FEATURED TITLES
The Life and Times of José Calderon
by José Faus
Overview
If you would have met José Calderon on the street, you might have wondered if he was all there — not because the man lacked substance but because he blended well with shadows and light. Though tall and imposing, his gait was easy and slight, as if a breeze could carry him away like a scent or a leaf. One friend said of him: "He suffered his life silently to the point of indifference." That is until he found inspiration from an old gypsy woman with a young girl's smile and set out to chronicle his life, motivated by "a question life had begun to ask of him."
The Life and Times of José Calderon — compiled from papers he left behind and the cryptic asides he made to the few acquaintances he let into his musty house on Independence Avenue in Anytown, USA, where he lived with a rambunctious cat and a majestic harp — follows This Town Like That, the debut book of poetry by José Faus.
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 30 May 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9908649-8-1
LoC Control No.: 2016953095
Catalogue No.: 39WP-21
Pages: 118
Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.3 inches
Striking the Black Snake
Poems from Standing Rock
by MG Salazar
Overview
Striking the Black Snake: Poems from Standing Rock by MG Salazar is a wild and raw book in equal parts manifesto, testimonial, how-to-manual, and confessional. Written during the winter of 2016-2017 after Salazar's "calling" to travel to the Oceti Sakowin Camp in North Dakota to be a water protector and prevent the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the poems chronicle the struggles and trials of the protesters, look deeply at those behind the crop dusters and riot gear, and speak to the children of the future, for whom the water must be preserved.
But this book is more than a call to a shared humanity. It is a journal of discovery and purpose in search of a code in which the heart, the voice, and the tears—the primordial gifts of the Creator—can make a being whole, and its poems are a liturgy couched in terms of a personal narrative that investigates the poet themselves: their life-long sense of alienation, their struggles with addiction, the acceptance of their identity, and the need to contribute meaningfully to future generations by standing up for the rights of indigenous peoples and the health of our planet.
Salazar, who was raised Latinx but discovered through genetic analysis their Native American lineage, shares with us from the ground their perspective of an important moment in U.S. history, which has its roots in a harrowing youth, a whispered and denied ancestry, and the dogged determination to stand like a pillar of salt in the wake of a social and political system intent on destroying rather than creating. The poet also shares their intimate journey, facilitated by their endeavors at Standing Rock, to reclaim an identity that had been lost to colonialism.
The songs of Striking the Black Snake tell not only Salazar's story but also proudly sing of the strength and endurance of Native peoples, who battle daily the dirge of the black snake, the oil, which the current U.S. government and its corporate partners value more than We the People. This book, therefore, represents the culmination of those songs.
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 25 April 2017
ISBN: 978-1-946358-03-5
LoC Control No.: 2017934283
Catalogue No.: 39WP-20
Pages: 102
Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.2443 inches
A Secret History of the Nighttime World
by Jason Ryberg
Overview
Welcome to the world of Jason Ryberg—a world of true crimes and misdemeanors in the American grain, transformed, through the poet’s retelling, into miniature works of art. Reading Ryberg is like driving a pick-up truck across Kansas on shrooms, and his imagery, as fresh as a midnight S curve, takes the reader on a journey from city streets to wheat fields, navigating through a landscape bright with the "five-battery-flashlight of a moon." A Secret History of the Nighttime World, the twelfth book of poetry by Ryberg, delivers one great breath of fire directly from his heart onto the page.
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 25 April 2017
ISBN: 978-1-946358-04-2
LoC Control No.: 2017938920
Catalogue No.: 39WP-19
Pages: 132
Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5 x 0.3093 inches
Black Girl Shattered
Overview
Black Girl Shattered, the third book by spoken word artist Sheri Purpose Hall, effortlessly weaves her spirituality, black consciousness, and femininity into a tapestry of fully poetic words that are part memoir, part Black Studies thesis, part feminist manifesto, and part sacred text. By exploring the root causes of misfortunes that have been engineered to break the spirit of every woman—and revealing a path that leads to the beauty of mending—she ministers to all women (and men) while also speaking directly to issues that are both unique and specific to the black woman. This collection of poetry, prose, epistles, and essays is built on the kind of raw honesty designed to reveal, refresh, and uplift.
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 21 February 2017
ISBN: 978-1-946358-01-1
LoC Control No.: 2016958895
Catalogue No.: 39WP-18
Pages: 130
Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.305 inches
Desolate Country
We the Poets, United, Against Trump
edited by j.d.tulloch
Overview
Now, more than ever, our collective voices (and actions) must stand united in opposition to Donald J. Trump, who—by following the demagogue's playbook—seeks to divide and conquer by turning Christians against Muslims, white folks against people of color, men against women, and straights against LGBTQIAs, thereby creating fear and hate amongst the populace.
