Oyster River Press

Poetry, Bilingual, Environmental, Chinese Myths, and Art of Living Books

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New Poetry from Oyster River!

GOING AND COMING BACK

by Elizabeth Knies
Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH, 2007-2009

A handsome chapbook for your pocket. A companion to Robert Dunn's Je Ne Regrette Rien.

At the Heart of Things

At the heart of things a little song
has not yet been extinguished.
Sometimes it sounds like a chirp,
sometimes like the brushing of leaves.

At three a.m. the ping of stars
wakes me. The full moon
wading across the lake!
And none to disbelieve.

JE NE REGRETTE RIEN:
Poèmes nouveux et retrouvés

by Robert Dunn

Edith Piaf's signature chanson, "Non, je ne regrette rien," celebrates a life that "regrets nothing." It's a fitting title for Robert Dunn's new book.

. . . more I have wished my words were bread in this hungry earth, itself a stone wanting to be bread. Or if the worth run not that high, a coin that in the wide almsbasin of a sky could ring most brave and merrily.

For three decades Dunn has been a familiar figure on Portsmouth streets, a classic flaneur, who never drove a car, got along fine without a telephone or TV for most of his life. His daily stroll to the Athenaeum, where he was employed until last year, took him past and into many of Portsmouth's local establishments, where he could be counted on to stop and chat.

Yes, there is humor . . . and poetry of a high order.
— Elizabeth Knies, 2007

Just when might the earth be fair,
its people glad and free?
Which of the explainers
would you want to ask? Not me . . .

(from "Turn toward")

FACING THE MOON: Poems of Li Bai and Du Fu

Translated by Keith Holyoak

A bilingual edition of two of China's greatest poets. Cover art by Xing Jie Chen.

Holyoak's translations achieve a high level of literary excellence while conveying a real sense of the musicality of the originals.
— Jonathan Chaves, George Washington University

The clarity and simplicity Holyoak brings to his translations carry the reader into the profundity and complexity of the originals. Over twelve hundred years disappear and another culture—in no essential way dissimilar to our own—reveals the similarities. Holyoak catches the spirits of China's two greatest poets: "The wine keeps flowing; the moon keeps watch." But the worthiest hallmark of the poets and of the book is sorrow transformed into art.  
— Sebastian Barker, Editor of The London Magazine

Idling Alone

        Drinking wine,
night caught me unawares.
        Fallen flowers
fill the folds of my gown.

        I stagger up
and step on the moon in a stream.
       Birds fly home,
most everyone has gone.

— Li Bai

TO CATCH LIFE ANEW:
10 Swedish Women Poets

Translated by Eva Claeson
In Swedish and English on opposite pages

A collection of poems by Sonia Åkesson, Kristina Lugn, Barbro Dahlin, Margareta Ekström, Johanna Ekström, Elisabet Hermodsson, Katarina Frostenson, Eva Ström, Marie Lundquist, and Elisabeth Rynell.

"And why aren't you writing? Write!" Hélène Cixous implores in her article "The Laughter of Medusa." She stated in 1975 that only if women "write their lives" will a new and rebellious text appear that will change the world and history. It is indeed that rebellious text the reader encounters in Eva Claeson's selection of poems by contemporary Swedish women poets.
— From the Introduction by Ia Dübois

. . . The soldiers stood at the edge of the road with their machine gun
Some showed pity and handed out snow
For the refugees to quench their thirst.
Time blind they stared at the white moon.
They saw with alarm that their uniforms had been sewn in 1914
And that they were turning into their own ancestors.

— Eva Ström, "The paper boy had fallen asleep"

Words disappear like ships at the edge
The sea flows onto land with the sky in tow
Life is pierced with birds flying in formation
When all is still, hear the wing-beat of the days

— Babro Dahlin, "Wing-beat of the days"

THE OTHER SIDE OF SORROW:
Poets Speak Out about Conflict, War, and Peace

From the Poetry Society of New Hampshire

Co-edited by Cicely Buckley of Oyster River Press and Pat Frisella, President of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire

[127] poets speak out... "Innocence does not die at once" begins Tess Baumberger... Responding to those who said 9/11 marked the death of American innocence....The year is 1914, 1948,1963, 2001;.. "There are no still waters...Cain murders Abel,/ and Abel murders Cain" (Hugh Harter).... "I will not dance to your war drum/ I will not lend my soul nor my bones to your war drum....This heartbeat is louder/ than death...." (Suheir Hammad).
— Linda Lerner, Small Press Review

Beyond the lochs of the blood of the children of men
beyond the frailty of the plain and the labor of the mountain,
beyond poverty, consumption, fever, agony,
beyond hardship, wrong, tyranny, distress,
beyond misery, despair, hatred, treachery,
beyond guilt and defilement; watchful,
heroic, the Cuillin is seen
rising on the other side of sorrow.

— Sorley MacLean

WALKING TO WINDWARD

20 of New England's Best Contemporary Poets

Explore, Read Reviews, View all 21 covers, Read Poems, Order

$75 for complete set of 21 chapbooks in 4 volumes (originally $135)!

ALONG THE ROADS OF THE UNIVERSE/
POR LOS CAMINOS DEL UNIVERSO

Poems & illustrations by Amor Halperin

Amor recalls Buenos Aires, New York, L.A., thoughts about the first landing on Mars, the passing of J. Buckminster Fuller, memories of Evita. Eloquent testimony by a keen witness of our times.

Quiero el cielo                    I want the sky                          
y la tierra,                         and the earth
y el pájaro que vuela         and the bird that flies
de árbol en árbol              from tree to tree
siempre en busca              always looking
de ese poquito                  for that little bit
de felicidad                       of happiness
que es el amor. . .             which is love. . . 

from "Quiero"

CROW MILK

Poems by Rick Agran

In Crow Milk you will find the unloved things, forgotten, unseen, returned to life . . . in the poet's clear vision: crows, abandoned children . . . Don't you see how it all shines?  
— Mekeel McBride, NH poet

EDGED IN LIGHT

Poems by Jane B. Jordan, Illus.

