Naissance Chapbooks |
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Forest Frottage
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John Martone feels the world around him intensely. Sometimes he uses words to share the intensity of that feeling. Sometimes he uses images. Sometimes he uses combinations of words and image and actual pieces of the world around him. With this collection you'll be able to feel the world around him as if it were the world around you. An excerpt:
—John Martone 24 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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Some Mythology
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Jessica Breheny turns the life of myth inside out by stepping inside and then stretching not just the mind’s eye, but the mind’s arms around what is found there—the myth of life. An excerpt, from WHAT IS WRONG: The first doctor said it was a virus and the second said it was a parasite. The third said it was bacteria and the fourth said it was inflammatory. All agreed there was a secret hidden inside her body. The secret was so deep that even she didn't know it was there, and the doctors' hands could not press, prod, or palpate it. Only the MRI machine could catch just the greywhite mothwing shadow of it. There were treatments and surgeries the doctors could provide, pills made from the urine of horses, vitamins, tubes. The secret, the doctors said, might eventually have to come out. —Jessica Breheny 40 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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Psychosis
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Steve Giasson delivers an amazing document comprising all of the comments to a YouTube posting of the classic shower scene from Hitchcock’s Psycho. At times hilarious and at times terrifying. Nothing short of a snapshot of everything wrong with the internet, and possibly humanity in general. An excerpt: kthevsd Lame movies ? Kid I like all movies, old films, new films, etc. How is this classic lame ? Have you even ever watched it ? What would some 16 year old teenybopper know about cinema ? You probably have never even heard of Kurosawa and I bet you have never even seen a Daniel Day Lewis or Meryl Streep movie in your life. No wonder everyone laughs at your generations taste in films. 4 days ago markymark93 actually i have seen this movie, and i have seen movies with daniel day lewis AND meryl streep.....so i wouldnt be so quick to judge. how can you say you "like new films" if you've been bashing my generation's movies the whole time? 3 days ago kthevsd @markymark93 If you have seen it than how can you find it lame ? It's an iconic movie. A masterpiece. Everyone bashes the movies of today, some are good(Scorsese movies) but most are mindless(like transformers). If you understand cinema you have to admit the quality of films had drastically gone down. 3 days ago XxINCHAINSxX @markymark93 And whos obsessing over their opinion on youtube? Hmmm... —Steve Giasson 44 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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The Inside Scoop, New and Selected Poems
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Carlos Colón breaks this New and Selected collection up into four parts: Haiku, Eyeku, Structured Poetry, and Free Verse Poetry, taking us on an extended inventory of the different kinds of arrows, darts, bolts, and flechettes that should be in every poet’s bandolier. An excerpt: Where I Wake Up A dark room Across No shackles The funny thing, —Carlos Colón 60 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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Smoke And The South
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Peter G Res writes right out on the edge of sense, where hanging on to a thought too too long might leave blisters, where it becomes more important to follow the glint and the glimmer of where the thought leads rather than force it into a predictable furrow. When poetry works, it makes sense in ways that logic will never follow. An excerpt: So Meditate In Traffic
So I met the kid once
the day I decided to skip class
hot black with soy
I dance with my cell phone I won’t be coming back —Peter G Res 20 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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Of Collocated Rhythms
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Felino A. Soriano does with words what Jazz does with music. Lines stray, explore, steer, turn, twist, and change but always, always, when you think the way has been lost, aha!, there’s the path we were on, right under our feet. An excerpt: —after Sam Rivers’ Tranquility Of inexistence.
Reflection rendered —Felino A. Soriano 47 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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Regular Expressions:
the facebook status update poems.
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Jenny Hill builds a lattice-work from the status updates of her Facebook friends, and constructs a cycle of poems which respond to each as if it were a prompt. The dynamic that results creates a flux-field where the details of the everyday don’t merely gain significance, they earn it. An excerpt: Ron: I delivered a fucking BABY tonight! Yep, a fucking BABY!!!!!!!!! what did u do today? Nursing school is AWESOME!!!!!!!
