Crystal Clark
The Poet's Haven
Massillon, OH
(c)2018
tiny format chapbook. Poetry is fine. The publisher seems to have disappeared online. The author lives in southeast Michigan. She can turn a phrase. Hope to read more from her in the future.
United States Department of Labor
Washington, DC
(c)1957
Staple bound "booklet". It's 85 pages so it's not a chapbook but it is staple bound and it is important in this era of "new gilded age" to remember that Labor is how billionaires came into being in the first place. Black and White images throughout.
Mary-Lou Brockett-Devine
Comstock Review, Inc.
(c)2025
The cover actually makes sense with the title.
Contest winner. Staple bound chapbook. The work here reflects a family connected to the sea. Fine poetry.
Mather Schneider
The Rattle Foundation
Studio City, CA
(c)2018
I should have learned this lesson long ago when my daughter, who could speak but hadn't started reading yet, pointed out an unforgivable error in a children's book. There was a page in which the text read "five violins" but there were only 3 violins shown on the page. She was not having it.
As a publisher I have attempted to wed book titles and content with a cover image that "worked" with everything else for over 25 years. This cover does not succeed.
This chapbook was the 2018 Chapbook Prize Winner but that doesn't excuse this apparent slap-dash cover image. The poetry is okay but I can't separate the cover image from the content.
I am certain my opinion has no bearing in the career of this writer or Rattle, just stating it for the record.
A long time ago now I happened across a statement - a proclamation really - by the artist and printer El Lissitsky who stated that "The book must be the unified work of the author and the designer. As long as this is not the case, splendid exteriors will constantly be produced for unimportant contents, and visa-versa.
He wrote this in 1931. I have been writing this chapbook blog for over a decade and I seldom mention the cover art nor whether the cover the poetry and the presentation work together as a unified effort.
I will strive to do better in the future. Many of the books I have mentioned have had covered that did not convey anything about the poetry, nor have any connection with the title of the book at all. Beyond my "save a tree" pronouncements throughout the blog over the years, I ought to have pointed out the often glaring contradiction that some publishers have offered for books that they deemed worthy of publishing.
Other books have been master classes in detail.
I will be adding commentary about the entirety of the "package" for now on.
beginning with the next one : A Bag of Hands by Mather Schneider.
Nancy Holt: Massachusetts
College of Visual Arts& Performing Arts
Dartmouth College
(c) 2021
This is an exhibition booklet for the artist's thesis work containing photos and a blueprint of a structure and artistic representations. There was a similar artist concept book from a different artist what was ruined by water. The artist died in 2014. This seems to have been a retrospective piece.
Naomi Thiers
Finishing Line Press
Georgetown, KY
(c)2013
Heartfelt memories woven together in this collection of poetry. Cover image of grandfather is a nice touch as well.
Rick Lott
The 2009 Ledge Poetry Chapbook contest winner
The Ledge Press
Bellport, NY
(c) 2009
The Ledge Press has a formula that they use for all their contest winners. It includes glossy slick covers that do not appeal to me at all. However, I do like the cover image of the Mobil Pegasus logo.
Poetry is good. Not abstract enough for my peculiar taste and a bit too much first person singular. But it was not my contest and all I got to do is read the work. But I really do like the cover image. That works for me.
Michelle Gillett
The Ledge Press
Winner of the Ledge 2010 Poetry Chapbook contest
Bellport, NY
(c)2010
Handsome book with a slick cover. Poems are fine. The production is fine. Just not my flavor, I suppose. Ms. Gillett is an accomplished poet as stated in her bio. Not meaning to sound dismissive. At the time of the release of this chapbook she was the co-partner of g + r, a writer assistance company but I found no trace of it online.
John Perazzo
David Horowitz Freedom Center
Sherman Oaks, CA
(c)2018
This is not a collection of poetry. This is a racist rant printed and stapled and distributed to white nationalists giving them "permission" (my interpretation) to hate women, anyone of color, anyone who has empathy for others. The "Freedom" at the center of David Horowitz's Center is the freedom to be white and maintain their privilege for being so. It's a disgusting booklet, as evil as anything published in Germany between the wars targeting Jews, gays, people of color. History has already repeated itself, only this time in America.
Someone needs to publish an answer to this diatribe with a booklet entitled "The Right's War on Everyone Else".
Needless to say, this did not make it into my collection of chapbooks.
Nick Wayte
The Ferry Press
London, UK
(c)1969
Never heard of this press nor this poet before. I found a webpage for this press and neither this book nor this author were listed as something the Press even brought out. Very curious.
