All titles can be found on Deerbrook Editions Website. You can order with PayPal using cards, and shipping is free in the USA.
These are all poetry collections , except for Antique Densities which borders on prose poetry and fiction. Things Seemed to be Breaking is a collection of black out or erasure poems, and may fit in the “found” category as well as that of visual poems.
Click on the cover of choice to get to the page for the book on the press Website.
A collection of ten Maine poets
Poems in the Time of Covid.
A brilliant collection.
A generous and forgiving passion for life.
Book II in The Argument of Time
Chestnut Ridge by Dawn Potter. Chestnut Ridge is also a deluxe volume in 7 x 10 in. format. This title was a finalist in the Maine Literary Awards for Poetry this spring.
Expanding on the post, The year in books, this post presents lots of new titles from the press over the past year, so we are going to just list the covers and send you to the site for all the details (click on covers for links to book pages for ordering; shipping in the USA is free)
In spite of what has been said if you search for stats of what people buy (poetry often does not even show up), last year (2017) was a good year for Deerbrook poets, mostly selling on amazon, with more good people going to the press Website. A survey done by The New York Review of Books a few years ago put poetry at about 20% of what people were buying in a year. Almost half of the top top subject, history. Here is an interesting article from a couple of years ago on CNN.
Lots of recent titles of interest; check out the backlist post on the site. Twenty three new titles were published in the past coupe of years, to be exact. Many titles have previews of on issuu.com which provides an excellent interactive catalog.
If you visit the site there are several menus for looking up titles, and most pages include reviews and endorsements about authors and titles, as well as embedded previews from issuu.com. This link goes directly to all the current previews.
When you order from the press Website in the USA you get free shipping. Usually sent media mail you get what amounts to a discount of about $2.60 off the price of a single title. Other presses often add shipping to the price of the book. It’s our way of saying thanks for ordering from the site. Also, please note that with PayPal you do not need an account with PayPal, you can use the card of your choice.
Worn out phrases
sounds like a plan
that day was a wash
the fact of the matter is
there’s no denying
time and time again
seeing is believing
say what you mean
and mean what you say
at the end of the day
it is what it is
Sarah White on The Lake two poems, Ventricular, and The Ballad of Narayama
Ventricular
Young Fanny Mendelssohn, in petticoats and pumps—
In the lower chambers of the heart
lost every race against her younger brother.
severe arrhythmia gives rise
In their middle years, they raced again and she awoke
to a danger of collapse
at the gates of Death, alone.
Chest compressions may be given
On the day of her burial,
by anyone, including family members.
Felix heard anthems in an awkward key, and her voice:
To restore a normal rhythm
“Brother, you’re so pale. There’s not much time.
(about 100 beats a minute)
Take these dark hymns and write my elegy
electric shock must be administered …
at lightning speed.
The Ballad of Narayama
A man carries his mother on his shoulders
through the brambles. She will no longer
be living in the village.
They’re going up the sacred mountain.
He is weary. He doesn’t want to leave her
up the mountain in a clearing
on her prayer mat, knees crossed,
peering through the brambles.
She knows she won’t be living
in the village. The man carries
his mother. He is weary.
The snowfall is a blessing.
Narayama is a mountain and a ballad
to be sung in any order—
down from the prayer mat
to the village, up to the clearing
where he leaves her, cross-legged,
smiling at the snowfall
and the shoulders disappearing
through the brambles.
Sarah White’s most recent published collections are The Unknowing Muse (Dos Madres, 2014) and Wars Don’t Happen Anymore (Deerbrook Editions, 2015). She lives, writes, and paints in New York City.
The Lake
“All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.”
Jean Rhys
Inspired by Jean Rhys’ imperative, The Lake is dedicated to publishing all forms of poetry by new and established poets, highlighting the best of contemporary poetry and reviewing the best of the new books.
Also appearing on Offcourse literary journal in Albany.
JR Solonche is a man of literature. He expresses his love of literature with many forms, more than I can say I know. Read this wonderful verse in Offcourse, penned out of simple love.
