Lushena Books Inc.
Bensenville, IL
(c) 1999
This "historic" booklet has in hindsight proven to be a partial hoax as the Willie Lynch part has been dismissed - yet as a completed image and text the booklet does attempt to represent the brutal nature of the American institution of Slavery.
Jen Silverman
Driftwood Press
(c)2022
Let me be clear : this is a chapbook with a spine. Not staple-bound. A spine so thin that no text could appear and since the cover is primarily black that means that the spine is black and therefore is exactly the "thin slice of nothing" that I call chapbooks to begin with. It's a thin black line on a bookstore shelf. Only chapbook prospectors would even try to dig it out and take it off a shelf.
The interview with the author by the publisher is nearly as long as the poetry in this book. That said, I look forward to reading more of what Driftwood presents. As should you.
Bits Press
Department of English
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, OH
(c) 1980
This is an interesting piece for several reasons. I found some of the poems in this thin hand sewn chapbook to be very good. Actual poetic language instead of "journal entries with spacing". For example, in her poem 'Grandfather' she has the line "In the cellar's cool dark" which I could feel as I was reading it.
Other poems, to my "delicate" nature had way too many first person singulars in them but at least there was more poetic phrasing than I tend to be reading these days.
The other thing, the more important thing chronologically is that there is no listing of this chapbook on her Wikipedia page. This chapbook mentions that her first full length collection Globe would be coming out in 1981 and her Wikipedia page started with Globe. When it should start with this one.
And for what it's worth - the title poem is good as are the 3 poems inspired by Japanese prints.
Processed World
San Francisco, CA
(c) 1985
Found this in a Goodwill shop next to a cool record store in South Street in Philadelphia earlier this week. Never heard of the publication before but it's extremely within my wheelhouse of anti-capitalism, "beware of technology" zeitgeist from the days just before the Internet became a "thing" in our world. Articles, poetry, images in a staple bound 65 paged bundle. If you are even slightly anti-globalist, you need to find these zines. Read them, keep them.
Edward F. Gillett, Jr, Esq.
Foreword by Hon. Peter Rodino
US Government Printing Office
Washington, DC
(c) 1980
At the time this staple bound booklet was printed Peter Rodino was the Chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary. Of course this type of booklet is more likely to be available in the DC area, where I live so it doesn't surprise me that I happened across it. 73 pages. It's a more serious take on how bills are past than the famous SchoolHouse Rock interpretation, but I do like that one better. It's got a song. This one is a tad dry.
Fernando Reyes
self published
(c)2023
It meant to be something. Really it did. A self promotion tool? The illustrations created by this gentleman are far superior to his words. And though he meant the booklet to introduce himself to the publishing world ("publish my book"), it really only highlights his artistic side. Unfortunately, a poet he is not. Rather, to me, he is not. Others might feel differently. Maybe his goal will be achieved. But I think his goal ought to be what he draws and not what he writes.
Edith Graciela Sanabria
y Grace Press
Alexandria, VA
(c) 1997
The Press failed this project. Entirely.
Karl Shapiro
Library of Congress
Washington, DC
(c)1967
This booklet is of a lecture given by Mr. Shapiro about Mr. Jarrell. 47 pages. Handsome insignia of the Library of Congress crest on back. Staple bound.
Earl McMurray
The Ledge Press
1997 Poetry Chapbook Contest Winner
Glendale, NY
(c)1997
Staple bound chapbook on slick cover stock. Photo of the poet inside back cover. Belated congrats for this contest winner (decades belated at this point). Have to say, (I) greatly appreciate that many of the poems in this winner book are absent of first person singular.
Department of Information
Ministry of Communication
HMG
Nepal
(c)1986
More information that I would ever need about the royal couple as of 1986. A royal family in the tradition of all single family rulers. Their heirs still run the country in 2024. No - this isn't poetry but they are chapbooks. Or booklets. Or historical documents. (a wink to Galaxy Quest). Okay, it's more nuanced than that. The Monarch was abolished in 2008. But the same family ruled the country since the mid-1700s and the same other family rules as prime minister even now.
