Pocatello Wildflower - by John Dorsey (CC#122)

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to announce the publication of our second title of the year, Pocatello Wildflower by John Dorsey. Pocatello Wildflower is a monumental sequence of around 350 original poems created by Dorsey through a process of erasure using selected works by undersung Idaho poets as source material. 

 

Pocatello Wildflower is c. 380 pages, 4.25" x 7", perfect bound paperback with cover art by Elena Samarsky.  Shipping on 14 February 2023. ISBN 979-8-88596-992-5. Available for $15 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

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In the U.S. $15.00 USD International $22.00 USD

 

John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw's Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015) Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016), Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Poetry, 2017), Your Daughter's Country (Blue Horse Press, 2019), Which Way to the River: Selected Poems 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020), Afterlife Karaoke (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2021) and Sundown at the Redneck Carnival (Spartan Press, 2022). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize. He was the winner of the 2019 Terri Award given out at the Poetry Rendezvous. You may reach him at archerevans@yahoo.com.

I Have a Poem About That - by Christine Howey (CC#121)

We at Crisis Chronicles Press are ecstatic to announce the publication of our first title of 2023, I Have a Poem About That by the amazing Christine Howey. It's always a joy and privilege to work with her.

I Have a Poem About That is 36 pp, 6 x 9", perfect bound, with cover art by Jessie Herzfeld. ISBN 979-8-88596-993-2. Available for $10 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

This volume features 23 poems, including "When We Die We Become Birds," "My Skiff," "Camus at Camp," "A Meeting of Suburban Deer," "Eternity on Elm Street," "Inside Out," "Invert at the Gem Saloon, Deadwood, South Dakota, 1876," "My Name Is John Doe," "Mount Everest," "Paul Desmond's Slot Machine," "Ten Ill-Conceived Kitchen Gadgets," "Maybe I Should Have Told Different Lies," "After I'm Gone," "Blueberries, Summer, 1944," "The Last One," "The Road Oft Taken," "Sign of the Cross," "A Bubble-Off Romance," "The Birds and the Bees," "The History of Television," "The Universal Usage Guide," "An Ode to Richard Howie," and "My Words Are Too Big Today."

 

Christine Howey is a performance poet and former executive director of Literary Cleveland. Her one-person play of poetry about her transgender journey, Exact Change, premiered at Cleveland Public Theatre and was selected by the New York International Fringe Festival. A film version of the play was an official selection of the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival. 

Christine has also been an award-winning theater critic in Cleveland for 25 years, currently with Cleveland Scene. She was named Transgender Leader of the Year in Northeast Ohio and received the Torch Award from the Human Rights Campaign for leadership on transgender issues. 

Kan Zaman - by Judith Mansour (CC#120)

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to announce the publication of Kan Zaman, a stirring memoir in poetry and prose by Judith Mansour. Mansour, a native of Youngstown, Ohio, walks the minefield of grief and nostalgia in her first full-length collection. Soot-covered porches from the once-booming steel industry of the Mahoning Valley are the backdrop for visceral, playful and devastating memories.

The title, Kan Zaman, is Arabic for "a long time ago" — often used to mean once upon a time or way back when. Apropos for this collection born of losing people Mansour loved and who shaped who she is.

Kan Zaman is 66 pp, 5.5" x 8.5", perfect bound, with color and b/w photos. Cover painting by Joe Geha. Design by Tim Lachina. ISBN: 979-8-88596-994-9. Available for $15 beginning 5 November 2022 from our friends at Mac's Backs Books on Coventry in Cleveland Heights or directly from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

Read Charlotte Morgan's interview with Judith Mansour about Kan Zaman at FreshWater Cleveland.

Meet the author at our book release event on November 5th 2022, 6:30 pm, at Beaumont School in Cleveland Heights.

"Judith Mansour’s Kan Zaman is an irresistible evocation of the Lebanese household she grew up in. This magical book is both a love poem to her family and an invitation for all of us to revisit our childhood, that paradise to which we can only return through memory. Mansour’s writing, by turns both sensual and hauntingly lyrical, is as welcoming as a warm kitchen on a winter night."

—George Bilgere

"True to her title, Mansour evokes the very aromas and tastes of the past, the losses and the joys of how things once were. Beautifully blending poetry and prose, she portrays the struggles inherent in family and culture."

—Joe Geha, author of Kitchen Arabic

Maple Leaf Zen - by John Dorsey (CC#119)

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to announce the publication of our sixth title of the year, Maple Leaf Zen by John Dorsey, on 3 October 2022. Maple Leaf Zen is a brilliant sequence of 124 original poems created by Dorsey through a process of erasure using selected works of the late New Orleans poet Everette Maddox as his source material.

