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
