Heather McNaugher leads a "Double Life"!

NightBallet Press is enormously pleased to announce the third of five Pittsburgh poets to be published this week:  Heather McNaugher, with her new chapbook Double Life!

In Double Life, which is (aptly) divided into two sections, "Seattle" and "Pittsburgh", McNaugher writes about  relationships and  recollections with wry humor and honesty.  In "Second-order Desire", she writes (excerpt)

So I said, "But I want to want
to marry you.  I want to want
kids, a dog, to trip over their toys in the yard,
to mow the lawn on Saturday, to learn to garden;
I want to want—"
And she pulled the car over on Woodlawn.
And not until she had come to a complete stop
did she turn her torso to look me directly in the eye
which I averted and she said, "Heather.
Will you listen to yourself?"  Then she put the Civic into drive
and drove.


And in "New Dumpling House, 2000", she writes (excerpt)

 

It was the Christmas I walked to the Chinese restaurant for beer. 
The snowy, then snowier, haul to the bottom of Murray.  Inside, my
glasses steam with Dim Sum and the secular body heat of
nonbelievers in blue jeans.  It was the Christmas I believed only in
beer. In the Chinese restaurant on Christmas there is one kind of
beer, Tsingtao, and the tidy man behind the bar is required by the
State of Pennsylvania to sell it to me by the bottle, 3 bucks apiece.  It
would be easier to purchase a grenade launcher.

.

Heather McNaugher received a BA in English from Pittsburgh's Chatham University in 1995, after which she followed a redhead to Seattle and became a housecleaner and barista.  She received her PhD in English from The State University of New York at Binghamton, and now teaches English back at her alma mater.  She is the author of two previous poetry collections, System of Hidouts (Main Street Rag, 2012) and Panic & Joy (Finishing Line, 2008).  Her work has appeared in The Fourth Genre, New Ohio Review, 5 A.M., and on the radio show Prosody.  She is poetry editor of The Fourth River.  She's tried living elsewhere, but keeps coming back to Pittsburgh.

Double Life is 32 pages with 17 poems.  The cover, which is thick white cardstock with a textured charcoal gray cardstock insert,  features a stunning photograph taken by New York poet Matthew Hupert.  The text is printed on creamy white paper.  This book is available for only $5 plus $3 shipping/handling beginning today, June 11, 2014 (orders will be mailed Saturday June 14, 2014, the day of the book release at Words Dance in the NightBallet.)  You may order by clicking on the PayPal button in the right side column, or find us on Amazon.  Of course, if you live near Pittsburgh, you can get a signed copy and hear the poet read from her book this coming Saturday June 14, 2014 (see the link in this paragraph for details)! 

You can order her book TODAY:

Jason Baldinger has "The Studs Terkel Blues"!

The second of five Pittsburgh poets to be published this week is Jason Baldinger, who has The Studs Terkel Blues!

 In The Studs Terkel Blues, Baldinger wryly addresses the subject of work:  finding it, leaving it, dealing with bosses, coworkers and customers, and sweating it out through seasons and relationships.

The front cover features original artwork by Jon Dowling; the chapbook cover is ivory with a dark chocolate cardstock insert.  The text is printed on ivory paper.  The Studs Terkel Blues is 32 pages long and contains 19 poems with wickedly witty titles such as "Employee of the Month", The Hymn to Toilet Duck", "My Three Days as an Environmentalist", and "To Interviews". 

A sample of lines from some of the poems:

"Jobs, like people, fall out of our pockets
sometimes, maybe more so when you're seventeen."

"I have to watchan OSHA video on safety
before I can report to work.
The video stars and is narrated by David Ogden Stiers...
...I'm pretty sure Major Winchester
never had to lift a box
or work a twelve hour day
in a diaper factory"

"To the drug store district manager, so excited he had a management candidate under thirty, it wouldn't matter what I said during that interview.  It was, however, creepy that at interview's end, standing for the handshake, he had a hard-on."

                                            photo by John Burroughs, used with permission

Jason Baldinger has spent his life in odd jobs; he says "if only poetry was the strangest of them, he'd have far less to talk about."  His latest books are The Studs Terkel Blues, and The Lower 48 (Six Gallery Press).  He has also been published in The New Yinzer, Shatter Wig Press, and Blast Furnace.  You can hear him read from The Lady Pittsburgh, his first solo collection, here.
                                     
Beginning today, Tuesday June 10, 2014, you can buy The Studs Terkel Blues for only $5 plus $3 shipping/handling (the books will be mailed Saturday June 14, 2014, the day of the book release).  You may purchase the book right here through PayPal, or find us on Amazon!

Jason Irwin Knows WHERE YOU ARE!

NightBallet Press is thrilled to be producing five new chapbooks for the upcoming (Saturday June 14, 2014) "Words Dance in the NightBallet" super-event!  These chapbooks will feature the work of five very talented Pittsburgh poets.  The first chapbook to be announced is Jason Irwin's Where You Are!

