Hanging Loose News

Reading with Mark Statman, Jane LeCroy and Bill Zavatsky

2009-12-30T11:18:00.003-05:00

Reading at Bowery Poetry Club, January 9, 2010, 6:00-7:30, with Mark Statman, Jane LeCroy, and Bill Zavatsky, Bob Hershon, moderator.

This is the first reading for Tourist at a Miracle, of which David Shapiro has written: "A lot of magic and a lot of music...” Bill Corbett: “Delivers the tourist’s wonder and distance in spare, deliberate music – American poetry’s grand plain style...” and Joseph Lease: “This book is a delight.”

Mark Statman's recent books include Tourist at a Miracle (Hanging Loose, 2010) and, with Pablo Medina, a translation of Garcia Lorca's Poet in New York (Grove, 2008).

Jane LeCroy is a widely published and performing NYC poet, teacher, front-woman of the avant-jazz-pop-poetry band TRANSMITTING, home-birthing
mother of three, televisionless, vegetarian, atheist, rebel soul subversive troublemaker.

Bill Zavatsky's last book is Where X Marks the Spot (Hanging Loose); he teaches at the Trinity School in New York City.

Bob Hershon's (who will introduce) is the author of numerous books of poetry, most recently, Calls from the Outside World (Hanging Loose).

Cover is $6.

Joanna Fuhrman Readings

2009-12-30T09:30:00.004-05:00

Joanna Fuhrman (Moraine, Ugh Ugh Ocean, Freud in Brooklyn) and winner of the Kinereth Gensler Award will be reading from her new book Pageant at the following venues in January and February:

January 26th
Celebrating the Renegade Press
Alice James Books Reading
(with Peter Waldor, Jean-Paul Pecqueur, and Mihaela Moscaliuc)
6-8
ACA Galleries 529 W. 20th St., 5th Floor
NYC
Free with free wine and snacks

January 29th
Emory University
What’s New in Poetry Series
(with Stacey Lynn Brown and Jenny Sadre-Orafai)
Location TBA
free
8 pm

February 10
The Naked Truth Readings
(With Darcie Dennigan)
The Art Institute of Boston
Library Reading room
7pm free

February 24th
The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church
(With John Koethe)
131 E. 10th St. New York NY 10003
8 dollars non-members, 7 dollars students, 5 dollars or free for members
8 pm

Febuary 27th .
Chapterhouse Café
(with two other readers)
620 S. 9th St (between South & Bainbridge)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
8 p.m

Sherman Alexie's Books Top 4 out of 5 for the Decade on SPD.

2009-12-23T10:21:00.001-05:00

See link.
http://www.spdbooks.org/pages/bestsellers/poetry/poetry-bestsellers-september/Poetry-Bestsellers-Archive.aspx

Hanging Loose Authors Reading at the Poetry Project on New Year's Day

2009-12-18T15:55:00.002-05:00

36th Annual New Year’s Day Marathon Benefit Reading

January 1, 2010
2:00 pm The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church 131 E. 10th Street, NYC (Note HL authors are in bold)

