bottom dog press
Category: poetry books| June 27th, 2009
produced & directed by KON PET MOON with Allen Ginsberg, Russell Salamon, Joan Turnbo, Russell Atkins, Martin Simon, Grace Butcher, Kent Taylor, John Scott, John Rose, Tony Walsh, Jake Leed, Dagmar Walter, Steve Ferguson, Ralph Delaney, Robert Carothers, Cleo Malone, Frank Osinski and Gerald Gold. 16-9 Anamorphic Widescreen 104 minutes.
This dvd is the end of a 20 years process in the final completion of this film about d.a. levy. The film changed several times its original concept of just mixing readings of levy’s poetry with images of his artwork and publications. It wasn’t meant to be a documentary, but then it had to become a documentary as I started meeting people who knew levy and what he was about. The film was 75 minutes long in 1985 for the premiere screening at MOMA/NY. It was reedited to a 55 minute “broadcast-length cut” in 1987 when PBS became interested but then backed out. After the PBS reedit, I moved on to other things but always had feelings of ‘incompleteness’ and regret on not having restored the film, especially after learning about and empathizing with levy and his life. I felt and still feel very close to levy; it’s like where Gary Snyder wrote, “I feel brother to levy…in the Buddha-fields.” Then around 2003 Mark Kuhar and Larry Smith got hold of me to show levy film stuff at the 2005 levyfest in Cleveland, and I realized that this was the time to restore, expand, make a dvd, and complete the film. —Kon Petrochuk (aka: Kon Pet Moon) Please visit Kon Petrochuk’s web page by clicking here…
This dvd is part of the d.a.levy & the mimeograph revolution book, edited by Larry Smith and Ingrid Swanberg. Chronology of his life and work, Biographical essays, Photographs, Interviews, Profiles, Statements, Letters, Art Work, Collage, Poems and Critical appreciations of his writing and art levy’s “Cleveland Prints” Eight pages in full color. ISBN -1-933964-07-3 | 276 pages.
Contributors: Ed Sanders, T.L. Kryss, rjs, Karl Young, Allen Frost, Joel Lipman, Kent Taylor, Mark Kuhar, Ingrid Swanberg, Larry Smith, Russell Salamon, John Jacob, Doug Manson, Michael Basinski, Jim Lang, and others. Bottom Dog Press.
30 EURO incl. shipment cost world-wide.
Like the archetypal hero of the old Irish drinking song, d.a.levy has been dead a long time but just won’t lay down. New editions of his work have appeared periodically and, lately, with some frequency, as well as a few online collections/archives. d.a.levy & the mimeography revolution is a robust, at times charmingly haphazard, approach to the man, his work and cultural resonance.
The book is divided into sections dealing with biography, interviews with levy, close friends and associates, criticism, and a selection of his written and graphic work. So, you may ask, what’s the deal? A history of levy is, in fact, an important historical snapshot of the small press movement itself and, for better or worse, the chaos that was 60’s America, specifically the then near police state known as Cleveland. levy himself was a poet, artist, and publisher, with a tendency toward manic-depression and a condition that might be called chronically suicidal.
The interviews, article by Karl Young, and work by T. L. Kryss particularly standout and, at times, even overshadow the rest of the volume. That is an irony that would never be lost on levy; revered more as a cultural icon than a poet/artist, his persecution by the Cleveland fascista and resultant self-inflicted assassination (bullet to the Third Eye in the lotus position, as legend goes) is so impossibly sad as to approximate levy’s own despairing depression. In each article, interview, and poem, the same sparse facts are gone over again and again; his obsessive dedication to poetry and putting Cleveland on the poetic map, his written attacks against the status quo and the local political machine, his persecution and arrest for obscenity and corrupting a minor (for reading in public the minor’s own “obscene” poem while said minor was present), his fascination with telepathy.
Though not intended as an anthology of his work, a larger selection would have put things into context, especially for those unfamiliar with levy. This, however, is made up for by the inclusion of Kon Petrochuk’s 75 minute film, if i scratch, i write. An important work in it’s own right, this helps make d.a.levy & the mimeograph revolution a fine starting point into the man and work. For more poetry, check out The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle: The Selected Poetry and Art of d.a.levy edited by Mike Golden (Seven Stories Press) and ukanhavyrfuckincitibak, edited by rjs (Ghost Press). — Don Wentworth, Editor Lilliput Review, 282 Main Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15201. lilliputreview at gmail.com | Issa’s Untidy Hut – The Lilliput Review Blog |
P.S.This review was originally published in Small Press Review
Eight minutes of excerpts from the 105 min. feature doc about the remarkable poet d.a. levy. This film uses a conceptual “cut & paste” like digital editing style to present interviews, artwork, locations, and other bits and pieces about levy’s intense life, times, and poetry. By K. Petrochuk /aka: Kon Pet Moon.
