Crisis Chronicles Press offers 2022 subscription: Everything for $100

Crisis Chronicles Press is back at it, hot and heavy, catching up on our pre-pandemic commitments and so forth. We're putting out 10 titles by some of my favorite writers in 2022, including the just released Contempt of Gravity: The Complete Published Poems, 1981–2020, by William Merricle (a $20 value) - soon to be followed by works by Lisa J. Cihlar, Chansonette Buck, Kent Taylor, Victor Adam Clevenger, Alex Gildzen, Christopher Franke, Brandon Johnson and more.

Subscribe! Donate $100 to receive all ten 2022 titles and an extra surprise or two.

 

Folks keep asking when we will be taking submissions again, and I've been responding with some variation of "hopefully in the near future when I'm caught up." Well, it looks like we will finally be caught up later this year. But whether we can eventually take on new books and keep going beyond 2022 is gonna depend on whether we can make the press sustainable (which has been a larger challenge than usual during the pandemic with so many events unable to happen). 

 

So please consider treating yourself by picking up a subscription to Crisis Chronicles Press - and thereby also help us to get through 2022 and possibly continue beyond that. Many thanks to the very kind indie lit lovers who have been supportive of this work so far (for nearly 14 years). May the universe smile upon you.

 

PayPal to jc@crisischronicles.com

CashApp us at $crisischronicles

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Crisis Chronicles Press publishes Contempt of Gravity: The Complete Published Poems, 1981–2020, by William Merricle

Crisis Chronicles Press is pleased and privileged to celebrate the new year with the publication of Contempt of Gravity: The Complete Published Poems, 1981–2020 by Ohio treasure William Merricle. William is one of the sharpest, smartest, funniest writers we've ever had the pleasure of working with. And this book is everything including (to steal a phrase from one of his poems) "a massive sensory experience"!

Contempt of Gravity is 437 pages, perfect bound, 5.5 x 8.5". ISBN: 978-1-64092-952-4. Front cover art by Steven B. Smith. Published 1 January 2022. 125 copies in print.

 

U.S. or Elsewhere?

United States $20.00 USD Elsewhere $30.00 USD

Contempt of Gravity is available for only $20 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 (plus $4 for shipping in the USA).

 

Contempt of Gravity: The Complete Published Poems, 1981–2020 includes several volumes of Merricle's work in one:

 

Living On Wormholes & Beer (previously uncollected poems from 1981-1990)

Love & Food By-Products (originally published by Iron Press in 1991)

Why Should I Suffer Alone? (originally published by Green Meadow Press in 1993)
Slubberdegullion Sonata (originally published by Big Easy Press in 1995)

Eye Sickles (originally published by Timelapse Press in 1997)

The Constellation Called Forget (previously uncollected poems from 1991-2000)
A Delicious Friction (previously uncollected poems from 2001-2010)
Heimlich the Donut (originally published by Pudding House Publications in 2010)

Grace, You Let the Screen Door Slam (originally published by Crisis Chronicles in 2011)

Chaos Theory (originally published by NightBallet Press in 2013)

Fractured Fairy Tales (originally published by Crisis Chronicles in 2016)

The Tongue Depressor Incident (previously uncollected poems from 2011-2020)

William Merricle was once the assistant manager of a ramshackle soft-porn movie palace. He would open the observation window and glide paper airplanes inscribed with quotes from Heidegger over the engrossed congregants below.

 

1981 copier-art portrait by Grace O’God. 

 

2020 portrait in radiation treatment mask by Jerri Merricle.

Video of our 12/16/2021 Neuronautic Institute reading

I'm sorry I haven't blogged much lately. Just getting over a two-week sickness. If anyone missed our reading the other day, here's video. I was still a little sick and not at my sharpest, but it was still a great time. Many thanks to my co-features William Taylor Jr and Martina Salisbury, to all who watched and/or participated in the open mic, and to Matthew Hupert, Meghan Grupposo and NeuroNautic Institute / Neuronautic Press for hosting.

https://www.facebook.com/109548260772346/videos/315459163779393

The poems I read all come from my book Rattle and Numb: Selected and New Poems, 1992-2019 [Venetian Spider Press]. They include:

Odd Missive
Kiss
Cover Girl
A Taste of Heaven
OT
Loveshot
Piss on Arson
Slipping Backwards into Blue Eden
Unfinished
Mark This

Two of my poems in the new issue of Common Threads

Common Threads is the annual member journal of the Ohio Poetry Association and I'm proud to have two short poems, "Sprouting Onion" and "Food for Thought" in their just-published 2021 edition, alongside work by a number of terrific poets. Edited by Steve Abbott. You may order a copy for $12 at https://www.ohiopoetryassn.org/product/common-threads/2.

