The Wrest of the Worthwhile: Unselected, Uncollected and New Poems, 1983-2023 - by John Burroughs (CC#123)

The Wrest of the Worthwhile: Unselected, Uncollected and New Poems, 1983-2023 by U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate John Burroughs is a poetry book 40 years in the making.

Over 340 pages! Hundreds of poems, early and new, that did not appear in Rattle and Numb. Perfect paperback, 5.5" x 8.5". ISBN: 979-8-88596-991-8. Released by Far Queue Press (an imprint of Crisis Chronicles) on 6 April 2023 at the Cuyahoga County Public Library's Self-Publishing Roundtable.

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In the U.S. $20.00 USD International $25.00 USD

Available for $25 (includes postage) from Crisis Chronicles Press,  535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143. Venmo: @jesuscrisis. CashApp: $crisischronicles. Or meet John and pick it up at one of these upcoming events.

The Wrest of the Worthwhile is comprised of three sections:

Forth
The entirety of his two quickly-sold-out limited edition 2022 chapbooks, You Can't Trust It to Remain (originally published by Between Shadows Press) and Dogging Catastrophe (The Grind Stone), as well as revised/completed versions of the rest of his July 2022 poems from the Tupelo Press 30/30 project.

Back
Previously unselected poems from many of his earlier chapbooks (everything not already included in the 2019 volume Rattle and Numb: Selected and New Poems, 1992-2019, from Venetian Spider Press). Said chapbooks include Bloggerel (2008, Crisis Chronicles), 6/9: Improvisations in Dependence (2009, Crisis Chronicles), Electric Company (2011, Writing Knights, expanded in 2016), Water Works (2012, recycled karma press), The Eater of the Absurd (2012, NightBallet), Barry Merry Baloney (2012, Spare Change Press), Oct Tongue -1 (2014, Crisis Chronicles), Beat Attitude (2015, NightBallet), and Loss and Foundering (2018, NightBallet).

Back and Forth
Never-before seen new poems and forty years worth of uncollected poems from various online and print journals going all the way back to his 1983 high school litmag and up through March 2023.

Cover art: Animal Locomotion, plate 332, by Eadweard Muybridge [1887] (Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington).

John Burroughs of Cleveland is the U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate for 2022-2023. A widely touring writer and performer, Burroughs previously served for two years as Ohio's Beat Poet Laureate. His previous books include Rattle & Numb: Selected & New Poems, 1992-2019 [2019, Venetian Spider Press] and The Eater of the Absurd [2012, NightBallet Press]. Since 2008, Burroughs has served as the founding editor and publisher for Crisis Chronicles Press.

I Have a Poem About That - by Christine Howey (CC#121)

We at Crisis Chronicles Press are ecstatic to announce the publication of our first title of 2023, I Have a Poem About That by the amazing Christine Howey. It's always a joy and privilege to work with her.

I Have a Poem About That is 36 pp, 6 x 9", perfect bound, with cover art by Jessie Herzfeld. ISBN 979-8-88596-993-2. Available for $10 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

Christine Howey’s newest book, I Have a Poem About That, contains what is undoubtedly some of her best work. As you read these poems, you are introduced to Howey’s unique takes on such diverse topics as jazz, gender, Viet Nam, the questioning of authority, and the afterlife. In the poem “My Words Are Too Big Today,” she reveals The sun is hanging in the / threadbare blue sky like a broken button. In “When We Die We Become Birds,” she considers Just as God’s gift to us, before death, / is the vodka martini, his postmortem gift / is to turn us into birds. While some of the pieces quietly reflect and fondly reminisce, most of them grab you by the shirt collar and jerk you close enough to feel the spit.
    —Dianne Borsenik, author of Raga for What Comes Next, publisher at NightBallet Press

This volume features 23 poems, including "When We Die We Become Birds," "My Skiff," "Camus at Camp," "A Meeting of Suburban Deer," "Eternity on Elm Street," "Inside Out," "Invert at the Gem Saloon, Deadwood, South Dakota, 1876," "My Name Is John Doe," "Mount Everest," "Paul Desmond's Slot Machine," "Ten Ill-Conceived Kitchen Gadgets," "Maybe I Should Have Told Different Lies," "After I'm Gone," "Blueberries, Summer, 1944," "The Last One," "The Road Oft Taken," "Sign of the Cross," "A Bubble-Off Romance," "The Birds and the Bees," "The History of Television," "The Universal Usage Guide," "An Ode to Richard Howie," and "My Words Are Too Big Today."

 

Christine Howey is a performance poet and former executive director of Literary Cleveland. Her one-person play of poetry about her transgender journey, Exact Change, premiered at Cleveland Public Theatre and was selected by the New York International Fringe Festival. A film version of the play was an official selection of the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival. 

