
ISBN: 978-1-934909-164 $18.00 |
Tourist at a Miracle
Mark Statman
Tourist at a Miracle is Mark Statman’s first full
collection of poetry. His
poems, translations, and criticism have appeared in many anthologies and
in such publications as American Poetry Review, The Hat,
Hanging Loose, Tin
House, and Florida Review.
His translation of Federico García Lorca’s Poet
in New York (with
Pablo
Medina) has been widely praised; John Ashbery called it “the definitive
version.” He is also the author of Listener in the
Snow: The Practice and Teaching of Poetry ( Kenneth Koch said “teaching poetry may never be
the same again”); The Alphabet of the Trees: A Guide
to Nature Writing (with
Christian McEwen); and The Red Skyline: Poems, a chapbook. His awards
include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
Statman is an associate professor of Literary Studies at Eugene Lang College
of The New School and also taught for many years for Teachers & Writers
Collaborative. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Katherine, and their son,
Jesse. |
Praise
for Tourist at a Miracle:
“It’s very rare to watch the birth of a new
style. It’s like watching through a new set of Proust’s
kaleidoscopes.
Mark Statman has been working for years on a vision of
himself and parts of the city—concentrated and
bare as any poetry. It’s hard to compare it to anything
except a commentary on the real and the imagined—
pointillist poems almost without figures and adjectives
and false decorations. But it all adds up, like a fire
hydrant taken by Rudy Burkhardt, because everything is
unexaggerated, convincing as a street sign. He has
gotten away from any lyric leftovers, and in his anti-anti-poems
he makes a lot of magic and music out of
elegies of a city mouse. He has a family, a loved wife,
and son, and a past—he has a constant politics and
is
not seduced by the political. He makes us bewildered tourists
at his everyday miracle.”—David
Shapiro
“Tourist
at a Miracle is a big title to live up
to. Mark Statman delivers the tourist’s wonder and
distance in
spare, deliberate music—American poetry’s grand
plain style descended from William Carlos Williams
and James Schuyler. His miracles are those we all experience
if we have our eyes and feelings open—love,
friendship, fatherhood, loss, anxieties, frustrations,
fears...the everyday and always. Statman is a head-on
poet willing to risk clarity in pursuit of the marvelous
we might encounter anywhere.”—William
Corbett
“‘The letters glow like ghosts’ concludes
Mark Statman’s poem ‘Losing Buttons’ which
is a memorable and
a signifying cipher of how every gesture and commonplace,
every person and place known has its negative,
reverse, absent “one left out,” the “what
I’m not seeing’’ ‘second question.’ The
poems in Tourist at a Miracle attend to the enigma of how it is ‘the other half
is still unknown’ imply the indescribable silence
and loss
when the baseball game on the radio is suddenly turned
off. Yet, evident, everyday things are engaged with,
loved and seen. ‘Yellow Jerusalem artichoke/Jesse
said.’ The hard, fast quick chasms of Statman’s
particular
urban topography register in a stripped down intimacy that
shares a propensity with James Schuyler for
splices of weather, signals of season ‘winter facts’ obliquely
seen. These poems compel us to notice instances
of being in shorthand like (my favorite) ‘syrup,
algebra, love’ amid the ‘heights, lost, heights
/ resolve, view,
found.’”
—Kimberly
Lyons
“The way to redeem the world, Mark Statman writes, ‘is
not to fall in love / but to stay in love / to use
the word love / every day in your life / and mean it.’ How
surprising, and how wonderful, to find a poet
who builds meaning this way, and insists on meaning what
love means. In Tourist at a Miracle, Statman
gives us language as commitment, commitment as imagination,
imagination as soul-making. Statman has
translated Lorca brilliantly, and here he gives us a version
of New York that Lorca would recognize and
welcome. This book is a delight.”—Joseph
Lease
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ISBN: 978-1-934909-10-2 $18.00 |
Dialect of a skirt
Erica Miriam Fabri
Erica Miriam Fabri is a graduate of the American Academy
of Dramatic Arts and received her MFA in poetry from the
New School. Her work has appeared in such publications as
The Texas Review, Hanging Loose, The Spoon River Poetry Review,
The New York Quarterly and Good Foot Magazine. She has lectured
and led seminars at Cooper Union School of Arts, New York
University, Columbia University and Penn State University.