Note Donna Brook and Robert Hershon will be reading between 4 and 5

Poets and performers this year include Ammiel Alcalay, Bruce Andrews & Sally Silvers, Penny Arcade, Arthur’s Landing, Ari Banias, Jim Behrle, Charles Bernstein, Anselm Berrigan, Edmund Berrigan, Ana Bozicevic, Donna Brook, Michael Brownstein, Franklin Bruno, Tyler Burba, Peter Bushyeager, Reuben Butchart, Callers, Steve Cannon, Yoshiko Chuma, Church Of Betty, Michael Cirelli, Todd Colby, John Coletti, CAConrad, Cori Copp, Brenda Coultas, Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle, Mónica de la Torre, Mina Pam Dick, Steve Dalachinsky, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Maggie Dubris, Douglas Dunn, Marcella Durand, Steve Earle, Will Edmiston, Joe Elliot, Christine Elmo, Laura Elrick, Maggie Estep, Avram Fefer, Jess Fiorini, Corrine Fitzpatrick, Foamola, David Freeman, Ed Friedman, Greg Fuchs, Joanna Fuhrman, Cliff Fyman, Kelly Ginger, Pepi Ginsberg, John Giorno, Philip Glass, John Godfrey, Toby Goodshank, Nada Gordon & Gary Sullivan, Stephanie Gray, Tim Griffin, Miguel Gutierrez, John S. Hall, Diana Hamilton, Janet Hamill, Robert Hershon, Tony Hoffman, Eddie Hopely, Lisa Jarnot, Paolo Javier, Patricia Spears Jones, Pierre Joris, Adeena Karasick, Erica Kaufman, Lenny Kaye, John Kelly, Aaron Kiely, David Kirschenbaum, Bill Kushner & Merle Lister, Susan Landers, Joan Larkin, Dorothea Lasky, Denizé Lauture, Joel Lewis, Brendan Lorber, Michael Lydon, Kim Lyons, Dan Machlin & Serena Jost, Filip Marinovich, Chris Martin, Gillian McCain, Legs McNeil, Tracey McTague, Taylor Mead, Jonas Mekas, Sharon Mesmer, David Mills, Rebecca Moore, Tracie Morris, Will Morris, Eileen Myles, Jess Mynes, Elinor Nauen, Murat Nemat-Nejat, Jim Neu, Geoffrey Olsen, Dael Orlandersmith, Richard O’Russa, Yuko Otomo, Gary Parrish, Simon Pettet, Nicole Peyrafitte & Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Kristin Prevallet, Brett Price, Arlo Quint, Elizabeth Reddin, Evelyn Reilly, Citizen Reno, Renato Rosaldo, Bob Rosenthal, Douglas Rothschild, Tom Savage, Michael Scharf, David Shapiro, Frank Sherlock, Elliott Sharp, Nathaniel Siegel, Christopher Stackhouse, Stacy Szymaszek, Anne Tardos, Susie Timmons, Edwin Torres, Rodrigo Toscano, Tony Towle, David Vogen, Nicole Wallace, Lewis Warsh, Phyllis Wat, Karen Weiser, Simone White, Emily XYZ, Don Yorty, Rachel Zolf, Magdalena Zurawski & more t.b.a.

This event will be held in the Sanctuary. General admission $18, Students & Seniors $15, Members $10.

William Corbett Reading at the Poetry Project

2009-12-18T15:53:00.002-05:00

William Corbett & Jonas Mekas

January 20, 2010
8:00 pm The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church 131 E. 10th Street, NYC

Wednesday

William Corbett is a poet living in Boston’s South End. He teaches writing at MIT, directs the small press Pressed Wafer and is on the advisory board of Manhattan’s CUE Art Foundation. He edited James Schuyler’s letters and his book on Philip Guston’s late work remains in print. His recent books of poetry are Poems On Occasion (Pressed Wafer) and Opening Day (Hanging Loose Press.)

Filmmaker and poet Jonas Mekas was born in 1922 in Semeniskiai, Lithuania. He has been one of the leading figures of American avant-garde filmmaking or the “New American Cinema,” as he dubbed it in the late ’50s, playing various roles: in 1954, he became editor and chief of Film Culture; in 1958 he began writing his “Movie Journal” column for the Village Voice; in 1962 he co-founded the Film- Makers’ Cooperative (FMC) and the Filmmakers’ Cinematheque in 1964, which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives, one of the world’s largest and most important repositories of avant-garde films. His own output ranging from narrative films (Guns of the Trees, 1961) to documentaries (the Brig, 1963) and to “diaries” such as Walden (1969) and As I was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2001) have been screened extensively at festivals and museums around the world. His latest book To Petrarca is published by Dis Voir. A one man show of his mixed media works will open later this spring at Serpentine Gallery, London. Visit his website for more!

