CAROLYN HEMBREE'S FORTHCOMING BOOK!

Congratulations to Carolyn Hembree whose manuscript Rigging a Chevy into a Time Machine and Other Ways to Escape a Plague, won the 2015 Trio Award, selected by Neil Shepard, and the 2015 Marsh Hawk Press Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award, selected by Stephanie Strickland. The book will come out from Trio House Press in the spring of 2016.

Rigging a Chevy into a Time Machine and Other Ways to Escape a Plague is a sequence of poems arranged like a truck owner’s manual. Set in rural Appalachia, “a truck up on concrete blocks” functions as time machine for V. Cleb, an accursed wanderer trapped and liberated by the limits of his world. When spiritual and material realms commingle, visions of cosmic significance are revealed. Biblical cadences, elliptical phrasing, and a deep-rooted vernacular distinguish the voice of these poems. “Through wormhole after wormhole,” the book inscribes a landscape visceral, haunted, afflicted, afflicting.

EILEEN TABIOS IN THE ST. HELENA STAR

with notice of her new Marsh Hawk Press book, The Connoisseur of Alleys!

PAUL PINES' LATEST IN NOTRE DAME REVIEW

Notre Dame Review #41, "Passages," has just come out and contains, among other notable pieces, Paul Pines' essay "What The Shadow Knows." Paul says that the essay is "masquerading as a review of Morris Dickstein's moving memoir, Why Not Say What Happened. I think perhaps it may in fact be a mini-memoir masquerading as a review masquerading as an essay. If anyone would like to figure it out, here it is."

You can see Paul's essay HERE.

AWP SPOTLIGHTS MARSH HAWK PRESS!

AWP Bookfair spotlighted Marsh Hawk Press on its Facebook account--go HERE to see. For those not on Facebook, this is what they said:

Spotlight on Marsh Hawk Press! 

Since its founding in 2001, Marsh Hawk Press has focused on the relationship between poetry and the visual arts, publishing the ekphrastic poetry of Sharon Dolin, the sculptural poetry of Eileen R. Tabios and Thomas Fink, the abstract-expressionist poetic memoires of Basil King, as well as the award-winning works of Phillip Lopate, Mary Mackey, Steve Fellner, George Quasha and others. The press sponsors annual awards: the Marsh Hawk Press book publication prize, the Robert Creeley Memorial Award, and the Rochelle Ratner Memorial Prize. 

Website:  www.marshhawkpress.orgBookfair table: #1301

POEMS IN RESPONSE TO THE CONNOISSEUR OF ALLEYS

We're delighted to see the husband-wife poet team Michael and Joyce Gullickson write poems in response to Eileen R. Tabios' latest Marsh Hawk collection, THE CONNOISSEUR OF ALLEYS.  Joyce's poem is available HERE and Mike's poem is available HERE.

Thanks poets!!

JANE AUGUSTINE APPEARANCES WITH MICHAEL HELLER, NORMAN FINKELSTEIN, JON CURLEY & BURT KIMMELMAN

FROM MICHAEL HELLER:

Dear friends and colleagues (apologies for longish message): 

I’ll be appearing with Jane Augustine in the Cincinnati-Louisville area, reading and attending the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture. For those in the area and/or attending the conference, we hope to see you. Here are our events: 

On Wednesday, February 17th, at 7:30 PM, Jane and I will be reading at Xavier University at Alter Hall Room 001. Jane will be performing work from her new book of visual poetry, Krazy, and I'll read new work from my forthcoming book, Dianoia.