Poems of discovery, of love and loss, of spiritual strength. Portraits like Rembrandt in words, reminiscent of Emily Dickinson. "Loves feather upon the scale yet outweighs death. . . ."

. . . Love's feather on the scale
weighs nothing, I believe,
yet outweighs Death,
makes sorrow lighter,
bids me to live,
to smile, protest aloud
to your sweet ghost . . .

HALCYON TIME

Poems on the birds by Hugh Hennedy
10 drawings by Charles Chu

Reading these spare poems, enhanced by ink-wash drawings, is like watching a craftsman build a structure of grasses, wind, cries of shore birds, fog . . . That dandy, randy smell of salt . . .
— Marie Harris, NH poet

The 128 poems are a sort of calendar of birds . . . a poet of the grand moment when Surf scoters dive like / lawn darts descending or Plovers prance at the edge . . . like horses. . . . we redeem experience through his vision.  
— Tar River Poetry

HERE COMES THE OLD MAN NOW

Poems by John Perrault

A collection by John Perrault, poet/balladeer, author of The Ballad of Louis Wagner and other New England Stories in Verse (with photos by Peter Randall), and Portsmouth Poet Laureate (2003-2005).

. . .whether to stormy Maine coasts, to the Paris of heritage, to the Argentina of the disappeared . . . All his dispatches resound against the base: home, hearth and the family around us and before and after us. . . .   
— Jean Pedrick

His poems are heartfelt, unsentimental; tender and muscular . . . political and deeply personal.   
— Marie Harris

I'll have / just a sliver of time please. . .
a wedge of deep dish sky / would be nice . . .

from "Dessert"

INTENSE EXPERIENCE
Social Psychology through Poetry

Fred Samuels, Ed.

Poems are models for coming to terms with inner conflicts through writing. With an index of concepts illustrated in the poems, and an essay on Erikson's Eight Ages of Man.

ORDINARY LIES

Poems by Robert Duffy

Robert J. Duffy must have listened, from a very early age, to readings from Homer, the Psalms of David, the Song of Songs, Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare. He is imprinted with our great language's flights and furies and it pours forth from him like a force of nature. Like John Donne, he asks his own questions, not used ones, and makes up and tries out his own answers, too.
— Jean Pedrick

As she could, with just her eyes,
increase by half the sun,
be careless with her joy
and laugh to no advantage;
so then could I, as one
with finger tries an iron,
be daring and not wise.

from "Love Story"

PEACE IN EXILE

Poems by David Oates, author of Earth Rising: Ecological belief. . .

A naturalist and backpacker follows traces of those who came before, through chaparral and desert to mountain peaks. There is irony in "The Dow is down . . .The tao is down slightly. . . ." and "What the chainsaws have made clear"
— Margery Milne

The roar of images and sounds impounds us
like ancient city walls keeping out the world,
keeping in beloved mayhem, barter,
smells, deceit and favor. Nothing astounds us
but news: politicians, boy versus girl,
anything pungent enough and rank . . .
This is the city. Get, consume, feud . . .

from "Even now"

SHADOWS & SUN/OMBRES ET SOLEIL
Poems & Prose (1913-1952) by Paul Eluard

Drawings by Picasso, Magritte, Chagall, A. Lhote.
Trans. Cicely Buckley

Seamless, accurate translations distinguish this bilingual selection. . . . includes "Liberté" which RAF pilots dropped over France during World War II, the Surrealist Declaration of 1925 . . . to an essay on "committed poetry" . . . to capture this century's shattering changes.
— Publishers' Weekly

Le centre du monde est partout et chez nous.
Soudain la terre bienvenue / Fut une rose de fortune
. . . Où tout chantait à rose ouverte

The center of the world is everywhere and within us.
Suddenly the welcome world / Was a rose of fortune....
. . . The whole world singing like a rose in bloom

THOUGHTS FOR THE FREE LIFE:
Lao Tsu to the Present

3rd Edition, Cicely Buckley, Editor and Illustrator

Wisdom of the ages from many cultures, on the art of living. Poems and sayings from American Indian, African, Oriental and Western cultures include Socrates, Shakespeare, American Indian, Thoreau, May Sarton, Shelley et al. With indices of original languages and authors.

The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robe ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.

—Shelley

UNDER THE LEGISLATURE OF STARS:
62 New Hampshire Poets

Rick Agran, Hildred Crill, Mark DeCarteret, editors. Poems by Maxine Kumin, Donald Hall & Jane Kenyon, MeKeel McBride, Charles Simic, et al.

Something lies in wait here for everyone, which is the true purpose of an anthology. . . . from the Greek for a gathering of flowers. But don't think hothouse alone, or roses or lilies. You will find thistles within as well, and bindweed, even the rebarbative sting of nettle, which is as it should be.
— Maxine Kumin

IS IT POISON IVY?

Second Edition
by Joan Raysor Darlington, author and illustrator

Guide for children and adults to identify poison ivy, oak, sumac, and their look-alikes.

. . .with humor, fine drawings of plants and nature's creatures, a woodland watercolor for the cover.
— M. Milne, author of The Balance of Nature

THE MENDING OF THE SKY & OTHER CHINESE MYTHS

Retold by Xiao-Ming Li; iIlustrations from Shan-Ming Wu.

25 legends of creation, the invention of writing, herbal medicine, good government. Illustrations have the power of traditional Chinese painting. For adults and children, and for reading aloud.
— Small Press Review

Page from The Mending of the Sky

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