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Here at Kamini Press we are very proud to present the sixth chapbook in our poetry series

The Poet Tree

by

t. kilgore splake

34 pages of poetry. Cover art by Henry Denander. All 150 books signed by the author in Calumet, Michigan. Twenty-five of the books come with a signed water color by Henry Denander. Mini-chapbook format, in wraps.

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Signed edition $9 incl. shipping all over the world

Limited edition with signed artwork $18 incl. shipping all over the world

Sweden, please pay SEK 60 per book to Bankgiro 5889-0781, price including postage. 125 SEK for the limited version. Email to reserve. Books are also to be found at Bokmagasinet, Stockholm.

The spirit of the Beats lives on the far reaches of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the person of t. kilgore splake. He is a seeker after Truth with his spare, jazzy, plain spoken style, in a materialistic age where abstraction and buzz words have replaced a poetry of, and, for the people.  Read splake and remember what real poetry is supposed to be all about. -Alan Catlin

t. kilgore splake was born as Thomas Hugh Smith in 1936, in Three Rivers, Michigan. While teaching at Kellog Community College in Battle Creek, splake began writing poems. In 1989, he chose to take an early retirement as a college professor, to live in creative poverty and find his poetic voice. Upon retirement, he moved to Michigan’s upper peninsula, living for ten years in Munising, before moving to Calumet in the Keweenaw peninsula.

in twenty years splake has become a legend in small press circles for his writing and photography. His artist supporters believe that splake possesses an original creative vision as well as exhaustive working habits.

Related posts:

1. Samuel Charters | The Poet Sees His Family Sleeping
2. Ronald Baatz | Bird Effort
3. Samuel Charters | The Poet Sees His Family Sleeping

—B.L. Kennedy, Reviewer-in-Residence

Here at Kamini Press we are proud to present another of our favorite poets and his new book:

Tom Kryss

Sketch Book

It was the fine poet and writer John Bennett who many years ago, on his Vagabond website, introduced us to Tom Kryss. Since then he’s been a favorite artist, illustrator and poet. Please study Kryss’s long list of books, chaps, broadsides and art, look at the bottom of this page. There is something about Tom Kryss’s tone and voice that makes him very special. Have you seen his art? Have you seen his The Book of Rabbits – one of the most beautiful children’s books you’ve ever seen?

Tom Kryss is a true outsider and he was part of the Cleveland poetry scene in the Sixties around d.a. levy; the Cleveland scene back then had more outsiders per square meter than any other poetry scene in America.

Let me quote John Bennett from Vagabond: “You want your young genius poet of the 20th Century? Scrap Rimbaud. I give you Tom Kryss. What Tom Kryss does, more than any poet I know, is strip away excess and cut to the bone. He staked out a modest turf and then hunkered down and stayed there. He has not squandered time and blurred his focus chasing down publishers and polishing his image. So that what he writes is unencumbered and fraught with the particular, which is the unique, which is the only way to get a handle on the universal. What he writes always gives you something and never takes anything away. “

Sketch Book is his new book from Kamini Press, number 5 in our Poetry Series. 40 pages of prose poems. Cover art by Tom Kryss. All 150 books signed by the author in Ravenna (this American town with the beautiful Italian name). Twenty-five of the books come with a hand-tinted and signed print by Tom Kryss. Author portrait painting by Henry Denander.

9 USD Signed book including postage all over the world.

18 USD Signed book with artwork including postage all over the world.

Please

use the PayPal button above or send cash in a brown envelope to Kamini Press, Ringvägen 8, 4th floor, SE-117 26 Stockholm, Sweden. In Sweden pay SEK 63,-/125,- (including postage) to Bankgiro 5889-0781, or get the book from Bokmagasinet, in Stockholm.

