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NEW FROM PEARL EDITIONS



JOAN’S OWN GOOD-4-YOU COOK BOOK
Recipes & Poetry Written 1950–2007
by Joan Jobe Voss
264 pp., plastic comb binding,
ISBN 978-1-888219-34-0, $30.00


“No world class cook, though a wee bit world wise, I’ve showcased, to honor within these many pages the expansive time-spanning Kitchen Encomium as I’ve known and read it, a gustatory genealogy and cultural conga line of Food: the great, essential human unifier: Food: the eternal eclectic reward, bounty and feast of all the families and friends I’ve knoshed and swapped recipes with beginning with my great-grandmothers’ Texas food...” —Joan Jobe Voss, from Introduction

sample poem & recipe

 

DENMARK, KANGAROO, ORANGE
by Kevin Griffith
80 pp., perfect-bound, ISBN 978-1-888219-33-3
$14.95
WINNER OF THE 2006 PEARL POETRY PRIZE


"There is something risky, random—even precarious—about this collection that flirts with ars poetica, nostalgia, and mortality...we see the familial and familiar in a strange radiance: unusually perceptive children; dead spouses at ease in the afterlife; a grown man finding himself in a toy box...The eerie, the comic, and even political gestures all seem to find their sly ways into these prose poems...Denmark, Kangaroo, Orange is a rich, startling, and magical romp." —Denise Duhamel, 2006 Judge

"Denmark, Kangaroo, Orange possesses the comic inventiveness that makes the prose poem a beloved form of trickster-poets, but it also possesses the astute and open hearted vision that only a poet of Kevin Griffith's skill can offer. He blends humor and contemplation, dream and domesticity, song and story in poems that manage to be simultaneously intricate and accessible. These are poems of relentless charm." —Terrance Hayes

sample poems

 

THIS BIG FAKE WORLD
by Ada Limón
80 pp., perfect-bound, ISBN 978-1-888219-35-7, $14.95
WINNER OF THE 2005 PEARL POETRY PRIZE


"This big fake world is not a mere nosegay of poems but a solid world (as real as it is fake, as any good work of art should be), a poetry of story and voice, a narrative of fracture and repair, that through its art becomes a whole—and a whole new thing."
—Frank X. Gaspar, 2005 Judge

"Part domestic fairy tale, part urban grit, part exposé of how making a living and making a life are often pitted against each other, this big fake world is a sophisticated exploration of manners, marriage, and the fragile bonds that desire both creates and destroys...the lives and language of this book are radiant emblems of a truly discerning mind and heart." —Tom Sleigh

sample poem

 

THE FARMGIRL POEMS
by Elizabeth Oakes
72 pp., perfect-bound, ISBN 1-888219-30-0, $11.95
WINNER OF THE 2004 PEARL POETRY PRIZE


"Elizabeth Oakes' first book of poems is the work of a mature craftsman. A memoir in poetry, it does not make one false step. It is filled with strong sentiment, but never the sentimental. Memory and the imagination weave past and present into a whole cloth. After Wordsworth, we can easily say of The Farmgirl Poems, the child is mother to the poet here." —Joe Survant, Poet Laureate of Kentucky, 2003-2005

sample poem

 

MAKARS' DOZENS
by Robert Peters, Paul Trachtenberg & Barbara Hauk
120 pp., perfect-bound, ISBN 1-888219-32-7, $11.95


"The importance of Robert Peters' poetry rests on the fact that it modifies poetic language and breaks new artistic ground . . . . By fully exploiting the metaphor of the body, its epidermal shape and vulnerable interior, he has provided a fresh code for the expression of feeling." —Billy Collins

"I'm attracted by the quippiness, the diction—which jangles and contracts with all sorts of musical possibility—and the air of nonchalant gravity that Paul Trachtenberg puts over everything he writes. It is quite unlike any recent poetry I have read." —Paul Christensen

"Virtually all of Barbara Hauk's poems are marked by an intense awareness of ‘propriety' and all its nonsensical hypocrisy. Her sense of the absurd and inability to conform are so acute and persistent that rebellion (either actual or imagined) becomes her instinctive response." —Marilyn Johnson

sample poems


Pearl established its press, Pearl Editions, in 1989 in conjunction with the Pearl Poetry Prize, an annual competition for a book of poetry. More than a dozen winning collections have been published since then, selected by some of the more well-known contributors to Pearl. Pearl Editions also publishes a limited number of poetry books and chapbooks by invitation only, and does not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

 

EARTH'S ENDS
by Andrew Kaufman
96 pp., perfect-bound, ISBN 1-888219-27-0, $11.95
WINNER OF THE 2003 PEARL POETRY PRIZE


