Ohioana Award Nominations

I am pleased to announce that five recent Crisis Chronicles Press titles have been nominated for 2019 Ohioana book awards. They are:

Serving by Kari Gunter-Seymour
Where Never Was Already Is by Steven Smith
Citizen of Metropolis by Christine Howey
Dodge, Tuck, Roll by Rikki Santer
Malformed Confetti by Juliet Cook

Fingers crossed! Good luck, you beacons of brilliance!

Dianne and I Cousins and my Top Songs in 2018

Still ill. But awoke to some very interesting news. 1) Dianne Borsenik got her DNA tested (I had mine done 2013) and we have discovered that we are 3rd cousins. 2) I also learned that one of our mutual ancestors, Guy Keith (my great great great grandfather on my father's mom's side), was a Union soldier who died as a prisoner of war at the Belle Isle Confederate prison in Richmond. 3) Finally, but less surprising, Spotify sent me my 2018 stats. The artist I listed to most was Prince (37 hours!). But the songs I listened to most (at least on Spotify) over the course of the year were: 
https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/37i9dQZF1EjgE44NdBQroU?si=x32e8zLoRj2vRRoFVzoBLQ

Home, Sick, PoetryBay, Pizzazz

11/29 during Neuronautic Institute Presents at the
KGB Bar's Red Room in New York City
[photo by Matthew Hupert]

It's good to be home, except for coming down with a cold. Maybe it's from touching too many poles in subways.

I am even more behind than usual on messages and work. I planned to spend today catching up, but my head feels like it weighs 50 pounds, so I'm taking it easy. I apologize to anyone I haven't gotten back to expeditiously. As soon as I can....

Meanwhile, I am extremely grateful to Francine Witte and PoetryBay for this review of Thursday's New York reading with Matthew Hupert and Kat Georges:

Downtown Legends & ‘Mr. Cleveland Pizzazz’ Heat Up NYC Night At KGB.

11/29 during Neuronautic Institute Presents
[photo by Max Chernin]

https://www.facebook.com/notes/poetrybay/downtown-legends-mr-cleveland-pizzazz-heat-up-nyc-night-at-kgbs/2108260409224896/

Crisis Chronicles Press to publish Drinking From What I Once Wore: Selected and Recent Poems by Chris Stroffolino in December

Crisis Chronicles Press is ecstatic to announce the imminent publication of Chris Stroffolino's long-awaited new book, Drinking From What I Once Wore: Selected and Recent Poems.

Drinking From What I Once Wore is 6x9" perfect bound, over 100 pages, and features cover art by Rachel Thoele.  ISBN: 978-1-64092-970-8. This volume features 49 works including "Cusps," "The Dart of the Eel," "First World Problems," "Variations of 21st Century Pop Songs," "2 Dramatic $onnets for the Con$umer $ociety," "Commercial Interruptions," and the Pushcart Prize nominated "Questions for Google Home."

Available for $12 US from Crisis Chronicles Press, 3431 George Avenue, Parma, Ohio 44134 USA. Pre-order now and we'll send it to you in December.

Where are you?

United States $12.00 USD Elsewhere $15.00 USD

Love for Chris Stroffolino and Drinking From What I Once Wore: 

"Maybe all life is preparing for 'The test/ We can only pass if we waste no time/ thinking we can study for it.' If so, Chris Stroffolino's carelessly brilliant poems would be as invaluable as cliff notes. In any case they come in handy."  

—John Ashbery, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

"There is no line of thought in [Stroffolino’s] poetry that can’t or doesn’t kick out a set of veins pumping blood to and from the dramatic qualities of its existence or an inverted conversion of the optimal antidote to its own fiercely depicted frailties. Chris has fought in his writing for a poetry that is intimate, musical, invested equally in Shakespeare & Joe Strummer and intensely personal without giving up the demand of rhetoric to be a necessity of passion rather than a muted counterbalance. His new book varies the tempo and carries these things through.  

—Anselm Berrigan, author of Something for Everybody

Chris Stroffolino
photo by Jaime Borschuk

"Edgy and hip."  

