FLASH SALE: National Coming Out Day Celebration

FLASH SALE! Just in time to celebrate National Coming Out Day on October 11th, Poets Wear Prada is offering 3 titles, 3 contemporary LGBTQ classics -- PAYDAY LOANS by Jee Leong Koh, THE SLIP by Michael Montlack, and THE WOMAN WHO WOULDN'T SHAKE HANDS by Chocolate Waters -- all at a special discounted price. Please use the links here or on the right side bar for the discount. These books will be available starting today through this weekend on Amazon for the special price of $6 a copy. (They normally list for $12 a copy.) GET YOUR PRIDE ON!

THE WOMAN WHO WOULDN'T SHAKE HANDS by Chocolate Waters  

Release Date: October 12, 2011 

ISBN 978-0935060096 

Paperback: 46 pages 

List Price: $12.00  $6.00

Now available on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2AZhIvi

Payday Loans
Poems by Jee Leong Koh
Saddle-Stitched Chapbook: 2007
Mass Market Edition: 2010
ISBN-13: 978-0981767895
Paperback: 36 pages
List Price: $12.00  $6.00
Now available on Amazon:

http://amzn.to/2itVqKl

 The Slip
by Michael Montlack
First Printing (Saddle-Stitched Chapbook): October 2009
Mass Market Edition: 2010
ISBN 978-0-9841844-2-2
Paperback: 32 pages
List Price: $12.00  $6.00
Now Available on Amazon:

 http://amzn.to/eaV1i9

Have you had your poetry today? Get your brain fuel from Poets Wear Prada.

Praise for Daniela Gioseffi and Waging Beauty: As the Polar Bear Dreams of Ice

Reprinted from Washington Independent Review of Books, Poetry Reviews, June 23, 2017

 

June 2017 Exemplars: Poetry Reviews by Grace Cavalieri

A monthly feature that looks at books of and about poetry.

The Best Poetry to Begin SUMMER
The Half-Finished Heaven, Selected Poems by Tomas Tranströmer, translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly. Graywolf Press. 118 pages.
Scribbled in the Dark by Charles Simic. Ecco. 72 pages.
Miss August by Nin Andrews. Cavankerry Press. 105 pages (with a kick-ass writer’s note at the end).
Resurrection Biology by Laura Orem. Finishing Line Press. 56 pages.
Inside Outside by Sue Silver. New Academia Press. 52 pages.
Waging Beauty: As the Polar Bear Dreams of Ice by Daniela Gioseffi. Poets Wear Prada. 38 pages.
Getting Ready to Travel by Llewellyn McKernan. Finishing Line Press. 33 pages.
Just Universes by Diana Smith Bolton. L+S Press. 31 pages.
The Apollonia Poems by Judith Vollmer. The University of Wisconsin Press. 88 pages.
Plus: Best Anthology, and Seven Other Books of Poems on June’s Best-of List.

+++++++++++++++++


Waging Beauty: As the Polar Bear Dreams of Ice by Daniela Gioseffi. Poets Wear Prada. 38 pages.

Gioseffi was marching, protesting, fighting and writing ever since people were painting pickets. She’s always used her ability to activate and stimulate. This book is no disappointment in her long canon of work. People need their history and Gioseffi has dedicated her life to making that an honorable one. More than ever, she shows that political writing is lyrical, imagistic and vulnerable. Far from the rant attributed to words that want to make change. “Big Hearted, Witty, and Wide Eyed” ends, “paint, sing, taste everything lawfully possible, / and help save the kids from Climate Crisis, / because you still have some hours left.” The poem “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” credits its folkloric origins in a high-flying poem that pierces the facade of a Pop Culture that kills instead of cultivates. In a standout stanza, “Where have all the young girls — young boys — / gone? / In uniform / everyone?” Gioseffi proves her emotional connection to the future, in poetic structure, from a lifetime of good writing.

Praise for The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost by Michael T. Young

Reprinted from Entropy, May 31, 2016

The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost by Michael T. Young

The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost by Michael T. Young
Poets Wear Prada Press, 2014
88 pages – PWP / Amazon

by Therése Halscheid
 

Titles lure us to books. They serve as a grounding cord, to situate us in a particular location or overarching theme. They establish a mindset to navigate content. This is what happened to me while reading Michael T. Young’s collection: The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost.

In Young’s title, the abstract noun lost is concretized in poems that depict the poet as a wanderer in both familiar and foreign locations. The poem “A Method of Escape” exemplifies this:

Whenever we go for a walk you ask
where we are going and I think, 
Eventually, where we started.                                         

Young then encourages us to step off the cyclical path. He invites us to get lost during walks in a familiar place. For the poet, spontaneity reveals unexpected treasures. “Never let the usual expectations plot the course,” he writes.

… let the time between be unplanned,
as uncharted as the charted urban streets we allow….

In other poems lost represents a psychological state as in lost in thought, the meandering mind. Or lost in the sense of questioning who we are. Lost turns to loss when it captures the powerlessness one feels when confronted with illness and the death of a loved one, or events over which we have no control.

And there are other meanings, unusual interpretations for lost, such as becoming lost through language, through something as miniscule as a six-letter word. In the poem “The Word ‘Anyway’” the poet examines how “anyway” works as a detour, which sets him off course: “like a ramp off the highway leading me somewhere else,” which inevitably takes him “in another direction, though not, / necessarily, in a better one….”

The second abstract word in Young’s title is beautiful. For me, the word is representative of the poet’s consciousness. It is not the journey itself, but the way he sets off through uncharted terrain that is reflective of an enlightened mind. For the poet, lost paths are meaningful if we remain open to what they present. In this sense lost is what happens, but beauty is the approach. This is this writer’s path, when exploring themes of life and death, physical and mental landscapes.

Young is a lyric poet. He is adept at image making. The “oak’s bare branches lurch / into the winter air” while “puddles release their smallest / reflections.” Certain images act as a gong. They reverberate long after our eyes move on, to another page, as in these lines of “Random Note”:

… where I sit on the bench, shade slips over me like a hood,
and I’m whisked off, abducted by the day’s closing minions….

What I also admire about this collection is cadence. Many poems share a rhythm of ease that leads us from one moment to the next. It is obvious that Young is a careful crafter. Poems are mapped out using intentional line breaks — end-stopped or enjambed. And this creates a steady walk through words. Even the overall tone does not carry the voice of someone frantic and lost. Instead the poet winds his way through endless territory, skillfully as his use of enjambment. He speaks of this in “The Continuous Thread” when he writes: “One thing leads endlessly to another. / Even if this street is a dead end, / it will continue in a different fashion…”

Young’s book holds to this premise: where one is led to, one is led to observe. In his signature poem “The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost,” he addresses this: “The secrets of a place are in its small streets, / its narrow passages…” (49). Traveling like this, even that which we tend to avoid can seem profound. As in the poem “Slug”:

Watching his deliberate movement, I forgot
he was a name we give each other in contempt.
What I noticed was his strange beauty and slow power,
and what in me refuses to be rushed….

