Sandra Feen, Dianne Borsenik & me
10/20/2018 at Main Street Books
Many thanks to Voices from the Borderlands for this video of me reading my poem "Judge Marks" on 20 October 2018 during the Borderlands open mic following Concrete Wink's feature at Main Street Books in Mansfield, Ohio!
The title "Judge Marks" is a play on the name Mark Judge, who once upon a time was [in]Justice Brett Kavanaugh's drinking buddy. I wrote the poem after learning of Kavanaugh's confirmation. Watch:
Crisis Chronicles Press is very pleased to celebrate the December holidays by publishing Awaiting Time, a duende-infused poetry collection by the inimitable Helen Shepard.
Awaiting Time is 48 pages, perfect bound, 5.5x8.5" and features 37 of Shepard's most engaging works, some in Spanish but mostly in English, including "Listening to Flamenco," "Ilusiones," "Más Ilusiones," "Blood Stains," "Garden of Delights," "I Need to Take Apart My Thoughts," "Circular Reincarnation," "Living with Eternity" and "When Blue Was Green." ISBN: 978-1-64092-974-6. Cover art: Ya tienen asiento by Goya.
Available for $10 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 3431 George Avenue, Parma, Ohio 44134 USA.
Helen Shepard of Oberlin, Ohio, taught for decades at Lorain County Community College and retired as an Associate Professor of Spanish. For many years after, she continued giving courses for their Center for Lifelong Learning. Helen has lived all over, from American Samoa to Spain, and traveled extensively. Her previous publications include "Camilo Castelo Branco and the Portuguese Inquisition" in New Horizons in Sephardic Studies. She has presented poetry at Snoetry: A Winter Wordfest, the Cleveland Museum of Art and countless other noteworthy locations. To find out more about Helen, please visit www.helenshepard.com or contact her on Facebook.
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
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....
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.
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 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.
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)
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.
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/.
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!
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:
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).
Pittsburgh is one of my favorite places to travel for poetry, and the last time I read there was August 2016. In other words, it has been far too long. This Sunday from 2 to 4, I'll have the honor of reading with Alyssa
Herron, Bob Walicki, Kara Knickerbocker, Nicole Onda
Grynd, Joshua Tarquinio and Sarah Washburn Thornton for the Hell's Lid Reading Series hosted by Miss Macross at the Full Pint Wild Side Pub, 5310 Butler Street, 15201.
In this clip, recorded the same day I saw the Pacific Ocean in person for my first time ever, I recite my signature poem, "John Cage Engaged and Uncaged." I forget who recorded it, but will update this when I find out.
Here I perform my poem "No Other" accompanied by the River Cow Orchestra
during Fountainverse: KC Small Press Poetry Festival on 13 October 2018
at La Esquina in Kansas City, Missouri. Video recorded by Jason Preu (thank you!).
I wrote "No Other" on 30 March 2018 - inspired by Tony
Ingrisano's "Far Enemy" - for an Ekphrastacy program at Heights Arts in
Cleveland Heights. The poem first appeared in print in The Gasconade
Review Presents: Missouri Is a Ghost Shaped Thing, edited by John Dorsey
and Jason Ryberg for Spartan Press.
No Other after Far Enemy by Tony Ingrisano
A wide web of geometry and pixelation
looms over my brick suburban bungalow.
The colors warm and entice me
with creeping florescent sophistication.
I feel them drawing me up and in
while equally I am drawing them inside.
It’s a network of jasmine attraction
bringing untoward craving and resentment,
hate and cruelty from America the beautiful,
Russian bots, unacknowledged racists,
television networks, Amazon.com, nihilism
proponents, penile enhancement specialists,
trolls, moles, sexist pols and ad-mongers,
while the colors of it all bleed into pools
of need and reaction, stupefaction,
failure to listen disguised as debate,
hasty action, dystopian dissatisfaction,
snark disguised as lark and warring factions.
This poem began as an expression of appreciation
for a wide web of precious colors and pixelation
before I met the so-called far enemies
in my bathroom mirror and hardly
If you're in the Columbus area, you can pick up some books of mine - including Oct Tongue and Loss and Foundering - at Gramercy Books in Bexley, Ohio Thanks to Linda Kass for being the perfect host, and also for these photos from my reading with Anna Soter there on Friday evening.
The others are 11/4 for the Hell's Lid Reading Series in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and 11/29 at the KGB Bar's Red Room in New York City. I'd love to see you at one of these!
