Hold onto something! HURRICANE MOUTH is here!

Hold on to your hats this breezy month of April, because Hurricane Mouth is here!

NightBallet Press continues to celebrate and honor National Poetry Month by publishing a second chapbook in as many weeks, and we are enormously proud to present
Hurricane Mouth by Amanda Oaks!

Hurricane Mouth is a 40 page chapbook of 25 poems by Pennsylvanian poet Amanda Oaks.  Oaks is the founding editor of Words Dance Publishing, and her work has appeared widely, including in Dressing Room Poetry Journal, Glamour, Elle, and Artful Blogging.  Check out her website at AmandaOaks.com, and her publishing at WordsDance.com! 

 

photo (c) Casey Rearick, used with permission

     

  Amanda Oaks at Snoetry 4 in Cleveland, Ohio 2014  

          

Oaks "believes in our collective & creative freedom & enjoys laughing more than most anything."  Her beautiful spirit shines throughout the 25 fascinating and accomplished poems in  Hurricane Mouth.  In "How to Pick Up the Pieces", she writes

You will outgrow this.  You are lion's
teeth.  You are medicine tongue.
Your roots are resilience.  When
you have your heart under a
magnifying glass the only thing
left to do is sing for the sun &
light yourself on fire.  Be ready
for the next good gust but
remember that you are not
a candle.  You are not a match.
You are a goddamn wildfire.

 

 

The text of Hurricane Mouth is printed on soft, brilliant-white paper, and the cover is a textured ivory cardstock with a sandstone brown cardstock insert.  The cover art features a photograph of a fragment of a much larger beautiful and highly unusual mosaic created by Cleveland artist Colleen Fraser. Check out the entire mosaic at Stone Mad Pub, 1306 W. 65th Street, Cleveland, Ohio!  Permission to use the mosaic art was graciously granted by Eileen Sammon, co-owner of Stone Mad Pub.

Get Hurricane Mouth and be blown away by its amazing poetry!  Buy Hurricane Mouth through PayPal right here on this website, or order it on Amazon! 

 

 

Let There Be Light...Let There Be Lumière!

To kick off this glorious National Poetry Month of April,  NightBallet Press is pleased to present Lumière, a brand new book of poems by New York surrealist poet John Thomas Allen!

 

 

 

Lumière, a 56 page book, contains 40 poems that are, in the poet's words, "a hybrid of orthodox surrealism and spiritual transcendence".  Of Allen's work, it has been said:
"The soul is conscious in this new voice, and John wears a rosary around his neck. Real as Albany, his infra-surrealism is growing and growling."

David Shapiro, author of David Shapiro: New and Collected Poems, Abstract Expressionism

“The work of John Thomas Allen reflects a mature, distinct and unique poetic voice.  There is an unusual courage of insight and clarity into what many of us would rather look away from.  Enjoy this young poet’s itinerant voice.”

Julian Semilian, author of  Osiris with a Trombone Across the Seam of Insubstance, Transgender Organ Grinder

John Thomas Allen, a 30 year old poet from upstate New York, is the head of a group of poets called "Noveau's Midnight Sun" inspired by the work of Andrew Joron, Philip Lamantia, David Shapiro, Adam Francis Cornford, Lee Ballentine, John Olson, and Will Alexander.  His previous chapbook The Other Guy is avail from Amazon and Crisis Chronicles Press.

One of this editor's favorite poems in Lumière is "The Virgin Is Burning Under the Sign of the Hourglass":

The Virgin Is Burning Under the Sign of the Hourglass
 —for Philip Lamantia

In the hourglass
her waistband undone
In the earthquake her hands
clap above ground wax cartoon gloves
In a gold sepia dream she is spinning
In wax oysters spat red with hue she is turning
In the aeons of the dying swans skirt is the timekeeper
In the chambers of a child's handgun
she turns
In the hourglass she burns a cap of midnight vapor she steals it
In the clown's silver eyes she turns the lock
In the magnet balls she gyrates Salve
Salve a twinkletoe geometry is born
In the skirt of basketball nets she crochets new diamond
Salve the Virgin Burns
In the Sign of the Hourglass Breaking
Salve the hexes of a lonely werewolf's cry she turns the volubles
She spins in the moon pale with corduroy buttons
in the clown's funeral suit
She burns in vignettes of black sand and deep purple smoke machines
Salve, combustus in bytes of chiaroscuro
Salve, moonlight maiden she locks the lunar hatchets in the dead yo yo
Salve, combustible maiden!


Lumière is printed on creamy textured soft white paper, and has a matching creamy textured cardstock cover.  The thick cardstock insert is a deep chocolate brown. 

Lumière is available for only $10 plus $4 shipping and handling, through PayPal here on the NightBallet Press website, and also on Amazon.  I just know that Salvador Dali would be standing in line for this surrealist Voice.  Get your copy today!