Tom Kryss | Painting by Henry Denander

Tom Kryss Books and Broadsides

• Cleveland Poems, Chicago Poems & Other Shit – Free Love Press – Cleveland 1967
• Look at the Moon Then Wipe the Light from Your Eyes and Tell Me What you See – Runcible Spoon – Sacramento 1968
• Nuclear Roses and Quiet Rooms – Open Skull Press – San Francisco 1969
• Dialogue in Pale Blue (with r.j.s.) – Broken Mimeo Press – Cleveland 1969
• The Book of Rabbits (Krulik Ksiega) – Ayizan Press – Cleveland 1969
• Sherwood Anderson’s Blue’s – Gunrunner Press – Milwaukee 1970
• Sleep Like Yellow Thunder – Second Aeon Publications – Cardiff, Wales 1970
• Dog’s Body – No Deposit No Return – Victoria, B.C. 1970
• New Majiks (Selected Poems & Rabbits) – Radical America – Cambridge, MA 1970
• Sunflower River – Dead Angel Press – Portland, OR 1972
• I Am the One Who Walks the Road (with Douglas Blazek and Don Cauble) – Dead Angel Press – Portland, OR 1972
• Music in the Winepress, Parrots in the Flames – Vagabond Press – Ellensburg, WA 1976
• Falling through the Cracks – Fuck If I Know Press – San Francisco 1984
• Coltrane Spins a Note – Black Rabbit Press – Cleveland 1990
• Dusty Dog #6 – (John Pierce, Publisher) – Zuni, NM 1992
• Strange Attractors – Zerx Press – Albuquerque, NM 1993
• Current Outsider (Tribute Sampler) – Vagabond Press Home Page – Ellensburg, WA 2000
• Just Blue Skies: Poems for & after d.a. levy (An Electronic Chapbook) – d.a. levy Home Page; cooperative presentation of Ghost Pony, Kaldron On-line, Light and Dust Mobile Anthology of Poetry 2001
• Downwind from the Fires of Nothingness – Kirpan Press – Vancouver, WA 2001
• 7 Poems & a Eulogy (with Steve Ferguson) – Ferguson Press – Cleveland 2003
• Sunflower Wars – Bottle of Smoke Press – Leesburg, VA 2003
• Death March (Poems for All #296) – 24th Street Irregular Press – Sacramento 2003
• Sunflower River for Jim Lowell (Bottle #2) – Bottle of Smoke Press – Bear, DE 2004
• Wiring Tutorial for Unshielded Twisted Pair (with Matthew Wascovich) – Slow Toe Publications, Cleveland 2004
• Entrance Level Opportunities - (Six Pack #4) – Bottle of Smoke Press – Bear, DE 2004
• Horse – Kirpan Press – Vancouver, WA 2004
• Two for the Asphodel – Costmary Press – Kent, OH – November 2004
• Here’s Wishing You Good Work in 2005 (assorted rabbits) – Jeff Maser, Bookseller – Berkeley 2004
• The Music Box Store (printed by Jason Davis of Verdant Press for Jeff Maser, Bookseller – Berkely 2005
• Brotherhood – Bottle of Smoke Press – Dover, DE 2005
• Real Time – Costmary Press – Kent, OH – June 2005
• Sunlight – Bottle of Smoke Press – Dover, DE – October 2005
• Spring into Winter – Kirpan Press – Vancouver, WA 2005
• Encyclical (Bottle #4) – Bottle of Smoke Press – Dover, DE 2006
• Real (Poems for All #617) – 24TH Street Irregular Press – Sacramento – May 2006
• The Search for the Reason Why – Bottom Dog Press – Huron, OH 2006
• In a Time without Sunflowers – Bottle of Smoke Press – Dover, DE 2006
• Unchained Melody – Letters Bookshop – Toronto 2006
• Rabbit (illustrated coaster) – Bottle of Smoke Press – Dover, DE 2006
• Further Downwind from the Fires of Nothingness (Measured Steps #5 with John Bennet and d.a. levy) – Kirpan Press – Vancouver, WA 2006
• At the Beginning & the End (Measured Steps #7 with Alan Horvath and d.a. levy ) – Kirpan Press – Vancover, WA 2006
• Where the Rainbow Ends (Measured Steps #8 with Jake Marx and David Pishnery) – Kirpan Press – Vancouver, WA 2006
• The Certificate of Nemeth Racz (Bagozine #55) – Word e Print – Cleveland – January 20, 2007
• Dusk (Populist Poems #12) – Bottom Dog Press – Huron, OH 2007
• In Reserve – Costmary Press – Kent, OH – February 2007
• Be the Poem (Bagozine #56) – Word e Print – Cleveland – February 17, 2007
• The Last Leaf (Bottle #5) – Bottle of Smoke Press – Dover, DE 2007
• Morel, the Clown (Bagozine #60) – Word e Print – Cleveland – August 18, 2007
• Was Lauft Er? (GPP Anthology) – Green Panda Press – Cleveland – August 2007
• The Case for Hope – Costmary Press – Kent, Ohio – January 2008
• The Attempt Itself – Green Panda Press – Cleveland – May 2008
• Stop, Look, What’s That Sound – Kirpan Press – Vancouver, WA – June 2008
• Tree Challenged - Kirpan Press – Vancouver, WA – August 2008
• Again – Costmary Press – Kent, Ohio – December 2008
• They Know Me at the Library – Costmary Press – Kent, Ohio – January 2009
• Tell What It Is To Be a Man – Costmary Press – Kent, Ohio – January 2009
• Light Dark Light - Iniquity Press / Vendetta Books – Manasquan, New Jersey – February 2009
• Two Poems and a Print – Costmary Press – Kent, Ohio – February 2009
• Roses That Bloom - J.W. Curry – Ottawa, Canada – March 2009
• At the Edge of the Forest – Yellow Pepper Press – Douglasville, GA – March 2009
• Roses that Bloom – Kirpan Press – Vancouver, WA – April 2009
• A Selection of Poems – This Passing World website – Portland, OR – June 2009
• The Little White Elephants of Senegal – Grey Sparrow Press – Kent, Ohio – August 2009
• Birds Don’t Talk - Costmary Press – Kent, Ohio – August 2009

Kamini Press
poet Tom Kryss wrote this letter in 1967, in support of da levy and Jim Lowell; who were under indictment by local authorities in Cleveland for the selling and dissemination of alleged obscene poetry. A collection of testimonials in behalf of Lowell, gathering anti-censorship discourse from American authors such as Charles Olson, Hubert Selby Jr., Charles Bukowski, Denise Levertov, James Laughlin, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and others, was published, with proceeds ploughed into Lowell’s defense fund.

A part of small press history, indeed.

Check out the Mimeo Mimeo blog.

Related posts:

1. Tom Kryss | Sketch Book

Tom Kryss

Sketch Book

It was the fine poet and writer John Bennett who many years ago, on his Vagabond website, introduced us to Tom Kryss. Since then he’s been a favorite artist, illustrator and poet. Please study Kryss’s long list of books, chaps, broadsides and art, look at the bottom of this page. There is something about Tom Kryss’s tone and voice that makes him very special. Have you seen his art? Have you seen his The Book of Rabbits – one of the most beautiful children’s books you’ve ever seen?

Tom Kryss is a true outsider and he was part of the Cleveland poetry scene in the Sixties around d.a. levy; the Cleveland scene back then had more outsiders per square meter than any other poetry scene in America.

Let me quote John Bennett from Vagabond: “You want your young genius poet of the 20th Century? Scrap Rimbaud. I give you Tom Kryss. What Tom Kryss does, more than any poet I know, is strip away excess and cut to the bone. He staked out a modest turf and then hunkered down and stayed there. He has not squandered time and blurred his focus chasing down publishers and polishing his image. So that what he writes is unencumbered and fraught with the particular, which is the unique, which is the only way to get a handle on the universal. What he writes always gives you something and never takes anything away. “

Sketch Book is his new book from Kamini Press, number 5 in our Poetry Series. 40 pages of prose poems. Cover art by Tom Kryss. All 150 books signed by the author in Ravenna (this American town with the beautiful Italian name). Twenty-five of the books come with a hand-tinted and signed print by Tom Kryss. Author portrait painting by Henry Denander.

