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Second Volume from Encyclomedia
Encyclopedia Volume 2, F-K
Tisa Bryant, Miranda Mellis and Kate Schatz, Editors
$25 | cloth | 400 pp.
Encyclomedia
ISBN: 9780977344314

Fiction. Drama. Poetry. Art. Literary Nonfiction. ENCYCLOPEDIA is a serial hardcover book project that presents a wide variety of approaches to narrative. Part reference book, part literary journal, each volume appropriates the form of the encyclopedia-from columns to cross-referencing-as a space for publishing new, innovative literary and visual works. This volume features over 209 entries by 193 talented folk, including "Fair" by Ronaldo V. Wilson, "Gonzalez Torres, Felix" by Amra Brooks, "Hir" by Eleni Stecopoulos, "Inference" by Derek White, "Jumper" by Samiya Bashir, "Korea" by Sueyuen Juliette Lee and much more! The full-color Artist Portfolio includes Tammy Rae Carland, John Caserta, Krista Franklin, Sam Lopes, and Amy Trachtenburg. LINK→

Ultimate Volume from Mode A/This Press
The Grand Piano: Part 10
Bob Perelman, Barrett Watten, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Tom Mandel, Ron Silliman, Kit Robinson, Lyn Hejinian, Rae Armantrout, Ted Pearson
$12.95 | paper | 269 pp.
Mode A/This Press
ISBN: 9780979019890

Literary Nonfiction. Biography and Memoir. PART 10 is the final installment of the Grand Piano "experiment." This volume draws some of its themes from experimental music, current Amercian politics, newspaper headlines, and an array of influnces (Kathy Acker, Lorenzo Thomas, Laura (Riding) Jackson, Robert Grenier, Larry Eigner, Clark Coolidge). At the same time, almost all the pieces of the ending volume make some kind of return to the complicated impulses that initally launched the project: autobiography, resistance to autobiography, writing, language-as-such, memory, time, and especially the rich historical meeting point of these ten authors in the Bay Area literary scene(s) of the 1970s. LINK→

New Illustrated Culinary History from El L�on
Foodoodles: From the Museum of Culinary History
L. John Harris
$24.95 | cloth | 147 pp.
El L�on Literary Arts
ISBN: 9780979528569

Literary Nonfiction. Art. Memoir. California History. The first battles of the American food revolution were fought in Berkeley, California, in the 1970s. In the trenches was art student L. John Harris who worked at several of the revolution's founding institutions, including the Cheese Board and Chez Panisse. Now Harris celebrates and skewers American foodie culture with over 90 gastronomically-incorrect cartoons and curatorial/memoirist commentaries from his mus�e imaginaire, the Museum of Culinary History. Foreword by Chef Jeremiah Tower. SEE SAMPLE CARTOONS→

New Fiction from Solid Objects
Gojira, King of the Monsters
Jim Shepard
$12 | paper | 56 pp.
Solid Objects
ISBN: 9780984414215

Fiction. "A perfect embodiment of mid-20th-century anxiety, GOJIRA, KING OF THE MONSTERS touches on hubris and nuclear testing, lunatic perfectionism and fire-tornadoes and the schisms wrought by grief and silence. In Jim Shepard's deft and darkly brilliant tale about the Master of Miniatures behind a legendary film, the complexities of creating a monster and shooting special effects resonate exactly with one man's inner life. No one writes like Shepard, quietly layering loss over loss-and no one orchestrates catastrophe better"-Andrea Barrett. "This is a poignant and important story that seems to me a summation and condensation of many themes that have preoccupied Shepard before. Like a diamond held aloft, each turn of this tale in his deft hand flashes still more light"-Ron Hansen. LINK→

New Fiction from sunnyoutside
The Really Funny Thing About Apathy
Chelsea Martin
$13 | paper | 68 pp.
sunnyoutside
ISBN: 9781934513248

