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Welcome to our Poetry page. Here you can view the poetic works that we have published. Of note here are several titles that we have published for Bowery Arts and Sciences (the renowned Bowery Poetry Club) in New York.
Cleaning
the Duck
By Tsaurah Litzky
Tsaurah
Litzky finds the sublime in the ridiculous and beauty in the garbage. Cleaning
The Duck, her honest, invigorating, and luminous second poetry collection,
will help you think, grow, come. Tsaurah lives in Brooklyn and believes it is a
privilege to be a poet.
In Cleaning The Duck, Tsaurah Litzky brilliantly captures the
contradictions of what it means to be alive in the twenty-first century. These
poems sing off the page leaving the reader enchanted, entertained, and
blissfully exhausted.
Danny Shot, publisher and editor of Long Shot
Transgressive, informative, totally original, funny as hell, Cleaning The
Duck will take your breath away.
- Steve Cannon, author of Groove, Bang, And Jive Around
founder-A Gathering Of The Tribes
ISBN: 978-1-936411-10-8 92 pages
40oz
Elephant
Poems by Celena Glenn and Black Cracker
Self-taught
and operating out of a grimy basement studio, the one-time army brat and art
school dropout, is, simply put, a creative powerhouse. Black Cracker, a
provocatively pop and poetic artistic ingénue, has created for, and been
featured in, productions for the Kitchen, the Culture Project, and BAM Harvey
Theater, along with having worked on projects with the Whitney Museum of Art,
the NY Knicks, and Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam.
Twice featured in the New York Times and just back from a tour in India and Europe with Swiss jazz trio Grandpianoramax, Black Cracker’s groundbreaking solo record is a blend of lyrical genius and beat-boxing for a sound that is best described as Basquiat meets Tupac.
In addition to being a fierce artistic talent, he was the Artistic Director of Urban Word NYC, one of the nation’s leading literary and performance organizations for youth. He was also a regular host at both the legendary Nuyorican Poets Café and the Apollo.
This book is the eleventh in the Bowery Books series.
Always Moving
Sarah
Herrington is a big-apple farmer, dharma bum punk, urban yogi, poet, and writer.
She was chosen by O, The Oprah Magazine as
an "Up and Coming Poet" in the April, 2011 issue. I'm
thinking about the Earth and about this space-shot of a book by Ms. Herrington,
about the nurturing ecology of poetry and consciousness. I would like to thank
Spaceship Sarah for Always Moving, and now we must all work hard as we
can to keep up!
-Bob Holman
ISBN: 978-1-936411-03-0 70 pages
7
Continents, 9 Lives
By Fay Chiang
Fay
Chiang’s work is complex. Born of anger, it is ultimately optimistic about the
importance of the artist as a preserver and perpetuator of culture, and of the
self-determination of the individual in a society in which pressures to conform
persist. Her unflinching sense of fairness and justice and her intolerance of
hypocrisy seem at odds with her joie de vivre and good humor. In truth,
her tenacity and clear vision are the strength of her work, both artistic and
political.
Fay Chiang is a writer, artist and
community/cultural activist living and working in Chinatown and the Lower East
Side of New York City for the past four decades. Raised in the backroom of a
laundry in Queens by immigrant parents from Guandong, China, she writes from her
experiences as a woman of color from the working class. She believes culture is
a psychological weapon to reclaim our past, define our present and to envision
possibilities for our future; that the development of culture is an integral
part of progressive social change and social justice movements.
“. . .through her words we feel the crackle and pain of being othered. . . .” states John Kuo Wei Tchen of New York University and the Museum of Chinese in America.
This book is the eighth in the Bowery Books series.
ISBN 978-0-9824012-4-8 160 pages
Click to view the Table of Contents and some sample pages from 7 Continents, 9 Lives
Startling
poems of incisive intelligence and deep compassion.
Marie Ponsot finds The Touch “rich, lyrical, sharp, a big world
well perceived, Cynthia Kraman’s poems are alive with real ideas. . . . You
have to read this. Pure pleasure.”
