Torque is the third release in the Ahadada Books Online Chapbook series edited by Catherine Daly - it's the eighteenth online chapbook offered by Ahadada.
Born Born in 1962, Alison Croggon is one of a generation of Australian poets which emerged in the 1990s. She writes in many genres, including criticism, theatre and prose. She is Melbourne theatre critic for the national daily newspaper, The Australian, and keeps a blog of theatre criticism, Theatre Notes.
Her poetry has been published widely in anthologies and magazines in Australia and overseas. Her most recent poetry publication is a chapbook, Ash (Cusp Books, Los Angeles 2007). A new full collection, Theatre, is forthcoming in 2008 from Salt Publishing. Other titles include November Burning (Vagabond Press Rare Objects Series, Sydney, 2004); Mnemosyne, (Wild Honey Press, Ireland, 2001); The Common Flesh (New and Selected Poems) (Arc Publications, UK, 2003) and Attempts at Being, (Salt Publishing, UK, 2002).
A native of Southern California, Lou Rowan began his writing career in New York City, where he earned his living as teacher and as an institutional investor. He lives and writes in Seattle. His current projects include a novel about the losing of the West, a sequel to My Last Days, stories, and his editorial dutiesat Golden Handcuffs Review. Click here to visit Lou Rowan's website.
Writes Patrizia Hayashi:
With incisive wit and a remarkable eye for the human condition, Lou Rowan weaves together a collection of short stories that will arouse laughter, nostalgia, and an occasional dose of pity. In Sweet Potatoes, the author lays his characters bare, digging into their psyches, presenting their foibles, and in doing so, holding up a mirror that dares the reader to recognize himself.
Writes A.J. Glusman: "Lou Rowan . . . is retired, in love and charged. He was raised by horse breeders and went to Harvard and thus possesses an outward polish. But he talks like a radical, his speech incongruous with his buttoned-down appearance. Golden Handcuffs Review, the local literary magazine that Rowan founded and edits, is much like the man himself: appealing and presentable on the outside, a bit wild and experimental at the core.
What Others Say About Sweet Potatoes
Lou Rowan's exuberant and richly varied book presents a series of dramatic monologues whose personal and imaginary components are fused in the blaze of the author's enthusiasm. The feeling that he is doing exactly what he wants to do produces consistently lively results, no matter how downbeat the struggles described - with parents, lovers, wives good and bad, business problems, and of course the inescapable self. In the final story, a counterpoint of these voices raises the narration to a level of intensity both harrowing and irresistible... -Harry Mathews, author, My Life in CIA
The stories in Lou Rowan's collection "Sweet Potatoes" are brilliantly rendered in a mesh of grim and exuberantly funny shifts of highly original tale-telling. The variety of characters are utterly real and fascinatingly complex. Their daily actions and experiences offer a mesmerizing picture of much in society that is false and outrageous and yet all too forgiveably human. Rowan tunes up his one of a kind narrative voice with resonances of Rabelais, Voltaire, and Mickey Spillane. -Rochelle Owens, author, Luca: A Discourse on Life and Death, and Futz
These very short stories are a blend of maybe memoir, crazed case history, and raunchy comic fiction spun by a deadpan narrator with a gift for dazzling transitions. -David Antin, author, i never knew what time it was, and what it means to be avant-garde
Over the past three decades Judith Skillman has written and published numerous poems for books, journals, and anthologies. She has collaborative translations from Portuguese, Italian, and French. Skillman's publications include FIELD, The Iowa Review, The Southern Review, Poetry, The Northwest Review, and Midwest Quarterly. She has ten books of poems.
From 1977 - 1978 she held a teaching assistantship at the University of Maryland, while working towards her masters degree in English Literature. She received the King County Arts Commission's Publication Prize in 1987, judged by Madeline DeFrees. This prize enabled her to find a publisher for her first book, "Worship of the Visible Spectrum" (Breitenbush Books.) In 1991 Skillman was awarded a Washington State Arts Commission Writer's Fellowship.
Skillman's poems move out from their opening point meditatively and delicately to embrace distant sights, memories of the past, other countries, and also mythologies and similarities. "Bearing the universal/forward in each particular...," she writes in "Cardoon." She is not seeking anything in this movement--neither knowledge nor possession nor control. The movement is not an urge, but rather the natural penchant to connect with what is beyond the immediate self. Things within the broader world are connected by a tissue of shared qualities. "Increments of blue and pink chalk/can be made..."-- from "On Circe's Island". Or, as she writes in "Zaydee," "...pink fragments claim/the edge of a wave...." Skillman's poems are created by following where an initial sensed quality leads; and all of the world, from objects to envisionings, is spun together by qualities similar and different. -Henry Berry
Hank Lazer has published 13 books of poetry, including The New Spirit (Singing Horse, 2005), Elegies & Vacations (Salt, 2004), and Days (Lavender Ink, 2002). He edits the Modern and Contemporary Poetics Series for the University of Alabama Press. Lyric & Spirit: Selected Essays 1996-2008 is due out shortly from Omnidawn (and is available at a big discount by clicking here). Please feel free to contact the poet by clicking here This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .
