Pimping Rattle in Avon Lake

Recently uploaded: On November 6th 2021 I had the pleasure at participating in the Avon Lake Public Library's annual Read Write Local event. During the book fair someone came by with a microphone and asked each author to share a little something. You'll find me rambling in this clip beginning around the 25:44 mark. Many thanks to Gerry Vogel, the library and Avon Lake Community Television. 

Read Write Local - November 6, 2021 from Avon Lake Community Television on Vimeo.

My Rattle & Numb: Selected and New Poems, 1992-2019 is available here. Shout out to its publisher, Venetian Spider Press.

 

Crisis Chronicles Press publishes Before the Next Ice Age by Lisa J. Cihlar

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to announce our second new publication of 2022, Before the Next Ice Age by Lisa J. Cihlar. We've been huge fans of Lisa's work for well over a decade and are happy as can be to have had the opportunity to work with her again. 

Before the Next Ice Age features more than twenty prose poems on 34 pages, perfect bound, 5.5 x 8.5". The front cover painting is also by Lisa J. Cihlar. Published 22 January 2022. ISBN: 978-1-64092-953-1. First edition of 150 copies.

 

U.S. or International?

United States $10.00 USD International $14.00 USD

 

Before the Next Ice Age is available for only $10 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 (plus $3 for shipping in the United States). 

 

Or subscribe to our entire 2022 series (at least ten titles, plus a surprise or two) for $100 with free shipping.

Earlier praise for Cihlar's work:

"When I first encountered Lisa Cihlar's poetry, I sensed an electricity in the air, a subterranean movement that insinuated itself up from the ground into my bones. And then I felt flooded, suddenly, with the wonder only great art inspires. Cihlar's poetry is full of muscle and sinew, power and verve, a voice so undeniable that it wraps itself around your synaptic connections and becomes indelible, essential. This is poetry of the highest order, of the most terrific, breath-stripping power."

—Terri Brown-Davidson, Author, Pulitzer Prize Nominee, The Carrington Monologues

 

Lisa J. Cihlar's poems have appeared in Blackbird, Gargoyle Magazine, South Dakota Review, Crab Creek Review, and Mid-American Review. She has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net award. Her three previous chapbooks are The Insomniac’s House from Dancing Girl Press, This Is How She Fails from Crisis Chronicles Press, and When I Pick Up My Wings from the Dry Cleaner (winner of the 2013 Blue Light Poetry Prize) from Blue Light Press. Cihlar lives in rural southern Wisconsin.

 

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, John Dorsey 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

paypal.me/crisischronicles

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 photo by Steven B. Smith of a mural by Donald Black, Jr. 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.