9 USD Signed book including postage all over the world.

18 USD Signed book with artwork including postage all over the world.

Please

use the PayPal button above or send cash in a brown envelope to Kamini Press, Ringvägen 8, 4th floor, SE-117 26 Stockholm, Sweden. In Sweden pay SEK 63,-/125,- (including postage) to Bankgiro 5889-0781, or get the book from Bokmagasinet, in Stockholm.

Tom Kryss | Painting by Henry Denander

Tom Kryss Books and Broadsides

• Cleveland Poems, Chicago Poems & Other Shit – Free Love Press – Cleveland 1967
• Look at the Moon Then Wipe the Light from Your Eyes and Tell Me What you See – Runcible Spoon – Sacramento 1968
• Nuclear Roses and Quiet Rooms – Open Skull Press – San Francisco 1969
• Dialogue in Pale Blue (with r.j.s.) – Broken Mimeo Press – Cleveland 1969
• The Book of Rabbits (Krulik Ksiega) – Ayizan Press – Cleveland 1969
• Sherwood Anderson’s Blue’s – Gunrunner Press – Milwaukee 1970
• Sleep Like Yellow Thunder – Second Aeon Publications – Cardiff, Wales 1970
• Dog’s Body – No Deposit No Return – Victoria, B.C. 1970
• New Majiks (Selected Poems & Rabbits) – Radical America – Cambridge, MA 1970
• Sunflower River – Dead Angel Press – Portland, OR 1972
• I Am the One Who Walks the Road (with Douglas Blazek and Don Cauble) – Dead Angel Press – Portland, OR 1972
• Music in the Winepress, Parrots in the Flames – Vagabond Press – Ellensburg, WA 1976
• Falling through the Cracks – Fuck If I Know Press – San Francisco 1984
• Coltrane Spins a Note – Black Rabbit Press – Cleveland 1990
• Dusty Dog #6 – (John Pierce, Publisher) – Zuni, NM 1992
• Strange Attractors – Zerx Press – Albuquerque, NM 1993
• Current Outsider (Tribute Sampler) – Vagabond Press Home Page – Ellensburg, WA 2000
• Just Blue Skies: Poems for & after d.a. levy (An Electronic Chapbook) – d.a. levy Home Page; cooperative presentation of Ghost Pony, Kaldron On-line, Light and Dust Mobile Anthology of Poetry 2001
• Downwind from the Fires of Nothingness – Kirpan Press – Vancouver, WA 2001
• 7 Poems & a Eulogy (with Steve Ferguson) – Ferguson Press – Cleveland 2003
• Sunflower Wars – Bottle of Smoke Press – Leesburg, VA 2003
• Death March (Poems for All #296) – 24th Street Irregular Press – Sacramento 2003
• Sunflower River for Jim Lowell (Bottle #2) – Bottle of Smoke Press – Bear, DE 2004
• Wiring Tutorial for Unshielded Twisted Pair (with Matthew Wascovich) – Slow Toe Publications, Cleveland 2004
• Entrance Level Opportunities - (Six Pack #4) – Bottle of Smoke Press – Bear, DE 2004
• Horse – Kirpan Press – Vancouver, WA 2004
• Two for the Asphodel – Costmary Press – Kent, OH – November 2004
• Here’s Wishing You Good Work in 2005 (assorted rabbits) – Jeff Maser, Bookseller – Berkeley 2004
• The Music Box Store (printed by Jason Davis of Verdant Press for Jeff Maser, Bookseller – Berkely 2005
• Brotherhood – Bottle of Smoke Press – Dover, DE 2005
• Real Time – Costmary Press – Kent, OH – June 2005
• Sunlight – Bottle of Smoke Press – Dover, DE – October 2005
• Spring into Winter – Kirpan Press – Vancouver, WA 2005
• Encyclical (Bottle #4) – Bottle of Smoke Press – Dover, DE 2006
• Real (Poems for All #617) – 24TH Street Irregular Press – Sacramento – May 2006
• The Search for the Reason Why – Bottom Dog Press – Huron, OH 2006
• In a Time without Sunflowers – Bottle of Smoke Press – Dover, DE 2006
• Unchained Melody – Letters Bookshop – Toronto 2006
• Rabbit (illustrated coaster) – Bottle of Smoke Press – Dover, DE 2006
• Further Downwind from the Fires of Nothingness (Measured Steps #5 with John Bennet and d.a. levy) – Kirpan Press – Vancouver, WA 2006
• At the Beginning & the End (Measured Steps #7 with Alan Horvath and d.a. levy ) – Kirpan Press – Vancover, WA 2006
• Where the Rainbow Ends (Measured Steps #8 with Jake Marx and David Pishnery) – Kirpan Press – Vancouver, WA 2006
• The Certificate of Nemeth Racz (Bagozine #55) – Word e Print – Cleveland – January 20, 2007
• Dusk (Populist Poems #12) – Bottom Dog Press – Huron, OH 2007
• In Reserve – Costmary Press – Kent, OH – February 2007
• Be the Poem (Bagozine #56) – Word e Print – Cleveland – February 17, 2007
• The Last Leaf (Bottle #5) – Bottle of Smoke Press – Dover, DE 2007
• Morel, the Clown (Bagozine #60) – Word e Print – Cleveland – August 18, 2007
• Was Lauft Er? (GPP Anthology) – Green Panda Press – Cleveland – August 2007
• The Case for Hope – Costmary Press – Kent, Ohio – January 2008
• The Attempt Itself – Green Panda Press – Cleveland – May 2008
• Stop, Look, What’s That Sound – Kirpan Press – Vancouver, WA – June 2008
• Tree Challenged - Kirpan Press – Vancouver, WA – August 2008
• Again – Costmary Press – Kent, Ohio – December 2008
• They Know Me at the Library – Costmary Press – Kent, Ohio – January 2009
• Tell What It Is To Be a Man – Costmary Press – Kent, Ohio – January 2009
• Light Dark Light - Iniquity Press / Vendetta Books – Manasquan, New Jersey – February 2009
• Two Poems and a Print – Costmary Press – Kent, Ohio – February 2009
• Roses That Bloom - J.W. Curry – Ottawa, Canada – March 2009
• At the Edge of the Forest – Yellow Pepper Press – Douglasville, GA – March 2009
• Roses that Bloom – Kirpan Press – Vancouver, WA – April 2009
• A Selection of Poems – This Passing World website – Portland, OR – June 2009
• The Little White Elephants of Senegal – Grey Sparrow Press – Kent, Ohio – August 2009
• Birds Don’t Talk - Costmary Press – Kent, Ohio – August 2009

Kamini Press
poet Tom Kryss wrote this letter in 1967, in support of da levy and Jim Lowell; who were under indictment by local authorities in Cleveland for the selling and dissemination of alleged obscene poetry. A collection of testimonials in behalf of Lowell, gathering anti-censorship discourse from American authors such as Charles Olson, Hubert Selby Jr., Charles Bukowski, Denise Levertov, James Laughlin, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and others, was published, with proceeds ploughed into Lowell’s defense fund.