Great Review of Hanging Loose Magazine in newpages

2009-12-15T10:39:00.002-05:00

http://www.newpages.com/magazinestand/litmags/

Alexie to Re-Visit Colbert Report

2009-12-01T11:20:00.002-05:00

Sherman Alexie will make a repeat visit to The Colbert Report on December 1. The show will air that night on Comedy Central and is shown again the following evening. On his first visit, last year, Sherman more than held his own—at one point, Colbert just put his head down on the table, laughing—so he (Sherman) expects Colbert to be more than ready for him this time.
http://www.colbertnation.com/home

Terence Winch's Stint as Poet-in-Residence

2009-11-05T13:53:00.003-05:00

Terence Winch, author of Boy Drinkers and That Special Place, is doing a stint as poet-in-residence for the high schools of Howard County, Maryland, during which he visits all 14 high schools in the county; he's done 6 so far and has enthusiastically promoted HL magazine (and the high school anthologies) to the students and their teachers. The Baltimore Sun did a piece on his high school visits:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/howard/bal-ho.neighbors01nov01,0,2671202.story

Mort Marcus Dies

2009-11-02T09:22:00.003-05:00

On another sad note, Mort Marcus, author of When People Could Fly, published by HL has also passed away. Here is the obituary.

Poet Morton Marcus dies at 73

By WALLACE BAINE
MediaNews
Updated: 10/29/2009 01:38:11 AM PDT

Poet Morton Marcus in his Santa Cruz home in 2006.
Morton Marcus, one of Santa Cruz's most prominent literary figures, died Wednesday at his home after a long battle with renal cancer. He was 73.
Marcus leaves a legacy of influence in at least three separate spheres. He was an internationally recognized poet, having published 10 books of poetry. He was a celebrated film critic and historian. And, for 30 years, he was a mainstay on the English Department faculty at Cabrillo College in Aptos.

A former Santa Cruz County Artist of the Year (1999), Marcus just last year published his 500-plus-page memoir "Striking Through the Masks," which served as both autobiography and re-evaluation of poets and writers of his generation. His final book of poems, "The Dark Figure in the Doorway," is slated for 2010 release.

"He was larger than life," said Santa Cruz poet Joe Stroud, who knew Marcus for more than 40 years. "Mort loved nothing more than to have a meal and to have a conversation. I think of him as a conductor almost, eating and drinking and driving the conversation this way and that. It was an unforgettable experience."

Marcus' fingerprints are everywhere in Santa Cruz literary circles. He led a free-wheeling film discussion group twice a month at the Nickelodeon, up to his last days. He was the co-host of a popular public-access TV program on film called "Cinema Scene." Until recently, he hosted KUSP's "Poetry Show." And he influenced hundreds of students over the years at Cabrillo College.

Marcus was born and raised in New York City. As he outlined in "Masks," his early life was a time of severe emotional trauma. His father left when he was 3, and Marcus was shuttled back and forth between boarding schools, between bouts of watching his mother endure abuse at the hands of a stepfather.
"He began his life in such an unpromising way, with so many strikes against him," said Mark Ong, a long-time friend and student who helped design many of Marcus' books. "It's a real testament to what was inside him that he became the man he did. I used to call him up and say, 'Why are you not insane?'"

After a youthful flirtation with boxing and a stint in the Air Force, Marcus came to California in the early 1960s, and to Santa Cruz in 1968.

"When Mort came to Santa Cruz, there was no poetry scene whatsoever," said Stroud. "He developed the reading series at Cabrillo and in various restaurants and bookstores, bringing such poets as Vasko Popa, Michael McClure and Al Young among many others."

He began publishing in the 1960s and achieved a wide readership with his volume "The Santa Cruz Mountain Poems," which, said Stroud, seemed to capture a distinct back-to-nature essence of the period.

"Mort was a master of so many different kinds of poetry. Lyric poetry, comic, cosmic, prose poetry. In fact, during the last part of his career, he really became one of the finest in the world at prose poems."

At Cabrillo, where he also served as the president of the Teacher's Union, Marcus was known as a great lecturer, and those public speaking skills carried over in his discussions at the Nickelodeon, which attracted a loyal core audience for years. He traveled widely, reading his poetry in workshops and serving as poet in residence at universities across the country.

In his later years, he wrote poetry, translated work from the Serbian poet Vasko Popa, and composed a libretto for an opera. He also helped edit a history of the Croatians in the Pajaro Valley written by his wife Donna Mekis and his sister-in-law Kathryn Mekis Miller.

