some literary items...

from Bill Roberts at Bottle of Smoke Press:

Hi Friends,

After taking a bit of a rest after completing Bottle #4 in April, I have returned to publishing chapbooks with two amazing new releases. As some of my best customers, you are being given first notice of these two new releases. These will not be announced for another two weeks to my other customers.

t.l. kryss - In A Time Without Sunflowers (New Poems) $5 - Release date June 15th
Poems by Tom Kryss and artwork by Hillary Krzywkowski. An amazing duet full of beautiful poems. Just what you have come to expect from This legend. 32 pages. Limited to 226 copies.

Christopher Cunningham - And Still The Night Left To Go: Poems & Letters - $10 - July 15th
Two volume release. Volume 1 contains the poems and volume 2 contains some of the finest letters that I have ever read. Both volumes are held together with a letterpressed wrap around band. Original artwork by the author is on the cover of volume 1. About 60 pages. Limited to only 100 copies.

Two amazing releases from two amazing poets. Please visit http://www.bospress.net/checklist.html to order. For those paying with check, please e-mail me first to reserve a copy and send payment plus $2 for each title to:

Distributor discounts by inquiry to those brave book sellers that are willing to carry these titles.

Finally, I thank you for your support. As Bottle of Smoke Press nears our 4th anniversary, I look back and thank the fine poets and artists that have allowed me to publish them and the fans of poetry that help support the arts.

Thanks and all best,

Bill Roberts
Bottle of Smoke Press
902 Wilson Drive
Dover, DE 19904

also, I just got the new issue of Quercus Review containing two poems and a letter from yours truly in which I bitch about the current state of poetic affairs. Sam Pierstorff is a great poet and an astute editor who knows his business. he has an "Editor's Note" alongside my letter. I would like to reprint a small excerpt from each that will nicely illustrate both the problem in our society with poetry being thought of as either impossible to understand (or useless entirely for the most part), and the weak kneed pansy ass academic crapmongers that stand in the way of a REAL SOLUTION that returns poetry to the people it serves.

from me:

listen, man, you guys are doing some great fucking work over there. I'm sure it cannot be easy in the cockshaking buddy buddy university world to do just what you say in your intro to the most recent issue which is to publish work that SCREAMS FROM THE STREET CORNERS and isn't just some obscure academic excercise in tedium that strives to impress only other artistic pretenders.

and then this from Sam:

So when William Logan writes in Poetry magazine that "The best poetry has often been difficult, has often been so obscure that readers have often fought passionately over it," I can't help but vomit a little in my mouth. [my emphasis]

of course when your grandmother or best friend dies you surely reach for a volume of John Donne, don't you (not that I have anything against the guy)?

wrong. this is what you're looking for my friends: words that bleed like we bleed, that laugh, that "belong" like everything else. like death itself.

the beauty of poetry is in its ability to reach us inside, where we REALLY ARE; poems that make us remember for a moment that we are human beings who live a short time and must make the most of the people in our lives, the birds we hear singing, the music we love, the paintings, the foggy trees in the early morning, the dogs barking in the distances, empty wet streets at four a.m., a glass of good red wine, an honest conversation, helps us realize that we must celebrate the background noise of each second as it slips almost instantly into the past, into memory, into the fabric of our fragile souls.

we as a society are our art. do we revel in obscurity?
or
do we shout
from the crumbling
mountains
that

we
were
here

and
we

fucking

lived.