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Too Animal, Not Enough Machine Christine Jessica Margaret Reilly There is nothing mechanical about Christine Jessica Margaret Reilly's chapbook, Too Animal, Not Enough Machine. The poems zip in and out of multiple consciousnesses, re-telling a variation of Hansel and Gretel through the streets of New York. But the poems do not feel suffocated or defined by the city, rather it is the poems' narrators who give that space life; whether it's searching for Gretel in bathroom stalls, chatting up Little Red Riding Hood, or pondering the nuances of Mermish, Reilly's poems are fearless in their imagination, effortlessly melding the surreal with the mundane, the fantastic with the everyday. "I love this collection of poems for the sounds and the sense of them. Immediately, the reader is struck—lightning-like—by Christine Reilly's agility in playing with language. This poet is craft-wise, cadenced, and 'crafty.' Beware the candy-coated house where the witch may be waiting…is this a chapbook of Grimms' Tales narrated, or a narrative filtered through those often misremembered but ageless stories? What I so admire about these poems is that Christine Reilly does not 'split' truth from tale, but holds them together in the flesh of our bodies, through violence and grace, and within the soul's pure 'knowing' of Mystery." -Kate Knapp Johnson, author of Wind Somewhere "The poems in Too Animal, Not Enough Machine are individual journeys to worlds where language is unique, startling, often luminous and always revitalizing. Christine Reilly's imaginative scope is inventive with a balanced tone that never rings a false note. Each poem is a destination that bends our perceptions so that we question what we have seen, heard and felt in order to ultimately embrace the new worlds she creates for us." -Kevin Pilkington, author of The Unemployed Man Who Became a Tree Too Animal, Not Enough Machine will be released on May 31, 2013. Pre-order your copy today for only $10 and FREE shipping! |
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Gathered: Contemporary Quaker Poets Edited by Nick McRae Gathered: Contemporary Quaker Poets, the first anthology of its kind, seeks to give the best Quaker poets writing today a voice in contemporary letters. Many anthologies of writing from other spiritual traditions have been published in recent years, and this Quaker collection will be an important addition to the conversation. The poets presented in Gathered come from all points on the Quaker cultural spectrum. There are Quakers from all over the United States and Quakers from abroad. There are liberal Quakers and conservative Quakers. There are lifelong Quakers, Quakers from hybrid spiritual backgrounds, and those who were once part of Quaker society but have since moved on down other paths. While all of these poets have been touched in some way by the Quaker way of life, the work presented here is not religious or devotional in the traditional sense. Many poems address Quaker culture and spirituality, but they question those traditions, taking a broader view of the human condition and the experiencing of living in our complex, often troubling world, where there are no easy answers. Contributors include poets such as David Ray, Maria Melendez, Dawn Potter, Laura McCullough, Ellen Wehle, Maryhelen Snyder, Jennifer Luebbers, Errol Hess, Heidi Hart, Sarah Sarai, and many others. Gathered will be released in in March 2013. Pre-order your copy today for only $15 and FREE shipping! Check back periodically for updates and more ordering information. In the meanwhile, you can follow the anthology on Facebook today! |
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The Butterfly Lady Danny M. Hoey, Jr. Gabriel Smith is a black man in a dress. Always in full makeup, he ridicules, inspires, and entertains; he is both mother and father, spectacle and relief. Tortured by a religiously zealous father, Gabriel leaves Pittsburgh after learning that his mother let herself die after seeing him do high kicks in the street. He moves to Cleveland, Ohio, to start a new life and surrounds himself with people who he believes love him. Soon, Gabriel learns that his presence, despite giving order to those closest to him, incites fear and hatred--something that he believed he left behind. Set against the backdrop of a city recovering from one of the worst race riots in history, The Butterfly Lady is filled with pain encased in the blues. This stunning first novel wrestles with the consequences of being black, gay, and male, while also tackling the horrors of love and the realization that it can suffocate. Gabriel, the Butterfly Lady, becomes the thing that those surrounding him compare their lives to, the spectacle that they realize isn't as bad as the lives they want to escape completely. Learn more about this novel and order your copy from Sundress imprint, Flaming Giblet Press! |
