BACK LIST AND OUT-OF-PRINT TITLES
Some older Poet's Press titles are archived here on this website, and you can read the text or download a free PDF by clicking over the title-link. Some titles have also been added to our e-book store at Payhip, and the "Buy the Ebook" link lets you order the PDF that way. Please do so if you would like to support the press. The print versions of some of these books are offered online for outrageous prices, partially because of the very small print runs of some of these books, and also because of the rapacious greed of some online book dealers.
Songs of the I and Thou, by Brett Rutherford — This is Brett Rutherford's first collection of poetry, from 1968, scanned from the last surviving copy in our archives. This book contains the poet's earliest extant works, from his Whitman-Ginsberg period. Some of these poems were premiered in coffeehouses in the Haight-Ashbury district and published in The Haight-Ashbury Free Press. Printed at Edinboro State College in Pennsylvania, this book reflects the author's fascination with Elbert Hubbard and the Roycrofters, mixed with a dose of San Fancisco psychedelia. The books were printed via mimeograph, employing a photographic stencil-making system developed by the Gestetner Company; this made it possible to reproduce line drawings via mimeograph. Some of the printed pages were then hand-marbled, and the book was sewn. About 100 copies were made, numbered and autographed; twelve of these were bound hardcover by a commercial bookbinder in Erie, PA.
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City Limits, by Brett Rutherford — Another long out-of-print early book by Brett Rutherford, this chapbook's title poem is a nine-part cathartic recollection of the author's calamitous last days in San Francisco in 1967, culminating in a police riot on Halloween night. During his first two years in New York City, this poem-in-progress was Rutherford's most-performed work at readings. Still reflecting the influence of Whitman and Ginsberg, these poems now count as "juvenilia," but here they are, warts and all. We all start somewhere.
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In the Shadows, by Barbara A. Holland. A chapbook of ghost poems and elegies, including Barbara's frequently-asked for poem about the ghost haunting St. Mark's Church in the Bouwerie in New York City. (NEW 12/2009)
BRETT
RUTHERFORD'S LONG-OUT-OF-PRINT 1973 CHAPBOOK,
THE PUMPKINED HEART.
Now
available for $2.00, here is a PDF facsimile of Brett Rutherford's
1973 chapbook, The Pumpkined Heart, his first outpouring of
neo-Romantic lyric poems, inspired by the natural surroundings of a
village in Northwest Pennsylvania where the poet attended college
intermittently. This collection, with intense black-and-white
photography by David Murphy, captures the history and pre-history of a
glacial lake, its Native American dwellers, and its pioneer settlers. The poet's
long cycle of autumn poems, Anniversarius, commences here,
and the two "Water Music" poems convey a sense of union with the
elements and raw, inhuman nature, a subsuming of the human into the
cosmos. While most of these poems have been revised, or are being
revised for the forthcoming print book, The Pumpkined Heart:
Pennsylvania Poems, this chapbook has its own integrity and marks
this writer's first mature poems. The first edition was limited to 500
copies, printed by the author at The Poet's Press loft in Manhattan.
Scarce copies are offered for outrageous prices by dealers on the
Internet, so here is the ebook for those who want to own it, for less than the price of an iced tea.
Please note: this chapbook is the seed-kernel from which the new book, The Pumpkined Heart: Poems of Pennsylvania, sprang.
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BRETT RUTHERFORD. PROMETHEUS CHAINED.
This little chapbook was typeset and designed in 1992, but was never released. The Poet's Press went to sleep for a few years while the publisher did a back-to-school adventure at University of Rhode Island. The subtitle: "A New Poem, After A Painting by Riva Leviten," points to an artist-poet collaboration among friends and neighbors. Poet Rutherford lived at one end of Sheldon Street in Providence's Fox Point, and artist Riva Leviten lived at the other end, three blocks away. Riva joined in our poetic and Lovecraft-related events with zeal, and a number of poems were prompted by a kind of Rorschach-test challenge put up by Riva, often in the form of "What can you write about this?" or even "I don't have any idea what this means. Do you?" The small mixed-media painting titled "Messenger," dated by the artist as "1993-2000," was exhibited at The Providence Art Club in 2000, where it won second prize. Although Riva regarded it as a more abstract composition, the poet immediately saw (or imagined) a number of mythological figures, the center being a dark, chained giant, with an eagle perched on it, and a barely-perceptible hooded and robed man standing beneath him and to the left. The poet instantly said, "Riva, I see Prometheus, tarred, feathered and chained, and Zeus as an eagle perched on his back. The tiny fugure below him is The Grand Inquisitor." From this sudden insight came a 16-part poem with some savage insights about mankind, politics, and the gods:
They did this. They put him here --
those little creatures with the monkey eyes,
the ones with all those fingers fluttering.
