Chocolate Water's Forthcoming Book Reviewed in "Lamba Literary Review"

Julie R. Enszer, reviews Chocolate Water's forthcoming collection "the woman who wouldn't shake hands" for "Lamda Literary Review."  Poets Wear Prada in conjunction with Eggplant Press will publish groundbreaking feminist writer Chocolate Waters's first new book in over three decades this Fall.


"... The thirty-one poems in the 'woman who wouldn’t shake hands' (Poets Wear Prada) are short. At times pithy, at times wise, Waters is always a performer. The poems of this collection are carefully-timed with tricky meters and hidden surprises that emerge when you read them aloud. Some of the poems are bon mots in the tradition of Dorothy Parker, if she were speaking openly about lesbianism. Other poems echo Gertrude Stein’s play with language, though Waters, unlike Stein, is concerned with concision ... ," writes Enszer.


To read Enszer's complete review online visit:

http://www.lambdaliterary.org/reviews/08/24/the-woman-who-wouldn%E2%80%99t-shake-hands-by-chocolate-waters-and-bad-wife-spankings-by-valerie-wetlaufer/

Author-signed copies of the books can be pre-ordered for $14  ($12 list price + $2 S&H) by check or postal order made out to Chocolate Waters from:

Eggplant Press, 415 W. 44th. St., Suite 7, New York, NY 10036 (USA).

or from Poets Wear Prada:

PayPal: roxy533 at myway dot com 

Mail Orders: Poets Wear Prada, c/o Roxanne Hoffman, 533 Bloomfield St., 2nd Floor, Hoboken, NJ 07030 (USA)

the woman who wouldn't shake hands
by Chocolater Waters
ISBN 978-0935060096
Soft Cover, Perfect Bound 46pp.
$12.00
Release Date: Fall 2010

Fagiani's CHIANTI IN CONNECTICUT on SPD's Recommend New Titles List

Small Press Distribution, a non-profit literary arts organization located in Berkeley, California, highlighted Gil Fagiani’s newly published Chianti in Connecticut (Bordighera Press) in its "Recommended New Titles for Jan. 15-31":

"Gil Fagiani's muse is Italian American memory. These are poems of origins and belonging, of family, culture, politics. These are recollections, both elegiac and ironic, of a world Gil Fagiani observes from the privileged perspective of an insider who does not feel bound to the need to eulogize his community. They function as archival records, a museum of language in which a gallery of characters and objects and moments are captured in lines that vibrate with a sound, a touch, a presence"—Edvige Giunta

http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9781599540153/default.aspx

Gil Fagiani’s previous collections include A Blanquito in El Barrio (Rain Mountain Press, 2009) set in the streets and to the music of Spanish Harlem and  Rooks (Rain Mountain Press, 2007) recalling his years as cadet at a Pennsylvania military college in the 1960s.  His chapbook Grandpa’s Wine (Poets Wear Prada, 2008) has been translated into Italian by Paul D’Agostino and will be re-released as bi-lingual edition in 2011. His Serfs of Psychiatry is forthcoming  from Finishing Line Press later this year.

Groove Assassin FT Tantra Zawadi: LOVE SEEKER Reviewed in TILLLATE

Groove Assassin Feat. Tantra Zawadi: Love Seeker (Gotta Keep Faith), GKF085, Released Dec. 27, 2010 gets the thumbs up (9/10) from  both Lewis Dene and DJ Mannix in Tilllate Magazine: The World's Essential Clubbing Magazine:

 http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/d5f3897c#/d5f3897c/88

"Reminiscent of Ursula Rucker's Firefly Single "Supernatural" of a few years ago, this ethereal, laidback, and sometimes positively chill house offering, comes from Sheffield's Nick Moss (AKA Groove Assassin) and New York-based poet Tantra Zawadi." Sultry and seductive in the main...the vocal makes you all gooey inside."-- Lewis Dene, TILLATE

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/d5f3897c#/d5f3897c/90

"Italy's finest address, when it comes to soulful house, Gotta Keep Faith have signed a real nugget here, the new cut from Nick Moss aka Groove Assassin. It's a spoken word flavored old skool record, powered by the tasty vocals of Tantra Zawadi..." -- DJ Mannix, TILLLATE

To preview/buy tracks goto TRAXSOURCE.com:

http://www.traxsource.com/index.php?act=show&fc=tpage&cr=titles&cv=75858 

Lisella's AMORE Reviewed in FRA NOI & Interview w/ Fagiani Archived on LiveStream

Fred Gardaphe's review of  Maria Lisella's Amore on Hope Street (Finishing Line Press, 2009) in the February 2011 of Fra Noi ("Books & Beyond") is reprinted below:

2. POWERFUL POETRY

Over two dozen poetic gems come in sections on immigrant similarities and clashes, the family here and gone, and travels abroad and inside relationships in Maria Lisella’s Amore on Hope St.. Lisella excels at both lyric and narrative forms, bringing the real to the surface through things like a young girl’s pierced ears, and sometimes through the surreality of a Venetian fog. Through her skills at framing her subjects, she makes the past seem present and the present seem past, creating poetry you want to read and reread. ($14 paperback) http://www.finishinglinepress.com/  ISBN: 978-1-59924-533-1.