Fiction. In THE REALLY FUNNY THING ABOUT APATHY, Chelsea Martin's charming but merciless prose employs mathematical paradoxes and theories of infinity to examine the inner workings of the bored and culturally over-stimulated while they idly consider the meaning of life. Overwhelmed and assaulted by their own inner monologues, these characters stumble through a series of external events, obsessing over the possible connections and ultimately assigning deep meaning to them. LINK→

New Poetry from Ugly Duckling Presse
Greensward
Cole Swensen
$14 | paper | 64 pp.
Ugly Duckling Presse
ISBN: 9781933254654

Poetry. Art. GREENSWARD looks at the interaction between animals, humans, and gardens. Often playful, it explores the question of whether animals other than humans have an aesthetic sense, posits that they do, and suggests that they develop it through watching humans garden. The short sections of poetry and prose, sometimes plainspoken, sometimes poised precariously on the line between sense and non-sense, are dovetailed into engravings of 18th century gardens by the artist John Roque. Graphic artist Shari DeGraw and poet Cole Swensen collaborated on excerpting elements from the garden maps and playing with scale and patterning to create a conversation between the visual and verbal elements. Two well-known 18th century garden designers also make cameo appearances, giving the text a historical sweep from the heyday of the English landscape garden to the present. Publication of this title made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. LINK→

New Poetry from Letter Machine Editions
This Isa Nice Neighborhood
Farid Matuk
$14 | paper | 160 pp.
Letter Machine Editions
ISBN: 9780981522753

Poetry. Can identity be pliant and penetrable? Can the speech act be one of attention over intention, can play and fluidity open onto an ethic? THIS ISA NICE NEIGHBORHOOD, Farid Matuk's first full-length collection, says yes. Yes to the rejection of any opposition between politics and aesthetics, between rhetoric and poetics. Yes to vulnerability. Yes to a poetry willing to enact the errors, uncertainties, and tangled complexities of our political, sexual, and social lives. Testing both narrative and lyric, Matuk finds desire at the root of each, a root from which, these poems suggest, compassion and permission grow intertwined. LINK→

New Poetry from Litmus Press
Beauport
Kate Colby
$15 | paper | 73 pp.
Litmus Press
ISBN: 9781933959115

Poetry. "Kate Colby's BEAUPORT opens windows framing history framing natural and unnatural settings (traffic, waves, skylines, sky). The work presents a series of displacements, smoke and mirror memory experiments, stitching together with anachronism the physical and the metaphysical. This is a fascinating book, composing and collapsing (wing, telescope), foregrounding subject, object and sightlines in between. With its architecture of vignettes, lullabies, hymns and fragments, Colby's BEAUPORT constructs resistances, ever confronting its considered grace and precision in ripples of savory humors"-Norma Cole. LINK→

New Poetry from Astrophil Press
The Botanical Garden
Ellen Welcker
$12.95 | paper | 68 pp.
Astrophil Press
ISBN: 9780982225233

Poetry. Winner of the 2009 Astrophil Poetry Prize. Foreword by Eleni Sikelianos. "I feel so grateful to live in a world that has books such as THE BOTANICAL GARDEN. Lyric elegy, futuristic science fiction, aliens and whales, Oulipian listing. It is all here in this beautifully moving book"-Juliana Spahr. LINK→

New Poetry from Octopus Books
Where We Think It Should Go
Claire Becker
$12 | paper | 75 pp.
Octopus Books
ISBN: 9780980193848

Poetry. "Poems should go to where we think, which means that they often end up in the loneliest, most impossible places. (California'll do, but there are others.) Once, when I was a little kid, I burned my hand with our car's cigarette lighter while my mom was busy paying for the gas she'd just pumped. I remember the meaty stench, the little crop circle in my palm, but mostly I remember wanting badly to know a thing, a thing that sped off as quickly as it came, maybe quicker. Claire Becker's poems seem both driven by that impulse and in love with that result. They've got a throb at which it's hard not to wonder and, like more than one of us, an aching oddball soul"-Graham Foust. LINK→

New Poetry from Les Figues Press
The New Poetics
Mathew Timmons
$15 | paper | 112 pp.
Les Figues Press
ISBN: 9781934254158

