Tsim Tsum
Poetry by Sabrina Orah Mark
author of The Babies
ISBN
978-0-9818591-2-5 / $14
"Sabrina Orah Mark’s Tsim Tsum is like a collection of episodes from a lost, slightly sinister children’s book on the nature of love and time, in which wry parables move us further and further down unknown hallways, beyond instruction, into
corridors of dream-sense, far into the strange, cool territory of the fabulous."
—Mark Doty
$14
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Hush Sessions
Poetry by Kristi Maxwell
ISBN
978-0-9818591-3-2 / $14
"By turns pained and playful, deceptively clear and transparently oblique, these poems show a will toward meaning that must find its way through the signs, superstitions, and provocations of language. The commonplace world is greedily dismembered and collected, brought home to wallpaper a constantly emptied interior—of house, of body, of marriage, of idea. Is it a comfort, all this cutting and slipping? Is it poetic romp? Or does it follow the sorrow of everything else that falls apart and slips away? The poet won’t say, but the poems say yes, yes, and yes."
—Susan Tichy
$14
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Polytheogamy
Poetry by Timothy Liu
Artwork by Greg Drasler
Introduction by Charles Altieri
ISBN
978-0-9818591-0-1 / $16
"It is difficult not to think about Robert Creeley when reading Liu's sparse and unreletingly lucid lines. Even Liu's insistenly enthmatic logic echoes Creeley, albeit with an indulgence approaching but not embracing surrealism. But there are emotional timbres that even a gay Robert Creeley might not risk.... Liu's lucidity is ludic, or almost ludic because of his sense of the freedom evoked by his insistent refusal of lyric expansiveess. The negatives born of Liu's lucidity become strange sources of plenitude."
—Charles Altieri
$16
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To the Bone
Poetry by Sebastian Agudelo
Winner of the 2008 Saturnalia
Books Poetry Prize selected by Mark Doty
ISBN
978-0-9818591-1-9 / $14
"If you want to study the nature of power and appetite, the economics of eating and serving, where better to look than the restaurant kitchen? Sebastian Agudelo locates his lyric inquiry into the intersections between food and class in the steamy back rooms where the immigrant poor wash the dishes while meals rife with information about culture and history are carried to the tables of those who can pay the bill. Inventive, politically alert, both disenchanted and compassionate, Agudelo invites Whitman and Auden behind the scenes, into the aspiration, struggle and resignation behind the swinging doors. To the Bone is an unexpected, bracing debut."
—Mark Doty
$14
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2008 Titles
Letters to Poets:
Conversations About Poetics, Politics,
and Community
Edited by Jennifer Firestone
and Dana Teen Lomax
ISBN
0-9754990-8-4 / $24
"This courageous and visionary book enacts and embodies a concrete "relational aesthetics" that gives poetic voices an epistolary space—for linguistic intimacy and soul-sharing. Don't miss it!"
—Cornel West
Includes:
ANSELM BERRIGAN
JOHN YAU
TRUONG TRAN
WANDA COLEMAN
ALFRED ARTEAGA
ANNE WALDMAN
QUINCY TROUPE
KATHLEEN FRASER
EILEEN MYLES
JILL MAGI
CECILIA VICUÑA
LESLIE SCALAPINO
ALBERT FLYNN DESILVER
PAUL HOOVER
& many others!
$24
Order your copy now!
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Days of Unwilling
by Cal Bedient
ISBN
0-9754990-9-2 / $14
"The poems of Days of Unwilling “love all things straining at their leash of blood.” In a voluptuous diction of art history, music theory, and philosophy, Bedient summons us to examine the solo body, the collective body, their leashes, and their blood—not as figures of imagination but as creatures, remonstrances, monsters, lovers. His genius is to have unearthed the widest possible lexicon to address (and redress) our times."
—Jane Miller
Order your copy now!
$14
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Midnights
Poetry by Jane Miller
Artwork by Beverly Pepper
Introduction by C.D. Wright
Finalist for Foreword Magazines Poetry Book
of the Year!
ISBN
978-0-9754990-6-1 / $16
"An absorbing
performance of art taken to the brink. There is
nothing prosaic about Midnights. No one is simply
cooking carrots; rather all of its parts contribute
to a gestalt of living, loving and losing in a reel
of feeling that nonetheless attains a bracing lucidity.
This is an incandescent text, and Beverly Pepper’s
drawings hold its ardor to its mark."