A part of small press history, indeed.

Check out the Mimeo Mimeo blog.

Related posts:

1. Tom Kryss | Sketch Book

Living With Music: A Playlist by Samuel Charters

Samuel Charters is an ethnomusicologist and Grammy-winning music producer. His most recent book is “A Language of Song.” Samuel Charters Shares a Playlist with New York Times

Some Songs I Wrote About, and Some I Haven’t Gotten Around to Writing About Yet

1) Dark Was the Night, Blind Willie Johnson. A mostly amateur Dixieland band I was rehearsing with on my clarinet in Berkeley in 1948 ended its rehearsals with two 78 r.p.m. records that the cornet player had in his collection. Only one of them each night — they seemed to us to be so powerful we only listened to one of them at a time. One was this haunting, searching guitar solo by the Texas evangelist singer Blind Willie Johnson. It sent me with my first wife, Mary, searching for Willie Johnson in the farm country of East Texas in 1955. A street singer in New Orleans told me the spring before that he’d met Willie in ’29, and he was “still livin’, last I heard, somewhere around Dallas.” The documentary of the people we met and the songs they sang for us as we searched the empty countryside the next winter became the LP album I produced for Folkways Records two years later.

2) Stones in My Passway, Robert Johnson. This was the other song that ended our Berkeley rehearsals, and we knew even less about Robert Johnson than we did about Blind Willie Johnson. The disc we had was an acetate copy with nothing on it but the name of the singer and the song. When I finally saw one of the original records the coded numerals on the record masters told me they were recorded in San Antonio, and it was there that I first searched for Robert Johnson in the winter of 1956. When I first wrote about him in the book “The Country Blues” in 1959, I explained that still almost nothing was known about his life, and his records had sold so poorly that I shouldn’t be including even a short chapter about him — but he was one of the most extraordinary of all the acoustic blues artists, and I didn’t feel I could leave him out. To accompany the book, I included his “Preaching Blues” on an LP album of blues singles that I’d written about in the book. It was the first time Robert Johnson was heard by listeners outside of the very small world of 78 r.p.m. blues collectors, and nothing afterwards was the same.

3) Penitentiary Blues, Lightnin’ Hopkins. When I found Lightnin’ on Dowling Street in Houston in 1959, he was down and out, living in a bare bedroom, his guitar in pawn. The guitar I rented for him so we could record in his room for a couple of hours was the kind of old-fashioned acoustic model he thought he’d left behind him in his struggle to get out of the cotton fields. Maybe it was the wiry sound of the strings, or the pint of gin under his chair, or the stillness of the neighborhood outside as I sat there with the microphone held in my outstretched hand, but after a moment or two Lightnin’ found his way back to those country roots and, of all the albums of his I was involved with in later years, it is still this one, and this first blues he sang that afternoon, that bring tears to my eyes. It was a description of that moment that opened my book “The Country Blues” published later that year.

4) One Room Country Shack, Buddy Guy. The old Chicago blues recordings were more complicated than they sounded to a casual listener, maybe because the 78 r.p.m. singles that companies like Chess were releasing were recorded in mono, and for the first stereo LP recordings we did in the studios later we had a complicated question deciding where each instrument should go in the final mix. This song was one of the great moments from the first album I produced where everything finally came out right. Buddy wouldn’t play without his usual guitar amp, and its sound leaked onto every other microphone we had set up in the studio, so the amp was put out in the corridor with the door propped open so Buddy could hear it as he sang. The album was done without vocal overdubs or reworked solos, and I have always been convinced this is the only way to record the blues. What you get is — as another great musician said about his own compositions once long before — “Not one note too many and not one note too few.”

5) I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag, Country Joe and the Fish. This song really did change my life. The song had difficulties with airplay in the U.S., but it was a No. 1 hit in Scandinavia, and as the song’s studio producer I decided to trail along with the band on their victorious tour through Denmark and Sweden. What I saw of Sweden decided me to take my family there the next summer, and what we experienced in that summer on a small farm in the traditional province of Dalarna persuaded us to leave New York and begin a new life in Stockholm. The song still sounds as gruff and as loose and as irreverent as ever, and I like what it was saying as much as I did then. That first summer, at an outdoor dance pavilion in the Swedish countryside, I asked some kids if they understood the words. “No, not really,” they said, “Not all of the words, but it’s so good to dance to!”

6) Crazy Man Crazy, Bill Haley and the Comets. From Country Joe to Bill Haley and his Comets was a total clash of musical cultures, but the Swedish company that hired me as a producer had just signed Bill as a recording artist. For our first album, I took Bill and the Comets into the studio to try him out with some new rock sounds. But for this second album, recorded in Nashville three years later, I decided to return to Bill’s rock roots. Putting together the arrangements with the sax veteran Rudy Pompilli from the Comets’s greatest years was a humbling and gratifying lesson in the value of simplicity. It felt a little like we were winding up a big toy, and when it was wound tight, all we had to do was press the button and it played itself. I still listen to the album and shake my head at the cheerful, knowing synthesis of styles behind its seeming artlessness. The album went gold in Venezuela.