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The Old Cities Marcel Brouwers At turns both funny and devestating, Marcel Brouwers' debut collection, The Old Cities, takes you on a linguistic adventure around the world and home again. The poems here are playful, smart, and never boring. This is a collection any lover of language and travel should own. "Marcel Brouwers' debut collection The Old Cities is a travelogue of local and national curiosities, and in that the poems range so freely, there is a glide to this work, a welcoming ease. In that every subject in poetry, considered both carefully and freely, is as skewed as we are, these poems reveal, piecemeal--what other way, honestly, do we live out most of our lives--who we are at our least pretentious and most lively. The reader of these poems will find a plurality of intimated joys and sorrows. And, as well, a voice that is never merely shrewd but, and more consistently than any reader has a right to expect, ready at any moment to redress the ironies it registers so aptly. I love this book because it is in love with oddness. And it's word-wise: just read the first poem: not a received noun or a stock phrase that isn't affectively queried. If language got us into this mess, these poems seem to say, language will have to get us out." -William Olsen, author of Sand Theory "These poems come at us much as contemporary culture comes at us, full-bore, multi-barreled, incessant. They engage with the frenzy of our time, and, in perhaps one of poetry's most vital functions, they are subversive. They question, they put every thought under review. These are powerful, wistful, bemused poems--the health of poetry has just improved." -Arthur Smith, author of The Late World: Poems "One of my teachers in graduate school once told me that a "decent" first book of poems only needs about three "very good" poems. If this is true, then it must be that Marcel Brouwers' debut collection The Old Cities is an exceptional book. There are echoes of, among others, Frost and William Matthews--not bad company--but these poems are all Brouwers. His voice is equally compassionate and ironic, his vision equally expansive and precise, evidenced in a poem about his country: "Children who die go down as heroes/ gone down." Humor often sidles up to grief in these poems, but it's the pathos that rings the loudest: "I'm not in favor of the end/ but it's hard to think of what's missing, a love/ that wishes it be different and how it ultimately is." Just one of many beautiful moments The Old Cities possesses." -Alexander Long, author of Still Life Order your copy today! |
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Poetry Broadsides
You can now buy broadsides from Stirring at the Sundress Etsy store! Be sure to check out these beautiful pieces by Rhonda Lott, including poems by Paul Hostovsky, T.A. Noonan, Letitia Trent, Valerie Loveland, Christine Jessica Margaret Reilly, and more! Buy more than one and get free shipping! |
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One Perfect Bird Letitia Trent In Letitia Trent's debut full-length collection, the poems unfold like wildflowers in the spring, each one more surprising and dazzling than the last. But they are not simply a fleeting beauty, but rather a voracious and heated sort that stays with you long after you've closed the book. These poems, rooted deeply in the places that they explore, are impeccably constructed and bitingly honest. This is a collection from a new voice that must be heard. "Reading these poems I was reminded of the voice and vision of Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping. Similarly, the emotional and psychological rawness of human thought, as crafted by Letitia Trent in surprising, elusive, and innovative lines, startles us into a recognition so profound, we're not entirely sure what we're reading or if we're reading. It's a pleasing and unsettling experience--and I daresay, what literature should and can be." - Kathy Fagan, author of Lip "The poems in One Perfect Bird ride like a dirty living letter in a good, clean envelope. They are the silty Tang in our cups, the color of the hunters' vests like ribbons through the birches as they searched our forest for any rusty bursts of blood. They are primarily poltergeists; mesh net masks and subtly singing beards, bee bodies slipping from their chins like honey. If it's true that I lifted all these lines of praise from the lines in Letitia Trent's poems--and it is true--then who could blame me? For the lyricism required to describe them, I can't better their maker. No one could." - Kyle Minor, author of In the Devil's Territory Order your copy today! For more information about this title, including poems from the collection, click here. |
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Like a Fish Daniel Crocker ISBN 0-9723224-7-7 "Dan Crocker isn't in the habit of calling things beautiful, Hell, neither am I, but I'm just going to put it out there, with Like a Fish, Crocker has shown his readers their fair share of beauty without ever having to drunkenly whisper its name. He writes about every day experiences in a way that anyone can relate to. His ivory tower is a Mississippi flophouse held together with tar and dreams. He's a strait shooter who gives it to you plain and simple. In short, his words don't have a stick up their ass. In our current lonely culture, what more could you ask for?" -John Dorsey, author of Sodomy is a City in New Jersey "Dan Crocker has the heart and the chops, an innate ear for language and the gift of good storytelling. He is one of those writers accessible to all of the diverse crowds he writes about--the denizens of the trailer parks, as well as the academies. To say Crocker is an important writer is an understatement; he's a hidden gem in American letters." -Nathan Graziano, author of After the Honeymoon and Teaching Metaphors "Crocker's gritty yet tender poems expand beyond the topography of the south and into the landscape of the human experience. He candidly displays life's three-dimensional ups and downs that most people perceive as a mere two-dimensional surface. This collection confirms why Crocker is one of my all-time favorite poets." -Rebecca Schumejda, author of Falling Forward Order your copy today! For more information about this title, including poems from the collection, click here. |