—Noelle Kocot, author of Phantom Pains of Madness

About Chris Stroffolino:

Chris Stroffolino is the author of 4 full-length books of poetry, as well as the memoir Death of a Selfish Altruist, two books of essays in poetry and culture criticism and, with Dave Rosenthal, a study guide to Shakespeare’s 12th Night. He currently lives in Oakland, California, where he has taught writing at Laney College since 2008.

This Year's Crisis Chronicles Press Pushcart Prize Nominations

Crisis Chronicles Press has had the honor of publishing many excellent books by very talented poets this year. Alas, the Pushcart people only allow us to make six nominations. I would have preferred to have chosen twenty, as there were so many worthy candidates. But after some lengthy and very difficult deliberations, I finally narrowed down the field and submitted the following Pushcart Prize nominations:

"Serving"
by Kari Gunter-Seymour — from Serving (March 2018)

"Eclipse Myths"
by Steven B. Smith — from Where Never Was Already Is (April 2018)

"William Randolph Hearst, Diving Alone, San Simeon"
by Christine Howey — from Citizen of Metropolis (August 2018)

"Afterlife"
by Rikki Santer — from Dodge, Tuck, Roll (September 2018)

"assembly line doll head roach motel"
by Juliet Cook — from Malformed Confetti (October 2018)

"Questions for Google Home"
by Chris Stroffolino — from Drinking From What I Once Wore: Selected and Recent Poems (December 2018)

Best of luck to all of you!

My "Whend" nominated for a Pushcart Prize

This Thanksgiving Day, I'm honored and grateful to learn that my poem "Whend" has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by NightBallet Press, alongside poems by Alex Gildzen, Bill & Pat Hurley, Sandra Feen, Jeanette Powers and M.J. Arcangelini. Many thanks to editor Dianne Borsenik!

"Whend" was the first significant poem I wrote after my wife Geri's untimely death in 2016. It was published in my 2018 chapbook Loss and Foundering.

Read more at https://nightballetpress.blogspot.com/2018/11/pushcart-prize-nominees-from-2018.html.

50 years after d.a. levy’s death....

Read this piece by Mark S Kuhar at cleveland.com.

Then join us for a poetry reading at levy's grave on November 24th at noon.

New LCCC Radio Interview Tuesday 11/13

I look forward to talking with Ryan Sagert about poetry Tuesday 11/13 at 10 a.m. on Lorain County Community College radio. You can listen in at https://www.lcccradio.com/.

My 1st Reading in the Heart of NYC Will Be on 29 November

Finally home after a fine three-day mini trip (Pittsburgh, PA; Richwood, WV; Pomeroy, OH). I have one more reading scheduled for this year and it's bucket list caliber - my first ever in the heart of New York City, at the KGB Bar's Red Room with Kat Georges and Matthew Hupert. So looking forward to this!

"Dish Work" and more live in Oakland on 7/19/2017

Reading at the Octopus, 1/19/17, photo by PCR

Last year I drove cross country to the west coast for the first (and so far only) time and it was one of the highlights of my life. So many good memories made!  One of the best was having the opportunity to read with D.R. Wagner, M.J. Arcangelini and Matt Cook at the Octopus Literary Salon in Oakland, California, on July 19th. I am grateful to Paul Corman-Roberts for making it happen—as well as emceeing, snapping pics and videoing random bits of the proceedings.
 

There are two clips of me that I meant to link to on this blog last year—but then I got behind and it hasn't happened until now. You can check them out here:

facebook.com/events/1562616010436560/permalink/1576457895719038/

One clip features "Dish Work," a poem inspired by Columbia Hills Country Club, where I worked as a dishwasher from around September 1986 to January 1987. It's also where I first met Geri, who was a waitress there at the time. The second clip catches me reading the first part of my poem "From Genesis to Exodus," a tribute to Prince.

"Dish Work" appears in my chapbook Water Works, first published in 2012 by recycled karma press and reissued in early 2017 as part of the Poets Haven Archive Series. "From Genesis to Exodus" was first published in Delirious: A Poetic Celebration of Prince (2016, NightBallet Press) and now also appears in my chapbook Loss and Foundering (2018, NightBallet Press).