Moving purposely, willfully, the poet remains a lifelong voyager but without a definite map. What he encounters he accepts. In “As Is” the poet shares “even before I recognize these things / for what they are, /everything is / as it should be.”

In “Eyewitness,” while crossing the Hudson River on a ferryboat, he ponders:

… I would like to think, in spite of it,
that my inner vision is sharper
as if age alone could teach me the apostle’s words
to ‘walk by faith, not by sight.’

This is what Young aspires to. Faith is required to journey in ways that are foreign. Faith helps us move through the unfamiliar — that we might come out of it, changed. In his poem “Directions” the poet relies on this belief:

Our heads tilt in a slow nod or shake;
our eyes cross figures in the air
writing a tenuous language that seems to say
there is no backward or forward,
no behind or ahead, only movement
from character to character, from stop to stop,
in books, on trains, in memory….

This is the message that Young leaves us with. The poet is first lured into the world “thrilled by the risk and uncertainty.”  He then gathers strength, as he says, “from the pleasure / of wondering if I would make it home.”

---

Therése Halscheid’s latest book Frozen Latitudes (Press 53), won the Eric Hoffer Book Award, Honorable Mention for Poetry. Other collections include Uncommon Geography,Without Home and a Greatest Hits chapbook award. Poems and essays have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Tampa Review, Sou’wester, Natural Bridge, among others. Recent awards include first in Welcome Table Press’s Creative Nonfiction contest. By way of house-sitting she has been writing on the road for several years. Her photography chronicles her journey, and has been in juried shows. Poems in Frozen Latitudes recount her time in the Arctic north where she lived with and taught the Inupiaq of Alaska. See www.ThereseHalscheid.com.

Book Reviews: Patricia Carragon reviews Carol Wierzbicki’s Top Teen Greatest Hits for GLR

 

Reprinted from Gently Read Literature, January 1, 2010

The Regrettable Passage: Patricia Carragon on Carol Wierzbicki’s Top Teen Greatest Hits

Carol Wierzbicki, Top Teen Greatest Hits, Poets Wear Prada Press


For me, adolescence was the regrettable passage from childhood to the demands of hormones and higher education. For Carol Wierzbicki, it became the Top Teen Greatest Hits, an intriguing collection of poems published by Poets Wear Prada Press (2009). Ms. Wierzbicki is tough and sensitive. She writes as if she were an observer during her rite of passage, even stepping back when she was five and six, taking in situations and translating growing pains into mini stories. Mundane occurrences, whether sad or funny, are refreshing to read, filled with insight and lessons.
For instance, in New Name (for Mom), the six-year-old Carol requested her mother to call her Lisa. Her mother said:

Would you like a glass of milk … Lisa?Are you going outside now … Lisa?

And Carol wrote:

Mom gives me time to chafe at the name
that has begun to rub spots on my psyche
raw. She doesn’t quit
until I tell her to abandon it.

Her mother was teaching her the value of being at peace with one’s name and self, which is not an easy lesson for either child or adult to absorb. Carol writes this without being sentimental or coy. Her words are simple and her metaphors work. You feel the harsh rubbing on her psyche’s sore spots—a lesson being learned.

Another example is the poem, "Dorothy’s Poem (for Dorothy Friedman). " Although this excellent piece was dedicated to Ms. Friedman, Carol makes you feel it’s universal. I can relate to this. We, in many ways, are little amputated people walking around and the past is not black-and-white nor sepia tone. But the train is our home—life moves to the next station and we learn to laugh or cry at the passing scenery, knowing that rules make no sense.

Carol Wierzbicki’s Top Teen Greatest Hits is a big hit. In each of her fourteen poems, Ms. Wierzbicki mastered the technique of storytelling through perception and simplicity—her rite of passage to be read and shared by all.




* * *

Patricia Carragon is a New York City poet and writer. Her publications include Poetz.com, Rogue Scholars, Poets Wear Prada, Best Poem, Big City Lit, CLWN WR, Chantarelle’s Notebook, Clockwise Cat, Ditch Poetry Magazine, Mobius the Poetry Magazine, The Toronto Quarterly, Marymark Press, and more. She is the author of Journey to the Center of My Mind (Rogue Scholars Press). She is a member of Brevitas, a group dedicated to short poems. Patricia hosts and curates the Brooklyn-based Brownstone Poets and is the editor of the annual anthology.

Praise for Simon Perchik and The B Poems

Reprinted from Sentinel Literary Quarterly, April-June-2017, p. 70 - 71

The B Poems
Author: Simon Perchik
Publisher: Poets Wear Prada
ISBN: 9 78 - 0692450697
Reviewer: Mandy Pannett

In his article "Magic, Illusion and Other Realities," published in Sentinel Literary Quarterly, October 2016, Simon Perchik offers a definition of poetry as "words that inform the reader of that which cannot be articulated ... Text need not always have a meaning the reader can explicate ... it informs, as does music, without what we call meaning." In The B Poems we see this philosophy put into practice: the book is non-linear, the poems may be read in any order, there is no apparent direction or meaning, everything is "Just below the surface" as we sense " the endless under and under." These are ideas that particularly appeal to me. I love the concept of the poet’s subconscious interacting with that of the reader. It feels similar to Emily Dickinson’s maxim "Tell all the truth but tell it slant" -- but with Simon Perchik there is no "telling." He allows words to align, associate , suggest, juxtapose, connect themselves to an infinite variety of emotions and experiences. As he says in the poem B6, "the earth leans against you / from inside, starts its turn / hand over hand." There are many examples of associations and juxtapositions in The B Poems. Some I particularly appreciate are:

"the way every star / smells from dying winds and grass"

"the way this tiny rock / is pulling you closer / wingtip to wingtip / is swallowing you / as if one by one / its feathers had opened"

"what makes the door shriek / is just its darkness reaching out / for crumbs, hungry, terrified"

Then there is this verse which I’ll quote in full:

Its ink is heavier at night
though you can still hear the hum
from some sea already faint
when sunlight too was blac
lost, floated lifeless

Associations in this collection interweave, repeat and echo. Through all the poems there are images of rain, tombstones, dirt , graves, circles, arms, lips, wind, waves, sky, sun , blossom and shadow -- a great deal of shadow. There is a sense of something incomplete, reflected, glimpsed and soon vanishing. Here It is "half nightfall, half / no longer warm"; we learn that "you die / in two places at the same time"; in an image of rowing a boat one is moved "left, right, swinging your arms / half moonlight, half almost makes out / the words rising from empty shells." This shadow is constant and always "half/reaching out, breaking loose."

