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Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Debut of Prayerbook Bouquet by Zachary Fishel!

This past weekend, the mega-event Snoetry Three and a Half rocked Erie, PA with two days and nights of poetic revelry.  Poets from various states gathered at the Poets' Hall, where emcee and cohost Cee Williams kept the poetry ball rolling with well over 50 features and open micers.  Lix & Kix (John Burroughs and Dianne Borsenik) cohosted with Cee, and an outstanding time was had by all!

And one of those moments that really stands out for this editor is the moment Zachary Fishel walked in the door of the Poets' Hall.  Beneath my seat was a box of chapbooks for Zach.  When a moment presented itself, we exchanged greetings and I presented him with his brand new chap, Prayerbook Bouquet, published that very day... 01-26-13!



Prayerbook Bouquet by Pennsylvanian/Ohioan Zach Fishel is a 24-page chapbook bristling with a bouquet of poetic gleanings.  Poet John Dorsey wrote an introduction - or, in the themed design of the book, an invocation - which states "These poems about love, disappointment and youthful abandon offer the reader tiny moments of joy and quiet revelations.  He is...making it a little safer to go into coffeeshops again...."

The front cover of Prayerbook Bouquet features a great photograph taken by Kathy Smith of her husband Steven B. Smith's hands. 

Fishel's fifteen short-but-exquisitely crafted poems are bracketed by Dorsey's invocation, and the photographical benediction taken by Chandra Alderman:

 

                                  

Alderman's photo features her daughter's hands, and as you move through the poems in the chap, you remember we were all children once upon a time, and that, in Zach Fishel's words from his poem "Telephone Calls About a Sandwich",

"we remember what breathing is...as we unlearn catastrophes"

Prayerbook Bouquet is printed on creamy ivory paper, with a white textured cardstock cover.  The heavy cardstock insert is a leather-textured chocolate brown.  The real beauty in this garden bursts forth from the poems; there are no weeds between the covers.  At only $5 plus $3 shipping/handling, how can you resist digging in?