Poetry. A cross-referenced encyclopedia of all things New, Mathew Timmons's THE NEW POETICS challenges the prevailing obsession with the emergent and the reinvented by remaking The New itself in the image of the banal. Employing techniques of collage and appropriation, Timmons explores the endless repetition and recapitulation inherent in a language constructed from signs, signifiers, memes, short-hands, ready-made phrases and the vast wash of pop-culture paraphernalia. Written with poetics as both subject and approach, but in rambling prose paragraphs and breathless, run-on sentences, THE NEW POETICS simultaneously critiques and reenacts the search for the ever-desirable and ever-elusive New in the rubble of convention. LINK→

New Poetry from Roof Books
Scented Rushes
Nada Gordon
$13.95 | paper | 103 pp.
Roof Books
ISBN: 9781931824408

Poetry. "Is poetry alive? It is part of the human body and seems to look like the human mind. But it is almost never as lively, voluptuous, dancing as these poems of Nada Gordon. She seems to be using her own dictionary and idiolect and innocence. Her work is a cadenza ad lib and seems unflawed as a Bollywood movie unfolds with increasing intensity. This is some of the freshest work of her generation: she helps create the new comedy, where jokes are not needed to be happy. She has what a painter once told me was absolutely necessary: shamelessness. This is like rock and roll from another planet for another time"-David Shapiro. LINK→

New Poetry in Translation from Talisman House
Rosestrikes and Coffee Grinds
Seyhan Er�z�elik
$14.95 | paper | 116 pp.
Talisman House
ISBN: 9781584980735

Poetry. Translated from the Turkish by Murat Nemet-Nejat. Seyhan Er�z�elik's G�l ve Telve (ROSESTRIKES AND COFFEE GRINDS) is one of the major works of Turkish poetry in the last twenty years. In it, two strands of the Turkish culture and history come together. The "Telve" section, which consists of twenty-four coffee grounds readings, spins a Shamanistic yarn of hope and desire going back to Central Asian animistic traditions and bringing their language to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The "G�l" section, which also consists of twenty-four poems, creates stunning variations around the image of the rose-a central image in Islam and in Sufism-mirroring the "Telve" section, the two parts together making a poetent, poetic statement. LINK→

New Poetry from Slope Editions
Our Chrome Arms of Gymnasium
Crystal Curry
$14.95 | paper | 96 pp.
Slope Editions
ISBN: 9780977769858

Poetry. Written through a dark time, Curry's poems in OUR CHROME ARMS OF GYMNASIUM navigate, as she says, "sexual communication and logic and the breakdown that occurs when people are perceiving different realities and trying to make sex, love and relationships work." She approaches this cavernous struggle with, in her words, "glee and mania" and breathes a fresh breath into formal meter. LINK→

New Poetry from Furniture Press Books
Heraclitean Pride
Magus Magnus
$14 | paper | 100 pp.
Furniture Press Books
ISBN: 9780982629925

Poetry. "Reading Magnus's HERACLITEAN PRIDE, one is reminded of Fragment 115: 'To the soul belongs a Logos that increases itself.' Magnus's approach increases the logos, and through that increase fashions perspectives from which to engage Heraclitus' philosophy. His is not a traditional interpretation but a journey that is simultaneously a piercing through. In that respect, Magnus's account truly combines two meanings of 'traversing' to fashion a standpoint of plenitude. I believe his success in thus traversing stems from a powerful and daring insight about Heraclitus: 'Previous analyses and impact don?t constitute its history, it?s not over.' For Magnus, the philosophy of Heraclitus is not over. Instead, he relates to Heraclitus in the moment when Heraclitus touches Magnus's own Logos and thus Magnus overcomes the danger against which Heraclitus warns in Fragment 72, for Magnus's account is never separated from that with which he is most in contact. This work is essential reading for serious inquiry into the great Sage from Ephesus"-Anne Ashbaugh, Chair, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Towson University. LINK→

New Poetry from Fence Books
Nick Demske
Nick Demske
$16 | paper | 88 pp.
Fence Books
ISBN: 9781934200391

