I am glad to report that in Issue 31 our featured poet is Marge Piercy. We have included a number of new poems by her, along with an illuminating interview of Piercy by Endicott College Creative... More > Writing major Emily Pineau. And, as usual, we have a fine roster of poets from all parts of the country to whet your poetic appetites.
Our managing editor for this issue is Lawrence Kessenich. Kessenich has a distinguished background in publishing, having worked as an editor at Houghton Mifflin for over nine years, from 1979-1988. He is also an accomplished poet and playwright.
Harris Gardner, founder of the literary organization Tapestry of Voices, is our poetry editor this issue and, we hope, for many more to come. Harris also founded the Boston National Poetry Festival at the Boston Public Library, which has run every April for the past twelve years. Gardner is well-connected in the literary community, and he has put his connections and discerning literary taste to good use for Ibbetson Street.< Less
Again and again, in poems of precision, conscience, and formal elegance, Dennis Daly arrests our vertiginous world so we may see its beauty, horror, and promise. Daly is a masterful poet, whether he... More > is writing in free or formal verse, and the poems in this substantial gathering of his work accrue to a mature vision of our world as it is and as it could be. The Custom House is a book to savor, a book to treasure.
— Richard Hoffman, author of Gold Star Road and Emblem< Less
In her fascinating poem cycle, Gloria Mindock jolts back into memory the roots of El Salvador’s present day violence. Mindock coaxes to the page the voices of the dead who lie, less in peace,... More > than in restless obsession with the atrocities they suffered. She brings forth as well the voices of the living who seem startled to find that they died somewhere between the horrors they witnessed and the grave they have yet to lie down in. Blood Soaked Dresses is a beautiful, harrowing first book. - Catherine Sasanov< Less
Kevin Gallagher's poetry is a rare synthesis of great poetic traditions that puts particular emphases on the image and the lyric blended with a uniquely personalized iconoclasticism. His is a... More > perpetual pursuit to make it new. - Anastasios Kozaitis< Less
A dawn light glows over Choir of Day, this generous selection of new poems, and work drawn from each of Robert K. Johnson’s many previous books. Here are poems of literal dawn and the birdsong... More > that accompanies it. Here also is a more metaphorical light, one that emanates from these poems and their capacity to refresh our vision, to
renew our sense of love and relationship, and to face without flinching the inevitable losses and painful truths of our lives. Let us give thanks
for this dawn chorus.
— Fred Marchant, Author of The Looking House< Less
Starting with Allen Ginsberg and ending with Charlie Parker, Sam Cornish takes us on a whirlwind tour of some of the livelier segments of 1950s and early ’60s American culture. With non-stop... More > energy, syncopated rhythms, and a fast pace that keeps you humming as you turn the pages, Cornish visits a wide array of writers, musicians, and films, stopping along the way to visit local poetry scenes and pay tribute to the homeless and poor. Calling on Jack Kerouac, Langston Hughes, Marlon Brando, Miles Davis and a host of others, Cornish makes us feel the excitement of those times, even as he and his companions absorb the complex and often disturbing history of what he aptly calls “My Young America.” — Martha Collins< Less
An interview with Henry Kirschenbaum, a denizen of the Lower East Side of New York City in the early part of the 20th century. This book deals with the Kirschenbaum family and their immigration from... More > the "Pale of Settlement" in Eastern Europe to their time selling books on pushcarts in the Lower East Side of NYC. Later David Kirschenbaum, would go on to be a leading bookseller on New York's famed "Book Row" and the owner of the Carnegie Bookstore. These are raw interviews, with many long forgotten details of an old New York.< Less
"On How to Read undertakes a vital mission, the questioning of the obvious in an age where the surplus of information seems to have created a new acquiescence. Rosenblatt's investigations make... More > play itself an integral part of the act of reading while inviting us to question our world. This is a rich little book." -- Affa M. Weaver, Pushcart Prize Winner 2008< Less
The settings of these poems are not 'poetic'--the suburbs, the commuter's routine, the sad pilgrimage from anticipation to regret, from the promise of life to the certainty of death, with all its... More > preliminary indignities. The themes and voice--disciplined by traditional craft, enriched by detachment, conscious of the immensities of time and space that frame our lives, diminishing and exalting them--are another matter. They contain gravity, delight, and mockery within them. One thinks of the Frost of "Desert Places," but in the context of our own time. There is a consolation in making music and a consolation in facing facts. OUTPOST, with many variations, provides both." --Franklin Burroughs< Less
The Ibbetson Street Press was founded in 1998 in Somerville, Mass. by Doug Holder, Richard Wilhelm, and Dianne Robitaille. Ibbetson Street Press was named after a street in Somerville, Mass. where the press was first located. The press has produced 29 issues of the literary journal IBBETSON STREET, and well-over 60 chapbooks and perfect bound poetry collections.
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