"Mort was a giant, loving intellect where you could have rich, very in depth discussions about almost any subject," said longtime friend George Ow Jr. "If you wanted to discuss any movie subject, Chinese poetry over the last 3,000 years, Greek and Roman mythology, hiking paths of Greece and Crete, best places to stay in Prague or Croatia, the history of Cabrillo College, New York City baseball, the San Francisco 49ers or anything else, you would have a good time and learn a lot."

Mark Ong said that Marcus, both as a teacher and a friend, demanded excellence but recognized the difficulty in achieving it.

"He was a person of integrity and great dignity and lived what he espoused," said Ong. "(His was) a life of inquiry, a life of rigor, a life devoted to excellence."

"He was a man of incredible energy," said Stroud. "He had enormous passions and he pursued them with zeal. He lived the life of the mind, and he lived the life of the heart as well."

Albert York Dies

2009-11-02T09:10:00.002-05:00

HL is sad to announce that Albert York, cover artist for Hanging Loose 94, has died. Here is the obit from The New York Times.

Albert York, a painter of small, mysterious landscapes who shunned the art world yet had a fervent following within it, died Tuesday in Southampton, N.Y. He was 80 and lived in Water Mill, N.Y.

Roy Davis

Mr. York in 1989.

Enlarge This Image

Davis & Langdale

Albert York's “Porch Bench With Seated Figure,” around 1967.

The cause was cancer, said Cecily Langdale of Davis & Langdale, the gallery that, first as Davis Galleries and later as Davis & Long Company, has represented him since 1963.

In a 1995 New Yorker magazine profile of Mr. York, Calvin Tomkins said he was perhaps “the most highly admired unknown artist in America.” He described a shy man who avoided anyone connected to the art world, who worked slowly and who was perpetually dissatisfied with his work, prone to scraping down his wood panels and starting over.

Ms. Langdale said Mr. York usually wrapped his paintings in brown paper and mailed them to the gallery. She said that when one arrived, unannounced and “practically still wet,” she often felt that Mr. York “had to get it out of the house in order not to destroy it.”

Rarely measuring more than 12 inches on a side, Mr. York’s paintings evoke a world in which time and art seem to stand still or even move backward through history. His trees had the symmetry of those in Renaissance paintings. His images of a single cow or dog evoked the manner of Dutch or English painters. His occasional figures might be robed or turbaned as in earlier times, or accompanied by a skeleton signaling life’s brevity. He frequently zeroed in on small vases of flowers, recalling late Manet, and even went so far as to do his own rendition of Manet’s “Olympia.”

But his paintings’ geometric simplicity, flatness of form and workmanlike brushwork exuded a quiet modernity, as did their wholeness of composition and feeling. In the catalog to a 1975 York exhibition at Davis & Long, the critic and painter Fairfield Porter wrote, “Certainly part of the strong emotional appeal of these paintings” is that Mr. York “is not clever, and in no sense superior to the nature of his medium or the nature of the subject, but that he is at one with both.”

Albert Edward York was born in Detroit in 1928. His parents were not married, and he was raised by his father but lived mostly in boarding schools and foster homes while his father worked as an electroplater in the automobile industry. In his teens he lived with an aunt and uncle in Belleville, Ontario. He studied at the Ontario College of Art and then at the Society of Arts and Crafts in Detroit; after serving in the Army during the Korean War, he moved to New York in 1952.

He studied briefly with Raphael Soyer until Mr. York’s life was taken over by odd jobs and he stopped painting altogether. Things eased in 1957, when he found a steady job as a gilder with Robert Kulicke, the innovative frame maker who died in 2007 and was also a still life painter.

Mr. York returned to painting in earnest in 1960, after four months spent in France with Virginia Mann Caldwell, whom he had met at a loft party in 1959, and her two children. They married later that year. He is survived by his wife; two stepchildren, Jonathan Caldwell of Santa Fe, N.M., and Kristin Caldwell of Carlisle, Pa.; and four step-grandchildren.