New York, December 15th, 2010 – NOTA BENE, a live discussion program, featuring dynamic conversation with leading Artists and Scholars of the Italian American Culture, hosted by Fred Gardaphe, Fulbright Fellow and Distinguished Professor of Italian American Studies at Queens College/CUNY. NOTA BENE re-streams taped LIVE on Wednesday, December 15th, 2010 at 8pm. NOTA BENE can be seen on the Internet LIVE at WWW.LIVESTREAM.COM/ITALICS the third Wednesday of every month. It is then archived on the Livestream.com Site for future viewings.

 

NOTA BENE with Fred Gardaphe featured PWP authors and IAWA Reading Series Hosts Gil Fagiani and Maria Lisella on December 15th 2010.   The show can be heard by following the link to the archived webcast:

 

http://www.livestream.com/ITALICS/video?clipId=pla_5734eeb2-d6ac-44f4-88eb-a957b7498c07&utm_source=lslibrary&utm_medium=ui-thumb

Check Out George Held's New Blog! And In Person This Friday in NYC.

PWP Author George Held has a new blog:  http://georgeheld.blogspot.com/  A frequent book reviewer for Small Press Review, as a well a regular columnist for INFAUXTAINMENT,  George has posted his review of Nicole Cooley's MILK DRESS (Alice James Books, 2010),  Saturday December 4th.


George will be the featured reader at the Son of Pony Friday Night Open Mic at The Cornelia Street Cafe this Friday, December 10th.

Friday, December 10th, 2010

GEORGE HELD

+

Open Mic (3 minute limit)

6pm - 7:45pm

(arrive by 5:45pm to secure spot at the open)

@

The Cornelia Street Cafe
29 Cornelia Street
New York, NY 10014
212.989.9319
http://www.corneliastreetcafe.com/

$7 cover includes 1 house drink

Host: Jackie Sheeler

La Prade's BREAKING THROUGH reviewed in THE BROOKLYN RAIL, NOV 2010

Roxanne,


The Green Gallery book is reviewed in the current issue of The Brooklyn Rail. I only found out 2 days ago.

There is an internet version also: Nov 2010 issue.

What's new?

Erik


* * *

Artist Greg Lindquist's review "Art Books in Review" of Breaking Through: Richard Bellamy and the Green Gallery, 1960 – 1965 / Twenty-Three Interviews by Erik La Prade (Midmarch Arts Press, 2010) appears in the month's (November 2010) issue of The Brooklyn Rail under ARTSEEN, available online at:

http://brooklynrail.org/2010/11/artseen/art-books-in-review

Breaking Through: Richard Bellamy and the Green Gallery, 1960 – 1965
Twenty-Three Interviews
By Erik La Prade
Midmarch Arts Press, 2010

 

"La Prade synthesizes a rich and sometimes superfluous account, often seeking consensus among the recollections. In doing so, he provides a more expanded view of this brief period between Abstract Expressionism and the Pop and Minimalism movements than can be found in most accounts, while discarding the historical terminology and revisionism that has since occurred in canonical texts." -- Greg Lindquist, THE BROOKLYN RAIL

Erik La Prade is also the author of the poetry chapbook SWATCHES (Poets Wear Prada, 2008) now available at  Amazon.com.

Cendrine Marrout, Canadian Independent Artist Examiner, Gives GATHERED AT HER SKY by Tantra-zawadi 5 Stars!

Gathered at Her Sky 
Life Poems by Tantra-zawadi
ISBN 978-0-9841844-6-0
Paperback: 42 pages
Poets Wear Prada, June 2010
$12.00

"GATHERED AT HER SKY, Tantra-zawadi’s new book will make you like poetry again. This short but amazing ten-poem collection delivers poignant truths that will tug at your heartstrings and shake your bones. It speaks to the divine in us, a place where Love is not hindered by materialistic considerations. Most importantly, the book asks women to proudly stand up and refuse the dictatorship of closed minds."
-- Cendrine Marrouat, Canada Independent Artist Examiner, examiner.com

To read the rest of Marrouat's review click here:
http://www.examiner.com/canada-independent-artist-in-canada/review-of-gathered-at-her-sky-review


GATHERED AT HER SKY by Tantra-zawadi is available from Amazon.com, CreateSpace.com and LULU.com and at the Greenpoint Bookstore, 686 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217.