So far I’m resisting planning many events in 2019, although I look forward to the handful I already have scheduled. I expect to have a new book out at some point during the course of the year, however, and will likely set up more events when I have a clearer idea of when that is happening.
Second Sunday Poets featuring John Burroughs, hosted by Doc Janning at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst Branch of Cuyahoga County Public Library, 1876 S. Green Road, 44121.
Thursday 14 March in Clarion, Pennsylvania
More details forthcoming.
Sunday 17 March in Columbus, Ohio
Peripatetic Poets, hosted by Doug Rutledge at the St. Stephen's Episcopal Church and University Center, 30 W. Woodruff Avenue, 43210.
30 August through 1 September in New Hartford, Connecticut
National Beat Poetry Festival. More details forthcoming.
I've been meaning to post a link to this video for awhile, but other things kept coming up. This clip catches me on 22 April 2018 in the middle of reading my poem "Ataraxis" during the Tongue-in-Groove Poetry Jam hosted by Ray McNiece at the Millard Fillmore Presidential Library in Cleveland's Waterloo district.
My folder full of to-do lists runneth over. I've been having some
concerning short-term memory issues lately, hence my recent round of
neuro testing. There's a good chance it could just be as simple as me
not getting adequate rest (apnea is a likely candidate, but I'm awaiting
final results) - although I do obsess about the remote possibility of
Alzheimer's, especially since DNA testing reveals that I have a gene
that makes me more susceptible to that as I age. No matter how hard
I work each day to get things done, fulfill commitments and cross
things off these many lists, it seems that every day I acquire even more
things to do. Although much (most) of these are things I love to do, it
can become a bit overwhelming at times. Especially concerning to me is
that there are several cases recently where I say I'll do things that
are important or interesting to me and if I don't write them down (maybe
I'm driving - or I'm somewhere without my lists folder) I totally
forget until something unrelated (or the person I never got back to)
reminds me. For this reason, I'm going to have to start saying no to
more things. I will still fulfill my current commitments (including
several events coming up, poems I've committed to writing, two presses
I've promised to put together manuscripts of my writing for, and 14
titles to publish in my Crisis Chronicles Press
queue, as well as catching up on updating the online Cleveland literary
calendar). But other than that, I'm going to try to say no to any new
commitments at least through the winter, by which time I'll be more
caught up and have much less to keep track of. If I was supposed to do
something for you and it hasn't happened yet, there is a high likelihood
that you're on one of these lists, in which case it will get done as
soon as I can. There's also a possibility that, despite how important it
was to me at the time, it somehow slipped through the cracks and I
forgot to write it down or get back to you, in which case I hope you
will be gentle and forgive me. I won't be offended if you send me a
reminder. Maybe I'll feel self-conscious about this post (I kinda
already do) and delete it soon. But since Facebook asked what's on my
mind, that's some of it. Now, it's back to work for me!
Crisis Chronicles Press is delighted to announce the publication of glitter witch Juliet Cook's new darkly delicious full-length poetry collection, Malformed Confetti,on 16 October 2018.
All
hail the Queen of Grotesque, Juliet Cook! Her imagery is monstrous, distorted
and unnatural — an unmistakably unstable mixture of estranged dollcanos and blood. These poems plunge
into “your neckline, your mouth, your eyes”— into the absurdities of existence,
and Cook can barely contain all that is coming apart, even “a stuck tongue
keeps breaking.” Malformed Confetti
is alive! And absolutely “plotting an insurrection.”
—Susan
Yount, editor of Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal
Juliet Cook’s full-length collection, Malformed Confetti, is a visceral examination of the body: bones, blood, teeth, breasts, ovaries, eyes, throat and thighs. Cook’s poetry is elemental grindhouse feminism; confronting what is most difficult with the unblinking eyes of a coroner. Lush and guttural, Cook leads us on a journey through a harrowing cycle of creation and destruction.