While We the People quarrel and vilify each other, Trump, without opposition, slyly invokes his true agenda: the marginalization of the masses and the continued facilitation of the advancement and concentration of wealth of the most affluent members of our society, which is evidenced by his billionaire cabinet nominees and bizarre infatuation with Russian President (and evil dictator) Vladimir Putin.
Desolate Country, therefore, represents an amalgamation of defiant work by established artists and those who, as a result of Trump's election, were inspired to write in protest. It aims to give voice to believers in the power of art as both a spiritual catharsis and a manifestor of change and to those who are morally opposed to saying, "Trump is my President."
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 13 January 2017
ISBN: 978-1-946358-02-8
LoC Control No.: 2017900193
Catalogue No.: 39WP-17
Pages: 96
Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.2299 inches
Novel Cliché
Aphorisms
Overview
Poet Jeanette Powers, well-known for her quips, presents her first collection of modern maxims. Novel Cliché: Aphorisms is a book of simple thoughts, or micropoems, that range from humorous to potent to pointing, and each adage is memorably quotable.
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 29 November 2016
ISBN: 978-1-946358-00-4
LoC Control No.: 2016958886
Catalogue No.: 39WP-16
Pages: 72
Dimensions: 4 x 6 x 0.1724 inches
Corazón y una lengua peregrina
by Latino Writers Collective
edited by Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs
Overview
Corazón y una lengua peregrina es una antología atípica que recoge en sus páginas a escritores de diferentes meridianos literarios. Es un compendio de historias en que la realidad y la ficción se mezclan para crear un mundo alterno que surge de la problemática social de sus protagonistas.
La escritora Mexicana Minerva Margarita Villarreal, en su comentario del libro, hace una apología de la literatura de habla hispana en los Estados Unidos, y como ella misma menciona, es la defensa de "una cultura permanentemente amenazada con la deportación," añadiendo que la segregación a que se ven sometidos los hispanos indocumentados en los Estados Unidos va acompañada del acoso y el rechazo social, que hace que los inmigrantes se mantengan y experimenten una vida de miedo constante. Por lo tanto, la defensa de la lengua es la defensa de la cultura.
De ahí, la importancia del lanzamiento de esta antología, cuando empieza a hacer carrera en este país, un sentimiento atávico de odio hacia los inmigrantes, que promete criminalizar a los individuos simplemente por su lengua, color o religión; todo ello impulsado por personajes de ingrata recordación, pero que revisten gran importancia en una nación que siempre se calificó como tierra de inmigrantes.
En este libro hay veintiocho poemas de facturas muy diferentes, pero que a pesar de las barreras generacionales de sus autores, conforman un todo homogéneo que nos revela una preocupación universal por nuestra identidad y nuestros orígenes. También encontramos once cuentos, relatos deslumbrantes, que recrean la vida y la muerte, en un transcurrir de disímiles experiencias que nos transportan a la madre tierra. Si bien los poetas de esta antología cuestionan en una reflexión interna y profunda el tipo de sociedad en que vivimos, de igual modo, nos presentan el amor como una consecuencia natural y algunos relatos nos brindan una muestra de brillante humor que nos trae de regreso a la realidad.
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 15 November 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9908649-9-8
LoC Control No.: 2016956737
Catalogue No.: 39WP-15
Pages: 128
Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.3007 inches
Prompts! A Spontaneous Anthology
edited by jeanette powers & j.d.tulloch
Overview
In June 2016, a social media call was sent out to the members of Poetic Underground—a whiskey drinking, verbal slinging, raucous and righteous open mic poetry sequence at the Uptown Arts Bar in Kansas City, MO—egging the artists to request a prompt: a short, personally crafted phrase intended to be the inspiration for NEW SHIT! to spit at open mic night. Over the next week, over one-hundred prompts were issued, which led to the epic readings of volumes of New Shit! But other folks, many of whom were unable to attend open mic, wanted to be part of the shenanigans; so, the idea of a prompts book was born.p>
Prompts! A Spontaneous Anthology represents the outpouring of new work by both fledgling and established writers and artists, which was engendered, simply, by the offer of a prompt.
