Category: Publication Announcement

THE DAY AFTER THE LAST ELECTIONS

for Pablo Neruda

Four more years doing time in the Big House
of the Amerikan Corporation,
Bossman Presidente holding the rifle and the dogs…

There’s a new sheriff in town—
identical, in fact, to the old sheriff,
resurrected in a fresh slogan
from the Boot Hill of legal banditry
and duded up in the erewhon drag of intolerance.

Here he comes,
riding over the cries of the Innocents
with an Old Testament fury—
a rootin’, tootin’, six-gun totin’ bottomliner,
with a duty to the Stockholders
to make the world safe for Apocalypse.

Yes, the People have spoken—
but in their sleep, hind legs kicking
like Ol’ Shep chasing dreamrabbits
through 3rd, 4th and 5th world alleys.
The nation is still apologizing to Custer
for having Unions—

meanwhile: the eyes of Saint Elvis float
above billboards advertising the cola
that leads to the method of true smiling.
Waiters jostle with sharks and orchids.

While nobody was watching,
while nobody was listening,
while everybody was ordering another round
of blood on the rocks,
they changed the monkey again—

deja vu, with amnesia, one more time.

from The Big Job by Robert Edwards (Red Dragonfly Press, 2016)

Obviously (and unfortunately) this collection of political poems remain as relevant as ever. If you’re feeling low after the last election, perhaps this is just the book to get you “active” once again.

Robert Edwards is originally from northern Minnesota. He attended Moorhead State University where he studied poetry with Thomas McGrath. His books include Rumors of Earth, Transparencies, Radio Venceremos, and American Sounds. Founder and editor of the magazine Pemmican, Edwards lives in the state of Washington.

The Big Job: Poems 1978 – 2004 by Robert Edwards (180 pages;9781945063008) is available from Red Dragonfly Press and Small Press Distribution.

Comments on The Big Job

The Big Job is filled with exclamations, high-spirited imperatives, and raucous hilarity in poems that are linguistically and formally adventurous without being coy and vague. All of these qualities make them highly unfashionable, but we would do well to read them and see what we’re missing in so much contemporary poetry that works so hard to say so little. In ‘Manifesto #94,’ Edwards wrote the following lines, committing to political action: “Now is the time / to set the wind free in the house. / Now is the time / to unsheathe my tongue / and take the safety off my hand.” Now is still the time. – Jonathan Andersen

Where are we in history? What have we lost? What have we become? That’s what Robert Edwards asks in this vast and decades-spanning book of lyrics and narratives and rants and homages—asks and sometimes answers, but never in a simple way. These are poems in love with, and deeply disillusioned by, America. Unapologetic, partisan, political, urgent, furious, The Big Job is also celebratory as it moves, in its own words, “among the sirens, in the American dark.” The truth is, some books can’t help but be hopeful, because they are so full of decency and real thinking. “Bring everything you have,” writes Edwards. “We need it all / because it is ourselves we make.” – Daisy Fried

Part retrospective, part poetry manifesto, part call to action, behind Edwards’ “Big Job” is a big idea: the need of working people to abolish the stranglehold rule of the rich and powerful and construct the foundations of a new egalitarian society. If Edwards’ allegiance to the working class harkens back to such midwestern literary ancestors as Tom McGrath and Meridel LeSueur, his rich imagery, surprising leaps and turns of language, and creation of a unique poetic voice are as accomplished as any poet writing today. The result of over forty years of writing, The Big Job is a triumph for Edwards, as well as for a growing movement of writers seeking to create socially conscious work on behalf of the 99 per cent. – Christopher Butters

Many a poet envisions him- or herself as a courageous figure, toiling steadfastly, crafting poems in, and despite, the Great American Wilderness. But it’s rare to find a poet who will say, “Now is the time / to make a few enemies.” And actually do it, with passion and joie de vivre. Such is the joy awaiting the reader of Robert Edwards’ The Big Job. – John Bradley

Though we are living through dark times, politically and existentially, we have Robert Edwards’ The Big Job to remind us of what it was like when the passion for justice was strong voiced and packed the streets. In these poems, Edwards brings us an archive of protest from 1978 to 2004 and with masterful poetic voice, he honours his contemporaries and those who have gone before. There is anger here, but also humor and biting satire as he skews those who stir his contempt, from Reagan and Bush to Enron bullies exulting over their exploitation of Grandma Millie. Now, this history of rebellion is more timely and needed than ever. – Marilyn Zuckerman

This new collection of poems by Diane Jarvenpa, with line-by-line luxuriance of language and attention to the natural world, is the perfect way to begin a new year of poetry at Red Dragonfly Press.

