so the ants made it to the cat food by Anselm Hollo (2001)

 so the ants made it to the cat food

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. 

Conversation with the Stone Wife by Natalie Eibert (2014)

 Conversation with the Stone Wife

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.

From the Face to the Bin by Kim Eggleston (1985)

 From the Face to the Bin (1978-1984)

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.