7) I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired, Rev. James Cleveland. Many of my books have been about the blues, but in a new book, “A Language of Song,” I included a long chapter about gospel music and the great churches of Harlem. I hope it goes a little way toward placing gospel music in its proper place as one of the molding forces of today’s African American spirit. Rev. James Cleveland, with his peerless blending of the fervid emotions of the gospel sermon with the soaring voices of his choirs, won six Grammy awards and helped shape a new generation of gospel artists. Once, after a week with Rev. Cleveland’s recordings, I said to a friend, Dr. Robert Stephens at the University of Connecticut, that I realized Cleveland was one of the geniuses of modern American music — but why didn’t people say more about him? Dr. Stephens was thoughtful for a moment, then he shrugged and smiled, “Everybody knows it!”

8) Heaven’s Just a Sin Away, the Kendalls. One of the classics of the modern Nashville country sound — an irresistible beat and the impeccable duet sound of Jeannie and her father Royce Kendall. How many other songs manage to tell you everything the song’s about in the title alone? Usually no one pays much attention to the writer of a popular song hit unless it is the artists themselves, but Nashville couldn’t live without its writers. For this song, it was the indefatigable composer and lyricist Jerry Gillespie who did both the music and lyrics. It was the Kendalls’ irresistible bouncing spirit on songs like this that got my wife, Annie, and daughters and me through many long car journeys back and forth from New York City after their return to Connecticut.

9) Cleopatra, Queen of Denial, Pam Tillis. This song was an unmistakable nostalgic nod back toward the years when country music didn’t make so much money and the song texts still reflected the wry amusement many of the writers felt at life’s foibles. The veteran singer Mel Tillis’s daughter Pam was entirely sincere and wonderfully persuasive as “Cleopatra, Queen of Denial,” floating down a river of lies, and she was one of the song’s writers, along with Bob DiPiero and Jan Buckingham. At a recent poetry reading, the remarkable Australian poet Les Murray read a short poem he’d also written about Cleopatra, the Queen of Denial, and I asked him afterward if he knew of the country song. He shook his head and said regretfully in his Aussie accent that he’d never even heard of it. I suspect that Pam Tillis also has never heard of Les Murray.

10) Hey Bobby, K. T. Oslin. K. T., if you ever read this, I want to tell you that it’s a wonderful woman’s song and the rhythm groove shakes the leaves off the trees — but how about a third verse? You only wrote two verses and I know you have more to tell us about what it feels like to be a woman picking up her date at his own house for the first time. She’s just bought her first car and she wants to take him out somewhere to park where they’ll watch the moon come up and drink that champagne toast from a paper cup! I’m not the only one who’d like to hear what the next verse might say.

11) To All My Friends in Far-Flung Places, Dave Van Ronk. Dave was one of my closest friends for many years, and we made music together for nearly 40 of those years. This song, from the last album I produced with him, summed up so much of what we had come to understand about life as the years passed. Dave learned it from the composer, Jane Voss, and after Dave’s death from cancer in 2002, it was years before I could listen to his version without beginning to cry again. Jane, I hope you don’t mind if quote from some of the lines — it is one of the most beautiful songs I know, and what it has to say has its own place in my heart.

In stranger’s shapes I seem to trace
The lines of old familiar faces
I left my heart so many places
I scarcely know which way is home

And parting is my constant sorrow
Here today and gone tomorrow
I’d like to wake up in some town
And find that you were all around me
And all of us were settled down
And I’d come home —
To all my friends in far-flung places …

Amen.

source

Samuel Charters

(born Samuel Barclay Charters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August 1, 1929; his name also appears as Sam Charters) is an American music historian, writer, record producer, musician, and poet. He is a noted and widely published author on the subjects of blues and jazz music, as well as a writer of fiction.

Charters was born and spent his childhood in Pittsburgh. He first became enamored of blues music in 1937, after hearing Bessie Smith’s version of Jimmy Cox’s song, “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” (Charters 2004). He moved with his family to Sacramento, California at the age of 15. He attended high schools in Pittsburgh and California and attended Sacramento City College, graduating in 1949. After being kicked out of Harvard for political activism, he received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California in 1956. In the 1940s and 1950s, Charters purchased numerous old recordings of American blues musicians, eventually amassing a huge and valuable collection.

In 1951, at the age of 21, he moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he absorbed the history and culture he had previously only read about; he lived there for most of the 1950s. He served for two years in the United States Army (1951-53) and began to study jazz clarinet with George Lewis, but soon acquired an interest in rural blues. In 1954, he and his wife began conducting field recordings (initially for Folkways Records throughout the United States, and then in the Bahamas in 1958). Their 1959 recordings of the Texas bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins proved instrumental to Hopkins’ rediscovery.

Charters began his writing career in 1959 with The Country Blues. Since that time, his writings have been influential, bringing to light aspects of African American musics and culture that had previously been largely unknown to the general public. His writings include numerous books on the subjects of blues, jazz, African music, and Bahamian music, as well as liner notes for numerous sound recordings. From approximately 1966 to 1970 he worked as a producer for the anti-war band Country Joe and the Fish. He became thoroughly disenchanted with American politics during the Vietnam War and moved with his family to Sweden, establishing a new life there despite not being able to speak the language at first. He divides his time between Sweden (where he has a residence permit to live, though maintaining his U.S. citizenship) and Connecticut. He has translated into English the works of the Swedish writer Tomas Tranströmer and helped produce the music of various Swedish musical groups.

Charters is married to the writer, editor, Beat generation scholar, photographer, and pianist Ann Charters (b. 1936), whom he met at the University of California, Berkeley during the 1954-55 academic year in a music class; she is a professor of English and American literature at the University of Connecticut. The two have collaborated together on many projects, particularly their extensive field recording work. Charters is a Grammy Award winner and his book The Country Blues was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1991 as one of the “Classics of Blues Literature.” In 2000, Charters and his wife donated the Samuel & Ann Charters Archive of Blues and Vernacular African American Musical Culture to the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center of the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. The archive contains materials collected during the couple’s decades of work documenting and preserving African American music throughout the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa. The archive’s materials include more than 2,500 sound recordings, as well as video recordings, photographs, monographs, sheet music, field notes, correspondence, musicians’ contracts, and correspondence. Charters’ most recent book, New Orleans: Playing a Jazz Chorus, is scheduled for release in September 2006.