swift, bright, drift is about the legacy of our wilderness, how we walk within it and around it and are still mystified by it. It is about being in the woods, observing, listening and sitting inside its luminous silence. There’s a legacy here of a father to his daughter, how he taught her the sacred aspects of the forest and its waters and how she wishes to pass this down to her daughter. There’s a phenology here as well, that is the humble desire to record the changes of the earth, how we can feel illiterate in the face of nature and yet grateful for its adaptability, delicacy, rebirth, and the chance to learn. Here are the opening stanzas of Jarvenpa’s ‘Illuminated Manuscript’:

Old-growth forest totems preach a thousand birds
along the unscrolled slender river
as you follow the skittish comma-heads
of quail, chirographic-antlered deer leaving dust trails,

tiny green and sapphire damselflies,
proverbs among the watercress.

It is one more sand hill penned with flowers,
inkstone thunder clouds over rye fields,
ravens black-stroking their book of haiku
above the black spruce.

swift, bright, drift ($11; 46 pages; ISBN 978-1-937693-83-1) is published as a perfect-bound chapbook, available at Amazon or by special order through your local independent bookstore.

Diane Jarvenpa is the author of Divining the Landscape (New Rivers Press), Ancient Wonders, the Modern World (Red Dragonfly Press) and The Tender Wild Things (New Rivers Press) which received the Midwest Independent Publishers Association book award in poetry. She has received artist initiative and fellowship grants in writing from the Minnesota State Arts Board. She is a singer-songwriter who records under the name Diane Jarvi (http://dianejarvi.com/).

I’m pleased to announce the winner of the 2015 Emergence Chapbook Series Prize: Clear Day in January by Mark Maire of Duluth, Minnesota. The poems in this collection explore the seen and unseen in the boreal landscapes of northern Minnesota. Look for this chapbook to be published about April, 2016.

Mark’s poetry has appeared in a number of literary magazines and anthologies. A past Pushcart Prize nominee and, recently, one of four finalists for the Codhill Poetry Award, Mark is a retired reference and technical services librarian who’s lived in Duluth for most of his adult life. To hear him reading one of the poems from this chapbook, follow the link: ‘Distance‘

I also wish to thank the other poets who submitted chapbooks; the range and accomplishment of the entries, all from Minnesota, continue to impress. Manuscripts for the 2016 Emergence Chapbook Series Prize will be accepted beginning in March 31, 2016.

Scott King

Dave Etter, now in his eighties, continues to write at the top of his powers. Like the irrepressible dandelions the poet admires, those flowers “of the easy, relaxed way of life,” his poems spring so naturally and easily from the page you could miss, at first, the impeccable craftsmanship, though never the keen eye, the even keener imagination.

Etter takes out a folding ruler, a pencil, and a piece of paper, poetically measures some interesting bit of conversation, then builds a poem. The results surprise. They teach us something about ourselves, about this world, and about this odd language we use. On one page a spire of two-syllable lines proceeds through the white space like mouse tracks through the snow. On another page long lines go gutter to book edge, end mirroring beginning like a syntagmatic half-pipe. The results leave you wondering, How did he do that? or Why didn’t I think of that? Most often, however, they’ll have you running to find someone with whom to share the poem.

The Yellow House, Dave Etter’s thirty-third collection, presents a dizzying variety of characters and voices, litanies and lists. Rooted in rural Illinois, the poet’s house literally stands within earshot of Main Street while providing a view across the railroad tracks to where the prairie breeze rustles the corn in the fields outside of town. The day-to-day blues, the bitter-sweet pangs of sex and mortality, the down-to-earth joys of small town, USA – it’s all here. Who’d ever think a small town could be this large?

No matter how you’ve arrived at The Yellow House, don’t pass by. The welcome mat is out, the gate door open. Come on up to the porch for a lemonade or a scotch. Come on, Etter insists!

Purchase from Red Dragonfly Press: The Yellow House ($15; free shipping)

Dave Etter is the author of thirty-three books of poetry. He has published his poems in numerous American and foreign magazines, anthologies, and textbooks and his work has been translated into German, Polish, and Japanese. Among his awards are the Carl Sandburg, Society of Midland Authors, Theodore Roethke (from Poetry Northwest), Illinois Sesquicentennial, and Chicagoland magazine prizes. Etter’s Alliance, Illinois and Sunflower County poems have been performed on stage by college, high school, and little theater groups throughout Illinois. He lives in Lanark, Illinois, with his wife, Peggy, and a handsome male cat named Georgie, who has become the heart and soul of their house on East Locust Street.