Photo and ‘Beast’ Cover Art by Cecelia Post
Don’t forget our launch party, with a reading by Justine Post, on January 24, 2014 — RSVP now or simply save the date, and we’ll see you there!
Hamlet’s terrace, Kronborg, Denmark
Hello friends! It’s almost time to celebrate the launch of Augury’s 2014 catalogue: Frances Justine Post‘s poetry book, Beast, and Halina Duraj‘s book of short fiction, The Family Cannon.
Help us celebrate putting these two books out into the world. At the same time, enjoy readings by Augury’s debut authors, Frances Justine Post and Halina Duraj, as well as guest readings by Timothy Donnelly and Ely Shipley.
Who: Augury Books’ new authors, Frances Justine Post and Halina Duraj, as well as poets Timothy Donnelly (The Cloud Corporation) and Ely Shipley (Boy with Flowers).
What: 2014 launch party for Augury’s new books! Complete with readings, drinks, and irresistible new books for sale.
When: 7:00 p.m. — Friday, January 24, 2014; Join us after the event for drinks in the neighborhood.
Where: Berl’s Poetry Shop — 126A Front Street / Brooklyn, NY 11201 (next to Superfine in D.U.M.B.O.)
Why: Because we all love new poetry, new fiction, wine, and each other.
How: Take the F to York Street or the A/C to High Street. Also, please RSVP to this event on Facebook.
Secure your copies of The Family Cannon and Beast now by pre-ordering!
AND
There is plenty of Circe, and plenty of Caliban, too, in the poems of Frances Justine Post’s book BEAST. Carl Jung would have nodded in affirmation at the way in which myth and archetype pulse and flow under the surface of her poems—wolf, whale, cannibal, fire, doll. Her monologues cast the speaker’s self into these tableaux, and it’s hard to convey the detailed viscerality with which Post renders the human psyche—in all its needy, vengeful, rueful, generous and knowing configurations. ‘What have you been killing, my dear? / Let me wipe your chin.’ Post’s theme is hopeless love, but there is so much bravado, courage, insight, and self-knowledge in the poems that BEAST feels like a weird, wild, somewhat frightening party. Not to mention the sensuous, acrobatic flamboyance of Post’s remarkable writing, which carries this psychic carnival all proudly into Art.”
—Tony Hoagland, author of What Narcissism Means to Me
Frances Justine Post
Frances Justine Post is the recipient of the “Discovery” / Boston Review Poetry Prize, the Inprint Paul Verlaine Poetry Prize, and the Amy Award from Poets & Writers. Her poems have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, The Kenyon Review Online, The Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, Western Humanities Review, and others. Originally from Sullivan’s Island, SC, she received her MFA from Columbia University and is currently earning her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Houston, where she is poetry editor for Gulf Coast Magazine.
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With quiet astonishment, Halina Duraj explores the mysteries of love and madness, offering her readers the secret salvation of story. Between a father’s reinvention of himself, a mother’s perplexing fidelity, and a woman’s navigation of the complexities of betrayal, we discover the exquisite pleasures of a world restored and redeemed through Duraj’s luminous gaze, the loving attention and tender playfulness of an extravagantly passionate imagination.”
—Melanie Rae Thon, author of The Voice of the River and In This Light
Halina Duraj’s stories have appeared in The Sun, The Harvard Review, Fiction, Witness, and other journals. She has an MA in creative writing from the University of California, Davis, and a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Utah. In 2012, she was a writer-in-residence at Hedgebrook, a women’s writing retreat on Whidbey Island, WA. She teaches at the University of San Diego, where she also directs the Lindsay J. Cropper Center for Creative Writing.
Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography
by Katie Fowley
Let’s all become nurses
And sleep in low places
A spa of red flowers
A block of old trees.
Away from your window
Across from your building
A building like yours
Lets off its new steam.
It’s better this weather
It’s better than silk.
The sky is a gray thing
The sky wants to hold you
The sky is away now.
It cannot white out.
Let’s all become nursemaids
And sleep in low places
Let’s all become jelly
In a spa of red hearts.
The heart is an urchin
The heart isn’t well now
The heart has a fever.
It wants to black out.
Let’s all become nurses
And sleep by the fire
The winter umbrellas
A host of red hair.
It’s a good thing this building.
This mantle of gleaming.
I’ll build you a building
If you live there with me.
Like snakes in the building
Like birds in the building
The men in the building
Are circling free.
The dusk is a low thing.
The dusk wants to hold you.
You cannot be held now.
You cannot walk out.
Come out of your building
Fluorescent in gloaming.
The windows are darkening.
The smell of green tea.
This green is depressing.
This green light is fetching
The light from the ether
The light from your knee.
Katie Fowley is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her poetry and criticism have been published in No, Dear; 6×6; and Rain Taxi: Review of Books. She is a co-editor of Lightful Press, which publishes poetry, translation, and art. Her chapbook is forthcoming from DIEZ in spring, 2014.
Editor’s Note: Many thanks to Ugly Duckling Presse’s 6×6, in which “Lullaby” first appeared.