Bob Holman says, “The Touch, the long-awaited new book of poetry
from medievalist and former punk-rocker Cynthia Kraman, tosses New Formalism on
its ear, and is rock lyrics . . . resuscitates Wordsworth . . . a superb,
extraordinary, shocking, unflinching, charming, hilarious, perfectly gem-cut
book.”
The book is in two parts: My Heart Was Like A Sword has as its formal
basis medieval number theory; Speak in the Dark’s form refers to the
days of Biblical creation and the weekly life of each of us. The poet writes,
“I will leave it to the reader to find her and his own macro and micro
readings of the poems’ many days and nights, of nature created and creating,
and the ongoing annihilations and regenerations of love and war.”
These are heights, when they are not depths. A rich vein in our new poetry.–Richard
Howard
This is a book to read and re-read, the real thing. –Thomas Beller
This book is the seventh in the Bowery Books series.
ISBN: 978-0-9800508-8-2 140 pages
Body
of Water
By Janet Hamill
Photographs by Patti Smith
With
mercurial wands, Baal’s angels, decks with wild Jacks of oracle bones, tempest
Serpens, Lord Byron on the Bridge of Sighs, stallions mottled grey, a “dark
blue stronger than the Flemish blue of hummingbirds,” and poesis lying in the
ashes of a dress, Janet Hamill turns her wizard poet’s eye on an immense body
of alchemical empathies. This book is a romantic, surreal, lyrical Voyage. It
twists and turns with the playful tide of poetic vision, enhanced by the
delicate measures of Patti Smith’s photography. Kudos all around.
—Anne Waldman
Reading Janet Hamill now, as I have over the last thirty years, I’m amazed
again at the particulars of the world her poetry makes—a night world, as I
read it, peopled with bright creatures and splashes of color, beautiful and
terrifying by turns. With this there is a mix, too, of pop forms and strains,
and of catholic and pagan names and images—angels and saints and hermits—as
in the vision of her sleeping gypsy: “firebird sweets / a morsel a taste of
carrion / . . . as in a dream.” With this and much more, she has become
indispensable.
—Jerome Rothenberg
With its unbridled surrealistic, hypnotic imagery, Janet Hamill’s alchemy of
language gives us back communion with our souls. With a magician’s grace she
reminds us of the enchantment of our being. Hers is a music both modern and
magik.
—Maureen Owen
. . . Janet Hamill has sought transcendence in language on the page or sung . .
. Hamill’s mastery of form and feeling comes together to create a poem that
delicately examines celebrity, gallantry, silence, talent, and beauty. Only a
poet could do that. Or maybe only Janet Hamill.
—Patricia Spears Jones
This book is the sixth in the Bowery Books series.
ISBN: 978-0-9800508-6-8 100 pages
Estamos
Aqui:
Poems by Migrant Farmworkers
Translated by Janine Pommy-Vega
Edited by Sylvia Kelly, Bob Holman, and Majorie Tesser
Everybody
talks about the plight of illegal immigrants in the US, but who gives us their
own voices, tells us of the daily lives, of these shadow workers? Estamos Aquí-We
Are Here-a heartstirring collection of poems written by migrant workers, speaks
of joy and heartbreak in the direct voices of Mexican and Central American
migrant farmworkers. Presented in both Spanish and English, these poems
ultimately succeed in humanizing them, revealing them as our neighbors. In
workshops after a day's backbreaking, sunbaked labor at migrant camps in upstate
New York sponsored by the GENESEO Migrant Center, and led by renowned Beat poet
Janine Pommy Vega, here came poems of home, of crossing borders, of the joys and
agonies of work. Until now, there's really been no way to tap into the inner
worlds of the Latino pickers of the produce that feeds the majority of our
populace, while their small earnings return to their families back home. Now,
with Estamos Aquí, we realize that we are in this together, a
relationship to evolve, not a problem to solve. The fourth book in the Bowery
Books Poetry Series, Estamos Aquí is a must for those studying illegal
immigrant farmworkers, interested in contemporary Spanish-English poetry
translations, having an awareness of the relationship of outsider arts, arts
education, and the political intricacies of US immigration policy.