Maple Leaf Zen is c. 140 pages, 6"x6", available in perfect bound paperback as well as a special limited edition (only 10 copies!) signed & numbered case bound hardcover. Cover image courtesy of @MapleLeafNOLA on Instagram.

The paperback (979-8-88596-996-3) is available for $12 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA. 

Paperback: US or Elsewhere?

In the U.S. $12.00 USD International $17.00 USD

The special limited edition signed & numbered case bound hardcover (979-8-88596-995-6) is available for $40 directly from John Dorsey. Email him at archerevens@yahoo.com to get yours while supplies last.

Meet the author:

10/3/2022 at Truman State University, Kirksville, MO

10/8/2022 at Uncloistered Poetry Live - October, Toledo, OH

10/9/2022 at Mac's Backs-Books On Coventry, Cleveland Heights, OH

John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw's Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015), Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016), Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Poetry, 2017), Your Daughter's Country (Blue Horse Press, 2019), Which Way to the River: Selected Poems 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020), Afterlife Karaoke (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2021) and Sundown at the Redneck Carnival, (Spartan Press, 2022). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize. He was the winner of the 2019 Terri Award given out at the Poetry Rendezvous. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com. 

[Photo of John Dorsey by Jeremy Proehl.]

Ouroboros: Memoir of a Dreamwalker - by Chansonette Buck (CC#118)

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to announce the publication of our fifth title of the year, Ouroboros by Chansonette Buck (with striking visual art by Jillian Mardin), on April 22nd 2022. Our release date also happens to be the author's birthday!

Ouroboros is c. 130 pages, perfect bound paperback, 11" x 8.5". Cover art also by Jillian Mardin. Available for $20 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA. 

ISBN: 978-1-64092-950-0. First edition, 125 copies.

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In the US $20.00 USD Elsewhere $30.00 USD

Praise for Ouroboros:

Chansonette Buck's Ouroboros: Memoir of a Dreamwalker takes us on a rich journey through the alchemy of dreams. Buck’s dreams are the kind we wish we remembered—full of significance, of meanings, of important messages. Dreams that reveal the deeper truths and greater understandings. Dreams that nourish our souls.

This is a journey of transfiguration—a word that came to me before I saw it in the book. Transfiguration: changing the forms of difficulty, challenge, and darkness into beauty, illumination, wholeness. Into nourishment for our souls. Like holding a kaleidoscope up to the light, and seeing the patterns form and reform, each more lovely than the last.

Buck is our guide, our priestess, our teacher of transfiguration—holding the lamp to illuminate our way. Singing us through her dreams into our own healing.

 

—Ariana Newcomer, Author; Sound Healer; Spiritual Mentor

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In her newest collection of prose works, Ouroboros, author Chansonette Buck chronicles her life’s journey over a dreamscape that defies expectation and interpretation. What at first seem promising destinations end up as obstruction; while impassible crevices and peaks become pathways to forgiveness and grace, as a movable cast of characters provide aid, conflict and insight to our beleaguered walker. The opening section plays like an overture before descending this landscape into deep trauma, and also, ultimately back into the dreamscape of healing and recovery. Once on this path, the reader will find themselves unable to “leave the trail” until they have gone exactly where Ms. Buck wants them to go…into discovery, the divine, and rebirth. 

 

—Paul Corman-Roberts, author Bone Moon Palace (Nomadic Press, 2021) 

 

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When I first met Chansonette Buck, she was a student of painting at the Museum School in Boston. She doesn’t use paints anymore, but draws the most exquisite word pictures, evocative of far more than could be represented in two dimensions. The partnership here with Jillian Mardin is brilliant, because these visual cues help one take the inner journey I think the poet intended.

There are very few writers whose work I find so rich. I can only read them in small doses. This book is one of those. The words, and word-pictures, have to be savored. As a person who works with both words and pictures, I found Ouroboros: Memoir of a Dreamwalker to be a rare treat. 

 

—Martha Cotton, FinallyFilms.net

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Chansonette Buck’s Ouroboros: Memoir of a Dreamwalker depicts multiple dreamscapes through which, in poetic language, she shares her psychological journey. Her luminous descriptions (enhanced with gorgeous collages by Jillian Mardin) take readers on a multi-dimensional voyage of obstacles, shadows, and dangerous precipices, but affirms the wisdom of elders, animals, and priestesses. Although the profound losses of fathers and lovers punctuate the book, she returns always to intentional survival and healing. With Whitmanesque exuberance immersed in female magical powers, she bears witness to loving affiliation with everything from people to galactic beings to nematodes. The many portals—windows, doors, cave entries—enable access to deep interiorities: watery domains and tunnels in caves. Those, in turn, allow access between minds, epistemologies, species, even planets. Spheres and consciousnesses interpenetrate. A beautiful book in every way, Ouroboros is a testament to our vulnerabilities, our interconnectedness, and our ever-shifting possibilities of renewal. 