This time of year, everyone is in the giving spirit. More importantly, everyone has various giftees they need to cross off of an ever-expanding list.
For a short time at a 35% discount, you can give the gift of poetry while supporting Augury Books and the literary arts. Expand your own collection or help beef up the bookshelves of your aspiring-writer niece or your poetry-loving boyfriend. Trying to think of an original gift for colleagues in your office that will entertain and impress? Voila.
For only $40, including shipping* — more than 35% off the regular price — get all four books:
Simply send $40 to augurybooks@gmail.com via PayPal, include your full name and shipping address on the PayPal order to avoid delays, and your books will be shipped within 24 hours.**
Love the idea, but already have our catalogue? Bravo! You can still help spread literary cheer. Share this with friends and (continue to) support the arts.
As always, to keep receiving posts such as this, follow our blog by clicking in the bottom right corner of this page.
*International shipping not included in special. Please contact us for international shipping rates. Sorry, no Amazon orders for this special!
**For receipt before 12/25/13, place order before end of business day 12/19/13.
In preparation for 2014 and the upcoming launch of our new books, Frances Justine Post‘s Beast—our fourth full-length book of poetry—and Halina Duraj‘s The Family Cannon—our debut break into fiction—Augury Books has joined Twitter!
Follow us to get all the updates and details about our events (including our launch party for the aforementioned books), as well as links to poems, pics, book specials, order info, submissions guidelines, teasers, and other stuff we like (and think you will).
Go on, follow us!
While you’re at it, Like us on Facebook, and Follow this Blog by clicking on the prompt in the bottom right corner —> —>
Thanks, Augury followers!
Photo by Dave Bledsoe, FreeVerse Photography
Mantic author Maureen Alsop and Joshua Gottlieb-Miller, winner of the 2012 Indiana Review Poetry Prize, paired up to create this piece of poetic splendor, “Cloud,” via A-Minor Magazine. Thanks, all!
Read “Cloud” at A-Minor Magazine.
Read more from Maureen Alsop or order Mantic.
Maureen Alsop, Ph.D., is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Mantic and Apparition Wren, and several chapbooks. Maureen is an associate poetry editor for the online journal Poemeleon and Inlandia: A Literary Journal. She presently leads a creative writing workshop for the Inlandia Institute/Poets & Writers, and the Rooster Moans. Collaborative poems with poet, Joshua Gottlieb-Miller have recently appeared on Verse Daily, Contrary, Inertia, and Switchback. http://www.maureenalsop.com
Joshua Gottlieb-Miller is the winner of the 2012 Indiana Review Poetry Prize. He lives in Madison, WI, where he works as a writing center coordinator and grocer, and volunteers with the Writers in Prisons Project at Oakhill Correctional Institution.
Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography
M E D I A T I O N S O N P E R S P E C T I V E
by Matthew Zingg
Because the sky was wax paper the planes were
flies stuck in their holding patterns.
It was just one of those days.
You said: the city was wearing its clearest uniform.
I said: the brow of the park looked
scabrous and fresh
in its Sunday best, the air a shade
of yellow easiest to forget.
It was a game we played—to see how far the other
could take all this acreage.
A balloon lifts up a couple blocks away
and it means an explosion, a portent
or it means a slow eye. In other words
Matthew Zingg‘s work can be found in The Paris-American, The Awl, Blackbird, Cider Press Review, HTML Giant, The Madison Review, Birdfeast, The Rumpus, Everyday Genius, and Muzzle, among others. He lives in Baltimore where he hosts the Federal Dust Reading Series.
Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography
The Hello Goodbye
by Sarah Carson
Friend, they’re on their way to tell you that the poem you’ve been carrying is no longer your love poem. She’s said, “If another boy comes along, I’m going to kiss him,” and they’ve stamped it all official. There’s no time for an ode to the time you touched her hair in a store window, an elegy for the morning she found your necklace splayed softly in the dirt. She’s working on a little something about boxes and boxes and empty tractor trailers, about the widest river on your favorite continent and the shortest song you’ve ever heard. There are lines about several evenings where the phone is ringing and ringing and ringing in America. That poem, like most poems you loved, is useless. I’ve only come to tell you that I know how you are feeling, and it doesn’t matter. You need to take a long swig of something now. You need to get the hell out of here.
Sarah Carson was born and raised in Flint, Michigan, and now lives in Chicago with her dog, Amos. She is the author of three chapbooks, “Before Onstar” (Etched Press, 2010), “Twenty-Two” (Finishing Line Press, 2011), and “When You Leave” (H_NGM_N, 2012). Sometimes she blogs at sarahamycarson.wordpress.com.
Photo by Dave Bledsoe, FreeVerse Photography
From “Solitude Must Share My Solitude” by Pia Aliperti
A fixed fire
a quiet, collected aspect.
Now for the hitch in the storm.
Fix your hair
bathe your face,
white-walled life.
I would then be your mistress.
Pia Aliperti holds an MFA from The New School. Her poems and reviews have appeared recently in Rattle, The Best American Poetry blog, H_NGM_N, and Publishers Weekly.