ISBN 978-0-9790972-3-2 1
16 pages o top)
The
Poetry Dollars
By Paul L Mills
What
is the shortest distance between a poet and the world of humans who might like
poetry, but have been taught it is obscure and boring? And what poetry would
result from making a living out of that connection?
The answer is THE POETRY DOLLARS, based on the very real life
experiences and work of Paul L. Mills, a.k.a. Poez (www.poezthepoet.com), who
during a ten-year career starting in 1977, invented himself in the form of a
"poet-performer," appearing with a fusion of drama, music, and
improvisation, first in the streets of Boston and New York, then in coffee
houses, nightclubs, concert halls, theaters, on radio and television, as a
straight stand-up performer, in off-Broadway theater, and with a modern dance
company, at such well-known venues as The Bottom Line, CBGBs, Charles Ludlam's
Ridiculous Theater, and The Bitter End in New York, and Le Theatre du Rond-Point
on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, sharing the bill with, among others, beat era
novelist William Burroughs, 60's jazz vocalist Mose Allison, and Richard Hell of
the new wave rock band Television.
There has never been anyone else like him.
This book is indispensable to anyone interested either in the history of spoken
word and performance poetry, or in its future development, because this is
pioneering work that, decades ago, went in directions that contemporary artists
have yet to surmise. THE POETRY DOLLARS is the inevitable
consequence of a web page posted by New York City poetry icons Bob Holman and
Jackie Sheeler, Whatever Happened to Poez? during the 15 years Mills
spent, after disappearing from the New York scene, as a civil rights lawyer in
Los Angeles. Now he is back, married to his former girlfriend, singer-songwriter
Suzanne Vega, with this book from Bowery Books and YBK Publishers.
The work consists of three parts. Part I is an essential instruction guide for
anyone who wants to follow his path into the street. Part II, fictionalized
memoirs of a career in performance poetry. Part III, the poems themselves.
Author Paul L. Mills is a former rock journalist, whose exploits were recounted
by David Felton in a Rolling Stone cover story, and whose work for Boston's
Fusion Magazine was hailed by syndicated Boston Globe columnist George Frazier's
The Lit'ry Life as "brilliant." He is a 1990 graduate magna cum
laude of the Columbia Writing Program.
ISBN 0-9790972-7-4 192 pages
Click here if you would like to read a sample from this book
Click here if you would like to view the
Title page and Table of Contents op)
A Simple Country Girl
By Taylor Mead
Taylor Mead's fourth book–his best and
funniest–and his first book in twenty years, A Simple Country Girl, is a
collection of poems that are bright, ephemeral, and brilliant downtown Zen.
Once Poet Laureate of Andy Warhol's Factory and now an indomitable octogenarian, Taylor Mead has recently been seen in Jim Jarmusch's latest, "Coffee and Cigarettes." He's a renowned actor, having appeared in innumerable underground classics from Warhol's "Lonesome Cowboys" to the first film of the Beat generation, "The Flower Thief." On stage he created the title role in Frank O'Hara's "The General Returns from One Place to Another" and Michael McClure's "Spider Rabbit."
Taylor Mead continues to be the most avant poet on the block, if he were in Japan, he'd be a National Treasure. Here, he's got a weekly cocktail gig at the Bowery Poetry Club (every Friday at 6:30PM). Who but Taylor Mead could possibly head the list of a series of books published under the Bowery Poetry Club imprint? Described by the New York Times as "that beacon on the Bowery" and proclaimed "the best poetry club in the world" by the Village Voice, the BPC has launched with YBK Publishers a series of books of and on poetry that will bring the freshest poetry to center stage, in fact, much of the work originates right on stage at the Club. Continuing the series of books will bring you the Club's Bartenders, complete with poetry recipes and "The Bowery Girls," five young women poets of the Bowery.