"Andrew Kaufman's Earth's Ends is not a ‘travel' book. It is a terrifying and powerful book about the world by a lone American poet who sought out some of its bleakest (in every sense of that word) and most beautiful places. Often understated, always unflinching, this book and its people are unforgettable." —Thomas Lux
sample poem

HOW JFK KILLED MY FATHER
by Richard M. Berlin
96 pp., perfect-bound, ISBN 1-888219-24-6, $11.95
WINNER OF THE 2002 PEARL POETRY PRIZE


"How JFK Killed My Father introduces to us an important new voice in contemporary poetry and offers us a rare, poignant glimpse into one doctor's world through poems that are honest and unflinching, gentle and brutal at once.... Here we have a doctor who admits that to 'save a life' is to pretend, a doctor who knows 'it's just a postponement.' Read Richard Berlin's poems; they are the salve. They are the music we hear while we wait." —Lisa Glatt, 2002 Judge

sample poem

TRAVELER IN PARADISE: New and Selected Poems
by Donna Hilbert
96 pp., perfect-bound, ISBN 1-888219-25-4, $11.95


"Donna Hilbert's poems ache with the wish to be safe in the world, and also with the knowledge that the world is irredeemably unsafe. On that edge her poems balance, offering their taut musicality, their knife-edge imagery . . . At every turn, this poet surprises with her beguiling wit, and then the sudden plunge into depths . . . As I was reading these poems, I kept thinking of Emily Dickinson's mandate, ‘Tell it slant.' Dickinson, I believe, would recognize a kindred spirit in these poems." —Janet Sternburg, author of Phantom Limb and The Writer on Her Work

sample poem


TRANSFORMING MATTER
by Donna Hilbert
64 pp., perfect-bound, ISBN 1-888219-14-9, $10.95
"Just over a year since Donna Hilbert's husband was tragically killed comes the amazing Transforming Matter. This collection examines faith, grief, the after-life, and most poignantly, how to love the ones who are no longer here." —Denise Duhamel

"Seen in retrospect, Death hovers over the sensual landscape of Hilbert's marriage, shaping the ‘plot' of her life, as it does for all os us if we could face it. This poetry reaches the heights, but at what a price!" —Edward Field
sample poem


SHELTER
by Lisa Glatt
64 pp., perfect-bound, ISBN 1-888219-13-0, $10.95


"By turns hilarious, wise, sad, horrifying, these poems are the real thing. If you think that we're living in the puritanical 50's, a time when politics, religion and most public art are tailor-made by and for fools: you need this book." —Ed Ochester

"Lisa Glatt is the best kind of bad girl: brave and vulnerable, grieving and tough. These poems hold up the female experience to a shard of mirror; look closely and take heart from the searing tenderness of her knowing, sensuous work." —Kim Addonizio

sample poem


MONSTERS AND OTHER LOVERS
by Lisa Glatt
96 pp., perfect-bound, ISBN 1-888219-00-9, $11.95


". . . clearly a woman's voice writing about women's experience, not safely, not at a distance, not with Olympian detachment, and surely not solely to be read with approval by men sitting in judgment . . . These poems are stinging; they tell us that women's bodies are still terrible and lovely, still secret, but they name those feelings in a loud, un-flinching voice." —Marjorie Roemer, Hurricane Alice

"Lisa Glatt writes about sex in as funny and convincing and touching a manner as any woman I have ever read." —Gerald Locklin

sample poem

FROM SWEETNESS
by Debra Marquart
94 pp., perfect-bound, ISBN 1-888219-19-X, $14.95
WINNER OF THE 2000 PEARL POETRY PRIZE


"These are poems of a world rendered specifically, characters lovingly articulated, landscapes redolent with possibility and life. I'm drawn to their honesty and vision and the sounds of their making, a music that's particularly American." —Dorianne Laux, 2000 Judge.

sample poem

ORAL HISTORY
by Anne-Marie Levine
48 pp., perfect-bound, ISBN 1-888219-29-7, $10.00


In the tradition of Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye, Anne-Marie Levine takes us back to the 1940s to bring us an American boy's coming-of-age story. Thrown into the world of the hard-working, hard-drinking, hard-loving men of the Texas oil fields, and in thrall to their free-wheeling individualism, the boy embraces their macho life style with eager, reckless abandon, telling his story with the singular, unjaded innocence of the very young. A verse monologue in the voice of a male narrator, Oral History has often been performed as a solo theater piece. Published here for the first time, this distinctive volume is sure to delight new audiences.