JOEL ALLEGRETTI on Word for Word Poetry, July 13

Jason Schneiderman on Word for Word Poetry, July 13

http://blog.bryantpark.org/2010/07/word-for-word-poetry-blogs_19.html

Paul Romero started the reading by saying that there was no theme for the evening’s reading, but of course, a connective tissue emerged. On a formal level, the poets were all narrative (as contrasted to Mark Bibbins & Jean Valentine, from the previous week), focusing on meditations and biography. They all work with language as a transparent medium, while carefully shaping it (but never to reveal the shaping). On a thematic level, the poets were deeply concerned with desire and violence, the ways that a body can be wanted, hurt, and soothed. They explored the desires and disruptions of their own bodies, celebrity bodies, and the bodies of loved ones. As Paul introduced each reader, it became clearer and clearer that the themes of the evening were emerging of their own accord.

Joel Allegretti started the evening, flawlessly reciting poems from memory, starting with a translation. His poems often focused on pop culture divas; Yoko Ono and Nico made early appearances. Allegretti’s latest collection Thrum (Poets Wear Prada Press) is comprised of poems about stringed instruments, though Buffy Sainte Marie kept his poems diva-centric as he read about her performing with a mouth bow (definitely worth checking out on Youtube). Even Eurydice took a star turn, being cast as Greta Garbo’s predecessor and regally pronouncing “I want to be alone.” Allegretti ended with an elegy for his mother (every man’s first diva?), using the dolphin and the butterfly as images to bring the two back together.


Timothy Liu began by announcing that he is about to celebrate 18 years with his partner. He read mostly new poems. In his poems, Liu often breaks down decorum, allowing the physical to lay alongside the emotional in unusual ways. There’s often a mystery at the center of his poems. Whereas the physical usually dissipates the mysterious (as in pornography, where nothing is left to the imagination), in Liu’s poems, physicality neither demystifies nor explains. One short poem: “Every vow I kept/ for seventeen years/ I wanted to break / until I slipped my finger / inside of you.” Knowing that he and his partner have been together for eighteen years suggests that these are marriage vows, while also suggesting that the “you” is his partner. But these ideas both slip away with that finger’s entrance. Where it goes, into whom, what the vows are, why those vows are no longer regretted--these are all satisfying kept out of the poem. A particularly tender poem depicted his elderly father discussing hand holding as they held hands, the softness of each other completing with affection their long isolated bodies. But Liu’s poems often challenge the sentimentality that a love poem can offer: “What need do I have for the mirror you smashed/ when I have your fist to look on.”

Jeffrey McDaniel was quite funny, though his humor was carefully calibrated against dire concerns and tragic tones. With poems like “Eliot Spitzer Contemplates Fate” and “The Cuckold’s Survival Manual,” McDaniel made the audience laugh before swerving into darker territory. Many of his poems seemed to be about a failure to connect, about desires that isolated or frustrated the speaker. In one of the longer poems, McDaniel told the history of his body’s evocation of desire in men, from his adolescent years to the present. In ironic circumlocutions, he apologized for his inability to satisfy the desire he provoked, while his explicit refusal to judge them (especially the ones out trolling for high schoolers) came with it’s own indictment. This poem resonated perfectly against the Cuckold poems, in which the speaker’s wife is pleasured in great detail. In both poems, the speaker remains humiliatingly proximate to desire. In one case he is unpleasantly called to a pleasure that is not his own; in the other he is excluded from a pleasure that is rightfully his. His last poem was an elegy for a childhood friend.


Jacob Scheier was the softest spoken of the group. The Toronto based poet’s quiet voice pulled in the audience as he read poems about New York, his previous home. One poem lamented how New York can never live up to its life in the movies—how life has to continue in it’s messiness, while a movie about New York can close itself tidily. The poems deftly wove together strands of personal, familial, and political history. One poem about the sexual abuse of his mother ranged over the family’s Communist commitments and the various ways that the abuse was justified, including red-baiting. Scheier worked to inhabit his mother’s voice, a way of bringing back a woman who died in 2000. It closed out his own reading perfectly, and brought the evening to a close, letting his elegy resonate against Allegretti’s.