If you would like to read a sample from this book, please click here!
Bowery Women: Poems
By Alana Ruben Free, Amy Ouzoonian, Ana Castillo, Ange
Mlinko, Ann
Bettison Enzminger, Anne Waldman, Brenda Coultas, Carla Harryman, Celena Glenn,
Cheryl Boyce Taylor, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Cynthia Kraman, Daphne Gottlieb, Dawn
Saylor, Deanna Zandt, Diane Burns, Donna Masini, Elaine Equi, Elinor Nauen,
Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Emily XYZ, Fay Chiang, Gabriella Santoro, Hettie Jones, Honor
Moore, Ishle Yi Park, Jackie Sheeler, Jan Heller Levi, Janet Hamill, Janice Erlbaum,
Janine Pommy Vega, Jen Benka, Jennifer Blowdryer. Jessica Hagedorn, Joy Harjo, Kathryn M.
Fazio, Kim Rosenfield, Kristin Prevallet, Lee Ann Brown, Leslie Scalapino, Leticia
Viloria, Liz Maher, Lynne N. Procope, Maggie Balistreri, Maggie Dubris, Marie Howe, Marie
Ponsot, Marjorie Tesser, Martha Rhodes, Marty McConnell, Mary Reilly, Maureen Owen, May
Joseph, Melissa Christine Goodrum, Nancy Mercado, Naomi Shihab Nye, The O’Debra
Twins, Patricia Smith, Patricia Spears Jones, Rachel Levitsky, Rachel McKibbens, Radhiyah
Ayobami, Regina Cabico, Sapphire, Sarah Herrington, Sarah Quinter, Seren Divine, Shanna
Compton, Simone Gorrindo, Suheir Hammad, Tara Betts, Tsaurah Litzky, Turah, Vicki
Hudspith, Wanda Coleman, and Zhang Er
What
is your signature poem? This question was posed to 76 contemporary American
women poets who have delighted, inspired, and shocked audiences at New York City’s
Bowery Poetry Club. And so was born Bowery Women: Poems,
an extraordinary anthology including such national treasures as Anne Waldman,
Ana Castillo, Sapphire, Jessica Hagedorn, Marie Ponsot, and Marie Howe, former
Broadway and HBO Def Jam poets like Ishle Yi Park and Suheir Hammad, slam
winners, plus a crowd of new talents.
One poet, one poem, one photo. Each poet
offers her greatest hit. In some cases, it is the one poem they’re best known
for, in others, it is the one most published or most often requested, and in
still others, it’s a personal favorite.
The works range from elegant classical poems
with chiseled lines to free-flowing “slam” pieces to experimental forms. The
poets, too, are an unusually diverse group: multi-ethnic,
teens to octogenarians, academics to drop-outs, urban to rural.
What emerges is an entertaining, highly readable,
challenging and stimulating survey of (mostly) American women poets writing today.
New York’s Bowery Poetry Club is where it
all started. An extraordinary venue that promotes poetry in all its forms, it’s
the brainchild of co-editor, poet and educator, Bob Holman. Holman
ran readings at St. Mark’s and the
Nuyorican Poets Café, where he founded and emceed their Poetry
Slams from 1988-1996. He’s also published seven books, created Mouth
Almighty, the spoken word division of Mercury Records, and produced poetry shows for PBS and MTV. Holman teaches at Columbia University.
The book is the third in the Bowery Books series.
ISBN 0976435985 150 pages
The Bowery Bartenders Big Book
of Poems
By Shappy, Moonshine Shorey, Laurel Barclay, and Gary Mex Glazner
Thirsting for some of that new poetry? Four of New York's Bowery Poetry
Club's great bartenders serve up some verse for all what ails you: the devilishly funny
pop satires of Firecracker Award-winner Shappy; the trembling white-trash truth serums of
Lower East Side Ingenue of the Year, Moonshine Shorey; the rock'n'roll womanifestos of
Laurel Barclay; and a series of drink recipe poems by Poetry Slam International's Minister
of Fun, Gary Glazner. The Club is known for its all-poet staff, for its 24-hour commitment
to serving the world poetry, and for its apple ply bar. Now you can have it all imported
into your living room via the technological wizardry of a Book! Cheers!"