Someone asks if it was slimy, another wants
Your hands are a blueprint,
This morning was a full round
Then, democrazy seized the moment, —Jenny Hill 48 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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Watching the Windows Sleep
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Tantra Bensko produces texts which skim along the liminal, stitching together scrims of the thin business of the daily. This book is a blend of fiction, poetry, and photographs working together to contain both the reality of the surreal and the surreality of the real. An excerpt: from The Terrace Steps The rest of the story shall go unexplained, but the steps were the first token of my affection for the birds, and we shall end there. They became being. Nothing else really mattered at the time, and the steps were the most beautiful rocks I could find in the quarries of the imagination, the shapes being suggestive of alterations in the seamless. The rocks never spoke to me directly, but they called to me in another time, and often their names were apparent in a kind of transparent liquid sensation that would take me over each time I discovered a name I couldn't understand in words. —Tantra Bensko 52 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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Variations on Ten Rounds
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Matthew Hinton takes us ten rounds with two titans who could have, possibly should have, but actually never did fight: Norman Mailer and Chet Baker. A play that is a must read for anyone who loves to imagine “What if?” An excerpt: (Lights up on an intimate jazz scene: small table/bar near center. BARKEEP hands a seated NM a drink. A fight bell is struck twice, and BARKEEP, a well dressed referee, struts across stage with a card that reads "Round 1". Bell sounds once. A trumpet solo can be heard ending offstage, followed by applause. Enter CB with his horn. BARKEEP presents CB with a drink.) NM CB. (CB doesn’t react.) NM I say, CB! (CB remains silent.) NM Tough crowd tonight? Hey! It's me ... NM? CB Are you talking to me? That ain't my name. NM Yeah, I've been calling you. I've said "CB, CB!" at least two, maybe three times. CB That's not my name. NM Ten times, at least. Is my voice off tonight or something? CB But that ain't me, babe. NM (The word "babe" startles him - he eyes CB. Beat.) Me neither. CB What about the crowd? NM Tough. A tough bunch of gangsters. Regular hoods. CB Oh, I didn't realize - NM Good company. Comrades. Familia Cosanostra. Fellow hoods. CB You're a hood? NM You'd better believe it, baby. CB Cute. NM The hell it is! This is serious! Here, CB ... imagine I'm a shylock and gaze upon my baubles, baby. (NM produces several empty gun shells.) CB Where'd you get those, NM. NM Guess. CB Sounds like footsie with the devil. (NM slugs CB. Teeth pour out of CB's mouth - landing in drink glasses, on both men, the floor, etc. Fight bell rings. CB exits as BARKEEP walks with sign that reads "ROUND 2". Bell. Same offstage trumpet, audience applause. Enter CB.) —Matthew S. Hinton 24 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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The Lost Shoe
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Martha Deed goes where no poet has gone before. Combining cut-up and court transcript, oscillating deftly back and forth between textual poetry and visual poetry, adopting voice after effective voice, she brings us a gut-punch orb of truth where only the names have been changed, though the innocent remain unprotected. A video trailer for the book is at her website. A text excerpt: Poppycock Leave your common sense —Martha Deed 48 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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The Goatfish Alphabet
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Kristen McHenry brings us a collection of poems that open up like a velvet bag of marbles. Here is a steely, here a cat’s eye, here an aggie, here a clearie, here an alley, here a princess, here a galaxy. Anyone who thinks you can’t pack both breadth and depth into a chapbook will be disproven by this collection. An excerpt: THE GOATFISH ALPHABET For so long they’ve pitied They’ve felt us dumbstruck So the goatfish have toiled When we are slug-muffled A language for the redemption Life will be so different then— All will be leapspeak, —Kristen McHenry 36 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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Body Art
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Wendel Scutti brings us a short story which begins with a positive pregnancy test and ends with, well, what sort of a teaser would this be if we told you where it ends? This is an exploration of the dichotomy of singularity and connection, and a story that worries out the complications of a single thread. An excerpt: Now Nancy pauses, listens to the droning sound of passing cars and inhales the faint scent of exhaust fumes. There is an entire generation lost to this city, Nancy thinks: Aborted children of women like me. Former suburban girls who arrive by bus with a few hundred dollars and vague artistic aspirations. Twenty-somethings who find the only thing they can afford is a studio apartment in some marginal, really dangerous neighborhood. Childish women who just barely survive but who are too stubborn to give up and leave. Girls who feel lonely and drink too much and miss their periods then calculate days and dollars, knowing they will be unable to rely on the casual friend or boyfriend who is too focused on his own struggles to help in any real way. —Wendel Scutti 28 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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Open your I
