New & Noteworthy Books
The New & Noteworthy Books section on NewPages comes out once a month (sometimes more) and features newly released and forthcoming titles primarily from independent and university publishers.
Posted on October 11, 2012
(See full list of noteworthy books by category below)
The Glimmering Room
Poetry by Cynthia Cruz
Four Way Books, October 2012
ISBN-13: 978-1884800979
Paperback: 98pp; $15.95
Fierce and fearless, The Glimmering Room beckons readers down into the young speaker’s dark underworld, and because we are seduced by Cruz’s startling imagery and language rich with “Death’s outrageous music,” we follow willingly. Peopled with “ambassadors from the Netherworld”—the orphaned and abused, the lost and addicted—Cruz leads us through this “traveling minstrel show / Called girlhood” which is at once tragic and magical.
It’s Animal but Merciful
Anthology by Ed. Jane Ormerod, Thomas Fucaloro, George Wallace
Great Weather for Media, October 2012
ISBN-13: 978-0985731700
Paperback: 162pp; $15.00
A collection of fearless poetry and prose from fifty-five writers across the United States, plus Botswana, the Philippines, Denmark, and Canada. This is world writing with a New York flair—no nonsense, no claptrap, ready to spit in your eye or call you lover in a cyberminute. There’s brutality, glamour, danger, and glitz...but an unexpected tenderness, too. Contributors include Rich Ferguson, Joan Gelfand, Janet Hamill, Aimee Herman, R. Nemo Hill, Puma Perl, Cin Salach, and Jon Steinhagen.
Keeping the Swarm
New & Selected Essays
Nonfiction by George Venn
Wordcraft of Oregon, October 2012
ISBN-13: 978-1-877655-76-0
Paperback: 224pp; $15.95
A collection of eleven personal essays by poet George Venn. Two unpublished essays narrate the prize-winning poet’s international sojourns in Spain and China; two others eulogize northwest people he loved. This book is a honey house chuckablock with eclectic gifts: stories, songs, adventures, meditations, eulogies, poems. There are new cells of joy, old black combs of grief, memories of love’s honey flow.
Recapture
& Other Stories
Fiction by Erica Olsen
Torrey House Press, October 2012
ISBN-13: 978-1937226053
Paperback: 200pp; $15.95
The stories in Recapture take us to an American West that is both strange and familiar. The Grand Canyon can only be visited in replica form. An archivist preserves a rare map of a vanished Lake Tahoe. A Utah cliff dwelling survives as an aging roadside attraction in California. By turns lyrical, deadpan, and surreal, Erica Olsen’s stories bring us the natural world and the world we make, the artifacts we keep and the memories and desires that shape our lives.
Shift
Chapbook by Alyse Bensel
Plan B Press, September 2012
Chapbook: 36pp; $9.00
NewPages reviewer Alyse Bensel’s first chapbook, Shift, depicts working class individuals—truck drivers, factory workers—living on the edge. In raw, spare language, a series of narrative yet lyric persona poems negotiate distance, return, and inevitability. Juxtaposing form and everyday language, Shift is filled with strong, resonating voices.
The Source of Life and Other Stories
Fiction by Beth Bosworth
University of Pittsburgh Press, September 2012
ISBN-13: 978-0822944195
Hardcover: 218pp; $24.95
Winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize judged by Sven Birkerts. Post-divorce dating is one more cause for celebration (or a quick call in to the police) in Beth Bosworth’s revelatory new book, The Source of Life and Other Stories. Reality is just another stumbling block for Bosworth’s characters, who might help themselves but don’t always choose to. There are leaps of faith here, nonetheless, as the collection dispenses a kind of narrative psychotropic for survival and redemption, with a chaser of humor mixed in.
Spoke & Dark
Poetry by Carolyn Guinzio
Red Hen Press, September 2012
ISBN-13: 978-1597092296
Paperback: 96pp; $17.95
There is no word for the place between the dying hand and the living hand that holds it, but there is a space between those hands. Spoke & Dark dwells there, in the tensions that inhere between one thing & another: lost & found, future & past, life & afterlife. Using typographical symbols (#, /, and especially &) to delineate these phantom spaces, Spoke & Dark explores the wild fluctuations in the nature of the known, searching for a language for the unknowable.