 

—Hertha D. Sweet Wong, Professor of English and Associate Dean of Arts and Humanities at University of California, Berkeley

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Chansonette Buck shares her dream world in Ouroboros: Memoir of a Dreamwalker, an expansive landscape that blends the natural world, both familiar and ordinary, with a fantastic territory of the imagination. All told with vivid and descriptive detail. She faces challenges, danger, and her own fear. Animal and human companions inhabit imaginary worlds, ancient and futuristic, realistic and visionary, threatening and comforting. Surely, Chansonette has a method for remembering her dreams. The “dreamwalker” of the title indicates these intense dreams are with her in her waking life, both a link to and a dialogue with her interior self. We all have similar episodic dreams, but this long literary stream of remembered dreams creates a personal world that treads somewhere between everyday reality and the nighttime recesses of the psyche. The writing is richly illustrated with collage images by Jillian Mardin, which reflect this magical adventure of both individual struggle and personal power. 

 

—Harvey Smith, Historian; President, National New Deal Preservation Association; Author, Berkeley and the New Deal

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Reading Chansonette Buck’s latest offering, Ouroboros: Memoir of a Dreamwalker (with Jillian Mardin’s multidimensional artwork accompanying) enabled me to enter a dreamscape occupied by myriad characters, archetypes, shapes, textures, layers, and meanings: light, dark, and in-between. The Carl Jung quote sets the tone from the start, inviting and warning the reader to advance with caution: this will be a journey of initiation and initiates.

It took me many months to travel through this book as part of the unfoldment of circumstances in my life at the time that involved deep incubation, excavation, birth, death, and rebirth many times over. Sometimes it provided a parallel narrative. At other times, it was analogous to entering another world that allowed me to open another way to see.

Always it speaks to defeat, loss, despair, acceptance, redemption, wisdom, and the will to create, and to be.

Such messages are rife throughout, with sentences standing on their own as ends in themselves, or as worlds to get lost in. Senses go on alert as danger makes itself known and must be faced. And yet, despite the danger (or because of it), one travels with kindred spirits all the way as we traverse the dreamtime landscape, pausing to drink in the images. Always we are held and guided, and although we must also collapse, mourn, and endure, it is clear we are always moving towards becoming, letting go, and becoming again. Letting go into life, letting go into death. Light and dark, and the cycles ever-continuing.

Thank you, beloved Chansonette, for sharing yourself so generously with us all. Your work is so necessary. 

 

—Fatima Bacot, Author; Trainer; Personal Development Mentor; Speaker

 

 

Chansonette Buck holds the PhD in English from UC Berkeley. She earned an BFA in Painting from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, where she won both of two juried prizes for her works on paper at a New England Regional show. Winner of the first Judith Stronach Prize in Poetry at Berkeley and a two-time Pushcart nominee, Dr. Buck has authored four chapbooks of poetry as well as a memoir of her time growing up “on the road” with “the great minds of [that] generation” as stepchild of Black Mountain School poet Edward Dorn. She is an ordained minister and certified spiritual healer and is adept in many energy healing modalities. As Principal Prose Wrangler in her consultancy Appaloosa WordCraft, she helps public policy think tanks and nonfiction authors with research, writing, and editing. A California Bay Area expat, she now lives in Southern Oregon’s magnificent Rogue Valley with her family. This is her first full-length collection. Another will be following from Hand to Mouth Press soon.

 

47 Poems - by Victor Clevenger (CC#117)

Crisis Chronicles Press is very happy to announce the publication of Victor Clevenger's latest book, 47 Poems, on April 7th 2022. We are offering this volume in two formats: perfect bound paperback and (while supplies last) a limited edition (47 copies) signed and numbered case bound hardcover. This excellent collection takes inspiration from Richard Brautigan's seminal novel Trout Fishing in America and features a foreword by John Dorsey.

47 Poems is 50 pages, 6x6". Front cover collage by Victor Clevenger. Available from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA. 200 total copies in print. UPDATE: The limited edition hardcover is now sold out, but you can still order the paperback.

Choose Format / Location

Paperback (in the US) $10.00 USD Paperback (elsewhere) $15.00 USD

A special book release event occurred on April 7th 2022, 6 pm Eastern, at the B Side Lounge in Cleveland Heights. This event featured readings by Victor Clevenger, John Dorsey, Nicole Hennessy, Russell Vidrick and John Burroughs.

Victor Clevenger spends his days in a Madhouse and his nights writing. Selected pieces of his work have appeared in print magazines and journals around the world; they have also been nominated for the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. He is the author of several collections of poetry including Sandpaper Lovin’ (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2017), A Finger in the Hornets’ Nest (Red Flag Poetry, 2018), Corned Beef Hash by Candlelight (Luchador Press, 2019), A Wildflower in Blood (Roaring Junior Press, 2020), and Scratching to Get By (Between Shadows Press, 2021). He and American poet John Dorsey run River Dog. You can reach him at crownofcrows@yahoo.com.