In 1962 he reluctantly showed his paintings to Mr. Kulicke, who enthusiastically recommended them to Roy Davis, Mr. Kulicke’s art school friend and business partner, whose small gallery began as a showroom for Kulicke Frames. Mr. York had his first exhibition at the Davis Galleries in 1963 and his last (at Davis & Langdale) in 2007, for a total of 16 exhibitions there. Because Mr. York worked so slowly, some paintings were exhibited repeatedly, but that seemed to fit Mr. York’s sense of time.

He painted only about 200 to 250 works in his lifetime. Most are in private collections and museums. A rare auction of his work took place after the death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who owned six of his paintings.

Mr. York and his family moved to the East End of Long Island in the early 1960s, and he earned money painting houses and doing rough carpentry; financial need was an important incentive to make paintings. When his mother, who he had been told was dead, reappeared in his life in the early 1970s and set up a trust fund for him, he worked even more slowly.

Mr. York had a small solo show at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., in 1993, and his paintings appeared in numerous group exhibitions, about which Mr. Davis kept him uninformed for fear he might refuse to participate. In 1989, when the critic and curator Klaus Kertess organized an exhibition of landscape paintings by Jane Freilicher, April Gornik and Mr. York at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, he did so without meeting Mr. York and was never sure if he even saw the show, since no one knew what he looked like.

Ms. Langdale said Mr. York did go to the show with her and Mr. Davis; she took a rare photograph of him on the occasion. In his New Yorker article, Mr. Tomkins wrote that after seeing his work at the Parrish, Mr. York said he was “pretty upset about what I’d been doing for these last years.”

Robert Kulicke offered an explanation in the New Yorker piece: “What Al doesn’t understand is that in art you never hit what you’re aiming at, but the difference may not be downward.”

Sherman Alexie Reading from FACE on News Hour

2009-10-23T11:42:00.002-04:00

Sherman Alexie was on News Hour on Thursday October 22nd reading poems from his new collection of poetry, Face.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/entertainment/poetry/profiles/poet_alexie.htm

Congratulations to Rackstraw Downes

2009-08-27T15:46:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Rackstraw Downes who won a 2009 MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship.
http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.5458009/k.8D03/Rackstraw_Downes.htm
Rackstraw's work was featured in Hanging Loose 89.

Liz Swados and Robert Hershon on the Radio

2009-06-17T12:08:00.001-04:00

The program will be live on WBAI 99.5 FM on 6/22/09, streaming live at www.wbai.org, archived for 90 days at www.wbai.org and archived forever at www.catradiocafe.com.

News from Arnold Mesches

2009-06-17T12:05:00.002-04:00

Arnold Mesches, FBI Files, has been awarded an HONORARY DOCTORATE by the University of Florida.

Congratulations to Jen Hadfield

2009-01-20T10:08:00.000-05:00

Scottish poet Jen Hadfield, who was published in Hanging Loose 79 & 82 and in the anthology Word Jig: New Fiction from Scotland, has won the most prestigious British poetry prize, the T. S. Eliot Award. Congratulations Jen.

From the Independent

Rising Star: Jen Hadfield, poet

By Katy Guest
Friday, 16 January 2009

As the youngest winner of the T S Eliot Prize, at 30, Jen Hadfield is also a relative newcomer. The £15,000 cheque that she collected on Monday has previously been awarded to Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy and Ted Hughes – though never to Andrew Motion, the chair of this year's judges.

Announcing her win, Motion described Hadfield's poetry collection, 'Nigh-No-Place', as "a revelation; jaunty, energetic, iconoclastic – even devil-may-care". Born in Cheshire, with an English father and a Canadian mother, Hadfield studied English at Edinburgh University, where she worked with the novelist and poet Robert Allan Jamieson.

In 2002 she received a Scottish Arts Council Writer's Bursary, and in 2003 she won an Eric Gregory Award which she used to fund a year in Canada. Four years ago she moved to Shetland, a place and dialect which informs much of her poetry. A stint in a fish-packing factory to makes ends meet resulted in a poem about haddock and their "gut worms".