Known for his acute criticism as well as exploratory poetry, Hank Lazer is a poet who might be described as a stylistic risk-taker as well as forager in the treasure house of words. ... -Cynthia Hogue, Rain Taxi
Lazer blends the purposes of poetry and the ISMs of various camps and forges poems that is both fun to read with the heart and with the mind. This is no easy exercise in these days of thick lines between the many classes of poetry. -Michael Basinski, Poetry/Rare Books Collection, SUNY-Buffalo
Available now in North American via Ahadada Books and Small Press Distribution, Late Poems of Lu You: The Old Man Who Does As He Pleases is now available from IMC Books, as well (our Japanese distributor).
Burton Watson...possesses all the qualities which distinguish a master translator. As a craftsman and a poet, he has inspired and challenged two generations."-Asian Affairs
"A new translation of any of the classics...from the hand of Burton Watson is an event to be welcomed with gratitude."-Journal of Asian Studies
"Burton Watson is the finest, most consistent, most generous translator of Chinese literature of this century."-Gary Snyder
Lu You (1125-1210) whose pen name was ‘The Old Man Who Does as He Pleases,' was among the most prolific of Chinese poets, having left behind a collection of close to ten thousand poems as well as miscellaneous prose writings. His poetry, often characterized by an intense patriotism, is also notable for its recurrent expression of a carefree enjoyment of life.
This volume consists of twenty-five of Burton Watson's new translations, plus Lu You's poems as they appear in the original, making this a perfect collection for the lay reader as well as for those with a mastery of Song dynasty Chinese.
In addition to poems, Burton Watson includes English translations of excerpts from La You's famous Ra Draii (Diary of a Trip to Shu), written in 1170, which describes his experiences on a journey he took to assume the duties of vice governor in the province of Kuizhou.
Burton Watson is a distinguished translator from the Chinese and Japanese. He has written or translated many books and is published largely by Columbia University Press. Ahadada Books is proud to present the latest of Mr. Watson's publications.
Of Bruce Stater's Labyrinth, Jerome Rothenberg writes: "To say it quickly: Bruce Stater's Labyrinthof Vision is little short of extraordinary - a work that ties language to a journey truly taken & a mind in extremis that acts to record it. Stater, as I read him, writes with a sense of imaginings that reminds me of a poet like Gerard de Nerval in his visionary prose work, Aurelia, where "dream is a second life" & "an overflow" into the everyday. As with Nerval & a small company of others, then & now, the vision & the language are inseparable: "a journey of remembrance & metaphor," as the title of Stater's first chapter tells us. If you want to take that as merely literature, feel free to do so; it is that & something more: a place where metaphor rings true & is - for the duration of the vision - the only truth there is. "It is light, it is dark," the old Aztecs said in defining their own labyrinths, & it is also the mark in Stater's labyrinthine journey of a strong new voice in poetry."
"1st, I am NOT an expert on Bruce Stater's work. 2nd, unfortunately, I doubt that there ARE any experts on Bruce's work other than himself. Therefore, consider this modest attempt to write about Bruce's "A Labyrinth of Visions" & the greater context of his writing in general as indicating that the lack of scholarly attn to this body is a lack I hope will be corrected - preferably w/in Bruce's lifetime!" -tENTATIVELY , a cONVENIENCE, from 'A Staterment'. "[tENT's] modest attempt to write about Bruce's A Labyrinth of Visions & the greater context of his writing in general" . Click here to download tENTATIVELY , a cONVENIENCE's full piece.
Now Available from Ahadada Books and Catherine Daly: Kittenhood. It is avaliable for download here. More information about our newest title can be found on our ebooks online catalog page.
Ahadada Books is pleased to present Kittenhood by Catherine Daly along with Cathy Eisenhower, Elisa Gabbert, Danielle Pafunda, and Kathrine Varnes.
Kittenhood is the thirteenth release in the Ahadada Books Online Chapbook series.
Pussipo is an ethereal neighborhood of younger experimental female poets founded by Anne Boyer. Catherine Daly, Cathy Eisenhower, Elisa Gabbert, Danielle Pafunda, and Kathrine Varnes are pussipos. OuLiPo is the organization for potential literature. Someof the poems here were part of an OuLiPo-like rewriting game played by Pussipo members during the summer of 2006. Poems included here were based on an early version of this book by Catherine Daly. They may appear in revised forms elsewhere.
