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John Berger once said "We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice." And Miles Davis quipped: "Don't play what's there, play what's not there." What we have in Christopher Soden's wonder filled Tempting God is, as the title suggests, an intense questioning of the everyday we live and also the invisible mystery behind it. The struggle is one of identity and relationships, and often one seems "like a thrush caught blindly / banging in an endless black flue." Counterpointing intimacy and memory, this masterful book forges a solution in moments "of intersection, {where} the earth / was a glad and remarkable / home, swaddling me / in the promise of miracles / within reach." It is the God within us that Christopher comes to realize, and that the temptation is to create and preserve one's identity-something we can all learn from this book.-Richard Jackson, Author of The Heart as Framed: New and Select Poems "The speaker in these splendid poems is beguiling, weary, and an astute observer of others, of the world. Hatred and confusion give away to fleeting intimacies and to the grace of miracles-another word for survival. The speaker's journey is rich with fleshy, pungent moments, pop culture, and the shifting bonds between men. Soden is a wonderful poet and this book is a marvel." -Eduardo Corral

"Not least because of his heroic efforts on behalf of the art through his leadership of Calling All Poets, Mike Jurkovic is rightly something of a local legend-especially in the sense that we all need a legend to interpret the map. From the profoundly moving first poem, "Blood Street," to the fasci-nating account of "My Meeting w/ Vonnegut" and beyond, Buckshot Reckoning richly delivers on its promise of what he calls mishap and magic. In his latest affable, shrewd, and politically acute collection, we find a kindred spirit to the Kerouac of Mexico City Blues, poems overflowing with what Kerouac described as Love's multitudinous boneyard of decay / The spilled milk of heroes." - Thomas Festa, Professor of English, SUNY New Paltz, author of Earthen"Bravely and boldly, Jurkovic announces the second scene/of the third act. In Buckshot Reckoning the poet confronts both mortality and criminality as he confesses that the age/of repair/ is upon me. Such repair is difficult in the context of a world gone batshit but that difficulty is exactly what Jurkovic engages with. The poems are clearly influenced by the poet's deep involvement with music either as directly alluded to (Screaming Jay Hawkins and Me in Our Prime) or in poems like crack n stack in which the repetition and cadence suggest a musical performance, as if the poet and the poem are about to leap off the stage and start a performance right in front of us. There is huge range in these poems - memories of youth and sex and excitement bump up against the terrors of the present moment - the drift and wreckage/ wreckage and grift of a world gone mad with poison and war. And then there is the quieter despair that comes with facing illness and loss, a life in which the speaker describes perfecting daily/the coffin pose. This is a brave book, that pulls no punches. Life and aging are just plain hard." - Ruth Danon, Creative & Expository Writing Coordinator, CMcGhee Division, New York University; Author of Turn Up the Heat¿¿¿"Mike Jurkovic's keen eye, sharp ear and compassionate heart beckon us once again--and reward us with uniquely satisfying images: from crimps in the human foil to tannins of peace. Gift yourself with this thoughtful and provocative book. - Irene O'Garden, poet, author, Risking the Rapids, Off-Broadway playwright, Women On Fire"Mike Jurkovic's keen eye, sharp ear and compassionate heart beckon us once again--and reward us with uniquely satisfying images: from crimps in the human foil to tannins of peace. Gift yourself with this thoughtful and provocative book. - Irene O'Garden, poet, author, Risking the Rapids, Off-Broadway playwright, Women On Fire