Sherman Alexie Is Small Press Month Posterboy

2009-01-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

We're very proud to announce Sherman Alexie is the posterboy for Small Press Month. As some of you may already know, Hanging Loose was the first to publish Alexie in our magazine and published his first book, The Business of Fancydancing. Since then he has gone on to publish many books, has made two movies and won numerous awards for his work, including the National Book Award which he won last year. He has remained loyal to Hanging Loose Press and continued to publish all his books of poetry with us, including Face which will be out in April of this year (2009). His other books The Business of Fancydancing, First Indian on the Moon, Summer of Black Widows, One Stick Song and The Business of Fancydancing: The Screenplay are all available from Hanging Loose Press. His website is www.shermanalexie.com.

Michael Cirelli Is One of the Debut Poets in Poets & Writers This Month

2008-12-17T10:33:00.000-05:00

Please check out POETS & WRITERS this month. Michael Cirelli (LOBSTER WITH OL' DIRTY BASTARD is one of the twelve debut poets.

HL Authors Receive NEA

2008-12-05T15:28:00.000-05:00

We're proud to announce Hayan Charara (ALCHEMIST'S DIARY) and Doug Goetsch (NOBODY'S HELL) are both recipients of an NEA this year.

Review of Hanging Loose 92 in HOME PLANET NEWS

2008-11-06T15:17:00.000-05:00

"Hanging Loose has been around since 1966, a long time for a small press, and it's still feisty. This 92nd issue contains 8 pages of full color art by Brenda Goodman, and its poetry covers the gamut from free verse to hip hop to haiku. Marya Rosenberg, a 2nd Liutenant in the U.S. Army, has a knockout haiku/senryu sequence. Here's one: "In his pocket/ when I press against him--the hard/ iron key to the church." Michael Cirelli deploys a souped up language out on the verbal dance floor, catching the beat on the fly, for those who like to get high and jam to a blast of mouth music. There's no dictionary yet for some of these dictions. For those interested in the Sixties--it's been 40 years since '68 folks--there's an eyewitness account, "Columbia Revolt," by Hilton Obenzinger, a participant who puts together a time capsule in prose. The Writers of High School Age section is always a feature of special interest. Look at the poems by these young women: Mariah Coley, Thea Goodrich, Emily Nagin, Bridget Hansen, Elizabeth Rosen, Hannah Zeavin. If there were a Jack Alchemy Prize for verbal skills it would go to all of the above. Educators take note. Hanging Loose Press has published three collections of High School poets. For content, format, and production values, Hanging Loose earns a shower of Brooklyn stars."

Announcing Spring 2009 Titles!

2008-10-16T14:19:00.000-04:00

POETRY

Face, Sherman Alexie. Hardcover: ISBN 978-1-931236-71-3, $28. Paperback: ISBN 978-1-931236-70-6, $18. April 15, 2009. First poetry collection in nine years by the recent National Book Award winner.

The One and Only Human Galaxy, Elizabeth Swados. Hardcover: ISBN 978-1-934909-08-9, $28. Paperback: ISBN 978-1-934909-07-2, $18. April 15, 2009. The first book of poetry by the celebrated composer, novelist and children’s book author.

On the Imperial Highway: New and Selected Poems, Jayne Cortez. Hardcover: ISBN 978-1-931236-99-7, $28. Paperback: ISBN 978-1-931236-90-4, $18. April 29, 2009. Hard-hitting new work and previously hard-to-find early poems.

Getting Lost in a City Like This, Jack Anderson. Hardcover: ISBN 978-1-931236-98-0, $28. Paperback: ISBN 978-1-931236-97-3, $18. April 29, 2008. First new book in ten years by the well-known New York poet and dance critic.

If the Delta Was the Sea, Dick Lourie. Hardcover: ISBN 978-1-934909-02-7, $28. Paperback: ISBN 978-1-934909-01-0, $18. May 5, 2009. Poems of the Mississippi Delta by the author of Ghost Radio who is also a busy musician.

Complete Lineups, Charles North. Paperback: ISBN 978-1-934909-03-4, $18. May 5, 2009. The legendary baseball lineup poems together for the first time, with art by Paula North.

Circa, Hannah Zeavin. Paperback: ISBN 978-1-934909-09-6, $16. May 12, 2009. A high-energy debut by an 18-year-old Brooklyn poet. Co-published with Scholastic.

Hanging Loose 92 Review in NewPages!

