Ode to Horatio and Other Saviors - by Carolyn Srygley-Moore (CC#112)

Crisis Chronicles Press is pleased to present our long-awaited latest title, Ode to Horatio and Other Saviors, a compelling collection of poetry by Carolyn Srygley-Moore. 

U.S. or Elsewhere?

United States $12.00 USD Elsewhere $16.00 USD

 

Ode to Horatio and Other Saviors is 92 pages, perfect bound, 6x6" and illustrated. ISBN: 978-1-64092-948-7. Front and back cover photos provided by the author. Available now for only $12 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA. A percentage of proceeds from the sale of this book went to support Rescue Dogs Rescue Soldiers, an organization that pairs shelter dogs with veterans and provides pet therapy programs.

"Carolyn Srygley-Moore’s poetry always enhances its relevance through specificity of coordinates in time and place. The poet has been a consistent fighter for animal rights and animal rescue services, tying them to imagery of human atrocities. In this collection, we go back to a specific era in 2012, and a specific friend named Evy, discovering the poems that illuminated the euthanasia of that dear friend. Her afterword essay is sure to bring tears. But that is Carolyn Srygley-Moore’s power."

—Loring Wirbel, writer and social justice activist

"A book of poems that takes you through meeting and instantly connecting with a beautiful pup, a snow white pit bull named Evy, coming to the awareness that this loving dog has issues that will be to its own demise, through no one’s fault. A book of poems on learning what it’s like to have that love and deep connection, yet coming to awareness and understanding that the ultimate choice had to be made — and the realization of actually having no choice, in reality, of having to surrender your animal to euthanasia. Walking down the road of having to come to terms with the fact that this loving dog could be/was a danger, especially towards children. Sweet Evy could be triggered at any moment in time, without warning, without any rhyme or reason, to become aggressive and dangerous and do severe harm to another body. This book is a roller coaster ride of emotions and mental anguish of having to euthanize this beautiful animal who you love so dearly."

—Judy Lynn Lustgarten Goldstein, activist

"Carolyn Srygley-Moore is a poet of enormous sensibility who combines confessional elements with a capacity to do what Heidegger said poets were for, which is to reveal the Being behind beings. Description of a whole array of things, however “poetic”, does not a poem make. Following a set of rules, merely emulating the constituents of a “canon of taste” will, almost infallibly, make “poets” crashing bores.

"We write, Heidegger reminds us, in “a destitute time” & “in default of God”. As an atheist, I am OK with this. Carolyn, however, does not like that “no god any longer gathers men & things unto himself.” Nothing shines any longer, it is night. The task of the poet is to find the wholesome. & the holy that relates to it, in the unholy that s/he depicts. This book deals with the subject of “euthanasia” of animals, in particular the “euthanasia” of one of the writer's dogs for alleged aggression. “Euthanasia” is far too frequently resorted to as part of the morally dubious treatment of pets in the USA, & it is remarkable that Carolyn deals with the subject with great restraint.

"Wherever Carolyn writes of that which is bad, the fact of her shows us what Hölderlin points out, that wherever there is danger there is also the seed of that which can save us. Because Carolyn is a great poet, the solution is not just hers, it is for Everyman. Although humans, or liars, as they are also known, work to destroy innocence, the poet in his or her poem points to where the future divinity will be found, or the future focus of being. It will not be in people, or anything anthropomorphic.

—David McLean, author of Flesh & Resurrection.

Carolyn Srygley-Moore (C Leigh Moore) is a writer who has encountered a variety of issues in her career. She has been published in Red Fez, I Am Not a Silent Poet, and other venues. Ode to Horatio parallels the plight of humanity with the plight of dogs randomly placed on death row. Carolyn's falling in love with the pit bull was ostensibly the beginning of years advocating for victims of breed specific legislation, including all breeds deemed dangerous by landlords and insurance pitfalls. She found the greatest meaning in her endeavors as transporter from shelter to adopter to foster etc. from winter 2019 to 20. Carolyn has had two emergency craniotomies leaving her with the current inability to drive. As well as caring for her own rescued pets, this elegy is the writer’s current contribution to the cause. Carolyn is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where she recalls the night she fell passionately in love with language. Forty years later, that passion has lasted.

Turnstile Burlesque - by John Greiner (CC#91)

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to announce the publication of Turnstile Burlesque, a stunning new collection of poems by John Greiner.

“The first thing you’ll notice when reading John Greiner is that his work changes like a spider web. The pieces in Turnstile Burlesque show a writer at the peak of his form, exploring his heart to push forward in the evolution of his own creativity.  These poems are our past and our future, they are the pulse of a city sidewalk, a love letter to Ted Berrigan’s New York and an accessible glimpse into what’s happening now and what’s happening now is John Greiner. Join him.”

          —John Dorsey, author of Appalachian Frankenstein.

Where Do You Want It?

United States $7.00 USD Elsewhere $9.00 USD

Turnstile Burlesque by John Greiner features 25 poems on 36 pages, is 6 x 9", perfect bound, with cover image by Steven B. Smith, and is available now for $7 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA. ISBN: 978-1-940996-43-1. Includes the Pushcart Prize-nominated poem "Jane in Her Business Suit."