One of my favorites posted here; go to the link to read the other four.
(After an Anonymous Chinese Poem)
A handful of clay
and a birch twig
for a handle.
Be grateful
for whatever
falls in.
Look.
These words
are first.
Five-time Pushcart as well as Best of the Net nominee, J.R. Solonche has been publishing poetry in magazines and anthologies since the early 70s. He is coauthor of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books) and author of Beautiful Day(Deerbrook Editions) and Heart’s Content (Five Oaks Press). He lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with his wife, the poet Joan I. Siegel and nine cats, at least three of whom are poets.
His work has appeared frequently in Offcourse.
A couple of poems in December’s The Lake Journal: The Lake poetry
Jacob and the Angel
Afterward in the morning,
already late in the morning,
already near noon,
he awoke,
and no one was about.
His right hand was gripped tightly
on the shin of his leg.
His left arm was under his head
so that the elbow was stiff,
and the forearm was numb
from the weight of his head upon it.
His mouth was dry with the dryness of sand,
and the lips of his mouth were parched as the sand of the desert.
He felt the soreness in his limbs.
He felt the stiffness in the joints of his limbs.
He saw the full light of day illuminating the tent.
The flap of the tent opening was bright with the brightness of daylight.
And even full with soreness in his body,
and even full with stiffness in his limbs,
and even full with a terrible thirst in his mouth, he sprang to his feet,
and he threw himself upon the tent opening,
upon the full light of the tent opening that flapped like white wings in the dry wind.
The Jonah Story
I do not like the Jonah story.
The Jonah story is all
obedience and disobedience,
God calling on the wind
to frighten the sailors,
God calling on the whale
to swallow up Jonah
and spit him out again
on dry land, God
calling on the worm
to desolate the vine.
The Jonah story is all God
calling. I do not like the way
the Jonah story ends.
The Jonah story ends
without ending. It ends
with God asking
Jonah a question,
but really asking one of those
holy rhetorical questions
that God is so fond of,
and that is where Jonah is
left hanging,
on the question mark of God.
And I do not like this because
I want to know what happens
to heroes at the end of stories.
What happens to Jonah
at the end of his story?
What does Jonah do?
Does he go home?
Does he stay where he is
on the east side of Nineveh
where he prepares a field
of gourd vines? Does he
sleep twenty-four hours through?
Does God leave Jonah alone?
Does God leave Jonah alone,
finally, oh finally,
in the shade of the vine?
J.R. Solonche has been publishing in magazines, journals, and anthologies since the early 70s. He is author of Beautiful Day (Deerbrook Editions) and coauthor ofPeach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). He lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with his wife, the poet Joan I. Siegel, and nine cats, at least three of whom are poets.
Wind drives leaves across the road.
Mozart’s Requiem remains in my mind’s ear.
It remains in my ear’s mind and has become a tree of human voices.
The wind drives the leaves across the road, ahead, in my car’s beam.
I hear the tree of voices die.
I hear it fall away voice by voice in the wind.
The tree is bare but for the boom of one last leaf-voice.
Then that too joins the wind as I open the door of the laundry room.
by J.R. Solonche
author of Beautiful Day
Deerbrook Editions, 2015
This is one of a few poems J.R. sent not in the collection that is Beautiful Day.
A review of Beautiful Day that appeared in The Lake.
Another poem delighted in on Wherewithall.
Here are two favorite poems from Freeing the Hook by Peter Harris. Although this title has been out for a couple of years I want to bring attention to the work because books don’t get discovered without this posting, and it seems folks want to see the work, so what better way then to put pages up.
Peter is a special poet that writes from the heart. These are a couple of sentences from the back cover:
Freeing The Hook takes you on a backstage tour of love, death, family and solitude. Their dark, inquisitive, tender humor is our immunization. Their stubborn compassion is our salvation.
—Tony Hoagland
Freeing the Hook features a painting by John Marin
The Long Answer
The Long Answer page 2
Fish Story
persimmon 