—Kelly Boyker, author of Zoonosis and Poetry Editor at Menacing Hedge
In
her second full-length collection of poetry, Juliet Cook offers up a menagerie
of beaten, bloodied, insect infested, ink ingested, broken girl bits. Her words cut into the eyes with nettles and
burs, leaving nothing but an empty socket, a hole to be filled with desire
“rooted in sick compulsion.” Cook stares unflinchingly at the sugar and spice
and everything nice to reveal the dark nature of such malformed conceptions of
beauty and womanhood. Each graphic image
is threaded with the red yarn of things that are forbidden to say, so Cook
cracks the skull open as easily as the shell of an egg. She stares the darkest horrors of the mind
straight in the eye to say “Doesn’t mean I still can’t maneuver up. / Maybe I
just don’t want to / with you." Her poems in this collection leave the
reader dazzled by blue blood and dead birds made out of the vocabulary of what
it means to be a capital P Poet.
—Tracie
Morell, author of Matilda's Battle Waltz
Poetry
that devours you. That isn’t afraid to put its best twisted doll foot forward.
I like to read Juliet’s poetry in the buff because her words keep me modest as
I rail against the perversity of playing with shit and all the anorexic
nightmares that go along with it. Her pound cake poetry fits perfectly in your
misshapen pie hole. Swallow her words like a handful of blue-tinged tacks
because there’s no standing on ceremony in this land of ravenous parasites and
machinated halos. Her well-chosen and ill-fated albino words aren’t afraid to
get their hands dirty as the maggots begin singing an emaciated melody and
there’s nothing left but her Tilt-O-Whirl porno star mannerisms. This
collection of Malformed Confetti will leave you in traction as it’s rolled
fresh from the oven and acts as a tranquilizer or dark red cloud burst
depending on your dissolution or poisoned discord and how prepared you are to
walk into the silently screaming fires.
—Charles
Cicirella, co-author of Ether Bisque
In Malformed Confetti, Juliet Cook conveys both a rare elegance and grotesque violence simultaneously. This book is
unafraid; it is not ashamed. It takes unabashed risks, and turns language into
something that is breathing, and alive with vigor. In this landscape of “secret
luminarias” the body is devoured like food, and her “tongue unroots from its
dank cave”; “bones are tapered syllables” and “hollow flutes.” There is a
vulnerability embedded in the anger and gore, and though some may say we are
“forbidden to talk about hunger,” Cook speaks of it fearless of her
rivals.
—Lisa
M. Cole, author of Dreams of the Living
and Heart Full of Tinders
Malformed Confetti by Juliet Cook is 113 pages, perfect bound, 5.5x8.5" and features cover art by Simona Candini. ISBN: 978-1-64092-973-9. Available for $12 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 3431 George Avenue, Parma, Ohio 44134 USA.
Meet the author:
Tuesday 16 October 2018 at 7 p.m. during Poetry Plus featuring Juliet Cook at Art on Madison, 14203 Madison Avenue in Lakewood, Ohio.
Sunday 11 November at 6 p.m. during Uncloistered Poetry at Calvino's Restaurant & Wine Bar, 3143 W Central Avenue in Toledo, Ohio.
Juliet Cook [photo by Darryl Shupe, processed by Cook]
Juliet Cook has been writing poetry for more than
25 years. Her poetry has appeared in a small multitude of magazines, both
online and in print. She is the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, recently
including a collaboration with j/j hastain called "Dive Back Down"
(Dancing Girl Press, 2015), an individual collection called "From One
Ruined Human to Another" (Cringe-Worthy Poets Collective, 2018), and with
another individual collection, "Another Set of Ripped Out Bloody Pig
Tails" forthcoming from The Poet's Haven.
Cook's first full-length individual poetry book, Horrific Confection, was published by BlazeVOX in late 2008, ten years ago
now. Her more recent full-length poetry book, A Red Witch, Every Which
Way, is a collaboration with j/j hastain published by Hysterical Books in 2016.
Her MOST recent individual full-length poetry book is this one, Malformed
Confetti.
The poems within Malformed Confetti
range from 2008 to 2015. In early 2010, Cook suffered from an unexpected
Carotid Artery Dissection, which lead to an Aneurysm which lead to a Stroke.
Later in 2010, while on the brink of divorce and temporarily living with her
parents, Cook began to assemble and submit an earlier version of this
manuscript. As time went on, she revised it, added more recent poems, and
rearranged it, forming it into a dissected but interconnected discombobulation
of pre-stroke and post-stroke work.
Cook's poetic style has undergone changes over the
years, but her passion for poetry lives on.
Cook also sometimes creates semi-abstract painting
collage art hybrid creatures.
Cook also runs her own tiny independent press,
Blood Pudding Press, which sometimes publishes hand-designed poetry chapbooks
and sometimes sells art.