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 25 October 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9908649-7-4
LoC Control No.: 2016953067
Catalogue No.: 39WP-14
Pages: 102
Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.2491 inches
Ghost Sign
by Al Ortolani, Melissa Fite Johnson, Adam Jameson, JT Knoll
Overview
In the 1920s and 1930s, Pittsburg, KS was a major coal-mining town, attracting various ethnic groups from southeast Europe and beyond. The often belligerent and divisive spirit of the miners--and the unpredictable politics of Southeast Kansas--earned the region the nickname, "The Little Balkans." The four poets (Al Ortolani, Melissa Fite Johnson, Adam Jameson, JT Knoll) appearing in this collection carry forward that same proud, independent spirit. They call themselves White Buffalo, after a now-defunct café in Pittsburg that offered writers, poets, artists, musicians, and friends a place of warmth and community, which in turn fostered an environment of challenge and diversity.
Ghost Sign epitomizes honest work that is both lyrical and painful while simultaneously joyous and sad. It is rooted in folklore and mystery, and its place is informed by powerful imagery: sunlight on the crater of a strip pit, the shadow of an owl at Camp 50, junkyard mechanics, railroad men, and a grandfather at a piano plunking out Methodist hymns. With craft and passion, the Ghost Sign poets, who each know how to remember, resurrect those indomitable, lost places, folks, and ghosts from the forgotten past of Southeast Kansas.
Published in partnership with Spartan Press.
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 11 October 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9908649-6-7
LoC Control No.: 2016953066
Catalogue No.: 39WP-13
Pages: 210
Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5 x 0.4802 inches
Nomadic? Rover by Days Singing These Gang Plank Songs of the Ambler
by Hugh Merrill
Overview
Hugh Merrill, the printmaker, has a dirty little secret: for many years, he has been covertly writing … poetry. His debut book of poems, Nomadic? Rover by Days Singing These Gang Plank Songs of the Ambler, reflects the intense and unguarded energy of a vital artist and natural storyteller who has deep connections to both historic and current movements. His subject matter ranges from childhood memories of racial inequality to contemporary ideas of gender fluidity, and his absurd ditties tickle the what the fuck bone in all of us. Littered amongst the poems are moments of prose and snippets of email exchanges between Merrill and his editor, Jeanette Powers. But perhaps the most dynamic aspect of this book is the inclusion of Merrill's original drawings and handwritten notes, which occupy the space around the poems: visual expansions from the poet’s haptic nonce of a squirrelly soul.Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 13 September 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9908649-5-0
LoC Control No.: 2016947066
Catalogue No.: 39WP-12
Pages: 64
Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.1533 inches
Gender Treason
by Ryan Wilks
Overview
Gender Treason, a series of portrait paintings by Kansas City based artist Ryan Wilks, chronicles his latest exhibition, which debuted at Leedy-Voulkos Art Center on July 1, 2016, and includes interviews with the artist's subjects, providing a rare glimpse into the lives of queer people living in the Midwest. In an effort to transcend sensationalized media stereotypes and portray a more honest perspective into queer existence, Wilks spent a year interviewing, and then painting, queer Kansas City residents.The series, which focuses on twelve people who span the queer spectrum of gender and sexual identity, offers a vulnerable insight into each individual's life, their common struggles, and the victories that bond them in a shared human condition. Each painting aspires to capture the complexity and truth of its subject by employing bold colors, painterly brush strokes, and hard lines.
Since the Stonewall riots of 1969 sparked the fight for queer liberation, LGBTQIA equality has breached the mainstream, leading to a national conversation that has helped change the minds of many once bigoted people and contributed to positive legislative changes. But equality is just the start. For true compassion to wrap itself around an entire nation and sustain lasting social growth, education on queer realities by queer people must be encouraged. Gender Treason strives to be that brand of education.
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 1 July 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9908649-4-3
Catalogue No.: 39WP-11
Pages: 34
Dimensions: 8 x 8 x 0.0883 inches
Tiny Chasm
Overview
Tiny Chasm, the third book of poetry by Jeanette Powers, explores the miniscule openings in our psyches in order to reveal the vast infrastructures of our neuroses, anxieties, and joys. It ponders the responsibilities of self to child and society; the ways we are manipulated and conditioned; the struggles of loss and longing; as well as the pathways into awareness and being present.These poems challenge societal standards, reveal surprising taboos, and don't hesitate to demand accountability. For example, "Enough Pussyfooting" accuses religious radicals of suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, "Shadow Children" reviles absent fathers, and "Breadbox" bombastically demeans those who don't press criminal charges against violators of children. The finger-pointing, however, turns inward as well, by taking total acerbic (and existential) responsibility for how one moves forward from victimization and abuse.
Yet alongside the vitriol and unabashed lashing out at cultural injustices, the absurdest side of Jeanette frolics in light-hearted pieces about finding happiness and dating yourself ("Things I Learned from Bill Murray" and "Tangible, Peculiar"). The volume also includes a number of previously unpublished slam poems from her controversial tenure with PoUnd SLAM, a selection of prose, and one of her notorious persona poems, "Just Cause," which is written from the voice of an incipient revolution.