Come Together Imagine Peace
Edited by Philip Metres, Ann Smith & Larry Smith. Introduction by Philip Metres.
Harmony Anthology Series. ISBN 978-1-933964-22-5 | Paper | 208 pgs.
A book for all times. Poems of Witness & Elegy, Exhortation & Action, Reconciliation, Shared Humanity, Wildness & Home, Ritual & Vigil, Meditation & Prayer
Precedents: Sappho, Whitman, Dickinson, Cavafy, Millay, Patchen, Rexroth, Shapiro, Lowell, Creeley, Rukeyser, Ginsberg, Levertov, Lorde, Stafford, Jordan, Amichai, Darwish
Contemporaries: Abinader, Ali, Bass, Berry, Bauer, Berrigan, Bly, Bodhrán, Bradley, Brazaitis, Bright, Bryner, Budbill, Cervine, Charara, Cording, Cone, Crooker, Daniels, di Prima, Davis, Dougherty, Ellis, Espada, Estes, Ferlinghetti, Forché, Frost, Gibson, Gundy, Gilberg, Habra, Hague, Hamill, Harter, Hassler, Haven, Heyen, Hirshfield, Hughes, Joudah, Jensen, Karmin, Kendig, Komunyakaa, Kovacik, Kryss, Krysl, LaFemina, Landis, Leslie, Lifshin, Loden, Lovin, Lucas, McCallum, McGuane, Machan, McQuaid, Meek, Metres, Miltner, Montgomery, Norman, Nye, Pankey, Pendarvis, Pinsky, Porterfield, Prevost, Ragain, Rashid, Rich, Roffman, Rosen, Ross, Rusk, Salinger, Sanders, Seltzer, Schneider, Shabtai, Shannon, Sheffield, Shipley, Shomer, Silano, Sklar, Smith, Snyder, Spahr, Sydlik, Szymborska, Trommer, Twichell, Volkmer, Waters, Weems, Wilson, Zale.
20 EURO incl. shipment cost world-wide
Cleveland Poetry Scenes: A Panorama and Anthology
Edited by Mary E. Weems, Nina Freedlander Gibans, Larry Smith.
A collaborative effort at telling the Cleveland poetry story. Cultural Timeline, Articles, Interviews, Profiles. Big 40 Poet Anthology with statements from poets. Supported by a grant from the Ohio Arts Council. Cover design by Jim Lang, photo editor.
304 Pages/ 40 photos/ ISBN 978-1933964-17-1
“Over half the book is devoted to discussing, describing, and initiating newcomers to the various poetry scenes in Cleveland…Overall, both Cap City Poets and Cleveland Poetry Scenes offers interesting and distinct poetic portraits of their cities and scenes which should intrigue readers from all areas of Ohio.” -Corey E. Andrews, Ohioana Quarterly
“Poetry has a long and living history in Cleveland, Ohio, and this examination of its past through the lens of its vibrant present is a treasure in and of itself. They’re all here, the great ones who showed the way: Langston Hughes, d.a.levy, Alberta Turner, Robert Wallace, Daniel Thompson. They set the bar pretty high. But as the editors demonstrate, their sons and daughters carry on, bringing the word to the city’s streets and universities, libraries and coffee houses.” -Ron Antonucci, Cleveland Public Library
20 EURO incl. shipment cost world-wide
An Unmistakable Shade of Red & The Obama Chronicles: Poems
by Mary E. Weems
Yes, this writer is a woman, who knows that “every mouth’s its own love language, / lust’s first cousin.” And yes, she is a black woman, for whom the eyes of Barack Obama “are so deep brown / I see blue in them, / ocean water, / bones rising, / right fists raised.” And yes, like the rest of us, she’s getting older, “hair graying in places / I shouldn’t have hair.” But beyond all divisions, she is a poet, who knows that poetry is music, and music is “the first place Black and White / came together like unwritten notes / in a jazz composition.” In these poems Mary Weems both challenges and embraces America in all its turbulence and beauty. We should be grateful. -George Bilgere, author of Haywire.