Simon Perchik's poems strikes me as exceptionally original. Not only are they written without a narrative or apparent theme but, apart from the enigmatic Bs, they have no titles to lead the reader in a predetermined direction. In his other collections verses form an even looser sequence, delineated only by asterisks. The writing is seamless, musical and rhythmically hypnotic, syntactically ambiguous and sounds intriguingly out of kilter to the ear:

... and what you swallow
is already shoreline

huddled around this table
and your lips in the open
the way small stones are left
to help the dead wander back
as the dim light they make
and any moment now.

The mood is sad in The B Poems. There is grief at "your mouth / no longer lit for kisses / and songs about nothing" and the bleakness of death surrounds everything in "a mist / half ice, half crushed between/the first caress and darkness."  There is such poignancy in the scene where "after the funeral / you drown in the row by row / where each photograph is overturned / shaken loose from the family album." These are the dead who don’t know they are dead who are still "holding hands / and what’s left they share / as memories ... for the grandchildren you almost forgot ... they mix up dates and places ... form a circle / as if they still expect to sing out loud / and you would hear it ..." Yet these are visionary poems which of fer the chance to repair, and heal, to make whole. At the end, the poet suggests, the unfinished will be made complete in ‘that slow love song/ from before the sun grew huge’ and there will be a reuniting with the other half, the double, the twin --

... in the darkness
that belongs to you both.

Praise for Your Infidel Eyes by Brant Lyon

 Reprinted from At the Inkwell, Book Reviews, Jan. 20, 2017

Not Grenades, but Pomegranates

by Mark Fogarty

Your Infidel Eyes 
by Brant Lyon
Poets Wear Prada ($12)

Poetry can be a very ephemeral business. That’s why it is a pleasure to see a tenth anniversary edition of Brant Lyon’s chapbook Your Infidel Eyes from Poets Wear Prada.

It is also quite poignant, since Lyon died in 2012, after putting out another fine poetry collection called You Are White Inside. He was also an influential poet and editor on the New York City scene, helping to launch several anthologies for Uphook Press and to start the group Great Weather for Media.

He was an excellent poet, too, as can be seen by the 14 poems in Your Infidel Eyes, and quite a traveler, as this chapbook has poems set in Mexico, India and Egypt. The poem “Illusion” actually describes himself as starting out as a prisoner of a “stupid” jailer. When he swipes the jailer’s keys and frees himself, he opens the way to go traveling, both physically and metaphysically.

I’m not sure Lyon would relish being called a romantic poet, since the book describes many of the aspects of pain in “I Ching” and compares truth to a spoiled child in the opening poem, “Truth.” And the rain in Mumbai (in “Homesick”) is “poison and its own antidote / As pain is to love, and love to pain.”

Yet You Are White Inside ends with quite a romantic deus ex machina, and I was on the lookout for a similar one here. Even the poisoned rain in India is leavened by the sweet flute music of “a blue skinned god / (who) learned compassion for every living thing.” In “Quang Tri” he remembers that a sick friend’s sketchbook contains images “not (of) grenades but pomegranates.”

There is a poem at the end of this book that give me the romantic denouement I’ve been looking for. It is called “An Outlaw Sura” and it is an exceptional poem, starting “Mine is not a book free / of doubt and involution.” And he realizes in it that while he has made “my devotional obligations” he will always be an infidel, in both physical and metaphysical ways, even though “I have not denied / but been led astray / obeying the forbidden / dictates of my heart.”

And this poem of self-realization, faith and hope ends “In the name of ever-merciful love / I have come to cherish love’s / most benevolent blasphemies.”

Now that’s romantic. And I think there are very few poets who aren’t filled by “doubt and involution” and wouldn’t love to think that by going through the process they might end up with “ever-merciful love.”

So it is a mercy, a tender mercy perhaps, that Poets Wear Prada has chosen to re-issue Lyon’s first book (and, their own first book). A world of pomegranates is infinitely preferable to a world of grenades, and the words of someone who thought so are well worth preserving.

---

Mark Fogarty’s poetry has been published in Hawaii Review, Viet Nam Generation, Journal of NJ Poets, Exit 13, Unrorean, Eclectic Literary Forum, Cokefishing in Alpha Beat Soup, Footwork, The Brownstone Poets Anthology, The TEA Newsletter, Gallery and The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow. Mark, also a musician, is the author of three poetry collections from White Chickens Press, Myshkin’s Blues, Peninsula and Phantom Engineer.

Praise for School for the Blind by Daniel Simpson

School for the Blind
by Daniel Simpson
Poets Wear Prada, 2014

 

Reprinted from Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry,  Volume 8,  Issue 4,  December 2014, Book Reviews.

Book Review: School for the Blind (Daniel Simpson)

Reviewed by Kathi Wolfe

"I sat on a broad stone/And sang to the birds/The tune was God's making/But I made the words," Mary Carolyn Davies wrote in "The Day Before April," her poem from her volume Youth Riding (The Macmillan Company, 1919). In 1925, The Macmillan Company reprinted the poem in the popular children's reader Silver Pennies: A Collection of Modern Poems for Boys and Girls.
It's superbly fitting that Daniel Simpson quotes this stanza from Davies' work in the poem "The Call of Poetry" in his stunning debut collection School for the Blind (Poets Wear Prada, 2014). With the musicality of a modern-day Homer and the wisdom of a contemporary Tiresias, Simpson in this slim, yet powerful volume takes us with him on his odyssey from "jumping on our twin mattresses" at four with his twin brother to being "left tonight/with his twin brother/at the boarding school" (a school "for the blind") to his musing, as an adult, "I don't know what a rainbow looks like/or that my life would be better if I could see one."

Simpson, a poet and musician, and his identical twin brother David were born blind in 1952. Dan attended the Overbrook School for the Blind from 1956 to 1966. After that, he became the first blind student in his Pennsylvania county to attend public school before earning a B.A. in English and music from Muhlenberg College, a master of Music in organ performance from Westminster Choir College and a Master of Arts in English from the University of Pennsylvania.
Making up words — "Lickington, Waggington…/names I made up/for the houses I passed" —enables him to both cope with and chronicle his institutionalized life — away from his family and home in the "school for the blind."