Jason Schneiderman is the author of Sublimation Point (Four Way Books) and Striking Surface (Ashland Poetry Press). His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry, Grand Street, Bloom, Court Green, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, The Story Quarterly, the Virginia Quarterly Review and Tin House among other publications. Jason has received fellowships from Yaddo, The Fine Arts Work Center, and The Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. He was the recipient of the Emily Dickinson Award from The Poetry Society in 2004. A graduate of the MFA program at NYU, he is currently completing his doctorate at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Posted by Bryant Park at 2:49 PM
Labels: bryant park reading room events, guest bloggers, jason schneiderman, word for word poetry blogs
* * *

HPN Winter/Spring 2008 - Linda Lerner Reviews 2 from PWP

Linda Lerner THE LITTLE BOOK OF FAIRY TALES AND LOVE POEMS By Iris Berman Poets Wear Prada, 533 Bloomfield Street, Hoboken, NJ, 2007, 23pp. $8. CONE INVESTIGATES By Bob Heman Poets Wear Prada, Hoboken, 2007, 12pp. $6.25

Reprinted from Home Planet News Issue 59 (Vol. 15 No. 3) Winter/Spring 2008 Page 7 (continued page 22)

The two collections are the latest from Poets Wear Prada Press begun by Roxanne Hoffman in the Fall, '06. Cone's empirical investigations lead him "over the edge of the map" into a world as magic-filled as Iris Berman's fairy tales. The red shoes that lead her "away from/ The beautiful men...Across meadow and dell/ From Mountain to mountain...refuse to stop moving...her mermaid's tears become the salty ocean." Heman's Dr. Cone "melts in the rain;..." the hedonists...view him as a cactus; when he visits "the city of numbers (he) slides inside a seven and disappears for hours." Boundaries between human beings and nature, animate and inanimate objects, don't exist. Dr. Cone thinks he is the reincarnation of an ancient snowstorm ... the wind gets trapped in his beard, and like the red shoes, takes on a life of its own. Berman teaches her lover "To fly on the wisps/ Of smoke burning/ From the tip of (her) cigarette..." In "Cone Dreams" the doctor is led to Barabus by a rooster who "crows just as he reaches the door that he is sure is the right one." Omens are to be taken seriously. A Cinderella "happily every after" story concludes not only Berman's title poem, but also in another in which a couple "stoned out of (their) minds...(make) truth out of lies to reach it." As if by magic, the fairy tale, rooted in the ancient world, and the scientist's investigations into the future, lead to the same place. It is not that the individual is in harmony with nature or in opposition to it, but that both interact, are engaged with each other through an unspoken language. Wishes in dreams come true; curses placed on people are granted, as is Berman's wish that anyone climbing her pear tree get stuck "Mired in muck, caught in mud." In "Cone Awakens" the doctor is stirred by a dream to buy a rooster; the old one no longer crows and there have been no new chicks for a long time. Told there are no more roosters, he turns down an offer of a mechanical alarm, goes into the woods and sacrifices the fattest rabbit he sees to the goddess of the dawn. His old rooster is transformed as if by magic, and "soon little chicks are seen hurrying all around the yard." For both Berman and Heman the surrealistic and fairy tale elements hide the unperceived reality of the world we live in. There is the angry man in "Humpty Dumpty" people "walk on eggshells" around, fearing to send him "over the edge" he eventually falls over; the treatment that cures him ends up killing the person he was, returning a seemingly lobotomized "Strangely quiet...Not the same" man. Rumplestiltskin "an ugly little man...who built an empire...Through bold financial deals" is reminiscent of ceo's who headline the news daily. A satire on how art and indirectly literary reputations are made is explored in "Cone Paints." An artist does a series of white-on-white paintings. The critics who can't differentiate between the shades or the paintings, "applaud him for his courage in filling the grand gallery with five hundred and eighty-two blank white canvases." He never does another painting, and so "his immortality is assured." In "Cone Investigates" there are his clones, the hanger-on assistants we are familiar with, who pretend or imagine they are him. Stylistically, each of these beautifully designed and produced chapbooks bears its own distinctive signature. Berman's poems utilize the short line, a minimum use of punctuation, and are driven by a moderately paced rhythm, sometimes with a refrain, as in "Echo Of Love." "My love goes riding" follows every one or two stanzas twisting around on itself to conclude with "My love won't stop writing." Heman's collection consists of twelve prose poems in as many pages on ivory parchment with a pale green tint. Employing a simple sentence structure like a rope that both anchors and grants him freedom, he lowers himself over the edge,"(leaving) the world of concepts behind...plunging instead into a land of forces and junctions" in which, unseen, he moves as in a dream through an unexplored landscape. As Berman goes riding off the earth with her lover and Cone "pulls magic out a rabbit and stuffs it into his hat," so readers will experience the same when they step into the marvelous worlds fo these two poets.