 

Where You Are is a 28 page chapbook of 21 slices-of-life poems, written by Pittsburgh poet Jason Irwin.  Irwin's pithy poems are collages


of desire and anticipation

From archipelago to archipelago
my eyes travel southward,
following a constellation of blue stars
that disappear beneath her low slung jeans.
of irony and missed chances

You know you could love her forever,
if you could just summon the courage to ask
her phone number.  Instead, you settle for a sixth cup
of coffee and extra ketchup for your fries.

of a lifetime seeking the "Where You Are" of the title...

Aren't we like that girl at the bus stop—
short skirt, one wool sock
pulled tight at her knee, the other lost
around her ankle—bewildered
by the distance we must travel?
                                                                       

                                              photo by Jen Ashburn, used with permission
                                            
Irwin 's first full-length collection Watering the Dead won the 2006-2007 Transcontinental Poetry Award and was published by Pavement Saw Press in 2008.  Some Days It's A Love Story won the 2005 Slipstream Press Chapbook Prize.  You can find him at www.jasonirwin.blogspot.com.

Where You Are features a beautiful cover photo by Chandra Alderman, printed on two-sided dove gray and dark gray cardstock, with a thick, burnt orange cardstock insert.  The text is printed on a creamy-textured brilliant white paper. This chapbook is available beginning this coming Saturday June 14, 2014 for only $5 plus $3 shipping/handling!  You may preorder beginning today.

If you are in Pittsburgh, you can obtain a copy at the Words Dance in the NightBallet event and have the poet sign it for you on the spot!  If you are out-of-town and must order it online, you can order it through PayPal or find it on Amazon!

Be among the first to get a copy and find out just exactly Where You Are!

Words Dance in the NightBallet Book Release Party!

                    

              Words Dance in the NightBallet—Poetry in the Dark—is a superbash scheduled
                                    for June 14, 2014, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania! 

NightBallet Press editor Dianne Borsenik teams up with Words Dance editor Amanda Oaks for a night of poetry and new books, friendship and fun! 

NightBallet Press has already published books for three of the poets reading—John Burroughs's The Eater of the Absurd, John Dorsey's White Girl Problems and Fall of the Ramen Empire, and Amanda Oaks's Hurricane Mouth—and is planning to release not one, not two, not three, but five books to celebrate the amazing talent that saturates the Pittsburgh poetry scene!

Due to be released June 14th, the night of "Poetry in the Dark", are:

Jason Irwin's Where You Are
Karen Lillis's The Paul Simon Project
Heather McNaugher's Double Life
Nikki Allen's ligaments of light tigering the shoulders
and
Jason Baldinger's The Studs Terkel Blues!

(In the coming days, each book will be showcased on the NBP page; stay tuned for the postings!)

Don't miss out on this chance to see us blow the roof off the Gallery!  The reading will be "in the dark" but these poets will light up the night with words that sparkle and sizzle...join us, BYOB, and help NightBallet and Words Dance kick off the summer with a night to remember!

New May Release: Jerry in the Bardo by Tsaurah Litzky!

National Poetry Month never ends here at NightBallet Press!  And to prove that we're still celebrating, we've published a brand new book—Jerry in the Bardo—by Tsaurah Litzky!



Jerry in the Bardo by Brooklyn, New York poet Tsaurah Litzky is a 32 page book of 22 poems, printed on bright white cotton paper. The textured ivory cover of Jerry in the Bardo features gorgeous collage art by Litzky titled "Jerry Enters the Bardo".  (NBP admits we had to look up bardo, which is a Tibetan word meaning "intermediate state"—in Tibetan Buddhism, the bardo is the state of the soul between its death and rebirth.)  The colors in the collage are enhanced by a heavy blue-gray cardstock insert.

A fascinating character study, Jerry in the Bardo explores the complex relationship between an adult daughter and her aging father, and does so with honesty, sensitivity, and discovery.  Mostly written, according to Litzky, in the four years before her father Jerry's death on March 7, 2011,  Litzky says "Jerry in the Bardo does not offer comforts or platitudes.  I only hope its truth comes punching out off the page, the way my father taught me to live my days."

Jerry and Tsaurah,, 2008 (photo used with permission)

Tsaurah Litzky writes poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, erotica, plays, and commentary, but says "poetry is (her) heart".  Her poems have appeared in over ninety publications, including the New York Times and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.  In 2006, she was named one of the 20 Poets Laureate of New York City by the People's Poetry Gathering.

Jerry in the Bardo, selling for $10 plus $3 postage/handling, is available beginning this week of May 6, 2014, right here on the NBP page (see the PayPal box to the right of this posting, on Amazon, and of course, as always, directly from the author!

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!

It's THE GREEN WORLD for the Spring Equinox!

Yes, we here at NightBallet Press are celebrating a glorious St. Patrick's Day and approaching spring equinox with the publication of

 

 

 

The Green World by Andy Roberts!

NightBallet is enormously pleased to present The Green World, which is a landmark publication for our press...it is the 50th book we've published! (Horns, drums, confetti, cheering!)