Books by Samuel Charters

• * 1959 – The Country Blues. New York: Rinehart. Reprinted by Da Capo Press, with a new introduction by the author, in 1975.
• * 1963 – The Poetry of the Blues. With photos by Ann Charters. New York: Oak Publications.
• * 1963 – Jazz New Orleans (1885-1963): An Index to the Negro Musicians of New Orleans. New York: Oak Publications
• * 1967 – The Bluesmen. New York: Oak Publications
• * 1975 – The Legacy of the Blues: A Glimpse Into the Art and the Lives of Twelve Great Bluesmen: An Informal Study. London: Calder & Boyars.
• * 1977 – Sweet As the Showers of Rain. New York: Oak Publications
• * 1981 – The Roots of the Blues: An African Search. Boston: M. Boyars.
• * 1984 – Jelly Roll Morton’s Last Night at the Jungle Inn: An Imaginary Memoir. New York: M. Boyars.
• * 1986 – Louisiana Black: A Novel. New York: M. Boyars.
• * 1991 – The Blues Makers. (Incorporates The Bluesmen and Sweet As the Showers of Rain) Da Capo.
• * 1999 – The Day is So Long and the Wages So Small: Music on a Summer Island. New York: Marion Boyars.
• * 2004 – Walking a Blues Road: A Selection of Blues Writing, 1956-2004. New York: Marion Boyars.
• * 2006 – New Orleans: Playing a Jazz Chorus. Marion Boyars.

With Leonard Kunstadt

• * 1962 – Jazz: A History of the New York Scene. Garden City, New York: Doubleday.

source

Related posts:

1. Samuel Charters | The Poet Sees His Family Sleeping
2. Samuel Charters | The Poet Sees His Family Sleeping

BIRD EFFORT

by Ronald Baatz

32 pages of poems. First edition of 225 copies out of which 125 are signed by the poet. Twenty-five special copies contain an original signed water color & ink painting by Henry Denander. Mini-chapbook format, in wraps. Cover artwork by Henry Denander.

9 USD incl. shipment cost world-wide

18 USD incl. shipment cost world-wide for the limited edition with signed artwork.

You will find the content of your kamini press shopping cart at the bottom of this page.

I think Ronald Baatz is one of America’s finest poets. I know that many will agree with me when I say so. You probably know Baatz already but if you don’t you should read this book as an introduction, since it is as good as his other books, and they set a very high standard. A book consisting of fifty beautiful, short poems with birds as the central theme.

I don’t know how many times I have read these wonderful poems during the process of putting this book together but still I like to have the book close by or in my pocket when travelling. I love these minimalist poems.

I think this chapbook will one day come to be regarded as somewhat of a classic – a chapbook that people later will try to locate, only to find that a mere 225 copies were made and all are gone.

Ronald Baatz is not so keen on writing about himself or on metrying to present him. He wrote once: “the only bio i ever give is that i’ve been living in the same farmhouse close to twenty years.” Here at Kamini Press we are very proud to present the fourth chapbook in our poetry series. Henry Denander

Please

use the PayPal button above or send cash in a brown envelope to Kamini Press, Ringvägen 8, 4th floor, SE-117 26 Stockholm, Sweden. In Sweden pay SEK 50:- (including postage) to Bankgiro 5889-0781, or get the book from Bokmagasinet, in Stockholm.

Related posts:

1. Ronald Baatz | Bird Effort
2. Gerald Locklin | The Plot of Il Trovatore
3. Glenn W. Cooper | Some Natural Things

SOME NATURAL THINGS

poems by Glenn W. Cooper

32 pages of poetry, mini-chapbook format, in wraps. Cover artwork by Henry Denander. First edition of 100 copies, all signed by the poet. This is the first title from Kamini Press and the first book in the Kamini Press Poetry Series.Please click the cover to enlarge.

9 USD incl. shipment cost world-wide

You will find the content of your kamini press shopping cart at the bottom of this page.

Glenn Cooper lives in Tamworth, Australia and for many years he’s been widely published in the small press and beyond. This is Glenn Cooper’s sixth book of poetry.

GERALD LOCKLIN says: I have thought very highly of Glenn Cooper’s work for many years, he’s a throwback to the glory days of the Wormwood Review. A first-rate poet in the debut of a very attractive new series.

ANN MENEBROKER says: Glenn Cooper’s poems are a walking companion in the rain. Something to think about under an umbrella. The poems are reflective of our losses, but also include the humor that grows like a palm tree in the snow. Glenn is ever the student, contemplating the forces of life which we have no control over. He says it best himself, the poignant need to write about “the small pleasures, just to make life beautiful.” And he does.

DAVID BARKER says: I highly recommend Glenn Cooper’s SOME NATURAL THINGS. A light touch, deep resonance. He writes about rain better than anyone I’ve ever read. As if rain was his dead sister. A beautifully designed little book that reads like a big book.

ADRIAN MANNING says: Congratulations on the first Kamini Press publication. The chapbook itself is beautiful – a top class publication, and the poetry from Glenn Cooper is fantastic. I recommend it to anyone.

JEFFREY WEINBERG says: A fantastic book…Fine poetry..Gorgeous design and print job.

T.K.SPLAKE says: …the cooper poem “gravy” is one of the best writings I can remember in the past long while…

STEVENALLENMAY of Plan B Press writes on his blog: The beauty of this blog is when I happen across the “globalization” effect of small presses, take for example the new small press out of Sweden Kamini Press. Poet/artist and now publisher Henry Denander has created a new line of finely made chapbooks. One of the first is by Australian poet Glenn Cooper. His poetry is well written. The chapbook is very handsome indeed. Cover art by publisher, overall completely worth checking out.

CHRISTOPHER ROBIN at The Guild of Outsider Writers: Sparse, rainy day influenced poems. In ‘The Sandy Bottom Exposed,’ Cooper makes the correlation between the health of a local river and the health of the community: “the old timers say the river has never looked so bad/so sick/and the crime rate is up around here too/ so maybe there’s some truth to what Jung says.”