Marvin, SD
(c) 1979
Similar to the Joel Oppenheimer book I just wrote about this one also "defies" definition in that it isn't even mentioned on the Wikipedia page for the author. There is a listing on that page of a version of this book published in 1981 by White Pine Press (something about this press, I swear) with an introduction to the work by Paula Gunn Allen, who also wrote the introduction - likely word for word taken - for the 1979 book published by The Blue Cloud Quarterly. I suggest you click onto the link for the Blue Cloud Quarterly since it goes into much deeper detail about that publication. I personally am ambivalent about Catholic publications "work on behalf of" Native writers since the history of European religions contributing to the obliteration of Native religions is raw and without justification.
And yet, if this publication had not brought out the work by a number of Native voices, would we even know of them?
Or know the name of the artist, Rokwaho, who did the cover image?
I greatly value the writings of all "marginal" groups who are part of the American Experience since for most of the history of the United States that narrative has been controlled by white Christians of European descent.
Joel Oppenheimer
White Pine Press
Fredonia, NY
(c) 1987
This is the second book published by White Pine Press of poetry by Joel Oppenheimer that has intrigued me. This time because this is actually a reprint of a book that was published, according to the Wikipedia page for Mr. Oppenheimer, just two years prior by Press of the Good Mountain - which after doing a quick bit of research online I found to be an actual publisher located in Rochester, NY. The Press was created at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1950. The instructor of Typography at the college, Alexander Lawson, was the supervisor of the Press.
Thirty-five years later, the Press of the Good Mountain published Why Not and then 2 years later, White Pine Press brought out their own version of the same book. Contractual issues? One can only speculate as those involved have all gone into the reeds at this point. However, on the printer's page there is an acknowledgment that the book is an expanded version of the "limited letterpress edition" which had been made by a David Lorczak at the Press of the Good Mountain. The cover illustration is by Joel Oppenheimer.
I wonder how few copies exist of that original 1985 letterpress edition. Apparently the 1985 edition had 100 copies printed. I have seen the cover online. Copies are not cheap online then again, they all seem to be signed by either Joel or David.
The Maverick Press
Eagle Press, TX
(c)1993
Inscribed and signed inside front. Printed on recycled paper. One of 150 copies printed. Signed on back pages. Unpaginated.
Ms. Cullar was an artist as well as the editor of a literary publication called "The Maverick Press" in that part of Texas. The cover image was created by Ms. Cullar. Hand sewn. Beautiful book. Well crafted poems.
Northern Virginia Community College (Alexandria Campus)
(c)1986
Recently a poet's personal library was "donated" to a local library that I am involved with. The poet's collection was rather unceremoniously released as the poet had died a few weeks prior and apparently their books were not designated to be placed anywhere. So...
The poet had also taught English and creative writing at the NOVA (as it is commonly referred to in the region) as well as other colleges through their life.
Typical college student fare. Nothing remarkable. But it was captured and collected and preserved. Noted.
Ian Samuels
housepress
Calgary, CA
(c)2002
This is a handsome little book. This one is #17 of 60 printed. What I find most fascinating and telling is how an author can "forget" a publication like this when only two years later they publish a bigger book, one entitled The Ubiquitous Big which came out in 2004 on Coach House Books. I am going to add the bio that was offered at that time (see if you can find what's missing) :
"Ian Samuels is a former editor of filling Station magazine and currently works at WordFest: Banff-Calgary International Writers Festival. He is the author of one previous collection of poetry titled Cabra (Red Deer Press, 2000). He lives in his hometown of Calgary, where he is currently working on a mythic history of once-famous blues venue the King Edward Hotel."
Yeah, pretty incredible.
wrote me, upon receiving it :
I have not held a chapbook of such poor quality in a long time. JesusHChrist trees were killed to make this piece of trash.
The concept could have been - but wasn't. I have to pulp it. It's terrible. Just NO
Katie Farris
Winner of the 2021 Chad Walsh Chapbook Prize
Beloit Poetry Journal
Katie Farris is an award winning poet who attracted serious attention with her hybrid-form text boygirls which was released in 2011. 39 pages of pure brilliance. Not "joy" since the subject matter is not cotton candy sweetness but extremely good poetry here.
Hotel Del-Monte
American Association of Gourmets
(c)2004
This is a reprint of 1936 edition. Nice cover stock. It feels like something.
Sophia M. Giudici
self published
(c) unknown
This hand sewn booklet is the physical representation of the author's time creating haiku and "publishing" them on Instagram.
However, there is none of that information in the book. I gleaned it from the Net. Not sure what the point of the book is since they were all posted virtually to begin with. The author is more a student of Insta-poets than of haiku. All the piece are surface - lacking depth. As a poet friend of mine said in the 1990s "it's just words".