Christine has also been an award-winning theater critic in Cleveland for 25 years, currently with Cleveland Scene. She was named Transgender Leader of the Year in Northeast Ohio and received the Torch Award from the Human Rights Campaign for leadership on transgender issues. 

Kan Zaman - by Judith Mansour (CC#120)

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to announce the publication of Kan Zaman, a stirring memoir in poetry and prose by Judith Mansour. Mansour, a native of Youngstown, Ohio, walks the minefield of grief and nostalgia in her first full-length collection. Soot-covered porches from the once-booming steel industry of the Mahoning Valley are the backdrop for visceral, playful and devastating memories.

The title, Kan Zaman, is Arabic for "a long time ago" — often used to mean once upon a time or way back when. Apropos for this collection born of losing people Mansour loved and who shaped who she is.

Kan Zaman is 66 pp, 5.5" x 8.5", perfect bound, with color and b/w photos. Cover painting by Joe Geha. Design by Tim Lachina. ISBN: 979-8-88596-994-9. Available for $15 beginning 5 November 2022 from our friends at Mac's Backs Books on Coventry in Cleveland Heights or directly from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

Read Charlotte Morgan's interview with Judith Mansour about Kan Zaman at FreshWater Cleveland.

Meet the author at our book release event on November 5th 2022, 6:30 pm, at Beaumont School in Cleveland Heights.

"Judith Mansour’s Kan Zaman is an irresistible evocation of the Lebanese household she grew up in. This magical book is both a love poem to her family and an invitation for all of us to revisit our childhood, that paradise to which we can only return through memory. Mansour’s writing, by turns both sensual and hauntingly lyrical, is as welcoming as a warm kitchen on a winter night."

—George Bilgere

"True to her title, Mansour evokes the very aromas and tastes of the past, the losses and the joys of how things once were. Beautifully blending poetry and prose, she portrays the struggles inherent in family and culture."

—Joe Geha, author of Kitchen Arabic

Gypsy Queen - by Nicole Hennessy (CC#109)

Crisis Chronicles Press is overjoyed to announce the publication of Gypsy Queen, a stunning new poetry collection by Cleveland's own Nicole Hennessy.
 

Gypsy Queen is 60 pages, perfect bound, 5.5 x 8.5". ISBN: 978-1-64092-945-6. Front cover art by Lauren Dulay. Available now for only $10 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA. 

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Read a selection from Gypsy Queen on the Cuyahoga County Public Library website.


Read a review of Gypsy Queen at The Poetry Question.

photo of Nicole Hennessy by Chad Cochran

Nicole Hennessy is a poet and journalist from Cleveland, Ohio. Gypsy Queen is her debut poetry collection, though she has been chasing poetry for more than twenty years. Her previous publications include Black Rabbit, a nonfiction profile of poet and artist Tom Kryss. Nicole also co-founded the underground art and literary bimonthly, Miser Magazine; and she will eventually launch her art and outreach effort, Universal Eccentrics, with some incredible, like-minded weirdoes. Her work has appeared in local and regional publications, and she was recently recognized as a Wild Wmn by the LA-based women’s artistic and wellness collective of the same name. Nicole is also mom to a spirited four-year-old boy. She’s probably cuddled up at home watching cartoons. You can stalk her on Instagram @nicohenness.

Read an interview with Nicole Hennessy: "Local Writer and Journalist Nicole Hennessy Releases Debut Poetry Book ‘Gypsy Queen’" at Cool Cleveland.
 

Meet the author at these special upcoming events:
 

5/4 - Vision of the Gypsy Queen book launch party and reading by Nicole Hennessy at the Good Goat Gallery, 17012 Madison Avenue in Lakewood, Ohio. (The accompanying art show runs through May 25th.)

5/19 - Tongue in Groove Poetry Jam featuring Nicole Hennessy at the Millard Fillmore Presidential Library, 15617 Waterloo Road, Cleveland, Ohio. 

10/15 - Poetry+ featuring Matt Hart & Nicole Hennessy at Art on Madison, 14203 Madison, Lakewood, Ohio 44107.

11/23 - Streetlight Imaginations with Crisis Chronicles & NightBallet Presses will feature Nicole Hennessy and our other Class of 2019 authors at the South-Euclid Lyndhurst branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library, 1876 S. Green Road in South Euclid, Ohio.

12/12 - Meet the Author, Nicole Hennessy at the Lakewood Public Library, 15425 Detroit Ave, Lakewood, Ohio.

Soul Picked Clean - by Cat Russell (CC#108)

Crisis Chronicles Press is pleased to announce the publication of Soul Picked Clean, the debut poetry collection by Ohio writer Cat Russell.

