The Vigil - by Shelley Chernin (CC#24)

cover from a graphite drawing by Jessie Herzfeld

Crisis Chronicles Press is ecstatic to announce the publication of Shelley Chernin's The Vigil, a chapbook featuring her seven part poem of the same name. Probing and powerful, Chernin's work digs deep, brings dark to light and is highly flammable.  Published 24 May 2012, The Vigil is now available for $5 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

"It's an astounding work. I knew as soon as I started reading it that I wasn't going to put it down, and that's pretty rare for me. It is just good on so many levels. Regardless of what one's faith relationship is, the work says something about faith that is irrefutable. Rather the metaphor, the mining and its inherent disasters and conditions, was so powerfully drawn that one walks away, whether one wants to or not, with a new reality concerning faith. I'm not a great judge and I don't keep up with award winning and prize winning, grant winning poetry standards, but I could see this book grabbing a big one. Remarkable....  It was like reading a sinking hole.  The book collapses right in your hands." - Cat Listening.

Click here to read Barbara Sabol's review of The Vigil and interview with the author at Poetry Matters.
Click here to read Michael Dennis' review of The Vigil at Today's Book of Poetry.
Click here to read The Vigil for free online in the Crisis Chronicles cyber litmag.
Click here to view ratings of The Vigil at Goodreads.

The Vigil is 8.5 x 5.5", hand assembled and saddle staple bound using white cover stock, textured gray-cream endpapers and white pages.  Early copies were inkjet printed; later copies, laser printed.  2nd edition released in January 2020. Approximately 240 copies exist.

Shelley Chernin, 2012 - photo by JB

Poet's bio (from the first edition):

Shelley Chernin is a 57-year-old freelance researcher, writer, and editor of legal reference books. She lives in Russell, Ohio (aka Novelty, proving that the US Postal Service once had a sense of irony). Her poems have appeared in Scrivener Creative Review, Rhapsoidia, What I Knew Before I Knew: Poems from the Pudding House Salon-Cleveland, the Heights Observer, the 2010 through 2012 Hessler Street Fair poetry anthologies and the Cuyahoga Burning edition of Big Bridge. She received the 2nd Place award in the 2011 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest and Honorable Mentions in the Akron Art Museum's New Words Poetry Contest in 2009 and 2010. Yes, of course, she plays the ukulele. Who doesn't?