Poetry. Love poems to the "bad," composed in the idiom of clich�, conceptualized as self-portraits, alive in the historically awesome, presently bankrupt form of the sonnet, these debut poems obsess, as do all dead white men, over big, common social constructs like race, gender, and sexuality. Demske employs himself with yet is repulsed by categorization: Fake and Real. He desensitizes your obscenity-mometer. LINK→

New Poetry from Shearsman Books
Collected Poems
Karin Lessing
$22 | paper | 224 pp.
Shearsman Books
ISBN: 9781848611313

Poetry. Karin Lessing-born in Germany, raised in the USA, resident for decades in France-is one of those poets who exist outisde the tides of literary fashion, and indeed beyond the ken of most readers, although she has a devoted band of supporters, among whom Shearsman Books must be counted. Her last two collections were published by Shearsman (IN THE AVIARY OF VOICES and THE WINTER DREAM JOURNALS), and this survey of her entire writing career, which brings together all of her books plus a number of uncollected texts is vital to reaching an understanding of her work. LINK→

New Poetry from Book Thug
Fieldnotes, a Forensic
Kate Eichhorn
$18 | paper | 75 pp.
Book Thug
ISBN: 9781897388662

Poetry. FIELDNOTES, A FORENSIC charts one forensic anthropologist's series of descents in the first decade of the new millennium-a decade when forensic discourses and experts became ubiquitous in popular culture and on the daily news. But the edgy, passionate and erudite writer of these fieldnotes is no Temperance Brennan or Kathy Reichs. Part parody of popular discourses on the forensic anthropologist, part exegesis of the fieldnote genre, and part response to the natural and human catastrophes that unfolded during the writing of this book, Eichhorn's second collection continues to explore the poetics and affective dimensions of knowledge making at the edges of poetry and fiction. LINK→

New Poetry from Omnidawn
Present Tense
Anna Rabinowitz
$14.95 | paper | 96 pp.
Omnidawn
ISBN: 9781890650452

Poetry. PRESENT TENSE is a tour de force, a book-length poetic project that is anatomy, history, testimony, eulogy, and divining rod of our constantly evolving present. In four acts, Rabinowitz dramatizes not only our various socio-religious-political ecosystems but also the myriad echoes of those systems that resound in our psyches and permeate our thoughts. Through dialogue, reportage, Biblical reference, interview, famous speech, infamous cultural and historical events and more, Rabinowitz offers readers an arresting account of who and what we are as humans-in all of our darkness and our brilliance. This poetry-with its invigorating breadth and shocking immediacy-compels its readers' full engagement with the page, an interaction that incites us to examine our own position and potential in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of the actual, as we experience it moment by moment. LINK→

New Poetry from Alice James Books
Parable of Hide and Seek
Chad Sweeney
$15.95 | paper | 96 pp.
Alice James Books
ISBN: 9781882295821

Poetry. In this surreal expos� of the human condition, Chad Sweeney transforms intangible space into a poetic playground. Poems unveil secret worlds, ecstatically reinventing archetypes for the American landscape. This book charismatically delights in the ordinary, grounding readers in urgency balanced by wonder. "Chad Sweeney's poems are matryoshka dolls of imagination: strangeness inside longing inside charm. Relentlessly figurative, they read as dreamscapes and translations: if the human soul has peripheral vision, these poems are what it sees. And gentleness, gentleness abounds here and makes the point of fancy to unite, to bring one thing beside another and build a home of their touch"-Bob Hicok. LINK→

New Fiction from Swank Books
O Amazonas Escuro
Eugene K. Garber
$15 | paper | 266 pp.
Swank Books
ISBN: 9780974428888

Fiction. Latino/Latina Studies. The acclaimed ethnographer K lives with the Roirua-peo in their compound on the Amazon. After a successful period of study, both his work and tribe's survival are threatened by the persistent journeys upriver of evangelists, adventurers, artists, and the ideas of well-known philosophers. Eventually, the arrival of a Herzog-esque German filmmaker and his deranged and volatile star destroy the balance of tribal life and lead to a surprising-and irrevocable-climax. LINK→

