Etruscan Press

[chenchenwrites]

Thanks to Craig Morgan Teicher for this lovely mini-review of my book on NPR! Check out the whole article, “Poetry To Pay Attention To: A Preview of 2017′s Best Verse,” which highlights new/forthcoming books by Morgan Parker, Adrian Matejka, Javier Zamora, Danez Smith, Craig Santos Perez, & others. 

[powells]

For Teenage Girls with Wild Ambitions and Trembling Hearts by Clementine Von Radics

“Because every girl deserves to believe in her own power, and maybe the right words can serve as a defense against anyone who tries to take that away from her.”

[lastnightsreading]

The National Book Critics Circle Awards, 3/12/15

[libraryjournal]

What To Read (and Watch) After “1984”

Fiction, both classic and contemporary; nonfiction; and film and TV for readers who have finished George Orwell's 1984 and still hunger for more titles to give them perspective on the current social and political climate.

[theperksofbeingabookseller]

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (via theperksofbeingabookseller)

[bookriot]

In response to the Trump-fuelled Islamophobic hate crime by a white nationalist in Quebec City on January 29th, I’ve made this list of books by Canadian Muslim authors. Below you’ll find YA, memoir, mystery, and literary fiction. To find more Muslim books, check out the #MuslimShelfSpace tag on Twitter and other social media!

http://bookriot.com/2017/02/09/five-great-canadian-muslim-books/

[staceythinx]

Illustrations from Rachel Ignotofsky’s Women In Science series 

[etruscanpress]

Tim Seibles reads the title poem of his latest book. 

[etruscanpress]

Arcadia Road by Thorpe Moeckel

Patrick James Dunagan reviews Thorpe Moeckel’s Arcadia Road today in Rumpus Poetry.

“While never outright rejecting city life or the modern world, Moeckel stirringly questions the efficacy of allurements found within daily mainstream reality, the “crapstorm // of media, opinions, banter, ballyhoo, art, / money, politics, fast cars, the old in/out // yearning & naught – so much barking, / humdingering” yet he acknowledges them “so tasty, these bedevilments.” It’s refreshing to read new poetry which manages remain contemporary and forward-looking in terms of its spry playfulness with language while yet bucking current hipster trends found in urbane poet-villas from Oakland to Brooklyn. This is a path few others are treading. Where precursor-poets do pop to mind, say Gary Snyder or Wendell Berry, perhaps A.R. Ammons or Ted Hughes, Moeckel’s frolicsome whimsy and near lackadaisical concern for imparting any sort of “heavy message” separates his work out from theirs in unexpected ways.”

[etruscanpress]

Dr. Phil Brady on Writers Resist

Etruscans,

Yesterday, I attended PEN America’s “Writers Resist,” a rally on the steps of the New York Public Library, featuring reading, singing and reciting by over 100 writers, with chanting, sign-waving and hollering by thousands standing in the freezing courtyard. It was an inspiring gathering, and a reminder of the power and responsibility that writers have to deepen and broaden our sense of community and our belief in witness.

Hearing about “Writers Resist,” Etruscan’s founding funder, Steve Oristaglio, reminded me that Etruscan was inaugurated after a national tragedy—9/11—when Bill Heyen brought together a community of writers to share our grief and witness our anger.

In the light of September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond and in the light of so many of our books which express our national and our human experience, the Etruscan community is, I believe, a powerful agent of change. It is a potent assembly that we can marshal.

So, in this light that we ourselves shed, I ask us to come together now. I don’t know what form this gathering will take, whether it be book or rally or readings or blog or a joining of virtual hands—but I invite a conversation that opens avenues for Etruscan—as a press, an activist organization, and a community—to mobilize in this time of crisis on behalf of friends, country, planet and universe.

Thank you all for the light and love and power you share in rhythmic utterance.

Phil Brady Executive Director, Etruscan Press

1.16.17

[etruscanpress]

Skunk Years by William Heyen

Skunk Years

A few steps down from my cabin there’s a flat stone I stand on to take a piss.

I was noticing poison ivy climbing a silver maple sapling when a skunk, maybe rabid,

the first I’d seen in daylight here, at first unaware of me, swayed side to side

as it approached the sound of splashing water. My stream cut off, the skunk looked up

& saw me, we both stood our ground, me with my pecker out in a kind of trance.

