PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION by Jim Leftwich

Jim Leftwich

PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION

 This unique book, written while the author and his wife have been moving around the Western USA, is full of references to place names, and flora and fauna of California, which reminds one of Californian writing of the 1960s, when poets, beats, and hippies were hanging out in places like Big Sur, Bolinas, Venice, and San Francisco. That resonance brings a level of lyricism to Leftwich’s work. But his writing is very different from those halcyon days, though there is a similarity in the attention paid to common moments and things, a Zen-like attitude. But here, words are often juxtaposed with little apparent semantic relationship, making for phrases and lines that create multiple possibilities of meaning and resonance. In Part One of this book especially, each of Leftwich’s “stanzas” are separate poems/ worlds/ perceptions/ and each rewards attention. They are not “thought”, but mirrors of attention, blank minds open - not like the Californian 1960s at all, where such things were talked about but not manifested so much. Leftwich manifests that kind of mind, as in a classical Japanese Haiku sequence. It requires a kind of open and shifting attention of the reader, an attention that does not include any kind of searching for facile instructions about how to live. It is, rather, documentation of an acceptance and exploration of the relationship between mind and world. - John M. Bennett this week the role of shoes / images of hats and nostrils / insomuch as the map pages / are unreadable illegible / desemantized & repetitive

&15 US

Poetry, 167 pp.

ISBN 9781938521942

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INFACTURAS by John M. Bennett

INFACTURAS

John M. Bennett

This poetry was written between July 2021 & July 2022. It has textual poems in English and/or Spanish; and many visual poems. John M. Bennett is recognized internationally as a presence in the avant garde for his unique, highly personal, and uncompromising work. INFACTURAS contains some of his most vivid and mature poetry yet. “…autopsia /de un viajito estancado enc/errado en un volver perpétuo…” , “…yr/wroteing time’s straw s/inks below yr eyes I/ssaw what didn’t see…”

160 pp.

In English and/or Spanish; includes visual poetry

ISBN: 9781938521935

$13 US

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THE UNFINISHED BREATH by Iván Argüelles

THE UNFINISHED BREATH

Iván Argüelles

Iván Argüelles s clearly one of the most unique and authentic poets working in English today, and I dare say one of the most authentic in any language.  His uniquely identifiable voice tuns throughout his work, but each of his individual books and poems has its own unique timbre, point of view, its own movement, tone, thematic center.  Each work is unique.  The nature of his engagement over the past 50 years or so has been far more than a desire to write “poetry”, rather, poetry is the air he breathes to embody a complex psychic need, the air he needs to be in the life form and time he occupies.  When you consider Iván Argüelles’ work, you are not looking at a literary career, but at something basic about the being of living things in general.  Proof of this is that the intense late poems in this book are stronger than ever.  His work is one of our greatest treasures.  -John M. Bennett, adapted from “The Chaocosmic Poetry of Iván Argüelles”, an extensive introduction to his work in his 2016  book, Orphic Cantos, Luna Bisonte Prods.

In 2 vols.

ISBN v. 1 : 9781938521911  ISBN v. 2 : 9781938521928

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Vol. 2, $23.08 US:

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IT'S A POEM OR AN EVENT by C. Mehrl Bennett

IT'S A POEM OR AN EVENT: Or Maybe Both

C. Mehrl Bennett

This is a book of multiples: postcards, artist stamps, text or images from little booklets, scanned drawings and caricatures, rubber stamped text or images, digital art, Fluxus scores, poetry, and visual poetry. Much of it was sent out as mailart. The book takes up where my 2009 book, "What It Says", left off. The chapters are organized chronologically although some of the images are more illustrative of texts in other chapters and are placed accordingly. The paper is heavy weight, coated paper that produces quality graphic images. The introduction includes information about contemporary Fluxus festival gatherings and the philosophy and history behind them. Many of my own event scores are included in each chapter of the book. A collaborative Flux Mass was co-created with Diane Keys and performed in Chicago, and I've written up all the rituals and included some photographs from the event. Experimentation with the erasure of found text with additional editing is illustrated with the final text published next to a scan of the original erasured source. Other writing processes are explained in context with other poems, and an informal essay is included about asemic writing and improvisation. It is hoped that the spirit of play in creation will be infectious and stimulating for the reader. - C. Mehrl Bennett

$15 US

120 pp.

English

ISBN 9781938521904

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SOSTENUTO by Sheila E. Murphy

Sheila E. Murphy, SOSTENUTO

“Throughout my life I have looked toward language for elevation and found that more potent than gravity.” – Sheila E. Murphy 

Murphy’s work has been a lifelong journey to find beauty and a kind of transcendence in life, in thought, in experience, and in language while at the same time including all the complexities, difficulties, and darkness from which any transcendence must arise.  SOSTENUTO, a sequence of recent sonnets, is certainly no exception, and also has a wonderful angularity and edginess, an edginess embedded in a richness of diction and consciousness.  The poems have a voice, a sensibility and a “story” or narrative current which is fully authentic.  Part of that authenticity is sensed in the often cut-up (and at times surrealistic) nature of the writing, which is also amazingly smooth and flowing.  There are storms,  understandings and questionings running through these beautiful poems, which form true mirrors to the depths and heights of living.  –  John M. Bennett

$12.00 US

65 pp.

I SBN 9781938521898

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