"In poet Dianne Borsenik's new book Flight of Honey, the sounds of music, homages to visual art, maps of family geography, interactions with nature, and married life and related concerns, combine in a poetry collection that is as satisfying, fluid, and sticky as the titular sweetener. If ever a writer deserved to be Poet Laureate of Ohio, it would be Dianne Borsenik."-Gregg Shapiro, author of Refrain in Light (Souvenir Spoon Press, 2023)"Borsenik's new collection of poems is a lyrical journey through a year of experiences that mirror the changing seasons. In free verse poems, haiku, and haibun, Borsenik explores the tensions of life's highs and lows. One moment we can relish a "golden weekend" with days like honey, "richly aureate," and the next, we hunker down, struggle amid the booms and busts of history. Through it all, there is plenty of music, a soundtrack in language and in images-from a grandfather strumming a dulcimer somewhere in a West Virginia hollow to Aretha Franklin belting out her classic "Respect," to the music of the universe, "one giant composition plucked out / on a cosmic guitar."-Chuck Salmons, author of Patch Job (Night Ballet Press, 2017) and Stargazer Suite (11thour Press, 2016)"In this sweet collection, spiked with the poet's desire to live longer than her mother did ("genetic advantage/is not in my charts,") we have zany moments where Jesus roams the Wal-mart parking lot, sixties lyrics zing, and birds and feral catsscreech in Midwest intersections. But the poems revel also in serious seasons of honey tasting, including the latter days,"the best of all," as Borsenik fills her hive with finely realized echo puns, ekphrasis, haiku, haibun, and many free-verseform explorations. We usually say this about fiction, but I have to say about this book of poems: I couldn't put it down." -Diane Kendig, author of Woman With a Fan: On Maria Blanchard (Shanti Arts, 2021)"For something so sweet, honey has a surprising depth of flavor, secret floral notes buried under waves of fructose and glucose. Similarly, the poetry of Dianne Borsenik will surprise you if you let it. There is joy and tranquility here that sometimes bubbles with mad effervescence, but also darker currents as she explores rustbelt landscapes, the Appalachian diaspora, the daughter-of-a-daughter-inlaw's blues, and her own mortality. Like the "flight of honey" in her title poem, she follows the seasons, tasting deep and mixing poetic forms to find her buried treasures. You will find haibun, ekphrastic poems, words on the wings of an uknown bird, and Jesus traipsing into Walmart. Much to loveand wonder over!" -R. C. Wilson, editor/publisher of Last Exit Press, curator of Last Exit Open Poetry Readings in Kent, OH"What life-affirming music is to be found in these meditations that travel from "a glass of ice cubes" all the way to "the solar lux." The Flight of Honey is graced by jays and bees, by the sweet honey of breath, "look at how the bodies touch" this book asks and hands us the spirit that rises on wings with each blessed passing day." -Sean Thomas Dougherty, Death Prefers the Minor Keys (BOA Editions, 2023)

"Mike James is a poet in love with bridges, a poet of praisein search of connective tissue, relentlessly on the move,searching for signifiers, trying to find that loose thread ofinspiration. "The sky is something we can drink from," hewrites. "Darkness is never clean or clear," knowing a humanbeing in love with mystery is never finished, and that theworld is mostly hidden from us, and poetry is one of theways humans discover the most important aspects of them-selves, illuminating and untangling as it tells. These lovelypoems are a blessing, an unexpected warm wind blowsthrough them and amazing declarations shiver forth asJames travels and watches and listens. "Sound brings us toour senses," said Thoreau, and the poems here are quietand tight, acutely aware of their own dissolution, and thetemporary spaces that we occupy. "The moon looks nothinglike the one I touched," writes James, and with a deftsurrealistic brush he fills in all the colors he finds and theones he had hoped to find. There are wonders to discoverin every poem and I gobbled them up. Sit with this bookand listen and the singing will settle in your imagination.Don't just take my word for it, open the cover and startswimming and you will be immersed in a better world." -Keith Flynn, editor of The Asheville Poetry Review and author of The Skin of Meaning"Mike James writes with a toymaker's sense of wonder. His poems, like toys, delight and fascinate, leading the reader's imagination in strange and beautiful directions. 'I never put a feather back on a bird,' he says in 'It's Lovely, at Last,' and we, looking on, know exactly what he means and how that irrational failure feels. James's poems attack the mind with a surrealistic bent like the verses of James Tate. They spiral and swirl, then lift and float. 'Most of my friends live with hallucinations,' he says in 'Discount Ghazal of Everyday Saints.' To read these poems is to be one of James's friends, dancing with phantasms. His writing is something to be experienced as much as read: a journey well worth taking." -Ace Boggess, author of I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So and The Prisoners¿"Like C.K. Williams, Mike James is a master of the flexible long line and its component parts. Compact in form, expansive in vision, his poems render ordinary events in startling focus, and find surreal gestures where most of us wouldn't expect them. I envy the precision and energy of poems like "Thinning Stars, Along the River," and the humor of those like "Where I'm From." This is a vivid and lively book, amusing and sobering at once."--William Doreski, author of Riding the Comet