These poems are more philosophical than whimsical and not asking to be taken lightly, as many nature poems I have read prior to this I am more likely to skip over for stating the obvious; but not these, he writes about the real natural world, ecology, and the affect on his psyche and his relationships. He reflects on the fragility and also the overwhelming power of nature, sometimes told through the experience of watching a small child, as in ‘Four Year Old Collecting Eggs.’

These are beautiful poems that never get bogged down by over-sentimentality, many poems dealing with the topics of love, nature, fragility and getting older. Highly recommended.

Please

use the PayPal button above or send cash in a brown envelope to Kamini Press, Ringvägen 8, 4th floor, SE-117 26 Stockholm, Sweden. In Sweden pay SEK 50:- (including postage) to Bankgiro 5889-0781, or get the book from Bokmagasinet, in Stockholm.

Related posts:

1. Ronald Baatz | Bird Effort
2. Gerald Locklin | The Plot of Il Trovatore
3. Ronald Baatz | Bird Effort

THE POET SEES HIS FAMILY SLEEPING

poems by Samuel Charters

34 pages of unpublished poems. First edition, 200 copies, all signed by the poet. Mini-chapbook format, in wraps. Cover artwork and author portrait by Henry Denander.

9 USD incl. shipment cost world-wide

You will find the content of your kamini press shopping cart at the bottom of this page.

Samuel Charters began his life with small presses in the 1950s in New Orleans when he shared a rundown French Quarter building with Gypsy Lou and Jon Webb and made his first magazine appearance in an issue of their ground-breaking magazine The Outsider. Beginning in the mid-1960s his poetry chapbooks, broadsides, and literary essays were published by Berkeley’s Oyez Press, many designed and printed by the legendary Graham MacIntosh. With their own Portents press, he and his wife Ann published small pieces by, among many others, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Charles Olson, and Robert Creeley. With Ginsberg they created the book Scenes Along The Road, the first look at the story of the Beat Generation.

In the other world of publishing he has written innumerable books on jazz and the blues, as well as novels, biographies, translations, and travel memoirs, and worked with Ann on the first biography of Jack Kerouac. He is also responsible for the poetry section of their college introduction-to-literature textbook Literature And Its Writers, now in its 4th edition. Their current project is the authorized biography of Beat novelist John Clellon Holmes. His own most recent book is the first history of New Orleans jazz, A Trumpet Around The Corner.

A sample poem from The Poet Sees His Family Sleeping:

Conundrum

a

There is no hell,
but I stumble there – often.
No heaven,
but I journey there – sometimes.

Please

use the PayPal button above or send cash in a brown envelope to Kamini Press, Ringvägen 8, 4th floor, SE-117 26 Stockholm, Sweden. In Sweden pay SEK 50:- (including postage) to Bankgiro 5889-0781, or get the book from Bokmagasinet, in Stockholm.

Related posts:

1. Samuel Charters | The Poet Sees His Family Sleeping
2. Samuel Charters | Living With Music: A Playlist
3. t. kilgore splake | the poet tree

THE PLOT OF IL TROVATORE

and other poems

by Gerald Locklin

32 pages of poems. First edition of 300 copies out of which 125 are signed by the poet. Twenty-five special copies contain an original signed water color & ink painting by Henry Denander. (First come first served…) Mini-chapbook format, in wraps. Cover artwork and author portrait by Henry Denander.

9 USD incl. shipment cost world-wide

The Limited Edition is SOLD OUT

You will find the content of your kamini press shopping cart at the bottom of this page.

Gerald Locklin is the author of over 125 books and chapbooks of poetry, fiction and criticism with over 3000 poems, stories, articles, reviews and interviews published in periodicals.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI wrote about Locklin: “I have never been let down. I have been picked up, lifted up, tossed into that rare area: excellent writing with verve, writing that laughs, writing that reads easy yet says something. That’s a good package.”

MARVIN MALONE wrote: “His poems are about real people and places that illustrate with common language the classic themes of love, envy, honesty, integrity etc. He is pro-people.”

EDVARD FIELD: “The male spirit in him remains honest, bighearted, sentimental, generous, gentle, vulnerable, but sassy in the face of adversity – qualities that could be applied to as few American poets as to presidents. I think of him as a wonderful, protective big brother every sensitive little boy needs.”

Please

use the PayPal button above or send cash in a brown envelope to Kamini Press, Ringvägen 8, 4th floor, SE-117 26 Stockholm, Sweden. In Sweden pay SEK 50:- (including postage) to Bankgiro 5889-0781, or get the book from Bokmagasinet, in Stockholm.

Related posts:

1. Gerald Locklin | The Plot of Il Trovatore
2. Limited Edition of Locklin book almost sold out
3. Limited edition sold out

THE PLOT OF IL TROVATORE

and other poems

by Gerald Locklin

32 pages of poems. First edition of 300 copies out of which 125 are signed by the poet. Twenty-five special copies contain an original signed water color & ink painting by Henry Denander. (First come first served…) Mini-chapbook format, in wraps. Cover artwork and author portrait by Henry Denander.

9 EURO incl. shipment cost world-wide

20 EURO incl. shipment cost world-wide for the limited edition with signed artwork.

Gerald Locklin is the author of over 125 books and chapbooks of poetry, fiction and criticism with over 3000 poems, stories, articles, reviews and interviews published in periodicals.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI wrote about Locklin: “I have never been let down. I have been picked up, lifted up, tossed into that rare area: excellent writing with verve, writing that laughs, writing that reads easy yet says something. That’s a good package.”

MARVIN MALONE wrote: “His poems are about real people and places that illustrate with common language the classic themes of love, envy, honesty, integrity etc. He is pro-people.”

EDVARD FIELD: “The male spirit in him remains honest, bighearted, sentimental, generous, gentle, vulnerable, but sassy in the face of adversity – qualities that could be applied to as few American poets as to presidents. I think of him as a wonderful, protective big brother every sensitive little boy needs.”