Someone said he made them from lumps of clay.
Prometheus didn't. He found them scampering
from tree to cavern to waterhole,
a fornicating horde of unformed talents,
flea-bitten, screeching, night-chilled,
terrified of lion-wolf, and vulture.
They ate whaever the earth provided
or whatever dead thing no jackal touched.
We're delighted to release this chapbook now as a free ebook. A poem that might please the spirits of Shelley, Nietzsche, Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce, this is an overturning of familiar myth, with the poor human species not coming off very well as judged by gods and Titans. The scorn of Prometheus for Zeus and the Olympians leads to a surprising defense of the very humans who have chained him -- with this very plot twist, Prometheus regains his proper role as mankind's benefactor.
Although this poem is included in Rutherford's large book, An Expectation of Presences, this separate chapbook puts this demanding and challenging poem into its own spotlight. It is also an In Memoriam for Riva Leviten, who died in 2014.
The 221st publication of The Poet's Press. PDF, 5-1/2 x 8-1/2" , 24 pages. To download and read this FREE Ebook, CLICK HERE.
EMILY GRECO. THINGS TO DO WHEN DEAD.
Emilie Greco died in 1972, leaving behind an unfinished feminist novel, There Is Fear in the Land, and enough poems to fill a small chapbook. Her friends, including Annette Hayn and Barbara A. Holland, edited the poetry manuscript and saw it through production at The Poet's Press in 1976. Daughter of Italian immigrants, her young years found her amid sweatshop workers, and rebelling against a docile working class mother by joining the Communist party in the 1930s. Decades later she emerged as a writer and studied at the New School, even as she knew her days were numbered from bone cancer. She said: "I am angry; I had planned to do so much." There are no echoes of ideology in this book, but there is a fierce resistance to dominance, whether from men, or from Death himself, of whom she writes "He is my unwanted spouse. I am indifferent to him. . ."
One wonders what Emilie Greco would have become, had she been able to emerge as a published poet, active among her peers. Those who heard her at open poetry readings became her friends and supporters, making this modest chapbook possible. The title poem, as well as the surreal poem, "It," showed terrific talent.
It is an ugly, impersonal, uninspiring word
It bursts open to a sunray, and closes to a moon-ray...
It meets each day with doubting, each noon with ennui, each nightfall with relief and
It hopes the silver rings around the stars will melt into opals and diamonds and spring up from the walks. ....
It is nothing, and, therefore, everything.
It is derived from the Id.
It, it, it, it."
The 220th publication of The Poet's Press. Foreword by Barbara A. Holland. PDF, 4 x 6-1/2" , 48 pages. To download and read this FREE Ebook, CLICK HERE.
CLAUDIA DOBKINS-DIKINIS. FIRST POEMS.
This chapbook was first published by the Grim Reaper Books imprint in 1974. It was the debut volume for Claudia, whose biting satire, lyric gifts, and Isadora-like presence dazzled the Manhattan poetry scene. Her work was also featured in the 1975 collection May Eve: A Festival of Supernatural Poetry. With the release of this ebook facsimile, The Poet's Press commences the republication of the best books from our archives.
The 216th publication of The Poet's Press. PDF, 4 x 6-1/2" , 24 pages. To download and read this FREE Ebook, CLICK HERE.
ANNETTE HAYN. ONE ARMED FLYER.
This chapbook was first published by The Poet's Press Books in 1976. Although framed as a personal book — an elegy for her late husband Gerald Hayn — it is the work of an experienced poet who worked in miniature, with restraint and pinpoint language. The foreword by Toby Olson summed up why this book was worth publishing, and still worth reading:
"Our people have a variety of ways of leaving us. Our children grow up, our parents age, loved ones die. But in an ironic and certainly poignant sense, the presence of those lost grows stronger in their absence. This is because the fact of their passing changes our total feel for things, and their fixed presence seldom does that. In the poems in One Armed Flyer, Annette Hayn speaks of a world in which loss is central. It is a world that extends only so far as her own life extends, but it is rendered universal through the clarity of the poet's vision. The central force of these poems lies in their quiet attempt to understand and express the changes that loss causes. The result is a book of poems, painful, touching, and exact, that speaks to a basic human need. For the readers of Annette Hayn's poems, loss is a kind of gain."
