Bicycle Day

Bicycle Day bt Mel Nichols is a beautifully made chapbook containing 21 poems that will make your life better.

I am sure that it may be found at Bridge Street Books in Georgetown.

Or, it may be acquired from:

Slack Buddha Press
4724 Bonham Road
Oxford, Ohio 45056

Deed

I love this book.


Rod Smith, Deed, University of Iowa Press / Kuhl House Poets (2007)

“The great thing about Rod Smith’s work is that it is all risk all the time. In Deed, he has built a substantial architecture whose ‘perilous upkeep’ is dazzling. This is a truly wondrous book.”—Peter Gizzi

“A master poet among us? I’d vote for Rod Smith. With the sweeping vision of Whitman, the noun-play of Gertrude Stein, and the slant political commentary of the New York School, Smith chisels out a place of his own with a tremendous integrity of vision. Deed contains the best of what American poetry has to offer: a place to pause and reflect upon the beauty of language and love flowering up through the mayhem of the world.” —Lisa Jarnot

+ go here and read about it, if you haven't done so already:

http://illuminatedmeat.blogspot.com/

Begin at Once

I just read Beth Joselow's new book, Begin at Once. It really got to me. If it doesn't get to you, it's because something else got to you first.

Beth Joselow, Begin at Once, Chax Press (2007)

The poems in Begin at Once are truly investigations, never simply statements of things the poet already claims to know. They wander– sometimes lightly, sometimes darkly, sometimes with a quiet but sharp irony, but always generously– over all sorts of contrasting subjects with a startling insight that traces the swift and shocking changes of a life lived in a world that’s genuinely right here, right now. Beth Joselow’s poems discover, and uncover, keen truths that always surprise and unsettle and make us think again about things we believed we understood.There’s real wisdom in Begin At Once, and the world sure does need more of that.
— Mark Wallace

Joselow’s poems are “tender numbers” for “people who used to be hungry”. We’ve been chowing down on the drill, organizing our lives around days of rain/bells with colors/gears without mesh until we experience more numbers/further use as “…elusive optimism/skin of ice…” So how do we unsettle the daily bout? Joselow suggests we take each poem as “one more time” to be “simply there” “In support of ________” …”To contain _______” so that we have some unslotted space to “sit down now, begin at once.”
— Tina Darragh

Begin at Once is a terrific collection because Beth Joselow is a writer with a great gift, but it’s also a tease. Because this is a book, all 104 pages of it, that leaves you wanting to read so very much more.
-- Ron Silliman