New Fiction in Translation from Counterpath Press
Vacant Lot
Oliver Rohe
$14.95 | paper | 88 pp.
Counterpath Press
ISBN: 9781933996219

Fiction. Translated from the French by Laird Hunt. Set in a city much like Beirut in the aftermath of bloody civil war, a former mercenary relates his fate and that of others of his kind after the peace. The world is rapidly healing itself-people getting back to their lives, the city being rebuilt. But he is unable to leave the site his crimes. Rohe's narrative is striking in its understatement: much of the work's power lies in what's unsaid, what's hinted and inferred. Sentences run on and on or stop short as if they've reached a dead end. Repetition is a kind of entrenchment, a being stuck, perhaps in the density of poetry. LINK→

New Fiction from New Issues Poetry & Prose
Merit Badges
Kevin Fenton
$26 | cloth | 233 pp.
New Issues Poetry & Prose
ISBN: 9781930974951

Fiction. Winner of the AWP Prize for the Novel, judged by Jim Shepard. Follow four friends as they move from The Brady Bunch to Seinfeld, from junior high to middle management. There is Quint, whose rebellion frays into self-destruction; Slow, who struggles to become the world's first teenage father figure; Chimes, who fears losing his friends while picking up a 7-10 split; and Barb who escapes the conformity of Minnisapa only to find herself returning by dark of night. You will feel as if you've always lived in Minnisapa, Minnesota. And you will never underestimate nice kids from the Midwest again. LINK→

New Fiction Anthology from Bottom Dog Press
Degrees of Elevation: Short Stories of Contemporary Appalachia
Charles Dodd White and Page Seay, Editors
$18 | paper | 186 pp.
Bottom Dog Press
ISBN: 9781933964393

Fiction. "Hard, brilliant, and dark as coal, this brand new and necessary volume captures Appalachia today, a place where the old bedrock verities of family, community, belief, work, and the earth itself are all in painful "Upheaval"-to use the title of Chris Holbrook's story herein. From manic to elegiac to rough, raw, beautiful, and heartbreaking, these stories will strike the reader as both absolutely true and as unforgettable, like the high pure ring of an ax on a cold winter morning, vibrating across distance, hanging in the air long afterward"-Lee Smith. LINK→

New Fiction from Bilingual Press
The Scoundrel and the Optimist
Maceo Montoya
$18 | paper | 272 pp.
Bilingual Press
ISBN: 9781931010672

Fiction. Latino/Latina Studies. Nothing is easy when you are thirteen, and it's especially challenging when everyone thinks you're eight because you are tiny; your father is an abusive, tyrannical lout; your siblings are determined to strike out on their own to escape constant drunken rages; and your mother is deeply depressed. In THE SCOUNDREL AND THE OPTIMIST we meet Edmund, a hapless but irrepressible redheaded teen whose magnificent strength of spirit makes him a giant among men. Despite roadblocks and bad advice, Edmund is determined to win the heart of Ingrid Genera and to become a great guitar player. But his most notable accomplishment is teaching his father, Filastro, the value of integrity and optimism. After a prolonged episode of debauchery, Filastro discovers just how horrifying abuse is. Edmund nurses him back to health and in the process teaches him that love is mightier than fists and is worth great sacrifice. At once humorous and touching, THE SCOUNDREL AND THE OPTIMIST is a delightful read. LINK→

New Fiction from Seoul Selection
Once Around the Sun
Melanie Steyn
$7.95 | paper | 141 pp.
Seoul Selection
ISBN: 9788991913714

Fiction. Southeast Asia Studies. Melanie Steyn's new novella, ONCE AROUND THE SUN, marks a rare and insightful attempt by a foreign writer to recreate characters and lives in Korea's most intimate social unit: thefamily. Published at the end of September this year by English-language publisher Seoul Selection, ONCE AROUND THE SUN takes place in a seaside village in southwestern Korea's Jeollanam-do Province. It introduces the family of Yi Chang-joon, a fisherman; his wife, Yun-hwa; their daughter and son, Ji-young and Dong-ju; and Chang-joon's mother, Kyu-ah. In the course of the book?s four chapters, each one relating to one of the four seasons, Steyn introduces episodes in the lives of each family member with the exception of Chang-joon himself. One year thus passes, and the earth revolves once around the sun. LINK→