Chair, bed,
dresser in a dorm:
keep the rhythm running,
get from Sunday to Friday,

Simpson writes in the poem "The Call of Poetry" in the deceptively simple, short lines that so effectively evoke the homesickness, starkness and dehumanization of spending one's childhood in even the best "school for the blind" or other institutionalized setting.
It's not that all schools for blind people were bad, or that students who were blind couldn't live happily and prosper academically in such places. I have friends, who attended schools for the blind in the mid-20th century, and look back upon this as one of the happiest periods of their lives. In the late 19th century, Helen Keller, who was deaf-blind, was saved from ignorance and isolation by her education at Perkins School for the Blind. Today, most blind and visually impaired children and teens attend the same schools as students without disabilities. Most schools now serve students who are not only blind but who also have other disabilities.

This having been said, many who grew up in schools for "the blind," (which were often state run and/or poorly funded) experienced stark living conditions as well as, at times, verbal, physical or sexual abuse. I know someone who, to this day, hates oatmeal because he was forced to eat it, at age 10, at a "school for the blind."

Too often, able-bodied people, even self-identified progressives, most likely out of ignorance, romanticize institutional settings for people with disabilities. Perhaps, they can't envision what it would be like to be taken from their home as a toddler and placed in such a setting — because this hasn't happened to them. Or, they assume that everyone who works in such places, is kind and caring toward those under their care.

Political poetry is so often devalued that I almost hesitate to say this: Simpson skillfully writes what Carolyn Forche has called "the poetry of witness." In poetry that calmly, but vividly packs a narrative punch, Simpson bears witness to the longings, betrayals, sadness and, at times callousness, of the school for "the blind." There is the misperception that political poetry is merely polemics dressed up as poems. As Simpson's work makes clear, this is far from the truth. In the hands of a talented poem, such as Simpson, the political begins with, and is entwined with the personal.

Take the poem "About Chester Kowalski I Don't Know Much." I don't want to reveal too much about Simpson's arresting, engaging, at times heartbreaking narrative. But these seemingly plain-spoken lines from the poem, mirroring the drabness of the school's dormitory and reflecting the rhythm of boys speech, tell more than any rant or policy paper about life at the "school for the blind":

…at night we breathed
the same fetid air of the open dorm
with thirty other eight to ten year-olds,
boys with healthy, shallow lungs who had played full tilt,
then said their prayers by rote —
"Now I lamey downda sleep."

One of the most harrowing stories of the impact of power, abuse and vulnerability is told in the prose poem "When the Chips Were Down." With a less skillful poem, this poem might have been a dull exercise in didacticism. In Simpson's telling, a lunch time hassle over potato chips is a quietly devastating tale of deprivation and cruelty. "What else they served for lunch that day in the boys' dining room, I can't say, but, dollars to doughnuts, whatever they passed off as nutrition was anything but," the narrative begins, "It could have been their infamous sausage that greased your shirt…Whatever it was, we'd have to count on the community bowl of potato chips…to carry us to dinner."

Only one staff member, Mr. G, tries to intervene with the powers that be when the supply of chips on the dining room tables runs out. "It wasn't life or death. After all, it was just one replaceable man taking a losing and inconsequential stand," the narrator says after Mr. G. fails in his mission to replenish the chips.

Poetry is profoundly of the body, and the bodies of children, particularly, kids with disabilities, are vulnerable to sexual and other types of abuse. Several of the poems in School for the Blind speak to this. "A long day of hiking, and now the man/rubs alcohol on the backs of the boy's legs," Simpson writes in the poem "Boy Scout Friend," "…The boy can't sleep;/it's those kisses on the lips."
If a person is blind, people frequently think that they want to be "healed" or that they spend all of their time lamenting that they can't see. As someone who's legally blind, I've often encountered (usually, well-meaning) people who believe that, if I pray more, in the after-life, I'll, at last, be happy, and have 20/20 vision. Simpson deflects this trope with wit. Without being anti-spirituality or against religion, he wittily offers a new vision of God and of eternity.

I'm thinking the next time I see Aunt Polly,
I'm going to tell her about my new vision:

"It's really going to be something," I'll say.
"In Heaven, you'll finally get to be blind."

Without being sentimental or white-washing the darkness of life at the "school for the blind," Simpson's work displays generosity and compassion toward those who were mean-spirited or behaved inappropriately. In the poem "The Luxury of Being Children," the narrator recalls Miss Walters, a cold-hearted dorm mother who "…when we said, 'Good morning,' …responded, 'What's good about a morning with you!'"

Yet years later, after he'd left the school for the blind and was in his senior year in high school, his hateful feelings toward Miss Walters, who'd retired, evolved. "A friend called to ask if I'd heard the story: / in a cheap apartment, alone, she froze to death."

School for the Blind is filled with the sexual and romantic yearnings of the narrator as he emerges from boyhood to adolescence and into adulthood. But, the most heartfelt love story in the collection is that of Simpson's love for his brother. "Sometimes as you well know,/I still can plow ahead, forget to call you,/but then something slaps me up against your absence,/and I'm stopped, that newborn baby boy again,/listening for you," Simpson writes in the touching conclusion of the poem "A Letter to My Twin Brother."

Simpson is an emerging and important voice that brings new vision to the disability poetics movement. School for the Blind is a stirring book that will become an indelible part of your memory and DNA.

Kathi Wolfe is the winner of the 2014 Stonewall Chapbook Competition. Her chapbook The Uppity Blind Girl Poems will be published in 2015 by BrickHouse Books. Her chapbook The Green Light was published by Finishing Line Press in 2013. Wolfe was a finalist in the 2007 Pudding House Publications Chapbook competition. Her chapbook Helen Takes the Stage: The Helen Keller Poems was published by Pudding House in 2008. She is a contributor to Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, an American Library Association Notable Book for 2011. Wolfe's poetry has appeared in Gargoyle, Beltway Poetry Quarterly and other publications.

RZ Wiggins Reviews Remembering Chris by Rosalie Calabrese for MER Book Reviews

Reprinted from Mom Egg Review, Book Reviews, June 21, 2016

BOOK REVIEW: Remembering Chris by Rosalie Calabrese.  Review by RZ Wiggins

Remembering Chris

by Rosalie Calabrese

Poets Wear Prada, 2015, $12.00 [paper]

ISBN 9780692303795

Review by RZ Wiggins

Mothers are simple, complex, opaque, vivid, loving, distant, devoted, and neglectful, all in a lifetime. From its first pages, this slim volume overflows with the above and with a mother’s abundant love and commitment. Rosalie Calebrese’s chapbook Remembering Chris is a memorial to a lost son. But the collection also shows the many sides to mothering through a voice that is at once surprisingly pragmatic and refreshingly honest.

Aside from “Mixed Emotions” (3) which centers on mothering concerns (how many mothers haven’t felt these?), Remembering Chris’s poems ring with joy at both motherhood and grandmotherhood. Given the absence of any mention of siblings, it appears that Chris, the collection’s focus (a boy who loved his Lionel trains), is an only child.