Full list of new & forthcoming books received
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Posted October 11, 2012
Anthology
It’s Animal but Merciful, Ed. Jane Ormerod, Thomas Fucaloro, George Wallace, Great Weather for Media
Chapbook
Shift, Alyse Bensel, Plan B Press
The Year of Dead Fathers, Maureen Sherbondy, Spring Garden Press
Drama
The Tragedie of Macbeth: A Frankly Annotated First Folio Edition, Annotated by Demitra Papadinis, McFarland
Fiction
An Age of Madness, David Maine, Red Hen Press
Barbed-Wire Butterflies, Jessica Kristie, Winter Goose Publishing
Ex-Boyfriend on Aisle 6, Susan Jackson Rodgers, Press 53
Hollywood Buckaroo, Tracy DeBrincat, Black Lawrence Press
The Lost Episodes of Revie Bryson, Bryan Furuness, Black Lawrence Press
Masha’allah and Other Stories, Mariah K. Young, Heyday Books
The Memoirs of JonBenet by Kathy Acker, Michael du Plessis, Les Figues Press
Napi’s Dance, Alanda Greene, Second Story Press
Recapture & Other Stories, Erica Olsen, Torrey House Press
The Source of Life and Other Stories, Beth Bosworth, Univ of Pittsburgh Press
These Things Happen, Richard Kramer, Unbridled Books
This Close, Jessica Francis Kane, Graywolf Press
Unbuilt Projects, Paul Lisicky, Four Way Books
Nonfiction
An Air War With Cuba: The United States Radio Campaign Against Castro, Daniel Walsh, McFarland
The American Spring: What We Talk About When We Talk About Revolution, Amelia Stein, Skyhorse Publishing
Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, Greg Palast, Seven Stories Press
The Core of Johnny Appleseed: The Unknown Story of a Spiritual Trailblazer, Ray Silverman, Swedenborg Foundation Press / Chrysalis Books
Do You Believe in Rock and Roll?: Essays on Don McLean’s “American Pie”, Ed. Raymond I. Schuck & Ray Schuck, McFarland
Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman: Essays on Comics, Poetry and Prose, Ed. Tara Prescott & Aaron Drucker, McFarland
Hazen “Kiki” Cuyler: A Baseball Biography, Ronald T. Waldo, McFarland
The Horror Sensorium: Media and the Senses, Angela Ndalianis, McFarland
Keeping the Swarm: New & Selected Essays, George Venn, Wordcraft of Oregon
Missed Periods and Other Grammar Scares: How to Avoid Unplanned and Unwanted Writing Errors, Jenny Baranick, Skyhorse Publishing
The Snark Handbook: Politics and Government Edition: Gridlock, Red Tape, and Other Insults to We the People, Lawrence Dorfman, Skyhorse Publishing
What Liberals Believe: The Best Progressive Quotes Ever, Ed. William Martin, Skyhorse Publishing
What You Should Know about Politics…But Don’t: A Nonpartisan Guide to the Issues that Matter, Jessamyn Conrad, Arcade Publishing
The White Umbrella: Walking with Survivors of Sex Trafficking, Mary Frances Bowley, Moody Publishers
Poetry
All Black Everything, Weston Cutter, New Michigan Press
The Answer to Each Is the Same, Pam O’Brien, Dos Madres
Counterpart, Elizabeth Robinson, Ahsahta Press
Cutting Room, Sarah Pinder, Coach House Books
Deadbeat, Jay Baron Nicorvo, Four Way Books
Dreamweed, Yvan Goll, Black Lawrence Press
Edge Effects, Jan Conn, Brick Books
The Empty Loom, Robert Gibb, Univ of Arkansas Press
Eveywhere Here and in Brookyln: A Four Quartets, Kristin Prevallet, Belladonna
Fierce This Falling, Betsy Johnson-Miller, Mayapple Press
The Foundling Wheel, Blas Falconer, Four Way Books
The Frame Called Ruin, Hadara Bar-Nadav, New Issues Poetry & Prose
The Glimmering Room, Cynthia Cruz, Four Way Books
The Gold Thread, Sarah Kennedy, Elixir Press
Gone & Gone, Rodney Wittwer, Red Hen Press
The Horses: New & Selected Poems, Richard Silberg, Red Hen Press
In Broken Latin, Annette Spaulding-Convy, Univ of Arkansas Press
Injecting Dreams into Cows, Jessy Randall, Red Hen Press
The Lease, Mathew Henderson, Coach House Books
Many Ways to Say It, Eva Saulitis, Red Hen Press
The Mining Camps of the Mouth, George Kalamaras, New Michigan Press
The Moon & Other Inventions: Poems After Joseph Cornell, Kristina Marie Darling, BlazeVOX [books]
Partially Kept, Martha Ronk, Nightboat Books
A Penance, CJ Evans, New Issues Poetry & Prose
Poems, Fancois Villon, Northwestern Univ Press
The Rapids, Susan Gillis, Brick Books
The Rich Place to Jump, Peter Covino, New Issues Poetry & Prose
The Rigid Body, Gabriel Spera, Ashland Poetry Press
Spoke & Dark, Carolyn Guinzio, Red Hen Press
Tantivy, Donald Revell, Alice James Books
Tremolo, Alice Derry, Red Hen Press
Where Good Swimmers Drown, Susan Elbe, Concrete Wolf Pub
Wolf and Pilot, Farrah Field, Four Way Books
Woman Without Umbrella, Victoria Redel, Four Way Books
Work from Memory, Dan Beachy-Quick & Matthew Goulish, Ahsahta Press
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