—C.D. Wright
$16
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Famous
Last Words
by Catherine Pierce
Winner of the 2007 Saturnalia
Books Poetry Prize selected by John Yau
ISBN
978-0-9754990-7-8 / $14
"Catherine
Pierce gets to the conundrum of language; we want
to believe what it says and we don’t believe
it. She understands our need to tell tall stories,
to exaggerate and embellish, to become figures that
we are not, but wish to be. Her empathy for the
abject in us is always riddled with humor, self-mocking,
sharp, and, at times, painful. Recognizing that
words can be both a solace and an accuser, Pierce
walks that tightrope with grace."
—John Yau
"With a marvelously
open-hearted candor, Catherine Pierce troubles both
the past and future — the homelands of her
lyric art — as much as she summons them into
life. ‘Be kind to old photographs,’
one poem tells us, ‘but not overly kind.’
Where other poets are flip, she’s seriously
playful; where other poets are timid, she’s
determined to engage the particulars behind which
experience hides. Even more remarkably, the poems
in this collection somehow manage to sing the way
their subjects think, and the tone of that voice
enlightens everything it touches.”
—Sherod Santos
"Catherine Pierce
has written an exhilarating book, one that rewards
its lucky reader with intelligence and lyric grace
and dance-hall, crushed corsage swing. A pure delight."
—Lynne
McMahon
$14
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2006/7
Titles
Stigmata
Errata Etcetera
Poetry by Bill Knott
Artwork by Star Black
Introduction by Mark Doty
ISBN
978-0-9754990-4-7 / $16
"Excellent new
poems by prolific surrealist, grouchy comic, underground
hero and oddball formal virtuoso Bill Knott ("One
of my pores creaks/ when I pass through it/.../
soon for the last time") join haunting, humorous
collages by poet and artist Star Black..."
—Publisher's Weekly
"...Knott is one
of the best poets writing in English... The poems
here form thoughtful patterns."
—John
Cotter, Open Letters Monthly
"Still pure, his
new poems are ice—refined, crystalline and
sharp."
—Brooklyn Rail
$16
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Dummy
Fire
by Sarah Vap
Winner of the 2006 Saturnalia
Books Poetry Prize Judged by Forrest Gander
ISBN
978-0-9754990-5-4 / $14
"From the verses
of gnostic antiquity to Whitman's drawn chorus of
lading, from winter wilderness to the dazzling volunteering
imagery of her solitary voice, Sarah Vap startles
again and again with a quiet, hermetic originality
that American poetry has never succesfully supported
before—she is brilliant and something entirely
new under the sun."
—Norman Dubie
"Dummy Fire
is outstanding in its originality, its vividness,
and its explosive lyrical esprit. Throughout the
dream realm and the domestic, Vap illuminates the
strangest of places with her uncompromising spiritual
light."
—Blackbird: a journal
of literature and the arts
$14
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2005
Titles
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Ing
Grish
Poetry by John Yau
Artwork by Thomas Nozkowski
Introduction by Barry Schwabsky
Winner
of the Small Press Traffic
Book of the Year!!!
"There
is no mistaking Yau's exceptional talent (or Nozkowkis')
in this unusual and beautiful book."
—Sima
Rabinowitz, Dragonfire
$16
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Correspondence
by Kathleen Graber
Winner
of the 2005 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize Judged by
Bob Hicok
"Correspondence
is a fresh accomplishment, swift with feeling and
intelligence, the work of a restless critical mind
mapping its way toward a means to bear the weight
of love."
—Mark
Doty
"There
is a mending quality to Graber's imagination, a
mending of self by extension into the world. This
is a wonderful book."
—Bob
Hicok
$14
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| Blackboards
Poetry by Tomaz Salamun
(translated by Michael Biggins)
Artwork by Metka Krasovec
Introduction by John Yau
$16
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The
Babies
by Sabrina Orah Mark
Winner
of the 2004 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize Judged by
Jane Miller
$14
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saturnalia books was established
in 2001. Our mission is to publish literary works, primarily poetry,
of high merit, by new and established writers; to encourage collaboration
and communication between poets and visual artists, particularly
in book form; and to encourage the publication of literature of
a non-commercial and challenging nature.
saturnalia books is
non-profit organization under section 501(c)(3). All contributions are tax deductible under section 170.
You may send a check or money order made out to "Saturnalia
Books, Inc." to:
105 Woodside Rd.
Ardmore, PA 19003
or click on the following button to make a secure
online donation:
Bookstores contact UPNE
for rates and conditions.
For review copies email info@saturnaliabooks.com
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