ATTN. TEACHERS!

One of the reasons The First Hay(na)ku Anthology sold out (see prior post) is that it's a great teaching text, having been used at several universities now. And one of the reasons it's a great teaching text is that surrounding the poems are essays about the form, including my essay on how exactly the hay(na)ku came to be originated. It's pretty unique that a poetry text would be able to include a meticulous play-by-play of its concoction.

Well, the new The Hay(na)ku Anthology, Vol. II reprints the "History of the Hay(na)ku" essay that made the first volume so ... educational. So, teachers, do please consider Vol. II for your poetry and creative writing courses!

OUT OF PRINT!...BUT MOI GOT YOU POETRY-LOVERS COVERED!

Well, it's official. The First Hay(na)ku Anthology is now officially out-of-print. Those of you prescient peeps who have this historic book now can look forward to seeing your copy progress towards increasing in value to a million bucks or so.

But, meanwhile, covering your voracious appetites for the hay(na)ku will be the just-released The Hay(na)ku Anthology, Vol. II. The book will be available at SPD as of next Friday, June 6....and forthcoming soon from Amazon et al. You also can still get a discounted copy through its RELEASE OFFER that expires July 31, 2008.

(Oh, okay. I'm a generous sort. I'll be willing to sell just five more copies of The First Hay(na)ku Anthology from the press' own archives. If interested, contact Moi at GalateaTen@aol.com)

SIGN OF THE TIMES

I'm back to reading The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times....what's unexpected is that they're not as tediously boring as when I had to read them as a banker*. See how Poetry expands the mind?


(*link amuses me; I just found out about it)

READ US! WE HAVE FLAVOR, BOUQUET, COLOR AND BODY!

Reflecting how poets make instead of inherit language, the press is named after "meritage," a word created to describe the Bordeaux-style of wine-making that uses California-grown grapes. Meritage style combines the grapes of cabernet, cabernet franc and merlot to create a wine characterized by robustness in flavor, bouquet, color and body – symbolizing the passion underlying the vision of Meritage’s artists.
--ABOUT Meritage Press

Speaking of what folks should read, the reviews & engagements at the BRAND NEW Meritage Press Blog indicate that y'all should read Meritage Press' books!

And why not? creating the Meritage Press Blog made Moi stumble in internet-searching on this Boog City Focus on Meritage Press! Indeedy, our books are so passionate I as publisher can even dole out this rare respect to Poetry (hee)! Do check us out; we're here for you.

Speaking of reading, here also is Moi's latest Relished W(h)ine Update:

THE CITY SLICKER'S HARVEST (to date)
Twenty strawberries (Twenty? Sheesh....and that's why I grumble with envy over this part of the Plath/Hughes legacy...)


PUBLICATIONS
ENDGAMES, poetry by Marton Koppany (brilliant book!)

TROUBLE AND HONEY, poems by Jilly Dybka (Free download or inexpensive purchase HERE)

WOW WOW WOW WOW, wow poems by Kevin Killian

MOTHER MONTAGE by Dodie Bellamy

IMAGO by Joseph Legazpi

FACTS ABOUT THE MOON, poems by Dorianne Laux

SILK STRING ARIAS, poems (manuscript) by Mary Kasimor

EASTER SUNDAY, poems by Barbara Jane Reyes

PHILIP GUSTON: WORKS ON PAPER, Eds. Christoph Schreier and Michael Semff

FLOODING, art monograph by Richard Tsao

AROUND OUR HOUSE, memoir by Henry & Janice Holt Giles

THE OLIVE HARVEST: A MEMOIR OF LOVE, OLD TREES, AND OLIVE OIL by Carol Drinkwater

THE GREAT MAN, novel by Kate Christensen

LULU MEETS GOD AND DOUBTS HIM, novel by Danielle Ganek

ODD HOURS, novel by Dean Koontz


WINES
1985 Dom Perignon
1978 Gaja Sori Tilden
1971 Penfolds Grange
1989 Lafleur
1983 Guigal La Mouline
1953 Lafite
2006 Kistler chardonnay Le Nuisette
2004 Giacomo Bologna Barbera D'Asti Brico dell Ucc___
2004 Burgess merlot
1985 La Rioja Alta Gran Reserva 904
2004 Peter Michael chardonnay Ma Belle Fille
2002 Tofanelli charbono NV
1973 La Rioma Alta Centenario 1890-1990
1999 Willliams Selyem Pinot Noir Rochioli Riverblock Vineyard
1997 R.B.J theologicum
1996 Gevrey-Chambertin

IT'S THE SECOND COMING!