See ratings and reviews of Turnstile Burlesque at Goodreads.

John Greiner is a poet, playwright and short fiction writer who lives in Queens, New York.   His previous publications include The Laundrymen (Wandering Head Press, 2016), Bodega Roses (Good Cop/Bad Cop Press, 2014), Modulation Age (Wandering Head Press, 2012), Shooting Side Glances (ISMs Press, 2011) and Relics From a Hell's Kitchen Pawn Shop (Ronin Press, 2010). Greiner's plays have been produced in New York City, Chicago and Gloucester, Massachusetts.  His work with photographer Carrie Crow has been shown in galleries, museums and public spaces in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Venice, Hamburg and Berlin.

City of Tents: Poems About the Occupy Movement and Other Items Taken From the News - by Martin Willitts, Jr. (CC#57)

Cover photo by Steven B. Smith

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to publish Martin Willitts, Jr.'s latest chapbook, City of Tents: Poems About the Occupy Movement and Other Items Taken From the News, in October 2014.  According to the author, "This is a collection of poems based on protest and social issue concerns. The poems start with the Occupy Movement, and include forced slavery, forced migrations, disenfranchised people, and other subjects. I question a lot in this book. As a Quaker, I find many things troubling in this world. I scold my own generation who had protested war, for women and minorities. Where are they? They should have joined Occupy, not the Tea Party."

 

City of Tents is a 38 page, handmade, 8.5 x 5.5", saddle-stapled chapbook featuring 22 poems including "Occupy This," "Hell for Plants," "If We Pull Down the Empty Sky," "The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti" and much more.  ISBN 978-1-940996-10-3.  Gray card stock cover, black endpapers.  1st edition: 60 copies.  Available for only $7 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

"Willitts calls out the irrationality of the put-on soundbite, of cruelty and greed. He asks of us and society to do the uncomfortable work of self-examination.

"At times he's in anguish at the scale, ledgers a litany of injustice with the grief of an exhausted exhale. Some of Willitts's lines are like skipping ahead steps in a math problem: 'smoking cigarettes of last chances.' He recognizes the nebulous: 'the type of nothingness nobody understands.'

"After we're wrung wet, he offers sparing notes like plates of sunlight: 'joy as temperamental as a geyser' and 'a cautionary song of Amazing Grace.'"

— Kathy Smith, co-author of Oct Tongue -1 and founding editor at The City Poetry 

"There are two pervading themes braided throughout City of Tents: 'He could have been any of us' and 'Words can…be an unlit match.' Willitts confronts oppression and imprisonment in its many varied guises, including poverty, bullying, ignorance, and war.  He also offers hope:  'I open envelopes of promises—heritage seeds…small changes begin.' City of Tents is a demand for political and socio-economic awareness.  Heed its call!"

—Dianne Borsenik, author of Blue Graffiti and founding editor at NightBallet Press 

“'Like many things it had no beginning'—yet, even a trauma, a seeking, a quest with no beginning can be brought to some wholesome end. However, this Picardy-third-like sound alighting the grid, causing fractals to sing across Indra’s net, would only ever take place by way of the body. 'Where is the body going?' ('sinkholes of a woman’s sorrow,' into 'the disquieted spirit')—

"This is a grief book, a human emotions book, a book-length rhetorical question capable of leading the body into an activist martial stance in the street, among a gathering of tents. Willitts gives us a long hard look at 'the type of nothingness nobody understands.' As the 'floating world' sink[s] it is an excess of belief that keeps us afloat. Will we be able to tow its weight? Can we adjust these norms by taking the sinking weight of a world on our shoulders?

"What is being modeled for us—what it is that we inherit: 'to take things apart and not necessarily put them back together.' Yet, through these poems, these proposals, the pulse being pumped into a desire for peace and rightness, he (we) are willing to stand up for this! We are actually how the things get put back together."
— j/j hastain, author of xyr and secret letters

Click here to read "Occupy This" from City of Tents in The New Verse News.
Click here to read "Hell for Plants" from City of Tents at Edgar Allan Poet.
Click here to rate City of Tents at Goodreads.

Martin Willitts, Jr. receiving the Dylan Thomas
International Poetry Award in Swansea, Wales

Martin Willitts, Jr. is a retired librarian living in Syracuse, New York. He currently evaluates Prior Learning for SUNY Empire State College. He is a Quaker. He is a visual artist of Victorian and Chinese paper cutouts. He was nominated for 5 Pushcart and 4 Best of the Net awards. He provided his hands-on workshop “How to Make Origami Haiku Jumping Frogs” at the 2012 Massachusetts Poetry Festival.

Martin has 5 full-length books and over 20 chapbooks including Art Is Always an Impression of What an Artist Sees (Edgar and Lenore's Publishing House) and Swimming In the Ladle of Stars (Kattywompus Press).  He is the winner of the inaugural Wild Earth Poetry Contest for his full length collection Searching for What is Not There (Hiraeth Press).  He won the William K. Hathaway Award for Poem of the Year 2012 and he won the Dylan Thomas International Poetry Award in 2014.

