Jesse Nissim
Furniture Press
Towson University/Baltimore
(c)2013
Edited by Christophe Casamassima with cover art by Jodi Hoover, this chapbook is a Towson collaborative effort. The cover is stunning. The artwork of Ms. Hoover is worth investigating.
Meow Press
Buffalo, NY
(c)1998
The Poet met the press and they were joined. At least for this staple bound project. Here's what Meow had to say about themselves in the late 1990s :
Meow Press was established in August of 1993 as a response to the New Cost festival and also the rapid proliferation of electronic publishing. In the case of the former, there is the hope that by getting involved it might be possible to reopen the anthologizing-closure process set in motion by that fateful gathering; that it might be possible to exist in a state where the printing of a book of poems might be - in the tradition of printer-poets such as Lyn Hejinian - an extension of one's own activity of writing. In the case of the latter, the romance of making books by hand that utilized the hot carbon transfer process as ultimately temporal ephemera, yet palpable physical without too much nostalgia for the Book.
An obsessive typography startup kit.
This is one of 300 printed. I am so lucky.
Allen P. West
White Eagle Coffee Store Press
Fox River Grove, IL
(c)2002
This book confuses me. The poems are about grief and loss (of a spouse) and have nothing directly to do with the title of the collection or the image. None that I could glean.
I am mostly intrigued by the Press, to be honest. Such an unusual name. Even the town the Press is located in, distinctive. They have a website that appears to have been created at the dawn of the internet age. Most of the titles of their published works do not have links to them. Does this mean they are all out of print?
One of the poems is entitled "I am a Jar". Well, I am con-fused.
Elizabeth Willis
Shuffaloff books
Buffalo, NY
(c) 1992
Handsewn chapbook. #42 of 100 printed. A prime example of a "thin sliver of nothing".
Karen Propp
Spirit Mountain Press
Fairbanks, AK
(c) 1983
This is a beautiful chapbook with cover design by Toki Oshima. Handsewn binding. 21 pages, just a lovely collection.
Elizabeth Cantwell
(c) 2014
Check out their catalog on-site.
This particular volume seems a transitional phase (the cover isn't all that)
Jessica Smith
above/ground press
Ontario, Canada
(c)2013
Poetry presses and the poets who populate them are a small circle of dedicated (possibly crazed) wordsmiths - and fanatics, to be fair. Poets chisel words onto blank pieces of paper or blank computer screens the way sculptors find their voice in rock.
Small presses, due to the necessity of their obsession and the lack of finances (generally), tend to be the most inventive in presentation because they are dealing with 'tiny slivers of nothing' as it is - slide a thin chapbook between large anthology volumes by reputable and established publishers and you will see a thin space but have no idea from its spine, or absence of spine, what the book might be.
This is such a book. Kinkos white cover with a detailed drawing of a bird feather, courtesy of Alixandra Bamford, graces the front. Inside is a second cover, red, on the back is the publisher information and author bio. Inside is just the text ma'am; just the text. Jessica Smith's words, regrettably, deserve better than Kinkos quality paper. Hey, I have stories of our own press's humble beginnings. Ours intersected with an "off the books" Kinkos transaction that led to the termination of the entire night crew at a particular Philadelphia location. I am sure that this effort by Mr. Mclennan was above/ground(board) and the combination covers are both striking and original. Kudos, sir!
I appreciate the spacial quality of Ms. Smith's work. I wonder if she hesitates a significant
amount of time
between passages
since the spacing beckons one to do.
Anselm Hollo
Samizdat Editions
Lake Forest, IL
(c) 2001
I admit that I came late to the awareness of what Samizdat meant during the Soviet half century of iron fisted rule over Eastern Europe and Russia (wondering if a similar discreet publishing effort is underway now with the Putin Soviet hard-on happening there now)
Husband/wife team in Lake Forest. IL did a series of chapbooks at the beginning of the century. This is the first I am writing about since it's by the "official" anti-laureate, Anselm Hollo. So US anti-establishment poet recognized by a US tiny press with a name that has murky 1960s-1980s Soviet underground connections comes to my attention via a repurposing gift from someone in Iowa.
And this isn't the only press globally using this name, Samizdat Editions, by the way.
I not only enjoy the poetry in this small collection but the footnotes are also worth reading as well.
Natalie Eibert
Bloof Books Chapbook Series
(c) 2014
#33 of 100 printed.
Natalie Elbert's rocket really took off shortly after the publication of this chapbook. She is the author of Indictus, winner of Noemi Press's 2016 Poetry Prize, as well as the poetry collection, Swan Feast (Bloof Books, 2015). Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from POETRY, Granta, The Jewish Current, The New Yorker, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, The Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. She was the recipient of the 2016 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellowship at University of Wisconsin–Madison and is the founding editor of The Atlas Review.
This chapbook, although only produced in a run of 100 numbered copies, had multiple cover images; possibly by the same artist. Interestingly enough, nearly all of the poems in this collection were published previously in different publications and yet together are a "completed thought" and I truly do appreciate a book of poetry that is in fact a completed thought.