"In Soul Picked Clean Cat Russell provides a thoughtful and hopeful collection of sharp-edged, personal poems that balance themes of “cosmic coincidence” (“Dice”) with close observations of daily life and family. Knitting together comfort and struggle, Russell’s poems build a sense of alienation filled with tense urgency. In poems like “Serial Killer at the Laundromat” she brings to focus measured risks, remaining “acutely conscious of / how alone I am” and “Balloon,” which imagines the growth and deflation of memory and life through “the events / that would shape and fill me.” If “Children see the things adults turn away from” ("2 a.m."), they are also evident in the honest insights of Russell’s debut collection."

—EF Schraeder, author of Chapter Eleven

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Soul Picked Clean is around 100 pages, perfect bound, 5.5 x 8.5". ISBN: 978-1-64092-978-4. Front cover photo by Chandra Alderman. Available 30 March 2019 for only $12 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA. 

Meet the author at these special events:

3/30 (7pm) - Book launch party at Mac's Backs, 1820 Coventry Rd, Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44118. Cat Russell and Pittsburgh-area poets Jason Irwin and Jen Ashburn will read.

4/11 (6:30 pm) - Cat Russell reads at Dorrie's Booktique in Canton, Ohio.

4/12 - Aztilude - sWord Fight Tournament in Canton, Ohio. More details forthcoming.

4/13 (11am-2pm) - Local Author Fair at Massillon Public Library, 208 Lincoln Way E, Massillon, Ohio 44646.

4/19 - Poetry and Art: Poet Cat Russell with artist Jim Meador in Canton, Ohio.

4/22 (6:30pm) - Cat Russell author talk with music by Ed Amann at the Barberton Public Library, 602 West Park Avenue, Barberton, Ohio 44203.

Cat Russell shares her life with her high school sweetheart, their son, and other ferocious creatures in the wilds of Ohio while composing poetry, writing short stories, and learning more about the craft every day. Her work has been published in Flash Me magazine, Metro Fiction, Beyond Centauri, and the Best of Friday Flash – Volume One and -Volume Two anthologies, as well as Poetry Quarterly and Three Line Poetry. More of her writing can be found on her blog at ganymeder.com. 

Our house on the sand - by Elaine Schleiffer (CC#107)

Crisis Chronicles Press is honored to publish Our house on the sand, a powerful, poignant, categorization defying sequence of work by Elaine Schleiffer.

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Our house on the sand is 44 pages, perfect bound, 5.5 x 8.5". ISBN: 978-1-64092-977-7. Front cover photo by Chandra Alderman. Available in February 2019 for only $10 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA. 

Elaine Schleiffer is a writer, organizer, and creative who focuses on abortion access, bisexual visibility, and queer rights. Her writing can be found in Rebelle Society, Santa Fe Literary Review, Pudding Magazine, et cetera and her activism can be found in Cleveland, Ohio.  

The Strength of Flowers - by Steve Thomas (CC#100)

Crisis Chronicles Press is pleased to announce the imminent publication of Steve Thomas' new book, The Strength of Flowers. Steve has been a stalwart of the Cleveland poetry scene for many years, and now, finally — this collection. It's about time! 

The Strength of Flowers is 80 pages, perfect bound, 5.5 x 8.5", featuring cover art by Danielle Stull, and available beginning 20 August 2018 for $12 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA. 

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ISBN: 978-1725142312. Poems include "Mapless," "When Miriam met Raymond Carver," Smoke dream, "Being moved unaware," "Contact in a contrary world," "Staring at Issa in the afternoon revisited" and many more. Now in its second edition with added poems as of March 2019!

Meet and hear the author:

10 October 2018, 7 pm, at Mac's Backs Books on Coventry in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
22 March 2019, 7:30 pm at Visible Voice Books in Cleveland, Ohio.

Steve Thomas has had poems published in Baldwin Wallace University’s The Mill during the years of 1984 & 1985. Upon returning to Baldwin Wallace in 2005, The Mill published his poetry in 2005 and 2006. He also has contributed to Hessler Street Fair anthologies intermittently from 2007 to 2015, placing third in the competition in 2008. He also had some exposure in a literary magazine Muse sponsored by The Lit in 2009.

Cover Artist Danielle Stull majored in Art at Youngstown State University. Along with her painting and sculpting interests, Danielle has been tattooing, for the last decade, unique designs for customers. She is currently at Focused Tattoo in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, on Coventry.

Citizen of Metropolis - by Christine Howey (CC#99)

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to announce the highly anticipated publication of Christine Howey's newest poetry collection, Citizen of Metropolis.