Chiron Review Spring 2008 - Linda Lerner Reviews Laura Vookles's JOHN ON THE CHRYSLER

Reviewed by Linda Lerner JOHN ON THE CHRYSLER Poems of Love and Grief Laura Vookles Poets Wear Prada Press, 533 Bloomfield St., Hoboken, N.J. 07030 2007, 17 pp., $6.25.

Reprinted from Chiron Review Issue #82, Spring, 2008 Page 44

Smoke from a Marlboro cigarette trails through poems which, in a very tactile sense, evoke a poignant relationship between a Long Island guy and a woman from Memphis. "You can't go back, but the past counts," Laura Vookles writes. More than counts. As she must accept her husband's death, so she can't ignore his presence whenever she touches one of his many art acquisitions and feels his spirit move through her hand; those same "battered and calloused hands (that) sawed, chiseled, sanded and built a wooden locomotive and a sloop inside a museum" were the hands "carrying me to places I had never been." In "You are a Dream" the poet is telling her husband she is sure he still has a presence, that she felt it in something she filmed or photographed. While unclear about the details and who is even in it, she is not about his visible presence. In the dream she believes she's found tangible proof he's still here - "Even a candle snuffed leaves smoke / and a lingering scent." This is what she "wants to think." Needs to think. In touching his Rookwood vase "she feel[s] the lust that compelled [him] to own her," and asks, "How did the 'artist fade that pink to green / without the glazes melting into mud?" How does one love someone with her every breath, without it turning, into resentment afterwards? Surrounded by "ceramic lovers" the poet suddenly has an urge to smash, throw them against the wall. "I should feel more angry at you, / like I am at those Marlboros." The significant word here is, should. The rage to smash cannot be separated from their "piles of pointed shards - / sharp, like grief." What lit up their life together and his death that extinguished it, are intermingled in that wide range of emotion one goes through in grieving. This poem follows the more gentle and beautiful, "Sand in My Sheets": "If I ever find sand in my sheets, I will listen for you smoking in my kitchen. / Lighter click, a cough and then / the scrape of wood on tile as you return to me." Like the vase, the sand brings back what also reminds her is gone. Cars like art objects are important links to both the poet and her husband, as in the title poem, "John on the Chrysler" and in the collection's final, "Stick Shift Cool," in which she is driving a blue and white Mini Cooper she bought for him. She is "Pounding the wheel, head tossed back yelling - 'Look at me, John! I got this car for you!'" and imagines she heard him laugh. By the time we read the author's aside to her husband at the end of this collection, "Are you listening John? I wrote these poems for you?" she has convinced us what she intuitively, through a leap of faith, believes.. This is a highly recommended collection any reader cannot fail to be moved by. For those of us who've tried to make ourselves heard through the barrier of death, reach someone who is gone, these poems will especially resonate.

SPR Mar/Apr 2008 - Linda Lerner Review Laura Vookles's JOHN ON THE CHRYSLER

Smoke John on the Chrysler (Poems of Love and Grief). By Laura Vookles 2007;17 pp; Poets Wear Prada, 533 Bloomfield Street, Hoboken, N.J. 07030. $6.25. Linda Lerner

Reprinted from Small Press Review Mar - Apr 2008 Vol. 40 Nos. 3 - 4 Issues 422 - 423 Page 13

Smoke from a Marlboro cigarette trails through poems which, in a very tactile sense, evoke a poignant relationship between a Long Island guy and a woman from Memphis. "You can't go back, but the past counts," Laura Vookles writes. More than counts. As she must accept her husband's death, so she can't ignore his presence whenever she touches one of his many art acquisitions and feels his spirit move through her hand; those same "battered and calloused hands (that) sawed, chiseled, sanded and built a wooden locomotive and a sloop inside a museum" were the hands "carrying me to places I had never been." In "You are a Dream" the poet is telling her husband she is sure he still has a presence, that she felt it in something she filmed or photographed. While unclear about the details and who is even in it, she is not about his visible presence. In the dream she believes she's found tangible proof he's still here - "Even a candle snuffed leaves smoke/ and a lingering scent." This is what she "wants to think." Needs to think.