"Anne-Marie Levine's Oral History utterly captivates. It moves with a delicate ease that is hard, true and enviable." —Tim Blake Nelson

sample poem

BUS RIDE TO A BLUE MOVIE
by Anne-Marie Levine
80 pp., perfect-bound, ISBN 1-888219-22-X, $12.00


"Bus Ride to a Blue Movie is as hilarious as it is endearing, as witty as it is often heart-breaking. Anne-Marie Levine has her finger on the pulse of the nation as it exists here, now—at this moment. Again and again, the reader chuckles with little shocks of recognition, as if to say, 'Yes, that's how it is for women today.' These are poems to savor and remember for a long time." —Marjorie Perloff

sample poem

ALSO FROM PEARL EDITIONS

 

TRIGGER FINGER
by Micki Myers
72 pp., perfect-bound, ISBN 1-888219-21-1, $11.95
WINNER OF THE 2001 PEARL POETRY PRIZE


"Trigger Finger introduces a fresh, quirky voice to American poetry. Or, more accurately, a range of voices, for Myers is able to inhabit a wide array of characters in her work. The characters are real, and the poet's compassion for these characters is genuine." —Jim Daniels, 2001 Judge.

sample poem

FLUID IN DARKNESS, FROZEN IN LIGHT
by Robert Perchan
70 pp., perfect-bound, ISBN 1-888219-17-3, $11.95
WINNER OF THE 1999 PEARL POETRY PRIZE


"Fluid in Darkness, Frozen in Light contains some of the best prose poems I've read in years. Poetry is, or should be, memorable speech, and not what Robert Bly has called ‘the chat rooms of poetry.' And this book has memorable speech, page after page. How could one not love a poet who says 'To call a fetus an unborn child / is like calling an old man an undead corpse.' Robert Perchan is in the same part of the poetry ball park as Russell Edson, Bill Knott and Dean Young, but is very much his own person. I suspect that he won't be invited to the White House for Poetry Month celebrations, but that's okay, we have him in print now, and any sensible person will read this book." —Ed Ochester, 1999 Judge.


THE POW WOW CAFÉ
by Joan Jobe Smith
64 pp., perfect-bound, $11.00
Published in England by Smith/Doorstop Books
AVAILABLE FROM PEARL!

"Joan Jobe Smith's The Pow Wow Café is the most exciting book I've read this year. It is as simple as that. Her wild, breathless, generous style is up front, in your face, and holy, all at the same time. A narrative of 64 poems takes us from childhood to now through a dazzling landscape populated by film stars, go-go and topless dancers, husbands, parents, lovers. There is a haze of alcohol, a stretch of Texan skies . . ." —Ann Gray

"Immediately compelling slice-of-life poems that are rich in local detail, outspoken and compassionate." —Michael Lasky


CARNEGIE HALL WITH TIN WALLS
by Fred Voss
160 pp., perfect-bound, ISBN 1-852244-73-9, $19.95
Published in Great Britain by Bloodaxe Books
AVAILABLE FROM PEARL!

"No mere temp—whether a visiting anthropologist or his ubiquitous literary equivalent, the poet-in-residence—could write with such intimate authority and psychological acuity about the workplace . . . . original and necessary poetry." —Dennis O'Driscoll, The Times Literary Supplement

"Extraordinarily moving . . . . a really important and major collection." —Sarah Maguire, BBC Radio 3

"Your poems about working at the machines, well, I liked them, understood them, sure." —Charles Bukowski

sample poem


A NECESSARY FIRE
by Marilyn Johnson
64 pp., perfect-bound, ISBN 1-888219-01-7, $9.95


"Marilyn Johnson is one of those transitional women who reached womanhood during the tumultuous '60s when all the old roles were rejected and new ones not yet formulated. Finding herself in the '90s . . . she writes what she sees and feels—showing us through her refreshing, almost painful honesty and her subtle wit, how it once was to be a woman and how it is today." —Catherine Lynn, Small Press Review
"Johnson is a terrific lyricist, elegiac in tone, smooth in her cadences, and celebrates relationships with an honest, and often harrowing, sensitivity." —Robert Peters, Small Press Review



TATTOOED WOMAN
by Carolyn Evans Campbell
130 pp., perfect-bound, ISBN 1-888219-05-X, $11.95
WINNER OF THE 1998 COLORADO BOOK AWARD


In two long poems—"Reflections of a White Bear" and "Gathering Ghosts"—and a collection of selected poems, Carolyn Campbell speaks to the seasons of a woman's life and demonstrates her intense range of mood, memory and spiritual metaphor. Readers new to her work will discover a genuinely brilliant and compelling poet . . ."I do not know of another poet writing today who brings me closer home to myself." —Grace Cavalieri, National Public Radio

 



CHAPBOOKS

 

OYL
by Denise Duhamel & Maureen Seaton
40 pp., saddle-stapled, ISBN 1-888219-16-5, $8.00


