Poets Wear Prada | PWP Books: Valentine's Day

Showing posts with label Valentine's Day. Show all posts

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Happy Valentine's Day! "Edith Piaf" by Joel Allegretti

Nocturne for Edith Piaf

by Joel Allegretti

The accordionist, the gigolo,
the pugilist surely knew:

It all came down to the lights —

The footlights that fawned
over your delicious agony.

The lust lights of Place Pigalle.
The chaste lights of Sacré-Coeur.

Mais non

It came down to the heart.
How it fractures like a thrown vase,

Like a lover’s airplane
for which the sky has no further use.

How, in breaking, it is more of a heart —
more than a heart.

Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien

We smoked a Gauloise in your honor.
We danced the Apache in your name.

How we envy you, Mlle Gassion.
You had no regrets. But we do.

This Valentine's Day selection is from Joel Allegretti's latest book, EUROPA/NIPPON/NEW YORK: Poems/Not-Poems, released in 2012 by Poets Wear Prada. “Edit Piaf” first appeared in Compass Rose. Poets Wear Prada nominated this poem for 2013 Pushcart Prize.

EUROPA/NIPPON/NEW YORK: Poems/Not-Poems
by Joel Allegretti
ISBN 978-0615600208
Soft Cover, Perfect Bound 52pp.
$12.00
Release Date: March 25, 2010
Now available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0615600204
and from CreateSpace: https://www.createspace.com/3785527

Come, children, and take your seat for Europa/Nippon/New York, where Joel Allegretti spans the globe with ears to the ground and eyes toward the stars. “The next world is the next movie,” the poet writes. Phantoms, chanson, Godzilla, bread and wine, riddlers-to-be roll through the projector-light of the poet’s wildly associative forms, his unforced epiphanies and extravagant voice.

~ Daniel Nester, Author of How to Be Inappropriate

Happy Valentine's Day: "Dearest Love" by Ice Gayle Johnson

Dearest Love
by Ice Gayle Johnson

I love the way you love
Your love helps me live —
White clouds lie over our promises —
It protects us from the weather
Your music plays songs deafening
The static on the radio

This Valentine's Day poetry selection is from Ice Gayle Johnson's "The Key," release by Poets Wear Prada in 2012.

The Key: Lady Grizzly & Sir Charles Otter
by Ice Gayle Johnson
ISBN 978-0615606514
Soft Cover, Perfect Bound 42pp.
$12.00
Release Date: April 6, 2012
Now available at Amazon: http://amzn.com/0615606512
and from CreateSpace: https://www.createspace.com/3803444/

“Ice is anything but cold. These confessions of unashamed love, expressed frankly and directly, are warm enough to heat a city. In this age of ironic commentary on dreadful topics, it is refreshing to read these ardently unironic expressions of the author’s humanity.”

— BARRY WALLENSTEIN

Happy Valentine's Day! "Begin" by Chocolate Waters

begin

by Chocolate Waters

you came that night
you came up to me
that night i
caught
your eye
that night you
caught me

This Valentine's Day selection, "Begin" by Chocolate Waters is from "The Woman Who Wouldn't Shake Hands, released by Poets Wear Prada in 2011.

the woman who wouldn't shake hands
by Chocolater Waters
ISBN 978-0935060096
Soft Cover, Perfect Bound 46pp.
$12.00
Release Date: October 12, 2010
Now available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/woman-who-wouldnt-shake-hands/dp/093506009X
Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-woman-who-wouldnt-shake-hands-chocolate-waters/1031784398, and from CreateSpace: https://www.createspace.com/3601293

Chocolate Waters's house music is rhythmic syntax and sassily whimsical word play that disarms, and then shifts down into impassioned essence. She shares with Billie Holiday a ‘smoldering, smoky quality’ and a finely tuned sense of timing, sometimes holding onto a single word or phrase until it becomes pure emotion. These poems are of the self yet selfless. Revelatory, lucid, luscious and laugh out loud funny but so psychologically astute.