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endwar has put together a collection of ultra-minimalist poems that don’t just look at language, they catch language in the act of looking back at us. And then they wink. It is impossible to apply one single term to the range of work in this collection. It is at times concrete, at times typoem, at times visual poem, at times conceptual poem, at times typewriter poem, but at all times it is poetry at its finest. A review and an example:
( —endwar 60 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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Illusions Delusions and Dreams
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Neil Ellman brings us a collection of Ekphrastic poems written in response to and in furtherance of the surreal in art. Titles refer interested readers to the works the poems responded to, but the poems stand firmly on their own and can be appreciated by all readers regardless of familiarity with the art invoked. An excerpt:
Love Parade
When machines fall in love There are no questions
They take a vow
They raise families, go to church
They work and seldom sleep
They grow old and their armatures creak —Neil Ellman 28 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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Missed Preflections, Refracting Back, & Other Vectors of Days
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Kellar Wilson doesn’t bend language, and he doesn’t break it. He refashions it, reforges it, reforms it, and in the process strengthens its ability to communicate. An excerpt: In Sane Relations And Showers II
What an incredible advance it would be —Kellar Wilson 60 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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Escaped Without Injury
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Carol Clark Williams takes as her starting point the limberness of language and the obstacle course of the daily. By working, working, working at the knots, she is able to carefully unravel them without breaking the silver links. An excerpt: Too Far Off to See the Wizard
A half life spent —Carol Clark Williams 40 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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Outpost Entropy
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Candace Kaucher takes the line, the thread of a thought, and teases out all individual microfibers that can come loose, dips each end in the stuff that turns metal rods into sparklers, then lights them all and writes down the song the sizzle makes. An excerpt:
Some days you are trapped. —Candace Kaucher 56 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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No L
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Jennifer Hill has performed a tour de force of incomparable compactness. 36 Holiday Fictions (one for each of the possible plots in all of literature) in 140 characters each, in which the letter L never appears. Twisted and wrong and completely delightful all rolled together in red velvet trimmed in white. The perfect book for anyone who loves or hates the holidays. An excerpt: Sacrifice of Loved Ones The daughter recovered from her Christmas fever. “Nutter has to go,” her mother said as she washed the barf from the stuffed chipmunk’s ear. —Jennifer Hill 40 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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Roman Holiday
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Eileen R. Tabios brings us a numbered sequence of prosepoem Synopses that strike the mind’s eye like an oil-filled kaleidoscope. Patterns merge and emerge in shifting repetitions that succeed in what all poetry attempts: to cover more ground than they should have been able. An excerpt: from Synopsis #7 It transcends the feminine gesture. [Consolation defined as the bat never reappeared]. She totters on ice despite thick ankles. [By his face, one can tell he’s about to deliver the boot.] He has a gaze like a mirror. [There is nothing like an infant tugging on a daddy’s white whiskers.] “Sulpicia, a Roman woman writer, wrote elegies in Latin that had been attributed to Tibullus.” [Whatever. True love is never chaste.] —Eileen R. Tabios 16 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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Two Poems
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Michael Aro’s poems speak with the voice of authority that is the natural by-product of a learning that runs both deep and wide. To read his writing is to understand that language is, indeed, the software which runs on the wetware of our brains. An excerpt: 5.
I shave him each day with shaving cream and a —Michael Aro 58 pages. $10, includes standard shipping within the Continental USA. |
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