John Bennett | The New World Order | Hcolom Press
To Jesse Helms, without whose inspiration this collection might never have coalesced. —John Bennett Continue reading
Author: Metropolis
John Bennett | Betrayal’s Like That | Hcolom Press
Betrayal’s Like That is killer. I’m so impressed with this book that if you order it and you don’t agree with me, I’ll send you whatever you feel you overpaid. —Joe Grant Continue reading
Mark Hartenbach | The Sound of Music | Hcolom Press
Two poets stand out in my mind as carrying a tradition that took root in the Sixties through subsequent decades and into the new millennium. Some call it Meat, some Confessional, but those labels are not big enough to cover this breed of poetry, and so I’ll leave it nameless. It’s a poetry that connects more with the Beats than the Sixties, but stripped of the baggage of ideology and formalized spiritual quest that saddles much of Beat poetry; its language is lean and sharp and drills into everyday life, surfacing with nuggets of uncut truth that melt away if you try to incorporate them into something “bigger”. The Mimeo Revolution was the vehicle that carried this poetry through the Sixties and early Seventies; after that, it was pretty much on its own. The poets I’m talking about are Albert Huffstickler, who died in February of 2002, and Mark Hartenbach, who carries on. — John Bennett Continue reading
John Bennett | The Birth of Road Rage | Hcolom Press
The Shards in “The Birth of Road Rage” were written over a span of time ranging from the mid 1990s until late in 2004. Some of them that sound as if they were written post 9/11 were actually written years earlier. Which goes to show that if you’ve got your finger on the pulse, you can hear the beating heart of the future. Which goes to show that Time is an illusion. — John Bennett Continue reading
Maia Penfold | The Red Buddha | Hcolom Press
A FEW WORDS FROM THE EDITOR Maia Penfold, known at the time as Gerda Penfold, drifted into my life in 1974 via an envelope packed with poems. I read those poems in one setting, published them and others in a chapbook titled Done with Mirrors, and from that point on, over the next turbulent thirty-six years, Maia has been a spiritual and creative running mate who remains fiercely independent and disinclined to compromise. She is a force of nature, no less so at the age of 82 than when she was a young girl in Saskatchewan and a young woman in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and her poetry is charged with this force, an elixir of wonder and innocence, biting wit and easy sophistication, an intelligence that drills to the core. She may be the most overlooked poet of the second half of the 20th century, and it came to me (as these things tend to do) in a flash of inspiration that I needed to collect as many of her poems as I could locate and put them into book form—Maia’s life has been hard and nomadic, and many of her poems have been lost along the way. Not long after that I found myself on a ferry to Bainbridge Island off the coast of Washington where Maia then lived. Continue reading
John Bennett | Passing On The Fire | Hcolom Press
Passing on the Fire In 1987 I published a piece of journalism in The Clinton Street Quarterly that won the Darrell Bob Houston Award. That kicked off a sporadic burst … Continue reading
John Bennett | U-Haul with Dinosaur | Hcolom Press
The stories in U-Haul with Dinosaur were written over a period of time stretching from the late Seventies into the new millennium. They don’t necessarily appear in the order in which they were written, and consequently the reader is at times exposed to violent shifts in style and perception from one story to the next — a little like being in a Formula-One race car with Ayrton Senna as it snakes through the Brazilian Grand Prix down shifting on the curves and roaring away at 150 mph on the straightaways. These are the last of my uncollected stories, and if there is a common thread that runs through them, it involves drinking and not drinking and love gone haywire. Continue reading
Joe Holiday | Somebody Else’s Nightmare | Strength and Kindness
As the bandleader my job is to develop a musical style, compose in that style and guide the interpretation of the compositions. The goal for this project was to perform music that was both written in “parts” and also meant for improvisation. “Parts” music is played by reading notes on a page; this can sometimes be complex and can require much concentration. It is found in many types of music including classical, pop, musical theater, big band and more. The challenge is to make the music sound alive and fresh every performance even though the musician has performed it the say way hundreds of times. With Somebody Else’s Nightmare, some of the “parts” change from performance to performance – for example, some compositions demand that the musicians improvise their own melody. To do this, they must listen closely to what the others are doing, and adjust. During performance, chord patterns might change. Also, I might cue in new sections while the piece is evolving, much like an audible called from the quarterback in football. In my mind, this is musical fun for both player and listener. — Joe Holiday Continue reading
Francine Witte | First Rain
Francine Witte. Winner of the 2009 Pecan Grove Press National Chapbook Competition. Copyright C 2009 by Francine Witte. All Rights reserved. Cover art: “Shreds of Blue”, Copyright C 2009 by Pecan Grove Press. ISBN: 1-978-931247-61-0. Pecan Grove Press, Box AL, 1 Camino Santa Maria, San Antonio, TX 78022 Continue reading
Larry Smith | The Long River Home | Bottom Dog Press
A Family Saga Set in the Green Heartlands… In this fine Appalachian novel, Larry Smith chronicles four generations of McCalls, their joys and sorrows, their sins and their nobility….Such regional fiction has always been about people: their connections with one another, their home place, their struggles to survive and to prosper. It’s all here, set, in the grand tradition of Wendell Berry and Conrad Richter, against the Ohio landscape: its hills and its rivers, its frontier beginnings and its later industrial development. We care about the place and its people. Finishing the novel, we understand ourselves and our nation with a deeper knowledge. — Annabel Thomas, author of Stone Man Mountain. Continue reading