SPR Jan/Feb 2008 - Clifton Snider Reviews Austin Alexis's LOVERS AND DRAG QUEENS

Anaphora Lovers and Drag Queens By Austin Alexis. 2007; 16 pp; $6.25. Poets Wear Prada, 533 Bloomfield Street, Hoboken, N.J. 07030. Clifton Snider

Excerpt reprinted from Small Press Review Jan - Feb 2008 Vol. 40 Nos. 1 - 2 Issues 420 - 421

Lovers and Drag Queens is a clear-eyed, queer exploration of urban characters and dilemmas from the perspective of the talented African-American New York Poet, playwright, and fiction writer, Austin Alexis. In free verse and prose poems, Alexis offers an enticing palette of ordinary and outré people who populate New York, including the sexually ambiguous cop in “Eyes,” the “Call Girl at 5 AM,” the “Drag Queen,” the “Bronx Woman,” and the murderous “psychopath.” Utilizing anaphora reminiscent of Walt Whitman, Alexis celebrates a gospel choir in “Gospel”: And the gospel choir swayed and the gospel members hummed in harmony... and the singers’ black faces shone against their loose white angel robes, and the organ revved up like a preacher the congregation loved... Alexis also used anaphora in the one poem clearly outside the city, “The Villagers, 2005”: “They were trying to say/ that gayness is wrong,/ that their rules rule,/ that they own/ the world’s corrosive poison:/ power.” Far from a celebration, this poem comments on “an African village...[where] a man was stoned to death because of his sexual orientation,” as the explanatory note says. Alexis also remembers another killer of gay men in “H.I.V.” And he delicately explores troubled lovers, male and female, in such poems as “Choices,” “Love Poem,” and “Dilemma.” Lovers and Drag Queens contains an intriguing variety of poems in its sixteen pages: a fine chapbook, well worth perusing.

SPR Nov/Dec 2007 - George Held Reviews 2 from PWP

Nocturnal Dances With Tears By Efrayim Levenson 2007; 10 pp; $6.25. Poets Wear Prada,533 Bloomfield Street, Hoboken, N.J. 07030. Found in a Cord By Alex O. Bleecker 2007; 10 pp; $6.25. Poets Wear Prada Press (see adress above). George Held	Excerpt reprinted from Small Press Review Nov - Dec 2007 Vol. 39 Nos. 11 - 12 Issues 418 - 419 Pages 1 & 6
...The poet and editor Roxanne Hoffman has started to publish chapbooks and, in the case of these two early examples, chaplets - 10-page collections of poems. For both Levenson and Bleecker these chaplets mark their debuts. Influenced by Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg, Frank Zappa and Chabad Chasidism, Levenson writes lyrics primarily about love and "G-d." For instance, in "Electrocuted Tears" he writes, "If we wash our hands/and breathe our kepittel/ our love becomes an answered prayer." For his non-Jewish readers he provides a glossary, so one learns that kepittel means "psalm." His poems themselves are heartfelt psalms. About 25 years younger than Levenson, Bleecker writes more formal lyrics, all in unrhymed tercets (except for two quatrains) that frequently run over from one to the next. As a preface Found in a Cord quotes the American Heritage Dictionary definition for "cord," which has eight meanings, but "cord" appears only once in these eight poems,within the title "Distorted Precordia." The precordium is the body surface overlying the heart and stomach, but what a twisted plural of it has to do with this lovely poem about picking orchids with the speaker's grandmother eludes me. Among the noteworthy lines in this collection are "It's been lucky / breathing with you," "I touch myself daily / / with the beauty of a coincidence," and "Take a boat/ and exchange it for a grain of sand." These chaplets make appealing introductions to these poets.