ANNOUNCEMENT FROM MERITAGE PRESS AND XPRESS(ED)

THE HAY(NA)KU ANTHOLOGY, VOL. II
Edited by Jean Vengua and Mark Young
Release Date: 2008
ISBN 951-9198-73-3
ISBN 978-951-9198-73-6
Page Count: 148 pages
Price: $16.95
Distributors (forthcoming): Small Press Distribution, Amazon.com, Meritage Press

Meritage Press (St. Helena & San Francisco) and xPress(ed) (Puhos, Finland) are delighted to announce the release of THE HAY(NA)KU ANTHOLOGY, VOL. II, edited by Mark Young and Jean Vengua.

More information about the hay(na)ku poetic form is available at http://haynakupoetry.blogspot.com and http://www.meritagepress.com/haynaku.htm . The former link identifies the poet-participants, while the latter shares some poets' thoughts on the hay(na)ku's attractiveness. The hay(na)ku has been one of the most popular new poetic forms in recent times; 39 poets participated in the soon-to-be-out-of-print first anthology. In Vol. II, 51 poets from around the world (and representing a multiplicity of poetics) participate.

Since The First Hay(na)ku Anthology's release in 2005, the hay(na)ku has appeared in many literary journals, anthologies and single-author poetry collections worldwide. Artists have created visual hay(na)ku. The form has been written in Spanish, English, French, Finnish, Dutch, Tagalog, and Norwegian. It has been taught in classrooms, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico/Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) features an hay(na)ku webpage in their online journal, Periódico de Poesía. Members of UNAM'S Faculty of Literature and Philosophy/Facultad de Filosofia y Letras are also preparing a full Spanish translation of The First Hay(na)ku Anthology for future release. Reflecting the hay(na)ku's continued popularity, THE HAY(NA)KU ANTHOLOGY, VOL. II is released just three years after the first hay(na)ku anthology. A third anthology is also in the works: The Chained Hay(na)ku which would present hay(na)ku collaborations among three or more writers. We hope readers enjoy this volume, and are encouraged to try writing their own hay(na)ku!  For this poetic form also was created as an Invitation to Poetry.

To celebrate its release, Meritage Press is pleased to announce a RELEASE SPECIAL OFFER of $12.00 per book, a 29% discount off of the retail price and incorporating free shipping within the United States (for overseas orders, please email first to MeritagePress@aol.com).  This offer expires on July 31, 2008. You can send checks made out to "Meritage Press" to

Eileen Tabios
Publisher, Meritage Press
256 North Fork Crystal Springs Rd.
St. Helena, CA 94574

For more information, contact MeritagePress@aol.com

THE BLIND CHATELAINE'S KEYS

I'm purred to announce the title of one of my forthcoming books -- and which explains my blog's new(est) title:

                  THE BLIND CHATELAINE'S KEYS

Its subtitle is "Her Biography Through Your Poetics" because it's a book that reflects my tinkering (disruption, heee!) of the form of biography....by utilizing prose written by some of today's leading poet-critics (what an angelic scam: a book "by" moi but written by others!). More book info later; for now, I just want to share this fabulous cover image:



It's a photo of dancer/musician Caroline Cabading of Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble by Rhett Pascual/Your Exquisite Photos. Isn't it ... exquisite?! I particularly love those fingernails...because, but of course, the Chatelaine's Keys are seamlessly attached to the end of her sharpened/heightened! fingers for Poetry as a Way of Life.

For me, Caroline's dance is quite inviting ... manifesting much of the Chatelaine's poems: an Invitation. For Moi am all about Toi!

LOOKING TO HARVEST ... REVIEWS FOR GALATEA RESURRECTS!

And I hop on another plane tomorrow....until I return to the mountain and the lowly garden this weekend, here's another Relished W(h)ines Update below. And in the meantime, too, please lookit at the latest review copies for Galatea Resurrects and consider offering some engaged time (deadline for next issue is July 5). Review copy and submission info HERE!