On Friday, February 19th, at the Louisville Conference, in connection with a new book on my work, The Poetry and Poetics of Michael Heller: A Nomad Memory (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015), there is a panel on my poetry. I’ll be in attendance, listening: 

Rites of Naming: The Poetic Practice of Michael Heller (E-5 on the program)
Friday 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM Room: Humanities
Chair: Burt Kimmelman, New Jersey Institute of Technology
• Norman Finkelstein, Xavier University“ Rethinking the Sacred with Michael Heller”
• Jon Curley, New Jersey Institute of Technology “'Until Another Word': Tradition and Revision in Michael Heller's Poetry”
• Tyrone Williams, Xavier University “The After-Birth of Before-Death: Two Poems about Lawrence Joseph's and Michael Heller's Fathers”
• Burt Kimmelman, New Jersey Institute of Technology “Respondent”

Immediately after that panel, at 3:15, Jane will be moderating a panel on H.D: H.D.’s Technologies of Time, Sense, Conflict (F-6 on the program)

On Monday February 22, Jane and I will be reading at The Bonboniere, 2030 Madison Road, Cincinnati.

THE CONNOISSEUR IS FEATURED & AVAILABLE!

One of the poems in THE CONNOISSEUR OF ALLEYS, is featured in John Bloomberg-Rissman's opus, THE HANGMAN--you can see it at Zeitgeist Spam. He conflated Eileen Tabios' poem "Menage a Trois with the 21st Century" with an artist statement by Jigger Cruz!

**

Also, even as the book is still in process of being stocked at Amazon.com, apparently it already received a review by one of its Hall of Fame reviewers. Thanks to Grady Harp for:

Anyone familiar with the rather enormous output of poetry and experimentation written communication and style will have an idea of what to expect in this newest publication THE CONNOISSEUR OF ALLEYS (the title alone invites creativity). But then again, not necessarily, because every time Tabios sets her mind to a new project, something unique happens. This collection of works is a collection of interconnected poems, each time a poem begins a reference shines, a moment of recognition and yet that moment so embellished with fresh perspective that the result is as mesmerizing as it is exquisite poetry. Each poem begins with ‘I forgot…’ and then meanders through the maze of memory and reconstruction of the past and references to the art of word craftsmanship in a manner that immediately becomes awe-inspiring.

And you can order it now, despite the site saying it's temporarily out of stock (that's not true; it's in process of being stocked).

EILEEN TABIOS' FIRST MARSH HAWK PRESS BOOK REVIEWED

Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole was both Eileen R. Tabios' first Marsh Hawk Press book as well as first U.S.-published book.  Fourteen years later, it's still receiving attention -- most recently from Romanian-based critic Monica Manolachi who reviewed it for THE HALO-HALO REVIEW.  You can go HERE for the review but here's an excerpt:

The study of flags, vexillology is a fusion of the Latin word vexillum (flag) and the Greek suffix –logia (study). Vexillologists deal with all sorts of flags and they often meet to discuss their meanings. When the flags happen to be unidentified and fictional, they may be found in short stories, novels or comic strips. If the flagpole is empty and the vexillologist says “I am addicted to what I do not know” or “I symbolize nothing” or “I am unsure with metaphors—I allow them to bleed from my pen,” then we are talking about a poet disguised as vexillologist. In Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole (2002), Eileen R. Tabios dwells on the possibilities offered by the combination of poetry and prose, reflects on belonging to various forms of in-betweenness and imagines unusually liberating flags for the states she explores. 

The motif of “the empty flagpole” can be read in different ways throughout the book. As a vertical line, it is a sign that simultaneously divides and unites, and it stands for the attempt to find laws in what is apparently turbulent and disconcerting: “To escape chaos, the Greeks created art with abstractions. It is a familiar approach, having long used geometry to deny myself caresses.” Tabios’s collection is also political. As a Filipino-American poet, born in Ilocos Sur, she explores the intersection of double belonging, by grafting cultural, ethnic and personal memory onto her American and transnational experience: “What does it say about me when I ask for asylum in places where people wish to leave? I try to find meaning in flags. But they repel me when buffeted by an incidental breeze.” The motif also implies the difficulty of separating poetry from prose and the desire to employ the aesthetic complexity of both, in order to express the struggle of finding meaning. For Tabios, the middle ground can be where the rhythmic cadences of free verse, with their lyrical repetitions, images and sounds, meet what seems to resemble a narrative, but which expresses a mood, emotion or feeling rather than strictly the thread of a story. The facts are only pretexts for further subjective visions, both sensual and intellectual.