Thus, Tiny Chasm is about the value of things that seem insignificant but are intrinsically essential.
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 7 June 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9908649-3-6
LoC Control No.: 2016932683
Catalogue No.: 39WP-10
Pages: 132 pages
Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.3093 inches
Undiscovered Paladins
Westward Rhymes Revisited
by j.d.tulloch
Overview:
In his most definitive collection of poetry to date, j.d.tulloch deliberately revisits his previously published Road Rhymes, reworking and synthesizing the truly essential ones with a generous selection of new poems.
Undiscovered Paladins: Westward Rhymes Revisited emerges in the present but never overlooks (nor fails to consider) the intertwined nature of its fleeting past and immutable future, which courtesy of current technologies are now etched together on the Internet for electronic eternity. It embodies the spirit of existentialism, prospecting everyday life west of the Mississippi for an authentic American Dream while simultaneously chronicling the absurdity of the American Reality: being human in the twenty-first century.
From the political correctness amok of progressive Portland to the narcissistic quest for celebrity during pilot season in Hollywood, from the ostensible permanence of the regal redwoods of Humboldt County to the fleeting tides of the pristine beaches of San Diego, and from the tech-generated, data-mined wealth inequality of San Francisco to the addiction-fed rampant greed of Las Vegas, these interconnected poems rely on j.d.tulloch’s autonomous voice—which employs melodic rhythm and language, vibrant imagery, and inspired acumen—to carefully guide the reader through snapshots of time that capture both the majestic beauty and ruthless brutality of the modern, American West.
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 20 October 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9908649-1-2
LoC Control No.: 2015915015
Catalogue No.: 39WP-09
Pages: 168 pages
Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.388 inches
Fringes
Overview:
In his latest collection of poems, scholar-poet Ricardo Quinones announces with little regret that last year's Finishing Touches did not quite live up to its name.
Other poems, some worthy of the best of his earlier volumes, obtruded, seeming to call for the special attention of a new volume: Fringes.
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 1 September 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9908649-2-9
LoC Control No.: 2015949086
Catalogue No.: 39WP-08
Pages: 40
Dimensions: 5 x 7 x 0.0958 inches
Finishing Touches
Overview:
From scholar-poet Ricardo Quinones comes his first collection of poetry since the critically-acclaimed A Sorting of the Ways: New and Selected Poems (2011). Finishing Touches, Quinones fourth book of poems, is a purposeful combination of the old and the new.
The old, represented by Teeming Americana, has its logic in history and opens itself to dramatization while the new, Station Crossings, tends more towards philosophical gatherings and the quests and the needs of character types. The line of difference is marked by the first of the new poems, where reality of events seems to contradict the mythography of poetry.
Presented in prose, "The Coda" is followed by a "defense of poésie," which then plays its part throughout the new poems. Thus, Station Crossings is made up of sections with two poems: the smaller, secondary one intended to counter, augment or disdain the primary, larger venture.
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 20 October 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9908649-0-5
LoC Control No.: 2014952288
Catalogue No.: 39WP-07
Pages: 88
Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.2108 inches
Neutral Receding Lines
Road Rhymes, Volume Two
by j.d.tulloch
Overview:
In this second Road Rhymes volume and sequel to 2011's Hypnotizing Lines: Road Rhymes, Volume One, j.d.tulloch reanimates a cast of characters unseen in one's daily stream: an unknown television guest star fixated on a quest for celebrity, an angry war vet bent on broadcasting his masculinity, and a recovering crack addict whose wife chooses rock over life ... plus ministers, hipsters, and half-naked strippers.
Neutral Receding Lines: Road Rhymes, Volume Two occurs in the moment, frolicking with rhythm and language in a chorus of ephemeral, observational tales of consciousness and conscience that explore the juxtaposition of fame and poverty, security and homelessness, dreams and reality, and freedom and addiction.
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 19 February 2013
ISBN: 978-0-615-76981-3
LoC Control No.: 2013933064
Catalogue No.: 39WP-06
Pages: 90
Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.2155 inches
Hypnotizing Lines
Road Rhymes, Volume One
by j.d.tulloch
Overview:
In August 2010, j.d.tulloch and his reliable traveling companion, a 1997 Lincoln Town Car, embarked on what has evolved into a fifty-thousand-plus mile journey, trekking westward--and then eastward--on a noble quest of inspiration, an escapade of adventure, in search of an American Dream that once hearkened the spirits of forgotten voyagers who beckoned him from afar as Horace Greeley loudly whispered in his ear, "Go west, young man ... Go west."