CITY SLICKER'S HARVEST (TO DATE)
Seven strawberries (sigh)


PUBLICATIONS
DISAPPOINTED PSALMS, poems by Brian Clements

(B)ITS, poems (manuscript) by Joel Chace

THE BOOK OF FUNNELS, poems by Christian Hawkey

COLLECTIVE INSTANT, poems by William Allegrezza

THIS POEM / WHAT SPEAKS? / A DAY, poems by Tom Beckett

ART AND LANGUAGE WRITES AN EPITAPH, poems by Marjorie Welish

from : EAR SAY, poems by Barbara Cole

from NOTHING TO SAY, poems by Ann Lauterbach

excerpts from the scores of PERMEABLE STRUCTURES: A PERFORMANCE ESSAY IN STEREO, poetry by Laura Elrick

VERTIGO SEEKS AFFINITIES, poems by Sharon Mesmer

RUMOR, poems by Elizabeth Robinson

MY ZORBA, poems by Danielle Pafunda

PLENTY: ONE MAN, ONE WOMAN, AND A RAUCOUS YEAR OF EATING LOCALLY by Alisa Smith & J.B. MacKinnon

JUMP OFF CREEK, novel by Molly Gloss

A HATRED OF TULIPS, novel by Richard Lurie

THE COLOR OF LAW, novel by Mark Gimenez

THE NEXT PRESIDENT, novel by Joseph Flynn

WALK HOME WITH ME, fundraiser anthology by Sue Sword with Candace Delona Sword


WINES
2005 Vincent Arroyo Petite Sirah Winemaker's Reserve
2007 Vincent Arroyo chardonnay (barrel tasting)
2006 Vincent Arroyo Sangiovese (barrel tasting)
2006 Vincent Arroyo Petite Sirah Greenwood Ranch (barrel tasting)
2006 Vincent Arroyo Petite Sirah Rattlesnake Acres (barrel tasting)
2005 Vincent Arroyo "Nameless"
2004 Aubert Sonoma chardonnay "Ritchie"
2004 Aubert Sonoma chardonnay "Quarry"
2005 JJ Prum Gracheer Himmelreich Auslese
2004 Mark Neal zinfandel
2004 Mark Neal Rutherford Dust Vineyards
2004 Mark Neal Chafen Family Vineyard
1999 Matriarch
1995 Beringer Reserve cabernet
2003 Kistler McCrea chardonnay
1997 Heitz Martha's Vineyard
2004 Dutch Henry chardonnay
2006 Dutch Henry pinot noir Mount Veeder
1990 Clerico Barolo Bricotto Bussia
2006 Julian Fort Saumur Loire Valley
2007 Pride Viognier
2006 Pride Vinter's Select chardonnay
2005 Pride Merlot
2006 Pride Merlot
2005 Pride Cabernet
Pride Mistelle de Viognier
2004 Togni cabernet
1997 Togni cabernet
2006 Togni (free run) cabernet (barrel tasting)
2004 Peter Michael Mon Plaisir
1993 Colgin Herb Lamb Vineyard
2003 Willi Schaefer Graaches Domprobst Beerenauslese

HARVEST POETICS

She looks up at the poker-playing Angels and hisses, "I know what you're trying to do...."!

She looks up before she pops a strawberry in her mouth, chews it for 24 hours, then swallows.

Except, that is ONLY the 7th strawberry and so far ONLY bounty she -- that City Slicker! -- has managed to "harvest" from this season's vegetable and fruit garden....

She knows what Poetry's Dark Angels are telling her....because this week, she had a manuscript accepted for publication by a publisher, then was solicited for what will become a "Selected Prose Poems" book by another publisher, is awaiting the release of her first novel (I'm back in the U.S.A., ye publisher-peep; what's up?), and just completed a new poetry manuscript....

Her gardening skills, the Angels want to insist, lie elsewhere rather than on the patch of dirt she's been lovingly watering on the mountain.

Except the Poet doesn't ever like being told what to do. So she hisses at the Angels: "Thanks for the books. But I got an eggplant in my heart, you cigar-puffing monsters...and I plan to let said eggplant out!"

The Angels sniff. And before they return to their perpetual poker game, they note, "You got another bounty harvested HERE...."

They make their point well....even as the Chatty Chatelaine thinks, Thank you artist-teacher Jenifer Wofford and young artist Hazel Benigno, before she stubbornly goes to the garage for the weedkiller.

DISAPPOINTED PSALMS WILL NOT ... DISAPPOINT!

A Meritage Press Announcement

A Pre-Release Offer for:

DISAPPOINTED PSALMS
Poems by Brian Clements
ISBN-13: 978-0-9794119-4-6 
ISBN-10: 0-9794119-4-7  
Price: $16.00
Release Date: Fall 2008
Distributors: Small Press Distribution, Amazon.com & www.MeritagePress.com

Meritage Press is delighted to announce the release of Disappointed Psalms by Brian Clements.  This poetry collection is published as the recipient of the Colombian Poetry Gift sponsored by Meritage Press. 