The book is not monothematic, since the poet has included some fine poems that stand on their own, such as her portrait of the biblical Delilah, and the delightful fantasy, "Unlikely Marriage" in which John Ashbery and Emilie Dickinson set up housekeeping in a doll house.
With the release of this ebook facsimile, The Poet's Press continues the republication of the best books from our archives.
The 218th publication of The Poet's Press. PDF, 4 x 7" , 64 pages. To download and read this FREE Ebook, CLICK HERE.
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ANNETTE HAYN. JOURNEYS AROUND ONE POINT.
This chapbook was first published under The Poet's Press Grim Reaper Books imprint in 1980. The foreword by Mary Ferrari provides special perspective on Annette Hayn's work.
"Annette Hayn 's poems are composed of several disparately colored threads tied peculiarly together; several streaks of light running through a few lines as quickly and intently as a cat, through leaves.
She is a poet of both the fantastic far away and the realistic near. She gives us images from a childhood lived within the shadow of a mountain-climbing mother and Hitler's Germany. Her contemporary views are no less exciting; have always about them a hint of theatre. Her sometimes stormy patches of domesticated nature go a long way emotionally; and are reminiscent of Emily Dickinson.
Each poem is an oblique glimpse through a small intensely lighted window. One looks in a window at the apparently necessary destruction of "roses / a woman ... " Another looks out: " ... and now the mugger can be seen clearly —".
Hayn's poems are miniatures in watercolor; have need of almost no beginning or end; catch that balloon, that voice in flight; are truly "journeys around one point": Annette Hayn's powerful sensibility."
With the release of this ebook facsimile, The Poet's Press continues the republication of the best books from our archives.
The 219th publication of The Poet's Press. PDF, 4 x 7" , 64 pages. To download and read this FREE Ebook, CLICK HERE.
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RICHARD DAVIDSON. THE SONG OF WALT WHITMAN.
This verse play by poet and playwright Richard Davidson is from the 1960s and has echoes of Clifford Odetts and other populist literature. It also evokes the spirit of Walt Whitman as champipon of the ordinary person. The Poet's Press produced a staged reading of this play in 1975 at Westbeth in Manhattan, with a cast of Equity actors and poets, directed by Brett Rutherford. This chapbook of the complete 1975 script was first published in 1975 and had several reprintings. In a foreword, Donald Lev shared the history of this verse drama: "a palimpsest begun in 1958, and by the time this book will have been published, will have received at least five different productions with no two texts alike in its fifteen-year history." With the release of this ebook facsimile, The Poet's Press contines the republication of the best books from our archives.
The 217th publication of The Poet's Press. PDF, 4 x 6-1/2" , 40pages. To download and read this FREE Ebook, CLICK HERE.
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BARBARA
A. HOLLAND'S COLLECTED POEMS, VOLUME 1
This
new e-book is an exact facsimile of one of the rarest of all Poet's
Press books, the intended first volume of the collected poems of
Barbara A. Holland. Less than 200 copies were circulated, and all we
had left was a photocopy, from which this PDF has been extracted. This
volume collects early Holland poems from magazines; the complete text
of the rare chapbooks A Game of Scraps, Penny Arcana, Melusine
Discovered, On This High Hill, and You Could Die
Laughing; and the text of two unpublished chapbook manuscripts, East
From Here, and Lens, Sight & Sound. These poems
paint the Bohemia of New York City in the 1960s , while plumbing
the depth of a self already defined as eternal outsider: "I am the
wanderer with dirty feet/ who wipes worlds from existence." Also here
are the poet's masterful "Medusa," "St. Mark's Church in
the Bouwerie: Offertorium," "The Argo," "Eurydice," "The Sybil of
Cumae" and "Melusine Discovered," among the finest poems on classical
themes of our time.
Right now this book is available for free download:
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD AND READ.
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IN THE SHADOWS. Barbara A. Holland.
Here is a facsimile in PDF form of a hard-to-find 1984 oversize chapbook from our "high-tech medieval" period. Barbara A. Holland selected 14 ghost poems and elegiac poems with a decided New York City flavor for this collection. This collection includes the haunting "Elegy for Alexis," about a suspicious wind that pulls guests out of an artist's loft in the Flatiron Building, and "St. John's Church in the Bouwerie: Offertorium," about the appearance of a spectre in the Lower East Side's most famous church. The little book was printed with digital fonts that we designed for high legibility and Gothic import, on acid-free paper and hand-bound. Copies are not to be had anywhere, but you can possess and share the PDF simply by CLICKING HERE.