The poems explore a mother who dutifully nurtures her son and teaches him what is needed. There is the heartfelt sting of sternly eradicating obscene words and gestures and the angst of removing the stowaway from the back seat to again deposit him at sleepover camp. These are a mother’s duties that must be done even though the heart is heavy.

I wanted more glimpses into this bond, more details of days spent together in the boy’s younger years, his falls and scrapes, more about his young mother. What were their rituals? Cozying together reading books in bed? Baking cookies on stormy days? Whispering to a favorite teddy bear in the dark?

Where the boy is absent, there is much of the mother: a divorced parent struggling to adjust to her new single status; a woman juggling work commitments and the coexistent guilt: 

…I ran the shuttle

between career and motherhood.

So often, our line of communication

filled with static − almost disconnected;

I feared you’d lose your way. (16) 

In addition, there is the struggle to hold onto some of herself, to be the woman who can go to Europe without her son while carrying a mother’s guilt.

The woman inside these poems finds it difficult to tell her granddaughter “what Jewish people believe in” (19) and instead defers to the Internet.  Yet, Jewish heritage bleeds across the pages, particularly in one of Calabrese’s most poignant poems:

A Memo to My Son

You had no bris,

And you had no bar-mitzvah,

But make no mistake, my son:

You are the flesh of my flesh,

And the blood of my blood:

When all the scores are tallied,

You will still be a Jew. (8)

Time and again Calebrese reminds us that mothers must be many things: loving yet stern, strong yet fallible. They must bend to meet life as it arises before and after their children are born and especially after a child sadly passes on too soon. Without a doubt, the essence that shines through these poems is of the richness and devotion of a mother’s love despite all of life’s varying circumstances. They remind us that mothers never let go, not when they send you to summer camp, nor when career demands intrude, nor when you get married and move into your own home. Mothers swell up with joy and hold on forever— “I reach for your hand/and hold the memory” (24).

RZ Wiggins is a reformed lawyer who has been writing since she was a wee child. She is working on a collection of memoirs about 9/11 from outside NYC and WDC and on a novel about a summer in Africa. She is a researcher at the Yale School of Management.

Poets Wear Prada Announces Molly C. Braswell as New PR Associate

Hoboken-based boutique publisher Poets Wear Prada welcomes journalist Molly C. Braswell as a freelance public relations associate.

Diane von Furstenberg (L) & Molly C. Braswell (R) at Rizzoli Books, NYC

HOBOKEN, N.J. - March 19, 2016  -- Poetry publishing house Poets Wear Prada has welcomed journalist and public relations guru Molly C. Braswell to their publicity division as a freelance public relations associate.

Braswell began her multifaceted career while she was studying marketing and political science at her alma mater Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. A fellow student asked her to write an article for the school paper about an event that Braswell had just produced for the campus. From writing that one article and through public relations internships at the Junior League of Birmingham and the American Diabetes Association she knew that she wanted to combine her interests of journalism and public relations into one career.

After graduating from Samford in 2010, Braswell's post-collegiate publicity career includes stints at not-for-profit organization Mississippi Blood Services and non-profit organization Susan G. Komen of Central Mississippi. She moved to New York City in 2011 to pursue her fashion journalism dreams, where she worked as a fashion and beauty staff writer for AllMediaNY.com and freelanced as style director for "WHOA! (What's Happening with Original Artists) Magazine." After leaving those positions for a political journalism opportunity in Washington, D.C., she moved back to Manhattan in 2015 where she currently works as a stylist at clothing company J. Crew.

"Molly has such an extensive and diverse public relations background that I couldn't afford not to hire her," said Poets Wear Prada publisher Roxanne Hoffman. "She was so enthusiastic about joining Poets Wear Prada and working with our team that she is going to bring a bright new energy to the company. I'm delighted to begin working with her!"

Hoffman and Braswell met recently when they attended a book party while waiting in line to have Diane von Furstenberg sign their copies of "Inside Venice: A Private View of the City's Most Beautiful Interiors" (Rizzoli New York). After chatting for a few minutes, they each discovered how auspicious their meeting was. Hoffman needed a professional to do freelance public relations work for her publishing house, and Braswell was looking for her next publicity and writing opportunity in NYC.

"When I met Roxy, I feel as if we almost clicked instantly, and I knew I wanted to work with her," Braswell said. "Standing next to her in line had to be pure serendipity. I know I can learn a lot from Roxy, and I feel it's going to be a wonderful partnership."

Molly C. Braswell was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and she currently lives on the Upper West Side in Manhattan.

Founded in 2006 in Hoboken, New Jersey, the birthplace of Frank Sinatra and professional baseball, Poets Wear Prada is a boutique publisher devoted to introducing and promoting emerging writers, as well as those more established, to the mainstream audiences with beautifully designed volumes of well-crafted poetry and prose. For more information visit the publisher's site: http://poetswearprada.com/.

Poets Wear Prada at Sunday's Hoboken Arts & Music Festival

HOBOKEN ARTS & MUSIC FESTIVAL
Sunday, May 3, 2015
11AM - 6PM
Washington Street from City Hall to 7th Street, Hoboken, NJ

Join Poets Wear Prada in our hometown, the birthplace of Frank Sinatra and professional baseball, Hoboken, New Jersey, Sunday, May 3, 2015 from 11AM to 6PM for a day of FREE LIVE MUSIC, GOOD EATS,  an OUTDOOR ART SHOW, and many, many SMALL BUSINESS VENDORS.  We will be selling our beautiful poetry books and launching our new line of poetry greeting cards. There will also be a sneak preview of  Roxanne Hoffman's upcoming July art show at the Hoboken Library.  Meet author, recording artist and performance poet, Tantra-zawadi who will be signing her books and CD's at our table all day at the event.