 

 

Arroyo Chamisa: Poems Rescued from a Blog - by Alex Gildzen (CC#116)

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to announce the publication of Alex Gildzen's latest collection, Arroyo Chamisa: poems rescued from a blog, on March 4th 2022.

Arroyo Chamisa is 76 pages, perfect bound, 6x6". ISBN: 978-1-64092-954-8. Front cover photo by the author. Available now for only $10 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

 

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United States $10.00 USD International $15.00 USD

Or subscribe to our entire 2022 series (at least ten titles, plus a surprise or two) for $100 with free shipping.

"Alex Gildzen was one of the first poets' blogs i found & read with great appreciation & gusto.  here was a poet with a gift for vernacular, a wit to match his cinematic range, & an obsession with movies that played upon my own heart.  i've long been a great admirer of Alex ever since those giddy early days of blogging when social media held the promise of uniting poets & creating a community of writers who, in their own unique ways, were dedicated to making & living a life in poetry.  Alex Gildzen is a poet with a life well-lived in poetry & at the movies.  his poems frequent the daily ordinary hard tasks of being a human being in our digital age, along with the practical importance of friendships, art making, family, technology, & the greats of Hollywood past & present.   Alex Gildzen is one of my very favorite poets & human beings.  as he says in a poem, 'go to the movies / you're alive.'"
     —Richard Lopez, co-editor of the anthology The End of the World Project

"Alex Gildzen is a master of his craft, unearthing beauty from the ordinary and celebrity from the common. Nowhere is this more evident than in Arroyo Chamisa: poems rescued from a blog. From the dark atomic whimsy of “swim thru the sea of night little swimmer” to the pure joy of living well in “I call the 3 palms / beside the pool / the Andrews Sisters,” Gildzen’s poetry grooves with the universal and vibrates with the intensely personal. This is an expedition you won’t want to miss."
     —Dianne Borsenik, author of Raga for What Comes Next and Publisher/Editor, NightBallet Press

Alex Gildzen saw his first poem in print 60 years ago. The first of many chapbooks followed in 1969. His poems have been published in Canada, England, France, Germany, Greece and Australia. He has given readings at Bowery Poetry Club, Palm Springs Art Museum, Bisbee Poetry Festival, Captain Brady in Kent, Fort Mason in San Francisco, Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, Antebellum Gallery in Hollywood and a plethora of bars. Currently Gildzen lives in Palm Springs where he has been called the city’s “unofficial poet laureate.” A piece of his is featured on the Poet’s Bench in the uptown design district.

His previous Crisis Chronicles Press titles include Ohio Triangle and Alex in Movieland (1943-1973).

Before the Next Ice Age - by Lisa J. Cihlar (CC#115)

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to announce our second new publication of 2022, Before the Next Ice Age by Lisa J. Cihlar. We've been huge fans of Lisa's work for well over a decade and are happy as can be to have had the opportunity to work with her again. 

Before the Next Ice Age features more than twenty prose poems on 34 pages, perfect bound, 5.5 x 8.5". The front cover painting is also by Lisa J. Cihlar. Published 22 January 2022. ISBN: 978-1-64092-953-1. First edition of 150 copies.

 

U.S. or International?

United States $10.00 USD International $14.00 USD

 

Before the Next Ice Age is available for only $10 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 (plus $3 for shipping in the United States). 

 

Or subscribe to our entire 2022 series (at least ten titles, plus a surprise or two) for $100 with free shipping.

Earlier praise for Cihlar's work:

"When I first encountered Lisa Cihlar's poetry, I sensed an electricity in the air, a subterranean movement that insinuated itself up from the ground into my bones. And then I felt flooded, suddenly, with the wonder only great art inspires. Cihlar's poetry is full of muscle and sinew, power and verve, a voice so undeniable that it wraps itself around your synaptic connections and becomes indelible, essential. This is poetry of the highest order, of the most terrific, breath-stripping power."

—Terri Brown-Davidson, Author, Pulitzer Prize Nominee, The Carrington Monologues

 

Lisa J. Cihlar's poems have appeared in Blackbird, Gargoyle Magazine, South Dakota Review, Crab Creek Review, and Mid-American Review. She has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net award. Her three previous chapbooks are The Insomniac’s House from Dancing Girl Press, This Is How She Fails from Crisis Chronicles Press, and When I Pick Up My Wings from the Dry Cleaner (winner of the 2013 Blue Light Poetry Prize) from Blue Light Press. Cihlar lives in rural southern Wisconsin.