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A Dream in Eden, by Stuart
Milstein
Genealogy X, by Thomas D. Jones (Excerpts)
In Chill November, by Brett Rutherford
May Eve: A Festival of Supernatural Poetry (1975 edition)
Rails Away by Emilie Glen
POEMS YOU CAN READ ON THIS SITE:
Apples of Sodom and Gomorrah -- Barbara A. Holland. A blood-curdling
poem of jealousy, as a witch murders her rival's babies. "Three
have already been extinguished -- one more means nothing..."
Resurrection of the Devil -- Claudia Dobkins-Dikinis. Rosemary
wasn't the devil's only mistress...
Legions of Bats -- Shirley Powell. A masterpiece
of atmosphere, letting you enter into the dark world of night-flyers.
Madwoman --Shirley Powell. Explore her psyche, if
you dare...
Fête -- Brett Rutherford. A passionate neo-Romantic
poem of love, revenge and magic. "I am Love's Anti-Christ..." Also see the Illustrated Chapbook of the first version of this poem.
Huldra -- Barbara A. Holland. Based on Norwegian
folklore.
Horror Story -- Claudia Dobkins-Dikinis.
Collectors, The -- Brett Rutherford. Based on
the images in several paintings by Belgian surrealist René
Magritte.
Imagined Dinner at Barbara
Holland's. -- Claudia
Dobkins-Dikinis. No one ever saw the inside of Barbara Holland's
Greenwich Village apartment — at least no one who lived to tell.
Here, her friend Claudia speculates about dinner chez Holland...
Take Flight to Montreal! -- Barbara A. Holland. Barbara
learns that BR has installed a Lovecraftian watchdog to protect
his Sixth Avenue loft...
Sorcerer's Complaint, The -- Brett Rutherford. BR gets back
at Barbara with a little weather magic...
Message, A -- Shirley Powell
Getting Thicker -- Shirley Powell. Shirley wrote
several poems about people being shut in, trapped, or consumed
by their own houses. This is a splendid piece of horror--or paranoia...
Sweet Revenge Does Have
Its Rewards -- Claudia
Dobkins-Dikinis. Or, how to get even with old boyfriends or bosses...
Counselor for the Dead -- Claudia Dobkins-Dikinis.
Voice - Claudia Dobkins-Dikinis.
Black Sabbath -- Barbara A. Holland. This is,
perhaps, the 20th Century's most terrifying poem...
Literary Revival, A -- Brett Rutherford. In Ray Bradbury's
dystopian vision, Fahrenheit 451, futuristic firemen invade people's
homes to burn their books. This poem was inspired by Bradbury's
terrifying book, and takes place in the bleak geometries of Cooper
Square at St. Mark's Place in New York.
American Goat Woman, The - Shirley Powell. A tale from
the Great Plains...
Under the Bed -- Shirley Powell. Don't read
this little prose poem in bed...
May Eve -- Brett Rutherford. A small-town graveyard
where a strange secret society gathers annually on Walpurgis
Night.
By Moonlight, Surely,
They'll Dance -- Brett
Rutherford. A pioneer graveyard where skeletons dance, and make
love...
Barbara Holland — Dan Wilcox
Writer's Block — Brett Rutherford. A poem inspired by Magritte and obliquely about the writing habits and psyche of Barbara A. Holland.
Ashes and Equinox, Mars in Conjunction — Brett Rutherford. An elegy for Barbara Holland.
About Barbara — Shirley Powell.
Real Poet — Shirley Powell. Concerning Barbara A. Holland.
Barbara Holland — D.H. Melhem.
Doxology — Joel Allegretti.
Last Moor Departs from Spain — Joel Allegretti.
Singer, The — Joel Allegretti..
Elegy for Erik — Joel Allegretti. Yes, that Erik, the Phantom.
Delilah —Annette Hayn..
Unlikely Marriage —Annette Hayn. John Ashbery sets up housekeeping with Emily Dickinson.
Half Way — Annette Hayn.
Three Seasons — Annette Hayn..
Delilah — D.H. Melhem.
Version 2.1 Updated December 18, 2019