New Memoir from RAW ArT PRESS
Salt and Paper: 65 Candles
Janell Moon
$15 | paper | 192 pp.
RAW ArT PRESS
ISBN: 9780981953427

Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. SALT AND PAPER is a daily reflection that is immediate and an accumulation of life experience in poetry and prose fragments placing a heartfelt, yet realistic light on difficult subjects as the author speaks of aging: a friend's slow demise with Alzheimer's; the lifelong effect of a brother's mental illness; the present, lived aging process; the interlacing of four generations-and, the creative, writing life that responds with compassion, humor, art. LINK→

New Art Reference from Benu Press
Bridges in the Mind: An Artist's Handbook for Everyday Living
Marianne Roccaforte
$16.95 | paper | 216 pp.
Benu Press
ISBN: 9780981516356

Literary Nonfiction. Art. Psychology. Finally-someone is saying what successful artists have always known. This practical book helps the creative mind to thrive, not just survive, in the everyday world. A systematic approach to the fascinating and complex topic of the artist's imagination as revealed in ordinary situations is explored in Dr. Marianne Roccaforte's useful, honest, and encouraging book. Drawing on well-grounded psychological research and theory-and informed by years of direct experience counseling and teaching college-student artists-Dr. Roccaforte examines the realities, delights, and challenges of having a strong sense of wonder and an imagination that's constantly "on." In a tone that both honors and guides the reader, the author weaves in voices of successful writers, visual artists, musicians, actors, and dancers, and offers easy-to-practice techniques for such situations as transitioning from an absorbing session of art-making, communicating effectively in social and business settings, managing intense sensory and emotional experience, and sustaining a healthy and active creative life. Insightful and applicable for any person possessing an artistic sensibility-as well as for parents and teachers of young artists-this book enlightens, validates, and empowers, ultimately helping to build new bridges of understanding. LINK→

New Poetry from Copper Canyon Press
One with Others: [a little book of her days]
C. D. Wright
$20 | cloth | 160 pp.
Copper Canyon Press
ISBN: 9781556593246

Poetry. Investigative journalism is the poet's realm when C.D. Wright returns to her native Arkansas and examines an explosive incident from the Civil Rights movement. Wright interweaves oral histories, hymns, lists, newspaper accounts, and personal memories-especially those of her incandescent mentor, Mrs. Vititow-with the voices of witnesses, neighbors, police, activists, and black students who were rounded up and detained in an empty public swimming pool. This history leaps howling off the page. LINK→

New Poetry from Tupelo Press
Then, Something
Patricia Fargnoli
$16.95 | paper | 76 pp.
Tupelo Press
ISBN: 9781932195798

Poetry. THEN, SOMETHING has won the Sheila Motton Book Award from the New England Poetry Club, the Silver Award for 2010 Poetry Book of the Year from ForeWord Magazine, the 2010 da Vinci Eye Award, and Honorable Mention for the 2010 Eric Hoffer Award. "Patricia Fargnoli...does not miss a stitch of beauty, neither does she avoid the darker aspects of our own human awareness of our continual aging, to which she gives sharp and poignant attention. I have been her champion since her first book Necessary Light was published, and I continue to be so"-Mary Oliver. LINK→

New Poetry from Greenhouse Review Press
Gathering the Pieces
Carol Lem
$15 | paper | 66 pp.
Greenhouse Review Press
ISBN: 9780965523929

