Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Hot Hot Hot: ARSON by John Reinhart!

We are on a HOT streak here at NightBallet Press, and we don't mean the outside temperature (although it has been in the nineties this past week)...we mean poetry books that will set your mind aflame!

It's Independence Day, and we have a firecracker offering for you:
NightBallet is extremely pleased to announce the publication of Arson by John Reinhart!

 


Arson is a stand-out collection of poems that explores the themes of light and enlightenment, heat and ignition, in varying ways. The cover is printed on a light brown card stock, with visually exciting cover art - "Skeleton" - by Kevin Eberhart. The thick card stock insert is - of course - hot red. The book contains thirty-three poems on forty-four pages, printed on crisp cream-colored paper.

"I'm busy" is one of the editor's personal favorites among the special poems in this book:
 
I’m busy
                                                                                                                 
 
writing a manifesto
for the Second Coming
and, Jesus Christ,

it’s too dramatic –
I mean, I could do without
all the fire and brimstone,
the wailing and gnashing –
let’s substitute some wood-fired
pizza, eaten around the hearthstone
in an alpine lodge while the Wailin’ Jennys
perform while the crowds nosh –
maybe the original plans were misunderstood,
maybe the Author had just taken a big bite
from a peanut butter sandwich –
on second thought, let’s just
scrap the whole thing. The end
of days doesn’t need a fucking manifesto
or roadmap or bullet-pointed agenda. Just let it
come, blow holes through our socks,
rattle the window panes, and disrupt
our Scrabble games, playing Johnny Cash songs
at top volume while lightning and thunder
and volcanoes erupt like pyrotechnics –
I’ll write the grocery list:
beer, cookies.




 

Perpetually sharpening his fiddle at the crossroads, John Reinhart is an arsonist, father of three, and poet. He was born in Denver, which suffered major fires in the 1860s, leading city officials to change building code standards. A long distance admirer of Herodotus and William Butler Yeats, he has encouraged his children to play with matches from an early age.

The recipient of the 2016 Horror Writers Association Dark Poetry Scholarship, he's won the Poetry Nook Weekly Contest and has been a Pushcart, Elgin, Rhysling, and Dwarf Stars awards nominee. His work ranges from fantastical to experimental, and has been published in Pedestal Magazine, Holy Shit!, Fleurs du Mal, Liquid Imagination, Popshot, Better Than Starbucks, and many others, various anthologies, and across seven collections of poetry. Find his work at http://home.hampshire.edu/~jcr00/reinhart.html, and on social media.

Arson is the fourteenth and final book in NightBallet's seventh season (year) of publishing vital, contemporary, exciting poetry. The new season - our eighth - will begin in late August/early September, with ten manuscripts in hand and scheduled for publication so far. Thank you to all who have been a part of the past seven amazing seasons!

Arson is only 12 dollars plus 3 dollars shipping/handling (USA customers only; all others, please email the editor at nightballetpress@gmail.com for information on shipping charges.) Come, celebrate the Fourth of July with us and order a copy of Arson today - I swear you can hear the crackle and boom of it from here!