At the time though, 1960s through mid-1980s, The Ferry Press did publish work by the likes of Lewis Warsh, Fielding Dawson, Tom Clark, J. H. Prynne, and others. Staple bound. Unpaginated. One of 350 printed. Somewhat oddly sized.
Joe Dunn with collages by Jess
White Rabbit Press
San Francisco, CA
(c)1968
This is an intriguing one to be sure. I knew who "Jess" (Collins) was, he was an artist in the Poetry scene in SF during the 'Renaissance' there prior to the arrival of the Beats. He was connected to the Jack Spicer circle somehow - I thought I remembered but I don't and as I collect more data, I wlll alter this posting - whereas Joe Dunn, who was involved with the same Jack Spicer group and was a founder of White Rabbit Press and verdant press, somehow has not been deemed important enough to have his own Wikipedia page. Go figure.
This book is stuffed with collages by Jess, one will spend a good deal of time studying them all. The poetry appears to have been created on a typewriter and feels very stream-of-consciousness, like floating across the page and then pulsating through the collage to begin anew on the next page of text. Red pages flyleaf between cover and text also adds a nice touch to the book. I also appreciate that the pages actually feel like something instead of many newer books that are so slick I feel the need to wash my hands after holding them just to feel something on my finger tips. Some books might as well be printed on plastic.
This one, however, is better than fine just as it is.
UPDATE ; I never do this but this time I have to. I reread this book and oh my god it is weird. Nonlinear text, collages that may or may not have anything whatsoever to do with the text. It startled me. I read it aloud. It didn't make any more sense that way than silent reading. Holy moly is it weird. How is this not better known? So original.
Julio Matas
Gabriel Arango
Havana, Cuba
(c)1958
This tiny booklet of poetry was written in 1953 and published in 1956. Written shortly after the coup that brought to power Bastisa and published toward the end of his reign. I do not read Spanish but I do know that an author signed copy of this book makes it pretty unique.
Additionally, this tiny book is not mentioned in any of the biographies or bibliographies that I have seen. It was signed by Mr. Matas apparently in Cambridge (Mass?)
Rare indeed.
Jason Arias
Erasure Bed
(c) 2025
"Writing is writing
Except when it isn’t"
Since starting this chapbook blog back in 2006 my primary purpose was simply to mention the title, author, and publisher information without criticism (unless the book was truly horrid) or praise (unless truly deserving).
What I did not do, for the most part, is write about the author’s process or the way the poems appear on the page - any of that type of specifics has not been discussed for the majority of the chapbooks I have written about.
However, this one insists upon it so I will “go there”.
Perhaps it is because I am just learning about this one; a poet whom my Press has recently published sent me a copy of a book of his (nostraDAMus 2032 by Jason Arias published in 2024 by Broadstone Books out of Frankfort, KY). Perhaps it was the way the poems appeared on the page - yes, it definitely had something to do with that. Also, it might have been the language he was using seems familiar in it’s almost layered quality. This was not mid-20th century poetry. This was post-post-modern. As if words plunked from a computer screen. This was my kind of poetry.
{ full disclosure : a book of mine was published in 2024 entitled written in the stubble of 2 torn out pages which mirrored Jason’s work without being aware of it. I intentionally write in a similar way as Jason seems to have}
So, I got his contact info and wrote him and he wrote back and a conversation formed. We discussed erasure/blackout/Tom Philips/William Burroughs cutup work and then he told me he had just finished an erasure project and that he would send me a copy - he did. He actually sent me copy #1.
As he explains in his introduction, his erasure book is based on the 1959 novel, Hard Hearts are for Cabbages by Vii Putman. Considering how he used a good deal of spatial separation in his earlier book, I was surprised that he chose to format this one in an almost traditional layout but I learned he only did that to shorten the book to a chapbook size. If one read the text without knowing it was an ‘erasure’, they could easily assume it was merely a book of prose poetry. But it is not “merely” anything.
Which leads me back to the quote at the top. “Writing is writing / except when it isn’t.” The traditional way of the public’s understand of how a writer writes, often coming directly from the writer himself who assumes that any actual detailed explanation would be met with a blank stare from the person who asked about their “process”, is that it “just flows out of me”. And writing does flow. Semiconsciously or completely unconsciously. Writers can “flow” as though in a trance.
However - this isn’t that. By “this” I mean the fragmented and fractured universe of writing that I am talking about. Going backwards through Tom Philips, Mary Ruefle, artist books, William Burroughs cut-ups, exquisite corpses, the intentional spacing of poetry by e e cummings and Apollaire, and all the like minded and similar writers and artists who saw the book itself to be a bound canvas of words; back to the first person that put marginalia into the first Guttenberg printed book: THAT far back! I would say that books as we know them have been altered by those who have read them and owned them up to this very day.