POETRY GREETING CARDS FROM POETS WEAR PRADA

POETRY BOOKS FROM POETS WEAR PRADA

Linda Lerner reviews Most Likely to Die by Hilary Sideris for SPR

#1 Survivor Most Likely to Die By Hilary Sideris. 2014; 52 pp; $12.00. Poets Wear Prada, 533 Bloomfield Street, Hoboken, N.J. 07030. Linda Lerner

Re-printed from Small Press Review Jan - Feb 2015 Vol. 47 Nos. 1 - 2 Issues 504 -505

Ok, so you know nothing about Keith Richards except that he is a member of the rock band the Rolling Stones, heard his “[Ain’t Got No] Satisfaction” and saw his lined face and skinny boy’s body on TV. Then you come to this collection, and can almost hear the first guitar string vibrate, images so sharp you feel as if you could pick out each note played as you listen to his gravelly voice.  Divided into four parts, each poem is written in couplets with one line flowing effortlessly into the other taking us from his life in prewar London, to his parents  ... "riding through air raids/ with (him) in the baby seat, puking ... to fame and surviving being 'number one' on 'a most-likely-to-die list.” Music was there from the very beginning, as was Mick, whom he met in primary school and who had every 45 Chuck Berry ever made. His admiration for Berry remains consistent: “It flew/ off the needle the first time / I put his record on./ It made me love the man, / let me put up with him in years/ to come ... the only bastard / I didn’t punch back.” (“Hail Hail”)  It wasn’t enough for him to love the blues, to learn to play it; he needed to get down to its very soul. “Blues don’t go / straight. There’s something / wrong, mixed up, flicked / back, suspended like a boy / from school, no rules. It’s dark / down here. You feel your way / around ...” (“Learning The Blues”) One of the best definitions of the blues I’ve also come across. We learn about “the holy house of Chess / the shrine where every song / we loved was cut” to their first song, “The Last Time.” With fame comes acid, seeing “a flock of yellow birds” who gave me / the eye, as if to say, 'try this' and the downers he took, “not for pleasure / but to shift from shitty fame / to busy lull, till I discovered / speedballs: cocaine, & heroin/ to take you up, bring you back/ down.” He could never understand why Scotland Yard bothered to tap their phones, “plant acid / in their cars,” and chase “a band / of tripping troubadours.” (“Acid” & “Speedballs”)  In the last part, he talks about his children: “What can / a father do? Mum’s a junkie, / Dad’s on permanent tour.” There’s the son who died of crib death ... something “We never spoke of ... /  Every lovely one of us should leave / this world, all in the natural order, / dad, mum. But seeing a baby off? / You just go numb.” (“Tara”)  The collection concludes with comments on both music and fame: “The moment you tune / your guitar to one chord / you have to learn where not / to put your fingers, what to / leave alone ... The same train takes you / from the Delta to Detroit. / the human heartbeat.” (“The Drone”) As for fame, “You don’t negotiate, / you nod your head, stick / to the road you’re on.” Leaving is not an option. It’s a calling. “The great ones ... / Muddy, Robert Johnson ... / sold their solid-duty souls. / Why would the likes / of us not follow them / to the crossroads.” What Hilary Sideris has accomplished is an amazing feat; she doesn’t so much as write about Keith Richards as inhabit his very being. I listened rather than read these poems, that drove me straight to his music and a “blue acoustic” few hours listening to what is really, quite “Somethin’ Else.”

KIRKUS Reviews CULLING: New & Selected Nature Poems by George Held

Culling: New & Selected Nature Poems
by George Held
Poets Wear Prada, 2014

Reprinted from KIRKUS,  Feb. 19th, 2015 

KIRKUS REVIEW 

Held’s (Neighbors: The Yard Critters Too, 2013, etc.) poetry collection praises the natural world and issues a dark warning about climate change.

Beginning with winter, Held takes the reader through the changes of the season and divides his collection accordingly. In poems such as “The Snow” and “Crow(s),” Held speaks simply but precisely of the reliable darkness and quiet of the winter months. In “The Waning Moon,” he voices a late-winter feeling that the season will never end, wondering, “Will life renew in spring?” Like Henry David Thoreau in “Walden,” the author meditates appreciatively on nature. For example, in “April,” Held recalls his springtime chores and rituals that leave him with sore shoulders and splinters, but which he longs for in the late winter. In “Green Again,” he recalls the restorative nature of spring, comparing a tree’s transformation to art—“leaves uncurling along every twig, / like daubs of paint in a Monet.” The ruminations also contain crucial warnings about climate change. For example, the apocalyptically titled “Glacial Warning” begins with sobering statistics about the rapid rate at which Norway’s glaciers are melting. In “Sad Birds,” Held mourns the results of the BP oil spill while darkly satirizing the thought of a BP executive lost in the wreckage. Held also looks beyond the hurricane season, examining the wreckage that such weather leaves behind while considering “the cost / of putting stakes down near the coast.” Throughout, Held includes a few one-off poems that are not as strong or poignant as the others. In one, Held makes light of a tick latching onto a hiker, writing, “her blood will require a regime / of Penicillin to combat her Lyme.” Overall, the work is strong and strikes a fine balance between meditative appreciation and concern, capturing nature’s splendor while noting its impermanence.

A closely observed collection on nature and environmentalism.

Michael T Young Wins Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award for "Living in the Counterpoint"

New Jersey Poet Michael T. Young Receives Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award

Michael T. Young of Jersey City, New Jersey, and Kyle Potvin of Derry, New Hamshire, were announced as co-winners of the New England Poetry Club's 2014 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award, judged by poet David Ellis.

"Living in Counterpoint" (L), Author Michael T. Young (R)

New England Poetry Club
(f. 1915)

PRLog - Oct. 8, 2014 - JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- Michael T. Young of Jersey City, New Jersey, has been named co-winner of the 2014 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award for his third poetry collection, “Living in the Counterpoint.” He shares the award with Kyle Potvin of Derry, New Hamshire, who received it for her debut poetry collection, “Sound Travels on Water.” This year’s judge was poet David Ellis. Both collections were published by Finishing Line Press of Georgetown, Kentucky.

The Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award is given for the best chapbook published in the previous two years. A chapbook is small poetry collection usually under forty pages in length and typically published as a pamphlet. Started in 2008, the Pedrick Award is administered by the New England Poetry Club. Founded in 1915 by poets Amy Lowell, Robert Frost and Conrad Aiken, the New England Poetry Club is the oldest poetry reading series in America.

Michael T. Young has published two other collections, an earlier  chapbook, “Because the Wind Has Questions” (Somers Rocks Press, 1997), and a full-length collection of poems, “Transcriptions of Daylight” (Rattapallax Press, 2000). Advance copies of his latest book, “The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost,” are available from New Jersey's Hoboken-based publisher Poets Wear Prada. Young has received a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Chaffin Poetry Award. He was also a recipient of a William Stafford Award.

Jean Pedrick (1922 - 2006)

“Living in the Counterpoint” was published by Finishing Line Press in 2012. “The book explores how we identify who we are, best, in the context of what we are not. The central theme of the collection is the necessity of taking risk in self-exploration. It’s similar to the odd way that candies are made better-tasting by adding a little spice to them," said author Michael T. Young. "Living in the Counterpoint" is a prelude to Young’s latest full-length collection, “The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost,” which continues his poetic exploration of self-identity and risk.

Both co-winners will each receive $100 and are invited to read at the New England Poetry Club.

Weinraub’s “Lapidary” — Poetry to Rock Your World: 46 Gems from Amber to Zircon Speak

New Book from Poets Wear Prada: “Lapidary,” inspired by gemstones, by poet and master storyteller Richard Marx Weinraub. Forty-six stones tell their stories and ours. Called “beautiful and peculiar” [Corral] and “a must have” [Odwitt].