"I'm crazy about Denise Duhamel's and Maureen Seaton's collaborations . . . The two poets are having so much fun with the language it rubs off on the reader. They're funny and they're smart and they're fast . . . and they're proving how much vitality there is in collaboration as an avant-garde ideal and a New York School tradition." —David Lehman



LITTLE NOVELS
by Denise Duhamel & Maureen Seaton
40 pp., saddle-stapled, ISBN 1-888219-20-3, $8.00


"Struck with the way a sonnet encapsulates a narrative—it seemed to us that a single sonnet could tell a very long story in just fourteen lines—we thought: They're like little novels!... The muse took over from there..." —Maureen Seaton

sample poems


A MERCIFUL BED
by Lisa Glatt and David Hernandez
32 pp., saddle-stapled, ISBN 1-888219-18-1, $8.00


"There is much which is dazzling in the work of Hernandez and Glatt—an easy and unembarrassed intimacy and an immediacy of expression . . . At their strongest, they demonstrate that poetry is to be found in everyday experience, in ordinary lives. Their shared focus on relationships, family, sex and work—a focus on universals—presents a strong contrast to those who tend to write from the perspective of individual estrangement." —Maggie Hannan, Critical Eye

MAN CLIMBS OUT OF MANHOLE
by David Hernandez
48 pp., saddle-stapled, ISBN 1-888219-15-7, $8.00


"If you read one poem from David Hernandez's new book, Man Climbs Out of Manhole, you'll have to read them all. And his imagination, humor, and the felicity of his metaphoric gift will bring you back to them again and again." —Ron Offen

AMBER SPIDER
by francEyE
28 pp., saddle-stapled, ISBN 1-888219-26-2, $8.00


"Sturdily, over the years, francEyE's become a Southern California treasure. Wearied by a world that hasn't worn her spirit down, francEyE's poetry reflects some of the finest that can come from a woman with a wise heart. If we women could return to our moonborn roots and sit again in the hut or cave, I would like to sit close enough to francEyE for our shoulders to touch or at least be allowed in the first row to watch her work her immortal magic..." —Joan Jobe Smith

sample poem

CITY BY THE SEA
by Judith Florence Grammel, Margaret Ann Towner
& Regina Nervo
60 pp., saddle-stapled, ISBN 1-888219-31-9, $10.00
WINNER OF THE 2005 JANE BUEL BRADLEY CHAPBOOK AWARD


"The three poets whose debut collections comprise City by the Sea present a fitting tribute to Jane Bradley: Judith Grammel, a trenchant observer of social interaction and well-schooled in the natural history of Long Beach; Margaret Towner, whose love of family and the natural world suffuses every page; and Regina Nervo, whose talent has not been tamed, only tempered by her amazing skill." —Donna Hilbert

sample poems

THE BELLY REMEMBERS
by Tamara Madison
40 pp., saddle-stapled, ISBN 1-888219-28-9, $8.00
WINNER OF THE 2004 JANE BUEL BRADLEY CHAPBOOK AWARD


"The poems in Madison's debut collection reveal her wit and keen eye for social observation and arise as much from muscle and sinew as from gray matter. Her poems are as taut as a well-toned body, lively as a well-toned mind." —Donna Hilbert

sample poem


JERKUMSTANCES
by Barbara Eknoian
52 pp., saddle-stapled, ISBN 1-888219-23-8, $8.00
WINNER OF THE 2002 JANE BUEL BRADLEY CHAPBOOK AWARD


"Jerkumstances is by turns funny and poignant, never missing a step in life's crazy dance. It is a memoir in verse, as engaging as a good novel." —Donna Hilbert

sample poem
BUKOWSKI BOULEVARD
by Joan Jobe Smith
48 pp., saddle-stapled, ISBN 1-888219-10-6, $10.00

"The poems of Joan Jobe Smith have the reality of force properly put down on paper . . . a strange woman, a strange, good, basic woman." —Charles Bukowski (1975)

"Whether or not these poems would delight you, I'll never know. However, they do tell another point of view about you, that from the periphery, the innocent bystander, the passive Bukowski watcher who loved you, admired you, was inspired and encouraged by you . . . and is now grateful to the poetry gods who blessed me with your acquaintance . . ." —Joan Jobe Smith

sample poem


DR. INVISIBLE & MR. HIDE
by Charles Harper Webb
40 pp., saddle-stapled, ISBN 1-888219-09-2, $8.00


"Charles Harper Webb has a wild inventive energy, a quirky, at times even manic wit, and a deep sense of wonder at the world." —Edward Hirsch

"This collection of nineteen brilliant pieces runs the gamut from fishing to introspection dazed by regret, all written with emotion that cartwheels through love and derision, optimism and realism, comedy and error." —Tim Grobaty, Long Beach Press-Telegram
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