2008-10-14T10:44:00.000-04:00

Here is a look at NewPage's review of Hanging Loose 92:

On Sherman Alexie's two opening poems

"Quoting a section [from Alexie] won't give him justice. Read these poems, cry (from sadness and laughter), and know that Alexie still recognizes, despite his fame, that good poetry demands attention and vulnerability to the world."

On the featured prose

"I thought Helen Elaine Lee's prose poem, 'Life Without,' extremely compelling, for she makes the reader pity prisoners without relying on false sentimentality."

On the magazine's featured high-school-age writers

"This section, along with the entire magazine, demonstrate's Hanging Loose's sincere interest in new and emerging writers."

To see the review in its entirety, please visit http://www.newpages.com/magazinestand/litmags/default.htm

Recent Publicity for New Titles

2008-08-22T14:01:00.000-04:00

WINTER JOURNEY by Tony Towle

"His style bears the hallmark of total engagement. The exciting pacing builds on unexpected projections that are sly, wry and winsome. And comely."—Brooklyn Rail
For full review:
http://brooklynrail.org/2008/02/books/poetry-roundup-2

Tony Towle in poetrydaily.com
http://poetrydaily.org/poem.php?date=13929

In Bloomsbury Review written by Regan Upshaw:
"...striking...poignant...His [Towle's] feelings are amplified in this book by the underlying awareness that his own journey is now entering winter. Through it all, Towle maintains a jaunty bleakness, as befits the recipient of 'an enriching barrage of astonishing perceptions/with which to illuminate the abyss'."

THE SPLINTERED FACE: TSUNAMI POEMS by Indran Amirtanayagam

"...Amirthanayagam's poems achieve a devastating intimacy that necessarily dissolves the separation between countries and peoples."

For full review go to: http://www.bookslut.com/poetry/2008_02_012487.php

"In more ways than one...'The Splintered Face' is revelatory."—Island Newspaper, Sri Lanka

"The sheer enormity of the destruction and misery wrought by an event such as the 2004 tsunami has the potential to overwhelm art created about it. A writer could flounder in emotionalism and generalizations, ironically blunting the emotional impact of the work. But Amirthanayagam avoids these pitfalls, largely by adopting a reportorial approach, and his poems are all the more poignant for their specificity."

For full review go to: http://www.iexaminer.org/archives/?p=962

TRAPEZE DIARIES by Marie Carter

“Marie Carter…has real talent…I think we all need to keep our eyes on this imaginative, bold woman’s writing. I predict she may well have a bright literary future.”
www.curledup.com
For the full review go to:
http://curledup.com/trapezed.htm

“A young woman, quiet and overly cautious, with a literary bent, who finds herself newly transplanted from Scotland to the Naked City of New York, comes to terms with herself and the recent death of her father….Her fears and doubts have been and are very much my own, and may I dare say, perhaps yours?…A wonderful read. Highly recommended.”
—Doug Holder
For full review go to:
http://dougholder.blogspot.com/search/label/Holder%20on%20Trapeze

"The Trapeze Diaries...is filled with honesty on every page...."
SPECTACLE, Winter 2008

Selected for the Foreword Magazine Book Club in April. Go to forewordmagazine.com to make a comment.

THE VIRGIN FORMICA by Sharon Memser

"During a recent visit to New York City a kind friend asked me if I had read any exciting works of poetry lately. Oh yes, I enthused, naming quite a few written by the West Coast-based poets I know best. She was astounded to hear that Sharon Mesmer's THE VIRGIN FORMICA had not made its way into my hands yet, and she rose from the Bowery bench on which we were eating lunch, to find a bookstore and to buy me a copy of the Mesmer book.

Together we found the book and on my way home I had myself a quick lesson in "Mesmerism." Part of her appeal is her wry, suggestive tone, an extraordinarily intimate instrument she handles with the precision of a surgeon.

A surrealist or at any rate fantastic element imbues the whole...her enthusiasm and her skeptic eye just sweep you off your feet. Anyway all in all, it was a highly profitable trip to New York."