HOBOKEN, N.J. -- Jack Cooper, production editor at Poets Wear Prada, today announced the official launch of “Lapidary” a new full-length collection of “formal verse” by poet Richard Marx Weinraub inspired by gemstones. “This book has been a long time coming: Richard’s previous full-length collection, ‘Wonder Bread Hill,’ appeared in 2002 — just over a decade ago. Craft continues to precede him; curiosity propels encyclopedic and astral projections of his subject. Natural science, supernatural myth, popular culture, historic events, wit, insight, and chutzpah, with pick, detonation, and loupe, by turns, tease ‘Lapidary’’s uncanny combination of unearthed and unearthly detail into an array of forty-six poetical gems — from amber to zircon — that speak their remarkable stories — and ours. These are poems to read and re-read. They are perfect! ‘Lapidary’ is singular — on a shelf by itself. Hail, Richard, King of Marx!” said Cooper.

Eduardo C. Corral, author of “Slow Lightning,” winner of the 2012 Yale Younger Poets Prize, called these poems “beautiful and peculiar.”



LAPIDARY
by Richard Marx Weinraub
Paperback: 70 pp.
ISBN-13: 978-0615833224
List: $15.00,
Poets Wear Prada: 2013

“Weinraub cracks open craft to reveal humane interiors. Fixed forms with meter and rhyme, tenderly chiseled, deftly sculpted, pulse with regret, joy and a hundred other sentiments. … These poems ‘forge a new world out of stone,’ a landscape populated by jade, garnet, and onyx with time-rich thoughts, blood-rich emotion,” said Corral.

Edward Odwitt, Connecticut writer and illustrator, described “Lapidary” as “an original and brilliant collection of poems that offers insights into the various states of human nature through the voices of different stones. This book is a must have, and it will be avidly read for years to come.”

“In ‘Lapidary’ — stones, semi-precious, precious — stones talk to you, skillfully, convincingly and you believe them, you believe them!” said Thomas Lux, acclaimed poet and teacher, and Bourne chair in poetry at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Roxanne Hoffman, publisher, said “We’re delighted to receive such enthusiastic response to the book. The poetry rocks! All the stones are ‘precious’ here — whether rock crystal or diamond, garnet or ruby, agate or emerald. Richard has taken the ‘stodginess’ out of ‘formal verse’; he employs its fixed and traditional patterns as a master diamond cutter would — to transform a seeming dull gray rock to its inherent sparkling beauty. Bravo!”

“Lapidary” is Weinraub’s second book project with Poets Wear Prada. “Heavenly Bodies,” a limited-edition illustrated chapbook of twelve poems, was released in 2008 by the Hoboken-based press. It included “Persephone’s Dream” which was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart prize. “Wonder Bread Hill,” his “sonovella” (a novella written in sonnets), was published by the University of Puerto Rico Press in 2002. A political thriller based on what may be the most explosive event in recent Puerto Rican history — the 1978 murder of two young radicals on Cerro Maravilla (Wonder Hill) and the trial that ensued — Weinraub’s 140 sonnets were translated into Spanish by Elidio La Torre Lagares. A Spanish edition, “Maravilla Rebanada,” was published by Terranova Editores in 2009.

Related to the Marx Brothers through his mother, Richard Marx Weinraub was born in New York City in 1949. He was Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico from 1987 through 2010. His poetry has appeared in many journals including “The Paris Review,” “Asheville Poetry Review,” “South Carolina Review,” “The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review,” “Green Mountains Review,” “North American Review,” “Slate,” and “River Styx.” Weinraub lives in Newark, New Jersey.

Founded in 2006, Poets Wear Prada publishes beautifully designed, well-crafted books of poetry from Sinatra’s hometown, Hoboken, the birthplace of professional baseball.

“Lapidary” by Richard Marx Weinraub (Hoboken: Poets Wear Prada, 2013), 70 pages, ISBN- 10: 0615833225, ISBN-13: 978-0615833224, list price: $15.00, is available in paperback from Amazon Books and other popular booksellers.

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Chapbook Classic Back In Print: Levenson's "Dances With Tears" POD Paperback Available November

Efrayim Levenson's "Dances With Tears" Print on Demand Edition Due Out November from Poets Wear Prada Following His Recently Released "Funhouse"

Described as a collection of "heartfelt psalms" ["Small Press Review''] and "a blast of Hasidic bebop ecstasy [Fishbane], "Dances With Tears" takes readers on a walk along a path a spiritual discovery. The new edition available November features cover art by publisher Roxanne Hoffman.

Poetry Chapbook Classic Back In Print from Hoboken Publisher

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Oct. 10, 2013 - HOBOKEN, N.J. -- Roxanne Hoffman, publisher at Poets Wear Prada, announced today the upcoming re-issue of “Dances With Tears” by poet Efrayim Levenson.  Originally printed in 2007 as a limited-edition (under 500 copies) saddle-stitched chapbook, and described as “a blast of Hasidic bebop ecstasy” by Brooklyn poet and Bensonhurst resident Craig Fishbane, the newly designed mass market paperback edition will be available this November.

DANCES WITH TEARS 

by Efrayim Levenson

(Poets Wear Prada, 2013)

Hoffman said, “This very popular and charming little book was reprinted twice after its original print run sold out with each subsequent printing selling out. How nice it will be to have the book in circulation again so that more readers can enjoy it.”  The new perfect-bound soft cover edition will be available print-on-demand, so the little book should not go out of print, again, at least not anytime soon. An initial run of fifty copies will be printed, to be signed and numbered by the author for collectors.

The new edition of “Dances With Tears” follows the recent publication of Levenson’s “Funhouse,” written while the poet listened to the music of guitarist Buckethead.

Levenson, who often composes his poems under headphones listening to music, said, “There are instrumental music interpretations involved with most of these.”  He recalls listening to Dave Schmeidler, “Skyrats Scraps,” HDS, 2002; Ensemble Ambrosius, “The Zappa Album,” Musical Heritage Society, 2001; Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Mark O'Connor, “Appalachia Waltz,” Sony Classical, 1996; Pat O'Connell, “Tikal,” Rogue Elephant Music, 2000; Prasanna, “Peaceful,” Susila Music, 2001; and John Zorn (performed by Rashanim), “Masada Rock,”  Tzadik, 2005. And of course Buckethead, “Electric Tears,” Meta, 2002, was playing when the poet wrote his poem “Electrocuted Tears.” The admiration Levenson has for these musicians is often returned. John Zorn, the American composer and saxophone player, wrote Levenson a personal thank-you note for “Mordechai’s Day at the Beach” after the poet hand-delivered a copy of the poem with his email address, the first time they met.