~ STEPHANIE DICKINSON, Award-winning Poet and Author of HALF GIRL and ROAD OF FIVE CHURCHES

"Chocolate Waters writes in your mirror. Be prepared to gasp out loud in recognition."

~ SHELLY ROBERTS, Columnist and

Author of ROBERTS' RULES OF LESBIAN LIVING

Live a raw and sensuous life. Suffer it with wisdom, wit and vodka. Then using elegance, restraint and bite, craft it all into hilarious, tender, brutal, outrageous poetry. That’s the art of Chocolate. Each of us has either loved a Woman Who Wouldn't Shake Hands, or been one. Read these poems!

~ LYNN JERICHO, Writer, Counselor, Creator of the Inner Year

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Happy Valentine's Day! "The Slip" by Michael Montlack

The Slip

by Michael Montlack

Is it possible

to have been tattooed

by someone’s soul?

Only with eyes closed

can I trace outlines,

a slight raise on my unmarked skin

(even in creases: inner elbows,

between fingers and toes).

The designs always familiar

but too abstract to identify.

I mean, can one be widowed

by the living?

Carting the blank stone

from days into dreams

toward an open grave

in my front and back yards,

basement, bathtub.

Ever eluded by the body,

not the scent.

And if there is someone else one day,

will he sense this presence?

The fine slip beneath

my rumpled clothes.

The railing I reach for

even on shallow stairs.

Will you

be the mosquito netting

draping my honeymoon bed,

swaying almost imperceptibly in the dark

but allowing in breezes

that comb the hairs on my arms,

legs, chest?

This Valentine's Day poetry selection, "The Slip" by Michael Montlack, is the the title poem of "The Slip," published by Poets Wear Prada in 2009.

With pitch-perfect pacing and an intimate colloquial voice, THE SLIP reads as engagingly novelistic even as these memoiristic vignettes are untamed by wit and scathing humor. Ouch. The poems are at once revealing yet winningly imaginative as they reignite myth—there’s even a bisexual Orpheus here who helps Montlack to rewrite the past while instructing, bruising, and exposing suburbia’s lingering melancholy.

—Peter Covino, author of Cut Off the Ears of Winter, winner of PEN/America Osterweil Prize

The many moods of THE SLIP, from fabulous to funny to frenetic, announce the arrival of a promising new voice that can express, with consummate sensitivity and verve, the sorrows and celebrations of our complicated queerness. When Michael Montlack writes, he can make us sing or break our hearts. Each poem is a veritable “kiss of the artist”—passionate and memorable.

—Rigoberto González, author of Other Fugitives and Other Strangers

Michael Montlack's THE SLIP situates us in the middle of a life, threading together joys and sorrows. Some of the comic moments will truly make you laugh out loud. And at times, you'll get horribly wistful. Such is the richness of this collection.

—D. A. Powell, author of Chronic

Sharing the Love & Poetry to Celebrate Valentine's Day!

Wednesday, February 13, 2013 -- Poets Wear Prada is sharing the love with a different poem from our collection of poetry books every few hours starting today thru' Friday to celebrate Valentine's Day! Enjoy and share them with someone you love.

Pale Male & Lola

Pornography in the Park

by Mary Orovan

Public mating,

      out in the open,

   Grey owl has cozied

with Red owl

     in hollow hole

of the old Pin oak,

     fluffing each other's cheeks,

waiting for the moon.



And Pale Male and Lola,

    our City hawks, atop the Carlyle Hotel,

                     aerobatic display,

always Valentine's day.

Indigo go go

   puffed puffed pigeons

followingcirclingfollowing,

   woo.     Bill and … .

   Egregious acts

of ubiquitous birds

        oh, baby, all over the City.

              Edgy music in the Ramble

    wild timbres and rhythms

bird calls

                                        bird calls

   birds answering

                           love on the fly everywhere.