Supposedly the haiku are meant to represent her live during the COVID years, which is fine and it's what countless others have also done - albeit not in haiku form, but
I am a big William S Burroughs fan and one of the manifestations of being a fan of his writings is also to note his words and his meanings, as best as one can, and one of the things he wrote, almost in passing, is how ridiculous Western Thinkers and in particular Americans are with their overuse of the word THE as though using THE something or another means the definitive. Burroughs saw this as lazy and near sighted self congratulatory nonsense when it came to a scientific or historical subject. THE meaning "the one and only" whereas, Burroughs argued, A is nearly always more appropriate to use in these scenarios.
So, I want to say that I am working on A history of poetry chapbooks and would never say I am working on THE history.... because the history of poetry chapbooks is as fluid and dare I say as plastic as the English language itself is.
This blog - moving forward - is now a template for the book since I have been, unintentionally and semiconsciously, writing it since 2006.
So many of the posting I have done have been thumbnail mentions instead of in-depth searches but with Carnglass and moving forward and backward simultaneously I will be fleshing out my subjects better so that I have a fuller appreciation of the subjects and so I might gauge what readers might gleam from my research.
I am going to play this out detective style here - each of the gentlemen I have communicated with about Carnglass Press have mentioned a linchpin, a spider at the middle of the web, and that person was named Jim Zimmermann who ran the Press from the basement of this house. The mystery is a little less dense but still exists.
Indeed I have been blogging about chapbooks since 2006.
Somewhere along the way I have also been sketching elements within my subject matter for expansion because to paraphrase Rod Stewart every chapbook tells a story. So, I will start with the one I am in currently in an see where the ripples go.
Carnglass Press was a publishing concern in Newark, NJ at the beginning of the 1970s. Michael Redmond was one of the translators of the two chapbooks that I have. I got the chapbooks from an artist named Harry Bartnick. Bartnick did some cover illustration work for the Press and they paid him in chapbooks, these two. Neither of these gentlemen know each other.
It seems that the bubbling poetic activities from Greenwich Village had traveled the 12 miles (in this case) to Newark. Michael was at Rutgers/Newark and Harry was working at the Newark library. Apparently there was a guy who was so into printing that he had a printing operation in the basement of his house that that was the hub for all these young dudes to be creatively crazy. Both men believe that Carnglass was a short term project. Neither believed that it produced more than these two books, maybe others they weren't sure of ever having been printed, like the project that Harry's cover art was meant for - A Single Shot to Kill a Bear - reenforcing the reality that not every project does come to fruition.
Shenandoah National Park Association
Text by Joanne Amberson, volunteer
Good Printers (Bridgewater, VA)
revised edition 2011
Little booklet full of directions and distances to the many waterfalls, top to bottom, of the Shenandoah National Park. Maps - the whole thing. Everything one would need to take on the elements and have a great hike to any one of these falls.
stevenallenmay
2714 Jefferson Dr
Alexandria, VA 22303
Dan Mutascu
Carnglass Press
Newark, NJ
(c)1970
Translated by Mircea Bucurescu and Michael Redmond
I love a good mystery, as any of you who have been following these postings can tell and in this case the seller of this chapbook actually knew more about the chapbook than the Net. In fact, the Net has almost nothing on this small press and the writer is Romanian. This collection itself is a trimmed down version of poems published in a larger edition by The Joycian Court Publishers.
I wrote to the person who sold me this (along with another chapbook from the same Press) one and he wrote back :
Hello,
Back in the late 1960s, I had worked with someone at the Newark Public Library who ran (or was in some way connected to) the Carnglass Press in Newark. I was asked to do a cover illustration for another one of their chapbooks, and in return received the 2 that you have.
All the Best,
Hello,
The information that I included in the post for the 2 poetry chapbooks was all that I could find on the internet. I don't recall the website sources that it came from. There didn't seem to be anything in Wikipedia on them. I think that Carnglass Press was a small-scale, private effort, probably short-lived. A more thorough (and time-consuming!) internet search would likely turn up more information.
Cheers,
XXXXXXX
Now, I have a multiple mystery on my hands. The writer is better known for books that we published later in the 1970s and the Press seems to have disappeared sometime in the 1970s. I will keep researching. It's something I like to so.
It's a staple bound chapbook. The drawing on the cover might be of the author. Or a random guy on a train, or in a coffee shop, who knows? (I don't) The person I dealt with got this - and the other - book from the publisher in exchange for cover illustration work. And had a connection to the Newark library in the late 1960s.