She is also a spoken word mentor and curriculum writer for
Urban Word NYC. She currently teaches creative writing and
performance poetry at The School of Visual Arts, Pace University
and for the City University of New York (CUNY) at Hunter
College and Baruch College. This is her first book.
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Praise for Dialect
of a skirt:
“These aren’t poems. They’re ball gowns.”—Rachel
McKibbens
“Wouldn’t you like to know what happened when
Marilyn Monroe made love to Joan Crawford? (Hint: a webbed
foot was involved.) Why holy is a secular world? What Barack
Obama’s grandmother thought? What the poet said to
the truck driver? And why a fourteen-year-old girl would
throw her newborn out a window? In Erica’s impressive
first collection we hear a myriad of characters speak—some
hilarious, some ironic, some tragic—and we can’t
help but listen. And learn.” —Sharon
Mesmer
“The poems in Dialect...are raw, honest, and built
of a dance that takes place in trees. They are that kung-fu.
This first book of Fabri’s challenges the landscape
of contemporary verse and makes us joyful for having followed
her in the end.”—Roger
Bonair-Agard
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ISBN: 978-1-934909-20-1$18 |
Vacations on the Black Star Line
Michael Cirelli
MICHAEL CIRELLI'S FIRST COLLECTION, LOBSTER WITH OL' DIRTY BASTARD (HANGING LOOSE, 2008), WAS A NY TIMES BESTSELLER FROM AN INDEPENDENT PRESS AND WAS FEATURED IN THE "DEBUT POETS" ISSUE OF POETS & WRITERS MAGAZINE. HE HAS ALSO AUTHORED TWO CURRICULA, POETRY JAM (RECORDED BOOKS, 2010) AND HIP-HOP POETRY & THE CLASSICS (MILK MUG, 2004), AND IS THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF URBAN WORD NYC. HE HAS BEEN FEATURED IN WORLD LITERATURE TODAY, SPOKEN WORD REVOLUTION REDUX, KING MAGAZINE AND HBO'S DEF POETRY JAM. HE LIVES ON THE MOON.
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ISBN: 978-1-934909-05-8 (pbk.) $19.00
ISBN: 978-1-934909-06-5 (cloth) $29.00 |
When We Were Countries
The Hanging Loose Press High School Writing Collection
When We Were Countries is a collection of extraordinary
poems and stories by 73 of the nation’s most outstanding
high school age writers. All the work first appeared in
the special high school section of Hanging Loose magazine,
the standard for cutting-edge work by teenage writers since
1968, offering young writers the opportunity to have their
work published alongside that of professionals in one of
the country’s oldest and most distinguished literary
journals. The poetry and fiction in this volume, as in
the previous three, has been selected by Hanging Loose editors
Mark Pawlak, Dick Lourie, and Robert Hershon. And When
We Were Countries incorporates a new feature not included
in the previous collections. Four accomplished poet/teachers
share their perspectives on how they have nurtured teen
writers: Marty Skoble teaches at Saint Ann’s School
in Brooklyn; Kathleen Aguero is a professor at Pine Manor
College near Boston and instructs teenagers every summer
at the New York State Young Writers Institute; Kip Zegers
teaches at New York City’s Hunter College High School;
and Joanna Fuhrman instructs students at Rutgers University
in New Jersey. She is also an alumna of the magazine: Her
own early poems first appeared in the Hanging Loose high
school section 20 years ago, and she has gone on to publish
four volumes of poetry, the most recent of which won the
prestigious 2009 Kinereth Gensler Award.
Poet and critic X. J. Kennedy concludes
his introduction to When We Were Countries with
these words:
“ . . . any old futzers who assume that teen-agers nowadays spend all
their time at video games or texting away on their cell phones will suddenly
wise up and find reason to rejoice. To anyone over the age of (maybe) ten,
these stories and poems will ring true. To any young writer: as you toil at
your computer screen or paper, this book will assure you that you are not alone.