While you're at it, please consider making a donation to the Ohio Poetry Association for #GivingTuesday2021. You may do so at https://www.ohiopoetryassn.org/donations.

Next reading: Goldberg, Kress, Audamatik & Burroughs live in Toledo on 12/11

I look forward to sharing the stage with three artists I love during Uncloistered Poets Live! on Saturday  11 December 2021, from 4 to 7 p.m. Eastern at The Switchboard, 912 Monroe Street in Toledo Ohio.

Our esteemed host Jonie McIntire says:

"Cleveland meets Toledo among the art of Just Jerry’s at The Switchboard when we feature Toledo’s own Audamatik, our favorite retiring professor Leonard Kress, Cleveland’s Steve Goldberg, and beat poet extraordinaire John Burroughs!

Features followed by open mic (no more than 5 minutes per reader). Snacks provided but you are invited to bring food as well. And the bar is outstanding - fantastic drinks you should definitely try!"

 

Palm Springs Point of View interviews author Alex Gildzen

Check out this interview! My Crisis Chronicles Press had the distinct privilege of publishing Alex Gildzen's Alex in Movieland (1943-1973) in February 2020, right before the pandemic ground live lit events to a halt, so this is the first time I've heard him read from it. Sharing the video on Facebook, Gildzen says:

 

I have never read more than a few lines from "Alex in Movieland" in public because it's not an easy work to present. however in this interview I read a section that I hope gives some sense of the work.

& once again my unending thx to John Burroughs for publishing the first installment of this important work of which I'm so proud.

 

 

Video permalink: https://youtu.be/O0AD7ALtrnI.

 

If you've been sufficiently tantalized, you may buy the book here.

US or Elsewhere?

U.S. Addresses $12.00 USD Outside the U.S. $16.00 USD

 

Yugen Archive (1958-1962)

Ever since I read How I Became Hettie Jones a while back, I've been wanting to read Yugen, the literary magazine she and Amiri Baraka (then known as LeRoi Jones) edited between 1958 and 1962. So I am thrilled to have discovered this online resource, where one can download scanned copies of all 8 issues of Yugen: 

https://realitystudio.org/bibliographic-bunker/yugen/

 

In its pages you'll find work by Philip Whalen, LeRoi Jones, Diane Di Prima, Jack Micheline, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Tuli Kupferberg, LeRoi Jones, Gary Snyder, William S. Burroughs, Peter Orlovsky, Charles Olson, Frank O’Hara, Michael McClure, Jack Kerouac, John Wieners, Robert Creeley, William Carlos Williams, Barbara Guest, David Meltzer, Jerome Rothenberg, César Vallejo, Philip Lamantia, Tristan Tzara, Kenneth Koch, and so many more.

Two more in-person featured readings this year: 12/11 in Toledo, 12/17 in Erie

Yesterday, I mentioned my final Zoom featured reading of the year: NeuroNautic Institute Presents - 12/16/21. I also have two remaining in-person readings this year. I hope you'll mark your calendars and attend/participate in one (or all) of them if you can:

12/11 (4 pm) in Toledo, OH with Steve Goldberg at the The Switchboard, hosted by Jonie McIntire.

 

12/17 (7:30 pm) in Erie, PA for Express Yourself, hosted by Mabel Howard.

12/16: Neuronautic Institute presents John Burroughs, Martina Salisbury and William Taylor Jr, plus open mic, on Zoom and Facebook Live

My final Zoom / Facebook Live reading of the year! On December 16th at 7 p.m. Eastern, I'll have the honor of reading with William Taylor Jr. and Martina Salisbury for this excellent series hosted by Matthew Hupert and NeuroNautic Institute / Neuronautic Press out of New York City. I'd love to see your faces and hear your words at the accompanying open mic.

Watch here. And send a private message to Matthew to sign up for the accompanying open mic.

 

Richard Brautigan with a Switchblade: A Review of John Dorsey’s Poetry

— by Nelson Gary:

 

The hoo-ya! energy of the here and now streams as John Dorsey’s lines in Triple Threat and Afterlife Karaoke. The insights in these books are sharp and funny. Dorsey is Richard Brautigan with a switchblade. The moves of Outlaw Poetics are here in terms of subversion, but as is frequently the case in this movement, there are elements of academia, the establishment. In terms of line arrangement, indentation, Vladimir Mayakovsky haunts a significant number of the lines of Triple Threat and Afterlife Karaoke. The variable foot of William Carlos Williams is certainly in step in these volumes. The well-read Alec Silverman told me he thought Dorsey’s poetry was reminiscent of Robert Frost’s. While he might be right in his analysis, I myself entirely disagree. Dorsey may be Richard Brautigan with a switchblade, but unlike Frost, he never chased his family around with an ax for making too much noise when he was writing. 