Set in Kitty's neighborhood, friends get together for a party. On the way to the party, players "Make a Wish," choose a "Favorite Quote," and enact other spaces.
The closest of friends learn new things about one another each time the game is played. Like Kitty says, You can never have too many friends. Featuring the international star, Hello Kitty. Players strengthen friendships by learning new things about one another. 2-4 players.
More information is available here. It is available for download here.
"Burton Watson...possesses all the qualities which distinguish a master translator. As a craftsman and a poet, he has inspired and challenged two generations."-Asian Affairs
"A new translation of any of the classics...from the hand of Burton Watson is an event to be welcomed with gratitude."-Journal of Asian Studies
"Burton Watson is the finest, most consistent, most generous translator of Chinese literature of this century."-Gary Snyder
Lu You (1125-1210) whose pen name was ‘The Old Man Who Does as He Pleases,' was among the most prolific of Chinese poets, having left behind a collection of close to ten thousand poems as well as miscellaneous prose writings. His poetry, often characterized by an intense patriotism, is also notable for its recurrent expression of a carefree enjoyment of life.
This volume consists of twenty-five of Burton Watson's new translations, plus Lu You's poems as they appear in the original, making this a perfect collection for the lay reader as well as for those with a mastery of Song dynasty Chinese.
In addition to poems, Burton Watson includes English translations of excerpts from La You's famous Ra Draii (Diary of a Trip to Shu), written in 1170, which describes his experiences on a journey he took to assume the duties of vice governor in the province of Kuizhou.
Burton Watson is a distinguished translator from the Chinese and Japanese. He has written or translated many books and is published largely by Columbia University Press. Ahadada Books is proud to present the latest of Mr. Watson's publications.
Masako's Story; Surviving the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima by Kikuko Otake Ahadada Books, 96 pages, Perfect bound Paperback, $12.50 ISBN 978-0-9781414-6-2 Soon to be available from SPD.
For a downloadable PDF of this Press Release, click here.
On August 6, 1945, when the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the Furuta family was living one mile away from the hypocenter. Five year old Kikuko, her mother, Masako, and her two brothers barely escaped with their lives. However, their soldier father was not so fortunate. Masakonever talked about her family's experiences on that day and the grim days following the bombing. Then one day, Masako started to talk about what happened-breaking a silence of nearly fifty years.
Written by Kikuko (Furuta) Otake, now an assistant professor of Japanese in the United States, Masako's story is a bilingual collection of prose-poetry, based on the true story of her family's tragedy. The appendix presents the original Japanese poetry written to capture the story as her mother said it in Hiroshima dialect. Moreover, the English translation is written with an "Objectivist" lineation similar in its understated power to Charles Reznikoff's "Testimony":
After crossing the Aoi Bridge, I walked diagonally across the grounds of the Gokoku Shrine To take a short cut. Oh. That ground was filled with hundreds of people with horrible burns Scattered everywhere. Many of them were dead. But those that still lived, Begged, "Mizu! Mizu o kudasai," in faint whispers. Soon my way was blocked by their outstretched arms. One of them even grabbed my ankle, though feebly, To stop me from running past him. His burnt skin sloughed off his fingers, As I pulled from his grip.
(pg. 23).
Kikuko Otake's Masako's Story is a powerful addition to the literature of the Atomic Bomb, and yet more evidence that we should all work together to stop the Nuclear madness.
Coming soon from Ahadada Books — Masako’s Story: Surviving the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima
On August 6, 1945, when the world’s first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the Furuta family was living about one mile away from the hypocenter. Five-year-old Kikuko, her mother, Masako, and her two brothers barely escaped with their lives. However, their soldier father was not so fortunate. Masako never talked about her family’s experiences on that day and the days following the bombing. Then one day, Masako started to talk about what happened — breaking a silence of nearly fifty years . . .
Kikuko (Kay) Otake was five years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. In her book Masako's Story (forthcoming from Ahadada), she offers a survivor's perspective.
Professor Kikuko (Kay) Otake was born on February 22, 1940 in Osaka, Japan. She earned her B.A. from Tsuda College of Tokyo, Japan in 1962 in English Literature. In August of 1968, she came to the US and in September 1987 earned her M.A. in Education from California State University in Los Angeles.
Professor Otake is an award-winning poet who regularly publishes tanka and haiku.
Ahadada Books is pleased to present Torque by Alison Croggon. You may download it by clicking here:
Torque by Alison Croggon (145 KB )
Ahadada Books is pleased to present 
