Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to cut loose this fine new chapbook by Ben Heins on 23 February 2014. Cut Me Free is a brave and rich, lovingly handmade eighteen-page chapbook, a tasty word stew seasoned with astute erasure, pregnant margin variation and other deftly applied spices/devices.
Highlights include "Letter of Disaffiliation to Freedmans Lutheran Church," "Delivering the Eviction Notice, Christmas Eve," "Reconsidering the Single Father," "I've Got This Grin You'll See from Space When You Come Down" and "Songs from the Ruptured Amniotic Sac." Cut Me Free is in 8.5x11" format and sidestaple bound using high quality cream and burnt orange card stock and faux ivory parchment paper.
Get yours while supplies last. Limited edition of 100 copies. A steal for only
$4 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 3431 George Avenue, Parma, Ohio 44134 USA. This chapbook is currently out of print.
"Ben Heins' vivid, disturbing poems are full of passion, empathy, and rage. In Cut Me Free, the poems cry out for freedom in the voices of collapsed,
'soul-sucked' balloons, an eviction server on a slippery front step on
Christmas Eve, and a single father estranged from his own father. The
book begins with a 'Letter of Disaffiliation to Freedmans Lutheran
Church,' but the church and the idea of God can't be so easily escaped.
From first to last, the poems take on big issues: a 'collapsing country'
where a man is freezing while the speaker in the poem locks his doors, a
person who is dying despite pills and an IV drip, and a church greeter
who can't forget a murderous mental patient who collapsed in front of a
congregation 'screaming for God.' Heins writes skillfully in forms
ranging from a terzanelle ('I've Got This Grin You'll See from Space
When You Come Down') to poems such as 'Songs from the Ruptured Amniotic
Sac' that are split open on the page by the intensity of the feelings
they express."
— Barbara Daniels, author of Rose Fever: Poems, Black Sails, and Quinn and Marie
"Very powerful stuff here. Excellent work....
Ben Heins does not mess around when he writes. These poems are very
powerful and use language extremely well. It is some of the best new
work I've read in quite awhile. Crisis Chronicles has published this
book and I would like to encourage
anyone who really cares about poetry and the written power of the word
to order themselves a copy before they go away. This is what you've been
wanting to read even if you didn't know it."
— D.R. Wagner, author of Breaking and Entering and Continuing Lecturer in Design at UC Davis.
"I like the look of [Cut Me Free], the size of it, and the layout of it.... Yes, it's unconventional—but
it's arty and I think it fits the material well. The colors are great,
and it's obvious the cardstock and paper are of high quality. I think
the poems benefit from being isolated on one side of the page, and I
also think it helps give the book physical heft."
— Dianne Borsenik, author of Fortune Cookie and publisher for NightBallet Press.
"Yesterday's mail brought copies of Songs in the Key of Cleveland
and Ben Heins' Cut Me Free. Heins was a good read, now onto Cleveland
Keys."
"Amazing work here!"
— Krysia Jopek, author of Maps and Shadows.
Click here to read selections from Cut Me Free in the Crisis Chronicles cyber litmag.
Click here to view ratings of Cut Me Free at Goodreads.
Ben Heins is the author of Greatest Hits & B-Sides
(Vagabondage Press, 2012). He graduated from Rosemont College in 2012
with an M.F.A. in poetry and from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania in
2008 with a B.A. in professional writing and a minor in English
literature. He currently teaches at Rowan University and the Richard
Stockton College of New Jersey. Find him at www.benheins.com.
ISBN: 978-1-940996-06-6
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