"In Remnants, the poems'' freshness comes not only from Troy Schoultz''s vivid images of bleak towns'' inhabitants and geographies, but also from this unspoken in sight: the bleakness one confronts can be mitigated by its recollection, its retelling. Placed alongside the poems, Amie Brownfield''s photos of everyday objects--watches, pictures, buttons, matchbooks, etc.--underscore the authenticity of Shoultz''s poems. The resulting assemblages create a world the reader can readily enter, with real people, real places, and real things presented in a startling light."-Don Winter, author of Cleaning Up at the Hamtramck Burger Chef.∩╗┐"Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks," wrote Plutarch.Artist Amie Brownfield and Poet Troy Schoultz provide the best of both worlds in these pairings of visual art and poetry that recall works by WilliamBlake, Kenneth Patchen, and, more recently, Banca Stone and WilliamTrowbridge. Narrative, at times nostalgic, and full of jolting surprises, this book made me grin and gasp, often simultaneously. On page after page, Brownfield and Schoultz tore me to pieces and then stitched what was left of me back together."-Tom C. Hunley, Ph.D., author of What Feels Like Love: New and         Selected Poems.  

"In these unique stories, Graziano''s use of surrealism juxtaposed with realism creates an unusual tension that makes you want to keep reading to figure out what is happening. The Seagull is almost like Godot, except for the fact that he does actually show up and then he keeps showing up. Long after you put down the collection, you will be left wondering who the hell is The Seagull anyway?" -Rebecca Schumejda, author of Something Like Forgiveness"Nathan Graziano''s Fly Like The Seagull is one of the funniest things I''ve read in years. All at once bizarre, non-judgemental, and strangely tender; whether we want to admit it or not, we''ve all known someone like The Seagull. Maybe we''ve been him, flapping our wings with a few well placed karate kicks in front of the mirror after a tough day at work. One thing is certain though, like Steven Seagal himself, this book is an instant American classic. It is a privilege to have gotten a sneak peek."-John Dorsey, author of Your Daughter''s Country"There''s a certain scent to Graziano''s writing that unmasks the wickedness within all of us. Apples hanging everywhere-in the bars, the parking lots, the basement rooms and fantasy suites-Graziano''s latest, Fly Like The Seagull, peels back the good, the bad and the ugly and takes a big, juicy bite along the way as he navigates the reader through the underbelly of a modern life."-Rob Azevedo, host of Granite State of Mind and author of Notes from the Last Breath Farm: A Music Junkie''s Quest To Be Heard

Bill Gillard is an award-winning teacher of creative writing and literature at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. His writing has appeared in dozens of journals, and he is the author of two chapbooks: Ode to Sandra Hook and Desire, the River and the co-author of Speculative Modernism, a study of the literary origins of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. He is the Fiction Editor at the literary magazine, Masque and Spectacle and earned an M.F.A. from Fairleigh Dickinson University. He lives in Appleton, Wisconsin, with his wife and two daughters and is a recovering youth hockey coach.Especially for those unfamiliar with supplication to imaginary omnipotents, it is helpful to page through the entire collection first, stopping here and there to get a feel for how the prayer book unfolds. Practice good breathing habits during this phase. Afterward, and as your devotion matures, it is existentially safest to read this book in its entirety every day, preferably aloud (clothing optional). Then nobody will be able to say that whatever comes next is your fault. You gave it your best shot. You were devout. Pious, even.