Levenson has collaborated with several musicians, including Dave Schmeider, Rey Scott, and others, and said he has a spoken word CD in the works.

The book's production editor, Jack Cooper, described the new front cover as "Beautiful!" Cooper had requested “something that colorfully and with Surrealist execution combines tears with rain.”  Hoffman, who is also a graphic designer, said she created the image of the young man dancing in a drizzle of tears, someone just learning to be “frum” [Yiddish for “devout” or “pious”], after googling hundreds of images of Hasidic men dancing. Levenson’s daughter Marissa took the photo of the author that appears on the new back cover.

Levenson began writing poetry in 1982.  His work is influenced by poets Lawrence Ferlingetti and Allen Ginsburg, and Chabad Chasidism, as well as by the music he enjoys.

"Dances With Tears" takes the reader on a walk along a path of spiritual discovery. The book, described as collection of “heartfelt psalms” by Small Press Review, includes the poem "& Ribbon," which was nominated for a 2008 Pushcart Prize. Rabbi Yossi Mendelson, Congregation Machane Chodesh, said “Efrayim’s poetry truly embodies the experience of a contemporary Jew who has found a very deep inspiration in his ancient roots. There is a certain freshness and bright sunny quality that comes with his pure simplicity which cuts to the very core of his growing relationship with G-d.”

Poetrymanz Press released his first collection, "For My Relations," in 2000.

Founded in 2006, Poets Wear Prada publishes beautifully designed, well-crafted books of poetry from Sinatra's hometown, Hoboken, the birthplace of professional baseball.

“Dances With Tears” by Efrayim Levenson (Hoboken: Poets Wear Prada, 2013), 24 pages, ISBN-10: 0981767834, ISBN-13: 978-981767833, list price: $12.00, will be available in paperback from Amazon Books and other popular booksellers.

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FUNHOUSE by Efrayim Levenson Takes Readers on 3-Day Cranial Amusement Ride

New Poems by Efrayim Levenson From Poets Wear Prada Take Readers on 3-Day Cranial Amusement Ride

Poets Wear Prada today announced release of Efrayim Levenson's “Funhouse,” poems written listening to guitarist Buckethead. Second book with Hoboken-based publisher follows "Dances With Tears," his "blast of Hasidic bebop ecstasy" [Fishbane].

 

FUNHOUSE
Poems by
Efrayim Levenson
Paperback: 42pp.; $12:00
 ISBN-13: 978-0615848853
Poets Wear Prada, 2013

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

 

PRLog (Press Release) - Oct. 3, 2013 - HOBOKEN, N.J. -- Roxanne Hoffman, publisher at Poets Wear Prada, announced today publication of “Funhouse” by poet Efrayim Levenson.

“Funhouse,” written while Levenson listened to the music of guitarist Buckethead, is a three-day journey in a surreal amusement park filled with sea lions, guitars, monsters, crickets, spiders, a guillotine, a human pretzel, more guitars, a traffic jam, drought, grasshoppers, angels, and even more guitars.

The book’s production editor, Jack Cooper, said, “‘Funhouse’ is superb; it reads beautifully, uncovers much that is profound, and remains full of surprise.”

“Efrayim Levenson’s ‘Funhouse’ sends us on a wild nightmarish yet at times tender merry-go-round ride through his own private Coney Island and ours,” said New York poet Steve Dalachinsky.

David Elsasser, founder of Parkside Poetry Collective, said, “In his new chapbook, ‘Funhouse’, Efrayim Levenson responds to the guitar virtuosity of Buckethead with a poetic soul-jouney that reverbs through the wildest word riffs.”

“I have been addicted to writing poetic interpretations of instrumental music for about seven years now,”  says Efrayim Levenson.  “This project was a lot of fun!  I hope Buckethead likes it.”

This is Efrayim Levenson’s second book project with Poets Wear Prada.  In 2007, the Hoboken-based press released “Dances With Tears,” a walk along a path of spiritual discovery.  The book, called "a blast of Hasidic bebop ecstasy" by Brooklyn poet, Craig Fishbane, includes the poem “& Ribbon,” which was nominated for a 2008 Pushcart Prize.  Poetrymanz Press released his previous collection, “For My Relations,” in 2000.

Founded in 2006, Poets Wear Prada publishes beautifully designed, well-crafted books of  poetry from Sinatra’s hometown, Hoboken, the birthplace of professional baseball.

“Funhouse” by Efrayim Levenson (Hoboken: Poets Wear Prada, 2013), 42 pages, ISBN- 10: 0615848850, ISBN-13: 978-0615848853, list price: $12.00, is available in paperback from Amazon Books and other popular booksellers.

Poets Wear Prada at CUNY Chapfest Bookfair May 3 & 4 in NYC

PWP's Contribution to CUNY Chapfest Super Chap Anthology

Please join Poets Wear Prada, our Chief Executive Editor, Roxanne Hoffman, and our Creative Director & Production Editor, Jack Cooper, at the fifth annual CUNY Chapfest Bookfair this Friday, May 3 and Saturday, May 4, held at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street, NYC.  The festival is taking place in the Proshansky Auditorium and on the C-Level.

The CUNY Chapfest celebrates the chapbook as a work of art and as a medium for alternative and emerging writers and publishers.

Poets Wear Prada will be among the sixty chapbook publishers showcased at this event.  We will be presenting chapbooks by Mary Orovan, Erik La Prade, Austin Alexis, Joel Allegretti, Richard Marx Weinraub, Laura Vookles, Tantra Zawadi,  Michael Montlack, Ice Gayle Johnson, Gil Fagiani, Maria Lisella, and more.  A limited number of signed first editions will available for some of our titles.

To celebrate the festival's fifth year,  Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative has created a  superchap — a mini-anthology.  Each participating publisher was invited to fill one page of the chapbook however they wanted. The resulting book was assembled and designed by Megan Mangum, our Lost & Found designer,  with the cover designed by book artist Jeff Peterson of Double Cross Press. The printing was done by Peter Viegas and the Graduate Center Graphic Arts shop.


Friday book fair hours are from 12:00pm to 6:30pm;  Saturday hours from 12:00pm to 5:00pm. 

The festival is free and open to the public, though workshops  require advance registration and some may require a small materials fee.

For the complete schedule and list of participating publishers please visit: http://chapbookfestival.org/

Facebook Event Link: https://www.facebook.com/events/541464705905065/

The CUNY Chapfest is co-sponsored by the CUNY Office of Academic Affairs, Academy of American Poets, the Center for Book Arts, the CUNY MFA Affiliation Group, Poetry Society of America, Poets House, and Poets & Writers.