Hypnotizing Lines: Road Rhymes, Volume One, the much-anticipated follow-up to j.d.tulloch's debut volume of poems, The Will to Resist: and psalms of anger, love & humanity, chronicles the first four months of his time on the road in poems that root themselves in the American landscape.
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 7 August 2011
ISBN: 978-0-615-52220-3
LoC Control No.: 2011935808
Catalogue No.: 39WP-05
Pages: 90
Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.2155 inches
A Sorting of the Ways
New and Selected Poems
Overview:
Following his break-through first volume of poems, Through the Years (2010), and its successor, Roberta and Other Poems (2011), Ricardo Quinones has upped the ante with a generous selection from those earlier volumes and additions from a ready supply of new poems presented here.
A Sorting of the Ways: New and Selected Poems contains such poems as "The Grafting Tree," a mythical marriage between a giant oak and a chair; "Ten and More," the record of a ten-year-old's deflating experience of the Korean War after the jubilation of 1945 and the end of WWII; "To Pick a Penny," another far-reaching poem about the magic qualities of a penny; and "Spoiler Speech," the fragile hold of civilized consciousness against the uprising of a primitive rage. The volume also announces the demise of the popular "Wallet Poems," mainly by virtue of their own superabundance and their replacement by a new kind of verse, "Bloc Notes."
In the poem "A New Beginning," Quinones takes the gamble of expressing his own philosophical and moral desideratum as to the nature of art and society, thus enacting his belief that at sometime a writer-poet must come to grips with those things he thinks essential if a society is to be reborn.
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 1 July 2011
ISBN: 978-0-615-50464-3
LoC Control No.: 2011932739
Catalogue No.: 39WP-04
Pages: 122
Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.2879 inches
Roberta and Other Poems
Overview:
Ricardo Quinones has followed his first volume of poems, Through the Years (2010), with a second, dedicated in large part to his wife, Roberta. Unlike other such volumes of personal interest, these poems begin with specific qualities that are then raised to the general. The poem 'Odalisque' transfigures women, even in their sexual composure, into the sources of culture and civilization. Several of the poems are humorous, such as the one describing the couple's futile attempts to set aside Tuesday as a day of abstinence. All of the poems in Roberta are rich in historical allusions.
The second part of the volume contains a philosophical poem, 'Rocks and Their Fellow Travelers,' which begins with the premise that nowhere in the Bible does it say that God created rocks and then proceeds to compare the nature of these anti-gods with Satan, Esau, Sisyphus, Iago, and Goneril (from King Lear). The volume adds to the very popular 'Wallet Poems' from Through the Years and then finishes with 'Profanities,' a poem that the late poet and critic Aino Passonen of Santa Monica declared made Quinones "a major American poet."
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 21 March 2011
ISBN: 978-0-615-46249-3
Catalogue No.: 39WP-03
Pages: 40
Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.0958 inches
The Will to Resist
and psalms of anger, love & humanity
by j.d.tulloch
Overview:
In his first published collection of poetry, The Will to Resist: and psalms of anger, love & humanity, j.d.tulloch asks the reader to momentarily transcend themselves and take a journey through American life in search of the existence of a selfless love that hides itself somewhere within the materialistic excess of an American popular and corporate culture that seems to tame our will to resist by teaching desire can become reality if one chases, captures, and possesses everything possible, as if our spiritual survival singularly subsisted on sadly serving selfish individualism, narcissistic need, and egocentric fantasy.
What happened to the will to resist?
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 14 December 2010
ISBN: 978-0-615-39361-2
LoC Control No.: 2010910434
Catalogue No.: 39WP-02
Pages: 80
Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.1916 inches
Through the Years
Overview:
Written over the last ten years, Ricardo Quinones' debut book of poems, Through the Years, is a mixture of regular and irregular forms, with subject matter ranging from Kansas to Southern California. The sometimes jaunty and sometimes meditative poems seek to use common words in an uncommon way, mixing humor with seriousness.
But many poems are philosophical, or deeply psychological, such as "Why Do Grown Men Weep?" and "The American Writer," while others border on the religious: "Desert Bloom" and "Oil and Water." The volume contains new sections called "Wallet Poems"--poems dealing with day-to-day subjects that are meant to be carried with you.
Mr. Quinones' poems skillfully vary in their reflectiveness, ultimately making the collection practically impossible to summarize.
Product Details
Paperback
Publication Date: 30 November 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9908649-1-2
LoC Control No.: 2010940188
Catalogue No.: 39WP-01
Pages: 76
Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.182 inches