Furniture Press Books Update
I’m super excited that Baltimore based poetry publisher, Furniture Press, has been going all these years. Publisher Christophe Cassamassima has brought a lot of great books and chapbooks into the world over the years, including stuff from M. Magnus, Chris Mason, Iris Cushing, Jen Coleman and lots, lots more. He just sent out an email with some exciting news, including Sandra Simonds’ selection for their next book.
And dang coming in 2018 there will be a Selected Poems of Buck Downs, y’all.
Here’s Christophe’s announcement:
Daniel Owen, Buck Downs, Elizabeth Savage & Ethel Rackin are helping Furniture Press Books expand its aesthetic outlook for 2018.
Good morning, FPBers
I’m so happy to announce a slew of new publications and a book in the making. But first…
5th Annual Furniture Press Poetry Prize
It is my esteemed honor to announce Sandra Simonds’ pick for the 5th Annual Furniture Press Poetry Prize: in what was conveyed as a very difficult decision (the pool of entries were packed with deliciously varied manuscripts), Sandra has decided to bestow the lyrical laurels upon Daniel Owen’s paean to life and death and life and death and… the aptly titled Restaurant Samsara.
From the manuscript:
UNINTENTIONAL COFFEE
contemplating meat—I am invited
by images to invite images
home—it’s a frame
of intention around the supposed
nearness of living
but regular business hours get boring
when contemplating the infinity off the plate
still—one will always remember
something—
oh! I need to go shopping for the rest of the world!
And then we’ll find ourselves in
line for an unintentional coffee
and part without having “caught up”
making plans in a voice that trails off
into a totally unnecessary part of love
back at the office they’ll hug me and tell me
I’m not just anything for their doorstep
“last ash,” they’ll say, “last ash”
as I wake to find I am Brooklyn
The book will be published in the latter half of 2018, and we’ll return with updates in the new year. Congratulations, Daniel!
&
Announcing two new chapbooks from Elizabeth Savage and Ethel Rackin…
Elizabeth Savage’s Woman Looking at a Vase of Flowers attempts to crack into Stevens’ poem of the same title, line by line, sometimes phrase by phrase, through distillation and contact. The first time I read the poem, the line “Hoot, the little owl within her,” made my heart pound and described my heart’s pounding. While the poem preoccupied me for years, like much of Stevens’ writing, it evaded intellectual explanation. This sequence is my effort to enter and live awhile in the poem I’d loved for twenty years. The coda, “People in the Air,” follows the little owl over the rooftops of Stevens’ writing, another effort to see his work from a different position.
from the chapbook:
At a Vase
the spindliest stem
brought upright
when the hooting
happens
even emptycull and keep
even thunder
what wind dissolves
How can we glance behind us without getting stuck? Peer into the future without becoming blind to the moment in which we presently dwell? Set in the spell between day and night, the brief lyrics of Ethel Rackin’s Evening focus on everyday moments of transitory beautyand imagination. Calling up traditions of portraiture, praise, and prayer, the three song cycles that comprise Evening intertwine in resemblance and resonance. Come home to the poems of Evening.
from the chapbook:
Decay SongEvery second of every day I’m dying
in my cheap shoes and expensive dress
I’m dying on this semi-wet park bench
under the large tree I can’t name
the humid breezes blowing
in minutes I’ll rise and resume my post
in the hotel lobby
I’ll die within a cubicle or cubby
within this single thought
I’ll catch a strong breeze
under the still nameless tree
and keep dying.
&
Buck Downs
And finally… In the spring of 2018 Furniture Press Books will unveil its lengthiest and most expansive project to date, spanning thirty-plus years and dozens of publications, our homage to the quintessential American poet, Buck Downs, in his first Selected Poems volume. The title has yet to be decided, but we’ve been compiling an inventory of hundreds of poems published diversely as handmade chapbooks and foldout booklets, postcards, rubbings and even perfect bound books. And our friend, Heather Fuller, will round out the work and contextualize the massive expanse of Buck’s virtuosity and versatility with an introduction, making this book a virtual poetical ethnography. In late winter we’ll be hosting a fundraiser to raise awareness for the book and give supporters a chance to interact with the various “modes” Buck Downs incorporates into his philosophy of writing and dissemination. He may even serenade you with a private reading…stay tuned!
Thank you for your continual support through event hosting and purchases. We exist because of your dedication to good poetry and good taste.
Adam Robinson lives in Atlanta and runs Publishing Genius Press. He is the author of two poetry collections, Adam Robison and Other Poems and Say Poem.
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