—New To The Society’s Shelves—

Mark Young, Your Order Is Now Equipped For Shipping, Sandy Press, 2022
Editor and publisher of the online omnibus art and poetry vortex, Otoliths, Mark Young has his finger on the pulse contemporary poetry internationally. His latest selection of poems is as timely and relevant as anything being written today. He is truly a modern poet in every sense of the word. His wide erudition and knowledge of world poetics informs the subtle matter of his work which he delivers with sly humor in the daily musings of a poet totally engaged in his art. His Pelican Dreaming (Meritage Press, 2008) holds a permanent spot on the Society’s shelves. It is now joined by its new companion to vibrate in tandem a specific poetic aura.

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Daniel Coshnear, Separation Anxiety, Unsolicited Press, 2021.
In Coshnear’s latest selection of stories and short prose he once again takes a keen eye to the human condition with precision and kinetic energy. Winner of the Willa Cather Award for his 2001 Jobs & Other Preoccupations, Coshnear, a counselor at a group home for the homeless and psychiatric clients, uses his up close and personal experience to delve into the inner workings of the other by deftly detailing the mannerisms that sometimes speak louder than words. His stories and dialogues all begin with the snap of an E. B. White opening sentence and hook the reader with their immediacy.

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Kit Robinson, Quarantina, Lavender Ink, 2022; Kit Robinson & Ted Greenwald, Takeaway, c_L Books, 2013.
Robinson is a poet of the declarative, there is no mistaking his intent even in something that can be as ambiguous as a poem. Quarantina was written during the pandemic and while the world entered a masked and locked down cautionary phase, Robinson kept the energy up with these reflective ruminations, both expressive and conclusive. Takeaway, with the late Ted Greenwald, were collaborations that sought to capture the spirit of  Japanese linked verse (haikai no renga) in which each of the participants takes a turn alternating between a three line and two line verses to create a sequence that can be read as a narrative, or not. It is not an easy form to master especially by those schooled in Western prosody. Even the illustrious Octavio Paz in his Renga: A Chain of Poems could not grasp its essential anti-authorial non-narrative poetic despite being locked in a basement with his collaborators for weeks! Takeaway is a valiant effort, nonetheless, and obviously an enjoyable way to explore a curious non-Western verse form.

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Lucille Friesen, Under The Southern Cross, private printing, ND.
World traveler, citizen of Montreal, co-founder of the legendary used bookstore, The Word, near McGill University in one of North America’s most cosmopolitan cities, Luci offers her lyric appreciation and love for the Chileans she met on her frequent sojourns to fabled Patagonia. “Dedicated to all the Chilenas and Chilenos who hugged me in friendship, who fed me with love, who played their guitars and sang for me, who taught me their history and read me their poetry, who were by my side.”

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Sandy Berrigan, A Slice Of The Pie, cover by Sam Berrigan, private printing, 2022.
Sandy Berrigan is one of those rare poets of “no pretense.” A Slice Of The Pie, the last of her privately published poetry chapbooks, once again proves that poems can be sentiments of the heart and don’t necessarily need to be cloying or faux profonde. Sandy has a gift and she shares it like a slice of pie. The concluding poem of this selection:

If I’m not on the wisdom path
by the time I’m 60,
I’ll just fake a good mood

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The Freedom of New Beginnings. Poems of Witness & Vision from Sonoma County
Phyllis Meshulam editor, with Gail King, Gwen O’Gara, & Terry Ehret, Poetry Crossing Press, 2022
A themed collection of poems edited by Sonoma County Poet Laureate Emerita Phyllis Meshulam featuring local poets Dave Seter, Ed Coletti, Kathleen Winter, among many others as well former Poet Laureates of Sonoma County including Mike Tuggle, David Bromige, Kathleen Hastings, Jonah Raskin, and current Poet Laureate Elizabeth Herron with cameo appearances by Joy Harjo, Jane Hirschfield, and Juan Filipe Herrera.  

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—Periodical Mentions—

The Poetry Project Newsletter  #270, 50^th Anniversary issue, Kay Gabriel, Bianca Messinger, Morgan Vō, eds. The Poetry Project Newsletter, like the Poetry Project itself, is an institution. It has gone from a few mimeograph sheets to offset pamphlet to tabloid newsprint and back and forth. Its latest iteration is of the newsprint variety with the wide open spaces of a newspaper with a full color cover of Joe Brainard’s Pansies featuring reminiscences by the original mimeographed newsletter editor Ron Padgett and a paean by Greg Masters to the mimeo machine that started it all. 

The Recluse (issue20) is a literary magazine by the Poetry Project staff features the same newsprint w/color cover format as the Newsletter ( “Shiv” by TM Davy) and showcases the young talent of young talent looking for their voices and the distinctiveness of comfortable unselfconscious mastery. Robert Gluck in a spillover from the Newsletter is joined by Jackie Ess and Luke Roberts on the leading edge. The Recluse seems like such an unlikely name for a publication at the center of the East Coast poetry vortex.

Rain Taxi, a quarterly book review from Minneapolis, the polar vortex of American poetry, is distributed to a local bookstore and can be easily acquired if bookstores are a frequent destination. The Fall 2022 Issue features a review of Dale Herd’s latest by Joe Safdie, and a review of Baudelaire’s posthumously previously unpublished writing. Rain Taxi always provides an insight into the diverse regional literary sensibilities of the Midwest where university presses and small publishers supported by arts foundation grants have made the literary a veritable industry.

The Reverend XJ Dailey of the Church of NOLAPO helmed from the poetry pulpit the literary magazine Fell Swoop for over 30 years. He finally said “enough!” and moved on to other nefarious poetry projects. But the Swoops kept falling and the ex-master of Kinko’s just couldn’t stop. He has upped his game, however, quite a few rungs in fact, to producing a series of letterpress small broadsides and poetry postcard sized “Swoopcards.” Among the poem cards that have found their way into the Society’s mailbox are those by Maureen Owen, Sheila E. Murphy, and Swoopcard #15 by Joyce Hausfallen. Expect more shenanigans from the gulf poetry vortex.

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