Grand Slam - by Alan Kleiman (CC#37)

The première collection of Alan Kleiman's poetry, featuring many of his most popular works, was published in September 2013 by Crisis Chronicles Press. Grand Slam is one of the winners of our September 2011 chapbook contest and we are thrilled to finally have it released. This book is perfect bound, 40 pages, with front cover art by John Newsome and cover/book design by Lisa Hollander. Roughly 300 copies in print.

Get this acclaimed book for your very own for only $10 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.  Or click below to use PayPal.

The buzz about Grand Slam:

"I actually LIKE Alan Kleiman’s poems. They’re both grounded and glorious. And for somebody who traditionally reads poetry only if she happens to stub her toe on it, that’s saying a lot.”
—Jenna Blum, New York Times best-selling author of Those Who Save Us and The Stormchasers

“I lost track of the chuckles and caught-breath insights Alan Kleiman’s big-hearted collection triggered. He has a remarkable way of turning an ordinary little event into a didja-see-that surreal moment that makes you jump (for joy!). Enjoy these firecrackers!”
—Elinor Nauen, author of So Late into the Night and My Marriage A to Z

“It’s a pleasure to praise Alan Kleiman’s brave and strange poetry, with its various strands of innocent yearning and worldly resignation. 'The Emperor’s clothes Don’t fit anymore' Kleiman has found. The result is a whole new wardrobe, this time, without excuses.”
—Jeff Nunokawa, Princeton University

Click here to read "Dancing with Varese" from Grand Slam in Blue Fifth Review.
Click here to read "Centerfold" from Grand Slam in The Camel Saloon.
Click here to read "What Tales" from Grand Slam in Words Dance.
Click here to read "Tomorrow" from Grand Slam in the Crisis Chronicles cyber litmag.
Click here to read Kate Campbell's remarks and "More."
Click here to read reviews of Grand Slam at Amazon.
Click here to view ratings of Grand Slam at Goodreads.

Alan Kleiman with Grand Slam proof

Alan S. Kleiman’s poetry has appeared in The Criterion, Verse Wisconsin, Right Hand Pointing, Blue Fifth Review, The Bicycle Review, Pyrta, Eskimo Pie, The Montucky Review, Kinship of Rivers, Stone Path Review and other journals. He lives in New York City and works as an attorney.

The Other Guy - by John Thomas Allen (CC#31)

cover photo by Steven B Smith

Crisis Chronicles Press is overjoyed to announce the release of The Other Guy, a new poetry chapbook by John Thomas Allen. Published 15 August 2012, The Other Guy is 16 pages, lovingly hand assembled and saddle staple bound using white cover stock, black card stock endpapers and white paper. 8.5 x 5.5", inkjet printed. Approximately 120 copies in print. Available for $6 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

According to David Shapiro: "Freud said to the young surrealists to beware of unconscious imagery, and Meyer Schapiro said even dreams were social. John reminds me of Lamantia, Vigo, Bolano—raw and angry but with a clear day under his baseball cap. Like the Berrigan brothers, he seems to be writing a last protesting book, with the harp of Harpo and instead of handcuffs from a flic who appears to look like a hamburger…The soul is conscious in this new voice, and John wears a rosary around his neck. Real as Albany, his infra-surrealism is growing and growling. Good that he's so disappointed; he occupies a special place in Poetry Park."

According to Charles Bane, Jr.: "The work of John Allen is profoundly moored; it is exploratory, shaded and searching. Read his work, and follow his quest."

According to Rich Follett: "John Thomas Allen's surreal images strung together like pearls; seemingly random events and characters juxtaposed in ways that expose mind-expanding meanings; the pungent, unblinking eye of the camera obscura; the unexpected voice of transients, ne'er do wells and those forgotten by fortune; these flavors and many more await readers of John Thomas Allen's dreamlike Humanist poetry and prose. There is a certain light to these visions — a three-in-the-morning beam of truth that exposes both deep flaws and great beauty in every subject, every character. John Thomas Allen offers us a mirror; — who among us can resist looking? What we see in the process is the bones of our collective socio-intellectual hypocrisy. The result is a simultaneously humbling and edifying reading experience: our flaws are laid bare but we realize in the blush of our shame that we still have an ineluctable beauty if only we are willing to cultivate it. John Thomas Allen's world has existed always, around us, among us and within us; in coming to terms with his humbling and uplifting indictments, we can only shake our heads and wonder how it is that we have missed so much for so long. Read, and walk with him."

Click here to see several reviews of The Other Guy at Amazon.
Click here to see ratings and reviews of The Other Guy at Goodreads.

Sample poems:

Click here to read "Smokebreak" from The Other Guy in the Crisis Chronicles cyber litmag.
Click here to read "An Elegy for One Living and Dead" from the book in the Crisis Chronicles.


Poet's bio (from the chapbook):

John Thomas Allen is a 29 year old poet who lives in Albany NY, for the moment. His work has appeared over 40 journals and his chief ambition is to write a real poem one of these days!