I didn’t know if I smelled this visitor, or if the recent national debacle tricked my brain,

but there it was, the sweet cadaverous stink I'd sometimes sniffed when passing road-

kill in my car. The skunk turned, raised its plumed tail, but didn't let loose, not yet,

I hoped not to have to bathe in tomato juice, … but when I consider that election,

the nearsighted stripers heading toward their corporate quarters, me outside my cabin

with my faithful ballot shriveled in my hand, I think of Time as fulcrum,

America balanced, but not for long, for that was then, before our new flag,

a skunk rampant on a field of oil, its righteous ass lifted & willing.

William Heyen--written for a previous inauguration (Bush) but even more relevant today.

[etruscanpress]

RADIO11.8.16 Hover your cursor over the embedded chapbook and press “Click to Read” to view the chapbook full size. It may take several seco

H.L. Hix on "the Hate State"

The intention of this project is two-part: (1) to create a time capsule for our gut reactions to this political season, a collection we can return to when we feel complacency or forgetfulness settling; (2) to make use of the unique capacities and freedoms of the essay to explore the dichotomies of bipartisanship, and to integrate personal responses with societal facts.

[etruscanpress]

Etruscan Press will once again be attending the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference (AWP). The 50th Anniversary event, AWP17 will be held in Washington D.C. from February 8-11, 2017. In partnership with Wilkes University, Etruscan will

Etruscan Press will once again be attending the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference (AWP). The 50th Anniversary event, AWP17 will be held in Washington D.C. from February 8-11, 2017.

In partnership with Wilkes University, Etruscan will be located in booth (402).

Etruscans attending: Kazim Ali Jennifer Atkinson Remica Bingham-Risher Bruce Bond Laurie Jean Cannady Julie R. Enszer Bonnie Friedman David Lazar Paul Lisicky Shara McCallum Jeremy Schraffenberger Tim Seibles D. M. Spitzer Diane Thiel

Tim Seibels & Laurie Jean Cannady

[mttbll]

[Repetition and anaphora] replicate the experience of repeated impact on a body. If you don’t live a life where you have to negotiate a version of the same erasure over and over you can’t know how that feels. Repetition simply says, Here it comes again. Ready?

Claudia Rankine (via mttbll)

[etruscanpress]

Author Reyna Grande and poet Tim Seibles read from their work in a free, public reading as part of our Writers Conference running from July 21-24. The featured readers will be preceded by Texas Poet Laureate Laurie Ann Guerrero and poet Barbara Ras. Books will be available for purchase and a book signing follows. Join us from 6-7pm for a social hour with music by DJ Despeinada.

Coates Chapel – Southwest School of Art

300 Augusta St. 

San Antonio, TX 78205 

More Event Details

[icketmaster]

"Love Note," Kazim Ali

a window from the afternoon dreams the evening nomad, again the wind’s eye is asking to see you

bound as you are by the chords pulled down from the sky afternoon’s restless discussion scatters

the years are pulled taut as strings and it is frightening not to know

what these days will sound like at the end night unwraps itself then bliss

the heart of me works no one is known or seen

here I am adrift in the sky empty, the strings now languid, draped loosely

I’m in love with you here Sunday night and silence

you’re starless, wonder-filled a full realization

why wouldn’t I thrashing and rapt imagine you as a cool night, a gift

this amazement you’re a promise thrown over the railing

dark to dark, a pen writing back to me as it falls against the sky

this is you, in love with a world you cannot see— listen: the world promised it would be yours and it was yours

Up at Painted Bride Quarterly (73).

[themissourireview]

Perhaps it is our longing to see the part that sees coaxed out from its place of hiding, like the shadow page you soon will turn to lay upon another. Perhaps there is a bone to mend, a heart we hardened when we were far away. The past is always out there— we know that—and never is. Forgiveness is difficult for this reason. And sweet. You see it everywhere, the dead hand that brought you into the world, the birth cry you cannot remember. Somewhere a wasp unzips the air and we pass through. No, you have never passed this way before. And yet this particular spoon, with the ceiling fan spinning in its eye, is on the verge of something, confessing its attachment, taking you, like some drunk exaggeration, back. Try, it says, to feed yourself in both worlds, to give to both, fit in, and so move about more freely. As if we might forget when we are thinking of forgetting. Or look a little closer by looking at the act of looking. We might, you know. Try, say all the fathers with their dying and ours, to blaze without burning, the way one sun blazes with many suns, and none so blinding as today.

Our poem of the week is Bruce Bond’s “Déjà Vu.” (via themissourireview)