ISBN 0-9764359-2-6
Love Poems
about Emma
By Robert Glover
Feel its
pain—live its pain.
Who is Emma?
Find out by clicking here.
ISBN 0-9703923-8-9 108 pages
Following are excerpts from Love Poems about Emma. They are snippets chosen to help show the pain.
Read the book.
Feel the pain.
| [from] Why Can’t I Be Like Other Men? Other
men fall in love and marry. I
have fallen in love with you, but
when I am near you I
feel so awkward that I can’t even say hello. How can I marry you if I can’t even say hello? |
[from] Hiding My Love I never look your way. I look any way but your way. When you are not in the room, I cannot even look in the direction where you would have
sat. Someone, I fear, might figure out I was looking at YOUR chair.
|
[from] If You Loved Me But if you loved me, oh how my heart would soar. All my hidden, secret love would and I would dedicate my life to you. |
[from] What I’d Do
For A Date With You For a date with you I’d propose to you, I’d marry you, I’d spend my life with you, I’d have twelve kids with you. . . .
|
[from] Every Day I Pray
For You Prayer is all I have to offer, to make you become mine. Mine forever, till death do us part. Mine to honor, to cherish, to protect, to care for and be
proud of. Mine to raise children with, mine to plan a future with. Only a miracle could ever make you mine. |
|
Unfinished
Ruins
By Bernard J. Looks
Beyond being a poet, Martin S. Dworkin was a writer,
photographer and editor of extraordinary ability. As a successful and widely published
critic of film, Dworkin broke new ground in maintaining that everything we do in society
has an educational aspect. During the fifties and early sixties, he was writing film
criticism on a regular basis for such journals as The New Republic, The New Leader, The
Progressive, and Canadian Commentator. As a teacher, throughout the sixties and
seventies, he offered two highly praised courses of his own origination at Columbia’s
Teachers College in New York City. He was a research associate at the Institute of
Philosophy and Politics of Education at Teachers College and was General Editor of his own
series, published by Teachers College Press. Also during the sixties and seventies,
Dworkin was often invited to lecture at universities on such diverse subjects as
photographic education, cinema, film study in higher education, and radio.
Dworkin’s poems are mined from the experiences of his life, especially what he lived
through during World War II. According to Bernard Looks, the editor of this collection,
“They are pervaded by a profound pessimism which, I can attest, characterized him
throughout his life. But, despite this pessimism, Dworkin never ceased his struggle to
make sense of the wreckage that the war brought and left in its wake during the post war
period.”
Bernard J. Looks is Emeritus Head of the Social Studies Department of the Great Neck South
High School in New York. He has been a lecturer in humanities at the United States
Merchant Marine Academy, a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University’s department of
history, and a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University’s department of history. In
preparation are a collection of the film criticism of Martin Dworkin as well as a memoir
of Dworkin’s life and work, and a translation of the philosophical memoir, How I
Arrived at This Conclusion, by Charles Renouvier, distinguished French philosopher.
Praise for Martin S. Dworkin:
It is not often ...that I meet with the consistent quality and subtle perception to be
found in the reviews and critical pieces of [The Progressive by] your columnist
Martin Dworkin.
—Amos Vogel, founder, New York Film Festival
It would be hard to find courses anywhere that give teachers a deeper understanding of
what education is all about than the two which Martin Dworkin of Teachers College offers
in Aesthetics and Education and Education, Ideology, and Mass Communication.
—Charles E. Silberman, author of
Crisis in the Classroom and Crisis in Black and White
ISBN 0970392338 119 pages
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