 

I know John a little, not well, but well enough to know he never did or would do anything like what Frost did. One thing that Dorsey and Frost share in common is they are all-in all the time (or as much possible) to write poetry. For all these luminous names mentioned, Dorsey’s poetry is most informed by Todd Moore and Charles Bukowski, the godfathers of present-day Outlaw Poetry. Moore, whose father ran with Dillinger, never earned an MFA in Creative Writing, but he spent his working life as a librarian and teacher; he had a life of books: God rest his soul with his guts to be read in his books. I was fortunate enough to write the essay about Moore for The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.

 

I got to know Moore after he gave a glowing review of my award-winning Cinema. It was the first I had ever heard of Moore, The Chiron Review, and Mayakovsky (Todd mentioned him in writing about my work). Over the years, I developed a friendship with the Outlaw Poetry godfather, and we remained tight until he died. There is a considerable amount of material in Pharmacy Psalms and Half-Life Hymns—for Nothing (Mystic Boxing Commission), my upcoming book, about him. After ordering the Dorsey books from poet-publisher John Burroughs’ Crisis Chronicles Press, I communicated with Dorsey on a great many subjects. One of them was Todd Moore. He said that Moore was a “father figure” to him. Because I knew Moore well, what I can say, with neither doubt nor reservation, was that Todd would have loved these books by Dorsey, been proud of them as the godfather of present-day Outlaw Poetics.

 

There are more than a few standout poems in both of Dorsey’s volumes. “I Want to Murder the Moon” from Triple Threat is a howl against nature for allowing divinity to touch the skin in transcendental experiences. At the end of this poem, Dorsey remarks, “The night is slow / like bloody murder.” These lines inform much of the terrain both books cover. Dorsey writes about the slowness of life that can be violently stultifying internally relatively often in the pages of these volumes. There are lines that jump out at you with the humor of Brautigan, such as the following: “Alice was a finger fucking champion” in the poem “The Rabbit Hole Conspiracy.” “Jimi Hendrix of New Paltz, New York” conjures images of a hustler in a simultaneously cruel and empathic way: “Stars burn / for your albino eyed street hustle / like a Hudson Valley rent boy.” In these poems from Triple Threat, there are mentions of sex, violence, and drugs, even if the violence is only toward that “punk,” the moon, “for bringing divinity / on our skin.”

 

What I loved most about Afterlife Karaoke, which is dedicated to poet Jack Hirschman, is the “Trailer Park Songs” that unify the poem cycle and the elegy for Scott Wannberg, an Outlaw Poet I may have known even better than Todd Moore. I strongly recommend both these books of John Dorsey’s, mostly, of course, for the poetry, but also for the beautifully assembled layout and design by John Burroughs’ Crisis Chronicles Press. The front cover art of Afterlife Karaoke by Steven B. Smith is positively magnetic. What I love most about Dorsey’s work (and these are not the first books of his I’ve read), is its Nirvana-like energy, a band he refers to more than once in these volumes, and his ingenious black humor and and meaningful empathy about the “quiet desperation” (Thoreau) of the multitudes.

 

Buy John Dorsey's Afterlife Karaoke.

Buy John Dorsey's Triple Threat.

Buy both together and save:

Buy Both and Save

In the USA $16.00 USD Elsewhere $28.00 USD

 

 * * * * *

Nelson Gary's works include XXX (Dance of the Iguana Press), Cinema (Sacred Beverage Press), A Wonderful Life in Our Lives: Sketches of a Honeymoon in Mexico (Low Profile Press), and Twin Volumes (Ethelrod Press). His Pharmacy Psalms and Half-Life Hymns—for Nothing will be published by Rose of Sharon Press in 2021. Gary's poems and prose have been published in numerous journals, magazines, anthologies, and newspapers, including The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry (Thunder's Mouth Press), Los Angeles Times, and Desert Sun. Gary, a former professional tennis player and instructor, was the Sports Editor at the Santa Monica Mirror. He read at Lollapalooza in 1994, had a residency with Ivan Neville's All-Star Band at The Mint, recorded his poetry with Elliott Smith ("Coast to Coast") on the latter's album From a Basement on the Hill. At Heroin Times, his journalism helped thousands, if not millions, of people addicted to opioids and their loved ones find recovery. Gary is a Beyond Baroque Fellow and has facilitated two writing workshops there. He has a bachelor's degree in English from California State University of Northridge and a master's degree in Forensic Psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.