ISBN: 978-1-933964-18-8 | 80 pages
20 EURO incl. shipment cost world-wide
Mary E. Weems, Ph.D. is a poet, playwright, author, performer, and imagination-intellect theorist. She is currently the Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights (April 2007 – April 2009). Dr. Weems is the author and/or co-editor of several books including Cleveland Poetry Scenes: A Panorama & Anthology (Bottom Dog Press, 2008), Poetry Power (Silvermoon Press, 2003), her educational text Public Education and the Imagination-Intellect: I Speak from the Wound in My Mouth (PeterLang, 2003), Working Hard for the Money: America’s Working Poor in Stories, Poems, and Photos (Bottom Dog Press, 2002), and a book of poems An Unmistakable Shade of Red and the Obama Chronicles (Bottom Dog Press, 2008).
Weems has been widely published in journals including The African American Review, Obsidian III, and xcp: Cultural Poetics. Her work has also appeared in numerous anthologies, most recently Go, Tell Michelle: African American Women Write to the New First Lady (SUNY Press) Boomer Girls (Iowa University Press), and Spirit and Flame: An Anthology of African American Poetry (SUNY Press)).
Weems won the Wick Chapbook Award for her collection white in 1996, and in 1997 her play Another Way to Dance won the Chilcote award for The Most Innovative Play by an Ohio Playwright. Her most recent chapbook Tampon Class (Pavement Saw Press) is in its second printing. As a public intellectual, Mary Weems has had numerous articles, performance texts, and book chapters published in the field of education including: Gap This! Contesting Empire, Globalizing Dissent: Cultural Studies after 9/11 (Paradigm Publishers, 2006), C.H.A.O.S. In Shirley R. Steinberg, Priya Parmar, Birgit Richard (eds.) Contemporary Youth Culture: An International Encyclopedia (Greenwood Press, London/Westbrook, 2006) and “The Politics and Poetics of Space in Urban School Reform,” In S. Hood, R. Hopson, & H. Frierson (eds.) The Role of Culture and Cultural Context: A Mandate for Inclusion, the Discovery of Truth and Understanding in Evaluative Theory and Practice. Burney, N., White, C.J. & Weems, M.E. (Information Age Publishing, 2005)
Mary Weems is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education and Allied Studies at John Carroll University. She also works as a language-artist-scholar and Education consultant in middle school, and high school classrooms, university settings and other venues through her business Bringing Words to Life. Programming includes F.L.Y. (Finding Love in Yourself) a self-esteem program for girls and women, which she has facilitated for the last five years as part of Ohio University’s, Upward Bound Summer Institute. source
Dr. Mary Weems recites three poems from her book “An Unmistakable Shade of Red and the Obama Chronicles”
The Long River Home
by Larry Smith
240 pages. ISBN: 978-1-933964-30-0 – Hard Cover
240 pages. ISBN: 978-1-933964-31-7 – Soft Cover
A Family Saga Set in the Green Heartlands…
In this fine Appalachian novel, Larry Smith chronicles four generations of McCalls, their joys and sorrows, their sins and their nobility….Such regional fiction has always been about people: their connections with one another, their home place, their struggles to survive and to prosper. It’s all here, set, in the grand tradition of Wendell Berry and Conrad Richter, against the Ohio landscape: its hills and its rivers, its frontier beginnings and its later industrial development. We care about the place and its people. Finishing the novel, we understand ourselves and our nation with a deeper knowledge. -Annabel Thomas, author of Stone Man Mountain.
Larry Smith is a native of Mingo Junction, Ohio, in Appalachia’s Panhandle region of the Ohio River Valley. Smith has worked as a steel mill laborer, a high school teacher, a college professor, and a writer and editor. A graduate of Mingo Central High School, Muskingum College, and Kent State University, he is the author of seven books of poetry, a book of memoirs, two books of fiction, two biographies of authors Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Kenneth Patchen, and two books of translations from the Chinese.
22 EURO incl. shipment cost world-wide HARD COVER VERSION
16 EURO incl. shipment cost world-wide SOFT COVER VERSION
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November 29th, 2011 at 12:06 am
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