SPR Sept/Oct 2007 - Linda Lerner Reviews 2 from PWP

Magic The Little Book of Fairy Tales & Love Poems By Iris Berman 2007;23 pp; $8.00. Poets Wear Prada,533 Bloomfield Street, Hoboken, N.J. 07030. Cone Investigates By Bob Heman 2007; 12 pp; $6.25. Poets Wear Prada (see adress above). Linda Lerner	Reprinted from Small Press Review Sept - Oct 2007 Vol. 39 Nos. 9 - 10 Issues 416 - 417 Page 8.
As Iris Berman goes riding with her lover off the edge of this earth, Bob Heman's Cone "pulls magic out of the rabbit and stuffs it into his hat" so readers will experience the same when they loosen their grip on logic to step into the marvelous worlds of these two poets. Cone's empiracle investigations lead him "over the edge of the map" into a work as magic filled as Iris Berman's fairy tales. The red shoes lead her "away from/ The beautiful men... Across meadow and dell/ From Mountain to moutain..." refuse to "stop moving; her mermaid's tears became the salty ocean." Heman's Dr. Cone "melts in the rain...";"the hedonists...view him as a cactus"; when he visits "the city of numbers (he) slides inside a seven and disappears for hours." A Cinderella "happily every after" story concludes not only Berman's title poem but another in which a couple "stoned out of (their) minds...(make) truth of the lies to reach it."
As if by magic, the fairy tale, rooted in ancient world, and the scientist's investigations lead to the same place. In "Cone Awakens" the doctor is stirred by a dream to by a rooster; the old one no longer crows and there've been new chicks for a long time. Told there are no more roosters to buy, he goes into the woods and sacrifices the fattest rabbit he sees to the goddess of the dawn. His old rooster is transformed as if by magic, and "soon little chicks are seen hurrying all around the yard." Stylistically, these beautifully designed and produced chaplets bear their own distinctive signature. While Berman's poems utilize the short line, a minimum use of punctuation,and are driven by a moderately paced rhythm, sometimes characterized by a refrain, Herman's collection consist of twelve prose poems in as many pages on ivory parchment with a light green tint.

HPN Fall 2007 - Robert Kramer Reviews Susan Maurer's RAPTOR RHAPSODY

Robert Kramer RAPTOR RHAPSODY By Susan Maurer Poets Wear Prada, 533 Bloomfield Street, 2nd Floor, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 2007, 14 pp. $8.

Reprinted from Home Planet News Issue 58 (Vol. 15 No. 9) Fall 2007 Page 9 (continued page 22)

Susan Maurer begins her recollectin with an epigraph from Carolyn Kizer: "I am passionatley opposed to the notion held for so long that women's true subjects are 'love and loss.'" Indeed, who could deny the absurdity of any such limiting concept? Yet most of her poems actually do deal with intense relationships between men and women. Written in a variety of tones, they often capture fraught moments between lovers or would-be lovers, while illuminating their sublime tensions and anxieties. In the following lines I would like to clarify her particular talent for obliquie psychological insights. The poem "Blossom" begins with a rather sarcastic question: "Want my wanting/ on ice?" The speaker recognizes the important role a woman's desire may play in a relationsip, realizes in fact her need is a significant factor in holding on to her man. The idea of somehow preserving her "wanting" on ice--maintaining it artificially--is crude and depressing; yet the woman pragmatically accept the situation. To her own rhetorical question "what's/ in it for me?"--she gives two answers: her sexual responsiveness will keep that man around and, if he stays around, she will have the possibility of hoping for something deeper and more intense, "that melt/ into a martini, that gin 'bite.'" The earlier image of ice now leads by association to a joyous experience from the past involving martinis: I think about the time in Ireland we took the kids' baseballs and had a martini party; ended up playing midnight baseball on the tennis court lit by rings of headlights. The initial tension, perhaps anger, disappears in the final scene of an idyllic moment of childhood returned and the overcoming of darkness. "Strativarius" is a witty account of an attempted communication that goes awry. The narrator address a certain "you" who is supposed to serve as the instrument of a reconciliation between the narrator and an alienated lover. The narrator dials her lover's number and hands the phone to "you", but instead of bringing her and her lover together, this "you" engages in a conversation with him, intruding into the former relationship, perhaps usurping it. The narrator responds with the laconic remark: "You're playing our song," masking her hurt by utilizing a witty variation on a cliche now turned negative. The title, of course, is ironic, since Stradivarius violins are esteemed the finest, while "you" has been an utter disaster as instrument.

Maurer is very skilled at exploiting cliches in a suprising manner. Her poem "Subject:" presents another example. I take the phone of the hook to stop the sound of silence. It can't come in unless you invite it Funny how the index finder can turn into a sword you throw yourself on, no on home. "The sound of silence" is an old paradox cleverly re-employed. "Silence" here is more than an absence of sound; it also refers to the awareness that someone who could and perhaps should call, but who does not. It combines uncertainty and hurt. But if one takes the phone of the hook, then there is no possibility of someone calling, there is no uncertainty, and there is less hurt, because the subject has become active and is "in control." In the last threes lines, however, the narrator changes her tactics and attempts herself to call the one who should have called, and the long, slender, pointed index finger used for dialing becomes the sword for committing emotional suicide, as no one answers. I must mention "Blue Rose," which does not at all explore the problematics of love and desire, but rather belongs in the tradition of Imagist poetry and certain Asian forms. Drop. Drop            From the eyedropper                       to the top of the glass            of the water                       as the doctor says            and the blue                       liquid spreads out                       and blossoms like a rose... "Blue Rose" depices a remarkable metamorphis from the banality, even portentousness, of depositing drops of medicine in a glass of water--to a beautiful vision of the fluid slowly flowing into the shape of blue rose. It's unique in this volume in its precise observation of objects in the physical world and is one of the loveliest poems in the collection. There are other poems here that will make you laugh out loud, yet leave a somewhat bitter taste in your mouth. The overall tone of the book is wry, juanty, ironic, and stoic--a fresh and original voice.