Kevin Killian, excerpted review on amazon.com

Andrei Codrescu in EXQUISITE CORPSE

Sharon Mesmer, The Virgin Formica, New York: Hanging Loose Press. Allen Ginsberg called Mesmer "vivaciously modern," which we misread as "viciously modern." She is, totally. For instance: "Okay, I was loose/foundering even,/a drifting archipelago of estrogen and cigarettes/in the glow of the southern eroticc gardens." If we had only known her then!

P.J. Gallo on coldfrontmag.com

"...Mesmer's voice plainly offers a raw and often refreshing sense of uncompromised subversion along with moments of sweet nostalgia."
Full review: http://reviews.coldfrontmag.com/the-virgin-formica.html

"Prolific, Veteran, and multi-lingual poet Sharon Mesmer returns with another fine anthology of poetry with "The Virgin Formica," a collection of surreal and vividly composed poetry. Both personal and witty, her poetry is gripping and will keep you asking for more."--The Midwest Book Review

THE EVOLUTION OF A SIGH by R. Zamora Linmark

See http://www.bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/ for an interview with R. Zamora Linmark

LOBSTER WITH OL' DIRTY BASTARD by Michael Cirelli

"The poems in Lobster with Ol' Dirty Bastard stand powerfully on their own as precise and complete pieces of writing. As a collection, they weave a complex and fascinating story that is equal parts witty and poignant, and at every moment compelling."—Erica Miriam Fabri in Coldfrontmag

For full review go to: http://reviews.coldfrontmag.com/emlobster-with-ol-dirty-b.html

"Cirelli is on a gangsta lean in a baby Benz blasting old school, riding the seemingly safe daytime streets of craft-poetry, then turning down those dark alleys where the tension and bravado are thick like '...machetes in the air waves.' Cirelli definitely makes it with the Hip-hop heads with his rap culture overtones.... Lobster is an all-night convenience store of lyrical goodies with no fluff in sight. Lobster is also a consignment shop of Hip-hop history."—Mike Amado

For full review go to: http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2008/05/lobster-with-ol-dirty-bastard-by_21.html

"...the use of modern street language, often edgy, always colorful, will appeal to the reader that most poetry never reaches...these pieces are built on strong images...the backbones of poetic language."--Kliatt

Yes! Sharon Nails the Fulbright Vault!

2008-08-07T12:52:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Sharon Mesmer (author of THE VIRGIN FORMICA) who just won a Fulbright and to her husband, David Borchart for publishing yet another hilarious cartoon in THE NEW YORKER!

In the NY Times

2008-07-21T16:06:00.000-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/books/review/InsideList-t.html?_r=1&8bu&emc=bu&oref=slogin

BIG LITTLE BOOKS: America’s best-selling indie poetry book, according to Small Press Distribution, a nonprofit distributor that represents books by some 450 small publishers, is Aram Saroyan’s crafty “Complete Minimal Poems.” The list below, from the S.P.D. Web site (www.spdbooks.org), reflects sales in March and April.

1) “Complete Minimal Poems,” by Aram Saroyan (Ugly Duckling).
2) “Poeta en San Francisco,” by Barbara Jane Reyes (Tinfish).
3) “All That’s Left,” by Jack Hirschman (City Lights).
4) “You Are a Little Bit Happier Than I Am,” by Tao Lin (Action).
5) “The True Keeps Calm Biding Its Story,” by Rusty Morrison (Ahsahta).
6) “Lobster With Ol’ Dirty Bastard,” by Michael Cirelli (Hanging Loose).
7) “The Evolution of a Sigh,” by R. Zamora Linmark (Hanging Loose).
8) “Lyric Postmodernisms,” edited by Reginald Shepherd (Counterpath).
9) “Incubation: A Space for Monsters,” by Bhanu Kapil (Leon Works).
10) “Underwater Lengths in a Single Breath,” by Benjamin S. Grossman (Ashland Poetry).

Mark Pawlak's Tribute to Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel

2008-07-02T11:02:00.000-04:00

Hanging Loose editor, Mark Pawlak's tribute to HL author Wilma McDaniel can
be read in the latest issue of The Dos Passos Review.

"Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, 1918-2007: An Editors Appreciation" appears in

The Dos Passos Review
Volume 5, Number 1

$8.00 including shipping and handling from

The Dos Passos Review
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