Poetry. Asian American Studies. The poems in GATHERING THE PIECES are remarkable for their quiet insight and humility, for their keen attention to and transformation of the small details of a life. Carol Lem's is a true voice in sure command of her craft, and her clear and accessible vision gives us poems that reveal profound and essential understanding. Her themes are the transience of our lives and at the same time the beauty of nature that sustains us. Carol Lem's poems seem to rise from love-of friends, teachers, the art of teaching, the art of learning, and music, the bamboo flute, the notes, the silence between them, the hush at the end. Philip Levine, in a lovely tribute poem, tells the poet she "knows what work is" and "how to do it." The "work" of writing poetry is as ordinary as a day shift and, at the same time, fundamentally mysterious. Carol Lem knows how to do it. LINK→

New Poetry from Anhinga Press
Like Happiness
Michael Hettich
$17 | paper | 64 pp.
Anhinga Press
ISBN: 9781934695203

Poetry. "Michael Hettich's poems are like grace, like gifts, like the natural world made Technicolor, like Technicolor making the natural world. He is a master of the simile, and in Like Happiness, he harnesses a specific and collective memory, the power of myth and allusion, like no one else. His poems give his readers a deep happiness, an earned happiness, a happiness decided upon with clarity and wisdom"-Denise Duhamel. LINK→

New Poetry in Translation from Host Publications
Over Autumn Rooftops
Hai Zi
$15 | paper | 271 pp.
Host Publications
ISBN: 9780924047763

Poetry. East Asia Studies. Translated from the Chinese by Dan Murphy. In the six years prior to his death, Hai Zi wrote over 250 short poems, a number of poetic plays, long poems totaling over 400 pages, and several short stories. His verse illuminates the poverty and desperation of his peasant upbringing, reflects on China's literary and cultural history, and touches down on the grasslands and wheat fields of western China, but he is not simply a cultural poet or a nature poet-his poetry transcends all of this. In OVER AUTUMN ROOFTOPS, Host Publications is proud to make available to English-speaking audiences the work of this profound and beloved poet. LINK→

New Poetry from epic rites press
there's a fist dunked in blood beating in my chest
Rob Plath
$15.50 | paper | 179 pp.
epic rites press
ISBN: 9781926860022

Poetry. Plath's first feature book release, A BELLYFUL OF ANARCHY, was released in 2009 by Epic Rites Press. If A BELLYFUL OF ANARCHY was Plath's monster, then THERE'S A FIST DUNKED IN BLOOD BEATING IN MY CHEST is the monstrous bride of the creature. Eighty-two new poems by Plath are presented in this volume, with an additional six poems riding shotgun in the footer of every page. LINK→

New Poetry from Poetic Matrix Press
Baker of Tarifa
Shadab Zeest Hashmi
$15 | paper | 66 pp.
Poetic Matrix Press
ISBN: 9780982734346

Poetry. Middle Eastern Studies. "Al Andalus-a unique cultural convergence in human time where myth hovers the way moths are drawn to lampshine, and in her luminous, spare language, Shadab Zeest Hashmi catches its essence: attar of memory, the perfume of peace, sweet rising dough of dailiness; at the end, smoke rising, the reek of war, useless keys, exile, sorrow distilled and deepened by the presence-in these deeply felt, lovely poems-of what feels newly lost"-Eleanor Wilner. LINK→

New Poetry from Spuyten Duyvil
Slaughtering the Buddha
Gordon Osing
$15 | paper | 90 pp.
Spuyten Duyvil
ISBN: 9781933132822

Poetry. Osing here draws on the Mississippi Delta blues tradition as well as the tradition of his own schooling in Chinese literature and American Poetics to advance his understanding of the aging man of letters. Informal in its appreciation of formulaic memories, the volume comprises an elegaic tone while mounting the vicissitudes and caprice of the still surrounding world. LINK→

New Poetry from Quale Press
Jargon
Brian Clements
$14 | paper | 132 pp.
Quale Press
ISBN: 9781935835004