SANDY MCINTOSH'S BOOK EXCERPTED IN LONG ISLAND PRESS!

An excerpt from Sandy McIntosh's book A HOLE IN THE OCEAN: A Hamptons Apprenticeship is excerpted in Long Island Press. You can go HERE to read the whole thing, but here's an excerpt:

Back in 1970, when the East End of Long Island was a quiet, difficult-to-access refuge for painters and writers who’d washed up on its shores from cities and towns around the world, I enrolled as an English major at Southampton College. The college, now Stony Brook/ Southampton, was then the furthest outpost of Long Island University. It had been founded to teach the children of the year-round residents, the workers living in the towns along the East End shore. 

What I found were teachers unlike any I’d met. Not merely scholars, these professors were the real thing: writers and artists of national, even international repute, quietly spending their winters in a warm and collegial place. 

These were artists such as Willem de Kooning, Ilya Bolotowsky and Ibram Lassau, and award-winning writers such as H. R. Hays, David Ignatow and Charles Matz. 

Why had these accomplished artists gathered at a small, rural college? De Kooning once explained it to me: “We’re here in the wintertime. We work in our studios all day and some of us want to get together at night, usually at some bar. Then people get drunk and into fights and the police come. But now we can meet at the college and talk, and we don’t get into too much trouble.” 

A Hole In the Ocean is my recollections of these unique artists I got to know on campus and off. Instead of classroom instruction, these craftsmen offered me their criticism, as well as their friendship, for many years to come. In return I played unofficial chauffeur, therapist, straight-man and witness to their successes and foibles.

MARSH HAWK PRESS AT AWP!

Yes, Marsh Hawk Press and its poets will be present at AWP this year.  We look forward to meeting you.  Here's the banner that will be at our table:

(click to enlarge)

MARSH HAWK PRESS AT NEW ORLEANS POETRY FESTIVAL!

Sandy McIntosh, Paul Pines and Eileen R. Tabios will present a Marsh Hawk Press reading at the inaugural New Orleans Poetry Festival.  

The first annual New Orleans Poetry Festival will take place April 15-17, 2016 at the Arts Estuary, 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue, and other locations nearby, including Mags (940 Elysian Fields) and Siberia (2227 St. Claude).

For registration information, information about featured poets (page is in progress), and other details, go HERE. 

All three Marsh Hawk poets recently released new books:

Sandy McIntosh: A Hole in the Ocean: A Hamptons' Apprenticeship

Paul Pines: Charlotte Songs

Eileen R. Tabios: THE CONNOISSEUR OF ALLEYS

PAUL PINES' ESSAY IN NUMERO CINQ!

Numéro Cinq has again done a remarkable job in presenting the third in a series of essays by Paul Pines, "Trolling with the Fisher King", this one "Constellating the Net: A Quantum Fairy Tale."  Here is the link

http://numerocinqmagazine.com/2016/02/02/trolling-with-the-fisher-king-chapter-three-constellating-the-net-a-quantum-fairytale-paul-pines/

and an excerpt:

In my practice as a psychotherapist, I encounter this repeatedly in a variety of ways. Recently, my twenty-five year old client, Nick, an artist of considerable talent, related that I appeared in his dream in a wheel chair. It was at the opening of a solo exhibition of his work. He welcomed me, told me how glad he was that I had come, then asked how I was feeling. I replied: “The world is dangerous. The world is thoughtful. I’m all right.”  The words resonated deeply for me. They summed up what, in fact, I hoped to model and convey to him in the course of our work. Understood in this way, the dream remains a concrete visual reference point and may be viewed as a psychological fact. A Memphite Tablet from pre-Dynastic Egypt, 5,100 years ago, tells us the creation of the world and everything in it issued from Ptah’s invisible heart-thoughts which materialized in his spoken word.  “Every divine word has come into existence through the heart’s thought and tongue’s command…”

(Paul Pines)