1/200 (I have the first of the lot!)
Furniture Press
Towson/Baltimore/Earth
Okay - I added "earth"
This is a packet of the 4 winners of the contest, apparently.
They were :
1X4 - The Caves of Ice by Joseph Cooper. 18 pages plus preface - at the end of the text.
2X4 - Clever Little Gang by Nicole Steinberg. 18 pages
3X4 - Your Stupid Fortune Gives Me Stupid Hope: A Horoscope by Caroline Crew & Chris Emslie
Unpaginated.
4X4 - : Part One : by Lisa Tallin. Unpaginated.
Hiroya Takagai
translated by Eric Selland
Duration Press
(c) 1999
Interestingly, as I approach the end of the huge poetry chapbook and ephemera dump I received a number of years ago from a generous soul in Iowa, I find one that completely appeals to me.
Translated from the Japanese by Eric Selland, this thin collection has spacial distance that attracts me - long pauses in white space. And Mr. Selland has translated Mr. Takagai before. He had a book published by the University of Hawaii entitled Then the Whole was Flooded with Light: Hiroya Takagai Translated (2000) which was the year after this brief collection came out. It is possible and likely that some of the pieces here were also in the bigger book published the following year.
Earl McMurray
Winner of the Ledge 1997 Annual Poetry Chapbook Contest
The Ledge Press
Glendale, NY
(c)1998
Inherited from a book lot dump I received years ago now. Not 1998 "ago" but - it's a contest winner but it doesn't tickle my poetry bone. Acknowledgment only.
Coral Bracho
Translated from the Spanish of Forrest Gander
Duration 11
(c) 1999
Part of the series. Great poetry.
I happened across the series and these chapbooks, I believe, by someone in Iowa unloading a store of chapbooks they had accumulated over the years before they retired from their position at the literary hub there.
One of the fascinating things about this series is that the translator had the opportunity to talk about the author they were translating, giving personal histories and perceptions to readers who were as likely as not NOT familiar with the poet whose work was the focus of the chapbook itself.
Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
Adventures in the Liaden Universe #9
SRM Publisher, Ltd.
Unity, Maine
(c) 2003
No - it's not THAT Steve Miller.
It's a 62 page staple bound fantasy adventure book written by these two writers featuring two characters, etc; etc; etc.
Apparently they have been extremely successful writing together and this was a sampler more than a completed project.
David Barringer
Word Riot
(c) 2003
Okay, Word Riot folded in 2016. The website link gets you to Hotels in Holland now. This book has an errata note in the introduction basically telling you to disregard the rest of the introduction and if you want to read the actual introduction by the writer Steve Almond, you can click onto - but you can't as I just explained because it doesn't - but hey, about those Hotels in Holland!
This is a collection of short stories. At 66 pages though, it's not a chapbook except that it was staple-bound so it is. (If you are getting the sense that I am circling the airplane, it's because I am circling the airplane) (( and we are all going down, together))
Beatrice O'Brien
H&H Press
Middlebury Center, PA
(c)2000
This is a collection of poems which were compiled from a single year's worth of writing about the lake. All of the pieces previously appeared in THE PATRIOT Cuba, NY newspaper. Ms. O'Brien was also well connected to the arts community in her area, she founded and ran Poet's Theatre for well over 25 years. She passed in 2018 at the ago of 98 years young. She had an impact.
My wife insists that I do something more expansive than merely acknowledging chapbooks as I come across them. She is aware of how much info and knowledge I have acquired along the way and she keeps telling me to "do more".
So in addition to this blog I have been formulating "A history of poetry chapbooks" (it's actually the subtitle of the work, the actual title will be revealed a bit later on). The focus will be American, because I am an American but more to the point : it's what I know and what I find. I have found and written about chapbooks produced in other countries occasionally but with some exceptions for British-based poetry booklets, I am looking at this endeavor through an American lens.
I do now and have appreciated the interest of those who have endured my often thumbnail summations of a number of the books that I have written about. But therein lays the rub about this subject : often the books are "one-offs", self produced or through a vanity press that disappeared before the ink was dry. The authors of the books might also not get recognization between the one chapbook that I have found of theirs. And I mention the book, the author, and the press that produced it in case it's true that my writing about them means they will not be forever lost to time.
And off we go again, chasing wild geese