Poetry. All too aware of language's inability to reveal real answers or to calm the cold and hard world we inhabit, in JARGON Brian Clements nonetheless revels in the places where we settle into "language's sly do-overs," into meaning-communication, identity, the making of art, religion and its replacements, each other-hoping to emerge from the dark places of the universe (e quindi uscimmo) to see again sunlight. The prose poems in JARGON are haunted by the ghosts of form, rhetoric, narrative, argument-the cultural forms that make the world familiar yet tend to abandon us when we need them most (such as in times of war, or in times of economic collapse). Like its prequel, AND HOW TO END IT (Quale Press, 2009), this book seems to rise ab nihilo in search of a beginning and an end-a cause and a purpose. LINK→

New Poetry from Mayapple Press
The Other Place You Live
Jane O. Wayne
$14.95 | paper | 80 pp.
Mayapple Press
ISBN: 9780932412973

Poetry. Jane O. Wayne's THE OTHER PLACE YOU LIVE explores "the world's slow unwinding" with insight and lyric grace. With characteristic intensity of language and a bounty of imagery, she reveals those other places wherever she is in the world. The poems move effortlessly from metaphor to metaphor, gradually building an atmosphere of dark disquiet, then suddenly revealing, as by moonlight, the burnished joy at the heart of things. This is a book of serious riches and profound human pleasures. LINK→

New Poetry from NYQ Books
The Last Lie
Tony Gloeggler
$16.95 | paper | 140 pp.
NYQ Books
ISBN: 9781935520153

Poetry. Using deceptively simple lines that raise common life events to art, Tony Gloeggler fills his new collection, THE LAST LIE, with people who don't fit in easily, naturally. It's a book about the quiet ones, the ones you don't notice, the ones who never raise their hands to volunteer, shoot up a classroom or do a victory lap after making the game winning play. They don't blame their parents for anything, and they never learned how to walk across a crowded room to talk to a pretty woman or how to ever ask anyone for help. It's how they go through the days trying to find places and people, no sorry, just one person, that can help them feel at home with themselves. It's all about loss, love, loneliness, lust, the power of memory and what's wished for and missed. THE LAST LIE is about your life. Exactly. Only different. Worse. Better. LINK→

New Poetry from BlazeVOX Books
Alice Ages and Ages
Sarah White
$16 | paper | 76 pp.
BlazeVOX Books
ISBN: 9781609640286

Poetry. "Never in American letters, before ALICE AGES AND AGES, have we seen a thigh at once so elegant and portentous. Upon its surface a filigree of web-like veins-empurpled, cerulean, blood-red, according to certain gradations of self-regard and fear. Where will we find its meaning? Deep-rooted in Alice's flesh? In its mirror image? Behind the looking glass in the specular world? If anyone knows, Sarah White does. Follow her words toward the heart of this spidery labyrinth. Stay always alert"-Eugene Garber. LINK→

Congratulations to National Book Award Winner Jaimy Gordon!
Jaimy won for her new novel, Lord of Misrule, from McPherson & Co.
(not available from SPD). Here are our very last copies of an early work.
Circumspections from an Equestrian Statue
Jaimy Gordon
$14 | paper | 76 pp.
Burning Deck
Pub date: June 1979
ISBN: 0930900782

Fiction. Last copies. Early novella by National Book Award winner Jaimy Gordon. Frontispiece and five ornamental initials by Dennis Hlynski. "CIRCUMSPECTIONS FROM AN EQUESTRIAN STATUE in length between a story and a novel, is one of her most delightful works. It has a precise historical setting: General Burnside has returned from the American Civil War (he was the North's worst general, by some margin) to build his house, be elected governor of Rhode Island, and become famous for the cut of his whiskers ('sideburns'). Having, after four years of marriage, no child, he engages P. Mariam Wishey, 'pioneer of gynecology,' to examine his wife. (I would like to think Wishey is historical, but I've yet to find a reference to him.) This situation is complicated by the ghost of Burnside's nephew, who disappeared during the battle of Fredericksburg-the General's great fiasco-and by the fact that Mrs. Burnside is not (as everyone in the story seems to assume) asexual. It is a tightly constructed and very funny story in limpid prose"-Keith Waldrop. LINK→

SPD's Year-End Open House is in Berkeley, California, Sunday, December 5. If you'll be able to join us at our warehouse, we'd love to have you. Click here for details.