I have referred to what I do, for the most part, to be assemblage instead of writing. Yes, I do write as the muse flows through me (this entire piece has been written in this way) but I am now talking about re-invention, re-configuation, re-purposing text to create something new.
Patteran by Jason Arias is in this universe of this uncatagorized “work” that is being done on the fringes of literature and technology and sensory overload. I have heard critics who say that we are stealing the work of previous author's books. Well, I also do collage and have heard the same observations or complaints about collages that use ad text or images from magazines and my response to all of it is I am taking the word or image out of its original context and repurposing them to create something new. It’s been done long before me and hopefully I am just part of the history of lierature, art, human understanding. Especially in these extraordinary and chaotic times we find ourselves living through.
Patteran is 63 pages of erasure text as prose poetry. My copy, the only copy made so far, is hand sewn. It was self-published by the author using his own “Erasure Bed” imprint. Now quickly get in line for the copies to follow. May he have a huge demand.
Jamie Brown
Argonne Hotel Press
Washington, DC
(c)1999
Something I will give this press, their chapbooks are quite distinctive because they are all exactly the same. The covers I mean. Exactly the same. And they captured a cross-section of Washington DC's poetry community.
Now, whether or not Mr. Baker decided on Hotel or House for the name of his imprint, it's good work here. Well worth the reading.
Melissa Bell
Black Buzzard Press
Fall Church, VA
(c) 1994
Okay, this is the 13th chapbook in the series from a press I never heard of that was located about 12 miles from where I live and I have never seen any chapbook by this press, can't find a single reference anywhere and unless the illustrator Jeffrey Thompson or the editor Bradley Strahan are still around and want to have a chat, I am flummoxed about this press. Actually, no
I wrote a piece about this Press in 2013 for a chapbook by a different poet and the location of the press was Austin, Texas. That chapbook was published in 2007.
Between the two, I like this one better. The poetry is a little better but I really like the feel and look of it more.
AND I just found a blog that a B.R.S. had for the Press when it was in Texas. Why did I write "when it was"? Because the last blog entry was in 2008. B.R.S. have to be the initials for Bradley R. Strahan.
All that said, I am definitely curious about their origins which I suspect took place in Northern VA sometime prior to 1994.
And further I found bio info on B.R.S. that he taught at Georgetown for 12 years, which definitely places him in the DC area (which Falls Church is part of)
Evan Williams
HAD chapbook #1
(Hobart After Dark)
(c) 2021
41 pages staple bound first item brought out by this entity. Hybrid poetry/short fiction (prose poetry) collection. Very good. Well made.
by A. Monroe Auband, Jr
(revised edition)
self published
Lancaster, PA
Subtitled "A Delightful Bit of Entertainment"
Half my family came from Amish/Mennonite legion in Pennsylvania. They didn't speak like this to "entertain" non-Pennsylvania Dutch speakers. It was their dialect and their culture. All the same, it is a cute booklet.
My great-grandmother was born in the mid-1800s and spoke no English at all. She was still alive and bedridden when I was a young boy and I would listen to Mother and Daughter (my grandmother) speak "Dutch" to each other.
In a way, then, this booklet speaks to my own history.
Majda Gama
Two Sylvias Press
Kingston, WA
(c)2023
Winner of Two Sylvias Chapbook Prize
It is refreshing to read work by poets who come to and through the English language from cultures and experiences beyond white Anglo-Saxon protestant backgrounds. Be that Native American, and frankly any "minority" voice BECAUSE how these other "voices" capture their experiences while also witnessing ours is cleansing.
Yes, cleansing. Far too many American poets write in a manner similar to how this country was portrayed in the Mel Gibson film The Patriot in which there were no black slaves and no Native tribes in a film where both groups IN HISTORY combined to outnumber European-born colonists and British troops at the time of the Revolutionary War. In the same way, when Robert Frost writes of being in the woods, those woods are empty canvases - they are devoid of whom inhabited them prior to Frost's birth. Prior to most "American writers'" births. And while the majority of poets in this country attempt to capture their experiences, their environments, their surroundings; they do so through their white person lens. And we, as a nation, are about to become a Minority Majority nation (despite the efforts of the MAGA and Trump and their White Nationalist ilk) so seeing things strictly through a "white lens" does not do our collective experience as Americans justice.
Ms. Gama, while neither beating a drum nor hammering a nail, presents experiences beyond - outside - and other with grace and calm expression. And her language is beautiful.
