires

When All Else Fails reminds us that poetry can arise from even the most difficult circumstances. Lana Hechtman Ayers takes the raw material of extreme childhood poverty and abuse and turns it into one arresting poem after another. Even more remarkable is that the poet emerges from this crucible not just alive but fully alive, willing to embrace everything, knowing that she’s here to touch/ the blank page with reverent ink. Ayers’ good humor and generosity of spirit are hard-won and all the more authentic for that. When All Else Fails is a powerful book about the redemptive power of poetry.

—John Brehm, author of No Day at the Beach and The Dharma of Poetry

 

 

Break-Up Hair & Other Poems

by Grace Richards

Scheduled Release Date: May 15, 2023

Pre-order at a discount now thru April 15th
For details, reviews, and placing orders: click here

Delicious. In Break Up Hair, Grace Richards gives us a scrumptious collection of verse that is at times sweet, savory, tangy, piquant, bitter, hearty and, oh my, even spicy. The 23 poems each offer unique reflections through many angles of light: reflective, refracted, prismed. A full cornucopia of emotive cuisine served warm on a literary salver. Bon Appétit.

—Theo Czuk, novelist & songsmith

What becomes of a woman unloved? In Grace Richards’ marvelous chapbook, Break-Up Hair, the woman blossoms. These poems, strewn with rose petals, orchids, lilies, and lavender, both delighted and inspired me. As the poet enjoins the reader in the powerful final poem, “The Poet’s Way” Lift your fledgling wings and give voice/ to the verses, billowing in airy, sinuous designs/ like starlings in murmuration.

—Alexis Rhone Fancher, poetry editor, Cultural Daily

 

Our Aching Bones, Our Breaking Hearts

Poems on Aging

by Joel Savishinsky

Scheduled Release Date: Apr 15, 2023

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We confront our own aging long before we ourselves become old. Through the roles we play as family, friends, or caregivers to our elders, we learn to anticipate our own later years. Drawing on the author’s half-century career in gerontology and anthropology, the poems of Our Aching Bones, Our Breaking Hearts explore the physical, emotional, and spiritual impact of the aging experience on the nurses and patients, parents and grandparents, retirees and volunteers, Holocaust survivors and roommates, and elderly spouses and mourners he has known.

The poet shares stories in a variety of settings, which include a summer camp, an orchard, a national park, a nursery and a nursing home, hospitals, an older couple’s marital bed, and the steps of a small-town front porch. At the core of these stories stand the aging body and mind, the well-worn heart, deep reservoirs of humor, love, and anger, and the longing, defiance, regret and gratitude of life’s concluding decades.

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“Infused with passion, resentment, frustration, and love, without undue gloom or false cheer, Joel Savishinsky’s poetry captures the essential conundrum of life: whether we rage or go gently, the light will die. Savishinsky inhabits characters immersed in their own, and others’ experiences. He captures the essential irony, that the body almost always fails the mind, that we need more than safe shelter to maintain our spirits, and that trading the pain of living for mindless security is a fool’s bargain. Whether speaking as the main character or an observer, these poems ring true and prescient.”

—D Ferrara, founder of San Fedele Press,
editor of Art in the Time of COVID-19

 

The Call Home

by Susan Johnson

Scheduled Release Date: Apr 15, 2023

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Finalist of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, 2022

The Call Home invites the reader to accompany the poet in natural world settings—lying alongside a caterpillar outside her childhood home on a military base in North Carolina, listening for the silence of salty tides of the Rappahannock River at her parents’ final home in Virginia, discovering salmon nests in the Cle Elum River near her home in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. Grounded in these settings, this collections bind five generations of women, revealing an undeniable rhythm of love and suffering, a persistent pulse as they share and bear witness to patterns of beauty, connection, tragedy, loss, and continuity. These poems resonate with the tender relationships among members of all communities, all listening for the call home.

“Susan Johnson’s poems call us home in the best of ways, back to our rightful place in the natural world, back to the simple hopes and joys of life, like planting new carrots/ in the garden, one tiny/ seed at a time. With the wisdom of a sage, she crafts poems that showcase the saving grace of small moments, how they can redeem even our darkest hours, teaching us that an unguarded heart/ is the only way.”

—James Crews, author
of Kindness Will Save the World: Stories of Compassion & Connection

 

Why Do We Look Up?

by Kazimieras Campe

Scheduled Release Date: Apr 15, 2023

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In Why Do We Look Up?  Kazimieras Campe explores the multiple views of the relationship between humanity and the universe. By universe, he takes a liberal stance, conjoining the micro and macro features of what surrounds us. The poems tend to be short, posing the challenge of capturing the vast expanse of time, space, and life as we know it. His musings range widely, from elusive sub-atomic particles to the seemingly endless cosmos. His intent is not to provide answers to questions raised in the poems. Rather, it is his hope that we may stop and think, especially whenever we look up.

“Kazimieras Campe’s poems let us smile with delight as we travel through the universe. We go from  the Big Bang, to black holes, that are to be forgiven for they know not what they do. Then, just when you think you know where you are, you’re at Olduvai Gorge where we ventured to walk, and, sometimes, to think. These poems proudly claim an enjoyable dry wit.”

—Mary Sesso, author of The Open Window

 

Signs

by Emily Newberry

Scheduled Release Date: Mar 15, 2023

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Oregon Poet Shows Us the Signs Toward Our Truth

“Imagine a conversation with your kindest, wisest friend, and you have Emily Newberry’s beautiful new book Signs. Full of wry wit and experience, these poems move with courageous delight from sand dune to mountain, and from birth to death—with time-travel wonderfully in between. “Write if you can,” Newberry skillfully advises, “on silk paper with soft lead/ the harsh sounds of your fears.” And in “Fetch,” she cannily asks us, “Will you miss/ everything/ but your own funeral?” Put this truth-telling book in your pocket or bag; you will want to keep these poems close.”

—Annie Lighthart, author of Pax

“Compelling, elegant, and remarkably honest, Signs paints an intimate portrait of identity and the ever-present need for empathy…”

—John Sibley Williams, author of The Drowning House

 

In Transit

by Teddy Norris

Scheduled Release Date: Mar 15, 2023

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Exploring Life’s Transitions with a Missouri Poet

“The poems in this collection by Teddy Norris transport us with powerful imagery and emotive rhythm as we cross a continent of life experiences through intimate moments of connection. Whether with inner longing or loss, disturbing events, or the slow, silent death of a bee, Norris puts the reader ‘there,’ as one living and acutely attuned to the story. She keeps us in transit throughout this beautiful collection of straight-from-life poems while inviting us to pause momentarily to revisit or consider what we can all identify as the reality of living in our chaotic world. Through her fresh eyes we are gifted with a richness of seeing and provided with thought-provoking insights.”

—Jan Groenemann, author of Woman Alone
and Creativity as a Life Path

 

A Starved Heart

by Genevieve Lardizabal

Scheduled Release Date: Mar 15, 2023

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Powerful Collection from a Brave Seattle Poet

She was isolated and alone. At one point, no other patients were allowed to speak to her, and she wasn’t allowed outside for five months. So many thoughts swirled in her head and without any output she felt trapped, so she began to write, and spent the next three years writing her book. A Starved Heart dives deep into the author’s eating disorders and mental anguish, sharing her experiences enduring four years of treatment centers and hospital stays that finally lead her to recovery.

“Beautifully poignant, vulnerable, and real. Genevieve is an extraordinary writer who breathes life into every word. With vivid detail she brings you through her journey, the dark night of her soul, and into the light of her true self. A powerful must read.”

—Nadia Ahrens, LICSW, Psychotherapist