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Especially the Deer Julie Ruble, Tyurina Allen, Mary Beth Magin ISBN 0-9723224-0-X Especially the Deer was the first book released by Sundress Publications in 2002 and the first book in the Artemis Project, which publishes poetry by women who are 25 or younger. Featuring poetry by Sundress favorites Julie Ruble, Mary Beth Magin, and Tyurina Allen, Especially the Deer has now been re-released with a new cover and book design! Get this beautiful 8.5" x 8.5" glossy-covered, perfect-bound edition today for only $12.95! Order your copy today! For more information about this title, including poems from the collection, click here. |
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The Bone Folders T.A. Noonan ISBN 0-9723224-6-9 T.A. Noonan's second collection of poetry, The Bone Folders, follows a coven of Louisiana witches through the death of their high priestess and the turmoil in the regime change that follows. Drawing upon interviews and experiences with modern practitioners of witchcraft, the poems combine innovative language with an overarching narrative that explores the complexities of love, history, spirituality, and personal sacrifice. Not to be confused with the supernatural tales of Anne Rice or Charlaine Harris, these beautiful and experimental poems come at this very real world through the lens of math, food, Greek mythos, grammar, sexuality, and the banal of the day-to-day. These poems in their dazzling craftsmanship explore the contemporary Pagan existence and the universal pain of human loss. "This is incantation. Noonan speaks; spells and forms and formulae leap into being. Very new, very, very old: poetry begins with naming, then metamorphosis. Dickinson's Letters to the World conjoins the 'hello world' introduction to Java and coffee ground soothsaying. 'O' the days begin, and they end with a loop, 'until what it touches / / : becomes what is touched.'" -Catherine Daly "Here, in The Bone Folders, the poem is an entity that springs from a love of language, algebra, and the landscape of the page. T.A. Noonan's tools are varied and sharp. She has a sculptor's eye for detail and an uncanny instinct for mining from the stone what the stone wants to be. With all her extravagances, spatial and intellectual, her eccentricities of grammar and syntax, her free form and reverent villanelles, she is the maker of language's shape, a craftsperson that knows that the center of an artist's commitment is to serve the work in progress. In all her abstract permutations is a focus on the truth. She is poetry's Henry Moore, giving shape to things and characters, particular and internal, to which, at the end of our reading we can only reply, YES." -Michael Madonick Order your copy today! For more information about this title, including poems from the collection, click here. |
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How We Spend Our Days Jessica Bush-Warman ISBN 0-9723224-4-2 How We Spend Our Days is the first collection of poems by Jessica Bush-Warman. Jessica Bush-Warman lives in Pennsylvania, where she attends graduate school at Seton Hill University. She is currently at work on her third book. Her poetry has appeared in various literary publications throughout the country. She and her husband are expecting their first child in September. (This is the second collection released in the Artemis Project.) Click here for a full table of contents. Order your copy today for $5.00. For ordering through check/money order |
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Can You Tell a Line from an Odyssey Marek Lugowski ISBN 0-9723224-1-8 Can You Tell a Line from an Odyssey is the newest chapbook from celebrated Chicago poet, Marek Lugowski. This collection of previously unpublished poetry explores Lugowski's 1988 road trip from Dallas to Taos and back again. Click here for a full table of contents. Order your copy today for $6.50. For ordering through check/money order |
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Especially the Deer Julie Ruble, Tyurina Allen, Mary Beth Magin ISBN 0-9723224-0-X Especially the Deer is the first book released by Sundress Publications. It is 100 pages, perfect bound. Featured in it is a spattering of poetry by Sundress favorites Julie Ruble, Mary Beth Magin, and Tyurina Allen. This is the first book in Sundress's Artemis Project, which publishes poetry by women who are 25 or younger. This edition is currently out of print. |