Kim Eggleston
Strong John Press
Greymouth, New Zealand
(c)1985 2nd printing
I have few rules about this chapbook blog that I have been writing/keeping since starting and one of those rules is that books with spines that have text on them are not chapbooks. And while that is technically true and I often scoff at chapbooks with spines as "cheaters", in this case I will make an exception since this is a 38 page book which can qualify as a chapbook but it does have a spine, yet it is - seemingly - quite rare so I wanted to note its existence here. The only copy of it that I found on the "internets" is in an Australian National book catalogue. None for sale anywhere and the copy I received needed regluing. So, there was this female poet named Kim Eggleston who had this book come out and then reprinted (my copy is a 1985 reprint) but it's New Zealand and that's a bit of the English language frontier, isn't it?
A fair number of these poems are "location-specific" in the sense that they refer to people and places in New Zealand but I found the last piece, a prose piece entitled "Waiting" to be more universal (about squatting/roommate hell) This poet needs to be rediscovered.
Stephanie Balzer
CUEeditions
Tucson, AZ
(c)2009
Prose poetry at its finest. (I know, but it's approaching midnight on a truly terrible year and I wanted to squeeze this in)
Balzer is an extremely talented writer. CUE is a overachieving journal/press. Great things hiding in generically plain covers. It's worth the read, seriously
J. Hope Stein
Hyacinth Girl Press
(c) 2012
Sometimes a chapbook is more than a fancy cover with a black ribbon, sometimes it is meant to be more and is in fact more. This is one of those times. [Mary] : is the 3rd installation of a mixed media project called “The Inventor’s Last Breath,” which includes a 10-minute film that premiered at the Henry Miller Library in 2011, and the chapbook [Talking Doll] : which was published Dancing Girl Press in 2012.
“The Inventor’s Last Breath” gets its title from Thomas Edison’s last breath, which was supposedly captured in a test tube and is on display at the Ford Museum in Michigan. A future installation of the Inventor’s Last Breath may or may not have taken place on her website, jhopestein.wordpress.com (almost 10 years ago now, and the traces of her film have disappeared from the Net).
It is fair to say that Ms. Stein has a highly creative mind as evidenced in her most reason book titled Occasionally, I remove your brain through your nose.
Guy Birchard
Pressed Wafer
Boston, MA
(c) 2003
tiny book of sizable words. The poet lives in Saskatchewan. Or did in 2003 when this collection came out. I like the way Grover on Sesame Street says Saskatchewan. The poems here are thin and tasty. Wherever Moose Jaw is.....
in case/this way two things fell
Beau Beausoleil
Potes & Poets Press
Hartford, CT
(c)1982
Potes & Poets Press has had a long and influential history (1972- 1998) From the University of Connecticut library archives page :
"Potes & Poets Press was a small press founded by poet and publisher Peter Ganick.
Peter Ganick was a private piano teacher, poet, publisher, artst and resident of West Hartford, Connecticut. He was born on December 14, 1946 in Boston, Massachusetts to parents William (an executive in advertising) and Virginia (a legal secretary and pianist). Ganick was raised in Needham, Massachusetts, twelve miles from Boston itself. He attributed his passion for the arts to his parents and to having grown up in the Boston area, where he had access to many exceptional art museums and venues.Beau Beausoleil is a poet and bookseller living in California. This chapbook is one of his earliest published collections. Published in a run of 300 copies in a famous Brooklyn print shop (The Print Center). Beau is best known now for being a founder of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition and the co-editor (along with Deema Shehabi) of the anthology Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here: Poets and Writers Respond to the March 5th, 2007, Bombing of Baghdad’s “Street of the Booksellers”
Merrill Gilfillan
Grand Rapids, MI
(c)2013
More interested in the history of this press than the words on the page with this one. Jen Tynes and crew are on a mission worth keeping track of.
Jennifer Campbell
dancing girl press & studio
Chicago, IL
(c)2021
Fairy tales meets 21st century media culture in this interesting blended collection.
Chelsea Biondolillo
Etchings Press
Indianapolis, IN
(c) 2015
Published in 2015 by the University of Indianapolis' Etching Press, this small collection of prose pieces is unique in size and scope. I didn't know, for example, not that I am worldly wise but I have been to and through Indianapolis, THAT there is a University of Indianapolis. Or that this University has a press. Or that this Press published Ms. Biondolillo. But it's a handsome book to be sure.
Amber Nelson
dancing girl press & studio
Chicago, IL
(c) 2013
I continue to filter through a packet of seconds from this small press. By that I mean books that should have been pulped because they were defective but instead were bundled like dead fish for the unsuspecting boob willing to fork over money for a set of 5 (defective) books.
I wonder how the poems were presented in Reb Livingston's No Tell Motel. They likely were presented better than this stinker. I have no faith in the quality of this press.
Kirsten Kaschock
Bloof Books
(c) 2012
At least for the 2012-2013 season Bloof Books printed a run of 100 numbered chapbooks and then released the text digitally.
The chapbook has a subtitle, actually, which is kind of novel in that most do not. The subtitle is "A Dance with Saints in Three Acts" which corresponds with the cover.
This collection is hand-sewn and has drawings throughout by Koen Kaschock-Marenda. Ms. Kaschock is a multidisciplinary artist who teaches at Drexel University in Philadelphia. The work here skirts the edges of many of those disciplines. It's a beautiful dance.
This is print #39 of 100 made.
