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1. Robert Dunn I hear America singing:ISBN 1-882291-60-3 / 60 pp. Paper / Price: $8.00
"He is a master of the understated, a true Yankee, succinctly spoken. His poems are uncluttered; they hit you directly; he has a wonderful sense of humor." -- Wayne Atherton, Café Review
Robert Dunn has served as Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, during the years 1999 and 2000. He has several chapbooks, and a book of poems, quo, Musa, tendis? published by Peter Randall in 1983. A number of these poems, and illustrations by Valerie Cooper, Nadine Perry and Susan Kuntz are included in the present collection.
Prologue
They say you can't possibly
be swallowed by a whale
but it's hard to tell -
it's awfully dark in here.
ISBN 1-882291-61-1 / 52 pp. Paper / Price: $8.00
". . . Pat Fargnoli proves that joy is not only possible, but that the highest joy is arrived at only after bearing the weight of experience through some terrifying valleys. . . . [Her poems are] rich with . . . energy and wonder." -- Brendan Galvin, on Fargnoli's award-winning book Necessary Light
Patricia Fargnoli holds a Bachelor of Arts from Trinity College in Hartford and a Master of Social Work from the University of Connecticut. Pat, who lives in Walpole, New Hampshire, is retired from her career as a clinical social worker and psychotherapist and currently teaches poetry at the Keene Institute of Music and Related Arts and in private tutorials. In the spring of 1998, she was awarded a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony, and she has been in residence several times at the Dorset Writer's Colony in Dorset, Vermont. She was on the resident faculty of The Frost Place Poetry Festival and is an Associate Editor of The Worcester Review. She has published widely in such literary journals as Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, The Laurel Review and The Indiana Review. She was the recipient of the 1997 Robert Frost Literary Award, and the 1999 May Swenson Poetry Award for her book, Necessary Light. The book was also a semi-finalist for The 2001 Glascow Awards. She has three adult children and two grandchildren.
Low Tide, Blues, Pemaquid Sunset
The last beached fish still flips, the fisherman hauls
his bent bow in again, young wife behind him on the sand,
sleeping son held to her shoulder. Gulls' steep calls
ride the wide waves, orange wash narrows to a coral band.
The man, how young he is - each honed limb burned
to tarnished bronze. Woman and child trapped in shadow.
How fathomless the small one's sleep, how silently
the woman stands - like the star of the sea.
How many hours will she wait - the man hefting one last blue
he stows with his stack on the sand? She shifts the child, pulls
him back from dream. Darkness rides in and paws
the ground. Patient as she, the gulls line the seawalls.Copyright © 2001 by Patricia Fargnoli
3. Catherine O'Brian Lucky to be Born in aISBN 1-882291-69-7 / 48 pp. Paper / Price: $8.00
Tales of growing up in the Philippines-where Amahs and lavenderas take charge of the children. Here are two chapbooks in one. The white nightgown takes on a riveting life of its own-in her dreams, in its own dreams: "Who left toothmarks / in the white nightgown's hem?"
Catherine O'Brian lives in Warner, New Hampshire, and works full time as Arts in Education Coordinator for the NH State Council on the Arts. She grew up in the Philippines. In 1995 she completed her MA in Writing at the University of New Hampshire, where she worked with poets, Mekeel McBride and Charles Simic. The complete manuscript of The White Nightgown was awarded the UNH Thomas Williams Graduate Poetry Award in 1995.
The Black Tile Patio
My sister and I
shared the same horse,
same bathroom, same brother,
same amah.
We watched
our mother and father
from a distance, watched them
drink and dance on the black tile patio -
watched them disappear
into airplanes, jade gardens
and air-conditioned rooms.
We stayed up late.
They didn't know,
we were watching them
on those hot,
Manila nights.Copyright © 2001 by Catherine O'Brian
ISBN 1-882291-62-X / 44 pp. Paper / Price: $8.00
"His compass fixes on family, the natural world, and consumerist society-in bewilderment, bemusement, irreverence and reverence-all with sage humor and eloquent humility." -- Wayne Atherton, Café Review
Mark DeCarteret was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1960. His poems have appeared in over a hundred different reviews, including The Contemporary Review, Conduit, FLASH!POINT, Phoebe, and Spinning Jenny as well as such anthologies as American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon Press, 2000) and Place of Passage: Contemporary Catholic Poetry (Story Line Press, 2000). His books of poems are Over Easy (Minotaur Press, 1991) and Review: A Book of Poems (Kettle of Fish Press, 1995). He also co-edited Under the Legislature of Stars: 62 New Hampshire Poets (Oyster River Press, 1999). A recipient of the Thomas Williams Memorial Poetry Prize and a finalist for the Joel Climenhaga Creative Writing Award, he teaches at the Heartwood College of Art, New Hampshire Institute of Art and Franklin Pierce College, Portsmouth.
Surviving Winter
Amazing any stars can be seen
through the tangle of trees,
this talk of eternity
almost visible between us.
His boot prints remain
from the last time he'd ever
go to the shed for a shovel,
the lightest of snow
having filled in the treads,
all logos, identification.
Tomorrow, more sun.
Only this time it is different -
less qualified, less sane.
We trudge back to the house
each making our own path;
something freezes in the forest -
eyes fixed like stones,
body pressed to the cold
as it tries to keep time with
the breathing of the world.Copyright © 2001 by Mark DeCarteret
5. Julia Older City in the SkyISBN 1-882291-66-2 / 32 pp. Paper / Price: $8.00
Her words relate her time in Native American Indian country, like the Tewa Indian song: My Words are joined as one with the Mountains, with the Rocks, with the Trees, as one with my body and my heart.
Julia Older is the winner of a First Hopwood Poetry Award and a Mary Roberts Rinehart Grant for prose. In addition to six poetry collections, her original verse drama Tales of the François Vase has been syndicated nationwide over Public Radio. She is the author of a novel, The Island Queen, based on the life of poet Celia Thaxter (1835-1894) and editor of Celia Thaxter: Selected Writings. Older's poems, stories, and essays have appeared in Poets & Writers, The New Yorker, Nimrod International, and many other journals. Her writing studio is nestled in the treetops of southern New Hampshire.
Petroglyphs:
Canyon De Chelly
The cottonwood stars in the sand
chart the constellation
of Anasazi, the Ancient Ones
who wound the canyon,
rounded kivas, molded mud
to drink the river
and spoke their language
on curved stone:
four directions
flung high like a jack,
a childish hand print,
and the brave scorpion
that falls eight-legged
toward the sky.Copyright © 2001 by Julia Older
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