Teachers: you’ll be heartened and encouraged by what this rich gathering
proves possible. Everybody: grab this book, if you know what’s good for
you. Devour it, digest it, and be regaled.” |
SMART LIKE ME
“These poems are by teenagers themselves, expressing an incredible range of thought and feeling on a wide variety of topics.... The levels of insight and maturity are often astounding....” – School Library Journal
BULLSEYE
“offers teenagers and adults a glimpse at America’s literary future: simple, spare free-form poetry; fiction with insightful wit and impressive depth.” – Booklist
SHOOTING THE RAT
“Images leap from the pages full of surprises, from classical allusions to brand name references, presenting readers with sharp slices of life and a variety of philosophical musings. The prose pieces – some stories, other captured moments – showcase writers who have mastered their craft and found their voices.” – VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates)
Find out more about the High School Writing Collection
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ISBN: 978-1-934909-12-6 (pbk.) $18.00 |
The World in a Minute
Gary Lenhart
This is Gary Lenhart’s fourth collection of poetry. He has also published two other recent books, Another Look: Selected Prose (Subpress) and The Stamp of Class: Reflections on Poetry and Social Class (University of Michigan Press). He teaches writing at Dartmouth World Center.
Writing about an earlier collection, Kenneth Koch said: “Not only does the strong emotion catch the reader very quickly but, almost as soon as it does so, it is undercut by an irony and/or a new understanding that leaves one shaken up, not sure exactly of where one has been (emotionally) but certainly sure that one has been traveling to important places. These high-bounding, twisting-about experiences are made possible, and plausible, by a remarkable quality the poems have of being absolutely true, true to what the poet thinks and feels, and not only convincing but also endearing....” |
“Gary Lenhart’s The World in a Minute combines all the best of intellect and heart. This compendium of histories takes in the political, ranging from ancient Rome to the Vietnam war to the present; the personal, which verges on memoir in its reminiscences of his life from its working-class childhood roots; and an intimate look at his relationships in the world of art and literature. Lenhart’s talent is in fusing public events and injustices with the day-to-day details of an individual life. Writing in a variety of forms with a sly humor and sophisticated wit, he allows us access to personal revelation at the same time that he gently remains the outsider. Yet, everything in Lenhart’s world of the self is informed by the state of flux around him: the brevity and intricacies of life mirrored in the events of friends’ lives and the historical and social fabric that knits us together. His love for the lived life of art and contemplation—which takes in the world’s chaos—finally determines the subject of this book. Whatever tonal understatement exists here is set against passionate thought, equal parts humor and a wonder undercut by grief, as he reveals our complexities in these fine, distinctive poems.”
—Cleopatra Mathis
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ISBN: 978-1-934909-14-0 (pbk.) $18.00 |
Hold
Tight: The Truck Darling Poems
Jeni Olin
This is Jeni Olin’s second full collection of poems,
following her exciting debut, Blue Collar Holiday.
Writing about that book, John Ashbery praised her “wonderfully
caustic and vulnerable lyrics,” adding that “Olin’s
voice is both raw and strangely accommodating. This
is a marvelous debut.”
A native of Houston and a resident of New York, Jeni Olin
studied at Oxford and Cambridge before receiving her BA
and MFA degrees from Naropa University. Her work
has appeared in The Portable Boog Reader, The
Hat, LIT, Hanging Loose, and many other magazines.
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ISBN: 978-1-934909-18-8 (pbk.) $18.00 |
3/03
Chuck Wachtel
Chuck Wachtel is also
the author of the novels Joe The Engineer, winner of the Pen/Hemingway
Citation, and The Gates; a collection of stories and novellas:
Because We Are Here (all Viking-Penguin); and five collections
of poems and short prose, including The
Coriolis Effect and,
most recently, What Happens to Me, both published by Hanging
Loose Press. He has written the screenplay for Joe
The Engineer currently in development as a film. His short fiction, poetry,
essays and translations have appeared in numerous periodicals
and anthologies both here and abroad. He lives in New York
and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at N.Y.U. |
Praise
for Chuck Wachtel’s fiction:
3/03 “Part love
song, part lamentation, Chuck Wachtel’s 3/03 calls
to mind the work of generous, lyrical moralists from Walter
Benjamin to Grace Paley. It’s a beautiful, immensely
serious, immensely tender portrait of the way we live now.” —Brian
Morton, author of Starting Out in the Evening and Breakable
You
BECAUSE WE ARE HERE “Wachtel is a fluid, modern
Aesop.” —The
Los Angeles Times
THE GATES “Wachtel
has given us a memorable and altogether believable story
of regeneration, reclamation and self-discovery.” —New
York Times Book Review
JOE THE ENGINEER “Wachtel
achieves a gripping narrative because his eye for nuance
and detail is exceptionally vivid, and because his knowledge
of his characters’ lives, the emotions they bear, is
direct and unsparing.” —Minneapolis
Star-Tribune
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