After years of working exclusively in the prose poem, Brian Clements shifts in Disappointed Psalms to short bursts, in turns raw and lyrical, that turn the languages of war and religion, so frequently aligned, against themselves.  Combining short phrases from The Book of Psalms and catch phrases from the post-9/11 cultural reservoir with Clement's own lamentations on lost faith, these short poems and the litany that closes the book, like all the best political poems, attempt to wrest the ability to make meaning from the hands of spin doctors, liars, dissemblers and would-be builders of empire.

The following is an excerpt from Disappointed Psalms:

One who realizes he is not a believer
May clothe himself with curses as his cloak,

And he may set up the sign of ignorance
As his own sign.

But one who realizes he is a believer
May know you, Lord,

And he may set himself up as your creditor
And seize all that he can,

And he may set up shop
In your name.

Brian Clements is the author of several collections of poetry, including And How To End It and Essays Against Ruin. He edits the small press Firewheel Editions and its Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics and coordinates the MFA in Professional Writing at Western Connecticut State University.

PRE-RELEASE SPECIAL OFFER
To celebrate the release of Disappointed Psalms, Meritage Press is pleased to offer a special disounted pre-release arrangement good through Aug. 15, 2008 (newly-extended from original June 30, 2008 deadline due to popular demand).  You may order the book for $12.00 (a 25% discount from the book's $16 retail price) plus free shipping/handling for orders throughout the United States.  (For non-U.S. orders, please email us first at MeritagePress@aol.com.)  Send a check made out to "Meritage Press" to

Eileen Tabios
Publisher, Meritage Press
256 North Fork Crystal Springs Rd.
St. Helena, CA 94574

For more info: MeritagePress@aol.com

PULP FICTIONS

My first poem on Jacket is courtesy of a Holiday Album Guest-edited by someone who apparently cooks as (in)frequently as I do: Elaine Equi. I reference the culinary as the poem sings about ... hard-boiled eggs.

Elsewhere, I extend pulp fiction with continued projects with big, burly men on Galatea's mountain. Here is Gabriela next to her newly-arrived statue. But poetry says to Make it Fresh (way better than that Make it new thingie). So when one does a statue of the dawgs -- this is for Gabriela in this photo -- one doesn't want to just replicate the image. Hence, the ball beneath one paw for added charm. From this thousand-word picture, one can glean something about the artful use of metaphor, di ba?

BOUNTIES

I "harvested" another strawberry yesterday....

Elsewhere, Garrett Caples' COMPLICATIONS continues to harvest reviews, to wit:

by Brian Strang at Verse

and

by Alan Gilbert at Village Voice

Elsewhere on Galatea, some BIG BURLY MEN are laying down cement and tile ....whilst singing along AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS to the tunes on the SOUL MUSIC Radio they got blaring over the mountain. There they go off with the "Temptations"....fortunately, no nearby neighbors....sigh: and there go the dawgs howling along....

THANKS FOR APPRECIATING (MOI) COMPLICATIONS

Kevin Carolo reviews Garrett Caples' COMPLICATIONS along with Joe Wenderoth's NO REAL LIGHT in the just-released issue of RAIN TAXI. Here's an excerpt:

Many things cannot continue in this world, and Complications and No Real Light make one painfully aware of this brute fact. Wenderoth concludes “Sitcom” with the assertion that “The sun is an explosion. / We survive via proximity to an explosion / that is getting hotter.” In turn, Caples’s “Liquid Diary” ends with “god mopes in his sober robes / he still owes my company money // for snow we made last year,” suggesting the fake powder annually sprayed on the streets of Disney’s fake city Celebration, as depicted in the film The Corporation. Fake snow chills more than real snow, and when people enjoy such fake flake across the snow board, they beckon a real “that’s when I reach for my revolver” moment in contemporary American poetics.

So that's another reason to read Garrett's COMPLICATIONS!

And people love me too -- Yay! Thanks to Otoliths for printing a couple of moi poems....and to Moria Poetry for publishing a review by Aileen Ibardaloza of moi ENGLISH BRICK. Here's an excerpt from Aileen's review....that's like moi ars poetica of sorts:

she writes “to see/hear what the poem is saying,” but that she makes it participative by creating a large enough space for the reader to see/hear for herself.

I hear ya, Peep. For Moi is all about Toi.