HPN Fall 2007 - George Held Reviews Payday Loans by Jee Leong Koh

George Held PAYDAY LOANS By Jee Leong Koh 32 pp. $10. Poets Wear Prada, Hoboken, 2007

Reprinted from Home Planet News Issue 58 (Vol. 15 No. 9 Fall 2007 Page 6 (continued page 18)

What are the odds that a gay Singaporean would or could publish a book of sonnets inspired by Paul Goodman (1911-72)? In Goodman's day, nil; in 2007, low. Yet for its debut chapbook, Poets Wear Prada has produced this beautifully designed and printed collection of thirty sonnets, one for every day of April, presumably 2005. Each poem bears the date as its title. Thus the first poem is "April 1, Friday," and in it the speaker asks "Mr. Certain Death" to "lend me thirty," with the promise, "You'll get them back on my payday." This is the payday loan that gives the book its title. Note that Koh uses "them" to refer to "thirty," an example of his sometimes unidiomatic English. But these slips don't detract from his fluency with the sonnet. He works all kinds of variations within its strict confines, to which he adheres in most cases. Moreover, he writes alternately in the Italian form, which allows less freedom in its rhyme scheme than the English form, in which he writes the other half of the time. He even writes a sonnet with an inverted rhyme scheme, and he has fun with comic rhymes. Thus "April 1, Friday" ends with these rhyme words: "pissed," "mall," "irrational," and "subsist." In "April 16, Saturday" Koh uses a single rhyme for the first thirteen lines and then breaks the pattern with the onomatopoeic word "crack," enforcing the breach. I mention only some of Koh's play with the sonnet, to suggest his versatility and the degree to which the pleasures of his book are formal. (The cover bears a firmly ruled calendar for April 2005.) Next to form, Koh's obsession is sex, a subject that informs his better poems here. Arguably the best is "April 13, Wednesday," which the government of Singapore banned from being read at a gay-pride celebration there. The poem begins: Come on straight boy, and make gay love with me. One night of loving will not turn you queer, if queer is what you will not bend to be. Loving a man is but a change of gears. These lines recall the rhetorical strategies of John Donne's peoms addressed to his (women) lovers, sly attempts to persuade his listener to enter into forbidden intimacy. Like Donne and other major poets, particularly sonnet writers, Koh exploits the value of monosyllables: these four lines contain 40 syllables, 38 in monosyllabic words. Moreover, except for the necessary adjective "straight," these lines eschew modifiers. Koh's skill in a second language puts to shame many contemporary poets who are native speakers of English and who seem addicted to modification. "April 13, Wednesday," is a perfect sonnet in the sense it fulfills itself in exactly fourteen lines. It moves from the charming opening quatrain through a second which asks the question to disparage heterosexual coupling and a third that argues for the superiority of performance between same-sex lovers, to the sensational closing couplet: "What have you got to lose? Leap, acrobat!/ You can always fall back on pussycat." The questions in the second quatrain recall Shakespeare, whose sonnets contain much interrogation, and whose other strategies and tones Koh's work borrows from. Other mentors are more contemporary and some are gay, including Goodman, a line from one of whose sonnets Koh uses to begin "April 20, Wednesday," and Frank O'Hara, to whose Lunch Poems Koh alludes in "April 19, Tuesday," which begins, "This is not a lunch poem. It's an after/ lunch poem. I can write this coz [sic] I'm jobless." By the end of this riff on an O'Hara poem, the speaker takes a job offer. May be he will soon be able to pay off his loan to Mr. Certain Death, but that theme occurs only sporadically in the Payday Loans, despite the title. Speaking of titles, I wonder that none of the famous poets Koh heartily thanks for their help did not point out to him that giving his poems the names of days would leave them bereft if they are ever anthologized: "April 18, Monday" offers no clue about the fine erotic poem beginning "What's on tonight but lips pressed on lips." And not all the poems in the collection add to its value; maybe Koh should have chosen February. All told, however, this book refreshes our sense of what can be done in a traditional form when the poet uses his wits and has the wit of Jee Leong Koh.