The Green World  features a beautiful cover photograph by Tucson artist Elizabeth A. Soroka and contains twenty-three poems by Columbus-area poet Andy Roberts.  Roberts' three previous chapbooks were published by Pudding House Press, and we are very pleased to have him join us at NightBallet.  A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Roberts has had poems appear in hundreds of small press journals over the last twenty-five years, including Atlanta Review, Coal City Review, Common Ground Review, Fulcrum, Hiram Poetry Review, Ilya’s Honey, Lake Effect, Mudfish, Parting Gifts, Plainsongs, San Jose Studies, Slipstream, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Third Wednesday, and many others. 

The Green World is thirty-two pages long, with a dove-white cardstock cover and a rich forest green cardstock insert.  The text is printed on brilliant white cotton paper.  But it's the poems within that make this book so gorgeous.  In them, Roberts explores "this greenfooted world" with a loving eye, a gentle voice, and an accomplished hand.  From wildflowers to redwoods, from bees to blue jays, and from creeks to thunderstorms, he turns daily observations into introspections that will soothe your soul and fill you with a yearning for nature's sweet green embrace.

Available beginning March 18, 2014, The Green World is only $5 plus $3 shipping/handling. right here on the NightBallet website and also at Amazon!  Go Green and check it out today!

On the INTERSTATE with Douglas Cole!

NightBallet Press is delighted to announce the first publication in this new year of 2014,
Interstate by Douglas Cole!

Interstate by Douglas Cole features a stunning cover photo of the South Satiam River in Oregon, taken by Tracey and Sarah Hiser, printed on creamy cardstock with an olive cardstock insert.  The chapbook contains 32 pages of 18 poems, printed on soft white paper matching the cover cardstock.


Of the poems in this book, David Bates, editor of My Favorite Bullet, says:

"The poetic institution that nature's elemental beauty somehow trumps humanity's complexity in meaning is an exploding myth. Interstate takes us on a “blind drive” into the emotional geography of the American Northwest, where nature continues to recover from it's own volcanic self-destruction. Cole's journey--in his car, in motel rooms, in campgrounds--initially seems a final grab at the idea that there is simple reason in the mountain, and simply chaos in the city. But this conceit fails to his credit. Anxiety and tranquility are not mutually exclusive. And the black highway between the two is where these poems live."

Through poems like "Map of the Cascades", "All Rivers Are One", "Indian River", and "Holy River Gorge", Cole takes us on a trip of discovery across the interstates of road, river, and reflection.  And believe me, this is one trip you won't want to miss.

 

Curtis Harrell, poetry editor of VISIONS, a Journal of the Arts, says "Douglas Cole's crystalline images propel his poetry down the page like water flowing down a fountain."

Douglas Cole, who lives in Seattle, Washington, has had work appear in Red Rock Review, The Chicago Quarterly Review, and Midwest Quarterly.  He is a recipient of the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize in Poetry for a selection called, “The Open Ward,” as well as a Best of Poetry Award from Clapboard House and First Prize in the “Picture Worth 500 Words” poetry contest by Tattoo Highway.  He teaches writing and literature at Seattle Central College, where he is also the advisor for the literary journal, Corridors.

Interstate is available to order beginning now right here at NightBallet (see the column to the right of this post), directly through PayPal, and also is listed for sale on Amazon.  Take a ride with Douglas Cole today!

Jennifer Hambrick emerges UNSCATHED!

Ohio poet Jennifer Hambrick emerges Unscathed,  and NightBallet Press is there to see it happen!

 

NightBallet Press is enormously pleased to present Unscathed, the brand new debut chapbook by Jennifer Hambrick!

Unscathed is a 32 page chapbook of 26 poems, and features a simply beautiful color photo by local artist-photographer Chandra Alderman.  The text is printed on thick, creamy soft white paper, and the covers are brilliant white cardstock with a seafoam-blue cardstock insert.  The poems, delicate yet profound vignettes of childhood and mortality, nature and family, loss and triumph, are sketched with a deft hand by Hambrick.

                                                    
                                           (bio photo by Barb Schwartz, used with permission)


Jennifer Hambrick's poetry has been published in Pudding Magazine, WestWard Quarterly, Common Threads, A Narrow Fellow, the 2013 Ohio Poetry Association anthology Everything Stops and Listens, the Columbus Creative Cooperative’s Ides of March anthology, and the Ohio Poetry Day Best of 2011 prizewinners’ collection.  Jennifer won the Ohio Poetry Association’s 2013 Ides of March contest, was a prize winner in The Poetry Forum’s 2011 William Redding Memorial Poetry Contest (Columbus), and received multiple recognitions in the 2011 Ohio Poetry Day contests.  By day, Jennifer Hambrick is a classical musician and public radio broadcaster, producer, and blogger.

Watch for Jennifer to be reading from her new chapbook around her stomping grounds, the Columbus, Ohio area,  soon!

Unscathed is available beginning today, for only $10 plus $3 shipping/handling, right here on this website...also available on Amazon!