Micah Towery's poems are little miracles of lyric intelligence pitched against a skeptic's need for faith: faith in God, faith in other people, faith in love, and faith that daily life means more than its repetitions and its downward spiral toward death. His devotion to the clear expression of such mixed emotions is reflected in how these poems are by turns satiric, tender, self-deprecating, and vulnerable. And as if to match this wide range of tone, his idiom is among the most varied and surprising of any writer of his generation: he moves from high style to plain style with the assurance of O'Hara and Bishop at their best. I greatly admire the integrity of feeling in these poems, their sophistication, and their devotion to subjects that are large and important and deeply felt.-Tom Sleigh, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award One of these poems] figures God's face as a hammer, and I'm tempted to apply the same metaphor to Towery's craft. It could be either the ball peen of an industrial worker or else a sculptor's hammer, one that overcomes the resistance of metallic or stony material....With the hammer of his art, this poet has knocked on the firmament, and the firmament has opened. If the light he found there was not fully comprehended, neither was it engulfed in darkness. The light he saw, he relays to us in turn. -Alfred Corn, from the introduction I predict in the coming weeks months years we'll all say one thing about Whale of Desire: this is the book we've been waiting, anxiously, to appear on the scenes. Part Confession (a la Augustine), part pyrrhonism skepticism, part mythical, completely contemporary, Towery's debut collection is the grittiest prayer: "may they find us too heavy-May they leave us to our ways-May we become two fattened saints stupid with prayer." -Metta S ma, author of Nocturne Trio (YesYes B ks) Artists of the great spirit such as Saint Augustine, or Rumi, or John Coltrane, know the space between the invisible and the visible is what we make. In this slim book of lyrics and portraits Micah Towery laces up the profound from the mundane and daily detritus of work and loss and love, to take us to someplace healing, inside an old yet new kind of choreography: "I counterpoint even hands to fingers, choose instead, no word for sorrow." -Sean Thomas Dougherty, author of All You Ask for Is Longing (BOA Editions)

Whale of Desire

Literature & Fiction

Towery, Micah

Poetry

Redux Consortium

The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets combines Maria Mazziotti Gillan's unique gifts as a visual artist with her already internationally known and prize winning poetry. Gillan’s imagination, whimsical sense of line and vibrant use of colors shine forth through this beautiful picture book in a manner that both compliments and contrasts with the wonderful poems. While the poetry offers moving narratives of people and events taken directly from Gillan's life, the paintings are the flip side of that record--deeply joyous, even gleeful depictions of the artist's rich, sometimes dream like inner world. Readers of her poetry have long known Gillan as a fearless witness to the challenges of class, gender and ethnicity. Her eyes have always been wide open to the sometimes difficult truths of her world. But in The Girl with The Chartreuse Jackets Maria Mazziotti Gillan has shown that her eyes are equally open to whimsy and to the dance of the imagination. This is a mature poet who has come full circle to meet a brilliant child/artist. The Girls in The Chartreuse Jackets is an essential book for anyone who wants to know the full range of Maria Mazziotti Gillan's--both as poet and as artist.

The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets

Gillan, Maria Mazziotti

A collaborative time-piece, part poetry part poetic image, poised in the Arctic but dislocating in place and in history; a meditation on nostalgia, sickness and life, on the nostalgia inherent in the lyric tradition, darkened and obscured and obscuring cultural and ecological loss; of voices, personal and elemental, narratives imposing and superimposed, conflicting; and the wild, clear light of the Midnight sun, imperial beyond a militant age, the Arctic midnight whose beautiful virtue is mourning turning into morning.

Midnight Elegies

Colbert, Ian

Colbert, Maile

Lyrical Grain, Doggerel Chaff, &amp; Pedestrian Preoccupations will remind you that everything -- waste paper emerging from melting snow in a lot, the memory of midnights in bus shelters at twenty below, tangled skeins of work places that read like a manual on how to survive without really suffocating, spectacles of solidarity with those who have nothing to give but themselves -- is, by far and away, worth our time and reflection. Accompany Roskos to, for instance, the Laundromat where on this particular occasion successive buffers of bad luck pinball him through so many twists and turns we almost lose sight of the equanimity of the human spirit and the humor that often informs moments of loss. Hunch down next to him in the shadow of the nacreous wall as he pulls the crushed pack from his coat and regards it with what amounts to a curious mixture of distaste and forbearance before looking you straight in the eye and asking the question he’s asked so many times it’s taken on air of guarded expectance, taps once, twice, allows your own hand to make the next move. -- Tom Kryss

Lyrical Grain, Doggerrel Chaff, & Pedestrian Preoccupations (Black & White)

Roskos, Dave

An anthology of new U.S. fiction and nonfiction, as well as transnational writing. A wide variety of fiction writers and essayists describe what it means to be American in a world of changing borders. A bright showcase of progressive literary style, personality and content. Contributors include Tope Folarin, Alia Yunis, Maurice Emerson Decaul, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, Patricia Park, Sonny Singh, Aisha Sabatani Sloan, Zeeva Bukai, Courtney Zoffness, and others.

Out of Many: Multiplicity And Divisions In America Today

Goodison Ph.D., Drs. Camille and Racquel