Related posts:

1. Limited Edition of Locklin book almost sold out
2. Gerald Locklin | The Plot of Il Trovatore
3. Gerald Locklin | The Plot of Il Trovatore

BIRD EFFORT by Ronald Baatz. Kamini Press. Ringvagen 8, 4th Floor. SE-117 26 Stockholm, Sweden. Limited to 225, 125 signed and numbered.

The poetry of Ronald Baatz sings with unparalleled beauty, and Bird Effort is one of the best examples of that song. I like Baatz’s work. He tends to draw the reader into his voice, and, once inside, you cannot help but become part of the song that he sings. Kamini Press’s edition of Bird Effort is smooth and stylistic, too. I highly recommend that the reader of this review go out of his or her way and secure a copy of it. Trust me, you won’t regret the purchase. —B.L. Kennedy, Reviewer-in-Residence

Sunday, March 22, 2009, REVIEW: “Bird Effort”

BIRD EFFORT by Ronald Baatz. Kamini Press Ringvagen 8 4th floor SE-117 26, Stockholm, Sweden

This is another of those gorgeous little editions Henry Denander, who’s a poet of considerable talents himself, is producing on his Kamini Press, and number 4 in the series is another selection of poems by Ronald Baatz. 46 (I make it!) American tanka, one might as well call them, and two haiku about nature, animals and ageing–which may not sound promising to anyone who prefers urban poetry or who isn’t versed in the traditional forms Ronald adapts so marvellously to the modern idiom. But trust me if you can! The poetry is melancholy, funny, lyrical and even the simplest observation echoes in the mind with revealed truths for a long time afterwards.You’ll read it, then you’ll step outside and notice something you’ve never seen before. He’s the successor to Kerouac as a poet in adapted Chinese and Japanese verse forms, to my mind, is Ronald, and very few people could have taken Jack’s mantle off his shoulders. Posted by Fred Abbey at 4:51 AM

Bird Effort by Ronald Baatz, Kamini Press (Sweden and Greece)

By Barbara Bialick

When turning to read Ronald Baatz’ new chapbook, BIRD EFFORT, first you note it’s undersized with a handsome bird watercolor cover and some 24 pages of minimalist poems without much punctuation by an experienced poet. Will it be easy to read, you wonder, but no, the book is very deeply written about death as visualized through nature imagery, particularly of birds…

But who is the poem’s persona speaking to? That remains a mystery, though now and again he’ll mention either the presence of or a memory of his mother, his dead father, old girlfriends, his three-legged dog, a dead pet canary, and yes, the lord. There in the foothills of the Catskills in New York, nature and the seasons are always present, ultimately leading him to conclude “how soft my ashes will be…” He maintains sadness throughout, wishing he could be as happy as his dog “just being let in”…

You wonder who else is there because the goal or theme of the book is expressed early: “You sing to the bird in me/I sing to the bird in you/an effort/we love to face/each dawn.” With that line’s staccato rhythm, he also suggests a pace like bird songs.

“If time had a shadow…,” he says, “It’d be a swiftness having/no nest to return to”. “enough/sleep is so difficult/now dreams of my dead father/have come to/spend the winter/Oh lord, let me stay drunk somehow/without all this drinking…”

The life in the poems is often cold to him. There are “crows in fog-/their backs turned to me/ignoring me”; and “winter’s white shoulders–just how beautiful and cold/they really are.” Or his old three-legged dog ”chasing after/a winter sun/that’s cold and/hobbling on one leg”.

To go on pulling beautiful quotes would be unfair to the author and reader. Readers there certainly should be. It’s a nice pocket-size book to carry with you on a nature walk when you might wish to ponder poems about the cruelty of death in the elegance of nature. By all means read them out loud…By Barbara Bialick, author of Time Leaves (Ibbetson Street Press) Read the review at the blog

There are so many wonderful small presses out there, doing all manner of work, in all manner of styles. One of the finest operations around is Kamini Press out of Sweden. The quality and care put into their books is obvious even before you hold one of their books in your hands: they are, as the cliché goes, a sight to behold.

Once in hand, first impressions are confirmed: the cover, the art, the paper, and the overall production is outstanding. Their statement of intent from their website says it all. Respect the poetry with the highest quality production possible, the rest will follow. It makes those of us on the lower end of things hang our heads in shame.

All this before even arriving at the first words. The poetry itself. Bird Effort by Ronald Baatz is No. 4 in the “Kamini Press Poetry Series” and it is a perfect little gem. It begins:

When the stream overflowed
the long grass
is combed close to the earth

You sing to the bird in me
I sing to the bird in you–
an effort
we love to face
each dawn

There is a depth of feeling in these poems delicately hinted at, subtly revealed:

Leave me bread
at least a few slices
leave me your voice
at least a few words
to go with the bread

Snow this morning
when I part the curtains
after getting out of bed
one rib
at a time

A sudden shift in perspective, and the introspective mode becomes all-embracing:

Finally
winter is losing its grip-
in my sleep
I hear the pond’s spine
cracking

Receiver
hanging off the hook
in a phone booth
hanging off
the earth

And again:

Digging
her canary’s grave
she catches the reflection
of lovely orange feathers
in the spoon

The old die old
sometimes the young
die young
and the little we know
the harsh winds blow

This beautiful little book contains 50 small poems, many 5 lines each, all tankas in their mood and construction, beautiful in their revelation. There is a simultaneous sadness and acceptance, a joy tempered by the real, a resonating wisdom. I can’t resist – here is one more:

So many crows-
as though the earth
is turning black
from so many bones
buried in it

Can’t blame the crickets
for crying out hour after hour-
summer having lied about
how long
it’d stay

This is the small press at its finest, the quality of work matched by the quality of the production, a beautiful reflection of life, work, dedication, and truth.

Ron Silliman mentionend on his blog Ronald Baatz Bird Effort. Please click his portrait on the left to visit his page.

Related posts:

1. Ronald Baatz | Bird Effort
2. Glenn W. Cooper | Some Natural Things
3. Gerald Locklin | The Plot of Il Trovatore