"Christine Howey’s unique brand of conversational poetry blooms brightly in Citizen of Metropolis. Like a bee nuzzling flower after flower, I found myself buzzing from poem to poem, delighted to find tales of poems with wires showing, visitors from another world, reasons to sit, and babies in treetops. Howey asks questions we’d never think to ask, and then answers them, twinkle in her eye, with penetrating wit." 
—Dianne Borsenik, editor/publisher NightBallet Press, author of Age of Aquarius

Citizen of Metropolis is 32 pages, perfect bound, 6x9", featuring cover art by Steven B. Smith, and available beginning 2 August 2018 for $7 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Blvd, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.  Add $2 for domestic shipping.

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Nominated for an Ohioana Book Award, this volume features 19 poems including "Citizen of Metropolis"; "I Don’t Like This Title"; "Things That Make Me Sit"; "Satisfaction"; "Rock-A-Bye Baby"; "One Second"; "My Muse Eats Cheetos"; "Destination Vacation"; "Meals"; "Losing It at Age 73"; "Edward Hopper, Motivational Speaker"; "An Evening Out"; "Beowulf at Breakfast"; "I Want to Write a Poem with the Wires Showing"; "My Grandson on a Sled"; "Taking Bryn, Age 7, to MOMA"; "There are Parts of My Body I No Longer Encourage People to Handle Freely"; Weather Report"; and "William Randolph Hearst, Diving Alone, San Simeon." ISBN: 978-1-64092-971-5.

Listen to Marcia Epstein's recent podcast featuring Christine Howey at Talk with ME.

Christine Howey is an actor, director, theater critic and performance poet. She was the Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights, Ohio for 2016-2018. Her one-person stage play of poetry about her transgender journey, Exact Change, was turned into a feature film. As a play, it premiered at Cleveland Public Theatre and was an official selection of the 2015 New York International Fringe Festival. The film was an official selection of the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival in 2018. Christine has had four books of poetry published. She is also a slam poet and competed in the National Poetry Slams, in 2013 and 2017, as a member of the four-person Cleveland team. Since 2002, Christine has been the theater critic for Cleveland Scene and she also posts reviews on her blog, Rave and Pan. She has been named Best Critic in Ohio by both the Press Club of Cleveland and the Society of Professional Journalists. Christine was awarded a Creative Workforce Fellowship in 2014 from the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, and an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council in 2016, which also granted her a 13-week residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. She was honored to receive the Illumination Award as the transgender leader of the year in northeast Ohio for 2015, and the Torch Award for leadership on transgender issues from the Cleveland chapter of the Human Rights Campaign in 2017.

Where Never Was Already Is - by Steven B. Smith (CC#98)

I am so very excited to announce the publication of underground art legend Steven B. Smith's magnum opus, Where Never Was Already Is, a collection of decades worth of his best poetry combined with a liberal array of his renowned collage art.

If not for discovering Smith and his work, I might never have attended a live poetry event or become a publisher. I cannot overstate his importance and influence, but not just on me. He is a master of language and rhythm and distilling innumerable harmonious essences from disparate parts. His humor is delightful and biting. His sensitivity and insight are unsurpassed. And no one is better at wordplay. Mix in love, lust, brain dust, the news, the blues and a lifetime of experiences that would make one hell of a series of movies and out comes Where Never Was Already Is, the must-have book of 2018.

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United States $15.00 USD Elsewhere $20.00 USD

Where Never Was Already Is by Steven B. Smith is perfect bound, 6" x 9", featuring 27 collages and roughly 250 poems on 324 pages. Nominated for an Ohioana Book Award. Cover collage and author photo also by Smith. ISBN: 978-1-940996-49-3. Available for $15 from Crisis Chronicles Press, 535 Parkside Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44143 USA.

Meet and hear Smith at these special upcoming events:
4/21 at 7pm during the Kleft Crisis 2018 poetry festival at Mac's Backs in Cleveland Heights.
4/22 at 6pm during the Tongue-in-Groove Poetry Jam at the Millard Fillmore in Cleveland.
6/13 at 7pm at Mac's Backs in Cleveland Heights.
7/7 at 7:30pm at Visible Voice Books in Cleveland.

Self-portrait by Smith

Smith: poet 55 years, artist 54 years. His books include Zen Over Zero - Selected Poems 1964-2008 on City Poetry Press; Unruly on Crisis Chronicles Press; Hip Cat Femur Whack Give a Doc a Bone on NightBallet Press; and his memoir Stations of the Lost & Found, a True Tale of Armed Robbery, Stolen Cars, Outsider Art, Mutant Poetry, Underground Publishing, Robbing the Cradle, and Leaving the Country by Smith & Lady on City Poetry Press.

See his art and poetry on agentofchaos.com, Smith & Lady's blogs on walkingthinice.com, and his songs on reverbnation.com/mutantsmith where he sort of sings his words with music by Peter Ball and Billy Clarksville.

Smith says his greatest achievement is finding and marrying Lady K. 13 years ago and their selling his place to live for 31 months in 10 countries on 3 continents.